Full Tide

by Celine Conway

  “Heaven forbid. If I smiled it was because as Nancy’s heavy guardian you amuse me. I’m inclined to think it must be an immense boon to you that the child is fairly self-possessed.”

  “It wouldn’t occur to you,” she answered with spirit, “that I’ve had a hand in implanting that self-possession. Believe it or not, Nancy was both nervous and shy when I took her over three years ago. And we’ve never had a single incident like the one at Las Palmas.”

  “You amaze me,” he said calmly. “Maybe it’s a case of exchanged personalities—except that you’re of an age to consider yourself indispensable to a man, and she isn’t. Tell me,” he leaned back upon the teak counter behind which stood the purser’s safe and the steel filing boxes, “how is it going—this tug-of-war between you and Astra Carmichael over Jeremy Carne?”

  She looked up at him, and what she took for a faint sneer at the corners of his mouth made her ache to say something which would stab. But all she could contrive at that moment was a trite retaliation.

  “I’m not fighting for Jeremy. I don’t have to.”

  His voice took an edge. “I wouldn’t be too sure if I were you. Astra has more than her share of charm and she’ll use it to get what she wants. It happens that at the moment she’s set her heart on nailing Jeremy.” As he bent forward his eyes narrowed. “You’re on a loser, my child, and if you have any sense you’ll admit it, and give up. Let the fellow run his own future; you certainly aren’t capable of doing it for him.”

  Lisa didn’t answer at once. She had not expected to have to discuss Jeremy again and could think of nothing new to say. She recalled that Mark had wagered she would fail with the young man, that he would be captured by the glamor of Astra’s proposition.

  “You haven’t won your bet,” she said. “Jeremy’s still half inclined to give up the idea.”

  “I wouldn’t put his inclination at a half. He’s heart and soul for the tinsel but it flatters him to have you so concerned. There’s the personal aspect, too. He can only pretend to make love to Astra, but with you he can taste the real thing ... can’t he?”

  To Lisa just then Mark’s face looked cruel; tanned, tight-jawed and tyrannical. The immaculate white uniform somehow accentuated the spear-like quality of his cruelty. Why should he be so sure that Astra would permit no serious love-making from Jeremy? Because he himself had first rights in her affections?

  The ventilator roared gently in the windowless room, conditioning the air and supplying a murmurous background to chaotic thoughts, but Lisa felt suddenly stifled. Previously, it had been impossible to see Mark as an idealist in love. Her conception had been of a man so utterly in command of himself and others that love in his life would come as a quite pleasant but fairly infrequent diversion.

  But a man’s face does not reflect cruelty unless he is feeling something deeply, and Lisa had the devitalizing conviction that Mark’s cold anger sprang, in some way, from his own desires concerning Astra. Why should he wish to know whether Jeremy philandered with Lisa, if not for the purpose of reassuring himself on the matter of Jeremy and Astra? It was all very bewildering and painful.

  “You’ve gone pink,” he said, his tone smoothed out into satire. “I believe you’ve grown really fond of the lad.”

  “Fond means foolish.”

  “That’s the old-fashioned interpretation. Today, fondness is accepted as a degree of love. It never burns up into anything white-hot, but there’s a type of woman who’s afraid of passion. She just hasn’t got it in her to respond. For her, fondness is enough.”

  “I see. You think I’m one of those!”

  “Could be,” he said, his inflexion of a gentle taunt. “You’re pale and pretty, and by no means sure of yourself, except in connection with Carne’s career.”

  Lisa grew pinker, with exasperation, “A character analysis, and all for nothing. Maybe if I were your age and had travelled as much as you have, I’d be as competent to make lesser fry feel stupid.”

