Winger's Landfall
Author: Stuart Lauder
Date: 1961-12-31T14:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fiction; General; Mystery/Adventure; LGBT
Description: Below decks on a big liner an intense and curious life goes on. It is in no way like the orderly realm of the passengers. Noisy, sensual, crowded, the men and boys of the crew make their own world. Harry Shears shipped on the Cyclamen for a reason. His job was that of a table steward—a winger—but his purpose was to find out what had happened to his young half-brother. Danny had disappeared overboard on a previous trip and nobody knew why. Suicide, presumably, but for what possible reason ? Very quickly, Harry is caught up in the life of the ship. It is a world without women and some of the men
Publisher: Eyre & Spottiswoode

WINGER’S  LANDFALL

Below decks on a big liner an intense and curious life goes on. It is in no way like the orderly realm of the passengers. Noisy, sensual, crowded, the men of the crew make their own world.

Harry Shears shipped on the Cyclamen for a reason. His job was that of a table steward—a winger—but his purpose was to find out what had happened to his young half-brother. Danny had disappeared overboard on a previous trip and nobody knew why. Suicide, presumably, but for what possible reason?

Very quickly, Harry is caught up in the life of the ship. It is a world without women and some of the men are glad to take the woman’s part. The rewards, in comfort, influence and flattered vanity, are immediate. The final result, when the “girl” is too old to play courtesan any more, is usually a life ruined beyond repair. In this strange, perverse half-world Harry Shears is immersed. He too could easily take part: in his own nature there is a strong vein of homosexuality. But he is repelled by the shrillness and self-deception of it all. For him affection and quietness are what matter, even in an affair between men. He cannot either enter or avoid the world of the queers.

Winger’s Landfall builds up a wonderfully strong and pungent image of this strange shipboard existence. In the echoing steel rooms and corridors different characters, forced into proximity, stand out in sharp and startling detail. The affections and conflicts that develop are sudden and violent. Through it all, the story of Harry Shears drives forward to its bitter, inescapable climax.

JACKET DESIGN BY KENNETH FARNHILL

Winger’s Landfall

Stuart Lauder

LONDON

EYRE & SPOTTISWOODE LTD
22 Henrietta Street, W.C.2

First published in 1962

© 1962 by Stuart Lauder

Printed in Great Britain by

C. Tinling & Co Ltd

Liverpool, London & Prescot

Catalogue No. 6/4266/2

TNT edition
2025

This book is a work of fiction and the characters and ships mentioned in it are fictional.

No reference is intended to any persons, living or dead.

The ship and the company which operates it are not a portrayal of any that exist in real life nor is any criticism of a real ship or company implied.

Chapter One

The “Cyclamen” glittered blue and green, picked out in white, in the electric brilliance of the Sydney morning, berthed alongside the sleek ocean terminal at Pyrmont 13. Harry Shears decided at once that he didn’t like the look of her. Nasty, those cold sea colours. Even the new double-decker wharf, all glass and show-boat curves, looked more sea-worthy.

To the slightly dotty, unseamanlike name, so typical of the Line, the colour-scheme added a note of disturbing irrelevance, betraying the floating-hotel pretence. She was a ship designed for dreamlike voyage along the coasts of fantasy, the offshore islands of Illyria; but for the humdrum commerce of the Sydney – Tilbury run she inspired less confidence. However, the Company Chairman’s wife could take the blame for that, as also for the vine-leaf chintz in the First Class cabins. What was more to the point, in terms of mundane technicalities, she had a murderous roll.

… And doubtless, since her last trip home, Harry told himself, she also had one small, pathetic ghost.

It being the end of the five-day turn-round, there was more life than usual. Aussie wharfies, in flannel vests and floppy hats, sat on their hams in the shade, smoking spills and nerving themselves to handle the incoming baggage. They had either just ended one of their strikes or were about to start another; or, Harry thought, possibly both. Some of the crew were jigging down the aft gangway, heading for a last wild day in the Big Smoke. A gang, caught for stores-loading, were lounging about in jeans while a fruit lorry backed towards an open gun-port.

As Harry passed them, they turned to stare, his civvies and battered suitcase being tribal recognition signs. A tough-looking hand gave him a jeering smile. “D.B.S.?”

“How long’ve you been at sea, mate?” asked Harry contemptuously. “Ever seen a D.B.S. without an escort?”

“Been adrift?” another one asked.

“No, mate, I’m emigrating,” Harry told him.

A fat queer in galleyhand’s whites leant out of the gunport and cried, “Hello, Ginger darling!”

Harry blew her a raspberry and went on down the wharf to the gangway. A sullen steward in duty whites and cap was dozing at the rail, keeping a wary eye on a wizened ancient Lascar who was swabbing dangerously close to his feet.

Harry showed his Seaman’s Book and asked “Who’s on watch in the Catering?”

The steward shrugged. “There’s a watch list up by the crew room.” He nodded forward. “But I don’t suppose no bastard’s on watch but me. I ain’t seen the Chief or the First since we docked, the lazy bastards. What you on, ungrate?”

“Replacement.”

“Well, sod your luck, mate,” said the steward, slumping on the rail. “This is a bastard ship, I’m telling you. Every time we come to Aussie, I get caught for … Get out of it. you poxy heathen!” he roared, as the deckhand’s mop swished past his heels.

The Lascar gave an ancient, wizened, sinful smile.

“Thanks for the welcome,” said Harry. He threaded his way through the empty Tourist public rooms, with their leather sofas and vinegar-smelling veneer, their electro-plated ashtrays and smeary paintings of the sister ships of the Van Dieman Line. Above the electric mock-coal fire in the writing room the black funnels of his old ship, the Cyclades, caught his eye. and he paused to study her, counting along the portholes in the fo’c’sle until he found his old peak.

“That was a bastard ship, all right!” he said aloud in the empty, bright room, with the water reflections interlacing on the ceiling. He said it without vindictiveness: it was a tribute of sorts. There were no good ships, except for these mythical Swedish tankers, these Dutch freighters, that no one you met had ever actually sailed in.

In the Tourist saloon some Goanese messmen were clearing the tables after the skeleton crew’s lunch. They moved at their standard speed — dead slow, and didn’t glance at him.

… I wonder if anyone’s ever seen a Goanese run? he asked himself. If there were ever a genuine call to Boat Stations, would they find they’d forgotten how?

Passing through the service doors he entered the huge galley amidships. The doors to the First Class saloon were at the farther end. Here at last he was in the crews’ demesne, feeling that lessening of tension that came when you passed out of sight of the passengers.

The galley was still fairly idle. Some Goanese hands getting down to the potato-peeling for the full ship’s dinner tonight. The usual swilling of the slippery floor; the stench of cooked greens and burnt grease, the oily, metallic stink of the long barricades of hot presses. One or two queers, setting up their sideshows for ices and dessert, called out as he passed, and he blew raspberries by way of traditional, unequivocal response.

“There’s a new one, Sybil! … Hi, Copper Nob! ”

“Hello, Ginger darling!”

“What’s your name, Rusty?”

A slim little one, aged about sixteen, darted up to clutch his arm. She had baby blue eyes and fair hair, and might almost have been pretty except for the splotchy heat rash.

“At last, a new man!” she gasped, trying to make her voice gurgle. “I’m so bored with this rough old lot! … I’m Marilyn. I expect you’ll be seeing a lot of me?”

“It’ll cost you money,” said Harry sardonically.

“Oh, one of those . . .” Marilyn sighed, with infinite dismal sagacity, and trailed thoughtfully away sucking her thumb.

Harry was used to this. He had gingery hair which they found attractive. He was tall, and they liked to look up to a man. His reddish, freckled face was lined with suggestions of viciousness and brutality. He looked wicked, they said delightedly. Certainly much older than his twenty-four years, and eleven months in Australia had not improved him, paring down his face to the bone and multiplying the freckles. In any bar in the Cross he had passed unchallenged as a native.

The plan of the Cyclamen was similar to that of his old ship, and he found his way without difficulty down the steep ladder from the galley to the deck below. Here, with heat, throbbing, and engine smells behind the bulkheads, the leathery stink of the baggage-holds, the fish-shop and butcher-shop odours, the working alley wound forward to the crew’s quarters: a lively Casbah sewer running under the sleek, prim passenger decks. The loading party were sweating at the gunport. manhandling crates of pawpaw into the lifts down to the storage decks. The low-grade peaks near the forward hold were full of idling, placid, secretive Goanese. Sydney had little to offer them, and. even in the bawdy houses of Woolloomooloo. the White Australia Policy made them unwelcome. They sat folded up in their coloured underpants, smoking and staring at the smoke, reading their fortunes, perhaps, but unmoved by the augury.

