Roman Nights by Dorothy Dunnett

Author:Dorothy Dunnett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Roman Nights
ISBN: 9780755131570
Publisher: House of Stratus
Published: 2012-05-16T16:00:00+00:00

Silent thoughts and tears unseen,

Wishing your absence was only a dream.

It crossed with one of his to me which came with another obituary:

We said farewell that autumn day

My heartstrings felt the tug

You laid your hair down far away

And left your heart in jug.

It takes four hours to drive to Naples and it rained all the way. Sheets of water sprayed up on each side of the Fiat, in which I was cravenly sitting with Jacko. Maurice’s chauffeur-driven limousine rolled majestically behind, bearing Innes and Professor Hathaway, talking.

The Fiat did a hundred and twenty on the autostrada and got to Naples ahead of the Maserati, with Jacko slumbering heavily in the back, on the way to rehabilitation after a brisk farewell warm-up of pages one to six of his address book. The yachting haven is on the north side of the bay. Johnson wove past all the stalls selling varnished shell ashtrays and splashed over a long concrete jetty lined with covered boats.

There was only one with the cockpit canvas stripped off and she was a gas: a big, snow-white ketch with two tall pitch-pine masts, glittering with naval brass and expensive teak and fine paintwork. A man in a peaked cap standing under the waterproof awning nipped up to the aft deck as the Fiat drew up and hopping ashore, sprinted up to us with a broad grin on his face. He was a short, powerful man with large ears and the gold lettering around his capband said Dolly. His name, it turned out, was Lenny Milligan, and his accent, greeting us all, was ripe Cockney. He helped haul out the luggage, and we walked towards the lushest seagoing pad in the harbour.

I don’t know why it surprised me. Next to Who’s Who. Maurice kept an up-to-date Lloyd’s Register in his library. We all knew the Dolly was a gaff-rigged auxiliary ketch of 59 tons with a 60 BHP auxiliary engine. What’s more, the owner’s name in the list bore an asterisk, which meant that Johnson Johnson held a Board of Trade Master’s Certificate.

I was glad of it. The Tyrrhenian Sea in November is no place to be without the Board of Trade Master’s Certificate, and perhaps even with it.

Below decks, Johnson’s yacht was deep-carpeted and warm and candidly comfortable. In the desperate silence of ignorance, Jacko traversed with me the cushioned saloon whose panelled walls contained all the civilized comforts. Johnson had a television set and a stereo record player and a radio and a fridge and a full-scale bar within which Lenny, in a white jacket, was already making himself busy. We passed through a door at the forward end and into a passage which contained the door of the galley on its right and that of a single-berth cabin on its left.

‘Mine,’ said Johnson, indicating the last. He opened a third door facing us at the end of the short passage and ushered Jacko gently in. ‘The forward stateroom. You’ll share this with Innes. Lenny sleeps in the fo’c’sle beyond it, but he won’t disturb you if he can help it.

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