by James Barlow
Halfway through the hot tiresome afternoon a steward whispered in Tomazos’ ear: ‘There’s a lady to see you, sir.’
Tomazos was startled.
‘Where?’
‘On the Parade Deck, starboard side forward.’
He thought it must be Elaine, and he hurried to see her, his mind in minor tumult. And it was she, standing by the rail. Typically she was looking the other way, not bothered as some relations obviously were; Elaine never forgot to be poised. Only once . . .
She turned as he was very near, as if she had some special instinct reserved for beautiful women. Other women might turn too soon and have time to lose their expression, to allow it to freeze or sag. Not Elaine. She was perfectly dressed, as if Guam had been a place she’d been about to visit anyway.
‘Nikolaos!’ she greeted.
She allowed herself to be kissed somewhere below the chin but above the throat.
‘I didn’t expect to see you, Elaine,’ Tomazos admitted frankly.
‘I was very frightened for you. It was on the TV news and the radio –’
‘Did you fly here?’
‘Of course. They said the Areopagus was making for Guam. The kids were fascinated. They never had any doubt at all, of course.’
‘How are they?’
‘Oh, they’re all right.’
‘And you, Elaine?’
‘I’m fine; just the same as ever.’
But this, of course, was not so.
‘I’m glad,’ he said.
‘Will they promote you?’
He laughed. ‘I hardly think so! There will be inquiries for years!’
‘But you brought her safely back –’
‘I was not looking for reward. It could have been done by any officer. We all contributed.‘
‘I can see where the fire burned the funnel and superstructure.’
‘Yes, that was alarming, although the fire in the hairdressing salon was perhaps more dangerous.’
‘What will you do now?’
‘I don’t know. Eat and catch up with sleep, I hope!’
‘I’m staying at the Palm Leaves,’ Elaine told him.
She was perplexed when he did not respond. She felt she had conceded more than enough. She refused to be abject because she’d never been abject. Nor apologetic. The gesture of flying thousands of miles was in itself, surely, sufficient apology?
She had no subtlety at all. She had come and that was enough. There was no penitence or remorse. Only a very beautiful woman could expect to get away with such arrogance.
It was touching and it might have been adequate, but he had been close enough to death to know that it wasn’t. Charm, he knew, soon deteriorated to hypocrisy. He had suffered the misery of her unfaithfulness and had recovered. She had been lost in the storm. He wished her no harm, bit she was now a stranger, albeit attractive.
His eyes looked over the rail and he saw something which startled him.
‘Excuse me,’ he said.
Elaine blinked in surprise, stiffened in shock and coloured with anger. But he had gone before she could manifest her resentment, and she could see him; pushing past people and going down the gangway in urgency. She had come on impulse, in pride, and now regretted it.
She saw that he was on the dockside, talking to somebody else. Christ, how rude! She’d come all that way and he considered the ridiculous ship more important than –
Then she saw that it was a young woman, a Greek in some absurd uniform . . .
Tomazos greeted with pleasure, ‘Hello, Kristina. Nice of you to come. I am glad to see you,’ he acknowledged outright.
Kristina blushed, which was absurd, and said in haste, ‘That pleases me.’ She moved her feet about and her hands fidgeted with an airline bag in agitation. ‘How are you?’ she asked.
‘Sober,’ he told her, smiling. ‘I’ve given up drinking. The posture did not suit me . . . How’s the airline?’
‘Very understanding,’ Kristina told him. She paused and then asked, ‘Will the Areopagus ever sail again?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Tomazos said. ‘The company is thinking of acquiring a South African liner which has come on the market. It has stabilizers and bow-thrusts, everything.’
