Free Madrigal for Charlie Muffin by Brian Freemantle Page B

like he worried about his feet.
    ‘What about Rupert?’
    ‘He thinks I’m somewhere off the coast of Menton, on a yacht.’
    ‘I didn’t mean that.’
    ‘Rupert didn’t seem a problem for you in America. What’s so different now?’
    ‘Look at me,’ said Charlie. ‘I’m a worn-out old bugger at least ten years older than you. If you took me to the house of any of your friends they wouldn’t let me past the kitchens.’
    ‘You’re an inverted snob!’
    ‘Would they?’
    ‘I don’t intend finding out.’ She looked around her. ‘This is a pretty crappy room, Charlie.’
    ‘I wasn’t expecting to share it.’
    ‘Are you going to?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘Yes you do.’
    ‘Isn’t this a bit too much slam, bam, thank you, ma’am?’
    ‘Being a prissy hypocrite doesn’t suit you.’
    ‘Flashing your arse doesn’t suit you.’
    A flush of anger picked out on her cheeks but she remained smiling. ‘You thought it was a nice enough arse last time.’
    This was how it had been in New York. He hadn’t felt so emasculated by the approach then.
    ‘We’re the same,’ Clarissa continued. ‘Not quite, but almost. That’s why it was so good. And will be again.’
    He’d forgotten the disarming way she looked at anyone she was talking to, with those unnaturally pale eyes. He wanted her like hell. And she knew it.
    ‘Go away Clarissa,’ he said weakly.
    ‘I’ve had a long journey,’ she said. ‘I’m tired and I want to go to bed.’
    ‘They’ve probably got rooms.’
    ‘I’m in one.’
    ‘Stop it Clarissa!’
    ‘Do you want me to?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I don’t believe you.’
    ‘This is like.…’ Charlie waved his hands, as if he were trying to feel for the expression. ‘… it isn’t real.’
    ‘It’s real enough for me.’
    ‘Perhaps I haven’t had the practice.’
    ‘You’re being a bore. You were never that, Charlie.’
    ‘I was never raped, either.’
    ‘I was once: it was fun.’
    ‘Jesus!’ said Charlie.
    ‘I never knew his name. He was a chauffeur, in Spain. Being raped is a common female fantasy, you know?’
    Clarissa rolled off the bed on the opposite side from him and said. ‘Help me with the covers, Charlie.’
    He hesitated. Then he got up from the chair and pulled them back on his side. She came over to him. ‘And now unzip me.’
    When the dress parted he saw she was not wearing a bra. She faced him as the dress fell to her feet and her hardnippled breasts pushed up for attention. She reached for him and pulled his face to her. ‘You didn’t kiss me when I came in,’ she said.
    He did now, biting at her and she came back at him, just as anxiously. She brought her head back, panting and said, ‘See! Just the same.’
    ‘You make it seem as if you’re trying to prove something.’
    ‘Come to bed and prove something to me,’ she said.
    For Charlie it had been a long time and he was nervous, so he finished too quickly. She let him rest, holding him against her breast and gently stroking his head. Then she pushed him down and said, ‘Now do it properly.’
    He coaxed her gently, with his hands and mouth, holding back until she was almost ready before pushing into her. She strained up to meet him, head taut back for the groan that went on and on. When she spoke, the words quivered. ‘ That was properly,’ she said.
    He turned onto his side, but didn’t part from her and she held him tightly, to make sure he didn’t.
    ‘No point in all that posturing, was there?’ she said.
    ‘No.’
    ‘Guilty?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Sorry?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Neither am I,’ she said. ‘But then I knew I wouldn’t be.’
    ‘What about all those animals you were supposed to be looking after?’
    ‘I’ve found a hobby I like better,’ she said.
    Sir Alistair Wilson stood before the easels, comparing the photographs of Henry Walsingham and Richard Semingford. Ordinary, unremarkable people, he thought. But spies and traitors always looked like ordinary people, with