The Green Flash (15 page)

I kissed her. ‘Dangerous character.'

‘Yes … dangerous. And horr-ible. And since I am a person who in general is attached to the laws of cause and effect I am seeking, have been seeking …' She stopped and laughed. ‘No doubt I am out of my tiny. Is that what you said?'

‘Like me to stretch out on a couch?'

‘You are already stretched out.'

‘Carry on, Mrs Freud.'

‘How can one carry on in the face of such – derision? Of course I am arguing in circles myself. But you don't
care
enough, you don't
feel
enough – perhaps not even for yourself. You – you are like a Buddhist, but for the wrong reasons!'

‘Well, stone me,' I said. ‘What trip are we off on now?'

She saw my eyes going over her and pulled the sheet to cover her.

‘A Buddhist cares little for this world because he believes, so long as his life here is based on good moral precepts, that what happens to him in it is unimportant. You care little for this world, care so little what
happens
, below a certain shallow level,
not
because you are developing and following your Karma but either because it does not exist or because it is hidden behind a wall, buried too deep to be got at!'

‘It doesn't exist,' I said. ‘ Haven't you noticed I have no reflection in the mirror? Makes shaving difficult.'

After a few moments she sighed. ‘Oh, well, that is how it is, I suppose. It just seems … such a waste.'

‘A waste of what?'

‘A human being.'

‘Well, thanks a million.'

‘Perhaps,' she said, ‘it shows I am beginning to care a little. And that is even more perilous.'

‘Very perilous indeed.'

I

I went to see Malcolm. I have as horny a sense of pride as any Highland Scot, but I can put it under wraps for the special occasion. This was the special occasion. He wasn't too hail-fellow when I rang, and still less so when I called. Looking as big, as dishevelled and as impressive as ever, he said he'd had a busy day, there was a long evening ahead of him and he was travelling north tomorrow; but I managed to outflank the early pockets of resistance and got him talking about cars again and advising me what to buy. Then I persuaded him to walk round the corner to Claridge's, where I bought him a series of champagne cocktails and led him to tell me about himself and his family. Having got up to the right atmospheric pressure, and made it clear to him by a number of casual references to titled people that my present social standing was not despicable, I brought the subject round to the purpose of my visit.

He wasn't enthusiastic, to say the least, and his eyes like unlit electric light bulbs too big for their sockets, ranged round the ornate room for some subject more interesting than the one I'd brought up. He found it in a young blonde who had just come in in a dashing scarlet velvet cocktail frock with a split skirt and choker pearls.

‘Damned good-looking girl,' he muttered.

‘Yes,' I said. ‘I know her.'

He looked at me doubtfully. ‘What? You do?'

I didn't, in fact, but I knew her by sight. I'd seen her somewhere before.

She took a table by herself, and a waiter brought her a drink. They exchanged a few words. She looked towards the door.

‘Excuse me.' I walked circuitously towards the restaurant and stopped the waiter. A five-pound note changed hands.

‘Miss Adamson?' he said. ‘Miss Rona Adamson. She comes in quite frequent I think she's a dancer.'

That was it, of course. I went across to her.

‘Miss Adamson. I wonder if you remember me? David Abden. We met at Lady Rowton's.'

She looked at me, and her eyes, from being cold, became less so.

‘Lady Rowton's?' she said. ‘ I don't think I
know
Lady Rowton.'

‘Could I be mistaken? It's Miss Rona Adamson, isn't it? Would it be at the Bellevilles', then?'

‘I
do
know Mary Belleville, but I don't remember –'

‘I'm sure you're expecting a friend, Miss Adamson. But I wondered if you could make our day by sparing five minutes to meet my cousin first? Dr Malcolm Abden. He was most anxious to meet you. Of course you'll have seen him on TV.'

‘Well … I
am
expecting someone. I don't think I should –'

‘For five minutes only,' said. ‘Or less, if your friend arrives. It would give us so much pleasure.'

After a bit more stop-go she rose and came across to our table. We had, I would guess, more than seven minutes of pleasant chit-chat from which the sexual element was never entirely absent; then her friend – who looked like an American film producer – came in and bore her away.

We settled to our fifth cocktail.

