The Song and the Sea

by Isobel Chace

  She scrambled into the back of the car and settled herself in time to see his gallic shrug when she didn’t answer him. She hoped that he hadn’t thought her dreadfully uncivil, but what could she have said?

  It seemed no time at all before the taxi had deposited her outside a large, gaunt building. She paid him off, while a couple of agents de police watched her with studied interest. She walked up the steps, hoping that she looked calm and poised, though nothing could be further from the truth. Her heart, was hammering and her knees were definitely wobbly.

  The station officer greeted her with suspicion. He suspected all foreigners on principle. He himself had grown up in a small village in Brittany until Paris had lured him away with her promises of promotion. What he had not expected was to find that the capital was peopled with Frenchmen who were not at all like himself and so many foreigners that sometimes he despaired of ever hearing his language spoken properly again. Properly, of course, meant with a heavy Breton accent.

  All this he poured out to Charlotte, his brown eyes soft and mournful. Indeed it was not his fault that she had been brought to the station. If he had had his way Liam would have had his head dipped in a bucket of cold water and then allowed to go free. But unfortunately his superior was a man of law and order. He beat himself to pieces trying to make these foreigners obey the good French laws, but with very little result. It was all very sad.

  At the mention of cold water, Charlotte began to relax. If Liam had done nothing worse than get himself run in for being drunk and disorderly, she thought she could cope with it.

  “May I see Mr. Flaherty?” she asked.

  The officer sighed. Mr. Flaherty was hardly fit for the eyes of a lady. Perhaps she would be kind enough to wait.

  He found her a chair. An old-fashioned, highly polished wooden affair with a cypher fixed into the design on the back. Charlotte sat on it, wondering out of whose house it had come. It looked very elegant, but it was madly uncomfortable.

  Occasionally someone would smile at her as they eased themselves past her stand in the corridor, the men politely doffing their hats, concealing their astonishment as well as they could. Charlotte tried to pretend that it was the most natural thing in the world to sit in a corridor in a draughty Parisian police station, but she wished that she had stopped to buy a newspaper, or had a book to read—anything rather than a slightly ridiculous and now fast-drooping bunch of lilies of the valley.

  At last the station officer signalled to her that Liam was now ready to see her. He looked grave and a little unhappy. Charlotte smiled reassuringly at him.

  “Where do I go?” she asked.

  He took her down some steps to the cells below. His whole attitude was apologetic and Charlotte felt rather sorry for him. He stopped outside the second cell and banged on the door.

  “Monsieur Flaherty!”

  Liam’s face appeared in the doorway, his brow clearing when he saw Charlotte.

  “Sure and you came, then. I thought maybe you’d be getting himself along to fish me out.”

  Charlotte tried to look disapproving but failed entirely. The sheepish expression on his face disarmed her, and he looked terrible.

  “How did it happen?” she asked dryly.

  “I wouldn’t be knowing that! A few of us went off to have a drink. The Lord Himself knows what as in it, but when I woke up, I was here!”

  Whatever he had had, his hangover was plainly visible on his face.

  “How about a cup of hot black coffee?” Charlotte suggested.

  Liam made a face.

  “Do I look so bad?” he asked.

  “You look terrible,” she informed him.

  “Maybe Seamus will not be saying anything,” he proffered hopefully.

  “I shan’t tell him,” Charlotte said calmly.

  Liam sighed.

  “It’s not Seamus that worries me,” he told her, “but when himself hears of it, he’ll be hitting the ceiling!”

  “Himself?” she asked uncertainly.

  “Black Nick himself. He’ll be as mad as a politician if he hears about this. You’ll not be telling him?”

  “Of course not.”

  So it was Nick and not her father who was referred to darkly as “himself”. Charlotte couldn’t understand it. Nick the charming; Nick the debonair—but Black Nick?

  Liam straightened himself up and winced as he stretched his neck.

  “You’re a good lass,” he said finally. “You’re Seamus’s daughter all right!”

