‘What sort of a ship is she?’ I asked.
‘A bastard,’ said Mike without any hesitation whatever.
I felt I was already on my way to Australia.
14
We seemed to be rolling in the Pacific for six months. The actual time from Valparaiso to Sydney was just under three weeks, but every week appeared to last about a couple of months. There were times when I cursed myself for booking a passage on this Yarrabonga, whose behaviour in bad weather was as ugly as her appearance. These times were generally during meals, which I hated, especially dinner. We had it at half-past six; the food was eatable but boring; the service was slap-happy; and we all pretended to be matey and bright and not tired of one another. There were little jokes that went on and on and on. If we’d allowed ourselves to be candid, grumpy, sometimes insulting, like the crew, we’d have all felt better. Away from the dining saloon, on my own, it wasn’t so bad. In Valparaiso I’d bought some water-colours, as a change from gouaches, and a lot of sketching paper that might have been worse, and in a corner I claimed, at the forward end of the deck, just under the bridge, I spent a lot of time making quick sketches or just staring at the sea and sky and ruminating. This was during the quiet days when often we seemed to be cutting our way through blue-black marble and even the foam was solid ivory. The skies in the early morning and the late afternoon belonged to some other world, a long way from pigment and paper, though I did pick up a few colour ideas that I’ve used since. On the rough and blowy days, I drank a good deal of gin, wedged myself into my bunk and read old detective stories. I soon felt a lot better than I’d done not only after Osparas but ever since I’d left London, when too much had happened in too many quick changes of scene. The huge emptiness, the monotony, the ruminating, perhaps even the boring people (they might not have been boring if I’d known more about them, but I was dodging that), began to make me feel at home with myself again.
One result of this expanding, relaxing, settling down with myself, surprised me. The whole Wavy Eight thing didn’t seem more improbable than it had done while I was buzzing around it on land. Not a bit. It might be still a mystery, even though some parts were beginning to take shape, but during these weeks of foam and cloud, sunlight and starlight, as a world conspiracy it began to seem more and not less likely. It was solider in my thoughts. It was the Enemy.
There’s nearly always some Top Man in every isolated group. Ours on the Yarrabonga was a big heavy man in his late sixties, a financial tycoon who was an Australian but had made most of his money and had bought his peerage in London – Lord Randlong. He was smooth, brown, sweet-tempered, everybody’s chum – a baron made out of butterscotch. He bought a lot of drinks for himself, though they did nothing to him except put a red glaze over him late in the evening, and he was always ready to buy drinks for everybody else too. Every day was his birthday, you might say. He took a fancy to me, so that soon I had to begin dodging him, to have some time alone, except in the long evenings after that early dinner. He liked my company, I think, for two reasons. First, because of my London background. I wasn’t straight out of the egg like some very tedious types we had from Brisbane and Adelaide. Secondly, being a randy old boy, he’d been trying to make a rather pretty little widow called Mrs Tetzler, one of those fluttery women who are the most determined teasers. When I came along, thirty years younger and a real artist, she tried to switch over to me as a deck-and-bar escort. This would have annoyed Lord Randlong if he hadn’t soon discovered that I wasn’t interested and didn’t mind if he used me as bait for Mrs Tetzler.
When she went below to lock her cabin door against wicked old peers, his lordship and I soon left the bar for what was called his stateroom. It was the only large cabin in the ship, Randlong being one of the directors of the line. There we could talk at ease over the excellent Scotch he provided, well away from Mr Jones’s comrade, Mike the bar steward, who not only didn’t think his lordship a wonder man but obviously hated his guts. Randlong, who was no fool, had plenty of smooth sweet butterscotch talk, in which he could laugh at himself – he liked to throw back his head and laugh and slap his thigh – without really opening himself out very much. He was very curious about this visit of mine to Australia, saying more than once that if my object was to paint and sell pictures he could, and would, do a lot for me. But I’d made up my mind – and about time too – that now I wouldn’t talk too much, and when he pressed me hard, all in friendship, I finally hinted that I was chasing a girl and couldn’t say any more than that. But a curious thing happened before we parted. It was between Wellington and Sydney, a roughish night, and we were listening to a radio he’d had installed. The news said that a most provocative speech, a very sharp challenge to the West, had just been made at the U.N. by the new Soviet delegate there. His name was Viktor Melnikov.
