by Isobel Chace
It was deeper than she remembered, and more than once she went the wrong way and they had to go back to somewhere they knew and start again. More than once Seamus pointed to his watch and she knew that he was worried about Nick’s supply of air. She looked all around her and recognized a tree of coral that she was sure had been somewhere near the merou’s cave. And then they saw Nick’s gun, lying abandoned on the bottom. Seamus picked up the line and ran it through his fingers until it was quite taut and then he hauled himself along it, hand over hand, going wherever it went.
Why she was apprehensive, Charlotte didn't quite know. Nick was as well able to look after himself as anyone she knew. He wouldn’t do anything silly. He wasn’t the type.
The merou was still in the cave, she saw that immediately she saw where the line led and remembered that that was the cave the merou had fled to for sanctuary. It blocked the entrance, its ugly spines still braced against the coral. Seamus peered inside, keeping well clear of the great fish, and held up his thumb in a gesture of triumph. Nick was there.
She went forward then too, slowly, doing nothing to antagonize the creature, but hating it because she was afraid. Behind it she caught a glimpse of Nick lying on the bottom. For a terrible moment she thought he was dead—that his breathing nozzle had fallen out of his mouth, or that he had been a victim of that thing she had read about but had never seen, rapture of the deep, when a man would show every sign of being, drunk, even to the happiness that that state is supposed to bring. But then she saw him move slightly and the bubbles from his breath shoot out from him, and saw the vicious sweep the merou gave its tail.
There was nothing else for it, she decided, she would have to creep in beside it, while Seamus engaged its attention. She made signs to him to show him what she had in mind, and he nodded. There was only one way she knew of to trick it out. Youssef had told her that the Arabs waved an octopus in front of it, and sometimes it would become curious and would relax its spines for a second, just long enough for someone to wrench it out of its crevice. Seamus must have had this idea now, for he searched about looking for a substitute octopus, but there was nothing that would do, and he came back drugging his shoulders.
Diving always made her cold. Nick had explained to her that this was the result of a sudden loss of calories, and had made her eat well before every dive she had made. She was bitterly cold now, shivering cold, and frightened too. She shut her eyes for a second, gathering her courage together. The sooner she went in the better it would be, she thought, for the longer she thought about it the worse she felt.
The coral scraped her skin, but she hardly felt it. The merou turned slightly and looked at her, and in a sudden rage she banged it on the nose as hard as she could with a lump of coral that had come loose and was lying on the sand at the bottom. At the same moment Seamus gave another great tug, and the surprised fish was wrenched out of its sanctuary. Seamus cut the line with his knife and it glided away.
She couldn’t really see what had happened to Nick inside the cave, so she dragged him out into the open, lifting him as easily as if he had, been a child in the waiter and propelling him before her. He held on to her and she could see his eyes through his mask. Her hands went over to him, making sure that he was all right, and then she saw a green liquid oozing from both of them and felt quite faint, so that she staggered and it was he that was supporting her.
How they reached the surface she never knew, but at last she could feel the hot sun on her head, and she took another look at the liquid and was relieved to see that it was nothing more than blood, as red as it had ever been, now that there was no great depth to discolor it. She pulled off her mask and looked at Nick, her whole heart in her eyes.
“Oh, Nick,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to leave you for so long. I’m sorry.”
And without more ado, clinging to the gunwale of the tender, she burst into tears.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“And where were you while all this excitement was going on?” Monique asked Jock when he finally came back on board.
The young New Zealander reddened a little. “Something wrong?” he asked.
“Oh no! Just Nick half killing himself and Charlotte blaming herself! Mon Dieu, you should I have seen us half an hour ago!”
Jock shook himself like a wet puppy.
“What happened?” he asked. “I heard his harpoon go a second time.”
“The merou got him cornered in a crevice. He cut himself rather badly on the coral, but Seamus is fixing him up now. He’ll be all right, he’s just a little shaken”
Charlotte could hear their voices up on deck, but she wouldn’t go up and join them. Supposing Nick’s cuts were to go septic? Wasn’t coral dangerous just because of that? She should have gone straight back to him, and then he wouldn’t have been so foolish as to have tackled that great fish all on his own.
She went down the corridor to her cabin and heard howls of mirth coming from Nick’s.
“What’s the joke?” she called out.
There was a further yelp of laughter from Nick. “It’s not one that you’d appreciate!” he called back. “By the way, Charlotte, I’m expecting you to come and visit the wounded after tea!”
But she couldn’t do that, she thought in a panic.
She couldn’t face him just yet. Suppose her father had told him that she had thought that he was in love with Monique? Even the thought of it was quite intolerable! She would go and wash the salt out of her hair and she would keep right out of his way for as long as she possibly could.
The best method of doing this, she thought, was to go and have her tea with the sailors. Liam would welcome her and the others would ask her to sing, and with any luck she could extend her visit to the entire evening. Tomorrow would be another day, and she would start to pack her things. She had said she would go to England and Nick had only been too willing to let her, and so she would go, without building up her hopes so that they could crash round her ears. She was too sensible for that.
