Medusa

‘Bloody Island. At the dig.’ She nodded towards the grey sprawl of the hospital ruins looking quite distant now that the harbour was full of whitecaps. ‘He hired a boat and came over to see me.’

‘To say goodbye?’

She shook her head.

‘Then why?’

‘I think because he wanted you to know. He also said he was sorry.’

‘For leaving Soo on her own that night, or for falling in love with her?’

‘Both, I imagine.’

We had stopped again and I was staring seaward, out beyond the fortress of St Felip to where the horizon lay, a dark line in a blue sea flecked with white. So his leave would soon be up and he’d be off to Gib to take command of his ship. A Navy man, newly promoted and on his way up the service ladder. No wonder she found him attractive, feeling as she did about her father. I thought of the wretched little house, one of a line of Victorian dwellings in a back street in Southsea. It was all her father had to show for almost forty years in the Navy, his pay mostly spent on good living, and what savings he had achieved thrown away on speculative investments that had never produced the fortune they promised him. That lovely little courtyard full of music from the old record player, the mellow limestone house overlooking the sea between Sliema and St George’s Bay, it had all seemed a long way away when we had last visited her parents. That was just after the loss of her first child, which I had thought might be some weakness inherited from her mother. But after that visit I was convinced that if it was an inherited weakness then it had to be from her father.

Still thinking about that, I glanced at Petra, standing Junoesque in the sunshine, the curve of a breast showing in the V of her orange shirt, the skin tawny brown with wind and salt, the patched denims filmed with the dust of the dig she was working on. No weakness there, and if she were to let up on the pill and have a child, she’d probably deliver it herself, no trouble at all, and get right on with the dig next day.

She turned her head and caught my gaze, the flicker of a smile back at the corners of her mouth. Something in her eyes made me wonder if she could read my thoughts. Were we that close already, and nothing said, just an acceptance that there were moments when the satisfaction of our needs …? ‘You go for that sail. It’ll do you good. I’ve got things to do.’ She turned away then, a wave of the hand as she called over her shoulder, ‘And don’t fall in. It’s blowing quite hard out there.’

I watched her as she crossed the road and disappeared up the stone staircase leading to the upper road where she always parked her battered little Citroen. She moved with the grace of an athlete, taking the steps at a run, her hair catching the sun like a burnished helmet of bronze. She must have known I was watching her, but she didn’t look back, and when she reached the top she didn’t look down or wave, though I caught the flash of that helmet of hair for a moment above the ornate balustrade.

She was right about the wind. It would have been fine if she had come with me, but single-handed the Flying Dutchman I had picked up in lieu of an unpaid bill was quite a handful, more like board-sailing than cruising. I reefed, of course, before slipping from our pontoon and sailing out of the shelter of Cala Figuera, but the wind was funnelling down the length of the harbour approaches, and not much shelter to be had in the lee of the islands. It was very wet as I beat past Villa Carlos and out as far as the big island called Lazareto, and when I went about and freed the main for the run back, we were planing on the break of the waves and every now and then that powerful little dinghy took the bit between her teeth and tried to broach-to.

I was wet and tired by the time I got in. Instead of providing me with the opportunity of thinking things through, it had taken all my concentration just to keep the dinghy upright and avoid capsizing. Ramón was waiting for me with a whole string of queries, mostly about matters that Soo would normally have dealt with, and there was the mail. I hadn’t dealt with the day’s mail yet and I loathed typing letters. There is a telephone call.’ He was hovering over me as I stripped and towelled myself down. ‘About the Santa Maria.’

‘You deal with it,’ I said. ‘You know the charter terms.’

‘He don’t want a charter.’

‘You mean he wants to buy her …’ I had been trying to sell the Santa Maria for over a year now.

But Ramón shook his head. ‘He already have a boat.’

I paused in the act of stepping into a dry pair of trousers. Then what the hell does he want? Who is he?’

‘Señor Flórez. He want you to phone him.’

Apparently Flórez was acting for the owner of a catamaran lying at the commercial dock, in the area reserved for larger yachts and those on passage. ‘He want to make some sort of exchange,’ Ramón added.