Liner

by James Barlow

  ‘There’s been a complaint about you,’ the staff captain continued. ‘Lady named Mrs. Pauline Triffett. She says that here on the bridge, on duty, you made certain suggestions to her, offered coarse remarks, pinched her backside. She says you were drunk and shouldn’t have been in charge of the Areopagus at all.’

  Tomazos asked with rage, ‘Who the hell is Mrs. Pauline Triffett?’

  ‘Oh, come now, Nikolaos. That won’t do.’

  ‘Describer her.’

  The staff captain did so, and suggested, ‘Not a young lady you’d fail to notice.’

  ‘She came with the bridge visitors?’

  ‘You’re dragging this out, Nikolaos. Of course she did.’

  ‘So they will tell you I made no coarse remarks.’

  ‘She says after they’d gone.’

  ‘No one asked her to linger. Yannopoulos will tell you that I went straight to him when the visitors had left. Then, when I returned here, this female was leaning where you are.’

  ‘That sounds fair enough and can be confirmed by Yannopoulos,’ agreed the staff captain. ‘If she was waiting, I accept the reversal of intentions . . . She’s a very lively-looking young lady. Why didn’t you take up her offer?’

  ‘I have troubles of my own.’

  ‘So has she, it seems. They tell me she’s tried to commit suicide a while back –’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Would it have made any difference?’

  ‘No. I am not the answer to her problems. She is.’

  ‘How about the drinking?’

  ‘I would dispute that I was intoxicated.’

  The staff captain eyed Tomazos cynically, but made no comment.

  ‘Nothing if Yannopoulos confirms what you say . . . I’ll put her in irons if she starts whoring round among the crew.’

  Tomazos was a little irritated to find that this woman turned up at a party given by the second officer.

  The discord between Tom Mollon and himself had not lasted more than a few hours. Mollon understood all too clearly the cause of Tomazos’ misery, and their previous amicable relationship had been resumed. Tomazos went along to his cabin because Mollon was not the man to raise an eyebrow at the amount of drinking. He could put away a fair amount of beer himself.

  Dr. Dempsey was there, and the American girl. Debbie, who exuded a very slight air of disapproval. Sister Eleni and a nurse sat on a rug. Kristina sat near to Tomazos, but there were long silences between them. Eleftheriadis, the deputy purser, was there, a suave young man who was learning to become as impenetrable as Demetropoulos.

  They were talking when the young woman, Mrs. Pauline Triffett knocked and walked into the cabin.

  Dempsey protested at once, ‘Oh, God, no! Can’t you go and be ill somewhere else?’

  She responded buoyantly, ‘Not ill, Daniel, darling. I’m in rude health.’

  Dempsey asked frankly, ‘Then what the devil are you doing here?’

  ‘Didn’t you ask -?’

  ‘No, I did not,’ roared Dempsey.

  Mollon, who knew nothing about Pauline, but could identify a pretty girl instantly, said, ‘I’m having a party. Care to join it?’

  ‘A beautiful idea,’ Pauline accepted.

  She was introduced. Sister Eleni was decidedly cool; Dempsey said frankly, ‘You’d talk your way into anything.’ When she faced Tomazos, Pauline was a little shaken; or was this, Tomazos wondered, affected? Kristina, behind him, didn’t even acknowledge the woman.

  ‘I’m sorry about all that impeachment earlier,’ Pauline said meekly and without a qualm. ‘I didn’t realize you really had problems.’

  Her apology was so unabashed and her personality so outrageous he forgave her at once. He was too good-natured a man to bear resentment.

  He grinned for the first time in more than a week and said, ‘Think nothing of it. Have a drink? At least we have that in common! What sort of trip are you having?’

  Their relationship was reversed in that immediate adjustment which is one of the twentieth century’s few improvements in personal and social behaviour.

  It seemed to Tomazos that the staff captain had been talking in confidence to this young woman. He might even have given her a hint of this party. She was certainly dressed for it.

  ‘What does the captain really do?’ she asked.

  Tomazos laughed.

  ‘God only knows. I’ve never dared to ask him!’

  Dempsey claimed, ‘He’s getting liverish. He doesn’t get enough exercise.’