  He staggered after her up the stairs, blinking painfully at the sunlight. He looked ghastly, she thought commiseratingly. And he’d been given time enough to recover.

  She paid his fine, with a silent, inward goodbye to the records she had been going to buy. These people and her music were evidently not destined to mix. She ran over that difficult passage in her mind. Now if I took a deeper breath there, she thought—

  “Sign there,” the officer told her, “and then Mr. Flaherty can leave.”

  Liam frowned.

  “Mr. O’Flaherty, if you don’t mind,” he said. “Descended from the old Kings of Ireland—”

  The Breton policeman began to look tired.

  “Passeport!” he demanded wearily.

  Charlotte gave him her best and most gracious smile.

  “It’s an Irish joke,” she explained. “Everybody with a drop of Irish blood is descended from the kings of old.”

  The Frenchman looked doubtful. It didn’t seem very funny to him. Charlotte took Liam firmly by the hand and dragged him out into the street. He protested loudly: “They are not!” down every step, but Charlotte was maddeningly absorbed in humming a tune over to herself again and again with a pleased smile on her face.

  Seated opposite Liam in the cafe, Charlotte found she could study his face in peace. He was a handsome old man, she thought—not tall, but with the wiry strength of so many small men. Perhaps the blackness of his hair, now streaked with white, had been a gift from the Spanish Armada, but his eyes were the genuine smoky blue of the Irish, made all the more obvious now by the black circles his night out had given him.

  “Ah, Paris is a sinful city,” he told her. “And whisky double the price you’d find it in Dublin.”

  Charlotte drank her coffee thoughtfully.

  “Tell me about the Sea Fever,” she suggested. She was beginning to think the less she knew about last night the better. Nick’s shrewd eyes were bound to make mincemeat of her if he really wanted to find out where Liam had been.

  Liam made a face. He didn’t like black coffee no matter how sweet it was.

  “Mr. D’Abernon bought her in London,” he told her. She had been little more than an old hull then, full of nail sickness, which turned out to be a condition where the nails have rusted away and the sea percolates slowly into the boat. Nicholas had renovated her practically singlehanded. For his last trip he had to hire a boat and that had proved rather expensive. Seamus it was who had suggested that they should get their own boat. They had gone to the Indian Ocean once before and Nick had taken some fine film. He had made experiments with some of the fish to find out about their breeding habits too. Ultimately he wanted to farm fish, to domesticate them, to make them multiply in specially designated areas where they could help solve the problem of feeding mankind.

  Nick, Charlotte discovered, believed in positive measures. If the majority of the world was under water and a complete mystery—well, as much of a mystery as Africa had been to his great grandfather—then it was up to him to do something about it. And so he had joined that select group of men, the Underwater Explorers.

  Seamus as a marine biologist had been essential to his plans. He himself had known a great deal about marine plant life and Monique was the geologist. Only Charlotte herself knew less than nothing about the sea. She would be no more than a piece of flotsam travelling on its surface, ignorant of the mysterious world that went on beneath her.

  “Mr. D’Abernon was an officer in the English N
avy,” Liam ended. “We served in the same ship and his temper then was what it is now. Ah, but he’s a lovely man, in spite of his politics.”

  It was rather a let-down to discover that it was Nick who was in charge of the expedition and not her father. She wondered how he had been prevailed upon to take her with them. She felt a stirring of interest in his motives. Surely it would have suited him far better if she had gone to study in London, so why had he backed her father so firmly? She looked down at her lilies of the valley and was sad to see that they had drooped beyond recovery.

  The lift shuddered reluctantly upwards. Each time Charlotte used it, she swore it would be the last, but somehow it succeeded in charming her into it again and again. Liam had gone home to sleep at last, reluctantly, because Charlotte had made an admirable audience and there was nothing that he liked better than to yarn about the sea, but as time had gone on, Charlotte had become hungrier and hungrier until at last she had suggested that they went back to the flat for some lunch. But Liam had not been willing to run into Nick in his present condition and so Charlotte had returned alone.

