Sea Fury (1971)

by Pattinson, James

  * * *

  “There’d be no risk to it,” Grade said.

  Holt stared at him. “No risk! What if the customs blokes open the box and find it doesn’t just hold tea? They’re not fools, you know; they know the tricks.”

  “So what if they do find the junk. Just tell ‘em the truth.”

  “That I was going to put a couple of pounds of heroin on the market? They’ll love that.”

  “Not that truth. The other truth. That Saunders gave you the box to take to his partner; that you thought it was just China tea like he said.”

  “And if they don’t believe me, tell them to get in touch with Saunders for corroboration. Fine.”

  Grade sighed. “Don’t be so gloomy, Nick. Take my word for it, nobody’s going to dig inside that box. You look too innocent. Nobody’d suspect you of drug smuggling in a million years. Why do you think Saunders picked on you?”

  “Customs are suspicious people. They’re paid to be.”

  “Are you going to throw away ten thousand pounds?”

  “There’s another point. It’s not simply a case of breaking the law. It’s immoral.”

  “What’s so immoral about it? It’s just trade.”

  “Helping people to become addicts. Giving them a push down the slope and getting rich out of it. That’s what you call just trade?”

  “Look, chum,” Grade sounded like a patient teacher explaining a simple proposition to a backward pupil, “you aren’t going to push anybody down the slope. There won’t be one extra addict just because you’ve put that stuff on the market. One way or another, the people that want a fix will get it, don’t you worry. The only difference will be that you’ll be that much worse off. Don’t you want the money?”

  “You bet I want the money.”

  “Then take it, for Pete’s sake; take it.”

  Holt lay on his bunk and thought it over. Grade certainly had a point. Putting that parcel of heroin into circulation was not going to make any appreciable difference to the number of drug addicts. Sure, you could take the strictly moral attitude and have nothing to do with the traffic; you could throw away ten thousand pounds, which might be just what you needed to start your fortune. But why be such a fool? It was like stopping arms supplies to some country because they might be used for the wrong purpose. So what happened? You offended a would-be customer, someone else supplied the arms anyway, and you lost the profit. Such conduct benefited nobody except the rival arms suppliers. And they were laughing.

  “Morals are for the missionaries,” Grade said.

  The missionaries! Well, hadn’t he, Nick Holt, set out from England as a kind of missionary? So what if he had? He had done his share of helping his fellow men; now it was time he started thinking about himself. He had his own life to live and there was no job waiting for him in Australia now.

  “You made your mind up yet?” Grade asked.

  “I’ll think about it,” Holt said.

  Captain Leach looked at his chief officer with distaste. He did not like Johansen; he never had liked him and he did not suppose he ever would. Johansen was the kind of man who played around with other men’s wives, and that was a subject regarding which Leach had good reason to feel bitter. Indeed, so deeply was the bitterness ingrained in him, that in a man like Johansen he was blinded to any possible good qualities by reason of that one outstanding vice. In the Dane Leach could see nothing good, nothing good at all.

  For his part, Johansen regarded Leach as a drunken old fool. It seemed to him that he himself would have made a far more competent master of the ship, and he made little effort to disguise this belief from his superior. With such antagonism existing between the captain and the mate, there was little possibility of that co-operation which is vital to the smooth running of a ship. The Chetwynd had many handicaps: she was old, she was worn, she was neglected; but perhaps the greatest handicap of all was this lack of concord among her officers.

  “Well?” Leach said. “What is it, Mr. Johansen? I imagine you have not come to my quarters simply to pass the time of day?”

  Leach felt sick in his stomach; his head ached; instead of a tongue he seemed to have a mouthful of tarred rope. Sometimes he wondered why he bothered to go on. It would be so easy to end it all; nothing to do but slip silently overboard on a dark night; no one to see him go, no one to mourn for him. Oblivion.

  “I am not happy, Captain.”

