Liner

by James Barlow

  Very reluctantly – because she was now ashamed – she told him: ‘Stella.’

  ‘You’re going to be all right, Stella. More or less.’

  ‘God hates me,’ she whispered with simple finality.

  He marvelled at the way the human animal could stand anything if the spirit was intact, but went to pieces otherwise. He knew this was enormously important to the girl, might even decide the physical result. Mumbo jumbo? Ridiculous? Or incredible, beautiful, a proof of something? He was stirred for all that. If there was a God He was too subtle for Daniel Dempsey, and too apparently callous. But he had days when he knew he had failed, not God . . .

  ‘Why should God hate you?’ he asked outright. ‘And not me?’

  ‘I’m ashamed. I know He does.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ barked Dempsey, forthright, almost frivolous. ‘On this ship lots of people have been hurt, burned, smashed up and even killed. Because they’re guilty of human sins? One is an unborn baby, who may not survive. You think this opera was laid on to punish you? The vanity of you! Does it hurt?’

  She stared at him.

  ‘Not too much.’

  ‘Well, then. Don’t be ashamed any more, Stella. I shouldn’t think you’ve been any more wicked than I have since we left Australian! You can start again, can’t you? I’m going to.’

  She asked oddly, ‘Can I listen to the radio?’

  ‘When we can find one.’

  ‘I want my mum and dad,’ she pleaded.

  ‘As soon as we can,’ he promised.

  Someone said, ‘There’s a cup of tea ready, Doctor.’

  ‘I could use it,’ he greed.

  He leaned against a cupboard, now emptied completely of instruments except for one drill. Good God! He thought, for there had been thirty pieces in there. Have we done that much? What’s the time?

  Seven hours had passed since the collision. The Areopagus still pitched and heaved. He presumed that she would survive. That was something.

  Pauline came and stood by his side.

  ‘Tired?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So’m I. But we’re winning, Pauline. It’s nearly over for us.’

  She said shakily, weeping, ‘Daniel, my dear –’

  Dempsey went hot in shock, identifying her terror.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I’m not joking.’ She insisted very earnestly. ‘I’m not clowning this time. But I cant’s seem to do anything with my left arm or leg . . . and I’ve got a cold,’ she concluded.

  He saw the spinal fluid running out of her nose, and knew in fear that he would have to use that drill.

  ‘Oh, Christ,’ he protested in the anxiety he couldn’t hide. ‘Can you see?’

  ‘I’m so tired I can’t see properly . . . It’s peculiar. Double, I think.’

  ‘Look at me.’

  ‘That’s a pleasure.’

  He saw that her pupils were unequal ion size.

  ‘You love to frighten me, don’t you, Mrs. Triffett?’

  ‘Am I a phoney?’

  ‘Did you fall?’

  ‘You bet I did when we’d – finished – I got dressed, remember? And I was thrown when the big bang . . . I cried but I didn’t tell you.’

  ‘What did you hurt?’

  ‘My head. But it wasn’t bleeding or anything and the pain went.’

  ‘Pauline, you’ve hurt yourself.’

  ‘But how?’

  ‘Intracranially.’

  ‘Big nasty word.’

  ‘Inside your silly lovely head. You hurt yourself on the right-hand side, yes?’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I’m going to have to operate. There’s pressure inside your head due to bleeding.’

  ‘Is it serious? You look worried.’

  ‘If it isn’t done it would soon be serious.’

  ‘This is a funny cruise, Daniel Dempsey.’

  ‘I’m satisfied with it.’

  ‘Will it make me ugly?’

  ‘Not a hope!’ he told her. ‘I’ll look after you.’

  She said, ‘I’ll agree to that . . . What will you do to me?’

  He told her evasively, ‘I’ll give you an anaesthetic and you’ll be out for a few hours. That’s all you’ll ever know.’

  ‘You mean that’s all you’re prepared to tell me?’

  ‘I shall operate myself.’

  ‘You look tired; Danlel, but I wouldn’t have anyone else.’

