The Song and the Sea
Page 13
What on earth, she wondered, was she going to give her father in the morning? She went through her possessions in her mind, dismissing each article as she went. He would probably have liked a bottle of Irish whisky—what did he call it? Mountain Dew?—or perhaps some of that strong tobacco he smoked when he thought everyone was out of the way. Or even some new socks. Or a shirt! A towelling shirt, like the one that Nick had worn, that had felt soft to her fingers and warm from his body. But she would not think about Nick!
Birthdays were important occasions, she thought. Her mother had thought so too. When she had been a little girl there had always been a large pile of presents for her at the breakfast table. She wondered if some of them had come from Seamus. Some of those large, bulky parcels of sweets and toys that had always had their labels cut off them. Funny that she hadn’t thought of them before.
There had been other treats too, all through the day, and an enormous cake for tea. That was a must for any birthday! A cake—
She shot out of bed and pulled on her dressing-gown. That was what she’d give Seamus! She’d make him a proper birthday cake, with candles (if she could find any) and icing, the lot!
She tried to light the gas in the oven several times before she remembered that it would have been turned off for the night. She crept up the companionway and slipped out on the deck. Everything looked very different at this time of night. The ropes creaked, holding the canvas against the wind, and the men looked no more than grey ghosts as they silently went about their work.
“Miss Hastings?” Liam’s voice asked quietly out of the darkness.
“Yes, it’s me,” she called back.
He came over to her, his cap in his hand.
“To be sure and haven’t you found your sea-legs yet?” he teased her.
She was genuinely indignant.
“I’m making a cake,” she said with dignity. “Perhaps you would turn on the gas for me?”
“Ah, making a cake, is it? Now, if it was a cup of tea you were making, it would be no more than a Christian act of charity to bring one up to the men, and maybe a biscuit.” He paused scratching his forehead with one hand. “For what would you be after making a cake now?”
“It’s my father’s birthday in the morning. I’ll bring you up a cup of tea, if you like. How many of you are there?”
He held up four fingers.
“The whole watch. It was getting rough back there. I was thinking we should have to take the spinnaker in, but we’ll do now, I reckon.”
She hurried back down the companionway, pulling the hatch over the entrance, for the spray was coming well up over the deck. It was exciting out, she thought. What a waste of time it was to have to sleep and miss this completely different world that the night presented.
The gas gave a little flicker and flared into life. She filled the kettle and put it on, smiling a little as she did so. Liam must think she was quite mad—making a cake in the middle of the night!
She found the ingredients easily enough. Flour, sugar, eggs, some of the fresh butter that had come on board that very day, and a whole packet of mixed fruit, stoned and ready for use. She got out the mixing-bowl and began sifting the flour into the sugar and the fat.
With the cake in the oven, she made the tea , , and put it on a tray together with five cups and a packet of biscuits, and then she hurried down to her cabin and dressed quickly, pulling on a pair of jeans and a raincoat so that she wouldn’t get too wet.
It was a bit of a struggle to get the hatch off again from inside. The wood had warped slightly in the heat and it no longer fitted very well. She gave it a terrific blow with her closed fist and it flew off with a bang. Liam came running up, and took the tray from her, pulling her up on to the wet deck with his other hand.
“Doesn’t seem like the same place on a night like this, does it?” he grunted happily.
She followed him up to the bridge, hanging on tightly to the railings. The wood was slippery under her rubber-soled shoes and the wind blew her right against the superstructure, knocking the breath out of her.
“It’s gorgeous!” she cried out to him.
“Ay, it may seem like that to you, but you try to hold her on her course. That takes a sailor.”
“Oh, may I, Liam?” she pleaded. “I should so like to.”
He grunted non-committally, but she was reasonably sure of her power to persuade him. It would be wonderful, she thought, to stand at the wheel and to feel that boat beneath her feet, rising and falling to the swell and obeying her lightest touch.
The men were glad of the tea. They laced it heavily with rum, pretending that it was to keep the cold out. Charlotte refused to have any in hers. It seemed rather depraved, like going to the cinema in the morning, though why she couldn’t say.
“Is it true now that you’re wanting to take the wheel?” Liam asked her, his hand reaching out for another biscuit.
“Oh, yes!” Her eyes shone. “I wouldn’t tell Nick,” she wheedled him.
“Would he be stopping you, then?” Liam demanded.
Charlotte gave him her most winning smile. “He would not,” she whispered. The Irish manner of answering won him in spite of himself.
“Well, all right, then,” he agreed. “You can take over while I give this puir man his tea.”
He showed her the lighted compass and indicated the course she must keep.
“Keep yon star off the starboard bow and you won’t go far wrong,” he said. “But keep checking, you’ll find the current will want to pull you away from the right track, but don’t you go letting it.” The man at the wheel turned it over to her, flexing his tired muscles.
