A Death on the Ocean Wave

by Tim Heald

  Tudor felt that the Prince was in danger of muddling his Horatios but he said nothing, just nodded sympathetically and sipped his apple brandy.

  Tm speaking this afternoon,’ he said, feeling that it was probably time to change the subject and wondering how much alcohol the Prince had consumed and whether this might prove to be a problem. He had always understood that Islam, to which presumably the Prince subscribed, involved an abstinence from alcoholic beverages, but he had seen enough of a certain sort of privileged adherent of any number of supposedly puritan creeds to realize that there were always some who considered themselves to be above the law, even if that law was God’s.

  ‘Ah. Break a leg!’ said the Prince unexpectedly. ‘I make it a practice never to attend lectures but I shall catch a little of what you have to say on the closed circuit television in my stateroom. On what are you holding forth?’

  ‘I’m doing the Mutiny on the Bounty,’ said Tudor.

  ‘How apposite,’ said the Prince. ‘Or perhaps not. I trust that our gallant captain is faring better than Captain Bligh at the hands of Fletcher Christian and his fellow desperadoes even if his voice has escaped him. Do you have anything new to tell us?’

  ‘Well...’ Tudor thought for a moment. ‘Not new exactly but my interpretation differs fundamentally from the view that Bligh was some sort of tyrannical bully who got his just deserts.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the Prince, ‘a revisionist view.’

  ‘You could say so,’ said Tudor.

  ‘I’m not sure that I share your charitable view of ships’ captains,’ said the Prince. ‘Certainly in modern times I believe that they should subscribe to the view that the passenger is always right. Particularly when the passenger is myself.’

  Saying which he rose unsteadily to his feet, smiled over enthusiastically, waved a hand in farewell and made for the exit, banging in to one or two tables as he did so.

  Chapter Thirteen

  His talk went well. The Bounty was an obvious subject. Even if everyone hadn’t seen one or other of the movies and got a fix on Charles Laughton or Marlon Brando they still had a good idea of the basic story. Tudor was a Bligh man, believing that the captain of the ship was a maligned figure and a great seaman and that Fletcher Christian was unfairly romanticized. He had a good academic grasp of the subject and had even, once, visited Pitcairn Island and talked to the descendants of Fletcher Christian and his accomplices. On this occasion, however, he didn’t think it appropriate to be too academically rigorous. The sort of audience you got in the ballroom of the Duchess was unlikely to want anything too demanding, especially after lunch.

  What went down well, as always, with a cruise-ship audience was to try to evoke a picture of the ship as an island entire unto itself, a little self-contained community far from the reach of outside civilization. This was, of course, far more true in the relatively empty and unsophisticated world of the eighteenth century. Today on oceans teeming with merchant ships and under constant surveillance by satellite and other electronic devices, one was never as isolated as the vulnerable little HMS Bounty. Nevertheless, as the morning’s events had so dramatically demonstrated a ship at sea was, well, a ship at sea.

  ‘No e-mails; no mobile; not even the most primitive ship’s radio,’ he said, theatrically. ‘Nowadays the Tahitian authorities would have sent a helicopter or a gunboat and the mutineers would have been subdued with stun-guns and taken away to face the international law of the sea. Even in the middle of the Atlantic or Pacific oceans the odds are that there is another vessel within an hour or so even if it’s only a Liberian registered container ship or a Taiwanese oil tanker. But back then you were well and truly on your own. And, incidentally, despite everything that has happened in the last century or so this is still a very lonely and vulnerable place to be.’

  At this point he always stared around the audience hoping to instil a moment of fear and awe but knowing only too well that the swaying curtain behind him and the memories of a gargantuan alcohol-fuelled lunch behind them and of a similarly proportioned tea in prospect would be enough to lull his listeners into a sense of security however false. Besides, many of them, if not actually asleep, were certainly not paying proper attention.

  At home in his lecture room at the University of Wessex on the Casterbridge campus he would have allowed himself the luxury of a snide sarcasm, but here in front of an audience of paying punters he was not as much in charge as he would have wished. He was not exactly a member of the crew but he certainly wasn’t a professor addressing a bunch of students. This audience was composed of paying customers and since they paid the piper they called the tune. At home he would have been seriously rude at the expense of a sleeping student; on board ship he was compelled to allow the sleepers to snore on.