  Presently he watched her slip into unconsciousness, and it was as if he’d never seen such a thing before.

  They were running short of antibiotics. He hoped that they had something else as well as penicillin, which did not get across the bloodstream into the spinal fluid. There was great danger of infection, although she had not broken her eardrum, which often happened in this type of accident and made the area susceptible to meningitis.

  He worked with Sister Eleni, cursing unashamedly aloud as the liner still did its best to cope with the sea.

  An hour went by like ten minutes. When he had finished he was wrung dry, but Pauline was safe. It was incredible that the white unconscious face should be the same one which, not many hours ago, had stared into his, shameless, loving what he did . . .

  Sister Eleni went to answer the telephone. Why the hell, he wondered, doesn’t someone else do that?

  She returned and looked around the surgery strangely – at the chaos of cardboard boxes emptied hurriedly, cylinders lying about, wedged with books, at blood . . .

  Dempsey said brusquely, ‘For Christ’s sake, Eleni, stop fidgeting.’

  ‘There was a telephone call.’

  ‘I don’t give a damn. To hell with telephone calls.’

  ‘From Nikolaos.’

  ‘Oh,’ he qualified.

  ‘He says that the barometer is going up rapidly.’

  Dempsey looked at the head under his care. What would his patients and staff say in Sydney when this cheeky ridiculous thing became his wife? He smiled at the sad witty face of the Greek sister. She still didn’t approve of Pauline, and he acknowledged humbly, ‘Thanks be to God.’

  ‘Not bad,’ suggested Sister Eleni, staring around again, and red in the eyes, ‘for a Panamanian ship run by a lot of phoney dirty Greeks?’

  ‘Not bad at all,’ he conceded.

  He went to see who was alive and dead.

  Debbie still eyed him, he noticed, in that absurd manner.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘for saving me.’

  ‘Don’t thank me,’ he told her. ‘Thank the old lady in your cabin. I didn’t fetch you. I’d forgotten you, Debbie, for which I’m very sorry.’

  The confession interested her. ‘You can’t think of everything,’ she suggested.

  The girl Stella’s parents were coming away solemnly. They looked like people who’d been kicked in the stomach. Dempsey was tired. They’d have to sort it out themselves . . . The girl was unconscious.

  Her father asked, ‘It’s very serious, isn’t it?’

  Dempsey said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did she break?’

  ‘Her lower spine. I’m sorry.’ Dempsey said, ‘that I can’t put it better or give you more pleasant news.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ the mother inquired, but she knew, Dempsey could see. It had some biter attraction to hear it aloud.

  ‘It means she’s lost the use of both legs.’

  ‘You mean,’ probed the father, ‘that she’s become a paraplegic?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The mother began to shake and tremble. The tears seemed to come from somewhere very deep, some other anxiety which had been subdued for a long time. Oddly, sh
e clung to her husband in desperate apology and pleased, ‘I’m sorry, Mike. Forgive me. I love you.’

  The girl’s father touched his wife’s head with great tenderness.

  ‘Please,’ Dempsey requested, prodding them with the flat of his hand in tough sympathy. ‘Go somewhere else. I’ve had a bellyful.’

  The woman didn’t even see Dempsey. ‘You know what I could do with, Mike? I could do with a drink.’

  Her husband gave a brief bitter laugh. ‘I could use one myself.’

  They didn’t seem hysterical, so Dempsey, attracted by the idea, said, ‘I shouldn’t think the bars are open! It’s six in the morning! Have some brandy. I’ll join you.’

  He poured it out, half a tumblerful each.

  ‘The sea’s calming down’ the man said.

  ‘Stella asked for you,’ Dempsey said. ‘Sorry. I should have told you. She wanted to listen to the radio and she wanted her mum and dad.’

  They stared at him.

  ‘She doesn’t know what’s happened,’ suggested the mother.

  ‘Oh, yes. I’m quite sure she knows what’s happened,’ Dempsey opined.

