She had flown from Sydney to Brisbane and then hitched lifts up to within a few miles of the beach. That much I got out of her when I went into the wardroom for a quick bite of food before going on watch. But that was all. Holtz was there, and Shelvankar, both of them treating her very formally, and beneath the formality I sensed a mood of caution as though she were something to be handled with extreme care. Shelvankar, in particular. He was unusually silent, his eyes every now and then glancing at her furtively. And she herself was not at all communicative, sitting there quite still as though bracing herself for the moment when her brother would come in.
The steward brought me my coffee and then went along the alleyway to give Holland a shake. It was just past noon and time for me to relieve Luke. I excused myself and took my coffee along to the bridge. The course was due north, visibility good and the sea calm, a long shallow swell coming in from the south. We were already clear of the continental shelf, no reading now on the echo-sounder and no sign of any land. I took a sun sight and was pleased when my calculations coincided almost exactly with our DR position. There was little for me to do then, and the watch passed slowly.
Any moment I expected Holland to come in and ask me why the hell I had gone behind his back and sent that message to his sister. Maybe she dissuaded him, but nobody came on the bridge during the whole of the afternoon watch, and when he relieved me at 16.00, he never mentioned it. He didn’t even refer to her presence on board. He was tight-lipped and very tense, the lines on his forehead deep creases, and he had been drinking. I could smell the whisky on his breath. ‘Have some tea, then get your head down,’ he said tersely. ‘You’re on again at twenty hundred hours.’
‘What about McAvoy?’ I asked.
‘No.’ And when I suggested he had looked sober enough to stand a watch, he almost shouted at me. ‘I tell you, no.’
The door to McAvoy’s cabin was open as I went down the alleyway to the wardroom. He was standing there, a glass in his hand, staring at his bunk, which had an open suitcase on it and a pile of clothes. An empty drawer lay upside down at his feet. He turned slowly, sensing my presence in the doorway. ‘You’re out of luck.’ He smiled at me slyly. ‘She’s having my cabin tonight.’ He waved the glass at me. ‘Thought you’d cleaned me out, didn’t you?’ The smile broadened to a grin, but behind the grin he looked old and tired. ‘Care to join me in a drink? It’s here somewhere.’ He looked vaguely round for the bottle. ‘Well, say something, can’t you?’ His voice was suddenly petulant. ‘Bloody amateur doing my job.’
‘It’s your own fault,’ I murmured.
‘My own fault, you say.’ He nodded slowly. ‘Aye. Maybe it is.’ He looked down at the glass still clutched in his bony hand and smiled. But it was only a drawing back of the lips from yellowed teeth. There was no humour in the smile. ‘I haven’t the guts, you see, to make an end of it. Not alone. I’ve tried, but I canna do it. So …’ He lifted the glass to his lips, swallowing quickly. ‘You’re lucky. No dark Celtic streak in you.’
He stood there staring at me, and I didn’t know what to say. But there were things I wanted to ask him, and in his fuddled state I thought perhaps it was as good a moment as any. ‘You knew Colonel Holland very well, I believe.’ His bloodshot eyes were suddenly wary and hostile. ‘Miss Holland said you were his best skipper.’
‘Aye. He wouldn’t let Perenna sail with anyone but me.’ His voice was firmer, a touch of pride.
‘Would you tell me something then? As I understand it, Colonel Holland took a canoe and sailed off into the Pacific. Why?’
I thought at first he wasn’t going to answer. He was glaring at me angrily. Then, as though it were being dragged out of him, his voice quivering, he said, ‘It was the custom. When you’re too old … to lead and fight … it’s the way the old Polynesian navigators used to go when they’d come to the end of their lives. God damn it! It’s better than dying in bed, to sail away, to the horizon, going on and on until in the end you meet your Maker, still proud, still active, sailing the way you’ve always sailed.’ And he added, ‘He loved the sea. He had courage. He was the finest man … ’ He jerked back the words, turning away, tears in his eyes. ‘Blast you!’
‘I’m sorry,’ I murmured. ‘But what I need to know is why he suddenly decided his time had come. Was he ill?’
