Man Overboard Read Free Page B

waistcoat was skidding to a stop, crying triumphantly: “Here you are, Captain!” and opening a door to show him Rose, coming towards him with her wide smile and both hands held out.
    There were other people in the room with her. Rose introduced him to them emphatically as
Commander
Francis, and he had the idea that she would have been gratified if he had turned up with three gold rings on his sleeve. The others seemed to be actors and actresses, or people connected in some way with her show, but Ben was scarcely aware of them, for Rose blotted out all other life for miles round.
    She was wearing a white sweater and a tight black skirt. She was more beautiful even than Ben had remembered. In that dingy room with the damp, green walls and dusty carpet, among the little group of unremarkable people with limp handshakes and indoor complexions, Rose glowed like an incandescent gas mantle.
    Ben stood bemused and happy while she fetched him a warm drink in a small glass, the wrong shape for gin and tonic. She was quite possessive with him, and so the other people accepted him with no more than the lift of an eyebrow, the downward tweak to the corner of a mouth. If Rose wanted to give the impression that she knew him quite well, that was fine. Ben played up, and found himself talking to her with some ease, or rather listening, since Rose did most of the talking in any company. She did not mention Amy, so Ben did not bring out the story he had prepared to cover up the child’s lack of interest.
    Rose seemed glad to see him. It was fantastic, better than anything he had dreamed when he had imagined himself watchingher in the studio from a distance, waiting for the bounty of a word of recognition. The first drink had been strong, because the tonic water was running short. Ben accepted a second, and his brain began to shout noiselessly: “This is terrific. She likes me!” His brain was standing straddle-legged on a wall, telling the open-mouthed crowds below that Rose Kelly was still standing by him, still talking to him, when she could have been talking to any of these other people in the room, who worked with her and were her kind.
    The door opened. Heads turned, Ben’s among them, as the producer, Bob Whiting, came in. He wore offensive pale suede ankle-boots, and a pistachio bow-tie, even narrower than the one he had worn in the restaurant.
    “Aha!” cried Bob Whiting, so that all the room might hear. “The gallant Commander. How are all those gorgeous sailors?” He affected a perverted lisp, and there was some laughter, which sounded sycophantic. He was evidently quite a big wheel at the studio. Someone brought him a drink, and Ben noticed that the others glanced at him out of the side of their corner conversations, as if checking his mood.
    “Well, Rosie,” Bob Whiting stood in front of Rose and Ben, with his childish mouth smugly pursed. “So it wasn’t just ships that pass in the night, I see.”
    “Don’t be a stinker,” Rose said lightly. “Did you get that straightened out, about the close-up? You were right about the man on that camera. See if you can’t get him changed next week. Please Bob?” Her saucer eyes appealed to him confidently. She liked him, that was the terrible thing. Ben was afraid that they were going to slip into the kind of easy, esoteric exchange he had watched them enjoying in the restaurant, and he was about to climb down off his mental wall and say: “Sorry, everybody. I didn’t make it after all,” when Rose took some keys on a silver chain out of the pocket of her skirt and said: “How about getting the car, Ben? It’s at this end of the car park. I’ll meet you at the door.”
    Had she merely forgotten to tell him, or did she not want Bob Whiting to know that Ben did not know what kind of car she had? No matter, Ben took the keys as nonchalantly as if he had handled them many times before, found his way down the staircases and along the baffling corridors, and nodded good