by Wilbur Smith
“Hambone,” I called him over. “Did you take anybody out to Dancer last night?”
“No, sit, Mister Harry.”
“Nobody at all?”
“Only your party. She left her watch in the cabin. I took her out to fetch it.”
“The lady?”
“Yes, the lady with the yellow hair.”
“What time, Hambone?”
“About nine o’clock - did I do wrong, Mister Harry?”
“No, it’s all right. just forget it.”
We buried Judith next day before noon. I managed to get the plot beside her mother and father for her. Angelo liked that. He said he did not want her to be lonely up there on the hill. Angelo was still half doped, and he was quiet and dreamy eyed at the graveside.
The next morning the three of us began salvage work on Dancer. We worked hard for ten days and we stripped her completely of anything that had a possible value - from the big-game fishing reels and the FN carbine to the twin bronze propellers. The hull and superstructure were so badly broken up as to be of no value.
At the end of that time Wave Dancer had become a memory only. I have had many women, and now they are just a pleasant thought when I hear a certain song or smell a particular perfume. Like them, already Dancer was beginning to recede into the past.
the tenth day I went up to see Fred Coker - and the moment I entered his office I knew there was something very wrong. He was shiny with nervous sweat, his eyes moved shiftily behind the glittering spectacles and his hands scampered about like frightened mice - running over his blotter or leaping up to adjust the knot of his necktie or smooth down the thin strands of hair on his polished cranium. He knew I’d come to talk insurance.
“Now don’t get excited please, Mister Harry,” he advised me.
Whenever people tell me that, I become very excited indeed.
“What is it, Coker? Come on! Come on!” I slammed one fist on the desk top, and he leapt in his chair so the goldrimmed spectacles slid down his nose.
“Mister Harry, please-“
“Come on! You miserable little grave worm—2 “Mister Harry - it’s about the premiums on Dancer.” I stared at him.
“You see - you have never made a claim before - it seemed such a waste to-” I found words. “You pocketed the premiums,” I whispered, my voice failing me suddenly. “You didn’t pay them over to the company.”
“You understand,” Fred Coker nodded. “I knew you’d understand.”
I tried to go over the desk to save time, but I tripped and fell-Fred Coker leapt from his chair, slipping through my outstretched groping fingers. He ran through the back door, slamming it behind him.
I ran straight through the door, tearing off the lock, and leaving it hanging on broken hinges.
Fred Coker ran-as though all the dark angels pursued him, which would have been better for him. I caught him at the big doors into the alley and lifted him by the throat, holding him with one hand, pressing his back against a pile of cheap pine coffins.
He had lost his spectacles, and he was weeping with fright, big slow tears welling out of the helpless shorts sighted eyes.
“You know I’m going to kill you I whispered, and he moaned, his feet dancing six inches above the floor.
I Pulled back my right fist and braced myself solidly on the balls of my feet. It would have taken his head off. I couldn’t do it - but I had to hit something. I drove my fist into the coffin beside his right ear. The panelling shattered, stove in along its full length. Fred Coker shrieked like an hysterical girl at a POP festival, and I let him drop. His legs could not hold him and he sank to the concrete floor.
I left him lying there moaning and blubbering with terror and I walked out into the street as near to bankrupt as I’d been in the last ten years.
Mister Harry transformed in a single stroke into Fletcher, wharf rat and land-bound bum. It was a classic case of reversion to type - before I reached the Lord Nelson I was thinking the same way I had ten years before. Already I was calculating the percentages, seeking the main chance once more.
Chubby and Angelo were the only customers in the public bar so early in the afternoon. I told them, and they were quiet. There wasn’t anything to say.
We drank the first one in silence, then I asked Chubby, “What will you do now?“and he shrugged “I’ve still got the old whaleboat– It was a twenty-footer, admiralty design, open-decked, but sea-kindly. “I’ll go for stump again, I reckon.” Stump were the big reef crayfish. There was good money in the frozen tails.
it was how Chubby had earned his bread before Dancer and I came to St. Mary’s.
