Jonathan Raban - Foreign Land - A Novel

“It just looks like a shirt to me,” said Mrs Haigh, who was writing a letter and seemed annoyed at Angela’s interruption.

It just looked like a shirt to George, too. But he knew that Angela was right. After breakfast she took him to Jermyn Street and had him measured. When the man in the shop led George into a little leather-and-cigar smelling room behind, Angela came as well.

“He doesn’t want it cut too full round his tummy,” she said to the man. “And he wants lots of cuff.”

It was another delicious part of being Angela’s, this feeling of being taken in hand and being talked of over his head. And she knew so much, about all sorts of things. It was only in the wheelhouse that he saw that the girl was treating him like a doll. No wonder she doted on him. George must be unique in her experience — this man who would submit to being dressed, patted, scolded, kissed and spanked.

“He must have them by Thursday. Oh, please?”

The man in the shop said that was quite impossible, until Angela gave him the full treatment with her enormous eyes.

“There’s a war on, miss. We’re very short of staff.”

“But he’s going back to his ship. He’s a fighting man!”

“I don’t know, miss.”

“Oh, you will. I know you will.”

And it was agreed. A dozen shirts, cut to Angela’s detailed prescription, would be ready on Thursday and charged to Mr Haigh’s account.

About this last detail, George was a little frightened. He thought it looked uncommonly close to sponging.

“Daddy won’t even notice, silly. Anyway he loves to pay.”

“What exactly does he actually … well … do?” They had crossed St James’s Street to a treelined court where Angela said she knew a hotel which did quite decent cocktails.

“Daddy? Like I said. He pays for things.”

George laughed. “Pays for what things?”

“Well … you know, if someone wants to build a factory somewhere … things like that. Daddy … sort of pays for it. He works a lot with the government now. Munitions. You know.”

“He’s a … financier?” George said.

“Oh, sweetie, no! You make it sound as if he’s Jewish!”

The sky was suddenly wide open. The haze had gone. There was even just enough of a light wind from the north to think about putting up a sail or two. The water ahead looked bright and frosted. Nothing in sight except the sun.

George got out Tom’s sextant and fitted its brass telescope into the frame. Standing in the cockpit, he found the sun, reflected through a screen of smoked glass. Slowly turning the knurled screw on the arc of the sextant, he removed the sun from the sky and lowered it in a series of jerks until it rested like a warty fruit on the horizon. He’d always enjoyed this clever little operation. It was satisfying to be able to mess about so casually with the solar system: you could put the sun wherever you wanted it and rearrange the planets as if they were chessmen on a board. He read off the angle between himself and the sun from the vernier: 41° 27’. He timed his sight at 0937. And fifteen seconds.

Working from the almanac at the chart table now, he found the sun’s Greenwich Hour Angle and its declination. 267° 48’ and 1° 33’. South. That would put it somewhere over Mogadishu, George reckoned. He’d been to Mogadishu once. Bloody awful place. Next he gave himself an assumed position.

“And that’s another of the navigator’s funny quirks of character,” Commander Prynne said. “In order for this trick to come out, he always has to assume that he’s somewhere where he knows he isn’t.”

George assumed that he was in Plymouth. On Larkspur . That made a nice round figure AP. Scribbling sums on the corner of the Admiralty chart, he calculated his intercept. 23.5 miles Away. He ruled the line in and measured off the miles. It looked as if he was within a few cables of his Dead Reckoning position. In a little while he should be able to see the Eddystone.

“Georgie?”

Angela was in his room. In her nightie.

“What about …?”

“It’s all right. Their room’s miles away.”

He realized that he was still holding his toothbrush. He put it carefully down above the sink and wondered where on earth he’d put his dressing gown.

“Don’t I even get a goodnight kiss, then?”

And the two of them were tangled on George’s narrow bed, busy, gasping, all fingers and mouths. Angela’s nightdress was rucked up over her waist; George’s pyjama bottoms had come untied. For about forty-five seconds (less, if one was going to be really truthful), it was like being caught up and winnowed in a paradisal threshing machine. George was harvested first; it took Angela a few moments longer before she too came clear of the sucking and clinging and tumbling.

“Oh God!” George said, “God … God … God!”

They lay together in the sexy, fishy smell of themselves. George couldn’t believe himself. He felt as if he’d been decorated — that there should be letters after his name now. He’d got to Number Ten . Well, perhaps not quite Number Ten in the usual sense; but surely what he and Angela had just done counted for pretty much the same thing … didn’t it? Then, in his pride, he remembered that he and Angela were Deeply in Love and he felt shabby and callow for ever allowing himself to think like that. You nerk.

“Darling!”

“Sweetie …” She was actually holding his damp penis in her hand.

“You couldn’t get … have a baby like … that … could you?”

Angela giggled. “Georgie! Do you want me to tell you about the birds and the bees?”

It was her tone of voice that made him say, “Have you ever … done it?”

No answer. George said: “I wouldn’t mind. If you had … darling.”

She was suddenly sitting upright, holding a blanket up over her chest. Her eyes were fierce and appalled. “What a horrible, horrible, horrible thing to say!”

“Oh Christ, Angela, I’m sorry, all I meant was—”

“It’s too vile for words. It’s filthy . How could you? It’s because you’re a beast, isn’t it? It’s because you’ve done it with horrible prostitutes. In the docks . I don’t want to hear about it, George. Your women . The beastly things you do. You’ve got a disease! You’re infected! You’ve got VD!”

George wept. He said sorry a hundred times. He hated himself. He loved Angela. He told her that he was more ashamed of himself now than he’d ever been in his entire life. He tried to hold her, to comfort her for the dreadful thing he’d said, but it was a good ten minutes before Angela frostily began to allow herself to be mollified.

“Oh, George, it’s too awful,” she said happily. “I don’t know whether I shall ever be able to trust you again.”

It was another five minutes before George heard her giggle.

“What? Darling?”

“Nothing. I was just thinking.” She raised herself on one elbow and looked down on him. “Georgie? Do you think I’d look funny, wearing black?”

“Grunff!” George said, putting a circle round the cross of his position. He was just as ashamed of himself here as he was there, and hardly less baffled by Angela’s lightning manoeuvres. Christ, but she had him on the run now! He was skipping about for her like a miniature dachshund doing tricks for biscuits.

The Eddystone Lighthouse was showing now as a hairline crack on the horizon far away to the southeast. George took its bearing. 124°. Just right. He stepped out on to the foredeck and winched up the big tan mainsail, watching the wind uncrease it as it climbed the mast. He raised the jib, flapping and banging overhead, and walked back to the cockpit to tighten the sheet. His father was there — seated on the gas locker wearing his summer alpaca jacket and straw boater.