Hungry as the Sea (26 page)

“Don’t be dense, luv. Your crumpet.” She hated it when he referred to Nick like that, but now she let him go on. “But he won’t be very much longer. His plane leaves at five o’clock, he is making the local flight to Johannesburg, and connecting there for London.”

She stared at him.

“Well what are you waiting for?” Angel keened. “It’s almost four o’clock now, and it will take you at least half an hour to reach the airport.”

She did not move. “But, Angel,” she almost wrung her hands in anguish, “but what do I do when I get there?”

Angel shook his head and twinkled his diamonds in exasperation. “Sweet merciful heavens, duckie.” Then he sighed. “When I was a boy I had two guinea pigs, and they also refused to get it on. I think they were retarded, or something. I tried everything, even hormones, but neither of them survived the shots. Alas, their love was never consummated.”

“Be serious, Angel.”

“You could hold him down while I give him a hormone shot.”

“I hate you, Angel.” She had to laugh, even in her anxiety.

“Dearie, every night for the past month you have tried to set him on fire with your dulcet silvery voice – and we haven’t even passed “GO” and collected our first $200.”

“I know, Angel. I know.”

“It seems to me, sweetie, that it’s time now to cut out the jawing and to ignite him with that magic little tinderbox of yours.”

“You mean right there in the departure lounge of the airport?” She clapped her hands with delight, then struck a lascivious pose. “I’m Sam – fly me!”

“Hop, poppet there is a taxi on the wharf – he’s been waiting an hour, with his meter running.”

There is no first-class lounge in Cape Town’s DF Malan airport, so Nicholas sat in the snake-pit, amongst the distraught mothers and their whining, sticky offspring, the harassed tourists loaded like camels with souvenirs and the florid-faced commercial travellers, but he was alone in a multitude; with unconscious deference they allowed him a little circle of privacy and he used the Louis Vuitton briefcase on his knee as a desk.

It occurred to him suddenly how dramatically the balance had swung in the last mere forty days, since he had recognized his wave peaking, but had almost not been able to find the strength for it.

A shadow passed across his eyes, and the little creased crows foot appeared between them as he remembered the physical and emotional effort that it had taken to make the Go decision on
Golden Adventurer
, and he shivered slightly in fear of what might have happened if he had not gone. He would have missed his wave, and there would never have been another. With a small firm movement of his head, he pushed that memory of fear behind him. He had caught his wave, and he was riding high and fast.

Now it seemed that the fates were intent on smothering him with largesse: the oil-rig for Warlock, Rio to the Bravo Sierra field off Norway - then a back-to-back tow from the North Sea through Suez to the to the new South Australian field, would keep
Warlock
fully employed for the next six months. That was not all, the threatening dockyard strike at Construction Navale Atlantique had been smoothed over and the delivery date for the new tug had come forward by two months. At midnight the night before, a telephone call from Bach Wackie had awakened him to let him know Kuwait and Qatar were now also studying the iceberg-to-water project with a view to commissioning similar schemes; he would have to build himself another two vessels if they decided to go.

All I need now is to hear that I have won the football pools, he thought, and turned his head, started and caught his breath with a hiss, as though he had been punched in the ribs.

She stood by the automatic doors, and the wind had caught her hair and torn it loose from its thick twisted knot so that fine gold tendrils floated down on to her cheeks – cheeks that were flushed as though she had run fast, and her chest heaved so that she held one hand upon it, fingers spread like a star between those fine pointed breasts. She was poised like a forest animal that has scented the leopard, fearful, tremulous, but not yet certain in which direction to run. Her agitation was so apparent that he thrust aside his briefcase and stood up.

She saw him instantly, and her face lit with an expression of such unutterable joy, that he was halted in his intention of going towards her, while she in contrast wheeled and started to run towards him. She collided with a portly, sweating tourist, nearly flooring him and shaking loose a rain of carved native curios and anonymous packets which clattered to the floor around her like ape fruit. He snarled angrily, then his expression changed as he looked at her.

“Sorry!” She stooped swiftly, picked up a packet, thrust it into his arms, hit him with her smile, and left him beaming bemusedly after her.

