by John Bowen
Muriel stood beside me on the deck. My face was scorched, my throat dry. “He murdered him,” I said. “Arthur murdered him.”
“Oh yes,” Muriel said. “My husband too. Arthur takes what he wants. After all, he has to, hasn’t he, if we’re all to respect him?”
She turned, and walked inside the cabin. The sky grew brighter as the flames spread over the whole of the ark. Somewhere in the heart of the fire there was an explosion. A baulk of wood, flung high into the air, came flaming towards us like a shooting-star, fell just short of the side of the raft, and disappeared. Then, with a long hiss as the burning wood touched the face of the water, the ark sank.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Becalmed
One of the beliefs that we used to hold in the Army was that the Authorities put saltpetre in the N.A.A.F.I. tea, and by that means prevented the more lustful among us from running wild; a counter view was that the hard work and exercise to which we were not accustomed had the same effect. Meanwhile near any Army Camp the bushes bloomed with limp rubber sheaths, and the bellies of a few unlucky local girls began to swell; neither saltpetre nor exercise, it seemed, were enough in themselves to destroy desire.
Arthur had no saltpetre with which to dose us, and the work was light as we lay becalmed, but of course we were not very well nourished; at any rate he had no trouble with us in that way. One falls so quickly into a habit of living. It was not making love to Sonya that I missed, but something much more important to me, that feeling of being together which we had shared in the dinghy, but which now seemed to have been lost. We were no longer a pair, it seemed to me, but part of a group of eight; I felt that I had no more part in Sonya than the others had. “We’re never alone together nowadays,” I said, as we cleaned fish in the galley for the evening meal.
“We’re alone now.”
“Not really. Someone might come in.”
“Do you want us to be alone?”
“Of course I do.”
“What do you want to talk about?”
“I don’t want to talk about anything. I just want to be with you.”
“You’re with me all the time.”
“Oh, never mind.”
“Well,” Sonya said, “if you’re going to go off at me about it….” She put down her knife, and wiped her fishy hands on her bikini. Then she led me out on deck, and down the ladder into the hold. At the bottom of the ladder she turned and faced me. “We’re alone now,” she said. “You needn’t worry about being overheard, if you don’t shout.”
“But we’re not….”
“What?”
“You can’t just be alone,” I said. “You have to be in the mood. It’s a state of mind.”
“All right,” she said. “Let’s go back. When you’re in the mood for being alone, we can come down here again.”
I said, “You don’t understand.”
“Yes I do,” Sonya said, “you are a fool. Do I have to ask you to kiss me, or what?” I took her face between my hands, and kissed her. Her body pressed against mine, and my arms slid down her back. I swayed, and very nearly fell over. “I think we’d better sit down,” I said.
As we lay on the floor together, Sonya snuggled into me, shivering a little under my exploring hands. For some time we lay there, silent. Then she said, “Do you think I don’t miss you?”
I kissed her again passionately, and she placed my hand back on her shoulders. “Not now,” she said, “it’s not important.”
“But——”
“After all, it’s only sex,” she said. “We can have that at any time. Let’s just be together now.”
“But a moment ago——”
“You were being stupid about it, and I got angry,” she said. “Do you think I haven’t been feeling the same way? I never have any part of you; you’re always with the others, and you all talk and talk, and I get bored. But I couldn’t tell you I wanted to get away from them; you had to ask me, and you never did. I used to come down here every day to practise with Tony, and I kept wondering when you’d see——”
“With Tony?”
“Well, of course. We only use it for practising, and the rest of the time it’s empty. Nobody ever comes here.”
My hand, which had been stroking her shoulder, stopped, and lay still. “I think we ought to be getting back on deck,” I said, “they’ll miss us.”
“Who cares if they do?”
“Arthur wouldn’t like it.” I kissed her again gently. “Come on, darling,” I said. “He’ll only make a rule about it if he finds out. We can come again.”
