King of the Sea

Chapter 31

Chapter 31

As her mother's footfall died away, she relaxed, but not completely. There was still the business of the good-night kiss. She put the back on its old glue marks and then, noticing that it didn't quite line with its neighbour (a matter in which Aunt Daphne was always so careful), she pushed it slightly upward. A fine line of glue showed along the bottom, which she wiped carefully away with wet hair-curling papers. Then, this being Saturday night, she put the rest of the papers in her hair. She had chosen this night on purpose, so that the papers she used on the album would cause no comment in the morning. One could never be too careful.

"What are Russian girls like?" Lawrence asked. "God, if I went to sea, I'd get to know all the girls in the world. Is it true about Chinese girls, by the way? Oh, of course, you wouldn't know yet.""

"Talking of girls ..." Neil tried to blow a ring out through the open window but a sudden breeze came from nowhere and worried it to tatters. "What was all that about little Emma Harding? I'm sorry to see her gone, she was always so cheerful about the place. This new one, whats-er-name ... Walker? Sleep Walker, it should be. She goes about as if her thoughts are miles away - which they probably are."

Lawrence gave a terse account of Emma's dismissal. "How do you know all this?" Neil asked, imagining he was tightening the noose, for surely his brother's only source could have been Emma herself.

"Kathy told me - unabashed. She's going to be a Modern Girl, I fear. I blame that Cornishwoman who teaches her. They've never been properly tamed, you know the Cornish. They still wreck boats."

Neil had an image of a prize fish vanishing in a dart of silver among the black troughs of waves -brother, who would never take the proffered bait. "I wonder what became of little Emma?" he mused over the creaking of his chair. "She left without a character, 1 imagine - from what Mama said?"

"One can get characters very easily. Half the characters in London are counterfeits." "You know all about it, do you?"

"There's a business card in a window in Cheapside, the Peerage, just round the corner from Turnbull and Trotter: Characters supplied from Members Clergymen, Justices of Peace, et cetera. Guaranteed genuine. Give us a quid and I'd buy you five sheets of the Lord Mayor's personal notepaper. Or any law lord's, if that's what you'd prefer."

"Ph-h-hew!" Neil exhaled a long ribbon of surprise, which hung blue in the window; the gaslight from the street cast it as a brown shadow on the wall. Lawrence always seemed to know things; he was never at a loss.

"The Thames on its dirtiest day is cleaner by far than the city it divides," Lawrence added. "You still don't take to life ashore, then?" He shook his head. "Nor ever shall. What about

you?"

Neil shrugged. "I got on better this voyage. I mean I managed better. I can do the work, all right, but I still don't take to it. I sometimes think I don't understand people very well." He tried another smoke ring, with better success this time. "D'you remember that mad idea we had last year - swap places? D'you think we could pull it off now?"

"Why now? I mean, what's different about now?" "Well... the old man's been shot stratosphere. While he was tramping around the up world there was always a chance he'd run across 'my into the i.e. your ship if we did swap."

"Or drop in at Turnbull and Trotter." "Quite. But now he'll be simply nailed to the

Atlantic crossing. Liver-pool-New York, New York-Liverpool, twenty times a year!" Lawrence chuckled. "Just a

glorified bus driver. He'd never get to Valparaiso or Shanghai or Bombay ... ah, the romance of names!" "Or Cheapside and Leadenhall Street and Thread

needle Street ... the romance of names, indeed!"

Lawrence shot him a pitying glance. "You'd be fed

up in two months." "Well, I don't suppose you'd find life afloat all it's cracked up to be, either."

After a ruminative pause Lawrence said, in a more

serious tone, "Actually, you know ..." and then fell silent again. "I was only going to say, the old man seemed

"What?"

somehow ... different when he came ashore this time."

"In what way?"

"Hard to put the old finger on it, as the w***e said to the cabin boy. You know how he used to say, 'Race you to Aunt Daphne's!' on Highbury Fields?"

"Lord, that's going back a bit!"

"Well, he said it this time. He won, too but only because I was so flabbergasted he got twenty yards start on me. And he was ... I don't know ... cheerful! This promotion has done wonders for his spirit." "Well!" There was a hint of polite disbelief in the

exclamation.

"I almost get the feeling that if we put it to him, man to man, you know ...

"Save your breath," Neil interrupted. "He couldn't change that much."

"Well" - Lawrence abandoned the attempt to persude him - "see what you think yourself. I just got the feeling that if we both went to him and said something like, 'See here, Papa, we've both stuck it a or you - but nothing year and we've had a jolly good stab at it, and we haven't disgraced ourselves - will change our minds. We'd each prefer to be in the other's shoes... well, I don't think he'd do the old Vesuvius impersonation like he used to. But don't

take my word for it- see what you think tomorrow." Neil pondered on ways to get back to the subject of Emma - Catherine knowing how his failure would disgust but could think of none.

Clever little Beast!

T HE TRAIN WAS on time; it must have realized who it was carrying, as Lawrence muttered to his sister. Their father had been known to bawl out the driver and fireman for arriving only five minutes late. They saw him at once, leaping from the first-class carriages, which were half way down the train, and setting off for the barrier with a jaunty stride. Of course, he was not expecting his family to be there; when he saw them, he checked himself and adopted his more customary nautical roll. But his sprightly gait had regsitered with Neil, who gave his brother a concessionary nod that was more than slightly surprised.

