Читать книгу Exile - Warwick Deeping - Страница 20

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Oscar Slade, who had been lunching en suite with an American publisher who was staying at the Hotel Elyseo, strolled through the lounge with his hat on, and Slade was a noticeable man, especially in the lounge of the Elyseo. He was aggressively and self-consciously un-English. His hat was broad and flat in the brim; his tie had an air of abandonment, and a black velvet coat and grey flannel trousers were curiously in contrast.

He was noticed.

“Who’s that fellow?”

“Haven’t the faintest idea. Looks like a Spaniard.”

“Me no likee.”

Someone leant across and imparted information.

“That’s Oscar Slade the novelist. Has a villa here.”

“English?”

“O, yes.”

“Looks like a dago.”

Slade had turned aside to speak to Georgio, the concierge at the Elyseo. Slade bought cigars and other articles through Georgio, who beamed upon him as he beamed upon all gentlemen with money. English eyes watched them both, the tall fellow with his brown, flat-cheeked face and his quizzical eyes, and the little bobbing Silenus in the blue and gold uniform. Slade’s was a figure that should have been laughed at by the conventional English, but the laughter failed to arrive. Someone had once called him “An insolent devil,” and a confident and ironic insolence does not stand to be ridiculed.

“Got the goods, Georgio?”

“I have, sar.”

“How much?”

“Tree undred and fifteen lire, sar.”

“Good lord!”

Slade smiled, and put down notes for five hundred lire.

“You’re a plutocrat, Georgio, an Americano.”

“Thank you, sar.”

Slade pocketed two small parcels, and passed out through the glass-doors, and down the carriage-drive of the Elyseo. The hotel was all white and gold; it flew three flags, the flags of Italy, England and the U.S.A. Patches of vivid, autumn-sown grass lay like carpets spread under the palms. People were sitting in the green and blue chairs. Two itinerant musicians were twanging a guitar and scraping at a violin.

Slade arrived on the white and dusty road which was an extension of the Corso, and on the red courts below the road people were playing tennis. A low stone wall separated the road from the Tennis Club, and a few old olive trees growing at the foot of the wall sustained a lacework beyond which the figures moved. Small birds twittered in the olives. A stone pine threw an oval shadow on the white road.

Slade loitered. He was not a player of games; life was his game. But he stood to watch the figure of a girl moving beyond the lacework of leaves, a figure in white, sleeveless, short skirted, moving on a pair of very shapely white legs. It was Billy Brown partnering Tom Bromhead against two people from the Elyseo.

Slade observed her. He was both artist and man in his knowledge of the figure feminine, and as Frevick had put it “The girl could move.” When she ran she floated with a kind of long, easy glide. Her swinging racket arm caught the sunlight; her hair danced with her feet. She played the game remarkably well, and in the modern style, running up on her service to volley.

Oscar Slade was interested. So much of life is tentative and bungling, and to watch someone doing a thing supremely well piqued the artist in him. He watched Billy with pleasure, and with Slade a pleasant perception became sensuous and personal. He ran to sex. Women had always been intensely necessary to him; not woman but women.

His sense of humour, stripped of its personal predilections, became a nicely balanced mockery. Old Tom Bromhead supplied Slade with the quizzical smirk; old Tom, perspiring and flamboyant, pounding about the court with a racket that was like a professorial net chasing elusive butterflies. He was vociferous. “Yours, partner.”—“Shot.”—“O, well played.” Billy most obviously carried the game. She was a light-footed Atalanta translating into lyrical phrases the efforts of a galloping and unwieldy centaur.

Slade chuckled. His lips moved. He addressed the inward word to old Bromhead. “Don’t worry, old thing; leave it to her. Just mop and shout.”

Such was Slade’s reaction, but to Billy old Tom Bromhead, with his fiery face, was a delight and a glory. He was so enjoying himself, the happy rabbit at play. To Oscar Slade he was absurd; to Billy Brown he was a “dear.” They won the first set and changed over. Old Tom, wiping his racket hand on the seat of his trousers, said something beaming and gaillard to Billy.

“I’d better keep out of your way.”

She smiled and gave a shake of the head, and Slade’s face lost its glimmer of mockery. He stared. He was piqued and tantalized by that vigorous head with its sudden smile. How would that smile affect you in a moment of ecstasy, with the shutters closed, and a white pillow supporting a dark head? His stare became brutal.

And Billy became conscious of it just as she was about to return a service. She mishit the ball, and glanced suddenly and half resentfully towards the olive trees. Her eyes met Slade’s, and for a moment their mutual challenge held.

“Sorry, partner.”

“First you’ve missed for a long time.”

But she foozled the next shot also, and looked grave, and gave a shake of the head. Concentration. She did not see Slade moving away with a faint smile that was too like a smirk. He was intrigued. So Miss Girl Guide was not so solid as she seemed; she could be put off her game by being studied in a particular sort of way. Vulnerable? O, yes, all women were.