However, now she was more restrained, her precipitous rush calmed to that long-legged thrusting hip-swinging walk of hers, and the smile was a little uncertain as she pushed vainly at the loose streamers of golden hair, trying to tuck them up into the twisted rope on top of her head.

“I thought I’d missed you.” She stopped a little in front of him.

“Is something wrong?” he asked quickly, still alarmed by her behaviour.

“Oh no!” she assured him hurriedly. “Not any more,” and suddenly she was awkward and coltish again. “I thought,” her voice hushed, “it was just that I thought I’d missed you.” And her eyes slid away from him. “You didn’t say goodbye.”

“I thought it was better that way.”

And now her eyes flew back to his face, sparking with green fire. “Why?” she demanded, and he had no answer to give her.

“I didn’t want to –” How could he say it to her, without making the kind of statement that would embarrass them both?

Above them, the public address system squawked into life.

“South African Airways announces the departure of their Airbus flight 235 to Johannesburg. Will passengers please board at Gate Number Two.”

She had run out of time. “I’m Sam - Fly Me!” Please! she thought, and felt the urge to giggle, but instead she said: “Nicholas, tomorrow you’ll be in London – in midwinter.”

“It’s a sobering thought,” he agreed, and for the first time smiled; his smile closed like a fist around her heart and her legs felt suddenly weak.

“Tomorrow or at least the day after, I’ll be riding the long sea at Cape St Francis,” she said. They had spoken of that, on those enchanted nights. He had told her how he had first ridden the surf at Waikiki beach long ago before the sport had become a craze, and it had been part of their shared experience, part of their love of the sea, drawing them closer together.

“I hope the surf’s up for you,” he said. Cape St Francis was three hundred and fifty miles north of Cape Town, simply another beach and headland in a shoreline that stretched in unbroken splendour for six thousand miles, and yet it was unique in all the world. The young and the young-at-heart came in almost religious pilgrimage to ride the long sea at Cape St Francis. They came from Hawaii and California, from Tahiti and Queensland, for there was no other wave quite like it.

At the departure gate, the shuffling queue was shortening, and Nick stooped to pick up his briefcase, but she reached out and laid her hand on his biceps, and he froze. It was the first time she had deliberately touched him, and the shock of it spread through his body like ripples on a quiet lake. All the emotions and passions which he had so strenuously denied came tumbling back upon him, and it seemed that their strength had grown a hundred-fold while under restraint. He ached for her, with a deep, yearning wanting ache.

“Come with me, Nicholas,” she whispered, and his own throat closed so he could not answer. He stared at her, and already the ground hostesses at the gate were peering around irritably for their missing passenger.

She had to convince him and she shook his arm urgently, startled at the hardness of the muscle under her fingers. “Nicholas, I really want, “she began, intending to finish, “you to,” but her tongue played a Freudian trick on her, and she said, “I really want you.” Oh God, she thought, as she heard herself say it, I sound like a whore – and in panic she corrected herself. “I really want you to,” and she flushed! the blood came up from her neck, dark under the peach of her tan so the freckles glowed on her skin like flakes of gold-dust.

“Which one is it?” he asked, and then smiled again.

“There isn’t time to argue.” She stamped her foot, feigning impatience, hiding her confusion, then added, “Damn you!” for no good reason.

“Who is arguing?” he asked quietly, and suddenly, like magic, she was in his arms, trying to burrow herself deeper and deeper into his embrace, trying to draw all the an smell of him into her lungs, amazed at the softness and warmth of his mouth and the hard rasp of new beard on his chin and cheek, making little soft mewing sounds of comfort deep in her throat as she clung to him.

“Passenger Berg. Will passenger Berg please report to the departure gate,” chanted the public address.

“They’re calling me,” Nicholas murmured.

“They can go right to the back of the queue,” she mumbled into his lips.

Chapter 15

Sunlight was made for Samantha. She wore it like a cloak that had been woven especially for her. She wore it in her hair, sparkling like jewellery, she used it to paint her face and body in lustrous shades of burnt honey and polished amber, she wore it glowing in golden freckles on her cheeks and nose.

