He went ahead of me, leading me up a couple of flights of steel stairs and along the deck, introducing me to a couple of people on the way. They all seemed a bit preoccupied though – nobody hung about to talk.
“We’re getting ready to haul anchor and follow the Japanese whaling fleet out of port,” Ray explained as we walked along an inner corridor. “Once we hear they’re on the move, we’ll be off.” He pushed open one of the doors and stepped over the door-frame. “Watch your step there,” he said. “This will be your crib – you’re sharing with Takumi, our Japanese campaigner – a good guy.”
The cabin was small, but quite well fitted-out. It had a desk and lamp in the corner, a telephone on the wall, and a small sink. There seemed to be a decent amount of storage, with a large double cupboard in a recess of the wall. The bunk beds looked small though, very bloody small in fact. A small porthole just above the top bunk was letting in a blast of sunlight. The room was stiflingly hot and stuffy; I could see what looked like an air-conditioning unit in the wall, but it wasn’t turned on.
Ray patted the top bunk bed. “This is the only reason me and Sinéad got married – so we could get one of the few proper beds on board!” He checked the bunk below. “Looks like you’re on top – Takumi’s taken the bottom one.”
I hadn’t shared a room with another bloke since school. I wasn’t impressed, but right at that moment I could have slept standing up.
“You can put some stuff in here if you can find any room,” Ray was saying. He opened up the cupboard door. “Jeez, he’s one neat-freak – Takumi.” He nodded at the two piles of perfectly folded T-shirts and fleeces. “He’s left you a few free shelves in here anyway so make yourself at home. I’ll give you a few minutes to settle in, then pop back to show you around the rest of the ship.”
“Actually, man, d’you mind if I grab a bit of shut-eye first? I’m wrecked – been travelling now for over twenty-seven hours straight.”
“Oh yeah, sure. No worries. I’ll call you if there’s any action from the whaling fleet.”
I nodded. “Great, thanks.” But I couldn’t have given a shit about the whaling fleet; right at that moment, the ghost of Moby Dick himself could have jumped up out of the Pacific Ocean, performed a series of acrobatic manoeuvres and swallowed the entire whaling fleet whole for all I cared. I just wanted to sleep.
When Ray finally left, I tried to turn on the air-conditioning unit. I twisted every knob, flicked every switch, but nothing. I thought about going to find someone to fix the blasted thing, but I was so exhausted that I didn’t have the energy. What little I did have went into the kick I gave the dysfunctional metal box. I finally gave up, took off my boots, combats and T-shirt and struggled up onto the top bunk. It was very narrow, and must have been designed for a child – it was far too small for a big fella like me – I had to curl up to fit into it.
“Edith, you damn well owe me one!” I shouted, before falling into a deep sleep.
Chapter 9
RICHARD
I woke up to sunlight streaming through the porthole. I was soaked in sweat, and could barely breathe. Disorientated, I sat up, and promptly banged my head off the ceiling.
Fuuuck!
I rubbed my scalp and looked around. It wasn’t a bad dream then, I really was stuck on a steel hell-house off the coast of Japan.
I was absolutely parched – my throat felt like sandpaper. I got up and splashed some water on myself from the sink in the cabin – then I tried drinking some, but it was warm and tasted awful, so I pulled on some clothes and went outside. I walked down a short, narrow corridor until I got to a doorway which looked as if it might lead out onto the deck. I walked through, then immediately recoiled from the sudden force of the sunlight outside. When I finally readjusted to the brightness of the day, I realised that the ship was moving.
So that’s what that noise was. I recognised the hum of the engine then, as my full senses finally began to kick in. I leaned out over the railing. All I could see was sea – flat, calm and blue: in front, behind and all around. There wasn’t another ship in sight.
I wondered if they had lost the whaling fleet. But I didn’t spend too long wondering; my need to find a toilet and a drink quickly took over. I went back inside and found two small cubicles a few feet down from my cabin. Each cubicle doubled-up as a toilet and a shower – another sharp reminder that I was no longer at the Plaza Hotel.
My quest for drinking water brought me upstairs to another short corridor of doors. I could just about make out some voices coming from one of the rooms at the end, so I walked down and looked around the door.
Inside, Ray was sitting at a long table working on a laptop. Beside him was a young woman with long matted dreadlocks and several nose-rings – much more like the eco-hippy I’d expected to come across on this trip. The woman was laughing and talking in French on the phone. Ray was busy tapping away at his laptop.
“Well, well, the dead arose!” Ray said, then turned to the woman on the phone. “Jules, quit chatting up that journalist – we’ve got a live one right here.”
Jules looked up, smiled and waved at me. “Pardonez-moi un moment, Michel,” she said to the person on the phone.
“This is Richard Blake, our long-lost Irish Chronicle journalist,” Ray said, then turned to me. “Jules writes the campaign blog. She also deals with some of the foreign press when my language skills fail me.”
I held out my hand to shake hers.
“Nice to meet you, Richard,” Jules said. “We were starting to get worried – you were asleep a long time, my friend.” Her English was perfect, though her accent was foreign – but not French. Scandinavian perhaps.
“Really? What time is it now?” I asked, taking off my watch to adjust to local time.
Ray pointed at the wall behind me. I looked around but all I could see at first were dozens of photographs of whales, large maps and Greenpeace posters. Then I saw the clock – it was a quarter past three.
I couldn’t believe it – that meant I must have been asleep for almost a full day and night.
“You missed it all,” Ray was saying. “We had to get the engines going late last night. The whaling fleet left the port of Shimonoseki unannounced as we thought they might. We did intercept them, and George, our captain and the crew put in a valiant effort to stay with them, but it was dark and they must have used a lookalike lead ship as a decoy. Anyway, they managed to give us the slip somehow. I tried waking you as it was all happening, but you were dead to the world.”
“Right, sorry about that, man.” Truth be known though, I was actually bloody glad that he hadn’t managed to wake me for the second time in two days. I needed the sleep. “So what happens now then? Are you trying to catch up with the whaling fleet again?”
Ray jumped up from behind the desk. “Why don’t we go grab a coffee and I’ll fill you in? We can go via the bridge and I’ll show you how we operate.”
The bridge, I learned, was the operational hub of the ship. The front of it was a slanted glass window which ran the whole width of the space. Under the window were the many controls and navigational devices needed to operate the ship. Inside, Ray introduced me to George, the Illuminar’s captain. Tall and lean, he looked to be in his late forties, and from his tanned, weather-worn face I could tell that he’d seen a lot of days at sea. He barely looked up from the map to acknowledge me. The guy exuded authority, and you could tell from the way Ray’s voice hushed when showing me around the controls near to him that the captain had the full respect of his crew.
I also met Ally, the expedition leader. She was from the Netherlands and was leading her third Greenpeace expedition. Neither she, nor the few ship’s mates Ray introduced me to, stopped to chat. Everyone was milling around the numerous radar screens, peering into the horizon through binoculars and scopes or poring over maps and charts. Nobody paid me too much attention; in fact, I felt a bit in the way. Ray lingered for a few minutes chatting with George and Ally about coordinates, and
discussing various moving spots on the radar. It was vaguely interesting, and on any other occasion I might have tried to listen in and work out what was going on, but right at that moment I was absolutely gasping for a drink of water, beer and coffee – in that order.
I finally managed to drag Ray away and down to the galley, where the smell of cooking made me realise I was also starving.
“Heya, babe, what’s cooking?” Ray asked a skinny girl with blonde wavy hair and a pretty face who was busy peeling potatoes. That face lit up when she saw Ray arrive. She bounded right over and jumped up on him, wrapping both legs around his waist.
“Hello there, lover,” she said after they kissed.
His wife, I assumed. Either that or he had a pretty open marriage.
“It’s vegetable frittata and chicken stew today,” she said.
“Mmm, fantastic,” Ray said, before landing her with a massive wet kiss. I could actually hear the slobbering, and almost puked into the spud peelings.
