Scend of the Sea

by Geoffery Jenkins

  Both of us had been tense at the beginning of the Buccaneer inquiry. She had sat by me on a hard chair in the big Ministry of Transport conference room. It had low concrete beams and a rather battered dais at one end for the chairman and two assessors. The place smelt of stale smoke. The battery of pressmen used old tin lids on the battered tables to crush out their cigarettes. The presence of so many reporters reflected the intense public interest. The public galleries, too, were crowded. Witnesses, set apart to one side of the room, had to run the gauntlet of the public eye as they walked from their seats to a stand by the chairman's table. The down-at-heel air of the place seemed an unworthy funeral parlour for a creature as swift and noble as the Buccaneer.

  I was called on the second day. She pressed my hand quickly as I rose and walked up to the stand. A ripple ran through the news section. They, like myself, had been lulled into a comfortable drowsiness by the previous day's flat monotone of technicalities, flying and meteorological. The hearing was taking shape as an open-and-shut case of an aircraft being lost in bad weather through nobody's fault.

  That is the way I wanted it, too, for Alistair's sake.

  Musgrave, a Supreme Court counsel who had made his name by specializing in aircraft matters and was often called in to serve on boards of inquiry, led me through my sighting of Alistair's Buccaneer coming towards Walvis Bay, his passing over the ship, his disappearance. I breathed a sigh of relief. No suggestion of low-flying! Only a casual, passing reference to our rendezvous. I glossed over the datum point story; no one probed it.

  I waited to be told to stand down.

  Musgrave said, 'Thank you, Captain Fairlie.'

  I turned to go, but he said almost casually.

  'Did you and your brother find the Waratah's treasure, Captain Fairlie?'

  A galvanic Shockwave passed through the newsmen. Pencils were grabbed, unsmoked cigarettes forgotten. Men and women whispered to each other in the public galleries.

  Bewildered, I looked across at Tafline. She was sitting very still and upright on her hard chair; I could see how white her knuckles had gone from clenching her gloves. Already some people were starting to crane forward to look at her - they had seen me come from her side.

  'There was no treasure in the Waratah,' I stated flatly.

  'Which means, of course, that you found the ship which for sixty years has defied every effort to locate her?'

  'I didn't say I found her,' I was confused, rattled, off balance. There was nothing in her manifests to show she carried bullion . . .'

  'Bullion, Captain Fairlie? Who said anything about bullion?'

  Already a newsman or two had broken from the table and were racing for the nearest telephone.

  'Listen,' I said desperately. The Waratah was carrying a cargo of frozen meat from Australia, some ore, a couple of thousand tons of bunker coal, 279 tons of fresh water . . .'

  Musgrave nodded, pleased. 'Exactly. We take your word for it, Captain Fairlie.' He slipped a pile of papers in front of him. 'In fact, in going through every single detail in connection with the Waratah - even to such a minute fact as the amount of fresh water in her tanks -1 think it is fair to say that there is no living person who knows as much about the Waratah as you do.'

  I cringed for the next blow.

  'In fact, Captain Fairlie, if it wasn't treasure you were after, I cannot see any reasonable . . .' he emphasized the word ' - person going to a hundredth of the trouble you have done: weather, metacentric heights, minute analysis of evidence . . .'

  Feldman! The C-in-C, too, had sold me down the river! They had turned over everything I had said and collected to this sharp-tongued barrister who was in the process of making a Roman holiday out of me!

  'I wasn't after treasure, nor was my brother,' I flared. 'I wanted to find out what sank the Waratah so that I could make sure it didn't happen again.'

  'A very commendable sentiment,' murmured Musgrave. 'Yet, despite the fact that this was the very purpose for which the authorities sent your ship to sea, you saw fit not merely not to consult them about your . . . ah . . . proposed enterprise, but you acted in flat defiance of their order.'

  I could not reply.

  Musgrave went on. 'It seems, on looking at the case as an outsider, that there must have been some compelling reason why at least three members of the Fairlie family have chosen to risk death-endure death, even-for the sake of the Waratah' The bland tone vanished. Tell the court, Captain Fairlie,' he ordered.

  ‘I've already told you - the safety of the oil rigs.'

  'Then,' said Musgrave, 'you can undoubtedly describe, on the basis of your near-miss with death, and your brother's death, what those conditions are?'

  1 said unhappily, 'There are still certain imponderables which require elucidation.'

  Musgrave let the lightning rest on every syllable as he repeated my words. There-are-still-certain-imponderables-which-require-elucidation.'

  The newsmen were grinning and scribbling. This was what they wanted.

  Musgrave went on. ‘I put it to you, Captain Fairlie, that you used your brother and an aircraft, irreplaceable because of the arms embargo against this country, as a spotter for some nefarious enterprise which you will not disclose to the court, and in doing so caused his death. You also used a ship belonging to the state for the same purpose and caused tens of thousands of rands' worth of damage both to the vessel and her equipment. You have also destroyed the value of the weather watch in the Southern Ocean by breaking its continuity, so that the observations carried out during the past year will have to be scrapped, and the whole project begun again.'

