Rum Affair by Dorothy Dunnett Read Free Book Online

for my luggage?”
    “No, no. She isn’t too small.” He thought. “But she’ll sink like a lift.”
    Ten minutes later, all my cases were open and had been cannibalised into a small heap of unappetising woollies, some mine and some Johnson’s. I was to put these in the smallest of my cases and leave it outside my door at eight o’clock sharp. Breakfast would be at 8:15, after which Rupert would row me to Dolly. At 9:30 we should set sail down the Clyde estuary for Gourock, and after an early lunch, the race would begin.
    I listened; I answered; I bade him goodnight; I saw him into the corridor; I returned and took, in due course, to my bed, having made my sole (as yet) gesture of explicit contempt.
    I did not give myself the trouble of locking the door.
     
    Next morning the sun was shining, but I had seen the sun shining in Scotland before. I dressed to my satisfaction, and had three calls to my bedroom before I was quite ready, at eight forty-five, to saunter downstairs.
    The hall of the Yacht Club was full of pixie caps, turtle necks, stained denims and an inorganic culture of toggles. I was wearing my thin kid trouser suit in almond pink, with matching boots and knitted silk jersey. My hair was in a French pleat, and my dark cat glasses were bought in Miami. I wore a little scent by Patou, and on my right hand was a large uncut emerald.
    As I descended the stairs, the noise abated; and Johnson, stepping forward, escorted me into breakfast in a silence almost complete. The bifocals shone with the most profound admiration. “The soft kill. Delicious,” he said, “and you’re not to worry. There’s some Thawpit on board.”
    I was not worried, although a little surprised to find after breakfast that instead of Rupert, the girl Victoria had been detailed to row me to Dolly. She was, of course, the sole shipmate and crew of Cecil Ogden, the lugubrious remittance man of yesterday’s encounter at the bar.
    We were introduced, Victoria and I, on the jetty. I looked for a hockey player and I found one: a centre forward, small, bony, and agile. The central zone of the face, revealed by the inner selvedges of long, hanging, mud-coloured hair, displayed large cow-like eyes under thick eyebrows, and a mouth much too big. She wore denims and a faded striped sweater and talked in a high, clear cordon bleu voice about the last thing I did for Stokowski. But she did not, at least, ask for my autograph.
    Seawolf’s dinghy I did not altogether appreciate. It was a light wooden, flat-bowed shell, known as a pram; and I, for one, was no baby. Victoria all too clearly knew I was about to get wet: she tucked oilskins, still talking, over my trouser suit as soon as I was seated, cast off, and took up the oars. Her arms were bare, and so were her feet. A little water at the bottom of the pram slopped over one of my kid boots. Between tugs: “Thank God there’ll be someone on Dolly with the glands to stand up to Johnson,” she said vaguely. “He’s done you an epic scene already, I bet, about the right clothes to take.”
    “He has. I had a selected caseful of warm waterproof things fixed to go on board first thing this morning.” I paused. The strip of face between the almost united curtains of hair was mildly expectant. “However, to be on the safe side, I bribed the Club porter to row out three more cases before Mr Johnson was up.”
    I was rewarded by a large toothy smile. “I knew you’d be super,” said Victoria. “I adore Johnson: he’s so slow and so frightfully switched on; he gets his own way with everything, and of course Rupert worships him and now Lenny the Crew: if you visit Dolly it’s like coping with the Memphis Jug Band . . . The épater la bourgeoisie thing is marvellous, if you can bear to go on with it. But anyway you’ll love every second. They all do. The racing bit doesn’t matter much, although some of them make rather a thing of it. But the islands are absolute heaven. Do you know the