Hungry as the Sea (44 page)

James Teacher showed no impatience, and he smiled and nodded and went through the ritual like an Arab born, sipping the little thimbles of treacly coffee and watching patiently for the interminable whisperings to be translated into English before making a measured counter proposal.

“We are doing fine, Mr. Berg,” he assured Nicholas quietly. “A few more days.”

Nicholas had a headache from the strong coffee and he found it difficult to concentrate. He kept worrying about Samantha, For four days he had tried to contact her. He had to get out for a while and he excused himself to the prince, and went down to the Enquiries Desk in the Bank’s entrance hall and the girl told him, “I’m sorry, sir, there there is no reply to either of those numbers.”

“There must be, Nicholas told her.” One number was Samantha’s shack at Key Biscayne and the other was her private number in her laboratory.

She shook her head. “I’ve tried every hour.”

“Can you send a cable for me?”

“Of course, sir.” She gave him a pad of forms and he wrote out the message.

“Please phone me urgently, reverse charges to–” he gave the Queens Gate flat and James teacher’s rooms, then thought with the pen poised, trying to find the words to express his concern, but there were none. “I love you,” he wrote “I really do.”

Since Nicholas’ midnight call to tell her of the carriage of cad-rich crude petroleum, Samantha Silver had been caught up in a kaleidoscope whirl of time and events.

After a series of meetings with the leaders of the Green-Peacers, and other conservation bodies in an effort to publicize and oppose this new threat to the oceans, she and Tom Parker had flown to Washington and met with a deputy director of the Environmental Protection Agency and with two young senators who spearheaded the conservation lobby but their efforts to go further had been frustrated by the granite walls of big oil interest. Even usually cooperative sources had been wary of condemning or speaking out against Orient Amex’s new carbon-cracking technology. As one thirty-year-old Democrat senator had pointed out, “It’s tough to try and take a shot at something that’s going to increase the fossil fuel yield by fifty percent.”

“That’s not what we are shooting at,” Samantha had flared, bitter with fatigue and frustration. “It’s this irresponsible method of carrying the cad-rich through sensitive and highly vulnerable seaways we are trying to prevent.” But when she presented the scenario she had worked out, picturing the effects on the North Atlantic deluged with a million tons of toxic crude, she saw the disbelief in the man’s eyes and the condescending smile of the sane for the slightly demented.

“Oh God, why is common sense the hardest thing in the world to sell?” she had lamented.

She and Tom had gone on to meet the leaders of Green-Peace in the north, and in the west, and they had given advice and promises of support. The Californian Chapter counselled physical intervention as a last resort, as some of their members had successfully interposed small craft between the Russian whalers and the breeding minkes they were hunting in the Californian Gulf in Galveston, they met the young Texans who would picket the Orient Amex refinery as soon as they were certain the ultra-tanker had entered the Gulf of Mexico.

However, none of their efforts was successful in provoking confrontation with Orient Arnex. The big oil company simply ignored invitations to debate the charges on radio or television, and stone-walled questions from the media.

“It’s hard to stir up interest in a one-sided argument,” Samantha found.

They managed one local Texas television show, but without controversy to give it zip, the producer cut Samantha’s time down to forty-five seconds, and then tried to date her for dinner. The energy crisis, oil tankers and oil pollution were joyless subjects. Nobody had ever heard of cadmium pollution, the Cape of Good Hope was half a world away, million tons was a meaningless figure, impossible to visualize, and it was all rather a bore.

The media let it drop flat on its face.

“We’re just going to have to smoke those fat cats at Orient Amex out into the open,” Tom Parker growled angrily, and kick their arses blue for them. “The only way we are going to do that is through Green-Peace.”

They had landed back at Miami International, exhausted and disappointed, but not yet despondent. “Like the man said,” Samantha muttered grimly, as she threaded her gaudy van back into the city traffic flow, “we have only just begun to fight.” She had only a few hours to clean herself up and stretch out on the patchwork quilt before she had to dress again and race back to the airport.

