The Red Reef

by James Reasoner

  THE RED REEF

  By

  James Reasoner

  Copyright 2008 by James Reasoner

  Originally appeared in HARDLUCK STORIES, June 2008

  Larkin had been master of The Red Reef until a gale came up out of nowhere and sunk her in the Navabutu Straits. Just another tramp steamer smashed to the bottom by the callous power of the sea.

  But it smashed the man as well, and even though he survived along with a handful of the crew, he had never been the same afterward. He came off the lifeboat with eyes that had seen too much.

  Even so, Larkin’s reputation was such that he could have gotten a good berth on another ship. Not as master, perhaps, though his ticket had not been taken away from him, but as first mate, or second at the worst.

  But Larkin had no more appetite for command, so he sailed as a common seaman, sweating out his guilt in the blistering sun on deck. Trying to, at least.

  Then, while the steamer Forsythe was docked in Port Chidsey, Giselle Beauchene came into the waterfront tavern where Larkin was drinking, looking for him.

  She had to be aware of the effect she had on the men as she walked past them. In her white dress and hat she seemed immune to the sullen, smoky heat of the tavern. She carried more coolness with her than the slowly revolving ceiling fans could ever muster.

  Larkin heard the silence and looked up from his whiskey as she came toward him. She couldn’t be looking for him; not a girl like that.

  But she stopped across the table from him and asked in a lightly accented voice, “M’sieu Thomas Larkin?”

  He didn’t talk much these days. His words had rust on them. “I’m Larkin.”

  “My name is Giselle Beauchene." Her head cocked slightly to the side. “The name means something to you?”

  Larkin didn’t have to think about it. “No.”

  “Perhaps this will." She opened her bag, took out a small pistol, and pointed it at him.

  Larkin didn’t know what to do. Most men would have been scared, or angry, or both. They would have begged her not to shoot, or bolted up from the chair, or even cursed her.

  Larkin sat there with a small, puzzled frown on his face.

  Someone else in the tavern saw the gun in the girl’s hand, exclaimed, “Gor blimey!”, and the exodus began. No one wanted to be caught at the scene of a killing. At best it would mean waiting to be questioned by the police; at worst, some of their own secrets might be at risk.

  So the customers headed for the door and were gone in seconds, leaving Larkin alone with the girl and the red-faced proprietor, who looked like he wanted to flee, too, but couldn’t bring himself to abandon his business.

  Finally Larkin shook his head. “I don’t know what you have against me, miss.”

  “My father was Charles Beauchene.”

  “The name means nothing to me.”

  “He was a passenger on The Red Reef.”

  “Oh, hell,” said Larkin.

  “Indeed,” said Giselle.

  “He didn’t make it off, did he?”

  “Non.”

  “I’m sorry." Pitiful, pathetic words, really, but all he had. They had been echoing in his head for months now.

  The Red Reef had carried cargo for the most part: copra, bananas, tobacco, sugar cane, construction supplies. But there were a limited number of passenger cabins. Sometimes they were occupied; sometimes not. Larkin had never concerned himself much with the passengers. The purser and the stewards looked after them.

  So even if he had seen Charles Beauchene’s name on the manifest, it would have meant nothing to him and would not have stuck in his brain.

  “If I could change things, I would,” continued Larkin. “I’d go back and change course, and that squall would have missed us . . .”

  He had tortured himself like that until it finally receded into the back of his head, never going away completely but no longer tormenting him night and day. He didn’t appreciate this girl, no matter how coolly beautiful she might be, bringing it back into the forefront of his thoughts.

  That resentment made his voice surly. “If you’re going to shoot, go ahead and do it. Get it over with.”

  She took a deep breath and her finger whitened on the trigger.

  But then her face crumpled and the pistol lowered, and she said, “I cannot . . . I cannot . . . I want to, but . . .”

  She placed the pistol on the table, sank into the chair opposite him, covered her face with her hands, and began to sob.

