The Black Tide
Page 12
He said it casually, but I sensed that the question was important. ‘How do you mean?’
‘You got enough to get here …’ He sat there, waiting.
‘Just enough,’ I said. ‘That’s all.’
‘No return ticket?’
I shook my head.
‘Christ, man! You took a chance.’ He nodded. ‘So you’re out o’ bread an’ no way of getting back to the U-kay, no prospect of finding work there anyway?’
I didn’t say anything and he grinned at me. ‘Orl raight, so I still got a berth for a second mate.’ He leaned forward, peering into my face. ‘But wot makes you think you’re the man for the job?’
‘Depends what it is,’ I said. But he wouldn’t tell me that, or who the owners were, not even the name of the ship. It was double rates and an end of voyage bonus, so what was I worrying about? ‘You want the job or don’t you?’
I knew then that I had no alternative. To find Choffel I would have to commit myself. ‘Yes,’ I said.
‘You got any money at all, apart from what you’ll get from that cottage?’
‘Enough to pay the hotel bill, that’s all.’ I didn’t know whether he was fishing for a bribe or not.
‘No dole money, no redundancy?’
‘I don’t qualify.’
‘So you got nothing. An’ now yer wife’s gone …’ He thumped the table, gloating at me. ‘You got nothing at all, have you?’ He sat back, smiling and lifting his glass in his big fist. ‘Orl raight, Trevor – yer on. Nantes–Paris, then Paris–Dubai, an’ after that you wait until we’re ready for you, everything laid on – hotel, swimming, booze, girls, anything you want. Just one thing though—’ He reached out a big hand and gripped my arm. ‘No tricks. An’ remember – it’s ’cos of me you’re getting the job. Understand?’
I nodded. I hadn’t been in the Gulf all those years not to recognize the glint in his eyes. ‘How much?’ I asked.
‘Voyage money will be paid in advance. You hand me half of it, okay?’ And he added, ‘You’ll still be getting full second mate’s pay. And you keep the bonus.’ The bonus would be five hundred quid, he said – ‘So you don’t ask questions, see.’
And so it was agreed. For half my pay I put myself in his hands, committed to an unknown ship and an unknown destination. ‘I booked your flight, by the way.’ He grinned at me slyly. ‘Did that soon as I heard you’d checked into the hotel.’ He emptied the bottle into our glasses and when we had finished it, he got hold of Varsac and we had a meal together. There was more wine and cognac with the coffee. The talk turned to sex, interminable sordid stories of the Gulf. Varsac had been in Jibuti. He was very funny about the madame of a brothel who changed into a man. And Baldwick became morose. I mentioned the Petros Jupiter again, asking him whether he knew anything about the engineer he’d recruited, but he stared at me with such drunken hostility that I didn’t persist. He knew I had been getting at something, but he was confused and he wasn’t sure what. In the end I went to bed.
My room was close under the eaves. It was cold, the bed not aired and I couldn’t sleep. The window rattled in the gusts and I kept thinking of that girl, the horror in her eyes, the way she’d spat in my face. I lay there, listening to the gusts, remembering that night off Sennen, the fog exploding into flame. And the Lloyd’s agent trying to tell me I’d no proof. The girl, too. It’s not his fault, she had said – ‘She did it herself.’ But they hadn’t been there. They hadn’t seen it. And Choffel. What would he say when I finally caught up with him, when I got hold of the murderous little bastard, my hands at his throat, the flesh yielding …? The wind beat against the window, a cold draught on my face. God damn it! What sort of a monster had I become?
I was shivering then, my eyes wet with tears. God in Heaven! Why should I start on self-recrimination when I’d right on my side? It wasn’t vengeance. It was justice. Somebody had to see to it that he never wrecked another vessel. And then I was thinking about why he’d done it. Greed! Stupid, senseless greed! But that wasn’t peculiar to him. It was a curse affecting us all, the whole human race, harvesting the sea till there was nothing left but oceans and oceans of dead water, drilling for energy, tanking it round the world, feeding factories that poured toxic waste into the rivers, supplying farms with pesticides that poisoned the land, pumping heat and fumes into the life-giving atmosphere until it was a lethal hothouse. What was Choffel by comparison? A nothing, just a symbol, a symptom of human rapacity, and myself a Quixote tilting at the windmill of man’s self-destructive urge.
