Riviera Blues. Jack Batten

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СКАЧАТЬ got my marching orders on him from the top guy.”

      “There are some facts about this mysterious trip of Jamie’s to Monaco that Daddy doesn’t know. And will never know, as far as that goes.”

      “You’re going to tell me, and it doesn’t leave this room.”

      “Goodness,” Pamela said, “aren’t we a very clever criminal lawyer.”

      When Pamela and I were married, I used to let her sarcasm fly by. No call to change old habits.

      “What’s the mystery about Jamie’s trip to Monaco?” I asked.

      “To start with,” Pamela said, “I’m not paying for it.”

      I gave Pamela my uncomprehending look. “Did I miss a step?”

      “For the past year, I’ve paid for practically everything Jamie has. Everything that’s any good. His suits, the apartment, rental on the Jag he’s so fond of …”

      “Why did you —?” I started to ask. And stopped. I recognized the step I’d missed.

      “I was having an affair with Jamie,” Pamela said. “Am having an affair with Jamie. At least I think I still am.”

      “You’re cheating? Oh, my. On Archie?”

      “Why the shock?” Pamela blew smoke out both nostrils in matching streams. “I cheated on you, for heaven’s sake.”

      “This conversation isn’t turning out to be a ton of fun.”

      “If it makes you any less scandalized, Jamie has been the only time I’ve betrayed Archie.”

      “It wasn’t Archie I was thinking of.”

      “Betrayed. God, I sound like Mata Hari or someone.”

      “There was the Swedish guy in Sardinia.”

      “What Swedish guy in Sardinia?”

      “How soon they forget.”

      “Oh, him.”

      Pamela pushed out her cigarette dead centre in the deep inky-blue thing. It wasn’t a bowl. It was an ashtray. Nothing in the damn room was what I thought it was.

      “You amaze me, Crang,” Pamela said. “That was a million years ago, the Swede. Not much on talk, now that I think about it, but he had an absolutely heavenly body.”

      “Nice to hear you didn’t betray me with just any old chap.”

      “Stop saying betrayed.”

      “That was only my first time.”

      “I must have been terribly naive when we were married. To have told you about the Swedish man, I mean.”

      “You said you hadn’t committed adultery before. You wanted me to forgive you.”

      “Remind me what you answered.”

      “I said I forgave you. But I had my fingers crossed when I said it. Didn’t count.”

      “That was wise of you, because I’m sorry to say there were one or two ‘any old chaps,’ as you put it.”

      “That you had affairs with when you were my wife?”

      “Only towards the end,” Pamela said. “And none of them was a friend of yours.”

      “That doesn’t narrow the field much. I hardly had any friends in those days.”

      “And now you have one very close friend.” Pamela did little arching numbers with her eyebrows, like a bad imitation of Groucho Marx.

      “Annie,” I said. “Annie B. Cooke. Why can’t anybody in your family come right out and say her name?”

      “I know her name, and I’m grateful to her.”

      “That has an ominous ring,” I said, “coming from you.”

      “Nothing ominous. I heard the people on the radio in the morning say they envied your friend’s trip to the Riviera. Pardon, Annie’s trip. And I guessed she wouldn’t be going alone. That’s why I’m grateful to her. I phoned a friend with a rather good job at Air Canada and got the rest, about the two of you leaving Monday.”

      The hefty woman in the black dress was halfway across the pale grey broadloom before I realized she had entered the room. She must have mastered the servant’s art of stealth. She set a large lacquered wood tray on the marble in front of Pamela. The tray held a teapot, matching cups and saucers in a pretty tangerine shade, milk, sugar, lemon slices, and a plate of cookies.

      “How do you take your tea, Crang?” Pamela asked.

      “Clear.”

      That was a mistake. At home, I drink gentle herbal teas. Pamela’s was straight-ahead English power tea. Taken untempered by milk, sugar, or lemon, it tasted like shellac. I tried an oatmeal cookie to take the taste away.

      “Well, okay,” I said, “you had an affair with Jamie Haddon, maybe still are having one, which is something you’d better clear up, the maybe part, and you spoiled him rotten. Car, clothes, other treats.”

      “Yes.”

      “It’s a cliffhanger so far,” I said. “What next?”

      Pamela put down her cup and saucer. She’d polished off the tea. The woman had a cast-iron stomach.

      “Five weeks ago,” she said, “Jamie sprang this silly three-month leave of absence on us all. I hadn’t an inkling until he announced it one night when we were all at Daddy’s for dinner. There I was, I’d invested so much of myself in him, affection, time, gifts, God knows I even risked my marriage for him, and he decides to traipse off to Europe.”

      “I see,” I said. “A woman scorned.”

      “That’s just it, scorn didn’t come into it as far as I could make out, not the way Jamie behaved. He continued to act as passionate and attentive as he’d been all through our relationship. Nothing seemed to change in his attitude to me except that he picked up and left for three months.”

      “Ah well, the spontaneity of youth.”

      “Don’t give me that crap,” Pamela said. The harsh shift in her voice brought back memories of the tiffs we’d had during our married days. “This kind of spontaneity needs a few thousand dollars.”

      “Which you didn’t give him.”

      “For once.”

      My tea was a quarter of the way down the cup, where it was leaving a dark ring. What was it doing to the lining of my stomach? I ate another cookie and left the tea alone.

      “Jamie has a job, right?” I said. “He must be earning good bucks of his own at C&G.”

      “Loan СКАЧАТЬ