Free Rum Affair by Dorothy Dunnett Page A

disappeared below to the chain locker. Rupert started to throw off his clothes.
    He wore a string vest. I wished very much I had stayed safe on Dolly. When he took off the string vest and started on his trousers, I marched below, leaving Victoria. I am broad-minded, naturally, but not in public. Then my attention was arrested by other things altogether.
    Seawolf was not, I declare, an irredeemable misnomer. If a Wolf Cub tried to train for all his badges at once in an area roughly the size, shape and smell of a large dental cavity, the result would be the inside of Seawolf. She was floored and half-lined. Above waist level were merely the ribs of the boat, with a shelf tacked onto the wood here and there. Hinged to the mast was a let-down table of rough-cut mahogany, with a brass plate on its underside: . . . In token of esteem and affection for his thirty years’ service to the Presbytery, I read.
     
    There were evidences, too, of the esteem and affection of the Navy, in the form of a standard pair of naval binoculars, a naval issue raincoat (American) and, on the benches, a pair of rubber-stamped charts. The Air Force had contributed a couple of fire extinguishers, British Railways a towel, and the Northern Lighthouse Commission a miscellany of objects, including three Brasso tins and a clock.
    The light, of a theatrical isolation, came from an engineer’s inspection lamp slung on a festoon of flex. The bedding, which lay rolled up under one of the benches, was as supplied by HM Prisons. Beside it, under this and the second bench opposite, was Ogden’s working equipment: old chocolate boxes filled with rusty screwdrivers, mouldering insulating tape, wire clippers and nails, tacks, hooks, hammers, odd bits of chalk and a spirit level, inscribed clearly WIMPEY. There were some engineers’ waste, and a number of old, dirty flags strung together, with some anonymous cans reeking of spirit and oil which clinked together as Seawolf began to sail up to her tow.
    There was another clinking too, which I was investigating in the fo’c’sle, a kind of aftercare unit for nail sickness, when a whoop from Victoria in the bows told of success with the chain: a moment later and from above there came the squeak of a hand-operated winch and rhythmic crash from the chain locker as the anchor was brought up from the sea to the bows. Soon after that, Seawolf’s gentle sauntering stopped; Johnson spoke, and there was a splash and a racing rattle as the anchor was thrown in again and the chain ran out, properly this time, to reach the seabed. Casting a last, fascinated glance at my immediate scenery, I prepared to return to the saloon.
    On the inside of the cockpit door was a painted legend, insufficiently sandpapered off, reading LADIES. I was studying it, entertained, when it flew open and the owner vaulted down the stairs.
    I was not tempted to laugh now: indeed I was not. Cecil Ogden was wet, cold, tired and in a towering temper. “Who the hell gave you leave to break in and meddle down here? You’ve squawked before all the zombies in Europe, and that makes you the bloody Queen of the May?” His eyeballs were bloodshot, but his ducking had practically sobered him.
    Before I could answer, Johnson spoke matter-of-factly behind me: “It’s nothing to be ashamed of, the building of a boat with your own hands, Ogden. Madame Rossi is a friend and a guest of mine, not a Hennessy, you know.”
    Then Ogden’s long, high-boned cheeks flamed under the streaming tails of his hair; and he muttered, directing it somewhere between us: “It’s the end of the season, that’s all. After a hard season’s wear, you can’t expect the same service from the best engine there is.”
    He was almost sober, as I have said; but the whole boat still reeked of spirits. Of course he didn’t want strangers exploring his fo’c’sle unaccompanied. But it wasn’t the boat he was ashamed of.
    But now Victoria emerged from the chain locker, talking