Ocean Prize (1972)

by Pattinson, James

  “Oh, yes. What question?”

  Madden coughed. “There’s a rumour.”

  Barling’s chin jerked up. So it was out. He did not need to be told what rumour, but he asked just the same.

  “Well,” Madden said, “there’s talk that you may be—er—retiring.”

  He was putting it as tactfully as he could.

  Barling’s eyes probed his, and Barling had the kind of eyes that seemed to be capable of digging very deeply; hard, steely, disconcerting when you were forced to look into them, as Madden was at that moment.

  “No more than that?” Barling asked.

  Madden wriggled his shoulders, distinctly uncomfortable. “There’s a bit more. The way I heard it—and I’m not saying I believe it—but the way I heard it is that the Company is—er—going out of business.”

  “Why don’t you say what you really mean?” Barling’s voice had become as hard and steely as his eyes. “Why don’t you say you think Barling and Calthorp are on the rocks? That they’re going bust.”

  “I don’t think that.”

  “Don’t you? Are you quite sure you don’t?”

  Madden did not know where to look. He tried to avoid Barling’s eyes. “Of course I’m sure.”

  “Well, that’s nice to know.” Barling’s tone was faintly sarcastic. “As the sole representative of the Company present, I thank you for your vote of confidence.”

  Madden flushed. “You don’t have to take it like that.”

  Barling felt that perhaps he had been a little rough with the chief engineer. It did not require any very deep insight to see why Madden was worried; he was no more eager to go looking for a new job than Barling himself was. He was seeking reassurance, almost begging for it. And that, unfortunately, was just what Barling could not give.

  “I suppose you’ve been talking to Adam Loder?”

  “I did have a word or two with him.”

  It was as Barling would have guessed: Loder had sniffed out something or had deduced it from observation. And then he had passed on his conclusions to poor old Madden, knowing that the merest hint of anything of that kind would be enough to worry the chief engineer sick. It was like Loder. He would have to get rid of that man, engage a new chief mate.

  But that was a stupid idea; after this trip he would not be needing a mate or any other officers; he would not be engaging anyone. And Loder would be laughing up his sleeve, not caring a damn about the loss of his own position if it meant the downfall of his superior. That would please him; it was the kind of mean-minded character he was.

  “So he told you B. and C. were finished?”

  “No, no; he didn’t say that, not exactly.” Madden looked alarmed. “You mustn’t think—”

  “I’ll decide what I may or may not think,” Barling said curtly. “And let me tell you this: I don’t confide the Company’s business to you, to Mr. Loder or to anyone else. Is that clear?”

  Madden looked hurt; he was like a whipped dog, a dog unjustly whipped. Barling felt a twinge of conscience; Madden had reason to be concerned; after all, his future was at stake too. But it would not have helped to tell him the truth; this way at least he could hope, even if the hope must be short-lived.

  “Is there anything else you wished to speak to me about, Chief?”

  “No,” Madden said. “Nothing else.”

  He walked to the door and left the cabin, shoulders hunched. One thing was certain: his mind was very far from having been put at ease.

  Charlie Wilson’s mind was not at ease either. He had watched with a feeling of relief the land fading astern; but even the knowledge that he was away from Canada, more than a thousand miles from the scene of his crime, could not banish the fear that held him in its grip. The day of reckoning had not been eliminated; it had simply been postponed.

  He wondered whether there had been any signal over the radio concerning the affair, a warning perhaps that Able Seaman Wilson was wanted in Montreal on a murder charge and was to be watched. They would not tell him, of course; it might be kept a secret between the radio officer and Captain Barling, not even shared with the other officers.

  Wilson made a point of intercepting the radio officer whenever the opportunity occurred, trying to read in his face any hint that he knew something. Mr. Scotton was a young, slightly-built man with very fair hair and a silky beard that looked sadly under-nourished. He had a habit of stroking the beard with his left hand, perhaps in the belief that a course of massage might encourage growth, but the results were disappointing. Mr. Loder had been heard to remark that Sparks’s beard was beyond hope and that the best thing to do would be to shave it off and give it a decent burial at sea, because it would never amount to anything. But Scotton was a persevering young man and refused to give up.

