In despair, Simon recognized the dreadful certainty that there was no time to waste. He would have to go in after her. He kicked off his trainers and, lowering himself into the filthy river, struck out towards the flailing windmill into which the freezing water had transformed the languorous signal. Garbled shrieks now accompanied the white bundle which was already being carried along at a rate of knots.
Frederick, rooted to the deck, strained to follow the action, a warm trickle in his trousers reasserting the awful humiliation of his wretched ailment. Simon swam on strongly, finally reaching the gurgling victim and grabbing an inordinate length of hair which swirled in the scummy water like tentacles. He attempted to encircle her chest in the classic lifesaving style he vaguely remembered and fervently wished he had never been called upon to practise. The woman seemed to be ‘parcelled’. Huge wads of drapery immobilized her body but, concentrating all her energy in arms now clasping Simon in a steel embrace, her vibrant screams denied any possibility of water in the lungs. He wrestled with the octopus whose numberless arms churned in an apparent determination to drown him also.
Angrily, he applauded the justice of the man who had slapped her down in the first place. With a gesture resembling a half-nelson—something which the lifesaving manual had stupidly omitted—he at last managed to grasp the ample bosom. There seemed to be a lot of it. Weary with the struggle, he managed to move in the direction of the houseboat, towing his catch now blissfully inert. He hadn’t the energy to worry about this.
The old man was kneeling at the edge of the deck, having shoved one of the pretty window-boxes into the river. Between them they pushed and heaved the spluttering creature on board, where she lay coughing on the scrubbed boards. Simon dragged himself up, flopping back into a chair while Frederick dabbed the girl’s face with his handkerchief, murmuring encouragement over her heaving chest in a miscast tableau of Romance.
Simon watched the girl’s efforts to raise herself to spew up the last of the Thames, wiping her mouth with the corner of the trailing shroud. She sat up, bright-eyed, with the air of happy release of one who has been sick and feels better now, thank you. Pushing strands of wet hair off her forehead, she atempted to untangle the sodden winding sheet and released herself to wobble awkwardly towards the saloon. Frederick struggled to his feet, all concern, his town suit spattered with tarry flecks.
‘Is there a loo?’ she asked in level tones, her aplomb undented, the junoesque figure entirely filling the doorway.
Simon wearily indicated below deck and the girl stepped inside, taking the spiral staircase in her stride, disappearing below like an over-ample water nymph. Slimy pools marked her progress across Simon’s Persian rug. He sighed, feebly patting the old man’s arm as Frederick emptied tots from the decanter into the miraculously intact balloon glasses.
After a decent interval in which they debated in urgent undertones the question of calling the police, the two men decided they really must first consult their uninvited guest. Perhaps they had misinterpreted the scene—the poor girl accidentally falling overboard in her struggle to disentangle herself from her escorts. After all, it was dusk, almost dark in fact …
Ever anxious to avoid unpleasantness, Simon Alington’s insistence on consulting her grew desperate. Frederick motioned his nephew to lower his voice and, emptying his brandy glass, miserably contemplated his damp trousers. At any other time the embarrassment would have been of epic proportions but eyeing the muddy disfigurement of chairs and polished floorboards, not to mention Simon’s sodden state, Frederick slyly concluded his own predicament would certainly go by the board just this once.
Simon rose stiffly, rancorously surveying the chaos in the cabin. He straightened the rug, flicking ineffectually at trails of what looked like electric blue plastic spaghetti. The string quartet, blithely winging its way through the Bach, lent an air of the Titanic to the wretched circumstances of Simon’s carefully planned interior.
He disappeared below. Frederick moved silently to the stairs, listening intently to firstly hesitant polite tapping on the bathroom door, then more urgent blows and finally, in exasperation, a loud ‘Excuse me!’ as Simon barged in.
Frederick leaned over, peering down, excited at the prospect of more drama. Simon emerged and looking up, called, ‘Frederick, you’ll have to help me. The silly cow’s passed out.’
They heaved at the heavy bundle, wedged between bath and basin, her hair spread across the floor as if in a Roman mosaic. Eventually, they managed to shove twelve stones of inert femininity into Simon’s double bed, too exhausted to wrestle with the problem of the wet chiffon dress. Anyhow, it already seemed not only almost dry but billowing in creaseless folds about her.
Frederick’s breath laboured in painful gasps, this last piece of exertion almost, but not quite, dissolving the vision of swelling flesh escaping it seemed in all the right places. She was out cold, lightly snoring, her lips parted in soft exhalations. Oh dear me, Frederick, acknowledged, Mayerton is going to seem a very dull ditch after this little lot.
Simon slept badly, haunted by a recurrent nightmare in which he was trapped in a bottle bobbing on a vast ocean. There must be a message in all this: ‘Help’ perhaps? Wedged on the small sofa, gloomily aware of a faint smell of bilge pervading the Christabel he reached for his Rolex. Eight-fifteen! He crept down to the bathroom, inevitably occupied, presumably by his uninvited guest, Frederick’s snoring being clearly audible from the spare cabin.
He sidled into the main cabin and withdrew a clean shirt and cords, grimly noting the tumble of muddy bedclothes and the froth of discarded chiffon tossed in the corner. The bathroom door spun open, and the girl appeared, fresh and smiling as a society hostess, quite unabashed.
‘Good morning! It’s all yours.’ She stood aside with a flourish of welcome.
He nodded curtly, noting her acquisition of his new denim shirt and the rolled-up cotton trousers he had bought for Cowes Week, and pushed past without a word. If she had used all the hot water he would certainly throw her back overboard.
When he emerged, feeling considerably less barbaric after a bath and shave, a wonderful aroma of fresh coffee and bacon obliterated the musty stink of Thames water which the previous night’s adventure had introduced. Frederick appeared looking frail, wearing a dressing-gown voluminous as a horse blanket and a sickly air of anxiety. He moved towards the upper deck. ‘She still here?’ he whispered.
Before Simon could reply the girl’s voice rang out, cheerful as a wedding bell. ‘Roll up, coffee’s ready.’ Her head appeared over the stair rail. ‘Come on, just as you are, I’ve done a full grill job.’
The two men’s confusion left no alternative but to toe the line. Frederick bunched the dressing-gown to his chest and ascended, Simon at his heels crossly aware of feeling a visitor aboard his own boat.
To give the girl her due, she was a quick worker. The saloon had been whisked to rights, the table laid, coffee steaming, and sunlight sparkling through the open hatches danced about Simon’s brass knick-knacks. Even the trails of plastic debris had been eliminated, the rug still damp from a brisk set-to and all evidence of the near-drowning utterly erased.
Simon, taciturn, merely grunted, but Frederick quickly responded to the girl’s unstoppable sprightliness and introduced himself.
‘So you are Frederick,’ she prattled, ‘And you’re—?
‘Simon Alington.’
‘And Simon’s staying here for—’
‘It’s Simon’s boat.’ Frederick almost choked on his bacon in his urgency to divert Simon’s rancour.
‘Oh good.’ She smiled across the table at him. ‘I had to borrow some clothes, Simon. You don’t mind?’
It was hardly a question. Would