Saturn Over the Water by J. B. Priestley, J.B. Priestley Read Free Book Online Page A

to be German, then he left the same way. She took a deep breath and turned to me. For a moment, half plastered though I was, I knew she saw me as just another irritating little problem, and it flashed into my mind then that I hadn’t had the right idea about her. By this time of course she had the witchery turned on again.
    ‘I’m not curious about him,’ I said. ‘But I’d like to know if I guessed right. He’s a Russian, isn’t he?’
    ‘Yes.’ She gave an impatient shrug. ‘You have a drink? Good! I think I will have some lemonade.’
    ‘Sorry!’ I poured some out for her. ‘Again, I’m not really curious. But what about those South Americans?’
    She shrugged them away too. ‘Sir Reginald has business interests in Argentina. He is going there quite soon, perhaps to live. Already he has a house there.’
    ‘Are you going too?’ I tried to make it sound casual.
    She looked at me for a moment, sorcery at work. ‘I may go for a little time. But you must not misunderstand. You think I am his mistress, don’t you?’
    ‘Well, I’ll tell you, Nadia. I did think so, but then when you got rid of that Russian and then looked at me, before you’d time to turn on your charm, you suddenly made me feel you were working and not being the girl friend.’
    ‘There are no girl friends here.’ She made a face. ‘He has other tastes – like so many of them.’
    That wasn’t deliberate but a slip, and, as I realised afterwards, a very careless bad slip. But even if I’d known then what advantage to take of it, I don’t think she’d have given me the chance.
    ‘Yes, I have work to do,’ she said. She put her glass down and came over to me. ‘You are a man, I think – a real man.’
    ‘I hope so. But then there are plenty of us about, Nadia.’
    ‘No, not so many. Oh yes – where there is real work to do – but not in the London I know. You are not married – we found that out – but perhaps you have a mistress – girl friend – yes?’
    ‘Not at the moment.’
    ‘How sad for you!’
    And that is when I did what she intended me to do, I think now, right from the moment she made that slip. And if she wanted to make me feel giddy and forgetful, she couldn’t have made a better move. It was a long kiss, with everything there is to know about sex implied in it, and if we’d had the place to ourselves I’d have carried her off at once to the nearest bedroom. Even so, and even in the woozy state I was in, I knew it was just a sexual performance on a very high level, and not what that kind of kiss ought to be, something between persons. Thighs, arms, lips and tongues may have been there but Nadia, Countess Slatina, whoever she was, wasn’t really there, and, to do him justice, neither was Tim Bedford.
    ‘So. I was right about you.’ She had stepped back now, and had sent fingers flashing up to her hair and down her dress, putting everything in order like lightning. She was pretending to be more out of breath than she actually was. There was a glint of irony in the grey-green depths of her eyes. ‘You are staying in London?’
    ‘No – damn it – I’m going away.’ What else could I say?
    ‘Then that is rather sad for me. Must you go? And if so – why – and where?’
    ‘I’m flying to New York on Saturday,’ I said.
    ‘Then you stay in New York? Because I go there too sometimes.’
    ‘No, I shan’t be there long.’
    ‘I think you are running away from me.’ She pretended to look forlorn and of course simply looked more seductive than ever. I moved forward, like so many iron filings to a magnet, but she held up a hand and backed away. ‘You are an artist not a business man,’ she said reproachfully. ‘You have not to keep on flying to places. Where will you go from New York?’
    ‘Well, I may have to go to Peru.’
    She nodded, but the rest of her, eyes and all, was very still, I noticed. ‘You know someone in Peru – a woman perhaps?’
    ‘No, not a woman, Nadia.’ It was my