‘I never liked James Dent.’
‘It’s strange, you know, but you’ve seen the wreck of the old Queen Elizabeth?’ She nodded. ‘I’m a bloody old fool, but I thought it looked symbolic, lying there. Made me think of my feelings about nationality and whether I might not be a traitor, or something. Then I realised my repudiation of nationality was as rational as the shipowners’. Don’t you think that’s odd?’
‘Not as odd as what happened to me on the flight out.’
‘What? I don’t understand.’
‘You remember how she died . . . how we never knew . . .’
Shelagh never mentioned their child by name. It was her way of coping, of coming to terms with the indifference of death. ‘I sat next to a woman, an Army wife coming back out to rejoin her husband. You know the way people chat on long flights. She’d just lost her son, a four-year-old. It sounded just like her . . . the symptoms, the lethargy, the weakness . . .’ She fell silent.
‘Go on,’ Mackinnon prompted, his voice low, thinking how attractive she looked to him. The single bedside light threw her face into sharp focus, revealing the beauty of it.
‘It’s rare, but it’s got a name, an auto-immune disease, dermatomyositis.’
The name meant nothing to him beyond the realisation that it pleased Shelagh to have discovered the cause of their child’s death.
‘In a sense,’ she went on, her explanation ruthless in its long-deferred pursuit of the truth, ‘the body starts to consume itself.’
‘It’s odd,’ he said quietly, ‘how life goes round in circles.’
Neither Stevenson nor Rawlings expected Mackinnon to return aboard before the morning. This irritated Rawlings, partly because of the confusion and irregularity inherent in their arrival, and partly because, with Taylor dead, he had perforce to split the night duty with the Second Mate. By contrast, Stevenson could not have cared less.
He had had no sleep before climbing to the bridge, for to him, in his capacity as liaison officer, had fallen the sad duty of seeing ashore the bodies of Chief Engineer York, Third Officer Taylor, Able Seaman Macgregor and the Vietnamese woman.
The padre had made the necessary arrangements and Stevenson had seen the bodies into police custody. Tomorrow, almost as his last act as Master, Mackinnon would have to register the deaths. He had already formally identified the bodies.
The inactivity of a midnight-to-six anchor watch brought home the fact that it was all over, and with a finality outside the normal emphasised by the presence on the bridge of the smartly uniformed Chinese policeman. Whatever happened to the ship, her true voyaging finished here, tonight, along with that of Mackinnon and himself and the rest of them. In a prescient moment Stevenson knew Rawlings would find, as time passed, his three – or four-day tenure of command a mild mockery. Stevenson wished him well, indifferent to the Chief Officer’s inner self, knowing he was adequately provided for.
A figure loomed at the head of the starboard ladder and Stevenson turned at the intrusion. ‘Can’t you sleep?’
‘No.’ Sparks settled himself beside Stevenson, elbows on the dew-damp teak rail, and they stared in companionable silence over the waters of Hong Kong harbour.
The night was overcast, the glow of the colony’s millions of lights were reflected in an orange glow from the cloud base. Crowded at the waterfront level, lessening in density higher up the Peak, they sparkled or flashed in the myriad colours of the advertising logos. The Chinese and Roman characters spelled the familiar names of companies known the world over, the American conglomerate, the Japanese daibatsu, the German corporations; airlines, electronics companies, beer and soft drinks manufacturers silently screamed the message of their commercial insistence like precocious children demanding attention. Both men felt the incongruous contrast of their situation compared with the peril through which they had so recently passed; yet neither could express the dichotomy, for in its brazen embrace they felt the comfort of normality.
On and off the lights flashed, the brilliance of the neon colours thrown back by the black, soulless waters of the harbour.
Opposite, from the lower levels of Kowloon, answering broadsides flickered from the environs of Nathan Road, fading into the dark hills of the New Territories beyond which brooded China.
Criss-crossing the harbour, ferries and wallah-wallahs made their ceaseless way while clusters of brilliance marked the merchant ships. Here and there the matrix of shore light was obscured by the batwing sail of an ancient junk ghosting silently through the crowded waters, its oil lamps ineffective in the prevailing glare.