  Possibly her voice quivered on the final word, or maybe it was the fact that she stood up which brought Mark right round to face her. Critically, and without a trace of mockery, he examined her features.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said quickly. “You may be right. Perhaps I’m too experienced to know how to handle a girl of your innocence, too old to have patience with your youth. Sometimes I forget how young you are.” He paused. “You came here this afternoon believing it your duty to assure me that the reward paid out on Nancy’s behalf would be refunded, but the cash, compared with what it achieved, means nothing at all to me. You deal in the small coin of life, but I’ve grown beyond that. You and I could never meet on the same plane if we tried for the rest of our lives—and I hardly think we shall do that! That’s how it is with some people.”

  She nodded dumbly. True, every word of it, just as it was true that he and Astra already existed on one plane and understood the subtleties of each other’s personality.

  He laughed briefly. “Tense, aren’t we? In a couple of weeks you’ll disembark at Durban and I’ll go back to England. A month after that we’ll each have forgotten what the other looked like. That’s life, Lisa.”

  It came to her with a dull and poignant shock that she had known him only a week. Yet all of him, the framework of his face, the deep-set eyes, his hands, his broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped physique, his virility, were indelibly etched in her mind and upon her heart. Odd to think that a man could come to mean so much in so, short a space of time, particularly as she knew so little about him. Possibly love often happened like that, or perhaps after the three drab years at Richmond she was more impressionable than girls who habitually have fun with men.

  “I’m sorry to have taken your time,” she said. “I won’t bother you again.”

  “I rather think you will,” he told her with humor. “I seem to have become entangled in this affair of Carne hitting the footlights, and you’re mixed up in it, too, like it or not. Will you promise me something?”

  “What?”

  “If you’re troubled about anything—anything at all—will you come to me?”

  “I don’t know.” She moved slightly towards the door and hesitated. “Getting in touch with you is like storming a stronghold.”

  “But you’ll agree it’s worth the effort,” he said teasingly. He also took a pace to the door, then paused. “Do me a favor and forget the few pounds we were talking of. There’s no reason why Nancy’s father should ever hear that we regarded it as a grave business. I’ve spoken to Nancy and made her think of it as a comic adventure, and by the time she tells him the episode will have sprouted an aura of romance. He won’t pay much attention to it.”

  “But he’ll see it in the newspapers—may have seen it already.”

  “I doubt it. In Las Palmas they wouldn’t consider the temporary loss of a child sufficiently important to warrant the sending of cables, and I suppressed all mention of it in messages from the ship. The incident may find its way into the passengers’ correspondence, but such news quickly goes stale.”

  “I ... I don’t know what to say. It was through my negligence Nancy was lost. If you’ll let me...”

  She had been on the point of stating that she would repay him the money herself, but at that instant came the overwhelming recollection that her small capital was tied up in England and she wouldn’t be able to do much about it till she got there.

  “Let it lie,” said Mark.

  Matters being as they were, Lisa had no alternative but to concur, for the present. She did not thank him again; her emotions were too near saturation point. When he pulled back the door she stepped out with him. He put on his cap and adjusted it at an angle which had become familiar and dear, and gave her a half-smiling bow and a salute. Without a further word they parted, Lisa to wander through the lounge to the sun deck and Mark towards the bridge.

  She drew a chair to the rail and sat looking through at the green, white-veined sea. Behind her, bathers splashed lazily
and women grumbled about the heat and the impossibility of sleeping as the atmosphere grew hotter and more humid; but Lisa heard nothing.

  It has been said that to owe money is more disquieting than to owe gratitude. That was not true of Lisa. She would have liked to refund the hundred pounds to Mark and was still undecided as to whether or not to make a full statement to Dr. Veness, but that side of it played no havoc with her feelings. It was Mark’s thoughtfulness which rankled; the trouble he had taken to find Nancy and to ensure the minimum of publicity. True, he had the shipping company’s high reputation to safeguard, but only his own personal code could have led him to talk to Nancy like a benign uncle and persuade the child to look back upon Las Palmas as a place where events might happen as they did in the best story books.

  Had he done that for Nancy or for Lisa? Both, probably. He possessed the enviable faculty of looking ahead and visualizing a set of circumstances. Dispassionately he had foreseen awkwardness between Lisa Maxwell and her employer and, because it was in his power to mitigate it, he had acted promptly and in the best way imaginable.

