by Wilbur Smith
‘Who was that!’
‘It's terrible, but I can't remember - I'm not even sure where I met him or when.’ And it was true, she could concentrate on nothing but Nicholas, and the others sensed it swiftly and left them alone.
Nicholas had not been in the sun for over a year, his body was the colour of old ivory, in sharp contrast to the thick dark body hair which covered his chest and belly. At the end of that first day in the sun, the ivory colour had turned to a dull angry red.
‘You'll suffer,’ she told him, but the next morning his body and limbs had gone the colour of mahogany and she drew back the sheets and marvelled at it, touching him exploringly with the tip of her fingers.
‘I'm lucky, I've got a hide like a buffalo,’he told her.
Each day he turned darker, until he was the weathered bronze of an American Indian, and his high cheek-bones heightened the resemblance.
‘You must have Indian blood,’ she told him, tracing his nose with her finger-tip.
‘I only know two generations back,’ he smiled at her. ‘I've always been terrified to look further than that.’
She sat over him, cross-legged in the big bed and touched him, exploring him with her hands, touching his lips and the lobes of his ears, smoothing the thick dark curve of his eyebrows, the little black mole on his cheek, and exclaiming at each new discovery.
She touched him when they walked, reaching for his hand, pressing her hip against him when they stood, on the beach sitting between his spread knees and leaning back against his chest, her head tucked into his shoulder - it was as if she needed constant physical assurance of his presence.
When they sat astride their boards, waiting far out beyond the three-mile reef for the set of the wave, she reached across to touch his shoulder, balancing the board under her like a skilled horsewoman, the two of them close and spiritually isolated from the loose assembly of thirty or forty surf -riders strung out along the line of the long set.
This far out, the shore was a low dark green rind, above the shaded green and limpid blues of the water. In the blue distance, the mountains were blue on the blue of the sky and above them, the thunderheads piled dazzling silver, tall and arrogant enough to dwarf the very earth.
‘This must be the most beautiful land in the world,’ she said, moving her board so that her knee lay against his thigh.
‘Because you are here,’ he told her.
Under them, the green water breathed like a living thing, rising and falling, the swells long and glassy, sliding away towards the land.
Growing impatient, one of the inexperienced riders would move to catch a bad swell, kneeling on the board and paddling with both hands, coming up unsteadily on to his feet and then toppling and falling as the water left him, and the taunts and friendly catcalls of his peers greeted him as he surfaced, grinning sheepishly, and crawled back on to his board.
Then the ripple of excitement, and a voice calling, ‘A three set!’ the boards quickly rearranging themselves, sculled by cupped bare hands, spacing out for running room, the riders peering back eagerly over their dark burned shoulders, laughing and kidding each other as the wave set bumped up on the horizon, still four miles out at sea, but big enough so that they could count the individual swells that made up the set.
Running at fifty miles an hour, the swells took nearly five minutes, from the moment when they were sighted, to reach the line, and during that time Samantha. had a little ritual of preparation, First, she hoisted the bottom of her bikini which had usually slipped down to expose a pair of dimples and a little of the deep cleft of her buttocks, then she tightened her top hamper, pulling open the brassiere of her costume and cupping each breast in turn, settling it firmly in its sheath of thin green cloth, grinning at Nick as she did it.
‘You're not supposed to watch.
‘I know, it's bad for my heart.’
Then she plucked out a pair of hairpins and held them in her mouth as she twisted the wrist-thick plait of hair tighter until it hung down between her shoulder blades and pinned back the wisps over her ears.
‘All set?’ he called, and she nodded and answered,
‘Ride three?’
The third wave in the set was traditionally the big one, and they let the first one swing them high and drop them again into its trough. Half the other riders were up and away, only their heads still visible above the peak of the wave, the land obscured by the moving wall of water.
The second wave came through, bigger, more powerful, but swooping up and over the crest and most of the other riders went on it, two or three tumbling on the steep front of water, losing their boards, dragged under as the ankle lines came up taut.