  “Oh, hell,” said Larkin again.

  * * *

  “My apologies, m’sieu,” she said a short time later as she dabbed her eyes with a lacy handkerchief. Larkin had called to the proprietor to bring over a glass – a clean glass, damn it – and the bottle of cognac that Larkin happened to know was underneath the bar. The man had done so; Larkin had poured a couple of inches of cognac and persuaded Giselle to drink it; and now some color had begun to reappear in the girl’s ashen face.

  “No need to apologize,” he told her. “I understand. I deserve worse than having a gun pointed at me, anyway. You’d have been justified in pulling the trigger.”

  His voice wasn’t as raspy now; the rust had begun to come off the words.

  Giselle shook her head. “Non, it was not your fault. There was nothing you could do.”

  “I was the master. I should have – ”

  He stopped short because he had been over it again and again in his mind, and despite what his heart told him, his brain failed to come up with anything he could have done differently. Sometimes the sea was like that. Violence from out of nowhere, terrible, unavoidable.

  “There is one thing you can do,” said Giselle, “although after what I did . . . with the gun . . . I would not blame you if you refused.”

  “What is it?” asked Larkin as he leaned toward her.

  “Take me there.”

  He frowned. “You don’t mean – ”

  “The Navabutu Straits,” and she nodded. “I would see for myself . . . where it happened.”

  Larkin sat back. He refrained from shaking his head, although he wanted to, emphatically. “That wouldn’t do any good,” he told her. “It wouldn’t change a thing.”

  “Is your father alive, M’sieu Larkin?”

  “No. He passed away years ago.”

  “But you know where he is buried, non?”

  “Well . . . yes, of course.”

  “And you have visited his grave?”

  Larkin sighed. She made a good argument. Everything in him wanted to refuse, but she deserved the chance to have what she asked for.

  “We’d have to find a way to get there . . .”

  “I have a ship.”

  That surprised him; but then, this appeared to be a night for surprises.

  “A schooner,” she went on. “I chartered it in Walualonga.”

  She had money, then, if she could afford to charter a boat. Not that money meant anything to Larkin these days, as long as he had enough to buy liquor while he was in port.

  “I don’t know . . .”

  “This is the only thing I want, M’sieu Larkin, the only thing I ask of you." What she left unsaid he heard plainly anyway: You owe this much to me.

  “All right,” said Larkin. “We’ll go to Navabutu.”

  * * *

  The schooner was called the Gallister. It was a pretty thing with its teakwood deck and two masts and billowing white shrouds. Like most men who went out upon the deep in steam-powered vessels, to Larkin there was something mystical and beautiful about sails as they caught and held the power of the winds. Steam was perhaps more dependable and practical, but so much more prosaic.

  Once the decision was made, Giselle wanted to waste no time. They sailed from Port Chidsey ea
rly the next morning. Larkin expected to have a hangover, but Giselle’s arrival in the tavern had forestalled his drinking so that he was unusually clear-eyed and clear-headed as the Gallister slipped away from the docks and headed out to sea.

  The master was a rawboned Scotsman named MacGreevey. He nodded to Larkin, said, “Heard o’ ye,” and not surprisingly didn’t offer to shake hands.

  Larkin didn’t take offense. He said, “If you need an extra deckhand . . .”

  MacGreevey shook his head. “Ye’re a passenger on this boat, not a seaman.”

  If that was the way he wanted it, fine. Larkin figured he would hole up in his cabin until they got the straits, in about three days’ time.

  Giselle would have none of that, however. She insisted that he stroll the deck with her, and he couldn’t find it in him to refuse, although why she would want to spend time with the man she blamed for her father’s death was beyond him.

  “Why did you call it that?” she asked one day as they stood at the railing. She wore blue today instead of white but looked as cool and lovely as ever. Without a hat to contain it, her lustrous dark hair lay over her shoulders and moved slightly in the breeze.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Red Reef. Why that name?”

