I couldn’t just pitch the man over the side. Or could I? Fate had delivered him into my hands as though of intent, so why didn’t I do it – now, while I was too tired to care whether he was a corpse or not? If I didn’t do it now, if I let him stay there, then I’d be responsible for him. I’d have to feed him. I’d have to do something about his wound. It was in his stomach, he’d said. And I’d have to clean him up. My God! Acting as nurse and sick-bay attendant to the man who had sent Karen to her death! If that was what I’d have to do, then Fate had played a dirty trick.
In the east the clouds were turning a flaming red, the sea catching fire as it had done that evening at Ras al Khaimah. It seemed a long time ago. A gap in the clouds took on the appearance of an open furnace, the ragged edges gleaming like red-hot clinkers. I saw a heraldic lion crouched in the cloud-gap. I blinked my eyes and it was a dragon breathing fire, its scales all crimson, and then the sun appeared, a bright red orb that slowly turned through vermilion and orange-yellow to a searing glare that changed the sea to a brilliant purple and the waves to glittering gold. Suddenly it was hot, the sun burning up the clouds, the fire-brown streak of the Musandam Peninsula lost in haze.
How far to Qisham, the big island on the north side of the Straits? I couldn’t remember. And there was Larak, and inside of that Hormuz itself, both of them much smaller islands. I stood leaning on the helm, swaying with it as I tried to remember the chart, my eyes drooping, half-closed against the glare. Surely I was far enough out? Why not turn now, head eastwards into the sun? The Straits were like a horseshoe facing north. As long as I kept to the middle, steering clear of all the ships, and of the islands and reefs of Ras Musandam, following the curve of the Iranian coast, there was no reason why the dhow should attract the attention of sea or air patrols from either side, and at an estimated six to eight knots we should reach the border between Iran and Pakistan some time tomorrow night. Gwadar. If I could anchor off Gwadar. Must check the fuel. I didn’t know whether we had enough to reach Gwadar. But that was the nearest place that had an air service to Karachi. Two days to Gwadar. And if we were short of fuel, then I’d have to sail the brute. Through slitted eyes I stared up at the great curved spar with the sun-bleached, heavily-patched sail bagged up round it. My head nodded and I caught myself, wondering whether one man could possibly set it alone. But my mind drifted away, abandoning any thought of how it could be done, unable to concentrate. I was thinking of Hals, and Sadeq – Baldwick, too. A kaleidoscope of faces and that little ginger-haired Glaswegian. Sadeq spraying bullets. Standing at the head of the gangway, very much the professional, a killer. I couldn’t recall the expression on his face, only the fact that he was about to cut me down and didn’t. I owe you my life, he had said, and now I couldn’t recall his expression. Not even when he’d lifted the barrel and fired at Choffel. Hate, pleasure, anger – what the hell had he felt as the bullets slammed into the poop?
There comes a moment when tiredness so takes hold of the body that the only alternative to sleep is some form of physical activity. When I opened my eyes and found the sun’s glare behind me and the dhow rolling along almost broadside to the waves, I knew that point had arrived. The sun was higher now, the time 08.23 and a big fully-loaded tanker was pushing a huge bow wave barely a mile away. I wondered how long I had been dreaming at the helm with the dhow headed west into the Persian Gulf. Not that it made much difference, with no chart and only the vaguest idea where we were. I hauled the tiller over, bringing the bows corkscrewing through the waves until the compass showed us headed east of north. There was a rusty iron gear lever set in the deck close by the engine control arm and after throttling right down, I put the lever into neutral. Lengths of frayed rope, looped through holes cut in the bulwarks either side of the tiller arm, enabled me to make the helm fast so that we were lying wind-rode with our bows headed east into the Hormuz Straits.
I went for’ard then, into the waist of the vessel, running my eye over the bundled sail as I relieved myself to leeward. Then I went round the ship, checking the gear. It was something I would have had to do sooner or later, but doing it then I knew it was a displacement activity, putting off the moment when I would have to go into the dark hole of the shelter under the poop and deal with Choffel.
The dhow was rolling heavily. With no cargo to steady her, she was riding high out of the water, heeled slightly to starb’d by the wind and wallowing with an unpredictable motion, so that I had to hold on all the time or be thrown across the deck. I was feeling slightly nauseous, dreading the thought of that dark hole as I made my way aft. The entrance to it was right by the steps leading to the poop, the door closed with a large wooden latch. I couldn’t remember closing it, but perhaps it had banged to on a roll. I pulled it open and went in.
