“No,” she said. “Don’t do that. I couldn’t stand that?”
She did something then and said, “Can you stand that?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I’ll hold there very good. No. Don’t kiss me. If you kiss me here on deck then we might as well have done everything else.”
“Why don’t we do everything else?”
“Where, Hudson? Where? Tell me in this life about where?”
“I’ll tell you about why.”
“I know all about why. Where is the problem.”
“I love you very much.”
“Oh yes. I love you, too. And no good will come of it, except we love each other which is good.”
He did something then and she said, “Please. If you do that I have to go.”
“Let’s sit down.”
“No. Let’s stand up just as we are here.”
“Do you like what you are doing?”
“Yes. I love it. Do you mind?”
“No. But it doesn’t go on forever.”
“All right,” she said and she turned her head and kissed him quickly and then looked out again across the desert they were sliding by in the night. It was winter and the night was cool and they stood close together looking straight out. “You can do it, then. A mink coat is good for something finally in the tropics. You won’t before me?”
“No.”
“You promise?”
“Yes.”
“Oh Hudson. Please. Please now.”
“You?”
“Oh yes. Any time with you. Now. Now. Oh yes. Now.”
“Really now?”
“Oh yes. Believe me now.”
Afterwards they stood there and the lights were much closer and the bank of the canal and the distance beyond was still sliding by.
“Now are you ashamed of me?” she asked.
“No. I love you very much.”
“But it’s bad for you and I was selfish.”
“No. I don’t think it is bad for me. And you’re not selfish.”
“Don’t think it was a waste. It wasn’t a waste. Truly not for me.”
“Then it wasn’t a waste. Kiss me, will you?”
“No. I can’t. Just hold your hand against me tight.”
Later she said, “You don’t mind how fond I am of him?”
“No. He’s very proud.”
“Let me tell you a secret.”
She told him a secret that did not come to him as a great surprise.
“Is that very wicked?”
“No,” he said. “That’s jolly.”
“Oh Hudson,” she said. “I love you very much. Please go and make yourself comfortable in every way and then come back to me here. Should we have a bottle of champagne at the Ritz?”
“That would be lovely. What about your husband?”
“He’s still playing bridge. I can see him through the window. After he finishes he will look for us and join us.”
So they had gone to the Ritz which was at the stern of the ship and had a bottle of Perrier-Jouet Brut 1915 and then another one and after a while the Prince had joined them. The Prince was very nice and Hudson liked him. They had been hunting in East Africa, as he had been, and he had met them at the Muthaiga Club and at Torr’s in Nairobi and they had taken the same boat from Mombasa. The ship was a round-the-world cruise ship which made a stop at Mombasa en route for Suez, the Mediterranean, and eventually Southampton. It was a super luxury ship where all the cabins were private suites. It had been sold out for the world cruise as ships were in those years but some of the passengers had left the ship in India and one of those men who know about everything had told Thomas Hudson in the Muthaiga Club that the ship was coming in with several vacancies and that passage on her might be had quite reasonably. He had told the Prince and Princess, who had not enjoyed flying out to Kenya in those times when the Handley Pages were so slow and the flight so long and tiresome, and they had been delighted with the idea of the trip and the rates.
“We’ll have such a jolly trip and you’re a wonderful chap to have found out about it,” the Prince had said. “I’ll ring them up about it in the morning.”
It had been a jolly trip, too, with the Indian Ocean blue and the ship coming out slowly from the new harbor and then Africa was behind them, and the old white town with the great trees and all the green behind it, then the sea breaking on the long reef as they passed and then the ship gained speed and was in the open ocean and flying fish were splitting out of the water and ahead of the ship. Africa dropped to a long blue line behind them and a steward was beating on a gong and he and the Prince and the Princess and the Baron, who was an old friend and lived out there and was really wicked, were having a dry martini in the bar.