Hungry as the Sea (42 page)

When they went through to the small informal dining-room, they sat at the table as they had done so often before; they seemed to be transported back in time to those happy almost forgotten years. There were moments which might have jarred, but Chantelle’s instinct was so certain that she could skirt delicately around these. She treated Nicholas as an honoured guest, not as the master of the house; instead she made Peter the host.

“Peter darling, will you carve for us?” and the boy’s pride and importance was almost overwhelming, although the bird looked as though it had been caught in a combine-harvester by the time he had finished with it.

Chantelle served food and wine, a chicken stuffed in Creole style and a petit Chablis, that had no special associations from the past; and the choice of music was Peter’s.

“Music to develop ulcers by, as “Nicholas remarked aside, to Chantelle.

Peter fought a valiant rearguard action to delay the passage of time, but finally resigned himself when Nicholas told him, “I’ll come and see you up to bed.” He waited while Peter cleaned his teeth with an impressive vigour that might have continued beyond midnight if Nicholas had not protested mildly. When at last he was installed between the sheets, Nicholas stooped over him and the boy wrapped both arms around his neck with a quiet desperation.

“I’m so happy,” he whispered against Nicholas’ neck and when they kissed he crushed Nicholas’ lips painfully with his mouth. “Wouldn’t it be fabulous if we could be like this always?” he asked.

“If you didn’t have to go away again, Dad?”

Chantelle had changed the wild music to the muted haunting melodies of Liszt, and as he came back into the room she was pouring cognac into a thin crystal balloon. “Did he settle down?” she asked, and then answered herself immediately. “He’s exhausted, although he doesn’t know it.”

She brought him the cognac and then turned away and went out through the doors on to the terrace. He followed her out, and they stood at the stone balustrade side by side. The air was clear but chill.

“It’s beautiful,” she said. The moon paved a wide silver path across the surface of the sea. “I always thought that the highway to my dreams.”

“Duncan,” he said. “Let’s talk about Duncan Alexander,” and she shivered slightly, folding her arms across her breasts and grasping her own naked shoulders.

“What do you want to know?”

“In what terms did you give him control of your shares?”

“As an agent, my personal agent.”

“With full discretion?” She nodded, and he asked next, “Did you have an escape clause? In what circumstances can you reclaim control?”

“The dissolution of marriage,” she said, and then shook her head.

“But I think I knew that no court would uphold the agreement if I wanted to change it. It’s too Victorian.

“Anytime I want to I could simply apply to have the appointment of Duncan as my agent set aside.”

“Yes, I think you’re right,” Nicholas agreed. But it might take a year or more, unless you could prove malafides, unless you could prove he deliberately betrayed the trust of agency.”

“Can I prove that, Nicky?” She turned to him now, lifting her face to him. “Has he betrayed that trust?”

“I don’t know yet,” Nicholas told her cautiously, and she cut in.

“I’ve made a terrible fool of myself, haven’t I?” He kept silent, and she went on tremulously, “I know there is no way I can apologize to you for what I did. There is no way that I can make it up to you, but believe me, Nicholas please believe me when I tell you, I have never regretted anything so much in all my life.”

“It’s past, Chantelle. It’s over. There is no profit in looking back.”

“I don’t think there is another man in the world who would do what you are doing now, who would repay deceit and betrayal with help and comfort. I just wanted to say that.” She was standing very close to him now, and in the cool night he could feel the warmth of her flesh across the inches that separated them, and her perfume had a subtlety altered fragrance on that creamy skin. She always wore perfume so well, the same way she wore her clothes.

“It’s getting cold,” he said brusquely, took her elbow and steered her back into the light, out of that dangerous intimacy. “We still have a great deal to discuss.”

He paced the thick forest-green carpet, quickly establishing a beat as regular as that of a sentry, ten paces from the glass doors, passing in front of where she sat in the centre of the wide velvet couch, turning just before he reached the headless marble statue of a Greek athlete from antiquity that guarded the double oaken doors into the lobby, and then back in front of her again. As he paced, he told her in carefully prepared sequence all that he had learned from Lazarus.