“You’re welcome,” he told her. “Stand square to it. Ay, like that.”
The hard, polished wood of the spokes of the wheel was cool to her fingers and filled with a life of its own, vibrating with the rhythm of the wind and the sea.
Steering by a star! She could feel the current pulling delicately against her and corrected the swing with one eye on the compass, a shower of spray came up across the bows and she stared happily out into the darkness, thoroughly enjoying herself. Above her, the sails, black against the sky, were huge and powerful, carrying the yacht relentlessly onwards through the sea, their ropes creaking against the wooden masts and booms, murmuring against the more mysterious sounds of the sea.
“Are you all right?” Liam called out to her through the night.
“It’s wonderful,” she replied.
There were a few clouds scurrying across the sky, playing peek-a-boo with the moon. They were friendly clouds, the first she had seen over the Gulf of Aden, strangers from a more temperate clime. Could they mean rain? She laughed at the thought. It didn’t ram in Aden! Only once in about four years.
The hollow winds began to blow,
The clouds look black, the glass is low;
Last night the sun went pale to bed,
The moon in haloes hid her head.
Look out! my lads, a wicked gale
With heavy rain will soon assail.
The words went through her brain, just as Liam had taught them to her—the first weather rhyme she had ever learnt. But there was nothing black about these clouds. They were wispy and long as they ran before the wind.
She heard someone hammering on the hatch and wondered who else could possibly be up at this hour. A man staggered over to the railing, clad only in his dressing-gown. It was Jock. She couldn’t help grinning at his predicament, remembering only too vividly her own first night at sea. What was it that was so irresistibly funny about someone else being sea-sick? That would mean cold chicken for him in the morning, she thought with satisfaction, and basked consciously in the outrageous feeling of superiority that gave her. She would be eating something very different. She had had her fill of cold meat. While the groceries were fresh she would make the most of them. She might even be able to find some fresh sausages—butcher-made sausages, quite different from the ones that came in tins.
&n
bsp; She glanced down at the compass and carefully brought the yacht back on course.
“Hi, Jock!" she called out. “Look at me!”
He pulled himself up the ladder towards her.
“What a night,” he said. “I feel awful! Why aren’t you in bed?”
It took all her concentration for a second to hold the Sea Fever steady, but then she put a quick finger to her lips.
“I’m making Dad a birthday cake,” she told him.
“Do you have to mention food?” he asked wearily.
She chuckled, and they were silent for a moment, gazing at the night. Then out of the sea arose a giant bird that landed again with a resounding crash on the water. A black shape, the size of a whale, she was sure. She heard herself scream, and within a second Liam was at her side.
“Did you see it?” she demanded.
“Ay, I saw it.” He sounded so calm and matter-of-fact that she began to doubt whether she had seen anything at all, but she was glad of Jock’s comforting nearness all the same.
“What was it?” she demanded.
“A manta ray, I reckon. They’re harmless enough.”
“It was so big!” She and Jock exchanged incredulous looks, remembering just how big it had seemed rising out of the water.
“It would weigh around a ton,” Liam agreed. “But a harmless creature for all that. It eats only plankton and would do you no harm. It was playing, that was all. They call them the Devils of the Red Sea because they frighten all the fisher-folk there, but they’re nothing more than great big bats of fish. You’ve no cause to be afraid of them.”
He took the wheel out of her nerveless fingers, just as another of the great creatures leapt out of the water.
“You’d best get himself,” Liam bade her. “If they’re playing he’ll not want to miss them. Your father too, maybe.”
At the mention of, her father she jumped. “The cake!” she exclaimed. “It’ll be burned!” And rushed down the companionway towards the galley.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It was the first time she had ever been in Nick’s cabin. He slept as neatly as he did everything else, his single blanket as smooth as when he had first got into bed. She switched on the light with an undecided hand and the sudden, harsh shadows accentuated the strength of his face, making it seem dearer than ever.
“Nick,” she whispered. “Wake up!”
He sat up immediately and smiled at her.
“This is a pleasant surprise,” he said lightly. “Anything I can do for you?”
His grey eyes met hers, both gentle and mocking. She stared back at him, stifling the impulse to run away from him.
“Liam told me to wake you,” she said abruptly. “We just saw a manta ray jump right out of the water.”
He went over to the porthole and peered outside.
“We couldn’t film it, more’s the pity. We haven’t the lighting, and anyway one never knows where they will surface next.” He turned and faced her. “Did it give you a fright?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Jock too,” she said.
“Ah yes, Jock too.” His voice was as cool as the English sea. “You’d better go and wake your father. I’m just coming.”
“Oh no!” she exclaimed. “We can’t wake him, he’ll smell the cake.”
“What cake?”
“His birthday cake. I’ve only just taken it out of the oven and you can .smell it all over the boat.”
The French look came back into his eyes and instinctively she pulled her mackintosh closer about her.
