An avuncular voice hailed Dick across the terrace. Señor Marcial Pereira, a leading film critic on a Rio newspaper, approached our table, accompanied by two of Copacabana’s ambling beauties. He recognised Dick from the interview he had given the previous evening on a local TV station. He joined us at our table with his companions, who surveyed us with the eyes of empresses. Like all the women in Rio, they were filled with such character, elegance, and hot beauty that only some inexplicable oversight had prevented them from achieving Hollywood careers.

“We have a party tonight, in my apartment at Ipanema,” Pereira told us. “A festival car will collect you at ten. Each day we must relax a little more. I leave you with my actress friends—Carmen and Fortunata. They are most anxious to meet visiting Englishmen.”

When he had gone the women settled themselves at our table, eyes conferring as they swiftly surveyed the crowded terrace. Both wore the same loose silk frocks that revealed their thighs and shoulders. They were scarcely older than my daughters, with an equal command of the space around them. Carmen’s dark hair sprang from a sharply sloping profile that was part Portuguese and part Indian. Her forehead was perpetually creased, as if she were fretting over some misplaced clue to the world. Her friend, Fortunata, a passive, heavy-breasted blonde, was waiting for the signal to leave, but Dick, excited by the heady body scent of the two women, was already ordering drinks and practising his pidgin English.

“You live in Rio? Here?”

“On the beach? No.” Carmen was ticking off Dick’s television smile, his gold medallion and credit cards. “São Paulo. We come for the festival.”

“Like us. We come from London—in England.”

“London, oh … Carmen and I go to London.” Fortunata stared down some Carnaby Street vista inside her head, at the end of which stood the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. She spoke wistfully, as if unsure whether Carmen would agree.

“Rio is much better,” Dick assured her. “Many beautiful women. Like you two.”

“Yes … many women in Rio.” Carmen sounded like a commodities dealer in a slow market. “You prefer beautiful women?”

“Of course. Especially in Rio.”

“You’re an actress?” I asked. “Have you made any films?”

“Yes. I act in films. With Fortunata.”

She spoke matter-of-factly. I assumed that we were with two São Paulo prostitutes visiting Rio on a speculative trawl. I waited for Dick to realise that there was only one way to impress them. Carmen was strumming at the tabletop with one hand, while the other flicked at her shoulder strap. She was exposing her breast to me, at the same time letting the hem of her silk dress ride up her thigh.