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  We met headwinds on the last leg of our journey across the Indian Ocean and put down at Bombay Airport, Santa Cruz, ninety minutes late. Bill promised to meet me outside customs and I practically ran off the plane, clearing my own baggage in nothing flat. I made my contact and told him that I would continue to handle the situation, and would he please pass the word back to Mr. Blaser. He agreed to stay on the job anyway—he was drawing expenses and didn’t particularly want to go back to the office.

  Then, like a schoolgirl on her first date, I went to meet Bill. As we drove in from the airport he wanted to know what some of the new buildings were, and why had they pulled down so and so. Fortunately I had been in Bombay earlier in the year and I knew most of the answers. Those I didn’t know, I made up. And by this time I flattered myself that he felt pretty much the same way as I did.

  Within two minutes of checking into the hotel I was moved out of my original room and into one next door to Bill’s. This had been arranged on the phone by the contact I had met at the airport. Then I had to act all surprised and bashful as I pulled open the connecting door and discovered Bill in the middle of his unpacking. We went down to dinner together and spent an indecent time lingering over the coffee. Bill had thoughtfully brought a flask of brandy down with him, and by the time we started back upstairs I was three parts tiddly. Outside my room I allowed myself to be kissed chastely, and then I let myself in and started to get ready for bed, waiting for the inevitable.

  It came ten minutes later, a discreet tap on the communicating door. I wrestled with my conscience. I really did. Here was a man I hadn’t known existed twenty-four hours ago, a man who could possibly be a traitor, and who I would have to turn in if he was. I was responsible for keeping a watch on him and reporting the least sign of anything suspicious. Added to that, he believed I was an Anglo-Indian with hair as dark as night and a body to match. It was feasible that I could keep my wig on through anything that might have followed, but how was I going to explain away those white slashes of flesh across my breasts and hips, standing out against my tan like a transparent bikini? The scales were weighted too heavily against me, I decided, and I took the only way out. I ignored the tapping on the door and, after a few minutes, when he gave up, I quietly cried myself to sleep.

  When one considers some of the situations I have been in since working for Mr. Blaser, it’s strange that I am still capable of behaviour like falling for a man and wanting him with all the intensity of a twenty-year-old. But the fact remains that somewhere not too deep inside me is a core of solid marshmallow that thrives on kind looks and gentleness and warmth. I’ve managed to construct a pretty hard shell around this softness, but it’s still there, and has the habit of leaking out through the shell at the damnedest times. Fortunately the men I generally come across in my professional capacity arouse in me nothing but distaste and I can perform my duties in a detached and, I hope, efficient manner. Then, just as one is feeling safe and secure, along comes a Bill Partman, and my insulation is cracked to hell and gone.

  We had breakfast together the following morning and he made no reference to his unsuccessful bid to storm my ramparts. For my part, I was too embarrassed to look up from my orange juice and coffee. He was to be met that morning by a man from the University and taken on a tour, ending with lunch with the faculty. The first of his papers he was to read that afternoon. Knowing my contact would pick him up as soon as he left the hotel, I saw him off after breakfast, standing outside the hotel until his car was out of sight. Then feeling like an absolute bitch, I let myself into his room and proceeded to dissect his luggage. After two hours I felt better; if he was carrying anything that he shouldn’t be, it certainly wasn’t in his room. And if it was as valuable as Mr. Blaser made out, he’d hardly be likely to cart it around with him. So, from my biased viewpoint, I surmised that the whole thing was a mistake and that Mr. Blaser had got his wires crossed somewhere.

  I had lunch alone in the huge dining room of the hotel, surrounded by a dozen waiters, all regretting the passing of the Raj. Then I went back to my room. I stripped off completely and climbed under my mosquito net where I drifted off to a never-never land, where all the men looked like Bill and I was the only woman left alive.

  The phone jerked me back to reality at five-thirty. It was my contact. Bill Partman was on his way upstairs. He had read his paper and been dropped back at the hotel. He had been in contact with no one other than the people at the University. I passed along my bit of news about having found nothing in his room. Then I got out of bed and started to make ready for another frustrating evening. We went for a ghari ride after dinner. Bombay is pretty depressing in the daytime, but at night its ugliness fades into the shadows and only beauty remains. This is especially so when you are sitting in a horse-drawn carriage, clip-clopping along, holding hands with a very attractive man. Mellowed old buildings, bathed in moonlight; giant moths fluttering kaleidoscopically in the lamplight; the smell of the sea, and the warmth of the night air; the sound of a street vendor’s call, high and plaintive; and the distant hoot of a departing liner. By the time we arrived back at the hotel, I was a gone gal.

