Quiller Barracuda

'Would you like some lobster?' the woman asked me.

'To eat?'

'What else would you do with a lobster? Don't tell me you're that kinky.' With a freezing smile, loathing me for even having known Proctor, but still too interested to let me go.

I said I liked lobster.

'Actually she's a tug,' Kim said, 'still is, really, though I've made a few changes.'

We'd put out a couple of miles, as far as the warning buoys on the reef, and dropped anchor.

'She was my father's, his one great love, apart from me. Two-inch oak on double-sawn oak frames, my God, the way they used to do things! She's still registered for coastwise and harbour work. Are you starving?'

'There's no hurry.'

'I've got to catch it first. There's some Scotch in that cupboard, unless you'd like wine. Help yourself.' She went into a berth and came back in a black bikini, hooking the bra and shutting the door with her bare foot. 'Aren't they handsome?' I was looking at the blown-up photographs of sharks all over the cabin. Brushing against me in the close quarters she said, 'I was rude to you back there on the quay.

'Sorry, but he really is such an absolute bastard. I won't be long – you can get some water on the boil if you like, that pan there, half full.'

Over the side in a perfect curve, no splash. The lobster-pot marker bobbed in the ripples.

I kept in the shade, under a canvas awning she'd rigged up aft of the cabin; the sun struck out of a full noon sky and the deck was giving off the smell of pitch. There was the glint of field-glasses again from the stern of the motor-launch that had nosed its way along this side of the reef soon after we'd dropped anchor.

Things had gone better in the night than I'd expected; the hags of Morpheus had been kept back by Ferris's telephone call reporting that Proctor had gone, and there'd only been a couple of hours after that, sometime before dawn, for sleep or nightmares. But there was still a sensitive area in my consciousness that I was deliberately avoiding, because it frightened me. It was about Senator Judd, and the way Ferris had put his question.

I'd face it later, when I had to, when I was forced to: and I would be, I knew that.

'Langouste a la Setoise ,' she said, 'but I think I should have marinated it. Garlic, tomatoes, oil, mainly – the olives are extracurricular because I dote on them. I had a French mother, not French, actually, Belgian. She met my father on the Dover ferry one night in a storm. Lonely people talk a lot, don't they?'

'Do you talk a lot?'

'You haven't noticed?'

'Are you lonely?'

'My God, four questions in a row. Is this any good?'

'C'est exquise.'

After a silence that wasn't obtrusive – 'Lonely in a way, yes, I suppose. Or this is the aftermath. He dropped me flat, only a few weeks ago.'

For Monique.

'You're well rid, aren't you?'

She looked up at me, her green eyes deeper in the shade of the cabin. 'It never really matters, you know, what they're like. He was the only man I've ever loved. Not loved, actually – been obsessed by. Why didn't you just – ' waving her fork – 'come to me and tell me what you wanted?'

'I didn't know how sensitive you might be feeling.'

She watched me for a moment. 'That was nice of you. But it cost you fifty dollars.'

Flash, flash from the launch near the reef.

I hadn't answered, and she said, 'You told me he's "gone". You mean cleared out altogether?'

'He took all his things.'

'But you said you'd been talking to him yesterday. He went last night?'

'Yes.'

'This really calls for the Chablis, you know.'

'I have to keep off it.'

'Oh. Are you some sort of official, then? I mean is he wanted for anything?'

'Not as far as I know.'

'That's a bloody shame.' Laughing on the outside, crying on the inside. With a big effort that only showed in her voice, lightly, casually – 'Did he talk about me?'

'We were talking business the whole time.'

A gull swooped and perched on the aft rail and she swung her head, then looked back at me. 'But you said he told you I was a good scuba teacher.'

'That was a lie. I couldn't think of a better introduction.'

'An honest liar – that's unusual. Then how did you really find me?'

'He'd cleared out in a hurry and left the flat in a mess, papers all over the place, including some phone bills.'

She was looking at me less often, and listening carefully, her eyes down. 'So how many numbers did you call? The whole lot?'

The one he'd called the most often, first.'

'Mine.'

'Yes'.

Looking away, 'There wasn't another number, since then, that he'd called often?'

'No.' She didn't want to know about Monique.

'Well it won't be long.' Pouring herself some more wine – 'So you found my phone number, but you didn't call me.'

'I got your answering machine.'

'And didn't leave a message.'

'You're listed.'

She drank some wine. 'I'm a careful soul, you see, and when a man comes here for lessons and uses his gear like an expert I want to know more.' She looked up at last. 'And I think I believe most of what you've said. Have you ever been rejected, Richard?'

'It happens all the time.'

'I doubt that,' holding my eyes for a moment. 'It's not the missing so much, the sex and all that. It's the colossal blow to the ego. You know? I mean I can find another man, the place is full of them – but even that isn't certain any more. He's made me suddenly feel unattractive, and I sense you're the rare kind of man who knows what that does to a woman.'

'It doesn't take a lot of imagination. But you ought to get that thought right out of your head. I've never been so close to a more attractive woman in my life.'

'Look, I wasn't – '

'I know.'

'Well it's always nice to hear.' She looked away at the reef. 'He's dangerous, did you know that? I don't just mean to women.'

'All I know is that he's in my debt.'

'Owes you money?'

'Yes.'

'That's why you want to find him?'

'Can you think of a better reason?'

'No, but there might be one.' She put down her knife and fork. 'Did I pass?'

'It was superb.'

'You can thank my mother. Does it sound as if I'm always fishing for compliments?'

'No, but women have to in a man's world.'

'God's truth.' She began clearing the table. "There's some fruit in the fridge. Smoke if you want to. Are they friends of yours?'

'Who?'

'The people over there with the field glasses.'

'In the launch?'

'Yes.'

'I hadn't noticed.'

'I think you had.' She brought a bowl of peaches.

'I don't want to sound cute, but with you diving for lobsters I'm not surprised there are some field glasses around.'

'My God, that was the fifties. They do it, these days, they don't just look.'

'Then they'll have to start just looking again.'

'That's true. It's frightening.' She sliced a peach. 'I suppose it's a way of keeping the population down. Are you in the same kind of business?'

'The same -?'

'As George Proctor.'

'Advertising, yes.'

'You live in the States?'

'No.'

'So you're not interested in the election. These aren't ripe, I wouldn't bother.'

'I don't know a lot about it, but I hope Judd gets in.'

She looked up quickly. 'He's got to. Mathieson Judd is not to be underestimated. He's a statesman with a world view that we haven't seen since Nixon, and he's not a megalomaniac. He'll get in. He's got to get in.'

She stopped, but I didn't say anything. She didn't want me to, wasn't looking at me: she'd withdrawn into herself. 'It's not just the Americans who are concerned, this time – the whole world's involved, and much more than usual when there's a change of administration here. I very much hope the Thatcher government realises what we've got in Mathieson Judd, because the outcome of this election's going to have a major effect on the UK.'