A Woman Involved. John Davis Gordon

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СКАЧАТЬ swam desperately, resisting her screaming instinct to thrash her legs. She swam and she swam, her heart knocking, her eyes wide: she glanced back frantically, and she could not see them any more, and that was worse: she swam and swam and swam for what seemed an eternity; then she saw the keel of the launch ahead, and it seemed the sweetest sight she had ever seen. She looked back desperately over her shoulder again; then the keel was coming up, the swimming ladder gleaming. She rose, arms upstretched, and she grabbed the ladder and broke surface and she began to scramble up. She spat out the mouthpiece and gasped: ‘Sharks …’

      Max got to his feet. ‘Where?’

      She pointed behind her. Max saw the fins on the surface. He snapped: ‘Have you warned the others?’

      She was halfway out of the water

      ‘No …’

      ‘Go and warn them! I’ll follow.’ He snatched up his flippers.

      She stared at him, horrified, her hair plastered to her head. But oh God yes of course they had to warn the others … She clung to the ladder a terrified moment more, then she crossed herself and rammed the airhose back into her mouth, and she sank, with dread, back into the water.

      She swam back the way she had come. And her fear was the purest she had ever known.

      She did not see the sharks on the way back. Within two hundred yards she saw Bill and Janet Nicols. She signalled to them desperately, Shark … She turned back towards the boat.

      The keel came into view again. They swam and they swam, hearts pounding. Anna made for the swimming ladder and grabbed it, and heaved. She scrambled up onto the sun-beaten deck. Janet came up the ladder frantically behind her. Anna grabbed her hand and heaved her onto the deck. Bill came scrambling up after her.

      ‘Where’s Max?’ Anna swept her eyes over the sea.

      ‘Here I am …’

      Anna spun around. Max Hapsburg was coming out of the saloon, a grin all over his handsome face. ‘Anyone for tennis?’

      She looked at him incredulously, and he burst out laughing.

      ‘They were dolphins! Dolphins … ’

      She was absolutely shocked.

      Max laughed, ‘You should have seen the look on your face–but any fool could have seen they were dolphins … ’

      She screamed: ‘You beast–!’

      She ripped her goggles off her head and hurled them at him: ‘You beast–!’

2

      It was five years since Jack Morgan had seen Anna Hapsburg. But he still dreamt of her often; and they were always intense and beautiful dreams, and his heart sang because he was with her again at last; and when he woke up he was filled with yearning. He tried to go back to sleep so he could be with her again, but he could not, and she was gone.

      Only three months they had had together. In those lovely days her name was Anna Valentine, and she was in her final year at Exeter University; he was a young lieutenant-commander in the Royal Navy on ninety days study-leave at the same university. She lived in a women’s residence on the campus; he had digs nearby in town, a bedsitter with a gasring. ‘We have not yet met,’ he had said on the telephone, ‘but I’m the ardent admirer who sent you those flowers this morning.’

      ‘Oh, yes … Well, thank you, Mr Morgan, they’re lovely roses and I’m very flattered,’ she had replied, ‘but as it happens I am engaged to be married.’

      This was terrible news. ‘Married? When?’

      ‘At the end of this term, Mr Morgan.’

      ‘This is very depressing news, Miss Valentine. But where is this painfully fortunate man?’

      ‘In Grenada. That’s a small island in the Caribbean, you mightn’t have heard of it.’

      Relief. ‘Certainly. A spice island. You grow nutmeg.’

      ‘Correct! Most people think it’s a city in Spain.’

      ‘So did I, but when I heard you speak at the Debating Society last night, I made enquiries about you, then looked up Grenada in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, so I would impress you over dinner. I know all about Grenada, Gross National Product, per capita income, birth rate, electricity problems, the works.’

      She smiled. ‘I am impressed, Mr Morgan. But I’m afraid dinner together wouldn’t be appropriate, because I’m getting married in three months’ time.’

      ‘On the contrary, all the more urgency about this dinner, Miss Valentine. Because I’m going back to sea in three months’ time and I think it highly important that we have the opportunity to consider each other before then, because it’s a crystal-clear case of love at first sight, Miss Valentine. I’ve never resorted to the Encyclopaedia Britannica and a florist in the same context before …’

      And, oh, why, why had they not done it? Why, after three glorious months of love and laughter and absolute happiness, that made them want to dance in the streets, that made the whole world seem a bowl of cherries and terribly amusing, happiness that made the whole world laugh with them, and envy them, happiness that gave them daydreams in the middle of lectures, that gave them the giggles every night as he smuggled her up to his digs past his landlady (House Rules: No Visitors of Opposite Gender, No Drink, No Cooking for Visitors, No Curries, No Music, No Pets, No Confabulations, By Order, Mrs Garvey), happiness that made them make love all night when they should have been cramming for final examinations, the happiness of talking talking talking about everything under the sun, and the rapture, rapture, of each other’s bodies – oh why, at the end of those three glorious months, when the examinations had somehow been written and passed (though not with the flying colours expected of both of them), why had they not just walked into the nearest registry office and married and lived joyously ever after? – Oh how different the world would have been.

      But, they had not. Because she was a Catholic and she wanted a proper church wedding, with her family around her. So they had flown back to Grenada for their last few days together, to introduce him to her parents and tell them that their darling daughter was going to live in darkest England for the rest of her life. They were going to be married on his next leave, four months hence. Then he had gone back to sea in his goddam submarine.

      He had never seen her again.

      It was that shark story that had finally made up his mind to go back to Grenada, after five long years. Janet Nicols had looked him up on her last visit to England, and the tale had come out.

      So now here he sat in a dark aeroplane, staring out of the window at the moonlight, at long last doing what he had so often dreamt of doing, flying across the Atlantic to try to see the woman he had once loved so madly. He had no idea what was going to happen. He had not told anybody he was coming, not even Janet Nicols. He did not know if he would set eyes on Anna, even from a distance. Maybe she would refuse to see him. And now that he was actually doing it at last, fulfilling his dream, he was not even sure what he wanted to happen. Did he really still love her so madly? Or was she just a dream? And if so, was it not best СКАЧАТЬ