The White Schooner

by Antony Trew

  Black had been on the island long enough to know that the rumours which circulated in its café society were often inaccurate, often malicious, and he wondered how much of what he’d heard was true. And it happened that Manuela Valez was at that moment thinking about him and making much the same reservations. Since she faced him, she was obliged to look at the sun-bleached Englishman with the hawkish bearded face whom she had seen at times sitting outside the Montesol, sometimes with members of the artists-writers colony and their hangers-on, but more often alone. None of her friends seemed to know him well, and in her three months on the island she had not found herself in the same party. So while she talked to Kyriakou a part of her mind recalled what she had heard about Black: that he was artistic, charming but shiftless, drank too much and existed on a modest remittance from England supplemented by the proceeds of occasional contributions to art journals.

  Not surprisingly, because he was seldom seen with women, he was rumoured to be a homosexual. She wasn’t interested and so didn’t care, but it had occurred to her that he wasn’t often seen with men either, so perhaps he just didn’t like people. Which wasn’t difficult for her to understand, because she wasn’t at all sure she liked people. At least not those she seemed to see most of these days.

  Her last thought about him was interrupted by Tino Costa who was pawing at her knee under the table. She pushed away his hand, glared at him and turned to Kyriakou who was filling the Cypriot’s glass for the fourth time.

  ‘Don’t give him any more,’ she said. ‘He’s getting above himself.’

  ‘Wadya mean?’ Tino was red-eyed and hoarse.

  ‘You know what I mean,’ she said.

  He stared at her, wondering how much she’d say in front of the Greek and deciding through an alcoholic haze not to take any chances with the boss who was a mean bastard if crossed.

  The moment of tension passed Kyriakou by, and he continued his story of an art-forger friend and went on pouring the champagne as if nothing had happened.

  The meal proceeded with Kyriakou doing the talking while Tino sulked. Manuela listened to the Greek with half attention, while she thought of other things. Towards the end of the meal he stood up. ‘You two wait here.’ He dabbed at his lips with a table napkin. ‘I’m going down aft to see how Benny’s getting on. Back soon.’

  Manuela looked sad. ‘Poor Benny,’ she said.

  Tino Costa snorted. ‘How come a guy who claims he was an Olympic swimmer, pukes his heart out for a few waves?’

  ‘A man can’t help it if he’s seasick,’ said Kyriakou. ‘He’s not God.’ The Greek took Manuela’s hand and with an exaggerated bow kissed it before making an exit which included hand-waves, smiles and shouted ‘Allo’s’ in several directions. Black noticed that he himself was not among the recipients. Not long afterwards Tino Costa took over the Greek’s empty chair and Black saw him slant towards the girl like a toppled sack of potatoes, sliding an arm along the back of her chair and whispering hoarsely.

  She drew away, but a large hand pulled her back and the whisper continued. Whatever it was he was saying, the Puerto Rican girl didn’t like it. She tried to get up but he pulled her back. This time she let fly and the noise as she slapped his face was like the muted crack of a whip. Tino’s mouth fell open with surprise. He swore at the girl as she pulled free and moved away from the table.

  As she came abreast of where Black was sitting the Cypriot caught up with her, grabbed her arm and said, ‘You goddam bitch. You don’t get away with that…’

  Black had no intention of intervening. There were good reasons why he shouldn’t mix in a brawl, but when she turned to him, eyes bright with fear, and whispered, ‘Please help me,’ her appeal was so urgent that he got up awkwardly, hating the involvement, and said to the Cypriot: ‘Cut it out, chum.’ He tried to sound friendly, to keep his voice free of animus, but Costa had drunk a lot of wine and was in no mood to let this Englishman stop him dealing with a woman who had publicly insulted him.

  He put his free hand on Black’s shoulder and pushed him away, and only the roll of the ship saved the Englishman from the table behind him. ‘Keep outa this,’ the Cypriot warned hoarsely.

