The Leper Ship

by Peter Tonkin

  21

  John leaped upright, his flesh creeping with horror. He must get Bernadotte to the infirmary at once, but even with Salah there just to get him down the ladder to the main deck would be impossible without further aid. Clearly, the big seaman could not use his hands any more. And, John guessed, he was in such pain that getting him to understand anything would be out of the question at the moment. John looked around for rope to lower the huge crewman. There was none. He glanced up at the crane. Its falls were still attached to the concrete block in the hold. But the crane did offer a solution, for in the cab was a phone which could contact the bridge. It was there so that bridge officers could give orders to crane operators, but it worked both ways. He picked it up and received an immediate reply.

  Fifteen minutes later, both Eduardo and Bernadotte were lying side by side in the infirmary and Asha was moving anxiously from one to the other, while Fatima tidied their bandages. The small crewman was deeply unconscious. The big crewman was the opposite. All too wide awake, the pain of his hands was clearly going to overcome even the powerful painkiller Asha had given him. John stood anxiously by. ‘Any idea about his hands?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s obviously the stuff from the barrels. But it’s diluted. There are none of the effects I noted on Captain Fittipaldi. Not that I looked too closely at him. I wish I had, now.’

  ‘He was working on the containers and he wasn’t wearing gloves. Stupid!’

  ‘Check back in half an hour. After you’ve gone over the containers with Ann and Faure.’ She was reading his mind again. ‘Fatima,’ she continued as he bustled out of the door, ‘don’t bandage his hands yet—just a light gauze.’

  *

  A minute examination revealed nothing specific at all. There was no obvious leakage from within any of the containers, though the weather made absolute certainty difficult. The drizzle had been replaced by steady rain and the exteriors of the containers were awash with rain water and dripping on to each other and on to the deck in any case.

  They retreated back to the shelter of the bridgehouse little the wiser. Faure had taken samples from the puddles on top of the containers, and from the water-washed deck below. Ann was content to watch his tests before deciding whether to take any samples herself.

  In the meantime, John needed advice on what to do with the containers now.

  ‘If I were you,’ said Faure, as the three of them stood dripping in the bridgehouse’s main deck corridor, ‘I would hose the whole lot down with salt water, just to clean the surfaces. Then I would try to cover them with something waterproof.’

  ‘Yes,’ Ann agreed. ‘It looks as though anything coming out of the barrels is being washed out by water seeping through the containers. If you can stop that, the leakage should stop.’ The more she said, the less convinced she sounded.

  ‘Well, I suppose I can try,’ answered John doubtfully. ‘But it’s a tall order. Keeping the deck cargo dry is difficult enough under ideal circumstances. Doing so through a December gale in the North Atlantic may not be possible at all. But you’re right, we must do what we can. The crew has to at least think we have things under some kind of control.’ The more he said, the more decisive he sounded. ‘Ann, check with Asha whether there’s anything about Eduardo or Bernadotte I should know, will you? I’d better get this underway as soon as possible.’

  He put together three teams. Using Niccolo’s expertise, he first put together a team of experienced deck-swabbers under Cesar’s command. Niccolo knew the crew well enough to be able to advise on the men who would have the good sense to take the apparently menial task seriously. These men were dressed in the protective suits and given old mops to use. Secondly, there was a team on the hoses, under Marco’s charge. These again were chosen carefully because John wanted to be certain that the powerful jets of sea water were carefully and precisely directed. The third team, under Salah’s watchful eye, would need to dress in the first team’s protective clothing at the end of the exercise, but to begin with all they had to do was get out the great tarpaulins from the ship’s store and lay them out on the deck immediately in front of the bridge and check them for holes and tears.

