by John Harris
‘Migrating birds, I mean, Signor Tom. Where are the swallows?’
Patch stared up into the clear sky too and then it occurred to him with a shock that he had also missed the sleek forms of the swallows, their smooth aerobatics round the houses and their chattering on the red pantiles of the roofs opposite Mamma Meucci’s in the early morning before the traffic drowned their cries.
‘That’s right,’ he said wonderingly. ‘There are no swallows. They’re late, this year.’
‘They’re not late, Signor Tom,’ Cristoforo said firmly, ‘They won’t be coming now. They should have arrived long since from Africa and even gone north. They’ve just not come. Neither have the martins and the orioles and the warblers. The sky’s empty.’
Patch frowned, his mellow mood gone in an instant. He knew immediately that this was another of those odd inexplicable things that were troubling Hannay, another strange augury of evil.
‘Perhaps it’s the heat,’ he said. ‘It’s hot today, Cristoforo.’
Cristoforo shook his head. ‘No, Signor Tom. Not the heat. That would bring them, not send them away.’
Patch drew on his cigarette for a while and squatted down alongside the boy. ‘Cristoforo,’ he said seriously. ‘Have there been any other curious things? – any other things like no lizards and no snakes, and no swallows?’
‘Alfredo Meucci’s seen things today, signore,’ Cristoforo said solemnly. ‘That’s why there’s a crowd round his boat. Tomaso’s telling everybody now.’
Patch stared at the noisy group, squinting against the sun. ‘What sort of things?’
‘The sea, Signor Tom. Bubbling as though it were boiling. Off Capo Amarea. The Sir Captain’s trying to find out what caused it.’
‘Is Captain Hannay there?’
‘Yes, signore. He’s at the front of the crowd.’
Patch puffed at his cigarette and looked at the group of people for a moment. Somewhere, stirring at the back of his mind, was a distinct uneasiness that he didn’t care to admit to, and he straightened himself abruptly.
‘Let’s go and join them, Cristoforo,’ he said.
Hannay looked up as Patch pushed through the crowd. He was dressed in grey flannels, held up by red braces. His jacket and cap were missing.
‘You heard what’s been happening?’ he asked Patch, his Yorkshire accent as blunt as himself.
Patch nodded and turned to Meucci who immediately smiled nervously. ‘Cristoforo says you’ve been seeing some pretty strange things, Alfredo,’ he said.
Meucci sat silently for a moment, one brown knotted hand resting on the engine which he wiped slowly with a piece of old rag, almost as though he were leaning on it.
‘There was warm water, Signor Tom,’ he said cautiously. ‘In some places, in fact, it was hot. Hot enough to bubble. And great swells that rose from the bed of the sea and moved without wind.’
Patch looked at Hannay and found the Yorkshireman’s eyes fixed on his face unwinkingly. Across the silence they heard the high-pitched sound of a motor scooter going up the hill out of the town, and the blare of the loudspeaker car.
‘Has anything like this happened before, Alfredo?’ Patch asked.
Meucci leaned on his rag again and considered, while the crowd waited for his reply. He was remembering a rushing of wind about him when there was no wind, and oppressive air in spite of clear sunshine. Then he remembered rumbles coming out to him across the bay, transmitted, it had seemed, by the lifting water – and the freak storm of a few days before which had come smashing down on the startled island out of a clear sky and a dazzling visibility, bringing short steep waves crashing on to the beach and lashing the palms by the harbour into a frenzy of tumbled fronds. It had built up in monstrous leaden clouds to the south-west in a few minutes, spreading sluggish purple fingers across the still air, until from the sea had come a desolate whine that had sent the bewildered fishermen heading nervously for the lee of Capo Amarea.
Meucci looked up at Patch cautiously. ‘There have been things,’ he said slowly, and went on to explain what he had seen. ‘Only last week something frightened the gulls out there by the Cape.’
‘What gulls?’ Patch found this thing about him – this intangible thing that was beginning to surround them all – was beginning to be creepy.
‘They were feeding,’ Meucci was saying. ‘And suddenly they all flew up into the air.’
‘A fish?’ Hannay asked. ‘Was it a big fish?’