  He was also extremely polite, and whenever Wilson managed to cross his path and mutter some form of greeting he would smile and nod in a friendly sort of way, and Wilson would spend the next few hours trying to decide whether there had been some hidden meaning in that smile. Had Sparks perhaps been smiling because he knew?

  Wilson, plagued by uncertainty, was almost driven to asking him outright whether there had been any signal concerning a murder in Montreal. And in fact on one occasion he did go so far as to stop Scotton with the intention of making an attempt to get some information from him in a roundabout way. But when it came to the point he found it impossible to do anything but make some futile remark on an altogether different subject, leaving Scotton gazing at him in a rather puzzled manner, as though suspecting that Wilson was not quite right in the head.

  In the seamen’s mess his moodiness had become a subject for comment. Things finally came to a head when Trubshaw, leaning across the long, narrow table that was bolted to the deck and had swivel chairs on each side of it, said: “What’s eatin’ you, Charlie boy?”

  “Nothing’s eating me,” Wilson said. “What makes you think there is.”

  Trubshaw drank some tea to wash down the food he had been taking on board, belched loudly and said: “Because you bin lookin’ like a bloody dyin’ duck ever since we left Montreal, that’s why.”

  “I can look how I please, can’t I?” Wilson felt a surge of resentment. What had it got to do with Trubshaw how he looked? “It’s none of your business, is it?”

  “None o’ my business? Well, that depends on the way you look at it. An’ the way I look at it’s like this ’ere. When there’s a messmate o’ mine goin’ about all day wiv a face as sour as a pint o’ milk left out in the sun it affects me. It makes me feel as ’ow life ain’t as good as it oughter be, an’ I don’t like that. So I’m askin’ you again—what’s eatin’ you?”

  “And I’m telling you again,” Wilson said, his voice rising. “Mind your own damned business. I don’t poke my nose into your affairs, so keep your big nose out of mine.”

  Trubshaw’s scarred and ill-used face turned red with anger. Nobody talked to him like that, nobody; least of all this young whippersnapper who was still sucking his mother’s tits when he, Trubshaw, had already been in fights from Buenos Aires to Singapore and from Hong Kong to San Francisco. Who in hell did he think he was with his baby face and his sulks?

  “Why, you—” Trubshaw said; and he stood up and reached across the table with his long, gorilla-like arms and took two large handfuls of the front of Wilson’s blue jersey. “Why, you cheeky young bastard. I’ll learn you to talk to me like that.” He pulled Wilson towards him across the table, dragging him down on to the remains of the recently concluded meal, the dirty plates and bits of bread, the cups and the sauce bottles. “’O d’you think you are? Givin’ yerself airs, aincher?”

  Wilson had been fed up with Trubshaw already, and this indignity suffered in front of a messroom half full of grinning seamen was the last straw. At any other time the older man’s evil reputation might have been enough to deter him, but now he was in no mood to care about reputations. Moreover, it was Trubshaw he blamed for all his misery; if Trubshaw had not coe
rced him into going out on the booze with him and Lawson and Moir; if Trubshaw had not picked a quarrel with the Swedes, all would have been well; there would have been no fight, no police, and he would not have met Bobbie Clayton. He would not have killed her.

  “Damn you!” he shouted. “Damn your rotten eyes!” He felt his groping right hand make contact with an enamel pie-dish, still containing the congealed residue of an Irish stew. Without a second thought he picked it up and smashed it into Trubshaw’s face.

  Trubshaw gave a yell and released his hold on Wilson’s jersey. Wilson pulled himself away from the table and stepped back against the bulkhead behind him, watching Trubshaw, a little apprehensive now that the heat of the moment had passed.

  There was silence in the messroom. No one was saying a word. Everyone was looking at Trubshaw and waiting to see what he would do to Wilson.

  Trubshaw wiped the stew from his face and stared across the table at Wilson with his little, piggy eyes. He said nothing either; he just began to walk round the table. The others made way for him.

  Wilson watched Trubshaw coming and did not move. He knew that he was no match for this broad, squat tank of a man; nobody in the ship was. Trubshaw could kill him with his bare hands if he had a mind to do so. And that, judging by the expression on his face, might well be just what he did have a mind to do.

