by Isobel Chace
He snorted down his nose.
“Will you be wanting to go down below? he asked her.
Charlotte agreed with enthusiasm. She was longing to see for herself the inside of the boat, to find out just exactly how much room there really was in her and how it had all been arranged.
Liam led the way down the companion way, which dropped down straight into the saloon.
“Irish reunion over?” Nick asked a trifle sourly.
“Oh, I’m not all Irish,” Charlotte replied innocently.
“Good thing too! Liam, go and get those tanks on board. We can’t waste the entire morning, Seamus will be here in a minute.”
The French girl, who had been sitting at the table, got languidly to her feet.
“Bonjour,” she said briefly.
Nick gave a quick frown.
“I’m sorry, I forgot,” he said. “This is Mademoiselle Monique Verlaine. Charlotte Hastings.”
“Enchantee,” murmured Monique.
“How d’you do,” said Charlotte, feeling rather stuffy as she did so. The French girl allowed her to touch her hand and then quickly withdrew it.
“I hope you do not share this passion for the sea,” she said softly. “Nick and Seamus are so boring when they get started and then, perhaps, we can talk of other things.”
Charlotte smiled non-committally. To her eyes the other girl presented a comic figure in her slacks and high-heeled shoes, her long, fair hair hanging in well-brushed clouds around her shoulders and her make-up heavy enough to demand artificial lighting. She’s French, she reminded herself firmly. She wasn’t brought up in sandals and shorts—indeed no! More probably in silks and laces, studying impossibly long hours for her baccalaureat, so that she could take up a subject like Geology. Not that she looked like a student type, for her clothes were designed to attract and, judging by Nick’s expression, they probably did.
“Show her over, will you, Monique?” he broke into the silence between the two girls. “I shall have to help Liam with those tanks.”
Monique swept her hair back behind her shoulders.
“Okay,” she agreed. “We shall begin at the back with the kitchen—”
“The galley,” Nick corrected her.
Monique shrugged.
“We understand one another, I think, without your help,” she said crossly. “It is very masculine, let me tell you, to have to say tribord, no, in English it is starboard, is it not?—when we all, know quite well what right means!”
Charlotte giggled. Monique, it seemed, was not a sailor. Nick pointedly ignored them both.
“It is more sensible,” Monique went on cuttingly, “to have the galley in the centre of the ship, as you will find out when you try to cook in it, but Nick insists that Seamus has his fish there to prevent them from getting mal de mer!”
“But why should it make any difference where they are?” Charlotte asked, now thoroughly bewildered.
“The motion is less in the middle,” the French girl told her.
It was still an impossibly ridiculous notion that fish could be sea-sick! The more Charlotte heard about her father’s work, the more she began to wonder about the sanity of the whole affair.
The galley was small and compact. The oven was fuelled by Calor gas, the containers stowed away somewhere on deck. Two gas-rings were slung on gimbals so that it was always possible to cook something no matter what the weather or the state of the seas outside.
“The pots and pans are in that cupboard,” Monique explained. “Nick insists that we have everything possible. He is a good cook, in spite of being English,” she added carelessly.
So, thought Charlotte, the French have their prejudices too, and remembered reading in a French book that all English women have long straight noses and even longer, straighter feet. Perhaps she was being just as silly when it came to Monique’s high-heeled shoes!
“Next there is the saloon, which you have seen. Then here are the berths of the men. There are six men to sail the boat, you understand. Beneath them is the engine-room. Then Nick’s cabin, with Seamus’s opposite. Then mine—I share it with my specimens, for my sins—and opposite mine is where you will sleep.”
Charlotte shook her head.
“Oh no,” she said quickly. “I’m not coming. I’m going to London to study as soon as possible.”
Monique’s eyes narrowed.
“So? Does Seamus know this?”
“Not yet,” Charlotte admitted. “There hasn’t been time to discuss anything with him yet. I was going to last night, but Nick came.”
It was difficult to tell what the French girl was thinking. She was suddenly very still and thoughtful.
“You know that Nick sacked the last secretary we had?” She said at last.
“No, I didn’t.”
“She made the mistake of falling in love with him,” Monique explained. “It was rather sad. Nick will flirt, but he will not be serious. He likes to be free to explore his sea—and what woman is going to put up with that? We would all prefer to be on shore, except Nick. Your father in his museum and me also, but not Nick. He must always be where no one else has ever been before, and nowadays that means the bottom of the sea!” She made an expressive gesture . of distaste. “Seamus had wanted to be on shore to have time to get to know you, but Nick insisted that he comes on this expedition even if it meant taking you too. I think perhaps you will have no choice but to come with us.”
“And why do you go?” Charlotte asked curiously.
Monique laughed.
“Me? Why do women go anywhere? Because they want to be with some man. Sometimes it is better to have half a loaf than no bread at all. And I should worry more about the sharks at home, I think.”
“So Monique too was in love with Nicholas D’Abernon. But did everyone have to follow his bidding? Her father was so much older; couldn’t he say what was to be done?
