The White Voyage

by John Christopher

  ‘There is a lot of sea in these parts.’

  ‘And not many ships. We are seven days out of Dieppe. By now we are counted as lost.’

  ‘I don’t think they have looked very hard for us.’

  ‘We have heard aeroplanes a couple of times, even if we have seen none. What do you expect? As you say, there is a lot of sea here. We are lucky – we have no one mourning us.’

  ‘Your mother is alive still, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes.’ Olsen produced one of the little Dutch cigars he was fond of smoking. ‘Nearly eighty. A strong woman.’

  ‘I have both parents,’ Mouritzen said. ‘But three brothers and two sisters. In some things a big family is good. I would not like to have so much hang on one heart, one pair of lungs.’

  ‘So you will have a big family. But first you must find a wife. Isn’t that how it goes?’

  Mouritzen did not reply immediately. He said:

  ‘Maybe I will not have far to look.’

  ‘No,’ Olsen said, ‘maybe you won’t. She is a fine woman. Pretty, healthy – I think you could be confident of a big family from her. She will make a good wife, providing you can get over the fact of her previous commitments.’

  ‘I think I can do that.’

  ‘Yes.’ Olsen grinned. ‘If not, you can join the circus yourself, eh? You can help her tame the bear, and maybe learn to swing together from the high trapeze. That breeds great trust between husband and wife, I fancy.’

  Mouritzen grinned in return. ‘Make jokes if you like. Nadya is a fine girl, but not for me. I leave her to you. We will have a double wedding; perhaps a double christening.’

  Olsen shook his head. ‘I think I would sooner marry the bear.’

  * * *

  Katerina had been moved from the cabins to the forecastle, and installed there in the cabin that had once belonged to Carling. Mouritzen had approved this; Olsen knew of it but had not recognized it officially. The cage, it had turned out, had been smashed beyond hope of repair on board ship.

  The cabin was at the forward end of the forecastle, well away from the galley and abutting on the lower foredeck. Nadya went there with food for the bear; the supplies that had been brought for the animal’s special use were now used up, and she was being fed out of the general ration store. Nadya brought her carrots and potatoes, a few apples, and some wheaten biscuits, smeared with syrup. She fed these to her, bit by bit, talking to her and brushing her with a stiff brush.

  ‘It is too stormy yet, my love,’ she said, ‘for you to promenade – cold and wet, weather that does not suit a bear. But when the rain stops and the wind goes down, we will go a small walk together. There is a deck here where you can stroll and no one will trouble you. And then we will get your cabin cleaned and made fresh and nice for a bear.’

  She had left the cabin door wide open, and would have heard the noise of anyone approaching down the corridor. She was surprised, hearing a sound and looking over her shoulder, to see Thorsen standing beyond the open doorway, watching her.

  ‘How did you get here?’ she asked him.

  ‘From the upper deck.’

  ‘It will be longer, coming that way.’

  Thorsen nodded. ‘But no one knows I am here.’

  Nadya stared at him for a moment, and then smiled.

  ‘Is that to make me tremble? Will you rape me, little Jorgen?’

  ‘I wanted to see you, to talk to you, and I wanted you to see that I can be discreet.’

  ‘Yes.’ She smiled again. ‘I think you can be discreet.’ She left the cabin, and closed and locked the door behind her. Thorsen stood beside her. He put his hands on her arms, beseeching rather than demanding.

  ‘Even in oilskins?’ Nadya said. ‘There is much romance in you, little Jorgen.’

  ‘Don’t call me that,’ he said. ‘I am as tall as you are.’

  ‘Yes.’ She surveyed him critically. ‘But a woman wishes a man to be taller. Go put on stilts, little Jorgen, and then come back and perhaps I will love you.’

  He clutched her arm more urgently. ‘Come into the next cabin. I have cleaned it up, made it all nice. There is drink there, and some glasses. We can sit and drink together.’

  ‘You have been drinking already. Your breath stinks of whisky.’

  ‘Have a glass yourself and you will not notice that.’

