Blood Ties

by A. J. Quinnell

  About Ramesh himself the lawyer was sympathetic but logical. If he was unable to get the engine even diagnosed by somebody competent, and if he was unable to afford to install a new engine his prospects were bleak and he should seriously consider taking the State of Haryana back to Bombay. Anyway, there was no need to take an immediate decision. The ship was not due for a few more days and in the meantime something might turn up.

  “Turn up!” Ramesh thought bitterly as he walked down the street to the Yacht Club. The way his luck was running the only thing that might turn up would be a dose of typhoid.

  He reached the Club and, seeing Nelson’s white Ford Escort parked outside, moved round the outside of the building. Moodily he walked on to the jetty, then lifted his gaze and came to an abrupt stop. Sitting on a battered green toolbox next to Manasa was Jack Nelson himself. For a moment Ramesh disbelieved his eyes, then Nelson called out,

  “Come on then. I’ve been waiting half an hour.”

  Slowly Ramesh walked forward and as the Englishman stood up said,

  “But . . . I am not understanding.”

  Nelson was looking a bit sheepish. “Well, after I got home last night I had a few more drinks and thought about it . . . sure I was angry and said a few things-so did you, mind! But then I thought why shouldn’t you ask me to look at the engine. What with Marzzochi away and that bugger Dauvell doing time, there’s no one else . . .”

  Ramesh was overwhelmed with relief. “That’s kind,” he muttered, “very kind . . .”

  Nelson was obviously embarrassed. “It’s OK . . . I’ve been getting a bit touchy these days . . . ever since the wife died . . . anyway, let’s forget all that and look at the bloody engine.”

  Ramesh helped him lift the toolbox on to the deck and Nelson said,

  “Look, don’t get your hopes too high. I know I bullshit a bit but I was a bloody good engineer. But ‘was’ is the operative word. For the past fifteen years I’ve been building roads and haven’t even looked at a marine engine. You say it’s a Perkins P4?”

  Ramesh nodded.

  “Well that’s a help. I’m familiar with the type. They came out just before the war. How old is it?”

  Ramesh said diffidently, “I think it must have been an early model.”

  Nelson grimaced. “Anyway, in those days they built good engines — let’s take a look.”

  They manhandled the toolbox down the companionway into the saloon and Nelson looked about him and then said with grudging approval, “You keep a clean ship.”

  “Thank you. The engine room is through here.”

  He led the way down the passage and then squeezed back to let Nelson in through the low door.

  Nelson surveyed the engine, nodding his head slightly, and then said, “Tell me exactly what happened.”

  “It was in the dogwatch,” Ramesh answered. “I was on deck, but sort of dozing. Suddenly there was a clattering noise. As I reached for the throttle there was a loud bang and the engine stopped.”

  Nelson made a sucking noise with this teeth. “Humm . . . sounds nasty. And she wouldn’t turn over?”

  “No. She won’t turn more than a few degrees. What can it be?”

  Nelson shrugged. “Any number of things. First I’m going to remove the rocker box and take a look inside.”

  He was already sweating in the confined space and as he started to unbutton his shirt he said,

  “Look it’s going to take a while, and seeing that it’s so old I might have to use a cold chisel. Why don’t you drag the toolbox along here and then pop up to the Club and ask Jimmy to put some beers in a bucket of ice.”

  He handed Ramesh his shirt and with a small smile said “Tell him to put them on my chit.” Before Ramesh could argue he turned away and bent over the engine, making tut-tutting noises.

  As Ramesh walked up the jetty he was overcome with remorse, for when Nelson had removed his shirt and bent over the engine Ramesh had seen just above the waist band of his shorts, on his right hand side, a strip of plastic about six inches wide. Ramesh recognised it instantly. It was the top of a colostomy bag, and it meant that Nelson had been operated on for cancer of the bowels. Ramesh’s mother had undergone the same operation a few months before she died. It accounted for Nelson’s loss of weight and poor skin colour. The knowledge that he was dying must also account for his short temper.

  Ramesh fervently wished that he could take back some of his words spoken the night before.

  Chapter 10

  “You want the bad news first, or the terrible news, or the catastrophic news?”

