You have seen the picture in the papers, you know what she looks like. A youngish woman in a black dress with a broad white collar, standing with her hands folded in front of her, one gloved, the other hidden except for the fingers, which are flexed, ringless. She is wearing something on her head, a cap or clasp of some sort, which holds her hair drawn tightly back from her brow. Her prominent black eyes have a faintly oriental slant. The nose is large, the lips full. She is not beautiful. In her right hand she holds a folded fan, or it might be a book. She is standing in what I take to be the lighted doorway of a room. Part of a couch can be seen, or maybe a bed, with a brocade cover. The darkness behind her is dense and yet mysteriously weightless. Her gaze is calm, inexpectant, though there is a trace of challenge, of hostility, even, in the set of her mouth. She does not want to be here, and yet cannot be elsewhere. The gold brooch that secures the wings of her wide collar is expensive and ugly. All this you have seen, all this you know. Yet I put it to you, gentle connoisseurs of the jury, that even knowing all this you still know nothing, next to nothing. You do not know the fortitude and pathos of her presence. You have not come upon her suddenly in a golden room on a summer eve, as I have. You have not held her in your arms, you have not seen her asprawl in a ditch. You have not – ah no! – you have not killed for her.
I stood there, staring, for what seemed a long time, and gradually a kind of embarrassment took hold of me, a hot, shamefaced awareness of myself, as if somehow I, this soiled sack of flesh, were the one who was being scrutinised, with careful, cold attention. It was not just the woman's painted stare that watched me. Everything in the picture, that brooch, those gloves, the flocculent darkness at her back, every spot on the canvas was an eye fixed on me unblinkingly. I retreated a pace, faintly aghast. The silence was fraying at the edges. I heard cows lowing, a car starting up. I remembered the taxi, and turned to go. A maid was standing in the open french window. She must have come in just then and seen me there and started back in alarm. Her eyes were wide, and one knee was flexed and one hand lifted, as if to ward off a blow. For a moment neither of us stirred. Behind her a sudden breeze burnished the grassy slope. We did not speak. Then slowly, with her hand still raised, she stepped backwards carefully through the window, teetering a little as her heels blindly sought the level of the paved pathway outside. I felt an inexplicable, brief rush of annoyance – a presentiment, perhaps, a stray zephyr sent ahead of the storm that was to come. A telephone was ringing somewhere. I turned quickly and left the room.
There was no one in the hall. The telephone rang and rang, with peevish insistence. I could still hear it going as I descended the front steps. The taxi had left, of course. I swore, and set off down the drive, hobbling over the stony ground in my thin-soled Spanish shoes. The low sun glared in my face. When I looked back at the house the windows were ablaze, and seemed to be laughing fatly in derision. I began to perspire, and that brought on the midges. I asked myself again what had possessed me to come to Whitewater. I knew the answer, of course. It was the smell of money that had attracted me, as the smell of sweat was attracting these damned flies. I saw myself, as if from one of those sunstruck windows, skulking along here in the dust, hot, disgruntled, overweight, head bowed and fat back bent, my white suit rucked at the armpits and sagging in the arse, a figure of fun, the punchline of a bad joke, and at once I was awash with self-pity. Christ! was there no one who would help me? I halted, and cast a troubled glance around me, as if there might be a benefactor lurking among the trees. The silence had a sense of muffled gloating. I plunged on again, and heard the sound of engines, and presently an enormous black limousine came around the bend, followed by a sleek red sportscar. They were going at a stately pace, the limousine bouncing gently on its springs, and for a second I thought it was a funeral. I stepped on to the grass verge but kept on walking. The driver of the limousine, a large, crop-headed man, sat erect and vigilant, his hands lightly cupped on the rim of the steering-wheel, as if it were a projectile he might pluck from its moorings and throw with deadly aim. Beside him there was a stooped, shrunken figure, as the car swished past I glimpsed a dark eye and a liver-spotted skull, and huge hands resting one upon the other on the crook of a stick. A blonde woman wearing dark glasses was driving the sportscar. We gazed at each other with blank interest, like strangers, as she went by. I recognised her, of course.
Ten minutes later I was trudging along the road with my thumb stuck out when I heard her pull up behind me. I knew it would be she. I stopped, turned. She remained in the car, her wrists folded before her on the steering-wheel. There was a brief, wordless tussle to see which one of us would make the first move. We compromised. I walked back to the car and she got out to meet me. I thought it was you, she said. We smiled, and were silent. She wore a cream suit and a white blouse. There was blood on her shoes. Her hair was yellower than I remembered, I wondered if she was dyeing it now. I told her she looked marvellous. I meant it, but the words sounded hollow, and I blushed. Anna, I said. I remembered, with a soft shock, how one day long ago I stole the envelope of one of her letters to Daphne, and took it into the lavatory and prised open the flap, my heart pounding, so that I might lick the gum where she had licked. The thought came to me: I loved her! and I gave a sort of wild, astonished laugh. She took off her sunglasses and looked at me quizzically. My hands were trembling. Come and see father, she said, he needs cheering up.
She drove very fast, working the controls probingly, as if she were trying to locate a pattern, a secret formula, hidden in this mesh of small, deft actions. I was impressed, even a little cowed. She was full of the impatient assurance of the rich. We did not speak. In a moment we were at the house, and pulled up in a spray of gravel. She opened her door, then paused and looked at me for a moment in silence and shook her head. Freddie Montgomery, she said. Well!