‘Wait, Christ’s sake,’ he ordered, and pushed her off him.
Then he took her very slowly and deliberately, using all his skills and hers. To shut her up. To tie a loose cannon to the deck. To get her safely into my camp before whatever battle lay ahead. Because it’s a maxim of mine that no reasonable offer should ever be passed up. Because I always fancied her. Because screwing one’s friends’ wives is never less than interesting.
Louisa lay with her back to him, her head under the pillows and her knees drawn up to protect her while she clutched the bedsheet to her nose. She had closed her eyes, more to die than to sleep. She was ten years old in her bedroom in Gamboa with the curtains drawn, sent there to repent her sins after slicing up Emily’s new blouse with a pair of sewing scissors on the grounds that it was brazen. She wanted to get up and borrow his toothbrush and dress and comb her hair and leave, but to do any of those things was to admit the reality of time and place and Osnard’s naked body in the bed beside her and the fact that she had nothing to wear except a flimsy red housecoat with the buttons torn off it – and where the hell was it anyway? – and a pair of flat shoes that were supposed not to show off her height – and what the hell had happened to them! – and her headache was so terrible that she had a good mind to demand to be taken to a hospital where she could begin last night again from the beginning, without vodka or smashing up Harry’s desk if that was what she had done, without Marta or the shop or Mickie dying or Delgado’s reputation being ripped to shreds by Harry, and without Osnard and all this. Twice she had gone to the bathroom, once to be sick, but each time she had crept back into bed and tried to make everything that had happened unhappen, and now Osnard was talking on the telephone and there was no way on earth she couldn’t hear his hateful English drawl eighteen inches from her ear however many pillows she might pull over her head, or the sleepy bewildered Scottish accent from the other end of the line like last messages from a faulty radio.
‘We’ve got some disturbing news coming through, I’m afraid, sir.’
‘Disturbing? Who’s disturbing?’ The Scots voice wak-ing up.
‘About that Greek ship of ours.’
‘Greek ship! What Greek ship? What are you talking about, Andrew?’
‘Our flagship, sir. The flagship of the Silent Line.’
Long pause.
‘Got you, Andrew! The Greek, my God! Point taken. Tricky how? Why tricky?’
‘It seems to have foundered, sir.’
‘Foundered? What against? How?’
‘Sunk.’ Pause for ‘sunk’ to sink in. ‘Written off. Up west somewhere. Circumstances not yet established. I’ve sent a writer there to find out.’
More puzzled silence from the other end, reflecting Louisa’s own.
‘Writer?’
‘A famous one.’
‘Got you! Understood. The bestselling author from bygone times. Quite so. Say no more. Sunk how, Andrew? Sunk totally, you mean?’
‘First reports say he’ll never sail again.’
‘God. God! Who did it, Andrew? That woman, I’ll be bound. I’d put nothing beyond her. Not after last night.’
‘Further details pending, I’m afraid, sir.’
‘What about his crew? – his shipmates, dammit – his silent ones – have they gone down too?’
‘We’re waiting to hear. Best you go on back to London as planned, sir. I’ll call you there.’
He rang off and yanked the pillow from her head where she was clutching it. Even with her eyes crammed shut she couldn’t escape the sight of his replete young body stretched carelessly at her side or his idle, bloated penis half awake.
‘I never said this,’ he was telling her. ‘All right?’
She turned resolutely away from him. Not all right.
‘Your husband’s a brave chap. He’s under orders never to talk to you about it. Never will. Nor will I.’
‘Brave how?’
‘People tell him things. He tells ’em to us. What he doesn’t hear he goes and finds out, often at some risk. Recently he stumbled on something big.’