  A little later, a little drunker, Tomazos asked Pauline, ‘And what did you do to Mr. Triffett?’

  ‘Oh, he got fed up with me and went off with an intellectual girl. I was left holding the baby – two of them. How about the first officer’s wife?’

  ‘She took a fancy to someone else.’

  ‘She was a fool.’

  ‘Thank you. You’ve made my day!’

  Tomazos was aware that Kristina had been listening intently to this. He pinched the back of her neck and informed Mrs. Triffett, ‘Here’s a young lady who’s marrying an airline tomorrow. Or is it the day after!’

  ‘I am not divorcing the ship to do so, Nikolaos. You know that. I don’t really want to leave her.’

  Pauline asked, ‘Then why do so?’

  Kristina said, ‘It’s a good thing to leave a ship when you’re happy. If you wait until you’re unhappy . . . ’

  ‘That’s too profound for me,’ admitted Tomazos.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Kristina quietly.

  Two hours after this Pauline called to Dempsey: ‘Come on! Time to take me home!’

  ‘Take yourself home,’ bellowed Dempsey. ‘I’m not your blasted keeper!’

  He looked rather worried, Tomazos thought. He went to his own cabin, at ease for the first time since leaving Adelaide.

  Night after night he had been building up a mental file, examining it, staying awake. For he had remembered who ‘Peter’ was, and to recall where he had previously seen the man was to squirm, to feel a fool, to be hot in humiliation and the certainty that he should have been violent that day, damaged to man, kicked him in the genitals. For Peter had sold him his sailing boat, and Elaine had bought two of her sports cars from the distributors of which Peter was sales director. Tomazos recalled having found the man in the house once before, at a normal hour, and that Elaine had been very enthusiastic about ‘the demonstration’ – too enthusiastic, Tomazos now recognized.

  But tonight it didn’t hurt so much. The ridiculous encounters with Mrs. Triffett had reduced Elaine to an equal absurdity. Perhaps, thought Tomazos with his more customary charity, Pauline had been more accurate on the bridge than she had known. Possibly he was a sensual man who was a mild hypocrite – who pretended not to be.

  He slept soundly, and no one mocked him; Elaine’s body did not writhe, greasy with exertion, in another’s grasp . . .

  The standby shook him awake before four o’clock in the morning and in minutes he was on the bridge.

  The Areopagus was about eighty miles south of Singapore. On one horizon lightning flickered thirty miles away. Ahead a light flashed eight or nine miles distant.

  It was ferociously hot, like steam. The sea was completely calm.

  There was heavy traffic in these approaches to Singapore and many islands and headlands. But Tomazos had no need to reduce speed yet. Soon he would have to do so and to exercise extreme caution because even the most prudent manoeuvring might not be possible.

  He switched both radar sets on, the one at short range and the other on the maximum scale. Nevertheless, he did not consult them often, for he wished to maintain night vision.

  Radar on the open sea with plenty of sea room, and where traffic was less dens
e, allowed high speed. The busiest shipping routes in the world had plenty of sea room; ships were not crossing each other at a distance of a few hundred yards. But there was a point where persistence in speed was taking a definite risk, and Tomazos, torn between delayed schedule and safety, would soon have to choose one. Excuses after a collision were useless to dead passengers. A ship’s log which showed that the officer of the watch had varied his speed might prejudice an inquiry in his favour, but not his own conscience.

  In the approaches to a large port risk was unavoidable and was at its greatest where all routes converged, or the direct route between two points which had to be passed through, and when looking for a pilot vessel or anchorage. Here, Tomazos was close to land now and again, and he saw the lights of several ships.

  In clear weather he watched the approaching lights of several vessels. Entering thick mist be turned to the radar to observe the next oncoming ship. Radar could not in fact tell him the aspect of the vessel, but it told him the range. From a combination of time, bearing and this range he worked out its speed and course and deemed that no risk applied unless it altered course violently. He watched the relative speed closely, for not only was it needed for him to resolve the triangle of velocities, but it was a fundamental consideration should manoeuvring action become necessary.

