The Green Flash

by Winston Graham

  I whistled. ‘That’s a Bible story I never heard before!’

  ‘That is how it happened. Of course for the bigger cities, the larger shops, this was not possible. But every buyer has a husband, a wife, a lover, or children. It soon got around that de Luxembourg had to be stocked – and given the top treatment. So they are now where they are.’

  I looked at her long tawny figure taking its ease in the chair beside me.

  ‘And to think in my childlike way I used to imagine the perfumery business was a genteel profession.’

  ‘Nothing is genteel where big money is concerned.’

  ‘How did you come to know all this?’

  ‘John told me.’

  ‘And how did he come to know it?’

  ‘Through his relatives.’

  ‘Oh. Are his relatives – connected with the Mafia?’

  She shrugged. ‘ One or two.’

  ‘And are we making use of these connections to up our prospects in the States?’

  ‘Of course. But not in an illegal way. That is all past. They are simply extending a helping hand, advising and helping on our outlets.’

  ‘So I don’t need to feel that if that attractive young female from Tracey’s doesn’t order enough, her boyfriend may be run down by a taxi tomorrow?’

  ‘Of course not! Don’t be so silly!’

  ‘Don’t you think I should have been told?’

  ‘What is there to tell? That competition in the United States is so cut-throat that co-operation from an existing company is a great advantage?’

  I got up and walked the quarterdeck. ‘Everything is relative, isn’t it? Even honesty. No wonder there was alarm and despondency when I shook up Marini. I’m surprised at John.’

  ‘John? Why?’

  ‘He has always seemed to me the idealist among us, more concerned for the principles than you or I.’

  ‘My dear David, idealism and realism do not mutually exclude each other. Nor are principles necessarily altogether lost in a conflict with the economic facts of life. I was reluctant to attempt the American market. But the attempt has now been made and it appears to be set on the road to success. There is little more to be said.’

  ‘Not much more to be said; a lot to be thought.’

  ‘As you please.’

  ‘Tell me, Shona, if this is a time for confession, what is your real relationship with John?’

  The cigarette had smouldered away unsmoked. She often did this.

  ‘John is a dear man. I like and respect him. From the beginning it was something of a mariage de convenance, because our abilities complemented so well. I cannot tell you there was ever passion between us, but we have played fair by each other. Once in a while he has had a little affaire; once or twice I have. He does not quite like that, I have to confess; but he accepts it.’

  ‘So that if you had an affair with, say, as an outside example, with me, for instance, there would be nothing too exceptionable about it.’

  ‘There might be.’

  ‘Nothing, at least, on your conscience so far as John is concerned.’

  ‘That is not the hindrance.’

  ‘What is, then?’

  There was a pause. I was afraid she was going to ask me to take off. If she didn’t I was making progress. Then she glanced up at me and I saw that I was making progress.

  She said: ‘No woman is offended by being desired. But it is another matter to yield to that desire. Why do you want this affair, David?’

  ‘I don’t want this affair, I want you. Is it necessary to say more than that?’

  ‘Try.’

  ‘In basic English you’re the most exciting woman I’ve ever seen, and I’ve hankered after you since the day I met you.’

  ‘But you are my – employee. Is that an offensive word?’

  ‘Out of context, yes. In context, no.’

  ‘But there, I think, is the danger.’

  ‘There’s no danger that can’t be overcome, Shona.’

  With long pointed nails she squeezed the cigarette end out of its holder, put the holder away. ‘ We must not be facile, David. We must not use glib words to slide over a serious issue.’

  ‘Then say what’s in your mind.’

  ‘In my mind is my belief that in a sex relationship it is the man who must dominate – or at least be the prime mover in any stable or reasonable variant of the sexual act. It is, as I say, a belief, and it may surprise you. But that is how I see it. But that does not, and never can, apply as far as this business is concerned. There could be no question now, or ever, or ever, of your being – dominant, the decider, even of your ever becoming an equal partner. There would therefore be a constant contradiction, an opposing role, to be played between us, one for the day, one for after the day is done. And contradictions are irritants; they cannot fail to be. There is obviously great danger in any such relationship.’