‘It was no fish, signore. There were no fish today. I’ve been a fisherman all my life and I know when there are fish. I can smell fish.’
Patch watched Meucci puffing gratefully at the cigarette he had offered to him. The things that were worrying Hannay were beginning to take root in his own mind.
The crowd was silent now, gaping.
‘Have these things happened before, Alfredo?’ Patch asked.
‘Occasionally, Signor Tom. Once now and then. But now they all happen together.’
Patch stared at the cigarette smoke hanging on the still air in blue whorls that changed shape as they drifted. The atmosphere seemed lifeless and suffocating. Hannay appeared to be gathering himself together for more questioning.
‘Do you remember 1892?’
The question seemed to drop like a bomb into the silence.
They all knew what the date meant. There was no one on the island who didn’t know what had happened in 1892 and they all guessed what Hannay was thinking. Several of them had been thinking the same things.
Meucci’s eyes switched to Hannay and he started to wipe the engine again quickly.
‘I am only a boy, signore,’ he said cautiously. ‘I am still at my mother’s knee. Only Dr Leonardi remembers that far back.’
‘Maybe.’ Patch took up the question. ‘But you’ve lived all your life here, Alfredo. You’ve talked to people who would remember. What about Mamma Meucci’s father, for instance? He was a fisherman. He’d remember. Didn’t he ever talk about it? Did he feel winds then and see bubbles? And warm water?’
‘Warm water, signore. He felt warm water. He said so. I remember. Very warm water.’
‘What about winds?’
‘He said the weather was bad – but only over the island. While everywhere else had sunshine, here there were thunder-storms – like the one the other day, I suppose – and a great deal of lightning. And the air was heavy. So heavy, he said, it was as though he was carrying a great load.’
‘Like now?’
Meucci thought for a moment. ‘It is certainly oppressive, Signor Tom.’
‘Suppose the mountain did erupt, Alfredo? Would everyone get into the boats? – as they did then.’
Meucci smiled and shrugged. ‘Signor Tom, you can’t get the whole of Anapoli into a few fishing boats and a few private yachts. Perhaps the ferry would help if it were in, but even so it couldn’t take everyone.’
‘No one was left behind in 1892. Were there more boats then?’
‘Of course. The authorities had ordered an evacuation. There were warnings.’
‘Alfredo–’ Patch spoke as seriously as he could, ‘–are we having warnings now?’
There was silence again as everyone waited for Meucci’s answer but he turned back to the engine and slowly began to wipe the casing again with his rag. There was a stubborn closed-down expression on his broad face, as though he had no wish to speak.
‘Meucci,’ Patch persisted. ‘Are we having warnings now?’
Meucci looked up, his black eyes troubled. ‘Signor Tom,’ he said soberly, ‘the Lord in His Mercy wouldn’t destroy us without first sending word.’
Nine
Patch said nothing as he turned away. The crowd began to chatter again and he could hear Tomaso’s voice, scared and noisy. The gulls were edging closer, shrieking and moaning as they wheeled above their heads in the empty sky.
‘I’m just going to ‘ave me breakfast,’ Hannay said, appearing at Patch’s side. ‘Come and have a cup of tea.’
They crossed the poop deck of the Great Watling Street, between the canvas-covered lifeboats and the refrigerating plant and the engine-room ventilators where Hannay was in the habit of taking his daily walk at sea, and climbed the ladder towards the bridge. Hannay opened a door to a tiny saloon almost filled by an oblong table and four swivel chairs all screwed to the deck. At one side was a dresser bearing a tea urn, above which hung a picture of the Queen, and at the other a cracked leather settee where a ginger cat sprawled, obviously in the family way.
Hannay pushed the cat to the floor and made room for Patch.
‘That bloody cat,’ he apologised. ‘Soft as a brush. Let’s all the toms ‘ave their way with ’er.’
He slumped heavily into one of the swivel chairs, his peeled red face serious. Patch sat on the settee and it was only when the indignant cat streaked for the door that he realised Cristoforo and his dog were still with them.
‘Got a new deckhand,’ Hannay said with a grin. ‘Shapes well. Chris boy, go and tell the cook to give you a plate of bread and dip or something. You look hungry.’
