Gently with passion, p.10
Gently with Passion, page 10
A suspicion dawned on Stella at the evasive form of this answer and she looked at him quickly, her eyes challenging his. Could it be – was it possible – that ‘George’ was Keith’s grandfather, posted here in disguise to keep an eye on Lazy Waters? But she realized at once that such a notion was fantastic. George could be no more than fifty and Simon wasn’t much younger. She thought: my girl, you have a guilty conscience, and let the look tail off with the best grace she could.
‘I thought we had decided that I was a GP.’
Once more the damnable fellow had read her thoughts like a book! She pouted.
‘I’m not sure. You’re very mysterious for a GP.’
‘That probably comes of being so frank all the rest of the year.’
He was laughing at her now, and she could feel her colour rising. Oh hell! She was behaving to him as Keith behaved to her. She snapped:
‘Well, you know a lot more people here than know you!’
His grin broadened. ‘That comes of being anonymous, doesn’t it?’
‘I think there’s something phoney about you.’
‘You don’t think anything of the sort.’
‘How do you know what I think?’
‘A person’s eyes tell you that.’
‘George, I’m going to hate you before we’re finished.’
He tipped his hat over his eye. ‘You wouldn’t like some coffee?’ he asked.
And there it was again – she couldn’t be seriously angry with George. He was altogether too big, too amused, too understanding. She accepted his cup of coffee, scalding hot from the galley, and sat drinking it in the dinghy while he arranged his tackle for a fresh cast.
‘Do you always have fishing holidays?’ she asked him.
‘Not always.’ He reeled in his slack; his float, a long porcupine quill, showed only a notch of luminous yellow. ‘But it’s the most relaxing pastime I know of . . . and it keeps the mind supple. You may think that anglers just sit, but they always sit and think. There’s no substitute for it when it comes to filling a keep-net.’
‘I shouldn’t have thought much skill was needed to outwit a fish.’
‘I’ll lend you a rod. That will teach you more respect for them. Fish have everything in their favour with the exception of brains – those are the angler’s weapon. He uses brains against the odds.’
‘And what does your wife think of your going off like this?’
‘Perhaps my wife had business to attend to.’ His lips curled just a little.
‘I’m being nosey, aren’t I?’
‘Of course you are, Miss Rushton.’
‘Call me Stella, you brute.’
‘Yes, Miss Rushton. Stella.’
She finished her coffee and sailed off with a twinge of regret, but was absurdly pleased on looking back to catch him watching her progress. She felt a most decided itch to know more about George; she knew she wouldn’t be satisfied until she had probed that upsetting personality.
She had no trouble in identifying Sunbird, which Simon kept moored in a cut at Alderford. She was anchored with others in a line of craft on either side of the committee houseboat. She was a wherry-yacht, a type that had been popular at the turn of the century, a species of long, broad-beamed vessel with a straight stem and ranging counter. They were rigged in wherry-fashion with a tremendous unstayed mast, having at its head, above painting and gilding, a traditional vane in the shape of a Welsh girl. A single loose-footed gaff sail gave these monsters a close-winded performance, and because their masts were counterbalanced they could shoot bridges on the run. Sunbird was a notable example of the class. Dressed overall in bunting she made an eye-catching spectacle. With her velvety-white top-sides, gilded cove and long run of mahogany coaming, she looked splendidly regal: a very proper boat for a regatta.
Before joining her, Stella made a run down the line of battle. A number of other fine craft had assembled on the Broad. A wherry, shorn of its mast, had been fitted for the accommodation of spectators, and clusters of yachts and motor-cruisers had dropped their mud-weights beyond the channel. They were dressed, and they dressed the Broad. It resembled a great marine flower-garden. And framing the hunting and the sails were the green reeds and an infinite sky.
She scudded back to Sunbird, where she had already been sighted, and moored the dinghy along with the small craft that accompanied the great yacht. Keith sprang to hand her aboard, his smoky eyes hanging on hers; but she thanked him very coolly and set him to tidy the dinghy’s sail. Simon and his guests were lounging in deckchairs on the counter-deck, over which had been erected a gay striped awning. Glasses, bottles and a container of ice stood handily on a table, and Simon motioned to them enquiringly as he rose to welcome her.
