Tim suddenly reached over and gave her a very precise, very firm, not too harsh slap on the side of her face. The slight sting was just enough to astonish her, to stop her in mid-sentence. She blinked, and when she could listen again, it was Tim who was doing the talking.
"That's the first of many," he told her cheerfully, "if you talk to me like that." Swiftly he had grown up again, to a person, to a man; it was the yearning of love which had diminished him, and now he was not going to be diminished any longer. "Now just you listen to me, and stop being so hopelessly disorganized. ... Of course I want to make love to you—" he pointed, "—in that very bunk, which is just big enough for what I have in mind. We loved it last time, and we'll love it again. I'm not ashamed of that. Nor are you." He took her by the shoulders; he was as strong, at least, as Carl. . . . "I don't know why you're talking like this, Kathy, and I don't want to know—I've forgotten it already. You can't scare me. . . . But just you remember a couple of things. One—" he shook her, "I don't mind what you've done in the past. It hasn't changed you or spoiled you—we found that out by the dam. You have a future, and I am in it. Two—" another shake, "—I am not going to stop being a sailor, just because you don't like it. You're going to make the change. It's not so terrible, anyway. And three—" but here his voice altered subtly, not towards weakness but towards cherishing, "—will you please be careful? You and the others, I mean. I don't want to lose you at Durban. I want to talk to you, and kiss you, and maybe go to bed with you, all the way back to New York. But if you want to save going to bed with me until we're married, that's perfectly all right with me."
She looked up at him. Out of all the surprises, she chose the biggest one of all.
"You knew, then."
"Yes."
"Who else knows?"
"We all do, pretty well." He smiled, and then he kissed her without any possibility of a denial. "I told you that the past doesn't matter. . . . And now," he ended, "the time being twelve-thirty, I'm taking you half-way back to your cabin, and I hope you sleep as well as I do. I'd like to be doing it with you, Kathy, but confidentially, the bunk is hell."
8
Though it was mid-morning, and the upper decks of the Alcestis were crowded with people taking long-distance photographs of the hundred-mile range of blue mountains far away on the port beam, Carl was still in bed, staring fixedly at the ceiling, when Kathy came to see him. She stood at the doorway, surprised, and then, moving forward, said: "I'm sorry, Carl. I thought you would be up."
He was smoking. He watched a spiral of smoke drift upwards towards the fans before he answered:
"You don't have to apologize for coming into my room. At least, you used not to apologize, two months ago."
Warned by his tone, which indicated a difficult mood, she said lightly: "Well, itis your room. . . . We're just coming up to Port Elizabeth. It really is lovely. You ought to get up and take a look at it."
After the same sort of loaded pause, he asked: "What's Port Elizabeth, for God's sake?"
"Just a place, I suppose." She had taken a cigarette from the box on the side-table, and was lighting it. When she had finished she said: "It's half-way to Durban."
He raised himself on his elbow, and looked across at her. He was frowning. She had been wrong about his mood, she decided instantly; it was not a difficult mood, it was a hideous one. But she was still not prepared for the extreme sarcasm with which he said:
"Thank you for coming to tell me that we are now half-way to Durban."
For some reason, Kathy felt brave this morning. Perhaps it was a chance feeling, perhaps it was the first of many brave mornings. But whatever its origin, she felt that it was good enough to take care of Carl, or of anyone else who wanted to impress his personality oe the wretched female race. She looked back at him with equal directness, and answered:
"I came to tell you some other things, too. . . . The Tillotson deal is off. I didn't go through with it."
He raised his eyebrows. "Why not?"
"There's no special reason.... I didn't want to, I suppose. Anyway, I've told him it's no good."
After a moment, Carl said: "You are lucky to be able to pick and choose."
But she was not going to take that; not on this morning, perhaps not on any morning. "Carl, do tell the truth," she said, rather sharply. "Did you actually want me to sleep with him? For five thousand dollars, or whatever he would have paid?"
"I would always want you to make five thousand dollars," said Carl, without expression.
"Carl!"
"Yes?"
"Don't talk like that! Answer what I asked!"
His eyes were positively murderous as he said: "You will not give me orders! Thatwas my answer."
It was a mood she could not deal with: all she could do was to remain unaffected by it. She shrugged her shoulders. "All right. . . . If you don't want to be honest . . . Tim Mansell says that all the officers know about us."
Carl, in a brief change of humour, laughed sardonically. He had imagined that the Captain would probably put out some sort of general alarm; but it amused him that the news should come from this innocent source.
"That should take care of your other problem."
Warily she asked: "What does that mean?"
"You are suddenly very obtuse," he snapped. His manner changed again, becoming charged with the spite she had been aware of earlier. "I would presume that your young sailor friend thought of you as a combination of Venus, Madame Curie, and one of the more dependable Vestal virgins. If he 'knows about you', as you put it, what does that do to this ideal dream of love?" Carl expelled some smoke towards the ceiling. "I can visualize a slight but perceptible cloud coming between him and the sacred vision."
Kathy said, almost without thinking: "Perhaps there's less to know about me than about the others."
"You have obviously taken good care of that."
She came back to hard reality. "Oh Carl, you're impossible when you're in this mood!"
"Jesus God!" he burst out suddenly. "What sort of a mood do you expect?" He turned again and looked at her, with venomous concentration. "All right—you haven't slept with Tillotson, and you haven't slept with that stupid child in the white uniform! What do you expect me to do? Burst into tears? Call for champagne? Here we have one of the smoothest operations of its kind ever planned —it was working like a dream—and then suddenly it falls to bits, and instead of cleaning up we'll be lucky if we break even—in fact we'll be lucky if we keep out of jail. . . . What do you expect me to do?" he repeated. In the warm air, his tense body was sweating. "You come here and tell me, we're half-way to Durban! Do you think I don't know it?"
Even as he spoke, she knew that she must help him. There had been many changes during the past two months; some people had grown, others had diminished, others yet had changed their area of vision, so that they could hardly remember the past and had a new hope of the future. She herself could claim to be in this category, and, try as she would, she could not be ashamed of it. But when she was with Carl, the strands of the past were bound to pull her back. She was with him now. It was when he said the word "Durban", on that note of foreboding, as if it were in truth the end of the road for him, that she felt most guilty and most responsible.
On an impulse, she crossed the cabin, and sat down on the side of his bed. There, putting her hand lightly on his arm, she said: