Acts of Mutiny

by Derek Beaven

  When he had gone, Robert pondered the implications. He came to no firm conclusion. He felt jangled and could not think clearly at all.

  By late morning much of the feverishness had subsided. He worked out the only bearable resting position: lowering the sheets to the limit of decency, abandoning all coverings whatsoever on his affected parts, and spreading his arms wide. That way what cooler air there was – the cabin was heating up – could circulate upon his tender surface.

  In the corridor outside, there came frequently the sound of running feet. At first he was puzzled. Then he remembered it was the children. They had got up some enormous spy game of late and were forever dashing here and there in gangs, pulling people out of hidey-holes, or dodging behind pillars.

  He wondered how far gone Chaunteyman actually was. With his hints and insinuations. Was he just about to disappear over into the DTs, or had he actually had a painful row with one of his ‘women’ that made his early-morning performance seem so extreme? Could he really be some sort of military agent for the Americans? He had, after all, managed to find out a good deal about a fellow-traveller’s plans. And had taken Robert for something he was not. Perhaps he believed his own fantasies.

  And had any of Chaunteyman’s remarks applied to Penny? With the anguish of a lover Robert would have it so: she was in danger, Chaunteyman was a seducer who thought he detected an easy conquest. Worse, her appetites were uncontrollable. She had delighted in leading Robert on while being all the time ‘crazy about’ this ageing playboy; by whom she was cheaply aroused and reduced to ‘English tail’. Which, if that were the case, was all she was damned well good for.

  Such tormented imaginings. They hurt him like his own skin. But every so often they would cool and return him to reason: that Chaunteyman’s chaos was of his own creation, that Penny was Penny and separate from it; and that he, too, was his own distinct, self.

  In the aftermath of these saner moments he became able to prop the Decline and Fall against his knees and browse half-heartedly on Gibbon’s rolling periods. And when he felt he had done enough with one pair of pages, he would swing up a naked scarlet arm, taking great care not to bend it, and gingerly perform the page turn – although Penny’s image was still imprinted there.

  Thus he occupied his time, with occasional testy interruptions from the nurse.

  It was shortly before lunch that the Madeleys appeared. Mrs Madeley gave a gasp when she saw him, but whether it was at his nakedness, his affliction, or the extraordinary book-marked stripe of white in the centre of him she did not make clear.

  They brought grapes – from the chef. Robert was compelled to pull up his bedclothes. She turned the metal chair round again and sat, pleated and pink, while Douglas stood, his bare knees close to his wife’s careful folds. They were full of sympathy and retrospective advice. Their children, the daughter now grown up and married, the son killed in the war, had always burned terribly at Sidmouth, where they had been accustomed to go each year. There had been no telling them, they would never listen to sensible advice, playing in the sun.

  Robert commiserated.

  ‘Of course, before the war we had better summers,’ Stella Madeley was saying. ‘As a rule I think we did, although you can never be sure if the mind isn’t playing you false, can you? I always think of that as the golden time, Mr Kettle. Since then there has been so much …’ She drew off. ‘I do feel though that the present decade really has been appalling for its weather, don’t you? But then you’re quite young. Nothing to compare. Childhood is always sunny. But such disastrous Augusts. And one can’t forget Lynton, Lynmouth, just washed away. Heavens. North Devon, we used to tour … Didn’t we, Douglas? So delightful. Since the war all our efforts just seem to have been, how should one put it, rained off. Of course they say it’s the bomb … One never knows …’

  Stella Madeley glanced up at her husband. Robert sensed that Douglas had been deputed to say something. He was looking away. His mouth twitched slightly. His dangling hand fiddled with the seam of his navy-blue shorts. Cued by the silence, he launched in.

