No Time For Love (Bantam Series No. 40) (13 page)

“We are all shadows. But when the shining comes from the hands of God,

Then the heavenly light falls on man, and life is all sweetness. ”

“
The heavenly light!” Larina repeated to herself and wanted to hold out her arms towards it, to feel it enfolding her as if it was in fact a man and she was in Apollo’s arms. Apollo’s or Wynstan’s?

The question came to her and she knew for the moment it was impossible to divide them. They were one and the same and she wanted their closeness.

Larina had nearly finished her breakfast when Wynstan joined her.

“Good-morning!” he smiled. “The servants told me you were up very early. You put me to shame!”

“You slept well?”

“If I need an excuse, I read until very late,” he answered. “I found a book which I think will interest you, and I will tell you about it when we are at Ischia.”

“We are going there for lunch?”

“That is what I planned,” Wynstan answered, “but I thought as we are early this morning, we would take the boat straight there across the open bay instead of keeping under the shelter of the coast. You wanted to see how fast she would go, and it is something I want to know myself.”

“That sounds exciting!” Larina exclaimed.

Wynstan turned to the servant.

“Has the mechanic seen to the motor-boat?”

“
Si, Signor,
he is down there now.”

“Good!” Wynstan answered. “I want to talk to him.”

He rose to his feet saying to Larina:

“Join me when you are ready. There is no hurry; I have one or two things I want to discuss with my mechanic.”

Larina fetched her hat and when she was in her bedroom she wondered if they were going out to sea whether she would need a coat. Then she told herself it was already warm and looked like being a hot day.

She put on the big straw, having changed the ribbons from the green one which had encircled the crown yesterday to a pink one which matched the dress she was wearing.

“I expect the wind will blow it away if we go very fast,” she told herself practically, “but I will wear it to go down to the Quay.”

She knew it was becoming, and she had thought when she wore it yesterday as they walked around Pompeii there had been a look of unmistakable admiration in Wynstan’s eyes.

Then she felt with a little drop of her heart that it was unlikely he would admire her since she was fair while the woman he had kissed last night was dark.

“I am sure fair men like dark women,” she told herself despondently, then shook herself mentally.

‘At least I will be alone with him all day today,’ she thought. ‘After that will it matter to me who he is with?’

Because she had no wish to waste any time she ran down the stairs and out into the garden.

The bees were already busy amongst the flowers, the butterflies seemed brighter than ever, as she started the descent down the cliff.

She could see Wynstan below her talking to the mechanic and the motor-boat gleaming white in the water.

As she reached them Wynstan turned to smile at her.

“Everything is ready,” he said, “and now we must see what speed-records we can break!”

“Can we really break one?”

“We can try,” Wynstan replied. “At the same time if we come back and say we have done a hundred miles per hour no-one will believe us!”

“I am sure that would be impossible!” Larina smiled.

They moved slowly out of the little harbour and Wynstan headed out to sea.

He stood at the wheel and Larina stood beside him resting her arms on the woodwork in front of her.

When they had gone a little way she took off her hat and bending down threw it into the cabin behind her.

“You must not get sun-burnt,” Wynstan said.

“Why not?” she asked.

“Because women should be white-skinned,” he answered, “like goddesses who are sculpted in marble.”

“I do not believe I sun-burn easily,” Larina answered. “And at the moment there is no sun.”

That was true.

The sun which had risen so gloriously at dawn seemed to have disappeared.

Now the sky overhead was grey and there were some ominous-looking clouds to the north.

“They will go away,” Larina told herself hopefully.

She could not bear to miss the sunshine today of all days.

They drove on and now Wynstan was increasing the speed until it seemed to Larina that they almost flew over the water.

Away from the shelter of the coast the sea was rough, far rougher than it had been yesterday. Now there was the slap of the waves against the bow which with their speed seemed almost to be lifted out of the water.

Larina looked back.

