The Coffin Ship

by Peter Tonkin

  There was little conversation, however, until they reached the forecastle head. Then Richard said, “If they’re not here in twenty minutes or so, we’d better start back. If the storm closes down again and catches us out here in this condition, we’re dead.”

  Nobody had the energy to point out that if they went back without securing the tugs’ lines before the storm hit Prometheus again, then everyone aboard was as good as dead anyway.

  But as it turned out, they had no real wait at all. The tugs came scudding down from the north almost at once, exploding out of the storm wall and igniting huge halogen searchlights visible for miles.

  Time, of course, was relative, especially to the men on the forecastle head. One moment it seemed that the tugs were distant; the next they were all but alongside. One moment their great searchlights were mere beams shining up from the horizon like a distant antiaircraft battery; the next they were illuminating every nut and bolt nearby and making their faces like eyeless death masks carved in ice.

  Lines came aboard. Light lines caught, eventually, secured to the winches and pulled until the towing cables rose like serpents from the sea. And when the fat, strong hawsers writhed up onto the deck, they had to be secured. And so they were. It was impossible, but it was necessary. And so it was done.

  But how it was done, no one could ever clearly remember.

  There came a time when the lines were secure and the tugs, like tiny horses towing a huge barge, began to turn Prometheus’s head.

  A time when the men stumbled back up the catwalk and into the warm bridge with the outriders of the returning storm threatening to overwhelm them at each faltering, exhausted step.

  There was a time when McTavish returned to the Engine Room and Richard via the shack—where he referred laconic tug captains to the owner—to the bridge. When Salah and Kerem joined Ho and his men, beginning to tidy up.

  There came a time, now the storm had returned, when Richard and Robin stood side by side at the helm while intrepid shadows moved behind them, clearing the bridge and taking the stricken down to their bunks.

  There came a dream time when the storm was gone and men with broad South African accents teemed out of helicopters on the deck and took over the running of the ship, but still the captain and his third mate would not leave the helm; nor would the chief leave the Engine Room.

  There came a bright, winter-clear morning, brilliant after rain; and out of the heart of the morning came South Africa, and Durban where they could safely rest at last.

  —ATLANTIC—

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Sometimes, when conditions are right, off Cape Agulhas where Africa comes to its southernmost point forming a wedge between the oceans, there is a cliff of water. Ships going west must step down into the Atlantic. It is there because the warm Agulhas current, which sweeps constantly down the east coast, meets at this point the cold Benguela current, spawn of the perpetual West Wind Drift, which flows forever up the west coast to the equator.

  At 09.00 Cape time on August 17, ten days later, Prometheus crashed forward over the twenty-foot sheer drop, causing even the sure-footed Robin Heritage to stagger.

  Richard was seated behind her in the captain’s chair and, inevitably, now, he found himself watching her; what was it they said? devouring her with his eyes. She had her back to him, gazing out over Salah Malik’s shoulder as the Palestinian held the helm. He could see the merest ghost of her reflection in the window, just enough to guess at its expression: that tiny frown of concentration she habitually wore when wrestling with a problem. Her shoulders were squared, her hands clasped behind her. He watched the unconscious play of her long muscles as she rode the movements of the deck.

  How well he knew every inch of that supple back. Dreamily, he watched the shoulders move microscopically, hips readjust, buttocks and thighs tense and relax.

  He wondered what she was wearing under the starched, razor-creased, tropical kit. Probably the practical, almost unfeminine combination he had first seen while helping her back up the side after the wreck of the felucca. Certainly not the breathtaking confections she had favored in Durban.

  In spite of all he had said about observing the proprieties once they got back aboard, he was still hungry for her.

  The South Africans have a strained relationship with the huge ships that pass and repass their shores on the Cape run. Forbidden by OPEC embargo from obtaining the oil in their holds, they tend to see instead only the filth they leave behind. Sludge from illegally or carelessly cleaned tanks. Tar from oil dumped overboard by overladen ships in foul weather; slicks seeping from wrecks. It is oil in the only state they do not want it, for it decimates their fiercely protected coastal wildlife and puts at risk some of the most magnificent beaches in the world.

  Richard expected the authorities in Durban to be less than polite, therefore. But this could not have been further from the case. They treated the whole crew, but himself, Robin, and the chief in particular, with something between kindness and awe. It robbed him of any real moral force when he came into conflict with them.

  He dealt with—was dealt with by—a big, bluff, cheerful man called Jan van der Groot. Such men exist in any organization and are universally successful. Certainly Richard tried every tactic he could think of to enforce his will over the South African’s and got nowhere. But he was playing from a position of absolute weakness. And van der Groot—“call me Jan, man!”—concealed beneath his bearlike bonhomie a steely resolve which, given the circumstances, could not be overcome. And the area of their disagreement was so small, Richard was soon made to feel positively petty.

  Though when he talked it over with Robin he found she had run into the same wall for much the same reason, and van der Groot’s charm had impressed her not at all.