  ‘Look here, old chap. Don’t mind saying we’re a shade worried about Mrs Kendrick. Stella found her in her cabin this morning. Shaken up, you know. Not quite the thing. Being a bit emotional. Naturally we’re concerned. Very nice sort of woman – as you realise.’ He paused. ‘Feeling a bit vulnerable I imagine, with no husband on board to look after her. Hugh’s already in Australia. I expect she’s told you. We wondered, Stella and I …’ he placed a hand on his wife’s shoulder before continuing, ‘… we wondered whether you might be able to throw any light on it.’ He hurried on. ‘Whether you might have noticed anything. She wouldn’t confide in Stella. Said there was nothing the matter at all. Brushed the thing aside, you know. But we want to look after the poor girl. Feel she’s rather our responsibility, do you see? Several days now. Missing meals. Whether you’d … Whether you’d any idea what the trouble might be … any light to throw on the …’

  ‘No.’ Robert shifted in the bed and indulged in some genuine grimacing – and some gratuitous. Anything to cover what his true face might give away. Though of course there was nothing for it to betray. He had done nothing ‘wrong’ at all. And yet he shifted nervously; and all his wretched skin flared again. ‘No. I’ve no idea. I hardly know … I wonder what made you imagine …? I understand it was Mrs Kendrick who found me yesterday. I’ve been hoping she might call in. So I could thank her. But as for anything else …? No. I’m sorry. No idea. I had no idea.’

  ‘Of course. Of course. Felt we had to ask, you understand. Feel responsible. Well. Just have to hope she comes round soon. Shakes it off. I’m sure we all want what’s best for her, don’t we. I’m sure we’ll all do our best. Just thought I’d mention it, old chap.’

  ‘Of course. Of course,’ Robert echoed, heartily sick by now of ‘old chap’, ‘old man’. So that was it. This message at least had got through. He was being warned off.

  The Armorican provinces of Gaul and the greatest part of Spain were thrown into a state of disorderly independence by the confederations of the Bagaudae, and the Imperial ministers pursued with proscriptive laws and ineffectual arms the rebels whom they had made. If all the barbarian conquerors had been annihilated in the same hour, their total destruction would not have restored the empire of the West: and, if Rome still survived, she survived the loss of freedom, of virtue, and of honour.

  ‘Cut up?’ The words came back. Penny was ‘cut up?’ A horrible image. It occurred to him to wonder where the war had gone off to after VJ. Where was all that horror and carnage, that unbelievable Roman spectacle of an affair … Where on earth was it lurking? And now these ‘friends’ she had acquired, who were so worried that she was ‘cut up’, were using his imprisonment to tell him how to behave. How dare they. Why, it seemed the only person on board who did not have some interest in his conduct was Joe. He could really have done with talking to Joe.

  Cheryl sat herself amply on his bed. It strained the covers over his navel. ‘Help yourself,’ he said, meaning the crystallised ginger.

  ‘So, Bobby. What have you been up to now?’

  ‘Sunburn. But I think it’s high time I got up.’

  ‘Did I say something wrong?’

  ‘Sorry. I don’t mean you. I will not be stuck here to be … to be … to be at everyone’s convenience. I must get out of this room.’ He was furious, and resolved.

  ‘Oh! Well. If you say so, darling.’ She stood up and turned her back.

  Robert thrust himself into his trousers. ‘I most definitely do, Cheryl. Most definitely I do.’

  31

  The Armorica sailed between the rocky bite of Yemen and Djibouti to dock at Aden in the sunset of the next evening. She had curled and twisted around the unfriendly-looking jags, to waters progressively calmer, stiller, darker. The breakwaters, long low arms, one with a small house on the end, marked the edge of a continent. Egypt had been a glimpse. But with that Africa was over, hardly seen, hardl
y touched. The dark continent, with its uranium and its manpower, an immense weight back there under the sun’s disc, back beyond those coastal rocks.

  Robert gazed astern, at the streaked water. He watched the accompanying pair of tugs begin to scurry up alongside. A covered launch plied across the confusion of their wakes, not far away; and in the clear there was an open boat, dhow-rigged. Two crying seabirds swooped, but apart from a few mid-sized vessels they had passed at anchor, fixed now in the glare behind like floating impurities in a melt of gold, the whole gulf was empty. It held an eerie beauty. Robert felt it. The sun visibly, almost audibly, dropped; the ship slid under him. Half-way already. From here it were as well to go on towards the East as ever dream of going back.