Now they were a long way from the shore and the mountains in the background were rising higher and still higher.

She could see Mt. Vesuvius very clearly, its small column of smoke like a ghost in the air above it.

She could see Naples and immediately behind them the small Isle of Capri.

On they went, until soon it was difficult to distinguish anything in the distance except the outline of the mountains.

There was something exhilarating in being surrounded only by sea and almost out of sight of human habitation.

Then suddenly there was a splutter from the engine and it stopped.

“Blast!” Wynstan ejaculated.

“What has happened?” Larina enquired.

Everything seemed suddenly very silent after the noise of the engine and the boat began to rock on the waves.

“I shall have to find out,” Wynstan replied.

He took off his light summer coat and, as Larina had done, threw it behind him into the cabin.

Then he rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, and opened two doors low down on the floor so that he could look at the engine.

“Do you know what has gone wrong?” Larina asked.

“I can guess,” he answered. “But it could be a number of things. I suppose, if I had been sensible, I would have brought the mechanic with us.”

‘That would have spoilt everything!’ Larina thought.

She could not say so to Wynstan, but it was very exciting for her to be alone with a man!

It was something she had never experienced before and something which she knew she ought not to be doing now.

No well-brought-up young woman would have dreamt of going off in a motor-boat, of all modern inventions, without even knowing where she was being taken.

Larina was well aware it would have shocked not only her mother but certainly all the acquaintances they had known in the days when they lived in Sussex Gardens.

Larina could remember the ladies who had called on her mother and come to her ‘at home’ days, and also those who came to the house for the purpose of consulting her father.

The Dining-Room was always used as a waiting-room. Larina would sometimes peep in to see the fashionably
-
dressed women, wearing sables and ostrich feathers in their hats, turning over the magazines which were laid on the table every morning by one of the maids.

Sometimes they left behind an expensive fragrance and when they went from the Dining-Room into her father’s consulting room she would hear the rustle of their silk petticoats under their full skirts.

Yes, they would definitely be shocked at her behaviour, but as they would never know about it why should she even think of them?

Wynstan, who had been half-inside the lower-deck, pulled himself out to say:

“You will find some papers in a drawer in the cabin. Please bring them to me. There should be a plan of the boat somewhere amongst them.”

Larina did as she was told.

When she had found the papers and was emerging from the cabin to hand them to Wynstan, she realised it was getting far rougher than it had been before.

Now the boat was rocking almost violently from side to side, and occasionally it pitched forward which made her stagger so that she had to hold on to something.

Wynstan sat on the floor studying the plans she had given him.

“Can I help?” she asked.

“Not unless you understand paraffin engines.”

Larina looked back the way they had come.

Now it was impossible to see even the mountains.

A grey mist seemed to have descended over them and after looking at it for some time she realised it was rain.

A few seconds later she felt the first drops and heard them spatter on the foredeck. They also fell on the papers which Wynstan was studying.

“This is ridiculous!” he said angrily. “I thought I knew all about engines.”

He picked up a tool and half-disappeared through the door. Only his legs remained outside and Larina knew he would get wet.

She was just wondering whether she should go and sit in the cabin, when a squall of rain so heavy it seemed almost torrential poured down on her so that in a few seconds she was soaked to the skin.

What was more the boat was rocking so dangerously from side to side that she felt frightened to move in case she should fall and hurt herself.

Thinking it was the only possible thing to do she sat down on the deck. The rain was beating on her so heavily that it was quite painful against her face and on her shoulders which were only covered with the fine muslin of her gown.

A long time later Wynstan pulled himself out of the engine-room.

“I cannot find it,” he said in an exasperated tone. “I thought it must be the pistons but I have checked every one.”

Larina looked at him helplessly through the rain.

“Why do you not sit in the cabin?” he asked.

“It is so rough I was afraid to move.”

“I will help you.”

“What is the point? I am wet now, I might as well get wetter!”

He smiled at her.