The watch list outside the crew room named the Third Steward and gave the number of his peak. Radio Australia was playing its endless parlour games, and was just on the point of giving away a grand piano, a spin-dryer and five years’ supply of floor polish, but the Third was keeping watch with eyes closed, laid on his bunk, and didn’t appreciate being disturbed.

“Who the heck are you?” he demanded, consulting some mental file of long-term deserters. Harry presented the Agents’ letter.

“Oh, it’s you, is it? Wondered when you’d decide to report.”

“They only wired me last night, and I’ve come straight on down from their office.”

He didn’t think much of the Third’s peak. A single-berther but a poky little hole. The Third was one of those overgrown Billy Hunters who fitted so naturally into the Merchant Navy.

Well, I don’t know, what am I to do with you?” He scratched his thick, schoolboy’s hair. “There’s no one aboard just now. I expect the Chief’ll want to see you.”

Harry was amused to see how the Third would cope. Signing-on and paying-off were rituals that were only performed in Tilbury! One false move and he’d be busted down to Assistant Steward!

… That’s the M.N. for you, through and through, Harry thought. If it’s not in the book, abandon ship!

“Perhaps you could just show me my peak,” Harry suggested, “and I’ll hang around until the Chief comes aboard.”

The Third grunted with relief and rummaged through his papers. “You’ll be in Macready’s peak. That’s the bloke you’re replacing.”

“What happened to him? Gone adrift?”

The Third scowled at the suggestion. “Got injured in a fight ashore, so we had to pay him off. He’s in hospital, poor sod.” “Who’d he fight with, then?” Harry asked conversationally. “He don’t know. He was out cold. Some of them bloody murderous bodgies, I reckon.”

“Or them bloody murderous cops! ”

The Third gave him an interested glance. “Was that your trouble, then?”

“Don’t it say in the Agents’ letter? I didn’t have no trouble. I got paid off with dysentry. Was in a shoreside hospital a couple of months.”

“What ship were you on?”

“Cyclades.”

The Third grunted. “Lousy old tub.”

“Don’t tell me!”

The Third led the way up into the fo’c’sle, buttoning his tunic in case the Chief sneaked aboard and caught him improperly dressed.

“You’re dead lucky, though. We don’t usually take on replacements, but we’ve got a full ship going home. How long was you on the Cyclades?”

“Four trips, and before that, on the Cyclops… .”

“Okay, okay. Spare me the story of your life. He opened a door in the last narrow alley that sloped up into the bows. “Bloody shame about Macready, though. He was a damn good winger.”

“Oh, Christ!” said Harry through his teeth. It was an eight-berth peak.

The Third was amused. “You think this is bad? Boy, you should see them peaks down by the hatch! And it’s a damn sight better than those Tourist inboard cabins over the screws!”

“Thanks for the moral uplift. Which was Macready’s bunk?”

“Well, now, someone’s moved down there.” He indicated the bunks against the bulkhead beside the door. “Looks like you got the top one now.”

“Draughty as hell, I’ll bet.”

The Third tried the doors of the salt-corroded steel cupboards. “This is the empty one. Keep it locked. We got some light-fingered friends aboard.”

“Now I know I’m home,” said Harry.

They considered one another, wondering how much mutual trouble they were going to be. The Third offered him a cigarette.

“What do I do now? When do you expect the Chief back?”

The Third scratched his head. “They’re running teas at four-thirty, but I should steer clear of that as it’s only a half muster. There’s no kids’ meals in port, and crew’s dinner’s at seven. I should try and catch the Chief about six.”

Harry looked at his watch. “Okay if I slide off ashore until then, I suppose?”

The Third shrugged. “Don’t see what else you can do, mate. I’m going back to kip.” He looked sly. “How long d’you say you’d been ashore?”

“Eleven months.”

“You should’ve had enough of it by now!” He shambled off. yawning, and left Harry alone.

Harry inspected the peak but it told him nothing of the occupants. He opened the small lockers over the bunks, but none contained anything but standard seamen’s gear. At least no bottles of perfume. Some even had snapshots and pin-ups of girls. That was a bit of luck. He’d been a latecomer on a ship once before and found himself in a peak full of screaming queers.

He locked his suitcase in the cupboard, switched his pillow for a softer one from another bunk, and went out, hands in pockets, feeling oppressed. Something so dismal about an empty, silent ship in port.

The short alley was closed off by a door marked “Bellboys”. Harry walked softly up to it, tapped, and went inside. The peak ran across the narrowness of the bows, with a porthole at either end. Twelve bunks, twelve steel cupboards, twelve bunk lockers with mugs, irons, copies of Autocar, Beano, Wizard, Flight, Reveille, Melody Maker, Photoplay. Some dog-eared playing cards, even a couple of razors. A slightly sour, melancholy smell of young boys, brilliantine, white blanco.

Harry stood there frowning awhile, running his fingers over the initial-scarred table, like a blind man deciphering Braille. Seeing, like a blind man, confused and blurred, the images of the past. Blurred and overlapping, like the carved initials.

Then he left the fo’c’sle, went down the working alley, out through the gunport and off the ship.

When he returned the whole aspect of Pyrmont 13 had changed. The swift Australian night was dropping over the harbour, the ship and ocean terminal ablaze, baggage swinging aboard, the last of the stores being hustled up the slides; the fo’c’sle thick with crew and the other decks with passengers and visitors. A band was playing on the Tourist dancing space. Dynamos hummed, engines throbbed, derricks screeched and rattled. On the First Class Promenade, B.Rs. and P.R.As., the elite of the stewards, were busily ingratiating themselves; and the officers, in tropical immaculacy, were circulating slowly, answering silly questions with sillier answers, and trying to spot an easy lay, according to preference, for the voyage home.

The Chief Steward obviously resented losing vital moments in the game. ‘“Taken your time, haven’t you?”

Harry woodenly recounted his movements.

“You should have been here for teas. With all these visitors aboard we were rushed off our feet.”

… I can just see you dashing about with a plate of cakes! Harry thought. “The Third said . .

“Never mind what the Third said. If you’ve been afloat this long, you should be able to use your loaf.”

“I do as I’m told, Chief,” said Harry tonelessly. Not paid to think.

The Chief gave him a tough, ox-like stare. “How was it you stayed so long ashore?”

“I couldn’t get back except D.B.S. And I didn’t reckon that, as I hadn’t done nothing wrong. I didn’t jump ship, so why should I go home like a bloody criminal?”

“Don’t swear in front of me,” said the Chief, darkening. “How was it the police didn t pick you up and get you shipped home?”

“I’ve got a British Passport.”

“Oh, have you! Let’s see it! ” The Chief was angry because impotent. There was no law against having a Passport as well as a Book, but they didn’t like it. It made jumping ship too easy.

“And I have this auntie near Sydney, and she vouched for me. So they couldn’t touch me. I could’ve stopped if I’d wanted to immigrate, but I’d had a bellyful.”

The Chief gave a heavy smirk. “No place like home, eh? All the same, eleven months is a long time.

“I tried to get home before. I wanted to put my name down with the P. & O. and that, but they wouldn’t wear it because of my contract with Van D. I’d just about give up hope when they wired me.”

“Well, you’re lucky, that’s all I can say.” The Chief made it sound like a personal favour. “The first time we’ve signed on a replacement in Sydney in years. What have you been doing ashore? Keeping your hand in, I hope?”

Harry shook his head. “The wingers in Sydney are mostly wops now. These New Australians or whatever… . No. I worked on the land mostly. As a jackeroo for this auntie of mine. She has a bit of land out beyond Picton.”

“Too hard graft for you, I suppose?”

“I’m a winger by trade, ” said Harry, acting offended. “First class hotel experience before I signed on.

The Chief grunted. “So they all say! Are you signing on again at Tilbury, or are we just giving you a trip home?’

Harry met his eyes and said levelly, “Depends how the trip goes, don’t it, Chief?”

Frowning, the Chief swept up his papers from his table. “If we look sharp we’ll just catch the Purser and you can sign the register. Did you have a Medical ashore?”

Harry shook his head. “There wasn’t time. But I’m fit.”

“I’ll fix up for you to see the quack in the morning, or we’ll catch it in the neck from the Quarantine johnnies.” The Chief paused in the doorway, glancing down at Harry’s bluish, swollen knuckles. “How did you get that?”