  The bows were nudging towards a wall of rock. Lit up eerily white on the first promontory, Government House loomed over a small destroyer moored up under the bluff. Its arches and palm trees echoed Port Said. Those hills behind looked grim and resistant, like a collection of Alp summits, sliced off. No plant could grow upon them. The terrain was extreme. There were white blocks on the foot slopes, slabs and terraces pierced with windows. That was the town.

  Half anxious, half excited, he was determined this time not to submit to its otherness – and be forced to retreat as in Port Said. And he could move himself about now, with care. Under the light shirt and linen jacket, his body was anointed with a lotion for the pain. He slipped below to see to his passport, change some money.

  When he emerged again, it was quite dark. Aden was a loose cluster of lights and their watery reflections. The breeze smelt mustily of rock and powder. As for the Armorica, she was still moving almost imperceptibly. At last he felt her screws go into the gentlest of reverses. There was a splash as the anchors went down. The thirty thousand tons of steel came to rest: the weight ran through his body like a tremor, a flicker, followed by the tenderest of slingings away, and the firmer jolt as the hawsers caught the strain again, swinging her a degree or two further round towards the jutting land.

  ‘Don’t whatever you do buy cameras.’ Douglas Madeley stood by his shoulder. ‘Even if the brand is reputable, the lenses are invariably cracked. They get them by some back door or other, hoping to palm them off on the unsuspecting traveller. Only a trained eye can tell. Sure you won’t come along with us? Might be safer, you know.’

  They had only the evening. The captain was still trying desperately to make up time. Their schedule was all blown to pieces.

  ‘I rather fancy trying my luck on my own. You don’t mind, do you? I’m still feeling a little groggy. A. little down. Not up to company much.’

  ‘We don’t mind. Anything, of course. Entirely up to you. Just take care, though, won’t you. Don’t let them put anything over on you. And take it easy. Are you sure you’re really ready to be up and about?’

  ‘I’ll manage, thanks.’

  ‘Have you got one of these?’ He held out the leaflet of advice produced by the shipping company.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Robert patted his jacket pocket – and then wished he had not. He winced and bit his lip. Thankfully the running out of the gangway stairs – from the doorway that opened out of C deck – prevented Douglas going through the leaflet with him. And in any case, after his stream of visitors, Robert hated all this concern. And so, at odds with the cruel sun, he would thrust himself, for the moment at least, into the night.

  The situation recently has been extremely unstable. Thanks, however, to an agreement signed by HMG only a matter of five days ago, we have a right to expect some easing of political tension. Passengers are nevertheless reminded that they go ashore at their own risk. While every effort has been made to secure the co-operation and goodwill of the port authorities, the Company cannot be held responsible for any unforeseen difficulties arising as a result of shore visiting.

  We recommend that you keep together in groups and treat the blandishments of street vendors or touts, as always, with the utmost caution. It would be wise also to avoid remarks which might cause controversy or offend local opinion.

  Forgetting her meal, Penny sat at the dressing-table in her cabin with her wrap round her. Four cigarette stubs were in her ashtray. She poised the Parker Fifty-one – Hugh’s early Christmas gift – over the note pad. The gold of its nib glinted in the flare from the light bulb over the mirror. With her free hand she curled up the pages slightly, rereading the letter:

  My dearest,

  Tonight we are in Aden. I intend to go ashore, but probably only briefly. To be perfectly honest I can’t imagine much profit, except of course the reassurance of solid earth underfoot. We have to go at night, and be in by such and such a time. It all seems so rushed, such a problem. The place is ‘delicate’, ‘touchy’. Not entirely safe, then. Phrases are bandied about: political situation, British Army; and people speak of Sheikh this, King that. I don’t know. But then again it would be so very foolish to miss an opportunity of seeing the world, now that I have the chance. Such a chance. I should be grateful, I know, darling. Most people would give their right arm, and I don’t mean this to sound ungenerous.

