in which the face is darker than the hair, which was not dyed but real. It was clean and shiny and almost silvery-fair, and she wore it as such women do, straight and loose. She wore black, and when she stood up you noticed that hers was the kind of tall figure that, although the shoulders are broad and the breasts full, tapers to too-narrow hips and too-thin legs. Her eyes were green and brilliant, and crinkled up, friendly, and on the wrist of one beautiful ungloved hand she wore a magnificent broad antique bracelet of emeralds and diamonds. Otherwise she was unadorned, without even a wedding ring. As she shifted along the seat of the car, a pleasant fragrance stirred from her, the sort of fragrance the expensive Fifth Avenue stores were then releasing into the foyers of their shops, to convince their customers of the arrival of the time to buy spring clothes. When she smiled and spoke, in a soft American voice without much to say, her teeth showed fresh as the milk teeth of a child.
Eileen thought how different were this woman and herself (with her large, Colonial, blue-eyed, suburban prettiness) from the sort of girls with whom Waldeck and Stefan had belonged in the world that was lost to them – girls of the twenties, restlessly independent, sensual and intellectual, citizens of the world with dramatic faces, girls such as Carlitta, inclining her dark Oriental head, had been.
The four drove through Central Park, rather threadbare after the snow and before the blossom. Then they went down to the East River, where the bridges hung like rainbows, glittering, soaring, rejoicing the heart in the sky above the water, where men have always expected to find their visions. They stopped the car at the United Nations building, and first walked along on the opposite side of the street, alongside the shabby, seedy shops, the better to see the great molten-looking façade of glass, like a river flowing upwards, on the administrative block. The glass calmly reflected the skyline, as a river reflects, murky green and metallic, the reeds. Then they crossed the street and wandered about a bit along the line of flagstaffs, with the building hanging above them. The Brands resolved to come back again another day and see the interior.
‘So far, there’s nothing to beat your bridges,’ said Eileen. ‘Nothing.’
They drove now uptown to an elegant, half-empty restaurant which had about it the air of recovering from Saturday night. There they sat drinking whisky while they waited.
‘I don’t know what we can do with the husband,’ said Waldeck, shrugging and giggling.
‘That’s all right,’ said Stefan. ‘Alice will talk to him. Alice can get along with anybody.’ His wife laughed good-naturedly.
‘You know, he’s worthy . . .’ said Waldeck.
‘I know,’ said Stefan, comforting.
‘Same old Carlitta, though,’ said Waldeck, smiling reminiscently. ‘You’ll see.’
His wife Eileen looked at him. ‘Oh, she’s not,’ she said, distressed. ‘She’s not. Oh, how can you say that to Stefan?’ The girl from South Africa looked at the two men and the woman who sat with her, and around the panelled and flower-decorated room, and suddenly she felt a very long way from home.
Just at that moment, Carlitta and Mr Edgar Hicks came across the room towards them. Stefan got up and went forward with palms upturned to meet them; Waldeck rose from his seat; a confusion of greetings and introductions followed. Stefan kissed Carlitta on both cheeks gently. Edgar Hicks pumped his hand. In Edgar Hicks’s other hand was the Palm Beach panama with the paisley band which he had removed from his head as he entered. The hovering attendant took it from him and took Carlitta’s brown coat.
Carlitta wore the niggly-patterned silk dress that had shown its collar under the coat the night at the theatre, the same shoes, the same cracked beige kid gloves. But above the bun and level with the faded hairline, she had on what was obviously a brand new hat, a hat bought from one of the thousands of ‘spring’ hats displayed that week before Easter, a perky, mass-produced American hat of the kind which makes an American middle-class woman recognisable anywhere in the world. Its newness, its frivolous sense of its own emphemerality (it was so much in fashion that it would be old-fashioned once Easter was over) positively jeered at everything else Carlitta wore. Whether it was because she fancied the sun still painted her face the extraordinary rich glow that showed against the