The Australian had already passed through customs and was looking lost and dejected in the terminal lobby. “Hi, I’m Sam Silver.” She pushed away fatigue, and hoisted that brilliant golden smile like a flag. His name was Mr. Dennis O’Connor and he was top man in his field, doing fascinating and important work on the reef populations of Eastern Aaustralian waters, and he had come a long way to talk to her and see her experiments.

“I didn’t expect you to be so young.”

She had signed her correspondence Doctor Silver and he gave the standard reaction to her. Samantha was just tired and angry enough not to take it. “And I’m a woman. You didn’t expect that either,” she agreed.

“It’s a crying bastard, isn’t it? But then, I bet some of your best friends are young females.” He was a dinky-die Aussie, and he loved it. He burst into an appreciative grin, and as they shook hands, he said, “You are not going to believe this, but I like you just the way you are.”

He was tall and lean, sunburned and just a little grizzled at the temples, and within minutes they were friends, and the respect with which he viewed her work confirmed that. The Australian had brought with him, in an oxygenated container. In the container, five thousand live specimens of E Digitalis the common Australian water snail, for inclusion in Samantha’s experimentation. He had selected these animals for their abundance and their importance in the ecology of the Australian inshore waters, and the two of them were soon so absorbed in the application of Samantha’s techniques to this new creature that when her assistant stuck her head through and yelled, “Hey, Sam, there’s a call for you,” she shouted back, “Take a message. If they’re lucky I’ll call them back.”

“It’s international, person to person!” and Samantha’s pulse raced; instantly forgotten was the host of spiral-coned sea snails.

“Nicholas!” she shouted happily, spilled half a pint of sea water down the Australian’s trouser leg and ran wildly to the small cubicle at the end of the laboratory. She was breathless with excitement as she snatched up the receiver and she pressed one hand against her heart to stop it thumping.

“Is that Doctor Silver?”

“Yes! It’s me.” Then correcting her grammar, “It is she!”

“Go ahead, please,” said the operator, and there was a click and pulse on the line as it came alive.

“Nicholas!” she exulted. “Darling Nicholas, is that you?”

“No.” The voice was very clear and serene, as though the speaker stood beside her, and it was familiar, disconcertingly so, and for no good reason Samantha felt her heart shrink with dread. “This is Chantelle Alexander, Peter’s mother. We have met briefly.”

“Yes.” Samantha’s voice was now small, and still breathless.

“I thought it would be kind to tell you in person, before you hear from other sources – that Nicholas and I have decided to re-marry.”

Samantha sat down jerkily on the office stool.

“Are you there?” Chantelle asked after a moment.

“I don’t believe you,” whispered Samantha.

“I’m sorry,” Chantelle told her gently. “But there is Peter, you see, and we have rediscovered each other – discovered that we had never stopped loving each other.”

“Nicholas wouldn’t –” her voice broke, and she could not go on.

“You must understand and forgive him, my dear,” Chantelle explained. “After our divorce he was hurt and lonely. I’m sure he did not mean to take advantage of you.”

“But, but – we were supposed to – we were going to–”

“I know. Please believe me, this has not been easy for any of us. For all our sakes –”

“We had planned a whole life together.” Samantha shook her head wildly, and a thick skein of golden hair came loose and flopped into her face, she pushed it back with a combing gesture. “I don’t believe it, why didn’t Nicholas tell me himself? I won’t believe it until he tells me.”

Chantelle’s voice was compassionate, gentle. “I so wanted not to make it ugly for you, my child, but now what can I do but tell you that Nicholas spent last night in my house, in my bed, in my arms, where he truly belongs. It was almost miraculous, a physical thing”

Sitting hunched on the hard round stool Samantha Silver felt her youth fall away from her, sloughed off like a glittering reptilian skin. She was left with the sensation of timelessness, possessed of all the suffering and sorrow of every woman who had lived before. She felt very old and wise and sad, and she lifted her fingers and touched her own not dried cheek, mildly surprised to feel that the skin was and withered like that of some ancient crone.

“I have already made the arrangements for a divorce from my present husband, and Nicholas will resume his position at the head of Christy Marine.”

It was true, Samantha knew then that it was true. There was no question, no doubt, and slowly she replaced the receiver of the telephone, and sat staring blankly at the bare wall of the cubicle.