It was the smell that hit me. Predominantly it was the hot stink of diesel oil, but behind that was the smell of stale sweat, vomit and excrement. At the stern of the cabin two shuttered windows either side of the rudder post showed chinks of light. I had settled Choffel on a mat on the starb’d side. We had been heeled to starb’d then, as we were now, but sometime during the night, or perhaps in the dawn when I was off-course, he must have been rolled right across the ship, for I found his body precariously huddled on the port side. I could only just see it in the dim light from the doorway, the blanket I had wrapped him in flung into a heap at his feet and his hands pressed against the timbers of the deck in an effort to hold himself steady.
He looked so lifeless I thought for a moment he was dead. I was not so much glad as relieved, his stubble-dark features white against the bare boards, his eyes wide and staring and his body moving helplessly to the sudden shifts of the ship wallowing in the seaway. I started to back away, the smell and the diesel fumes too much for me. The engine noise was much louder here, and though it was only idling, the sound of it almost drowned the groans of the ship’s timbers. They were very human groans, and seeing the man’s head roll as the deck lifted to a wave, I had a sense of horror, as though this were a ghost come to haunt me.
Suddenly I felt very sick.
I turned, ducking my head for the doorway and some fresh air, and at that moment a voice behind me murmured, ‘Is that you, Gwyn?’ I hesitated, looking back. The dhow lifted to the surge of a wave, rolled to starb’d and, as it rolled, his body rolled with it, his groan echoing the groan of the timbers. ‘Water!’ He suddenly sat up with a shrill gasp that was like a scream suppressed. One hand was pressed against the boards to support him, the other clutched at his stomach. He was groaning as he called for water again. ‘Where are you now? I can’t see you.’ His voice was a clotted whisper, his eyes staring. ‘Water please.’
‘I’ll get you some.’ It was the salt in the air. I was thirsty myself. The salt and the stench, and the movement of the boat.
There was a door I hadn’t noticed before on the port side. It opened on to a store cupboard, oil cans and paint side by side with sacks of millet, some dried meat that was probably goat, dates and dried banana in plastic bags, a swab and buckets, bags of charcoal and several large plastic containers. These last were the dhow’s water supply, but before I could do anything about it, my body broke out into a cold sweat and I had to make a dash for the starb’d bulwarks.
It was very seldom I was sick at sea. The wind carried the sickly smell of the injured man to my nostrils as I leaned out over the side retching dryly. It would have been better if I had had more to bring up. I dredged up some seawater in one of the buckets. We were on the edge of a slick and it smelt of oil, but I washed my face in it, then went back to that messy cubby-hole of a store. There were tin mugs, plates and big earthenware cooking pots on a shelf that sagged where the supports had come away from the ship’s side. I had a drink myself, then refilled the mug and took it in to Choffel.
He drank eagerly, water running down his dark-stubbled chin, his eyes staring at me with a vacant look. It was only when he had drunk nearly the whole of a mugful that it occurred to me the water wa
s probably contaminated and should have been boiled. In Karachi everybody boiled their water and I wondered where the containers had last been filled. ‘Where am I? What’s happened?’ He was suddenly conscious, his eyes searching my face. His voice was stronger, too. ‘It’s dark in here. Would you pull the curtains please.’
‘You’re on a dhow,’ I said.
The ship lurched and he nodded. ‘The shots – Sadeq.’ He nodded, again feeling at his stomach. ‘I remember now.’ He was quite lucid in this moment, his eyes, wide in the gloom, looking me straight in the face. ‘You were going to kill me, is that right?’
‘Do you want some more water?’ I asked him, taking the empty mug.
He shook his head. ‘You think Sadeq saved you the trouble.’ He smiled, but it was more a grimace. ‘I’ve shat my pants, haven’t I? Fouled myself up.’ And he added, ‘This place stinks. If I had something to eat now …’ The ship rolled and I had to steady him. ‘I’m hungry, but I can’t contain myself.’ He gripped hold of my arm. ‘It’s my guts, is it?’
