Chapter 1
The girl on the barstool wriggled back a bit so that her ample behind seemed to lap out like a pouting lip over the wooden seat and Roger Hartnell, sitting at a table across the room, was aware she'd done it for his benefit.
He looked down moodily at the fading froth in his glass. Usually he didn't go for tarts, but now he was so bored and dispirited that he recognized a distinct inclination stirring inside him. Besides she was very much of the better class type - in fact he'd been rather surprised at her suggestive movement - and was undoubtedly attractive.
For the last half hour she'd been sitting eyeing him in the long mirror behind the bar, and he'd been sitting staring at her back. Neither had made any previous advances except for the looking. It was rather amusing, he thought soberly, looking up once again.
If his years in the Air Force hadn't taught him to recognize this sort of woman by instinct he might not have thought she was one. Nobody else had approached her and the smart gray suit which nipped in tight at her waist and creased out around full hips gave her quite a respectable look.
More than anything else, he decided, it was their apparent lack of interest in anyone else while they took their time quietly and discreetly summing up who was interested in them and whom they were interested in.
He could see her face in the mirror, pale and clean-cut in its frame of unviolent red hair. She looked more like a strayed country type than a whore.
The bar, smart and respectable, was tucked away in Chelsea. It charged 2d extra on its beer to keep out "the roughs." It was not the sort of place to be harboring prostitutes. Hartnell was alone at his table; in fact the bar was not very crowded. There was just enough hum of conversation to drown individual words, with the occasional chink of glasses and swish of beer as the barman served.
His eyes moved around the jutting rim of her buttocks, seeing them white and plump without the skirt. His hands mentally closed on the slim waist and then he was deciding that he might as well see what the deal was. He was pretty low on cash.
The girl had continued to gaze at him steadily and now he smiled into the mirror at her. After a moment she smiled back. He raised an eyebrow and indicated the chair opposite him and after another moment she twisted around to look at him and then slipped off the stool.
He stood up politely as she crossed the space between tables and bar and she looked even less like a tart as he saw her more clearly. Her skin was good, she walked gracefully and her eyes were a bright, honest blue.
He pulled back a chair and she sat in it with a murmured "Thanks."
"What will you have?" he asked.
"A martini, please."
He called the waiter, ordered and then looked at the girl appraisingly. She looked about twenty-six but she could have been older or younger.
"A pleasant change to see you in the flesh," he said.
"Good," she said. "Mirrors are usually flattering."
"In fact, when you sat there with your back telling the bar to go to hell I began to think you were having an affair with the barman."
She laughed quietly and her long upper lip rose to show the tips of small, regular teeth.
"The barman has a squint," she said. "I like handsome men."
Hartnell grinned.
"I was about to blush prettily," he said. "But, of course, I don't know that you like me yet."
A faint perfume drifted to him across the table, but he couldn't quite place it. He was afraid she was going to be expensive. Too expensive probably. But now he could see the voluminous push of her breasts in the blouse under the suit and he saw his eating money going down the drain.
"Oh, I don't have to tell you you're handsome," she said with another quiet laugh. "You're no adolescent. But for the last half hour you've been looking so sad you've brought out the mother in me as well."
He grinned again.
"Unfortunately mother has to be paid the housekeeping money," he said. "And youngsters don't make much nowadays."
She looked at him for several seconds, a good-humored twinkle in her eye.
"You make yourself clear and I suppose I should be insulted," she said, "but you have such a nice face that I'm sure it must be an accident."
His brow furrowed, the smile still in his eyes.
"I'm afraid you're not making yourself clear," he said.
"My dear," she said, "I've been around but I'm not one of the girls and, on the odd occasions when a man really attracts me, I do it for love."
The smile didn't leave Hartnell's eyes.
"I owe you an apology," he said. "It was just my mood. All women look the same to me at times."
He was astonished. Astonished and then doubtful. He'd made mistakes before, but this really was insulting to the poor girl. He felt definitely embarrassed, but she didn't seem to have taken offense. And then he felt vaguely flattered and his desire shot up several degrees.
"Let's have another martini," he said.
"What were you looking so sad about?" she asked.
Her voice was modulated and clear, gave the impression of careful training. In his boredom it was suddenly quite pleasant to have someone to talk to, apart from the sexual side of it. He thought he might as well tell her.
"Nobody wants me," he said.
She raised a quizzical eyebrow and he went on:
"I've been trying to get a job since I came out of the RAF six months ago but there's too much unemployment."
"What can you do?" she asked.
"Pilot a plane and tell you anything you want to know about life and literature, neither of which is any good, it seems!"
"I should have thought that would have got you somewhere."
"I thought it gave me a fair chance, but all the jobs I'd like have too many after them and on the other hand they fight shy of putting me to make roads or something like that. I'm on my uppers."
"Poor boy," she said. "Maybe I can find you something. I have contacts. But we'll talk about that in the morning. Would you like to leave now? The mother in me's getting overwhelming."
So Roger Hartnell, the Cambridge Blue who had won decorations in the Battle of Britain and now couldn't get a job, followed her out into the warm London night, looking at that behind which still seemed to pout and wondering what the morrow had in store for him.