‘No luck?’
‘Not yet, sir, but,’ he temporised, thinking of the two Vietnamese men running into the saloon in mock outrage, ‘I think they’ve hidden it somewhere.’ He hesitated, knowing he would have to confess he had inadvertently let the refugees know their destination was Shanghai.
‘That’s bad,’ Mackinnon mused. ‘I think they know by now that we are not going to Hong Kong.’
‘Sir?’ Stevenson frowned.
‘When Sparks brought the message about our diversion, Macgregor overheard us discussing it.’
Relief flooded Stevenson. ‘Yes, they know, sir,’ he said flatly, confirming the Captain’s deduction.
‘There’s always one rotten apple in the barrel,’ Mackinnon said, and Stevenson’s self-esteem shrivelled under this vicarious disapproval. ‘Anyway, we’ve got to get through this lot yet. Did you find the Mate?’
‘No, sir, I haven’t seen him.’
‘Checked his cabin?’
‘No.’
‘You’d better have a look.’
Rawlings was fast asleep, spread-eagled on his bunk, his face slack, almost boyish in its innocent detachment from responsibility. Stevenson gazed at him for a moment, recalling his escapade with his niece, Dawn Dent; ‘Double-D’ the crew had nick-named her for her nubility. It took all sorts, Stevenson thought.
‘Leave him be for a bit,’ Mackinnon said, staring again at the depressed needle of the aneroid barometer. ‘He’ll wake up soon enough.’
And they were not long left in their situation of relative comfort, for as they moved across the vortex and it, in its turn, moved over them, the residue of the wind in which they had been hove-to sent the waves in towards the centre. For some twenty minutes, as they passed out of the wind through the invisible ‘wall’ bordering the typhoon’s eye, this continued. Then, imperceptibly at first, cross swells ran in, the sea began to heap, to fling itself in the air as unseen waves collided with an increasing turbulence. After the pressing violence of the great wind, all now seemed a random of chaos.
The Matthew Flinders was flung about, her hull protesting as a violent roll terminated abruptly in a premature counter-roll, only to turn with a monstrous jerk which bodily twisted her into a sky-climbing pitch from which her suddenly unsupported bow fell with an immense, jarring crash.
There were no harmonics in this anarchy of water, nothing recognisable as a pattern of waveform, nothing in the least predictable beyond the knowledge that the vast energy the storm had unleashed on the surface of the sea, an energy which unimpeded could send an ocean swell from one side of the Atlantic to the other, had concentrated its power to propel a gyration of swell waves to a small centre perhaps twenty or thirty miles across.
Mackinnon clung to the handles of the wheelhouse windows. It was no wonder that the combination of low pressure and the inward heaping of the sea could raise the very sea level by estimated heights of sixty to seventy feet! Indeed, he knew of a ship that had been carried over a shoal which would normally have ripped the bottom out of her. He thought of the words of the psalmist: They that go down to the sea in ships and occupy their business in great waters; these men shall see the works of the Lord . . .
Mackinnon watched the foremast whip back and forth across the blue of the sky with its table, making of it an elongated cross. ‘Let’s hope the builders made a good job of her,’ he said to no one in particular.
The extreme erratic violence of the ship’s motion increased the misery of all on board. Only those with strong stomachs and good sea legs could move about. Without exception the boat people lay down, many choking up their recently eaten food so that the reek of fresh vomit was added to the stench of human neglect filling the accommodation. Rawlings woke, as Mackinnon had predicted, but he dragged his mattress on to the deck and fell upon it, dead to all thought of duty, aware someone would call him out if he were wanted. Freddie Thorpe was driven from his patient’s side by sheer exhaustion. He also crashed on his deck-laid mattress, as did the remainder of the crew who were not on duty.
At their posts there now remained only a handful of men. On the bridge were Captain Mackinnon and the duty seaman at the helm; Sparks in the radio-room patiently waited for a further incoming signal he knew was due from the inclusion of the Matthew Flinders’s call sign on the last traffic list transmitted by Hong Kong Radio. Far below, in the shaft tunnel, Greaser Number Twenty-three, Wang Ho Lee, tirelessly worked his way along the shaft bearings while his colleague, Chan Xao Ping, clung like a limpet above the generators and main engine and checked dashpots and tun-dishes with an impressive devotion to his duty. Below him, on ‘the platform’ beside the engine controls and the terminus of the telegraph, George ‘Geordie’ Reed stood listening to the beat of his engine. Somewhere above him Assistant Engineer Curtis again checked the level of the service tanks.
