Cargo of Eagles (15 page)

The girl leaning with one elbow on the bar was watching him with the deliberation of a cat at a mousehole. Her sombre eyes were over-emphasised in the fashion of the day but she had transformed herself from the leather jacketed virago of the morning into something wholly female. The mark on her cheek had been obliterated by careful make-up and her dark tightly curling hair had been combed over her forehead so that it mellowed the hardness of well defined skullbones and a square determined chin. She was wearing a white sleeveless blouse and black trousers which fitted like a skin.

For a long moment she outstared him and he was grateful to Mr Hamilton Dashwood's mellow claim on the company's attention to witness the official peak of the evening.

When he turned his head again she was standing next to him apparently watching the contest, her shoulder within an inch of his arm.

‘I'm Doll Jensen,' she said. ‘Remember me?'

Morty took his time before he answered. He was acutely conscious of the animal magnetism which the girl was exerting and he began to suspect that the change in her appearance had been made for his benefit. He looked down at her carefully groomed head and stylish white silk and decided that she had made a very good job of material which was better than he had first supposed.

‘Sure. You took a fall in all that broken glass.' He spoke without enthusiasm, but his cautious curiosity was aroused. If the girl wanted to make the running he was quite prepared to let her go ahead.

The attention of the company had now been given entirely to the contest and the hero of the minute before was forgotten. Conversation was conducted in lowered voices to allow the players to concentrate on the game. The girl was looking away from him, but he could feel the warmth of her arm through his sleeve.

‘That was Moo Moo,' she said, ‘or so the boys reckon. Grotty great bastard. He knew I was coming down that night. He's the one you put on the floor. That was a laugh. Lucky you didn't knock his wig off or he'd have done you up rotten. He's as bald as an egg and doesn't like jokes about it.'

‘Moo Moo?'

‘They call him Moo Moo the Dog Faced Boy, up at the Flats. Comes from Wanstead. I hate his guts.'

‘Not a boy friend of yours?',

She continued to stare directly in front of her, talking out of the corner of her mouth.

‘Never fancied him . . . he's just a layabout. They let him
string along because he's a fixer. You know—gets spares and all that jazz. Works in a garage and knocks the stuff off I shouldn't wonder. Likes boys mostly. I don't go for his type.'

It was on the tip of Morty's tongue to ask what her type was, but he thought better of it and enquired mildly, ‘Why do you come here? What's the attraction in a dead end like this?'

An obstinate frown crossed her face. ‘Because I bloody like it,' she said. ‘It suits me. I've got a pad here in a caravan and the rest of them can mostly find a shed or a hut to doss in if they don't want to go home. Nothing to pay. No questions asked. If the boys want a lay or a giggle or a kick-up they can please themselves—that's their business—and there's no one to tell them to get the hell out.'

‘If it suits them, why make trouble?'

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Search me. If you find life a bind don't you bang around and get yourself a rave? It's something to do. Better than a caff or a godawful youth club.'

Morty began to feel old. There was a gap here which he could not bridge. The philosophy of life, if it could be defined by such a phrase, was beyond his grasp. The girl continued her deliberate touch against his arm with just enough pressure to make conversation intimate.

Derisive groans and faint applause announced that the men of Saltey had lost the first leg of the match. He turned away from her to the bar but she moved with him so that they remained in contact. She accepted a vodka and tonic water much to Dixie's disapproval and as she raised her glass to him he realised that she had established a degree of possessive intimacy which he could not defy. In Mrs Weatherby's phrase book, he was being chatted up.

Doll Jensen, he felt, was not a girl who did anything without a reason and yet he did not altogether credit the superficial purpose she conveyed. He found himself mildly excited and very curious.

‘What do you do for money?' he asked. ‘You can't go burning up the road on a Honda just with a handful of dimes.'

She shook her head. ‘That's for sure. I do a lot of things. You'd be surprised. I've been a waitress. I've worked the knocker if you know what that means—the door-to-door selling racket. I tried the yachting crew-girl lark in the Med one summer but came unstuck in the winter. I get along.' She talked easily, as between equals of two different worlds, giving him a glimpse of lives and backgrounds outside his experience or imagination.

