Back in the wheelhouse I found Luke poring over the chart. He looked up and smiled, a flash of white teeth in a broad black face. ‘Not very good morning, Mr Sling’by. I think it blow soon.’ He nodded to the barograph. ‘Pressure already falling.’ And this was the Coral Sea. When Shelvankar came in with the latest forecast, it was for strong to gale force winds, sou’sou’east veering sou’westerly, rain heavy at times with moderate to poor visibility.
The sea was already getting up by the time I went off watch, the movement uncomfortable and the fiddles fixed to the wardroom table. The others had finished breakfast, Holland sitting beside his sister, smoking a cigarette. ‘Any sign of the Frederick Reef on the radar?’
I shook my head. ‘The trace is getting blurred by the break of the waves, and the rain is quite heavy now.’
He pushed the bell for the steward and got to his feet. ‘When you’ve finished, take a look round the ship and see that everything’s secure, will you? Particularly the Haulpak fastenings. They may need tightening. I’ll tell Teopas to go with you.’ He poured himself another cup of coffee and took it with him to the wheelhouse.
The steward came in with my bacon and eggs. This time there was no fat. ‘I hope you like it,’ Perenna said. ‘I’ve had him grill the bacon instead of frying it.’ She smiled. ‘Getting him to cook vegetables properly may be more difficult.’ She seemed unaffected by the movement, face fresh and the freckles very noticeable with no make-up.
‘We’ll be hove-to before the day is out,’ Holtz said gloomily. ‘It’s not so good down below when she’s hove-to.’
I didn’t think it would be much better up top. I could remember how I’d felt last time I’d been hove-to in one of these ships. We had been off South Uist then, and I’d been sick as hell. I hoped I wasn’t going to be sick this time. An LCT is very different from a sailing boat. It never conforms to the wave pattern.
We were already slamming heavily by the time I started my tour of inspection. Down on the tank deck I found the coxs’n already tightening up on the securing chains of the first Haulpak. We were about a quarter of an hour checking the other three; then we came to the trucks, and I glanced up at the bridge. I could just see the top of the helmsman’s head, nobody else. ‘I’ll look after these,’ I told Teopas. ‘You check the bow doors and ramp.’ It meant he would have to go up to the catwalk and through past the workbench to the platform above the cross-members. As soon as he had vanished from sight, I unfastened the back of the starb’d truck. The movement up here in the bows was very violent, and as I clambered in with the bag of tools, the slam of the bows plunging into a breaking wave pitched me against the first of the crates. It took me a moment to recover myself, and then, as I was searching the bag for a cold chisel and hammer, my ankle was gripped. I turned to find Teopas staring up at me angrily. ‘Ol bilong mi pipal.’ He was shouting to make himself heard above the noise of the sea. ‘What you doing there?’
For a moment I considered trying to persuade him to help me, but the dangerously hostile look in his eye made me think better of it. ‘Just checking to see that the crates haven’t shifted.’ But he had seen the hammer in my hand, and he didn’t believe me.
‘You come down. Nobody go inside truck. Kepten’s orders.’
I jumped down, landing heavily on the deck beside him. ‘They seem okay,’ I said. ‘I told you to check the bow doors.’
He reached into the truck for the tools and then fastened the canvas back of it. ‘First we check the trucks. Then we check the doors, ugh? Together.’ The deep guttural voice was solid and unyielding, and I turned away, uncomfortably aware that this was a man of considerable authority in his own world.
‘Well, let’s get on with it.’ I felt I had lost face, and my voice sounded peevish. Perhaps it was the movement, the constant slamming. By the time we had finished I was suffering from nausea and a feeling of lassitude.
I got used to it, of course, but the constant plunging and twisting, the bracing of muscles against the staggering shock of breaking waves was very exhausting. There was no let-up in the tension, even when I was flat on my back in my bunk, and though we were never actually hove-to, I was conscious all the time that we were steaming close to the limit for an old vessel of this type.