  ‘Little Jorgen is persistent,’ Nadya said. ‘Perhaps I will let him give me one little drink.’

  He opened the door of the cabin and stood aside for her to enter. It had two sets of double bunks, but the top bunks were retractable and had been fastened back. Thorsen had cleared away traces of the crew members who had formerly bunked here, and had brought in cushions and rugs. He had also wired up a small electric fire, and he now switched this on. Then he removed his oilskins and hung them up behind the door. Nadya looked around thoughtfully.

  ‘You have feathered a nice little nest here,’ she said.

  ‘You like it? I am glad.’

  ‘And the whisky?’

  Thorsen went to a locker and produced a bottle and two tumblers. He poured a fairly stiff drink into each glass.

  ‘I do not drink raw whisky,’ Nadya said. ‘I will have water also.’

  Thorsen reached into the locker again, and produced a soda siphon. He squirted some into the glasses.

  ‘I have everything you want, Nadya,’ he said. ‘And I am patient, and I understand women. Maybe you would like to have Niels here instead of me, but Niels likes better to chase the Irish woman. It is right for both of us to be honest with ourselves. You thought that when she went ashore at Amsterdam, you would have him to yourself the rest of the voyage. But things have changed. We will not get to Copenhagen unless we are towed, and if that happens she will be there too. You must admit you have lost Niels.’

  He gave her one of the glasses, and she sipped it. Her dark, slanting eyes watched him, with an expression that was not easily to be read.

  ‘I am not so tall and handsome,’ Thorsen said, ‘but I am virile, and it is virility that you want.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘I notice these things,’ Thorsen said. ‘I have had practice in noticing them. Love is important to a woman like you. Especially confined so long on a boat like this, you grow restless.’

  ‘Yes,’ Nadya said. ‘I grow restless.’

  ‘I will quieten your restlessness,’ Thorsen said. He went to her, where she stood by one of the bunks. ‘Sit down.’ He put an arm round her waist and she did not resist the action. ‘You will find you can rely on me.’

  His voice had a cajoling but confident note. She felt it play over her. A man whose pride was on the surface was easy to handle; where, as with this one, the pride was deeply buried under humility, a willingness to swallow insults, it was more difficult. It was ludicrous that he should make an attempt like this, after Dieppe and with the ship still lurching blindly through stormy waters, but the absurdity of it did nothing to release her from her mounting tension. As he went on talking to her in a low, steady tone, she felt that the words were strumming her nerves, driving her forward to find a release. She set her jaws together, and felt her teeth grating against each other. He touched her hand, and she had to tense herself still further to prevent shivering.

  ‘Niels is a fool,’ Thorsen said, ‘going after a woman like that when he might have had you. You have the kind of fire a man needs.’

  She gripped his arm.

  ‘Yes,’ Thorsen said, ‘that’s what you want, isn’t it!’

  He bent towards her. She had heard the difference in his voice, the cajoling note replaced by contemptuous certainty of triumph, but could do nothing about it. It was only when he laughed against her ear that her need was transmuted into cold rage. Swinging her body over, she pinned him down against the bunk. He struggled, and she hit him hard with her right hand, rocking his head back against the bulkhead. Again and again she slapped him, while he tried to dodge the blows. He cried out to her, but she was too engaged with c
ursing him to take any note of what he said.

  The keen edge of her urgency wore off. Taking his wrists, she pinioned them with her left hand, holding them against his chest. Thorsen struggled again.

  ‘Be quiet,’ she said. ‘Do you want more slapping, little Jorgen?’

  He lay there, watching her with hatred. With her right hand, she reached for the bottle of whisky.

  ‘Now I give you a drink,’ she said. ‘Open your mouth and take your drink, like a good boy.’

  He tried to move his face away as she brought the bottle towards it. Putting the bottle down, she hit him again, four times, with deliberation.

  ‘Drink,’ she said, ‘when I tell you.’

  She lifted the bottle again, and held it to his mouth. He drank in convulsive gulps, each time spilling whisky down his chin and over his chest.

