The narrow door beside the optician's shop opened and Leslie White came out, walking backwards with a large cardboard box in his arms. It struck her again how well his colorless, androgynous name suited him. He was very tall and very thin-willowy was the word that came to her-and his large hooked nose had a way of seeming always to be detecting a faint, displeasing smell. He had on a pale-blue striped blazer and white duck trousers and two-tone shoes and, of course, his silver cravat; his gleaming hair-in sunlight it had the quality, she thought, of burning magnesium-was bohemianly long, falling foppishly to his collar. She supposed he would be considered handsome, in a pale, jaded sort of way. He pulled the door shut with his foot; he was gripping a set of keys in his teeth. He put the box down on the step and locked the door, then dropped the keys into his jacket pocket and had picked up the box again and was turning to go when he caught sight of her regarding him from the other side of the street. He frowned, then bethought himself and quickly smiled, even though, as she could plainly see, he did not remember her; Leslie White, she felt sure, would always have a ready smile for the girls.
She was crossing the road. What are you doing? she asked herself, but she knew very well it was in hope of seeing him that she had come to loiter here. The man hesitated, his smile faltering; girls, smiled at or not, would be, she supposed, as often a source of trouble as of promise for the Leslie Whites of this world. "Hello there," he said brightly, rapidly scanning her face for a clue to her identity. What should she say? Her mind was a blank-but then he rescued her. "Listen," he said, "will you do me a favor?" He turned sideways to her, hefting the box higher against his midriff. "The keys are in my pocket, the car is round the corner. Would you-?"
She fished for the keys-what a shivery sensation, delving in someone else's pocket!-while he smiled down at her, confident now that even though he could not place her he must know her, or confident at any rate that he soon would. She saw him noticing the flowers she was still clutching-she could not think how to get rid of them-though he made no comment. They walked to the corner and turned into Duke Lane. She was aware that she had not yet spoken a word to him, but he seemed not to mind it or think it odd. He was one of those people, she guessed, who could maintain a perfectly easy silence in any situation, no matter how awkward or delicate. His car was an apple-green Riley, rakish and compact, absurdly low to the ground, and fetchingly a little battered about the bumpers. The top was down. He tumbled the box into the passenger seat, saying "Ouf!," and turned to her with a hand out for the keys. "Very kind of you," he said. "Don't know what I'd have done." She smiled. What help she was supposed to have been to him she did not know, since the car had not needed to be unlocked. He held her gaze with his. He had that way all attractive men have, with their crooked, half-apologetic smiles, of seeming at once brazen and bashful. "Let me buy you a drink," he said, and before she could reply went on: "We'll go in here, where I can keep a watch on the car."
The interior of the pub was dark and the atmosphere as close as in a cave. They approached the narrow bar and she sat on a high stool. When she asked for a gin and tonic he beamed and said, "That's my girl," as if she had passed a test, one that he had prepared especially for her. He offered her a cigarette from a gunmetal case and beamed more broadly when she took one; the test had multiple parts, it seemed. He held his lighter for her. "The name is White, by the way. Leslie White." He spoke the name as if he were imparting to her something of great and intimate value. His plummy accent was put on; she could detect clearly the hint of cockney behind it.
"Yes," she said, turning her head and blowing the cigarette smoke sideways, "I know."
He raised his eyebrows. His skin really was extraordinarily pale, silver almost, like his hair. "Now, I'm sure I should know," he said, laughing apologetically, "but you are…?"
"Phoebe Griffin. I was a customer, in the shop."
"Ah." His look darkened. "You'll have known Laura, then."
"Yes. You gave me your card, once."
"Of course I did, I remember now." He was lying, of course. He took a sip of his gin. The evening sunlight in the doorway was a wedge of solid gold. "Did you know what happened to her-Laura, I mean?"
"Yes." She felt ridiculously giddy, as if she had already consumed half a dozen drinks.
"How did you hear?"
"Someone told me."
"Ah. I was afraid there might have been a story in the papers. I'm glad there wasn't. It would have been unbearable, seeing it in cold print." He looked at his shoes. "Christ. Poor Laura." He knocked back the last of his drink and caught the barman's eye and waggled his empty glass. He looked at hers and said, "You're not drinking."
"I don't, really."
He gazed at her for a moment in silence, smiling, then asked suddenly, "What age are you?"
"Twenty-five," she said, and was surprised at herself: why had she lied, adding two years to her age? "And you?"
"Oh, now," he said. "A girl doesn't ask a gentleman his age."
She smiled back at him, then looked into her glass.
The barman brought the second drink and Leslie turned the tumbler this way and that in his hand, making the ice cubes chuckle. For the first time since he had spoken to her he seemed momentarily at a loss. She asked: "Are you closing up?"
"Closing up…?"
"The Silver Swan. I thought, when I saw you with the cardboard box…"
"No, I was just taking away some of-some of Laura's things." He paused, with an exaggeratedly mournful expression. "I don't know what I'll do with the place, really. It's complicated. There are a number of interests involved. And the finances are a little-well, tangled, shall we say."
Phoebe waited, then said, "Her husband, is he one of the 'interests'?"
For a second he was struck silent. "Do you know him, the husband?" he asked, a hint suspiciously.
"No. Someone I know knows him-used to know him."
He shook his head ruefully. "This city," he said. "It's a village, really."
"Yes. Everyone knows everyone else's business."
At that he gave her a sharp look from under his eyebrows. "It's true, I'm sure," he said, letting his voice trail off.
A couple came into the pub then and greeted him. The man was dressed in a remarkable ginger-colored suit made of a coarse, hairy material. The woman with him had dyed shiny black hair that was gathered in a topknot and tied tightly with a ribbon, which gave her a look of wide-eyed, fixed astonishment. Leslie White excused himself and sauntered over to them. She watched him as he talked to them in his languidly animated way. If Laura Swan had been more than his business partner, as Phoebe had suspected, it was clear that her death had not broken his heart. All at once she saw in her mind with unnerving clarity Laura Swan's-Deirdre Hunt's-broad face with its slightly flawed features, the saddle of faint freckles on the bridge of her nose, her purplish-blue eyes and the look in them, eager, anxious, excited, and she felt a stab of pity-was it?-so piercing that it made her catch her breath. She was surprised at herself, and even a little shocked. She had thought she had grown out of the way of such feelings.
Leslie White came back looking apologetic again and urged her to have another drink, but she said no. She stepped down from the stool. She was uncomfortable. It was so hot and airless in here and the stuff of her thin dress clung briefly to the backs of her thighs and she had to reach a hand down quickly and peel the material from her skin. Leslie-was she really thinking of him already by his first name?-laid two long, slender fingers on her wrist to detain her. She fancied she could feel the faint rustle of his blood beneath the pads of his fingertips. Life consists, she reflected with matter-of-fact clarity, in a long series of misjudgments. The man in the hairy suit and his topknotted companion-she looked, in fact, as if she were suspended from the ceiling by an invisible cord attached to her hair-were examining her from across the room with unmasked speculation.