  Conversation in the saloon stopped, all eyes on the two men while stewards hovered nearby. But even they did not see what Black did. In a quick movement he slipped between the Cypriot and the girl and the next moment Costa let go his hold, staggered back and clapped a hand to his arm, grimacing with pain. Recovering, he moved forward and squared up to Black just as a voice from the saloon door shouted, ‘Quit that, Tino!’ The big man dropped his arms, looking like a dog called to heel. Kyriakou pushed into the small group, jaw out-thrust, and glowered from Manuela to Black to Tino.

  The girl said, ‘He tried to get fresh, Kirry. I slapped his face. Then he wanted to hit me.’

  Kyriakou turned on Tino. ‘You goddam sonofabitch. Put one hand on that girl and I break you in leetle pieces. Understand?’

  The Cypriot shook his head. ‘I didn’t get fresh, boss. She got me wrong.’

  ‘Like hell she got you wrong,’ Kyriakou’s eyes dilated. ‘You’re drunk. Get to hell out of it.’ He pointed imperiously at the door.

  Tino Costa’s perspiring face was agitated. Kyriakou had cracked the whip, and, befuddled though he was, Tino knew he had to obey. Shaking his head, muttering, he lumbered out of the saloon. At an adjoining table a thin man with dark glasses and a christ-beard got up and followed.

  Manuela looked at Charles Black and then away. ‘Thank you,’ she said, her breath coming in small gasps. ‘You stopped him. He’s crazy.’ Black liked her soft foreign accent, the inflections of Caribbean Spanish with North American undertones. Somehow the way she said them, expressed more than the words she used.

  He hitched his shoulders. ‘It was nothing.’

  But he was thinking that it might have been if Kyriakou hadn’t turned up. The Cypriot wasn’t all that drunk. It would have been a brawl by any standards. He didn’t really doubt his ability to deal with Tino, but these things couldn’t be done neatly among the tables and chairs of a swaying dining-saloon.

  Kyriakou turned off his rage like a tap, and became in an instant all smiles and geniality. ‘Fine, fine, old chap,’ he beamed, rubbing his hands and looking round to see who was in the audience. ‘So you protect my leetle Manuela. Ah. Very nice. I am so much grateful.’

  ‘I’m not your Manuela,’ said the girl. ‘And I wish you’d keep your friend Costa on a leash.’

  The Greek’s eyes flickered but he laughed as he took Black’s arm. ‘Ah. She make leetle joke, hey? Come along. Join us for a dreenk. We soon forget Tino’s nonsense. He take too much vodka. Make him angry.’

  Black hesitated, was about to refuse, when he remembered the dingy cabin. He wasn’t tired enough for that. Besides these two might have some information, however little, that could help him. The girl saw his hesitation. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘We would like you to.’

  So he accepted, saying that he would join them when he’d settled his account with the chief steward.

  After that he went across. Kyriakou had unbuttoned his coat and was sitting back smoking a cigar, shirt buttons straining across the round of his stomach.

  ‘Aha! Sit down Mister …? Forgeev me. I forget.’

  ‘Charles Black,’ said the Englishman.

  Kyriakou’s white teeth flashed under the black moustache. ‘Of course, of course. The art critic. Yes?’

  Black nodded and sat down. Kyriakou beckoned to a waiter. Black ordered a coñac. Manuela wouldn’t drink, and the Greek ordered an Oso.

  ‘You know Manuela Valez?’ he asked, knowing perfectly well that Black didn’t.

  Black smiled at her. ‘Hallo,’ he said.

  ‘Hi,’ she replied and her dark eyes seemed to be trying to read his mind.

  The Greek was preoccupied, and Black and the girl did most of the talking. The tables emptied and the stewards hovered, until Kyriakou lifted himself out of his thoughts and sa
id: ‘What say we go to the bar?’

  Black was enjoying himself. Manuela Valez was not the person he had imagined her to be. She was intelligent and sympathetic. Most of the time they discussed Ibiza and he was amused by her gossip about the Ibizencan painters and writers, and though he’d not gleaned anything new he wasn’t anxious to face the disenchanting cabin. It was not long after ten, so he said, ‘Yes. Good idea.’

  For the next hour or so they sat at the bar. She didn’t drink, but somehow they laughed a lot, and Black wasn’t sorry when on two occasions Kyriakou left them for one reason or another.

