me, taken my arm and sweet-talked me as any bride of ten weeks ought to have done. But the moment we had been alone or secure from observation her normal cool aloof remote personality had dropped between us like a portcullis with a broken hoist-rope. The previous afternoon, waking out of a short sleep on the Hawaii-Suva hop and drowsily forgetting that we weren't being watched, I'd incautiously taken her hand: she'd taken my right wrist in her right hand, slowly-far too slowly- withdrawn her left hand, at the same time giving me the kind of look that stays with you for a long time to come: if I could have hidden under the seat I'd have done just that and with the size I'd felt it would have been no trick at all. I didn't make the same mistake again, I'd sworn to myself that I wouldn't make the same mistake again, so now, sitting beside her in the dank and chilly hold of that gently rolling schooner, I reached down and took her hand in mine.
Her hand was ice-cold and stiffened immediately at my touch: next second it was clamped round mine and doing its best to give an imitation of a small but powerful vise. I hadn't taken all that of a chance, she wasn't scared, she was terrified, and that was all out of character with Marie Hope-man: I could feel her shiver from time to time and it wasn't all that cold down in the hold.
'Why did you bawl me out back in the hotel room?' she said reproachfully. 'It wasn't nice.'
'I seldom am,' I agreed. 'But that was different. You were about to start apologising to me for falling asleep.'
'It was the least I could do. I–I'm sorry.'
'Didn't it strike you that our friend Fleck might have found it rather curious?' I asked. 'Innocent people with nothing to hide don't strive to keep awake all night along. My one thought at the moment was that the less reason Fleck had to suspect us of being anything other than we claimed the greater would be our later freedom of movement.
'I'm sorry,' she repeated.
'It doesn't matter. No harm done.' A pause. 'Did you ever read George Orwell's '1984'?'
' '1984'?' Her voice was surprised and wary at the same time. 'Yes, I have?'
'Remember how the authorities finally broke the resistance of the central character?'
'Don't!' She jerked her hand from mine and covered her face with her hands. 'It's-it's too horrible.'
'All sorts of different people have all sorts of different phobias,' I said gently. I took one of her hands away from her face. 'Yours just happens to be rats.'
'It-it's not a phobia,' she said defensively. 'Not liking things is not a phobia. All sorts of people, especially women, hate rats.'
'And mice,' I agreed. 'They yell and they scream and they dance about and they make for the highest piece of furniture they can reach. But they don't have the pink fits, not even if bitten. They're not still shaking like a broken bed-spring half an hour after it happens. What started all this off?'
She was silent for half a minute, then abruptly pushed up the tousled blonde hair at the side of her neck. Even in the dim half-light I had no difficulty in seeing the scar behind the right ear.
'It must have been a mess at the time,' I nodded. 'Rat, I take it. How?'
'After my parents were drowned on the way to England I was brought up by my uncle and aunt. On a farm.' Her voice was not that of a person discussing the faraway green fields of treasured memories. 'There was a daughter three or four years older than I was. She was nice. So was her mother, my aunt.'
'And he was the wicked uncle?'
'Don't laugh. It's not funny. He was all right at first, until my aunt died about eight years after I came to them. Then he started drinking, lost the farm and had to move to a smaller place where the only room for me was an attic above the barn.',
'Okay, that's enough,' I interrupted. 'I can guess the rest.'
'I used to lie awake at night with a torch in my hand,' she whispered. 'A ring of eyes round the room, red and pink and white. Watching me, just watching me. Then I'd light a candle before going to sleep. One night the candle went out and when I woke up this-this-it was caught in my hah' and biting and it was dark and I screamed and screamed-'
'I told you, that's enough,' I said harshly. 'Do you like hurting yourself?' Not nice, but necessary.
'I'm sorry,' she said in a low voice. 'That's all. I was three weeks in hospital, not with my neck but because I was a bit out of my mind and then they let me out again.' All this in a very matter-of-fact voice. I wondered what it cost her to say it. I tried not to feel sorry for her, not to feel pity: involvement with any person was the one thing I couldn't afford. But I couldn't help myself from saying: 'Your unpleasant experiences weren't just confined to the rats, were they?'
She twisted to look at me, then said slowly: 'You are more shrewd than I had thought.'
'Not really. When you find women behaving in the hands-off down the nose snooty superciliousness affected by some, it's because they think it's an interesting attitude or a mark of superiority, or provocative, or simply because it's a cover-up for the fact that they haven't sufficient intelligence or common sense to behave and converse like a human being. We include you out. How about the wicked uncle?'
'He was wicked all right,' she said, unsmiling. 'By and by my cousin ran away because she couldn't stand him any longer. A week later I did the same, but for different reasons, some neighbours found me crying in the woods in the dark. I was taken to some institution, then put in care of a guardian.' She didn't like any of this and neither did I. 'He had a sick wife and a full-grown son and-and they fought over me. Then another institution and another and another. I had no family, I was young, a foreigner and had no money: some people think the combination entitles them to-'
'All right,' I said. 'You don't like rats. And you don't like men.'
'I've never had any reason to change my mind about either.'
It was hardly the time to point out that with her face and her figure she had as much chance of escaping attention as a magnet would have of moving untouched through a heap of iron filings. Instead, I cleared my throat and said: 'I'm a man, too.'
'So you are. I'd quite forgotten.' The words meant nothing but the little smile that went with them made me feel ten feet tall. 'I'll bet you're just as bad as the rest.'
'Worse,' I assured her. ' 'Ravening' would be a weak word to describe me.'
'That's nice,' she murmured. 'Put your arm around me.'
I stared at her. 'Come the dawn,' I said, 'you'll regret this weakness.'
'Let the dawn look after itself,' she said comfortably. 'You'll stay here all night?'
'What's left of it.'
'You won't leave me?' This with a child-like persistence. 'Not even for a moment?'
'Nary a minute.' I rattled my club against the battens. 'I'll sit here and I'll keep awake and I'll fight off every rat in the South Pacific. Every man in the South Pacific, too, if it conies to that.'
'I'm quite sure you would,' she said peacefully. She was asleep inside a minute.
CHAPTER TWO
She slept serenely, like one dead, for over three hours, her breathing so quiet that I could hardly hear it. As the time slipped by, the rolling of the schooner became increasingly more pronounced until after one particularly violent lurch she woke up with a start and stared at me, her eyes reflecting confusion and perhaps a touch of fear. Then understanding came back and she sat up, taking the weight off my arm for the first time in hours.
'Hullo, knight-errant,' she said.
'Morning. Feel better?'
'Mmm.' She grabbed a batten as another violent lurch sent some loose boxes banging about the hold. 'But I won't be for long, not if this sort of thing keeps up. Nuisance, I know, but I can't help it. What's the time?'
I made to look at the watch on my left wrist, but the arm was quite dead. I reached it across with my right hand, trying not to wince as the pins and needles of returning circulation shot through it. She frowned and said: 'What's wrong?'
'You told me not to stir all night,' I pointed out patiently. 'So I didn't. You are no light weight, young
