‘Lovely,’ he said. ‘Fabulous.’
He was still smiling and she thought he must be drunk except that his speech was in no way slurred.
‘It’s really so late,’ she said as the taxi paused in traffic. ‘Perhaps we should leave the designs for tonight, Mr Belhatchet?’
‘Andy.’
‘Perhaps, Andy –’
‘Take morning off, Ellie.’
As they entered the flat he asked her again if she’d like to use the lavatory and reminded her where it was. While she was in there the telephone in the nook beside her rang, causing her to jump. It rang for only a moment, before he picked up one of the other extensions. When she entered the sitting-room he was speaking into the receiver, apparently to Signor Martelli in Rome. ‘Fabulous,’ he was saying. ‘No, truly.’
He’d turned several lights on and pulled the green blinds fully down. The pictures that crowded the walls were more conventional than those in the lavatory, reproductions of drawings mainly, limbs and bones and heads scattered over a single sheet, all of them belonging to the past.
‘’
In the room there was no pile of designs and she said to herself that in a moment Mr Belhatchet would make a suggestion. She would deal with it as best she could; if the worst came to the worst she would naturally have to leave Sweetawear.
‘Fancy drop brandy?’ offered Mr Belhatchet.
‘Thanks awfully, but I really think I’d better –’
‘Just get designs,’ he said, leaving the sitting-room.
He returned with a stack of designs which he arrayed around the room just as he would have done in the office. He asked her to assess them while he poured both of them some orange juice.
‘Oh, lovely,’ she said, because she really felt like orange juice.
The designs were of trouser-suits, a selection of ideas from four different designers. One would be chosen in the end and Sweetawear would manufacture it on a large scale and in a variety of colours.
‘Fancy that,’ he said, returning with the orange juice and pointing at a drawing with the point of his right foot.
‘Yes. And that, the waistcoat effect.’
‘Right.’
She sipped her juice and he sipped his. They discussed the designs in detail, taking into consideration the fact that some would obviously be more economical to mass-produce than others. They whittled them down to three, taking about half an hour over that. He’d come to a final decision, he said, some time tomorrow, and the way he said it made her think that he’d come to it on his own, and that his choice might even be one of the rejected designs.
She sat down on the buttoned sofa, feeling suddenly strange, wondering if she’d drunk too much. Mr Belhatchet, she saw, had pushed a few of the designs off an embroidered arm-chair and was sitting down also. He had taken the jacket of his suit off and was slowly loosening his tie.
‘Okayie?’ he inquired, and leaned his head back and closed his eyes.
She stood up. The floor was peculiar beneath her feet, seeming closer to her, as though her feet had become directly attached to her knees. It moved, like the deck of a ship. She sat down again.
‘Fantastic,’ said Mr Belhatchet.
‘I’m afraid I’ve had a little too much to drink.’
‘God, those days,’ said Mr Belhatchet. ‘Never ’gain. Know something, Ellie?’
‘Mr Belhatchet –’
‘Mother loved me, Ellie. Like I was her sweetheart, Mother loved me.’
‘Mr Belhatchet, what’s happening?’
She heard her own voice, as shrill as a bird’s, in the bright, crowded room. She didn’t want to move from the sofa. She wanted to put her feet up but she felt she might not be able to move them and was frightened to try in case she couldn’t. She closed her eyes and felt herself moving upwards, floating in the room, with a kaleidoscope in each eyelid. ‘Mr Belhatchet!’ she cried out. ‘Mr Belhatchet! Mr Belhatchet!’
She opened her eyes and saw that he had risen from his chair and was standing above her. He was smiling; his face was different.
‘I feel,’ she cried, but he interrupted her before she could say what she felt.
‘Love,’ he murmured.
He lifted her legs and placed them on the sofa. He took her shoes off and then returned to the chair he’d occupied before.
‘You made us drunk,’ she heard her own voice crying, shrill again, shrieking almost in the room. Yet in another way she felt quite tranquil.
‘We’re going high,’ he murmured. ‘All righty? We had it in our orange juice.’
She cried out again with part of her. She was floating above the room, she said. The colours of the trouser- suits that were all around her were vivid. They came at her garishly from the paper; the drawn heads of the girls were strange, like real people. The purple of the buttoned sofa was vivid also, and the green of the blinds. All over