  After forty minutes or so he stopped and invited questions. This was a risky enterprise. Sometimes the ship’s bore moved in and droned on for minutes on end, not asking a question but simply enjoying the sound of his own voice. It was usually his but sometimes hers. In his experience there was no sexual discrimination when it came to narcolepsy. On marginally less boring occasions an ‘expert’ of some kind stepped up and contradicted something Tudor had said. Sometimes these people were ignorant cranks with bees in their bonnets; on other sometimes embarrassing occasions they knew more than he did. Best, under those circumstances, to put your hands up and surrender.

  This time it was little Umlaut. Tudor hadn’t noticed him, sitting there at the back unobtrusively, in the classic position of the man who doesn’t want to be recognized, identified, called upon to speak. He was in the aisle seat of the person who wishes to escape without being called upon to do anything. Anonymity seeped from every pore. Yet the diffidence was oddly unnatural. Tudor had seldom met a man who was so obviously confident in himself.

  ‘This morning,’ said Umlaut, with assumed diffidence, ‘Heute Morgen. Something happened. Very mysterious. Quite alarming. May you please tell us what precisely took place?’

  ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ said Tudor, surprised and a little discomfited, ‘but I’m really here to talk about the Mutiny on the Bounty. I’m afraid today’s events just aren’t within my remit.’

  ‘Forgive me, but were today’s events not a little reminiscent of the events concerning Captain Bligh and Mr Christian?’

  He had a funny way of talking, thought Tudor. It was a little like listening to dialogue written by a thriller writer whose first language was not actually English. Tudor had someone in mind but could not for the moment remember who it was. He knew several thriller writers like that.

  ‘I really can’t comment,’ said Tudor. ‘But you seem to know something that the rest of us do not and perhaps you would care to share that information. In what sense were today’s events reminiscent of the Mutiny on the Bounty, Doctor Umlaut? I think we should be told.’

  The little doctor looked shifty and Tudor realized that he hadn’t expected his name to be known, much less called out in public.

  ‘Private information,’ he said, unconvincingly. ‘I have private information that as we are outside national waters and therefore subject to no national jurisdiction but only the law of the sea, you were called in to advise on the legality of a complicated and delicate situation. No?’

  ‘No,’ said Tudor, ‘or rather no comment. However on the matter of legality and jurisdiction I believe that you’re mistaken. When a criminal matter arises in international waters it is treated as if the case had arisen in the country in which the vessel concerned is registered. As you know many ships today are registered, as a matter of convenience, in countries such as Liberia or Panama where justice and the law is administered with, how shall I put it, a somewhat lighter touch than some of us are used to. Luckily, however, the ship on which we have the good fortune to sail is registered in Southampton. Therefore, any misdemeanours that occur on board will be treated as if they had taken place in Great Britain itself. Malefactors will be dealt with according to Her Majesty’s law. Thi
s applied, of course, to HMS Bounty herself. When finally apprehended those mutineers who did not evade the long hand of Brtish justice were brought back to Blighty, tried in properly constituted courts martial and, for the most part, hanged from the yard arms of His Majesty’s ships at Spithead. We take a more enlightened view these days, I’m happy to say, but now if you’ll excuse me I’m afraid we’re completely out of time and in fairness to the macramé class, which is scheduled to begin in only five minutes, I must wind up. Thank you for coming and I look forward to seeing you at my next lecture.

  ‘Sod!’ he said to himself, as he acknowledged the slightly half-hearted clapping. ‘Try not to sound so pompous.’ He knew it was a failing. When rattled, he succumbed to verbal diarrhoea, used long words where short ones would do and generally banged on. He knew instinctively that he should shut up and sit down but something in his nature made him long-winded and patronizing. He did himself no favours.

  ‘Alpha until the questions,’ said a voice at his elbow.

  It was Elizabeth, grinning with the insubordinate affection he found so beguiling.

  To be honest,’ he said, ‘I wasn’t expecting questions. Brits are usually too embarrassed. It’s an American thing, running up to the microphone as soon as the speaker’s finished and telling him he knows nothing.’