‘Wi’ her tossing herself aboot like this, ah doon’t want no more fooking air locks,’ Reed had told him, ‘or ah’ll hae yoor fooking bollocks for a necktie.’
Without seeking permission, Stevenson had left the bridge. Phan Van Nui, he guessed, was one of Tam’s boyfriends. He wanted to call him an ‘intimidator’, but he was no longer sure. He had been a fool to think a slight rapport could signify anything.
East was east, and west was fucking west, he thought savagely.
He went first to the radio-room. He had no real idea why, beyond acknowledging he should perhaps have been here earlier. Sparks removed one of his headphones.
‘Hullo, Alex,’ he said. ‘Bad news about Chas.’
‘Yes.’
‘You were . . .?’
‘Yes, I saw it. Poor bastard.’
‘He wasn’t a very happy bloke.’
‘No. I wonder if any of us are.’
Sparks pulled a rueful face. ‘Soldier philosophers are to be admired as historical heroes; sailor philosophers are a pain in the arse.’ He smiled, taking the sting out of the rebuke. ‘He’s at peace now, anyway, out of this bloody mess.’
Stevenson was about to remonstrate and then he recalled the expression on Taylor’s face, the expression he could not quite define, that had mystified him. ‘Yes,’ he found himself saying, ‘he is.’
‘You’ve heard the news?’ Sparks went on, ignoring the warning as to the confidentiality of radio telegrams that was framed under glass on the adjacent bulkhead.
Stevenson nodded. ‘Shanghai? Yes. The boat people have got wind of it, too.’
‘It’s fucking Dent’s,’ Sparks said, ‘probably James Dent himself. I was told he’d be out in Hong Kong when we arrived. He’d happily do the government’s dirty work for them. Probably sucked his way to dinner with the Governor. There’s nothing that bastard likes better than kicking arse. He must get a great big stiffie out of it.’
‘I think there may be trouble with the boat people,’ Stevenson interrupted, ‘once we’re out of this lot. They’ve got a gun of some sort. It’s my guess they might try and take over the ship.’
Sparks’s mouth dropped open. ‘You’re kidding.’
‘No, I’m not. I wish I was.’
‘Does the Old Man know?’
‘Yes. I think he’s guessed what might happen.’
‘What’s he going to do?’
Stevenson shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea; but I thought I’d better put you in the picture.’
‘Thanks,’ replied Sparks ironically. ‘What about Randy?’
‘Rawlings is crashed out,’ the Second Mate said, ‘and frankly I don’t think he’s going to be a lot of good.’
‘No,’ said Sparks, ‘he’s a bit of a broken reed at the best of times.’ He smiled again. ‘You won’t forget old Sparky, Alex, will you, if things start to hum? Perched down here at the after end of the boat-deck I’m a bit isolated and they may take it into their heads to fuck up this lot.’ He gestured at the radio sets before him.
Stevenson grinned. ‘Okay, I savvy.’
‘I mean I’d hate to end up like poor Chas. My wife still
loves me – at least so she says in her letters.’
Outside, on the boat-deck, Stevenson almost trod on the fluttering of an exhausted bird. It was a parakeet of some kind, a tangled bundle of brilliant colours, one wing broken and its long tail feathers bent. He stood for a moment staring at the unfortunate thing, then looked out over the wild confusion of the sea. He had never seen anything like it, for it beggared all description, a leaping, heaving mass, the tall columns of imploding waves sparkling in the benign sunshine.
Suddenly he made up his mind. Turning forward, he began to run.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A Roosting of Pigeons
A man running on a wildly bucking deck experiences two sensations: that of weightlessness as the deck drops from under him; and that of weighing far more than mere avoirdupois as it changes and rises rapidly beneath him. The first makes him run on tiptoes, the second causes his knees to buckle; in neither case has he control of himself, for a lateral movement of the ship may set an unanticipated sideways component into the equation of balance, and a deck has too many excrescences to allow unimpeded movement. Thus Stevenson fetched up sickeningly against a boat-hoisting winch, just as Macgregor had done hours earlier.
When he reached Captain Mackinnon’s cabin, he sank to his knees on the damp carpet before the ship’s safe. Catching his breath he tried to recall the combination number. Miraculously the safe opened at his first attempt. Lifting out the revolver he carefully inserted the handful of bullets and snapped the magazine into the handle. Finally he put the weapon inside the waistband of his uniform shorts and buttoned his shirt over his belly.
