The Driver's Seat (9 page)

‘We go
out of town a little way,’ says Carlo. ‘I know a place. I brought the Fiat, did
you see? The front seats fold back. Make you comfortable.’

‘Stop
at once,’ Lise says. ‘Or I put my head out of the window and yell for help. I
don’t want sex with you. I’m not interested in sex. I’ve got other interests
and as a matter of fact I’ve got something on my mind that’s got to be done. I’m
telling you to stop.’ She grabs the wheel and tries to guide it into the curb.

‘All
right, all right,’ he says, regaining control of the car which has swerved a
little with Lise’s interference. ‘All right. I’m taking you to the Hilton.’

‘It
doesn’t look like the Hilton road to me,’ Lise says. The traffic lights ahead
are red but as there is very little traffic about on this dark, wide
residential boulevard, he chances it and skims across. Lise puts her head out
of the window and yells for help.

He
pulls up at last in a side lane where, back from the road, there are the lights
of two small villas; beyond that the road is a mass of stony crevices. He
embraces her and kisses her mightily while she kicks him and tries to push him
off, gurgling her protests. When he stops for breath he says, ‘Now we put back
the seats and do it properly.’ But already she has jumped out of the car and
has started running towards the gate of one of the houses, wiping her mouth and
screaming, ‘Police! Call the police!’ Big Carlo overtakes her at the gate. ‘Quiet!’
he says. ‘Be quiet, and get into the car. Please. I’ll take you back, I
promise. Sorry, lady, I haven’t done any harm at all to you, have I? Only a
kiss, what’s a kiss.’

She
runs and makes a grab for the door of the driver’s seat, and as he calls after
her, ‘The other door!’ she gets in, starts up, and backs speedily out of the
lane. She leans over and locks the other door just in time to prevent him from
opening it. ‘You’re not my type in any case,’ she screams. Then she starts off,
too quickly for him to be able to open the back door he is now grabbing at.
Still he is running to catch up, and she yells back at him, ‘If you report this
to the police I’ll tell them the truth and make a scandal in your family.’ And
then she is away, well clear of him.

She
spins along in expert style, stopping duly at the traffic lights. She starts to
sing softly as she waits:

Inky-pinky-winky-wong

How do you like your potatoes done?

A little gravy in the pan

For the King of the Cannibal Islands.

Her
zipper-bag is on the floor of the car. While waiting for the lights to change
she lifts it on to the seat, unzips it and looks with a kind of satisfaction at
the wrapped-up objects of different shape, as it might be they represent a good
day’s work. She comes to a crossroad where some traffic accumulates. Here, a
policeman is on duty and as she passes at his bidding she pulls up and asks him
the way to the Hilton.

He is a
young policeman. He bends to give her the required direction.

‘Do you
carry a revolver?’ Lise says. He looks puzzled and fails to answer before Lise
adds, ‘Because, if you did, you could shoot me.

The
policeman is still finding words when she drives off, and in the mirror she can
see him looking at the retreating car, probably noting the number. Which in
fact he is doing, so that, on the afternoon of the following day, when he has
been shown her body, he says, ‘Yes, that’s her. I recognize the face. She said,
“If you had a revolver you could shoot me.”’ Which is to lead to many
complications in Carlo’s private life when the car is traced back to him, he
being released by the police only after six hours of interrogation. A
photograph of Carlo and also a picture of his young apprentice who holds a
lively press conference of his own, moreover will appear in every newspaper in
the country.

But
now, at the Hilton Hotel her car is held up just as it enters the gates in the
driveway. There is a line of cars ahead, and beyond them a group of policemen.
Two police cars are visible in the parking area on the other side of the
entrance. The rest of the driveway is occupied by a line of four very large
limousines each with a uniformed driver standing by.

