An Unsuitable Wife

by Lindsay Armstrong

  Fortunately Mike, whom she’d decided to let sleep a bit longer because of the time she’d taken up having the finer points of test piloting explained to her, was up on deck immediately.

  ‘It came really suddenly,’ she tried to explain, above the wind.

  ‘Mmm…’ He looked around intently. ‘Listen, we’re in for a rough ride. I’m going to get all these sheets down and try to rig-up a storm sail. Start the motor and hold her into the wind as best you can.’

  ‘Romeo,’ she said obediently.

  ‘And, while you’ve got the chance, call up Mackay Air Sea Rescue, give them our position and let them know the conditions—I think our best bet is still to run for Percy; tell them we’ll call back if there’s any change.’

  Thirty tense minutes later he slid into the cockpit beside her and took the wheel. Her fingers were white with strain. ‘I’ve got her.’

  ‘You’re soaked.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter—well, why don’t you pop down into the cabin, make things as fast as you can then bring up a dry shirt and a waterproof?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Sid?’ he said just as she was about to slip down the ladder. She looked up at him. ‘Thanks—for not panicking yet, I mean.’

  She blushed with pleasure.

  It took them four hours to reach Middle Percy, four highly uncomfortable hours when there were times, she had to be honest, when she was frightened stiff but refused to give way to it. She’d never seen seas as big nor heard a wind howl quite as devilishly; she wasn’t sure how, as they slipped into one great trough after another, Mike managed to control Morning Mist and guessed it was pure seamanship and strength.

  It was all she could do not to burst into tears when the bulk of an island loomed up ahead and he said, ‘Middle Percy; we should get some protection under its northern lee but I think, as I hoped, this squall is passing us by now.’

  And it wasn’t until they were safely anchored under the lee of Middle Percy that she went below, looked around at the chaos, and could restrain the tears no longer.

  ‘Hey,’ he said softly, coming down behind her, ‘it will clean up, it’s only superficial.’ He rescued some apples and oranges and began stacking all the books that had fallen out.

  She scrubbed at her eyes furiously. ‘I’m not really crying.’

  ‘You’re allowed to,’ he said with a grin. ‘Do you think I wasn’t scared?’

  ‘You didn’t show it.’

  ‘Nevertheless the man who isn’t scared of what the sea can do is only an idiot.’ He straightened, looked at her anxious expression then came over and hugged her briefly. ‘Make us a cup of tea—no, that was definitely a rum and Coke trip in best seafaring traditions. I’ll get it. Sit down and relax.’

  She didn’t, of course. She went on tidying up until he put a glass into her hands and propelled her to the settee. ‘We’ll stay here a couple of days. I’d like to check the boat out from stem to stern. That was a pretty solid initiation but I thought she handled it well.’

  Sidonie brightened. ‘I’ll help.’

  And the rum and Coke helped so that she was able to laugh when she went into her bathroom and discovered her shampoo had not so much leaked but plastered itself liberally over walls, floor and ceiling.

  ‘At least it smells nice,’ she said wryly to Mike, ‘if a bit overpoweringly so.’

  ‘Mmm…Like a flower garden. Like your hair,’ he said lightly. And it was as if her heart moved slightly, like a shy bird ruffling its feathers then going back to sleep.

  So they worked all day the next day restoring Morning Mist to shipshape, combing the engine, checking the bilges and repairing the self-furling mechanism of the foresail, which had jammed, fortunately after the sail had been furled. But the next day when the Wind swung back to a northerly they moved round the island to Whites Bay and had a lay day. They went ashore to explore and Sidonie was fascinated by Middle Percy.

  One of the outer islands within the reef and Well south of the Whitsundays, it had a different air to it, she told Mike. You really felt you were in the middle of a great ocean; the rocks around the beach and in the bay had strange, wind-eroded shapes and it was one of those exciting places, possibly like visiting Easter Island, she said she felt.

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ he replied as they climbed a huge smooth sand dune littered with some weird and wonderful silvery driftwood. ‘I’ve never come across any strange stone monoliths with enigmatic expressions.’