  ‘If the danger has been laid on the line, as you’ve stated it now, it should be much easier to avoid.’

  She shook her head. ‘You are not thinking, David. Or shall I say not thinking beyond the next half-hour. I don’t believe you love me, even if you know what love is – which I doubt. I certainly do not love you. But when there is a double relationship such as you are proposing, there is no way, I assure you, of one life not coming to intrude upon the other. If things were to go sour for us at night, it would of a certainty affect the day. And vice versa. You have been working for me for well over two years, and although we have differed from time to time it has been easy to accommodate the differences. With this new element intruding it might not be possible to heal the differences, and then you would lose your job and I would lose a man I need and have come to rely on.’

  I sat beside her again. So close, finger’s length, but mustn’t touch. Have to face up to her rational mind before you can essay her irrational body.

  ‘D’you realize one reason why everything has run on greased rails is that all the time I’ve been in love with you? All right – call it what you fancy – but that’s been there, on my side at least, a pressure on me to settle; to give way. Don’t you think that if we become lovers it will be all the easier for me to concede – for us both to agree?’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  I laughed.

  She sat up more straightly, limbs folded, one hand at ease still within a few inches of mine. ‘I have to make this clear, David. About the business. With John’s help in several vital particulars, I have created it. It is trivial, I know – as important as that fly on the wall, no more. But I fear it is all I shall ever create. I became too old for ballet; my fencing can never be like Erica Lease, it is just a sport; I am no writer; and only a very amateur pianist. So this, this Shona business is all. While I am here, and for a few years after I am gone, it will serve as a flimsy monument. And while I am here it shall be preserved to the best of my abilities.’

  ‘Who in hell is trying to touch it, to harm it? I’m not.’

  ‘Ah, no, but there are various ways of harming. As you know.’

  I felt she was at her most Russian. Although nearer to me sexually than ever before, she was at her most alien, giving me this grilling out of her deep emotions. It hit me.

  ‘What do you want me to promise? What do you want me to concede now? Shona.’

  She looked up. ‘It is what you want me to concede. Perhaps I do not altogether trust you.’

  ‘I don’t altogether trust myself,’ I said, ‘ when you’re around.’

  She shook her head at me sadly. ‘ That came too easily. Not from the heart at all.’

  ‘I was told hearts were not going to come into this.’

  ‘Not hearts. But not a commitment that is only glib.’

  At last I put my hand on hers. First time ever. This way. It didn’t stir. ‘I can’t match you in argument. If you wanted to you could make John the Baptist sound superficial. But I can tell you, there’s nothing glib in my wish to make love to you. I promise you if you’ll let me into yo
ur bedroom there’ll be no need for further talk.’

  She smiled, but with a downcurving of the mouth. ‘Sex without intellect? Isn’t that for the apes?’

  ‘Still trying to put me off?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You don’t really fancy me; is that it?’

  She looked at my hand on hers, then at me again. ‘ The truth is that I am a little afraid of this involvement you suggest. If one jumps in, who knows how deep the water will be?’

  ‘I’m not offering a lifebelt.’

  ‘No, I’m sure of that. But I am much older than you, wiser than you, isn’t it? I pause to count the risks.’

  ‘You’ve already done that. You were never short on resolution.’

  ‘Nor you on persuasion. What are you selling this time, David?’

  But I wouldn’t be insulted. I put my hands in hers and gently hoisted her to her feet. The movement didn’t stop, and the expensive Balmain frock covering the expensive body came along quite readily. We kissed properly for the first time. Her lips didn’t feel thin to kiss.

  Maybe I should have known better. At least, surprise, surprise, self-advancement wasn’t one of my priorities just then. I’d got just a little beyond that.

  Chapter Seven

  I

  After New York, Boston, then Chicago, then San Francisco, then home. Of course everything was different between us, and yet above the board everything was just the same.

  It was a wild two weeks in all senses. Insofar as it was in my nature to enjoy things I enjoyed that time. Hockdeep in work and play doesn’t leave much time for the morbid stuff.

