Hungry as the Sea (25 page)

“Play the game with me and I’ll play it with you, he promised, and thought for a moment how it would be if they didn’t want to speak with him, how it would be if they didn’t know who he was, and didn’t care.

“Where have you booked me?” he asked Larry Fry now, and turned back to them. “In two hours time I’ll be in my suite at the Mount Nelson Hotel. You’re invited, and there’ll be whisky.” They laughed and tried a few more half-hearted questions, but they had accepted the compromise – at least they had got the pictures.

As they went up the palm-lined drive to the gracious old hotel, built in the days when space included five acres of carefully groomed gardens, Nick felt the stir of memory, but he suppressed that and listened intently to the list of appointments and matters of urgency from which Larry Fry read. The change in the big man’s attitude was dramatic. When Nick had first arrived to take command of Warlock, Larry Fry had given him ten minutes of his time and sent a deputy to complete the business. Then Nick had been touched by the mark of the beast, a man on his way down, with as much appeal as a leper. Larry Fry had accorded him the minimum courtesy due the master of a small vessel, but now he was treating him like visiting royalty, limousine and fawning attention.

“We have chartered a 707 from South African Airways to fly
Golden Adventurer’s
passengers to London, and they will take scheduled commercial flights to their separate destinations from there.”

“What about berthing for
Golden Adventurer
?”

“The Harbour Master is sending out an inspector to check the hull before he lets her enter harbour.”

“You have made the arrangements?” Nick asked sharply. He had not completed the salvage until the liner was officially handed over to the company commissioned to undertake the repairs.

“Courtline are flying him out now,” Larry Fry assured him.

“We’ll have a decision before nightfall.”

“Have the underwriters appointed a contractor for the repairs?”

“They’ve called for tenders.”

The hotel manager himself met Nicholas under the entrance portico.“Good to see you again Mr. Berg.” He waived the registration procedures. “We can do that when Mr. Berg has settled in.” And then he assured Nick, “We have given you the same suite.”

Nick would have protested, but already they were ushering him into the sitting-room. If it had been a room lacking completely in character or taste, the memories might not have been so poignant. However, unlike one of those soulless plastic and vinyl coops built by the big chains and so often offered to travellers under the misnomer of inns, this room was furnished with antique furniture, oil-paintings and flowers. The memories were as fresh as those flowers, but not as pleasing. The telephone was ringing as they entered, and Larry Fry seized it immediately, while Nick stood in the centre Of the room. It had been two years since last he stood here, but it seemed as many days, so clear was the memory.

“The Harbour Master as given permission for
Golden Adventurer
to enter harbour.” Larry Fry grinned triumphantly at Nick, and gave him the thumbs-up signal.

Nick nodded, the news was an anti-climax after the draining endeavours of the last weeks. Nick walked through to the bedroom. The wallpaper was a quietly tasteful floral design with matching curtains. From the four-poster bed, Nick remembered, you could look out over the lawns. He remembered Chantelle sitting under that canopy, with a gossamer-sheer bed-robe over her creamy shoulders, eating thin strips of marmaladed toast and then delicately and carefully licking each slim tapered finger with a pink pointed tongue.

Nicholas had come out to negotiate the transportation of South African coal from Richards Bay, and iron ore from Saldanha Bay to Japan. He had insisted that Chantelle accompany him. Perhaps he had the premonition of imminent loss, but he had overridden her objections.

“But Africa is such a primitive place, Nicky, they have things that bite.” And she had in the end gone with him. He had been rewarded with four days of rare happiness. The last four days ever, for though he did not then even suspect it, he was already sharing her bed and body with Duncan Alexander. He had never tired in thirteen years of that lovely smooth creamy body; rather, he had delighted in its slow luscious ripening into full womanhood, believing without question that it belonged to him.

Chantelle was one of those unusual women who grew more beautiful with time; it had always been one of his pleasures to watch her enter a room filled with other internationally acclaimed beauties, and see them pale beside his wife. And suddenly, for no good reason, he imagined Samantha Silver beside Chantelle – the girl’s coltish grace would be transmuted to gawkiness beside Chantelle’s poise, her manner as gauche as a schoolgirl’s beside Chantelle’s mature control, a warm lovable little bunny beside the sleekly beautiful mink.

