"You won't get a better offer, nor such a fast one," said Mark.
"It's very generous," Edgar acknowledged. "And please don't think that I'm turning you down out of hand."
"Well, of course you can have some tune to think about it," said Mark. "But I don't want to have to wait indefinitely. Four million is a great deal of money to lay my hands on in cash; and there'll be some financial planning to do."
"I understood completely," said Edgar. "But, if you could excuse me—"
"Sure," said Mark. "I'm sorry I called you on a question of business on a day like today."
"Stanley wouldn't have minded," Edgar replied. "Stanley would have recognized that respect for the dead has to wait for the needs of the living."
Mark was a little baffled by that remark. He said, "Sure, okay," and hung up the earpiece.
"I don't think I can ever quite get the hang of dealing with the British," he remarked, turning around to Wallis. But it was then that he saw who it was that Wallis had let into the room, and his frown faded immediately, and he spread his arms in welcome, and said, "Marcia, I thought you were in Paris."
Marcia Conroy came flowing towards him across the sitting-room, the sleeves of her silvery dress rippling in the breeze of her own coming, tall and blonde, with shingled hair and pearl ear-rings that danced and swung (in Wallis" words) "like the drip on the end of a Mississippi river pilot's beezer'.
Marcia had been graced with what was easily the most beautiful profile of any of the debutantes of 1922, but she was one of the few who had remained unmarried. She had contrived to meet Mark at last year's Ascot, by deliberately tipping strawberries-and-cream down the left leg of his trousers, and since then they had carried on a spasmodic, combative, irregular affair whenever their paths happened to cross.
Marcia's seasonal cycle took her to Paris in the springtime, then home to England for the Derby and Ascot, and London's high season,-then to the regatta at Cowes, off to Germany for a cure at Marienbad, Scotland for the fall shooting; followed by a winter cruise of the Mediterranean. Her friends always knew where Marcia was by the social calendar, but Mark only ever ran Into her by accident. That was what made their affair so exciting: the fact that after each brief bout of lovemaking, they might never actually meet again, ever. But they never said "goodbye'.
"I was astonished when Bangers told me you were here," said Marcia, kissing Mark on both cheeks as if he had just been awarded the Croixe-Guerre. She threw her silvery evening-purse down on the sofa, and opened the onyx cigarette-box on the table.
Mark offered her a light. "Who the hell's Bangers?" he wanted to know.
"The Honorable Phoebe Tawthome-Bangs," said Marcia, blowing smoke out of her nostrils. "She said she'd seen you at the Criterion, in the crash bar, but the crush had been too crushing to reach you. She did shout "cooee", but she's never had a very convincing voice."
"Can anybody say "cooee" convincingly?" grinned Mark.
"Bangers can't," said Marcia.
"Wallis," asked Mark, "will you bring me a fresh drink, please? A Ward Eight, and what's yours, Marcia?"
"Anything but champagne," said Marcia. "One gets so tired of champagne."
Mark sat down on the sofa and Marcia perched herself on his lap, her cigarette held at the very tips of her fingers. She tugged up the long hem of her dress so that she might be more comfortable, and also more provocative. Underneath the silver satin she wore silver silk stockings, with silver garters. Mark knew from experience that she rarely wore panties. She had an aura of perfume around her that was heavy with Gueriain's fashionable new Chamade.
Paris was so tiring this year," she said. Her eyes were the blandest blue that Mark could ever remember seeing, like a clear sky glimpsed through a frozen windowpane. "There were so many Americans there, begging your national pardon. I was taken to dinner at the Ritz one evening by Due de Gramont, and all around me there was positive ocean of Americans: Berry Wall, Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, the Dolly sisters. And all braying, my darling, like hounds."
Mark touched her cheek, and twisted one of her curls around his finger. "I am sorry about the braying," he said. "I'll speak to Olivier about it."
"Oh, it wasn't really so bad," Marcia said, kissing the veins on the a Mark's wrist. "I was just feeling unusually vexatious. I feel better now that I'm here, with you. You have a wonderfully calming effect on me. You're like a good lunch."
"Well'—Mark smiled—"I've been compared to one or two things in my life: an ass and a thick-headed bullock. But never a good lunch."
Wallis came in with a tray of drinks—a Ward Eight for Mark, he being a good Bostonian; and a glass of very cold Polish vodka for Marcia, so frigid that it smoked. The Ward Eight was a kind of bourbon sling, devised at Locke-Ober's Winter Palace Wine Rooms in Boston in the 1890s, and it was said to make the experience of being struck by lightning seem comparatively mild.
Once Wallis had retired to his quarters, with instructions not to disturb them, Mark and Marcia raised their glasses to each other. Marcia said, "Your man murmured that I shouldn't keep you longer than necessary. He said you had an important meeting with your company secretary."
"All my company secretary can do is to nag me about the deficiencies in my long-term planning. Besides that, he's in one of his bates. Isn't that what the English call it, a bate?"
They clinked glasses, and sipped their drinks. "Cherry vodka," said Marcia appreciatively, shifting herself on Mark's lap. "Your man may be fussy, but he has taste."
"We Americans aren't as ignorant as we seem," Mark told her, with the smile of an impudent boy. "We don't want very much out of life, but then there isn't ever very much of the best, is there?"
They kissed, with a fierceness and a hungriness that would have startled anyone who was secretly watching. The insides of their mouths were cold with ice and aromatic with spirits, and their tongues sought each other's teeth like chilly seals in Arctic waters.
"I always think I'm going to hate you when I see you again," breathed Marcia. "I always think I'm going to walk into the room and think how ugly you are, and how dull you are. But I never do. You always make me feel so abandoned. You make me feel as if I'm being swept away by a hurricane."
Mark said nothing, but sought her mouth again, and kissed her into breathless silence.
"Music," she said. "Why isn't there music?"
"They don't have victrolas in the rooms, that's why. I can hum, if you want me to. How about "Little Alabama Coon"? My father taught me that. I do the baby cry and the clog noises, too."
"God, you Americans are so romantic," said Marcia, in mock disdain. "I want music to dance to, music to make love to."
Mark shrugged, and tipped Marcia off his lap. He went across to the telephone, and tapped the bar for the hotel operator. "Get me the manager, will you? This is Mark Beeney. That's right."
Marcia, sitting on the floor with her back against the sofa and her dress right up to her slender thighs, sipped her drink and watched him with the smouldering coldness of a lascivious Ice Queen. He smiled at her, and one by one began to undo the buttons of his black vest.
"Is that the manager? This is Mark Beeney. Yes, fine. every thing's really fine. Well, I have a favour to ask. Sure. You had a string quartet playing at dinner this evening, am I right? I heard it on the way in. Do you think if they're all through in the restaurant they could come down to my room and play a little dance music outside of my door? Would that be too much to ask?"
Marcia threw her head back and laughed out loud. "You're mad," she sad. "Quite mad, but I adore you."
And so it was that in ten minutes" time, Mark and Marcia were dancing cheek-to-cheek around the sitting-room to the muffled waltz music of the Albemarle Quartet, who sat outside in the corridor on gilt chairs provided by the hotel management. Mark was naked, Marcia wore nothing but her pearls. As they danced, she pressed her small rose-nippled breasts against his chest, and he pressed the stiffened thrust of his penis against her bare stomach.