  The concierge had clucked sympathetically over the dead lilies of the valley and had taken them out to the dustbin to throw them away. She herself had a few stuck in a far too large vase in the public hallway and she smiled up at them whenever she passed them. The French, it seemed, were mad about lilies of the valley.

  Charlotte stepped out of the lift with the added confidence that experience brings, straight into the arms of her father.

  “Where have you been?” he demanded. “I've been nearly frantic with worry.”

  She looked bewildered.

  “I only went to take a look at Paris,” she told him.

  He looked visibly relieved.

  “I thought maybe you had gone to find out about singing lessons,” he said. “I know you’re keen, but I can’t bear the thought of not having you with me for a while. I’ve seen so little of you all your life.”

  Charlotte was touched. Was it possible that this stranger was genuinely fond of her? Fond of her in the same way as her mother had been? As a parent? She kissed him gently on the chin, which was the only part of his face that she could reach, without saying anything, because she didn’t know what to say. He smiled at her and hugged her to him.

  "You’re a fine daughter,” he said. “I couldn't have wished for a prettier one.”

  “Or a nicer one, I hope?” she teased him.

  They went into the flat together, their arms still linked. Nick was there and he looked up and smiled at them both.

  “Your daughter is getting too much attention,” he told Seamus with mock severity. “You hugging and flattering her and me bringing her flowers!” And so he had, Charlotte saw with surprise. Masses of them, in every bowl he could find, all over the kitchen table. And they were all lilies of the valley.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “But why?” Charlotte stammered. “Oh, they’re beautiful!”

  Nicholas, watching her, looked slightly gleeful. “An old French custom,” he said lazily, “to exchange bouquets of muguet on the first of May.”

  “Very nice too!” Charlotte exclaimed faintly. Bouquets, yes, but all those! What an extravagant gesture! She could not deny the pleasure he had given her, though, that had brought a slight flush to her cheeks and a sparkle to her eye. “It was sweet of you, Nick.”

  “Wasn’t it?” he agreed. “They are also to welcome you aboard the Sea Fever. Monique suggested that I should pile them into your cabin, but as I’d already put all my stuff in there, I didn’t think there would be room.”

  So the French girl had known about Nick buying her flowers. Charlotte felt a momentary twinge of pity for her. Loving Nick must be the very devil, she reflected. She was glad that she had had the common sense to see exactly what it would be like so early on in their acquaintance.

  He waved away her gratitude when she started to thank him all over again, so she let the subject drop, but the scent of the flowers was with her all the time she was getting the lunch.

  She had not really expected Nick to stay to the meal, but he drew his chair up to the table and watched with interest as she began to serve up.

  “Afraid that it won’t be as good as your soup?” she asked him sweetly.

  “Nothing is as good as my soup,” he returned. “But you appear to be quite promising as a cook.”

  “Quite promising!” she repeated severely. “Let me tell you, considering the facilities of this kitchen, I consider it a minor miracle that we ever get anything to eat at all!”

  She had the satisfaction of knowing that no one could have made a more satisfying or tasty meal in a shorter time than she had managed it, and she must have showed her satisfaction, for both the men looked amused as they began to eat.

  Nick ate carelessly, in the French manner, using his bread to push his meat on to his fork. He looked tired, Charlotte thought suddenly. It was a novel idea, for Nick was one of those people who somehow never do get tired. But his eyes were shadowed and when he was not smiling it was possible to see the beginnings of little lines etching themselves into his sunburnt skin.

  “What have you been doing this morning?” she asked.

  Her father looked across the table with satisfaction.

  “I believe she’s beginning to get interested in the boat in spite of herself,” he said.

  Nick laughed, his teeth showing white and strong.

  “I found an instrument for you to practise on,” he said. “A hand organ, I believe it’s called. Any good?”