“Mr. Berg, London.” Larry Fry called from the sittingroom interrupting him, and with relief Nick picked up the telephone.

“Just keep going forward,” he reminded himself, and before he spoke, he thought again of the two women, and wondered suddenly how much that thick rich golden mane of Samantha’s hair would pale beside Chantelle’s lustrous sable, and just how much of the mother-of-pearl glow would fade from that young, clear skin. “Berg,” he said abruptly into the telephone.

“Mr. Berg, good morning. Will you speak to Mr. Duncan Alexander of Christy Marine?”

Nick was silent for five full seconds. He needed that long to adjust to the name, but Duncan Alexander was the natural extension of his previous thoughts. In the silence he heard the banging of doors and rising clamour of voices, as the journalists converged on the liquor-cabinet next door.

“Mr. Berg, are you there?”

“Yes,” he said, and his voice was steady and cool. “Put him on.”

“Nicholas, my dear fellow.” The voice was glossy as satin, slow as honey, Eton and King’s College, a hundred thousand pound accent, impossible to imitate, not quite foppish nor indolent, razor steel in a scabbard of velvet encrusted with golden filigree and precious stones – and Nicholas had seen the steel bared. “It seems that it is impossible to hold a good men down.”

“But you tried, young Duncan,” Nick answered lightly.

“Don’t feel bad about it”

“Indeed you tried.”

“Come, Nicholas. Life is too short for recriminations. This is a new deck of cards, we start equal again.” Duncan chuckled softly. “At least be gracious enough to accept my congratulations.”

“Accepted,” Nicholas agreed. “Now what do we talk about?”

“Is
Golden Adventurer
in dock yet?”

“She has been cleared to enter. She’ll be tied up within twenty-four hours – and you’d better have your cheque book ready.”

“I hoped that we might avoid going up before the Committee. There has been too much bitterness already. Let’s try and keep it in the family, Nicholas.”

“The family?”

“Christy Marine is the family – you, Chantelle, old Arthur Christy - and Peter.” It was the very dirtiest form of fighting, and Nick found suddenly that he was shaking like a man in fever and that his fist around the receiver was white with the force of his grip. It was the mention of his son that had affected him so.

“I’m not in that family any more.”

“In a way you will always be part of it. It is as much your achievement as any man’s, and your son –”

Nick cut across him brusquely, his voice gravelly. “You and Chantelle made me a stranger. Now treat me like one.”

“Nicholas.”

“Ocean Salvage as main contractor for the recovery of
Golden Adventurer
is open to an offer.”

“Nicholas – “

“Make an offer.” As bluntly as that. “I’m waiting.”

“Well now. My Board has considered the whole operation in depth, and I am empowered to make you an outright settlement of three-quarters of a million dollars.”

Nick’s tone did not alter. “We have been set down for a hearing at Lloyd’s on the 27th of next month.”

“Nicholas, the offer is negotiable within reasonable limits.”

“You. are speaking a foreign language,” Nick cut him off. “We are so far apart that we are wasting each other’s time.”

“Nicholas, I know how you feel about Christy Marine, you know the company is underwriting its own.”

“Now you are really wasting my time.”

“Nicholas, it’s not a third party, it’s not some big insurance consortium it’s Christy Marine” He used his name again, though it scalded his tongue.

“Duncan, you’re breaking my heart. I’ll see you on the 27th of next month, at the arbitration court.” He dropped the receiver on to its bracket, and moved across to the mirror, swiftly combing his hair and composing his features, startled to see how hard and bleak his expression was, and how fierce his eyes.

However, when he went through to the lounge of the suite, he was relaxed and urbane and smiling.

“All right, ladies and gentlemen. I’m all yours,” and one of the ladies of the press, blonde, pretty and not yet thirty but with eyes as old as life itself, took another sip of her whisky as she studied him, then murmured huskily, “I wouldn’t mind at all, duckie.”

Chapter 14

Golden Adventurer
stood tall and very beautiful against the wharf of Cape Town harbour, waiting her turn to go into the dry dock.

