Restless (16 page)

'Is Mr X third rate?'

He paused and she could sense him thinking: how does she know about Mr X? And then figuring out how she did know, and that it was all right, he replied slowly.

'No. Mr X is different. Mr X sees the value in AAS Ltd.'

'Was Mr X there, today?'

'Yes.'

'Which one was he?'

He didn't answer. He reached for the bottle and refilled both their glasses. This was their second bottle of Chianti.

'Here's to you, Eva,' he said with something approaching sincerity. 'You did very well today. I don't like to say that you saved our bacon – but I think you saved our bacon.'

They clinked glasses and he gave her one of his rare white smiles and for the first time that evening she was suddenly aware of him looking at her – as a man will look at a woman – noting aspects of her: her fair hair, long and curled under, her red lips, her arched black brows, her long neck, the swell of her breasts beneath her navy-blue dress.

'Yes, well…' he said awkwardly. 'You look very… smart.'

'How did I save your bacon?'

He looked around. No one was sitting close to them.

'They're convinced that the problem arose in the Dutch branch. Not the British. We were let down by the Dutch – a rotten apple in The Hague.'

'What does the Dutch branch say?'

'They're very angry. They blame us. Their executive was forcibly retired, after all.'

Eva knew that Romer enjoyed this plain-code, as it was termed. It was another of his rules: use plain-code whenever possible, not ciphers or codes – they were either too complex or too easy to crack. Plain-code made sense or it didn't. If it didn't make sense it was never incriminating.

Eva said: 'Well, I'm glad I was of some use.'

He said nothing in reply, this time. He was sitting back in his seat, looking at her as if he was seeing her for the first time.

'You look very beautiful tonight, Eva. Has anyone ever told you that before?'

But his dry and cynical tone of voice told her he was joking.

'Yes,' she said, equally drily, 'now and then.'

In Frith Street, in the dark of the black-out, they stood for a while waiting for a taxi.

Where do you live?' he asked. 'Hampstead, isn't it?'

'Bayswater.' She felt a little drunk, what with the gins and all that Chianti they'd consumed. She stood in a shop doorway and watched Romer chase a taxi up the street vainly. When he came back towards her, his hair a bit awry, smiling ruefully, shrugging, she felt a sudden, almost physical urge to be in bed with him, naked. She was a bit shaken by her own carnality but she realised it had been more than two years since she'd been with a man – thinking of her last lover, Jean-Didier, Kolia's friend, the melancholy musician, as she privately called him – two years since Jean-Didier and now she suddenly felt the powerful desire, wanted to hold a man in her arms again – a naked man held against her naked body. It was not so much about any sex act, it was something about being close to, being able to embrace that bigger solider bulk – the strange musculature of a man, something about the different smells, the different strength. She missed it in her life and, she added, this isn't about Romer, watching him come towards her – this is about a man – about men. Romer, however, was the only man currently available.

'Maybe we should go by tube,' he said.

'A taxi'll come,' she said. 'I'm in no hurry.'

She remembered something a woman in Paris had told her once. A woman in her forties, much married, elegant, a little world-weary. There is nothing easier in this world, this woman had claimed, than getting a man to kiss you. Oh really? Eva had said, so how do you do that? Just stand close to a man, the woman had said, very close, as close as you can without touching – he will kiss you in one minute or two. It's inevitable. For them it's like an instinct – they can't resist. Infallible.

So Eva stood close to Romer in the doorway of the shop on Frith Street as he shouted and waved at the passing cars moving down the dark street, hoping one of them might be a taxi.

'We're out of luck,' he said, turning, to find Eva standing very close to him, her face lifted.

'I'm in no hurry,' she said.

He reached for her and kissed her.

Eva stood naked in the small bathroom of Romer's rented flat in South Kensington. She hadn't switched on the light and was aware of the reflection of her body in the mirror, its pale elongated shape printed with the dark roundels of her nipples. They had come back here, having found a taxi almost immediately after their kiss, and had made love without much ado or conversation. She had left the bed almost immediately afterwards to come here and try to gain a moment of understanding, of perspective, on what had happened. She flushed the lavatory and closed her eyes. There was nothing to be gained by thinking now, she told herself, there would be plenty of time to think later.

