The Year of Dangerous Loving

10

She lay flat out on her belly in the moonlight, long hair matted in sand, gasping her breath back. Hargreave lay spreadeagled beside her, trembling with exhaustion.

‘You saved my life …’

‘My fault … Shouldn’t swim … with so much booze …’

‘Never had cramp like that before …’

‘I have. I should have known better …’

She rolled over on to her back, arms outflung, and looked up at the stars. Her breasts and belly and thighs were covered in sand. After a minute, she said, ‘How are we going to get you back to the boat?’

‘I’ll swim.’

‘No, you risk your life. And mine.’

Hargreave sat up wearily. ‘You could fetch the dinghy,’ he said.

‘Yes. Of course.’

‘Can you row?’

‘I can learn.’ She heaved herself into a sitting position.

Then Hargreave realized that he had forgotten to put the swimming ladder down before he dived in. ‘Oh Lord … You won’t be able to get aboard, the gunnels are too high.’

Olga stared out at the yacht lying out there in the moonlight, registering this information: then she dropped her head and giggled. ‘Oh no! And we are naked on the beach.’ Then Hargreave saw the funny side of it despite himself. Olga laughed: ‘So the only solution is to walk naked to the village and borrow some clothes!’

‘Borrow us a sampan while you’re about it.’

‘Me?’

‘You’re the pretty one!’

Olga threw back her head in the moonlight and guffawed. She collapsed back on the sand, arms outflung. ‘This is so funny. Naked in Hong Kong! But what are we going to do, darling?’

Hargreave stood up, grinning. He walked into the water and washed the sand off his hands. ‘Climb up the anchor chain,’ he said.

Olga sat up again. ‘Of course!’

‘Haven’t done it for years; it’s damn hard, but it can be done.’

‘Not you – me,’ Olga said emphatically. ‘At gymnastics we had to climb up ropes, my arms are very strong. Look!’ She bent her elbow and made her biceps hard. ‘So impressive! I am not letting you swim out there and drown.’

‘In an hour the tide will have turned and whatever causes cramp will have gone away.’

‘No, I am not letting you …!’

‘Al Hargreave may be unathletic but he’s not a complete prick. Would Errol Flynn have let his girl swim out there alone to climb anchor chains? Sean Connery would do it in his dinner jacket.’ He spread his arms. ‘Relax. You’re marooned in the hot China night on a deserted beach with your very own yacht out there – all we’ve got to do is climb up the fucking anchor chain. What could be more romantic?’

‘With my own true love?’

‘So come here and let me wash that sand off your beautiful body.’

She did not have to save his life again when they finally swam out to the boat when the tide had turned: she stayed beside him but the cramp did not return. She was as good as her word about rope-climbing: while he clung to the anchor chain she put one foot on his shoulder, grabbed the chain above his head, stood, then went hand over hand up the short distance to the bows. She grabbed the gunnel, then swung one leg up under the rail, lost her grip and crashed back into the water with an undignified flash of naked flesh. Giggling, she tried again. This time she succeeded. She wriggled under the rail, and got to her feet.

In the morning they sailed to the yacht club. Hargreave left Olga aboard while he took a taxi to the Marine Department and completed port-entrance formalities: he got her admitted into the colony as his crew-member without a hitch – the young Chinese immigration officer recognized him and did not query Olga’s profession of singer recorded on her Macao identity card. ‘Have a nice sail, Mr Hargreave.’

They had a lovely sail, for the next week. That first day he circumnavigated Hong Kong, to show Olga the bustling industrial development and the beautiful bays and luxurious apartment complexes on the other sides of the island. ‘So much money – so much work!’ He anchored in Repulse Bay for the night amongst dozens of yachts and pleasure junks out for the long weekend. They sat on deck in a beautiful sunset, the jungled mountains looming up, the shore lined with the lights of gracious apartment blocks, music and laughter wafting across from the boats.