  Maybe it’s stretching things to say she was something quite new. All right, she was older than I was, which in some stages can be an advantage. Anyway she had a sort of ageless relish that never became mere lust. Not that I’d have cared at first. She taught me the difference. I thought one night it was like the first time I’d played first-class bridge. It raised your own game.

  Coming now so close to her, I couldn’t help but wonder more about her age. I guessed she was about fifteen years older than I was, which would make her forty-two. She never mentioned how old she was when she left Russia, or what year it was, and it was such an obvious ploy I wouldn’t ask.

  We never made love in bright light. She preferred it that way, and it didn’t worry me. I’ve known twenty-year-olds with a similar preference and greater reason.

  When we got home it was as if nothing at all had happened, except that John wouldn’t speak to me. At first I thought he’d somehow latched on to what had been happening; then I realized it was altogether another set of misdemeanours he had in his crop. The Brotherhood had let him know that I had offended against one of the family. It was settled, of course. No more would be said. But there was a black mark against me. So when I went to the States again I would have to watch my step. Francesco Marini was one of their top men.

  This I learned in bits from Shona. I was derisive.

  ‘Feeling there were a few hoodlums looking for me would be stimulating. Helps you to breathe more, deeply.’

  ‘Sometimes if you breathe too deeply you stop breathing altogether.’

  ‘Oh, come. You don’t give them credit for a sense of proportion. Of course I know they can kill; it’s all part of the legend. But grant them the virtue of common sense. Everything they do is done with a good reason. Or what appears to be a good reason to them.’

  ‘Quite. Well, I know you like taking risks, David.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘How do I know it? I sense it. It is one of your more agreeable characteristics. But don’t allow the temptation to go to your head. If you were to take on the Mafia in any way you would be the loser. Of money, of comfort, or of life.’

  ‘Perhaps I could join ’ em,’ I said. ‘How does one become their favourite nephew?’

  She did not reply to this, as if in her opinion it was beneath contempt.

  Most Tuesday evenings we’d still go to the fencing together, then I’d take her home to my flat. Later, much later, I would take her to South Audley Street. It was less than half a mile.

  Sometimes in the middle of a business, spat at Stevenage, with me on one side of her and John Carreros on the other, and circled by the reps, the sales manager, the chemists, all with intent faces, considering the reactions of the average woman to a lip-brush instead of a lipstick, or the kind of moisturizing cream best for those who live in central heating, I’d think of the way Shona had been with me the night before. You couldn’t relate the person she was now to the naked woman lying twisted on the mat in front of the fire or involved in an octopus of limbs in the half-dark of my bedroom. So I’d got what I wanted, hadn’t I? This was what I’d been going straight for three years for, wasn’t it? Not a cash-catch this time. Just a woman-catch. Couldn’t say I wasn’t enjoying it. But on dark nights ugly spectres came to tell me it was a let-down.

  We were careful in office hours; but Erica Lease soon latched on. She said nothing we could pick up, but there was a knowing glint in her eyes, an acceptance of a situation nobody needed to spell out. Once or twice she picked on me specially for advice or a spot of tuition, as if to challenge Shona, not to fencing but to monopoly of a male.

  One night we sat in a corner while Shona was fencing and she said: ‘So I suppose it’s you and Shona now, is it?’

  ‘Has been for a long time. We work well together.’

  ‘Oh, yes? That wasn’t what I meant. Unless you call it work.’ She looked me over. ‘She’s picked rather well this time.’

  ‘Doesn’t she usually?’

  ‘Well, it’s a long time since she had a steady. I thought she was maybe giving it up in favour of eurythmics.’

  My mistress was weaving her way with elegance and grace through a compound riposte.

  ‘Have you known her long?’ I asked.

  ‘About six years.’

  ‘So you won’t have seen her through many steadies?’

  ‘No … The only one was Eddie Ludgrove. You know, the Marquess of Ludgrove.’

  ‘What broke it up?’

  ‘You’d better ask her! Rumour has it that the duke didn’t like it. And sometimes she gets tired of her playmates too.’

