A Woman Involved (2 page)

He was alone on his boat at the moment. His guests and his wife were somewhere along the reef, under the water.

Anna Hapsburg did not know where the others were. She had not seen them for almost half an hour.

She swam slowly along the magnificent coral reef, fifteen feet below the surface. The sunshine shafted down onto the multitude of beautiful shapes, onto growths and flowers and animals all the colours of the rainbow: the kaleidoscope rambled, rugged and smooth, sparkling and dark, with bays and grottos, going on and on, fading into mistiness. Anna loved the reefs. She swam slowly in her underwater wonder-world, her long golden legs gently flipping, her long blonde hair streaming silkily behind her.

When she was about two hundred yards fhe was halfway out of throm the boat, she saw the sharks.

There were two. They were indistinct, to her right, on the surface. Her heart missed a beat and her stomach contracted; she stared at them a terrified, heart-pounding moment, then she frantically turned for the boat.

She swam desperately, resisting her screaming instinct to thrash her legs. She swam and she swam, her heart knocking, her eyes wide: she glanced back frantically, and she could not see them any more, and that was worse: she swam and swam and swam for what seemed an eternity; then she saw the keel
of the launch ahead, and it seemed the sweetest sight she had ever seen. She looked back desperately over her shoulder again; then the keel was coming up, the swimming ladder gleaming. She rose, arms upstretched, and she grabbed the ladder and broke surface and she began to scramble up. She spat out the mouthpiece and gasped: ‘
Sharks
…’

Max got to his feet. ‘
Where?
’

She pointed behind her. Max saw the fins on the surface. He snapped: ‘Have you warned the others?’

She was halfway out of the water

‘No …’

‘Go and warn them! I’ll follow.’ He snatched up his flippers.

She stared at him, horrified, her hair plastered to her head.
But oh God yes of course they had to warn the others
…  She clung to the ladder a terrified moment more, then she crossed herself and rammed the airhose back into her mouth, and she sank, with dread, back into the water.

She swam back the way she had come. And her fear was the purest she had ever known.

She did not see the sharks on the way back. Within two hundred yards she saw Bill and Janet Nicols. She signalled to them desperately,
Shark
…  She turned back towards the boat.

The keel came into view again. They swam and they swam, hearts pounding. Anna made for the swimming ladder and grabbed it, and heaved. She scrambled up onto the sun-beaten deck. Janet came up the ladder frantically behind her. Anna grabbed her hand and heaved her onto the deck. Bill came scrambling up after her.

‘Where’s Max?’ Anna swept her eyes over the sea.

‘Here I am …’

Anna spun around. Max Hapsburg was coming out of the saloon, a grin all over his handsome face. ‘Anyone for tennis?’

She looked at him incredulously, and he burst out laughing.

‘They were dolphins!
Dolphins … 
’

She was absolutely shocked.

Max laughed, ‘
You should have seen the look on your face–but any fool could have seen they were dolphins … 
’

She screamed: ‘
You beast–!
’

She ripped her goggles off her head and hurled them at him: ‘
You beast–!
’

It was five years since Jack Morgan had seen Anna Hapsburg. But he still dreamt of her often; and they were always intense and beautiful dreams, and his heart sang because he was with her again at last; and when he woke up he was filled with yearning. He tried to go back to sleep so he could be with her again, but he could not, and she was gone.

Only three months they had had together. In those lovely days her name was Anna Valentine, and she was in her final year at Exeter University; he was a young lieutenant-commander in the Royal Navy on ninety days study-leave at the same university. She lived in a women’s residence on the campus; he had digs nearby in town, a bedsitter with a gasring. ‘We have not yet met,’ he had said on the telephone, ‘but I’m the ardent admirer who sent you those flowers this morning.’

‘Oh, yes …  Well, thank you, Mr Morgan, they’re lovely roses and I’m very flattered,’ she had replied, ‘but as it happens I am engaged to be married.’

This was terrible news. ‘
Married?
When?’

‘At the end of this term, Mr Morgan.’

‘This is very depressing news, Miss Valentine. But where is this painfully fortunate man?’

