The Last Ship: A Novel

by William Brinkley

  “Men have second thoughts, Captain,” she said, mildly, but almost instructionally. “Some wish now they had gone in the boats.”

  I came down from it. I shrugged as though we were dealing with an emotional rather than a realistic matter; a distorted state of mind of a few men given to imaginings, changeable in time perhaps, in any case not to be acted upon by those afflicted with it; objects of pity, solicitousness—and of help—these poor souls should be, certainly not of anger in their world of almost eerie fantasy: we had not come close to picking up anything; even those vastly puzzling Bosworth signals long since ceased, seas back; all of this, along with all that other mountain of validations, to any mind which had not entirely abandoned rationality certifying as would a coroner’s certificate the death of the place she had just spoken of as home. Long since my mind had turned inflexible on the subject. Inwardly having much less tolerance than at one time with views so opposite to the overwhelming evidence, I nevertheless spoke quietly, considerately, even compassionately, as though dealing with the irrational; in it, however, a captain’s unmistakable tone, of matters now become nonnegotiable; in fact, nondiscussable; of matters he had had enough of.

  “You’re doubtless right, Miss Girard. Men change their minds. And once they do . . . I suppose we should resign ourselves to the fact that there are always bound to be a few nothing will ever convince—short of our getting back on the ship, casting off, taking that course we’re not going to take, can’t take; and never will—long since decided, that matter. So long as they don’t make actual trouble . . .” I could hear my voice adamant . . . “I’ll leave them alone; with their illusions; I understand them; I even understand what they feel. Men have a right to illusions, especially those. But as to any serious consideration of that foolishness, madness. I’m not prepared to go into that affair again. It’s finished. It was settled off Suez. Going home, as they put it. As they fully understood. That the choice not to go back was for once and all.” I spoke rather sharply. “I take it you remember that was made clear to the last hand, Miss Girard.”

  “Indeed I do, sir. And have reminded of it those hands we’re talking about.”

  I sighed, backed off again. “But I’ll let them be. They seem harmless enough. Aberrants.”

  I could feel her compulsion to say more; a certain familiar determination hovering around her mouth. I had run out of time as to this subject. I wanted an end to it.

  “All right, Lieutenant,” I said shortly. “Let’s have it.”

  “I’m not sure they’re all that harmless, sir. If I may put the matter directly, I think you may underrate their tenacity, their sense of purpose.”

  It was as though she were giving me a lesson in the dangers of naïveté; even in basic logic. She continued as if to set me straight, indeed herself speaking rather trenchantly.

  “I believe it’s also wise to remember, sir, that they don’t consider themselves—this group of men I’m talking about—either foolish or mad or even aberrant; nor present the behavior of such men; indeed, quite the opposite; and that this present equanimity is not any final guarantee that they’ll remain forever passively content with—their illusions. They’re in dead earnest. I would put it this way: They’re biding their time.”

  The phrase, coming from the least of alarmists, felt suddenly threatening in the hushed air; to no one more so than a ship’s captain who had gone through the business of rebellious men, was absolutely determined beyond anything else not to let any possible vestige of a similar uprising get a start, the mistake he had made once. It was not one any ship’s captain was likely to make twice.

  “Biding their time?” My voice abruptly taking on the tones of a sea captain confronted with unallowable behavior.

  “If the governance should change. Majority rule. Believing then that they might change the minds of the others. The matter actually brought to a vote. Sir, I think they’re waiting for the question of the governance to come up.”

  “But not to stay on the island—what other choice is there?”

  “There is that.”

  She looked down at the ship. Something froze in me. I was afraid to speak. I looked out at the waters, down myself at the ship. Asked, almost off-handedly. “They would take the ship? How many men are we talking about, Lieutenant?”

  “Twenty at least. As high as twice that.”

  I said it factually: “Forty out of one hundred and seventy-eight.” I looked across at her. “I now appreciate your concern, Miss Girard.”

  I waited a moment. “I have a question which may strike you as curious.”

  “I am here to answer all questions, sir.”

  “I am glad to hear it.” I looked straight into her eyes. “This one is, among those wishing to go back, are there any women?”

  She looked me straight back. I thought I saw a flash of something like amusement in her eyes; it could have been something quite different.

  “Negative, sir. Not a single one.”

  She immediately picked up: “I’ve often wondered if it was wise, sir.” Her own voice altering slightly to take on that tone of persuasion I also knew as a sign of having herself reached a strongly held conviction on some matter she considered urgent, now the time to go to bat for it using all her finely honed talents in such circumstances. “More than ever I find myself coming to the determination that the Navy way is still the best for everyone. In fact, the necessary way. At least for some time to come. Certainly that it’s too early for any change.”

  “It’s not a question of whether the Navy way is still the best way, Miss Girard. The point is that they have to be given the choice. For the men to be ruled now in any manner other than one they choose themselves . . . I can think of no greater incentive to trouble.” I shrugged. “Who knows? They’re Navy men. They may choose the Navy way themselves.”