“What kind of cake?” he asked.
“A fruit cake. Why?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“I thought you might have been making patti-cakes with Jock. What's he doing up at this time of night?”
“He was sea-sick,” she said with dignity. “And I’m not given to making—or playing—patti-cakes with anyone.”
His chuckle was infectious.
“No?” he asked. She could feel herself blushing, remembering his kiss in Aden. “Out, woman!” he commanded her. “I want to dress and then I’ll come and watch you ice the cake. I haven’t watched anyone make a birthday cake since I was a boy.”
She grinned.
“If you’re very good I’ll let you have the bowl,” she promised him demurely, and fled.
In the sanctuary of the galley she wondered why she had been so precipitous, scurrying down the corridor and across the saloon as though the Devil himself were after her. The Devil? Black Nick? She stood stock still, breathless and shaken.
A very attractive devil with that look in his eyes! The galley was too small to really get down to icing the cake, so she took it into the saloon and put it down on the table. She had no marzipan, but there were plenty of eggs and icing sugar, though most of it was as hard as a rock. She began to sieve it on to a plate and found that her hands were trembling. Oh, Nick! she thought, I can’t go on like this.
She would have to go back to London. It would be quite easy. All she had to do was to show her father the letter she had received from her mother’s solicitors. The only difficulty really, if she was honest, was that she didn’t want to go.
She separated two of the eggs and beat up the whites until they were stiff. She would have a white background and forty-six blobs of pink in lieu of candles, she decided. She went to her cabin and searched for a piece of stiff paper to use as a nozzle so that she could get the right star-shaped effect, then busied herself with cutting it out and folding it so that she could pour the icing into it.
When she came back to the saloon, Nick was waiting for her.
“Did you see the ray?” she asked.
“No.” He picked out a cherry that was sticking through the top of the cake and ate it. “Mmm, good,” he pronounced.
She beat the sugar into the egg-whites.
“Nick,” she said, “I’m going back to England. You don’t really need me here and I have to go.”
He said nothing, but his eyebrows went up enquiringly.
“I’ve heard from my mother’s solicitors. Probate has been granted on her will and they have paid the money into a bank in London. They say that I must get on with my training.”
Nick looked at her thoughtfully.
“And do they have any right to tell you that?” he asked.
“Yes, they do. They’re my trustees. I don’t get any of the money if I don’t use it in the way that my mother wanted.”
“And is that your only reason for going?” he pressed her.
She ran her hand through her hair, looking suddenly tired.“
“No,” she said at last. “There's another reason. I can’t compete with Monique any longer. It isn’t fair to either of us.”
Nick took a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket and knocked it against his hand, American style. He offered her one and then took one himself. There was an intimacy in the bright light of the match as he lit them, bitter-sweet to her.
“So you know about Monique,” he said. “Somehow I thought you didn’t.” He looked across the table at her, his eyes meeting hers. “Monique knew what it would mean for her to come with us, you know. I warned her myself. Don’t you think you can leave it to her to manage her own affairs?”
She slopped the icing on to the cake and smoothed it down with a knife.
“No, I don’t,” she said hotly. “She’s unhappy. She has been ever since we left Paris. Oh, I know the philosophy of half a loaf is better than none sounds very good in theory, but in practice it isn’t much fun.” Especially not when the man one loved was as charming to other girls as Nick was to her! But she didn’t say that out loud, for she was well aware that Nick could make verbal circles round her any time he chose. To her relief he left the subject and went back to her singing.
“What do you plan to do?” he asked.
“I shall enrol at the Royal Academy if I can.”
“And you still think your singing can bring you happiness?”
‘I don’t know,” she admitted. “But Mother wanted it more than anything.”
He pinched a little of her icing and sucked his finger.
“You can taste the plum in it,” he informed her. “Sharp, but it’s good. Seamus is a lucky man.”
“I felt awful,” she said, “not even knowing that it was his birthday.”
He grinned.
“I should have told you in Aden. I would have too if you hadn’t taken my mind off such matters.”
“I, how can you say it was me?” she demanded quickly.
His grey eyes teased her.
“The trouble is that you go to my head,” he drawled.
And he to hers!
“All the more reason for me to go to London,” she burst out.
His eyes narrowed.
“Maybe, for a little while. You know what I think, my sweet? I think that you’ll never be anything more than a very gifted amateur. Your voice is glorious, but I don’t think you have either the stamina or the inclination to become a prima donna. And another thing, your ear isn’t accurate. You still haven’t got that passage right!”
“But you don’t mind my going to London?” She was hurt to the quick that it should be so, but what else had she expected? That he should plead with her not to go?
“That’s not quite the way I’d put it,” he told her. “I think you’ll always feel guilty if you don’t go and find out for yourself. And I think you’ll be working too hard to get into much trouble before I get back to England myself.”