‘We were told at school,’ Olga began, ‘that the West was terrible, only very few people were rich, all the rest very poor, without enough food, dying of cold. Our teachers showed us movies of New York in the winter, the hoboes freezing while the rich people ate in restaurants and all their children took drugs and all the pretty girls had to be prostitutes. The American army were well-fed because their only job was to conquer Russia to make us slaves. And the whole of Europe was the same, our teachers told us, and England was worse, because you have a queen. I remember, when I was a little girl, when Prince Charles married Diana, we were shown a movie of them at Buckingham Palace after the wedding, on the balcony, the crowds of people outside, and our teacher told us the crowd was demanding bread.’

Hargreave smiled. ‘And you believed your teacher.’

‘Of course, I was only about ten. Even my father and mother believed it. I wanted very much to be a soldier for Communism to help those poor American and English people, to give them food, so their children could grow up happy like me. And when they showed us pictures of the Berlin Wall to keep out all the nasty West Germans and Americans, I clapped. I was very patriotic, darling, when I was ten.’

‘And then?’

‘And Africa – our teachers showed us such pictures of little black babies crying with nothing in their stomachs and flies on their noses and their mothers’ breasts all empty, and we were told this was the fault of the capitalists who were making them work in their factories and mines, who killed all the wild animals and chopped down all the trees for firewood in London and New York. And we saw many pictures of brave Russian and Cuban soldiers fighting to free them from such misery. And, oh, I wanted to be a soldier. I was going to be a parachutist, darling!’

‘A parachutist?’ Oh, he loved her.

‘Jumping out of the sky with my machine-gun and shooting all those nasty capitalists. And when we saw movies of the Americans fleeing out of Vietnam – oh boy, I wanted to marry a soldier so much!’

Hargreave laughed. ‘And when did you change?’

‘When I started to get tits, I suppose. When all us girls started to look at black-market magazines from the West – fashions and icecreams and motor cars. And one of my friends had a brother who had come back from the army and he told her many things. My mother was dead and my father was very sick now, and my brother had left to work in the mines. Then suddenly Mr Gorbachev was the new boss and he was talking about perestroika and glasnost. I was living in the orphanage now and I was very interested in boys, and clothes, and all this was very exciting to us. We only understood that the West was maybe not so bad, but to us it meant being pretty girls with rich husbands. So romantic. Then I went to work in the aluminium factory, but there were no pretty clothes, everybody was poor except the apparatchiks; things got worse not better because there was so much confusion, so many criminals now. Then I was offered the job at Mosfilm, like I told you, but it really was a KGB job. Then everything went crazy when the old Communists tried to take Gorbachev’s power, and I was sent to Istanbul. I was very confused.’

‘And now?’

She spread her arms. ‘Now I am the happiest girl in the world, with my knight in shining armour. Now I am not confused, even if I am still a whore.’

‘You’re not, you’re a singer.’

She smiled. ‘Yes, with you I am not a whore. And I never want to be a whore again, that is what I have learned, that is one of the things I am not confused about.’

He believed her; but what would she do the week after next when this holiday was over? He felt the happiest man in the world, too – but was this the real world?

‘And another thing I am not confused about: now I really know what I want to be. I always wanted to do it, but now I am really determined. Study to be a vet. I like animals very much. On the collective farm I often helped the vet, and I was very good at school with chemistry and biology, so interesting. So after I have bought my brother a farm I will study to be a vet.’

He was very pleased to hear that. She was no whore in her heart! But it raised a number of questions. ‘But where? In Russia?’

She wanted to say, Wherever you are. She smiled: ‘Wherever I can, darling, I will find a way to do it.’

Oh, yes, he wanted her to do it, he wanted to ensure she did it, pay for her to do it, but it was too early yet to consider the implications of all that. At that moment the two-way radio rasped in the wheelhouse: ‘Yacht Elizabeth, this is Kingfisher, come in.’

Hargreave went to the machine and picked up the receiver. ‘Kingfisher, Elizabeth, good evening, Jake. Pick a channel.’

‘Seventy.’