After he’d switched off, Randlong looked curiously at me. ‘I don’t say you gave a jump, Bedford – nobody does – but I noticed what they call a sharp reaction. Know anything about this Melnikov?’
It seemed wiser to admit something than try to dodge the question. ‘Yes, I’ve met him. First, in London. At the house of a fellow who occasionally buys a picture of mine – Sir Reginald Merlan-Smith.’
His roar of laughter came a fraction of a second too late. I just caught something first, a cold flash. ‘Don’t tell me Reggie Merlan-Smith’s hobnobbing with the Commies. Business, I guess. Reggie’s very sharp. Don’t I know it. And what about that grey-haired continental piece of his – what’s her name little Nadia – eh, Bedford? Bet you noticed her all right, didn’t you – never mind any Melnikovs – o-ho – what a wicked piece! Yes, our friend Reggie looks after himself very nicely. But he’s a sound fellow, sound as a bell. Ought to have put his money into the Commonwealth but he prefers South America – can’t imagine why. Now look, my boy – you don’t want to talk about this girl you’re after – don’t blame you – but where are you making for, after we land? Staying in Sydney?’
‘No, I think I’ll go straight to Melbourne. Only a short flight, isn’t it?’
‘Quite short and no trouble at all. Australia’s a different place now you can fly everywhere. Well now – look. First thing I have to do is to visit Canberra – business not pleasure, you can bet on that – and then I go down to Melbourne. I’ve a suite at the Windsor Hotel. You want to meet people – you want to make friends – try me, and we’ll kill another bottle or two. We’ll stick to Scotch too. And here’s a tip, my boy. Keep away from the beer. It’s the curse of the country. They’re all muzzy with it – half-drowned. Stick to Scotch and you’re four moves ahead of the average Aussie every time.’
He was my butterscotch and other Scotch Uncle Santa Claus Randlong right up to the time we crept into that super-harbour at Sydney, which seemed to be waiting for something classier than the Yarrabonga. When we landed he was met by a young man, some office stooge, and whisked away, and the next time I saw him, not to speak to, was through the open door of a waiting-room at the airport, where he was being photographed and interviewed. I flew to Melbourne, where it was steamily hot, and got a room in a small hotel in Collins Street. In some ways it was stranger than Lima or Santiago, Chile. As if Liverpool had been cleaned up and moved to the subtropical Pacific. The people in the hotel were very free-and-easy and didn’t put themselves out very much for the customers, but at least there seemed to be none of that barely disguised contempt and hate you notice in the larger European hotels. Melbourne gave the impression of being big, rich, important, but nothing much appeared to be happening there. At least the newspaper I bought couldn’t promise much.
I came across one item, though, that I couldn’t shrug away. The evening before, it told me, a lecture attended by a large and enthusiastic audience had been given by Dr Magorious, the well-known psychologist and psychiatrist from London. It was one of three lectures telling us in the Free World how, psychologically, we should reply to the Challenge of Communism. Dr Magorious had rated a whole-column report, and clea
rly was going over big in Melbourne.
Late next morning I ran into him. I’d been to the desk of the Oriental Hotel – it was the fourth I’d visited – to inquire if Miss Rosalia Arnaldos was staying there or had been there recently, and had just drawn the fourth blank. I wasn’t surprised, but it had seemed a long shot worth trying. Just as I was going out, Dr Magorious was coming in with two other men, oldish and not smart, university types probably. ‘Hello Dr Magorious,’ I cried, loud and clear. He walked past me without a word, without any obvious sign he’d either heard me or even seen me. It was the most deliberate complete brush-off I’ve ever had. I went out into the glare and noise of the street full of fight and determination. The Magorious treatment had at least done me a bit of good.