‘Here we go!’ exulted Samantha, and three came rustling, green and peaking, and in the transparent wall of water four big bottle-nosed porpoises were framed, in perfect motion, racing in the wave, pumping their flat delta shaped tails and grinning that fixed porpoise grin of delight.
‘Oh look!’ sang Samantha. ‘Just look at them, Nicholas!’
Then the wave was upon them and they sculled frantically, weight high on the board, the heart-stopping moment when it seemed the water would sweep away and leave them, then suddenly the boards coming alive under them and starting to run, tipping steeply forward, with the hiss of the waxed fibre-glass through the water.
Then they were both up and laughing in the sunlight, dancing the intricate steps that balanced and controlled the boards, lifted high on the crest, so they could see the sweep of the beach three miles ahead, and the ranks of other riders on the twin waves that had gone before them.
One of the porpoises frolicked with them on the racing crest, ducking under the flying boards, turning on its side to grin up at Samantha, so she stooped and stretched out a hand to touch him, lost her balance, and almost fell while the porpoise grinned at her mischievously and flipped away to rise fin up on her far side.
Now, out on their right hand, the wave was feeling the reef and starting to curl over on itself, the crest arching forwards, holding that lovely shape for long moments, then slowly collapsing.
‘Go left,’ Nick called urgently to her, and they kicked the boards around and danced up on to the stubby prows, bending at the knees to ride the hurtling craft, their speed rocketing as they cut across the green face of the wave, but behind them the arching wave spread rapidly towards them, faster than they could run before it.
Now at their left shoulders, the water formed a steep vertical wall, and, glancing at it, Samantha found the porpoise swimming head-high beside her, his great tail pumping; powerfully, and she was afraid, for the majesty and strength of that wave belittled her.
‘Nicholas!’ she screamed, and the wave fanned out over her head, arcing across the sky, cutting out the sunlight, and now they flew down a long perfectly rounded tunnel of roaring water. The sides were smooth as blown glass, and the light was green and luminous and weird as though they sped through a deep submarine cavern, only ahead of them was the perfect round opening at the mouth of the tunnel - while behind her, close behind her, the tunnel was collapsing in a furious thunder of murderous white water, and she was as terrified and as exulted as she had ever been in her life.
He yelled at her, ‘We must beat the curl,’ and his voice was far away and almost lost in the roar of water, but obediently she went forward on her board until all her bare toes were curled over the leading edge.
For long moments they held their own, then slowly they began to gain, and at last they shot out through the open mouth of the tunnel into the sunlight again, and she laughed wildly, still high on the exultation of fresh terror.
Then they were past the reef and the wave firmed up, leaving the white water like lace on the surface far behind.
‘Let's go right!’ Samantha sang out to stay within the good structure of the wave, and they turned and went back, swinging across the steep face. The splatter of flung water sparkled on her belly and thighs, and the plait of her hair stood out behind her head like th
e tail of an angry lioness, her arms were extended and her hands held open, unconsciously making the delicate finger gestures of a Balinese temple dancer as she balanced; and miraculously the porpoise swam, fill up, beside her, following like a trained dog.
Then at last, the wave felt the beach and ran berserk, tumbling wildly upon itself, booming angrily, and churning the sand like gruel, and they kicked out of the wave, falling back over the crest and dropping into the sea beside the bobbing boards, laughing and panting at each other with the excitement and terror and the joy of it.
Samantha was a sea-creature with a huge appetite for the fruits of the sea, cracking open the crayfish legs in her fingers and sucking the white sticks of flesh into her mouth with a noisy sensuality, while her lips were polished with butter sauce, not taking her eyes from his face as she ate.
Samantha in the candlelight gulping those huge Knysna oysters, and then slurping the juice out of the shells.
‘You're talking with your mouth full.’
‘It's just that I've still got so much to tell you,’ she explained.
Samantha was laughter, laughter in fifty different tones and intensities, from the sleepy morning chortle when she awoke and found him beside her, to the wild laughter yelled from the crest of a racing wave.
Samantha was loving. With a face of thundering innocence and the virginal, guileless green eyes of a child, she combined hands and a mouth whose wiles and wicked cunning left Nick stunned and disbelieving.
