by James Barlow
‘I shall log you. I can’t demote you sine you’re the lowest of the low anyway, so you’ll lose pay. Any more fights and you’re out on your ear.’
‘If you say so, sir.’
‘And no damn insolence to me.’
‘I was simply standing there when this aggressive lout attached me –’
‘We know all about that.’ Said the staff captain. ‘We’re not blind. Take better care of your sex life in future.’
He stamped out, giving Dimitrios a long fierce stare in which there might have been the trace of a grin.
Dimitrios was heartened. At least he’d not see John in the engineer’s half of the Areopagus again!
Thirty-six hours later, still a little weakened, he returned to duty. The men all stared at him, a few grinned outright. One even said, ‘That’s a lovely scar you’ve got there, boy.’
But Keith didn’t star or smile or come forward to welcome him back’ nor did he ask about his health. He wouldn’t meet Dimitrios’ eye at all, and when he did at last, his own eyes had a new, unwelcome expression which withered all hope of any resumption or progress in their rapprochement. For in Keith’s eyes were shame and embarrassment.
He knew . . .
Chapter Fifteen
Tomazos came on duty at four o’clock and ten minutes later a party of visitors was conducted by a seaman onto the bridge.
They were a typical group. There was a company director (who managed to proffer this status as information with his first question) and his wife, a plump little woman who was overcome by awe. (She thought Tomozas was the captain.) Also a New Zealand sheep farmer, a small wiry sunburned man who had made four trips to England and now monopolized the dialogue to the irritation of the other passengers. Then there was the myopic gangling idiot, loaded with cine camera and malicious barbs, who endeavoured to prove that the job of being a ship’s officer was nothing important really; any fool, including himself, could do it. (This was Squibb at his maximum grossierete.) There was the inevitable man who wished to air a grievance and simply followed words until they could be seized upon and exploited with this in view. This was Pybus, who was offensively drunk, almost past coherence, blinking rapidly, and sweating what smelled like pure alcohol. He had, incredibly, put on a shirt and tie and a jacket with an emphatic badge on it. His breathing was so heavy it was audible like an engine, and his face was ravaged by beer and heat. There was a family which included a small boy who was allowed to stand at the wheel, but had to be watched subsequently because of his tendency to press buttons, depress switches and talk into voice whistles to the radio room and the captain. There were also two girls, unaccompanied, pleasantly self-conscious in the afternoon sun. One of these Tomazos recognized as Debbie Vertigan.
He always wore dark glasses at the start of these visits. It was to achieve anonymity or overcome slight nervousness until he’d established a relationship with the visitors. Then he would take them off and rub his eyes and be willing to see them in sharper focus and be stared at himself. But even with dark glasses on he could see that the second girl, older than Debbie, was agitated in consciousness of her own eroticism, and this with some justification.
Yannopoulos was at the wheel and smiled obligingly as people took photographs.
Tomazos was in white, without jacket, and the whole atmosphere was equally informal. He did not hurry them; they could stay for an hour if they wished. He answered their questions, avoided their snobberies, and was quite frank about the age of the Areopagus.
‘How long do you reckon she’ll last?’ someone asked.
‘Five more years,’ forecast Tomazos. ‘You see, people like new things, and speed.’
‘New ships seem to catch fire or run aground or have trouble with their turbines,’ suggested the company direction amiably. ‘I prefer the old ones.’
‘She’s stable, I’ll say that for her,’ agreed the New Zealand sheep farmer, patronizing the Areopagus.
‘Why does she leave all that black smoke?’ Squibb inquired.
Unexpectedly, he obtained a laugh, as if, for once, he had said something truly funny.
Tomazos answered, ‘She’s probably using too much oil or has a clogged burner –’
‘Why isn’t it cleaned then?’ Tomazos said. ‘Or maybe the chief engineer doesn’t like to lose steam.’
He explained to them what were the functions of the bridge, how it was the heart of the ship and its brain. He showed them the radar sets and gyro-compass; he pulled down the periscopic magnetic compass for them to look into. He pointed out the inclinometer which showed the attitude of the ship in a roll. The instrument had a maximum of thirty degrees to port or starboard. ‘But we can’t stop her if she rolls more,’ he concluded with a smile.
‘She hasn’t got stabilizers,’ said Squibb in accusation.
‘That is true.’
‘She’s stable,’ reiterated the New Zealand farmer. ‘When we once came out of Sydney harbour aboard the Opalescent, which is thirty-four thousand tons and had everything, she tolled like a rowing boat.’
A woman asked, ‘Have you ever been in a bad storm?’
‘On the Areopagus?’
‘Well, yes.’
‘I like her in rough weather,’ admitted Tomazos. ‘It gives me something to handle.’
‘Suppose we hit a typhoon,’ Pybus said. ‘She’d go down like a stone.’
‘Oh, no,’ disputed Tomazos. ‘The captain, in the war, served on a concrete American ship. In the Caribbean he went through a typhoon, and it was quite stable –’
‘Have you ever been in one?’
‘Certainly.’
‘What was it like?’
‘The nastiest was off South America,’ Tomazos recalled. ‘We were off a lee shore and the sea was so strong the ship couldn’t even be turned to meet it.’
