Her Victory

by Alan Sillitoe

  The captain raved when Sedgemoor touched his legs and tried to straighten them. His jaws clamped. Sweat dripped from his face.

  The engineer calmed him for a time, but through the rest of the night the captain’s demon continued its ravings. Sparkie called the medical service, which radioed back regrets that they had an epileptic on their hands, and sent instructions on how to treat him. Two days later they steamed into Seattle, and the captain was taken ashore, his game neatly parcelled and labelled by Tom, never to be seen by any of them again.

  For years he could not pass a toy shop without wondering whether old Captain Robinson had recovered sufficiently to market his weird hobby. He would look among rows of coloured boxed in the hope of seeing that he had. Perhaps the concentration of devising such a complicated and never-ending game had in fact held back the seizure for many years, yet only till such time as would make certain that the first fit would be his last as far as duty at sea was concerned.

  Sedgemoor spent weeks blocking in the colours of his ‘Mona Lisa’. He one day looked at his masterpiece (‘A bit too lovingly,’ said the cook), finished but for a few last numbers around the enigmatic yet for him utterly discouraging smile, and deciding he could do no more towards bringing it to life beyond the state of a mere painting, masterpiece though it might be, walked on deck with it, stood on the rail, and fell overboard.

  A Filipino deck-swabber saw him go, so that he was soon hauled back. The artist-by-numbers explained to the captain, who had nothing less than murder in his eyes, that he had been taking his painting into the air to dry when a gust of wind caught the large canvas and, acting like a sail, carried him away.

  8

  The map of the world made from match heads by the third mate was, when complete, the marvel of the ship. Even the captain asked to see it. No one thought to remark on so inflammable a work being kept in one of the cabins. Some must have known that the match heads were lethal, but did not realize the possibility of fire should it rest too long against hot pipes.

  Nothing of the sort happened, however. After finishing his object the third mate often placed it on a table, closed his eyes, and ran his fingers along coastlines till he knew it so well that he could tell exactly where he was, as if he were a blind person reading a Braille map of the world. The only man who had not seen it was the cook, and for him the third mate brought out his huge board and set it on the ping-pong table in the crew’s rest room. Those who thought they might not get another opportunity of seeing the map also came in.

  Puffing a half-smoked cheroot, the cook leaned over to look. Such utter fascination must have its consequences. Hot ash from his foul-smelling smokeroo landed at the top of Norway and, being neglected while he looked at Australia, one match head ignited with a sprout of blue and yellow flame, generating sufficient heat to make contact with those on either side. A handkerchief, or perhaps an upturned ashtray, could easily have doused this initial conflagration, but no one seemed able to do anything except stare.

  A line of blue flame went east along the Siberian coast, and another zig-zagged in a southerly direction down Norway and leapt across to Denmark. The cook was mesmerized, so much so that the cheroot also fell, bounced, and hit the top of Scotland, thus encircling Great Britain by fire, and also Ireland when heat seeped to Ulster via the Mull of Kintyre.

  Those who looked were either helpless, or they enjoyed the sight of a disaster for which they had no responsibility. Eurasia went up in smoke, and flame traversed the Bering Straits to surround the Americas. From Asia it travelled via the Malay Peninsula to Indonesia, not even sparing Australia. The board was thick enough not to let the universal flare-up damage the table, and no one troubled to save the world. Not even Madagascar was unscorched, because after the white heat had ignited Africa through the Sinai Peninsula, and fizzed its all-destroying track down the Red Sea (joined by fire coming from a flame that had already entered the Dark Continent, soon to be dark no more, by the Straits of Gibraltar), it jumped sufficiently eastwards to reach that island also. Only a few spots in the Pacific and parts of the south Polar regions were seen to be untouched when the smoke became diagonal rather than vertical, and to these the third mate, after much hand-wringing, gibbering laughter, and a kind of tap-dancing rage, took out his lighter and also put a match.

  The smouldering board was thrown over the side, trailing a few rags of smoke, a sound of conflict as it fought and then made peace with the water. Tom lent the third mate a pair of field-glasses so that he could view his devastated creation floating like a mouldy biscuit in the green sea.

  No man’s pastime could have ended more satisfactorily. The man had come to the end of hobbying even before the accident, which was why he did not try to stop the powder-train of destruction. He could have saved Africa at least, perhaps half of Asia, conceivably Japan, but the fire combusted from the smouldering in his soul, and he played the malevolent god by letting continent after continent burn. The hobbyman has his own pressurized space within which the obsession plies itself, but sooner or later baleful normality breaks in from the world of so-called sanity, reminding him that even on a ship no man lives alone, and that all were subject to laws which, while not easily comprehended, bound them in ways from which it was impossible to escape.

