The Lighthearted Quest by Ann Bridge Read Free Book Online Page A

listened with impatience to Captain Blyth’s slowly-pronounced explanation of some failure to deliver part of the cargo for ‘Tangiers’, as he called it, and how instead they had loaded up with tractors and saloon cars for ‘Cahssa’. If they were putting in at Casablanca she might be able to see Paddy Lynch, and cause him to make enquiries about Colin through the Banque Regié Turque; but then, if Geoffrey’s probings at the Bank of England yielded any fruitful results, she ought to know what they were before accosting Paddy.
    â€œHow long shall we have at Casablanca?” she asked, practically cutting into the Captain’s softly-spoken sentences.
    â€œAbout twelve hours—maybe twenty-four. You never know to an hour or so.”
    Julia got up, moving a good deal faster than she normally moved.
    â€œWhere can I get to a telephone?” she asked. “Do excuse me, but if we’re going to Casablanca I ought to get hold of someone at once. The office will be shut of course—damn!”
    There was a telephone kiosk by the other dock gates, nearer the ship, the Captain told her. Julia remembered those gates, that was the exit which she and the crane-driver had used on their way to the pub.
    â€œWell, if you will forgive me, I’ll fly and telephone,” she said.
    â€œYou’ll be back by nine-thirty, won’t you?” the Captain said. “I oughtn’t to let you off the ship now, it’s ten past nine.”
    â€œOh, yes, I’ll be back in loads of time. How sweet of you. That perishing Mr. Scales might have told me about going to Casa of course—what a blot the man is,” said Julia, hurriedly downing her whisky; she heard the Captain’s slow chuckle as she hastened out.
    She was out of luck. When she had pattered through the rain to the red kiosk, a desolate little monument to who knows what ardent or despairing last-moment conversations, and put in her three pennies, there was ‘No Reply’ from Geoffrey’s flat. Julia said “Damn” again, pressed Button B, and tried the Garrick—the Club porter, after a prolonged interval, informed her that Mr. Consett was not in the Club. She stood for a moment or two in the cold stuffy little wood-and-glass box, smelling of stale tobacco-smoke, casting about in her mind as to where else she could try, but no brilliant idea occurred to her. Julia had a strongly-held theory, upon which she often acted with success, that in any crisis there is always something clever to do if one can only calm down and think what it is—she therefore calmed down and thought hard, in that telephone box by the London Dock gates; but nothing occurred to her except a strong desire to go and ask kind fatherly Captain Blyth what on earth she could do to get a message ashore at that time of night? Julia did not then know that the
Vidago’s
captain was commonly known as “Cheery Blyth”, or to his ship’s company simply as “Cheery”; but in her moment of need she felt the want of his cheerful kindness, and after splashing back over the wet cobbles and scramblingand slipping up the greasy gangway, she boldly tapped on his door.
    â€œGracious, you
are
wet,” he said, as she entered on his “Come in.” “Get your call all right?”
    â€œNo. In fact I’m in rather a jam. I suppose there’s no earthly means of getting a letter ashore, now?”
    â€œTake off that wet mac thing—I’ll dry it in my bathroom,” said the Captain; he took it from her and disappeared through an inner door. Returning—“You’d better have some whisky,” he said levelly; “don’t want to start off with a cold.”
    â€œBut
can
I get a letter ashore?” Julia asked, as he poured her out a stiff glass.
    â€œO’ course—the pilot will take it when we drop him, down the river; easiest thing in the world,” said Cheery