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lot, I thought.’

      ‘RC priests.’

      ‘Only the one. The other was seeing-off. Do you reckon, RC?’

      ‘Looked like it, didn’t it?’

      Mr Cuddy smiled. He had a strange thin smile, very broad and knowing. ‘They look ridiculous to me,’ he said.

      ‘We’re moving in high society, it seems,’ Mrs Cuddy remarked. ‘Notice the furs?’

      ‘And the perfume! Phew!’

      ‘I’ll have to keep my eye on you, I can see that.’

      ‘Could you catch what was said?’

      ‘Quite a bit,’ Mrs Cuddy admitted. ‘She may talk very la-de-dah but her ideas aren’t so refined.’

      ‘Reely?’

      ‘She’s a man-eater.’

      Mr Cuddy’s smile broadened. ‘Did you get the flowers?’ he asked. ‘Orchids. Thirty bob each, they are.’

      ‘Get on!’

      ‘They are! It’s a fact. Very nice, too,’ Mr Cuddy said with a curious twist in his voice.

      ‘Did you see what happened with the other lady reading over the elderly chap’s shoulder? In the bus?’

      ‘Did I what! Talk about a freezer! Phew!’

      ‘He was reading about those murders. You know. The flower murderer. They make out he leaves flowers all scattered over the breasts of his victims. And sings.’

      ‘Before or after?’

      ‘After, isn’t it awful?’ Mrs Cuddy asked with enormous relish.

      Mr Cuddy made an indefinite noise.

      His wife ruminated: ‘It gives me the creeps to think about. Wonder what makes him go on so crazy.’

      ‘Women.’

      ‘That’s right. Put it all on the ladies,’ she said good-naturedly. ‘Just like a man.’

      ‘Well, ask yourself. Was there much in the paper?’

      ‘I couldn’t see properly but I think so. It’s on all the placards. They haven’t got him, of course.’

      ‘Wish we’d got a paper. Can’t think how I forgot.’

      ‘There might be one in the lounge.’

      ‘What a hope!’

      ‘The old chap left his in the bus. I noticed.’

      ‘Did you? You know,’ Mr Cuddy said, ‘I’ve got quite a fancy for the evening paper. I might stroll back and see if it’s there. The bus doesn’t go till eleven. I can just do it.’

      ‘Don’t be long. You know what I’m like. If you missed the boat – ’

      ‘We don’t sail till midnight, dear, and it’s only ten to eleven now. I won’t be more than a few minutes. Think I’d let you go out to sea with all these fascinatin’ sailors?’

      ‘Get along with you!’

      ‘Won’t be half a tick. I’ve got the fancy for it.’

      ‘I know I’m silly,’ Mrs Cuddy said, ‘but whenever you go out – to the Lodge or anything – I always get that nervous.’

      ‘Silly girl. I’d say come too, but it’s not worth it. There’s coffee on down below.’

      ‘Coffee essence, more like.’

      ‘Might as well try it when I get back. Behave yourself now.’

      He pulled a steel-grey felt hat down almost to his ears, put on a belted raincoat and, looking rather like the film director’s idea of a private detective, he went ashore.

      Mrs Cuddy remained, anxious and upright on her bunk.

      Aubyn Dale’s dearest friend looking through the porthole said with difficulty: ‘Darling: it’s boiling up for a pea-shuper-souper. I think perhaps we ought to weep ourselves away.’

      ‘Darling, are you going to drive?’

      ‘Naturally.’

      ‘You will be all right, won’t you?’

      ‘Sweetie,’ she protested, ‘I’m never safer than when I’m plastered. It just gives me that little something other drivers haven’t got.’

      ‘How terrifying.’

      ‘To show you how completely in control I am, I suggest that it might be better to leave before we’re utterly fogged down. Oh, dear! I fear I am going into a screaming weep. Where’s my hanky?’

      She opened her bag. A coiled mechanical snake leapt out at her, having been secreted there by her lover who had a taste for such drolleries.

      This prank, though it was received as routine procedure, a little delayed their parting. Finally, however, it was agreed that the time had come.

      ‘ ’Specially,’ said their dearest male friend, ‘as we’ve killed the last bottle. Sorry, old boy. Bad form. Poor show.’

      ‘Come on,’ said their dearest girl friend. ‘It’s been smashing, actually. Darling Auby! But we ought to go.’

      They began elaborate leave-takings but Aubyn Dale said he’d walk back to the car with them.

      They all went ashore, talking rather loudly, in well trained voices, about the fog which had grown much heavier.

      It was now five past eleven. The bus had gone, the solitary taxi waited in its place. Their car was parked farther along the wharf. They stood round it, still talking, for some minutes. His friends all told Dale many times how much good the voyage would do him, how nice he looked without his celebrated beard, how run down he was and how desperately the programme would sag without him. Finally they drove off waving and trying to make hip-hip-hooray with their horn.

      Aubyn Dale waved, shoved his hands down in the pockets of his camel-hair coat and walked back towards the ship. A little damp breeze lifted his hair, eddies of fog drifted past him. He thought how very photogenic the wharves looked. The funnels on some of the ships were lit from below and the effect, blurred and nebulous though it now had become, was exciting. Lights hung like globes in the murk. There were hollow indefinable sounds and a variety of smells. He pictured himself down here doing one of his special features and began to choose atmospheric phrases. He would have looked rather good, he thought, framed in the entrance to the passageway. His hand strayed to his naked chin and he shuddered. He must pull himself together. The whole idea of the voyage was to get away from his job: not to think of it, even. Or of anything else that was at all upsetting. Such as his dearest friend, sweetie though she undoubtedly was. Immediately, he began to think about her. He ought to have given her something before she left. Flowers? No, no. Not flowers. They had an unpleasant association. He felt himself grow cold and then hot. He clenched his hands and walked into the passageway.

      About two minutes later the ninth and last passenger for the Cape Farewell arrived by taxi at the docks. He was Mr Donald McAngus, an elderly bachelor, who was suffering from a terrible onset of ship-fever. The fog along the Embankment had grown heavier. In the City it had been atrocious. Several times his taxi had come to a stop, twice it had gone off its course and finally, when he was really feeling physically sick with anxiety the driver had announced that this was as far as he cared to go. He indicated shapes, scarcely perceptible, of roofs and walls and the faint glow beyond them. That, he said, was where Mr McAngus’s ship lay. He had merely to make for the glow and he would be aboard. There ensued a terrible complication over the fare, and the tip: first Mr McAngus under-tipped and then, in a frenzy of apprehension, he over-tipped. The driver adopted a pitying attitude. He put Mr McAngus’s fibre suitcases into their owner’s grip and tucked his cardboard box and his brown paper parcel

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