“My horse got too close to a tree,” said Harry glibly.

“Will it slow you up at table?”

Harry shook his head. Thanks for asking if it hurt!

“Well come on, then, look slippy.”

The Chief Steward marched off down the passageway, and Harry followed, gently massaging his knuckles. That chap Macready might have been a damn good winger, but he had a very hard chin.

Chapter Two

When Harry got back from the purser’s office there were three wingers in the peak. They were all under twenty, and he told himself Christ, I’ll he the Daddy of this lot!

The smallest lad looked sixteen at the most, but must have been older to be an A/S. He was already in his whites, short legs straddled before a mirror, solemnly combing his hair with exclusive care and attention. The others, still in jeans, were making a lot of noise. A dark, very skinny one, very volatile, jerky as a puppet, croaked excitedly about some incident ashore, punctuated with curses as he dug into his tumbled suitcase. The third, a fair-haired lad, inclining to puppy fat, sprawled laughing on his bunk; snub-nosed, pale-eyed. formlessly featured, he had a lively, panting eagerness when he laughed. He was the dark one’s trained audience, you could see at a glance. And the dark one was the resident comedian. There was something withdrawn and unforthcoming about the hair-combing lad, which showed in his stance and the set of his shoulders, and his utter self-absorption. He wasn’t laughing.

“Wotcher,” said Harry, pushing past them to open his cupboard.

“Here!” croaked the dark lad. “What are you on?”

“Calm down,” Harry told him. “I live here.”

They both inspected him. The short one combed his hair.

“You replacing Dangerous Dan Macready?’ the fair one panted.

“S’right.”

“Well, sod your luck, mate!” chuckled the comedian. “His was the worst bloody tables in the saloon!”

“And the worst bunk in the peak,” said Harry pointedly. He opened his case and shook out his whites.

“Marty moved down below. You’ll have to argue the toss with him.”

“I wouldn’t though,” said the fair lad. “He’s a big bastard.”

“So I’m a midget, said Harry laconically. “When do we eat?” He stripped off his civvies and hung them in his cupboard.

“Right now. Coming down to conner, Phil?”

“I suppose.” said the fair lad. struggling to his feet. “If I can face that muck after shoreside scoff. Smashing chop suey that was!

They grinned and winked and looked at the small lad.

“For Christ’s sake, Lennie,” said the dark one, “let your hair alone before it starts coming out in handfuls!”

“Ah, sod off!” said Lennie in a distant, preoccupied Midland whine.

The pair went off down the alley, the comic with his hand on Phil’s shoulder, rattling away about his shoreside adventures. As soon as they had gone. Lennie put his comb away, with a swift, clean movement, and whipped his mug and irons from his locker. Almost as if he were unobserved and playing at being someone else. He streaked past Harry, eyes downcast, small, regular features as composed as a waxwork, hair as perfect as a window dummy’s; as though, still lifeless, he was ready for life to begin.

… Well, what did I expect? Harry asked himself glumly. You join a ship in mid-voyage and find they’ve sorted themselves long since into their clicks, made their friends and enemies. Not that I’m bothered. This time I’ll manage better alone.

He followed the crowd along to the galley and joined the queue past the hot presses. The food looked reasonable, but he got no further than the door to the Tourist saloon when the tubby Third Steward bawled out his name.

Head Waiter wants to see you in the First Class, Shears.”

Harry grimaced at his plates.

“Oh, sling that and go round again. Better not keep Mr Parsons waiting. He’s right up the wall.”

“Too bad. I’m starving.”

“Not to worry,” said the Third, sniggering. “He might invite you to dinner!”

“Oh? One of those?”

He dumped the food in the waste bin, sliding his plates across the plate-house counter as he went back down the galley.

… Better not get in bad with these commissioned cowboys, he cautioned himself.

A gang of heavyweights, stripped to the waist, were sweating in the plate-house. A timely reminder of the fate in store if you got in bad, and got busted down to Utility Steward.

Beyond the revolving doors, in the damask and silver glitter of the First Class saloon, the Head Waiter was dining alone, attended by his personal Goanese who looked like the Mahatma Gandhi.

“You wanted to see me, sir?”

The Head Waiter was tall, grey-haired, dapper. A narrow, ascetic face, his lips drawn down, as though perpetually sampling the broth and finding it not up to standard. Harry waited sardonically while Parsons daintily balanced a pea on his fork. Another chuck-out from the cordon bleu brigade. They were all the same.

“You are Shears, I suppose?’’ He dabbed his lips and gave Harry a pained, sidelong inspection. “Weren’t you told to muster here to lay for dinners?’’ Obviously Harry’s appearance sickened him but he was determined not to show it.

“No, sir.” Harry matched his expression of distaste.

“You should have known. You should know without telling, if you’re a First Class A/S.”

“I do need telling, sir,’’ said Harry. “But only once.”

Under his professional disdain, slightly reassured, a line twitched beside his nostril. “Sure you known this job?

“It’s all in my Book, sir.”

“I’m asking you, Shears.” The Head Waiter swung round on his chair, folding his napkin daintily down the creases and shaking it out again.

“Yes. sir, and first class hotel experience.”

The Head Waiter sighed musically. Haven’t they all? … Are you kitted out?” He steeled himself to look at Harry’s brass buttons, white blanco, and hands. “Fingernails? Palms? Tobacco stain on your second finger. I want that off.’’

“The finger, sir?”

“If need be,” said the Head Waiter icily. He waved the napkin. “I had a bellboy lay up your tables, but you’d better check them. It’s the six-table and the deuce down there by the doors.”

Harry groaned. They really were the worst in the saloon. So they would have the worst bloods to match.

“You have only one sitting down there, but you have children’s meals as well.”

Harry groaned louder.

“I’m sorry, but the Children’s saloon is overcrowded and you’re the overflow.” A very good description, Harry thought. “Dinner’s a half-hour after sailing time tonight, so be here for eight-thirty.” He signed to the Mahatma to bring his sweet. “I think that’s all for now, Shears. But I’ll have my eye on you.”

Harry returned to eat his dinner in the Tourist saloon. In the noisy crowd no one paid any heed to him, except the queers, who never missed anyone. They sat at their own tables, very jaded, spiteful and genteel, like elderly hostesses in a refreshment room, if such a combination were possible. Harry glanced around, identifying the close, taciturn groups of Public Room Attendants, Barmen, Bedroom Stewards; the senior grades and long-service men, most of whom would never leave the sea now, except feet first under a tarpaulin. The bellboys sat together in a high-spirited gang, throwing bread and splashing tea, like a Sixth-Form river trip. The plate-house toughs hunched their shoulders and bowed their thick necks in another group. Some of them looked alarmingly low in the anthropoid register. Prognathous and button-eyed; squat, beefy bodies, low foreheads, arms that looked as if they might hang down to their knees.

Oppressed by a sense of helplessness, Harry heard Willie the comic’s cracked, rasping laughter in the distance. He was waving his thin arms like a third-rate actor aping an Italian. Phil, the fair boy, the tame audience, was choking over his food, his pale eyes bulging. The small, quiet one – Lennie, was it? – ate quietly, eyes downcast, his hand sometimes smoothing the nape of his neck. His hair seemed to be the only part of him that ever got ruffled.

Harry wondered about the other occupants of his peak. There was a strapping great lout next to Willie. That could be Marty, by all accounts. He looked like a regimental boxer.

… Hopeless, he told himself. I must have been up the wall!

Finishing his meal, Harry returned to the First Class saloon and checked his tables. They were certainly bad enough, right next to the service entrance, down a long alcove between the Children’s saloon and the bulkhead that contained some large functional obstruction, perhaps a funnel. There was another six-table in the alcove, beyond his own, and his deuce was tucked away in the corner. The good thing was that it was the farthest point from the cold buffet, where the Head Waiter would be queening it. But that was also a bad thing, since it meant that the least important bloods would be stuck down here; the names at the bottom of the seating plan, who would never get within hailing distance of the Captain’s table. And they would know it and resent it, and work off their resentment on him, especially in the vital matter of tips.

The really chronic thing, however, was that all the wingers would have to pass his tables coming in—so handily placed to supply any gear that they lacked. Harry checked quickly and found three soup spoons and two side plates missing. He prowled cautiously into the main saloon and helped himself from another lay-out.

And no tray, of course. It was a mystery why there were never enough trays. Did they all go overside? You could hardly stuff one through a porthole, and it seemed a bit extreme to have to take them up on deck just for the pleasure of getting rid of them. You were supposed to draw them from the cold buffet and return them after each meal; but in practice most wingers had one hidden away.