  “Great God!” Leach said. “What do you expect me to do about that? I’m not happy. Sparks isn’t happy. Who the devil is?”

  Johansen controlled himself with an effort. He would so have liked to knock Leach down. “It is the weather that makes me not happy.”

  “It’s too hot for you?”

  “Is not that, Captain. I do not mind hotness. But I think mebbe we head for trouble.”

  “Trouble! What d’you mean?”

  “I think there is storm somewhere. I feel it.”

  “So you feel it, do you?” Leach’s voice was heavy with sarcasm. “And have you any other evidence apart from this feeling?”

  “The glass. It drop a little.”

  “You don’t have to tell me about the glass. I can read it for myself.”

  Johansen wondered whether Leach had in fact looked at the barometer lately, whether he had not been too busy looking into another kind of glass. But he said nothing.

  “You’ve read the weather reports that have been received on the radio, I imagine,” Leach said.

  “I have.”

  “Any mention there of storms?”

  “No, Captain.”

  “But you think your feelings are more reliable.”

  “Mebbe the weather people get it wrong. Mebbe they make mistake.”

  “So what do you want me to do?”

  “You do what you damn please, Captain.” Johansen was beginning to lose his temper. “I just tell you what I think. I don’t tell you what to do. You feel like it, you turn this whole damn ship upside down. Not my bloody business.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Johansen.” Leach’s voice was icy. “I think that will be all. Unless you have something more to tell me about your—feelings.”

  “No, Captain. No more to say.” Johansen walked out of the cabin and only with difficulty refrained from slamming the door. So be it then. He had done his duty. Now let the Old Man do what he liked. He, Carl Johansen, washed his hands of the whole affair.

  Alone in his cabin, Leach, poured himself a glass of whisky and drank it slowly. He wondered whether there could be anything in the mate’s hunch about the weather. But, damn it, there would have been something on the radio, and according to the reports Maggs had brought there had been no hint of anything untoward. Yet Johansen had said the glass was falling a little. Well, what if it was? There were bound to be slight variations in barometric pressure; that was nothing to worry about. If it fell rapidly, that would be a very different kettle of fish. But it was not falling rapidly.

  Leach shrugged. Johansen was making something out of nothing. He could feel it indeed! Damned nonsense. Leach drained his whisky and poured another.

  Lycett found the Mensteins sitting in deck-chairs in the shade. They looked very small, sitting there, patiently waiting, as they had so often waited patiently in the past.

  Lycett said, “You don’t like the sun?”

  “The sun can be a little too hot,” Menstein said. “Then it becomes oppressive.”

  “Never too hot for my wife. She’s a regular sun-worshipper.”

  “A very beautiful woman, Mrs. Lycett. More than once I am saying to Sara that it is so.”

  Mrs. Menstein added her meed of praise for Moira Lycett, “So elegant. So charming.”

  “You and my wife are pretty good friends, I believe.”

  “Good friends?” Sara Menstein seemed a little puzzled.

  “She talks to you a lot.”

  “Oh, no. We say ‘Good morning’ sometimes. But no, we do not talk a lot.”

  Lycett did not care for the
sound of it. Nevertheless, he pressed on. He had to be sure. “But yesterday evening. You must have talked quite a bit with her then.”

  Both Mensteins showed astonishment. “Yesterday evening?” Menstein said. “Why yesterday evening?”

  “She was with you, wasn’t she?”

  “With us? Oh, no; you are mistaken.”

  “We see Mrs. Lycett at dinner,” Sara Menstein said. “After that we do not see her again. Why do you think she is with us, Major?”

  “A misunderstanding. Some remark I must have heard incorrectly. So you did not see her at all?”

  “Not after dinner.” Sara Menstein looked worried. “Is it important?”

  Lycett made an attempt to appear unconcerned. It was a poor effort and he did not believe it deceived the Mensteins, who were both now watching him closely. “Important? Oh, certainly not. Of no importance at all.”

