I sat there on the edge of my bunk, head in hands and after a while, there was a foot on the companionway. I should have known, I suppose, but the emptiness moved in me again and my mouth went dry.
“Savage?” she whispered. “Are you down there?”
She fumbled for the switch. I glanced up, eyes half-shut against the sudden brightness and there was dismay on her face. She dropped to her knees beside me and touched my cheek.
“Oh, the pigs, look what they did to you. What happened to your friend?”
“Ciasim?” I grinned wryly. “Hard at it on the beach somewhere with a German lady.”
“I thought he looked a man of parts.”
“Very definitely.” I held her wrists lightly. “I’m glad you came.”
“I know. About what happened on the beach…”
“To hell with that. This is all that counts. Where’s Aleko?”
“He’s all right now. He’s gone back to the Firebird.” She hesitated and said slowly, “He has a thing about physical violence. Some psychological disturbance or other. I believe he’s had psychiatric treatment, but it didn’t do any good. He can’t help it. It isn’t that he’s a coward in the normal sense. You understand what I’m trying to say?”
“I think so. In a way, I have the same kind of fear down there at depth. But tell me about you and him. Anything you think I should know.”
“He’d do anything for me,” she said. “Since my sister was killed he seems to have turned all the love he had for her on to me. Not in any sexual way. I can honestly say he’s never put a foot wrong that way. He needs me. I suppose that’s about the size of it.”
“And you? Do you need him?”
“I don’t need anybody,” she said and then added, “or thought I didn’t.”
She got to her feet, then sat down beside me. “I’m a wealthy woman, Savage. Just about all the money in the world. Left to me by my favourite uncle who had the good sense to marry a rich American lady who fancied being a countess. The thing is, I don’t get to touch it till I’m twenty-one. Just over a year to go and Dimitri is my trustee. The uncle in question never did like my father.”
Which explained a great deal. I stood up and groaned as pain hit me in half a dozen different places. She was immediately all concern.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m getting old, that’s all. What I need is a swim. Are you interested?”
“If you think you’re up to it.”
She stood there, a hand on my hip, her mouth lifted in that strange, scornful way of hers and it wasn’t swimming she was talking about. I knew it and so did she.
“You’ll just have to take your chances, won’t you?” I said. “Now if you’ll come on deck and cast off when I tell you, we’ll go and find a little peace and quiet.”
I took her out to Hios where I had eaten earlier that day on the beach with Ciasim, mainly because it was uninhabited and I wanted to get away from people. As far away as possible.
It was a wonderful run at any time, but especially so on a night like that and visibility was excellent because of the bright moonlight. I gave the Gentle Jane her head and Sara leaned in the doorway of the wheelhouse and watched me.
“You love this boat,” she commented after a while. “You’re a different person in here.”
“I suppose I do in my own twisted way,” I said. “It’s the sea as much as anything.”
‘Gentle Jane,’ she said. “Was she an old girl-friend?”
I laughed. “That’s what she was called when I bought her. The original owner was from North Cornwall. Believe it or not, but there’s a hamlet in those parts that’s actually called Gentle Jane.”
I allowed her to take the wheel for a while after that, but not for long because at the speed we were going, we were approaching Hios within half an hour. I stopped the engines and dropped anchor in the same tiny bay I had already visited earlier that day.
I got some blankets together, coffee, a pot to go with it and some tinned milk and we went ashore in the dinghy. There was plenty of driftwood still on the beach, all dry as a bone after the heat of the day and flames roared up into the darkness when I put a match to the brushwood.
“Our own private island,” she said. “Now that, I like.”
“Do you want to swim now?”
“No, later, if it’s all the same to you. Let’s talk.”
“What about?”
“Anything. Cabbages and kings, love, war, death. You name it.”
And now she was getting too close for comfort and for a little while I staved off the big question, the one I really wanted to put to her. Instead, I said, “You told me you weren’t interested in your brother-in-law’s involvement with present Greek politics. Did you really mean that?”
She seemed surprised. “I thought I made it clear enough when you asked me earlier. I’m not interested in politics. In all the hopeless stupidity of men’s affairs. I’m interested in the now. In me. I’m living for as long as I can hang on.”
At last, the big question and there was no avoiding it. “And how long would that be?”
“I’ve got chronic leukaemia and there are worse varieties. At least five years in my case. Ten, if I’m very lucky, but that would be exceptional.” There was one of those silences again, and finally she said, “Well, what have you got to say to that?”
“What do you want me to do?” God knows how I kept my voice steady. “Start feeling sorry for you? In my game, angel, I could die tomorrow. I take a chance whenever I go down. Tears are a waste of time. You’ve got to make every minute count. That’s the important thing.”
Her eyes were shining in the firelight. I didn’t dare touch her, not at that precise moment for the emotion was too close to the surface of things. Instead, I stripped off my jeans and shirt and ran down the beach into the sea without saying a word.
