Colin Watson - Lonelyheart 4122

“No, I came a little early today. Business before pleasure. The sooner I can get done with people like bank managers, the brighter the rest of the day looks.”

“They are a bit of a bore,” Miss Teatime agreed. “And so dilatory these days. Don’t you think so, or is it just my imagination?”

“I shouldn’t call them clippers, certainly. Mind you, one bank can be much nippier than another. And so long as you’ve got hard cash in the hold, it’ll answer the helm quickly enough.”

Miss Teatime smiled and said she supposed he was right. Not that it mattered all that much to her; she never needed to call on big sums and was quite content to leave everything as it was—neatly tied up in “securities”, whatever they were.

Trelawney looked amused. “And do you really not know anything about them?”

“Only that I can’t get at them without a fearful amount of bother. A trip to London, for one thing. I have to sign things in person on the spot. And then there’s always a teeny glass of Madeira afterwards and everybody is referred to as Mister James or Mister Charles. Oh, you’ve no idea...”

“But I have, my dear. One of my own companies is just like that. To this day they still hold their annual general meeting in a chop house, with tankards of porter all round and something they call the Chairman’s Gammon....”

“Oh, lovely.!” cried Miss Teatime.

“...and, of course, a quill to sign the minutes...”

“Yes, of course!”

“...and would you believe it, nobody can cash a single share without filling in a special requisition that has to be signed by a clerk in holy orders, the headmaster of Eton and the editor of The Times !”

“Marvellous!” laughed Miss Teatime. “Absolutely marvellous!” (Within her merriment was a tiny doubt: the headmaster of Eton...was that quite the correct title? Never mind, the point was rather trivial.)

They chatted for a while in sustained good humour until Trelawney suggested that a stroll by the river might be a pleasant way of working up an appetite for lunch. Miss Teatime agreed and they entered the series of gently descending streets, lined with old fashioned shops, that led to the Sharms—Flaxborough’s harbour district.

This had been once the residential preserve of successful shipping merchants and retired master mariners, but with the ebb of the port’s prosperity their big, rather severe looking homes had become tenements or lodging houses. Here and there was one of those depressing English institutions at whose doors and windows can always be glimpsed men in vests and women in curlers and bad tempers, that on the continent would be called brothels.

“Pretty hard tack, this lot,” the commander remarked of a group of inhabitants taking their ease outside a betting shop on the other side of the street. “That’s one reason why I like the country. If you want to leave your doors open, you can, and there’s nothing worse than good fresh air can get in.”

Miss Teatime commended his philosophy, but ventured to suggest that there was an even more secure refuge.

“And what’s that, Lucy?”

“You ought to know,” she said, giving his arm a gentle squeeze.

“Tell me.”

“A boat. A little ship.” No expectant mother could have referred more coyly to her own embryo.

Trelawney frowned but managed to look indulgent at the same time.

“Oh, but there are lots of practical difficulties, you know. You’d have to have a crew. And, my word, you have to be careful there. Then there are things like...oh, port dues and so on. And navigation. Have you thought about navigation?”

“Oh, I don’t mean a big boat. It was what I believe they call in the trade a forty-footer that I had in mind.”

“I say! You have picked up the lingo, haven’t you! I should ima...” He stared at her. Their walking slowed to a halt. They had reached the quay and the stern of a rusty old coaster towered above them.

What Miss Teatime readily identified as a roguish smile appeared on her companion’s face as he leaned against a bollard and continued to regard her intently.

“Do you know, I believe you’ve been up to something!” declared the commander.

She smiled up at the coaster’s limp red flag. “I suppose I shall have to tell you. But you mustn’t laugh. I won’t have you laughing at me, even if I am a poor landlubber.”

Trelawney clapped a hand to one eye. “Nelson’s honour!” he declared, looking more roguish than ever. Then suddenly his face was serious, perhaps even a little anxious. “Go on.”

“Well,” said Miss Teatime, polishing the clasp of her handbag with one gloved hand, “it started with father, really. He used to keep a very nice cabin cruiser—a forty-footer, I think he called it—moored on the Thames at home. Of course, during his illness it wasn’t used and then when he passed on and there was all that business of the estate being settled I really wasn’t in the mood to think about things like pleasure boats.”

The commander nodded sympathetically. “So I let it go to one of father’s old business friends who had often sailed with him and was very keen to have it. I knew what the boat was worth, because it was in the valuation at two thousand three hundred pounds—and that was only just over half what it had cost two years before. But I also knew that Mr Cambridge wasn’t terribly well off, so...well, I made him take it for five hundred. He was quite pathetically pleased and insisted on giving me an undertaking that if ever he wished to part with the boat, it would—what is the word—revert?—it would revert to me for the same money.

“Anyway, I received a letter from Mr Cambridge’s daughter. He is in hospital, poor man, and terribly worried about that silly promise. And strictly between ourselves, he needs the money desperately. I wrote at once and told her to sell the boat for as much as it would fetch, but not for a penny under two thousand...”

An almost indetectable tremor passed over Trelawney’s face.

“...and now back has come that dear, foolish woman’s reply. No—I must have the boat or no one else will. Final. Flat. Now can you understand how anyone could be so stubborn?”

The commander’s expression said that he certainly could not.

“Mind you,” Miss Teatime added, “I must admit that the temptation is almost irresistible. When I look at that water, I can just picture the Lucy—did I tell you he named it after me?—gliding along with that funny little thing on the mast going round and round...”

“Do you mean to say it’s got radar?”

“I don’t know what it’s called, but it’s something to do with being able to steer in fog. Anyway, she really is a beautiful little ship and there’s nothing I’d love so much as to...”

She stopped, suddenly serious.

“Yes?” Trelawney prompted. Boats had become an altogether fascinating topic.

Miss Teatime remained silent.

“I do believe,” he said, doing his best to be roguish again, “that you’ve let out that secret ambition of yours. It’s true, isn’t it? You want to cast off.”

She nodded, but something seemed still to be troubling her.

He asked: “Was it the Lucy you had in mind all the time?”

“Oh, no. When I mentioned my...my ambition in that letter, I certainly was thinking of the sea and going to all those wonderful places like Naples and Marseilles and, and Mozambique—perhaps with someone to share the adventure. But it was only afterwards, when I got Miss Cambridge’s letter, that the idea of the Lucy came into my head. Oh, but no—no, it’s impossible. It would be like taking advantage of a sick old gentleman.”

“Come now,” said Trelawney bluffly, “you mustn’t look at it like that. These old chaps are very proud; it wouldn’t be kind to go against what they believe to be right.”