The gale lasted a full two days, something I had never experienced during my National Service, and when the wind finally died, it left us wallowing in an uncomfortable swell, no slamming, but the movement equally trying. One thing I remembered afterwards – the appearance of McAvoy on the bridge. It was in the early hours of the second day. I was on watch, and he was suddenly there beside me. He didn’t say anything; he just stood there, his face very pale, his eyes staring wildly. He stood there for a long time, quite silent, staring into the black darkness out of which the brilliant phosphorescence of broken wave tops rushed at us. God knows what he saw out there, but something, some haunting product of his drunken imagination.
‘What is it?’ I asked, unable to stand it any longer. ‘What are you staring at?’
He turned then, facing me reluctantly, his features crumpled by the intensity of the emotions that gripped him. He mumbled something, gripping hold of my arm, but the sound of his voice was lost in the crash of a wave. The shock of it flung us against the front of the wheelhouse. Involuntarily I ducked as spray spattered the portholes like flung pebbles, and when I had recovered myself, he was gone, leaving me with the odd feeling that his presence there had been nothing more than a ghostly apparition. I was thinking about him all the rest of that watch, and it was during those black lonely hours that I began to understand the depth of the man’s attachment, the terrible burden he carried in his heart, living all the time in the past. I was certain that what he had seen out there was the corpse of an old man alone in a canoe.
I was on duty every four hours during the gale, sharing the watches with Holland. He wouldn’t trust Luke to know when to heave to. In the end I was too tired to keep anything down, living on coffee and falling into my bunk dead to the world the instant my watch ended. Sometimes Luke was in the wheelhouse with me, but he didn’t talk much, and I was only vaguely conscious of his presence. And Perenna. She’d stand there for hours on end during the day, staring dumbly ahead as though searching the grey line of the dipping horizon for the imagined outline of Bougainville. But everything was so chaotic, a vague blur of sleeplessness and tumbling waves, that I don’t remember whether we said anything to each other.
And when it was finally over, it took time for body and mind to adjust, muscles still tensing for the slams that no longer came, eyes bleared and heavy with sleeplessness. We were all of us exhausted. That afternoon the sun came out and I was able to get a fix. Within an hour the clouds were lying in a cottonwool pile to the north of us and we were steaming in a bright blue world, blue sea, blue sky, the surface of the water oily calm, and it was suddenly hot.
Perenna was in the wheelhouse then, looking fresh and bronzed in shorts and a sleeveless shirt. She came over to the chart table, leaned her bare arms on it and watched as I entered up our position. It put us at least 20 miles to the west of our dead reckoning and 30 miles ahead of it. We were getting very close to the Louisiade Archipelago now. She reached for the dividers and measured off the distance to Bougainville. ‘About three hundred miles to go,’ I said.
She nodded. ‘So this is our last night at sea.’
‘Not quite. There’ll be another night as we work our way up the coast to Buka.’ I had forgotten all about those damned cases. ‘Better leave it till then.’ I pushed my hand up over my eyes and through my hair. I was too tired to care.
‘No. We must do it tonight.’ Even whispering, her voice was implacably determined. ‘Tonight, while everybody’s still exhausted.’ And she added urgently, ‘I must know.’
‘Tonight,’ I said, ‘all that matters is getting safely round the end of the Louisiades.’
‘He’s been worrying about that all morning.’ She ran the point of the dividers along the 300
-mile outline of the archipelago. ‘Do you think that’s where my Great-uncle Carlos went down?’ She was tapping gently with the dividers, leaning forward and staring at the chart, and for no apparent reason I was suddenly reminded of McAvoy. Perhaps it was the Holland Trader he had seen out there in the luminous break of the waves, and not Colonel Holland at all. ‘Tonight,’ she said. ‘It must be tonight.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ I said. ‘Leave it till we’re off the coast of Bougainville. Tonight we’ve more immediate problems.’
She put her hand on my arm, gripping it urgently. ‘Please. This is our best chance. Jona comes off watch at midnight. You’ll be alone then.’
‘He won’t leave the bridge, not until we’re past the Louisiades.’
‘And that will be when?’
I pointed to the eastern tip of the archipelago. ‘Rossel Island is nearly three thousand feet high. We should pick that up on radar within the next four hours.’ I glanced at the bulkhead clock. ‘That means we’ll clear Cape Deliverance around o-two-hundred.’
‘And once we’re past the Cape it’s open sea again.’ She looked up from the chart. ‘Then he’ll go to his bunk till he relieves you again at four.’