‘What happened?’
‘We turned into the sea, with it, and reversed engines for fourteen hours.’
‘God!’
‘It was so calm at the centre,’ Tomazos recollected. ‘In another ship of this line I was right in the centre of a typhoon once. The water was moderate but confused. The air was calm but we were gasping. There were birds circling. Then the other half – a quarter really – of the storm hit us. It took thirteen hours to get out of it. It was unpleasant but not all that dangerous.’
Mr. Pybus said in interruption, ‘I bet this bloody ship doesn’t get to Singapore on time. I bet you a hundred dollars it doesn’t.’
Tomazos could see that the other visitors were rendered uncomfortable by this accusation; they had come here in a spirit of interest and friendliness.
‘We haven’t quite caught up the schedule’ he admitted. ‘But you will undoubtedly have a day ashore there.’
Debbie Vertigan diverted the direction of the questions and asked about radar and collisions, and why wasn’t radar switched on now?
‘Ah, well, look!’ Tomazos requested, and pointed forward to a clear sea and sky and a horizon empty fifteen miles away. ‘You understand: although collisions are the greatest hazard these days this has nothing to do with radar. It is a matter of speed. There were no collisions in the days of sail . . . We are approaching Singapore now, a crowded area, but there is no fog. What happens in fog or darkness is that two vessels on reciprocal courses see each other on radar. But they do not know each other’s size or aspect or speed, nor can they for some time identify any change of the other’s course. So maybe they’ve both altered course minutes pass and they see the next heading of the other vessel. It is again reciprocal to their own new course. They alter again, but so does the other. And suddenly they are no longer ten or five miles apart, but too late. Quite safe in a visual encounter where the aspect of the other can be seen, but here, in fog, maintaining rather high speeds because no captain likes to ac
tually stop, they are in great danger because there is no concerted action. So. At the last moment one turns to starboard – this is the correct thing to do – and the other to port because that is theoretically safer in view of the available information. But his information is one step out of date. So they swerve and might miss even now. But do you know the length of a tanker? A thousand feet! How much better not to swing to one side, not to present that thousand feet! For the angle of aspect, as it is called, would then – in a head-on position – be one breadth of the tanker instead of nearly eight. So that tanker gets rammed side on, which is very bad.’
They laughed nervously at this understatement.
Debbie persisted: ‘But radar is better than the eye surely, in such a situation?’
Tomazos thought about it and then said, ‘No. Radar is not better than the eye. Yes, maybe in fog and darkness if we all follow the same rules. If there is no echo on the screen there may still be a wooden small boat in our way, giving no echo. The weather can influence performance. Atmospheric conditions – usually exactly when we need great accuracy! – affect the propagation of radio waves. Then, you see, there is shadow sector, mostly astern. Now we can move our eyes with our bodies and go and have a look. But radar stays fixed so if we are worried on this score we must zigzag the ship, and this may be in an area where we should not do so. We also have to change from one distance scale to another, but the eye sees all scales at the same time.’
‘But I can’t see why if you can now see a ship coming toward you in fog there should ever be a collision,’ Debbie commented, perplexed
‘You only see it as a dot,’ Tomazos told her. ‘At first you don’t even know if it’s coming toward you or moving away. It takes at least twenty minutes in fog and using radar to be sure of what you’re both doing and to manoeuvre accordingly. One is fumbling a bit, at first, for in fifteen seconds for the other fellow might alter course a mere four degrees. This is not even noticeable on radar, but it may have placed the other ship from a port to a starboard aspect. Even an alteration of thirty degrees may not be noticeable for several minutes after its execution.’
‘Gee!’ said Debbie. ‘Maybe my parents were right to go by plane!’
The passengers and Tomazos were amused by this.
Tomazos said, ‘Well, we are in an area of the world pretty free from fog. And the typhoon season is just over. Perhaps we shall survive!’
‘Is this the roughest sea?’
‘Oh, no,’ Tomazos said decisively. ‘The North Atlantic is the rough one. Fog and icebergs too. No deck chairs on that trip! The seas in these parts of the world are usually very calm. The Pacific Ocean was named so for exactly that reason.’
The attractive woman spoke for the first time and created a noticeable tension even with a harmless question.
‘What,’ she asked, ‘does the captain do?’
Tomazos had to look at her to answer, and her eyes mocked him, gleamed in awareness of her own capabilities of disturbing him. She had the ability to make him slightly uncomfortable.
‘The captain is always on duty and always responsible, asleep or awake,’ he told her. ‘Even on leave or when he’s gone ashore. Or when a local pilot is on the bridge.’
‘Yes, but what does he do?’ she persisted.
‘He has the power of a magistrate although it is not true that he can perform the marriage ceremony –’
‘That’s a relief!’
They laughed with her.
‘The owner can signal change of port or to take a load or some passengers somewhere, but it is the master who says how or if it can be done.’
‘It doesn’t sound very masterful,’ the woman suggested. ‘We still don’t know what he does.’
Tomazos was unruffled.
