"How else should I talk?" he asked brutally. "You want sweet talk?You? Don't make me laugh!" He looked down at the roll of bills. "How much is there here?"
"I don't know," she said. "I never—"
He twisted her thin arm again. Hurting her, he was at last hurting the cab-driver, hurting the world. "How much?"
"Oh, please! About five hundred dollars."
"You're worth more than that." He was beginning to enjoy himself, in a way which had never happened to him before. He brought his face closer to hers. "You wouldn't get everybody to agree, but I say you're worth more than that. Not at strip-tease, maybe, not like Miss America, but in other ways. . . . You want me to ring the bell, call that stewardess, let her see me like this?"
"No, no!" Shame and fear combined to render her powerless. "What do you want? I haven't any more money."
"Jewellery," he said. He had already appraised what she had, during the past fortnight; indeed, they had talked about it and admired it, like two old friends; he knew exactly what he would take. "The two bracelets. The clips. The sapphire ear-rings and the rubies. The big solitaire ring. You can keep that necklace. It's lousy!" And as a new horror dawned on her face, he said, with frightful menace: "Get them! Or by Christ I'll run out of here naked!"
"But my husband gave them to me," she said pitifully.
"I'll bet that's all he gave you. For years. Isn't that the truth?"
She covered her face with her free hand. "Oh God, how can you say things like that?" She was crying now; ridiculous tears coursed down her face, bringing ruin to the careful make-up. In a shaking voice she said: "You told me you loved me."
"Don't make me laugh!"
She had not heard him; she had retreated into a pathetic, belated world of school-girl common sense.
I always knew you were no good. . . . Your eyes are too close together----Mother always said—"
Mother!" He put such crude savagery into the word that she was forced to look up. "Mother! How old is mother, for Christ's sake?"
"My mother has passed on."
"By popular request." He rose swiftly from the bed, and stood over her, buttoning his shirt. The action itself had an obscene connotation; she had imagined sailors doing that, leaving a girl as soon as they had 'finished', walking away with a rolling self-satisfaction. . . . "We're wasting time. Give me the jewellery. And if you ever breathe a word to anyone—"
"It's Mrs. Consolini," she said, still clinging to the rags of normality, to anything which would explain the unbelievable insult in compassionate terms. "I've seen her looking at you. . . . Don't deny it! She's been scheming to get you away from me. . . ."
He wanted to say:You've got a point—she's next on the list, but he resisted it. He had to keep up the pressure; he must not let her escape into any other world except the one they stood in now—the secret world of her cabin, the world she was terrified of letting anyone see.
"That's enough," he said roughly. "I don't need any Mrs. Consolini to make me dump you. Work it out. . . . You want me to twist that arm again? You want me to shout for help? Give me the jewellery."
Her grey hair had fallen foolishly over her ravaged face, like a blurred old mask. She pushed it back, and said again: "But you told me you loved me."
"Are you nuts?" He poured into the question all the scorn he could muster: he knew it might be the last pressure he need apply. "Love you? Have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately? Do you know how old I am? Twenty-four. And you? Christ, you must be fifty!"
"I'm forty-one."
"Round the hips."
"Oh God!" she said again. Her tears were beginning to roll afresh; her sobs were like coarse hiccups, rending her whole body. "How can you say things like that? And age doesn't matter—you said so yourself."
"I said a lot of things that make me sweat to think of them. But I'm not saying them any longer. The late late movie's finished." He was ready to go now; the money was in his pocket, the jewellery case within a few feet of him. "You bought me," he said crudely, "and now you've got to pay. Christ, do you think I'd dance with you for anything except money? And a hell of a lot of it, too! Haven't you seen people laughing? Jesus, they think you're my mother— my grandmother! I should be in short pants! And you were aiming to go to bed with me!"
"I wasn't," she said. Her voice was shrill. "I never even thought—"
"You thought about it all the time. You're just a dirty old woman, that's all." He moved swiftly, towards the jewellery case; he plunged his hand in, and drew out what he wanted, piece by piece, while she watched him, horrified, powerless. The stones hardly had time to sparkle before they were dowsed for ever within his pocket. "I'm going now," he told her. "But if you ever breathe a word—"
He had come prepared. He drew out of his other pocket a knife, and flicked it open. Then he advanced the point towards her face, while she watched it, and the light gleaming on the blade, in absolute terror.
"Take a look at this," he said. "I can use it. I've often used it. If you say a word about this—a single word—to anyone—" he punctuated the sentences with twisting stabs, so that the knife seemed to be darting and snaking in and out of her flesh, "I'll come back and carve my name on your face. Your—ugly—old—face."
"Go away," she whispered. "Oh, go away. . . . Take anything— everything. Only go away."
"Now you're talking." The knife flicked shut, and disappeared into his pocket again. He straightened up. "But don't talk any more," he said. "Not to anyone." Then there was silence, and in the silence he was gone.
Left alone, in cruel isolation, in deadly fear still, she thought she was going to faint. She was trembling all over, and her face in the mirror was utterly distraught. Now she did look old. . . . But as her terror receded, it was not anger which was left, or the memory of peril. It was shame. It was scorned love. It was a desolate mourning for her last chance at the cherished might-have-been.
Presently she fell forward on the pillow, where his head had rested, where she could smell his young body, and, for the first time in her life, began to sob as if her heart would break.
5
The lunch-time sessions in the Tapestry Bar were growing longer, as people shed the habits of home and developed a more casual approach to misbehaviour. The weather helped; it grew hotter, as they made their calls at Guadeloupe and Marie-Galante and Dominica; they achieved, as they drew south, a pirate thirst which could only be slaked by the long and potent drinks—rum punch, rum Collins— which seemed appropriate to this part of the world. The bar was always well-patronized by eleven o'clock; at noon, when Edgar closed the daily sweepstake and the figures for the day's run were telephoned down from the bridge, it was packed; and the pre-lunch gaiety often continued until two o'clock, at which time Edgar rang a small and discreet gong, and announced to the assembly: "Ladies and gentlemen—have a heart!"
For those few who, remaining prim, took their lunch at the normal hour, it was quite a sight to watch the entrance of these late-blooming gladiators into the dining-room. Some of the stewards ran a small sweepstake on the last one to arrive. Mrs. van Dooren was always a favourite runner.
In the bar, the talk was easy; clothes for the women, business prospects for the men; modest travellers' tales, and shipboard gossip on the same unchanging themes. They wondered how near Mr. Simms was to dying; they noted that his pretty nurse, Miss Bartlett, found time to charm the officers' table on most evenings; they reported some fresh atrocity on the part of Barry Greenfield; they confessed they didn't know how Mrs. van Dooren kept it up— or down. It was always a shame about Bernice Beddington, who really got more homely every day. It was always a disgrace about the Burrells—people said they weren't even married. It was always odd about the Tillotsons; no one knew anything at all to say about them.