  Lisa sighed, hating the sense of humiliation which continued to cloud her thoughts. The deflating part of it was that Mark would have done as much for' anyone.

  The sun burned across her forearm and stung her sandalled feet, but she was too absorbed in recapturing the things he had said and the way he had looked to pay attention to such trifles.

  What an idiot she had been to agree in effect with every pronouncement he had made. Why shouldn’t there be some plane on which they could meet and comprehend each other, if only for the rest of the voyage? Nothing was impossible. Had he cared just a little, he couldn’t have voiced such an opinion; he would have made common ground. Had he cared!

  But why in the world should he care for a woman passenger who had caused him only trouble? He had a full life and an important job to do. He met different women on every trip, yet not one of them had altered his bachelor state, though a good many must have tried pretty hard.

  What was it Mark wanted in a woman that most of them lacked? Lisa felt she would never know, but was half afraid that Astra Carmichael had a fair supply of the mysterious quality. The woman had everything.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The intense, sultry heat lasted three days. The ship arrowed through a sea of molten green glass and the sky arched overhead, a hazed but cloudless blue. The sunsets were spectacular affairs of scarlet-flame and purple, covering at first three-quarters of the sky but sliding slowly down behind the horizon, a receding celestial canvas. The dawns were gentler, blue tinged with a heavenly pink mist which deepened in hue as the sun climbed into view and finally disappeared into fleecy wisps. There seemed no connection at all between the crisp early sun and the great brazen, thing which mercifully went to rest at six each evening.

  Everyone agreed that the nights were the worst. The ship was very quiet; even the creaking of timbers and bulwarks seemed muted as the Wentworth sailed on serenely, her immensity a speck in the boundless, silvery ocean. The children slept heavily in the soporific darkness, but adults unwisely drank too much and sweated.

  Lisa got up one night and took a stroll along the dimly-lit corridor. All the cabin doors were hooked back and the curtains swung slowly with the movements of the ship, revealing triangular glimpses of the dark, oppressive caverns within. She hadn’t the courage to risk a meeting with the night steward or she would have gone up tot deck where it was surely cooler.

  She heard the faint, resonant chime of one belts the middle watch, and knew the officers on the bridge were changing duty. The engineers were on the job, of course, keeping the great engines running, and a night nurse would be on duty at the hospital cabins; Mrs. Herst said the doctor was watching two cases of “Congo cough” one of septic prickly heat rash. The very next morning Lisa learned from the steward that the night nurse had gone down with enteritis contracted through eating too many sub-tropical fruits from Las Palmas.

  “It lays an awful burden on poor Nurse Bridge,” said Mrs. Herst, prinking the hair which stood up around the edge of her white cap. “Normally when a nurse goes sick they take off a stewardess with nursing experience and share her work among others, but we’re packed to capacity and a couple of stewardesses are off with colds, anyway, so it’s going to be difficult to please everyone.”

  “The passengers will understand,” said Lisa.

  “Some of them, but every alley has its problem child, and I don’t mean one of her size, either,” jerking-a smile at Nancy, “My particular bit of bother is Miss Carmichael. I’ve never known a woman spend so much time in her cabin, and she will leave the door wide while she and that young man shout poetry at one another. Even that wouldn’t be so bad if she didn’t insist that the alley be kept quiet. She’s a cool one, she is.”

  Mrs. Herst was not really grumbling. Astra’s type invariably dispensed good tips at the end of a voyage and the company handed out bonuses for extra work. But what with the heat, which was always hard on the feet, and the fact that the doctor had ordered a special inspection at ten thirty, she was just a little disgruntled.

  Lisa was in her cabin when the doctor made his round. His reddened, lined face poked over the edge of the curtain and he regarded her in his spuriously sleepy manner.

  “Fit?” he shot at her gruffly.