‘Thank you, Simon, a shandy.’
He mixed one for her and added the ice. He was smiling to himself as though he felt particularly pleased. Stella glanced round the deck and noted the disposition of the company. She saw that Dawn and Jeff Simpson were seated together, and a little apart.
‘We need a shade more breeze, my dear. And then everything will be perfect.’
‘You look radiant, Simon.’
He laughed as he handed her glass. ‘I keep checking on my blessings and just now I seem to have plenty. I doubt if I have a care in the world at the moment.’
He sat her down in a chair between himself and Jill Shore, with Glynda on his other side, looking placid in hideous sunglasses. Woody, he told her, had taken off for a spin in the launch, to loll around in which was becoming a favourite pastime. In half an hour the racing was due to begin. He pointed out the triangular course, which would take the yachts round the island. Perhaps the only discordant note on the after-deck was sounded by another unlucky clash of raiment, both Dawn and Glynda having chosen to grace the occasion in towelling sunsuits. Stella felt it was not by chance that they sat with their backs to each other.
Keith came back quietly to squat on a cushion on the deck. He was doing his best, Stella could see, to keep his eyes from being drawn to her. He picked up a pair of binoculars that stood by Simon’s chair and zealously examined the craft moored on the opposite side of the channel.
‘Are you two thinking of doing some racing?’ Simon’s smile was insidious and much too knowing. Stella took a long pull from her glass before replying:
‘No, I don’t think so. What about you and Glynda?’
Glynda stirred herself to say coldly: ‘I think that sailing is a silly idea.’
‘Perhaps Jill would crew you, Simon.’
Jill looked rather alarmed. ‘I don’t know enough about it.’ She took a sudden interest in a passing-cruiser.
‘Then what about Dawn?’
‘My dear, quite frankly I’m not a racing type.’ Simon laughed carefully and was firmly unembarrassed. ‘I prefer sailing for its own sake and not as a form of competition. I do my racing spontaneously. It’s only a small part of the fun.’
Keith said: ‘I’ll put us down for the White Boats, if you like.’
‘No, my pet. I’m like Simon. I do my racing spontaneously.’
‘I’ve swotted up the rules. I’m pretty certain we’d do well.’
‘And I’m pretty certain we wouldn’t, so we won’t put the matter to test.’
The racing began and then there was an object for their attention, though in all honesty Stella could find little in it to stir the blood. As a spectacle it had charm but as a drama not very much, and she quickly became bored with watching for relative changes of position. This was especially so in the handicap races, for there not even the helmsmen had a clear notion of their placings; while in the class races, in which the boats were alike as peas, it seemed a matter of huge indifference that one or other should come in first. But the spectacle remained: the Broad was kept alive with graceful movement. Stella began to enjoy it more when she began to notice it less, when in fact it became a background to a pleasant picnic on the Broad.
Before long, Woody joined them. He handled the launch without much finesse, and Stella caught Simon frowning at a rub on the beautiful varnish. It seemed as much as Woody could do to haul his large body aboard the yacht, and when he’d managed it he dropped into a deckchair and pleaded feebly for a drink. Simon poured one; Woody downed it in a couple of quick gulps. Then he lay back in the chair and stared dreamily at the distance.
‘It gets me down!’ he said to Stella. ‘I’ll never last the pace, girlo. I’ve been watching them sail those dinghies till I nearly collapsed with fatigue.’
‘You’ll have to wear blinkers, Woody.’
‘I close my eyes when it gets too bad. But I can’t close my eyes to everything, that’s the worst of it, girlo.’
Stella looked at him questioningly. She thought that Woody had used a certain emphasis. But now he had closed his eyes and was looking a picture of exhaustion.