He informed her: ‘There are staff conferences, ship inspections, interviewing heads of departments, dealing with correspondence from head office and officials at ports of call. He has the final responsibility for navigation, and expects to be called to the bridge in fog or storm or unusual circumstances. Each voyage he entertains a few people in his Day Cabin and meets every passenger in a number of cocktail parties. He judges competitions and gives prizes. There are occasional problems – stowaways, thefts, irregularities and emergencies. As you may have noticed, he sometimes takes the nondenominational morning service on Sunday . . . ’
‘Oh, this is pathetic,’ said the woman. ‘You read it in a brochure’ I mean, honestly, what does he do? Right now, what’s he doing?’
Tomazos suspected that Captain Vafiadis was in his Day Cabin reading a paperback, but he assured her loyally, ‘I expect he’s working on documents relating to our arrival in Singapore or on official letters, to be posted there to the company.’
She let it go at that, but smiled slightly in the knowledge that she had made him a little uncomfortable and could by persistence have stung him out of his gravity.
Someone offered the comment, ‘It’s hot today’ in a tone of slight weariness, and at once Pybus took up his cue. He tried to trap Tomazos into an admission by asking, ‘What temperature’s the ship supposed to be at?’
Tomazos was puzzled.
‘The temperature? At the moment the air temperature is ninety-three and the sea eighty-six. Did you mean the furnaces? They are burning at three thousand degrees.’
‘No. The ship,’ said Pybus. He sucked in air laboriously and went on brusquely. ‘The cabins, how hot are they supposed to be?’
‘Mine is very hot,’ laughed Tomazos. ‘The sun beats on it all day.’
‘The bloody air-conditioning isn’t working,’ complained Pybus. ‘People have had to come up on deck to sleep.’
‘The coolest places on the ship are the lounges,’ advised Tomazos, ‘and the dining room. I don’t really know what temperature the cabins are supposed to be at.’
‘They don’t bloody care either,’ growled Pybus.
He staggered away, sniffling noisily, gasping the humid air.
The company director said in what seemed to be an apology: ‘A gross man. Very embarrassing. Never sober. And he’s one of us, alas. The same lodge.’
The visitors began to drift away. A few who had not managed to ask any questions now came up and had a brief conversation with Tomazos. But soon they’d gone and he went for a minute to see Yannopoulos.
He then returned to the chartroom to continue the plotting which the visitors had interrupted, and found the sybaritic young woman leaning on the chartroom table. He was a little ruffled, but said politely, ‘Can I help you?’
‘What are these?’
He knew she wasn’t interested. She referred to two plan views of the Areopagus with coloured markers which could be moved.
‘Those are to show the position regarding water and oil. It shows them in tons, as you see – the blue indicating water and the red oil. Some are empty, some are carrying ballast, a few are now only half full. I need this information, not only for the obvious reason but to know the trim of the ship.’
‘You give a good lecture.’
‘I don’t know about that!’
‘Oh, but you do. You’re happy in your work.’
Tomazos coloured very slightly and responded, ‘One must be happy in something.’
‘You are unhappy in others, then? How interesting! You looked so calm, so impenetrable!’
Tomazos said, ‘You must excuse me, I have to plot our next position.’
The woman smiled at his discomposure. ‘Not to be alarmed. I am unhappy, too. My only happiness is in sex.’
Tomazos asked frankly, ‘Have you had your money’s worth?’
She bristled at once. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Of mocking an officer whom you know cannot answer back.’
‘You are a stubborn little man. But y
ou’ve got it wrong. You fascinate me.’
Her fingers touched his on the chart of the approaches to Singapore, and crawled across his one hand. The tactile sensation was surprisingly sensual.
She urged, ‘Oh, come on! Don’t be unhappy. Where’s that stuffy old cabin of yours?’
She was certainly bolder than her predecessors who had been in search of the same result.
He said coolly, ‘I am not so unhappy that I need to cheapen myself.’
She wasn’t visibly upset, but instead sniffed and commented, ‘My God, darling, you have been hitting the bottle!’
He was shaken; it was his turn to demand quickly, ‘What do you mean?’
‘Your breath, pigeon. Neat Scotch is coming straight off the roof of your mouth!’
She was tremendously sensual, but inevitably he thought about Elaine who was equally cheap.
‘I must ask you to leave the bridge now,’ he said. ‘You should not be here. Surely there are plenty of passengers to enjoy yourself with.’
‘Pathetic,’ she said. ‘You pompous pathetic little fat man. I’d have given you the time of your life . . . You damn well stop that!’ She shouted suddenly, and left rapidly, so that the action puzzled him as much as the raised voice.
Yannopoulos had been screened from view and if he had overheard anything, even the shout, it would have meant little to him, for he spoke scarcely any English.
The explanation of her raised voice came when the staff captain came to see Tomazos an hour later.
The staff captain ranked superior to Tomazos, but only fractionally so. He liked to throw his weight about, and was not liked even among his fellow officers. It was, perhaps, inevitable, since his whole business was discipline.
Nevertheless, his approach was friendly, perhaps to trap Tomazos if he was guilty.
‘Someone doesn’t love you anymore.’ He said when he came into the chartroom.
It meant nothing to Tomazos.