  “With all respect, sir, I don’t think we can afford the risk that they will choose something else. Not yet . . .” Her voice seeming to bear in on me, a tone admonitory in it, almost a lecturing quality. She looked at me dead on. “I have to put it straight to you, Captain.”

  “Please do so.”

  Her words came at me, hard and clean-cut, bent now on convincement.

  “I don’t think you have the right just to give it up like that. If that time is to come, it’s not here now. In fact the time could not be worse. I think it’s your duty to want to continue in the old way, the Navy way, the way they’re used to.”

  Suddenly I gave myself a lapse I would have thought I would never have permitted myself.

  “I’m not running for office, Miss Girard.”

  At once I felt a sense of self-revulsion; felt I was soliciting, almost begging for fealty, for flattery; almost that she, seeing so, was slyly supplying these things. Felt a sense of falseness in the air.

  “Don’t misunderstand me, Miss Girard. I like being a ship’s captain. Commanding, yes, ruling the men, my word final; yes, I like that. I’m less certain that I have any desire to be monarch of this island.”

  I should have stopped there. Instead, like some abject politician, overcome by his own self-importance, his sure sense of his indispensability, that men could hardly get along without him, preying avariciously on anything that would feed this feeling, I proceeded.

  “Those who want to go home,” I said. It was as if I were seeking some excuse, some justification, somehow to reverse my position, hold on to my captain’s sovereignty. “What would they do if they achieved power? Seize the ship? Cast off—for home?”

  “I don’t think they’re that rash. Or even for other reasons that they would actually do it. Not abandon their shipmates to the island. No.” She waited, again seeming to search for precision, to come as near as possible to exactly what she felt would happen. “Something like this: They would work—the word might be proselytize—to make their opinion the majority one. Then I think they might say to the others: ‘We’re taking the ship home. That is what most of ship’s company now wants to do. You
may remain on the island—or you may come with us. It’s your choice.’ They would be at least that fair.”

  The very word in that context made me angry, the mockery of it.

  “Some fairness. Considering what they’d be taking them into.”

  “Remember that they—the ones I’m talking about—believe differently as to that. They think they would find something back there. Some place that would take them in—be habitable. And there is the fuel to go there. They all know it.”

  “Fuel.” I spoke brutally. “The ship: we would need her for our very lives—if ever we should be forced out of here, have to find another place. If radiation hits this island. Not likely now, Selmon says. But still in the realm of possibility. They must know that. We would be trapped. Those who remain. They would place those in the most mortal danger.” I turned to her, feeling utter calm. “Simply this. It will not be allowed.”

  I became aware of something in her eyes which seemed to mirror my own resolve; then something else that rather sent a chill up my spine: in them, too, that certain glow, that unmistakable sense of having won out, a sense of something like personal triumph. I was baffled. And one other thing: It was as though she looked straight into my eyes and saw what she saw.

  She had stood up, was holding something out to me.

  “Very good, sir. I simply wanted to get your agreement.”

  She handed over the envelope. And was gone.

  * * *

  I stepped out on my porch-bridge, for some unexplainable reason wanting a clearer view of the ship; simply quietly regarding her where she stood self-confidently aware of her beauty, her many and diverse talents; yet now something poignant about her, containing as she did a fatal flaw, as from a terrible illness: her low supply of fuel, emasculating her of her highest gift of all, which was to go as she pleased across all waters, starting with the greatest ocean-sea on earth now stretching in such ardent invitation beyond her, seeming rapturously to woo the ship. I appraised, a helpless professional habit, sea and sky as to sign of weather—of anything. The twin azures both now unstained, resting as if for oncoming night in an exquisite languor. I stepped back inside, opened the envelope, took out the single sheet of paper, and read the single-spaced type:

  The Women’s Conditions

  The following arrangement will take effect upon the completion of the building of the settlement; the first, itself as a condition to all other conditions, having been built into the settlement.

  1. Each woman will have separate and individual quarters, belonging as exclusively to herself, and to be as sacrosanct and inviolate as any private residence.

  2. The men will be divided as equally as may be possible among the women, who alone will determine the method for accomplishing this division, including which man will be assigned to which woman. In the event of incompatibility, a man may thereafter be transferred, at the women’s sole discretion, to another group and another woman. Such transfer shall be made not more than one time.

  3. Each man will be granted a week on a rotation basis in which he may come to his assigned woman’s quarters. The rotation will be chosen by the men by lot. In explanation: The time frame of one week has been selected for the reason that in the event of a pregnancy, the women do not deem it to be in the welfare of the community that any person, including the woman herself, should know the identity of the father; thus no man may claim the child as his.

  The above arrangement will not commence until two weeks have passed. During that time each woman’s men may visit her on a basis of three per week. Thereafter, the one-man-per-week arrangement will go into effect.

