He pointed his fork at her – he was eating what purported to be Veal Milanese; she had ordered salted cod with tomatoes.
'How are we meant to run a successful company if the board of directors are so third rate?'
'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.'