Read The Boat for Free Online Page B

were the precise reasons why Clem loved him. Her mother had never understood her; ever since Clem could remember she had looked at her with a kind of bewildered disappointment in her eyes. And though it made Clem feel treacherous to admit it – because after all, her mother had been the only constant in her life – she was frequently embarrassed by her: her lack of imagination, her conventionality. Sometimes, especially when they were all together at the Loves and her mother would make some banal comment about the weather or the tea, she actually felt ashamed of her. However, since travelling, she had noticed a change in her own heart; with the distance, the irritation had been replaced with a fondness, from a thousand miles away she could actually appreciate her mother. She promised herself that she would try and behave differently towards her whenever she got home again. The truth was that Johnny’s family had become her family; she adored them and they had embraced her in the same way they embraced life. When they stayed in Putney, Johnny’s dad would come into their bedroom in the morning bearing tea and reciting sonnets, pulling open the curtains with an ode or two. ‘ Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day ,’he’d say to the summer’s day. He employed them at his building company and if they weren’t earning money doing that they were usually to be found in bed in the tower block in Roehampton. They’d heaved a huge mattress right up to the window so that they could look out over Richmond Park. They didn’t have sex all of the time; sometimes they just lay there for hours on end staring into each other’s eyes as only lovers or loonies can do, in sheer amazement, always reeling from the miracle that two parts of the same thing had united and become one. Clem pulled away from Johnny’s lips. ‘Isn’t Mr Magnate’s friend going to be furious? When he finds out that all his stuff has been dumped at Kos when he thought it was going to Fethiye?’
    ‘Not our problem, Clem,’ Johnny said, rather wishing that just occasionally she would concentrate on one thing at a time. He breathed in her lovely teak-decking smell and pretty soon they found themselves making love on the millionaire’s slippery red satin sheets.
    They didn’t hear him come in. Clem saw him first; she sat up very slowly, not bothering to cover herself up and she tapped Johnny on the shoulder. He turned around to see Charlie Potts holding the door wide open staring at them.
    ‘Oh, there you are,’ Charlie said, seemingly not noticing that they were mid-coitus, showing no signs of embarrassment or backing out. ‘If you’re going to do that sort of thing I would rather you didn’t do it in here. There’s a room on the lower deck available for breeding purposes.’
    Johnny ran a hand through his hair. They certainly weren’t breeding – she was on the Pill.
    ‘Anyway, there’s no time for any of that…’ Charlie said with a brisk click of his heels, walking right into the room and over to the bed and handing Johnny a sheet of blue paper. ‘It’s a telegram from the boss,’ he said, keeping his eyes exaggeratedly averted from Clem’s bare breasts. Johnny held the telegram in his hands and Clem leant in close to read it: ‘SINK ALL POSSESSIONS STOP IN INTERNATIONAL WATERS STOP’.
    Both Clem and Johnny laughed and looked up at Charlie but his expression was deadpan. ‘He’s not serious?’ Johnny asked, wiping the sweat from his glistening forehead.
    ‘My boss is not known for his jocularity.’ This fact could be backed up by one glance at his photograph.
    ‘Won’t they take it here?’ Clem asked.
    ‘Have you seen customs? It’s the size of a sentry box.’
    ‘He wants you to chuck all those things overboard? The piano? The furniture? The gold mirror?’ Johnny asked. ‘Into the sea?’
    ‘Affirmative. We’ll do it tonight and then we’ll go on to Fethiye. I’ll pay you an extra fifty plus your fare home. Does