  ‘She’s a wonderful kid,’ the father said.

  ‘You know what I want, Mike?’ the woman asked.

  The man shook his head.

  ‘I want to go back,’ the woman told him.

  ‘I’ll drink to that,’ the man agreed. ‘But not by bloody ship, kid . . . ’

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Tomazos shaved for the first time in thirty-six hours, and put on a fresh shirt. It was just possible that soon he might be able to have a few hours’ sleep.

  The sky was blue and the sea scarcely more than choppy. The Areopagus limped along at a steady ten knots with a list reduced to five degrees.

  He went down to the Parade Deck and into the Aegean Lounge, where many of the passengers had gathered, as requested. Demetropoulos, as immaculate as ever, joined him with Eleftheriadis at the entrance.

  There was a buzz of excitement and curiosity and even laughter as the three of them made their way to the dais and the piano which leaned now because of a broken leg. The smashed chairs, glasses, torn curtains, blood and vomit had long since been cleared, only the atmosphere of recent events hovered.

  As Tomazos turned to address them, the passengers began to cheer him. It went on for a long time and they meant it and he was moved.

  Tomazos then said, ‘That was kind of you. But let us truly give thanks to God. All sailors do this.’

  They were willing and eager to do so. He viewed them with affection and cynicism. He had heard of the way they had behaved. They lived from one year’s end to the other without God, most of them. But goodness, how hard they’d prayed during the hours of peril! And many had panicked and done shameful things, or done nothing. Now, shaken, almost killed by nature and bad luck, they were grateful, penitent, wished to expiate. But in a few days or weeks, back in the environment of money and words, where anything could be proved, the feeling of gratitude would pass and they – with others urging them on – would consider how to make a profit. They’d remember their views about the lifeboats corroded in the davits; the oxygen cylinders rolling about; they’d think of many things which they did not think of now. Complaints and justifications would pour into the company’s office along with their claims for compensation.

  Meanwhile, here and now, they were in the comparatively safe and final half of a drama. American destroyers steamed alongside. Aircraft occasionally flew overhead. One had dropped drugs. The galleys and bars were functioning again. They were garrulous in relief. Ahead lay the excitement of talking to journalists, relations and friends, a life time of conversational material: nothing would ever better their dialogic fillip: ‘When we were o n the Areopagus . . . ’ Gradually their own confused parts in the storm and collision would become magnified . . . A few, more shaken than they knew, would in the weeks and months ahead, have strange illnesses – dreams and claustrophobia which would send them running into the garden, sweating and weeping in the middle of the afternoon, or wake them in the night and send them downstairs searching for drugs.

  Here, however, they responded to the situation with good humour.

  Tomazos, too, felt that mild humour would please them.

  ‘Once again,’ he acknowledged, ‘the Areopagus has fallen behind schedule –’

  They roared with laughter and applauded.

  ‘We’ll be in Guam,’ Tomazos told them, ‘the day after tomorrow. All being well.’

  They thought this qualification funny, too.

  Tomazos informed them: ‘We’re on one engine room, but it is in perfect condition . . . Captain Vafiadis, as you know, was injured in the collision, but sends his blessings and apologies to you all, I know,’ Tomazos continued after some applause, ‘that you all wish to go on with this cruise –’

  Subdued laughter.

  ‘- but the Areopagus is bound to be under repair for some time in Guam. The company is therefore making arrangements for you to fly to San Francisco and join another ship – of this line, I’m glad to say. Alternatively, we will fly you to wherever your ticket says, and perhaps elsewhere if this unfortunate situation has caused you or your relations inconvenience or anxiety . . . The chief purser and his assistant will be here throughout the day to note your intentions. If anyone wishes to ask questions about the ship I am here for another hour.’

  They were a little shy of him, but their own situation fascinated them, and twenty or thirty – anxious, it seemed, to acquire information to authenticate gossip – questioned him for the whole hour, and listened in absorbed interest to his perspective of what had happened.

  One of them brought him a drink of whiskey.