Harry, following his nose, found one behind a nearby cold press, and took it to conceal in his own, unpatented hiding place; which was to wedge it between the seat of a chair and the underside of the table.

Then he took his mug and irons back to his peak. Overhead the derricks had stopped and the ship was filled with a humming, expectant stillness. Harry followed the faint sounds of running feet and shouted orders, topside, up the companion-way and out onto the forward well-deck. This, like the fo’c’sle head, was crew’s quarters. On the observation decks that rose above the well, the passengers flickered past like tropical fish in a tank, or perched like migrant birds along the Boat Deck rail. Rising behind them the great transverse of the Bridge glimmered in the terminal illuminations, with the stack getting up smoke beyond.

… She looks top-heavy, Harry thought. No wonder if she’s such a terrible roller as they say.

The hatches were closed and covered, and most of the crew on deck, trying to spot their Sydney lays on the wharf. The passenger decks were chained to the terminal with a fluttering trawl of coloured paper. There was a lot of bawling through cupped hands, waving, idiotic messages and tearful high spirits. The Tourist gangway was already down. Harry was glad he had dissuaded Auntie Betty from coming down to see him off. There was no sense in adding to her sufferings.

He lit a cigarette and eased his way to the landward rail. They certainly gave you a great send-off from Aussie, almost as good as the States. A very different matter from slinking out of Tilbury, through the refuse tips and mudflats. As though it were a disgrace to be leaving the dear old country, they made it as stern and drab as possible — as though your spirits hadn’t been quenched already by that ghastly, awful train ride from that terrible, grimy station.

Abruptly Harry thought of his father, and wondered what woman he was living with now, in those stark resettlement flats in Lewisham. He wondered if he ought to write to the old devil, or just sneak up and surprise him. He had wanted to ask Auntie Betty’s advice on that, but they had never mentioned him, and, at the end, it was too late to open the topic. Whatever she must once have felt for him, before she came out here to start life again, with his three casual children and her two-bob wedding ring, it was all burnt out now, and the ashes scattered. Or else she hated him so much that she daren’t speak of it.

Yes, she must hate him now of course. For Danny had wanted to go home to see his father, and now Danny was dead.

The last gangplank was down, the hooter booming and echoing across the harbour, and the screaming getting wilder, drowning the band. Harry watched the paper web slowly stretching and tearing and fluttering down into the oily dark water, as the lights of the ocean terminal began to sail slowly past.

As a devotional exercise of farewell, he concentrated on the image of Auntie Betty’s round, firm, aggressive face, her freckled arms, her all-weather print dress, as she stood on the verandah of her weatherboard bungalow, watching him off her sun-dried piece of land. She was a brave, tough, wonderful woman. Armed with a hundred pounds she had saved on the sly, a mythical widowhood, and a will as tough as the land she came to battle with, she had scooped up her three etiolated saplings and rooted them firmly in the alien red soil. She was beating the dust, the flies, the heat, the chemical closet, the Freemasons, the Milk Marketing Board –- or whatever they called themselves in Picton, the loneliness and the suspicion. She’d beat the lot of them.

… I’d have swapped with Danny any day, he told himself, remembering without emotion the vague blonde image of his own mother, who had died of T.B. in his infancy and left him to the care of the succeeding mistresses. Some of them were very short-lived and even vaguer. Auntie Betty had been the pick of the bunch all right.

The Cyclamen eased herself out of Darling Harbour and turned slowly to pass under the centre of the bridge. The oriental domes of Luna Park sparkled across the water, and the wingers beside him began to describe the girls they had picked up there.

With the others, with every shipboard eye, he stared upward as the masthead dipped and the great dark span of the bridge swung slowly above them. It was fantastic. No other word for it. The ship was no more than a bath-tub toy; and up there, in the middle air, were trains and tramcars and lines of traffic, street lights, lovers necking, suicides being considered, conductors clipping tickets. And, higher still, the struts and the arch, holding up the stars. It made you proud, just for a moment, to belong to the human race.

… Then you look around you, Harry thought, and you aren’t so sure. And you look at yourself, and you’re positive.

Chapter Three

In the first class saloon, the second waiter, in very ripe Cockney, was delivering a short explanatory lecture on the menu.

“Cote D’Agneau Montparnasse … That’s cold mutton. Paupiettes of Beef Aux Olives … Meat balls… .”

A subdued group of wingers clustered round him, apparently resentful of his learning. Behind an array of improbable ruffed and varnished viands on the cold buffet, the Head Waiter was involved in an intricate shafting sunburst of gladioli. His face spasmed slightly with pain as the Second Waiter had a bash at Ramequins Charlemagne.

Harry loitered at the buffet, collecting his napkins and menus, until his presence registered. The Head Waiter, sighting him amid the dolphins incised in the long mirror behind the floristry, nodded coldly.

‘‘Your tables in order, Shears?”

“Yes, sir, thank you.”

He went back to listen to the rest of the briefing, and craftily slid two forks up his sleeve to replace those currently missing from his lay-out. The wingers scattered to their tables as the bloods began to gather, slavering, beyond the revolving glass, awaiting the signal to engage.

“Stand by to repel boarders,” rasped Willie, whisking past.

Returning to the alcove, Harry found Lennie, the small Midlander, at his obsessive occupation. He stood at the long mirror beside the two-table combing, disarranging, combing again, his expression soberly rapt.

“Here!” said Harry. “Watch out with that dandruff!” He flicked a napkin over the chairs of the deuce. “My bloods’ll think it’s been snowing.”

Lennie tucked his comb away and buttoned his pocket.

“I ain’t got dandruff,” he objected quietly, walking past, eyes lowered, lifelessly serene. The degree of reproach was almost laughable, and Harry couldn’t decide if he was a saucy little sod or just a bit bent.

“Whose is that?” He indicated the other six-table in the alcove.

“Mine,” said Lennie, straightening the silverware. “And I run the four-table out there.”

“Oh, yes?” When Lennie’s back was turned he slid his tray out of its concealment. “You been an A/S that long, then?’

Across the tables, Lennie’s eyes lifted to look straight at him. His babyish, prim little mouth didn’t quite smile. “Long enough, mate. Have you?”

… Friendly! thought Harry, smiling and turning away. 1 wonder what his angle is?

“And here they come!” he said, taking up a position where he could watch his gear when the rush began.

There was a tumbler missing, but he decided to risk it. Maybe they wouldn’t all come down tonight. He wondered, just the same, whether Lennie had whipped the tumbler. Eyes in the back of your head, light enough!

The distant doors spun and the bloods came charging in, heads down, like fighting bulls with fire-crackers up their tails. They tried to act dignified as they fanned out towards their tables. A horde of them had forgotten their places, got lost, and had to be sorted out.

Harry saw his first blood coming a long way off. She fixed him with a glare like a long steel needle as she came through the doors, and she was a C-Deck nobody, a natural for the bottom table. A slight, whey-faced spinster with steel-rimmed glasses and a thin nose ported high. No one had dressed tonight, and she wore a baggy grey suit, with a yellow silk scarf, accentuating her bilious air, to give herself a dressy look.

“Good evening, steward,” she said. “I think this is mine?” (She said mayne. Her accent was atrociously refined. Harry guessed she was a Sydneyite, perhaps a secretary from Government House circles).

He helped her to her chair and gave her the menu. The first of a souvenir series of Cathedrals of England. Tonight it was Battle Abbey, which seemed appropriate. Poor Harold was already reeling from the steel-tipped glance she had darted into his eye.

She glanced at the menu. “What is your name?” Another arrow sped home. He told her his name.

“Well, Shears,” (she said Shers) “would you remember that the first thing I requah, before everah meal, is a glass of watah? I have to take my little pills, you know.”

“Certainly, madam.” One tumbler down.

“I am Miss Withers, Shers, and I’m afraid I don’t travel very well. Do you think it’s going to be rough?”

“It’s hard to say yet, madam.” Wingers, like policemen and taxi-drivers, were supposed to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of their calling, as well as being steeped in maritime folklore, mystically attuned to omens of wind and weather, consummate geographers, and experts at identifying fish. In truth, most of them, if pressed, could just distinguish port from starboard.

“So I should appreciate a little extra attention. You won’t find me ungrateful.”

“Certainly, madam,” said Harry gravely. He didn’t like the sound of that at all. Thirty bob at the outside. “Do you wish to order now?”

“No, I shall think about it first. And my little pill must do its work.”