‘No.’ He was staring down at the empty glass in his hand.
‘Then what decided him?’
There was a long silence. Then he raised his hand and smashed the glass on the floor. ‘I told you,’ he shouted, turning on me. ‘When a man’s too old to fight any more … he was eighty-three.’ He was glaring at me. ‘You – you’re in the prime of life. You’re hard, callous – you think the world’s at your feet; if you want anything, it’s there and you grab it. But you wait. You just wait. Wait till you’re old and tired and can’t face youngsters. Can’t fight the world any more. Then you’ll understand. An old bull … he was like an old bull … too proud to go under … too old to fight.’
‘To fight what?’ I asked.
But he had turned away, surveying the cabin. ‘I have to clear up here,’ he murmured. ‘Perenna won’t like it if it isn’t tidy.’
I hesitated, but he was already kneeling on the floor, picking up the pieces of broken glass with trembling fingers. I left him then and went to my cabin, lying on my bunk and trying to visualise the world towards which the monotonous throb of the ship’s engines was steadily driving me, the world that Colonel Holland had been too old to fight. Across the alleyway I could hear sounds of movement and Perenna’s voice.
The cabin door opposite me was closed when I went along to the wardroom for the evening meal. She didn’t appear, nor did her brother. Luke had taken the last Dog watch, and I relieved him at 20.00. The sky had clouded over and beyond the lights of the ship all was darkness. The watch passed slowly. I wasn’t accustomed to a helmsman who had no English, and I couldn’t even take star sights to pass the time.
I had just entered up the log for 22.00 and was working out the DR position on the chart when I became conscious of somebody else in the wheelhouse. Perenna was standing on the starboard side, staring straight ahead at the reflection of herself in the glass of the porthole. She was dressed in jeans and an open-necked shirt, the same clothes I think she had been wearing when she had first opened the door to me on that sunny summer morning back in England. She turned her head as I crossed towards her. ‘Mind if I share your watch for a bit?’
‘Of course not.’ She was no more than a shadow in the darkened wheelhouse, and though I couldn’t see her features clearly, I was conscious of a withdrawn mood. ‘How did it go?’
‘Oh, all right. At least he didn’t throw me off the ship.’ She had turned back to the porthole. ‘It’s very dark tonight. Do you think there are sharks out there? In the islands the crew used to catch sharks. For sport, not to eat. They’d tie their tails together and push them back into the sea. Sprit-sailing, they called it.’ She went on talking like that for a time, about nothing that touched either of us, treading cautiously as though unwilling to destroy the quiet peace of the night with the questions that were in her mind. ‘Where are we now?’
I took her over to the chart table and showed her, conscious of the effort she was making to behave normally, not to show her impatience at the slow progress towards Buka. ‘Another six hours and we should pick up the light on the north-east edge of Saumarez Reef.’
‘Is that named after the admiral who served with Nelson? His descendants live in Suffolk.’
‘How do you know about Admiral Saumarez?’ I asked.
She shrugged. ‘At Aldeburgh I had a lot of time for reading, especially at night. I got books out of the library, sea books mainly. I think I take after my grandfather. He started in the City of London, the family shipbroking business, but his real interest was the sea. Jona’s the same. It’s in the blood.’ She paused then, and there was a long silence. ‘I’m sorry you don’t know Tim,’ she said suddenly. �
�He’s different, very different.’ Silence again. ‘Has he told you anything about this voyage? The cargo, I mean, and where he’s delivering it.’
‘No.’
She nodded. ‘I can’t get anything out of him either.’ All this time she’d been staring down at the chart. Now, suddenly, she turned to me. ‘Those trucks. While we were waiting on the track leading down to the beach, I had a look in the back. They were full of crates. Do you know what’s in them?’
‘Outboard engines.’
‘Are you certain?’
‘It’s on the manifest.’
She nodded. ‘That’s what Jona said.’
‘And you don’t believe him?’
She was silent for a moment. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what to believe.’ And then in a whisper, speaking half to herself: ‘Japanese outboards. It makes sense. It’s the sort of equipment that would sell well in the islands …’
‘Well then?’
