Further along the rail I recognised the young woman from the English car I’d let into line, hoping she would know me as I approached. She did, and smiled: “That was a nice thing you did for my father. He would have been out there now if you hadn’t been so kind.”
“I couldn’t have done anything else but oblige a fellow countryman, could I?” I went a shade closer. “I hope you don’ mind the smell of my cigar.”
“Oh no. My father smokes them.”
I handed her a tubed Havana. “Give him this, then, with my compliments. It’s a Romeo and Juliet. He’s bound to like it.” Moggerhanger wouldn’t miss another, and if he did he could kiss my arse. I sensed her to be a bit of a daddy’s girl who would think well of my gesture, and she took it so gracefully I wanted to kiss her smiling face, but had to listen to her telling me about the Classical sites they’d been to, details I could repeat to Frances on getting home. “My name’s Michael Blaskin. What’s yours?”
“Rachel.” She was shy, seemingly reticent, but my direct questions encouraged her. I hoped she wasn’t married or attached, as I spun a tale about my frequent business trips to Athens, telling her I worked as chief courier for someone whose name I wasn’t at liberty to reveal. The engines thumped under us, and she said what a relief it was to be going.
“I’m glad, as well, though I’ve had a good time. Greece is like nowhere on earth.”
“It’s my first time,” she said. “My father’s been promising to bring me for years, and he did at last, for my thirtieth birthday. I’ll have a lot of wonderful memories when I get home.”
Lightning hot-footed it over the mountains. We walked to the other side of the deck, where lamps winked on the oily water. “And where is your home?”
“Reading, in Berkshire. My father’s a GP.”
“What do you do? Tell me your career details, as my father the novelist Gilbert Blaskin would have one of his characters say.” Even at the second mention his name meant nothing, but I moved closer, throwing a good half of my cigar over the side to impress her.
“I help in the surgery,” she said, “and run the house. It keeps me busy, which can’t be bad. But I always feel happy when I’m on the deck of a ship about to leave port. I find the hooting so suggestible, don’t you? It makes me wonder whether I’ll ever come back to a place. I also like to think I don’t know where we’re going. I prefer to feel lost and uncertain at moments like this, as if the ship’s going to land at an unexpected place. At the same time it might be a bit upsetting, but that’s all right, because that way I can get to know more about myself, which I think is the most important thing in the world.”
There was more to her than I’d imagined, or wanted to hear about. I preferred women who knew very well who they were, though sensed that one who didn’t might be easier to become acquainted with in the manner I wanted. “What makes you feel that way?” I’d heard Geoffrey Harlaxton at the agency say his psychiatrist asked that question when he said something however trivial while on the couch.
“That’s what my psychiatrist always asks,” she said.
I recovered quickly from my surprise. “They all do. But you go to one of those?”
“Twice a week. I need to. It helps me a lot.”
Probably cost her a hundred quid a shot, because charlatans like that don’t come cheap. “I hope I’m not taking a man’s living away — because where would the world be without them? — but if you come to see me now and again I’d guarantee you would soon feel so much better you wouldn’t have to use one from then on.”
Another blast of the steam whistle drowned her laugh, and I shifted close enough to lay an arm over her shoulder, at which she leaned against me as if for warmth. “It’s always chilly when a ship moves out of harbour in the middle of the night,” I said, thinking that if she was halfway loony enough to need a psychiatrist she would be willing to take up with me without too many boring preliminaries. “I didn’t notice your mother in the car.”
“She died ten years ago. My father, being a doctor, got her the best cancer treatment, but it made no difference. He always blames himself for her death, which is why he often looks so sad.”
I recalled talks about it with Frances. “People generally feel that way. There’s nothing you can do.”
“She died three months after he’d noticed something wrong, then felt guilty because he hadn’t guessed she was ill earlier.”
“People are good at hiding it. An aunt of mine came home from work on a Friday, and she was dead in three days from cancer of the throat. She must have had it at least six months, but her husband hadn’t caught on, and they were very close as a couple.”
No response was forthcoming, or even necessary, so I kissed her lightly on the lips, and she responded as if to push my teeth into the back of my throat. Fatigue went, and I met further kisses as they deserved, because she was lovely and passionate and worth whatever I was able to give. I undid sufficient buttons of her blouse to get my fingers on the warm flesh of a breast and stroke a nipple. Luckily it was two in the morning, and the rest of the passengers had boarded now, to get what sleep was possible, so I could hardly regret the long delay in our leaving.
“I saw you in the car at the dock gates,” I murmured, “and fell in love with you, but saw it was hopeless because there was a man with you. I can’t tell you the bleak disappointment I suffered.”
“I saw you, as well,” she said. “But who’s your friend?”
“Oh, him? He’s a chap I’m giving a lift to. He’s from the Athens branch of the firm. He’ll act as my general factotum on the way home. I had to take over the wheel to get us out of that traffic mix-up because he’s not aggressive enough.”
“You were wonderful.”
She leaned across, and my hand went cautiously up her leg. “I’d ask you to my cabin, except I’m having to share it.” I had no intention letting Bill put his spoke in. “We couldn’t get separate ones.”
“I have my own, so we can go there. My father was so glad to have the tickets he didn’t care what they were for. And when he turned in he said that if I had an adventure on board he hoped it would be a pleasant one; though I think he was being ironic.”
“He shouldn’t be, with a lovely daughter like you.” Things were going so well I wondered if I ought to be smelling a rat. The man in the car was her husband. Both were part of the Green Toe Gang, intending to club me in some dark corner of the ship, and tip my body overboard. But it couldn’t be. If rat there was, it was me.
Make-up accoutrements were scattered around the sink, frocks and skirts on hangers, with a smell of sweet soap over all. The ship’s way was so smooth we seemed to be in a tent at the back end of the universe. With a proper look I saw dark hair, brown eyes, a sallow complexion, though an intelligent face, subtly expressive lips, and a delicate slightly curving nose.
We kissed by the sink, me with such a stiff on I lowered her to the bunk, and when she pulled at me to go straight in I decided that some preliminaries were in order for such a rare woman, not only for me. Spreading her legs and drawing off her knickers with help from her when she realised my intention, I put my mouth at her bush and, a hand behind to bring her as close as necessary, made my tongue work for its living other than by speaking or taking in food.
She cried out, and went on keening as I licked to be sure she had finished. I lifted her up to get our clothes off, an undressing so rushed on both sides that as she turned for the bunk, unable to hold myself from that long delightful nakedness, I gripped her by the waist and went in from behind, one hand reaching the front to stimulate her till she came again.