‘Probably.’
‘That means you’ll have two hours alone here.’ She straightened up. ‘All right then. I’ll check with you at o-two-hundred, and if there’s nobody about … ’ She turned to go, but then she said, her voice a little cold and distant, ‘No need for you to be involved. I should be able to manage it on my own.’
Cape Deliverance was broad on the beam when I came into the wheelhouse at midnight, the radar trace showing our distance off 9 miles. Holland had already altered course to 350°. The tension had eased out of him, and he stayed chatting to me until we were clear of the Cape and into the open waters of the Solomon Sea. Then he went below, leaving me with nothing to do except admire the brightness of the stars. The port bridge wing door was open, a warm breeze ruffling the pages of the Admiralty Pilot.
I had just entered up the log for 02.00 when Perenna appeared, dressed in jeans and a dark top. ‘I’ve had a look round. Everybody’s asleep.’ Her voice was low, a little strained.
‘Have you got a torch?’
‘Yes, and tools. They’re in my cabin.’
I hesitated, but only for a moment. The wire fastenings might be difficult for her, and now that I was rested the urge to know what was in those crates had returned. ‘Tell the helmsman I’m going to check the vehicles. I’ll be gone about ten minutes, quarter of an hour.’ He was a Buka Islander, and she relayed the message in Pidgin; then I followed her to her cabin, picked up the tools, and we climbed down into the tank deck. It was very quiet down there, the sound of the sea rushing past the ship’s sides muted. Somewhere a chain was rattling, and the black bulks of the Haulpaks, outlined against the stars, seemed to sway with the movement of the ship. There was nobody anywhere for’ard of the bridge housing to challenge us. I chose the starb’d truck, knowing the canvas back was easy to unfasten. Once inside I shone the torch on the first of the crates and set to work with hammer and chisel.
It took longer than I had expected. The top of the crate was very securely fastened, long 4-inch nails, and the steel walls of the tank deck echoed to the sound of my hammering, the reverberations magnified in the still night. I felt nervous, remembering the way Teopas had hauled me out of the back of the truck two days before, so that I found myself glancing up every now and then, half expecting that deep voice to challenge me out of the darkness. Before I could prise open the wooden top, the two securing wires had to be severed. There were no wire cutters in the toolbag she had borrowed from the engine-room. I had to use a hacksaw, and it took time. ‘Hurry,’ she whispered as the first wire parted with a twang. ‘The helmsman comes from the same village as Teopas.’
Her face was very close to mine, sweat shining on her freckles in the torchlight as she levered at the top of the case, using the long cold chisel. ‘Is that important?’ I asked.
She pushed her hair away from her eyes. ‘They’re in a funny mood. You must have noticed it.’ And she added in a fierce undertone, ‘I don’t trust the Buka people when they’re like that.’
With her hair pushed back I could see the scar in the beam of the torch. ‘Is Teopas responsible for their mood?’
‘He’s their leader, yes.’ She straightened up for a moment, easing her back. ‘There’s something brewing. I don’t know what. Something …’
The second wire parted. I took the hammer and chisel from her, and in a moment the nails were pulling out, the whole top of the case lifting. I put all my weight on the chisel, and my end came loose, enabling me to get my hands under it and force it back, the nails at the other end tearing out of the wood. Whatever it was in the case it wasn’t bottles, and it wasn’t anything in cartons. The thick brown covering paper yielded to the touch. She tore at it with her hands, ripping it clear. ‘Oh, my God!’ She stood frozen, shocked into immobility, staring at the contents. ‘Guns!’
They were neatly chocked into wooden supports, half a dozen machine pistols in the top layer, the plastic grips gleaming, the dull steel coated with grease.
She looked up at me. ‘Do you think he knew? He must have known.’
‘He probably guessed.’
‘All these cases. And another truckful of them.’ She was peering into the back. ‘And there’ll be ammunition, too.’ She turned to me. ‘Who’s getting them? Where are they being sent?’
‘No idea.’ I started folding the lid back. ‘If you’re in the armaments business, I don’t imagine you ask yourself questions like that.’