“You’ll need new engines, those old Sea Gulls of yours are shot.”
We drank another pint, while I worked out my finances - what the hell, a couple of thousand dollars was not going to make much difference to me. “I’ll buy two new twenty horse Evinnides for the boat, Chubby,” I volunteered.
“Won’t let you do it, Harry.” He frowned indignantly, and shook his head. “I got enough saved up working for you,” and he was adamant.
“What about you, Angelo?” I asked.
“Guess I’ll go sell my soul on a Rawano contract.”
“No,” Chubby scowled at the thought. “I’ll need crew for the stump-boat.”
They were all settled then. I was relieved, for I felt responsible for them both. I was particularly glad that Chubby would be there to care for Angelo. The boy had taken Judith’s death very badly. He was quiet and withdrawn, no longer the flashing Romeo. I had kept him working hard on the salvage of Dancer, that alone seemed to have given him the time he needed to recover from the wound.
Nevertheless he began drinking hard now, chasing tots of cheap brandy with pints of bitter. This is the most destroying way to take in alcohol, short of drinking meths, that I know of.
Chubby and I took it nice and slow, lingering over our tankards, yet under our jocularity was a knowledge that we had reached a crossroads and from tomorrow we would no longer be travelling together. It gave the evening the fine poignancy of impending loss.
There was a South African trawler in harbour that night that had come in for bunkers and repairs. When at last Angelo passed out cold, Chubby and I began our singing. Six of the trawler’s beefy crew members voiced their disapproval in the most slanderous terms. chubby and I could not allow insults of that nature to pass unchallenged. We all went out to discuss it in the backyard.
It was a glorious discussion, and when Wally Andrews arrived with the riot squad he arrested all of us, even those who had fallen in the fray.
“My own flesh and blood, Chubby kept repeating as he and I staggered arm and arm into the cells. “He turned on me. My own sister’s son.” Wally was human enough to send one of his constables down to the Lord Nelson for Something to make our durance less vile. Chubby and I became very friendly with the trawlermen in the next cell, passing the bottle back and forth between the bars.
When we were released next morning, Wally Andrews declining to press charges, I drove out to Turtle Bay to begin closing up the shack. I made sure the crockery was clean, threw a few handfuls of mothballs in the cupboards and did not bother to lock the doors. There is no such thing as burglary on St. Mary’s.
For the last time I swam out beyond the reef, and for half an hour hoped that the dolphins might come. They did not and I swam back, showered and changed, picked up my old canvas and leather campaign bag from the bed and went out to where the pick-up was parked in the yard. I didn’t look back as I drove up through the palm plantation, but I made myself a promise that I’d be coming this way again.
I parked in the front lot of the hotel and lit a cheroot. When Marion finished her shift at noon she came out the front entrance and set off down the drive with her cheeky little bottom swinging under the mini skirt. I whistled and she saw me. She slipped into the passenger’s seat beside me.
“Mister Harry, I’m so sorry about your boat. We talked for a few minutes until I could ask
the question.
- “Miss. North, while she was staying at the hotel, did she make any phone calls or send a cable?”
“I don’t remember, Mister Harry, but I could check for you.
“Now?”
“Sure,” she agreed.
“one other thing, could you also check with Dicky if he got a shot of her?” Dicky was the roving hotel Photographer, it was a good chance that he had a print of Sherry North in his file.
Marion was gone for nearly three-quarters of an hour, but she returned with a triumphant smile.
“She sent a cable on. the night before she left-” Marion handed me a flimw copy. “You can keep this copy,” she told me as I read the message.
it was addressed to: “MANSON FLAT 5 CURZON STREE7 97 LONDON w. j and the message read: “CONTRACT SIGNED RETURNING HEATHROW BOAC FLIGHT 316 SATURDAY.“There was no signature.
