Read Online Endangered Species by Richard Woodman - Free Book Online Page B

from leaning on the rail and the deck lights high-lit the tight-lipped, malicious smile.
    â€˜Well, well; if it isna our Second Mate, an’ pissed out o’ his skull an’ all!’
    Stevenson paused for a moment, glaring at Macgregor, but possessed of sufficient sobriety to hold his tongue; then he plunged through the door into the athwartships alleyway and dragged himself unhappily up to the boat-deck accommodation.
    A giggle came out of Rawlings’s cabin and the door curtain was suddenly rent aside. A naked girl, her face flushed and laughing, backed out, her arms extended as though restrained. She twisted free with a toss of straw-blonde hair, still giggling, and made to run. She found herself confronting the astonished Stevenson. Both of them stood stock-still, the lights playing across the girl’s breasts as they heaved with excitement and exertion. Then she turned and fled in the opposite direction, just as Rawlings, a towel draped discreetly round his paunch, looked out into the alleyway.
    â€˜Dawn? Dawn? Are you all right? Good God, Alex . . . !’
    â€˜She went that way.’ Stevenson nodded towards the Captain’s end of the alleyway.
    â€˜Oh, shit.’
    Rawlings padded barefoot in pursuit. For a moment Stevenson stood, wondering if he had really seen the naked girl, then the intense whispering from the turn in the alleyway and Rawlings’s reconnoitring head made him turn away. He let himself into his own cabin. As he shut the door he heard the flap of their feet and the suppressed giggles of the girl.
    â€˜Was that one of your friends?’ she asked with the voice of a fallen angel.

CHAPTER FOUR
Cargo Work
    During the lonely night watches of the outward passage, Taylor had seen no very good reason for Caroline’s fidelity. In his unhappiness her acceptance of his proposal in the first place and their subsequent splicing among the liturgical trappings of the Church of England seemed equally incomprehensible. Perhaps she had changed afterwards; perhaps, after all, she had made a mistake, in which case it was a common enough one.
    Had she written even the dullest of letters to meet the ship’s arrival at Singapore he might have felt some amelioration of the self-doubt and low self-esteem he so competently buried in his cultivated air of superiority. But Caroline had failed him and his disappointment was so acute he came ashore intent on desperate and immediate solace.
    Thus, he rode with his wounded pride silent in the taxi alongside Stevenson whose very words had precipitated the crisis, knowing what he contemplated had its own compensations the instant he caught sight of Sharimah alone at the bar. The girl’s beauty made her price unimportant and it pleased Taylor to excite his tormentor, then to cheat Stevenson of her.

    He woke at dawn. Above him a large fan gyrated slowly against the cracked plaster of the ceiling. He rubbed his eyes and the movement disturbed a gecko high up on the far wall. The little house lizard was hunting dozing flies. Outside, beyond the open jalousies, the air was heavy with the land smells and the persistent stridulation of cicadas.
    Alongside him Sharimah stirred. Even after his passion was spent and remorse crept upon him with the awareness of the events of the previous evening, he could lie and admire her beauty. The grey light made her seem insubstantial, ethereal. One breast was uncovered and she had caught a stray lock of her black hair in her right hand as she had turned in her sleep.
    Memories of the yielding softness of her lips came to him, and he stared in fascination at the high cheekbones and the delicate darkening of the skin of her almond eyelids.
    He was suddenly disgusted by the sweat-stained grossness of his own body, already stirring again with its automatic and primaeval reaction.
    She opened her eyes, gauging his mood, suddenly cautious and insecure, he realised, as she must always be on waking next