  He got away from them as quickly as he could, but he felt that they still watched him until he was out of sight. Why had he been stupid enough to approach them at all? He might have known what kind of answer he would get. And now he had as good as told two more people that Moira had deceived him. Damn her! And damn Johansen! They had been laughing at him, laughing. Perhaps the whole ship was laughing. He had to do something about it; by God, he had. And he would too. Maybe Johansen would find it was not quite so funny after all to take a man’s wife right from under his very nose. Maybe he would find Morton Lycett a tougher proposition that he had bargained for; a hell of a lot tougher.

  She was still asleep when he went into the cabin. She had a great capacity for sleep. She had only a sheet for covering and one of her bare, sun-tanned arms was hanging over the side of the bunk. Lycett put a hand on her shoulder and shook her none too gently, until she opened her eyes.

  She stared up at him for a moment or two, as though unable at once to get him into focus. Then she said, “What is it? Is something wrong?”

  Lycett stood with his left hand resting on the upper bunk gazing down at her. Her hair was disarrayed and she did not look quite so elegantly attractive in this first awakening as she would later when she had done some work on her appearance. She looked more her age. But still voluptuous, still worthy of a man’s attention. Oh, yes; no doubt at all about that.

  “Should anything be wrong?”

  “I don’t know.” She sounded a shade petulant. “Why did you wake me?”

  “Haven’t you had enough sleep?”

  “Does it matter to you how much sleep I have?”

  “It does when I want to talk to you.”

  “You mean to say that’s all you woke me for?” She sat up and swept her hair back with an impatient movement of the hand. “Give me a cigarette.”

  He gave her one and lit it for her. He watched the smoke drift out of her mouth. “You haven’t asked me what I want to talk to you about.”

  “What do you want to talk to me about?” Her tone was flat. She could not have been less interested.

  “About where you were last night.”

  “Oh, Lord!” she said. “Do we have to go all through that again? I thought we’d had it out.”

  “This time I want the truth.”

  “You’ve had the truth.”

  “You spent the evening with the Mensteins?”

  “Yes.”

  “That for a start is a lie. I asked them. They said they didn’t see you again after dinner.”

  She drew more smoke from the cigarette and regarded him coolly with those wonderful eyes that had once driven him nearly crazy, and perhaps still could. “So you check up on me. Nice to have trusting husband.”

  He gave a short, bitter laugh. “Trust! I’ve got good reason to trust you.”

  “All the same, you shouldn’t have questioned the Men-steins. It could make you look silly.”

  His voice rose a little. “I don’t care about looking silly. I just want the truth.”

  She stared at him through the drifting tobacco smoke with a mixture of mockery and contempt, saying nothing. She despised him, and he knew it. The knowledge goaded him to fury. What right had she to despise him? He seized her by the arms and shook her as he had shaken Perkins. The cigarette fell from her mouth and began to burn a hole in the pillow-case.

  “Answer me! Answer me! Where were you?”

  She tried to free herself from his grip, but anger seemed to have given him added strength and her struggles were in vain. He continued to shake her from side to side.

  “You were with Johansen, weren’t you? Admit it. You were with him.”

  “Yes,” she shouted. “I was with him. And I’ll be with him again tonight. Now are you satisfied?”

  He stopped shaking her. He had known it. And yet, hearing it from her own lips could still come as a shock. Even to the end he had still entertained the thought that it might not have been true, that Perkins had been lying; but now there could no longer be any doubt. He had demanded the truth and he had got it.

  He released her arms and slapped her on the cheek. “Whore!” He slapped her again. “Bloody whore!”

  She rolled over sideways and her bare shoulder touched the forgotten cigarette. She gave a cry of pain, slid off the bunk, stumbled and fell at Lycett’s feet. He pushed her away from him with the sole of his shoe, then walked to the wash-basin and drew a glass of water from the tap. Pungent smoke was rising from the smouldering pillow. He poured the water on it and the fire went out with a hiss.

