man,’ she said.
‘He irritates me. And he’s a damn’ sight too cool about your work.’
‘Oh come!’
‘Yes, he is. Breathing down your neck. My God, you’re you. You’re “Troy”. How he dares!’
‘Do come off it.’
‘Have you noticed how rude he is to Natouche?’
‘Well, that – yes. But you know I really think direct antagonism must be more supportable than the “don’t let’s be beastly” line.’
‘See the Rickerby-Carrick?’
‘If you like. Yes.’
‘You know,’ he said, ‘if you weren’t a passenger in the good ship Zodiac I think I’d rat.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘It’s not. Where did you get to last night?’
‘I had a telephone call to make.’
‘It couldn’t have taken you all evening.’
Remembering Fox’s suggestion Troy, who was a poor liar, lied. ‘It was about a fur I left at the gallery. I had to go to the police station.’
‘And then?’
‘I went to the church.’
‘You’d much better have come on a one-pub-crawl with me,’ he grumbled. ‘Will you dine tomorrow night in Longminster?’
Before Troy could reply, Miss Rickerby-Carrick, looking scared, came up from below, attired in her magenta wrapper. Her legs were bare and her arthritic toes emerged like roots from her sandals. She wore dark glasses and a panama hat and she carried her Li-lo and her diary. She paused by the wheelhouse for her usual chat with the Skipper, continued on her way and to Troy’s extreme mortification avoided her and Bard with the kind of tact that breaks the sound-barrier, bestowing on them as she passed an understanding smile. She disappeared behind a stack of chairs covered by a tarpaulin, at the far end of the deck.
Troy said: ‘Not true, is she? Just a myth?’
‘What’s she writing?’
‘A journal. She calls it her self-propelling confessional.’
‘Would you like to read it?’
‘Isn’t it awful – but, yes, I can’t say I wouldn’t fancy a little peep.’
‘How about tomorrow night? Dinner ashore, boys, and hey for the rollicking bun.’
‘Could we decide a bit later?’
‘In case something more interesting turns up, you cautious beast.’
‘Not altogether that.’
‘Well – what?’
‘We don’t know what everybody will be doing,’ Troy said feebly and then: ‘I know. Why don’t we ask Dr Natouche to come?’
‘We shall do nothing of the sort and I must say I think that’s a pretty cool suggestion. I invite you to dine, tête-à-tête and –’
Miss Rickerby-Carrick screamed.
It was a positive, abrupt and piercing scream and it brought everybody on deck.
She was leaning over the after-taffrail, her wrapper in wild disarray. She gesticulated and exclaimed and made strange grimaces.
‘My diary! Oh stop! Oh please! My diary!’ cried Miss Rickerby-Carrick.
Somehow or another she had dropped it overboard. She made confused statements to the effect that she had been observing the depths, had leant over too far, had lost her grip. She lamented with catarrhal extravagance, she pointed aft where indeed the diary was to be seen, open and fairly rapidly submerging. Her nose and eyes ran copiously.
The Tretheways behaved with the greatest address. The Skipper put the Zodiac into slow-astern, Tom produced a kind of long-handled curved hook used for clearing river-weed and Mrs Tretheway, placidity itself, emerged from below and attempted to calm Miss Rickerby-Carrick.
The engine was switched off and the craft, on her own momentum came alongside Miss Rickerby-Carrick’s diary. Tom climbed over the taffrail, held to it with his left hand and with his right, prepared to angle.
‘But no!’ screamed Miss Rickerby-Carrick. ‘Not with that thing! You’ll destroy it! Don’t, don’t, don’t! Oh please. Oh please.’
‘Stone the crows!’ Mr Lazenby astonishingly ejaculated. With an air of hardy resignation he rose from his Li-lo, turned his back on the company, removed his spectacles and placed them on the deck. He then climbed over the taffrail and neatly dived into The River.
Miss Rickerby-Carrick screamed again, the other passengers ejaculated and, with the precision of naval ratings, lined the port side to gaze at Mr Lazenby. He was submerged but quickly re-appeared with his long hair plastered over his eyes and the diary in his hand.
The Skipper instructed him to go ashore and walk a couple of chains downstream where it was deep enough for the Zodiac to come alongside. He did so, holding the diary clear of the water. He climbed the bank and squatted there, shaking the book gently and separating and turning over the leaves. His hair hung to one side like a caricature of a Carnaby Street fringe, completely obscuring the left eye.
Miss Rickerby-Carrick began to give out plaintive little cries interspersed with gusts of apologetic laughter and incoherent remarks upon the waterproof nature of her self-propelling pen. She could not wait for Mr Lazenby to come aboard but leant out at a dangerous angle to receive the book from him. The little lump of leather, Troy saw, still dangled from her neck.
‘Oh ho, ho!’ she laughed, ‘my poor old confidante. Alas, alas!’
She thanked Mr Lazenby with incoherent effusion and begged him not to catch cold. He reassured her, accepted his dark glasses from Troy who had rescued them and turned aside to put them on. When he faced them all again it really seemed as if in some off-beat fashion and without benefit of dog-collar, he had resumed his canonicals. He even made a little parsonic noise: ‘N’yer I’ll just get out of my wet bathers,’ he said. ‘There’s not the same heat in the English sun: not like Bondi.’ And retired below.
‘Well!’ said Caley Bard. ‘Who says the Church is effete?’
There was a general appreciative murmur in which Troy did not join.
Had she or had she not seen for a fractional moment, in Mr Lazenby’s left hand, a piece of wet paper with the marks of a propelling pencil across it?
While Troy still mused over this, Miss Rickerby-Carrick who squatted on the deck examining with plaintive cries the ruin of her journal, suddenly exclaimed with much greater emphasis.
The others broke off and looked at her with that particular kind of patient endurance that she so pathetically inspired.