  ‘No more!’ he gasped. ‘I cannot drink more.’

  ‘The party isn’t over,’ Nadya said. ‘I will tell you when you are finished.’

  The bottle had been nearly three-quarters full; when she put it down for the last time, it was empty. Nadya looked down at the helpless Thorsen and, shaking him, released his hands.

  ‘Poor little Jorgen,’ she said. ‘He is disgusting. I think he will be sick.’

  She got up from the bunk and went to the door. He still lay there, his eyes closed. .

  ‘I forgot something,’ Nadya said. She came back to the bunk. ‘I forgot the soda water.’

  Taking the siphon, she squirted the jet into the pit of his stomach and then, as he jerked upright, directed it against his face and head.

  ‘That does not wash you clean,’ she said, ‘but it washes you a bit. Goodbye, my little Jorgen.’

  The storms went on, and the Kreya continued to roll in their path. But neither wind nor seas rose as high as they had in the North Sea, and fears that the Kreya might founder lessened with each day and night that she rode the waves and took no harm. It was surprising but, as the new routines became more familiar, there was time for boredom, and the beginning of monotony. Olsen and Mouritzen continued to search the skylines for possible landfalls or another ship, but the others grew accustomed to the continuing empty waste of grey all round them, to the howl of the wind and the sea’s buffeting. At the same time, confident now that they would eventually be saved, they grew impatient as day after day drifted past, as featureless as the rough seas by which they were surrounded.

  The Joneses, one afternoon, went up together to the poop-deck, to get some fresh air and a greater sense of privacy: from there they could look the length of the ship and see anyone approaching. The rain had stopped, but grey, tattered clouds trailed low overhead, and the Kreya lurched with every new wave that struck her. They wore their oilskins. Sheila’s made her look tiny, child-like, Jones thought. He put an arm round her, and she pressed close to him.

  She said: ‘I suppose we can call ourselves real sailors now. Especially with your beard.’

  ‘It’s not looking too bad, is it?’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t think I would recognize you if I hadn’t been watching it grow.’

  ‘Rescue has held off long enough. It can come as soon as it likes now. I don’t even mind if we’re taken to a British port. We can get clear again.’

  ‘No more worries?’

  ‘I have a feeling that everything is going to be all right,’ he said. ‘For the first time since we started, there are no doubts at all. It really is going to work.’

  She did not speak at once. She said:

  ‘So you really are mine – for the rest of our lives?’

  ‘For the rest of mine.’

  ‘Thanks to a beard,’ she said, ‘and a typewriter case, full of money. I couldn’t have you without those, could I? Without deception and – and theft, there’s no future for us.’

  ‘Things haven’t changed. It was like that before.’

  ‘I had a dream,’ she said, ‘early this morning. I dreamt the ship drifted into a lagoon – somewhere in the South Seas, I suppose late at evening, with the sea blue and the sky purple.’

  He looked at the cold, grey, heaving waters. ‘We’re a long way from the South Seas, I’m afraid.’

  ‘The sun had just gone down,’ she said, ‘and they came out across the lagoon in canoes, covered with flowers, singing the kind of song that makes you sad and happy at the same time. Somehow we got down into the canoes with them.’

  ‘And the Captain and the others,’ he said, ‘– what about them? And the bear?’

  ‘It was our dream. I don’t know what they did. They rowed us back across the lagoon to a beach. The sand was almost white and there was some kind of village – huts thatched with leaves – palm leaves, I suppose – up against the forest. They brought food for us, and wine, and the girls and young men sang songs. They seemed glad to have us.’

  ‘It sounds wonderful. I should think you were sorry to wake up.’

  She leaned against him again. ‘You’d brought the typewriter case with you. When the feast was over, you opened it, and took out some notes, and gave them to the one we thought was the chief. He looked at them and smiled and shook his head. You tried to insist on him taking them, and he shook his head again, and we realized that they had no use for money – that they were glad to have us, as long as we wanted to stay with them, that there was nothing to pay, and nothing to hide.’

