Pow Pow Pow. The high-pitched note of a Continental car horn ripped the morning air. Harry Kondit’s deux-chevaux was in the forecourt of Albufeira station.
‘Hi there, Ace, climb into the sled. I told your boys I’d pick you up – they’re diving and Charly’s shopping.’
I wondered by what process of deduction H.K. had latched on to our diving so soon. Was it possible to keep such a thing secret in a town as small as this one? It made the whole job a little more dangerous. We sped down the sunny road. The fig trees had lost almost every leaf and stood bare and silver in the red fields.
‘What’s the good word, Harry?’ I said. Perhaps I should tell London to prepare a new cover for us in case trouble blew up. We sped across the main road past the canning factories.
‘I just got some new jazz records from the States, Ace. Pretty wiggy. Come around for drinks this evening. Get an earful of wax. Ha, ha, ha.’ We were outside Number 12 by now. I said ‘thank you’ to H.K. and he bumped down the narrow cobbled street to his place. I went inside.
Unfortunately for Charly she was the first person I saw. She was cleaning fish in the kitchen. She wore a microscopic white bikini.
‘Well hello, darling!’ she said, putting a sustained accent on the final syllable of each word.
‘Can the crap, Charly,’ I said.
‘Skilful alliteration, darling,’ she said and wrinkled her nose. ‘What’s upset the chiefman?’
‘First why is it too much trouble for anyone to meet me? Secondly I don’t appreciate H.K. riding me back and telling me about how the diving is going.’
‘How the diving is going? Admit it, lover, he didn’t really tell you how the diving was going, did he?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘he told me that the boys were diving. What sort of security do we have here? How much more information has he pumped out of you?’
‘He’s just done to us what he’s done for you: mentioned the word “diving” to see what reaction he got. What would you prefer us to do, take him up on it and start playing “What’s my line”?’
‘I don’t like it.’
‘Well, you know, little us can’t be expected to manage without big chiefman. You shouldn’t leave us, darling.’
‘Knock it off, Charlotte, and put some clothes on. So much flesh in the kitchen is revolting.’
‘I’ve had no other complaints,’ said Charly. She moved past me through the door, and paused, her nubile body brushing mine … ‘so far,’ she said, and leaned forward to touch the tip of my nose with her pointed tongue. ‘You are breathing heavily, chiefman,’ she said huskily just an inch or so from my mouth. ‘Buzz off, Charly,’ I said, ‘I’ve got enough troubles already.’ But I was breathing heavily.
‘I hear you have a sexy little secretary tucked away in London, darling.’
‘I wouldn’t say sexy,’ I said, ‘she has two kids, three chins, and five per cent of the gross. She drinks like a fish and cooks the sort of food advertised on television.’
Charly gave a high-pitched giggle. ‘You nasty old liar, you left a photo of her in your shirt last week, I know what she’s like.’
‘Do you wash our shirts, too?’ I said.
‘Well, of course I do, who do you think does your laundry? But don’t change the subject. I’ve got the photo of your secretarial sex-bomb and what’s more I can see the glint of matrimony at fifty paces.’
‘Fifty paces from you is close enough,’ I said.
‘Then stop looking down my swimsuit,’ said Charly.
‘What swimsuit?’
There was a knock at the door. I backed away from her. It was a local urchin who went to the fish market for Charly sometimes. Would I like him to clean the car? Yes I would. I walked across to the Victor with him. We must be running up quite a bill with the hire company. He produced a bucket and cloth from nowhere and began to slop water over the windscreen. I sat inside the car and engaged this fourteen-year-old in conversation. Did he know H.K., da Cunha, Fernie Tomas. Yes, he knew them all. Was the tunny fish any good at present? It was all right but not like it is in July. Did he ever run errands for any of those people? No, they were too grand, he said. Would he care to do a small favour for me? But of course. And keep it secret? As secret as the grave. Did he know which barber Senhor Tomas went to? Augusto knew – the movement of the town was his pastime and career. He must get a small lock of Senhor Tomas’s hair. A small piece of hair and no one must see. He and I would share this secret and further I would reward him to the extent of five escudos.
It would be for sending to the ‘O país das fadas’? he asked. I thought of Charlotte Street. It would, I agreed, be for sending to the land of the fairies. I began to wonder how to tell them about Joe.