Something to Answer For

by P. H. Newby

  “Hold it,” he wanted to shout to her. “I’m coming.”

  But instead he cut the ropes with a fisherman’s knife he had found in a box under his seat and grabbed another rope with the idea of hoisting sail. The sailors cheered ironically. Somebody tossed a tin of corned beaf into the boat. Another man was lowering a bottle of beer on a piece of string. As a landing craft came into view round the stern of the warship a sailor pushed Townrow’s boat away from the ladder and, the breeze catching the sail when it was still only half way up the mast, Townrow was ten, twenty, thirty yards away; moving north-east. He was smack in the middle of an enormous fleet, like some dog running on to Horse Guards during the Trooping. H.M.S. Spiker was probably telling the whole gathering about him. He could see the light winking away. He set a course between an aircraft carrier and a squat yellow boat flying a Tricolour and opened his bottle of beer which fortunately had a screw top. He was moving fast. The clumsy boat was shipping water. If she kept afloat Townrow reckoned that in a matter of hours he would be over the horizon and what then, he thought, what then?

  Point number one: any one of these boats would be prepared to pick him up. He could be dropped in Cyprus or Malta. Within a week he could be in the U.K. If the fund embezzlement still bothered him he could pack the job in. If he was really bothered he could call at the nearest police station where they had a service for people with that sort of newly awakened conscience. After he had served his two or three years he would still be saying, as he was saying now, what then? So why, except out of sheer bloody perversity, go through all that?

  Point number two: he could not sail about the Eastern Med indefinitely on a bottle of beer, now empty, and a tin of bully. He could not open the tin anyway; he had snapped the little tag that fitted into the key. And if the waves grew really big this boat would duck like a moorhen.

  Point number three: give up these long-term objectives.

  More immediately, he was setting a course for some point near the heart. He had travelled some of the distance before. On Lake Menzallah he had an outboard motor to help and a dead calm of stagnant water, so shot through with the glancings of sun and star and moon he might have moved naturally and painlessly to some clockless retreat; an island with ruins, a cell, an upturned boat in the rushes, a tomb. You didn’t need to go back to England and serve a jail sentence to learn as little as this, that whenever he ran away he was on course and doing what came easily. Like his father running away.

  Here he was, then, two months later on a tougher escapade than that lake trip. He knew that much more. He had fewer illusions. He now knew he could not afford to surrender the smallest splinter of judgement to any government, organisation, cause or campaign. He was to trust only the immediate promptings, what the eye saw, the nose smelled, and his hand touched. Nobody again would play him for a sucker about what was right and what was wrong. Nobody but he himself would look after his tender little conscience. This was pride if you like. Arrogance. It was amazing, and ironical, and absurd—he couldn’t find the right word—that a lousy crook like himself should creep into middle age thinking of honour. Honour? The word made him incredulous. If it was right for a bastard like him to think of honour no wonder it was a dirty word. Honour? Good men spat at the word. And if she had at all detected this crazy notion taking root in him no wonder Leah was furious. Women did not understand honour. It meant a man had decided, absolutely, to answer for himself. Women did not like that kind of loneliness.

  He undid the top button of Elie’s old brown overcoat because the breeze had dropped and the December sun was warm. The sea rolled about him like blue, unbroken silk. There was enough haze to confuse the line between sea and sky. Depending how he sat, some of the warships seemed pinned above any reasonable horizon. If he really wanted to reach some point he could call the heart maybe this was as near as he would ever get.

  It was almost as though it were some real point in the actual sea he was looking for. This might be it. There was too much dazzle to make out anything below the surface; but down there would be fish and sand. Up here were patches of froth and a floating Tate and Lyle sugar carton. He knew, by the sense of absence, he had arrived. He was away and alone, stark.

  The waves battered the side of the boat like the thumping fists of people trying to break into his solitude. For the time being he wanted to keep them out. He wanted to rest in this sense of being absent from whoever or whatever he most profoundly needed. He dreamed, woke and tried to catch up with his dream. Oh! It was everything that had ever happened. The eye specialist assured him there was no permanent injury. The girl screamed with laughter as she said he would have to marry her now. For years he had been going through the same routine without immediately recognising it for what it was. He was always being caught out. Of course he was a fool. A simpleton like him had no option but to hang on and hope the dreaming would stop. Once again, this tattoo of fists. No, keep out! Even Leah, keep out!

  He was intent, as though he had finally managed to strike a light with a damp match and was protecting it in the wind.

  About the Author

  P. H. Newby (1918–97) was an English novelist and broadcasting administrator. His first novel, A Journey into the Interior, was published in l946. He was awarded the Somerset Maugham Prize in 1948, and he was the first winner of the Booker (now Man Booker) Prize – his novel Something to Answer For received the inaugural award in 1969.

  Copyright

  This ebook edition first published in 2012

  by Faber and Faber Ltd

  Bloomsbury House

  74–77 Great Russell Street

  London WC1B 3DA

  All rights reserved

  © Sarah Schenk and Katie Sinclair, 1968

  The right of P. H. Newby to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  ISBN 978–0–571–30023–5