It was cold out there and the salt got into the various abrasions I had sustained in the fight and stung like hell. I swam round to the other side of the Gentle Jane and turned for the shore. When I went back up the beach, there was no sign of Sara, but her clothes were in a neat pile on the blanket. I was aware of a splashing out there beyond the boat, but it was impossible to see her for a cloud had crossed the face of the moon, killing all light.
The fire had died down into a great pile of glowing embers so fiercely had the dry wood burned. I crouched over it, raking through it with a stick and heard a movement behind me. As I turned she stepped into the light.
She was quite naked and water ran from her firm breasts, glistening in the light of the dying fire and her body was a thing of mystery, shadowed in the secret places, more beautiful than anything I had ever known.
She stood there for what seemed the longest moment in my life, a figure in time, and then she smiled, that wonderful smile, and dropped to her knees beside me. I reached for a blanket to cover us. When we came together it seemed like the most natural and inevitable thing that had ever happened.
ten
HEADLONG INTO ETERNITY
It was a little after seven when I awakened, but already sunlight was drifting in through the portholes of the cabin.
Sara Hamilton slept easily in the bunk opposite, all very right and proper, the pale, straw hair spread across the pillow, the face in repose, washed clean, no longer scornful at the whole world.
The blanket had slipped down from her shoulders in the night, exposing her left breast, which added a certain piquant charm to the general picture, but was calculated to disturb at that time in the morning.
A couple of minutes spent looking at that was all that flesh and blood could stand. I tiptoed out, taking my clothes with me and went on deck. It was going to be a hot one. I stood at the rail for a moment, the warmth of the sun pleasant on my skin and was aware that I was hungry and there was only one answer to that.
I checked the two aqualungs. One was empty and the other was about as low as it could be, which was a pity because I suddenly remembered
that our portable compressor had packed up the previous day and Morgan simply hadn’t had the time or opportunity to put his mechanical genius to work. Still, one good fish was all I needed and that shouldn’t take long in a spot like this where they weren’t used to spearfishmen.
I went over the side quietly clutching a harpoon gun, adjusted my air supply and went to work. Within ten minutes I found exactly what I was looking for, a fine sea bass weighing a good five pounds from the look of him. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he found me, for he came in to meet the harpoon as if greeting a long-lost friend.
When I surfaced at the boat, I caught the wood smoke scent at once and swimming round to the land side, found the fire burning well on the beach and Sara a few yards away gathering driftwood.
She saw me as I waded from the water, dropped her wood beside the fire and came to meet me. She wasn’t wearing her denim skirt. Just the white sweater and black nylon briefs.
“The longest legs I’ve ever seen,” I told her.
“Like me to cover them up?”
“In a pig’s eye, you will.” I got an arm around her, wet as I was, and kissed her good and hard.
“There’s passion for you at this time in the morning.” She prodded the bass. “What do we do with him?”
“We eat him,” I said, “for breakfast, or would you prefer lemon tea and three fingers of toast?”
But she didn’t, because at least half the bass disappeared into the lovely mouth just as fast as I could get the steaks out of the pan. She sat cross-legged on the blanket, licking her fingers and looking very satisfied with herself.
“You know, Savage, you’re something special. You can cook as well.”
“As well as what?”
I ducked to avoid the plate she threw and any idea of retaliation was foiled by her quickness with the coffee pot. I was clutching a full cup before I knew it.
“Beachcombing has a lot to be said for it,” she remarked.
I nodded. “Who needs people?”
She lay back on the blanket, hands behind her head, one knee raised, presenting a disturbingly erotic picture. I was filled with a strange sadness but also a perverse desire to bring her back to reality.
“All right in dreams,” I said, “but the present is rather different. Maybe five minutes of air left in my aqualung and enough fuel in the tank for forty or fifty miles at the most. I need people all right. People with money who’ll help support me in the manner to which I’ve become accustomed.”
She turned her head sharply and her voice was gravel and ice. “Why do you talk such balls?” As usual, her language was peculiarly her own. “Jack Savage, the unscrupulous adventurer, mercenary to the trade. Anything considered as long as the price is right.”
“An accurate enough picture. I’ll take a couple of hundred handbills of that one. Gothic script, black edging.”
But she wasn’t smiling. “If money is what you want, you could have had thirty thousand dollars last night. You turned it down.”
“Hollywood adventure stuff,” I said. “I got away with it once and that was once too often. Anyway I like living.”
Which was a bloody stupid remark to make because she flinched and said bitterly, “Don’t we all?”
It was the first time I’d had even a hint of what she must be feeling about three layers down. There was an awkward silence and I couldn’t think of anything to say. Any way in which I might comfort her.
I poured myself some more coffee and said lightly, “You never did tell me anything about your family. You said you had brothers the first time we talked.”
“Phil and Roderick. They’re at Eton.”
God save us all. “And your parents?”
“My mother died some time ago. My father remarried a couple of years back. He’s a dear, lovely man and his wife is fine, but two women in a house. You know what I mean?”
“I should have thought you could have kept fifty or sixty rooms between you,” I said. “You told me last night that your favourite uncle left you a pot of gold, but didn’t like your father. What was the trouble there?”