‘Do you think,’ Kristina began to inquire, ‘that there’s any chance -?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Tomazos said with certainty. ‘I’m sure there is.’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Tornetta looked cautiously out of the porthole. He was in a luxurious cabin on Delphi Deck. The Brother had insisted. There had been some talk of whether Squibb should come, too, but Tornetta had conveyed it, very delicately, that Squibb was not only a bore. He was not a gentleman. Alas, he was a coward. He, Tornetta, hinted at disgraceful cowardice and an ugly scene in the cabin, and the Brother, who had heard rumours of such things, nodded sagely. He was a do-gooder, but inevitably full of curiosity. He had to have facts in order to do good. Tornetta did not like supplying facts. However, Mr. Brook – which was the man’s name – spent much of the three days on do-good committees with others. They sat at tables in the lounge and tirelessly noted passengers’ complaints, injuries and financial losses. He consulted with Demetropoulos, but got little satisfaction out of the chief purser, whose English had suddenly deteriorated.
Mr. Brook retired to bed at about then, with a ritual as irritating as Squibb’s. He talked in the darkness, and Tornetta was bored into fury which he could not express. But Mr. Brook was ‘safe’ and Tornetta accommodated him with pleasantries, lies and care.
He was away now, talking to the company’s representatives, staking his claim of importance and authority on behalf of the passengers, very polite but quite ruthless and insistent.
Other passengers had fled from the Areopagus as fast as they could, and with their customary selfishness had fought for first positions on the buses to the hotel or Boeing or whatever it might be. But an irritating number of people hung about. Tornetta had kept well out of the way of journalists and TV cameras. He wanted to vanish without giving his name to anyone.
It irritated him enormously. What did they all do, these people, standing in the sun? What was there to talk about so endlessly?
These two, for instance. An American in shirt sleeves and one of the engine-room crew. They stood by a water tower and gossiped idly. An hour went by. Tornetta seethed with anxious fear. Soon Brook would be back and he’d be committed to some damn nonsense. It had been very difficult not to become involved in the man’s do-good work, become a committee member. Tornetta did not want to lose goodwill or the status of gentleman into which the fool had put him on account of his ‘friendship’ with Mr. Rossi. He had had to claim agony in his hand and utter exhaustion.
Tornetta had not seen Barbara, but he had observed Squibb an hour ago, loaded with his cameras and cases, staggering with others to a bus. Some girls had been waiting at the foot of the gangway to hand to each passenger who descended a plaited palm hat, green and fresh from local trees. Squibb had thrown his cap away to put on the green hat with a dull joke. He was indestructible . . .
A large American sedan stopped a hundred yards away and Tornetta saw two men stroll toward the ship. A girl ran after them and strode with them. The trio hesitated and talked to someone at the foot of the gangway. This man shook his head vaguely.
The three began to walk up and down slowly, chattering. They passed within thirty fee of Tornetta without being aware of him.
He saw that one of the men was his brother, Ignazio. It was very exciting, even a little upsetting. But no doubt Ignazio would have thought of everything. Everything would be organized. Ignazio knew his brother’s fearful position. All Tornetta had to do was get off the ship.
That shouldn’t present difficulties. He was frightened of it, fo
r all that. He had killed a man; he had hurt a dancer and beaten Squibb. In his pockets and case was a total of over six thousand dollars much of it stolen. He couldn’t think of a thing that the Greek company or anyone else could do to him. The TV cameras had gone. He should be safe. And yet ye sweated heavily with fear.
He struggled with the porthole and opened it as the trio again paced by below him.
They were surprised.
‘Bartolomeo!’ cried his brother. ‘Shall we come up?’
‘I will come down’ Tornetta said.
He was agitated and anxious to get off this ship.
People stared at him, but idly, and a ship’s officer wanted to know his name, and, receiving it, crossed if off a list. It meant nothing, Tornetta was sure. At most they had noted that he was alive and had gone ashore at Guam with a hand injury.
Ignazio and his two companions stood back a little, out of the crush.
Tornetta embraced his brother. ‘My God, it is hot,’ complained Ignazio. He was certainly sweating: his face shone and his shirt was moist at the neck. ‘I didn’t think we’d see you,’ he said hesitantly. ‘Allow me to introduce you . . . Arnaldo, a business associate, and Anna, who works for me.’
