Spy limit

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

He shivered and held her even more tightly. The sound of Noah dumping his bags, coupled with the still only half pacified baby, was answer enough to her question. "We'll never be as alone again as we were that week on Pegasus," he replied gloomily.

"Next time I'll come to New York," she said - and was astonished to feel how tense he suddenly became. "No?" she asked.

He shook his head and hugged her to him with an odd sort of desperation.

Such a strange man!

"Why not?" she asked. "I can't really explain it. Just take it from me. New

York, to me, is shipping. Everyone I know is in shipping. We talk of nothing else all the time. We breathe shipping. We eat it... we dream it. But those few days with you aboard Pegasus were a revelation to me. Their memory is precious for so many things - among them the discovery that there is another life, nothing to do with gross registered tonnage and horsepower and bushels of coal and bills of lading ... and the latest from Big Nellie's in Sydney." 

He held her briefly at arm's length and peered deep into her eyes. "I don't want you to get caught up in all that. You are my refuge from it all - you, this house, little Tony. You are all so special and dear to me because you are not part of that other world."

"All right! All right!" She buried herself again in his darling embrace and let the notion wither. "It was only an idea."

"Not a very bright one. Besides, it's considered to be bad luck."

"Yes, yes! I said all right!" Then she kissed him again and said she was sorry. "To be honest with you, Frank, I'm annoyed with meself, so I am, for not having a dinner ready for tonight."

He took her hand and led her out to the back porch where they sat on the swing seat and watched the sun fall among thin wreaths of purple-gray cloud. "I don't want banquets and fatted calves," he told her. "There shouldn't be any special celebrations each time I come home ... except He brushed her left breast gently with his knuckles.

She licked her lips and, eyeing him with merry daring, said, "Can't you ever think of anything else?" He made a pistol of his hand and shot her through the temple.

"I'll be here again on the twenty-fifth, and again on the tenth of September, and again on the twenty-sixth ... and so on. Every sixteen days at least, that looks like being our timetable for the rest of this year. I'm really just a bus-driver from now on. Don't you see?" She sighed. "Yes... I suppose so."

MA ARRIVED BACK at Liverpool to find letters E awaiting her from both Lawrence and Kathleen. The Pride of Liverpool had made the crossing in five days, twenty-two hours, easily beating the previous record of six days, five hours set by the Berlin. They docked at eleven o'clock on the night of Monday the sixteenth. Some passengers caught night sleepers to London but most stayed on to disembark at their leisure the following day. Emma was not free until early afternoon on that Tuesday - but she was in luck at the station and just managed to catch the London train.

She was in even more luck with her liberty. In winning the Blue Riband the Pride of Liverpool had consumed over two thousand tons of coal, some ten percent more than Shaw & Eggar had planned for a regular trip; Frank had almost literally obeyed his instructions to "burn the funnels off her." 

But he had also demonstrated that, by cutting her speed back from nineteen to seventeen and a half knots, she could maintain an eight-day schedule quite easily, and without consuming more than her estimated eighteen hundred tons of coal per voyage. In the normal run of things, therefore, she would not have docked before Wednesday, ready to sail again on the Friday. 

And now the company had decided to adhere to that sailing date, because it would give them time to strip her engines and inspect them for damage without giving rise to unfortunate rumours. So Emma found herself with almost three clear days in London; not to mention five pounds in wages and tips in her purse.

She settled in the railway carriage and took out the two letters to read again. They were brief, to say the least and couched in amusingly similar terms. They baldly stated the fact of their meeting at the apartment in Upper Street on the day after she had vamoosed - without even hinting at what passed between them. 

They each partially excused their silence by adding that there was now so much to talk about though, again, with no hint of what that might be. Kathleen said that Lawrence had given her the run of the apartment until the end of the quarter, so she, Emma, was welcome to stay there; Lawrence said the apartment was hers for as long as she needed it; each said they would be at Euston Station to meet her train if she would telegraph them poste restante at Highbury post office from the Pride of Liverpool.

She hadn't, of course, telegraphed from the ship. A fine time she'd have had, explaining why she was informing the old man's son and daughter, not about his arrival - which she just might have managed to explain away but about hers! Instead she had telegraphed from an office on the way, which was why she had almost missed the train.

She scanned the letters again and smiled to herself, wondering if the two young Charless would run across each other in Highbury post office, or would the surprise come at Euston? She did not know that an even bigger surprise awaited all three of them, for, in dallying at the telegraph office in Liverpool, she had failed to see Cap'n Charles himself getting into the first class carriage, some two coaches nearer the head of the train than hers.