  It was close to midnight when the party broke up, and by then they were all on first name terms. Black looked at Manuela. ‘See you to-morrow.’

  ‘Surely,’ she said, and he wondered if she meant it and found to his concern that he hoped she did.

  His last thought before going to sleep was to regret the fracas in the dining-saloon. It had been stupid and undignified, and it had made him conspicuous.

  Chapter Four

  Soon after daybreak the ferry steamer passed Tagomago Island and started down the coast of Ibiza. Wind and sea had dropped and the sound of the bow-wave reflecting back from the calm surface of the water was like rustling paper.

  Black went up on deck as they passed Santa Eulalia. It was the cold of early morning and he kept moving to warm his body, his mind occupied with what lay ahead. At first he had the deck to himself but soon other passengers appeared, among them Kyriakou and Tino Costa who went by absorbed in conversation. Kyriakou gave him a preoccupied smile and waved, but the Cypriot looked away. After that, though he hesitated to admit it, Black was looking for the girl and that this should be so annoyed him. He regretted the party of the night before. If he’d refused the Greek’s invitation she would have remained no more than a name and a face. It would have been better that way, he thought, but his eyes continued to search.

  The sun rose as the ship rounded Isla Grossa and headed in between the Botafoc lighthouse and the breakwater running out from La Bomba. He looked across the harbour to the waterfront where the buildings of Ibiza crowded upon each other, rising until they reached the walls of the old town. There they halted, to emerge again on the terraces of D’Alt Vila, the white of tall Moorish houses emphasising the browns and terra cottas of buildings of medieval formality. Dominating them, tall and ecclesiastical, the cathedral of Santa Maria seemed to proclaim the truth that man cannot live by bread alone. The jumble of architecture with its Moorish, Carthaginian, Gothic, Castilian, Ibizencan reminiscences, was like pages torn at random from a history book. He tried to picture the pageantry, the splendour, the savagery, the battles fought beneath the citadel walls, the Moorish raids to rape and pillage, and his thoughts became sombre—man had not changed: the obscenities of Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Theresienstadt—worse probably than anything in Ibiza’s long history—the brutality of Vietnam. Was there no end to it? Was the only lesson of history that nothing was learnt from it?

  Manuela’s voice broke into his thoughts. ‘It is beautiful, is it not?’ She pointed across the water.

  ‘Hallo. Yes. It is.’ He felt an inner excitement he would have liked to repudiate, and fought it by concentrating on what she’d said. Beautiful. But beautiful is not a good word, he thought. The harbour this morning with the town above it bathed in early morning sunlight, the sky opalescent, the whole thing looking like an illustration from Hans Andersen, requires something more definitive. Just as she does. One can say Manuela is beautiful but it does not describe her. What does? Idiom? Fabulous, for example? No. Overworked superlatives lose their meaning. So what?

  She saw him smile. ‘Why do you smile?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said.

  ‘You smile for nothing?’

  ‘Sometimes. When I feel good.’

  ‘Have you seen them?’ she asked.

  ‘Kyriakou and Costa?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They were on deck a few minutes ago. They went down aft.’

  She touched his arm. ‘I am grateful to you for last night.’

  ‘Forget it.’

  ‘You have made an enemy.’ She said it gravely.

  ‘Tino?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Forget him, too,’ he said.

  ‘For me that is not possible.’

  He thought he knew why.

  She looked uncertain. ‘I think I must go to find them.’

  ‘They’ll find you.’ He knew he couldn’t stop himself saying it. ‘Hold on for a minute.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Sure of it. How’s your friend Benny?’

  ‘Oh, still very sick, poor chap. They say he will rest for a while before going ashore.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘A business friend of Kyriakou’s,’ she said casually. ‘From Beirut.’

  The telegraph bells rang and the ship’s engines stopped. The bow swung in towards the cross berth and a motorboat with a one man crew chugged off towing a hawser. On the quay a longshoreman threw a heaving line. The man in the motorboat caught it and secured it to the eye of the hawser, and the longshoreman hauled it up and slipped it over a bollard.

  As the steamer warped in, her passengers exchanged shouted greetings with those who had come to meet them; there were waves and grimaces, gestures of pleasure, of embarrassed recognition, while the distance between ship and shore was still too great for conversation.