Lunch was served in the saloon, a lobster salad with fresh strawberries to follow. After the glare of the light on the Broad the saloon appeared refreshingly dim. Stella admired the mahogany of the coamings and the two inbuilt sideboards; she imagined it was this wood that helped to give yachts their slightly sweet, distinctive odour. By no design of her own she was sitting between Keith and Simon, and she was annoyed to find that Simon expected her to give her attention to his nephew. Keith, however, was keeping quiet, even if he tended to look the more for it: Stella snubbed him without mercy and talked to Woody throughout the meal.
After the coffee she found herself restless and on pins to be off. She was weary of remaining a spectator of all the sailing going on around her, weary also of Simon’s subtle – and sometimes unsubtle – innuendos. He seemed more than ever resolved on drawing attention to Keith’s infatuation. Stella was certain that by now even Ruby, the maid, must be aware of it. Dawn was cutting her like fury, Glynda watching her with calculation, Jill was being the perfect secretary and only Jeff (bless him!) oblivious to the situation. What Woody thought about it was the usual close secret. His big, amiable, creased face was a mask that gave nothing away.
‘I think I’ll go for a spin in the dinghy,’ she said to no one in particular; but Simon, damn his eyes, was only waiting for a chance to pounce.
‘Why not take Lutestring so that I can get some photographs of her?’
‘No, thanks. I don’t think I could manage her on my own.’
‘But my dear, Keith will oblige. And you’ll be doing me a real favour. I’ve been wanting to take some pictures of her to make a pair for my flat.’
If in the end she assented, then it was out of pure defiance. Very well – she’d let them see she wasn’t scared to snatch Keith from under their noses! She wondered if Simon would be so damned pleased if he knew how indifferent she really was, or how unlikely it was that this stupid affair would last the week out. She sent Keith to prepare the halfdecker; she took a sudden interest in Simon’s camera. She made him show it to her and explain it while she hung intimately on his shoulder. From Glynda in the background she could feel currents of sheer hatred, and she continued to bask in these until Keith had set sail. Perhaps that would take a little of the self-satisfaction out of Simon.
A race was just starting so she waited for the yachts to get away, then she put in a few turns for the benefit of the camera. She gave him Lutestring sailing free, on the reach and close-hauled, then, on instructions, came in close while he took shots of boat and crew.
‘Right you are – that’s the lot. Now you can go and amuse yourselves!’
She saw Keith flushing up and caught a sneering look on Glynda’s face. She put her helm up directly, to send the halfdecker driving across the channel. And to hell with the whole boiling of them! Why should she care tuppence what they thought? Put them together, and they would scarcely muster the solid qualities of a man like George.
NINETEEN
SHE FOUND A gap in the flotilla opposite through which she could just slide Lutestring; then they were away from the prying eyes and binoculars of the wherry-yacht. Keith was facing forward and trying to squeeze himself up small – knowing well enough, the poor innocent, that at the moment he was just an irritant. She took a long sweep behind the screen which the moored craft offered. Slowly her annoyance faded in the pleasure of handling the beautiful halfdecker. She sailed a line down the Broad which might have been traced with a rule, and succeeded in laying the island before the racing fleet snapped at her heels.
‘Would you like to take her now?’ She felt a twinge of remorse towards Keith. He looked so thoroughly crushed and helpless; she was afraid he might be in tears.
‘I’ll take her if you want me to.’
‘I do. I would like a turn with the jib.’
She turned into the wind and handed him the helm.
‘Where did you think of going?’
‘It’s up to you. You’re the skipper now, my lad.’
‘I think we’d better go Alderford way. Then we shan’t get mixed up with the racing.’
She made the further concession of sitting well down towards him, since a perch up forward was not essential to crewing; but at first he pretended to give all his attention to the sailing, his eye now on the throat, now on the burgee. She let him go his own way, she settled down to enjoy the sail. The channel to Alderford was fresh to her and appeared to be well worth exploring. An arm of the Broad, it ended in a tree-lined dyke leading to the village, but several interesting creeks turned off it, giving glimpses of staithes and old thatched boathouses.
‘We won’t go into the dyke, will we?’
Stella shook her head. ‘Rather not. It would probably mean the paddle, and there’s no pleasure in that.’
‘We could go back and down the river.’