Harry groaned and cursed inwardly. The first wingers to pin down their bloods were skimming past with laden trays, looking smug. With infinite gentility, Miss Withers conveyed the pill to her mouth and took an elfin sip of water. She gave a slight gulp and a wriggle, like an ostrich downing a glass of Guinness, opened her eyes and smiled waterily.

“You going to Tilbury, madam?” Harry hovered significantly at her elbow.

“Only to Colombo … Quite far enough for me!”

Behind her back he pulled a face. Have to work fast on this one to get a worthwhile drop. “Well, no sense in going back to the English winter!”

“Oh, don’t say that, Shers!” she cried reproachfully. “How I miss the bracing cold and the lovely snow! And the green, green grass! How can you say that?”

“You’ll be finding it hot in Colombo, then, madam?”

She gave a faintly scandalised pout. “Heavens! I shan’t stay in Colombo! I shall go straight up to the Peak!”

“Ah,” said Harry pacifically. He had just seen two more bloods approaching.

Lennie, who was already serving a full four-table, with two waiting on the six, cast Harry a faint, sly smile.

A heavy, red-faced Australian, with wife to match, approached the alcove, counting and pointing at affronted shoulders until they decided that this was them.

“Good evening.” Harry helped the fat woman into her chair opposite Miss Withers. She had grey hair recently permed and tinted violet, freckles on her neck, fly-away, diamante spectacles and a load of costume jewellery. A passable imitation of a Boston matron. Miss Withers was making an obvious mental comment on the “American influence.” that curious transpacific flirtation; that love-hate relationship that sent the Australian politicians in sackcloth and ashes to the wailing wall, and everyone else to the Sydney Stadium to be saved by Billy Graham.

Miss Withers bowed forgivingly over her clasped fingers, and they nodded back and grunted cheerfully.

“Well, now, what’ll you have. Lou?” the man demanded, reaching for the menu.

Miss Withers twitched her lips to one side, peered down into her pillbox and counted softly, to take her mind off her surroundings. Station-owners or store-keepers, Harry decided, taking that trip to Europe at last. Have to go easy there. Aussies were always touchy, especially the parvenu. They’d want their money’s worth, even if they had to eat right through the menu, and they’d resent any hint of patronage.

“Oh, to hell with these fancy names!” groused the man genially, unabashed. “Waiter, what’s any good?”

“No, Ern, give it here!” cried his wife gaily, slapping his wrist, and giving Miss Withers a conciliatory smile to explain that this was just connubial bliss. Miss Withers was dabbing under her long nose with a scrap of tissue. “I’m going to order, Ern! ”

She ordered the dishes with English names. That wouldn’t last. After a time they’d get adventurous, and he’d have to find out what the fancy names meant.

Harry doubted if they’d been waited on very often. They were built for the open spaces. Miss Withers seemed to be debating the necessity of another pill.

“Are you ready to order yet, madam?” he asked her, and she shook her head with a smile of quiet fortitude.

So he whisked away with his tray, round to the galley entrance in the opposite alcove. Fair-haired Phil was queueing for soup at the hot press, and Harry slid in behind him.

“God, you should see my bloods! What’ve you got?”

Phil giggled, his eyes, lips, and snub nose glinting with delight. “An Indian prince or some bloody thing, and an old nut case what talks to himself, and his nurse, and three young dollies, pretty half-soaked at that.”

“Come on, cowboy!” roared the galleyhand at the tureen.

“This nut case keeps saying there’s something under the table, but I reckon it’s this rajah playing footie-footie with one of the dollies …”

Harry shoved through the mob to the greens, fish, cooked meats, piling up his orders, covered plate upon covered plate, and skimmed away over the slippery floor to the exit.

Marilyn trailed a broom languidly across his path, saying “Hullo, dahling,” in a voice like Tallulah Bankhead.

While he was serving the Aussies, and they were tucking their napkins under their chins and rubbing their palms, the Second Waiter brought a woman down and sat her diagonally across from Miss Withers. Harry was on his guard. She must be someone, not just a chuck-out from the main saloon. Maybe she liked a dark corner? Didn’t look very impressive. A big, placid, grey-haired woman like a retired schoolmistress, or a lady doctor. Or one of those dons who wrote thrillers? There was something about her. Her clothes were so negative that they gave the impression that she could afford not to care.

He wished her good evening with a reverent inflection, and gave her the menu.

She replied in a murmur, tapped her chin, and read the menu as though it all meant something to her, even the Catering Department French. Miss Withers was watching with a fixed, oblique stare, and now summoned with a spiky finger. “Shers! ”

In a thin, vibrant tone, loud enough to carry along the table, she ordered entirely in French.

“D’accord, madame,” Harry said (he had worked in that sort of Soho restaurant), unable to keep the mockery out of his voice.

The Aussies ate stolidly, glowering at their plates, and the woman’s freckled neck went pink. Down the table, Harry caught a single amused glance, before the other woman’s eyes went politely blank. He nodded and went to her. and she ordered a modest meal in a quiet, private tone. She pronounced the French as exactly what it was. a bastard lingo. She seemed to think it funny. Miss Withers, outsmarted, changed her order pettishly, her face shrivelled with dislike.

“I suppose we ought to introduce ourselves.” she said, unbending graciously towards the Aussies as Harry raced away. She had picked the moment when their mouths were stuffed with food.

From snippets of conversation, Harry identified the married couple as Fan and Lou Arnold. The woman in the corner was a Miss Hathaway. No other information was forthcoming. The other two places on the six-table and the deuce remained empty.

Halfway through the meal, Willie, loping past with a crazy pinnacle of dishes, croaked warningly. “Watch out! Mother Superior’s coming!”

Harry saw the Head Waiter gliding like a water serpent between the tables. The nickname seemed appropriate enough. For there was something rather Papist about the way he laid out his buffet with flowers and silverware and stood there smiling benedictions.

“Everything all right?” The Head Waiter addressed Miss Withers and Miss Hathaway conjointly, with a neat, sliding smile, giving preference to neither. After a subtle pause he included the Arnolds.

“So far,” said Miss Withers valiantly, pecking at her food. She cast an unhappy glance over her shoulder as the revolve shuddered and a winger came crashing through. A gentle sniff drew attention to the seeping odour of stewing cabbage.

“Good, good! I hope you’ll be comfortable!” The Head Waiter placed a light hand on Harry’s shoulder, coaxing him out of earshot. “Mr Renolds and Wing Commander Walsh have not come down?”

“No, sir, not yet.”

“You will have a Mrs Margravine and her daughter at your two-table. I want you to look after them. Mrs Margravine is rather an invalid. We may have to arrange a special diet.”

… Great! thought Harry grimly.

“However, I don’t expect they’ll come down to all meals.” The Head Waiter nodded and drifted suavely away, paying graded respects to the tables he passed, and becoming almost jovial as he reached the chosen ones around his shrine. At the Captain’s table he leant inward to adjust a floral centrepiece and appeared to crack a joke.

Rather too late in the meal to be much use, a Wine Steward mooched into the alcove, his expression appropriately pessimistic among such low-caste bloods. Like a flag-seller at Rowton House.

Arnold greeted the W/S expansively. “Ah, well, we might have something with it another night.” His roguish man-to-man approach suggested that the W/S might equally be a pimp, if not an agent of the devil; an attitude doubtless conditioned by the Australian licensing laws. “But not tonight.” Arnold said. “I’m afraid the wife’s had a drop too much already!” (Nods and winks all round. Miss Withers froze with horror.)

“Ern! ” squealed Lou, unable to match his aplomb.

“Now you know what you’re like when you’ve been on the plonk!” Ern teased her. “You want to get upstairs on your own two feet, don’t you?”

… Upstairs! An A Deck cabin? They might be all right for a drop after all.

Meanwhile the two maiden ladies dismissed the W/S with silent smiles, not blaming him for only doing his duty.

As the W/S moved away, sighing gently. Lennie came up to him and asked in a low, anxious voice. “Where’s Bernard?”

“Stocktaking.”

“Oh …” Lennie looked blank and smoothed the sides of his hair.

“Don’t worry,” said the W/S sardonically. He’ll be back safe and sound tomorrow.”

Miss Withers left the table first, with a cool nod to the others and a reproachful “Good-night, Shers! ” She had taken one tiny spoonful of her Glace Chinoise. He gathered he was somehow to blame.

Miss Hathaway left unobtrusively a few moments later, and the Arnolds, having dealt with hors d’oeuvre. soup, fish, main course, ices and dessert, settled down to coffee, cheese and biscuits. Harry knew they would want to be friendly, so long as it involved no loss of face, and therefore asked them if they were London-bound, which they were.