  Tom had noted the dogged preoccupations of the hobbyists which prevented self-knowledge from overwhelming them, or which denied the fact that their prior desolation had been an act of God. They were happy, and good luck to them, but he, apart from the distraction of a few books and records, preferred to let the ocean of twilight and nightly solitude break over him and do its worst. Between watches when he couldn’t sleep, read, listen to music or even talk to himself, he would sit in his darkened cabin with eyes wide open, lulled by the sound of bashing sea and consuming engines, to recall details of his life with as much clarity as imagination could muster, warding off despair with a determination that turned aside any notions of self-pity. Not knowing where he came from, he had no ghosts to push aside. Having no places to go to, there were few hopes on which he could with any realism dwell. Hopes that might be close were under the water through which the ship was pushing its way, and no moment passed when he was not aware that he would only find solutions if he sank endlessly down to look for them.

  The energy to do much was present, but to seek any other posture except that of sitting upright on the only chair, would be to pull himself towards the water by a force impossible to hold back from. At the worst, the only way to survive was to stiffen against inner temptations which were stronger and more dangerous than those outside. His spirit, composed of the will to fight against emptiness, was opposed by the cultivation of an even greater emptiness, so that he could look on the original with less fear. From such a vantage point, he was safe – yet one shade nearer to the deadness which is called annihilation.

  He descended, yet stayed alert, and hours had vanished into minutes when the steward knocked at his door and came in with tea, which he would drink quickly no matter how hot, then walk on to the bridge, thankful that duty intervened as a form of salvation from attacks against which his life seemed the only defence.

  His colleagues sensed by the set of his features that he possessed only the moral strength to do his work, which confirmed him as a type with whom they could do no more than pass the time of the day. Nothing further in the way of friendship was possible. He was not at peace with himself, and was to be avoided. His silent and ungiving expression marked him as ‘one of the old sort’, and they left it at that. He knew what they thought, because the dumb insolence of his own miseries at least had the advantage of making him sensitive to the assumptions of other people concerning himself.

  To take up some pastime as a guard against his isolation would be dangerous, for if he later tired of whatever hobby his temperament suggested, the peril of a greater emptiness than had assailed him before would be such that he might find himself beyond all reason for continuing his life. So he became known as the sort of person a
bout whom it was said that his hobby was his work, and work his hobby.

  The intensity of the struggle had varied over the years, but it was always present, till he saw that by being a firm part of his existence, such a fight might have saved the only quality his spirit possessed. Safety came to depend on the fight. The effort of contesting his despair pulled him through innumerable voyages. In the valley of the shadow he stayed sane. He remained part of life, fixed into himself, and committed to a battle which became responsible for his survival.

  His spirit had chosen the way, because though the price was devastation, there was a reward of a sort, for beyond the turmoil, which there was no evading, was a love of and an enjoyment of life, of belonging to the land and sunsets, and certainly to those storms which, on a smallish ship, and for days at a time, often threatened to make the next minute his last. He was able to observe such manifestations coolly, and do his work, sometimes going from the bridge to the wireless cabin to hear the singing of the morse, and see a weather message written down telling of the storm’s increasing force.

  The wireless operator on one ship was Paul Smith, a tall and youthful Ulsterman of forty, with long jaw, short sandy hair, and grey eyes that needled rather than looked. Deck officers rarely mixed with the Sparks on a ship, but Tom, friendly towards few, was undiscriminating when he chose to speak.

  Paul tapped at the morse key, and shifted around in his armchair as if afflicted with some incurable disease of the posterior nerves, but which was only a habit of certain wireless officers who took pride in the speed and rhythm of their sending. Tom’s message from the captain was destined for the owners regarding cargo handling at the next port.

  Like all wireless operators, Paul knew how to make himself comfortable. There was a cat asleep on the receiver, a large well-fed unfriendly ginger beast. A tea-making machine lay within arm’s radius, and two pots of flowers by the porthole, as well as framed photographs of Paul’s family, and scenic views of Ulster set in Union Jack frames and pinned by the transmitter.

  ‘It’s where I’m going when my time’s up,’ he called out. ‘There’s a message coming, so wait for it, if you like.’

  ‘I will.’ He looked along a shelf of books when Paul, with earphones clamped, began to write; glanced through a thin volume whose theme was that the British people were one of the Lost Tribes of Israel. He had never heard of such a notion, though Paul had, because the pages were scratched with annotations. The argument was, Tom gathered, that the British were Sons (and presumably Daughters) of Abraham, who would one day resume their rightful place in Palestine – the book having been printed before the modern Israel was formed. An army of British-Israelite regiments would conquer the country from the Heathen (Gentile) Turk and run the country as part of the Empire before handing it over to the Jews as the heritage which had been promised by God to Abraham and his progeny for ever. The Jews of the earth would return, it being assumed that they would all wish to, under the protection of the British Government, and eventually the Kingdom of God would come about on earth because the Jews would finally become Christians.

  Tom thought that the Jews might have a thing or two to say about this last point, but he read a few more pages to discover that the British, being Israelites (tell that to my Aunt Clara, he thought), would keep the world policed from the strategical centre of Palestine under a friendly government of Christian Israelites. For the British were the same people as the Hebrews, while other nations were referred to as ‘Gentiles’. The author quoted from the Holy Scriptures, and Tom thought his prophecies remarkable considering the present reality of Israel. He slid the book back on the shelf, and sat down.

  Paul had got rid of the wireless message. ‘Convinced?’