Outside in the alleyway he paused by Rawlings’s door. Then he knocked and, opening it, put his head into the Mate’s stuffy cabin.
‘Mr Rawlings,’ he called. Stretched out on his mattress the Mate stirred.
‘Eh? What is it? What’s the time?’
‘I think the Old Man could do with a relief on the bridge,’ Stevenson said, ‘or some moral support. We’re in the vortex. I think you should be up top.’
‘What about the Third Mate?’ Rawlings asked, still fuddled with sleep.
‘He’s dead,’ snapped Stevenson, bringing Rawlings to his senses, before backing out and slamming the door. He peered for a moment up the stairwell to the chart-room. He could hear the low buzz of conversation, presumably Mackinnon and the helmsman. He slipped below.
He thought of all the places the Vietnamese might have gained access to: the gyro-room, the stores alleyway. He quizzed the assistant stewards, but no one had released a key or opened a locker for hours. The galley, a worse shambles than on his earlier visit, yielded nothing, and he probed yard after yard of cable tray with a mounting hopelessness. His task daunted him, for there were so many hiding places on a ship.
He clambered gingerly through the heavy engine-room door, its weight swinging dangerously against his injured shoulder. A wave of hot air and a thunderous noise met his entry. It was to Stevenson, depite his long years of sea service, an alien place. The strict lines of demarcation drawn up by the twin, inter-related disciplines of the British Merchant Navy existed to its bitter end. Class, tradition, personal inclination and sheer English snobbery ensured it.
Thus, even in the extremity of near-desperation, Stevenson entered the huge space, as big and awe-inspiring as an English mediaeval parish church, with a sense of being a stranger. For him to search the vast labyrinth was impossible, but to communicate his apprehensions to Reed was no more than common sense demanded.
As Mackinnon stood on his bridge, Reed still occupied his own command post: the platform. Stevenson shouted the nub of his intelligence and Reed shook his head and pointed upwards.
‘Ah can see the engine-room door from here. Every time it opens ah can tell – the draught alters a bit. You become used tae these things. Nobody’s been below, Alex.’
Somewhat reassured, Stevenson made his way aft along the shaft tunnel. Number Twenty-three Greaser nodded and smiled.
‘Okay?’
‘Okay.’
He climbed upwards through the escape into the sodden squalor of the poop. Here Chinese faces greeted him.
‘No good,’ said Number One Greaser, ‘plenty water come in. No good. Come Hong Kong-side, go home. Ship finished. No good. Big wind no good. Company no good. Bastards Ay-ah . . .’ and he swore a complex Cantonese oath, continuing all the while to bale out his cabin.
‘You okay, Number One?’
‘Oh, sure, Secon’ Office’ all okay.’
‘You see boat people come aftside?’
‘Boat people?’ the old man queried incredulously. ‘Fucking boat people plenty no good,’ an they too were united genealogically with the oath. Admiring the greaser’s incredible fortitude, Stevenson made his slow way back to the accommodation via the shaft tunnel and the engine-room while the Matthew Flinders crashed and banged her wracked way across the airless void of the vortex.
Guilt, Mackinnon knew, wore a man down more surely than anything. It acted upon the soul with a persistent corrosive power.
If he was susceptible to the workings of conscience.
The qualifying afterthought made him smile wryly to himself. Mackinnon could see little guilt about Rawlings.
‘Thought I’d come up and see if you wanted a relief, sir,’ he drawled.
‘Very kind of you,’ Mackinnon replied dryly, undeceived.
‘We should be out of the eye soon, the cloud’s beginning to build up ahead,’ Rawlings went on.
‘Aye, it is. It’ll be a head wind and we’ll keep her away to the north-east until the wind moderates to an eight or nine before we haul round to the north.’
Rawlings moved forward and jammed himself in the port forward corner of the wheelhouse in imitation of his commander. ‘Wind’s stripped miles of paint off the derricks,’ he remarked.
‘So it has,’ said Mackinnon unmoved from his own vantage point. For a moment they were silent, both thinking it no longer mattered, then Rawlings asked:
‘Are you going below, sir?’
Mackinnon shook his head. ‘Not yet.’
‘Well, there’s no point in both of us—’
‘I quite agree,’ broke in the Captain. ‘I’d like you to go below and have a look at the woman.’