‘It’s the secrecy I don’t understand. And those drivers. I don’t know what sort of men go in for trucking in Australia, but they didn’t seem like ordinary truck drivers to me. And the back-up vehicle to take them home wasn’t a ute or anything ordinary like a Holden. It was an English Jaguar.’
‘Did you find out anything about them?’
‘No. They weren’t the sort of men you ask about their backgrounds. I did ask Nobby, the one who drove me on board, where his home was, and all he said was, “You want my telephone number, too?”’ And then after a long pause: ‘There’s only one way to find out what’s in those crates.’ And when I reminded her they were Customs-sealed, she smiled. ‘It wouldn’t be the first piece of cargo that got dropped and fell open by accident.’
I didn’t say anything, and after a moment she asked about the watches. ‘It’s just you and Jona then?’
‘During the hours of darkness, yes.’
‘So we either do it now or just before dawn.’
I told her it was out of the question, that the cargo he carried was his own affair, and anyway, I was his guest on board. She stared at me. ‘I’ve a right to know. And so have you.’ I thought she was about to press me further, but then with a quick goodnight she was gone.
There was less than an hour of the watch to go, and I spent it pacing up and down, my mind going over and over what he had said that first evening when I had come on board in Darling Harbour, remembering how scared he had been, his conviction that I had been sent by somebody. Who? And why had he been scared, so scared that he had set out to drink himself into a stupor?
Midnight came and went. I entered up the log, then went to his cabin to wake him. But he wasn’t asleep. He was sitting there, a glazed look in his eyes, a glass of whisky beside him. His face looked pale, almost haggard, beads of sweat on his forehead. He lifted his arm, a slow, deliberate movement, and peered at his watch. ‘Thirteen minutes after midnight.’ I could see him struggling to pull himself together. ‘You should have called me before.’
‘No hurry,’ I told him and went back to the wheelhouse.
It was about five minutes before he came in. He had had a wash and seemed more or less himself. I gave him the course and was turning to go when he said, ‘Has Perenna been talking to you?’
‘She was here for a while.’
‘What did she say?’
‘Nothing very much; she talked about the sea, about the schooners she used to sail in.’
He was staring at me, his eyes unblinking, holding himself very carefully. ‘Anything else?’
I hesitated. I was on watch again in less than four hours, and I wanted to get my head down. But then I thought, to hell with it, the moment was probably as good as any to get the truth out of him, now, when he was still mentally exhausted by his sister’s suspicions. ‘She was asking me about those two trucks,’ I said.
He turned away from me then, to the high chair that was still in the wheelhouse, relic of the ship’s Service life. ‘God in Heaven!’ He slammed his hand down on the wooden back of it. ‘Why did she have to come now? If she’d done what I told her, stayed in Perth … ’ I thought he was about to reproach me for sending that cable, but instead, he asked me in a very quiet voice, ‘What did you tell her?’
‘That the crates contained outboard engines.’
He nodded. ‘Did she believe you?’
‘No.’
‘And you?’ He turned suddenly and faced me. ‘You think I’m smuggling something, don’t you?’
I shrugged. ‘It’s none of my business. You made that perfectly clear.’
‘Well, understand this. I don’t know what’s in those crates any more than you do. They may be outboards. They could equally be full of cigarettes, or whisky. It’s nothing to do with me. I’m being paid to put them ashore on Buka Island. If she wants to know what’s in them, she’ll have to ask Hans. He fixed it. It’s his responsibility.’
‘What if it’s drugs?’
He shook his head firmly. ‘Hans wouldn’t ship drugs.’
‘Stolen silver then, something like that?’ In Sydney the papers had been full of a wave of silver thefts by armed raiders. ‘It’s your ship that’s delivering them to Buka, and if the police find out, start an investigation …’
‘They won’t. Buka is a long way from the centre of the Civil Administration at Arawa.’
‘And there’s no Customs?’
‘No. Not where I’m going to put those trucks ashore.’
