The Flame of Life Read Free Page B

– no, champagne,’ he said, ‘to toast the way I feel about you.’
    He felt a hand on his wrist. ‘Pay the bill,’ she said. ‘We’ll get a taxi to my flat on Mount Street.’
    It was a last ploy to call his bluff, but she knew it wouldn’t work, and hoped it wouldn’t, and it didn’t, though under her confidence she wondered where it would lead – if anywhere.
    So did Handley as he helped her into her coat and caught another whiff of her subtle expensive perfume, and a glimpse of the pearls laying along the pale flesh of her neck.
    From the long corridor he could see it was the sort of flat that cost a hundred pounds a week to rent furnished. Everything was Harrod’s best, tables of expensive rosewood, dark green panelling, heavy half-drawn curtains, an elaborate dressing-table with a pink marble top, built-in wardrobes (a bad touch that, he felt) and a high, enormous bed which redeemed everything. She’d led him straight into the bedroom so that the maid wouldn’t twig.
    He stood alone, smoking a cigar and blessing such unexpected luck, his back to the empty fireplace. Or was it luck? There was no saying, though he couldn’t think she’d shown him to her bedroom for a drink of beer. There were no pictures or ornaments on the walls, and only a faint sound of traffic through the double wondows.
    She clicked the door to. ‘I hate cigars. Do put it out.’
    Sitting at the dressing-table, she lifted off her wig. Its sudden absence diminished her face, made it slightly less thin, and dark hair underneath was so short she resembled Joan of Arc.
    â€˜Don’t kiss me,’ she said, when he went to her. ‘And don’t undress me. Just take your clothes off.’
    He didn’t trust her, though he had nothing to lose so could see no reason for it. But he got out of his jacket, shirt and trousers, watching her observing him through the dozen mirrors, and noting the slightly exaggerated curve of her lips, as if she too didn’t know why he was there. If you couldn’t kiss her, how else could you lead up to it?
    Her short wispy hair made her look younger and more vulnerable, as if she ought to be glad of having him in her bedroom rather than trying to make him feel so privileged. Her face was also a little hard in its thinness, and the mix-up gave to her eyes a mocking air that he wanted to get rid of.
    â€˜It’s a fine bedroom. It suits you.’
    She took off her pearls and bracelets. ‘I camp here. You should see the bedroom at Flaxton, my country place. It would make your mouth water, I’m sure.’
    â€˜I like this one.’
    â€˜It’s mine,’ she smiled, standing to let her skirt fall. ‘My husband is allowed to visit me in it now and again.’
    The transformation from the elegant Lady Ritmeester with the elaborate and high-piled coiffure to the short-haired naked thin woman with a smile like a Hampstead housewife off for an afternoon with her boyfriend was so disconcerting that he found it erotic, and went towards her. The remains of her personality had retreated into her voice. She backed away and said in the normal Ritmeester timbre: ‘Don’t. I’ll come to you.’
    Since they weren’t more than a few feet apart he could afford to wait, though to pass the time he took off his pants and stood naked. She reached out and touched him in the only spot that seemed to matter, for under her delicate fingers it lifted, a very obedient horn. Her small breasts lured him because he had never seen any so perfectly white. Even the nipples were pale and merged into the flesh. The rest of her body was firm, and only slightly less pale, and he bent forward and kissed her slender neck, his hand on her stomach.
    They stroked each other, and Handley was locked in the circle of her as if gripped by fatigue. His dream made him feel she was the most powerful woman he’d ever met, and he was