‘Do you think we would stick in one of the creeks?’
‘Well . . . I know one with plenty of water. But I thought you wanted to sail.’
She did, but she wanted to be nice to Keith, too. When she thought about him the twinge of remorse continued to nag her. He was a pawn, the poor devil, just a pawn of his Uncle Simon’s, and Stella herself was doing precious little to allay the sting of it. In a way she was treating him just as badly as his mother had done: she was letting him see, far too clearly, that he meant nothing to her. And Keith, she was afraid, was fatally sensitive. She couldn’t suppose it didn’t hurt him.
The creek he had chosen was one of those leading to a boathouse, but this and the staithe beside it looked comfortably neglected. In a corner lay a sunken yacht with only its deck and coamings showing, an ancient, fixed-top relic, left to moulder in the mud; in the boathouse one could see another, seemingly of like vintage, while in a cut overgrown with vegetation rested the carcase of a wherry. Fifty, sixty years ago this had probably been a busy staithe, but the passing of the wherries had fated it to a slow decay.
‘I wonder if that yacht is ever used.’
Stella was much taken with the place. And the yacht in the boathouse, though shabby and archaic, had a personality that she found intriguing.
‘We can look at it, if you like. I don’t suppose anyone will mind.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s on your head, my son.’
She could sense his pleasure with the idea of the venture so she let him take the initiative. The boathouse was a dark and repulsively grimy place with moss quilting the slipping thatch of its roof. Inside the splined footways were crazy and in part rotted away; Keith went ahead of her, proud of his agility, then returned to lend her a hand.
‘She’s the sort of old-timer that you see in early photographs.’
‘I know. I was looking at some last night.’
‘She must be a hundred . . . just look at her bowsprit! And her decks are planked-up. And what a stick she’s got on her . . .’
She was about thirty-five feet long and had a beam that seemed prodigious, schooner-bowed, long in the counter and with at least six inches of toe-rail. Her cabin roof looked very squat, as though it were crouching towards the decks, and her windows were flat ellipses that had no business with opening and closing. The twin doors from the well were not locked; Stella unlatched them and hooked them open. The hatch above them was so stiff that she was obliged to leave it closed. Below, down two steps, was a low but very roomy cabin, a long one, on the berths of which people had doubtless slept end-to-end. It was lined with dirty embossed paper and smelt dry if stuffy. It was fitted with numerous drawers and lockers and – surprise! – a tiny piano. She passed through it into a short passage, on one side of which was a toilet; she was obliged to smile at the mighty throne and at the fluting and flowers of the washbasin; then into a smaller cabin fitted with three berths and a dressing-table, which she was able to identify at once as ‘the cabin for the ladies’.
‘Come and look in the forepeak.’
She climbed back on deck through the companion-hatch. In the forepeak Keith was admiring its two pipe-cots and an enormous, rusty cooker.
‘This would be the crew’s quarters, the skipper and the cook. It was like this on Sunbird before Uncle Simon modernized it.’
‘It must be hell down there when you’re cooking dinner.’
‘I don’t know. It’s rather fun.’
Keith climbed out looking scruffy and brushing his trousers with his hands.
‘She’s sound, you can smell that. What a shame to leave her here to rot.’
‘It would cost you a fortune to put her in commission.’
‘I’m not so sure. And I’m coming into some cash when I’m twenty-one.’
‘You’ll want something handier, more modern.’
‘Yes, I suppose that’s possible. But it would be something to tackle this one – to restore her, not modernize her.’
He ran his hand caressingly over the blistered varnish of the coaming, and she was touched by the affection he seemed to feel for the old boat. She said, with sudden inspiration:
‘You’d want to do it yourself, wouldn’t you?’
He leaned his head on one side. ‘Yes . . . I would like to have a go.’
Boats, she said to herself: and that could be the answer, young man. They could represent that alternative vocation towards which he was blindly feeling. Neither mechanical things on the one hand nor abstract on the other, but an absorbing physical expression of that between thinking and dreaming: boats. And why shouldn’t Keith become a designer and builder of boats?
