The Key to Rebecca - Ken Follett [43]
Smith said: “Enchanted, absolutely.”
They sat down. Wolff poured champagne. Smith said: “Your dancing was splendid, mademoiselle, just splendid. Very ... artistic.”
“Thank you.”
He reached across the table and patted her hand. “You’re very lovely.”
And you’re a fool, she thought. She caught a warning look from Wolff: he knew what was in her mind. “You’re very kind, Major,” she said.
Wolff was nervous, she could tell. He was not sure whether she would do what he wanted. In truth she had not yet decided.
Wolff said to Smith: “I knew Sonja’s late father.”
It was a lie, and Sonja knew why he had said it. He wanted to remind her.
Her father had been a part-time thief. When there was work he worked, and when there was none he stole. One day he had tried to snatch the handbag of a European woman in the Shari el-Koubri. The woman’s escort had made a grab for Sonja’s father, and in the scuffle the woman had been knocked down, spraining her wrist. She was an important woman, and Sonja’s father had been flogged for the offense. He had died during the flogging.
Of course, it was not supposed to kill him. He must have had a weak heart, or something. The British who administered the law did not care. The man had committed the crime, he had been given the due punishment and the punishment had killed him: one wog less. Sonja, twelve years old, had been heartbroken. Since then she had hated the British with all her being.
Hitler had the right idea but the wrong target, she believed. It was not the Jews whose racial weakness infected the world—it was the British. The Jews in Egypt were more or less like everyone else: some rich, some poor, some good, some bad. But the British were uniformly arrogant, greedy and vicious. She laughed bitterly at the high-minded way in which the British tried to defend Poland from German oppression while they themselves continued to oppress Egypt.
Still, for whatever reasons, the Germans were fighting the British, and that was enough to make Sonja pro-German.
She wanted Hitler to defeat, humiliate and ruin Britain.
She would do anything she could to help.
She would even seduce an Englishman.
She leaned forward. “Major Smith,” she said, “you’re a very attractive man.”
Wolff relaxed visibly.
Smith was startled. His eyes seemed about to pop out of his head. “Good Lord!” he said. “Do you think so?”
“Yes, I do, Major.”
“I say, I wish you’d call me Sandy.”
Wolff stood up. “I’m afraid I’ve got to leave you. Sonja, may I escort you home?”
Smith said: “I think you can leave that to me, Captain.”
“Yes, sir.”
“That is, if Sonja ...”
Sonja batted her eyelids. “Of course, Sandy.”
Wolff said: “I hate to break up the party, but I’ve got an early start.”
“Quite all right,” Smith told him. “You just run along.”
As Wolff left a waiter brought dinner. It was a European meal—steak and potatoes—and Sonja picked at it while Smith talked to her. He told her about his successes in the school cricket team. He seemed to have done nothing spectacular since then. He was very boring.
Sonja kept remembering the flogging.
He drank steadily through dinner. When they left he was weaving slightly. She gave him her arm, more for his benefit than for hers. They walked to the houseboat in the cool night air. Smith looked up at the sky and said: “Those stars ... beautiful.” His speech was a little thick.
They stopped at the houseboat. “Looks pretty,” Smith said.
“It’s rather nice,” Sonja said. “Would you like to see inside?”
“Rather.”
She led him over the gangplank, across the deck, and down the stairs.
He looked around, wide-eyed. “I must say, it’s very luxurious.”
“Would you like a drink?”
“Very much.”
Sonja hated the way he said “very” all the time. He slurred the r and pronounced it “vey.” She said: “Champagne, or something stronger?”
“A drop of whiskey would be nice.”
“Do sit down.”
She gave him his drink and sat close to him. He touched her