‘And you were jealous?’
‘No,’ I said, slightly surprised. ‘Not really. I was proud of her, in a way. A bit uneasy, but proud. There was nothing dodgy about it, after all; she wasn’t the type. She was so damn beautiful …’ She’d been something of a status symbol round the college, if I was honest. ‘But she hated living off me, she wanted to pay her own way when we went out; she was obstinate like that, stupidly so. And, well, she went a bit far. She decided she’d earn most posing for magazines – and God, she went and did it without telling me.’
‘Why should she? Was that so different?’
‘Come on, there’s all the difference in the world between a few student’s scribbles and copies on every newsstand in the country! They’re permanent, photographs! They hang around! They could surface years later –’
Mall drew breath suddenly. ‘Hah! And you feared they would?’
‘Look, you’ve got to understand. I told you, I had it all planned out! And you know what it’s like – you’re young, you think it’ll all happen tomorrow! She could have wrecked everything! I couldn’t have some little hack turn up with these things – they were pretty damn broad – and slather them all over the papers when I was trying to get taken seriously as some kind of public figure! I mean, imagine it when I was fighting my first by-election, even! So –’ I waved my hands helplessly.
‘So you quarrelled?’
‘Well, yes – a bit. But I didn’t just drop her or anything like that, I wasn’t that cruel. I just let it peter out naturally over the summer vac. We’d talked about going out to Singapore – but, well … it lapsed. And come winter –’ I shrugged. A gull cried out, wild and lonely, and I shivered a little. ‘She married somebody else the next summer, so she can’t have been in that deep either. Not the type I’d have expected; one of her artists, a right talentless little sod. Last I heard he was graduated and designing soap wrappers. About her, nothing. Expect they’re still married, if she hasn’t wrung his scrawny neck by now. That’s the nearest I’ve come to what you’d call love, Mall; and it can’t have been that near, can it? Am I supposed to go on thinking about that?’
I don’t know what response I expected, but it wasn’t the mildly pitying look I got. ‘Few care to remember being cozened of something precious for a false profit; still less when they’ve cozened themselves. But consider two things. One, she’d not need snow in her mouth to feel winter come. Two, politics once was not a craft a man openly professed. The word meant doing what was expedient, not what was right and true.’
The sting was in the tail. And luckily the glib answer that leaped to my lips never got beyond them. The falling moon laid down a first tinge of silver on the horizon, the billows caught it and spread it, glittering, in a great streak. From up above in answer came the lookout’s voice, crackling with excitement into the exultant shriek of a seabird.
‘Sail ho! Sail ho!’
‘Whither away?’ bawled the master’s mate, through a speaking trumpet he hardly needed.
‘Hull down on the horizon, dead ahead!’ There was a general rush, and a snapping open of telescopes. ‘Three masts i’ the moonlight! And she’s a big’un!’
‘Then begad, that may be she!’ muttered the mate. ‘Hold the deck, Mall! Cox’n, go rouse the Sailing Master and the Captain. By’re leave, sir!’
‘Only a league or two the head of us,’ Mall gloated. ‘Is this not a sweet speedy little bird we ride? We’ll have ’em, Stephen, we’ll have ’em! If it is the Chorazin, mind; must needs be sure first. There’ll be all hell to pay if we open fire on someone’s plain ordinary merchantman; and a warship so big’d blow us to matchwood for a pirate, with one broadside.’
‘Open fire …’ I felt a drop of sweat trickle down my back; the hunched black shapes spaced out along the rails took on the look of sleeping cobras, poised to spit venom. The reality of what we were about to do took sudden drastic form. And whether it was the excitement or what, the dinner and the drink chose just that moment to strike, and it occurred to me there was one vital part of the ship I hadn’t cottoned on to.
‘Er – Mall – by the way, where’re the, er, heads?’ At least I’d remembered the proper shipping term.
She pointed in the general direction of the foredeck and the bowsprit beyond. ‘Up there.’
‘Up where? In the foc’sle?’
‘No. Over the rail there, down into the forepeak and out onto the bowsprit. There’s a ladder.’
‘You mean … in the open air?’
‘For health’s sake, aye.’
‘Christ!’ The picture appalled me. ‘Why the acrobatics? Why not just use the rail, long as it’s public anyway?’
‘Cap’n Pierce wouldn’t like it. And just one little flaw of wind, and like as not you get your own back.’
‘I see,’ I said, and stumbled off down the companionway.
It was only as I tottered across the foredeck towards the rail that she shouted after me. ‘There’s always another, mind – in the port foc’sle cabin. That’s mine. By custom for ladies only, but if you’d wish to avail yourself, you being a well-brought-up sort of young man –’
‘Listen!’ I called back as I clambered clumsily over the rail. ‘I appreciate the compliment, but – Here am I, stuck on a ship to nowhere, right? With a bunch of the toughest goons I ever saw in my life! And you think I’m going to go tempting fate and use the ladies?’
A cheer arose from the bowels of the ship.
So that is how we sped heroically into action, with myself crouched shivering on the wooden box behind the bowsprit. As a figurehead I left a lot to be desired, and my only comfort was that if we really were above the airs of earth, the earth was in for a bit of a shock.
By the time I clambered back up the watch below had been called up, and the deck was in a whirl of purposeful activity. Jyp and the captain were up and about; Jyp looked fresh as a daisy, but Pierce was in a filthy mood, and I was secretly glad to see him head hastily for the bowsprit.
‘Any joy?’ I demanded.
‘We’ll know any minute,’ Jyp answered without lowering the telescope from his eye. ‘T’gallants in – sail shortened for the night. We’re overhauling her fast – too fast, maybe. I’d sooner come on ’em after moonset. Has anyone seen old Stryge? Someone roust him out!’
The lack of enthusiasm was so general that I offered to go myself. When I hammered on the small green door I expected anything from a frenzied bout of barking to a thunderbolt, but instead the girl Peg Powler opened the door, gathering her loose black rags about her. She said nothing, only looked at me large-eyed and was beckoning me in when Stryge’s low snarl stopped her.