She slid back into bed beside him.

'I've broken all my rules, you realise,' Romer said.

'Only one, surely?' she said snuggling up to him. 'It's not the end of the world.'

'Sorry I was so quick,' he said. 'I'm a bit out of practice. You're too damn pretty and sexy.'

'I'm not complaining. Put your arms round me.'

He did so and she pressed herself up against him, feeling the muscles in his shoulders, the deep furrow in his back that was his spine. He seemed so big beside her, almost as if he were another race. This is what I had wanted, she said to herself: this is what I've been missing. She pressed her face into the angle of his shoulder and neck and breathed in.

'You're not a virgin,' he said.

'No. Are you?'

'I'm a middle-aged man, for God's sake.'

'There are middle-aged virgins.'

He laughed at her and she ran her hand over his flanks to grip him. He had a band of wiry hair across his chest and a small belly on him. She felt his penis begin to thicken in the loose cradle of her fingers. He hadn't shaved since the morning and his beard was rough on her lips and on her chin. She kissed his neck and kissed his nipples and she felt the weight of his thigh as he moved to cross it over hers. This is what she had wanted: weight – weight, bulk, muscle, strength. Something bigger than me. He rolled her easily on to her back and she felt the heft of his body flatten her against the sheets.

'Eva Delectorskaya,' he said. 'Who would've thought?'

He kissed her gently and she spread her thighs to accommodate him.

'Lucas Romer,' she said. 'My, my, my…'

He raised himself on his arms above her.

'Promise you won't tell anyone, but…' he said, teasingly leaving the sentence unfinished.

'I promise,' she said, thinking: Who would I tell? Deirdre, Sylvia, Blytheswood? What a fool!

'But…' he continued, 'thanks to you, Eva Delectorskaya,' he dipped his head to kiss her lips briefly, 'we're all going to go to the United States of America.'

ON SATURDAY MORNING JOCHEN and I went down to the Westgate shopping centre in Oxford – a shopping mall, of sorts, concrete, ugly but useful as most malls tend to be – to buy some new pyjamas for Jochen (as he was going to be spending a night with his grandmother) and to pay the penultimate hire-purchase instalment on the new cooker I'd bought in December. We parked the car in Broad Street and walked up Cornmarket, where the shops were just opening and, even though it promised to be yet another fine, hot sunny day, there seemed to be a brief sensation of freshness in the morning air – a tacit conspiracy or wishful illusion that such hot sunny days were not yet so commonplace as to have become tiresome and boring. The streets had been swept, the rubbish bins emptied and the sticky bus-and-tourist-clogged hell that was a Saturday Cornmarket in reality was still an hour or two away.

Jochen dragged me back to look at a toyshop window.

'Look at that, Mummy. It's amazing.'

He was pointing to some plastic space gun, encrusted with gimmicks and gizmos.

'Can I have that for my birthday?' he asked plaintively. 'For my birthday and next Christmas?'

'No. I've got you a lovely new encyclopaedia.'

'You're joking with me again,' he said, sternly. 'Don't joke like that.'

'You have to joke a little in life, darling,' I said, leading him on and turning down Queen Street. 'Otherwise what's the point?'

'It depends on the joke,' he said. 'Some jokes aren't funny.'

'All right, you can have your gun. I'll send the encyclopaedia to a little boy in Africa.'

'What little boy?'

'I'll find one. There'll be masses who'd love an encyclopaedia.'

'Look – there's Hamid.'

At the foot of Queen Street was a small square with an obelisk. Clearly designed to be a modest public space in the Edwardian part of the city, now, with the modern redevelopment, it served only as a kind of forecourt or ramp to the maw of the Westgate centre. Now glue-sniffing punks gathered at the steps around the monument (to some forgotten soldier killed in a colonial skirmish) and it was a favourite spot for marches and demonstrations to begin or end. The punks liked it, buskers liked it, beggars liked it, Hare Krishna groups tinkled their cymbals and chanted in it, Salvation Army bands played carols in it at Christmas. I had to admit that, nondescript though it was, it was possibly the liveliest and most eclectic public space in Oxford.