‘Seventy.’ Hargreave turned his control switch from the mandatory Channel 16 to Channel 70. ‘Where are you, Jake, over?’

‘Anchored about two hundred yards astern of you. Want to come over for a drink? I’ve got some friends aboard for the weekend.’ He added: ‘Including some very pretty ones.’

Hargreave hesitated. It would be nice to see Jake but right now it was much nicer being alone with Olga, and he didn’t want to face questions about her; they hadn’t even worked out a proper alibi yet.

‘Not now, thanks Jake, we’re just making supper, maybe tomorrow. Where’re you going from here?’

‘Thinking about having lunch on Lamma, join us if you like. After that just wandering up the islands, probably to Sai Kung area.’

‘Good, we’ll look for each other on channel sixteen, huh?’

‘Roger, we’ll be listening. Have a good time. Out.’

They had a good time. They slept late the next morning. Repulse Bay beach was full of people; there were many more pleasure-craft anchored when Hargreave and Olga left, lots of topless girls sunbathing on decks. They did not go to Lamma for lunch: it is a pretty island, with a quaint Chinese village with excellent seafood restaurants and Hargreave indeed intended taking Olga there sometime this week, but not today: today was a public holiday, there might be many people he knew and he did not want to start tongues wagging about Olga, and why Liz shot him. So after a late champagne breakfast they set sail up the island-studded coast towards Sai Kung area. The sun shone hot out of a clear sky, the blue sea was flat but there was just enough breeze to fill the sails and keep them cool. Hargreave was very happy: this is what he would love to do for the rest of his life, sailing, messing about on boats, living on his own boat, maybe even making a bit of money out of it – he would be perfectly happy for the rest of his life in the Caribbean, taking the odd charter party out for a week’s cruising around the islands to augment his pension, he would be perfectly happy living like that with Olga. Look at her – she was loving it as much as he, revelling in the quiet shh-shh of the sea, loving the gentle slop and surge of the sails, the feeling of freedom, of free power, of working with nature, having an adventure, sailing to distant islands, sailing anywhere you like, to faraway places with strange-sounding names.

‘Darling, this is so beautiful …’

And she was so beautiful: she was sitting topless on the roof of the wheelhouse, sometimes studying the islands through binoculars, sometimes flopping on to her back, arms spreadeagled, just looking up at the sails towering above her.

‘Alistair, I could do this for ever.’

He was sitting on the wheelhouse roof near her, his legs dangling over the end, looking aft, drinking beer. ‘And what about being a vet?’

She rolled over on to her stomach.

‘You see, when I am a vet I will make lots of money. And you will not have to be a lawyer any more. You can look after the boat, you see, and maybe the chickens and ducks too, and then every weekend we can sail this boat. But –’ she held up a finger – ‘at the end of every month I do not work for the next month, because I have made so much money and anyway I am such a good vet all the animals are very healthy, so off we go sailing for a month!’

It was a pretty scenario. ‘And where’s your surgery going to be?’

Her reply astonished him. ‘Cuba.’ She added: ‘Anywhere you like: maybe Florida is better for you Englishmen, but I like Cuba.’

Hargreave grinned. ‘Why?’

She rolled over on to her back again and looked up at the sails.

‘Because,’ she said solemnly, ‘Cuba is like Russia, starting all over, only much better. So exotic. Beaches and palm trees. And rum! Cuba is soon going to collapse, like Russia, and then it is also going to need everything. And then Cuba is going to go vroom, because the Americans are going to put a lot of money into Cuba, oh boy yes. And Cuba is a very big agricultural country, many farms, many animals and they will need many vets. But all the fat American vets will not go there, because they are making so much money looking after cats and dogs in Miami, and New York, and all the Spanish vets are making too much money in Madrid, and anyway Spaniards do not love animals because they have those terrible bullfights. So they will need plenty of vets in Cuba. And Cuba will be like America was fifty years ago – many opportunities.’ She held up her finger at the sails: ‘And that is when Doctor Olga Romalova arrives!’