‘In Grenada. That’s a small island in the Caribbean, you mightn’t have heard of it.’

Relief. ‘Certainly. A spice island. You grow nutmeg.’

‘Correct! Most people think it’s a city in Spain.’

‘So did I, but when I heard you speak at the Debating Society last night, I made enquiries about you, then looked up Grenada in the
Encyclopaedia Britannica,
so I would impress you over dinner. I know all about Grenada, Gross National Product, per capita income, birth rate, electricity problems, the works.’

She smiled. ‘I am impressed, Mr Morgan. But I’m afraid dinner together wouldn’t be appropriate, because I’m getting married in three months’ time.’

‘On the contrary, all the more urgency about this dinner, Miss Valentine. Because I’m going back to sea in three months’ time and I think it highly important that we have the opportunity to consider each other before then, because it’s a crystal-clear case of love at first sight, Miss Valentine. I’ve never resorted to the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
and a florist in the same context before …’

And, oh, why,
why
had they not done it?
Why,
after three glorious months of love and laughter and absolute happiness, that made them want to dance in the streets, that made the whole world seem a bowl of cherries and terribly amusing, happiness that made the whole world laugh with them, and envy them, happiness that gave them daydreams in the middle of lectures, that gave them the giggles every night as he smuggled her up to his digs past his landlady (House Rules: No Visitors of Opposite Gender, No Drink, No Cooking for Visitors, No Curries, No Music, No Pets, No Confabulations, By Order, Mrs Garvey), happiness that made them make love all night when they should have been cramming for final examinations, the happiness of talking talking talking about everything under the sun, and the rapture,
rapture,
of each other’s bodies – oh why, at the end of those three glorious months, when the examinations had somehow been written and passed (though not with the flying colours expected of both of them),
why
had they not just walked into the nearest registry office and married and lived joyously ever after? – Oh how different the world would have been.

But, they had not. Because she was a Catholic and she wanted a proper church wedding, with her family around her. So they had flown back to Grenada for their last few days together, to introduce him to her parents and tell them that their darling daughter was going to live in darkest England for the rest of her life. They were going to be married on his next leave, four months hence. Then he had gone back to sea in his goddam submarine.

He had never seen her again.

It was that shark story that had finally made up his mind to go back to Grenada, after five long years. Janet Nicols had looked him up on her last visit to England, and the tale had come out.

So now here he sat in a dark aeroplane, staring out of the window at the moonlight, at long last doing what he had so often dreamt of doing, flying across the Atlantic to try to see the woman he had once loved so madly. He had no idea what was going to happen. He had not told anybody he was coming, not even Janet Nicols. He did not know if he would set eyes on Anna, even from a distance. Maybe she would refuse to see him. And now that he was actually doing it at last, fulfilling his dream, he was not even sure what he wanted to happen. Did he really still love her so madly? Or was she just a dream? And if so, was it not best that he just keep her as that, his lovely dream-girl? When you’re lying in your lonely bunk in your submarine, or sitting in your lonely farmhouse drinking whisky in front of the fire, home is the sailor home from the sea but the home is empty, it is easy to be sure that you still love her with all your heart, you are even glad to be sad, thinking of what might have been – but now that he had finally made up his mind to go, he was not so sure. It was unreal. He was very excited, but wasn’t all this foolishness? What the hell are you doing? he asked himself many times that long night – why are you flying halfway round the world just for the chance of seeing, of only glimpsing maybe, the woman who once loved you and left you and married another man? What right have you got to try to interfere with her marriage now? What makes you think you’ve got a chance? The shark story? Because Janet Nicols cautiously admitted, under cross-examination, that Anna’s marriage to Max had not been going well? But had Janet said that Anna ever spoke of him? No. Indeed, Janet had said that Anna would never leave Max because she was a devout Catholic, marriage is for better or worse …  What makes you think she’ll even
want
to see you? So, what foolishness is this? – and now that you are actually on this aeroplane at last, are you even sure you really still love her? Don’t you really prefer to be free to be glad to be sad? …  Don’t you even resent her, for breaking your heart? … 