  I looked desperately across at Tafline. Her eyes did not meet mine. She was taut, white-faced. Had the Waratah cost me her, too?

  I did not know the answer to that when, raw and damaged, I returned to her flat after the inquiry. There was no doubt that in the court's eyes the whole broadside of blame would be mine. She opened the door and went straight across to the window, not speaking. The dusk had come and the beam of light from the lighthouse flicked across her face and gave it a brightness which is with me still.

  She still did not face me when she asked.

  That night when the big wave hit Walvis Bay-what did you see, Ian?'

  'Dead ahead I saw a ship, an old-fashioned ship. She was heading into the wind.'

  She did not turn, and the light beam cut across her face. It came and went as she stood looking out.

  I do not think either of us heard the telephone ring the first two or three times. Then she went slowly across to the instrument and spoke quietly. She said 'thank you' mechanically and went back to the window.

  She waited, then said, 'That was Mr Hoskins. The late papers are full of it. The Navy has found part of your father's airliner. It has got a message on it - for you.

  'It is addressed from the Waratah.'

  CHAPTER TEN

  The ragged rectangle of aluminium, about the size of a bathmat, looked strangely dull against the polish of the colonel's wooden desk. The edges were scolloped as if they had been hacked off with some inadequate instrument. The metal, section of an aircraft fuselage, did not lie flat and streamlined but was buckled and uneven. Painted orange letters, discoloured and faint but still readable, spelled 'b-o-k'. The upright stroke of the ‘b' was half obliterated by the torn edge. Fastened through the aluminium by its corroded strap was a gold wristwatch.

  Tafline was with me at Railways and Harbours Police Headquarters the next morning. The day was bright and mild; we had lingered a little in the street before the building to admire the glorious proteas, the over-early yellow ixias and Tyrian purple babianas of the Malay women flower-sellers. She was quiet and serious and refused flowers after we came out again.

  She had been that way ever since I had told her about my sighting of the old-fashioned sailing ship in the path of Walvis Bay. She had not, as I feared, derided it; she simply did not refer to it again, but she had been abstracted from time to time during the evening.
r />   Both our consternation and perplexity at Mr Hoskins' news-I had gone out and bought newspapers with their screaming headlines - had been heightened by a second telephone call hard on the heels of his. The caller had been Colonel Joubert, head of the Railways and Harbours Police. He had first made sure it was Tafline he was speaking to, and then had requested-in a way which made it clear it was more a command than a request-that both of us should meet him next day. Why Tafline? What had she to do with the finding of a section of fuselage purporting to have come from my father's airliner? How, I asked myself uneasily, did Colonel Joubert know in the first place to find me at her flat? It presupposed that the authorities had a close eye on me. The papers stated that the Navy had found the panel floating at sea when the last warship (unnamed) was returning to Simonstown after a stay on the coast more than a week after the search had finally been abandoned. At first, the floating panel was thought to have been part of the Buccaneer; when it was realized that it was not, it was turned over to the Railways Police as falling within their sphere of investigation.

  By some tacit understanding, Tafline and I did not discuss the Waratah or the panel or the hundred questions which thronged our minds that evening after the two telephone calls. After supper, we had sat on the floor of her flat, in one another's arms, and, as the lighthouse flash came and went, she had told me of her night's vigil and the dawn of her love; she took the pain, from my wounds; we lost ourselves in each other. I would wait with a kind of unbelieving impatience for the light flash to come and tell me that the lovely face was real, close to my face; when it was gone, the warmth of her lips against mine would underwrite the moment's vision with a searching tenderness.

  Now, Colonel Joubert said tersely, 'Usually the sort of thing we have to cope with is an old bottle with a tear-jerker message in it, supposed to have been set adrift in an emergency which existed only in the joker's imagination. This has an original slant to it.'

  He lit another cigarette off the one he was smoking and placed it, ash towards himself, on the desk's pock-burned inner camber.

  A police major, sitting to one side of the colonel, said sarcastically, 'At least your father doesn't claim to have met your grandfather aboard the Waratah.'

  The policemen looked as if they had listened to too many woes to accept anything at face value; several civilian aircraft experts, whose exact function I did not know, seemed strained.

  'Not so fast,' I started to say. 'The only information I have is from the newspapers, but first I want to know why ...'

  'Why the juffrou has been brought into it?' The colonel swung back on his chair and blew a cloud of smoke towards the ceiling.

  'She sent a very strange telegram to you.'

  'Strange? There was nothing strange about it!'

  He picked out a photocopy from a file in front of him.

  ' "Until we see each other, please keep away from the Waratah. Tafline."'

  There was certainly nothing wrong with the Navy's staff-work. First, the record of my interview with the C-in-C which had been turned over to Musgrave, and now a private telegram to mel

  'In view of what is written on that panel, I want a lot of explanations . . .'

  Tafline startled us. After the stiff, formal introductions she had been silent. Now she stood up, walked to the desk, and ran a finger over the twisted, sea-marked panel, as if to establish some contact. She might have been quite alone. She did not react to the colonel's demand. The circle of watching men was stilled? she was oblivious. What was she seeking from the panel which itself had been in the physical presence of the world's greatest sea mystery, probably even seen the corroded hulk of what had been Captain Ilbery's pride, the metal coffin which had broken so many hearts so long ago and tantalized so many minds since?