The
police collect on either side of the hotel doorway, their faces picked out by
the bright lights, while there emerge down the steps from the hotel two women
who seem to be identical twins, wearing black dresses and high-styled black
hair, followed by an important-looking Arabian figure, sheikh-like in his head-dress
and robes, with a lined face and glittering eyes, who descends the steps with a
floating motion as if his feet are clearing the ground by an inch or two; he is
flanked by two smaller bespectacled, brown-faced men in businesslike suits.
The two black-dressed women stand back with a respectful housekeeperly bearing
while the robed figure approaches the first limousine; and the two men draw
back too, as he enters the recesses of the car. Two black-robed women with the
lower parts of their faces veiled and their heads shrouded in drapery then make
their descent, and behind them another pair appear, menservants with arms
raised, bearing aloft numerous plastic-enveloped garments on coat-hangers.
Still in pairs, further components of the retinue appear, each two moving in
such unison that they seem to share a single soul or else two well-rehearsed
parts in the chorus of an opera by Verdi. Two men wearing western clothes but
for their red fezes are duly admitted to one of the waiting limousines and, as
Lise gets out of her car to join the watchers, two ramshackle young Arabs with
rumpled grey trousers and whitish shirts end the procession, bearing two large
baskets, each one packed with oranges and a jumbo-sized vacuum-flask which
stands slightly askew among the fruit, like champagne in an ice-bucket.

A group
of people who are standing near Lise on the driveway, having themselves got out
of their held-up taxis and cars, are discussing the event: ‘He was here on
vacation. I saw it on the television. There’s been a coup in his country and he’s
going back.’ — ‘Why should he go back?’ — ‘No, he won’t go back, believe me.
Never.’ — ‘What country is it? I hope it doesn’t affect us. The last time there
was a coup my shares regressed so I nearly had a breakdown. Even the mutual
funds …’

The
police have gone back to their cars, and escorted by them the caravan goes its
stately way.

Lise
jumps back into Carlo’s car and conducts it as quickly as possible to the car
park. She leaves it there, taking the keys. Then she leaps into the hotel, eyed
indignantly by the doorman who presumably resents her haste, her clothes, the
blurred stain on her coat, the rumpled aspect that she has acquired in the
course of the evening and whose built-in computer system rates her low on the spending
scale.

Lise
makes straight for the ladies’ toilets and while there, besides putting her
appearance to rights as best she can, she takes a comfortable chair in the
soft-lit rest-room and considers, one by one, the contents of her zipper-bag
which she lays on a small table beside her. She feels the outside of the box
containing the food-blender and replaces it in her bag. She also leaves
unopened a soft package containing the neckties, but, having rummaged in her
hand-bag for something which apparently is not there, she brings forth her
lipstick and with it she writes on the outside of the soft package, ‘Papa’.
There is an unsealed paper bag which she peers into; it is the orange scarf.

She
puts it back into place and takes out another bag containing the black and
white scarf. She folds this back and with her lipstick she traces on the
outside of the bag in large capitals, ‘Olga’. Another package seems to puzzle
her. She feels round it with half-closed eyes for a moment, then opens it up.
It contains the pair of men’s slippers which Mrs Fiedke had mislaid in the shop
having apparently in fact put them in Lise’s bag. Lise wraps them up again and
replaces them. Finally she takes out her paperback book and an oblong package
which she opens. This is a gift-box containing the gilded paper-opener in its
sheath, also Mrs Fiedke’s property.