If Liam was surprised to see her he made no comment. All the men liked Charlotte and they were anxious to banish the fear that still lingered in her eyes, leaving her face white and without its usual gaiety.
“So himself is hurt,” Liam greeted her. “But it’s yourself that’s feeling the pain, I’m thinking.”
Charlotte smiled at him.
“I grazed my arm,” she told him. “I washed it with antiseptic, but it hurts rather.”
His Irish eyes looked at her shrewdly.
“I’m told it’s the heroine you are!” he said. “Banging the great creature on the nose as though it were no more than a tadpole. Seamus was telling us all!”
“Was he?” She smiled again. It hadn’t been bravery at all that had made her hit out at the merou, it had been sheer temper, but it was nice to know that her father thought she had acquitted herself well, even if it had been her fault that Nick had got into trouble in the first place.
“He was. Here, drink a cup of tea, though to my way of thinking you’d do best with something stronger!”
A glimmer or genuine amusement readied her eyes.
“I wouldn’t deprive you of it, Liam,” she teased him. “Do you brew it at night on deck by the light of the moon?”
“Och now, you hold your tongue!” he bade her sternly. “I wouldn’t be telling you even if I did!” But she bet the Flahertys at home in Ireland had their own stills and that they lived by poaching, in fact that they were all as one supposed the Irish to be, even though Liam’s cousin was a Guard in the local police force.
“You’d best let me take a look at that arm,” he said after a little while. “Women have no sense when it comes to their own injuries.”
She allowed him to look, even though she thought she had done everything possible for it. It was a bad graze, running down her forearm and she winced when he straightened out her arm so that he could see it the better.
“I think himself should see it,” he said at la
st. “There are pieces of coral still in it.”
She pulled her arm away from him.
“Oh no!” she exclaimed. “Besides, he's in bed!”
Liam cackled with laughter, bringing a blush to her cheek.
“Aye, he’s hoping to soften your heart, I reckon. Isn’t it the place of a woman to be looking after her man at such a time?”
“But he isn’t my man! I'm nothing to him and he’s nothing to me!”
“Then why should you mind his looking at your arm?” he asked her reasonably. “Go up on deck and I’ll fetch him to you.”
There seemed nothing else to do but to obey him. She went up through the hatch that the sailors used and made her way up on to the deserted bridge. Her arm was hurting badly now and she would be quite glad to have it seen to, if only it hadn’t been Nick who would do the looking!
He was dressed when he came up, and she could see the bandage that Seamus had put on his shoulder under his thin shirt.
“Are you better, Nick?” she asked faintly.
He grinned at her, his eyes dancing.
“My only regret is that we let the blasted fish get away,” he told her. “I suggested Jock and Seamus went down and tried to get it, but they’d had enough.”
“So I should hope!” she said primly. “It was awful!”
His amusement made her bite her lip. Didn’t he know what she had gone through when she had seen him caught in that crevice?
“Why didn’t you tell Seamus about your arm?” he asked.
She held it out for his inspection, looking out to sea, away from him, because she couldn’t bear him to mock her any more.
“I washed it with Dettol,” she said.
She heard his quick intake of breath and glanced at him. His lips were set and the laughter had gone from his eyes.
“You little fool!” he said. “You crazy little fool! How did you do it?”
It seemed to her that that was a purely rhetorical question, and so she made no attempt to answer it. The pain in her arm was now a nagging ache, but she was still inclined to dismiss it as of no account. If this was how her arm felt, what must his shoulder be like?
“I’ll have to take those pieces out,” he told her. “It’ll hurt like hell. Do you think you can take it?”
She nodded.
“If you’re quick,” she said huskily.
He put her hand down on the railings and covered it with his own.
“Would you rather Seamus did it?” he asked her.
She shook her head. Nick, with his neat, quick movements, would make a much better job of it. “I'll go and get the kit, he said.
She watched with nervous anticipation as he opened the large white box beside her and took out a hypodermic syringe.
“Not allergic to penicillin, are you?”
“I don’t think so,” she said.
She couldn’t bear to watch any longer as he pushed up her sleeve and dabbed at her arm with a piece of damp cotton wool. The smell of antiseptic assailed her nostrils, then she felt a sharp prick and it was all over.
“Now we start the real business,” he warned her. “Are you ready?”
She grasped the railings more tightly.
“Yes,” she breathed.
He had a pair of Monique’s eyebrow tweezers in his hand, cauterized and dipped in antiseptic. The merest touch on her arm was agony, but she knew that he was being as gentle as he could. Piece by piece he took out the minute pieces of coral that were still clinging to the graze and wiped them on a piece of cotton wool.
“Is there much more?” she asked at last.
“Feeling faint?” he asked.
But she wouldn’t admit to being so poor-spirited.
“Not at all!” she retorted.
He grinned and kissed her on the tip of her nose.
“You’re a brave poppet,” he said. “About five more pieces.”