It was an argument and a view of life that went round and round in my head as gusts rattled the door and the rafters crackled in the frost. And then I woke to complete stillness in a grey dawn that held everything in a grip of silence, the window panes frosted over and the rooftops opposite a glazed white. It was no longer freezing and by the time I was dressed there was a gleam of watery sunshine, the world outside beginning to thaw.
Baldwick was already there when I went into the bar-restaurant for breakfast, sitting at a table with a pot of coffee and a basketful of rolls in front of him. ‘Take a seat.’ He pulled out a chair for me, indicating the coffee. ‘Help yourself.’ He had his mouth full, chewing voraciously at a roll, his heavy cheeks glowing pink as though he had been for a brisk walk in the cold morning air, his big frame full of vigour. ‘Paris is no go, thick as a pig’s snout. If the fog don’t lift you could be here another night.’
He had settled with the desk and had given Varsac the air tickets. All the time he was talking those little eyes of his were fixed on me intently. Something was worrying him, some sixth sense perhaps – ‘Keep yer mouth shut.’ He was suddenly leaning forward, his face close to mine and nothing in his eyes or his voice, nothing at all to indicate he had been drinking heavily the night before. ‘Understand? Anyone starts talking they could find themselves in trouble. I’m telling you that ’cos I reck’n you’re far too intelligent not to know you don’t get double rates and a bonus for a run-of-the-bloody-mill voyage. Okay?’
I nodded, finding it difficult to meet the bright beady eyes barely a foot from mine.
‘You still thinking about the Petros Jupiter? ’Cos if you are …’
I shook my head, reaching for the coffee and pouring myself a cup as I enquired why he had asked.
‘Last night. You were asking questions about the engineer.’
‘Was I?’
‘You know bloody well you were. Did you think I was too drunk or something not to remember? How did you know I’d anything to do with the man?’
‘You were in Sennen when the crew came ashore.’ But the instant I’d said it I knew it was a mistake. He pounced on it immediately.
‘Sennen? Who said I went to Sennen? Falmouth, I told you.’
I nodded, buttering myself a roll and not looking at him. ‘I heard you’d been at Sennen earlier, that’s all.’
‘Who told you?’
‘I don’t know.’ I gulped down some coffee. ‘Everything was a bit mixed up at the time. A press photographer, I think.’
‘I never was at Sennen. Understand?’ His fist slammed down on the table, rattling the crockery. ‘Forget it. Forget everything – okay? Just do the job you’re paid for …’ He looked up as Varsac joined us. The Frenchman’s face was more cadaverous than ever, heavy pouches below the bloodshot eyes. ‘Mornin’, Albert,’ Baldwick said brightly. ‘You look as though you’ve been tangling with Madame all night.’ He picked up the pot and poured him a coffee. ‘You’ll take it black, eh?’ And as Varsac sat down heavily and buried his long nose in the coffee, he added, ‘Bet yer if a nice plump Baluchi girl walked in now you couldn’t do a thing aba’t it.’ And he let out a great guffaw as he slapped the wretched Varsac on the back.
His taxi arrived a few minutes later and as he got up from the table, he paused for a moment, staring at me. ‘See you in Dubai,’ he said. ‘And no tricks, see?’ He was smiling at me, but not with his eyes. For a moment he stood there, looking down at me.
Finally he nodded as though satisfied, turning abruptly and going out to the waiting taxi.