I was beginning to think I was in fact invisible on board this ship, when Ray said, “Sorry, where are my manners? Sinéad, this is Richard Blake, journalist from The Irish Chronicle – remember, the guy I told you about yesterday?”
“Oooh, yes, of course. It’s so exciting,” she said, and shook my hand. “Welcome on board, Richard. I hope you’re hungry, ’cos we’ve got loads of food tonight. I think I may have overdone it this time.”
I began to take a liking to this woman.
“Great, I’m absolutely starving. I can hardly remember my last meal. Any chance of a glass of water in the meantime?”
Ray filled a plastic cup with water from a tap in a large container and handed it to me. “Head on into the mess there next door and I’ll bring you in something to eat. Help yourself to coffee and whatever’s there.”
I drained my cup of water, filled it up again from the container, and went next door into the mess. It was a large dining room, filled with tables and benches, and the walls were adorned with murals of whales lest you should forget the ship’s raison d’être. I made myself a coffee and climbed over one of the benches to sit down to wait for my food. After what seemed like an eternity Ray came in holding a plate of sandwiches. You had to hand it to the guy, he had it good – shagging the cook on board a ship definitely reaped its rewards.
He put down the plate of ham and cheese sandwiches and climbed over the bench opposite me at the long table.
“That was some sleep you had,” he said as I munched hungrily.
“Sure was, but I needed it.” I swallowed the bite I was eating. “To be honest, I’m surprised I slept so long – the beds remind me of the bunks at my old boarding school.”
“Yeah, but I think they were bigger at Ashvale.” Ray reached out for a sandwich.
I stopped eating. “What did you say? How do you know Ashvale?”
“Class of ’99.” Ray saluted. “Didn’t Aunt Edie tell you?”
“Aunt Edie? Hold on a second.” I put down my sandwich. “Do you mean Edith? Edith Maguire? My editor?”
Ray nodded. “She didn’t tell you? She’s my mother’s sister.”
I didn’t trust myself to speak. I just shook my head. Edith was his aunt? What the hell was she playing at?
Ray laughed. “You know, I must admit I was surprised when she called to say she was sending someone out here at long last. I’ve been on at her for months, years even, to do something on our anti-whaling campaign in her paper. ‘Not quite our thing, dear,’ she’d tell me each time. She kept palming me off until a few days ago when she rang me out of the blue and asked if we could take one more on board. ‘One of our top journalists,’ she said. We jumped at it, of course – once there’s space on board, and the paper pays your way, we’re happy to get whatever positive coverage we can for the campaign. Hey, are you okay, Richard?”
I just sat staring at Ray. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Why hadn’t Edith mentioned that he was her nephew? And why had she suddenly decided to cover this issue? In fact – not just cover it, not just run a rehashed article from a press release, or conduct a telephone interview. Why had she gone to the expense and trouble of sending me – her business-and-economics editor for Chrissake – out off the coast of Japan and into the Pacific Ocean to follow a group of sea-hippies? Even if one of them was her nephew.
“Did Edith mention why she changed her mind on covering the story?” I asked Ray as calmly as I could.
“No, though it may have had something to do with that awesome press release we wrote last week about the humpbacks being included in the hunt this year. It was good stuff even if I say so myself.”
Ray started to rabbit on about his journalistic skills, but my mind was racing again.
There was only one logical explanation for this. Edith couldn’t care less about whales or about giving her nephew’s cause coverage in the paper. No, the only explanation that made any sense was that she was trying to shaft me. She must have wanted me out of the way for a few weeks so she could try Jeff out in my job, see if she could sideline me into Fashions or the bloody Social Diary, or even if she could get rid of me altogether. Shit, I knew I’d been a bit out of line in recent months, maybe been drinking a bit too much, screwed one or two interns too many, missed the odd deadline. But this was not on.
I stood up, stumbling backwards when the bench didn’t give way.
