by Derek Beaven
‘Now and then.’
‘Cigarette?’ The man who was sitting down pushed a packet of Stuyvesants towards him. ‘My name’s Wheatfield, by the way’
‘Thanks. What can I do for you?’
‘I’ll get straight to the point. It’s come to the director’s notice you’ve still got a loose mouth.’
‘What?’
‘Don’t let’s beat about the bush, Bob. We both know what I mean. Shipping yarns. Salt water. Okay, you like a drink – now and then. What bloke doesn’t? Only in your case it leads to … flights of the imagination.’
Robert heard himself give a single laugh. It had a bitter edge.
Wheatfield permitted himself a chuckle, too. ‘Yeah. Who doesn’t like a few beers with his mates? But it’s come to the director’s attention that despite the personal chat he had with you a couple of months ago, there’s still something of a problem. And of course the base out here is a relatively small community, where it’s pretty bloody important to maintain morale, don’t you agree, Bob? Now, Sergeant Petter and I …’ He glanced sideways. The man who had remained standing was holding the whisky bottle by its neck above the unwashed breakfast things on the table. He left his inspection of its label to look coldly at Robert.
‘Sergeant Petter and I have an unpleasant duty, I’m afraid, Bob. It concerns the matter of nationality, rights of residence and so on. You do realise that this is an important strategic project up here. A significant front line, if we’re to be strictly honest. Even if it doesn’t look much.’ He grinned and spread his palms as if to apologise for the ramshackle network of concrete prefabs and army huts which formed the community outside.
‘Has there been a complaint against my work? Do you mind if I ask who you’re actually representing?’ Robert said quietly. He turned from one man to the other, raising his eyebrows.
By way of reply Sergeant Petter opened his grip and allowed the whisky bottle to drop. It shattered in the plate below it. The breakfast table became a waste of glass and white shards. ‘Sorry.’ The sergeant spoke without expression.
‘To put it bluntly, Bob,’ his colleague smiled, ‘your stay in this country is conditional on security. Watertight security. To the director it’s a moral issue. One bad apple and the rot starts. You get what I’m driving at. One communist influence—’
‘Communist?’
‘Booze and sedition.’ He drew leisurely on the cigarette. ‘It’s not just that you’re in the habit of shooting your mouth off when you go on these … benders of yours, it’s what you’ve been letting yourself come out with. Now, if it was up to me, I’d be inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt. It’s a strain up here, after all. Problems with the girlfriend. That kind of thing. We all have ’em. Even Sergeant Petter has ’em.’ He paused. Robert felt a bead of icy sweat trickle down from his armpit inside his shirt. ‘They don’t like it, do they, Neil?’ Robert dared not catch Neil’s eye. ‘The sheilas. It’s hard on a woman. They’re apt to consider their options, you know. It’s a fact. It’s got to be faced. Sometimes the tough choice gets made. I’ve seen blokes … It’s a worry isn’t it, Bob? Can make even the best men go a bit …’ He wound his finger to his forehead, and smiled.
‘But of course it’s not up to me. And the director has to consider his own … position. Basically, he’s giving you a couple of months.’ Wheatfield shifted in the chair, and reached down beside it to stub out the butt. ‘You wouldn’t consider yourself a church-going man, really, would you, Bob?’
‘Not really.’
‘Shame. It’s a bit of a man’s world up here, I realise that. Still, there are standards. There is this matter of your visits down to Adelaide. The immoral purposes.’
‘My what?’
‘A Mrs …’ He made a show of consulting his diary. ‘A Mrs Kendrick, isn’t it? Now what kind of woman would she be?’
‘A very fine woman, actually.’
But the policemen insisted on hearing the wrong emphasis. They both laughed.
‘There’s a Kendrick who works down at Salisbury, isn’t there, Neil? Quite a big wheel there, wouldn’t he be? No connection of course, Kettle. Couldn’t be, could there.’
Robert’s temper flared. If only he could get any sense out of her. If only she would say.