  Half an hour later the first white jet of sea water hit the side of the first container. The water exploded into foam against the corrugated side, making a sound like distant thunder. Carefully, Marco’s men played the cleansing jet over the vertical steel side, then switched it off. The swabbing team, in place on top of the container, swiftly cleaned the top—which had not been hosed—and got it as dry as the conditions would allow. Then the hose moved down and when its work on the side of the next container was done, the swabbers got to work again on the horizontal surfaces. John had calculated that any water going on top of the containers, even salt water designed to clean them off, would only add to the seepage problem. The only horizontal surface given the benefit of a direct hosing was the deck beneath the containers. And so the washing process continued. Sides and ends were hosed down. Tops were swabbed. Decks were washed and swabbed alike. And when the swabbing was finished, the swabs were thrown overboard, just in case. Then the third team took the first team’s protective clothing and, under John’s supervision, made huge tarpaulin parcels out of the deck cargo.

  By 18.00 it was all finished to the best of their ability. The officers retired to the bridgehouse exhausted but also satisfied that they had at last achieved some sort of control over their terrifying cargo. Salah took the men down to clean up for drinks and dinner. ‘Tomorrow,’ said John to Richard, ‘I’ll ask Salah to find the second best crane driver aboard and sort out the other two holds. Then we’ll be as ready as possible.’

  Dinner that night was among the social highlights of the voyage. The chef outdid himself and produced the sort of meal that would form the foundation of much pleasurable reminiscence in the future. The feeling that they were at last exerting some control over their sinister cargo and that they had a guaranteed welcome at their destination far outweighed the threat of the gathering storm or their lingering concern about the way the voyage had gone so far.

  The mood was further lightened by the fact that, in the infirmary, things were improving. Eduardo was awake and Bernadotte was asleep. Faure’s tests had established that the rainwater from the top of the container did in fact contain a substance of a strongly corrosive nature. Asha had at once bathed Bernadotte’s hands in the most plentiful chemically inert medium they had to hand: salt water. This had apparently soothed the pain sufficiently to allow him some rest. He was clearly going to be incapacitated for some time, but at least his condition seemed to have responded to treatment, however basic that treatment was. And Eduardo showed every sign of being back on his feet soon.

  Salah and Fatima joined the others and took part in the conversation, though Salah himself would rather have been in the crew’s mess and Fatima would rather have been in the infirmary. John’s mind was also much more at rest than it had been almost since the outset. Asha was playing the perfect hostess and clearly enjoying herself so much that her husband just sat back and watched, his pleasure unalloyed even by the thought that it should have been like this for her every night since their wedding.

  *

  Next day dawned grey and threatening and the weather reports left them in very little doubt that they would be lucky to get their day’s work done before the bad weather arrived. But get their work done they had to and John still had every intention of holding that last lifeboat drill before nightfall. They made an early start, opening the two remaining hatches and spreading out the cargo across the floor of the holds as they had done the previous afternoon.

  Cesar and his team finished bracing the bow and Niccolo came limping down the deck on Salah’s arm to check that the tarpaulin covers were holding on the containers.

  When they broke for lunch, everything was done except the final battening down and making ready. John took pity on them and let them finish their well-earned meal before he sounded ‘Abandon Ship’. The lifeboat dr
ill went smoothly in spite of the fact that this time John insisted that the boats actually be lowered into the choppy water and everyone aboard except the occupants of the infirmary, and Fatima who was nursing them, take their place aboard. When that was done, he split the crew into two units: one, under Niccolo, re-secured the lifeboats and checked everything was safely stowed in them again; the other battened down everything aboard. Then he and Richard, as they had so often done in the past on so many other ships, completed a tour of inspection which tested every line and strut, every knot, bolt, shackle and fall; everything that might spring loose, blow loose, break free or be washed away. From stem to stern they went, and from keel to truck, and the officer in charge of each section accompanied them. Even El Jefe acquiesced, and conducted them round the engine room—perhaps because only they knew where his beloved telescope had been stowed.

  By 18.00 they were finished. There was nothing left for them to do except dismiss the off-watch officers and crew to eat, drink and be merry. For tomorrow the storm was due.

  *

  ‘How are you, my darling?’ asked Robin, her voice a distant whisper.

