The Key to Rebecca - Ken Follett [89]
There was no point in staying in the house. He could not possibly sleep, and there was nothing else he could do there. He would go and join Jakes and the others, despite Dr. Abuthnot’s orders. He put on a coat and his uniform cap, went outside, and wheeled his motorcycle out of the garage.
Elene and Wolff stood together, close to the edge of the bluff, looking at the distant lights of Cairo and the nearer, flickering glimmers of peasant fires in dark villages. Elene was thinking of an imaginary peasant—hardworking, poverty-stricken, superstitious—laying a straw mattress on the earth floor, pulling a rough blanket around him, and finding consolation in the arms of his wife. Elene had left poverty behind, she hoped forever, but sometimes it seemed to her that she had left something else behind with it, something she could not do without. In Alexandria when she was a child people would put blue palm prints on the red mud walls, hand shapes to ward off evil. Elene did not believe in the efficacy of the palm prints; but despite the rats, despite the nightly screams as the moneylender beat both of his wives, despite the ticks that infested everyone, despite the early death of many babies, she believed there had been something there that warded off evil. She had been looking for that something when she took men home, took them into her bed, accepted their gifts and their caresses and their money; but she had never found it.
She did not want to do that anymore. She had spent too much of her life looking for love in the wrong places. In particular, she did not want to do it with Alex Wolff. Several times she had said to herself: “Why not do it just once more?” That was Vandam’s coldly reasonable point of view. But, each time she contemplated making love with Wolff, she saw again the daydream that had plagued her for the last few weeks, the daydream of seducing William Vandam. She knew just how Vandam would be: he would look at her with innocent wonder, and touch her with wide-eyed delight; thinking of it, she felt momentarily helpless with desire. She knew how Wolff would be, too. He would be knowing, selfish, skillful and unshockable.
Without speaking she turned from the view and walked back toward the car. It was time for him to make his pass. They had finished the meal, emptied the champagne bottle and the flask of coffee, picked clean the chicken and the bunch of grapes. Now he would expect his just reward. From the backseat of the car she watched him. He stayed a moment longer on the edge of the bluff, then walked toward her, calling to the driver. He had the confident grace that height often seemed to give to men. He was an attractive man, much more glamorous than any of Elene’s lovers had been, but she was afraid of him, and her fear came not just from what she knew about him, his history and his secrets and his knife, but from an intuitive understanding of his nature: somehow she knew that his charm was not spontaneous but manipulative, and that if he was kind it was because he wanted to use her.
She had been used enough.
Wolff got Wolff got in beside her. “Did you enjoy the picnic?”
She made an effort to be bright. “Yes, it was lovely. Thank you.”
The car pulled away. Either he would invite her to his place or he would take her to her flat and ask for a nightcap. She would have to find an encouraging way to refuse him. This struck her as ridiculous: she was behaving like a frightened virgin. She thought: What am I doing—saving myself for Mr. Right?
She had been silent for too long. She was supposed to be witty and engaging. She should talk to him. “Have you heard the war news?” she asked, and realized at once it was not the most lighthearted of topics.