  4. The women will avoid demonstrating partiality for one man over another. In identical fashion, no possessiveness, no proprietorship or control of any nature whatsoever as to the woman is to be tolerated on the part of the men, nor jealousy of any kind. Any manifestation of these elements will be grounds for shifting the man to another group and another woman, or for suspending or excluding the guilty man altogether from these arrangements, as the women shall decide.

  5. Any man or woman, finding himself or herself unable to participate in these arrangements, may choose not to do so, and no obloquy shall attach to the person reaching such a decision. However, a man and a woman cannot opt out in order that they may be solely and exclusively together. Once any shipmate, man or woman, ceases to participate that person becomes a celibate.

  6. Since these arrangements are in every respect new and untested in our experience, the above conditions may be altered as time goes on, and at any point they choose, on the vote of all the women, solely at their discretion. However, all planning to enter into the arrangement should know that the women anticipate that any changes that might be made will be minor or procedural in nature and that all the fundamental precepts herein set forth will permanently obtain.

  7. As a final condition, the settlement’s governance shall continue as on the ship for a period of at least six months, the reason being to make certain that the above provisions are backed by the full weight of Navy authority, rule, and discipline. At the end of six months, these arrangements having worked to their satisfaction, the women will not oppose any alternative system of governance which a majority of ship’s company may choose; provided that that system, whatever it may be, agrees to the full incorporation and carrying over of all the provisions in this document.

  The document was signed by all twenty-six women.

  I sat there looking at the paper but not seeing it. In a little while I reread the provisions. The document was well drawn, everything anticipated, tucked in neatly. The second paragraph of Provision Three I found particularly admirable on the part of the women, demonstrating both that they knew their mathematics and that they were women of compassion, of benevolence, considering the long months of deprivation that had now existed, its meaning being that every man in ship’s company would have been accommodated at the end of two weeks, otherwise that worthy attainment being for some more like six.

  I reread once more Provision Seven. Yes, they understood its nature: power. Lieutenant Girard: that enormously brilliant comprehension that the area of women-men relationships, the territory of sexual practices, we were about to enter was fraught with such profound hazards of itself, in truth no one having any clear idea as to how these matters would work (sexual behavior at its simplest unpredictable as to outcome, this incertitude vastly, infinitely, multiplied in these arrangements), that to add that of an undetermined governance which might—as a random example—overturn all these carefully reasoned provisions was an unacceptable risk; she and the women in their profound shrewdness (in their own domain), insisting on the Navy governance which had always safeguarded them, knowing it would continue to do so with whatever measures might be required. Knowing also, to an absolute, I was vain enough to discern, that they had this flawless protection in present ship’s captain. I shook my head, felt a sardonic smile at the astonishing adroitness—for here was the genius stroke—with which she had led me into the position the women wanted, quite slyly using her sure instinct that it was what I myself also wanted; sure even to the extent of writing it in beforehand. I had been had. But then I wanted to be had. The fact that the reasons for my remaining so as given in that tour de force of persuasion were quite distinct from the one set forth in the “conditions” in no way adding up to her having dissimulated, to having “tricked” me: She was far too intelligent not to have felt that foolish to attempt. The truth was simple enough: She believed, with equal passion, equal urgency, in both circumstances as absolutely requiring a continuation, at least for now, of the existing system of a captain’s sovereignty. If the one residing in her area of responsibility—the women—perhaps loomed somewhat larger in her mind, as I suspected, that is but to cavil; it is only human to pay first allegiance to one’s own interests. Nothing in this lessened by that other hard truth: I simply would not tolerate anything that approached the terrible time we had gone through before; that part of it, even the rem
ote possibility of such a thing, a true service she had rendered me, alerting me; doing me the favor of granting me the perfect means of putting off any question of the governance, yes, for two reasons of the greatest cogency; only one of them, the insistence by the women on it, for their own reasons, needed to satisfy the men. There would be no trouble there. They would accept almost any terms the women laid down. And in myself not the slightest doubt that she had thought all of this through precisely: her knowing to an absolute there was no way it would fail to work with me; in that exchange she had held me in her hand; even my satisfaction a part of that.

  None of this served to make her saintly in my eyes, rather to make her immensely artful, and blessedly wise; and yes, infinitely cunning. Otherwise: Suspicion, once let in the door, will hardly ever let itself out again. I could not help wondering what other motives, as yet unrevealed, awaited execution in Lieutenant Girard’s mind; having to admit, again with a felt wry smile, that she was showing herself in all respects, so far at least, quite a master in her own exercise of sovereignty. The question to myself being: Did she have a still larger intention? Power is like a breeder reactor: the exercise of it irrefragably creating the need, sometimes urgent, for ever more forceful forms of it.

  Finally I reread the entire document yet again, objectively dissecting it virtually word by word. I thought it just might work. Yes, altogether an admirable job. The Jesuit was right. They had ceased to be sailors. They had commenced to be women.

  5

  Worship of Women