  ‘You’re being deliberately unromantic,’ she teased, and stopped suddenly, her eyes widening as they reached the plateau of the dune. ‘Look at that,’ she whispered and put her hand into his suddenly. ‘That’ was a single line of huge footprints in the sand. ‘What could it possibly be?’

  ‘Well, now——a yeti?’ It was his turn to tease.

  ‘No, Mike, I’m serious,’ she said reproachfully. ‘Those are not human footprints, they don’t come from the beach and there’s nothing but scrub then rocks and that peak behind.’ She gestured to where the bulk of Middle Percy rose to the skyline.

  He laughed. ‘I’d love to be able to tell you there’s a legend of an Abominable Sandman who lives here but in fact the White family, whom this bay is named after, lived here for years and ran stock on the island——it’s probably a very large goat gone bush or a cow.’

  She relaxed her grip on his hand a bit and sighed whimsically. ‘So much for romance.’

  ‘Well, wild cows and goats can be a bit of a handful, you know.’

  ‘It’s not the same,’ she said grandly.

  But that night, as they sat in the cockpit and the moon shone over the dunes, making them white with black fringes, and curlews cried mournfully, she told him she’d had her faith restored in Middle Percy.

  ‘It’s——for some reason, it really gets to me,’ she said wonderingly.

  ‘I must admit I have a soft spot for it myself,’ he conceded.

  They sat in silence and the water lapped gently against the hull and Sidonie thought of the wide dark water around them and was lost in her imaginings, which inexplicably turned sad. Which was probably how, when Mike suggested it was time for bed, she was so preoccupied with an upsurge of grief solely to do with the magic of this world and him as its central pivot that she missed her footing as she went down the ladder, fell, hit her head on the side of the chart table and knocked herself out briefly.

  ‘Sid?’

  Her lashes fluttered up uncertainly; she discovered she was in his arms in his lap and he was staring down at her with a frown of concern.

  ‘Oh…’ It all came back to her and she tried to sit up. ‘What a stupid thing to do. I don’t think I’ve done any damage—I must have been daydreaming,’ she said shakenly.

  He breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Don’t,’ he said briefly and stilled her urgent movements. ‘You could have concussion. Does your head hurt?’

  She lay back and felt her head tentatively. There was already a bump above her left temple. ‘Not yet—too much,’ she said cautiously, and felt his fingers follow the path hers had, find the bump and she winced.

  ‘You’re going to have the proverbial lump like an egg for a day or two and a bit of a headache. Any other symptoms like double vision or feeling cold?’

  She blinked experiment ally. ‘No, no double vision.’

  But she shivered suddenly, although she said, ‘That’s probably just a bit of shock; I’ll be fine.’ And she tried to sit up again. ‘

  ‘Where the hell do you think you’re going?’ he said exasperatedly.

  ‘Well, I can’t stay here——’

  ‘Of course you can, just do as you’re told,’ he ordered.

  She subsided.

  ‘What were you daydreaming about, in the middle of the night?’ he asked after a while.

  She was silent, her cheek resting on his shirt, his heart beating steadily beneath it.

  ‘Sid?’ He smoothed her hair gently.

  ‘All sorts of things,’ she sai
d with an effort and closed her eyes on foolish tears. ‘I’d rather not talk about it,’ she added barely audibly.

  She thought he sighed. ‘This?’ he said very quietly, and touched her face with his fingers.

  ‘No, Mike,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve never let myself do that, not really.’ And it was true that she’d refused to allow herself to make that great leap in her imagination to being his lover.

  ‘All the same,’ he said gently, ‘it seems to be more than I can do to let you be sad and lonely—with a sore head as well.’

  She moved her cheek. ‘I’m fine really.’

  ‘Well, maybe this will make you finer.’ And he got up with her and carried her into his cabin and laid her on the double bed.

  ‘Mike…?’ Her eyes were huge.

  ‘No, I’m not going to do anything like that; relax, Sid—how many times have I told you that?’

  ‘Quite a lot.’ She bit her lip.

  ‘What I had in mind was swapping beds with you tonight; this is much more comfortable, plus I can sit here—’ he indicated the small armchair ‘—and read you nonsense stories until you go to sleep.’