‘Bit of an anticlimax, isn’t it?’ Stevenson said at last, as though the phrase was the final precipitation of his thoughts.
‘Yes; but the end of a voyage always was.’ Reasonably, Sparks temporised, the eternal optimist, though the use of the past tense was evidence of the importance of the moment in their shared lives.
‘You’re not going on to Shanghai?’
‘I’ve got no choice,’ Sparks replied. ‘Unless Dent kicks us all ashore. I can’t afford to jeopardise my pay off. Not now, not after all these years. What about you?’
‘I’ve been doing some thinking. I don’t know for sure yet.’
‘Other fish to fry, eh?’ Sparks looked at the younger man, half-envying him his foot-loose youth.
‘I don’t know that either, yet.’
‘Well good luck. I suppose we must chalk it up to experience.’
‘Yes.’
‘You had a rough time from what I hear. I only got locked in the shit-house!’ They chuckled together, reviewing their respective luck.
‘I’m sorry we didn’t save the woman,’ Stevenson said, thinking of the baby.
‘Pity, after what the Old Man, Chas Taylor and Freddie did.’
‘Yes, poor Chas . . . I keep thinking of him and poor old Ernie York; even Macgregor. He was going to fill me in here, if he got the chance.’
Sparks grunted. ‘Man proposes and God fucks him up,’ he philosophised.
‘Old Gorilla did pretty well, though, didn’t he? Took us all by surprise.’
‘Especially Rawlings,’ said Sparks, and they chuckled at the Mate’s discomfiture. ‘He’s not so bad really. Did a good job with the boat people.’
‘Yes. He’s okay.’
‘I wonder what’ll happen to the Viets.’
They relapsed into silence and then Sparks straightened up, slapping the teak rail. ‘Well, Alex, I’ve a busy day tomorrow, up to my bollocks in bumph. Better get some shut-eye. Good night.’
‘Good night.’
‘Come on, Pritch, drink up.’
Braddock stood with the mess-room rosy in one hand and the other held out for Pritchard’s beer can.
‘Tidy bugger. You’re wors’n my old woman.’
Leaning back in his steel chair, Pritchard tipped the last drops of lager into his upturned mouth with exaggerated finality. Then he lobbed the empty can neatly into the rosy, simultaneously letting his chair slam back on to the deck. The crash of the chair and clatter of can was accompanied by a loud belch.
‘You are a coarse sod,’ said Braddock inoffensively, returning the rosy to its corner.
‘Dat’s what my old woman used to say.’
‘She’ll be able to tell you regular now, remind you what we’ve had to put up with.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Funny about Macgregor.’
Pritchard hoisted himself unsteadily to his feet. ‘What’s funny?’
‘Don’t know, really. Didn’t like ’im, but . . .’ Braddock shrugged. ‘Well, I didn’t wish ’im dead.’
Pritchard stretched, his extended fingers reaching the deckhead. ‘What’s it fucking matter, Brad?’
On the deck above, the refugees were almost all asleep. Armed Chinese constables guarded the doors of both the saloon and the smoke-room. For long into the night the men had smoked and talked in undertones, their voices hissing like waves breaking on a beach. At about one o’clock Fredd
ie Thorpe had made his last rounds before turning in. Peering into the dimly lit saloon he watched the last debate end, the last cigarettes glow in the darkness.
‘What happen Vietnamese people?’ he asked the policeman, who shrugged. The Chinese officer had seen too much during his service among the Alsatias of Hong Kong’s overcrowded purlieus to produce a compassionate response.
‘Maybe go to camp, maybe be repatriated.’
‘There’s cholera in the camps.’
‘Maybe. They’ – the Chinese constable jerked his head at the settling forms beyond the double doors – ‘are a problem; Hong Kong is too small. Hong Kong has plenty of problems.’
‘Too many problems in the world,’ Thorpe said, turning away.
‘Too many people,’ said the Chinese policeman to his retreating back.
