Levkas Man by Hammond; Innes Page B

her bunk, her black hair tousled and her face still flushed with sleep. ‘I’ll wake Bert, if you like.’ He was snoring gently in the other bunk.
    â€˜Better see what you think first,’ I said, and I went back to the wheelhouse. We had swung about a point off course and I brought her head back. The light of the compass was fading with the dawn. I could see the waves more clearly now. They were steep and breaking, the sea flecked with white to the horizon, the sky ahead a pale translucent green just starting to flush with the sun’s hidden rays.
    She didn’t take long to dress, and when she entered the wheelhouse, she stood there a moment, looking at the sea and at the sails with eyes slightly narrowed, a cool, almost professional appraisal. Then she took the wheel from me and held it, getting the feel of the boat. ‘No, I think she’s all right,’ she said. ‘It always sounds worse below.’ She gave a quick little laugh. ‘I’m inclined to get panicky when there’s a lot of noise.’
    She was wearing a thick black polo-necked sweater and red oilskins. ‘It’s hard on Bert,’ she said. ‘He did want to run that new engine of his. But I like it like this—just the noise of the sea.’ She was fully awake now and her eyes sparkled with the exhilaration of the speed and the movement. ‘Doesn’t it excite you—the sea, when it’s like this?’ But then she laughed. ‘No, of course—you must have experienced plenty of really big seas.’
    â€˜In the North Atlantic, yes. But with a large vessel it’s much more remote.’
    She checked the wheel as a breaking wave rolled under us, biting her lip with concentration, and the jib emptied and filled with a bang to the roll. The green had gone from the sky ahead. Ragged wisps of cloud showed an edge of flame and right on the horizon an island of molten lava seemed to blaze up out of the sea.
    â€˜How old is your father?’ she asked.
    â€˜I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Sixty-ish, I suppose.’
    She glanced at me then. ‘You’re worried about him, aren’t you?’
    â€˜Yes, I suppose so.’
    â€˜Then why didn’t you fly out?’
    I had no answer to that, but fortunately she took my silence as a rebuke. ‘I’m sorry, I ask too many questions, don’t I?’ She gave a little laugh, low and strangely musical, and then she was looking up at me, her lips slightly parted, her dark eyes gentle.
    We were alone, the two of us in a wild dawn, and I put my hand on her shoulder and the next moment she was in my arms, her mouth soft, her body clumsy in her heavy weather clothing. She stayed like that for a moment, and then the ship yawed and she pushed away from me and took the wheel again. She was smiling, a quiet, secret smile. ‘You’re lonely, aren’t you?’
    â€˜And you?’ I asked.
    â€˜I’m not lonely. It’s just the sea. It excites me.’ And she added, ‘Now go to bed. You’ve been up half the night.’
    â€˜I’m not tired.’ I hesitated, conscious of a need, but no way of satisfying it.
    â€˜Of course not. You’re too tensed-up to feel the tiredness.’
    â€˜Perhaps.’
    She was looking at me, those large, dark eyes of here suddenly offering sympathy. ‘Those two days in Malta—nothing but work, and you hardly left the ship. Even Bert noticed it. And now—at sea …’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t know what the trouble is, and I’m not asking, but bottling it all up inside you—that’s not good.’ She checked the wheel, staring ahead. ‘Try to relax, why don’t you?’
    â€˜Was that why you kissed me?’
    She smiled. ‘It helps—sometimes.’
    I nodded, and we stood in silence, watching as the sun’s upper rim lipped blood-red over the horizon. Then I checked the log