‘The reason I ran away without a word was that I did not want to have your ravishment and violation on my conscience,’ he shook his head at her disbelievingly.
‘I wrote my PhD thesis in those subjects,’ she told him blithely, using her forefinger to twist spit-curls in his sweat-dampened chest hairs. ‘And what's more, buster, that was just the introductory offer - now we sign you up for a full course of treatment.’
Her delight in his body was endless, she must touch and examine every inch of it, exclaiming and revelling in it without a trace of self-consciousness, holding his hand in her lap and bending her head studiously over it, tracing the lines of his palm with her fingernail.
‘You are going to meet a beautiful wanton blonde, give her fifteen babies and live to be a hundred and fifty.’ She touched the little chiselled lines around his eyes and at the corners of his mouth with the tip of her tongue, leaving cool damp smears of saliva on his skin.
‘I always wanted a real craggy man all for myself.’ Then, when her examination became more intimate and clinical and he demurred, she told him severely, ‘Hold still, this is a private thing between me and himself.’
Then a little later.
‘Oh wow! He's real poison! Poison?’ his demanded, his manhood denigrated.
‘Poison,’ she sighed. ‘Because he just slays me!’
In fairness, she offered herself for his touch and scrutiny, guiding his hands, displaying herself eagerly.
‘Look, touch, it's yours - all yours,’ wanting his approval, not able to give him sufficient to satisfy her own need to give. ‘Do you like it, Nicholas? Is this good for you? Is there anything else you want, Nicholas, anything at all that I can give you?’
And when he told her how beautiful she was, when he told her how much he wanted her, when he touched and marvelled over the gifts she brought to him, she glowed and stretched and purred like a great golden cat so that when he learned that the Zodiacal sign of her birthday was Leo, he was not at all surprised.
Samantha was loving in the early slippery grey-pearl light of dawn, soft sleepy loving, with small gasps and murmurs and chuckles of deep contentment.
Samantha was loving in the sunlight, spread like a beautiful starfish in the fierce reflected sunlight of the sculptured dunes. The sand coated her body like crystals of sugar, and their cries rose together, high and ecstatic as those of the curious seagulls that floated above them on motionless white wings.
Samantha was loving in the green cool water, their two heads bobbing beyond the first line of breakers, his toes only just touching the sandy bottom and she twined about him like sea kelp about a submerged rock, clutching both their swim suits in one hand and gurgling merrily.
‘What's good enough for a lady blue whale is good enough for Samantha Silver! There blows Moby Dick!’
And Samantha was loving in the night, with her hair brushed out carefully and spread over him, lustrous and fragrant, a canopy of gold in the lamplight, and she kneeling astride him in almost religious awe, like a temple maid making the sacrifice.
But more than anything else, Samantha was vibrant, bursting life - and youth eternal.
Through her, Nicholas recaptured those emotions which he had believed long atrophied by cynicism and the pragmatism of living. He shared her childlike delight in the small wonders of nature, the flight of a gull, the presence of the porpoise, the discovery of the perfect translucent fan of papery nautilus shell washed up on the white sand with the rare tentacled creature still alive within the convoluted interior.
He shared her outrage when even those remote and lonely beaches were invaded by an oil slick, tank washings from a VLCC out on the Agulhas current, and the filthy clinging globules of spilled crude oil stuck to the soles of their feet, smeared the rocks and smothered the carcasses of the jackass penguins they found at the water's edge.
Samantha was life itself, just to touch the warmth of her and to drink the sound of her laughter was to be rejuvenated. To walk beside her was to feel vital and strong.
Strong enough for the long days in the sea and sun, strong enough to dance to the loud wild music half the night, and then strong enough to lift her when she faltered and carry her down to their bungalow above the beach, she in his arms like a sleepy child, her skin tingling with the memory of the sun, her muscles aching deliciously with fatigue, and her belly crammed with rich food.
‘Oh Nicholas, Nicholas - I'm so happy I want to cry.’