She did not cry, she felt as though she would never cry, nor laugh, again in her life.

Chapter 34

Chantelle Alexander studied her husband carefully, trying to stand outside herself, and to see him dispassionately. She found it easier now that the giddy insanity had burned away. He was a handsome man, tall and lean, with those carefully groomed metallic waves of coppery hair. Even the wrist that he shot from the crisp white cuff of his sleeve was covered with those fine gleaming hairs. She knew so well that even his lean chest was covered with thick golden curls, crisp and curly as fresh lettuce leaves. She had never been attracted by smooth hairless men.

“May I smoke?” he asked, and she inclined her head.

His voice had also attracted her from the first, deep and resonant, but with those high-bred accents, the gentle softening of the vowel sounds, the lazy drawling of consonants. The voice and the patrician manner were whay she had been trained to appreciate – and yet, under the mannered cultivated exterior was the flash of exciting wickedness, that showed in the wolfish white gleam of smile, and the sharp glittering grey steel of his gaze.

He lit the custom-made cigarette with the gold lighter she had given him – her very first gift, the night they had become lovers, Even now, the memory of it was piquant, and for a moment she felt the soft melting warmth in her lower belly and she stirred restlessly in her chair. There had been reason, and good reason for that madness, and even now it was over, she would never regret it. It had been a period in her life which she had not been able to deny herself. The grand sweeping illicit passion, the last flush of her youth, the final careless autumn that preceded middle age. Another ordinary woman might have had to content herself with sweaty sordid gropings and grapplings in anonymous hotel bedrooms, but not Chantelle Christy. Her world was shaped by her own whims and desires, and, as she had told Nicholas, whatever she desired was hers to take. Long ago, her father had taught her that there were special rules for Chantelle Christy, and the rules were those she made herself.

It had been marvelous, she shivered slightly at the lingering sensuality of those early days, but now it was over. During the past months she had been carefully comparing the two men. Her decision had not been lightly made. She had watched Nicholas retrieve his life from the gulf of disaster. On his own, stripped naked of all but that invisible indefinable mantle of strength and determination, he had fought his way back out of the gulf.

Strength and power had always moved her, but she had over the years grown accustomed to Nicholas. Familiarity had staled their relationship for her. But now her interlude with Duncan had freshened her view of him, and he had for her all the novel appeal of a new lover – yet with the proven values and qualities of long intimate acquaintance. Duncan Alexander was finished, Nicholas Berg was the future. But, no, she would never regret this interlude in her life.

It had been a time of rejuvenation, she would not even regret Nicholas involvement with the pretty American child. Later, it would add a certain perverse spice to her own sexuality, she thought, and felt the shiver run down her thighs and the soft secret stirring of her flesh, like the opening of a petalled rosebud. Duncan had taught her many things, bizarre little tricks of arousal, made more poignant by being forbidden and wicked. Unfortunately Duncan relied almost entirely on the tricks, and not all of them had worked for her – the corners of her mouth turned down with distaste as she remembered; perhaps it was just that which had begun the curdling process.

No, Duncan Alexander had not been able to match her raw, elemental sexuality and soaring abandon. Only one man had ever been able to do that. Duncan had served a purpose, but now it was over. It might have dragged on a little longer, but Duncan Alexander had endangered Christy Marine. Never had she thought of that possibility; Christy Marine was a fact of her life, as vast and immutable as the heavens, but now the foundations of heaven were being shaken. His sexual attraction had staled, she might have forgiven him that, but not the other.

She became aware of Duncan’s discomfort. He twisted sideways in his chair, crossing and uncrossing his long legs, and he rolled the cigarette between his fingers, studying the rising spiral of blue smoke to avoid the level, expressionless gaze of her dark fathomless eyes. She had been staring at him, but seeing the other man, Now, with an effort, she focused her attention on him.

“Thank you for coming so promptly,” she said.

“It did seem rather urgent.” He smiled for the first time, glossy and urbane – but with fear down there in the cool grey eyes, and his tension was betrayed by the clenched sinew in the point of his jaw.