  She took up the watch, too, and turned it round in her hands. Her unspeaking action seemed to have taken the initiative from the colonel and his peremptory demand about the telegram.

  He reddened and snapped. 'That watch and all the rest of it looks like something picked up from the films.'

  'It isn't a fantasy,' Tafline said, not looking up. She turned the panel this way and that to catch the light.

  'It is a will.'

  Addressing only me, she read out in her soft, clear voice: -’"To my son Ian Fairlie I bequeath wreck Waratah south Bashee ...”"

  I gasped. 'It's . . . it's . . . too fantastic! A will-written on a piece of metal! He bequeaths me the Waratahl How . . . where did he find her?'

  My flow of words died at the colonel's cool, professional scrutiny. I felt he was logging every reaction of mine, almost every eye-blink.

  That is exactly what I want to know. That is why I asked you to come and explain. Both of you.'

  'I ... I simply don't know! I've never heard of such a thing . . .'

  'Nor have I,' he retorted. The more one goes into it, the more incredible it becomes. Not only the panel itself, but the circumstances surrounding it. All of which involve you.'

  I did not know what to reply.

  Tafline came to the rescue. 'There is more writing. But the wording becomes very indistinct. There are some figures, too. It looks like - no, I can't make it out.'

  One of the civilians, his plain clothes contrasting with the smart blue uniforms and white collars of the police, said. ‘We cleared it up, in order to read it. Warren and I have been working most of the night on it. Eh, Warren?'

  A heavy-eyed, bearded civilian nodded. 'Waratah was plain enough. Aluminium, of course, doesn't rust in seawater.'

  Colonel Joubert said. 'Please leave that alone, juffrou, and sit down again.'

  Tafline put it down gently. As she did so, she swung round and looked full at me. Gone was her earlier abstraction; her eyes were shining, as if she had come to some big decision. I was bewildered, the move was so deliberate.

  The telephone rang and the colonel answered in Afrikaans, deferentially but firmly.

  He put down the receiver. 'Pretoria!' he exclaimed. 'What am I doing about the Waratah? The powers in Pretoria want to know! What do the preliminary investigations show? The press wants to know-the whole world wants to know! Already this morning I've had four calls from London, one from Munich, and two from New York. You've got a lot of questions to answer, Captain Fairlie!'

  I didn't care for his overbearing attitude. I gestured at the panel. 'I've got a right to know first what all this is about.'

  'Tell him, major, you took the first call.'

  He said, This panel was picked up about twelve miles offshore, north of East London, by the frigate Natal...'

  Lee-Aston!

  I broke in. 'What was she doing there1?' The major looked surprised. The colonel leaned forward expectantly. I saw the flash of suspicion. 'Why?'

  'Well . . . Natal towed me in to Cape Town. I thought the frigate was damaged. Her captain said he was going to Simonstown for repairs. The search area was to the north of the Bashee. Lee-Aston told me so himself.'

  'Natal was damaged,' replied the major. 'But Commander Lee-Aston joined the search in its final stages. However, when it was called off, the damage to Natal was found to be more extensive than at first thought. Natal did not return to base. She stayed over at East London for more repairs. That took some time. She was on her way back when she spotted the panel ..

  It slipped out before I could check myself. 'But if she was making for Simonstown, she would not have been north of East London but south ...'

  Lee-Aston was not the cold, inflexible machine I had thought him to be after all. The main search having failed, he had gone straight to the area I had urged him to search 1 And he had found part of the Gemsbok.

  Both the colonel and the major were staring at me.

  Joubert said thoughtfully, 'You're very clever about these things, Captain Fairlie.'

  The major resumed, not taking his eyes from my face. 'Commander Lee-Aston first thought he had found part of the Buccaneer.'

  'Why didn't he say something!' I burst out.


  ‘You've been a great deal in the news lately, Captain Fairlie,' replied Joubert. ‘How the press must love you! One drama on top of another! Fortunately Commander Lee-Aston chose his duty above publicity. He kept his mouth shut until he reached Simonstown and the origin of the panel could be established.'

  There was an innuendo about the colonel's words which should have warned me.

  He threw away his cigarette. 'If you listen hard, you can hear the reporters grinding their teeth outside the door waiting to interview you. Howling, in fact. How did they know?'

  He eyed me searchingly.

  'Are you trying to imply ... ?'

  ‘I am implying nothing, Captain Fairlie-at this stage. All I can say is that the way one drama is piling on after another . . .' He shrugged. 'It gets like a drug, being in the headlines. There was a man I wanted once whom we chased all over the country. Every day he had the headlines. He got away. He was quite safe where he holed up. The papers cooled off. He couldn't bear it. So he arranged with the papers that he would give himself up at a particular spot and they'd be there - reporters, photographers, the lot. He was perfectly happy when we arrived to arrest him. He was back again on the front page. It is quite amazing how co-operative the press proves on these occasions ...'

  To the other side,' growled the major.

  I looked from one to the other. They had not accused me

  of a put-up job with the press, but they were pretty close to the wind.