  I allowed Bill to lead me by the hand up the huge curved staircase, not wanting to share our intimacy even with the elevator boy. He took my key from my nerveless fingers, opened my door and pushed me in gently. I didn’t move a muscle as he kissed me, and once again my conscience and I joined battle. This time, my conscience lost. I stood still while he unwound my sari and allowed it to slip to the floor. He hadn’t turned on the light, so the room was in semi-darkness, and if he noticed anything, he didn’t say. Not that I would have cared much anyway. He unclipped my bra with such gentleness that I was hardly aware of it until I felt his hand curl round my breast. My nipples hardened under his touch and I shivered although the night was very warm. Then he pulled me towards him and we were kissing again. Our tongues met briefly and then more urgently. ‘You can have my resignation, Mr. Blaser, as of now,’ I said to myself as he led me towards the bed.

  He was gentle, as I had known he would be, but he was firm and positive as well. His hands were insistent, caressing my breasts, my stomach and my thighs, opening me up as though I were a ripe fruit. It’s madness, I thought, complete and utter lunacy; what happens tomorrow if I have to...But tomorrow was impossibly far away. Any latent reluctance buried in my subconscious slowly seeped away under the persuasion of his hands and mouth. Finally it was pure instinct that led me on, all reason having long deserted me. And still he continued to stroke reactions from my body until I begged him to make real love to me.

  ‘Now, Bill. Please. Now!’

  He rolled over and I was conscious of his weight for a brief second. Then all feeling other than the concentrated focal point left me. Movement became urgent and autonomic, building up towards that impossible climax which it should, and so often doesn’t, reach. I wanted it to last and last, and yet I chased it to its end, searching and finally achieving what I was at the same time trying to delay. And we matched each other perfectly. It was as though we had been making love to each other all our lives. I lay still for a long time afterwards, holding him close almost as though I were frightened to let him go. He was the one to eventually break the spell. He lit two cigarettes and passed one to me. I rested in his arms, pulling myself together slowly, piece by piece. Finally I judged I was sufficiently in control to say something reasonably lucid.

  ‘I wondered why they called you Professor,’ I said. ‘Now I know what you’re a Professor of.’

  ‘You weren’t too bad yourself,’ he said generously. ‘Even if you are not what you would have us all believe.’

  I went cold suddenly and tried to keep myself from stiffening in his arms. ‘How’s that?’ I said innocently.

  ‘You’re no more an Indian than I am,’ he said. ‘And I come from Bognor Regis.’ Obviously the darkness hadn’t been as complete as I thought. ‘Your tan is an outside-in one, rather than the other way round.’

  ‘
You won’t tell anyone, will you?’ I said.

  ‘Tell them what? That my brown love wears a white bikini made of skin?’ His brown love; I liked that. One more lie, I thought; then we’ll forget the whole thing.

  ‘Air India like their girls to be Indian,’ I said. ‘And I like working for Air India. As long as none of the paying customers finds out, they’re happy, and so am I.’

  ‘This paying customer is happy,’ he said, reaching his hand for me again. But I beat him to it; after all, he had found out all about me, so it was about time I started to find out some things about him....

  Later, as we lay there, warm and peaceful, he told me about himself. William Partman, age forty-two, unmarried, parents killed in an automobile accident when he was seven years old. There had been no brothers or sisters and he had been brought up by an aunt. He had won a scholarship to a redbrick university which had been delayed for a couple of years by his National Service at the tail end of the war. Then came four years of concentrated study, after which he passed out with more honours than any one man has a right to receive. He had declined the offer to stay on at the University in a teaching post, and moved out into industry to make his fortune. He hadn’t made a fortune for himself, but he had for his employers, who marketed one of his computer developments and made ten million dollars in the process. When his contract had expired he had told them politely to get stuffed, and even the offer of a five-pound-a-week rise in salary didn’t get him to change his mind.

  Then, all on his own, he invented a small gizmo which meant absolutely nothing to me but obviously did to someone. He patented it and then leased the patents to the Gerastan Corporation on a royalty basis, thereby securing himself a yearly sum of money which would continue to the day he died and beyond. He refused to tell me how much at first, but as I was already entertaining serious designs on this man, I tickled him into eventual submission, and he told me.

  ‘My God,’ I said. ‘I’m in bed with a millionaire!’

  ‘Only if I live to be a hundred and sixty-two,’ he said.

  It seemed that Gerastan Industries were so happy with the situation that they allocated him unlimited funds to work on anything he chose, providing they had first option on anything he came up with. This happy state of affairs had existed for the last eight years, during which Bill had grown even richer. Then they had the only disagreement of their association.

  ‘They wanted me to go to America,’ he said.

  ‘What’s so bad about America?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing, if you’re an American. Personally, I can’t stand the place. It’s all neon and freeways.’

  ‘I rather like it.’

  ‘People can change their minds,’ he said.

  ‘Yours or mine?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. We’ll work on it.’

  Anyway, he had flatly refused to go when they asked him, and there was nothing the Corporation could do about it as long as they wanted to hang on to his services. Apparently he had even been interviewed by the almost mythical Roger Gerastan himself, a man who hadn’t been seen in public now for as long as anyone could remember.

  ‘Sent his own aeroplane to London for me,’ said Bill. ‘A bloody great DC-8 with a crew of six. Flew me all the way to California to his own private airfield. He lives in this extraordinary rambling sort of place, full of armed guards and man-eating Alsatians.’

