bulkhead in Cabin D. She winced. Oh, no, not again! Not tonight! You’d think that now the ship stopped, in this complete silence without the throb of the engine and the vibration to lend at least an illusion of privacy to their lovemaking, they might be a little more discreet.
She felt trapped, embarrassed, and angry. The first time it happened, the night they sailed from Callao, in her revulsion at being a captive audience to the impassioned grapplings and ecstatic shrieks from beyond the bulkhead, she had buried her head under her pillow and suffered through it. Mrs. Lennox was aware that she occupied Cabin D, so it was obvious she just didn’t realize how sound-transparent that flimsy bulkhead really was. The next day, when she was sure the other woman was in her cabin, she had gone bustling around her own, singing fragments of song, dropping a book, creating other small sounds which should carry the message without being too obvious about it. It had done no good at all. The next night was a repetition of the first, and the following was even worse, with the result that by now she was afraid to make any sound in her cabin at all. Just once, it could be assumed without too much embarrassment on either side that she’d been asleep, but that was impossible now, after nearly a week of it. She wasn’t certain that even Mrs. Lennox herself was aware of some of the things she cried out in her transports, but any recognition between them now that they’d been overheard would be mutually humiliating to the point their one desire would be never to see each other again. Which would be somewhat awkward under the circumstances; the old freighter was a small ship, they were the only women on it, and it was a long way to Manila.
With the initial moan from the other cabin she sat up wearily and reached for her robe. The only escape was in flight, but she was damned if she’d get dressed again. Belting it around her, she dropped cigarettes and a lighter in the pockets, located her slippers in the darkness, and went out, softly closing the door behind her. Her hair was a mess, and she had on no makeup, but she was too angry to care. The worst of it was that by leaving her cabin she was committed to staying away until she was certain the man, whoever he was, would have left. It would be embarrassing in the extreme to meet him in the passageway coming out of Mrs. Lennox’ cabin at this hour of the morning.
She’d thought once or twice of asking the steward or captain if she could move to another cabin, but always ran into the unanswerable question of what excuse she could give. Besides, it would have to be a double cabin, and she’d paid only for a single. While there were only four passengers aboard and the Leander had accommodations for twelve in four double cabins and four singles, they were all people travelling alone, so only the doubles were unoccupied.
Her cabin was the last one aft in the starboard passageway. There was no one in sight. She turned into the thwartships passageway, went on past the entrance to the dining saloon on her left, and stepped out on deck on the port side. This level, referred to in the usual grandiose language of travel brochures as the promenade deck, contained the eight passenger cabins, the steward’s cabin, and the passenger dining and smoking saloons. On the next deck below were the crew’s quarters and messrooms, while the deck officers and engineers occupied the one directly above, along with their messroom and the wireless room. Passengers were encouraged to stay in their own area, except that they were allowed on the boat deck, the uppermost one, as long as they kept clear of the bridge.
She went around to the ladders at the after end of the midships house and mounted to the boat deck, which was in darkness except for the faint moonlight, since the bridge was at the forward end of it. Between the two wings of the bridge was the wheelhouse, the rest of the structure aft of it containing the chartroom and captain’s quarters. She walked forward and stood leaning against the rail between the davits of the two lifeboats on the starboard side, gazing out at the star-studded night and the dark, unmoving surface of the sea.
Three