At two in the morning Stevenson shared a pot of tea with the Chinese constable on the bridge. Their conversation was monosyllabic and neither sought to prolong it. With his cup the policeman retired to the bridge-wing. Stevenson remained in the chart-room writing up the log when Tam, having evaded the guard on the smoke-room door, whispered his name:
‘Alex!’
He spun round, pleased to see her. ‘Hullo,’ he whispered, and quickly drew her out of the policeman’s line of sight. ‘No can sleep?’
She shook her head and tried to peer out on to the dark bridge-wing in search of the police guard.
‘He’s okay,’ Stevenson reassured her. ‘You’re all right with me. I’ll make you some tea.’
While he bent to the task she asked, ‘What happen tomorrow?’
He shook his head, handing her the hot mug. ‘I don’t know, Tam. Now you are here, in Hong Kong, the padre says the authorities will let you stay. You’ll know tomorrow.’
‘We’ll go to a camp, yes?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’
The girl nodded. Illuminated by the dim chart lamp her face was like ivory, a beautiful mask, Stevenson thought, hiding the turmoil and uncertainty within. His heart was thundering in his breast as he braced himself, knowing that her evasion of the police guard and her appearance on the bridge may have been motivated by fear, but hoping something more personal had triggered her action. He felt a prickling shame that despite his bold resolutions all he had done for her was make her a cup of tea.
‘There may be cholera in camp,’ she said and he felt the force of implication in her dark eyes. He guessed the opportunist desire which might lie beneath the bald statement, yet she had made no effort to entrap him. He suddenly found he did not care, and with the carelessness came the conviction that life was an act of faith. He had cast Cathy aside, but he did not want to lose this girl.
‘Tam,’ he began huskily, the ridiculous fluttering in his belly inexplicably making his voice quaver so that it faltered. Instead he held out his hands to her.
The morning was a suffocating sequence of bureaucratic obligations for Captain Mackinnon. The crew had to be paid off, statements made in the presence of the Panamanian vice-consul; the deaths had to be registered and depositions made at the Coroner’s office. From the agent’s he made a telephone call to York’s son seeking instructions about the body, followed by a fruitless attempt to do the same for Macgregor. The wretched man had no next of kin, he discovered, and Mackinnon wasted an hour tracking a sister who had long ago deserted the only address they had for her.
Nothing seemed real. His interference with those distant lives as he blundered into their night hours gave him a sense of remote detachment.
A further hour was devoted to locating Caroline Taylor. A man’s voice sleepily anwered the number he had been given. He refused to let Mackinnon speak to Taylor’s widow.
‘D’you know what time it is?’ the voice protested.
‘It’s about her husband. She should have been informed . . .’
‘Yes, yes, she heard yesterday.’ There was an edge of complicit guilt in the man’s tone. ‘Look, I’m afraid she’s not very well at the moment.’
Mackinnon felt a rising anger. Taylor’s preoccupied misery came back to him. He held on to his temper and explained he wanted instructions regarding the body.
‘I don’t think she knows,’ the man said after a pause in which, Mackinnon hoped, he had at least consulted the young woman. ‘You’d better contact his family. Wait, I’ll give you a number.’ A strong sense of the lovers divesting themselves of any responsibility came to him, and he imagined it bouncing up to the satellite and back to the other side of the earth while he hung on. In her deceit, Caroline Taylor was, he guessed, far beyond the point of remorse. Perhaps Taylor had known.
When the man finally provided the information Mackinnon dialled again and waited. In his mind’s eye the telephone rang in the empty darkness of a large house. Taylor’s mother was icy in her self-control, only her silences betrayed the effort it cost her.
‘How did it happen?’ she asked and Mackinnon explained at length. From what she subsequenly said Mackinnon concluded she was a widow or lived alone.
‘Bury him in Hong Kong, Captain,’ she said at last. ‘Let me know when it is to be and I will . . .’ Her voice caught.
‘Are you sure?’ Mackinnon asked.
‘Yes,’ she said, her voice stronger, ‘It is what he would have wanted.’
‘Yes, I rather think it is,’ Mackinnon agreed.