If Wheatfield’s gentle voice filled the gap that had opened, Robert did not hear. Syllables were like an intense pressure in his chest, like air bubbles. ‘Thirty thousand tons,’ he breathed at last. Odd, that the gasp of the metal’s weight alone should somehow rise up more eloquently than the five hundred bodies it contained.
But the policeman – or whatever he was – spoke on as if everything were in its place, and so heavy a sacrifice must lie miles beneath the unscarred surface of their discussion. His parting remarks concerned Robert’s passport. ‘It’s a precious document, you know, Mr Kettle. We’ll not keep it for longer than necessary. A few solemn undertakings you signed on your arrival here. You’ll have it back just as soon as we’ve updated our documents. Who knows, you might be needing it.’
When they had gone, and Robert had recovered from the fit of shaking which came over him, he conceded the game had been lost. Not the one he carried on with Joe – who did in fact run a long-range radio correspondence with him via the base’s non-military equipment. But the larger one he had been playing with the times he lived in.
That night, his thoughts far from any radar screen, he walked to a corner of the base compound where the lights from the main block hardly carried. There was to be a launch tomorrow; some squib would squirt its way up from the desert a hundred miles west. Further away still, a team of squaddies might be rigging a scaffold tower for the next ‘dust experiment’. Might – or maybe they had given up on all that now. He did not know. The outlines of the Flinders foothills were just visible, dark on dark. Beyond them the continental floor, once a seabed.
He must find her. He turned and stared up at the stars. They were peculiarly alive, yet remote. Crux hung under the Southern Pole. The Jewel Box. Reticulum, the Net. He pointed out to her Carina, Vela, Puppis. ‘There! Do you see?’
The tears prickled at his eyes. ‘I saw what I saw, know what I know’ But the ship was fracturing, the sections already losing themselves against a chaos of scintillation.
As for Erica and me, you know the details of our stay. We subsisted on the edge of the bush for about a year, until the draggles of commitment from Chaunteyman dried up, and a summons home was posted out.
And so we were reunited with my father. I was born in the town of Woolwich, near Greenwich itself, London’s prosperous and beautiful pearl, where the whole world takes its time from a metal marker hammered into the hill. My mother told me. My dad taught me to read. I held his hand. We took the train down to the marshes on Galleons Reach. I saw a barge with brown sails from the green foot-bridge over the railway line, looking out across the allotments. The river stank in the sun, was green, too, close up; yellowish green the river from the steam ferry crossing over to Silvertown. I saw a porpoise floating dead, belly up. Silver-tarnished, and everything smoky and soot-stained before us, steaming onward with the paddle-wheels driving, and black behind us upon the rise of the southern shore we had left, far behind, back past Woolwich, as far as Greenwich where the slopes rise up to Blackheath. Dark houses. That is England. Smoking against a hot, pale sky, with low sun. That is England, a hot country of perpetual fire.
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Acknowledgements
My very grateful thanks are due to Sam Boyce, without whom this novel could never have been written; Bill Hamilton, for his excellent guidance in its development; and Nicholas Pearson, who is its true midwife. I’m also much indebted to Mary Chamberlain, Peter Lamb, and my daughter Kirstie – for their help and advice.
May I further acknowledge Neil McCart’s enjoy
able book, No. 3 in the series ‘Famous British Liners’ (FAN Publications), for supplying important detail and some anecdote; and the National Maritime Museum Library in Greenwich for their general helpfulness.
About the Author
Acts of Mutiny
Derek Beaven lives in Maidenhead, Berkshire. His first novel, Newton’s Niece (1994), was shortlisted for the Writers’ Guild Best Novel Prize and won a Commonwealth Prize. Acts of Mutiny is his second novel.
Praise
‘The symphony of voices is beautifully harmonic, and although there’s a knowing, gently satirical edge to the portrayals, they ring very true.’ Tobias Jones, Observer
‘Derek Beaven’s second novel seems likely to confirm his status as a first-rate novelist … An extraordinary novel.’
David Nokes, Sunday Times
‘His is a prodigal talent.’ Lorna Sage, London Review of Books
Also by the Author
Newton’s Niece
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