  Jack Nelson looked quizzically at Ramesh, took a pull on the last bottle of beer and sweated from his recent exertions.

  They sat on canvas under an awning on the aft deck. It was noon and the sun, at its apex, was merciless.

  “It is so bad?” Ramesh asked gloomily.

  Nelson nodded, his face brick red from the heat. “I’ll put it simply,” he said. “I chiselled off the rocker box and found the rocker shaft displaced and bent. The valves were stuck. So I knew there was a serious timing problem. I removed the front pulley and damper and the timing case cover-all rusted and jammed and bloody difficult – to find that the timing chain had broken, messing up some of the crankshaft sprocket teeth. In effect your engine is sick and needs major surgery in the hands of an expert geriatric surgeon.”

  Mournfully Ramesh asked “But can it be repaired?”

  Nelson took another swig of beer, drew a deep breath and nodded. “Anything can, given the time, spares, tools and expertise. But it’s a dirty, difficult, hot and frustrating job. As to spares, I found a few things in your junk box. Some old valves that could be refaced, with luck, and a cylinder head gasket. The big problem is the timing chain. If you find one ashore it’s just the beginning. The sprocket has to be built up with welding and the damaged teeth reformed by filing and then case hardened. The rocker shaft would have to be carefully straightened together with one rocker. When you get the head off you’re sure to find damaged valves and probably the tops of the pistons. The sprocket and chain need replacing, having retimed the valves and fuel pump. A cork gasket would have to be made and the front refitted. Then the pulley and so on.”

  Ramesh vainly tried to take it all in. He was shaking his head in bafflement, but Nelson plunged relentlessly on.

  “After that, replace the cylinder head and valves gear, recheck the timing and replace the injectors, manifolds, exhaust system and ancillary pipework-in effect a rebuild.”

  He paused for breath and sucked in some more beer and contemplated Ramesh’s puzzled face.

  “OK,” he said. “It’s double dutch. In laymen’s terms a top class mechanic with the right workshop and spares could fix it in about ten days. The only one I know is Charlie Marzzochi. He’s young and without formal training but he has a feel for engines and he has a workshop. Trouble is finding a spare timing chain. Also he’s not here and might not be back for weeks . . . how long can you wait?”

  Ramesh spread his hands. “I’ve no timetable. But all this sounds expensive.”

  Nelson shook his head. “Not really. For ten days’ work Marzzochi would charge you about two to three thousand rupees . . . if he can find a timing chain and . . .” Abruptly Nelson stopped talking and frowned in concentration. “Wait a minute – yes. Last year he showed me round his workshop . . . bloody well laid out . . . he has some old engines for cannibalising. There was a P4- just a skeleton, but the chain was there.”

  Nelson hunched forward, the now empty beer bottle gripped tightly in his right fist. He cogitated for several minutes, his lips compressed, then slowly he looked up at Ramesh and his sweating, sagging face cracked into a broad smile, lighting up the whole atmosphere.

  Ramesh smiled back tentatively, somehow absorbing the strange luminosity of Nelson’s mood.

  “Me!” Nelson said emphatically. “Never mind Marzzochi -I’ll do it!”

  There was a silence while the two men looked at each other. Nelso
n still with a lopsided grin.

  Then Ramesh asked faintly, “Is it possible?”

  Nelson sank back in his chair and lowered the bottle carefully to the deck. “Yes,” he said firmly. “I’ll use Charlie’s workshop – he won’t mind – I’ll fix the bloody thing!”

  His mood was almost euphoric and Ramesh sensed the reason. For the last three hours Nelson had been reliving his youth, rediscovering old skills and energetic pleasures. It was the esoteric challenge of the born engineer – taking an old, tired hunk of machinery and making it work again. Proving to one’s own self that the skill was still there even if long dormant.

  Ramesh, in spite of his anxiety, felt a sudden pleasure at Nelson’s enthusiasm and was strangely pleased by his own negative contribution.