  Manuela and Black leant on the rail watching the upturned faces, the small unfolding drama of arrival.

  ‘Anyone meeting you?’ Why, he thought, do I feel this girl’s proximity so acutely?

  ‘No. And you?’

  He shook his head. ‘How do you get to where you’re going?’

  ‘It is not far. Kyriakou will take me.’ She looked along the deck as if expecting him.

  ‘I see,’ said Black. He’d forgotten that tie up. The night before she’d said to the Greek, ‘I’m not your Manuela.’ With surprise he acknowledged that it pleased him to remember that. While he was thinking about it, a voice inside him said, snap out of it, man, remember what you’re here for. He stretched his arms and stifled a yawn. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘So long. Be seeing you.’

  As he walked away he knew that his abrupt change of manner would be inexplicable and she would be hurt. Just as well, he thought, wondering how a certain synthesis of voice and manner, of face and figure, could affect a man’s judgment. And for this girl. A pseudo abstract painter, a Puerto Rican drop-out, tied up in some way with Kyriakou who was said to be in the drug racket. She was probably a junkie, maybe a pusher, and—he shied away from the thought but came back to it—maybe the Greek’s mistress. Christ, he thought, I must be going round the bend.

  Down in the cabin he collected his suitcase and raincoat and went up on deck. Stevedores were running the gangway across into the hull where water-tight doors had opened to receive it. He walked to the after end of the boat-deck and looked down at the sailors taking lashings off the cars brought from Barcelona.

  Kyriakou was there with Tino. They were fussing round the Greek’s powder-blue Buick which dwarfed the small Continental and British cars around it.

  There was a smell of tarred rope, of fishing nets, of oil fuel and old drains, and the noise of steam winches, of men shouting, of cars and trucks revving on the quays, the barking of a dog and, above it all, the shrill cry of seabirds fighting for offal.

  Black looked up towards D’Alt Vila to see if he could identify his room. He found the El Corsario and then, below it, he thought he could make out the Massa house, and high up in it the window of his own room. Maria Massa, his landlady, would be there, misshapen by work and poverty, industrious, honest, proud. She would be swabbing the floor, the terra-cotta tiles glistening with moisture, the rooms smelling of old age and stale cooking. She would be singing sad little Spanish folk songs about work and love and childbirth and death.

  He went down a companion ladder and joined the stream of passengers
making for the gangway. Once ashore, he set off along the quay carrying the suitcase and raincoat. It was not far to D’Alt Vila and he felt good. The sun was warm and the smell of coffee and freshly baked bread from the cafés made him hungry. He passed the Plaza Marino Riquer, the Bar Balear, Les Caracoles and went into Can Garroves. The tables were full so he stood at the counter and ordered coffee and ensaimadas. While he waited a couple left a table in the window, and he went over and put his suitcase and raincoat on it. When he returned with the coffee and ensaimadas a woman was sitting at the table. Her back was to him but he knew it was Manuela.

  For a moment he thought of going back to the counter, but she turned and saw him and it was too late. He said, ‘Hallo,’ and sat down.

  Her ‘Hi,’ was subdued and the way she looked at him he knew she was thinking of his earlier abruptness.

  He stirred the coffee vigorously. ‘Smells good.’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘Aren’t you having anything?’ he said.

  ‘The waiter has not come.’

  He took a mouth of ensaimada. ‘He’s busy. What d’you want?’

  ‘Just coffee,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry. I can wait.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ll’ get it.’

  When he came back she thanked him and for a moment they sat in silence. Then he said, ‘Waiting for Kyriakou?’

  She nodded. ‘You don’t like him?’ It was more a statement than a question. He took another mouthful of ensaimada and when he’d dealt with that, and the crumbs, he said, ‘I haven’t really thought about it.’

  A small procession came down the road from the town led by a priest with a crucifix. He was followed by acolytes carrying candles. Behind them about twenty men straggled in an untidy line. The procession passed the Can Garroves and turned right, going on in the direction of the ferry steamer. To Black there was a picturesque solemnity about the cortège, a pious, infinitely patient futility.