Eventually Malcolm said grudgingly: ‘There's a fellow called Arthur, Gilbert Arthur, who's Controller of the Royal Household. Of course you could just write to him, impersonally, send samples of your products, ask for their patronage …'

‘Or?'

‘Or – if you wish – well, on the whole – you could write first to Sir Frederick Lukey – mentioning my name – it would help matters along. He's the man, as it were, who
oversees
all these things.'

‘I'll do that.'

‘But don't forget it will cost you something.'

‘Cost me something?'

‘Your firm. Not money, of course. Nothing so vulgar. But gifts in kind. It's an accepted practice. After all, many of these people – controllers and the like – are very ill paid. The tradition has been long established. It can all be done very discreetly.'

‘Thank you, Malcolm. You've been very kind.'

We separated with a degree of warmth hardly imaginable ninety minutes ago. He even said he thought his father, old Sir Charles, might be interested to meet me if I ever happened to be passing their way. I said I'd be delighted to do this sometime, not having the slightest intention of going near them.

‘By the way,' I said, signalling for the bill, ‘I've put a few things together. Some Dryad perfumes. And our latest, Faunus. We thought your wife might find them useful. I've left them in the cloakroom. I'll give them to you as you go.'

‘Thank you,' said Malcolm, without blinking an eyelid. ‘ My
new
wife, in fact,' he added; with a little satisfied smile. ‘Yes, she'll be pleased to have them.'

Within six months we were supplying soaps, bath essences and perfumes to the Royal Household. Whether they went to royal personages or were shared out among the staff didn't much matter. It was simply that we could claim the accolade. Shona was very pleased with me.

II

In spite of all our teamwork in the shafts, sometimes out of step but generally jogging in the same direction, in spite of the success of what we did and the sense of getting somewhere that went with it, I never felt Shona's equal. It was the same old stone in the jam, the thorn in the shoe. One thing was that John and she still owned the business. I was an employee – decently paid but on a salary. (Having become her lover hadn't changed
that
.) But mainly it was the strength of her personality. She'd been in the business longer; everyone thought she was the tops. And I had this continuing old rowel sticking in my flanks of knowing her intellectually that much ahead of me and no way of making up the ground. Her taste was better, her culture deeper rooted; nearly always it was her judgement that created a product with an appearance of higher quality than those of her rivals. It wasn't something she'd learned – I could have dealt with that; it was innate. Sometimes she put the stamp of her yes or no on a point at issue and wouldn't condescend to say why. Maybe she couldn't put it into words, but often and often she was shown to be right. I suppose you can't build up a business of that sort without a flair, a touch of genius. Well, she had it, but it didn't make me easy under the bit.

Yet our affair went on and continued to work. In fact just to say it worked would be the understatement of the year. When I saw her again after a break of a few days my mouth would go dry; and I knew she was pretty far gone down the same road herself. While it lasted like this the friction had to be smoothed over, the blue touchpaper frizzled out with the firecracker unlit.

I still saw Derek occasionally, and out of one of my meetings with him came the notion to set up a little private limited company of my own, just to make a bit on the side. Kilclair Ltd I called it, which is my middle name. I suppose you could say it all grew out of my adolescent resentment of her superiority, but I preferred to consider it as a perfectly legitimate and logical development of my position in the firm.

Every perfumery business has its unsuccessful lines, from time to time, or overproduces on a successful one, or for one reason or another has surplus stock it wants to get rid of. In those days all the high-class producers simply ditched the stuff, so that nothing of theirs ever came on the market cheap. Ever since I knew about it this had distressed my Scottish Jewish blood. I decided that Shona & Co. should sell their surplus stuff to Kilclair Ltd at a knockdown price and Kilclair Ltd should sell it cheap in the north-country factories where no one would ever notice. Result, profit for Kilclair Ltd, and much better than a total loss for Shona Ltd. I knew it wouldn't appeal to Shona, who had this frightful preoccupation with exclusiveness and cost. However, as far as I could see, she need never know the favour I was doing her.

I made Derek a director – I owed him something, and this was the sort of extra perk he would appreciate. The other director was Crack – now Van – Morris. Since he joined the firm he had been living an exemplary life – in office hours anyway – and he'd found himself a girlfriend from somewhere and was going steady. Since his hope of promotion in his present job was nil, this would be a profitable side shoot for him without extra work, except the occasional weekend driving stuff up north.

