“That’s an understatement: it’s a dazzler. Have you your car here?”
“No. I’ll show you the bungalow, and then perhaps you wouldn’t mind driving me back?”
“Of course I’ll drive you back.”
I held the door open and she got in. I had a brief glimpse of her slender ankles as I shut the door. I went around the car, got in and drove down the drive.
“You turn right and go to the far end of the promenade,” she told me. There were a lot of cars idling along the promenade. It wasn’t possible to do more than twenty miles an hour and then only in short bursts.
The moon was up, the night was warm and the sea and the palms made a nice setting. I was in no hurry.
“From what I hear this Musketeer Club is quite a place,” I said. “Do you go there often?”
“It’s the only place you can go to that isn’t crammed with tourists. Yes, I go there quite a lot. Daddy owns half of it, so I don’t have to pay the bills. I wouldn’t go there so much if I did.”
“All you’d have to do is to hock one of those emeralds and you could move in there for good.”
She laughed.
“It so happens they don’t belong to me. Daddy allows me to wear them, but they are his. When I want a change, I take them back and he lends me something else. I don’t own anything. Even this dress I really can’t claim as mine.”
“There’s the bungalow you have on lease,” I said, looking at her out of the corners of my eyes.
“It’s not my lease. Daddy bought it.”
“He’ll love his new tenant. I think maybe I’d better skip this idea and not move in.”
“He won’t know. He still thinks I use it.”
“It would come as a surprise if he drops in for a cup of tea, wouldn’t it?”
“He never drops in for anything.”
“Well, if you’re sure about that. So you’re the genuine poor little rich girl?”
She lifted her lovely shoulders.
“Daddy likes to control everything. I never have any money. I have to send him the bills and he settles them.”
“No one ever settles my bills.”
“But no one tells you shouldn’t have bought this or that, and you can do without these or those, do they?”
“You know if you go on like this, I’ll begin to feel sorry for you, and you wouldn’t want that, would you?”
She laughed again.
“I don’t see why not. I like sympathy. No one ever gives me any.”
“You listen carefully: the drip, drip, drip you hear is my heart bleeding for you,” I said.
We were reaching the quieter part of the promenade now and I was able to increase speed. I shifted into top, and moved up to forty miles an hour.
“You don’t believe me, do you?” she said. “Sometimes I’m quite desperate for money.”
“So am I. Now look, you don’t ever have to be desperate for money: not a girl like you. You could make a small fortune as a model. Ever thought of that?”
“Daddy wouldn’t allow me to do it. He is very careful about the dignity of his name. No one would employ me if he told them not to.”
“You’re just stalling. You don’t have to live here. New York would love you.”
“Do you think it would? Turn left here, down that road.”
The headlights picked out a rough, sandy road that seemed to be running right into the sea. I swung the car off the broad promenade and reduced speed. We went down the sandy road into darkness. The headlights cut a white path ahead of us.
“I was just talking: it’s easy to talk,” I said. “You can’t lead other people’s lives. You’ve managed so far. You’ll go on managing.”
“Yes, I suppose I will.”
“This is a little off the beaten track, isn’t it?” I said, as the car bumped over the uneven road. Palm trees on either side blocked out the moon and there was only darkness each side of the headlight beams.
She opened her bag and took out a cigarette and lit it.
“That’s why I wanted it. If you had lived in this town as long as I have, you would welcome a little seclusion. Don’t you like being alone?”
Thinking of a possible visit from Hertz and his thugs, I said with reservation, “Within reason.”
We drove for a quarter of a mile in silence, then the headlights picked out a squat bungalow within twenty yards of the sea.
“Here we are.”
I pulled up.
“Have you a flashlight?” she asked. “We’ll need it until I can find the light switch.”
I got a big flashlight out of the door pocket. We both got out and together we walked up the path to the bungalow’s door.
The moon was brilliant and I could see a mile-long strip of empty sand, palm trees and the sea. In the distance I could see lights of a house that was built up on a rocky hill, projecting into the sea.
“What’s out there?” I asked as Margot opened her bag and hunted for the door key.
“That’s Arrow Point.”
“Those lights from Hahn’s place?”
“Yes.”
She found the key, pushed it into the lock and turned it.
The door swung open. She groped, and then a light sprang up on a big luxuriously furnished lounge with a small cocktail bar in the distant corner, a radiogram and television combination, plenty of comfortable lounging chairs, a three-foot-wide padded window-seat that ran the length of one of the walls and a blue-and-white mosaic floor.
“This is quite something,” I said, walking in and pausing in the middle of the big room to look around. “Are you sure you mean me to move in here?”
She walked over to the double french doors and threw them open. She touched a light switch and lights came up on a thirty-foot-long terrace that had a magnificent view of the sea and the distant lights of St. Raphael.
“Do you like it?”
She came back to stand in the doorway and she again gave me her small bewitching smile. Just to look at her got my blood running around in my veins like a car on a roller coaster.
“It’s terrific.”
I was looking at the bar. There was an assortment of bottles on the shelves. It seemed to me there was every drink you could want there.
“Are those bottles the property of your dad or are they yours?”
“They’re his. I took them from the house. Four bottles at a time.” She smiled. “He has everything. I don’t see why I shouldn’t help myself sometimes, do you?”
She went behind the bar, opened the door of a refrigerator and took out a bottle of champagne.
“Let’s celebrate,” she said. “Here, you open it. I’ll get the glasses.”
She went out of the lounge. I broke the wire around the cork of the bottle and, as she returned with two champagne glasses on a tray, I eased the cork out. I poured the wine and we touched glasses.
“What do we celebrate?” I asked.
“Our meeting,” she said, her eyes sparkling at me. “You’re the first man I’ve met who doesn’t care if I’m rich or poor.”
“Now wait a minute... what makes you think that?”
She drank the champagne and flourished the empty glass.
“I can tell. Now go and look at your new home and tell me what you think of it.”
I put my glass down.
“Where do I begin?”
“The bedroom is through there to the left.”
We looked at each other. There was an expression in her eyes that could have meant anything.
I went to look at the bedroom, finding I was a little short of breath. I told myself I was letting my imagination run away with me, but the feeling that she wasn’t here merely to show me the bungalow persisted.
It was a nice bedroom: a double bed, closets and a mosaic floor. The closets were full of her clothes. The room was decorated in pale green and fawn.