Monique pushed open the door of one of the fore-cabins and showed Charlotte the hook that caught it back and prevented it from slamming when they were at sea. Too many doors had jammed when it was very hot and too many hours had been wasted trying to get them open again for them not to have found some simple, practical remedy.
“I expect this one will be yours. All those boxes are Nick’s photographic equipment. You’ll have the typewriter and the records as well. That will be your department.”
“But I can’t type!” Charlotte objected, not without satisfaction. But as soon as she had said it, she remembered Nick saying that it shouldn’t take her long to learn. He was taking her for granted in a way that she didn’t quite like. Why, she didn’t even know the destination of the expedition!
Gingerly she prodded the bunk to see what it felt like. It was nothing more than a thin layer of foam-rubber over wood.
“It seems hard,” Monique admitted, “but one is glad in the heat. There is less to sink into.”
Charlotte was beginning to think that she had reason to be grateful that she would be occupying a bed-sitter somewhere in London all summer and not on board the Sea Fever. She wouldn’t have the excitement of sailing the seas, but she would be safe and comfortable, and, if she had no one of her own in England, she would soon make some friends, and anyway she would be very busy working. She would really have to talk to her father and make him see how important her singing was to her.
In this she didn’t have very long to wait, for at that very moment, she could hear his voice calling for her the whole length of the boat.
Nick was busy with his charts. He had them spread all over the saloon table and stood, his foot on one of the seats, making endless calculations on a notepad. Charlotte was very conscious of his presence even though he showed no signs of heeding what she was saying.
Her father, on the other hand, stood in the galley doorway, a stubborn look on his face and with a glass in his hand. Only Monique appeared at all sympathetic, looking up at intervals from flipping over the pages of an out-of-date magazine she had found in the cabin
.
“I can’t be away from a piano all that time!” Charlotte insisted. “I can’t! If one wants to be any good, one must practise and practise.”
“I don’t see it,” Seamus replied, his mouth closing firmly after the words. “You’ll be taking your voice with you, won’t you? You can sing in the evenings. Entertain us a bit.”
“What with?” Monique asked dryly. “Oh, my Beloved Father?”
Seamus turned on her, with real anger in his eyes.
“You keep out of it, d’you hear?” he demanded. “She’s my daughter, and that’s that!”
Monique got up.
“Eh bien, I shall go ashore. I have no wish, to hear you quarrel any more. It is not very exciting, you understand?”
Nick crouched more firmly over his charts. He couldn’t remove himself further from the proceedings, Charlotte thought angrily. Why didn’t he go too, if he didn’t want to join in?
“Nick,” she appealed, “don’t you think I'm old enough to know what I want to do?”
He turned at that and stood looking at her.
“I don’t think your singing is everything,” he said at last. “Your father has been deprived of you all these years, don't you think you could spare him a few months now?”
She stared at him helplessly. Couldn’t he understand either?
“But you’ve never heard me sing,” she said.
“No, I haven’t,” he agreed.
“But a voice is more than a possession! It’s something one is given to share with the world.”
He nodded thoughtfully.
“You may be just as good as that,” he agreed. “But the world will wait six months.”
“You’re Philistines! Gottis, all of you!” she retorted sharply.
“Perhaps we are,” he conceded. “But if you did work as hard as you think you will, you would strain your voice, and then where would you be?”
“And if you have your way I shall be so out of practice that I won’t know A from C sharp,” she said crossly. She had a strong suspicion that he might be right, that he might even know what he was talking about.
“I think we can see that you practise enough to prevent that!” he teased her. “I’ll see that there’s some sort of musical instrument aboard to accompany you—how’s that?”
The soft, wheedling note in his voice unmanned her. What right had he to bend her to his will so easily? And she couldn’t even object to his doing so, because he had carefully not said a single word until she had asked him to!
“I don’t know what my mother would have said!” she replied in defeated tones, but Nicholas had already turned back to his charts. It seemed that the whole conversation had been so unimportant to him that he couldn’t waste another moment on it. She bit her lip and tried to swallow down the tears that threatened in her throat. He would think that she was always crying! But it was a sacrifice to her to postpone her training, and not one of them seemed to realize it.
“I knew you’d come when you saw it clearly,” Seamus told her, relief making him suddenly look younger. “I’ll be off to join Monique on shore to tell her it’s all decided. She’ll want to know, she’ll be glad of a bit of feminine society on board. It hasn’t been easy for her, living with all us men.”
He dropped his glass on the table with a clatter, in the middle of Nick’s calculations, and hurried off up the companionway. For some moments Charlotte stood in silence where she was, living with the ghosts of the past. Her mother, watchful and a little disapproving when she had missed a singing lesson for some reason. Her music-master’s anxiety when she had had to have her tonsils out the year before and had been so ill after the operation. In fact she still hadn’t made up the weight she had lost then. When she hadn’t been able to eat anything other than ice-cream. It had all meant so much to everyone around her. Her voice had been the corner-stone around which she and her mother had built their whole lives.
And now it was to be dismissed—carelessly, as though it was something of no account. Her father hadn’t cared whether she could sing or not.