Sonya said, “All right,” and I helped her to get to her feet. We held hands as we walked across to the foot of the ladder. I had to walk a little wide to avoid Tony’s improvised weights. After all it’s only sex, I thought, and then, I come down here with Tony every day.
At the top of the ladder, just before we were visible from the deck, Sonya bent down and kissed me on the mouth. “You are strange, you know,” she said, and we walked back to the galley in silence.
*
Soon we began to be on what Arthur called “strict water discipline”; he seemed to enjoy the phrase, which was a hang-over from his days with the Rajputana Rifles during the war. As well as cutting down on water, he took all the bulbs out of the light sockets, and locked them away in a drawer; there were to be no more readings and discussions in the cabin after supper. Everything moved so slowly in those days: the needle in Muriel’s hand describing a slow arc from one stitch to the next, the lazy progress of a broom across the galley floor, the barb of a fish-hook sinking like a wire through ice into the belly of the small fish Hunter would be using for bait. We moved through time as if it were treacle, and lay for most of the day on deck under the improvised awning of a sail, waiting in the heat for a breeze.
Once upon a time, when I had said, “I’m hungry,” it had not meant that I was in pain. I had thought that “the pangs of hunger” meant no more than “the pangs of love”; a stale metaphor for need. But now I discovered that hunger was a physical sensation, an intermittent gnawing pain in the upper belly. We could rely on its visits; like a faithful creditor it came always at the same time in the afternoon. Hunger was a beast, to be mollified. We could not give it food, but we tried to stroke it into harmlessness. Round and round over the skin of our bellies our hands would pass to soothe and smooth away the pangs.
Since we ate a stew of fish and Glub in the evenings, our hunger was not constant, but thirst was always with us as a stickiness in the mouth and throat. We drank twice a day, never more than a couple of mouthfuls, and there was liquid in our evening stew, but however much they may have nourished our bodies, these rationed mouthfuls did nothing to make us feel less thirsty, and as inactivity and the heat sucked talk out of us during those days on deck, our tongues seemed to increase in size until they filled our mouths like blotting paper.
When I remember this time, it seems that Arthur always sat apart in the cabin, writing and writing in the blank volumes of the log; perhaps he liked to be near the water jar. Hunter took over the fishing completely. He would sit all day on the edge of the raft, his limbs slack, his head lolling a little. The sun did not affect Hunter, except as a drug; his reactions had slowed and his initiative almost disappeared, so that once when he left his post to visit the privy, we found him still there some two hours later, sitting with the vacant expression he always wore and that only a pull on the float could disturb.
Tony and Sonya still went every day into the hold to practise. I did not know what they did there. At about the same time every afternoon, Tony would say, “Coming, Sonn?” and they would climb down the ladder, and I would watch them go, and remember my own last visit to the hold with Sonya, and try to push away the doubts and questions that came into my mind.
We were hungry and thirsty, and still the sun shone, and the air was still. Our batteries gave power but did not get it as we lay idle in the water. Hunter said that he had never known them to give out, but he a
dmitted that he had not been becalmed so long before. The arrow on the dial of the ammeter crept slowly backwards, and the days went by.
“It is no good,” Arthur said. “We are still using too much power. We must cut down.”
“Cut down,” Muriel said. Much of Muriel’s conversation now was to repeat what had just been spoken.
“We waste power in the cooking.”
“I’m sorry, Arthur,” I said, “I don’t use more than I can help.”
“I am sure you do not, Mr. Clarke. But you misunderstand me. With the situation as it is, it would be better not to use any power at all in cooking.”
“Just eat Glub?”
“That would not be practical without moisture of some sort. I suppose, Captain Hunter, that there is no supply of liquid Glub that we have overlooked?”
“There’s Glub in a Matchbox.”
I said, “It has to be chewed slowly to set the rich nourishing juices circulating through the system. We can’t just swallow it.”
“Has to be chewed,” Muriel said.