“Are you frightened?”

She shook her head.

“I am only thankful I do not feel sea-sick.”

“Well, that is one blessing and we had better start counting them. It looks as if we are going to be here for a long time.”

He collected some more tools and once again put his head under the floorboards.

Larina sat patiently.

The rain was now not so violent, but a strong wind made the sea even more tempestuous than it had been already.

The boat was thrown about on the waves and every so often one broke over the stern in a shower of spray.

It must have been two hours later that Wynstan stood up and steadying himself on the deck-rail, tried to start the engine.

For a moment there was nothing, then there was a splutter which quickly died.

It was, however, encouraging and Larina rose to stand beside him.

“Do you think you have found out what was wrong?” she asked.

“I hope so,” he answered. “There was a wire that was broken. I have repaired it, but it may not hold.”

He tried the engine again, and this time it ran for five or six seconds before once again it spluttered into silence.

Wynstan was back on the floor, then another ten minutes later he came out again.

This time the engine started and roared into life.

It seemed to Larina that they both held their breath in suspense, but there was no splutter and it appeared to be running smoothly.

“You have done it! You have done it!” she cried.

Wynstan turned to smile at her.

She was standing very close to him.

As he looked down his smile deepened. She was soaked to the skin and her muslin gown clung to her so that she might in fact have been wearing nothing.

It revealed her small breasts and clung tightly over her hips to the ground.

The wind had blown her hair loose and it fell on either side of her cheeks nearly to her waist, framing her small face and her huge grey eyes.

“You look exactly like one of the Sirens who tempted Ulysses,” Wynstan exclaimed.

Then he put his arms around her and kissed her!

For a moment Larina felt her lips cold against his, then something wild and ecstatic ran through her like forked lightning.

She knew that this was what she had longed for, this was what she wanted! She felt his lips were suddenly warm and at the same time hard and demanding.

It must have been only a moment that he held her against him and his mouth possessed hers, and yet it seemed to Larina as if the whole world was hers and the stars fell from the sky around her.

It was a wonder and a rapture that she had never believed possible. Then Wynstan released her and said in a voice that was somehow strange:

“I said that you were a Siren, Larina!”

He put both his hands on the wheel and very slowly turned the boat round.

She stood beside him without moving. It was impossible to do anything but cling to the fore-deck to steady herself, and feel as if her whole body had come alive.

It was the same feeling, she thought, that she had known when she had become part of the flowers and the water.

The same, and yet in many ways even more wonderful, more ecstatic.

“We shall have to go rather slowly,” Wynstan said, “or it will break down again. I am afraid it is going to take us a long time to get home.”

‘It does not matter—nothing matters!’ Larina wanted to say, but it was impossible for her to speak.

She could only look at Wynstan’s profile as he stared ahead of them and feel that she was still quivering from the wonder of his lips.

He drove for a little way in silence, before he asked:

“What are you thinking?”

“I was thinking of a poem,” Larina answered truthfully.

“Then it should be the lines written by Sophocles when he said: ‘Many marvels there are, but none so marvellous as Man!’.”

He gave a little laugh.

“That is me! Because I assure you it was very marvellous of me to have repaired this engine! If it gets home safe and sound, it will be a miracle!”

“And if you had not mended it?” Larina asked.

“Then we might have been drifting for hours, even days, before we were picked up—unless we had swum back to the shore.”

Larina gave a little laugh and looked at the distant coast which was still shrouded in mist.

“The only possible way of doing that would be to ride on the back of a dolphin!”

“Of course, if the gods behaved properly, they would send us a dolphin each!” he answered lightly.

Larina did not answer and after a moment he said:

“I am interested to hear of which poem you were thinking.”

“Yours is better!” she answered.

“I am waiting,” Wynstan said.

Shyly, her voice low but just loud enough for him to hear it above the engine, she quoted the lines that seemed to have been in her mind since she came to the Villa.