Ignazio did not specify the nature of the work. The girl was very handsome in a vulgar way, but tough, and Tornetta presumed that his brother, like himself, was in the business of supplying what the world needed. Arnaldo was a man who could be anything between thirty and forty. He did not look like a man who would fly from San Francisco to Guam – if he had – for the pleasure of looking at the scenery.
The girl greeted, ‘Hi.’
Arnaldo asked with selective curiosity: ‘Was there any trouble?’ He talked like a man of authority, in charge of something.
Tornetta opened his mouth to admit to killing of Mr. Rossi. But he still wasn’t sure if Rossi had been Mafia or not, and in any case his brother and the girl might be shocked. A little alarm and concern would be added to the responsibility they had already kindly taken on.
He therefore said, ‘Nothing.’
Arnaldo acknowledged, ‘That is good.’
‘Everything will be all right now,’ insisted Ignazio, but he, as well as Tornetta, was obviously nervous. ‘Let me take your case. My God, what you have been through! But it is all over now. Seats are booked on an airplane tomorrow. It will be cooler in San Francisco. I find this heat wearisome.’
The other man, Arnaldo, opened the door of the big sedan and Tornetta climbed in and sank into a soft seat. He realized, as he relaxed, how tense and tired he had been. A few weeks’ rest and he would e fine, himself again.
The girl sat in front with Arnaldo and Ignazio sat behind with his brother.
‘It is hot,’ complained Ignazio again. ‘A beautiful place, this island. But American,’ he commented, close to a sneer. ‘The people are now too idle to grow crops. They prefer to work for Americans and eat out of cans. It pays. If the Yanks ever leave . . . What lovely flowers,’ he commented, but indifferent, his thoughts clearly elsewhere.
‘Which way?’ asked the girl at a main road.
‘Right,’ Ignazio said. ‘I hired the car,’ he told Tornetta.
Tornetta felt uneasy. He did not know why.
‘Aren’t we going into the town?’ he asked.
‘My God, no!’ protested Ignazio. ‘The hotels will be full of journalists and your fellow passengers. It was a sensation. Look!’ he insisted in vicarious pride. ‘Just look at the headline!’
Tornetta held the newspaper open with both hands. The headline read TYPHOON LINER LIMPS THIS WAY. It was yesterday’s paper.
Ignazio brought the knife around in a brisk, nervous arc to where Tornetta’s jacket had fallen open.
‘I am sorry but I have to do this,’ he said through his teeth. Tornetta for a second didn’t know what it was that Ignazio was doing, but saw that his brother was terrified, and that the sweat ran down every crevice of his face.
He felt the penetration of the knife and began to leap about and scream. But it was too late. As the pain burst briefly and life collapsed inside the envelope of skin still moist and hot his killer justified himself uselessly: ‘you should have disembarked at Singapore or somewhere.’
Ignazio saw that he was addressing a corpse. He wiped the sweat out of his eyes and breathed heavily for whole minutes and waited, in vain, for his heart to stop pounding so fast.
‘It is done,’ he told the other two.
The man called Arnaldo said, ‘They will be very satisfied with you,’
Ignazio agreed bitterly, ‘My God, I should think so.’
The girl asked, ‘Do we take a photograph to prove it is done?’
Arnaldo shrugged. ‘I suppose so, although my word is enough.’
They were still on the main rod, doing seventy. American Navy and Air Force sedans raced by in the opposite direction. It must be lunch time, Ignazio thought with detached cynicism.
‘Where do we take him?’ he asked wretchedly.
‘It is easy,’ said Arnaldo, turning off onto a dusty side road that wound its way to small green mountains. ‘These fools won’t know where to start. We’ll bury him in the forest.’
‘And his case?’ inquired the girl.
‘I do not want his dirty clothes,’ said Ignazio in dejection, the tears rolling with the sweat.
Bali
Fiji
Guam
Hobart
Hong Kong
Singapore
Taiwan
Tenerife
1968 / 1970