  ‘I’m not much of a Bible scholar.’

  He shook his head. ‘But he’s got something?’

  It cost nothing to agree. ‘I suppose he has.’

  Electrical chatter squeaked in through the atmospherics, and Paul gave the key a few punches as if to keep them quiet. ‘He knew that politics and religion have always been bound together, and always will be. The West is cartwheeling towards destruction because it has ceased to believe it. The Russians know it, and their communism is going full blast to convert the world. The first thing the Russians want are the Holy Places of Jerusalem so that they can control the world. It’s been their aim for centuries, and they’ll never let go. They want to wipe out our religion, but can’t because the other tribes of Israel are already back there to guard Jerusalem. Our great British-Israelite statesman David Balfour made arrangements for this in 1917. He knew that Western civilization and our Israelite religion depended on the existence of Israel, and God was in his right mind when the Promised Land was again made available to His scattered people – to whom you and I belong, by the way. The Jews in Israel have not yet taken to accepting the divinity of Jesus, but no scheme is perfect, and there is still time.’

  Anything was possible, Tom thought, from the mouths of babes and radio operators. For ten more minutes Paul proved that at least he was good at scripture, and Tom wondered whether in idle moments he didn’t set his transmitter on to an empty wavelength and bash out exhortations in the hope of stunning some lonely radio man into instant conversion.

  ‘You’re not listening,’ Paul rapped out.

  He was, and said so.

  Paul’s fingertips keyed an outlandish rhythm into the transmitter. ‘What were my last words?’

  To think and hear at the same time was no feat for a deck officer. ‘You said, “For Zion’s sake I will not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest.”’

  When Paul leaned, Tom drew both hands back in case he tried to grasp them. ‘We British belong to the same Hebrew race by birthright, and you also are one of the annointed of the Lord!’ He flipped a switch, which caused water in the kettle to heat. ‘Israel is our ally against the Gentiles and Heathens of the world because we too have lived by the Book and worshipped the One Faceless God Who Shall Be Nameless. We have our own nation back again, with eternal Jerusalem as the capital city. He brought us to the dust, but has lifted us to our appointed places!’

  Tom was as diffident with his questions as he would want a person to be who thought to ask something of him. A man’s views were bound up with his complete mental nuts and bolts, and you had to be careful. ‘Have you always known this?’

  Without leaving his chair Paul drew milk and cream-biscuits from a small refrigerator by the side of the goniometer.

  ‘Sugar?’

  Tom nodded, and passed tea cups from a row of plastic hooks.

  ‘My parents believed, may they rest in peace, that the British were a Lost Tribe with all the characteristics of the Wandering Jews. I might not have talked to you if God hadn’t led you to the one book which dealt with this universal question. When I glanced at your face I knew you were one of us.’

  He made the best cup of tea on the ship, whatever his opinions and obsessions. ‘I’ll think about it.’

  The effort of talking made Paul sweat more than when he worked at his wireless gear. ‘If you believe, the thought comes of itself. Logic falls into place when you have faith. When I took the log to the captain for signing the other day and explained to him that we were all Jews he seemed a wee bit puzzled, but he’s a man of learning, and agreed eventually that the State of Israel was vital to our world. Other nations resent it, but that’s because the idea of redemption through Israel is anathema to anti-Semites.’

  Paul’s monologue sung on in the pertinent tones of his native Ulster, and Tom wanted to continue listening, because the voice of this biblical contortionist comforted him like the rhythmical swish of the sea when he was trying to rest. But to stay was a luxury he could not enjoy. ‘I have to get back to duty. Then I must write a letter to my aunt – or a postcard at any rate. Save me doing it on shore tomorrow.’

  He reached out, and handed the book to him. ‘Take it with you. I’d like you to have it.’

  Tom
put it in his pocket. ‘Kind of you. I’ll have another crack at it.’

  A volume, perhaps on the same subject – he thought all of them were – was dislodged by Paul’s haste and fell to the floor, and Tom was amused to see Paul press his lips to the cover before putting it back. He had found a way of filling his days at sea that did not depend on manual dexterity, or the enthusiasm of acquiring different versions of the same object, or the interest of calculations that were an end in themselves, but by a notion that was perpetrated by a belief in God, and reinforced by faith in the destiny of a people to whom he felt linked in a personal and moral way – and who could say how right or wrong he was?

  From within his own fortress Tom envied no man, but thought no theory could be insane that kept the radio officer as sane as he generally appeared. Even though he himself needed no religion, and no such bizarre side-issue, he knew that Paul had found more stability than the boozers, gamblers, womanizers, and plain black-dog brooders of the maritime or any other fraternity. He was generous and dependable, good at his profession, and within his simplicity lay imagination and even humour, as well as a keen ability to put forth his argument. He studied Hebrew so as to prepare himself for the day when he would, he said, go to the Promised Land. When it did not interfere with his watch-keeping he listened to short-wave broadcasts from Jerusalem, towards which he beamed an aerial so that he would receive news from the middle of the world: ‘On perilous oceans I can, by God’s will, hear everything loud and clear.’