“You okay, Richard? You’d wanna watch that – most of the furniture is nailed to the floor – stops it rolling when the weather’s bad.”
I stepped over the damned bench. “Yeah, I’m fine, man. Can you show me how to make a phone call?”
“Edith?”
“Yes, hello, Richard. What has you calling me so early? It’s just turned seven in the morning here.”
“I’m terribly sorry to be calling so early, Edith. It was just to let you know that we’ve set sail now – me, the crew of the Good Ship Lollipop . . . oh, and your sprightly young nephew, Ray Kelly.”
“Oh, that is good, Richard. I’m delighted you’ve connected,” she said.
“What the bloody hell is going on here, Edith? Why didn’t you tell me he was your nephew?”
“Would you have gone if I did?”
“No, I would not have. I’d have known it was a bloody set-up and I’d have held firm on it. So why did you really send me down here, Edith? Do you want to get rid of me, is that it? Are you hoping that I might get speared by a stray harpoon perhaps? Or swallowed whole by a whale?”
I could hear her laugh at the end of the phone.
“Wouldn’t that be handy?” I went on. “Then all your troubles would be over. You could instate bloody Jeff in my job permanently and never have to worry about missing a deadline again.”
“All right, just calm down, Richard.” She sighed. “Yes, look, okay. I sent you there to research and write a series of features about my much-loved nephew and his lovely new wife. Have you met Sinéad yet, by the way? Sweetie, isn’t she?”
“Yes, she’s a real honey. Bloody hell, Edith, this is apile of fucking shite and you know it!”
Her voice turned quite stern then. “I told you why I sent you out there, Richard – I want this story, and I want it from first-hand experience. I have no other agenda. Just grow up and write the damn feature articles, will you? Throw in a few whales to keep the environmentalists happy, and try to give me something a little bit different. Is that so difficult?”
I went to answer but she wasn’t finished yet.
“And before you say anything else, let me be quite clear here. Mess this up, Mr Blake, and we will have some serious talking to do when you get back to Dublin. In fact, getting harpooned out there will seem a rather attractive fate in comparison with what will greet you on return if you don’t deliver. Do I make myself clear?”
I felt like murdering her, but I knew when I was beaten. “Yes, all right. You’ll get your damned features, but I want my job back when I get home. No games, Edith. I mean it – I’ll sue you and the
paper if you try to shaft me on this one.”
“I understand. Thank you, Richard. So is that it then?”
I grunted.
“Well, good luck with your features now, and give my nephew and Sinéad a big kiss for –” She stopped short. “Actually no, on second thoughts stay away from Sinéad.” She actually sounded like a witch as she cackled down the phone. “Toodles!” she said before hanging up.
I slammed down the receiver. “Stupid, bloody b–” I stopped as Ray walked into the office.
“My aunt?” he asked.
“Don’t ask.” I shoved back my chair and walked past him to get back to my cabin.
Chapter 10
RICHARD
I tried to put the Edith issue to the back of my mind and put on a good front when I met the rest of the crew. It was an effort, but I had at least two, if not three weeks ahead with these people – I didn’t want to be known as a total grouch for the whole trip.
“Ah, there’s your cabin-mate Takumi now,” Ray said as we walked over to join him at the end of the dinner queue in the mess that evening. “Takumi, I’d like you to meet Richard Blake. He was the guy snoring above you for a whole day and night yesterday.”
I was instantly envious of Takumi’s small frame – he must have found the Illuminar’s miniscule bunks practically spacious. Clean-shaven, with tightly cut, black, spiky hair, he wore a smart, navy polo shirt with a Greenpeace rainbow logo on the chest pocket, and a matching pair of navy shorts with brown sandals. Small black-rimmed glasses framed his dark-brown eyes, and his high-set eyebrows made him look surprised.
“Ah yes, hello, Richard,” Takumi nodded.
“Just be careful not to shorten his name,” Ray said to me.
“Why, what do they call you? Taco? Or is it Tacky?” I asked, in an admittedly very lame attempt to break the ice.
Look into the Eye Page 9