“I see. Well perhaps we might try Glub in a Matchbox two nights a week, increasing the water ration a little so as to allow us to chew. For the other evenings we must make shift with our fish au bleu.”
“Blue?”
“Raw.”
“Eat raw fish?”
“Others have done so. It should be cut up to release the moisture, and the scales removed. Very much, in fact, as you usually prepare it, but uncooked.”
We began on our new diet next evening. Banner asked a blessing, and we dipped our spoons into the mess. There they remained for a while, and each looked at the others to see who would be the first to taste it. Arthur lifted his spoon to his mouth, and swallowed a spoonful of fish. “It is unpleasant on the whole,” he said.
Banner said, “The Japanese consider it a delicacy.” His face twitched with disgust as he tasted the fish, but he swallowed it, and one by one we followed his example.
Only Sonya did not. She lowered her spoon, and sat with her head hanging, staring at her plate. “I can’t eat it,” she said, “I’ll be sick.”
“Come now, Miss Banks,” Arthur said, “it will do you good.”
“It won’t do me any good if I bring it all up again.”
“You must keep it down.”
“I can’t. I don’t want any. Anybody can have my share.”
Arthur tapped his spoon upon his plate, and gazed round the table. “There is no need for us all to stop eating just because Miss Banks is having a little difficulty with her fish,” he said. With his prim mouth and glittering spectacles, he looked like a nanny presiding at nursery tea. “Come now, Miss Banks,” he said. “You must eat your fish. Let us try again.”
“Must eat our nice fish,” said Muriel.
“I can’t,” Sonya said. I could hear tears in her voice.
I said, “If she doesn’t want it, I don’t see why anyone should force her to eat it. After all, it’s her own funeral.”
“Exactly, Mr. Clarke. If Miss Banks does not eat, that will be her own funeral. And while she is under my charge, I do not intend that her funeral shall take place.”
“Can’t she have Glub and water instead?”
“There will be no exceptions.”
“Darling,” I said, “try to eat some. It’s easier once you get started.”
Sonya lifted her head, and stared at me. I could see that her eyes were angry behind the tears. “I don’t see why you’ve got to interfere,” she said.
“Quite right. There is no reason at all for Mr. Clarke to interfere.”
“I’m sorry, Arthur.”
“Sorrow by itself means nothing unless it is accompanied by the intention of amendment. Do not interfere again.”
“No. I won’t”
“Then we shall continue with our meal. Miss Banks, I appreciate how you feel. The fish is indeed nauseous at first taste, and no good would be done at all if, after swallowing, you were to vomit it up again. If you wish, I shall ask Mrs. Otterdale to hold your nose while you eat.”
We were all quite silent now. Muriel began to rise from her place, but Arthur waved her back. “We shall avoid it if we can,” he said. Sonya took her first mouthful of raw fish, and followed it very quickly with a second. Arthur took a mouthful. We copied him obediently. Soon we were eating in unison, our spoons rising and falling a little after Arthur’s, and when it came to the end, our plates were cleared together.
*
Now the tigers of jealousy began to invade my mind, and I was too weak to keep them out.
Company would have helped to keep the tigers away, but I shunned company, lying for long hours on the deck feigning sleep, turning my face away from the others and hugging my arms close to my chest as if I loved the tigers and wanted to keep them with me always. And the tigers would walk through my mind endlessly, delicately, waving their tails and conjuring up pictures for me. The tigers themselves did not rend me, but the pictures they made were hurtful.
Jealousy needs no nourishment from outside. The memory of a long-past indiscretion, a misheard sentence—the tigers need only a single puff of air to give them life, and after that they make their own. For almost as long as I had lived, these tigers had lurked below the surface of my mind, awaiting only the excuse for life, and now they had it. They were my tigers. They were part of me. Bone, flesh and pelt were made out of my own insecurities, my own deep knowledge that I was not a person to be loved easily, or sincerely, or for long. Haply that I am black—disaster would have come in some way to Othello, even if Iago had never existed. Iago was no more than a trigger. He was a conceited man, as well as wicked, to imagine otherwise.