“Where are we going?” she asked Nicholas.
He moved over so that she could look at the charts.
“Here’s the Red Sea,” he pointed out to her. “And here the Horn of Africa. Around there somewhere, probably. It depends on what we find.”
“And are there many sharks there?” she asked, trying to keep her fear out of her voice.
“Yes,” he said briefly.
“And who lives on the shore?” she asked brightly.
He grinned.
“Do you really want to know?” he asked.
“Of course,” she assured him with dignity.
“Suspected cannibals.”
Perhaps it was fortunate for her comfort that she didn’t really believe him.
Later that night, she wept when she was going to bed. She felt strongly akin to the woman who had taken her harp to the party and no one asked her to play. Tomorrow, she assured herself, she would spend the whole day singing and listening to the records of other singers. There was that passage where she could not get her breathing quite right, she would work on that, and she wouldn’t give a single thought to the Sea Fever, nor anything to do with her.
But as it was her last thought before sleeping was to wonder what “nail-sickness” could possibly be and whether it was as nasty as it sounded.
CHAPTER FOUR
The old lady at the corner of the street shuffled her feet and pushed her basket hopefully in Charlotte’s direction.
“Muguet?” she bleated hopefully. “Muguet, mademoiselle?”
It was astonishing, Charlotte thought, how the lilies of the valley seemed to have come out overnight, to be sold on every street corner of Paris. The air was heavy with their scent, mixing with less pleasant smells of petrol and motor-cars. She paused uncertainly, tempted to buy a bunch, but not knowing whether they would last long enough until she could get them into water.
“Combien?” she asked. “How much?”
The sun-darkened, peasant face of the woman broke into a smile and a torrent of French came out of her mouth, thick with the Parisian argot that came more easily to her tongue. Mademoiselle was discerning, she could see with half an eye that these flowers were fresher than any of the others for sale. And why? Because, they had been picked that very morning! So they wouldn’t quarrel about the price, would they?
Charlotte was fascinated into shaking her head. She put one of the brand-new francs into the old woman’s palm and received two little bunches of the flowers in exchange. She bent over them, smelling their perfume greedily. When she looked up, she saw her father watching her.
“A pretty girl like you shouldn’t be buying flowers for herself,” he admonished her. “Even on May Day!”
She smiled gently at him. Didn’t he know that she had wanted them so much because they were fresh and full of an optimism that she couldn’t share?”
“I wanted them,” she said, a little defiantly.
“They’re pretty enough,” he agreed “Taking them straight back to the apartment?”
Charlotte looked down at her neat black shoes and nodded. After all, she couldn’t very well arrive at a strange studio clutching a bunch of flowers. Seamus put a clumsy hand on her shoulder.
“That's right,” he said. “I thought you might be going off to some friends of your mother. Then I shouldn’t have seen you again today.”
She thought rebelliously that it was moral blackmail, but she didn’t argue. It would be easier to slip out later, without saying anything to anyone, and then she wouldn’t feel weighed down with guilt merely because she wanted to sing.
“Are you coming?” she asked.
“No,” Seamus sounded regretful. “I have to get down to the Sea Fever. Nick thinks the preparations are going too slowly.”
So Charlotte went back to the flat alone. The concierge was making a great play with her broom as she entered the hallway, but she stopped as soon as she saw
Charlotte, approaching her with an air of determination that made her quite sure that she had broken one of the rules of the house.
“It’s the telephone!” the woman announced. “It has gone three times this morning already.”
“For me?” Charlotte asked, unable entirely to conceal her surprise.
“But yes! For whom else? You are to ring this number, if you please.”
The number had been scrawled on an old piece of newspaper, the last having been crossed so firmly in the typical Continental manner that the paper had torn under the strain. There was no telephone in the flat and so she went out again to the nearest public booth and put through the call in her stammering French. A blessedly English voice answered after a heated interpolation by some non-comprehending Frenchman.
“Can I help you?”
Charlotte explained who she was and that she had been asked to ring the number.
“Ah yes, mademoiselle. This is the police station. Do you know a William Flaherty?”
“Yes, yes, I do.” Charlotte admitted. There was a muttered consultation at the other end. “Is he with you?” she asked nervously.
“We picked him up last night,” the policeman told her. “He is under the impression that you will come and pay for him.” She could hear the disapproval in his voice and thought with amusement that the French really were a very gallant nation. “Is there no one else who could come?”
Charlotte dismissed both Nick and her father. If Liam had wanted either of them to know about his exploit he would have contacted them himself.
“No,” she said quickly. “I can’t think of anyone else.”
He gave her some quick instructions as to how to get there, ending with an admonition to take a taxi. Charlotte stumbled out of the telephone booth and looked helplessly around her. Supposing she hadn’t enough money to pay his fine? Suppose he had done something dreadful? Wouldn’t her father be furious with her for accepting such a responsibility? And—and Nick?
She waved to the first taxi that came along and told the driver where she wanted to go.
“Lost your luggage?” he asked her helpfully.