Many times in that long, unreal night it was like that. But then, a little later, it was different again. Because you had
another dream about her, he said. Because she came to you again, and she was beautiful and smiling, and you felt her whole loveliness pressed against you again, and you smelt her scent and you looked into her lovely eyes and oh God yes you still loved her, and oh yes she still loved you, and when you woke up your heart was breaking and you desperately tried to go back to sleep, to be with her again. And for days afterwards you could not stop thinking about her, and there was such yearning … 

And then the sun came up, glorious and red and gold, and the Caribbean was born below him, the turquoise waters, and the reefs, and the white beaches, and the palms, and he glimpsed again the golden girl; this was
her
part of the world, where
she
lived, he glimpsed her hair swirling across her laughing face as she ran across the white sands into his arms, he felt her warm-cool body against him, and he knew that he did still love her, that she was in his blood. He was very excited when the plane began its descent and the island of Grenada came up out of the sea, mauve and brooding in the sun, the blue sea fading to turquoise around it; and his heart was beating deliciously, and he knew he still loved her.

There had been a revolution here since his last visit, a coup by the New Jewel Movement; there were some tattered posters proclaiming its glory and he saw Cuban soldiers around Pearls airfield, but otherwise it was just like he remembered: the sun shining big and bright, the sky so blue; everything so green, the air fragrant with spices: it was a beautiful day to be doing the wonderful thing he had yearned to do for so long. He was grinning inside with excitement as he strode into the hot airport building, he wanted to smile at everybody, and he loved every black face. He rented a car. It seemed he remembered everything, and he loved every mile of the road into town.
This was her island in the sun
…  He was grinning when he turned his car into the gates of the Victoria Hotel.

It was somewhat run-down, and he did not remember it like that, but he did not care. He checked in, carried his bag to his room. It was unreal, and beautifully real. The gardens out there beyond his balcony, the bar, palms, the beach beyond, the sparkling sea.
Her sea.
He showered, and shaved carefully. He looked at his face in the mirror. How much change would she see? There were no grey hairs yet – and most of his colleagues had plenty of those. He brushed his teeth thoroughly. Then he did not know what to do with himself.

It was only breakfast time, too early to do anything yet. He went down to the empty bar in the garden. It was sultry-quiet. He ordered a cold beer, and just gave himself up to the delicious excitement of waiting.

He had drunk half of the beer when a voice behind him said: ‘Hullo, Jack.’

He turned, taken by surprise. ‘
Janet Nicol … 
’

He stood up. He took her hands, grinning, and kissed her cheek. ‘What a coincidence! I was going to contact you …’

She said, ‘Not a coincidence at all. I’ve known for three days that you were coming back to Grenada.’

She sat beside him, drinking fruit juice. She said: ‘I work for British West Indies Airways, remember. BWIA has strict instructions to report if ever a Jack Morgan books a seat to our fair island.’

He was astonished. ‘Good God …’

She said: ‘Max is extremely jealous, Jack. And one of his many sidelines is that he’s a director of BWIA. And the immigration department is under instructions to report the arrival of any Mr Morgans.’

‘Good God! Does he run the Post Office as well?’

Janet did not smile. ‘Grenada is a small island. And Max has a lot of clout.’ She added significantly: ‘With the police, included.’ Before he could ask what the hell that meant she went on soberly: ‘And he’s not just a big fish in a small Caribbean pond.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘And big fish can bite.’

‘Are you saying that he’d use the
police
?’

‘He might.’

Morgan said incredulously: ‘For what bloody offence? …’

She said, ‘I don’t know what he’d do. But your offence is that you’re in love with his wife.’

‘I haven’t seen Anna for five years!’

‘And they haven’t stopped having arguments about you for five years.’

He was amazed. ‘Arguments?’

Janet said, ‘Hell-fire rows. Max is obsessed with the belief that Anna is still in love with you.’

Morgan wanted to throw his arms wide to the sky in joy. ‘And? Is she?’

She ignored the question. ‘He even says that you have lovers’ trysts every time she goes to New York and London.’