Red heaved his wicker case onto the bed and loosened the rope that held it together. He swung the lid open and looked inside, deciding what to wear for dinner. He hadn’t brought a suit. There was a short-sleeved shirt with black and white stripes that he had acquired when the Harlem Globetrotters had come to Berlin, and the players were horsing around, throwing referee shirts to the crowd and inviting them on court to confuse the officials. Worn under his leather jacket, it usually got him into the less exclusive Berlin nightclubs, where he acquired his complimentary teeshirts. He was not much seen in the men’s outfitters of the city.
He gave the shirt a sniff and a shake and dropped it on the bed. With that sartorial decision made, he stripped off his yellow teeshirt, socks, cords and pants and turned on the shower. It was the sort that you could adjust to a concentrated jet that massaged your back and shoulders. He stepped under it and sampled the pleasurable sensation. It didn’t come up to the tiny fingers of a Vietnamese masseuse, but it was enought to cause a moment’s reflection on the vagaries of a life that provided Cedric with showers like these in his guest bedrooms and himself with a lime-encrusted bath in a Berlin tenement.
After stepping out, he discovered the purpose of the sliding glass panel, which he had left open, seeing no cause for modesty. The bathroom floor was awash. More personally inconvenient, so were his clean socks and pants. He reached for a towel, rubbed himself dry and dropped it onto the floor with two others to minimise the possibility of damp ceilings downstairs. Then he padded into the bedroom to see if by some genius of foresight he had packed some spares. He had not.
He would borrow some. Cedric had mentioned that Dick Garrick was also in the end cottage. ‘Ginge’, as Red had privately named Dick, looked the sort who packed spares of everything and would get positive satisfaction out of coming to the aid of a less organized fellow-guest. Some movements were apparent in the adjoining room, so Red rapped on the connecting door and said, ‘Dick?’
There was no reply. Presumably, Ginge was in the shower and couldn’t hear.
The key was on Red’s side of the door, so he turned it, opened the door and put his head round. He was right that the shower was running, but he was not right about the occupant – unless Ginge had just stepped out of a pair of pink knickers in the middle of the floor.
Red called, ‘Sorry, love. My mistake.’ And closed the door and turned the key.
He lifted the cover off the bed, draped it around him and went along the passage to the door of the other guest room, which Ginge opened at once. He had a radio going, with some sports commentary in French. He had already showered and changed. He was very obliging, opening a drawer to let Red make his selection from a tidy stack of underclothes.
‘I expect you didn’t get much time to pack, having to fix your flight and everything,’ he said companionably.
‘Right on,’ said Red as he dropped the bedspread and slipped on a pair of black jockey briefs and some grey socks. ‘These’ll do fine. I’ll replace them as soon as I can.’
‘Don’t bother.’
‘D’you smoke? I’ll let you have some Duty-Free.’
‘Actually I don’t.’
‘Wise man. What’s your tipple? Beer?’
‘Not really. I’m quite happy with mints.’
Red was not relating too successfully to Ginge.
Swinging the bedspread over his shoulder, he returned to his room.
He checked the bathroom and noted with satisfaction that the towels had soaked up most of the water. He retrieved the wet clothes, wrung them out and hung them over the shower framework. As he stepped back into the bedroom, a movement attracted his attention. The handle of the connecting door was being turned. He crept fast across the room and unlocked the door.
It opened slowly and a whiff of some musky perfume wafted in. Still dressed only in jockey briefs and socks, Red backed out of sight until Jane was inside, and then said, ‘Looking for something special, darling, or just visiting?’
Jane had put on a dress of white wild silk. Her lipgloss was several shades deeper than it had been before. She let her eyes travel swiftly and clinically over Red’s mainly naked physique. ‘I didn’t know you were in here. I thought I heard you speaking to Dick.’
‘You did.’
‘I wanted to check whether the door was locked,’ she explained. ‘You know how it is in a strange room.’
‘Too true, love,’ Red agreed.
Jane gave him a cool look and said, ‘Sorry I didn’t knock first.’
‘No sweat, darling.’
She tensed a fraction. ‘I don’t care to be patronised, thank you.’
He grinned disarmingly. ‘That’s all right. I’m liberated. You can call me darling whenever you want.’
‘All I want just now, Mr Goodbody …’ she slid another disinterested glance over his torso ‘… if that is your name, is to have this key on my side of the door.’ She took it out of the lock and held it in her open palm.
‘Whatever you desire, miss,’ said Red with a suggestion of servility in the voice, although his eyes belied it.
Jane put the key firmly into its new slot, stepped back into her room and closed the door.
Red weighed the conversation in his mind, and decided she was right: it was quits. He liked militant birds. They fought like hell and fucked like crazy.