  ‘Australians do it,’ she said. ‘We’re not shy either. It’s a completely British thing that false modesty. I find it rather unattractive. As you know.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ he said, ‘but Doctor Umlaut is German.’

  The audience had vanished as if by magic and they were alone on stage. The only person in sight but not earshot was the sound technician in his box of tricks at the far end of the auditorium.

  ‘German extraction,’ she said. ‘He hasn’t lived in Germany since he was a child. He’s from Leipzig. His family came out soon after the Russians moved in. He owns an island or two, but if he lives anywhere he seems to live on board ship. Useful tax dodge I imagine, and the communications are presumably excellent.’

  ‘What exactly does he do?’ Tudor wanted to know. His young protégée seemed to know practically everything there was to know about the German-sounding doctor.

  She shrugged. ‘Arms, property, drugs, second-hand cars, prostitution.’ She sighed. ‘That’s what I suspect. In other words nothing nice. But it won’t show up anywhere. All the paperwork will prove that he is a perfectly above-board banker of some kind. Assets, acquisitions... legalized gambling with other people’s money. Making squillions out of ordinary people’s life savings. Shunting money around so that it breeds. You know my opinion of men like Umlaut.’

  ‘It’s called capitalism,’ said Tudor, mildly irritated, because once upon a time he too had had scruples and ideals and now he feared they had just become jealousy and suppressed rage. He didn’t see why, in a just society, good university lecturers such as himself shouldn’t inherit the earth. But somehow they didn’t and it was all left to shysters like Umlaut. Never mind, he would never be able to pass through a needle and attain the Kingdom of God.

  Elizabeth jabbed him playfully in the ribs.

  ‘You know you don’t believe that for a moment. You think it’s theft just the same as I do.’

  ‘No matter,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t much matter what we think of him, nor how he makes his money. What was he getting at when he asked those strange questions? Why did he ask them in front of everyone else? Does he know something we don’t?’

  ‘You mean, is he in on the plot?’

  Tudor thought for a moment. ‘I suppose I do,’ he said. ‘I mean there are two ways of looking at this morning’s fiasco. Either it was just a lot of scatterbrained Irish students indulging in an elaborate sort of rag-week stunt, or it was something altogether more significant and sinister which simply mis-fired.’

  ‘We don’t know that it’s misfired,’ said Elizabeth.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘The voyage isn’t over yet,’ she said. ‘We have three or four days before we hit New York. We’re only halfway through the mystery.’

  ‘But they’re locked up,’ he protested.

  ‘That’s only a key-turn. Just as easy to unlock as to lock.’

  ‘That’s silly,’ he said.

  ‘I wish I shared your certainty,’ she said. ‘I think there’s more to this than meets the eye. I didn’t care for Umlaut’s questioning whatever the subtext is. I’m not happy about the captain’s laryngitis. I’m deeply suspicious of half the passengers. I think we’re all at risk and frankly I’d rather be safe back home in the good old U of W.’

  Tudor smiled at her.

  ‘There’s absolutely nothing to worry about,’ he said, wishing he felt as certain as he sounded. ‘As long as I’m here representing law ’n’ order and intellectual rigour we have nothing to fear.’

  He glanced up at the ceiling and cocked an ear for noises off.

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘unless I’m much mistaken the storm has abated and the tempest past. All sounds calm. The worst is behind us. Why don’t we go outside and take another turn on deck and see if the waters are as placid as I sense?’

  She stared at him as if he were deranged. Which she sometimes thought he was.

  ‘All right,’ she said, at last, ‘why not?’

  Chapter Fourteen

  The water had become placid as the proverbial mill pond. Extraordinary, mused Tudor, how the sea could move in moments from gurly and growly to butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth. One moment the depths were all menace, the next they were stroke-your-brow-and-hold-my-hand. The wind had dropped and there were no whitecaps. All was quiet and calm. You could have sculled across this ocean in a skiff.

  ‘Sail ho!’ exclaimed a breathy voice just behind them.

  Tudor and Elizabeth turned abruptly and saw Mandy Goldslinger in a Florida female approximation of a sailor suit. She wore white trousers and a white jacket, with much gold braid, buttons, epaulettes and a blue belt tightly buckled. She looked like the runner up in the best first mate competition, senior section. She smelt vaguely as if she had been drinking margaritas, swayed slightly despite the new calm but was tipsy rather than drunk.