  And might it not be the best way out? It would solve everything. No more wondering whether the body had been found and whether the police were on to him; no more nightmares in which he strangled the woman again and again, and from which he woke sweating and shuddering; all that would be finished if Trubshaw killed him.

  But he knew, just the same, that he did not want to die, that he would fight Trubshaw if he had to fight him with every ounce of strength in his body, every last gasp of breath in his lungs. And he knew also that, whatever he did, Trubshaw would win, because that was the way it had to be.

  Trubshaw had reached the end of the table and was edging between it and the sink with the water heater above it and the plate racks and the lockers. He was not moving fast but with a solid deliberation that was somehow far more menacing than any bull-like rush would have been.

  Wilson said, breaking the silence: “You asked for it.”

  Trubshaw did not answer.

  “You started it,” Wilson said. “You grabbed me.” He looked at the others for confirmation. “You all saw him, didn’t you?”

  Nobody said anything. They were not taking sides against Trubshaw.

  Trubshaw walked towards Wilson, down between the backs of the chairs and the side of the messroom. The ship rolled a little and a glimpse of sea was visible through the portholes with their screwed-down covers, a plateau of broken water heaving up into view and then sinking away again. The roll did not affect Trubshaw’s stability; he had spent half his life in ships and he knew their ways.

  “Keep away from me, Trub,” Wilson said. “I’m warning you.”

  “An’ I’m warning you, sonny boy,” Trubshaw said; and he drove his clenched fist into Wilson’s stomach.

  Wilson was slammed against the bulkhead as if a battering-ram had struck him. He could not breathe; he wanted to be sick; he knew that he ought to be fighting back, ought to be hitting Trubshaw, but his arms refused to do anything about it. He could see a fragment of meat clinging to Trubshaw’s hair and gravy on the side of his face and on his shoulder. And Trubshaw was grinning, a sadistic kind of grin, as if he were beginning to enjoy himself and meant to go on doing so.

  He hit Wilson again, on the side of the jaw, and Wilson’s legs began to fold. Trubshaw hit him a third time before he reached the deck and then started kicking him.

  Wilson rolled over, pain stabbing at him. He struck upward blindly and felt his fist bury itself in the softness of Trubshaw’s groin, felt it go in deep, all his desperation driving it.

  It stopped Trubshaw. It stopped the kicking. Wilson managed to get himself up into a sitting posture, his back against one of the chairs, his head singing. Trubshaw was doubled up, not grinning now, but with his mouth twisted into a grimace of agony. Wilson had really hurt him.

  Again there was silence in the messroom, broken only by the creaking of timber, the rattle of cutlery, and a laboured, grunting noise coming from Trubshaw. Wilson looked at Trubshaw and was scared, scared of what Trubshaw would do to him when he recovered from that punch in the groin. He thought about getting away, but Trubshaw was between him and the door. And even if he escaped from the messroom, where would he go? Once more the hard fact forced itself upon him: in a ship at sea there was nowhere to go.

  Trubshaw straightened up slowly, carefully, as though testing the way before committing himself. When he had reached his full height of five feet nothing he moved towards Wilson. Wilson got up quickly and backed away. Trubshaw followed. Wilson retreated until he was brought to a halt by the end bulkhead of the messroom. Trubshaw came to a halt too and stood looking at Wilson.

  “I’m goin’ to make you sorry you done that,” he said. “I’m goin’ to smash you, kid. Oh, yes, I’m really goin’ to smash you now. When I’ve finished with you you’re goin’ to need plastic surgery.”

  This time Wilson did not wait for Trubshaw to start things; he put his head down and rushed at the other man, arms flailing, fists beating at Trubshaw’s iron face like hailstones rattling against a brick wall, and with little greater effect. Trubshaw gave a shake of the head like a horse bothered by flies, then slugged Wilson with a left and a right to the stomach. Wilson went down again, retching, and once again Trubshaw began to kick him systematically, without passion, but with a deadly accuracy, picking his targets.

  “Give it a rest, Trub,” Lawson said. He sounded worried. “The kid’s had enough. You wanter kill him?”