  As soon as they arrived in Durban, Prometheus was put into a specially prepared quarantine dock and everyone aboard was removed to the Addington Hospital overlooking the harbor for observation. Tests soon established virulent but relatively simple food poisoning; the suspect foodstuffs were destroyed and replaced. A thorough search of the ship at last revealed the final resting place of Hajji Hassan’s bloated corpse. It was removed, and a postmortem held as soon as the relevant officers and crew were well enough to attend. A verdict of accidental death was returned.

  As a gesture of respect for the strength of the officers above deck and below, especially that of the chief, the third mate, and the legendary captain, all of whom had remained at their posts, and technically in charge in spite of the distress signal, salvage claims were waived. A local harbor watch was put aboard, awaiting the return of the crew.

  In the Addington—and afterward—things were not quite so simple. The deckhands and stewards had a ward each; the officers had rooms. Everything possible was done for their comfort. The doctors and nurses were kindness itself. Patients responded, for the most part rapidly. Put in his room at dawn on the 7th, Richard was well enough to receive van der Groot on the evening of the 9th and to check himself out on the 10th.

  As soon as he was well enough to walk, he went around the others. First he checked on Robin, and he found her in better shape than he was himself, fuming from her first interview with van der Groot. Martyr, too, was on the mend, but some of the others were still in a bad way. Ben was in a coma—not dangerous, apparently, but not too healthy—being fed by a glucose drip. No one was allowed to disturb him. Rice, Napier, and John Higgins were almost as bad. A visit to the crew’s quarters, accompanied this time by the restless Robin, revealed almost the same story. Some were nearly well again; some were still quite ill.

  “About half our complement are well enough to go back aboard, Mr. van der Groot,” said Richard firmly on the 9th.

  “Call me Jan, man,” boomed van der Groot in answer, with a broad grin.

  “Quite. I’d like to get them back aboard as soon as possible, ah…Jan.”

  “Impossible, I’m afraid.” The South African lost none of his charm. “We had to put togeth
er a slightly unusual package under the circumstances. Immigration were not too happy about letting you all in, my people not too happy about leaving your kaffirs out in the harbor to die. We came to an agreement, therefore. They agreed to let you all in together: we agreed to see you all out together.”

  “And that means, precisely?”

  “What it says. Like any good crew, it’ll be ‘one for all and all for one.’” He saw Richard’s growing impatience and leaned forward to explain in detail. “As the crew get better, we take them out of hospital and put them in the Seaman’s Mission down by the docks. As the officers get better, they check out of the Addington and into the Edward Hotel. We have rooms reserved. When the last man is one-hundred-percent fit, we bundle up the whole lot of you and put you back aboard. All at once. Together. Not one at a time. Not in dribs and drabs. All at once. It’s what we agreed. It’s the way it has to be.”

  “And in the meantime?”

  “You get better. You check into the Edward. You have a couple of days’ holiday.”

  And that was that, bar the arguing. Except for the distant formalities of Hajji’s inquest, which seemed to be looking into the death of someone utterly unattached to their current, fairy-tale existence. The practicalities were taken care of without Richard being involved—for all that he tried to be, in every stage of everything that affected the welfare of his crew. The owner, without contacting his captain except via telex, arranged such payment as was necessary; provided funds at the Standard Bank of South Africa for all officers and crew; even for the third mate, though she had in dependent funding of her own.

  So, as each officer improved, he moved in Robin’s footsteps down the road to the Edward Hotel on Marine Drive, and into a suite in one of the great hotels. There were no complaints, of course, but Robin, Martyr, and Richard all looked at their surroundings with a great deal of suspicion. During the day, the three of them were together quite a lot; visiting the sick and convalescent, attending the inquest, doing a little sightseeing, wandering, apparently aimlessly, round the docks.

  In the evening, however, they split up. Martyr was a lonely man who preferred his own company, spending most of his evenings writing long letters that never seemed to be answered—as, indeed, he did aboard ship. As the younger officers came out of hospital so they entered into the swing of Durban nightlife, visiting the nightclubs, especially those with the most daring cabarets. Richard and Robin would have been thrown together by circumstances in any case, even had the chemistry not been so potently at work.

  Richard arrived at the Edward on the evening of the 10th, a mere twelve hours after Robin had done so. They moved, with the rest of the crew, back aboard Prometheus at 18.00 local time on the 14th. The hours in between were like a honeymoon for the two of them.

  There was no hesitation, no courtship. These were people who had known each other too long, knowing that in the other lay almost everything they had always wanted. Robin had loved Richard to the exclusion of almost all others for ten years. Richard saw in Robin everything that had attracted him so fiercely to Rowena, plus a certain indefinable extra. An extra made up of a heady combination: Robin’s own strong, open character; the fact that she shared all of his interests and preoccupations; the fact that, subconsciously, subliminally, like a child with a beloved parent, she mimicked him in so many ways. The combination would have been irresistible, even had he felt the slightest inclination to resist.

