FullReads

‘You’d better go, Butterworth,’ repeated Adrian.

The young man looked at him uncertainly.

‘It seems to me you’re being unjust to your wife,’ he ventured.

‘My wife isn’t herself.’

‘That’s no reason for bullying her.’

Adrian lost his temper.’You get out of here!’ he cried.

The two men looked at each other for a moment in silence. Then Butterworth turned to Eva, said, ‘I’ll be back later,’ and left the cabin.

‘Eva, you’ve got to pull yourself together,’ said Adrian when the door closed.

She didn’t answer, looked at him from sullen, half-closed eyes.

‘I’ll order dinner here for us both and then we’ll try to get some sleep.’

‘I want to go up and send a wireless.’

‘Who to?’

‘Some Paris lawyer. I want a divorce.’

In spite of his annoyance, he laughed.’Don’t be silly.’

‘Then I want to see the children.’

‘Well, go and see them. I’ll order dinner.’

He waited for her in the cabin twenty minutes. Then impatiently he opened the door across the corridor; the nurse told him that Mrs Smith had not been there.

With a sudden prescience of disaster he ran upstairs, glanced in the bar, the salons, even knocked at Butterworth’s door. Then a quick round of the decks, feeling his way through the black spray and rain. A sailor stopped him at a network of ropes.

‘Orders are no one goes by, sir. A wave has gone over the wireless room.’

‘Have you seen a lady?’

‘There was a young lady here–‘ He stopped and glanced around.’Hello, she’s gone.’

‘She went up the stairs!’ Adrian said anxiously.’Up to the wireless room!’

The sailor ran up to the boat deck; stumbling and slipping, Adrian followed. As he cleared the protected sides of the companionway, a tremendous body struck the boat a staggering blow and, as she keeled over to an angle of forty-five degrees, he was thrown in a helpless roll down the drenched deck, to bring up dizzy and bruised against a stanchion.

‘Eva!’ he called. His voice was soundless in the black storm. Against the faint light of the wireless-room window he saw the sailor making his way forward.

‘Eva!’

The wind blew him like a sail up against a lifeboat. Then there was another shuddering crash, and high over his head, over the very boat, he saw a gigantic, glittering white wave, and in the split second that it balanced there he became conscious of Eva, standing beside a ventilator twenty feet away. Pushing out from the stanchion, he lunged desperately toward her, just as the wave broke with a smashing roar. For a moment the rushing water was five feet deep, sweeping with enormous force towards the side, and then a human body was washed against him, and frantically he clutched it and was swept with it back towards the rail. He felt his body bump against it, but desperately he held on to his burden; then, as the ship rocked slowly back, the two of them, still joined by his fierce grip, were rolled out exhausted on the wet planks. For a moment he knew no more.

�

IV

�

Two days later, as the boat train moved tranquilly south toward Paris, Adrian tried to persuade his children to look out the window at the Norman countryside.

‘It’s beautiful,’ he assured them.’All the little farms like toys. Why, in heaven’s name, won’t you look?’

‘I like the boat better,’ said Estelle.

Her parents exchanged an infanticidal glance.

‘The boat is still rocking for me,’ Eva said with a shiver.’Is it for you?’

‘No. Somehow, it all seems a long way off. Even the passengers looked unfamiliar going through the customs.’

‘Most of them hadn’t appeared above ground before.’

He hesitated.’By the way, I cashed Butterworth’s cheque for him.’

‘You’re a fool. You’ll never see the money again.’