Hargreave grinned. ‘And when are you going to start studying?’

She looked up at him seriously, upside-down.

‘When I leave Macao. I already have enough money, even after I have bought a farm for my brother and me – I have decided I will not buy an apartment.’ She paused. ‘But, of course, if you do not tell me to go away, I will start after you leave Hong Kong.’

Tell me to go away. Oh you poor girl. Before he could respond she twisted on to her stomach, scrambled to her knees and flung her arms around his shoulders. ‘Oh, don’t be frightened of me – I am not putting pressure on you! I am so sorry! Oh darling, of course you are not responsible for me, we are just discussing and the truth is I love you so of course I want to do what you say, but I am not a crazy girl who thinks everything is decided, I am just telling you what I have decided about my life because I do not like to be a prostitute any more!’

‘I didn’t look frightened, did I?’ Hargreave grinned.

‘Oh –’ she waggled her sweaty breasts against his head and hugged him – ‘your face, so funny, so worried! Darling, there is no problem for you, I am just telling you my exciting future now I am almost not a whore any more. And I have already written a letter to the University of Moscow, and the University of Miami, asking how much it costs, soon I will know something. Oh darling –’ she clasped his face to her and rocked him – ‘do not be frightened of me – now let’s stop talking about it.’

No, he was not frightened of her: he was enchanted. Her enthusiasm and energy seemed as boundless as her beauty.

That afternoon they anchored in an empty cove on Tap Mun Chau and went ashore with goggles and snorkels. They swam along the rocky shoreline, looking at the marine life: Olga led the way, and Hargreave was not watching too much marine life; he was entranced by the beautiful form ahead of him, her buttocks, her lovely long golden legs smoothly working the flippers, her long blonde hair streaming silkily behind her: she was the most sensuous creature in the world. They walked along the deserted beach together, looking at the shells and seaweed and jetsam, Olga crouching to examine bits of this and that, holding them up to the sun to admire the colours: she caught a very worried sandcrab and held it up for Hargreave to admire.

‘Look how perfect this animal is. Look at his shell, to protect him. Look at his little claws, to catch his food – so strong. Look at his little breathing place – and look at his eyes! How can eyes so small have all the lenses and nerves and things to tell him what he is seeing?’ She put the crab down and watched it scurry away gratefully. ‘God is very clever, even though I don’t believe in Him.’

‘I think you do.’

‘Yes? Then why is there so much suffering?’

‘Because long ago God decided to let us do our own thing and not interfere, so we would develop our characters, become strong.’

‘But if He decided not to interfere, why do you pray for help?’

‘In the hope He will grant it.’

She mused, walking along, head down, very dissatisfied with that answer. ‘But God knows everything. So He knew long ago whether you would pray or not, and He knew long ago He would not interfere because He wanted you to be strong. So what is the hope in praying? You cannot make God change His mind by praying because He already knew before the world began what He was going to do.’ She stopped to pick up a shell. ‘I wish I understood that. If I did, I would pray.’

Hargreave wished he understood it too. ‘Maybe by praying we harness some of His strength to ourselves.’

‘Hmm,’ Olga mused, ‘I must think about that. Like the yogis. Maybe that is the solution to the puzzle.’

They were swimming nude, about twenty yards from the yacht, when Jake McAdam’s junk came around the point and turned into their bay. There were three girls sunbathing topless on the foredeck, Jake and a dozen people on the big afterdeck. Jake shouted: ‘Come over for a drink!’ He steamed past them and dropped anchor about a hundred yards away. Hargreave and Olga swam back to their yacht. She mounted the swimming ladder and put on her bikini and he pulled on his swimming trunks.

‘Remember you’re a singer.’

‘That’s me. At the big hotels. And I’m making my holidays.’

‘And we met in the floating casino, because Jake knows I don’t go to night-clubs.’

They clambered down the ladder into the inflatable dinghy. He started the outboard motor and they chugged over to Jake’s junk and tied up to his swimming ladder.

