by Isobel Chace
She put the finishing touches to her icing with a steady hand.
“Well, that’s that,” she said. “I’m off back to bed now.”
He stood up, stubbing out his cigarette as he did so.
“Nineteen is still pretty young," he said. “You might remember that I have to think of that all the time. Seamus wants only the best for his daughter.”
She screwed up her face.
“My mother was already married at nineteen,” she said pertly.
“Exactly,” he said dryly.
Sleep was elusive when Charlotte got back to her cabin. She had washed and dried the bowls she had used in the galley, and when she had come back, Nick had gone up, on deck. Within a few seconds she had slipped between the sheets on her bunk, but her mind was too full of the moon and the stars and she kept going over what Nick had said, and each time she did so it made less and less sense.
Why did he have to remember that she was only nineteen? She turned restlessly. Could he be right about her singing? She thought ruefully that he probably was. The enthusiasm that had kept her so single minded about it for so long had been her mother’s far more than hers. It must have been so, for frankly, the thought of going back to it appalled her.
She saw the dawn, half awake and half asleep, and then it was possible to distinguish a black thread from a white one, she heard Fahad and Youssef arise to pray and the dull thud of their bodies as they threw themselves back on the deck again to sleep some more. The day was just beginning, and Seamus was forty-six years old. Charlotte was quite glad when it was at last time to get up. She made tea and took a cup to her father, knocking lightly on his door.
“Come in,” Seamus granted.
She pushed open the door and put her head round it.
“Many happy returns, Dad.”
He sat up and smiled at her, his hair all ruffled up so that she could see the patches of grey in it that were so much less evident when he had it brushed down.
“Hullo, Charlotte. What kind of day is it?”
“Hot. Absolutely no wind. It dropped at dawn, so they started up the engines.”
He nodded.
“Good enough.” He sipped at his tea, looking at her over the top of his cup with twinkling eyes. “Did I hear you and Nick talking half the night?”
“We talked a little,” she admitted. “I was making your birthday present.”
Seamus chuckled.
“Is that so?” he asked. “Well now, I had thought you might have had other things to talk about.”
Charlotte gave him an exasperated look. “Don’t you want to know what your birthday present is?” she demanded.
Her father laughed.
“Can’t you wait to tell me?” he teased her.
She drew herself up to a more dignified height. “Now, just for that I shan’t tell you,” she informed him loftily. “I shall go and get the breakfast instead!”
Fahad was already in the galley, his eyes sticking out like organ stops when he saw the cake she had made. He was busy boiling eggs, so she left him to it and went up on deck to try to find a little breeze, it was so hot down below.
Nick had been developing some of his films and there were the first stills hanging up in the sun to dry, held to a piece of string by a series of clothes-pegs. She smiled at the homely effect this gave to the uncommon sight. These would be the first copies, hurriedly made so that her father could peer at them over breakfast, a reward that they had all been looking forward to.
She felt she was cheating as she wandered down the line, looking at the strange sights that their cameras had recorded. Unless flash had been used, she noticed, the sea acted as a filter in all the colored prints, washing out the other colors of the spectrum and leaving everything a light, mysterious blue. She had to admit that she was more interested in the shots of Nick and Seamus and one or two of herself, looking strangely glamorous in her mermaid capacity. There were two of her in her scarlet swimming-suit, one of them with her holding another of the croaking fishes they had found. The prints looked like her, she thought—a little flattering, perhaps, but like her.
“You’ll be able to put that on the cover of your programmes when you’re famous,” a teasing voice said behind her.
She turned and laughed.
“Do you think opera audiences would appreciate that?” she asked.
Jock squinted at it in the sun.
“The male element would, I guess,” he said with enthusiasm. “Shall I take a copy back to Aden with me and pin it up in the mess?”
“You dare!”
He grinned.
“Why not? Some girls would be flattered. When you’re famous you’ll be signing photographs for all your fans, so why not one for me? I’m one of your very first, after all.”
She had a horrid sinking feeling inside her. If she ever did make the grade she supposed that that was exactly what she would have to do. But she would never be enough of an extrovert to enjoy it. She recalled Nick’s distaste when he had had to sign some more photographs for her to send to his unknown admirers. Wasn’t that how she would feel too?
"I don’t suppose I shall ever be as good as all that,” she murmured, and found that she had crossed her fingers for luck, though normally she didn’t believe in signs and omens or anything like that.
Jock regarded her thoughtfully.
“Maybe not,” he said at last. “When I first saw you I had you all staked out as a home-loving girl. I could hardly believe you were the daughter who sang! I don’t think I was so far out either. You’re not the type to like moving round the world as fast as opera singers seem to have to.”
“I might,” she objected. “I’ve always wanted to travel—”
“Then I’d stick to travelling with Nick,” he advised her with brotherly candor. “In the Sea Fever you can carry your home around with you. He’d make you pretty welcome too, I reckon.”
She stared up at the picture of herself with unseeing eyes.