  In such waters communication by radio between ships might have seemed a good idea, but would have been frustrated by the congestion of traffic on the wave length, although some ships of the same company on cross-channel routes did employ bridge radio-telephones. Tomazos was aware that, even so, two had collided. It was the same old business of contradiction – the need for speed and that for safety, and the in-built optimism in every sailor: it happens to the other fellow, not to me.

  He was, for instance, rounding a headland now. It was safe to do so at a distance of three miles, and ships approached from different directions at an angle of thirty degrees. The routes of different ships were spaced out from three miles to about eleven. Most of them ‘cut the corner’ and the concentration was even greater than that which mathematics indicated in the smaller area. Tomazos kept eleven miles out. If any difficulty arose, not only was the concentration of traffic less but he had the open sea available . . .

  Soon, free of mist, he took the Areopagus through a narrow channel where ships did not exercise the discipline of those which followed the ‘traffic lanes’ down the parallel shores of say, the Strait of Gibraltar. Here, there was heavy traffic and considerable danger even from vessels travelling in the same direction. There was no limit to the width of the channel followed by traffic in each direction, no ‘neutral zone,’ and consequently the risk was quite high.

  Dawn came with a great blast of pink light. There were a surprising number of small vessels, sampans and junks in view. A two-masted junk was passing close by, sailing on the wind. She was a beautiful, awkward shape. Her grass-mat sails were stiffened horizontally across their entire width with flexible split-bamboo battens. She was rigged so simply that one man could have taken in her sails in seconds if a storm had whipped up quickly.

  Sailors were hosing down the Areopagus’ deck and there were a few passengers up and about early. They waved to the junk.

  The liner approached Singapore with her signal flags flying where they could be read without obstruction from masts or stays.

  The flags were made of bunting, which was a strong woollen cloth woven in Yorkshire. The Areopagus was wearing her merchant flag at the stern. At the mainmast she was wearing the house flag of the Greco-Australian Line and hoisted at the fore was the courtesy flag, in this case that of Singapore. She also wore the four flags which were her identification as a ship, and a signal requesting a pilot. Tomazos did not feel she would be in port long enough to merit being ceremonially dressed. That would have to wait until she reached Hong Kong. Then she would be ‘dressed all over’ – with masthead flags as well as ensigns and jacks, and with decorative lines of signalling flags from bow and stern to the mastheads and also ‘rainbow fashion’ between the mastheads, and from the mastheads to the deck. At night there would be lines of electric light bulbs . . .

  They had to wait an hour for a pilot while hundreds of passengers, having finished their breakfasts, lined the rails and noted with caustic commentary the comings and goings of small boats.

  But at last the Areopagus inched her way through channels and for the fifty-third time Tomazos scrutinized the City of Lions, which had a population of eight thousand people in each square mile and saw the arrivals and departures of thirty thousand million tons of shipping each year.

  The Somerset Maughan landscape of green cricket pitch, gray stone harbour buildings and red-tiled bungalows was still here, but it was broken and dominated now by the smog-encrusted ‘highrise’ hotels, office blocks, department stores and apartments.

  Anchored in the roadsteads were merchant ships from all over the world, and around the harbour scuttled overladen Chinese tongkangs ferrying goods from ships to shore, Indonesian barter boats, Chinese sailing junks, Singapore River bumboats with magic painted eyes as big as plates on their bows to ward off evil spirits. From the short drifted the pungent smells of spices and rotten fish.

  Captain Vafiadis and other officers were now on the bridge, and half a dozen Singaporean officials, in good humour.

  And now Kristina rushed on.

  ‘Ah!’ greeted Tomazos. ‘I’m so glad you came because it will be hours –’

  ‘There is some mail for you! You see, I did say there would be!’

  Tomazos was disturbed; his pulse quickened as he saw that the postmark of one letter was Adelaide.

  Kristina made no move.

  Tomazos muttered, ‘Excuse me’ and read the letter from Adelaide.

  It was not from Elaine. He did not know who it was from. There was no address or signature. The first words were ‘Somebody ought to tell you that your wife is whoring round . . . ’ The words swam a little before his examination. ‘Disgraceful . . . I know you Greeks don’t believe in morals . . . not a thought for the children . . . ’

  ‘Something wrong?’ Kristina asked absurdly.

