The White Voyage by John Christopher Read Free Book Online Page B

said.
    ‘Frightened or not, I will lure them.’
    The three Simanyis remained watching him. Thorsen came out with them, and Mr and Mrs Jones were on the small promenade deck, looking down. There was no bite. For ten or fifteen minutes, Olsen waited without success, from time to time reeling in and re-casting. Then as the French dock labourers came aboard and the mobile crane moved along and picked up the horse-box, the watchers turned their attention to the other side.
    Olsen called Thorsen to him. He gave him instructions in Danish and Thorsen, grinning, went off to the forecastle. A few minutes later, Olsen called out to Josef:
    ‘Here you are! I said I would give back the rod when there was a fish on the line. Come now, and take it.’
    The onlookers turned back. Josef came across and took the rod. The float was three-quarters submerged. He began to reel in. Olsen stood beside him, watching with interest.
    ‘There it is,’ he cried, as a flat shape was drawn up to the surface. ‘There is your fish, Simanyi!’
    Simanyi was the first to see it. ‘Ah, you scoundrel!’ he said, but he continued to reel in. Nadya began to laugh, and the others joined in. The fish which Josef unhooked from the end of his line was headless and gutted, and still brick-hard from its sojourn in the ship’s cold-store.
    ‘Where I promise, I perform,’ Olsen said. He grinned. ‘Good fishing, Simanyi.’
----
    As they went back to their cabin, Jones said: ‘He’s a cool one, that Olsen.’
    Sheila said: ‘Yes.’
    She went to the dressing-table and began making up. Her movements were jerky and nervous. He noticed it, and went to stand behind her. He put his hands on her shoulders.
    ‘Half the voyage behind us,’ he said. ‘Time is going on.’
    ‘Very slowly. Do we have to stay on board all afternoon and evening? Can’t we go ashore?’
    ‘There’s nothing to stop you going.’
    ‘Not without you.’
    ‘There wouldn’t be any pleasure in it. I know really that nothing could go wrong, but I’d be jumpy all the same.’
    ‘You’re not likely to bump into anyone who knows you in Dieppe, in November, surely?’
    ‘No.’ He nodded in the direction of the typewriter case. ‘It’s that.’
    ‘It’s locked,’ she said, ‘and you can surely lock the cabin too if you’re going ashore. There would be nothing odd about that.’
    ‘Thorsen would have to come in here to see to the beds. He might decide to borrow the typewriter. When he found it locked he might be struck by the fact that the lock isn’t an ordinary typewriter lock. I had to put a new lock on because a child could have picked the other. But it makes it unusual.’
    ‘Would it matter, as long as he couldn’t open it?’
    ‘I don’t know.’ He put his hands up to his face and rubbed his eyes with the finger tips. ‘He might find a way of opening it. I suppose he could even break it open and tell some story of having dropped the case when he was cleaning the cabin. There are a dozen things that could happen. I just don’t want to give anyone the chance of a couple of hours here undisturbed. You understand that?’
    She asked: ‘Is this the way it’s going to be?’
    ‘Only for a few more days – a week at the outside. Things will be different after that.’
    ‘Will they?’
    He kicked the typewriter case with the side of his foot.
    ‘We can have the little ceremony of getting rid of it, if you like. Take it out on the lake and watch it drown. My love, we knew this part wasn’t going to be easy.’
    Sheila stared at the case. ‘It’s like an interloper, sitting with us all the time, watching and listening. I didn’t know one could hate an inanimate object so much.’
    ‘Be fair,’ he said. ‘We depend on it. All our future is in there.’
    She nodded. ‘That’s what makes me afraid.’
    ‘Are you sure that’s all? You’re not beginning to have regrets?’
    ‘For what?’
    ‘I had no alternative,’ he said, ‘but you did. You’re so much