“First visit?” he asked politely, which delighted them.

“Matter of fact, yes,” said Arnold brazenly. “You from London, then?”

“You won’t be seeing my part of London, sir. “

Mrs Arnold giggled. “My goodness, and you wouldn’t see Mangrove Mountain if you came to Australia, would he, Ern?”

“Only by accident,” Ern agreed.

“That’s where we come from, Mangrove Mountain.”

He told them he’d been out there eleven months. So they asked what he thought, and he told them what they wanted to hear. Smashing climate, terrific beaches, land of opportunity, working man’s paradise, car and refrigerator in every home. And now television. What more could you want?

“What’s your name, feller?” Arnold asked.

Harry told him.

“Oh? I thought she called you Shers, or some bloody thing?”

“Ern!” said Mrs Arnold, slapping his hairy wrist.

“That’s what they call the Oxford accent, sir,” Harry said slyly. “You’ll be hearing a lot of that.”

“You haven’t got it.”

“I didn’t go to Oxford.”

They all laughed, while Harry smoothly slid the plates away from them.

“What did you think of the Australian accent? … Oh, I can’t call you Shers … Shears… Don’t you have a first name?” Mrs Arnold clasped her beringed and freckled hands. She really was tight.

“Harry. I didn’t mind the accent. It’s just like Cockney. Made me feel at home.”

At last he got rid of them, rushed his plates to the plate-house, rinsed his cutlery in the buckets, sped back, drying the silver en route, skimmed across the emptying saloon with tumblers to the glass locker, cruets to the silver buffet; went out again to dump his cutlery tray in the silver locker, and the water ewer in the jug locker. He returned to cover the tables with their beige plush draperies, flung his napkins and tablecloths into the pile by the linen locker, hid his tray, and glanced at his wrist-watch.

Seven minutes to strip his tables. Not bad. He hadn’t lost his touch.

Out in the galley the wingers were assembling in fatigues for their last strap-up; the galleyhands were swilling the deck, while the plate-house men bellowed and sweated in the steam. Harry slid away down the ladder. They wouldn’t have thought of a strap-up for him yet, and he wasn’t going to volunteer.

In consequence, he reached the well-deck alone, unbuttoned his jacket and lit a cigarette. They were well down below the Heads now, and no lights visible on the starboard shore. He wished he had been able to stay on deck for the voyage out across the Harbour, for it was a sight you couldn’t match anywhere else in the world.

He rubbed his hands slowly along the scrubbed grain of the rail, and it was still warm from the Sydney sun. There was a light swell, and the ship occasionally dipped gently and righted itself, with the bow-wave hissing, like a horse shying and snickering through its nostrils, with a brief white flash of its mane.

He strolled across, leaping up on to the hatch and down, and hung over the port rail, watching the grey, phantasmal flutter of the bow-wave.

“Watch out!” cried a youthful, eager voice behind him. and his heart constricted with shock.

It was Phil. “You want to be careful, mate!” He panted between his words, like a child learning to talk, either from shortness of breath or from high spirits. “We had a case of that, last trip home! Did you read about it?”

“A case of what?” Harry’s heart began to thump again, slow and then accelerating painfully.

“Kid went overside. One of the bellboys. Wasn’t it in the Aussie papers?”

It was all too sudden, and Harry could think of no words to detain him. Phil was already skidding towards the companion-way. “Beer issue tonight! Look slippy if you don’t want to miss it!”

Chapter Four

On his way below, Harry consulted the duty list outside the crew room, and found that his morning scrub-out was to dust the A Deck Pool Bar, in collusion with someone called Prince. That didn’t sound too back-breaking. Inside the recreation room there was a plop of darts, a click of ping-pong, falsetto queers singing at the piano, a noise of argument and clinking bottles. Harry decided to give it a miss. The fo’c’sle was rowdy tonight, now that the bows were turned towards home: a curiously sardonic air of celebration, lacking spontaneity: the sound of Englishmen getting drunk.

The door of the bellboys’ peak was open, and three lads were playing cards at the table. Marilyn emerged, draped in a large lilac towel, and fluttered her lashes at him.

“Hullo, darling. Come on up the showers and I’ll scrub your back.”

“And then what?’

She thrust out her lower lip. “Get you, you great butch thing!” she said mournfully. Harry gave a small, grim, satisfied smile.

There was another card school in his peak. Willie, Phil, little Lennie, and a brown-faced, slow-speaking country boy named Bruce, who always held up the bidding and licked his thumb when he dealt. Although the evening was quite cool, with a stiff breeze through the portholes, Lennie wore only a singlet. Like the hair-combing it seemed another small eccentricity.

“Evening all,” Harry said. They grunted without looking up from their hands.

In the farthest corner by the portholes, a wizened little man lay on the lower bunk, smoking a spill and staring at nothing.

… So I’m not the Daddy after all, thought Harry with some relief.

He looked a real old salt, the tattoos faded on his wiry arms, a shiny bald head, lips stretched in an unconvincing smile across oversized dentures. At the sound of Harry’s voice he raised his head, like a corpse reviving on a mortuary slab.

“You Shears, then?”

“S’right.” Harry unlaced his shoes. The white blanco would last another day without re-touching. Auntie Betty had done a good job on them.

“First trip?”

“Do me a favour,” said Harry, stripping off his whites and easing past the table to hang them in his cupboard. The card school’s eyes glanced at him briefly, with natural curiosity, and Bruce tipped forward his chair to let him pass.

“Ta,” said Harry, smiling as he caught the country boy’s dark, moody glance.

“Didn’t think so,” said the old man. He had a soft, dry. rustling voice, like a sidesman talking in the aisle. “Not from the way you was running them tables. Couple of right bastards you got there, son.”

“They are for losing your gear.” Harry agreed. “If I catch any sod with his hands on my table I’ll chop ‘em off.”

He glanced at Lennie. still wondering about the missing tumbler. Lennie ignored him, but with a listening air, and swung his leg casually over the chair arm.

“Cor, dear,” the old man quaked with dry, painful-sounding laughter, “You’ll never see the stuff being whipped. It’s bloody miraculous. There’s some right fly blokes on this ship.”

“I just hope I don’t catch ’em!” Harry went to the porthole. The night air smelt of the open sea.

“What ship was you on before?”

“The Cyclades. You know it?”

“Cor dear, yes, I done a few trips on that old tub!”

They talked for a while about old so-and-so. and old what-was-his-name.

“We have Goanese peak boys on this ship,” the old man said. “We chip in a quid each at the end of the trip.”

“Fair enough. I hate scrub-outs.”

“We got a good boy this trip, old Joe.” They were all called Joe.

“He’s a right lazy bastard,” said Bruce slowly and sententiously. “One of these days we ll cop it on Captain’s Rounds.”

“Do it yourself, then, mate,” said the old man. “No one’s stopping you.”

“I’ve half a mind to,” said Bruce aggrievedly. “Then I’d know it was done proper.”

“You’ve got half a mind,” said Willie, “and that’s the truth.”

The old man winked at Harry. “He’ll get on, if he don’t grow out of it!”

Bruce’s neck went rusty brown as he prepared to argue, but Willie punched his shoulder and yelled at him. “Belt up and play your cards, you stupid old swede-basher! … And you didn’t ought to encourage him, Dad! Why don’t you die or something?”

“I’ll see you into your grave, you croaking little tadpole,” said the old man composedly, lying back and staring at the underside of the upper bunk.

“You see?” Willie shrugged his thin shoulders at Harry. “A nice friendly peak, you see?”

A lean, swarthy, hawk-faced winger darted into the peak, his thin body bowed to conceal a dinner plate wrapped in a napkin. The others groaned.

“You wolfing, gutzing bastard, Ron! ” cried Willie.

The newcomer crouched on his bunk and reverently unwrapped the plate. “I don’t know how you lot can stick that crew’s conner! … Blimey, though, I had a narrow squeak with this one. I almost bumped into the Mother Superior nosing round the galley!”

Lennie looked up at him, frowned, scratched himself and swung his leg. Harry remarked how seldom he smiled, and what little part he took in the surrounding horse-play. As though he was insulated from it by a thick skin of indifference.

But he looked very young to have grown a shell like that. Maybe he was just stupid.

In the next peak someone turned up a radio full blast. Radio Australia belting out dance tunes.

“Shaarup!” Willie screamed.

“Come in here and say that!” someone roared back.

Bruce and Phil held the gibbering Willie down in his chair, and Lennie said quietly, without looking up, “Play your cards.”