"I thought we'd all go to the zoo, dear," Hilda explained before he was really within easy earshot. "The zoo!" she repeated when he frowned. "Euston's half way. It seemed silly to fetch you all the way back to Highbury and then ..."

He smiled and stemmed her flow with a quick kiss - on her mouth, which surprised her, for she was plainly offering him her cheek, as usual. He hadn't kissed her on the mouth since... she couldn't recall. She used to hate it.

He, meanwhile, was exchanging bluff, manly handshakes and shoulder squeezes with his two sons before turning to his darling Catherine. She stood there, half wanting him to pick her up and hug her and swing her around as he used to and half dreading that he might demolish her dignity by doing so. He compromised, grasping both her hands and swinging her in a circle, as in the schottische. "My, my! You've grown even in this last month."

The admiration in his gaze was balm to her. Men of power, men who wield command as if it were their birthright, develop a certain glint in their eyes, which a woman is quick to notice, even quicker than other men. Admiration in such eyes carries a special thrill that a hundred lesser men together could not match; and when that singular man is also the woman's father, there is no pleasure quite like it in all the world.

Hilda noticed the flush in her daughter's cheek and was annoyed at her lack of self-control. "Your bonnet is crooked," she said, knocking it awry and then jerking it straight with a sharp tug that elicited a vulgar "Ow!"

"The zoo on a Sunday morning?" Frank asked. "I thought it was members only on Sunday mornings."

"I've still got the fellowship Uncle Brian gave me for my birthday last year," Lawrence explained. "Apparently he renewed it without telling me." He lifted the corner of his card from his breast pocket and tucked it back again.

Only a year ago, Hilda thought, he would have pulled it all the way out and shown it to Francis. Two years ago, Francis would have taken it from the boy's pocket and satisfied himself that all was in order. But he was no longer a boy that was it. She had the first intimation that these three were catching up and would one day overtake them. One day, she and Francis would be the children, and Lawrence or Neil or Catherine would be pulling things out of their bags or pockets to make sure they weren't getting in a muddle. She smiled at the thought. That day was a long way off yet.

"Well!" Frank punched a fist into his palm. "A cab? Or shall we walk there? A nice stroll through the park, eh?" He stretched a hand to Catherine and offered the crook of his other arm to Hilda. "I've been stuck on that wretched train since four this morning."

"I owe you an apology," Neil murmured as he fell in beside his brother. "What a transformation!"

"Shall we chance it?" "Let's see. Don't say anything yet."

Over the next half mile or so, between Euston Arch and Park Square, they fell progressively behind the other three, who were impelled by their father's perennial eagerness to arrive somewhere, or anywhere. "Catch up!" he bawled when they reached Great Portland Street.

"All sail set," Lawrence commented. It was an appropriate image since both mother and daughter had their parasols open and there was a good following breeze. "We'd better step out, though. they're waiting for us."

"He won't be setting much sail in future," Neil pointed out. "I'm surprised he's so sanguine about it. He always said he'd never give up sail for steam."

"Is it very different? It must be."

"The sea is the sea, whether you're sailing, steaming, or adrift. And there's good and bad in steamships... no different from sail."

Lawrence chuckled. "D'you realize you're already beginning to talk of it with a certain nostalgia."

Neil saw his chance. "What about you? Isn't there anything you'll miss about the landlubberly life? Nothing at all? I can't believe that."

Lawrence heard the humorous innuendo in his brother's tone. "You mean girls," he said. "God, I'll have one in every port."

With the tip of his cane Neil fastidiously pushed a

lump of dried dog turd into the gutter. "You wouldn't,

you know."

"Think not?" Lawrence gave a brave laugh, as if to say "try and stop me"! "You know you wouldn't. They cost a bally

fortune, if they're any good." "All right. I'd have a wife in every port. I'd be loving and faithful and sincere to them all does that suit you better?"

"Loving and faithful and sincere to who?" Catherine asked, for they had just come within range of her sharp ears.

"To whom," her mother corrected. "All my wives," Lawrence told her vaguely.

"He's going to turn Mussulman," Neil put in swiftly not wanting to broach the subject of Lawrence as a seafaring man just yet.

"Such a text for the sabbath!" Hilda said. "Why can't you discuss some improving topic."

"Sorry, Mama," Lawrence replied earnestly. "You're right, though. The subject of wives could not possibly be considered an improving topic."

Hilda turned to Frank, confident she could leave this piece of impertinence to his anger; to her surprise, he just smiled and shook his head, as people do at the incorrigibility of youth. "I regret having called you young brats to catch up," was all he said.

His two sons smiled awkwardly, having no means of coping with him in this rare, mellow mood. He saw it and was dismayed, though he was old and wise enough not to show it. Again and again these past few months he had seen in other people's eyes, in their hesitation, in their baffled silence - glimpses of a Frank Troy who was as dead to him as the dodo. Only Boris had been able to adapt; but then Boris knew.