  ‘Fine, darling, how are you?’ It was a lie. Richard could not remember when he had felt so lost and lonely.

  ‘We miss you.’

  ‘I miss you two too.’ Even though the baby wasn’t due for another three months it was already developing emotions and longings, likes and dislikes, according to its mother. Richard played along, indulging her as he always did, because he loved her too much to do anything else.

  ‘What have you been doing today?’

  ‘Nothing much.’ A half-truth this time. ‘We’ve been battening everything down. We’re in for a bit of a blow.’

  ‘I know. I saw the weather forecast.’

  ‘I’m surprised you’re not listening to the shipping stations.’ He had meant it as a joke. But then her silence told him that that was exactly what she had been doing. ‘Oh Robin!’

  ‘Don’t, darling! I know it’s silly but I promise not to worry too much.’

  ‘I know.’ He tried to put into his voice all that deep calm he knew would make her feel safer. But the fact that they were apart for the first time in some years, and at such a point in their life together, was something that both of them were finding very hard to bear. Communication on the satellite phone was a mixed blessing. Without each other, so far apart, they felt less than whole; they needed to communicate. But when they talked on the satellite, the distance between them was only emphasised more painfully. He could hear her becoming more and more depressed on the far end of the faint link and he could do nothing to cheer her because the same thing was happening to him. Had he known it would be as bad as this, he might have hesitated longer before coming aboard.

  But he still would have come. There was no real choice in the matter. Robin would not have allowed him to be hesitant even had he weakened himself, for they had both seen the right course of action quite clearly. But their strength was as a team, together. He found it very hard to be so far from her. And she found it harder, he was on a dangerous ship carrying a deadly cargo heading for a destructive storm and she could share none of it with him. Perhaps that was what she found worst of all. That he might die without her. Of course she told him none of this, but he knew her as well as he knew himself and he could read between the lines of their agonising conversations.

  ‘How’s the baby?’ he asked, after a short, hissing silence. ‘Stopped being sick?’

  ‘No! God knows what sort of a sailor he or she will be, but we can’t even get in the car without a brown paper bag! It’s embarrassing. And, you’ll be pleased to know, it’s crippling my social life!’

  ‘No! Selfish little brute!’

  ‘The build-up to Christmas just won’t be the same. No husband. No wild parties.’ She was teasing. They worked too hard during the day to go wild at night, and in his absence Robin was in the office every day. In any case, since becoming pregnant, she had had no alcohol to drink and had been careful to eschew smoke-filled atmospheres; she had avoided parties, in fact. He looked at the clock Jesus kept above the radio. 22.00 local time. It would be eight o’clock in London. Behind the quiet hissing of the air waves, he could hear quiet music. She was at home, curled up in front of the fire, listening to the stereo. How he ached to be there with her.

  ‘What are you listening to?’

  ‘Don Carlos.’

  ‘Verdi? Not Mozart?’

  ‘I started to listen to Cosi Fan Tutte but gave up. Not in the mood.’

  ‘Don Carlos is a bit depressing, though, isn’t it?’

  ‘I listened to Madame Butterfly last night. All about unfaithful sailors sailing away for ever.’

  He caught his breath at that. She was getting depressed. Could he hear tears in her husky voice? ‘We have a chap called Verdi mixed up in this,’ he told her, making his voice light and a little bracing. ‘Funny little chap. Works for the owners of the ship, CZP.’

  ‘That’s nice…’ She said more, but the link suddenly started phasing out on them. Her voice drowned under a rising tide of static. She was gone.

  He stood, looking down at the instrument, his face set like stone. Then he put it back and stepped out on to the bridge. Marco Farnese was there, lounging in the watchkeeper’s chair. ‘Good night,’ said Richard quietly.

  The third officer jumped up and stood to attention. ‘Buona notte, Capitano,’ he said.

  *

  ‘I’ve never seen him look like that,’ said John.