She sat like a bird on the point of flight, turning her head to watch him, those huge dark eyes seeming to swell larger as she listened.

It was not necessary to explain it to her in layman’s language, she was Arthur Christy’s daughter, she understood when he told her how he suspected that Duncan Alexander had been forced to self-insure the hull of
Golden Dawn
and how he had used Christy stock to buy re-insurance, stock that he had probably already pledged to finance construction of the vessel.

Nicholas reconstructed the whole inverted pyramid of Duncan Alexander’s machinations for her to examine, and almost immediately she saw how vulnerable, how unstable it was.

“Are you certain of all this?” she whispered, and her face was drained of all its lustrous rose tints.

He shook his head. “I’ve reconstructed the Tyrannosaurus from a jawbone,” he admitted frankly. “The shape of it might be a little different, but one thing I am certain of is that it’s a big and dangerous beast.”

“Duncan could destroy Christy Marine,” she whispered again. “Completely!”

She looked around slowly, at the house – at the room and its treasures, the symbols of her life. “He has risked everything that’s mine, and Peter’s.”

Nicholas did not reply, but he stopped in front of her and watched her carefully as she absorbed the enormity of it all. He saw outrage turn slowly to confusion, to fear and finally to terror. He had never seen her even afraid before – but now, faced with the prospect of being stripped naked of the armour which had always protected her, she was like a lost animal, he could even see that flutter of her heart under the pale swelling flesh of her bosom, and she shivered again.

“Could he lose everything, Nicholas? He couldn’t, could he?” She wanted assurance, but he could not give it to her, all he could give her was pity. Pity was the one emotion, probably the only one, she had never aroused in him, not once in all the years he had known her.

“What can I do, Nicholas? she pleaded. Please help me. Oh God, what must I do?”

“You can stop Duncan launching
Golden Dawn
 until the hull and propulsion has been modified, until it has been properly surveyed and underwritten and until you have taken full control of Christy Marine out of his hands again.” And his voice was gentle, filled with his compassion as he told her.

“That’s enough for one day, Chantelle. If we go on now, we will be chasing our tails. Tonight you know what could happen, tomorrow we will discuss how we can prevent it. Have you a Valium?” She shook her head.

“I’ve never used drugs to hide from things.” He knew, that she had never lacked true courage. “How much longer can you stay?”

“I have a seat on the eleven o’clock plane. I have tonight – we’ll have time be back in London by tomorrow morning.”

The guest suite opened on to the second-floor balcony which ran along the entire front of the building overlooking the sea and the private harbour. The five main bedrooms all opened on to this balcony, an arrangement from fifty years previously when internal security against kidnapping and forcible entry had been of no importance. Nicholas determined to speak to Chantelle about that in the morning. Peter was an obvious target for extortion, and he felt the goose bumps of horror rise on his arms as he imagined his son in the hands of those degenerate monsters who were everywhere allowed to strike and destroy with impunity. There was a price to pay these days for being rich and successful. The smell of it attracted the hyenas and vultures. Peter must be better protected, he decided.

In the sitting-room, there was a well-stocked liquor cabinet concealed behind mirrors, nothing so obvious and resoundingly middle-class as a private bar. The daily papers, in English, French and German were set out on the television table, France Soir, The Times, Allgemeine Zeitung, with even an airmail version of the New York Times.

Nicholas flipped open The Times and glanced quickly at the closing prices. Christy Marine common stock was at £5.32, up on yesterday’s prices. The market had not sniffed corruption – yet.

He pulled off his silk roll-neck, and even though he had bathed three hours previously, the tension had left his skin feeling itchy and unclean. The bathroom had been lavishly redecorated in green onyx panels and the fittings were eighteen-carat gold, in the shape of dolphins. Steaming water gushed from their gaping mouths at a touch. It could have been vulgar, but Chantelle’s unerring touch steered it into Persian opulence instead.

He showered, turning the setting high so that the stinging needles of water scalded away his fatigue and the feeling of being unclean. There were half a dozen thick white terry toweling robes in the glass-fronted warming cupboard, and he selected one and went through into the bedroom, belting it around his naked waist.