All this time I never knew Shona's age, which showed some ingenuity on her part and some lowered eyelids on mine because, travelling abroad as we sometimes did, it was a question of filling up forms on aircraft, having your passport quizzed, sometimes handing the passports in at the hotel and then these being casually returned when you next collected the key to the rooms.

Except when away, she kept to the same routine: an hour at the clinic every morning for face and body massage, and a week every three months in a health hydro in Sussex; fencing one or two evenings a week. She ate precious little but wasn't really thin in a way that mattered. (Actually, in spite of being careful not to be seen in bright lights, she always looked younger without her clothes.)

When we went to Paris she took me to a tiny flat in Montparnasse where her father lived with a middle-aged niece to look after him. He was a tall bearded old boy very deaf, and looked like Tolstoy. The flat was thick with Russian books and furniture that looked as if it had come from a stage set of
The Cherry Orchard
. He had been a schoolteacher until he offended Beria's secret police. Because of her father's disgrace Shona Maraskaya Pantelevitch had not been evacuated from Moscow with the Bolshoi – instead had stayed on and seen the war through, losing her mother from pneumonia and two brothers in Poland. Old Pantelevitch had a small crackly fire burning, and she sat cross-legged before it warming her hands while the light danced on the skin of face and neck. ‘ That second year of our war,' she said, ‘it was the coldest winter ever, and my mother was ill. Of course the pipes had long since frozen and burst. I brought in bricks and mortar and built a stove in the middle of our living-room. It was smoky but it was heat. Fuel? Oh, the fuel was our furniture.'

When I came back that year from my holiday in Barbados she said: ‘ David, do you find there sometimes younger women to your taste?'

‘I'm a lazy man. I can't be fished.'

‘You go so regularly I wonder if you have a special favourite there.'

‘If I had, d'you think three weeks a year would keep the battery charged?'

She slanted her eyes at me. ‘Maybe yes. Maybe no. In all your life you have calculation.'

‘Have me watched,' I suggested. ‘Private eyes could go on business expenses.'

‘You stay at the same hotel always?'

‘Yes. You get to know people who come each year.'

‘Sometime I should like to meet them.'

‘Of course,' I said insincerely, and then, to duck the searching glance, I got up and lit a cigarette. ‘Sun and sea are what I look for, not conquests.'

‘But if you find one without looking? … No, don't answer. It is all private. I must not ask. Indeed, my question was a general one, not a particular one.'

‘I've forgotten what it was.'

‘No, you haven't.'

‘Well, then, the answer is no.'

A day or two later she brought up the subject again.

‘You must meet many women younger than I.'

‘How'm I supposed to answer that?'

She brooded a moment. ‘By saying yes.'

‘Then yes.'

She said: ‘I think of all the pretty girls who represent us in the shops. Nubile young women – isn't that the fashionable phrase? You go among them often. I see their eyes follow you. You would only need to raise a finger. I heard two talking of you the other day. It was very naive but very sensuous.'

‘You're killing me.'

She turned her head away. ‘Ah, well …'

‘Well what?' I said. ‘Aren't you content? I am. Age is not as important as you think.'

‘Thank you. But in some ways it must be. Do you know, I have no fear of death at all. It means
nothing
. But I have the greatest fear of becoming old.'

‘Growing old like your father?'

‘Oh no … Not like that. When I am his age maybe I shall be reconciled. No, it is the growing old before that – in the next ten years, or whenever it may be. I know I am good-looking. All my life I have been good-looking. I remember the first time going into a restaurant with my father and mother when I was twelve: men stared. My mother was quite upset; she thought it was bad for me, me being so young. My father said: ‘‘Are you surprised, Elena Maraskaya? I am not surprised.'' Ever since then.' Shona breathed through her nose. ‘ Ever since then. When I go into any public place people look – not just men, people. I enjoy it! It is meat and drink to me. So I dread, as if it were the cholera, coming to a stage when that will no longer be. When I shall have all the emotions and desires of a woman and find my body has become a shell. If one could so regard it, it would be funny. As in a nightmare I dread the time when I shall walk into a restaurant and all the men will continue to eat their roast beef!'