Ron guzzled intently on his bunk. He had a narrow, long-nosed face like a Hindu, startlingly black hair, and a vee of thick, conjoined eyebrows that grew down towards the bridge of his nose. He was so thin that his whites flopped about him. Harry thought he might be a Eurasian.

“I don’t know where he puts it.” Dad chuckled. “Never gets any bleeding fatter.”

“Look who’s talking, you old skeleton.” muttered Ron. passing to sling plate, napkin and cutlery out of the porthole.

“Yes, we last forever, us skinny ones.” said the old man. “I’ll see him into the grave, that fat podge from the swede country.” Bruce’s neck began to darken again. “And that bunch of sausage-meat from Walsall! … Yes. you, you sly little Midland runt! ’’

Lennie looked up at him slowly across the table, and the others paused in their play. Lennie was absolutely expressionless, as though too young to have learnt expressions.

Harry was puzzled by the old man’s evident antipathy. Lennie hardly seemed worth it.

“Don’t you give me that look!” said the old man. his voice hardening. “Don’t you try to come saucy with me. I know all about you, sonny, and don’t you ever think different! You ain’t heard the last of that business yet, not by a long chalk!”

Lennie looked down at his cards, and his small lips twitched with a slight hint of scorn. “I’ll stick.” he said composedly.

The others relaxed, made their bids, and up-ended their bottles ot beer. Ron stripped to his underwear and slid his skinny, dark limbs straight between the sheets… . Maybe, Harry thought, that was how he got so brown?

“Get your beer issue tonight, son?” the old man asked Harry. Harry shook his head. “I’ve got a guts-ache. Too much Aussie beer.”

“Or there’s some cocoa going down in the galley.”

“I ain’t bothered, ta.”

“Get out of it, Dad!” Willie jeered. “He’s just trying it on. He wants you to fetch him some up, ’cause he’s too old and weak to get down there after it himself!” He didn’t seem to be taking Lennie’s part. Obviously the incident was familiar. A part of a pattern. It embarrassed the others but didn’t drive them to Lennie’s defence. It was evident that they resented his coolness, his lack of involvement.

“I’ll be after you tonight, Croaking Willie,” the old man threatened amiably. “You better watch yourself.”

“Get out of it. You ain’t got the strength!”

Harry stripped to his shorts and took his towel and shaving tackle up to the wash-room. Marilyn was there, drifting about with the lilac towel tied into a bustled skirt.

“I’m thinking of putting my hair up. It’s the Edwardian look. It’s all the rage, you know.”

“Oh, not you again!” Harry complained.

Marilyn pouted. “Am I boring you?”

“Either you or three others just like you.”

“There’s no one like me,” she protested, in her nasal, blah-blah voice. “Not on this dreary old ship, there’s not. I’m the youngest girl afloat. I’m only sixteen.”

“You carry it very well, dear,” Harry assured her, lathering his chin.

“May I watch?” She came and leant on the next basin. “I adore to watch men shaving.”

“Drop dead,” said Harry.

“I’ve got your number, don’t you worry!” Marilyn said from the doorway, venomously arch. “You cant fool me, dear!” Harry frowned at his image, studying the drawn cheeks, freckled forehead, the thin, set lips, the expressionless pale eyes. No, nothing there to hint at anything. No clues at all.

As he shaved he wondered idly what Lennie’s number was. Just showing off? As well he might, and he was just about the age for it.

Down in the peak the poker school huddled in a swirl of smoke. Dad and Ron were dozing. Harry climbed up to his bunk and found it as draughty as he had feared. The breeze from the portholes cut straight across to the six-inch gap between the bulkhead and the roof. You also got the draught, noise and light through the gap behind his head into the next peak, and they sounded like a very noisy mob indeed, with two drunken Irishmen spoiling, as usual, for a fight.

“The girls having a party tonight?” Phil asked.

“Suppose so,” said Willie. “First night out the girls go wild. That’s where Marty’ll be.”

“I just don’t know how he can bring himself to do it,” said Bruce censoriously, rolling his vowels like barrels of potatoes.

“You bloody well go there yourself!” crackled Willie indignantly.

Bruce flushed indignantly. “I only ever go there for a laugh!”

“Laugh!” Willie yelled incredulously. “You don’t know how!”

Under the sheet Harry chuckled silently. True enough. Bruce really was a humourless clod of loam.

“You’d sooner have something on four legs any day. wouldn’t you?” asked Dad genially from his bunk. “You bloody swedebashing hypocrite.”

… It wouldn’t surprise me, Harry thought. He looks stupid enough for anything. But if this Marty was a queer’s mate he could be an ugly customer.

The noise in the alley sharply increased with a pelting of feet, jostling and squealing, and, somewhere in the distance, a crash of glass. A tall blonde in a green brocade dressing-gown swirled into the peak. She was very discreetly made up, like a well-bred Tatlcr woman, and waved a long cigarette holder in her slim, manicured fingers,

”Hullo there, stranger!” she said, striking a pose like a movie star before a battery of press-men, and puffing out smoke. “Happy to have you aboard my ship …”

“You ain’t had ’im yet!” said Dad,

“I heard there was a new man, so I’ve come straight along to see they’re making you comfortable. I’ve had to tear myself away from a party …”

“What’s his name?” Willie asked.

“ … I must rush back in a minute before they start calling for me. You may kiss my hand.”

“What ho, Lil,” said Willie, winking at the others. “Give us a flash!”

Lil swirled her skirts. “You nasty little boy, you shouldn’t be thinking about things like that at your age! The very idea!” She smiled at Harry and said cosily, “What are these boys coming to?”

“We’ll be coming to have you, one of these nights,” said Willie.

“That’ll be the day! ” said Lil witheringly. She pulled a long face at Harry, sucking in her cheeks. “Crude isn’t the word. Just rabble, most of them. Scum of the deep, my dear. No idea how to treat a lady. And look at that one, as bold as brass! Really! Ladies present!” Lennie, however, neither moved nor glanced at her. “But you look like a gentleman, dear. Is your hair a natural colour?”

“With a little help from others,” said Harry impassively.

Lil’s eyes shone. “Oh, don’t you adore The Importance?” She fluffed out her fair curls. “But I must warn you that Patience Strong’s is not! … Have you met Patience? Isn’t she a dreary old cow? Old as the hills, my dear, and grey at the roots … She used to be queen of this ship before I came aboard and dethroned her. Now she’s madly jealous, of course. She spreads the most dreadful tales about me.”

“They’d have to be very bad, me old darling, before I believed them,” said Dad amiably from his dark corner.

“Dreadful old man!” Lil mouthed at Harry, clinging to the edge of his bunk. Aloud she said. “I think I’ll appoint you to be my special bodyguard. Your duty is to protect our royal person from these nasty toughs. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Mm? … You get a special uniform, designed by Dior, and whenever I come into the saloon you rise to your feet and shout God save the Queen!”

“And God help the Merchant Navy!” Dad commented.

“The Mechant Navy!” said Lil brightly. “I’m trying to arrange a fanfare of trumpets, but the Purser’s being very difficult. Breach of tradition or something.”

There was a distant hullabaloo. “Diamond Lil? … Where’s Lil?”

“Heavens, they’re calling for me! My absence has been discovered! I must fly!” She gave Harry a twinkling, intelligent, witty smile, kissed her hand to the others and whirled away.

“Cor, dear me!” said Harry, feeling some comment to be called for. That had been a nasty slip-up. quoting from Oscar Wilde. As good as a password.

“You won’t get nowhere with that one,’’ Dad advised him. “One of the Engineer Officers is having her. She’s a right old tease but she don’t give nowt away.”

“I reckon Marty’s interested,” said Bruce darkly.

“More fool him then,” said Dad, composing himself for sleep.

“There’s a right lot on this tub. though, ain’t there?” Harry ruefully observed.

“Same as most,” grunted Dad. “The all-white ships is the worst though. Cor, dear, you seen them screamers on the Atlantic run?”

“Too right,” Harry agreed. “Hey. and what about that little one, Marilyn, is it? She’s a case, ain’t she?”

“What she wants is the end of a rope,” said Dad, clicking his tongue against his dentures. “Bleeding disgrace at that age … A bellboy, you know ”

“Get away!” Harry recalled seeing her emerge from the bellboys’ peak. An item of information worth remembering. “Thought she was a bit on the young side.”

“She reckons she was born like that,” said Phil uncomfortably, looking rather pudding-faced when he stopped grinning.

“How do you know?” Willie demanded.