Flights south were leaving on schedule, but Paris and all the north of France was fogged in. It looked as though we’d be kicking our heels in Nantes for some hours yet and I went in search of the papers. The only English ones I could find were the Telegraph and the Financial Times and I looked through them over a fine à l’eau in the bar. There was no news of the missing tankers in either of them, the front page of the Telegraph full of the trial of terrorists charged with the Piccadilly bomb outrage, and there had been a demonstration outside the Old Bailey in which shots had been fired at the police. It was in the Financial Times that I found a small paragraph tucked away on an inside page headed TANKER CLAIM REJECTED: ‘Solicitors for a Lloyd’s syndicate operated by Mr Michael Stewart have rejected a claim by the NSO Harben company of Schiedam in respect of the loss of the tanker Petros Jupiter. No reason has been given, but it is presumably based on their assessment of the evidence that will be given at the Enquiry due to begin on January 27. The amount of the claim is put at over £9 million for the hull alone. This is the largest marine insurance claim so far this year.’
Just before midday we were informed that it was unlikely we should get away until the following morning. A definite decision would be made after lunch. I got hold of a city plan and walked down to the riverside quays where the cargo ships lay. The sun was quite warm, the streets all dripping with melted snow. At the offices of the Réaux shipping company my request to speak to somebody who had actually known Choffel resulted in my being shown into a tiny waiting-room and left there for a long time. The walls were hung with the framed photographs of ships, most of them old and faded, and there was a table with copies of French shipping magazines. Finally, a youngster, who spoke good schoolboy English, took me along the quay to a small grain carrier that had only just come in. There I was introduced to an elderly chief engineer who had been on the Tarzan in 1959.
He described Choffel as a quiet man who didn’t say very much, just got on with the job. He had had very little French at that time, but was eager to learn because he wanted to live in France. I asked him why, but he just shrugged.
‘Was he a good engineer?’
‘Mais oui – excellent.’ And then he said something that came as a complete surprise to me. He said, ‘Henri Choffel, vous savez, il était anglais.’ English! That was something that hadn’t occurred to me. But then suddenly things began to fall into place. The girl – it explained the lilt, that sense of familiarity, that vague likeness to Karen, the name even. Of course, Welsh! How would a French engineer know the difference – Welsh, English, it was all one to him.
But it didn’t help me to an understanding of the man, and he couldn’t tell me what ships he’d been on or where he came from. I asked him what sort of company Choffel had kept when they were in port, but apparently he had usually stayed on board, studying French and talking to the French members of the crew. He was on the Tarzan almost a year, and by the time he was promoted to another of the Réaux ships he was quite fluent. There was only one other worthwhile thing he told me. Choffel had had the word FORMIDABLE and the date 1952 tattooed across his chest. The old man pronounced it, of course, in the French way, but it could just as easily have been English and the name of a ship.
Barre was out to lunch by the time I reached his office, but I arranged with his secretary for a telex to be sent to Pritchard advising that a search be made for the name of any Welshman serving as a conscript in the engine-room of HMS Formidable in 1952. It was a chance. Once Pritchard had the man’s original name, he’d be able to find out what merchant ships he’d served in later and whether any of them had been wrecked shortly before he had joined the Tarzan under the name of Henri Choffel.
Back at the hotel, after a meal and a bottle of wine at a little restaurant by the river, I found Varsac waiting anxiously for me in reception with his bags packed. Paris was now clear and our flight would be leaving Nantes at 16.10. I got my key and was told there was a Mademoiselle Choffel wishing to speak with me. She was having a coffee in the bar.
I left Varsac to order a taxi, got the bags from my room and then went through into the bar-restaurant. She was sitting in a corner facing the door into the hotel and she got up with a nervous little smile as I went towards her. There were dark shadows under her eyes and her face was flushed. She held out her hand. ‘I had to come. I want to apologize. I was upset. Terribly upset. I didn’t know what I was saying, or doing. It was such a shock.’ The words poured out of her as we shook hands, her clasp hot and moist.
‘You should be in bed,’ I said. ‘You look as though you’re running a temperature.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ She sat down abruptly, waving me to the seat on the opposite side of the table. ‘I couldn’t let you – leave, like that. As if I had no understanding, no sympathy.’
‘You’re Welsh, aren’t you?’ I asked.
‘Half Welsh, yes. My mother was French.’