She counted them off on her fingers, pressing them one by one against her thigh as hard as she could so that she wouldn’t cry out. At last he put the tweezers down and turned her round to face him.
“Shall I give you a kiss to make it better?” he suggested impudently.
She colored fiercely.
“So that was what you were laughing about! Dad did tell you! Well, let me tell you, I may have been wrong about Monique, but I don’t think I was wrong about you!”
He was silent.
“Are—aren’t you going to refute it?” she asked hopelessly.
“I can’t very well,” he said simply.
She pondered that for a few seconds, then: “Why not?” she demanded.
“Because I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” he told her firmly.
There was another silence, this time an expectant one, and she knew that he was waiting for her to enlighten him.
“That was why I was so long coming back to you,” she explained in a breathless rush. “I couldn’t find anyone anywhere, so I went down to the saloon, and Dad and Monique were there—”
The French look was back in his eyes and she found it oddly unsettling.
“Oh, Nick, don’t look at me like that!” she pleaded.
His smile deepened.
“Why not?” he demanded.
Impossible to tell him what it did to her. Her heart hammered madly until she could feel it even in her throat.
“Because I’m not one of your girls to be flattered by it,” she said crossly. “Other girls may appreciate it, may—may even like it,” she assured him.
“But you don’t?”
“No,” she said baldly.
“Then how must I look at you?” he asked.
That was more difficult. She swallowed hard and looked away from him, out across the sea.
“You see,” he went on encouragingly, “I like looking at you. I like the way your hair grows and the slant of your eyes, and your mouth when you’re trying not to smile. I even like you when you’re cross and tell me not to flirt—”
“Flirt!” she exclaimed. “You flirt as easily as you breathe!”
“Do I?” He sounded flattered, and she made a little gesture of impatience.
“You know you do!” she accused him.
“And you don’t I suppose?” he asked demurely. The rank injustice of that robbed her of any reply.
“As I was saying,” she retorted. “Dad and Monique were together in the saloon. I—I hadn’t realized that they wanted to get married. In fact I thought Monique was in love with you—”
“Oh, I see,” he said, as though something had suddenly been made plain to him.
She blushed again.
“It was stupid of me, of course. I should have known when he gave her those shoes, or even before!” She gave a little agitated movement with her arm and winced with pain. “Don’t you think you should be in bed with that shoulder of yours?” she asked gruffly.
“And leave this entrancing conversation in the middle?” he asked. “How could you even suggest such a thing?”
Very easily, she assured him mentally. She had the uncomfortable conviction that he was enjoying himself, that he knew exactly where he was going, whereas she was horribly confused and more than a little shaken by what he had already said. She liked to look at him too. She liked everything about him, and she was afraid that if she stayed with him for very much longer, she would be telling him so, and no girl should make such statements to any man unless she was sure exactly where she stood. Not if she was wise and had any self-respect.
“I must say I think it will be a wonderful thing for Dad,” she went on in matter-of-fact tones. “He must often have been very lonely in the past.”
“And what about you?” Nick asked.
“Me?” she repeated.
“Will you be happy on your own in London?”
A lump of unhappiness settled in her throat and she gave a little sob.
“Oh, Nick, I don’t want to go!” she said.
His arms went round her and he hel
d her close. “Muggins,” he said fondly. “You only had to say so. No one was making you go!”
“But I must! What will I do if I don’t? There’s nothing else I can do. I can’t even type!” She pushed him away from her. “You’ll start your shoulder bleeding again,” she warned him. He pulled her back to him with a strength that she couldn’t resist.
“Would you be happy with me, do you think, my foolish love?” he asked in her ear. “Sailing across the sea?”
“Like Shenandoah’s daughter?” she asked with satisfaction, her voice muffled against his shirt.
He chuckled.
“I can’t promise to take you across the Missouri, but together we could explore the seas, and perhaps one day the world will be a better place because we shall have done something to feed the hungry. Something positive. I never did approve of negative measures.”
She looked up at him.
“Are you proposing to me?” she demanded. “Really proposing?”
“What else?” he said simply. She searched his face, not daring to believe him, but there was a tenderness in his eyes that she had never seen before.
“I didn’t know," she murmured, “I thought perhaps you might like me for a little while. I should have tried to be content with that.”
For a long moment he held her without saying anything and then he gave her a little shake.
“I think that’s the most outrageous thing I have ever heard you say,” he informed her. “When I try to court you, you accuse me of flirting with you, but this—! Dear heart, don’t you know that I love you, every inch of you, and that I have done ever since Paris?”
She was as shaken as he. All she could do was stare up at him, wondering at her own foolishness. “I thought—” she began.
“Perhaps you’d better not tell me,” he said dryly. "I’ll tell you instead. When I saw you in Seamus’s flat in Paris I thought you were the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen. In that sea-green dress you put on to impress him, you did something to me, and I haven’t recovered yet.” He put his finger on her lips to prevent her from interrupting him. “When you flew in from Libya, I nearly asked you to marry me there and then, but you were as prickly as a hedgehog, and the next thing I knew we had young Jock on board!”