As the door shut behind the boy, Hannay looked up at Patch. ‘Taken a real fancy to that kid,’ he said. ‘I think Mabel would like him.’
He waited until the steward arrived with a dish of greasy bacon and eggs, then he looked up again at Patch. ‘I’m thinking of seeing this chap Devoto who looks after him,’ he said. ‘Thought I might get the kid a job aboard of a ship.’
‘I hope you’re successful.’
Hannay frowned at the sarcastic note in Patch’s voice. ‘Don’t you think I could do it?’ he asked. ‘I know lots of people in Naples who’d pull a few strings for me.’
‘If I were you, I’d just whip him away and say nothing. It’d be easier and Devoto wouldn’t be surprised to find he’d disappeared. Why can’t you just smuggle him aboard and up-anchor? It’d be simpler.’
Hannay seemed startled and shocked by the suggestion. ‘I couldn’t do anything like that,’ he said.
‘Why couldn’t you?’
Hannay was staring at his plate. ‘When you’ve spent all your life living by rules,’ he said, ‘you don’t go and break ’em some time just because it suits you.’
‘My God, you’ve been well brought up.’
Hannay sat back in his chair. ‘I was brought up Non-Conformist,’ he said. ‘Church three times on Sundays. Kids should be seen and not heard. Hell fire and damnation if you went off the straight and narrow. Sometimes, I think it’s a pity there isn’t more of it. What are you?’ He seemed with an effort to thrust Cristoforo out of his mind and his manner became brisk again.
‘Me?’ Patch was startled by the question. ‘Me? A bit of hell fire might have done me good?’
‘You’ve been here a long time, haven’t you?’ Hannay said unexpectedly.
Patch studied the ugly red face opposite him for a moment. ‘Why do you ask?’ he said.
‘Just interested. You come to save money?’
‘I couldn’t save money on a desert island,’ Patch said ruefully. ‘I was in America with an exhibition and some fool discovered I once helped at a Communist meeting when I was at art school. They started twittering like a lot of maiden ladies at a baby show. Un-American activities and so on. It didn’t help the exhibition much. Especially when one of those pernicious columnists they have got hold of it. I was called before the committee who were running the show and questioned about my politics, my morals, my girl friends, the size of my grandfather’s hats, everything you could possibly conceive might cross a man’s mind.’
‘I bet that pleased you.’
Patch grinned. ‘I stood it for a bit, then I told them that while they were hell on wheels as organisers, otherwise they were a lot of old grannies. There was a slight argument.’ Patch smiled faintly in reminiscence and Hannay suspected that, in spite of the disaster, he had managed to enjoy himself. ‘I told them their mental stature was that of a set of dwarfs and that they’d have been better running a whelk stall than an art exhibition. I thought I might as well have a good time. I knew I was done for. I was suspect. I was tainted. I was anti-Christ. I was anti-bloody-everything smug and proper they stood for, in fact – and damn’ glad to be,’ he added with feeling. ‘I was shown the door.’
‘And you had to go home?’
‘No.’ Patch managed to look faintly embarrassed. ‘I told you. I’d already got on the wrong side of the people who matter there. So I came here. They like painters in Italy – even stylised Beardsleys like me – and painters like them.’
‘Are you a Communist now?’ Hannay asked.
‘My God, no! It was one of those things kids of nineteen and twenty do at university and art college. Like eyeing girls in tight sweaters. All I did was help at a meeting when I was too young to know any better. A week later I had a passage of arms with the candidate over the way he kept calling me “brother” and fetched him one with a pint pot.’ He paused and glanced quickly at Hannay. ‘Where’s all this questionnaire leading?’
Hannay looked up, surprised at Patch’s perception, for he had been leading up to something which had been worrying him a little. He studied Patch for a while over his plate, then he made one of those bewildering switches in conversation Patch had come to expect from time to time. He seemed to have forgotten Cristoforo completely.
‘I ’ad an English bloke and his wife come to see me last night,’ he said. ‘Big chap. Talked like he had a plum in his mouth. His wife was a blonde. Snappy bit but going off. Name of Hayward. Said they knew you.’