  ‘What did we do with it all,’ he asked her, ‘– make paper boats with the money and set them sailing on the lagoon?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He felt her shaking her head against his chest. ‘The money just wasn’t there after that. And I woke up soon after.’

  ‘That must have been hard.’

  ‘No. I heard you breathing, and knew you were still there.’

  ‘No flowers, though – no lagoon, no songs. Just ordinary life, with the ordinary problems.’

  ‘I don’t mind those.’

  She was silent for a moment. Then, speaking more quickly, she said:

  ‘We could manage without it, couldn’t we? You could find work – I could get a job. I could always get a job as a secretary. We could manage.’

  ‘What are you suggesting?’ His tone was neutral. ‘That we bring it up here and drop it over the side?’

  ‘Couldn’t we? Why not?’

  He laughed unhappily. ‘It wouldn’t knock anything off the sentence, you know. Probably it would add a year or so on. They would think I’d salted it away somewhere.’

  She said: ‘It’s us I’m thinking about. I don’t care about the rest of the world.’

  ‘Nothing’s changed.’

  ‘No. But some things get worse the longer one lives with them. That little box does.’

  ‘We get rid of it,’ he said. ‘I get a job – a clerk in the kind of firm where they don’t bother about references – and you work all day and clean and cook and mend in the evening.’

  ‘We could do it.’

  ‘You remember what you said – about Carol and not having children? How long would it be before we could have children, living like that? Ours wouldn’t be a real marriage either. Scraping along in some miserable English suburb – that’s a long way from the lagoon, too.’

  ‘It needn’t be England. There must be places in the world where we could live quietly – with just enough for us, and for children later.’

  ‘I suppose there are. But we would have to get there. Before we sink it, shall we take a few notes out, for the fares? And a few more so that we can manage till we find those jobs? Jobs might not be so easy in a foreign country.’

  She was silent again.

  ‘How much shall we take out,’ he asked her, ‘before we make the grand gesture? Five hundred? A thousand?’

  She said, in a flat voice: ‘We’re tied to it. Without it we can’t exist – that’s what you’re saying, isn’t it? Not together, at least. We can live separately, but it’s the money that binds us together. That’s our wedding ring. It has to stay with us, as long as we
both live. There’s no way out of that.’

  He put his arm more tightly round her. ‘Now it seems bad,’ he said, ‘because we find ourselves trapped between our old lives and the new. This was only meant to last a few days. Once it’s over, everything will be different.’

  ‘Will it?’

  ‘Everything. First Zurich – then South America. Nothing to fear, and too many things to do for you to brood over the past.’

  ‘Do you think so? Perhaps.’

  ‘And we’ve got to go through this to get to it. Like going to the dentist to get the trip to the Zoo or the theatre or Madame Tussaud’s.’

  She shook her head. ‘When I was a child it wasn’t like that. There was only the dentist’s. At the corner of Histon Street – a shop with the window painted over and his name on it in black.’

  ‘Never mind. This time there is going to be a trip. And this time we go home to a different place.’

  She looked up, and smiled, and he kissed her. On the bridge, Thorsen, who had been watching them, jerked Mouritzen’s arm.

  ‘The English couple,’ he commented. ‘Not married long. Not married at all, maybe. What do you think?’

  Preoccupied, Mouritzen said: ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘These days you brood too much. If they honeymoon, why has he grown a beard? The wrong time for such an exercise.’

  Mouritzen did not reply. Thorsen said:

  ‘Maybe his wife will be waiting for him when we come to port. Perhaps he grows a beard so she won’t know him.’

  * * *

  After Annabel had gone to sleep, they sat together on the sofa opposite the bunks, watching her. It was not very big; they were not pressed together but their bodies touched comfortably. They had the single light on over the dressing-table. It dimmed, as though about to go out, and then picked up again.

  ‘I am not happy,’ Mouritzen said, ‘over that generator. She has had heavy work – heavier than is right. If it fails things will be harder. There is none of us can mend it.’

  Mary said: ‘It’s strange.’