My fingers where I had held him were a sticky mess. I reached for the blanket, wiping my hand on the coarse cloth. I could clean him up, but if I got water anywhere near the wound it would probably bleed again. I started to get to my feet, but the clutch of his hand on my arm tightened convulsively. ‘Don’t go. I want to talk to you. There are things … Now, while I have the strength … I was going to escape, you see. I was going to Iran, then maybe cross the Afghan frontier and get myself to Russia. But you can’t escape, can you – not from yourself, not from the past.’
His voice was low, the tone urgent. ‘No,’ he said, clutching hold of me tighter still as I made to rise. ‘The Lavandou. You mentioned the Lavandou. My third ship. A boy. I was just a boy and my mother dying, you see. Cancer and overwork and too much worry. She’d had a hard life and there was no money. My father had just died, you know. His lungs. Working in the mines he was when just a boy. The anthracite mines down in the Valleys. He was underground. Years underground. A great chest he had, and muscles, huge muscles. But when we laid him to rest he was quite a puny little chap – not more than six or seven stone.’ His voice had thickened and he spat into the mug, dark gobs of blood.
‘Better not talk,’ I said.
He shook his head urgently, still clutching me. ‘I was saying – about the Lavandou. I was twenty-two years old … and desperate.’ His fingers tightened. ‘D’you know what it is to be desperate? I was an only child. And we’d no relatives, you see. We were alone in the world, nobody to care a bugger what happened to her. Just me. God! I can still see her lying there, the whiteness of her face, the thinness of it, and all drawn with pain.’ His voice faltered as though overcome. ‘They knew, of course. They knew all about how desperate I was. She needs to go into a clinic. Private, you see – not waiting for the National Health. And me at sea, unable to make sure she got proper attention. It’s your duty, they said. And it was, too – my duty. Also, I loved her. So I agreed.’
He stared up at me, his eyes wide, his fingers digging into my arm. ‘What would you have done?’ His breath was coming in quick gasps. ‘Tell me – just tell me. What would you have done, man?’
I shook my head, not wanting to listen, thinking of Karen as he said, ‘The ship was insured, wasn’t she? And nobody got hurt, did they?’ His eyes had dimmed, his strength fading. I loosened his fingers and they gripped my hand, the cold feel of them communicating some deep Celtic emotion. ‘Just that once, and it went wrong, didn’t it – the Lloyd’s people twigged what I’d done, and myself on the run, taking another man’s name. God knows, I’ve paid. I’ve paid and paid. And Mother … I never saw her again. Not after that. She died and I never heard, not for a year. Not for over a year.’ He spat blood again and I could see his eyes looking at me, seeking sympathy.
What do you do – what the hell do you do when a creature like that is dying and seeking sympathy? At any moment he’d start talking about the Petros Jupiter, making excuses, asking my forgiveness, and I didn’t know what I could say to him. I thought he was dying, you see – his eyes grown dim and his voice very faint.
‘We’re wasting fuel,’ I said, unhooking his fingers from my hand. I think he understood that for he didn’t try and stop me, but as I got to my feet he said something – something about oil. I didn’t get what it was, his voice faint and myself anxious to get out into the open again, relieved at no longer being held by the clutch of his hand.
Clouds had come up and the wind had freshened. Back on the poop I put the engine in gear and headed east into the Straits. We were broadside to the waves, the dhow rolling and corkscrewing, spray wetting the parched timbers of her waist as the breaking seas thumped her high wooden side. I was hungry now, wondering how long the shamal would blow. No chance of a hot meal until I could get the dhow to steer herself and for that I’d need almost a flat calm. But at least there were dates in the store.
I secured the helm with the tiller ropes and made a dash for it, coming up with a handful just as the bows swung with a jarring explosion of spray into the breaking top of a wave. I got her back on course, chewing at a date. It was dry and fibrous, without much sweetness, and so impregnated with fine sand that it gritted my teeth. They were about the worst dates I had ever eaten, but being a hard chew they helped pass the time and keep me awake.
Towards noon the wind began to slacken. It was dead aft now, for all through the forenoon hours I had been gradually altering course, following the tankers as they turned south through the last part of the Straits. Soon our speed was almost the same as the breeze, so that it was hot and humid, almost airless, the smell of diesel very strong. The clouds were all gone now, eaten up by the sun, the sky a hard blue and the sea sparkling in every direction, very clear, with the horizon so sharp it might have been inked in with a ruler. There were a lot of ships about and I knew I had to keep awake, but at times I dozed, my mind wandering and only brought back to the job on hand by the changed movement as the dhow shifted course.