  ‘He misses Robin. I hope you’re going to look like that whenever we’re apart.’

  ‘Yes. It’s funny that. I’ve never known them to be apart for any length of time. I’ll tell you what, though.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m glad he’s here.’

  ‘Why? You haven’t really let him take any responsibility aboard. He hasn’t actually done all that much.’

  ‘Well, that’s because I’m in charge. I’m the captain. It’s my responsibility; my job.’

  ‘I think he feels out on a limb. I think he’s come aboard for all sorts of good reasons and now he finds he’s all alone with nothing much to do.’

  ‘There’ll be enough to do when the storm hits tomorrow.’

  ‘Well, in that case, we should be getting some sleep.’

  ‘We’re all tucked up in bed, aren’t we?’

  ‘That’s not quite the same thing.’

  *

  ‘Annamaria Julietta Corigliano-Calabro,’ said Niccolo, rolling it round his tongue.

  ‘That’s what it would have been, yes. The same as my grandmother. But when my grandfather arrived at Ellis Island, the immigration people thought Corigliano-Calabro would be too much of a mouthful.’

  ‘So they shortened it to Cable.’

  ‘Yup. A lot of social and racial heritage went that way in the thirties. Nobody argued, they were all too glad to get safely in. Grandpa especially. He’d fallen foul of Mussolini and the Blackshirts.’

  ‘Communist, huh?’

  Niccolo meant it as an Italian joke, but he hit a raw nerve. She swung round to look at him full face, her eyes blazing with rage. ‘Never!’

  ‘Sorry, cara! I was only joking.’

  ‘It’s no joking matter. And don’t call me cara!’

  ‘So, your nonno emigrated in the thirties to escape fascist persecution. What did he do?’

  ‘He had trained as an architect in Italy but he couldn’t get a job even as a builder in New York. He looked all over. It was bad in the thirties, of course. Grandma took in washing. He did odd jobs. The old thing. Then Dad came along and things got really tough. They drifted west. Ended up in Hollywood and Grandpa got a job with MGM building sets. Solid work. They settled down. Had a big family. Dad grew up in Tinseltown, got some bit parts as a kid. Got married in fifty-nine. I came along in sixty-one, just as he was really establishing himself in the movies.’

  ‘Not Clark Cable!’

  She had hear
d that one before. She threw a napkin at him. Some of the other occupants of the officers’ saloon looked across at them, then looked away again. Something in her expression settled Niccolo down as well.

  ‘You won’t have heard of him, he never made it big. He fell ill in sixty-three. Cancer. He died seven years later, when I was nine. On my birthday. It was my birthday wish that he should stop suffering at last.’

  Niccolo looked at her in silence. What was there for him to say?

  ‘You heard of the film star Dick Powell?’ she asked after a while.

  ‘Sure.’ He couldn’t quite see where this was leading, but he was pleased to change the subject.

  ‘In the late fifties he started directing films. The story goes that he made one of them out in the desert in New Mexico. My dad was in it. Bit part, but big break.’

  ‘Yes?’

  She had retreated far away from him now. He had the feeling this story was one she rarely told but was important to her.

  ‘The government had just done a test there. A nuclear test. They didn’t realise, then, about the way such things worked. Things like fall-out, radiation. They didn’t warn anyone. Certainly not a bunch of actors shooting some movie in the desert nearby. That’s how the story goes.’ There were huge tears in her eyes. ‘They all died of cancer. Dick Powell, my dad…’

  Niccolo sat silently, looking at her. She had answered the question he had instinctively held back from asking: why she had joined Greenpeace.

  *

  Asha and John were interrupted five minutes later by the only person aboard who would have dared thunder on the captain’s door like that.

  ‘Look!’ said Richard when John answered his imperious summons. ‘Salah’s just come across this. It’s Lazar’s. It was hidden in his cabin and it’s just come to light.’ Richard was holding out an open passport as though it was the Holy Grail.

  ‘Come on, Richard, what’s so important about this?’