  “Yes, thank you, doctor.” Quickly she laid aside her sewing. “I hope you won’t think this cheek, but I hear your night nurse has gone sick. I’ve had some nursing experience, and if I can be of any assistance...”

  “You can’t!” He qualified the abrupt refusal by adding, “Unless you can prevent these infernal youngsters knocking pieces out of their limbs and eating too much chocolate. Chocolate’s bad in the tropics—over-heating—brings them out in spots which their mothers insist are fever rash.” Lisa thought he had gone, but his face appeared again and he demanded, “How much do you know about nursing?”

  Lisa explained, and ended, “I did the night turn for a month just before I left England. Not alone, of course, because it was the surgical ward, but I know the routine and could carry out instructions. I’d be really glad...”

  “Can’t be done.” He made a gesture of finality and rumbled, “Passengers helping the staff! What next?”

  He really was gone this time, and Lisa was left smiling.

  He was rather an old dear, the kind she had liked best at the hospital. But it was a pity he wouldn’t let her do her bit. She would have loved to have work to do, to know that because she was helping the day nurse would get her full rest and others benefit too. She would also have been glad of the diversion from her own problems. Judged in the light of other people’s sickness they seemed petty and hardly worth bothering with. What did it matter if the treasured black cocktail frock had to be remodelled to resemble evening wear? Or that the aquamarine showed a wine stain from the glass of a clumsy man? At the worst, she would only have to plead a headache and dine here in the cabin, and that might turn out to be a relief. Stripped of its trimmings, life was very simple.

  She went on deck, had a swim, dried out and stepped into shorts and a shirt, and won a game of deck tennis. Each of her victories had astonished Lisa. At other deck sports she was a dud, but in tennis her lightness and speed had pushed her into the singles final, and into the finals of the doubles with Jeremy. To Lisa it was one of those incomprehensible facts; she, who had never excelled in any game, found herself almost the champion of the Wentworth at catching a rope ring and slinging it back over the high net.

  With several others she went below to practise badminton on the covered court. It was here that Mark played at six o’clock every morning with the chief engineer, the purser and the wireless officer. Badminton and a daily swim were all the exercise he could get on board, but they were obviously enough to sustain his extraordinary vitality.

  Lisa hoped, in time, to become as good with, a shuttlecock as with the rope ring.

  Today, while she watched the matches, she tho
ught of several things the friendly purser had told her about Mark. That he played a fast and clever game of lawn tennis, was a strong No. 3 at polo and fitted in a round of golf whenever he could. In London he lived at a club, but he always managed a day or two with a married sister who was a few years his junior and lived at Reading.

  Mark with a young married sister of whom he was fond seemed to Lisa a different person from the man who stood aloof from the passengers of the Wentworth. She wondered if he wrote to her, whether he had a, pet name for her, and if he bantered her when they were together. He had said he was not used to children, so she probably hadn't any yet—or perhaps only a baby who did not pose many problems.

  Lisa found that she liked to think of him in a small comfortable country house, enjoying the domesticity, talking over with his sister her problems and going off for golf with his brother-in-law. They were normal, everyday things and they made him closer and more comprehensible.

  He was austere and withdrawn on the ship because he had to be. A ship’s master has no private life and he is never really off duty. True, he can behave as he pleases, but Mark’s code of behavior was strict and demanding. She got the impression that he unbent against his will, except, perhaps, with Astra. But the actress was an old friend of his; with her he did not so much unbend as slip back into a comradely relationship which had started in days when both of them were young and aspiring. Lisa wished she had known him then; but ten years ago, she reminded herself ruefully, she had been exactly twelve!

  The day patterned itself on those which had gone before. Lunch, at which Jeremy appeared with wild hair, a hoarse voice and an absent-minded smile, an inactive couple of hours till tea, then a game or two partnering Jeremy against other passengers, after which the various groups broke up, to dress for dinner.

  Nancy reported having spent an hour reading the “horse” book aloud to Mrs. Basson.

  “She says horses are sensible creatures. Her son and daughter have one each, and she can ride herself. I bet she jingles.”