Lise
slowly returns the lipstick to her handbag, places the book and the box
containing the paperknife on the table beside her, places the zipper-bag on the
floor, then proceeds to examine the contents of her hand-bag. Money, the
tourist folder with its inset map of the city, the bunch of six keys that she
had brought with her that morning, the keys of Carlo’s car, the lipstick, the
comb, the powder compact, the air ticket. Her lips are parted and she leans
back in a relaxed attitude but that her eyes are too wide open for restfulness.
She looks again at the contents of her hand-bag. A notecase with paper money, a
purse with loose change. She gathers herself together in such an abrupt manner
that the toilet attendant who has been sitting vacantly in a corner by the
wash-basins starts to her feet. Lise packs up her belongings. She puts the
paper-knife box back in the zipper-bag, carefully tucking it down the side, and
zips the bag up. Her hand-bag is also packed tidily again, except for the bunch
of six keys that she had brought on her travels. She holds the book in her
hand, and, placing the bunch of six keys with a clatter on the plate left out
for the coins, the attendant’s reward, she says to the woman, ‘I won’t be
needing these now.’ Then, with her zipper-bag, her book, her handbag, her hair
combed and her face cleaned up, she swings out of the door and into the hotel
lounge. The clock above the reception desk says nine thirty-five. Lise makes
for the bar, where she looks round. Most of the tables are occupied by
chattering groups. She sits at a vacant but rather out-of-the-way table, orders
a whisky, and bids the tentative waiter hurry. ‘I ‘ye got a train to catch.’
She is served with the drink together with a jug of water and a bowl of
peanuts. She drenches the whisky with water, sips a small part of it and eats
all the peanuts. She takes another small sip from her glass, and, leaving it
nearly full, stands up and motions the waiter to bring her bill. She pays for
this high-priced repast with a note taken from her bag and tells the waiter to
keep the change, which amounts to a very high tip. He accepts it with
incredulous grace and watches her as she leaves the bar. He, too, will give his
small piece of evidence to the police on the following day, as will also the
toilet attendant, trembling at the event which has touched upon her life
without the asking.

Lise
stops short in the hotel lounge and smiles. Then without further hesitation she
goes over to a group of armchairs, only one of which is occupied. In it sits a
sickly-looking man. Bending over him deferentially to listen to something the
man is saying is a uniformed chauffeur who presently turns to go, waved away by
the seated man, just as Lise approaches.

‘There
you are!’ says Lise. ‘I’ve been looking for you all day. Where did you get to?’

The man
shifts to look at her. ‘Jenner’s gone to have a bite. Then we’re off back to
the villa. Damn nuisance, coming back in to town all this way. Tell Jenner he’s
got half-an-hour. We must be off.’

‘He’ll
be back in a minute,’ Lise says. ‘Don’t you remember we met on the plane?’

‘The
Sheikh. Damn rotters in his country have taken over behind his back. Now he’s
lost his throne or whatever it is he sits on. I was at school with him. Why did
he ring me up? He rang me up. On the telephone. He brings me back to town all
this way and when we get here he says he can’t come to the villa after all,
there’s been a coup.

‘I’ll
take you back to the villa,’ Lise says. ‘Come on, get in the car with me. I’ve
got a car outside.’

The man
says, ‘Last time I saw the Sheikh it was ‘38. He came on safari with me. Rotten
shot if you know anything about big game. You’ve got to wait for the drag. They
call it the drag, you see. It kills its prey and drags it into the bush then
you follow the drag and when you know where it’s left its prey you’re all
right. The poor bloody beast comes out the next day to eat its prey, they like
it high. And you only have a few seconds. You’re here and there’s another
fellow there and a third over here. You can’t shoot from here, you see, because
there’s another hunter there and you don’t want to shoot him. You have to shoot
from over here or over there. And the Sheikh, I’ve known him for years, we were
at school together, the bloody fool shot and missed it by five feet from a
fifteen-foot range.’

His
eyes look straight ahead and his lips quiver.

‘You’re
not my type after all,’ Lise says. ‘I thought you were, but I was away out.’

‘What?
Want a drink? Where’s Jenner?’

She
gathers up the handles of her bags, picks up her book and looks at him and
through him as if he were already a distant memory and leaves without a
good-bye, indeed as if she had said good-bye to him long ago.

She
brushes past a few people at the vestibule who look at her with the same casual
curiosity with which others throughout the day have looked at her. They are
mainly tourists; one exceptional sight among so many others does not deflect
their attention for very long. Outside, she goes to the car park where she has
left Carlo’s car, and does not find it.

She
goes up to the doorman. ‘I’ve lost my car. A Fiat 125. Have you seen anyone
drive off with a Fiat?’

‘Lady,
there are twenty Fiats an hour come in and out of here.’