Then Larry Fry arrived; he arrived on a cloud of indignation, red-faced and accusing as a cuckolded husband.
‘Two weeks,’ he blared. London and Bermuda and St Nazaire have been driving me mad for two weeks!’ And he brandished a sheath of telex flimsies that looked like the galley proofs for the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
‘Nobody knew what had happened to you. You just disappeared.’ He ordered a large gin and tonic from the white jacketed bar-tender and sank wearily on to the stool beside Nick. ‘You nearly cost me my job, Mr. Berg, and that's the truth. You'd have thought I'd bumped you off personally and dumped your body in the bay. I had to hire a private detective to check every hotel register in the country.’ He took a long, soothing draught of the gin.
At that moment, Samantha drifted into the cocktail lounge. She wore a loose, floating dress the same green as her eyes, and a respectful hush fell on the pre-luncheon drinkers as they watched her cross the room. Larry Fry forgot his indignation and gaped at her, his bald scorched head growing shining under a thin film of perspiration.
‘Godstrewth,’ he Muttered. ‘I'd rather feel that, than feel sick.’ And then his admiration turned to consternation when she came directly to Nicholas, laid her hand on his shoulder and in full view of the entire room kissed him lingeringly on the mouth.
There was a soft collective sigh from the watchers and Larry Fry knocked over his gin.
‘We must go now, today,’ Samantha decided. ‘We mustn't stay even another hour, Nicholas, or we will spoil it. It was perfect, but now we must go.’ Nicholas understood. Like him she had the compulsion to keep moving forward. Within the hour, he had chartered a twin-engined Beechcraft Baron. It picked them up at the little earth strip near the hotel and put them down at Johannesburg's Jan Smuts Airport an hour before the departure of the UTA flight for Paris.
‘I always rode in the back of the bus before,’ said Samantha, as she looked around the first-class cabin appraisingly. ‘Is it true that up this end you can eat and drink as much as you like, for free?’
‘Yes.’ Th
en Nick added hastily, ‘But you don't have to take that as a personal challenge.’ Nicholas had come to stand in awe of Samantha's appetites.
They stayed overnight at the Georges V in Paris and caught the midmorning TAT flight down to Nantes, the nearest airfield to the shipyards at St Nazaire, and Jules Levoisin was there to meet them at the Chateau Bougon field.
‘Nicholas!’ he shouted joyfully, and stood on tiptoe to buss both his cheeks, enveloping him in a fragrant cloud of eau de Cologne and pomade. ‘You are a pirate Nicholas, you stole that ship from under my nose. I hate you.’ He held Nicholas at arm's length.’ I warned you not to take the job, didn't I?’
‘You did, Jules, you did.’
‘So why do you make a fool of me?’ he demanded, and twirled his moustaches. He was wearing expensive cashmere and an Yves St Laurent necktie; ashore, Jules was always the dandy.
‘Jules, I am going to buy lunch for you at La Rotisserie,’ Nicholas promised.
‘I forgive you,’ said Jules, it was one of his favourite eating-places - but at that moment Jules became aware that Nicholas was not travelling alone.
He stood back, took one long look at Samantha and it seemed that tricolors unfurled around him and brass bands burst into the opening bars of ‘La Marseillaise'. For if dalliance was the national sport, Jules Levoisin considered himself veteran champion of all France.
He bowed over her hand, and tickled the back of it with his still black moustache. Then he told Nicholas, She is too good for you, mon petit, I am going to take her away from you.’
‘The same way you did Golden Adventurer?’ Nick asked innocently.
Jules had his ancient Citroen in the car park. It was lovingly waxed and fitted with shiny gewgaws and dangling mascots. He handed Samantha into the front seat as though it was a Rolls Camargue.
‘He's beautiful,’ she whispered, as he scampered around to the driver's door.
Jules could not devote attention to both the road ahead and to Samantha, so he concentrated solely upon her, without deviating from the Citron's top speed, only occasionally turning to shout, ‘Cochon!’ at another driver or jerk his fist at them with the second finger pointed stiffly upwards in ribald salutation.