  I confess I’ve been having a bad patch. There are several nice couples, though, who’ve taken me under their wing. You remember when I wrote from Port Said I described the Cootes, Russell and Clodagh. There are also the Madeleys, and the Finch-clarks – and Cheryl Torboys and her family, of course; and all in all quite a good ‘gang’ of pleasant folk with whom I generally find myself going about. So that is all right, isn’t it? Do I lack for company? You can rest assured. Tonight we shall make up some sort of shore party, I don’t doubt. I shall join them when I’ve finished writing to you.

  There is the special smell of the ship in my cabin here. I love it. It’s dark outside, my curtains are drawn. The vibration that always runs through the walls and the floor is still going, faintly, even though we’re at rest. The flavours of the wood, the spiciness, the delicate saltiness of everything – it all seems to come out at these times. The ship’s side is just here, I can touch the metal; it runs right down between me and the water. Well, I say I have grown to love it. It is my own place. For the duration, of course.

  As for the bad patch, it is nothing, dear. Mostly homesickness, I’m sure. Wherever my home is! Just been a little off colour perhaps the last day or so but that is no more than a passing headachy affair – you know how I get. And trivial really. You may be certain I shall be myself again tomorrow. So I am being self-indulgent, and would not be writing gloomily like this were it not that we have to catch the post wherever the ship stops. If only I could be allowed to write to you tomorrow, out on the high seas again, with a clear head and true heart, I should not be burdening you with my troublesome little affairs or grievances. But that is not permitted. How could it be? So I am petulant now. I’m so sorry.

  All is not helped by a general sense of strain about the boat, almost like an impatience, a rush against the clock. That is the fault of the wretched storm. We were set back days, as I told you, and the captain seems to be an absolute slave to schedule. One would have thought that in voyaging to the other side of the world a day or so was neither here nor there. But apparently not. How many thousands of miles is it? Everything would be quite different if we had to make Cape Horn in time for the best of the roaring forties, or whatever, as they had to in sail. You could be set back months, couldn’t you? But these days when we are not really at the mercy of wind and tide any more you’d think they might let us get our breath back. I don’t know; it’s just a sense, a kind of tension about everything.

  I suppose I must have been brought up with accounts of a more leisurely era, when life was more settled everywhere. Are we lucky, or unlucky? Looking back, the Canal feels rather ‘skin of our teeth’. This is nonsensical; yet it was really Quite threatening. Going through what amounts to a Russian sphere of influence. Feeling hated.

  She was dissatisfied. Certain words had crept in which might give the wrong impression. The part about tomorrow bringing a true heart. That
odd sentence in which she referred to her little affairs and grievances. In writing it she had not noticed. Now they shouted at her from the page; the more she queried, the more she could not tell whether her whole tone was simply normal, or pregnant somehow with Robert Kettle’s burnt limbs. Glaring even. Loving the ship. Not knowing where home was. And all that talk of a bad patch. Why did she have to tell him that? She would be all right by tomorrow – she had said so already. Why could she not just write him a cheerful letter, then, with nothing worrisome in it? Why could she not simply deal with her feelings? She had always done so before.

  She should redraft. That would be better, less disturbing for him. She would have to redraft. Glancing at her watch, she took a new piece of Company notepaper:

  Dear Hugh,

  There have been no more storms, you’ll be pleased to know. This evening finds me in good spirits, on the point of going ashore. In fact, I must be brief. They’re waiting. So do excuse, darling, this rushed letter. We are in Aden, and set sail again in the morning in order to make up lost time. Every day brings me nearer to you, which is an advantage …

  She stamped her foot under the dressing-table and swore silently. ‘… which is an advantage’! What a thing to say! Even Hugh could not fail to miss the lack of passionate feeling. And if, under pressure of the post, she sent just a quick letter, what in any case would that mean? That the whole length of the Red Sea she had not thought about him sufficiently to manage a few pages of tenderness and affection?

  She ripped the paper, screwed up the pieces and threw them towards the curtained porthole. Then she glanced again at her watch. She had missed the high tea laid on instead of dinner for those who wanted to make the most of Aden. Now she was supposed to be meeting Russell and Clodagh, and the Madeleys. Like last time. They would all keep together, which would be perfectly all right. But the letter had to be done tonight. Why could she not achieve so simple a thing?