Again I was remembering that first meeting with him, and now that same driven look. ‘Why did you ask if I was going to Bougainville to stir up trouble?’ I said it quietly, not wishing to push him too far.
‘Did I?’ He was staring at me, shaking his head. ‘I don’t remember.’
‘When I came on board that first time.’
‘I wasn’t myself. I was very tired.’
‘You were worried about something.’
‘Yes, I remember now. You said I was scared.’ His voice had suddenly risen, his face flushed, his eyes angry. ‘You’d no right to say that. I was worried about the ship, about my ability to stay awake for five nights. It’s not so bad this way, but coming south, it’s a long haul to the two reefs we’ll be threading our way through in a few hours’ time. Even so, there’s the Louisiade Archipelago. There aren’t any lights on the Louisiades. Yes, I was scared if you like. I didn’t want to lose my ship the way Carlos Holland did.’
He hadn’t answered my question, but I didn’t feel this was the moment to ask him about the sullenness of the Buka element on board. ‘We’ll talk about it tomorrow,’ I said. ‘But if I were in command of this ship, I’d certainly want to know what was in those crates. If it’s drugs—’
‘It’s not drugs,’ he said quickly. ‘Hans would never handle drugs.’
‘On moral grounds?’
He didn’t answer for a moment, standing there, thinking it out. Finally he said, ‘I don’t think he’d necessarily see it that way. He’s a businessman. It’s just that there’d be no profit in it. There’s no demand for drugs in the islands.’
‘But he could be shipping the crates on – South East Asia, Singapore and no questions, even if the contents had been stolen.’
He shook his head, frowning, and that muscle moving on his cheek.
‘Well, if I were you, I’d check.’
I turned to go then, but he stopped me. ‘I’ve told the coxs’n nobody is to go on the tank deck without my permission. You understand? That includes you, and Perenna.’
It was so utterly illogical that I was on the point of telling him it didn’t make sense, one minute convincing himself that the crates were no more than innocent contraband, the next giving orders to ensure that he couldn’t be faced with the hard evidence of their contents. But seeing him standing there, gripping the back of the high chair, so tense that his hands were shaking, I thought better of it. ‘See you at o-four-hundred,’ I said.
He didn’t seem to hear me, his head turned to the porthole facing for’ard, his eyes w
ide, and I realised he was staring at those trucks, their tops just visible above the cab roofs of the Haulpaks. I didn’t bother about a warming drink. I went straight to my bunk, and was asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow.
Dawn was beginning to break when I woke. He hadn’t called me at 04.00, and when I went into the wheelhouse, he was at the chart table. He nodded to me. ‘Just managed to get a bearing on the Saumarez light while it was still dark enough.’ His face looked pale and drawn, but he seemed pleased, and he was quite relaxed now. He was a man who thrived on navigation, his mind totally absorbed in the necessity of picking up that light. ‘Had to rely on dead reckoning. No star sights. Thick cloud all night.’ The course hadn’t changed. ‘I’ll send Luke up to keep you company as soon as he’s fed.’
I have never liked the dawn watch. There is a timelessness about it, daylight spreading but the day not yet come, the world in limbo, everything a little unreal. I went out on to the bridge wing and climbed the ladder to the upper bridge, letting the wind blow the sleep out of me. It had freshened. Away to starboard the clouds were greying. A glimmer of whitecaps showed in the dark blur of the sea, and a light drizzle touched my face, clinging to my sweater like dew on a cobweb. Once I thought I caught a glimpse of a light away to port, but the drab dawn was strengthening all the time, and I couldn’t be sure. For’ard I could just see the trucks, dim, canvas-covered shapes.
I thought of all the times I had been at sea, sometimes wet and cold, sometimes frightened, but never before with any doubts about the purpose of the voyage or my own involvement in it. And now, standing in the boxed-in area of the open bridge, watching the coming of that reluctant dawn, I knew she was right. Somehow Holland had to be persuaded to check that cargo, and if he wouldn’t do it himself, then we’d have to do it. Cigarettes or liquor was one thing, but I wasn’t going to be party to the delivery of stolen goods, drugs, any of the things the police might investigate.
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