The Sea Break by Antony Trew

the African and made for his room. He saw that the door was on the latch and was mildly surprised because he thought he’d locked it. Opening it, he switched on the light and realised at once that he’d got out of the lift on the wrong floor for, upon the bed, her fine head precisely in the middle of the small embroidered pillow, lay Olympia Stavropoulus. The light could have been on for only a few seconds when he switched it off, but he left the room wondering furiously if she’d been awake and whether she’d seen him. If she had what on earth would she think? Worried and rattled, he cursed himself and the liftman for the stupid mistake and went up the stairs to the next floor. As he had suspected his bedroom door was locked. Again he cursed. Of all the wrong rooms he might have walked into, why had he chosen Olympia’s?
     
    The next day was Sunday.
    Shortly before lunch Widmark came up from the harbour, swung his car into the courtyard, gay with portulaca, and parked in the shade of the magnolia trees. The heat rose from the paving stones in waves as he walked to the front door of the Polana past the palm trees with plantains growing at their feet, past the concrete tubs of red geraniums and the beds of tropical plants where the variegated leaves of the crotons and the deep carmines of the cannas predominated. The glare from the white walls of the hotel struck into his eyes like fine sand.
    In the foyer he was asking the Goanese porter for a newspaper , when there was a touch on his arm and a woman said: “Hallo, Stephen! What on earth are you doing here?”
    He turned slowly, alarm signals jangling in his mind, wondering who it was and what he was going to say. Thenwith relief he saw that it was Di Brett, a woman he’d met at parties in the Cape in 1940 and once danced with at Kelvin Grove and then, somehow, she’d passed out of his ken, and when he got back from the Mediterranean he’d heard that she’d left the Cape.
    As he said “Hallo, Di!” he saw the Newt walking away, back towards them, and with cold unbelief heard her call after him. “Do be a darling, James, and bring down my sunglasses.” The Newt’s shoulders twitched and he mumbled “Righto!” but he didn’t turn round.
    Widmark knew that Di Brett was a widow. “Your new husband?” he smiled thinly, inclining his head towards the retreating figure.
    “Heavens, no! A charming young Englishman from Portugal who is staying here. I’ve only known him for a week.”
    “You haven’t wasted much time.”
    Her eyebrows arched. “I call everybody ‘darling.’ You should know that, Stephen! Anyway what are you doing here? I thought you were at sea fighting the enemy.”
    “Invalided out. Asthma. Just happened. I was bored stiff in the Cape, so I went up to Johannesburg and when that died on me I thought I’d come down here and loaf in the sun.”
    “Married?” Her smile was half indolent, half curious.
    “No. What are you doing here?”
    “Oh! Waiting for the time to pass.” She looked away and her mouth drooped. “I tried Durban after the Cape. Then Salisbury. Then Johannesburg. But everywhere I went it was people in uniform and the talk was war, war, war ,and I couldn’t bear it any longer so I came here. There’s something to be said for a neutral country. You escape from the uniform and—and the things you’re trying to forget.” She smiled gaily and said: “And to be quite honest, the food and the atmosphere here are much less stodgy than the Union. This place is quaintly gay and cosmopolitan. There’s even a casino.”
    “I know. Costa’s. I’m going to give it a thrash to-night.”
    “Be careful, Steve! Lots of pretty girls there.”
    He looked round the foyer, bored with the conversation, anxious to escape, worried about the Newt’s friendship with this attractive woman. The Newt was highly susceptible and Widmark didn’t want him involved in that sort of thing now. There was too much at stake. And why hadn’t the