Today there was a small demonstration of Iranians – students and exiles, I supposed – a group of thirty or so assembled under banners that read 'Down with the Shah', 'Long Live the Iranian Revolution'. Two bearded men were trying to encourage passers-by to sign a petition and a girl in a headscarf was listing, in a shrill singsong voice, the Pahlavi family's iniquities through a megaphone. I followed the direction of Jochen's pointed finger and saw Hamid standing some way off behind a parked car, taking photographs of the demonstrators.

We wandered over to him.

'Hamid!' Jochen shouted and he turned, visibly surprised at first, then pleased to see who it was greeting him. He crouched in front of Jochen and offered him his hand to shake, which Jochen did with some vigour.

'Mr Jochen,' he said. '
Salaam alaikum
.'

'Alaikum salaam,'
Jochen said: it was a routine he knew well.

He smiled at him, and then, rising, turned to me. 'Ruth. How are you?'

'What are you doing?' I said, abruptly, suddenly suspicious.

'Taking photographs.' He held up the camera. 'They are all friends of mine, there.'

'Oh. I would have thought they wouldn't want their photos taken.'

'Why? It's a peaceful demonstration against the Shah. His sister is coming here to Oxford to open a library they have paid for. Wait for that – there will be a big demonstration. You must come.'

'Can I come?' Jochen said.

'Of course.' Then Hamid turned, hearing his name shouted from the demo.

'I must go,' he said. 'I'll see you tonight, Ruth. Shall I bring a taxi?'

'No, no,' I said. 'We can walk.'

He ran over to join the others and for a moment I felt guilty and a fool, suspecting him in that way. We went into the Westgate to look for pyjamas but I found myself still brooding on the matter, wondering why anti-Shah demonstrators would be happy to have their photographs taken.

I was standing over Jochen as he packed his toys into his bag, urging him to be more ruthless in his selection, when I heard Ludger come up the iron stairs and enter through the kitchen door.

'Ah, Ruth,' he said, seeing me in Jochen's room. 'I have a favour. Hey, Jochen, how are you, man?'

Jochen looked round. 'I'm fine, thank you,' he said.

'I got a friend,' Ludger continued to me. 'A girl from Germany. Not a girlfriend,' he added quickly. 'She's saying she wants to visit Oxford and I'm wondering if she could stay here – two, three days.'

'There's no spare room.'

'She can sleep with me. I mean – in my room. Sleeping bag on the floor – no sweat.'

'I'll have to ask Mr Scott,' I improvised. 'There's a clause in my lease, you see. I'm really not allowed to have more than one person to stay here.'

'What?' he was incredulous. 'But it's your home?'

'My
rented
home. I'll just pop down and ask him.'

Mr Scott worked some Saturday mornings and I had seen his car was parked outside. I went down the stairs to the dentist's rooms and found him sitting on the reception desk, swinging his legs, talking to Krissi, his New Zealand dental nurse.

'Hello, hello, hello!' Mr Scott boomed, seeing me arrive, his eyes huge behind the thick lenses of his gold-rimmed spectacles. 'How's young Jochen?'

'Very well, thank you. I was just wondering, Mr Scott, would you object if I put some garden furniture out at the bottom of the garden? Table, chairs, an umbrella?'

'Why would I object?'

'I don't know – it might spoil the view from your surgery, or something.'

'How could it spoil the view?'

'That's great, then. Thanks very much.'

Mr Scott, as a young army dentist, had sailed into Singapore Harbour in February 1942. Four days after he arrived the British forces surrendered and he spent the next three and a half years as a prisoner of the Japanese. After that experience, he had told me – in all candour, without bitterness – he had made the decision that nothing in life was ever going to bother him again.

Ludger was waiting at the top of the stairs. 'Well?'

'Sorry,' I said. 'Mr Scott says no. Only one guest allowed.'

Ludger looked at me sceptically. I held his gaze.

'Oh, yeah?' he said.

'Yeah. In fact you're lucky he's let you stay for so long,' I lied, quite enjoying the process. 'My lease is at stake here, you know.'