The Partridge Kite by Michael Nicholson

pulled away. It was only a matter of time, Tom was convinced, before he was introduced to his real employers. If the game was as big as it seemed to be, they couldn’t afford this double-act for long.
    ‘God!’ he said aloud. ‘What a bastard hole this is!’ He looked around him at the cold drab green-emulsioned bedroom; socks, shoes, newspapers scattered everywhere. Odd mugs on the floor half-full. It was at times like this that he was reminded he was alone. No family, few friends, no one he could ring up, no one just as desperate for a chat and a pint. There was no local pub to pop into to escape these moments of aloneness, knowing there’d be someone there he’d recognise enough to stand two pints on the bar and share the warmth and chatter.
    So, more often than not, he’d open another bottle of Scotch, fill up a saucepan with ice cubes from the deep-freeze, pull the blankets about him and watch television - taking in nothing but Scotch until he fell asleep, drunk.
    But tonight he wouldn’t get drunk. He would make an early start tomorrow. The sooner this was all over, the sooner ten thousand pounds would join the other five in his bank. And then Greece! A month, maybe two. A rented house on the Islands, sun, dolmades and sheftalia, cheap domestica and more sun.
    The telephone rang. It was Kate.
    ‘I was thinking of you,’ she said.
    Tom recognised immediately the timbre of her voice and was grateful. He knew what it meant.
    ‘And I was thinking of Greece, sweetheart.’ His cheeriness almost gave him away.
    ‘Are you alone?’ she asked.
    ‘Good Lord, no! I’ve a roomful of queer Italian waiters who’ve promised to perform acts of gross indecency never before seen north of Milan. In return I’m doing the Lebanese basket trick with my charlady! Of course I’m alone, Kate. I’ll be over.’
    He heard her laughing as he put the phone down.
    Within seven minutes he had showered, shaved, talcumed, cleaned his teeth and brushed his hair. Within twenty minutes he was in Chelsea warming his stomach with Kate’s malt whisky and his hands by Kate’s open fire which burnt evenly and with a welcome.
    He was sitting on the goatskin rug directly in front of the fire, legs crossed. Kate was kneeling directly behind him, her arms clasped around Ins chest, her head nuzzling by his, blonde hair falling over her forehead hiding her face, her chin resting on his shoulder.
    His eyes were closed and the heat from the fire made his face tingle. He could feel, he was certain of it, the malt moving into his blood, feel it leaving the stomach walls, pumped into the arms and legs. He smiled like the famous cat. Maybe it was the smell of her, the scent of her skin and her hair. Maybe it was the promise - the unsaid promise that always accompanied evenings like tonight.
    She knelt motionless. Seldom in these moods would they talk. They were after all old lovers and thoughts were transmitted in other ways - the touch, the kiss, the warm concentrated breath from the nose on his neck, deliberately aimed. They were old, fierce lovers and at times like this they dwelt on their own, reminding themselves of previous moments, reliving the sex they’d shared, acting out again the foreplay in their minds. They were comfortable together in this nest of white goatskin.
    Slowly, as her blood rose, Kate began moving her hands backwards and forwards across Tom’s chest and down to his stomach, fingers pushing between the openings of his shirt undoing the buttons. Her nipples grew and rose hard. She pressed each in turn against his shoulder blades. She felt his back muscles tense and began kissing and licking his ear, running her moist tongue gently down his neck and up again.
    Tom sat quite still. She expected him to; it was all established. She would enjoy his hard stillness, would finally go down to him groaning, grabbing with her mouth. And then Tom would take her, take his lips, his tongue to every part of her, tasting her, enveloped by