The Last Place God Made - Jack Higgins [37]
I laughed out loud. 'A small-town lawyer. What we call a solicitor in England, at a place called Wells in Somerset. A lovely old town near the Mendip Hills.'
'It sounds marvellous.'
'It is, especially now in the autumn. Rooks in the elms by the cathedral. The dank, wet smell of rotting leaves blowing across the river.'
For a moment I was almost there. She leaned on the rail. 'Grantville was never like that. We had three things worth mentioning, none of which I ever wish to see again. Coalmines, steelworks and smoke. I didn't even look back once when I left.'
'And your sister?'
'We were orphaned when she was three and I was eight. The nuns raised me. I guess it became a habit with her.'
'And what about you?'
'I'm doing fine. Sing with some of the best bands in the country. Dorsey, Guy Lombardo, Sammy Kaye.' There was a perceptible change in her voice as she said this, a surface brashness as if she was really speaking for an audience. 'I've played second lead in two musicals in succession on Broadway.'
'All right.' I held up both hands defensively. 'I'm convinced.'
'And you?' She leaned back against the rail. 'What about you? Why Brazil?'
So I told her, from the beginning right up until that present moment, including a few items on the way that I don't think I'd ever mentioned to another living soul, such was the effect she had on me.
'So here we are,' she said at last when I was finished. 'The two of us at the edge of nowhere. It's beautiful, isn't it?'
The moon clouded over, sheet lightning flickered wildly, the rain came with a sudden rush bouncing from the awning above our heads.
'Romantic, isn't it?' I said. 'We get this every day of the week at sometime or another. Imagine what it's like in the rainy season.' I refilled her glass with wine. 'Bougainvilleas, acacias and God knows how many different varieties of poisonous snakes that can kill you in seconds. As for the river, if it isn't the alligators or pirhanas, it's water snakes so long they've been known to turn a canoe over and take the occupants down. Almost everything that looks nice is absolutely deadly. You should have tried Hollywood instead. Much safer on Stage 6.'
'That comes next month. I've got a screen test with M.G.M.' She smiled, then reached out to touch me, her hand flat against my chest, the smile fading. 'I've got to know, Neil. Just to know, one way or the other. Can you understand that?'
'Of course I can.' My hand fastened over hers and I was shaking like a kid on his first date. 'Would you like to dance?'
She nodded, moving against me and behind us, the sliding door was pulled open. 'So this is what you get up to when my back is turned?' Hannah said as he came through.
*
He was dressed in flying clothes and badly in need of a shave, but he was a romantic enough figure in his leather coat and breeches, a white scarf knotted carelessly about his neck.
He smiled with devastating charm and rushed forward with a sort of boyish eagerness, hands outstretched. 'And this will be Miss Joanna Martin. Couldn't very well be anyone else.'
He held her hands in his for what seemed to me no good reason. I said, 'What in the hell is going on here?'
'You might as well ask, kid.' He yelled for the waiter and pulled off his coat. 'A lot happened since you left this morning. Alberto got through to me on the radio in the middle of the afternoon. Wanted me to pick him up at Santa Helena and fly him straight down to Manaus. We got in about an hour and a half ago. Met Miss Martin's companion at the hotel. When I left, she and the colonel were having quite an argument.'
'What's it all about?'
'That half-breed of Alberto's, the guy who'd lived with the Huna. Well, Alberto put him over the river last evening and by God, he was back at noon today.'
'You mean he'd made contact?'
'Sure