“Dicky had to go through all his files - but he found one.” She handed me a six-by-four glossy print. It was of Sherry North reclining on a sun couch on the hotel terrace. She wore her bikini and sunglasses, but it was a good likeness.
“Thanks, Marion.” I gave her a five-pound note.
“Gee, Mister Harry,” she grinned at me as she tucked it into the front of her bra. “For that price you can take what you fancy.”
“I’ve got a plane to catch, love.” I kissed her on the little snub nose, and slapped her bottom as she climbed out of the cab.
Chubby and Angelo came out to the airport. Chubby was to take care of the pick-up for me. We were all subdued, and shook hands awkwardly at the departure gate. There wasn’t much to say, we had said it all the night before.
As the pistonengined aircraft took off for the mainland, I glimpsed the two of them standing together at the perimeter fence.
I stopped over three hours at Nairobi before catching the BOAC flight on to London. I did not sleep during the long night flight. It was many years since I had returned to my native land - and I was coming back now on a grim mission of vengeance. I wanted very much to talk to Sherry North.
When you are flat broke, that is the time to buy a new car and a hundred-guinea suit. Look brave prosperous, and people will believe you are.
I shaved and changed at the airport and instead of a Hillman I hired a Chrysler from the Hertz Depot at Heathrow, slung my bag in the boot and drove to the nearest Courage pub.
I had a double portion of ham and egg pie, washed down with a pint of Courage while I studied the road map. It was all so long ago that I was unsure of my directions. The lush and cultivated English countryside was too tame and green after Malaya and Africa, and the autumn sunshine was pale gold when I was used to a brighter fiercer sun - but it was a pleasant drive over the downs and into Brighton.
I parked the Chrysler on the promenade opposite the Grand Hotel and dived into the warren of The Lanes. They were filled with tourists even this late in the season.
Pavilion Arcade was the address I had read so long ago on Jimmy North’s underwater sledge, and it took me nearly an hour to find it. it was tucked away at the back of a cobbled yard, and most of the windows and doors were shuttered and closed.
“North’s Underwater World” had a ten-foot frontage on to the lane.
It was also closed, and a blind was drawn across the single window. I tried without success to peer round the edge of the blind, but the interior was darkened, so I hammered on the door. There was no sound from within, and I was about to turn away when I noticed a square piece of cardboard that had once been stuck on to the bottom of the window but had fallen to the floor inside. By twisting my head acrobatically, I could read the handwritten message which had fortunately fallen face up. Enquiries to Seaview, Downers Lane, Falmer, Sussex. I went back to the car and took the road map out of the glove compartment.
It began to rain as I pushed the Chrysler through narrow lanes.
The windscreen wipers flogged sullenly at the I spattering drops and I peered into the premature gloom of early evening.
Twice I lost my way but finally I pulled up outside a gate in a thick hedge. The sign nailed to the gate read: NORTH SEAVIEW, and I believed that it might be possible to look southwards on a clear day and see the Atlantic.
I drove down between hedges, and came into the paved yard of an old double-storeyed red-brick farmhouse, with oak beams set into the walls and green moss growing on the wood-shingle roof. There was a light burning downstairs.
I Parked the Chrysler and crossed the yard to the kitchen door, turning up my collar against the wind and rain. I beat on the door, and heard somebody moving around inside. The bolts were shot back and the top half of the stable door opened on a chain. A girl looked out at me.
I was not immediately impressed by her for she wore a baggy blue fisherman’s jersey and she was a tall girl with a swimmer’s shoulders. I thought her plain - in a striking manner.
Her brow was pale and broad, her nose was large but not bony or beaked, and below it her mouth was wide and friendly. She wore no make-up at all, so her lips were pale Pink and there was a peppering of fine freckles on her nose and cheeks.
Her hair was drawn back severely from her face into a thick braid behind her neck. Her hair was black, shimmering iridescent black in the lamplight, and her eyebrows were black also, black and boldly arched over eyes that seemed also to be black until the light caught them and I realized they were the same dark haunted blue as the Mozambique current when the noon sun strikes directly into it.