I could still see the Omani shore, the mountains a brown smudge to the south-west. The wind died and haze gradually reduced visibility, the sun blazing down and the dhow rolling wildly. The sea became an oily swell, the silken rainbow surface of it ripped periodically by the silver flash of panicked fish. The heat ripened the stench from the lazarette beneath my feet. Twice I forced myself to go down there, but each time he was unconscious. I wanted to know what it was he had said about oil, for the exhaust was black and diesel fumes hung over the poop in a cloud. I began listening to the engine, hearing strange knocking sounds, but its beat never faltered.
Water and dates, that was all I had, and standing there, hour after hour, changing my course slowly from south to sou’sou’east and staring through slitted eyes at the bows rising and falling in the glare, the mast swinging against the blue of the sky, everything in movement, ceaselessly and without pause, I seemed to have no substance, existing in a daze that quite transported me, so that nothing was real. In this state I might easily have thrown him overboard. God knows there were fish enough to pick him clean in a flash, and skeletons make featureless ghosts to haunt a man. I can’t think why I didn’t. I was in such a state of weary unreality that I could have had no qualms. I did go down there later, towards the end of the afternoon watch – I think with the conviction he was dead and I could rid myself of the source of the stench.
But he wasn’t dead. And he wasn’t unconscious either. He was sitting up, his back braced against the stern timbers and his eyes wide open. It just wasn’t possible then. I couldn’t pick him up and toss him overboard, not with his eyes staring at me like that. And as soon as he saw me he began to talk. But not sensibly. About things that had happened long, long ago – battles and the seeking after God, beautiful women and the terrible destruction of ancient castles.
He was delirious, of course, his mind in a trance. And yet he seemed to know me, to be talking to me. That’s what made it impossible. I got some sea water and beg
an cleaning him up. He was trembling. I don’t know whether it was from cold or fever. Maybe it was fear. Maybe he’d known and that’s why he was talking – you can’t throw a man to the fishes when he’s talking to you about things that are personal and take your mind back, for he was talking then about his home in Wales, how they had moved up into the old tin hills above a place called Farmers, a tumble-down longhouse where the livestock were bedded on the ground floor to keep the humans warm in the bedroom above. It was odd to hear him talking about Wales, here in the Straits with Arabia on one side of us, Persia on the other. ‘But you wouldn’t know about the Mabinogion now, would you?’ he breathed.
I told him I did, that I had read it, but either he didn’t hear me or he didn’t take it in. His mind was far away on the hills of his youth. ‘Carreg-y-Bwci,’ he murmured. ‘The Hobgoblin Stone. I’ve danced on it as a kid in the moonlight, a great cromlech on its side – and the Black Mountain visible thirty miles away. It never did me any harm,’ he added in a whisper. Then his hand reached out towards me. ‘Or am I wrong then? Was I cursed from that moment?’ The dhow rolled, rolling him with it, and he clutched at his guts, screaming.
I steadied him and he stopped screaming, gulping air and holding on to me very tightly. I got his trousers open at the fly and in the light of my torch could see the neat hole the bullet had punched in his white belly. He wasn’t bleeding now and it looked quite clean, only the skin round it bruised and bluish; but I didn’t dare turn him over to see what was the other side, in the back where it must have come out.
I cleaned his trousers as best I could and all the time I was doing it he was rambling on about the Mabinogion, and I thought how strange; the only other person ever to talk to me about it was Karen. She’d got it from the travelling library, asking for it specially. And when she had read it she had insisted that I read it, too, the four branches of it containing some of the oldest stories of the Welsh bards. A strange book full of fighting men who were always away from home and wives that gave themselves to any valiant passer-by, and everything, it seemed, happening three times over, all the trickery, the treachery, the blazing hopes that led to death. Some of its eleven stories had borne a strange resemblance to the tribal life in the hills where my mother’s people had come from – the feuds, the hates, the courage and the cruelty. And this man talking of the country above Lampeter where Karen and I had stayed one night in a wretched little inn with hardly a word of English spoken to us.
The Black Tide Page 22