  “If it plays,” she said doubtfully.

  “It plays all right. Almost blew us out to sea: Want to come and see it?”

  She nodded.

  “It’ll mean some other work as well,” he warned her. “Checking off equipment with me. Heavens, but I shall be glad when we’ve done all these preliminaries.”

  “When shall we be off?” Seamus put in.

  Nick shrugged his expressive shoulders.

  “In a couple of days maybe,” he said.

  Charlotte was thoughtful as she washed up the dishes. Only a couple more days in Paris, and then what? A little tremor of excitement stirred within her. She had never thought that she was the adventurous type, but at the moment she was quite outrageously glad that she was going with them.

  Both Nick and Monique were able to play the organ. Nick with excellent technique, as he did everything, but without much love for hearing himself play; Monique without any noticeable technique, but redeemed by the passionate feeling that she had for the instrument. She sat on the deck, with the instrument on her knees, and tried out one or two tentative scales. Charlotte waited, longing to open her mouth and let the sound carry across the river and knowing that Nick and her father were aware of her impatience; Nick, by the slight narrowing of his eyes, and her father, by his obvious bewilderment.

  At last Monique nodded to her.

  “What do you want to sing?” she asked.

  They had one bad start when they found they were in different keys, but then the joy of the music gripped them both and Charlotte forgot everything in the concentration on breathing correctly during that one awkward passage that always caught her out. She gathered herself for the climax, willing herself to do it correctly and then triumphantly opening her eyes as she succeeded. She couldn’t escape the look Nick gave her. It warmed her right through. Whatever he had been expecting it had certainly not been a voice of the quality of hers. She had sung the song well, with all the warmth and the dexterity it had demanded of her. She relaxed visibly.

  “Any requests?” she asked.

  Monique asked for an aria from Aida and then Seamus timidly asked her for an Irish song, something that he could understand, so she sang “I know where I’m going” as sweetly as she could for him, knowing that he was lost and really preferred the hot modern jazz songs that appealed to his emotions and not to his head.

  She turned then to Nick. She was frankly curious to know what
sort of a song he would ask for. It was impossible to guess, for it might just as likely be a sea shanty or an obscure aria from some seldom performed opera. But he only shook his head, and rising to his feet in one easy movement, he muttered something about getting back to work.

  Monique’s eyes were sympathetic.

  “Men are quite impossible, cherie,” she said gently. “It is best to ignore them when they wish to be apart.”

  Charlotte pretended to herself that she didn’t care in the least. If he didn’t want to ask for a song, no one was making him! She was very nearly angry enough not to care, but the hurt was there all the same, deep down.

  “Sing the drinking song from La Traviata,” one of the sailors asked her, and she did so, turning to the gay music with relief. Only a small corner of her was left to wonder what Nick was thinking, deep down somewhere in the bottom of the boat.

  By mutual consent neither of the two girls asked for any further requests. Monique closed the organ and smiled up at Charlotte.

  “Where are you thinking of keeping it?” she asked.

  “In my cabin.”

  The French girl’s eyebrows lifted quizzically.

  “Vraiment? Have you seen it recently?”

  Charlotte shook her head, laughing.

  “What made you take up geology?” she asked, suddenly unable to control her curiosity any longer.

  Monique fluttered her eyelashes, her smile a little naughty.

  “The men were so much stronger and sweeter,” she explained demurely. “The scientists were so dogmatique, and the philosophers so clever! Besides there is something so solide about a rock, n’est-ce pas?”

  Charlotte admitted that there was, though she couldn’t help thinking that Monique must have had a great deal in common with the philosophers. She never gave anything away if she could help it, and it couldn’t be easy to school oneself all the time to accept only half a loaf when the bakery was on one’s doorstep—for to compare Nick with a single loaf of bread was to do him an injustice!

  She carried the organ down the companionway into the saloon and stowed it away under the seats. Nick had the table covered with mysterious objects and was checking them against a list in his hand.