In his briefcase there was a draft of the agreement of sale of Ocean Salvage and Towage to the Sheikhs. James Teacher and his gang of bright young lawyers had read it, and made a thick sheaf of notes. Nicholas must study these before tomorrow evening when he met them in London.

He took the papers from his case and carried them through into the sitting-room, glancing at the top page before dropping them carelessly on to the low coffee table while he went to pour himself a small whisky, heavily diluted, He brought the drink back with him and sprawled into the deep leather armchair, picked up the papers and began to work.

He became aware of her perfume first, and felt his blood quicken uncontrollably at the fragrance, and the papers rustled in his hand.

Slowly he lifted his head. She had come in utter silence on small bare feet. She had removed all her jewellery and had let down her hair brushing it out on to her shoulders. It made her seem younger, more vulnerable, and the gown she wore was cuffed and collared in fine soft lace. She moved slowly towards his chair, timorous and for once uncertain, the eyes huge and dark and haunted, and when he rose from the armchair, she stopped and one hand went to her throat.

“Nicholas,” she whispered, “I’m so afraid, and so alone.” She moved a step closer, and saw his eyes shift, his lips harden, and she stopped instantly. “Please, she pleaded softly, don’t send me away, Nicky. Not tonight, not yet. I’m afraid to be alone – please.”

He knew then that this had been going to happen, he had hidden the certainty of it from himself all that evening, but now it was upon him, and he could do nothing to avoid it. it was as though he had lost the will to resist, he stood mesmerized, his resolve softening and melting like wax in the candle flame of her beauty, of the passions which she commanded so skilfully, and his thoughts lost coherence, began to tumble and swirl like storm surf breaking on rock.

She recognized the exact instant when it happened to him, and she came forward silently, with small gliding footsteps, not making the mistake of speaking again and pressed her face to his bare chest framed in the collar of his robe. The thick curling hair was springing over hard flat muscle, and she flared her nostrils at the clean virile animal smell of his skin.

He was still resisting, standing stiffly with his hands hanging at his sides. Oh, she knew him so well. The terrible conflict he must suffer before he could be made to act against that iron code of his own. Oh, she knew him, knew that he was as sexual and physical and animal as she was herself, that he was the only man who had ever been able to match her appetites. She knew the defences he had erected about himself, the fortressing of his passions, the controls and repressions, but she knew so well how to subvert these elaborate defences, she knew exactly what to do and what to say, how to move and touch.

As she began now, she found the deliberate act of breaking down his resistance excited her so swiftly that it was pain almost, agony almost, and required all her own control not to advance too swiftly for him, to control the shaking of her legs and the pumping of her lungs, to play still the hurt and bewildered and frightened child, using his kindness, the sense of chivalry which would not allow him to send her away, in such obvious distress. Oh God, how her body churned, her stomach cramped with the strength of her wanting, her breasts felt swollen and so – sensitive that the contact of silk and lace was almost too painfully abrasive to bear.

“Oh, Nicky, please – Just for a moment. just once, hold me. Please, I cannot go on alone. just for a moment, please.”

She felt him lift his hands, felt the fingers on her shoulders, and the terrible pain of wanting was too much to bear, she could not control it. She cried out, it was a soft little whimper, but the force of it shook her body, and immediately she felt his reaction, Her timing had been immaculate, her natural womanly cunning had guided her.

His fingers on her shoulders had been gentle and kindly, but now they hooked cruelly into her flesh. His back arched involuntarily, his breath drummed from his chest under her ear, a single agonized exhalation like that of a boxer taking a heavy body punch. She felt his every muscle come taught, and she knew again the frightening power, the delirious giddy power she could still wield.

Then, at last, joyously, almost fearfully, she experienced the great lordly lift and thrust of his loins – as though the whole world had moved and shifted about her. She cried out again, fiercely, for now she could slip the hounds she had held so short upon the leash, she could let denied, them run and hunt again. They had been too long but now there was no longer need for care and restraint.