  ‘Something unexpected. Read it.’

  She did so, unabashed.

  ‘My God! How sordid! How mean!’

  ‘It is a sordid business.’

  ‘Not your half of it, Nikolaos, I am sure.’

  ‘Ah, well, I am feeling a little better. It is so horrible it can but be a nightmare. Listen! I am glad you came, although I see Captain Vafiadis will have some rude remarks for me later! Because I shall be fiddling about here for hours, and I did want indeed to wish you well.’

  ‘That is kind of you.’

  ‘It is an interesting city. You’ll be happy.’

  ‘I hope you will be, Nikolaos.’

  ‘I have plenty to do, that is the thing.’

  ‘Look me up next time you come here, won’t you?’

  ‘Oh, I shall do that all right, Kristina! Will you ever come back to Greece?’

  ‘I just don’t know at present. When I get lonely . . . ’

  ‘That won’t be for a very long time.’

  ‘I must leave you now, Nikolaos. I see the car from the airline.’

  ‘I am sorry. I wish you weren’t going. We shall miss you.’

  ‘We?’ she pleaded.

  ‘Me.’

  They shook hands. It felt insufficient to him after knowing her for three years. He touched her under the chin.

  ‘Cheer up. You look a little daunted.’

  She was as awkward as he was, and said, ‘Nothing of the sort.’

  She turned and left. He called out, ‘Goodbye, Kristina,’ but she didn’t seem to hear.

  A few moments later he went to the wing of the bridge in a curious anxiety, and happened to see her at the fo
ot of the gangway, with cases. She turned her face and looked up. Tomazos felt oddly guilty and he saw in alarm that she was crying.

  He was filled with compassion and at last understood.

  He waved, but the airline’s automobile had blocked his view, and now it drove away and she had gone.

  Chapter Sixteen

  ‘Dear friend,’ Debbie Vertigan wrote. ‘Here I am writing to you when I am on my way to Hong Kong and hoping to see you within a week. I wonder if my letter will reach Hong Kong before I do?’

  It was too hot and she could obtain no reality in the words. The writing room of the Areopagus was merely space filled in at a junction of Metaxas Deck, and consisted of a few tables and chairs. All the chairs had been occupied and one lady was even energetic enough to type. Debbie’s table was by a porthole and the sun burned her with ferocious retardation. Her neck was moist with sweat, and her dress stuck to her waist and to the leather of the chair. It was impossible to concentrate on anything.

  She looked at her watch. It was ten o’clock in the morning. But she was reluctant to move now. She was too self-conscious to sit in a deck chair to pass time away; it would have been an admission that she was with nothing to do. Sometimes she sat for nearly an hour in the Aegean Lounge when it was fairly empty, looking at a book but never turning a page. But finally some dull conceited youth would come along and try to persuade her that he was what was missing in her life.

  Ten o’clock and boiling hot so that she was in a torpor. Ah, well, she reflected, I’d sooner be here than there, in school – Alfie telling us the obvious. He’s so laborious. Now if Daniel was a teacher he’d be terrific! He’s so alive compared with other people. Outrageous, but never vulgar. A small smile altered her face as she daydreamed. I like the smell of tobacco. Not so keen on the whiskey. Why does a doctor drink whiskey? He must know it’s harmful. I wish they didn’t all smoke.

  I feel so silly coughing. I feel absurd, anyway, inhibited, a child, I still rank as a child, even he identifies me so and just doesn’t interpret the message even if he intercepts it. He thinks it amusing if I drink a sherry and pull a face doing so. What do I have to do to shock him into understanding? Nothing disconcerts him. I suppose doctors get like that. I ought to behave as they did when we crossed the Line – throw sausages at him, pour tomato sauce over his hair, hurl great wet lumps of liver about. Or maybe I should shock him with words: ‘You’re an amusing bastard, and you monopolize my hopes dreams and wishful thinking. So will you please do something about it? Kick me, pull my hair, smack me, kiss me, but stop circling around up there in that empyrean orbit and satisfy my adolescent silly penchant for middle-aged doctors of Irish extraction . . . ’