She moved in sunlight with wondrous grace, barefooted in the white sand, so that her hips and buttocks roistered brazenly under the thin green stuff of her bikini, She sprawled in the sunlight like a sleeping cat, offering her face and her naked belly to it, so he felt that if he laid his hands against her throat he would feel her purr deep inside her chest.

She ran in the sunlight, light as a gull in flight, along the hard wet sand at the water’s edge, and he ran beside her, tirelessly, mile after mile, the two of them alone in a world of green sea and sun and tall pale hot skies. The beach curved away in both directions to the limit of the eye, smooth and white as the snows of Antarctica, devoid of human life or the scars of man’s petty endeavours, and she laughed beside him in the sunlight, holding his hand as they ran together.

They found a deep, clear rock pool in a far and secret place. The sunlight off the water dappled her body, exploding silently upon it like the reflections of light from a gigantic diamond, as she cast aside the two green wisps of her bikini, let down the thick rope of her hair and stepped into the pool, turning, knee-deep, to look back at him. Her hair hung almost to her waist, springing and thick and trying to curl in the salt and wind, it cloaked her shoulders and her breasts peeped through the thick curtains of it.

Her breasts, untouched by the sun, were rich as cream and tipped in rose, so big and full and exuberant that he wondered that he had ever thought her a child; they bounced and swung as she moved, and she pulled back her shoulders and laughed at him shamelessly when she saw the direction of his eyes.

She turned back to the pool and her buttocks were white with the pinkish sheen of a deep-sea pearl, round and tight and deeply divided, and, as she bent forward to dive, a tiny twist of copper gold curls peeped briefly and coyly from the wedge where the deep cleft split into her tanned smooth thighs.

Through the cool water, her body was warm as bread fresh from the oven, cold and heat together, and when he told her this, she entwined her arms around his neck, “I’m Sam the baked Alaska, eat me!” she laughed, and the droplets clung to her eyelashes like diamond chips in the sunlight.

Even in the presence of others, they walked alone; for them, nobody else really existed. Among those who had come from all over the world to ride the long sea at Cape St Francis were many who knew Samantha, from Florida and California, from Australia and Hawaii, where her field trips and her preoccupation with the sea and the life of the sea had taken her.

“Hey, Sam!” they shouted, dropping their boards in the sand and running to her, tall muscular men, burned dark as chestnuts in the sun. She smiled at them vaguely, holding Nicholas’ hand a little tighter, and replied to their chatter absentmindedly, drifting away at the first opportunity.

“Who was that!”

“It’s terrible, but I can’t remember – I’m not even sure where I met him or when.” And it was true, she could concentrate on nothing but Nicholas, and the others sensed it swiftly and left them alone.

Nicholas had not been in the sun for over a year, his body was the colour of old ivory, in sharp contrast to the thick dark body hair which covered his chest and belly. At the end of that first day in the sun, the ivory colour had turned to a dull angry red.

You’ll suffer, she told him, but the next morning his body and limbs had gone the colour of mahogany and she drew back the sheets and marvelled at it, touching him exploringly with the tip of her fingers.

“I’m lucky, I’ve got a hide like a buffalo,” he told her.

Each day he turned darker, until he was the weathered bronze of an American Indian, and his high cheek-bones heightened the resemblance.

“You must have Indian blood,” she told him, tracing his nose with her finger-tip.

“I only know two generations back,” he smiled at her. “I’ve always been terrified to look further than that.”

She sat over him, cross-legged in the big bed and touched him, exploring him with her hands, touching his lips and the lobes of his ears, smoothing the thick dark curve of his eyebrows, the little black mole on his cheek, and exclaiming at each new discovery. She touched him when they walked, reaching for his hand, pressing her hip against him when they stood, on the beach sitting between his spread knees and leaning back against his chest, her head tucked into his shoulder – it was as if she needed constant physical assurance of his presence.

When they sat astride their boards, waiting far out beyond the three-mile reef for the set of the wave, she reached across to touch his shoulder, balancing the board under her like a skilled horsewoman, the two of them close and spiritually isolated from the loose assembly of thirty or forty surf-riders strung out along the line of the long set.