‘He’ll have to ditch them.’ Her voice was trembling. ‘I won’t be a party to it. Automatic weapons like that. They’ll land up in the hands of terrorists – innocent people getting killed. God! What a fool! No wonder he didn’t want me here. What a bloody stupid mindless fool to get mixed up in a thing like this!’ And before I could stop her, she had jumped to the deck and disappeared among the black shapes of the Haulpaks.
Chapter Five
The small hours of a night watch are not the moment I would choose to face up to a decision involving moral principles. There was nothing to occupy my mind, the course set, no navigation required … time passing as I paced back and forth, wondering what the hell to do and conscious all the time that there were guns on board and a sullen crew – an explosive mixture.
Every now and then I glanced at the clock, the minutes dragging, wondering whether she would persuade her brother to get rid of them, expecting him to burst in on me at any moment. Suddenly the deck lights came on, and there were men down there at the for’ard end of the tank deck, dark figures in the shadows gathered round the back of that starb’d truck. The coxs’n’s head appeared, coming up the ladder from below and storming into the wheelhouse. ‘Yu. Yu opim em kes?’ He was naked to the waist, the muscles rippling under the velvet skin of his bare arms as he stood glaring at me. ‘Why yu do it? Cargo bilong Buka pipal. I tell yu before, bilong Buka Co’prative. Where I find Kepten Holland, in his cabin?’
I nodded, too surprised at the man’s anger, his proprietorial sense of outrage, to say anything.
‘Okay, I tokim. An’ yu’ – he was still glaring at me – ‘yu stay out of cargo deck. Nobody go on cargo deck – nobody, yu savvy, only Buka men.’ And he went through into the alleyway. I heard the door of Holland’s cabin thrown open, the sound of voices, then silence, only the murmur of the engines, the rattle of the cups on the ledge below the porthole.
A few minutes later Holland came in. ‘I’d like a word with you. Not here, in my cabin.’ He was wearing sandals and cotton trousers, nothing else, his face pale and that muscle twitching along the line of his jaw. I followed him into his cabin, the ceiling light blinding. There was a bottle and glasses on the desk, and Perenna was there, sitting withdrawn and very still, the tension in her filling the cabin. ‘I thought I’d better tell you. There’s nothing I can do about it.’ He
had seated himself on his bunk, his body slumped. ‘By morning it’ll be all over the ship. Everybody will know we’re carrying guns.’ He reached for his glass as though to a lifeline. ‘Perenna wants me to ditch them. But I can’t. I can’t do that.’ And he added, ‘She thought I should tell you.’
I looked at her, expecting her to say something, but she remained silent, drawing on a cigarette in quick, short puffs. I hadn’t seen her smoking before. ‘What’s their destination?’ I asked.
‘Queen Carola Harbour in the north-west of Buka. The Co-operative takes them on from there.’
‘Yes, but who gets them in the end?’
‘How the hell do I know?’
I glanced at Perenna again, but still she didn’t say anything, her eyes avoiding mine, as she drew nervously on her cigarette, inhaling deeply. ‘So you don’t care where they’re going.’ I had turned back to her brother. ‘Or even what they’ll be used for?’
He shook his head as though to push that thought aside. ‘There were fuel bills,’ he muttered. ‘I told you. And the yard – the engine overhaul cost more than I thought.’ And then, still trying to justify himself: ‘Hans has always co-operated with the indigenes.’ He was looking across at his sister again. ‘He’s very close to them, so close that sometimes—’ He shrugged. ‘Well, you know his background. He’s almost one of them.’
‘He came to see Tim.’ Her voice sounded strained, a little wild. ‘I wrote you about it. At the end of May.’
‘Of course he came to see you. He was in England, and the accident happened on a coaster he’d chartered, so naturally—’
‘Don’t you ever read my letters? Tim was getting better, slowly. He was winning. And then suddenly there was no will left. He just seemed to give up. Hans was with him for the better part of an hour, and it was after that—’
‘For God’s sake, Perenna! You’re letting your imagination run away with you.’
‘Am I? Don’t you see what Hans is? A child of four hidden in thick forest under Mount Bei until the war was over, then brought up in Lemankoa by that man Sapuru. Red hair and a white skin, but underneath he’s Buka through and through. Grandpa saw that, why the hell can’t you?’
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