  Nelson was concentrating again and talking as though to himself. “A couple of days to dismantle and remove the cylinder head and the other messed up stuff . . . then in the workshop. I’ll start after lunch.” He stood up and started pacing – three steps each way across the deck – and Ramesh could mentally superimpose on the slack, obese figure a young, vibrant and inventive man lying on his belly for forty-eight hours dripping oil on to a destroyer’s shaft bearing. He smiled and said:

  “Mr Nelson you turned up!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It doesn’t matter – so sorry about last night and your shorts are not stupid but they are a little baggy!”

  Nelson grinned. “Accepted. By the way, the name’s Jack.” He stopped pacing and held out his hand. “Let’s start afresh.”

  Ramesh stood up and shook the proffered hand formally. “And I am Ramesh.”

  There was a brief, slightly embarrassed silence which comes when two basically shy and opposite people start down a path of friendship. Ramesh broke it by saying “What about some lunch?”

  “Good idea. By the way, what about that young stowaway you brought in?”

  Abruptly Ramesh’s mood turned sombre. “It’s a problem,” he said. “They hold her in jail awaiting the Governor’s return. This afternoon Mr Rajaratnam is to see the Commissioner of Police to try to get her released . . . he is not optimistic.”

  “And if he gets her out?”

  Ramesh shrugged. “Well if you fix my engine I will take her on with me; she has no home and, well, we sort of get on.”

  Nelson was buttoning this shirt. He looked up with a knowing grin hut seeing Ramesh’s face the grin faded. “Get on how?” he asked seriously.

  “Oh nothing like that,” Ramesh was embarrassed again. “She’s really just a child in a way. I’m worried about her,”

  Thoughtfully Nelson finished buttoning up his shirt and then said, “Well Bob Black is a good chap, but indecisive. He always did need a push. He lunches at the Seychelles Club in Victoria. Let’s go over there and give him a nudge.”

  They turned at the sound of an engine and watched a black hulled, two masted flush-decked motor sailor come in past the small island at the entrance of the yacht harbour. There was a group of three men on the foredeck and behind the wheel a hulk of a man with a short, black beard and black matted hair on his arms and bare chest.

  “Jaloud,” Nelson muttered grimly, and pointed with his chin at the helmsman. “Danny Lascelles. Give him a wide berth, Ramesh. He’s a mean bugger . . . come on, let’s go.”

  They left the Manasa and walked down the jetty. The tall brown Anglo-Indian and the flabby red Englishman. They walked with a jaunty step.

  Book Two

  Chapter 11

  The wet smack of flesh pounding on flesh was the worst sound Kirsty had ever heard. It was Cady’s flesh being pounded and as it continued with rhythmic horror she stood numb and paralysed. Finally when Cady hit the gravel carpark and curled into a foetus, and Lascelles started to kick him viciously, Kirsty screamed and started forward. The Portuguese grabbed her from behind, pinning her arms tight and lifting her feet from the ground, holding her firmly while she struggled and screamed. The others stood in a group watching as Lascelles tried to kick his way past Cady’s sheltering arms to his face. For Kirsty it was an eternity in Hades before he finally smashed his boot into Cady’s kidneys and turned away, his eyes gleaming with sadistic lust, spittle drooling from the corner of his mouth into his beard. Chest heaving, he grunted, “That’ll teach the cocky little bastard.” He grinned at the Portuguese. “Let her go, Carlo.”

  As soon as Kirsty’s feet touched the ground and the restraining arms were gone she ran sobbing to Cady’s still form, dropping to her knees beside him. He was still curled up tight, his arms over his face. As she murmured his name and gently tried to pull his arms apart an object dropped on to the gravel beside her. It was Garret’s gold watch. She looked up to see Lascelles’ grinning face.

  “Have the bloody thing,” he said, then pointed at Cady. “When pretty boy that was wakes up, tell him to stay in his own league.”

  He turned away and the Portuguese and the others followed him back into the bar.

  Three hours later Kirsty sat by herself at a table on the terrace of the Northolme Hotel. With the little bay below her with its sandy beach facing a solitary rock on which incredulously grew a solitary coconut tree, and with the sun setting and casting a red glow, it was an idyllic setting contrasting with a woman in the depths of misery.