‘From Vertou.’
Her eyes widened. ‘So you’ve been making enquiries?’
‘Of course.’ And I added, ‘My wife was Welsh. But not her name. Her name was Karen.’
‘Yes, I know. I read about it. When I heard the news I read all the English papers I could get …’ Her voice faded, floundering over the macabre memory of what had been printed in the English press.
‘Karen was from Swansea. That’s where we met. In the docks there.’
‘It was nothing to do with my father,’ she whispered urgently. ‘Please. You’ve got to believe that. You must believe it, because it’s true. It was an accident.’
‘And he’s a Welshman, you say?’
‘He was born there, yes.’
‘Where?’
‘In the middle somewhere. I’m not sure.’
‘What was his name then?’
It was on the tip of her tongue, but then she hesitated. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘A fellow Welshman …’ I murmured, not looking at her now, knowing I had tried to trap her.
‘You’re not Welsh.’ Her voice was suddenly harder, an undercurrent of impatience. ‘The way you talk sounds like it sometimes, but if you were Welsh now—’
‘It would make no difference.’
‘If you were, you would have the imagination to see—’
‘I have plenty of imagination,’ I cut in angrily. ‘Too much perhaps.’
She was staring at me now, her eyes wide and the same look of horror dawning. ‘Please. Won’t you try to understand. He’s never had a chance. Every since the Stella Rosa. You know about the Stella Rosa, I suppose?’
‘Yes.’
‘He was exonerated, you know.’
‘The Stella Rosa was gun-running.’
‘There was no other ship available. My mother was sick and he needed the money.’
‘Honest engineers don’t go gun-running,’ I told her. ‘Then, when the ship was wrecked, he blamed one of his engineer officers, a man named Aristides Speridion.’
She nodded slowly, her eyes dropping to her hands.
‘What happened to Speridion? Has he told you?’
She didn’t answer.
Varsac poked his head round the door to say the taxi had arrived. I waved him away. ‘Tell it to wait,’ I said. And then to the girl, ‘You realize that when the Petros Jupiter went on to the rocks by Land’s End he was in charge of the engine-room? And masquerading under the name of Aristides Speridion. He even had Speridion’s passport.’
‘I know.’ The admission seemed dragged out of her, the words a whisper. She suddenly reached out, touched my hand. ‘There’s some explanation. I know there is. There must be. Can’t you wait – until after the Enquiry? It’s like a court of law, isn’t it? The truth – the real truth – it’ll all come out.’ Her voice was urgent, desperate to believe that he would be vindicated, his innocence proved. ‘He’s such a kind man. You should have seen him when my mother was dying—’
‘It’s Dubai, isn’t it? You’re going to Dubai.’
I nodded.
‘When you see my father …’ She got slowly to her feet, tears in her eyes as she stood facing me. ‘Give him my love, will you. Tell him I did my best. I tried to stop you.’ She stood quite still, facing me, with her hands to her side, as though she were facing a firing squad. ‘Please remember that when you find him.’ And then, in a sudden violent outburst, ‘I don’t understand you. Will nothing satisfy the bitterness that’s eating you up? Isn’t there anything—’ But then she stopped, her body stiffening as she turned away, gathering up her handbag and walking blindly out by the street door.
She left me with the bill for her coffee and a feeling of sadness that such a nice girl, so absolutely loyal, should have such a man as her father. Nothing she had said had made the slightest difference, his guilt so obvious that I thought she was probably convinced of it, too, as I went out to the waiting taxi. Varsac was already there with the door open. I handed my bags to the driver, saw to it that he put them both in the boot and then, as I was bending down to get in, the girl’s voice behind me called out, ‘Monsieur. Un moment.’ I turned to find her standing by the bonnet of the taxi with one of those flat little miniature cameras to her eye and at that moment the shutter blinked. It blinked again before I had time to move. ‘Why did you do that?’ I was reaching out for the camera, but she put it behind her, standing stiff and defiant. ‘You touch me and I’ll scream,’ she said. ‘You can’t take my camera.’