  But even the power of Roger Gerastan had failed to work with Bill, and the following day he had been flown back to London. All that had been a year ago, and since then he had continued to work on happily somewhere down on the South Downs, while the security forces of the West chewed their fingernails impotently. And that seemed to bring us back to square one and, before he got too tired from talking, I dragged him back into physical involvement.

  Bill was scheduled to read his second paper at nine o’clock the following morning. I don’t know how he made it, because we didn’t get to sleep until five a.m. When I woke up it was eleven and he had left me a note on the pillow. ‘Stay in bed. I’ll be back for lunch.’ I felt so marvellous that I had forgotten for a moment the reason I was here. Then I remembered—and at the same time I remembered that, while he was at the University, someone else was watching him. Not that there was any further need; of that I was convinced. But until I reported in, no one else was.

  I debated for a time whether or not to call Mr. Blaser; then I decided against it. If he agreed with me that he had been wrong about Bill, then he would very likely order me home on the first available plane, whereas if I kept quiet I could stay with Bill under the guise of doing the job I was sent out to do. And anyway, Mr. Blaser was going to require more proof than the fact that one of his people found the subject under surveillance a marvellous lover. He just isn’t the type to be swayed by such considerations, and it’s no good waving things like woman’s intuition at him. As far as he is concerned, if such a thing exists, it’s to be viewed with considerable scepticism.

  So I made no phone call. I turned on the bath and rang for the room to be done while I was in the tub. Then I ordered lunch for two to be sent up to the room, including a contraband bottle of champagne, which in Bombay is like ordering the crown jewels. By the time Bill arrived I was ready for him, having even discarded my wig, which had somehow remained in place during the previous night’s exercise.

  ‘My God,’ he said when we had kissed, holding me at arm’s length. ‘My brown love is copper-topped with it.’

  ‘Genuine, too,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t believe it. That colour just can’t be natural. It goes against nature.’

  ‘I can prove it.’

  ‘So prove it.’ While the champagne cooled in the ice bucket, I proved it.

  We spent a childish afternoon playing silly games which I hope my children, should I have any, don’t play until they’re over twenty-one. Then we dressed reluctantly and meandered down to dinner. Over dinner he told me that he had received a call, via the University, that he must return to London as soon as possible. It was rotten news because he had hoped to spend at least a couple of weeks in India, revisiting some of the places he remembered. But his employers, it seemed, thought otherwise, and could I use my influence to get him on the next flight to London? Nobody had reported to me about any long-distance telephone calls, but my sphere of influence didn’t extend to the University switchboard. So, feeling completely happy, I went to the lobby to make my own phone call.

  My intuition had been right. He had delivered his lectures and now he was going home. No secret meetings in back alleys. No suspicious rendezvous. Everything exactly as it appeared to be. I phoned my contact and made the necessary arrangements and reported them back to Bill. I was due out on the London flight tomorrow morning, and I had reserved a seat for him.

  ‘You will personally be looked after by the best-looking, sexiest hostess on the route,’ I told him.

  ‘I thought you were coming along,’ he said. And the whole evening went like that, silly jokes that kept us both in stitches, while we both wondered how early we could decently escape back upstairs. Eventually we did, and that night was even better than the previous one. Now we were armed with an intimate knowledge of each other’s bodies which made lovemaking less of an adventure, but more of an experience. As I drifted off to sleep, I was composing in my mind the letter of resignation I would hand to Mr. Blaser as soon as Bill asked me to marry him.

  FOUR

  To cope with the business of organising the flight, Bill and I parted company for a couple of hours the following morning. I noticed that he was still being watched by my contact. If it made the department happy, good luck to them. They certainly weren’t going to find anything on my boy. As he came aboard with the other passengers, I pressed my palms together and bowed low. He didn’t bat an eyelid as I showed him to his seat. I promised to come and sit with him as soon as the takeoff paraphernalia was completed; then I moved off to settle the other first-class passengers. There were only four of them, two India
ns, one Asiatic and a European. One of the girls from the economy section remarked that she only had twenty people aboard and the airline wasn’t going to get very rich on this trip.

  I paid my respects to Captain Singh immediately after takeoff. I had flown with him before, and if he wondered why I was a red-haired English girl one day, and a raven-haired Indian the next, he didn’t say so. I collected his and the rest of the flight crew’s order for lunch and passed it to the Chief Steward. And that seemed to be that as far as I was concerned.

  There were two other girls working the cabin and, with only five passengers including Bill, they weren’t going to be rushed off their feet. So I went to sit with Bill. We held hands surreptitiously, twining fingers while we gazed into each other’s eyes and spoke volumes without saying a word. I left him for half an hour while lunch was being served, and each time I passed his seat, I stopped for a moment and he stroked my leg. It was all very childish and extremely bad behaviour for an air hostess, but I couldn’t have cared less. Later we sat and talked the afternoon away. I told him about Tom and he squeezed my hand sympathetically, and he told me about the girl he had been going to marry who had died of leukemia and I squeezed his hand.