She gave me another flashing smile, younger sister to the first, and moved where I’d said. She drank vodka martini, I drank scotch, and we both ate a few black olives and spat out the stones genteelly into fists.
‘Do you usually pick up girls in the street?’ she said.
‘Only when they fall.’
‘Fallen girls?’
I laughed. ‘Not those, no.’
‘What do you do for a living?’
I took a mouthful of scotch. ‘I’m a sort of engineer.’ It sounded boring.
‘Bridges and things?’
‘Nothing so permanent or important.’
‘What then?’
I smiled wryly. ‘I make toys.’
‘You make... what?’
‘Toys. Things to play with.’
‘I know what toys are, damn it.’
‘What do you do?’ I asked, ‘In Westchestcr.’
She gave me an amused glance over her glass. ‘You take it for granted that I work?’
‘You have the air.’
‘I cook, then.’
‘Hamburgers and French fries?’
Her eyes gleamed. ‘Weddings and stuff. Parties.’
‘A lady caterer.’
She nodded. ‘With a girl friend. Millie.’
‘When do you go back?’
‘Thursday.’
Thursday suddenly seemed rather close. After a noticeable pause she added almost defensively, ‘It’s Christmas, you see. We’ve a lot of work then and around New Year. Millie couldn’t do it all alone.’
‘Of course not.’
We went into dinner and ate smoked trout and steak wrapped in pastry. She read the menu from start to finish with professional interest and checked with the head waiter the ingredients of two or three dishes.
‘So many things are different over here,’ she explained.
She knew little about wine. ‘I guess I drink it when I’m given it, but I’ve a better palate for spirits.’ The wine waiter looked sceptical, but she wiped that look off his face later by correctly identifying the brandy he brought with the coffee as Armagnac.
‘Where is your toy factory?’ she asked.
‘I don’t have a factory.’
‘But you said you made toys.’
‘Yes, I do.’
She looked disbelieving. ‘You don’t mean you actually make them. I mean, with your own hands?’
I smiled. ‘Yes.’
‘But...’ She looked round the velvety room with the thought showing as clear as spring water: if I worked with my hands how could I afford such a place.
‘I don’t often make them,’ I said. ‘Most of the time I go to the races.’
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I give in. You’ve got me hooked. Explain the mystery.’
‘Have some more coffee.’
‘Mr Scott...’ She stopped. ‘That sounds silly, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes, Miss Ward, it does.’
‘Steven...’
‘Much better.’
‘My mother calls me Alexandra, Millie calls me Al. Take your pick.’
‘Allie?’
‘For God’s sakes.’
‘I invent toys,’ I said. ‘I patent them. Other people manufacture them. I collect royalties.’
‘Oh.’
‘Does “oh” mean enlightenment, fascination, or boredom to death?’
‘It means oh how extraordinary, oh how interesting, and oh I never knew people did things like that.’
‘Quite a lot do.’
‘Did you invent Monopoly?’
I laughed. ‘Unfortunately not.’
‘But that sort of thing?’
‘Mechanical toys, mostly.’
‘How odd...’ She stopped, thinking better of saying what was in her mind. I knew the reaction well, so I finished the sentence for her.
‘How odd for a grown man to spend his life in toyland?’
‘You said it.’
‘Children’s minds have to be fed.’
She considered it. ‘And the next bunch of leaders are children today?’
‘You rate it too high. The next lot of parents, teachers, louts and layabouts are children today.’
‘And you are fired with missionary zeal?’
‘All the way to the bank.’
‘Cynical.’
‘Better than pompous.’
‘More honest,’ she agreed. Her eyes smiled in the soft light, half mocking, half friendly, greeny-grey and shining, the whites ultra white. There was nothing wrong with the design of her eyebrows. Her nose was short and straight, her mouth curved up at the corners, and her cheeks had faint hollows in the right places. Assembled, the components added up not to a standard type of beauty, but to a face of character and vitality. Part of the story written, I thought. Lines of good fortune, none of discontent. No anxiety, no inner confusion. A good deal of self assurance, knowing she looked attractive and had succeeded in the job she’d chosen. Definitely not a virgin: a girl’s eyes were always different, after.
‘Are all your days busy,’ I asked, ‘Between now and Thursday?’
‘There are some minutes here and there.’
‘Tomorrow?’
She smiled and shook her head. ‘Not a chink tomorrow. Monday if you like.’
‘I’ll collect you,’ I said. ‘Monday morning, at ten.’
4
Rupert Ramsey’s voice on the telephone sounded resigned rather than welcoming.
‘Yes, of course, do come down to see your horses, if you’d like to. Do you know the way?’
He gave me directions which proved easy to follow, and at eleven thirty, Sunday morning, I drove through his white painted stone gateposts and drew up in the large gravelled area before his house.
He lived in a genuine Georgian house, simple in design, with large airy rooms and elegant plaster-worked ceilings. Nothing self-consciously antique about the furnishings: all periods mingled together in a working atmosphere that was wholly modern.
Rupert himself was about forty-five, intensely energetic under a misleadingly languid exterior. His voice drawled slightly. I knew him only by sight and it was to all intents the first time we had met.
‘How do you do?’ He shook hands. ‘Care to come into my office?’
I followed him through the white painted front door, across the large square hall and into the room he called his office, but which was furnished entirely as a sitting-room except for a dining table which served as a desk, and a grey filing cabinet in one corner.
‘Do sit down.’ He indicated an armchair. ‘Cigarette?’
‘Don’t smoke.’
‘Wise man.’ He smiled as if he didn’t really think so and lit one for himself.
‘Energise,’ he said, ‘is showing signs of having had a hard race.’
‘But he won easily,’ I said.
‘It looked that way, certainly.’ He inhaled, breathing out through his nose. ‘All the same, I’m not too happy about him.’
‘In what way?’
‘He needs building up. We’ll do it, don’t you fear. But he looks a bit thin at present.’
‘How about the other two?’
‘Dial’s jumping out of his skin. Ferryboat needs a lot of work yet.’
‘I don’t think Ferryboat likes racing any more.’
The cigarette paused on its way to his mouth.
‘Why do you say that?’ he asked.
‘He’s had three races this autumn. I expect you’ll have looked up his form. He’s run badly every time. Last year he was full of enthusiasm and won three times out of seven starts, but the last of them took a lot of winning... and Raymond Child cut him raw with his whip... and during the summer out at grass Ferryboat seems to have decided that if he gets too near the front he’s in for a beating, so it’s only good sense not to get near the front... and he consequently isn’t trying.’
He drew deeply on the cigarette, giving himself time.
‘Do you expect me to get better results than Jody?’