  Trubshaw paused in his kicking and stared at Lawson. “Keep out of this, Aussie, ’less you want a sample of it yerself.”

  Lawson’s mouth tightened. It looked for a moment as though he might be about to take Trubshaw up on that; but he thought better of it.

  “You’ll kill him,” he said, but he made no move to stop the killing.

  “Maybe I will,” Trubshaw said, and he started kicking Wilson again.

  Wilson could taste the blood in his mouth and his jaw felt as though it might be cracked. His whole body seemed to be on fire, nothing but pain and more pain as the kicks exploded in his quivering flesh. Oh, God! he thought, when will it end? Oh, God, make it end!

  It went on.

  When he thought about it afterwards Wilson could not help wondering whether Trubshaw would have gone on until he had really kicked the life out of his victim. It was possible; for Trubshaw had a kind of brute mentality that did not look beyond the immediate moment, did not consider the possible consequences of any action. So he would probably have gone on kicking Wilson until there was no life left in the boy, not because he had any real desire to kill him but simply because he was in the mood to take his revenge by inflicting pain. Wilson had dared to provoke him and for that must take his punishment; that was Trubshaw’s code.

  That he did not in fact kick Wilson to death or at best permanent injury was not the result of any change of heart but simply the intervention of Orwell, the black-bearded carpenter. Orwell, passing the doorway of the messroom, looked in and saw what was happening. And he did not like what he saw. In fact he liked it so little that he went into the messroom at a quicker pace than was normal with him.

  The first that Trubshaw knew of Orwell’s presence was a heavy hand on his shoulder and a voice bellowing in his ear: “Give over!”

  Trubshaw stopped kicking Wilson and turned to face the carpenter, breathing hard from exertion and anger. “Get your bleedin’ ’and off my shoulder.”

  Orwell drew his hand away without haste. “Are you trying to kill the lad?”

  “It’s nothing to do with you, Chippie. You keep out of this.”

  “Nowt to do with me, is it? Well now, I don’t happen to agree. I’d say it’s to do with an
ybody when a young lad’s being hammered senseless.” He looked at the other men and there was contempt in his eyes. “Why were you lot letting this go on? Haven’t you got any spirit in you? Why didn’t you stop it?”

  They shifted their feet uneasily and avoided his eyes, but said nothing.

  Trubshaw sneered. “They knew they couldn’t stop it. No more than you can.”

  “Ah, but I can,” Orwell said. “And I will.”

  Trubshaw said, coldly menacing: “Get away from me, Chippie. Don’t try to stop me or it’ll be the worse for you. I’m goin’ to learn that young cub some manners, and not you nor nobody else ain’t stoppin’ me.”

  “I’m stopping you, Trub,” Orwell said, and he moved in between Trubshaw and Wilson. “I’m stopping you.”

  “Are you lookin’ for a fight too?” Trubshaw sounded surprised. He thrust his chin out belligerently. “Cos if so, that’s what you can ’ave.”

  “I’ll not fight with you,” Orwell said. “I’m not daft.”

  “Then get out of the way, an’ stay out.”

  Orwell stood his ground. “I’m not moving. You let him be. I’m telling you.”

  “And I’m tellin’ you, Chippie—” Trubshaw made a move to thrust Orwell aside and found a wide-bladed knife with its point no more than an inch from his stomach.

  “Don’t start anything, Trub,” Orwell said. The knife had been in a pigskin sheath on the back of his belt and again he had moved more swiftly than was usual with him.

  Trubshaw glanced down at the knife and then up at Orwell. The carpenter overtopped him by more than a foot. “You wouldn’t do it.”

  “Want to try me?”

  Trubshaw looked as though he would have liked to do so but could not quite bring himself to the mark. The muscles on each side of his jaw stood out, iron-hard, as he clenched his teeth.

  “When it comes to a choice betwixt sticking a knife into your guts and being beat up,” Orwell said evenly, “it’s the knife every time for me.”

  Trubshaw stared into Orwell’s eyes, clenching and un-clenching his fists. And Orwell stared coolly back at him, the knife held firmly in his right hand. It was obvious to everyone present that he was perfectly prepared to sink the blade into Trubshaw’s belly if such an action should become necessary.