  “You will not be with him again tonight,” Lycett said. “You’ll never be with him again. Never.”

  SEVEN

  Message for Johansen

  IT WAS during his spell on the bridge in the dog watch that Mr. Johansen noticed the first really unmistakable signs of the approach of dirty weather. An airless, humid, sweaty heat hung over the ship and all the ironwork seemed to ooze moisture like the skin of a man sick with fever. And yet the sun was no longer shining completely unobscured as it had been earlier. There was a misty halo round it, as though water had been splashed on to its surface and the water had evaporated into steam.

  A few high, feathery cirrus clouds strayed across the sky and gave it the bluey-white appearance of adulterated milk. There had been sea-birds with the ship that morning, diving for the garbage that Chin Kee threw overboard; now there were no birds; they had all fled, as though fearful of some imminent peril.

  The mate consulted the barometer and saw that it had fallen again. He went out on to the port wing of the bridge and looked towards the north-east, away on the port quarter. From that direction the sea came rolling towards the ship in a long oily swell. The water no longer looked blue and limpid; it appeared thick and dirty, as though some mud had been stirred into it. Yet still there was no wind, no breath of air to ruffle the surface of the sea; only that oily swell making the ship roll a little as she steamed inevitably on.

  Johansen sent for the radio officer. Maggs appeared, looking sullen.

  “Still no report of storms, Mr. Maggs?”

  “If there had been, I wouldn’t have heard them,” Maggs said.

  Johansen glanced at him sharply. “How so?”

  “The radio’s not working. It’s broken down.”

  “So? But you mend it? You mend it damn quick?”

  “Can’t do. It’s a transformer burnt out. No replacement. You know what this ship is?”

  Johansen swore. He certainly did know what the ship was: old, decrepit, with worn-out equipment. And now the radio had broken down.

  Nevertheless, to Johansen’s way of thinking, there was something not quite right here. He looked at Maggs suspiciously. “You say nothing this morning when I talk to you. You do not say then that radio is no good.”

  “It was after that it broke down.”

  “Why do you not report it at once?”

  “I’ve been trying to get it right, haven’t I?” Maggs sounded aggrieved. “You don’t suppose I’ve just been sitting on my backside doing nothing.”

  Still it sounded wron
g to Johansen. “But before it break down, there is no report of bad weather?”

  “I told you once. Nothing. Why do you keep asking?”

  “Bad weather coming.”

  “You feel it in your bones?” Maggs was sarcastic.

  “More than my bones, Mr. Maggs. Look.” He pointed at the sky, at the sea.

  “No wind,” Maggs said.

  “Wind will come. Will come bloody strong, I think. Soon.”

  “Well, that’s your pigeon. Nothing I can do.”

  He left the bridge exulting. He had caught them now. They were well and truly caught; all of them. And he had done it. He was so pleased with himself that he felt an urge to confide in someone, to boast of his cleverness. But he could not do that; he would have to keep it to himself. But it was worth it.

  As the hours of Mr. Johansen’s watch dragged away he liked the look of things less and less. He debated in his mind whether to call Captain Leach and suggest a change of course. But he remembered his earlier reception by the Old Man and he had no desire to risk a repetition of that unpleasantness. He had little expectation that Leach would come up to the bridge of his own accord; he scarcely ever did so in the mate’s watch, preferring to have as little contact as possible with his second in command. And as he had expected, Leach did not appear.

  But if Johansen did not call the captain, he did call the serang; and though it was already dark he gave orders for everything to be made secure, the hatch-covers checked and extra lashings put out, life-lines to be rigged between poop and midcastle and between midcastle and forecastle. The serang took these orders without comment and went away to see that they were carried out without delay.

  Johansen looked again at the sky and did not like it.

  Nick Holt noticed the unusual activity of the crew when he went on deck for a breath of fresh air. It was stifling in the cabin. He thought it so strange that he went straight back below and told Grade about it.