Despite the pallor of her skin, there was an aura of good and glowing health about her. The pale skin had a lustre and plasticity to it, a quality that was somehow luminous so that when you studied her closely - as I was now doing - it seemed that you could see down through the surface to the flush of clean blood rising warmly to her cheeks and neck. She touched the tendril of silky dark hair that escaped the braid and floated lightly on her temple. It was an appealing gesture, that betrayed her nervousness and belied the serene expression in the dark blue eyes.
Suddenly I realized that she was an unusually handsome woman, for, although she was only in her mid-twenties, I knew she was no longer girl - but full woman. There was a strength and maturity about her, a deep sense of calm that I found intriguing.
Usually the women I choose are more obvious, I do not like to tie up too much of my energy in the pursuit. This was something beyond my experience and for the first time in years I felt unsure of myself.
We had been staring at each other for many seconds, neither of us speaking or moving.
“You’re Harry Fletcher,” she said at last, and her voice was low and gently modulated, a cultivated and educated voice. I gaped at her.
“How the hell did you know that? I demanded.
“Come in.” She slipped the chain and opened the bottom of the stable door, and I obeyed. The kitchen was warm and welcoming and filled with the smell of good food cooking.
“How did you know my name?” I asked again.
“Your picture was in the newspaper - with Jimmy’s,” she explained.
We were silent again, once more studying each other.
She was taller even than I had thought at first, reaching to my shoulder, with long legs clad in dark blue pants and the tops thrust into black leather boots. Now I could see the narrow waist and the Promise of good breasts beneath the thick jersey.
At first I had thought her plain, ten seconds later I had reckoned her handsome, now I doubted I had ever seen a more beautiful woman. It took time for the full effect to sink in.
“You have me at a disadvantage,” I said at last. “I don’t know your name.”
“I’m Sherry North,” she answered, and I stared at her for a moment before I recovered from the shock. She was a very different person from the other Sherry North I had known.
“Did you know that there is a whole tribe of you? I asked at last.
“I don’t understand.” She frowned at me. Her eyes were enchantingly blue under the lowered lashes.
&nbs
p; “It’s a long story , , .
“I’m sorry.” For the first time she seemed to become aware that we were standing facing each other in the centre of the kitchen. “Won’t you sit down. Can I get you a beer?”
Sherry took a couple of cans of Carlsberg lager from the cupboard and sat opposite me across the kitchen table.
“You were going to tell me a long story.” She popped the tabs on the cans, and slid one across to me, then looked at me expectantly.
I began to tell her the carefully edited version of my experiences since Jimmy North arrived at St. Mary’s. She was very easy to talk to, like being with an old and interested friend. suddenly I wanted to tell her everything, the entire unblemished truth. It was important that from the very beginning it should be right, with no reservations.
She was a complete stranger, and yet I was placing trust in her beyond any person I had ever known. I told her everything exactly as it had happened.
She fed me after dark had fallen, a savoury casserole out of an earthenware pot which we ate with home-made bread and farm butter. I was still talking but no longer about the recent events on St. Mary’s, and she listened quietly. At last I had found another human being with whom I could talk without reserve.
I went back in my life, in a complete catharsis I told her of the early days, even of the dubious manner in which I had earned the money to buy Wave Dancer, and how my good resolutions since then had wavered.
It was after midnight when at last she said: “I can hardly believe all you’ve told me. You don’t look like that - you look so,” she seemed to search for the word, “wholesome.” But you could see it was not the word she wanted.
“I work hard at being that. But sometimes my halo falls over my eyes. You see, appearances are deceptive,” I said, and she nodded.
“Yes, they are,” and there was a. significance in the way she said it, a warning perhaps. “Why have you told me all this? It is not really very wise, you know.”
“it was just time that somebody knew about me, I suppose. Sorry, you were elected.” She smiled. “You can sleep in. Jimmy’s room tonight,” she said.