“Would he?” she demanded. “And Monique?”
Some people say that you can tell a man’s character by the way he opens his boiled egg. If that was true, Charlotte thought, all she would have to do would be to watch the others eating breakfast and she would know all about them. In fact, it was very different. Nick used his spoon with a quick, economical movement which told her nothing at all, except that he always moved that way. Her father tapped endlessly all round the egg and only then carefully removed the top with his fingers. Monique used her knife and so did Jock. Charlotte’s mother had always told her that to use a knife was bad manners. She wondered if her father had used a knife before marrying her and whether that was why he still looked slightly awkward wielding a spoon.
“You know, sir,” Jock was saying to Seamus, “your daughter’s nuts!”
Monique gave a stifled giggle.
“Nuts!” she exclaimed. “What is this expression ‘nuts’?”
“Mad,” Jock supplied briefly. “She hasn’t got a clue how fond of her you are. Seems to think you look on her as some kind of cuckoo!”
Charlotte flushed scarlet.
“I don’t, Jock!” she denied hotly.
“Don’t you?” he asked, his eyes bright and unusually serious. “It seems to me that you do, you know. The onlooker seeing most of the game, and all that.”
“Cuckoo means silly also?” Monique asked, struggling to follow the conversation.
“Not in this case,” Nick said. “The cuckoo, if you remember, goes around laying her eggs in other birds’ nests.”
“Ah!” Light suddenly broke as to what they were talking about. “You mean we do not make her welcome?” she accused Jock. “Is it possible? Do you really feel that, cherie?” she demanded of Charlotte.
Charlotte stood up, taking her plate to the galley.
“Of course not,” she said lightly. “It’s Jock who’s nuts!”
She turned away, but not before she saw the look that Monique exchanged with her father.
“I know,” Seamus said heavily. “Sometimes we both find it hard.”
Only Nick was silent.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Charlotte dropped the eggshells overboard and watched the eager fish rise hopefully to the surface, looking for food.
“This ought to be a fisherman’s paradise,” she remarked.
Her father smiled.
“We’re going down after lunch to see if we can get a merou,” he said. “Nick’s been talking about it for days, but today I insisted. There’s nothing quite like fishing with a harpoon, pitting one’s skill against the speed and the strength of a fish as big as that!”
“Is it really very good eating?” she asked. “Nick seemed to think so.”
“Best ever,” Seamus assured her.
They stood in silence looking down at the calm sea below. They had dropped anchor and were as still as it was possible to be, very much “the painted ship upon a painted ocean”.
“You know,” her father said suddenly, “that young man had me worried just now.”
Charlotte smiled lazily down at the water. “You ought to know better,” she chided him. “Jock doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
“But I think I do,” he said gently. “You had a thing about Nick right from the start. That’s the truth of it, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so,” she admitted.
“You should have taken him as he was, not resented him so much. I think I did wrong to bring you on this trip. Your mother always accused me of lacking in imagination. I’m sorry, pet.”
She shook her head, unwanted tears coming into her eyes.
“Don’t be, Dad,” she begged him. “I wouldn’t have missed it for worlds. And Mother wasn’t always right.”
“I guess I'm not qualified to say,” Seamus smiled. “I probably wouldn’t have married her if it hadn’t been for you. One has to pay for one’s sins. I suppose I wasn’t paying hard enough, because she up and took you to New Zealand as soon as she could get the money together.”
“So that’s what happened,” Charlotte breathed. “Thanks for telling me, Dad.”
Her father chuckled.
“You did begin life as a kind of a cuckoo, I reckon,” he said. “Perhaps that’s why young Jock’s remarks got me so on the raw! But you know, the odd thing about the young cuckoo is that it becomes the most popular thing in the nest. Remember that.”
“And so you never married again?” she asked him tentatively.
“I was married,” he replied simply.
Charlotte stood on the deck for a long time after her father had left her. Thinking back, she thought that what he had said explained many things about her mother. She could well imagine her marrying because she had to, and then spending the next two years saving every penny so that she could get away from both her husband and the mistake she had made. Her mother had been a single-minded woman who had never hesitated to cut her losses.
It was perhaps surprising, but at that moment Charlotte felt very close to her mother. She had always adored her, an adoration tinged with both admiration and fear, but now for the first time she felt a warm affection for her. So her mother had not always been that rather perfect, dedicated individual she had known—but how she would have hated her daughter to have known that while she had still been alive. Charlotte smiled to herself. She could understand now why her mother had never mentioned Seamus. It was only remarkable that they had ever known each other at all! Her mother, dainty and determined, always smelling of roses, civilized in a way that Seamus would never, even understand. And she herself, Charlotte supposed, was a mixture of both. She had wanted the things her mother had wanted, but now she had discovered that she wanted the things that Seamus had more. Was that a betrayal? She didn’t think so. Everyone had to find their own standards, she no less than anyone else. She liked to feel the wind and the weather and the tang of a harsh wine on her tongue. It would be difficult to reconcile herself again to the restraint of her mother’s world, to the sophistication of a society where nobody said exactly what they meant.
