Locked rooms - Laurie R. King [2]
“The Captain tells me that we are making good time,” he commented.
“I'm glad the storm blew itself out,” I replied. “I might actually be able to face the dinner table tonight.” Something about the angle of the wind the past days had made the perpetual pitch and toss of the boat even more quease-inducing than usual.
“You haven't eaten anything in three days.” Holmes disapproved of my weak stomach.
“Rice,” I objected. “And tea.”
“Or slept,” he added, snapping his wind-proof lighter into life and holding it over the bowl of his pipe.
That accusation I did not answer. After a moment, as if to acknowledge that his comment had not required a response, he went on.
“Had you thought any more about pausing in Hawaii?”
I stifled a yawn and put my empty cup onto the chair's wide arm, nestling back into the warmth of the rug. “It's up to you, Holmes. I'm happy to stop there if you like. How many days would it be before the next ship?”
“Normally three, but it seems that the following ship has turned back to Tokyo for repairs, which means we could be marooned there for a week.”
I opened one eye, unable to tell from his voice, still less his smoke-girt expression, which way his desires leant. “A week is quite a long diversion,” I ventured.
“Particularly if Hawaii has embraced the austerities of Prohibition.”
“A half-day would mean a long walk and sit at a table where I don't have to aim a moving soup spoon at my mouth. Both would be quite nice.”
“Then another four days to San Francisco.” The pointless, unnecessary observation was unlike Holmes. Indeed, this entire conversation was unlike him, I reflected, squinting at him against the glare. He had his pipe between his teeth, and was concentrating on rolling up the pouch, so I shut my eyes again.
“Terra firma,” I said. “A week in California, tying up business, and then we can turn for home. By train.” I don't get seasick on trains.
“A week will be sufficient, you believe?”
“To draw up the papers for selling the house and business? More than enough.”
“And that is what you have decided to do.”
This noncommittal, pseudo-Socratic dialogue was beginning to annoy. “What are you getting at, Holmes?”
“Your dreams.”
“What about them?” I snapped. I should never have told him about them, although it would have been difficult not to, considering the closeness of the quarters.
“I should say they indicate a certain degree of anxiety.”
“Oh for heaven's sake, Holmes, you sound like Freud. The man had sex on the brain. ‘Rooms in dreams are generally women,' he declares. ‘A dream of going through a series of rooms indicates a brothel, or a marriage'—I can't imagine what his own marriage could have been like to equate the two so readily. And the key—God, you can imagine the fraught symbolism of playing with a key that lies warm in my pocket! ‘Innocent dreams can embody crudely erotic desires.' The faceless man he'd no doubt equate with the male organ, and as for the objects that spurt wildly into the air—well, I'm clearly a sick woman. What does it say about my ‘erotic desires' that reading the man's book made me need a hot bath? Or perhaps a cold shower-bath.”
“You sound as if you've researched this rather thoroughly.”
“Yes, well, I found a copy of his Interpretation of Dreams in the ship's library,” I admitted, then realised that I was also admitting to a greater degree of preoccupation than I thought sensible. To lead him away from the admission, I said, “I wouldn't have thought that you of all people would fall for the Freud craze, Holmes.”
His face darkened as he came close to responding to my diversion, then he caught himself, and counterattacked with a deceptively mild, “A knowledge of psycho-logical jargon is hardly necessary when confronted with such an unambiguous statement as that contained in those dreams of yours.”
“What do you mean, unambiguous?” I protested furiously, and too late realised that I had stepped