  It was a shock to him to see her at dinner on the 10th, dressed as a woman. The sheer magnificence of her left him breathless, choking like some callow boy on his first date. He had seen her under a bewildering breadth of circumstances during the last weeks; seen her fighting him for the position of third mate with vivid passion, seen her turn humiliation into victory over Neptune, seen her throw away her life to help what she thought might be a child in danger. Seen her refuse to give in to the greatest extremes of physical discomfort when all around were helpless. But he had never, until she swept like a princess into the restaurant where he and Martyr awaited her, never seen her as a woman.

  They were dining in the hotel on that first night, the three of them together for the first and last time. They had put aside their vexation with the cheerfully intransigent van der Groot, put aside their worries about the others—and some of their suspicions about what was really going on here—and were simply dizzy with the joy of being alive; as would be any group of people who had survived what they had survived.

  They were waiting for her in the cocktail lounge outside the Mandarin Room, with their table booked for 8.30. Both of them were in Number One whites, having had no chance to arrange civilian clothing, and individually were quite distinguished enough to be turning a few heads themselves as they sat at their ease at a table near the door.

  The first they knew of her arrival was a sort of communal intake of breath. A rustle of movement as every head in the place turned. Richard glanced up with the rest and was suddenly unable to inhale.

  She stood in the doorway, framed to perfection, accepting the reaction she was causing as of right—as Rowena had—but waiting there not for effect but because she could not see the others in the gloom. She had had twelve hours longer out of hospital than they, and had used some of that time to the greatest possible effect.

  The golden curls had been cropped close to her head, giving the effect of a glistening Juliet cap. Around the long neck, the theme of gold was taken up by a modest chain. Tanned gold too were the naked shoulders and back, the sheer slopes of the breast. And there it stopped, contained in black silk. The dress was by Chanel. It was tulip topped and backless, flowing out from a tight waist in a controlled cascade to the gathers midcalf. It was, like the necklace, simple as only the greatest art can be.

  A perfect dress perfectly filled. The raw silk and the gold flesh complemented each other perfectly. Seemed to have been created for each other and probably had been. Richard stood, fighting the most ridiculous desire to applaud, and she saw him. Had she been breathtaking before, now she became incandescent, seeming to light the room as she crossed to him. He stood tall and awaited her, feeling for the first time in many years the cynosure of all eyes. Knowing from experience without a trace of vanity—that couples all around the room were looking at each other and almost nodding. Of course the golden girl was with the dashing, distinguished officer. Such creatures belonged together.

  It was a feeling more powerful than the strongest drug.

  “Hooks and eyes. At the back. Oh! Quickly!”

  He fumbled, clumsy with desire.

  They were in each others’ arms at last, in her room simply because it was the nearest, too impatient even to switch on the light. He slid his thumbs between the hot tight silk and the smooth skin, closing the sides of the dress together, twisting them back apart. And her hands were busy too, on his simpler, more accessible buttons.

  The slick silk and the crisp cotton slid away miraculously at the same time and each partner paused, reveling in the sensation of skin on skin; of softness crushed against firmness; of heat building upon heat. They kissed again, crushing each other, terrified to slacken their grip in case the beloved slipped away. Yet slacken their grip they did at last, dominated by more than childish fears.

  And later, when they lay in a tangle of bedsheets, she curled against him, his hands lazily exploring her back, learning her by feel in the dark like a blind man, he asked at long last, “Robin, what is all this about? Really?”

  “I want you. I want you back. That’s why I came out to Prometheus.”

  “Only your idea?”

  She should have been shocked at the question, he knew: enraged at the implication. But he asked, somehow safe in the knowledge of her.

  And she answered. “He’s too proud. And anyway…”

  They paused. There was no suspicion between them, no bitterness left. During the last few hours they had also laid Rowena, in the way she would have appreciated most, to rest. It was time for the simple truth, and they b
oth knew it.

  And the truth did not seem so very dreadful, after all.

  “Oh, Richard! I’m so very worried about him. He won’t tell me—and I can’t find out for sure—but I think there’s something dreadfully wrong. He hasn’t been the same since Rowena died. He seems weaker, somehow; hesitant. But it’s more than that now. He’s been seeing his doctor, usually when I’m at sea and he thinks I won’t find out. He’s had a whole battery of tests and I think he was afraid that he had a brain tumor.”

  “And has he?”

  “No! Not as far as I can find out. But there is something. And he still does the strangest things…”

  “Like buying the oil?”

  “Like waiting until I took the first holiday in years and then buying the oil. I was halfway to the Seychelles when I found out. It was quite by accident. I’d forgotten to tell my secretary I wanted complete rest and he telexed me the news. He had my itinerary—he’d booked all my flights—and the message caught up with me on Bahrain. I came south instead of heading on east. Came onto Prometheus instead of onto the beach.”