I needed it too. Of course I knew a lot more about what I was up against than I’d done when I arrived in South America, but that didn’t help much. Going round Melbourne inquiring about Rosalia, I knew even while I was doing it, was just marking time. There were several mysterious and tantalising clues to somebody or something on Joe Farne’s list, my favourite being Old Astrologer on the mountain, but only one definite place, the same one that Rosalia had given me, Charoke, Victoria. And of course this was why I’d come straight to Melbourne. I bought a large-scale map of Victoria, and after some trouble I found Charoke, which was in the north-west, about seventy miles north of the main highway, going through Ballarat and Ararat, from Melbourne to Adelaide. The map showed a branch railway line not a long way off, but a fellow I talked to in the bar of the hotel, a cattle man from those parts, said the only thing for me to do was to hire a car and drive myself up there. I could just about manage this, but what worried me was what to do when I got there. After all, my last contact with this organisation was when I sapped one of its larger employees with a blackjack. Von Emmerick, feeling silly, might have kept this information to himself, and nobody at Osparas or the Institute knew I’d come to Australia. But I felt this visit to Charoke, miles from anywhere, was dicey to say the least of it, and that I was very much out on my own. In fact, during the afternoon, after I’d fixed up to hire a car for a week – it was oldish but a big tough Buick – and to pick it up in the morning, I wondered if I ought to tell somebody where I was going. I could go round to the Windsor, to see if my genial shipmate Lord Randlong had arrived, just to tell him. Or at a pinch perhaps I could tell the police. After all, I wasn’t in Peru and Chile now. Wasn’t I a citizen in good standing of our great Commonwealth of Nations?
Like hell I was. This is what happened within an hour of my leaving the car-hire garage. Turning the corner, back into Collins Street, I ran into Mike the bar steward, no longer in dirty whites but still looking like a truculent but melancholy bear. We’d parted friends, in spite of my sessions with Lord Randlong, and now I must have a drink with him in a favourite boozer of his near-by, where no bleeding crook beer was rotting the guts of the poor bastards who knew no better. So in we went, hot and thirsty, into the shade and air-conditioning, while I repeated to Mike his lordship’s warning remarks about Aussies and their beer. Mike shoved me into a corner and lumbered off for our drinks, after promising to open my eyes a bit wider. But no sooner had he come back than I opened my eyes very wide. A man nearly as big as he was gave Mike a sharp tap on the shoulder.
‘Oh for Christ’s sake!’ said Mike, looking at the man in disgust. ‘Not again.’
‘What is this?’ I said.
‘Yew tew, mister,’ said the man. Outside a young policeman was waiting for us.
I tried the young policeman. ‘Look here – what’s happening?’ And not only didn’t he reply, he didn’t even look at me. Perhaps he’d attended Dr Magorious’s lecture, the evening before. The four of us got into a car, which was driven by another policeman, and a quarter of an hour later, after telling the first man my name and where I was staying, I found myself sitting in a little room – not a cell but no centre of gracious living either – with no company except my own angry feelings. I was there two whole hours before anything happened. Then, as I was told, Major Jorvis of Security was now ready to see me.
So there he was, sitting behind a desk, a big pink bull of a man, with angry red-rimmed blue eyes and a ginger moustache that he kept trying to chew. He was exactly the kind of man – I’d had dealings with several of them in the army – I’ve never been able to get along with anywhere at any time. I knew at once that this Major Jorvis was a king specimen. He was the type right up where it belonged, in Authority, Security, Blood and Iron. A final touch of horror came with his voice and accent. Not because he had an Australian accent – I can enjoy any accent if it genuinely belongs somewhere – but because he’d brewed for himself a nasty mixture of Australian and Field-Marshal Viscount Montgomery speech-on-parade English.
‘I’m Major Jorvis,’ he began.
‘I know you are,’ I said angrily. ‘But what I want to know is why I’ve been brought here, kept here for a couple of hours – ’
‘And I’ll tell you when I’m ready to. But I’ll ask the questions. Now you arrived in Sydney yesterday in the Yarrabonga, didn’t you?’ He did a looking-at-papers act.
‘Yes – and my name’s Bedford, I came from Valparaiso, I live in London, I’m a painter by profession, and I didn’t come to Australia to sit in cubbyholes – ’
‘We can soon show you worse ones than that. Now – stop shouting – and answer my questions, if you don’t want another long wait. You’re a member of the Communist Party, aren’t you?’
‘No, I’m not. And never was at any time.’