  ‘Sail ho!’ she repeated loudly and liltingly in what she must have thought was a good imitation of a cry from the crow’s nest. As she called out she gesticulated in the direction of a distant horizon and when Tudor and Elizabeth followed her outstretched hand with their eyes they were surprised to see a shape. It was not merely a ship shape but also, as the cruise director suggested, a ship under sail. A lot of it. Billowing in the prescribed manner.

  ‘A ship,’ said Cornwall fatuously.

  ‘Not any old ship, darling,’ said Mandy, ‘a barquentine no less. Four masts, the tallest little short of two hundred and thirty feet; the most forward square-rigged and the three behind rigged fore and aft. I’d judge that she carries the best part of, oh I’d say around thirty-six thousand square feet of sail, and she’s something over two thousand tons and about three hundred and sixty feet long. Modern, very. Judging from the way she sails I’d say she was built in Belgium possibly in the Langerbrugge Yard in Ghent. But I’d say she was registered in Luxembourg, though Swedish owned. Can’t be much more than ten years old. Ask me another.’

  She smiled in triumph.

  ‘You’re making it up,’ said Elizabeth, visibly impressed.

  ‘Au contraire,’ said Mandy. ‘But I’ll admit we’ve had the bins on her from the bridge. And that wondrous display of sail doesn’t entirely account for the speed she’s making. That’s from her twelve cylinder diesel engine which generates thirteen hundred and fifty horsepower with seven to one reduction gear operating a four-blade variable-pitch aluminium/bronze propeller that gives a speed of twelve knots –’

  ‘Stop, stop!’ said Tudor. ‘My ears are bleeding.’

  Ms Goldslinger laughed, a husky tinkling sound much practised and rehearsed.

  ‘You didn’t know my alter ego was Jane of Ja
ne’s Ships, did you? Don’t worry. She’s an old friend; Star Clipper. Klaus or Jürgen is at the wheel. They’re twins so can’t tell them apart. And my friend Jeffrey Rayner’s on board. He says they have a surprise for us and when Jeffrey says ‘surprise’ he means surprise.’

  ‘Like what?’ Tudor wanted to know.

  ‘He wouldn’t say. Surprisingly stumm. I thought we’d pay a visit in one of the Zodiacs. Want to come?’

  Tudor glanced at the girl with a raised interrogative eyebrow and she nodded back.

  ‘We’ll give you life jackets, but I’d wear something waterproof. Warm too. It may look calm and not very far but mid-Atlantic in an open boat gets kinda choppy and chilly.’

  Mandy smiled a wintry smile at Elizabeth. If looks could kill this wouldn’t quite have done the job but it would certainly have maimed. Or frozen. It was the coolness rather than the ferocity that was marked. Elizabeth smiled back but her eyes were almost as glacial as the cruise director’s.

  Five minutes later the two guests were back in yellow woolly hats decorated., slightly improbably, with the logo of the University of Wessex. They also wore anoraks. Mandy Goldslinger in a figure-hugging Duchess weatherproof catsuit looked superior and ushered them slinkily to a rope ladder suspended from a door several decks down. At the bottom a black inflatable bobbed dangerously alongside with three crew members lounging nonchalantly in charge. Just as they were about to set off they were joined by two thirty-something men in black wet suits. Neither Tudor nor Elizabeth recognized them. They nodded curtly. Presumably, thought Tudor, they were security officers of some sort or another. He wondered who exactly was in charge. He vaguely assumed it was Mandy Goldslinger though he wasn’t entirely sure.

  It was a bumpy ride. The boat’s rubber bottom slapped the water as the skipper revved the show-off outboards in a display of nautical muscle-flexing. From high up on the Duchess the ocean looked oily and placid; down here it felt rough as stubble. As the Duchess receded so she began to look more and more like a stylized child’s toy safely at anchor in a bath tub. Conversely, as the four-masted barquentine got closer and closer she looked more and more like the real thing. She gleamed like a well-trained thoroughbred in the paddock and if you hadn’t known that she was a creature of the twentieth century with the gear to match you would have suspected her of being a close blood relation of the Cutty Sark bringing home tea from China at a rate of wind-blown knots.