The Melting Man

She looked at me for a moment or two in silence while I blinked to get the glittering out of my eyes. Then she closed the door and came slowly across to the desk. It was pure liquefaction with even a little sweet disorder in the dress. Not much, just a hint of it. It was a grey silk dress shot with tiny gold and silver threads that helped to roll the light over each moving swing and curve and stretch. If you can imagine a dress that might have been made out of water with gold and silver sun-ripples on it, then I needn't say more. There was a jaunty little bow at the lowish vee of the neck, like some butterfly poised for flight. If it took off, I thought, it would kindle in her clothes a wantonness.

She said, 'What is all this? I've come all the way up to London for you.'

With an effort I said, 'If you're Mr O'Dowda's chauffeur, that's a wonderful uniform you're wearing.'

'Don't be an ass. I'm his daughter, Julia.' I stood up. I wouldn't have done it for a chauffeur, but a millionaire's daughter was different. And even if she hadn't been a millionaire's daughter I would have done it. She was in her early twenties and her hair was as dark as a raven's wings and her lips cherry bright. Her face was tanned, her dark eyes had a what-the-hell look and there was a suggestion of stubbornness about the nicely pointed chin. Her face was beautiful, a bit gipsyish, but full of self-confident sparkle. Angry or excited, I decided, she would be hard to handle.

She was taller than I, but I didn't mind. You can't have too much of a good thing. I just stood there, quivering finely like a pointer, waiting for the command to flush game. She said, 'It's a nice dress, isn't it? Jacques Fath.' I said, 'I can't keep my eyes off it. I'm Rex Carver.' With a little lift of her eyes for my persisting stupidity, she said, 'I know you are. But you don't quite come up to the description Miggs gave of you. Sort of blurred around the edges somewhere.'

'Come autumn,' I said, 'I begin to disintegrate a little. My best month is May.'

She looked at her watch — I caught the faint sparkle of a diamond setting — and said, 'I can't wait until then, neither can my father. Are you coming or not?'

'I was thinking,' I mumbled, 'of taking a holiday.'

'You look,' she said, 'as though you could do with one. I'll tell my father you're not available.' She turned for the door.

I went across the room and picked up my weekend case.

'You're bullying me,' I said. 'But I don't mind. For you I would go anywhere.' I gave her a big smile. It was an effort, but I thought it worth it. 'Julia O'Dowda. It's a wonderful name. Wild Irish, a strong Connemara wind whistling through your hair and—'

She moved to the door, saying. 'I'm his stepdaughter. The name's Julia Yunge-Brown. And on the way down you'll sit in the back. I don't like a hand on my knee as I drive. Okay?' The dark eyes, faintly smiling, fixed me.

'Okay,' I said.

Obediently I followed her through into the office. Wilkins looked up at me woodenly.

I said, 'The next time you use the word "driver" over the phone, qualify the sex. I'm being led into captivity.'

Julia, ahead of me, giggled. It was a nice sound, like a fast brook tumbling over stones.

Wilkins said, 'I'll phone Mrs Meld to say you won't be back tonight.'

It wasn't the Facel Vega, but a big black Rolls, looking a bit like a hearse and as quiet in the back as a funeral parlour. Clipped into a silver holder alongside me was a speaking horn.

Going over Westminster Bridge, I whistled down it and then said, 'What happened to the regular chauffeur?'

Horn to my ear, I got the reply: 'Tich? He's gone fishing with my father. Stepfather.'

I said, 'What's all this about a stolen car?'

'Something to do with Zelia. She's always messing things up.'

'Zelia?'

You had to be quick with the trumpet thing, but it was fun for a long journey. 'My sister. You'll get all the details.'

'Where are we going?'

'Sussex. Near Sedlescombe. You'll be just in time for the evening rise.'

'Evening what?'

She nipped between a bus and a petrol tanker, and then said, 'Stop talking. There are magazines in the rack in front of you.'

I fiddled for a bit and got the rack down. It held the latest numbers of Vogue, The Field, Illustrated London News, Playboy and Reveille. And also a half-empty box of cigars, Bolivar Petit Coronas. It lit one and settled back with Playboy.

Once we were clear of London she drove the car as though she wished to God it had wings, half hoping, maybe, that if she did go fast enough it would take off. Anyone riding in it might not have been able to hear the clock ticking in the silence, but they would have heard my heart going bump, bump against the roof of my mouth. I began to regret my hasty impulse. A good-looking gipsy girl walks into your office, wearing a Fath number that would cost more than your cigarette bill for a year, gives you a what-the-hell look and there you are — every good resolution gone, back at work again when you should be on holiday.

I didn't try to keep track of where we were going, but it took us an hour and a half. Finally we turned in through lodge gates, the pillars ornamented with stone greyhounds, each holding a shield. I couldn't see the device on the shields because we went by too quickly. We then did a half a mile of drive through parkland. Up ahead I saw the big bulk of a country mansion, but I didn't get a long look at it because we turned off, away from the drive and down a long slope through beech and fir trees with dirty, dank-looking rhododendron growths under them.

We came through the trees and the side drive ended in a wide circular turning space below a high grass bank. Julia swing the car round and stopped. She sat in the driving seat while I got out and went up to her.

'Stimulating drive,' I said. 'Tonic for the nerves. When you get her back in the stables, give her a good rub down and a handful of oats. But don't let her drink for a while. Some time you can take me out in the Facel Vega and we'll really enjoy ourselves.'

She looked at me thoughtfully, up and down and then down and up, as though I were a piece of antique furniture, a tallboy or something she fancied she might fancy, and then she said, 'You've got something. Just something — but I suspect you're trying too hard with it.'

'Or just out of practice. All I need is a few days' country air. Where's daddy?'

'Daddy is someone you want to be bloody polite with.'

I knew then what it was that had boosted me off my office cushion. She was a border-line girl. Somebody you could go either way with. Get her wrong, rub the knap the reverse way, and you had, not an enemy for life (there's always hope there), but someone who just obliterated you from her memory. But get her right, handle her with the capable, finessing touch of a master, and you had a star-spangled carnival stretching ahead of you. But there wasn't any hope of that unless you were at the top of your form.

I winked at her. 'I've dealt with millionaires before. They handle easily so long as you let them know it's their money you're after. Where is he?'

'Up over the bank. Just ring for him. You can leave your bag. I'll take it up to the house.'

She started the engine.

Before she could move off, I said, 'What is it about step-daddy that you don't like?'

I got it then, full and square for the first time; a cold, dark stare that came from surprise she was not quite able to hide. She put her foot down and the Rolls swung away from me and back into the beech trees.

I lit a cigarette and climbed a flight of stone steps to the top of the grass bank. It was a dam, grassed on this side and faced with concrete slabs on the other. Along the top of it ran a grass walk, mowed tight. Stretching away from it was an artificial lake of about thirty acres. It was fringed with pine woods and backed at the far end by a hill studded with great oaks. On the far bank, away to my left at the end of the dam, was a boathouse and a landing pier that projected twenty yards into the water. Way out in the centre of the lake I could see a rowing boat with two men in it.