Globe Engineering, the contractors who had been appointed to repair her, had signed for her and legally taken over responsibility from
Warlock’s
First Officer. But David Allen still felt an immense proprietary pride in her.

From
Warlock’s
navigation bridge, he could look across the main harbour basin and see the tall, snowy superstructure glistening in the bright hot summer sunshine, towering as high as the giraffe-necked steel wharf cranes; and in gloating self-indulgence, David dwelt on a picture of the liner, wreathed in snow, half obscured by driving sleet and sea fume, staggering in the mountainous black seas off Antarctica. It gave him a solid feeling of achievement, and he thrust his hands deeply into his pockets and whistled softly to himself, smiling and watching the liner.

The Trog thrust his wrinkled head from the radio room. “There’s a call for you on the land-line,” he said, and David picked up the handset.

“David?”

“Yessir.” He drew himself to his full height as he recognized Nicholas Berg’s voice.

“Are you ready for sea?” David gulped, then glanced at the bulkhead clock. We discharged tow an hour and ten minutes ago.

“Yes, I know. How soon?”

David was tempted to lie, estimate short, and then fake it for the extra time he needed. Instinct warned him against lying deliberately to Nicholas Berg.

“Twelve hours,” he said.

“It’s an oil-rig tow, Rio to the North Sea, a semi-submersible rig.”

“Yessir,” David adjusted quickly, thank God he had not yet let any of his crew ashore. He had arranged for bunkering at 1300, hours. He could make it. “When are you coming aboard, sir?”

“I’m not,” said Nick. “You’re the new Master. I’m leaving for London on the five o’clock flight. I won’t even get down to shout at you. She’s all yours, David.”

“Thank you, sir!” David stuttered, feeling himself flush hot scarlet.

“Bach Wackie will telex you full details of the tow at sea, and you and I will work out your own contract later. But I want you running at top economic power for Rio by dawn tomorrow.”

“Yessir. I’ve watched you carefully.”

“David,” Nick’s voice changed, becoming personal, warmer. “You’re a damn good tug-man. just keep telling yourself that.”

“Thank you, Mr. Berg.”

Samantha had spent half the afternoon helping with the arrangements for taking off the remaining passengers from
Golden Adventurer
and embarking them in the waiting fleet of tourist buses which would distribute them to hotels throughout the city while they waited for the London charter flight.

It had been a sad occasion, farewell to many who had become friends and remembering those who had not come back from Cape Alarm with them – Ken, who might have been her lover, and the crew of raft Number 16 who had been her special charges.

Once the final bus had left, with the occupants waving for the last time to Samantha, “Take care, honey! You come and visit with us now, hear!”

She was as lonely and forlorn as the silent ship. She stood for a long time staring up the liner’s high side, the damage where sea and ice had battered her – then she turned and picked her way dejectedly along the edge of the basin, ignoring the occasional whistle or ribald invitation from the fishermen and crew members of the freighters on their moorings.

Warlock seemed as welcoming as home, rakish and gallant, wearing her new scars with high panache, already thrusting and impatient at the restraint of her mooring lines. And then Samantha remembered that Nicholas Berg was no longer aboard her, and her spirits sagged again.

“God!” Tim Graham met her at the gangplank. “I’m glad you got back. I didn’t know what to do with your gear.”

“What do you mean?” Samantha demanded. “Are you throwing me off the ship?”

“Unless you want to come with us to Rio.” He thought about that for a moment, and then he grinned. “Hey, that’s not a bad idea, how about it, old girl? Rio in carnival time, you and me.”

“Don’t get carried away, Timothy,” she warned him. “Why Rio? The Captain –Captain Berg?”

“No, David Allen, he’s the new skipper,” and she lost interest.

“When are you sailing?”

“Midnight.”

“I’d best go pack up.”

She left him on the quarter-deck, and Angel pounced on her as she passed the galley. “Where have you been?” He was in a flutter, all wrists and tossing hair. “I’ve been beside myself, darling.”

“What is it, Angel?”

“It’s probably too late already.”

“What is it?” She caught his urgency. “Tell me.”

“He’s still in town.”

“Who?” But she knew, they spoke of only one person in these emotional terms.