She hardly noticed When Jock came and stood beside her, she was so lost in her own thoughts.
“You know,” she said, “Dad ought to marry again!”
The young New Zealander gave her an astonished look.
“Maybe he’s working on it,” he said faintly.
“How can he possibly be, way out here?”
“Well, if you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you,’ Jock assured her. “Why don’t you come swimming instead of brooding here? You go and change into your togs and I’ll organize a boat.”
In the end everyone went in for a swim and Youssef gave them a demonstration of his skill at skin-diving. Charlotte put her head under the water and watched him dive away down below her, deeper, for perhaps three minutes before he surfaced, gasping for breath.
Jock nearly drowned himself trying to emulate the Arab, but the most he could do was one minute and a few seconds. Charlotte refused to try.
“I’m hungry!” she announced instead.
“That is because you did not eat your breakfast,” Monique told her seriously, “and if you eat now, you will spoil your lunch.”
“But we could eat something now,” Charlotte suggested, “while we watch Dad open his presents.” She wouldn’t exchange glances with Nick, but she knew that he was laughing at her because she couldn’t wait any longer for her father to see his cake. It had turned out better than she had dared to, hope, looking quite professional with its pink and white icing, and Seamus really liked cake in the same way that children do. She wanted to see his face when she presented him with it.
“Aren’t you hungry, Dad?” she asked slyly.
He grinned.
“Maybe. It depends on what you’re proposing we eat.”
Charlotte looked mysterious.
“I’ll race you back to the boat,” she proffered, and darted off, hoisting herself easily on board the tender, with the others in hot pursuit.
The cake was a success. Seamus cut it up into generous slices, and everybody on board had a piece to wish him good luck in the coming year, with sidelong glances and a good deal of jesting. It occurred to Charlotte that other people besides herself had obviously thought it would be a good idea for him to marry too, for there were a number of veiled references to his single state. She might have thought about it more except that Nick was just beside her and she was unbearably conscious of him, longing to slip her hand into his or just to touch him to make sure he was really there!
“Am I right in thinking that Seamus has at last told you the truth about his marriage?” he asked in her ear.
She nodded.
“And you don’t mind?”
She turned to face him.
“Should I?” she asked.
His eyes teased her.
“Certainly not!” he said. “But losing illusions can be a painful business.”
The corners of her mouth twitched.
“I ought to tell you not to probe,” she sighed, “but you’d only find another way of asking!”
“Mm-hmm,” he agreed. “I’d charm it out of you one way or another. Frankly, I’m curious.”
Her lips twitched again.
“Do you mean to say that you don’t know?” she asked innocently. “Poor Nick! How could Dad have been so remiss as not to have told you all about it?”
An answering glint came into Nick’s eyes.
“Very easily, I imagine,” he said. “However, I’m not interested in the details only your reactions to them. Does that surprise you?”
“It does a little.” She was a little dismayed by the under-current of seriousness that had come into the conversation. “It doesn’t make any difference to how I feel about him—or Mother.”
He looked at her for a minute.
“That wasn’t exactly
what I meant,” he said at last. “But so long as you’re not hurt, I suppose there’s no harm done. Eat your cake and forget I asked,” he advised her. “I don’t want to put ideas into your head.”
She was obliged to smile at that.
“I’m not hurt,” she assured him, “You see, I’m still me, if you see what I mean.”
His look was comprehensive, taking in the whole of her.
“I do indeed!” he agreed solemnly, and watched, delighted, as the color sped up her cheeks. “You’re rather a poppet, you know,” he added. “Even the heat doesn’t seem to get you down!”
But if it wasn’t getting Charlotte down, Monique and Seamus became more and more fractious as the day progressed.
“Combien de degres le thermometre marque-t-il?” the French girl asked despairingly at lunch not caring whether anyone understood her or not. Jock obligingly checked and told her it was well over a hundred degrees in the saloon.
“I cannot understand your thermometer,” Monique told him crushingly. “It means nothing to me at all!”
Snubbed, Jock sat down again with a slight shrug of the shoulders.
“I shall be glad to get under water,’ he remarked to no one in particular. It was Nick, Charlotte noticed with some admiration, who held them all together. With a quick word he would put an end to a threatening quarrel and somehow find the joke that would set them all laughing. There was something very wonderful about Nick.
Fahad took the dishes up on deck to wash them, setting up a piece of sailcloth as an awning. Charlotte went to dry up for, him, feeling a little sorry for him, as he sat there, completely surrounded by plates and as cheerful as ever. He grinned up at her.
“Good cake!” he said.
She squatted down beside him and took a wet dish from his hand.
“It had to be good for my father,” she replied with a smile.
He nodded with enthusiasm.
“Good cake for good man,” he agreed.
She took another plate and dried it languidly. It was surprising how the humid heat sapped the will. Five minutes at anything and she was quite exhausted.
