Relatively Dangerous by Roderic Jeffries Page B

within her depth—which, because the sea bed shelved so gradually was almost two hundred metres out— he continued on, enjoying the coolness of the water which had not yet warmed to tepid summer heat. Off the harbour, a large yacht was hoisting her spinnaker and as he watched the light wind began to balloon the multi-coloured sail. One day, when they were so successful that people came from as far away as Palma for a meal, he’d buy a yacht and name her Helen; she’d be the most beautiful craft afloat. He turned and, no longer employing a powerful crawl, swam slowly inshore. He thought how strange it was that now he should care so much for someone else when previously he’d been careful to care for nobody because experience had taught him that to care was to be rejected . . .
    He reached her and they returned to shore. They stretched out on towels, rapidly drying in the hot sun. When the restaurant was a success, they’d shut up in the winter and he’d take her to Hongkong, Bali, Tonga . . .
    ‘What are you thinking?’ she asked.
    ‘That when we’re rich, I’m going to take you to all the glamorous places in the world.’
    She reached out for his hand. ‘I don’t give a damn if it’s Clacton-on-Sea, provided you’re there.’
    She was looking vulnerable, he thought, and he knew a fierce desire to protect her. Her character was a strange mixture of toughness and tenderness; no one could have been tougher than she in that Turkish fishing village, yet sentimentally she was weak.
    They were silent for a while, then she said: ‘I saw your stepmother when I was in the port earlier on. I wonder what she was doing in this part of the island?’
    ‘Slumming. Did she deign to notice you?’
    ‘She was on the other side of the road and I doubt she even saw me. She was with that friend of hers—what’s his name?’
    ‘The Honourable Archibald Wheeldon.’
    ‘He’s very handsome.’
    ‘And wet.’
    ‘Her clothes were really lovely; they must have cost a fortune.’
    ‘She’s no idea that one can buy a dress for less than five hundred guineas.’
    ‘Mike, why do you two dislike each other so much?’
    ‘I’ve told you before, it’s traditional to dislike one’s stepmother.’
    ‘It’s more than that. And it’s such a pity.’
    Such a pity the bitch didn’t fall over the edge of her patio and break her neck. He could still remember, with bitter irony, the words his father had used when he’d first talked about his forthcoming second marriage. Beautiful, charming, generous, kind . . . His father had used words with such abandon and skill that people had accused him not merely of having kissed the Blarney Stone, but of having swallowed it whole. His father had got things very wrong with Muriel. She might be beautiful and charming—if she could be bothered—but she wasn’t generous or kind . . .
    He’d cleared out of her home just one step ahead of being told to clear out. That’s when he’d begun his drifting which had ended in the village of Amozgat. It was funny—funny incredible—that not long ago he had managed to talk himself into believing Muriel would help him and Helen to buy the restaurant. It showed to what lengths self-deception could go. After all, in her eyes people who ran restaurants were on the butt end of the social scale. Yet he’d taken Helen to see her and to ask for the loan—the loan, not the gift—of six million pesetas. She’d treated Helen with disdain and him with sardonic dislike; she’d said that she was very sorry, but she couldn’t afford to help, certain that he knew full well she could have given him twice that amount without the slightest problem. Her contemptuous refusal had so infuriated him that he’d cursed the whole idea into oblivion. It had been Helen who had talked him round, stoutly declaring that somehow, somewhere, they’d find the six million . . . And they had!
    ‘I suppose we ought to move,’ she said.
    ‘I suppose.’
    ‘I could easily