After a long reflective drink she looked up at him. She was a year or two older than he had first supposed, about twenty-one perhaps.

‘What about you? You're a prof of some sort. And a Yank. What's in it for you at Saltey? Digging up fossils or old bones?'

‘Hardly.' Morty felt an urge to be entertaining but did not rate his chances as a lecturer very highly. ‘I'm researching. Manners and customs—history round about two hundred years back. Maybe I'll write a book about it.'

He struggled to explain without condescension but knew he was failing.

She shook her head. ‘Beyond me, that's for certain. I just wouldn't know. History's strictly for the birds if you ask me.'

Suddenly she brightened. ‘Old stuff—you're keen on old bits of nonsense. Did you ever see the Sex Pot? It's ever so antique and groovy as all hell. Ever see that?'

Morty was baffled. ‘You have me beaten. No one's told me anything about a sex pot in these parts.'

She laughed, showing very white even teeth. Her head was perhaps a shade too large for her body but in this oncoming mood she was undeniably desirable. Different clothes and change of warpaint, he decided, would make her a real eye-catcher.

‘Not what you mean, lover boy. We just call her that. She's carved and painted—must be hundreds of years old. You ought to put her in your book. Want me to show you?'

The guitar and piano were now pumping out pop rhythm
and despite the open windows the smoke thick atmosphere was tepid as a London tube. She took his arm. . . .

‘Let's get the hell out. I'll show you.'

The prospect of fresh air and adventure was too great to be resisted. Morty followed her as she twisted through the sweating revellers.

The forecourt of The Demon was still lit by a single arc lamp focused on the hanging sign and as they emerged he saw that she had slung a black leather coat over her shoulders and was carrying a long business-like torch. She slipped a hand into his, not confidingly, but by right of being the leader. They crossed into the shadows and walked slowly towards the dim grey bulk of the weather-boarded sail lofts which stood on brick piles as a protection against the highest tides. Wooden steps from the road led to the main doors which were padlocked but she picked her way carefully by the side of the buildings through a confusion of small unpainted hulks, wire hawsers, ropes, planks and rusting marine engines on the muddy slope which led to the Bowl. At the back, within a few yards of high water, a ladder was propped steeply against a door, a small entrance which was part of a larger frame.

She climbed lightly as a cat, pushed open the rotting timber and flashed the torch back on the rungs.

‘Up here.'

He followed her nimbly enough and they stood together in the engulfing blackness of the great barnlike structure which smelt of the sea, tar, varnish and decay. With the door closed she took his hand again and led him cautiously, the beam directed to the wooden floor.

The buildings were made up of four long sheds, each with an open communicating door. The torch threw brief scudding shadows from a dusty medley of masts, spars, coiled ropes, empty cases and sacks. From high above them an imprisoned bird, scared by the light, beat blindly against the corrugated iron of the roof.

The girl did not pause until they had reached the far angle
of the final section. She was still keeping the illumination on the floor, for much of the planking was unsound and treacherous. Abruptly she halted her companion and for a moment they waited in utter darkness.

‘Now,' she said. ‘Now. There she is.'

The sudden shaft of light which flashed upwards into the corner was almost blinding. Morty, who had no sort of theory about what he was going to see, was quite unprepared for the shock of discovery. Above him towered the blind eyed figure of a woman with jutting voluptuous breasts who appeared to be soaring between earth and sky, a wooden giantess whose cold unreality was emphasised by crude faded colours, pink, blue and grey. Snakes writhed about her forehead and the carving was cruel and incisive.

He drew a long breath and whistled. ‘She surely is a shocker. What a beauty, though. Do you know what she is?'

Doll Jensen played the torch over the massive body and the shadows on the wall appeared to dance.

‘Not a due. I think she's just the coolest thing ever. Glad you came?'

Morty moved closer and ran an exploring finger over the formalised folds of drapery which concealed nothing of the gross curves of belly and thigh.

‘She's a ship's figurehead. About eighteen ten, I'd say at a guess. A real peach. She ought to be in a museum. H.M.S.
Medusa
, if you want to bet on her name. Doll, I'm certainly grateful to you.'