  She did relax a bit then. ‘Oh! But you don’t have to and I think you might be a bit too tall for my bunk.’

  ‘I can sleep anywhere,’ he said wryly. ‘Don’t go away.’

  He came back some minutes later, with her book of Edward Lear and her pyjamas. ‘Hop into these and I’ll make us something to drink.’

  She got up cautiously and changed into her pink tailored pyjamas, felt a bit dizzy so she stared at the bed, then, as she heard him coming back, slid beneath the covers.

  This time he brought with him two steaming cups of cocoa. ‘Warm enough now?’

  ‘Yes. Look, thanks very much for all this,’ she said shyly. ‘I hate to be a nuisance.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, in some respects, you couldn’t be less of a nuisance if you tried.’ He opened the book and his lips twitched. ‘It’s years since I’ve read this. I take it this bookmark is where you got up to the other night?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, here goes; listen, prop yourself up a bit and drink your cocoa—I think it’s supposed to help for shock—and in the meantime I shall start to declaim.’

  He read well and after she’d finished her drink Sidonie slid back down and rested her cheek on her hand and listened with drowsy pleasure. Then her eyelids closed and, imperceptibly, she fell asleep. So she didn’t hear him get up and stand beside the bed for a while as he gazed down at her, at the mass of her cornsilk hair curling on the pillow, the pale pink of her lips and the fine, faintly golden skin of her arms and neck. Nor did she hear him say, ‘Though you may not realise it, my friend Sid, there are times when you remind of a thorny but sweet, wild, little rose—what am I going to do with you?’

  The next morning she not only had a bump but a livid bruise just below her hairline, and a headache.

  ‘Stay put,’ Mike commanded when he came in just after she’d woken to check on her.

  ‘But I can’t stay in bed all day,’ she protested.

  ‘I’ll bring you something for the headache and you’ll stay in bed until it clears up—just do as you’re told, Sidonie.’

  She opened her mouth, read the determination in his eyes and said meekly instead, ‘What kind of a day is it?’

  ‘Overcast and it’ll probably rain—you couldn’t have chosen a better day for it.’

  She subsided and half an hour later he brought her breakfast. Rain was indeed hammering on the deck. But despite her doubts about spending the day in bed it turned out to be a comfortable, homely day. They played Scrabble once her headache had cleared up, she had a long sleep after lunch, and as it still poured while the afternoon turned to a murky dusk he told her some more about his job, and the cottage he rented in rural England not far from where he worked, and the dog he owned and had to board out with friends whenever he came to Australia, to its utmost chagrin.

  She said, ‘Will you ever come back here to live, do you think?’

  He shrugged. ‘Probably.’ And didn’t sound as if he cared to enlarge at all.

  She said no more but after dinner he let her get up and put a video on—they could get no television in this remote area—and it seemed perfectly natural when he sat down beside her on the settee and put his arm casually round her shoulder. Natural and friendly and she didn’t realise that she looked particularly like a stray waif in her pink pyjamas with that dark bruise on her forehead. Nor when the movie, which was a thriller, got to a very exciting stage and she was watching with bated breath did it seem odd for him to look down at her wryly and kiss the top of her head lightly as he said, ‘I don’t know if this was a very good idea; you might have nightmares.’

  She laughed and snuggled closer to him quite unconsciously. And that was how she stayed until the movie finished, when she came back to earth with a crash and realised it was the loveliest thing to be close to him as she was but she wasn’t sure how it had happened or, even more particularly, why he had allowed it to happen. So she lifted her head and there was sheer consternation in her eyes but instead of moving her away or saying something to break the spell he hesitated, touched one finger to her parted lips then bent his head and kissed them.

  ‘Sweet Sid,’ he said a long time later, very quietly, ‘I shouldn’t have done that.’

  ‘No…’ She looked away confusedly, still bemused by the wonder of her first real kiss, because she’d never felt like this in her life before, although she’d had a few intimations of the sheer sensual wonder Mike Brennan aroused in her before she’d clamped down on those kind of thoughts. Now it was impossible, she discovered. Impossible to be unaware of the sensations in her own body and unaware of his, impossible not to think of him making love to her, touching her breasts, which felt tight and expectant, and not to think of touching herself to him with no clothes between them…

  He drew her head back on to his shoulder. ‘But now it is done—do you really regret it?’