‘Welcome aboard!’

Hargreave need not have worried. Jake remembered Olga – ‘How could I forget that tango?’ – but nobody else had seen her before. The party was going strong and everybody was very jolly. Jake was with a physiotherapist called Monica with whom he had a long-standing affair of convenience: Hargreave knew most of the fourteen people aboard, at least casually: they were a mixed bag, as Jake’s parties usually were, from highbrow to low-brow: Doc Dobson, a bachelor from the government clinic whose ‘tiresome duty’ it was to keep tabs on the venereal health of Wanchai bar-girls; Jack-the-Fire, a senior fireman with his ageing live-in girlfriend, Nancy Smythe, who was a teacher; Harry Howard, the stockbroker with his imperturbable Chinese mistress, Petal, who was a psychiatrist (‘He’s crazy, even more than me’); Denys Watson, a very successful barrister whose weaknesses were whisky and women, who had left his long-suffering wife at home; Whacker Ball, a misogynist who was the editor of the Oriental Israelite, a caustic weekly digest of Hong Kong news owned by Jake; Isabel Phipson, the very attractive headmistress with her lesbian lover, Penny, who was Jake’s bookkeeper: though there were some new faces, Hargreave counted these people as his friends – and Elizabeth’s – and they all seemed pleased to see him. Nobody mentioned Elizabeth or his bullet wound – his dramatic scar was exposed – although there were many interested looks cast at Olga. (‘Wow,’ Isabel Phipson joshed him, ‘lucky boy, Al, where did you find her?’ ‘Hands orf!’ Hargreave grinned, and Isabel went into giggles.) ‘What a lovely girl, Al,’ Denys Watson murmured, ‘where’s she from?’

‘You hands orf, too, Denys!’ Isabel giggled, and they all laughed. Hargreave liked Denys, who stoically excluded his friends’ women from his weakness.

‘She’s from Russia,’ Hargreave said, ‘she’s a night-club singer in Macao.’

‘How do you do; I am Olga Romalova from Russia,’ he heard her say above the music and chit-chat, pumping hands energetically with Whacker Ball.

‘And what brings you to our part of the world, Olga?’ Whacker boomed.

‘I am a singer, now I am making some holidays …’

Doc Dobson put his hand on Hargreave’s shoulder and whispered, ‘What a charming girl. Even Whacker likes her.’

Charming – that was the word for her. Hargreave watched surreptitiously as he circulated around the big afterdeck: now Olga was the centre of a small circle of people, the formerly-topless girls and Harry Howard: they all laughed uproariously at something she had just said. Jack-the-Fire, who was getting along with the whisky, murmured, ‘Good on yer, Al – I hope she’s not going back to Russia too quick.’

‘I hope so too.’

‘I hope she goes back tomorrow,’ Petal twinkled, ‘just look at that crazy man of mine, eating out of her hand!’ She held a finger up at Hargreave: ‘So, maybe she’s young, Alistair, but that doesn’t matter if her heart is good, and that girl has a kind heart, I can tell.’

Hargreave felt proud of her; she was the centre of attention and she was handling the task admirably. He knew everybody was being kind because they felt sorry for him because Liz had left him in a blaze of embarrassment, but he also knew they were genuinely charmed by Olga, and he was delighted.

‘Interesting woman,’ Whacker Ball rumbled beside him. ‘Telling me about the Roman ruins in Istanbul.’ Whacker liked Roman ruins.

‘She was working in Istanbul before she came here,’ Hargreave said.

‘One of my favourite watering-holes,’ Denys the Menace slurred. ‘Which nightclub?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Hargreave said, ‘I think she mentioned the Trocadero as one of them.’

‘Trocadero?’ Denys said. ‘Don’t know it.’

Jake put his hand on his shoulder. ‘Nice to see you looking happy, pal; how long is she around for?’

‘Her agent’s trying to negotiate another contract for her in Macao, in the Estoril, I think.’

‘Where’s her agent?’