younger But still, it had been cowardice. She had become a friend
during those weeks, and she could hardly have been aware of the emotions
that she had aroused in him during those long dark hours on Warlock's
bridge. She was not to blame for his unruly passions, in no way had she
encouraged him to believe that he was more than just an older man, not
even a father figure, but just someone with whom to pass an otherwise
empty hour. She had been as friendly and cheerful to everyone else on
board Warlock, from the Mate to the cook.
He really had owed her the common courtesy of a handshake and an
assurance of the pleasure he had taken from her company, but he had not
been certain he could restrict it to that.
He winced again as he imagined her horror as he blurted out some sort of
declaration, some proposal to prolong their relationship or alter its
structure into something more intimate, her disenchantment when she
realized that behind the facade of the mature and cultured man, he was
just as grimy an old lecher as the furtive drooling browsers in the
porno-shops of Times Square.
Let it go, he had decided. No matter that he was probably in better
physical shape now than he had been at twenty-five, to Dr. Samantha
Silver he was an old man and he had a frightening vision of an episode
from his own youth.
A woman, a friend of his mother's, had trapped the nineteen-year-old
Nicholas alone one rainy day in the old beach house at Martha's
Vineyard. He remembered his own revulsion at the sagging white flesh,
the wrinkles, the lines of strain across her belly and breasts, and the
oldness of her.
She would then have been a woman of forty, the same as he was now, and
he had done her the service she required out of some obligation of pity,
but afterwards he had scrubbed his teeth until the gums bled and he had
stood under the shower for almost an hour.
it was one of the cruel deceits of life that a Person aged from the
outside. He had thought of him self in the fullness of his physical and
mental powers, especially now after bringing in Golden Adventurer. He
was ready for them to lead on the dragons and he would tear out their
jugulars with his bare hands - then she had called him an old-fashioned
thing, and he had realized that the sexual fantasy which was slowly
becoming an obsession must be associated with the male menopause, a
sorry symptom of the ageing process of which he had not been conscious
until then. He gRinned wryly at the thought.
The girl would probably hardly notice that he had left the ship, at the
worst might be a little piqued by of manners, but in a week would have
forgotten his name.
As for himself, there was enough, and more than enough to fill the days
ahead, so that the image of a slim young body and that precious mane of
silver and gold would fade until it became the fairy tale it really was.
Resolutely he turned in the jump seat and looked ahead.
Always look ahead, there are never regrets in that direction.
They clattered in over False Bay, crossing the narrow isthmus of the
Cape Peninsula under the bulk of the cloudcapped mountain, from the
