he explained to the others. “I wanted a couple of modifications to the line of the keel. I don’t suppose Tony told you about it, love?”
“Just before I came away.”
Now I feared they would begin to probe into my early adult life and bring out the fact that I hadn’t been married to Tony’s father.
I realized that I was losing my cool, for my cheeks burned.
But it didn’t happen. Instead, Eric Fitch said, “You haven’t had any of the sauce!”
“No.”
I caught the whiff of perfume again. Estée Lauder. A friend of mine used it.
Richard helped me to the sauce, though I could cheerfully have hurled my plate and its contents at the effeminate little man beside me. Fitch and the Sievel woman would go for me now.
“I can’t think when I’ve had a better meal,” Richard said appreciatively. “What do you say, Anne?”
He knew I was distraught, but I think he had put it down to the hurt ankle.
“Anne’s not feeling too well, are you?” said the Sievel woman. “Stop filling her glass,” she told Eric Fitch, who was pouring more of the heavy red wine into my glass. “She’s a working girl and she’s obviously had a long day.”
“It’s a marvellous meal,” I said. “And I’d enjoy another glass of the burgundy.” I was at the stage where I would do exactly the opposite of what anyone suggested.
“I like to see women eating well. And drinking,” said Fitch. “That’s the charm of primitive communities, you know. I was commissioned to do a study of aboriginal eating customs a couple of years back. One of the big American philanthropic trusts put up the money. Go and research the their food fetishes, they commanded. And I went. Extraordinary people. Odd customs.”
“Don’t be mysterious, Eric,” reproved the Sievel woman. “The aboriginals. Come on, what was odd about them?”
“Nothing to do with the their food—a boring diet. It happened whilst I was at a small town in the interior, a quite horrid experience. The local traders knew I was interested in the aboriginals’ customs, and they knew too that I was some sort of scientist.”
Fitch smiled.
“I saw a dead man speak.”
It should have been shocking or at least have produced a dramatic effect, but it didn’t shock or awe me.
I exploded with laughter into the long silence that followed his announcement. Red wine sprayed over the tablecloth. I gulped and gasped for air, and began to laugh aloud. As I spluttered and howled, I turned to Richard and saw an expression of shock on his face, and I knew that at last I had done what the three interrogators wished. I had offended him.
Richard used his napkin to help me tidy up, and the waiter appeared with fresh table linen. To cover my embarrassment, the other three began a conversation about similar occurrences in their lives.
“All right now?” asked Richard, when I had recovered. “Must have gone down the wrong way,” he said quietly. “Eric, what were you saying?”
“It wasn’t much of a story,” Fitch said. “Nothing more than an apparently supernatural manifestation which could be rationalized by anyone with a minimum of scientific training.”
I felt that I had to say something, in case Richard believed me to be insensitive.
“What was the explanation for your dead aboriginal’s continued speechifying?”
“It was all to do with air pressure,” he replied. “In itself quite a remarkable phenomenon. You see, the dead man was kept perfectly preserved in the desert air. He had been buried, though that isn’t the right term for it—for they used a stilted platform for their dead—in a small depression in the desert where the evening winds coming down from two mountain ranges met at sundown. A small amount of air which had expanded during the heat of the day became cooler and passed through his vocal cords.” He paused. “Yet the whole tribe believes he is one of the living dead.”
The room was very quiet. I couldn’t see a pattern in the way the conversation was leading. There was a disturbing undercurrent of connivance in the glances of the three International psychologists.
“Nonsense, Eric,” said the Sievel woman. She indicated the remains on her plate. “Once physical death occurs, there’s nothing left but the bones. The trouble with you field-workers is that you adopt the superstitions of the communities you meet. But men are the dreamers, aren’t they, Anne?”
I didn’t want any more talk about dead men speaking.
“Richard’s as down-to-earth as any man I’ve known,” I said.
“André,” said Jensen, gesturing largely at the waiter, who then cleared the table with his neat unobtrusive skill. “So, no mysteries for you, Richard? But I thought the sea was the last home for romantics and visionaries. No stories for us, Richard? No experiences that left you with the feeling that you thought there were some answers you didn’t want to find in your charts?”
André, neat as a bird, brought on a selection of sweets as Richard considered. Then:
“I’ve had the usual hallucinations,” he said. “I’ve seen all the mythical beings when I’ve been short on food and sleep. The fruit,” he told André. “But it was always hallucinatory. As for anything approaching Eric’s tale, no.”
“But there was something?” prompted Monica Sievel, her voice soothing and confidential.
“I’ve never told anyone before,” Richard said slowly. “I’d not seen a living soul for over a month, and then it was only a little cargo boat. Nothing after that for days. I was right off the main lanes, more or less idling, trying out a new rig for an Australian manufacturer. I’d been for a swim, with a line, of course, and I’ll swear the sea was empty when I went over the side.
“I saw a fishing-boat whilst I was in the water,” he went on. “The boards were bleached white and streaked by drying weeds. The hull was high in the water, as though she was out of ballast. I couldn’t see more than her boards and her single mast—not her people, not her upper works. I remember the pleasure I felt in the end of my loneliness. I pulled myself back to the yacht and began waving as I climbed up the side,”
Richard’s handsome face looked tired. I felt the weight of his loneliness, and the mystery he had kept to himself.
“I could see the remains of a sail—the usual island rig for that part of the world. And the baskets they use for their catch.”
“And?” prompted Jensen.
“The crew.” Richard stabbed with a fruit fork at the guavas on his plate. The waiter deftly removed the wine glasses and brought on two bottles of a German wine. “Dead, of course. The bizarre thing was that they were all in position. One man at the tiller. Another in the bows looking forward as if he could see his landfall. There was one other, and he had his back to the small cabin amidships, for all the world as though he’d been on watch all night and it was his turn to loll back whilst the others sailed the boat. I shouted to them even as I realized that