Her grip on his hand tightened.

‘You'll put her in your book?'

‘Surely.'

The girl was facing him now, her upturned head level with his chin.

‘Glad you're pleased. I wanted to please you, see?'

The kiss was slow, deep and quite inevitable. The girl gave her lips and her whole body to him with an intensity which quivered between them without any restraining instinct. The
torch clicked into oblivion and for a time they swayed together, mindless and hungry.

Presently she relaxed and took a couple of steps backward dragging him with her. Morty, putting out a protective arm, found himself collapsing easily on to musty sacks whose presence he had scarcely noticed.

The girl nestled and twisted beneath him and he found her mouth, wide and soft as velvet.

For a long minute neither of them moved and he could feel her heart beating hard and regular against his chest.

Quite suddenly her body became tense. She was still gripping the torch in one hand and it now burst into light over his shoulder. Her high pitched scream of pure terror was directed at something immediately behind his head.

‘No!' she shouted. ‘No, you . . .'

Morty had a split second vision of being plunged into the interior of a meteorite. Agony seized him like a flame which devoured and paralysed and he collapsed into a pit whose depth was not to be guessed.

He did not wake to full consciousness for many hours. Lights, faces and voices drifted about him like strange fish seen through a distorting glass. With focus and perspective came pain which dragged him mercilessly back to reality.

Dr Dido Jones was bending over him and standing diffidently beside her was Mr Campion.

‘YOU'LL PROBABLY HAVE
a splitting headache for a couple of days, so relax and take it easy. There's no great harm done.'

Dr Jones' voice was cool and her hands straightened the coverlet brusquely. Until that moment Morty had considered that she was the ideal ministering angel to smooth the fevered brow and in his wilder daydreams had envied anyone fortunate enough to be her patient, but now there was an inflection in her tone which he found too impersonal for his peace of mind.

‘Don't bother about explanations. We know most of them, anyway. Drink this.'

He raised himself painfully as the world swayed giddily about him and did as he was told. He was lying, he realised, in a large Victorian four-poster bed in a room which bore all the fussy ultra-respectable hallmarks of the period. Faded photographs mounted in crimson velvet and the more ponderous works of Burne Jones and Watts looked down placidly from walls decorated with ribbons and roses. The back of his head still opened and closed with searing irregularity.

He made a supreme effort.

‘It would be a help if you told me where the heck I am.'

Dido's voice came to him from a long way off. ‘You're at The Hollies. We brought you here last night. This is Sunday morning . . . Sunday morning . . . Sunday . . .'

The pain slowly dissolved into clouds of cotton wool and he slept.

When he next awoke he was dimly aware of a large lugubrious face looking down on him. Mr Lugg was standing
at the foot of the bed, a massive arm supporting one of the posts.

For some time he eyed the patient without moving and Morty returned the stare. To prove that he was awake he winked.

‘You dropped a clanger last night, cock.'

Morty sighed. ‘You're telling me. It fell right on top of my head. What happened?'

‘Gawd knows.' Mr Lugg shrugged his shoulders. ‘'Er ladyship 'as decided to open up the 'ouse for the summer season. I'm on tempor'y loan to make the party respectable and do the washing up—what the Frogs call a Conscience. They came down together last night lookin' for yer.' He sucked a tooth reflectively. ‘Well, it was me wot found yer.'

‘And brought me here?'

‘Exackly. If you'd been took back to the pub in the mess you was in 'alf the rozzers in the place would be asking questions and 'is nibs is in no mood to give 'em answers. I never seen 'im in such a state. As for Doctor D, it'll take more than a bunch of forget-me-nots to put 'er feathers straight. You was a bit public, mate, with your amoors last night. You can't go playing Errol Flynn in front of a full 'ouse without getting your name in the gossip columns.
You was noticed.
Mrs. Dixie blew the gaff on your bit of nooky in black tights so I didn't 'urry meself to find you. Then when you didn't come 'ome and I see yer bit of nonsense messing around in 'er van all on 'er tod I knew it was safe to look for yer. You was out like a light in that shed which I might add is one of the best known local boodwah love nests. That's the full strength of the 'ow d'ye do.'