  I said: ‘Do you know John Carreros?’

  ‘I saw him once. Heavy man? That’s it. You expecting a knife in the back?’

  ‘Not particularly. Did Eddie Ludgate?’

  ‘Ludgrove. No, he was too important.’

  ‘Well, thanks.’

  ‘I mean a peer, and all that. They wouldn’t, would they?’

  ‘Who’s they?’

  She was silent a moment, running her hands through her loose fair hair. ‘One thing I can promise you won’t get, and that’s a divorce petition.’

  ‘Why d’you say that?’

  ‘Carreros would never break up the firm. Shona is his meal ticket.’

  ‘Isn’t that a bit hard on him? He’s done a lot on the laboratory side.’

  ‘Which any good chemist could do, I’m told. No, Shona’s the magic.’

  ‘On that,’ I said, ‘I’m inclined to agree.’

  ‘I thought you would.’

  II

  A couple of weeks later we went to dinner with Erica. She had a very big flat on the second floor of a block in Knightsbridge overlooking Hyde Park.

  In answer to my raised eyebrows Shona said: ‘ Her father is a biscuit manufacturer. Have you not heard of Lease’s Hardbake, Lease’s Shortbread? She’s his only daughter.’

  ‘And lets her have all her own way?’

  ‘Pretty well.’

  There were ten of us to dinner, and as soon as I got in I saw a tall, craggy-looking chap whose face I vaguely knew. He was untidily dressed – looked as if everything had been thrown on in a fit of absence of mind – but his cultured dogmatic voice and bulbous brilliant eyes seemed to claim and get an immediate circle of attention for himself.

  We took drinks and talked and then Erica, virginal in white
satin, took me over and said: ‘Wonder if you two are related? Same name. Both from Scotland, I suppose? Or do you know each other already? Dr Malcolm Abden. Mr David Abden.’

  We shook hands, and the man looked me up and down.

  ‘Are you Uncle Stewart’s son? Angels and ministers of grace! I think I see a faint resemblance! We’re cousins germane, in that case.’

  His voice was not very cordial, and mine reflected the same warmth.

  ‘First cousins?’ said Erica. ‘Never to have met? How droll! Can you beat it?’

  ‘I see your name in the papers a lot,’ I said.

  ‘I see yours from time to time too,’ he said. ‘ Is that all over now?’

  ‘What all over?’ asked Erica.

  ‘A bit of trouble I was in,’ I explained. ‘Remind me to tell you about it sometime.’

  ‘Oh, I will – I will. Was it scandalous?’

  ‘Ask Malcolm,’ I said. ‘He’s the expert.’

  ‘Oh, I know all about Malcolm,’ said Erica. ‘You’re the dark horse.’

  I could see my cousin switch on when he met Shona. A noted womanizer, he at once gave her the full benefit of his charm. You could understand why he was a success on television, popping up on any programme that invited him, so long as it was one that recognized his importance. Warm, witty, old-fashioned, eccentric, authoritative, highly prejudiced and often mildly gassed, he was good value on the screen, at a dinner party or in Parliament. I couldn’t remember exactly about the last, but he was soon contradicting someone in the room and denying he was a member. At the recent general election he had lost his seat at East Strathclyde to the SNP.

  ‘SNP,’ he said, ‘stands for Scotsmen Never Pay. Don’t worry: I’m looking for another constituency to nurse. I’ll be in again at the next general election.’

  He was probably forty-three or -four. I should have known, but in fact had kept few tags on my relatives in the Highlands. He talked all through dinner and seemed well informed on when the Americans were going to put another man on the moon, and whether Heath’s twenty-odd majority would see him through a full five-year term (personally he hoped not!). He was dead against England going into the EEC; he wanted to ban all future immigration, reintroduce hanging, and was in favour of Rhodesia’s declaration of independence. All a fairly normal printout considering his background, but proclaimed with a sort of polemic good humour that took the sting away. Every now and then some turn of phrase got into my hair, but it was not his political opinions, for which I cared nothing either way.