  Larkin thumbed his cap back on his head and leaned his forearms on the railing. “Years ago I was first mate on a ship called the Keyne. One day at low tide she happened to be passing a reef as the setting sun hit it just right to make it light up in the water. Most coral’s either white or pink, but this was red. At least, that’s the way it looked with the sun shining on it like that. Red like blood . . ." He straightened and shrugged. “Anyway, it just struck me and stayed with me, and when I became master I talked the owner into calling the ship The Red Reef. Silly, actually. No good reason for it.”

  “There is always a reason, whether we see it or not.”

  “I can understand why people would like to think so.”

  Larkin’s tone, however, made it clear that he knew how tragically senseless life could be. And that was truly the most frightening thing of all.

  * * *

  The Gallister reached the Navabutu Straits the next day. Larkin felt a chill as he stood at the rail and looked at the narrow passage between the mountainous islands of Callachoa and Wagong. He should have gone around instead of through, but that added at least a day to the voyage and Larkin in those days had believed in efficiency.

  When the squall came up out of nowhere, the straits had funneled all its power onto The Red Reef, and the steamer had had no chance to outrun the storm, nor any place to hide from it among the rocky shoals of the islands. It was the worst feeling in the world, recalled Larkin, to see disaster bearing down on you and have no way to escape it.

  Giselle came up beside him. “Can you find the spot? The exact spot?”

  Something in her voice made him turn to look at her. She was gazing out over the water, a hungry look in her dark eyes. Larkin frowned and said, “I suppose I can. Is it important?”

  She nodded. “Very.”

  “All right, then. I know what the readings were. If Captain MacGreevey will allow me to use his instruments, I ought to be able to get you to the place.”

  “Please, M’sieu Larkin.”

  Puzzled over her anxious attitude, Larkin went up to the bridge. MacGreevey was still cool toward him, but he cooperated and by nightfall they had navigated to what Larkin believed was the exact spot where The Red Reef had gone down.

  Giselle was pleased when he reported to her. “Tomorrow morning – ” she began, then stopped. Larkin didn’t ask her what she’d been about to say. He supposed she intended to have some sort of small ceremony to honor her father.

  That night when the knock came on his door, he was surprised to see her standing there wearing a silk wrapper, her hair loose around her shoulders.

  “Mademoiselle Beauchene,” he said. “What can I do for you?" His voice sounded stiff to his ears.

  “Call me Giselle,” she said, “and allow me to forgive you.”

  “That’s not necessary – ”

  “I have seen the pain in you, Thomas." She moved closer to him, rested a hand on his arm. “Do you not believe in forgiveness? In redemption?”

  Larkin didn’t . . . but that wasn’t what she wanted to hear right now.

  So when she put her arms around his neck and the silk wrapper opened, he didn’t turn her away.

  * * *

  A weak squall blew through during the night, just enough to rock the Gallister on its anchors and make a cold sweat spring out on Larkin’s forehead as he sat up in his bunk and listened to the wind and waves. It was gone by morning, leaving behind only a cool breeze that was refreshing when Larkin came up on deck. The weather, and what had happened with Giselle, had rekindled a few sparks of optimism in him.

  Those sparks hissed out, drowned by the cold sweat that came back when he saw the crewman in the diving suit with the helmet about to be lowered over his head and dogged shut. Giselle Beauchene stood near the man, and the gun in her hand this time was not a dainty little lady’s pistol but rather a wicked-looking automatic.

  “Come, m’sieu,” she said as she raised the gun to point it at Larkin, who had stopped at the top of the ladder. “Your services are needed.”

  Larkin felt his insides turning to stone again. He forced his muscles to work.

  “Why do you need me?” he asked as he walked toward Giselle. “You could have found the wreck without me.”

  “So I thought, until I reached the provincial capital at Walualonga and discovered that the building was destroyed by a fire two weeks ago. All the records of the inquiry are gone." Her slim shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. “Doubtless there are other survivors from The Red Reef who could have led me here, but who better than the captain himself?”

