such as yours, being painted. Michael! Do you hear? You are a slave driver.”
“Do I look like a slave driver?” said Michael lazily. But I knew that this evening at Crinan there would be a handful of telegrams waiting for him; and he would go ashore and make phone calls; and then out of that damned pigskin dispatch case would come the score of someone’s interminable opera, which I should then have to learn. I found I was frowning, and smoothed out my face. It was silly to be angry with Michael. Without him I should still be striving to do all these things. Without me, he would be nothing.
Then, it seemed, almost at once, we were on the last sunny stretches, and the canal basin, where we were to spend the evening and night, lay there before us.
Folded in greenery, with the blue sea beyond the lock gates and the green coastal hills and isles in the distance, the last stretch of the canal and the basin at Crinan itself was packed with yachts as with groceries. And not only yachts. Motor launches, small puffers, wartime conversions of ungainly size and unforgettable shape crowded the water, where also I could see the stout dark red belly of the Buchanans’ sloop Binkie, the shabby decking of Ogden’s string-tethered Seawolf, and the shining twin masts of Hennessy’s yawl, the suave Symphonetta.
“Well, there it is, Tina,” Johnson was saying. He stood, pipe in mouth, conning her in, and waving cursorily from time to time as he was hailed from either side. “All the essence of a paranoic scout camp financed by a brewery. Port, Rupert. We’ll get in beside Cara Mia.”
“My God, is she there?” said Rupert, craning to see over the coachroof as he eased the tiller. “Jane! Cindy!”
Two reclining figures, one in a man’s shirt and the other in an arrangement of string fulfilling the minimum requirements of decency, rolled over on the decks of a big motor cruiser as we slid past, and waved. Victoria was there too, in her patched trousers and bare feet, with a screwdriver, half-sunk, in her hand. “And my God, Ogden will dig that,” said Rupert as he reversed and cut.
“He doesn’t like the Cara Mia? ” It was not hard to see why. Compared with this, Cecil Ogden’s Seawolf was a cereal packet, with a hole in the bottom instead of a gift.
“Dotty subdebs aren’t much in Cecil’s line,” said Rupert. “The boat belongs to Moody the financier – that’s Tim Moody over there.”
True enough, a young man came into view in very small boxer shorts and a peaked cap from the Aquatic Sports Club, Barbados. Two other boys and a fat girl in a catsuit made their appearance, and there was a general clinking and pouring. Daddy, clearly, was absent at work in the City. Music, of a sort, shuddered out from the decks.
“Huddy Leadbetter’s new single,” said Rupert thoughtfully, effecting a final clove hitch. He avoided looking at Johnson.
“Goodbye,” said Johnson lazily. “Give them my love, and don’t smoke anything I wouldn’t smoke.
In five minutes, Rupert had gone.
In five more minutes Michael too had gone, hell-bent for the hotel and the telephone, leaving a fallout of Trumper’s Eucris behind him. A succession of working parties began to move round from boat to boat, like bees preparing to swarm. The clinking of glasses, competing strains of tape, radio and record player, and loud bellows of laughter, live performance, were heard all over the basin. Some of the parties came aboard Dolly, and Lenny served drinks.
Their jokes were all very long, and some of them were in dialect. They seemed to have had a very dangerous summer. Eventually, Johnson said something about fixing dinner at the hotel and clambered ashore, leaving me to change in my locked cabin, with Lenny as watchdog. Trouble seemed unlikely. But then, trouble always seems unlikely.
I dressed in white cotton matelassé and uncut turquoises. I was very brown, from the South America tour, and my hair had bleached itself almost
“Do I look like a slave driver?” said Michael lazily. But I knew that this evening at Crinan there would be a handful of telegrams waiting for him; and he would go ashore and make phone calls; and then out of that damned pigskin dispatch case would come the score of someone’s interminable opera, which I should then have to learn. I found I was frowning, and smoothed out my face. It was silly to be angry with Michael. Without him I should still be striving to do all these things. Without me, he would be nothing.
Then, it seemed, almost at once, we were on the last sunny stretches, and the canal basin, where we were to spend the evening and night, lay there before us.
Folded in greenery, with the blue sea beyond the lock gates and the green coastal hills and isles in the distance, the last stretch of the canal and the basin at Crinan itself was packed with yachts as with groceries. And not only yachts. Motor launches, small puffers, wartime conversions of ungainly size and unforgettable shape crowded the water, where also I could see the stout dark red belly of the Buchanans’ sloop Binkie, the shabby decking of Ogden’s string-tethered Seawolf, and the shining twin masts of Hennessy’s yawl, the suave Symphonetta.
“Well, there it is, Tina,” Johnson was saying. He stood, pipe in mouth, conning her in, and waving cursorily from time to time as he was hailed from either side. “All the essence of a paranoic scout camp financed by a brewery. Port, Rupert. We’ll get in beside Cara Mia.”
“My God, is she there?” said Rupert, craning to see over the coachroof as he eased the tiller. “Jane! Cindy!”
Two reclining figures, one in a man’s shirt and the other in an arrangement of string fulfilling the minimum requirements of decency, rolled over on the decks of a big motor cruiser as we slid past, and waved. Victoria was there too, in her patched trousers and bare feet, with a screwdriver, half-sunk, in her hand. “And my God, Ogden will dig that,” said Rupert as he reversed and cut.
“He doesn’t like the Cara Mia? ” It was not hard to see why. Compared with this, Cecil Ogden’s Seawolf was a cereal packet, with a hole in the bottom instead of a gift.
“Dotty subdebs aren’t much in Cecil’s line,” said Rupert. “The boat belongs to Moody the financier – that’s Tim Moody over there.”
True enough, a young man came into view in very small boxer shorts and a peaked cap from the Aquatic Sports Club, Barbados. Two other boys and a fat girl in a catsuit made their appearance, and there was a general clinking and pouring. Daddy, clearly, was absent at work in the City. Music, of a sort, shuddered out from the decks.
“Huddy Leadbetter’s new single,” said Rupert thoughtfully, effecting a final clove hitch. He avoided looking at Johnson.
“Goodbye,” said Johnson lazily. “Give them my love, and don’t smoke anything I wouldn’t smoke.
In five minutes, Rupert had gone.
In five more minutes Michael too had gone, hell-bent for the hotel and the telephone, leaving a fallout of Trumper’s Eucris behind him. A succession of working parties began to move round from boat to boat, like bees preparing to swarm. The clinking of glasses, competing strains of tape, radio and record player, and loud bellows of laughter, live performance, were heard all over the basin. Some of the parties came aboard Dolly, and Lenny served drinks.
Their jokes were all very long, and some of them were in dialect. They seemed to have had a very dangerous summer. Eventually, Johnson said something about fixing dinner at the hotel and clambered ashore, leaving me to change in my locked cabin, with Lenny as watchdog. Trouble seemed unlikely. But then, trouble always seems unlikely.
I dressed in white cotton matelassé and uncut turquoises. I was very brown, from the South America tour, and my hair had bleached itself almost
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