He put the phone down. He was stiff with sitting and rose slowly to his feet. The reactive fatigue after his ordeal was beginning to catch up with him. Wearily he shook his head to clear it, bracing himself for the encounter with Dent.
James Dent received him in an opulent office high above the streets. It commanded a magnificent view of the harbour and Mackinnon knew he was supposed to feel awed, to be trepanned from his familiar environment of a ship’s bridge and caught at a disadvantage upon the acre of blood-red carpet. Dent sat behind a large desk, staring out of the window. Over his shoulder the Matthew Flinders looked no bigger than a child’s shoe.
‘I have effected the change of Master,’ Mackinnon reported formally. ‘Apart from your agent’s attendance with the money to pay off the crew, that concludes our business together.’
Dent turned with a studied and intimidating arrogance. ‘I looked at your file before I left London, Captain. You’ve been with us a long time.’
‘I knew your grandmother.’
‘There’s no room for sentiment in business, Captain.’
‘Quite so. But you’ve had your pound of flesh.’
Dent’s expression became hard, the handsome, proud young face flushed beneath its cow-lick of blond hair. ‘You’ve caused me a lot of trouble.’
‘It doesn’t matter much now, does it? Pay off the crew—
‘I’m going to,’ Dent said with a sudden petulance, and Mackinnon saw, beneath the bland assurance of the businessman, the thwarted youth. ‘The whole bloody lot are going. You’ve made things very awkward for me by bringing the ship here instead of taking it to Shanghai.’
Mackinnon mastered his rising anger. He was too old and tired to change the world. A sudden, terrible and perverse yearning came over him, a poignant desire to be once again on the bridge of the Matthew Flinders, to be pitting his wits and his ship against the insensate fury of the typhoon. Odd so awful a situation should seem preferable to giving this spoiled, overpowerful brat a piece of his mind. But it did not matter, could not matter, for he was without influence.
‘Call it an act of God, Mr Dent,’ he said calmly. ‘That’s the official designation of the typhoon through which we passed. It made things very awkward for us too.’
‘I’m afraid the company will be unable to foot the bill for your wife’s accommodation after all,’ Dent went on, ‘and her air fare is being deducted from our final settlement of salary to you.’
The meanness of Dent’s decision failed to outweigh the irony of his action. Despicable as it was, Mackinnon’s contempt overcame his affront.
‘As you say, Mr Dent, there is absolute
ly no room for sentiment in business.’
He went out into the wide atrium. A huge and abstract oil painting thick with impasto hung above the beautiful Eurasian receptionist. She smiled mechanically at him. Mackinnon glared ferociously back. In his mind’s eye a hundred and forty-six pallid faces stared up at him from the deck of a derelict junk.
‘You know nothing,’ he said to the astonished young woman, ‘nothing at all.’
CHAPTER TWENTY
Endangered Species
The room at the Orient Star Hotel was much cheaper and closer to the true heartbeat of Hong Kong. ‘More like the pensiones of Florence,’ Shelagh said, smiling and reminding Mackinnon of the prospect of a leisure limited only by death.
He grunted, sitting on the edge of the bed. Death had obsessed him lately. First the funerals, then the days in court reliving those few, climactic moments of Macgregor’s end . . .
‘What’s the matter?’ Shelagh asked.
‘Eh? Oh, nothing. Just missing some air conditioning.’
‘And I thought you such a tough guy,’ Shelagh said, still smiling as she stepped out of her dress. ‘I’m going to take a shower.’
He lay back exhausted after their day of sight-seeing, wanting his own turn in the shower, followed by a drink. For Shelagh’s sake he would endure these dog-days of tourism, but already he missed the ship’s routine and had begun to consider the galleries of the distant Uffizi preferable to this haunting of a waterfront upon which he now wished only to turn his back.
He had discharged his final duties two days earlier. There had been the court appearance necessary to try Phan Van Nui for the murder of Macgregor. The witnesses were called, unfamiliar figures out of their uniform. Stevenson boyish and almost a different person from the young officer with whom Mackinnon had spent the last two months of his life. It was always like that, Mackinnon mused, at the end of a voyage.
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