Last Voyage of the Valentina

1




London 1971

“S he’s enjoying the attentions of that young man again,” said Viv, standing on the deck of her houseboat. Although it was a balmy spring evening, she pulled her tasseled shawl about her shoulders and took a long drag of her cigarette.

“Not spying again, darling!” said Fitz with a wry smile.

“One can’t help noticing the comings and goings of that girl’s lovers.” Viv narrowed her hooded eyes and inhaled through dilated nostrils.

“Anyone would think you were jealous,” Fitz commented, grimacing as he took a sip of cheap French wine. In all the years he had been Viv’s friend and agent she had never once bought a bottle of good wine.

“I’m a writer. It’s my business to be curious about people. Alba’s engaging. She’s a very selfish creature, but one can’t help being drawn to her. The ubiquitous moth to the flame. Though, in my case, not a moth at all but a rather beautifully dressed butterfly.” She wandered across the deck and draped herself over a chair, spreading her blue and pink caftan about her like silken wings. “Still, I enjoy her life. It’ll do for a book one day, when we’re no longer friends. I think Alba’s like that. She enjoys people, then moves on. In our case, it shall be I who moves on. By then, the dramas of her life will no longer entertain me and, besides, I’ll have grown bored of the Thames too. My old bones will ache from the damp, and the creaking and bumping will keep me up at night. Then I shall buy a small château in France and retire to obscurity, fame having become a bore too.” She sucked in her cheeks and grinned at Fitz. But Fitz was no longer listening, although it was his job to.

“Do you think they pay for it?” he said, putting his hands on the railing and looking down into the muddy water of the Thames. Beside him, Sprout, his old springer spaniel, lay sleeping on a blanket.

“Certainly not!” she retorted. “Her father owns the boat. She’s not having to fork out twelve pounds a week in rent, I assure you.”

“Then she’s simply liberated.”

“Just like everyone else of her generation. Following the herd. It bores me. I was before my time, Fitzroy. I took lovers and smoked cannabis long before the Albas of this world knew of the existence of either. Now I prefer bog standard Silva Thins and celibacy. I’m fifty, too old to be a slave to fashion. It’s all so frivolous and childish. Better to set my mind on higher things. You may be a good ten years younger than me, Fitzroy, but I can tell the world of fashion bores you too.”

“I don’t think Alba would bore me.”

“But you, my dear, would bore her, eventually. You might think you’re a swaggering Lothario, Fitzroy, but you’d meet your match in Alba. She isn’t like other girls. I’m not saying you’d have trouble bedding her, but keeping her, now that’s a very different story. She likes variety. Her lovers don’t last long. I’ve seen them come and go. It’s always the same, they skip up the gangplank; then, when it’s all over, they plod off like ill-treated mongrels. She’d have you for dinner then spit you out like a chicken bone, and that would be a shock, wouldn’t it, darling? I bet no one’s ever done that to you before. It’s called karma. What goes around, comes around. Pay you back for breaking so many hearts. Anyway, at your age, you should be looking for your third wife, not a transitory thrill. You should be settling down. Set your heart on one woman and keep it there. She’s fiery because she’s half Italian.”

“Ah, that explains the dark hair and honey skin.”

Viv looked at him askance and her thin lips extended into an even thinner smile.

“But those very pale eyes, strange…” He sighed, no longer noticing the taste of cheap wine.

“Her mother was Italian. She died when Alba was born. In a car crash, I think. Has a horrid stepmother and a bore for a father. Navy, you know. Still there, the old fossil. Has had the same desk job since the war, I suspect. Commutes every day, very dreary. Captain Thomas Arbuckle, and he’s definitely a Thomas and not a Tommy. Not like you, who are more of a Fitz than a Fitzroy, though I do love the name Fitzroy and shall continue to use it regardless. No wonder Alba rebelled.”

“Her father might be a bore, but he’s a rich bore.” Fitz ran his eyes over the shiny wooden houseboat that gently rocked from the motion of the tide. Or from Alba’s lovemaking. The thought made his stomach cramp competitively.

“Money doesn’t bring happiness. You should know that, Fitzroy.”

Fitz stared into his glass a moment, reflecting on his own fortune that had brought him only avaricious wives and expensive divorces.