Endangered Species by Richard Woodman Read Free Book Online Page B

you marry than the kind you screw.’ He sighed. ‘But I suppose you were screwing her just the same.’ Taylor caught Stevenson’s eye. The latter was oddly discomfited by the remark and swung round to gaze in the mirror and comb his hair assiduously.
    â€˜Sorry, old man,’ said Taylor. ‘Didn’t mean to tread on any toes.’
    Stevenson heard the supercilious pomposity enter Taylor’s voice with the outmoded words. He was assailed from both flanks. First Macgregor’s sly attack on the imagined privilege of his being Alexander Stevenson, Second Mate of the ageing motor vessel
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; now, from somewhere above him in the social pecking order, came the mild contempt of the blond aristocrat. He felt bowed under the martyrdom of being middle class and in a flash had lost his temper.
    â€˜Oh, for Christ’s sake, Chas, don’t be so bloody condescending!’ He rounded on Taylor and whipped him verbally, transferring the anger he felt for Macgregor to the lolling figure of the Third Mate on the daybed. ‘From what you told me the other night, you’re no great Lothario yourself . . .’
    And for the second time that afternoon he regretted what he had said the instant the words had left his mouth.
    Taylor looked like a man physically struck.
    â€˜Oh, fuck it! Chas, I’m sorry, I really am . . .’ Stevenson was abruptly aware of the difference in their ages. Taylor was suddenly a silent, crushed boy and Stevenson realised that his superciliousness was a facade, bred in him, or cultivated, it did not really matter.
    â€˜I am sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean it. Macgregor got under my skin.’
    Very slowly Taylor uncoiled himself and stood up, facing the contrite and apologetic Stevenson.
    â€˜Forget it, Alex. I’m going down to dinner.’ He made to push past Stevenson as the notes of the steward’s gong sounded.
    It was the Radio Officer who saved the situation. His appearance in the cabin doorway was without the time-honoured formality of a knock and the obvious excitement on his face was sufficiently unusual to distract them both.
    â€˜Hey, you guys, come and have a butchers at this lot.’ He paused, sensing reluctance and insisted,
‘Come on!’
Stevenson and Taylor followed him on to the boat-deck, dodging the streams of water that cascaded down from the lower edges of the sagging awnings. By the rail and beneath the awning’s shelter they joined Captain Mackinnon and Chief Officer Rawlings who were staring through the persistent rain.
    The long line of merchant ships of many flags and nationalities lying alongside the shallow curve of the wharves of Keppel Harbour stretched as far as they could see on either hand. From the adjacent fairway, the muted grumble of slow-running, high-performance diesel engines announced the approach of a curious sight. The five Britons stood silently, staring at the rain-splashed strip of grey water and the burden it bore.
    A sleek, evil-looking patrol launch of the Singapore Defence Force was coming up Keppel Harbour. A filthy brown haze of exhaust smoke trailed astern, throwing into sharp focus the light grey paintwork and the red and white of her ensign, but partially hiding what she was towing. As the big launch came abeam of the
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they saw clearly what it was.
    Trailing astern of the immaculate patrol boat came a mastless junk, half the size of its tug. It was crammed with people, so crammed that no one individual could be discerned from the mass, like ants round the entrance to an ant hill, but with one important difference: the ants wouldhave heaved with a common energy, a mass of moving legs and bodies.
    The people aboard the junk were immobile.
    They sat, or lay, or stood like statues and it seemed to the watching British officers their stillness was not that of exhaustion, or hunger; not even of an oriental fatalism or