  As soon as Kirsty had managed to pry Cady’s arms apart and had seen the bloody mess of his face, she had gagged and almost vomited, quickly jumped to her feet and ran down the drive to the road. A Camion, the brightly painted open trucks that the Seychellois use for buses was coming down the hill. It was loaded with plantation workers returning home. She ran into the middle of the road, waving her arms, and the Camion screeched to a halt. Minutes later gentle hands were lifting Cady into the back, cradling his head on Kirsty’s lap, then they were bumping along the rutted road the mercifully short distance to the hospital.

  He had been conscious, grunting as they hit bad potholes. At first Kirsty had thought he might be dying, she had never seen a face so battered. Lips already swelling like inner tubes, the nose squashed and angled, half a dozen cuts oozing blood. He looked as if he had walked into a high speed fan with sharpened blades. She remembered the heavy gold rings on Lascelles’ fingers and hatred mingled with her anxiety. One eye was already a closed slit but the other was open and looking up at her. She bent her head down.

  “Don’t worry Cady,” she murmured close to his ear. “We’ll be at the hospital in a couple of minutes.”

  He nodded slightly and she saw his lips move and thought he was trying to speak but then among the red she saw a flash of white as his tongue pushed out a piece of broken tooth. Carefully she picked it off his lower lip and, not knowing what to do with it, held it in her hand.

  At the hospital they had fetched a stretcher and taken him straight into the casualty room. A nurse started wiping blood from his face, then an Irish doctor called O’Reilly arrived. Kirsty smelt whisky on his breath but he had a competent air. After a quick examination he asked Kirsty to wait outside. She sat on a chair in the corridor and a nurse brought her a cup of tea, telling her proudly that it contained real cow’s milk. Apparently a rarity on the island.

  After half an hour O’Reilly came out wiping his hands on a towel. One look at Kirsty’s anxious face and he smiled. “Don’t worry yourself- he’ll be all right.” He took the seat next to her, dropped the blood stained towel over his knee, pulled out a packet of cigarettes and offered her one. She shook her head with a touch of impatience. He lit the cigarette, inhaled deeply and then exhaled in a slow sigh.

  “Danny Lascelles,” he mused. “If I was in private practice I could retain that bugger and he’d send me enough customers to keep me in clover.”

  “How bad?” Kirsty asked cryptically.

  “Not as bad as it looks,” O’Reilly answered. “Oh, to be sure a broken nose, I suspect a fractured cheekbone and maybe a couple of cracked ribs, but I won’t know until the radiologist arrives and takes some X-rays. H
e’ll have quite a bit of internal bruising as well as the surface stuff and he’ll give old Morey the dentist a few hours’ work. All in all a grade ‘A’ Lascelles beating. He did the same thing to a British seaman off a merchant ship a few months back . . . at the Trianon too. Some contretemps over a poker game.”

  The anxiety began to leave her face. “But he’ll be all right?”

  O’Reilly nodded. “I can’t be positive until I’ve seen the X -rays but luckily he’s young and strong and very fit. I’ll have to stitch some of the cuts on his face and he’ll carry the scars. I’ll do what I can with the nose.” He took a thoughtful pull on his cigarette. “Was he handsome? It’s a bit hard to tell.”

  “Yes, very,” Kirsty answered and. in spite of her misery, had to smile a little. “But I don’t think scars and a broken nose will bother him a lot.”

  O’Reilly had looked puzzled and was about to say something when a dark skinned young man came hurrying down the corridor.

  “Leclerc, the radiologist,” O’Reilly explained, and stood up and introduced her, then said “We’ll have the X-rays in half an hour. After that you can see him. I’ll keep him in for two or three days for observation just to be sure. Come and see him in the morning after eleven.” He smiled. “I’ll ask the dentist to come in early so his mouth might be functioning a bit better.”

  Now, as the sun dropped below the horizon, Silhouette Island ten miles away lived up to its name, looking like a black mountain with the red sky a red-curtained backdrop, Kirsty reviewed her position.

  By the time the State of Haryana had arrived in the Seychelles her friendship with Cady had markedly deepened. She was physically attracted but conversely never viewed him in a romantic light. The friendship was platonic and would always remain so. She convinced herself of that, and she hoped that his feelings and expectations were the same.

  The remainder of the voyage had been more than pleasant. Together with the Savys and Stevens they had made a relaxed group, the conversation and companionship interesting and easy.