  ‘How could I?’ she said huskily, which was true but she was also unable to think of anything else to say, yet she forced herself to make the effort. ‘I didn’t exactly fight you off so I’m as much to blame, I expect, if anything—if it shouldn’t have been done…’

  She trailed off uncertainly.

  ‘No.’ He took her hand and fitted his fingers through hers. ‘I’m afraid the blame’s all mine.’

  ‘When you say that…’ she paused ‘…it’s very hard to know what to think.’

  ‘Well, tell me some of your thoughts on the subject,’ he prompted and rubbed his chin on her hair.

  ‘Mike…’ she tried to gather the threads of her thoughts, which wasn’t at all easy when all she wanted to do was bury herself against him and be held even closer ‘… it was true what I told you last night. I’ve never really let myself think about… this. There are probably two good reasons for that—I don’t have the experience or that kind of imagination for it, or I didn’t… And I knew…I’d only get more hurt if I did. That’s one set of thoughts,’ she said, and swallowed.

  ‘Go on.’ He pressed her fingers gently.

  ‘And you made it so plain you didn’t think of me in this way,’ she said in a rush, ‘that now I’m really confused.’

  ‘Sid,’ he said, rather bleakly, she thought, ‘I was wrong. Your—charm has been growing on me. What overlaid it was the fact that nothing else I told you has changed.’

  ‘That you’re a lost cause, you mean?’

  ‘That I’m the last person for a girl like you,’ he said sombrely. ‘You’re right about what I do not being as dangerous as it sounds but it’s not an easy occupation to live with either. Perhaps even more—fatal,’ he said after a brief pause, ‘to a stable relationship is that it expresses me perfectly. I don’t like to be tied down. Even my dog knows that,’ he added with considerable irony.

  ‘Who’s to say I would want to tie you down?’ she said—the first words that came to
mind but not spoken in any spirit of defiance, as he must have seen after casting her a frowning little glance.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he queried.

  ‘Well,’ she said, and the way she was concentrating showed in her eyes, ‘I’m not exactly a conventional person myself.’ Despite herself a faint smile touched her lips. ‘I thought that may have been a bit obvious. So,’ she sobered, ‘well, I haven’t suffered from what a lot of girls my age seem to suffer from—yet. Perhaps suffer is the wrong word,’ she said quickly. ‘They may be quite normal and I’m the odd one out—it’s usually that way with me—but what I’m trying to say is that I don’t have any maternal pangs, although I like kids; I haven’t been plagued by any…visions of domestic bliss with a man, you included—that could even be a sure road to disaster for me; I haven’t—’

  ‘Sid, stop,’ he said with a laugh.

  ‘It’s true!’

  It was his turn to sober. ‘It may be,’ he said quietly, ‘but they could still come. And I have to point out to you that you treat Morning Mist like a precious home.’

  She bit her lip. ‘It’s still only a boat, though,’ she said uncertainly after a moment of thought. ‘And I think the home bit is in my heart,’ she added with unconscious wisdom. ‘I guess what I’m trying to say is, I can do without conventional homes, even conventional relationships.’ She stopped and sighed.

  He was silent for so long that she stirred at last and looked up at him. ‘Mike?’

  ‘Sid,’ he said abruptly, ‘does what happened with Karen mean nothing to you?’

  ‘Do you mean,’ she said slowly, ‘that I should be afraid of what kind of man you are because of it? I’m not.’

  ‘You should be,’ he said roughly, then, ‘Oh, hell,’ and gathered her up into his arms. ‘You’re so bloody sane in things that really matter, you’re so unpretentious and unlike every other woman I’ve known—there are some things I can’t help loving about you. Not the least being that you’re without the slightest artifice, you wouldn’t know how to be sexy and come-hither if you tried, you’re as delicate and pretty in your own way…as a wild rose, and it’s like a breath of pure fresh air! But it can’t last, not with me.’ And his blue eyes were curiously tormented as he stared down at her.