  Larkin recalled hearing the wireless operator on the *Forsythe saying something about a fire at Walualonga, but he had paid little attention to the news. The things that went on in the world beyond the ship hadn’t interested him.

  “Was there really a Charles Beauchene?” he asked Giselle now. “Was he actually your father?”

  “My husband, in truth,” she said. “He left me in Honolulu, taking with him the fortune in diamonds we had stolen from a gem merchant there. The fool thought he could abandon me!”

  “I suppose fate was against him,” Larkin said slowly.

  Giselle smiled and made a motion with her free hand. “Fate, bad luck, call it what you will. All I know is that down there lie the diamonds that rightfully belong to me, and I intend to have them. The diver can recover them as soon as you tell me which cabin belonged to my husband.”

  Larkin shook his head. “I don’t know. You’d have to check the passenger manifest.”

  “I told you, all the documents were destroyed in the fire!”

  “I can’t help you, Giselle." Her name tasted bitter in his mouth. Why had she come to his cabin last night if she intended to pull a gun on him this morning? Had she merely been toying with him?

  Larkin looked to the bridge. MacGreevey stood there at the wheel, but he just grinned at Larkin and touched a finger to the brim of his cap in a mocking salute.

  “Not all Scotsmen live up to their reputation as thrifty,” said Giselle. “Captain MacGreevey, for example, owes a considerable amount to a gambling establishment in Singapore. If he wants to set foot there again without having a knife planted between his ribs, he needs money to pay that debt.”

  “Which you’re going to pay him for helping you recover those diamonds,” said Larkin.

  “Certainment. So you need not waste your time looking to him for help. You will not find any." She lowered the automatic slightly. “Now, tell me which cabin belonged to my husband.”

  “I don’t – ” began Larkin.

  She shot him in the right leg.

  Larkin cried out as his leg buckled beneath him and pain flooded through his body. He lay there and instincti
vely clamped both hands over the wound.

  “It’ll be the devil gettin’ bloodstains out o’ that teakwood,” MacGreevey complained from the bridge. “Canna ye no’ be careful, lady?”

  “It’s worth a little blood for me to get what I want,” said Giselle. She came closer to Larkin. “You have another leg and two arms. Tell me what I want to know.”

  He looked at her and laughed. The strain of his wound made the sound shaky. “Don’t you think I would if I could?” he asked. “I don’t care about diamonds or anything else. I just wanted to be left alone.”

  “Alone with your guilt? I heard a great deal about you while I was looking for you, Thomas. It is said you blame yourself for what happened to your ship, whether it was truly your fault or not. When I saw you in that tavern in Port Chidsey, I knew it was true. And I knew you would bring me here if I helped you wallow in that guilt.”

  “You never meant to . . . shoot me?”

  “Not then." She gestured with the automatic. “I will now, if you fail to tell me what I need to know.”

  “Listen to me,” said Larkin through gritted teeth. “I don’t know which cabin was your husband’s. I never paid any attention to the passengers. You should have looked up the purser. He made it off the ship alive. He might know.”

  Lines appeared around Giselle’s mouth as her lips tightened. “Very well. I believe you are telling the truth.”

  “Wait a minute, lady,” MacGreevey called. “I got to have that loot now. I can’t afford to go huntin’ through th’ islands for somebody else.”

  “Nor can I afford to wait,” said Giselle. “You have another diving suit, Captain?”

  “Aye.”

  She pointed with the gun at Larkin. “Bind up his wound and get the suit on him. You know where the passenger cabins are, Thomas?”

  Larkin nodded. “I know. But I’ve never done any diving.”

  “You’ll have a companion. All you have to do is find the right cabin." She stepped closer to him. “For what it’s worth, I enjoyed last night, Thomas.”

  Larkin felt sick, and it wasn’t only from the blood he’d lost.

  * * *