“Simple,” she said. “They were twins and Daddy pipped Uncle Gavin at the post for the earldom by eleven and a half minutes. Poor old Gavin never forgave him.”
Hambray House. The Earl of Hambray. Major General the Earl of Hambray as I recalled.
“I served under him in France,” I said. “Your father, I mean. Not that he’d remember me. I was a sergeant at the time.”
“Oh, no you don’t,” she said. “To hell with your peasant pride.” She came close and leaned against me. “You’ll like him, Savage, and he’ll like you which is exactly as it should be.”
“And when does this merry meeting take place?”
“When you go to ask him for my hand,” she said complacently. “It’s an old family tradition.”
“I know,” I said. “You told me. All seven hundred years of it.”
“I want everything to be right and proper,” she said lightly. “Isn’t every girl entitled to that when she gets married?”
My heart pumping loud enough to hear, I swallowed and said with some emotion, “I don’t know about that, angel, but if I’m it, you can have me any way you want.”
She came into my arms then and I held her close, rocking her gently as if comforting a child and a small, chill wind rippled the surface of the sea as I gazed blindly out to the horizon.
Coming through the Middle Passage towards Kyros just before noon, I gave Sara her head and left her at the wheel on her own.
The morning had been wonderful. We’d explored the island, gone swimming, talked in a way I had not talked to anyone for years, or to be more honest, a way in which I’d never talked to anyone before.
But everything had to end and we had to put in an appearance at Kyros some time. There was Aleko to see, various arrangements to be made if I was to return to England with her which was very definitely what she wanted. I had responsibilities again. From now on Sara came first. It was simple as that. A favourite phrase of mine and a curiously empty one, for if life had taught me anything it was that nothing ever was as simple as it looked at first sight.
I had just finished making a pot of tea on the galley when the phone buzzed. She said calmly, “I think you’d better get up here. Someone is trying to signal us and it’s all Greek to me.”
Which was intriguing, but I found time enough to put the pot of tea on a tray along with a can of milk and a couple of mugs before going up to join her.
We were slap in the centre of the Middle Passage now, about half a mile south of Sinos and three hundred yards to starboard of Ciasim’s trenchadiri, the Seytan. I put the tray down and picked up the binoculars. Yassi jumped into view, waving an old piece of red cloth vigorously. Abu was standing by the compressor and from the looks of the lines disappearing into the water, Ciasim was already working on the wreck.
Something was wrong, I knew at once. Instinct, or was it simply that I had been expecting it? I pulled Sara out of the way and took over the wheel. “We’re going in. The big Turk who saved my neck last night, Ciasim Divalni, that’s his boat.”
“What’s he doing, diving for sponges?”
“Not this time. Salvage job. Wartime wreck about a hundred and thirty feet down. Too deep and too damned risky with the gear he’s got. I told him it was no go, but he wouldn’t listen.”
“Is that your fault?” she asked with real perception. “I don’t know much about diving, but that sounds a fair way down to me.”
We were already coming close and I throttled back and cut the engines to run the Gentle Jane in against the Seytan’s starboard rail. Yassi had a couple of old tyres over as fenders and grabbed the line Sara threw to him. He was scared—scared all the way through and Abu turned from the compressor, tears streaming down his face.
“Please, please, Mr. Savage.” His Greek was broken and disjointed. “Help my father. Something bad happen down there.”
I turned t
o Yassi. “How long?”
“Half an hour, maybe forty-five minutes. Everything fine and then something go wrong. Just before you come he gives three fours.”
Four quick pulls on the line by the diver repeated three times meant Get me out of here. It usually meant things were about as bad as they could be.
“What happened then?”
“We tried to haul him up, but the line, she won’t budge. No more signals since.”
Abu plucked at my sleeve. “You go down now, Mr. Savage. You bring him up.”
Which was fine except for the fact that my aqualung was just about empty. “Did you get any of that?” I asked Sara.
She nodded. “What are you going to do?”
“I’ve no choice, I’ll have to go down.”
She frowned. “But you said the aqualung was almost empty.”
I didn’t even argue. Simply went over the rail to the Gentle Jane and got my diving gear on fast. No time to pull on a wet-suit so I left my denim pants and shirt on.
As I buckled on the aqualung and turned, I found Sara talking to Yassi in fast, fluent Greek. I went back over the rail and he got in my way, a hand to my chest. “No, Mr. Savage, not this way. My father would not want this.”
I shoved him to one side and vaulted into the water. I paused barely long enough to adjust my air supply and went down fast, following the curving lines into the green mist.
I swerved as a steel mast pierced the gloom, and hovered over the wreck. There was something wrong, something different, I knew that at once and in the same moment realised what it was. The old anti-aircraft gun which had been mounted on the fore-deck was missing.
I found it when I went down after the line, hanging over the starboard rail of the hulk along with about fifty tons of scrap iron and the air hose and lifeline disappeared underneath.
Which could have been the end of things if something hadn’t made me take a look on the other side of the pile where I found Ciasim flat on his back on firm sand, pinned like a fly by his fouled lines, helpless, unable to aid himself in any way at all.
Jack Higgins Page 12