‘That’s the answer we expect to get of course – ’
‘Why do you ask the dam’ silly question then?’
‘To prove you’re all ready to tell lies. Now, Bedford, are you willing to swear you’re not a member of the Communist Party?’
‘Certainly, with pleasure.’
He looked pleased. He had me trapped, somewhere in the lost jungle of his mind. ‘That question and your answer have just been recorded, you might like to know.’
‘It won’t sell. Not without music.’
That annoyed him of course, but he didn’t explode. Instead, he was quiet, ruthless, deadly now, the way he’d seen it done on films. ‘We don’t guess, y’know, Bedford. We go to work on information. We have some about you or you wouldn’t be here. Now I’ll ask you another simple straightforward question. Why have you come to Australia?’
I hesitated, as of course he observed with great satisfaction. ‘Surely that’s my business,’ I began, rather stupidly playing for time.
I was saved – or I thought I was – by somebody buzzing him. What he heard through the receiver lifted his horrible moustache above a grin. ‘That’s just great. Of course. Bring him along at once. And you stay – second witness.’ He put down the receiver, leant back, half-closed his eyes and hummed or purred, a cat with a ginger moustache and a mouse.
The man who’d yanked us out of the pub came in to hold the door open, for somebody to make a big entrance. It was made by my old Yarrabonga bar-and-stateroom chum, Lord Randlong, who entered with an outstretched hand and a wide warm smile. I sprang up, words of welcome tumbling out. But the hand and smile were for Major Jorvis, not for me. The suspect Bedford got one cold quick look, that was all. I sat down again, feeling like a punctured balloon. But while Lord Randlong and Major Jorvis were exchanging some bluff manly downunder stuff and being admired by the other man, Inspector Somebody, I did try to nourish a tiny hope that my butterscotch and other Scotch Australian Uncle Santa would suddenly emerge, give me one of his warm smiles, then prove to Major Jorvis how wrong he was about shipmate Bedford my boy. But the next look he gave me, as he settled down, was even stonier than the first.
‘Well, Major Jorvis, I can answer questions or just tell you what I know.’
‘Just tell us what you know, please, Lord Randlong.’ The major’s sickly sweet manner was a real horror, just the thing for Frankenstein’s Uncle or Dracula’s Cousin.
L
ord Randlong cleared his throat, which may have given him some trouble since his recent transformation into a rat, and put on an important but dutiful look. ‘This man Bedford came aboard the Yarrabonga at Valparaiso. I’d gone ashore for a couple of days so I didn’t see him come aboard. But a member of the crew, who often makes confidential reports to me – ’
‘A private spy of yours, is he?’ I put in. This went badly with all three of them.
‘This member of the crew,’ his lordship continued, ‘told me that Bedford immediately spent some time in the bar, which shouldn’t have been open then, with the steward Mike – ’ Here he paused for dramatic effect, but Major Jorvis thought he’d been given an opening.
‘Oh – we know all about him, Lord Randlong. And he and Bedford were picked up together this afternoon – ’
‘I say, Bedford had spent some time in the bar not only with the steward but also with another man he seemed to know particularly well. A Chilean called Jones who’s known to be a Communist agent. Ask the Americans in Santiago.’ All three looked cloaks at one another and daggers at me.
‘So I decided to cultivate this man Bedford’s acquaintance. Kind of thing I’ve been able to do once or twice before, as you know, Major. We talked a good deal in the bar and over drinks in my stateroom – ’
I had to break in here. ‘Where you promised to do this, that and the other for me in Australia, introduce me to your friends – ’
‘Well, here’s one – Major Jorvis.’ He gave a roar of laughter, and Major Jorvis and the Inspector guffawed with enthusiasm. Then as Randlong pulled his face straight again, to look dutiful, solemn, important, and I stared hard at him, I caught something, another cold flash, just as I’d done after we’d been listening to the radio in his stateroom. It told me at once that this was just as much a performance as the one he’d put on for me, and that he regarded the other two as a pair of zombies that could be useful to him. But not simply to him personally. He wasn’t here on his own account. He’d learnt something about me, since he’d landed, that had brought him here.
Saturn Over the Water Page 20