In the absence of the Mate, Captain Mackinnon resumed his train of thought. Characteristically, he rejected the theory his over-active brain was erecting as a carapace to cover its own inner secrets. Guilt was not universally destructive; it was not even universally acknowledged, for no one of the Captain’s generation was able to grant a grain of goodness to all mankind. He was dissembling: guilt lay heavy on the Captain’s ageing soul. Guilt had once driven him to the verge of alcoholism. Guilt had sprung the metaphysical locks of his fate-laden philosophy, guided his thinking as he jostled his lonely conscience through the current crisis wherein he pitted his skill against the typhoon. He recalled the ideas he had had earlier, seeking to drive them further, closer to the truth.
In order to make judgements a man needed more than experience, experience merely gave him options. What he had drawn on in the past hours was more than cunning, in its original sense, the sense that linked it with knowledge. What had guided him was his intuition, his own luck, a sense bounded by its own restraint: his guilt.
Again and again, in these moments of enduring, of waiting until the ship battled her way out of the typhoon, his mind went over and over these abstract obsessions: how things turned full circle, of cause and effect; luck and guilt, opportunity and misfortune; and overall – fate. Somewhere – Conrad, wasn’t it? – he had read that life was a ‘droll thing’, a ‘mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose’.
The concept chilled him.
No landsman could ever truly know the loneliness of the sea life; how omnipresent was the job, how few the distractions. If a man’s conscience was troubled, guilt grew like a wart upon his nose, conspicuously, unavoidably. And from an early time Captain M
ackinnon had acquired his measure of guilt to hump about the world’s oceans; no very great thing, perhaps to a landsman. No very great thing to many seamen either; a peccadillo, one might say, except the indiscretion was passionate and, in its own intense way, sincere. Its power to trouble him lay in this sincerity; its power to destroy, in the fact that it was inimical to his sworn love for Shelagh.
He had for many years enjoyed his share of inconclusive skirmishes with the whores of Hong Kong and Japan; the willowy, long-haired Chinese in their brocaded silk cheongsam, the dainty, erotically tantalising Japanese in either traditional kimono or cheap copies of Yankee fashion. On a cold night in Yokohama, the tiny, brightly lit bars, each with its glowing brazier, hot towels and the solicitous attentions of willing and concupiscent women, were a welcome distraction. Jubilant mama-san welcomed the foreign seafarers like Trojan heroes and their blandishments were well-nigh irresistible. Mackinnon recalled, too, the lost world of Blood Alley in Shanghai, closed down by the crusading Communists not long after he had been bombed in the Whang-Po on the old James Cook. There a man, no matter how perverse his tastes, or how far gone in debauchery, could find satisfaction for the most bizarre appetite.
For the young Mackinnon most of this had been no more than a colourful backcloth, something to be enjoyed as an accompaniment to a run ashore, but never indulged in seriously, for at his shoulder stood the constant shadow of Shelagh. Nothing, he had consoled himself when the temptation became unbearable, was worth losing her, for she had come into his life after he had faced death in an open boat and only a fool would hazard so obvious an intervention of fate.
But, in the end, Mackinnon had been a fool.
It was his first voyage as Chief Officer. As almost her last influential act before her death, the elderly Mrs Dent had sanctioned his appointment to the Sir Robert Fitzroy, Eastern Steam’s newest cargo-liner. They had completed their discharge of the outward cargo at Kobe and been ordered into dry dock, since the ship was suffering problems with her tail shaft and stern gland. There they had suffered delay, first from a typhoon, then from the prolonged attempts of the original builders to evade responsibility for a scored shaft. The wranglings of solicitors in the distant United Kingdom drew a curtain of idleness on the ship; her crew awaited the outcome uncomplaining, for the bright lights, the girls and the cheap shops of post-war Japan beckoned. Eventually even Mackinnon’s pretence to being busy could be sustained no longer. A night in a bar loosened his appetites. Warily he refused a second. Instead he took a train to Kyoto, intent on enjoying the sights. The young woman sitting opposite him was dressed in the western fashion with a cotton print dress and high-heeled shoes. Her black hair fell to her shoulders with the seductive curve of a permanent wave copied, Mackinnon thought, from Jean Harlow. She was reading a copy of the Mainichi Daily Times, betraying a knowledge of English, and his restiveness must have communicated itself to her, for despite the demure attention she paid to her newspaper their eyes met several times. Though both shied nervously away, this mutual avoidance in so confined a space inevitably caused Mackinnon’s nervously crossed legs to brush her precious nylons.
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