Unexpected fucks with unmarried women were sweet, and I said how enjoyable it had been. “I haven’t done it that way for a long time. I love you, darling.”
Almost true, it never hurt to say so, and even on those occasions when it had been a lie — though I couldn’t think of one — the woman seemed as happy to hear it as I was to say it. I also told her I hadn’t made love for months, though only to find out how long she’d had her last experience.
“It’s two years,” she said. “I had a boyfriend, who left me because he guessed that my father didn’t like him. It was just as well, I suppose, because we found out later he’d been in prison for smuggling.”
I didn’t want the talk to go that way. The world was full of such people. “But you haven’t made love for two years? Such a beautiful young woman? How did you manage all that time?”
She laid her face against my shoulder, breathing warmly while speaking. “I had to look after myself, didn’t I? The psychiatrist I was seeing recommended it — not that he needed to. He tried to make love to me, but I didn’t fancy him. So I went to someone else, but he was the same. Then I went to a woman, and when she tried to seduce me I was horrified.”
“They all try it on,” I said. “That’s why they take up the trade.”
“Anyway, I already knew that the greatest pleasure in the world was at my fingertips.” I must have loosened her no end for such confidences, though she talked in that way, I supposed, because I was a stranger, but the idea of her doing it to herself so inflamed me that a hard-on came back, and we lay on the bed and fucked ourselves into pleasure again. “Will you see me in England?” she asked.
“Of course, but I can’t say when. There are too many days, alas, when I’m busy at my work.”
“I can wait, though if it’s not soon I’ll feel like Mariana of the Moated Grange.”
“Tennyson?” I laughed. “Was that a test?”
“Oh no. I don’t do tests of that sort. They’re too crude. But I’m glad more than ever that father brought me to Greece.” She took one of his cards from her handbag and wrote her name on the back. I put it into my wallet, between Sophie’s and the one I’d cajoled out of Marie the French girl. “Perhaps we’ll see each other in the morning.”
“Yes, please. I’d like that.”
When my hand was at the door she smiled slyly. “Do you know, Michael, when I saw you in the car letting my father into the queue I said to myself: ‘I’m going to have that man, if at all possible.’ And I did, didn’t I?”
We laughed together. “The devil you did,” I said, giving her a last well-meant kiss.
I made my way to the place where we’d met on deck, and backtracked to find my cabin. I was too done in to undress but I did. My bunk was so far under the water level that the rush and gurgle seemed to be on all sides, and I worried that the sea would break in at any second. When a baby began to choke beyond the plywood partition I uncharitably hoped it would get the fit over with or die, then went to oblivion floating on a twelve-inch plank towards the Zambesi Falls.
Chapter Thirteen
When the steward knocked at six to say we’d be landing in an hour Bill dressed as quickly as only a soldier could. “Where were you last night?”
“On deck,” I told him, “getting a breath of air.”
“What, till four o’clock?”
“How did you know?”
“I sleep with one eye closed and one eye open. And you stank like Grimsby with the trawlers in.”
The subject of Rachel was too precious, so I said nothing, smoothed my suit, and followed him to breakfast before we could be called to the car deck.
A few tables away, she made a discreet move of a hand before biting into a bun. She looked tired, but happy. Her father had his back to me, but he noticed, and turned to give as much of a smile as could be mustered so early on. Was it for having let him into the car queue, or for my responsibility in sparking up his daughter’s features?
Bill finished his roll, and lifted my bun. “So it was her you were with? I always knew you had good taste.”
To stop Rachel’s father coming across and hearing Bill twitting me I went to their table. “I’d like to wish you a good journey back to England, sir.”
He was dressed for travel, a pepper and salt three-piece suit, a watch in his waistcoat pocket, well polished boots, and a floral tie. His semi-tragic sensitive eyes were the same as Rachel’s, though lit by middle-aged kindness and self-assurance. He looked as if he’d been something of a seducer himself at one time, and even now must have had a charming bedside way with his patients.
I offered a hand and told him my name, and at the flicker of his eyes thought he well knew the state between me and Rachel. “It was quite a scramble at the dock gates last night.”
He spread butter on his roll. “Thank you for letting me into the line. I appreciated it, though I was about to battle in myself.”
I had nothing to linger for, and didn’t want to, so wished them luck, and went back to my table. “You have all the luck,” Bill said.
“And you know why?” I sat down. “I’m subtle and understanding in dealing with women. I don’t go at it like a bull at a gate. Hey, where’s my breakfast?”
“You were getting on so well I didn’t think you’d be coming back.”
“You freebooting swine.” The coffee had all gone, as well. “I’m not a founder member of Weight Watchers. I’m starving.” I waved the waiter to bring another breakfast, but he pointed to the tanoy telling everybody to go on deck and have their passports stamped.
Heavy rain was sheeting over Brindisi, as if cleaning it for tomorrow when we wouldn’t be there. After queuing an hour in a corridor to get the inspection done we went to the car deck and waited again. I’d thought we would drive straight off, through the town and away, but there was a long trail of cars leading to the customs post.
“I’m not looking forward to this bit,” Bill said.
His comment made me nervous. “You haven’t got anything they shouldn’t see, have you?”
He showed the handgun thieved from the hatchback. “Only this little toy.”
My heart beat so fast I wanted to jump over the quayside and drown myself. “For God’s sake hide it.”
“Don’t get so worried.” He put it under the seat. “Anyway, what do you think is in the parcels and carrierbags they filled the boot up with in Greece? Beecham’s Powders? My handgun’s a mere bagatelle compared to that. I can’t understand, letting a little thing like a gun get on your wick. Or the powder packets, come to that. Don’t you remember all the gold and drugs we shifted in the past? It never bothered me.”
The pictures of being led away in leg irons by the carabinieri, with Rachel and her father looking on, then getting thrown into a helicopter and taken to Rome, where we’d get forty years apiece on the Island of Monte Cristo, quite frankly appalled me.
“Don’t you remember how we had our own book of rules when it came to smuggling gold bars?” Bill said, as we waited to go through what I could only think of as a meat grinder. “Maybe tactics have changed, but in those days the weekend was a bad time. The customs men tended to rely more on intuition as the crowds came through. They were on overtime, and had to justify it. Some smugglers didn’t realise that to go through from Monday to Wednesday when it was slack was also bad because they’d spot you a mile off, out of boredom. Thursday was best, I can’t think why. Probably they were still pleasantly making up their minds about what to do at the weekend. Another rule was don’t look too much like a smuggler, and never sport binoculars around your neck in their leather case, or shoulder a tennis racket, and certainly don’t swing a butterfly net. If you must wear a pocket watch carry it in your lapel, not strung across your waistcoat. And when you go through the Nothing to Declare channel try not to have the fact of what’s in your poacher’s pockets too much on your mind. Don’t, for instance, consciously look away from the customs man, and don’t try to stare him out, either. They may be the scum of the earth but they’re only doing their jobs.”