  ‘Here’s to you,’ the man insisted cheerfully.

  But Tomazos refused, pleading, ‘Sorry, but I’m on duty, and have a mountain of things to attend to.’

  He had not felt sorry for himself for thirty-six hours and did not suppose he ever would again.

  There was an oil fire burning on Guam, and long before they saw land the passengers could see the thick black column of smoke rising into the hot blue sky. The sea was that of the company’s brochures: calm and as blue as paint.

  Gradually the island came into view, low green hills dusty in the heat, palm trees in still air, a concrete harbour entrance.

  ‘Port Twenty.’ Tomazos ordered and the Areopagus swept around in a perfect approach. It was most undesirable to be seen approaching the harbour entrance leaving a cautious zigzag wake behind the ship. Despite its present weaknesses the liner came around leaving an unhesitating arc. Someone, Tomazos saw, was by a lighthouse, filming the arrival.

  He took two tugs just outside the harbour. It would have been possible to enter Guam without tugs at all, but he did so in consideration of his passengers, and because he was not certain of the strength of the bows. Each tug – one to port and one to starboard – secured its towing hawser abaft the most obvious area of damage.

  They entered the large harbour and proceeded slowly past five nuclear submarines, packed alongside each other like canned herrings. There were at least a dozen American destroyers and cruisers in the harbour, and a space-tracking ship, with its enormous white dish, and all of these that had steam up blew a welcome with sirens.

  It was always an exciting moment putting one of the company’s liners alongside a mole or jetty. The Areopagus was, after all, a big ship. It seemed easy and tedious to the passengers, but to the captain or officer of the watch it was a challenge. Conditions, even in an ‘easy’ harbour such as Guam, were never the same as last time. The wind would be blowing from a different quarter, or half a gale, or, as now, not at all. Any current might be setting a different way. Even the depth of water in different harbours of the world made a difference, for the screws cou
ld not exert their full propulsive effort in shallow water. And as speed dropped off the effectiveness of the rudder diminished until the point was reached when the ship lost steerageway and no longer answered the helm.

  The passengers lined the rail in silence, impressed perhaps, or aware of what might have been their destiny. Ahead by water storage tanks and buildings was a crowd. And a band was playing. The sound of music concussed the morning air and it was impossible not to be stirred. People were waiving and cheering, standing on automobiles to do so. TV cameras were at work.

  Tomazos took a third tug at the stern for the actual going alongside and berthed with infinite caution starboard side to the harbour. ‘Finished with engines,’ he telegraphed as the head and stern lines, breasts and springs were run out to the bollards. He wondered if the Areopagus would ever sail again.

  The military band, he was able to notice now, was playing ‘There’s Nothing Like a Dame.’ Because the American Army liked girls? No. They were attributing fine female characteristics to the Areopagus. He was touched . . .

  The gangways went down at once people swarmed aboard. It was impossible to stop them or turn away this American expression of emotion. Among them were stretcher bearers, US Navy surgeons, sailors, newsmen, local people, and, of course, insurance assessors, local officials and two men from the company. A TV team set itself up on deck and without authority began questioning passengers. They even questioned officers if they could. Tomazos, taking a party around to view damage and to talk to Captain Vafiadis, heard a TV man ask Mollon, ‘Can you tell me, in depth, of your emotive reactions in the stress?’ Mollon laughed and said, ‘Sure. I was bloody scared.’ A pressman inquired cynically, ‘Is this thing insured?’

  It went on for hours. Tomazos had to take the company’s representatives and the insurance men to lunch and go on talking about the log, documents, when was the radio last tested? The lifeboats? Boiler tests? Then why in his opinion did this or that happen? When had he first heard of a possible storm? Who decided to continue on that course? These were difficult questions to answer for one who wished to remain loyal to Captain Vafiadis. They invited the chief engineer up to the bridge in the afternoon and attempted to take him apart. But Bitsios was cynical and bitter and asked searching counter-questions which made their faces red and angered them.