I lay on the deck in the sun apart from the others, and the pictures made by the tigers followed one another through my mind. Sometimes I would accuse Sonya; I would come right out and accuse her, and she would laugh at me cruelly, saying, “Well, really I don’t see why you should think you’re the only one,” and again, “It’s just sex after all.” Sometimes I would tackle the two of them together, and what a scene would follow! Anger! recrimination! remorse! regret! Each of the tigers’ pictures came complete with dialogue, superbly theatrical, superbly final. I walked out on Sonya and the curtain fell forty times a day, always to rise again on the next picture, and the next, and the next, while the playful tigers purred and paraded interminably in my mind.
I wanted so much to turn my suspicions into knowledge. I wanted so much to go down and surprise them in the hold, but I was frightened. What if they were indeed—what if they were? Whatever unrelenting dialogue the tigers might give me to speak, I loved Sonya, and that could not be changed. I could not leave her confined as we were, it was in any case impossible to do so except by death. If I were to find out for certain, I should become the complaisant cuckold of the French stories, despicable in all men’s eyes, and in my own (the tigers gave me that picture also). And suppose I were to find nothing? It would shame me to be spying on them, and would not quiet the tigers.
My behaviour changed. I found myself alternating between moods of sullenness and moods when I would be impossibly placatory with Sonya, for I could no longer take our day-to-day life together for granted. Even Arthur noticed how strangely I was behaving. I think he believed that I might be “cracking up”, because he kept finding extra tasks for me, so that my mind might be occupied.
Coming one afternoon from polishing the galley stove for the third time in four days, I found that Muriel was watching me. She sat on deck in my usual place near Gertrude and Banner, and, when she saw that I had noticed her, she smiled a thin smile and glanced in the direction of the ladder which led down into the hold. Sonya and Tony would be practising, doing their exercises, doing—what might they be doing together in the hold? I paused by the top of the ladder, listened, and could hear no sound of voices. Why were they so silent? But it was better, I thought, it was better for them to be silent. Let Tony be in my place, let him do—and let her…. Let them both do
the action, but let me keep the words. Let Sonya not say to anyone else the special loving words we used with each other, let her not cry out, let her not…. But perhaps these words were as automatic a part of the act as orgasm itself. Like chocolate from a slot machine, out they came when you pressed the right handle.
Muriel was still watching me. The expression on her face was of undisguised relish. I found that, for all the assumed casualness of my pausing there, I was tense and shivering in the heat. I composed my voice, and said to Muriel, “I’ll just go down and see how they’re getting on.”
I was careful to make a great noise as I descended the ladder. “Hullo,” Tony said, “You come to watch?”
“Yes.”
“Well, there’s not much to see.”
I sat down. The air was hot and close. “Go on. Give me a demonstration,” I said.
“I’m not trying to lift anything heavy, y’see. Not got the strength for it nowadays really, and they say you mustn’t overstrain. I just do press-ups and that.”
“You could do those on deck where it’s cooler.”
“Suppose so. But we’re used to it down here, aren’t we, Sonn?”
“Are you?” I said to Sonya.
Tony said, “Go on, Sonn. You show him some of your stuff. Squats and stuff.”
“Pliés.” Sonya was embarrassed, and, I could see, angry, though without yet quite knowing why. She said, “I can’t do them before——”
“Strangers?”
“Anyone. I don’t like practising in public. It makes me shy. Anyway, there’s nothing to see.”
The two of them stood there awkwardly, gazing at me. Something was wrong. I had interrupted; I was indeed a stranger. I had brought the musky stench of the tigers with me into the hold, and the atmosphere had become oppressive.
“We’re finished anyway,” Sonya said. “It’s too hot down here to do much,” and the two of them climbed back up the ladder to the desk, and left me sitting there alone.