Patch thought immediately of the note he had ignored and wondered if it had had any connection with this visit to Hannay.
‘What did they want?’ he asked.
Hannay shovelled a forkful of bacon into his mouth. ‘They were a bit upset. They were doing a bit of poking about, if you understand my meaning. Sort of trying to get to know if I’d take them and a lot more like ’em to the mainland if the occasion arose. They was tearing it up a treat for a bit. Nearly had me crying.’
Patch’s head came slowly up from the mug of tea he held. First Cristoforo, then Hannay, then Cecilia – now, it seemed, the whole of the British colony. What had been a small cloud on the horizon a few days before was growing now into a storm, dark and disturbing. He began to understand the meaning of Mrs Hayward’s desperation.
‘What occasion precisely were they thinking about?’ he asked.
Hannay helped himself to more bacon and indicated the mountain with his fork.
‘What did you tell ’em?’
‘What could I tell ’em? That I wasn’t going yet but that they was welcome as deck passengers when I did go. Only it made me think, see? First them. Now this here fisherman. Maybe he’d like to go too, if he had the chance. Only he hasn’t – any more than Cristoforo has, or your pal with the bar has, or any of ’em, for that matter.’
Patch stared at the earnest little man in front of him, baffled by his unswerving interest in everybody else’s business.
‘You seem bloody keen to poke your nose in,’ he said.
Hannay stared back at him, his bulging blue eyes as placid and undisturbed as a pair of glass marbles. ‘You ever read anything by John Donne?’ he asked unexpectedly, and Patch was as startled by the question as he was by the knowledge that Hannay had ever heard of John Donne.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘He was a bit like you. He liked to elect himself keeper of the public conscience.’
Hannay ignored the comment. ‘I’ve got a book of ‘is. Some queenie who once signed on as a deckhand left it behind when he jumped ship in Sydney. They brought it to me with his stuff. It’s dead clever. Lots of things to make you think.’
‘That was the idea.’
‘There was one bit I’ve never stopped thinking about. I’ve read it. Lotsa times.’ Hannay put his head back and began to quote as though he were reciting the Rules of the Road for Mariners – or running through a paragraph from a signalling manual or a North Sea Pilot – sonorously and
in a completely unembarrassed manner which made Patch squirm. ‘“No man is an ilande,”’ he said, ‘“intire of itself.” It’s old-fashioned, see. “Every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a clod be washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesser…” then there’s a bit more, and it finishes “…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind”.’
Patch found himself oddly moved, not by Hannay’s quotation or by the fervour with which he recited it, so much as by the obvious way he believed in what he was saying. He found himself staring with a certain amount of awe at a humanitarian whose humanity was cloaked by a rough exterior and a set of tasteless catch phrases that dropped off his tongue every time he opened his mouth.
Hannay was opening his eyes now, his rocky face transformed by the light that seemed to glow behind it. ‘That’s the bit I like best,’ he said. ‘Involved in mankind. If a bloke’s nice to you, it becomes part of you, see? If he’s dead rude, the same applies. In other words, if anyone’s in trouble, you can’t bloody well walk off and ignore ’em just because they’re Eyetalians or whatever else they are.’
‘You ought to be a lay preacher,’ Patch said.
‘I am,’ Hannay replied blandly. ‘When I’m home.’
Patch sat back and studied Hannay. He had obviously been listening to a lecture in which Hannay’s intention to convince him that he ought to concern himself with the mountain’s activity was only thinly disguised.
‘What would you do then,’ he asked, ‘if the mountain went off pop? You’re obviously a do-gooder and you obviously think I ought to do a bit of good myself. So we might as well know what your ideas are at least, before I start telling you there’s nothing doing. What would you do?’
Hannay answered firmly and without a pause to consider, so that Patch felt faintly ashamed of his cynicism: ‘I’d fill me ship,’ he said, ‘with anybody what wanted to come – Eye-talians, English or bloody old Chinese – till she was sinking under the load. And then, if there was one we’d left behind that we could take, I’d turn round and come back for him. That’s what I’d do, Mister.’