“Because she laid me!” Phil glared back.

“I reckon she fancies you,” muttered Willie, moodily possessive.

“Ah, don’t be daft!”

“Now then, lads, put them cards away and let’s get some kip,” Dad requested.

It was already half past official lights-out at eleven, but the noise went on and on. Down the alley someone was trying out a trumpet.

… And yet it was only twenty-four hours since he had lain in the cricket-singing night on Auntie Betty’s sleep-out verandah, watching the clear stars prickling the sky, diffused by the mosquito wire. It would take him some time to get back into the habit of sleeping through the fo’c’sle riot.

He started to think, fumblingly, of other things; of nights on the prowl in the Cross, a close shave with the cops in Picton, men from other ships … Suddenly the image of the sleep-out burned with a clear, Australian brilliance, arid, cloudless, shrivellingly hot. The morning sun striking down through the mesh; the brief, pale shadows on the burnt grass under the silver wraiths of trees. The bright scene filled with a menacing emptiness. And Danny’s empty bed beside the salvia tubs. Out in the silver trees a grey parrot screeched, in the clashing, gold and silver, metallic brilliance of morning. A sound to strike and claw with bitterness and senseless irreparable loss …

Harry awoke with a jerk as a large hand fumbled across his sheet. A cropped head swayed about, close at hand in the glow that spilled over the bulkhead. A head joined by a thick neck to very wide shoulders.

Harry drew up his knees and prepared to repel boarders.

… Here we go again, he told himself irritably.

“Sorry, mate,” said a slurred south London voice. I forgot I moved downstairs, di’nt I?”

“S’right,” muttered Harry guardedly.

The large hand slapped him on the thigh. “Sorry, mate … sorry …” The head and shoulders disappeared, and there were thumps and curses from below, followed by a sudden stillness.

Presently Harry peered over the edge and glimpsed a pair of long, bare legs thrust out over the floor, with jeans wreathed round the ankles. They looked as though they’d be there for the night.

… He looks a right one, Harry thought, settling down again.

Perhaps because he had not worked a full day, not even as hard as his normal day ashore, he could not fall deeply asleep, but dozed uneasily, at moments aware of the sea. Dad snoring, footsteps in the alley, the creak and throb of the ship, and the trembling shudder that ran through her as the bows clove the heavy swell rolling up from the Tasman Sea.

Then once again he was wide awake, his head rising from the pillow towards the bulkhead gap at the sound of a low, persistent whimpering from the alley. He saw in the half light that Lennie’s bunk, next to his own, was empty. And Lennie’s voice was complaining in an anguished murmur out in the alley … “He keeps on at me … And you know I had nothing to do with it … You’ve got to stop him. Bernard! You got to tell him straight!”

A low voice answered. “Just ignore him, Lennie. Don’t worry, it will all be forgiven and forgotten soon. So far as they’re concerned …”

A strange voice – grave, educated, mature. A warm voice, with a deep, harmonious country burr. A voice that fitted no particular face or type. Harry thrust his head against the roof, trying to angle his eye to see down into the alley, but it was impossible.

Forgiven and forgotten? What sort of winger would talk like that?

Then Harry saw Lennie’s shadow in the doorway, and lay down and pulled up the sheet, watching Lennie climb quietly up to his bunk, his babyish haunches and unbabyish appendages glimmering under the tail of his singlet.

Snivelling in the dark didn’t quite match up with the equipment. Just for show? Anyway he evidently had a talent of sorts that appealed to his gentleman protector.

Harry watched awhile to see if the kind gentleman would conn and tuck Lennie into bed, but dozed off thereabouts into a dream of angels with brightly-painted faces kissing each other’s cheeks in token of forgiveness. The crime of which they were accused was not specified but hung like a cloudy menace in the air; and Harry woke again in the small hours, shuddering in the draught.

Chapter Five

With uncanny prescience, Joe, the Goanese peak boy, arrived with a can of tea at five-forty-two, three minutes before knock-up. It was terrible tea, but that wasn’t Joe’s fault because it was a long haul from the galley. He went from bunk to bunk, shaking with a hand as gentle as a lover’s, poured tea into your mug and went away without a murmur. All points in his favour at that time of day.

Lennie was not noticeably affected by his disturbed night, but woke as easily as if he had had his full six hours, and swung down into the melee of thrusting legs and reaching arms. Harry himself felt whacked, but had always been bad at getting up. Fortunately, homeward bound you won a little extra sleep every night as the clocks went back. Coming out and losing sleep could be dead rough in a noisy ship.

Dad, the typical old hand, had been creeping about before knock-up. Probably years since he’d rushed himself for anyone. Ron, a huddled skeleton under his sheet, was all set to lie till the last moment. No sign of life from Marty, who had got himself into bed, and looked as if he’d celebrate the victory by stopping there. His cropped head was deep in the pillow, his tea getting cold and pallid. Phil, as a sort of class distinction, having been to grammar school, wore pyjamas.

Harry jostled up to the washroom.

“Queueing all parts!” Marilyn sang out. And that was about the size of it. Especially for the stalls. The crafty who had risen before knock-up had bagged the showers.

When he got back to the peak, Ron had gone, and Marty, come unwillingly to life, was fumbling to close the zip of some rather inadequate jeans. “Gawd!” he gasped, letting out his breath as he fastened the waist.

“You don’t watch out you’ll throttle yourself,” said Harry, thrusting his legs into jeans, arms into striped jacket, and feet into plimsolls in simultaneous jerks,

“It’s the plonk as does it,” said Marty ruefully, striking his hard stomach. He was very husky, an inch taller than Harry, though probably only twenty-one or -two. He had broad, simple features, a bull neck, hair cropped close and shaven up the back.

“First trip too?” he asked, wriggling into his jacket as they strode down the alley.

“Christ no! Is it yours?”

“Too blooming right! And the last! It’s a bastard life, i’nt it? ”

“Depends,” said Harry. “What was your racket ashore?”

“I just come out the army. And I’ll tell you. mate, this is a bloody sight worse and no kidding!”

“What mob?”

“I was in the Guards, said Marty, rather challengingly.

Harry glanced at him, detecting a faint slyness behind his smile.

… And I bet you made the most of it. he thought. 1 bet you know the score! You’ll be right in your element here!

“Well, you should do all right in the M. N .” he said aloud.

Marty laughed loudly, slightly uneasy, and asked. “What mob was you in, then?”

“None of ‘em. 1 been at sea since 1 was eighteen.”

“Half the bleeding kids on this ship are just dodging the call-up.” said Marty scornfully. “Five years of this. I ask you! Is it worth it? I tell em straight. Don’t be a clot. Go home and serve your time. It’s a bleeding picnic compared with this caper!”

“It weren’t for the call-up dodgers it’d be better for us regulars. But they don’t have to put themselves out to keep us, because they know there’s a million half-soaked kids begging to sign on, to keep out of khaki.”

“S’right,” said Marty moodily.

“If they can only stick one trip then that’s their funeral. It’s all the same to the Companies. Plenty more where we came from! ”

“Too bloody true,” Marty said.

Harry clapped him on the shoulder. “Anyone tells you ships run on oil, or coal, or whatever, don’t you believe it. They run on sweat.”

The First Steward was overseeing tick-on in the galley. “You know your scrub-out, Shears?”

“Yes, First.”

“I’m putting you in charge up there. Keep an eye on Prince. He’s a lazy little devil. I’ll be up to inspect later on, and if I’m not happy you’ll be for the high jump.”

“Right.” Harry outstared him with tried, professional contempt. Get knotted.

He made his way up the ladders to A Deck by the crew route, up through the pantries where the B.Rs. were preparing their early trays for the lunatics who liked to be wakened with tea or orange juice at six a.m. He stepped out into the passengers’ quarters, that white, silent vista of passageways and silver-numbered doors, feeling the familiar stiffening of sinews, that faint prickling of the scalp. Not that anything could happen. Not that you were ever in danger of insulting a blood unless you were raving drunk or up the wall. And yet… .

There was a lot of dark panelling in the Pool Bar, a lot of leatherette, and far too many tables, ashtrays, radiators, sills –dust-traps all. Beyond the glass wall to the open play-deck a salmon stain seeped across the grey blotting-paper of dawn. Seagulls, toned to match, effortlessly paced the ship. Salmon water slopped in the pool as the deck tilted, and the colour spilled in long streams across the boards the Lascars were swabbing. Bizarre shadows, they padded about, exotic in turbans and smocks, ludicrous in rolled cotton trousers.

It was all right being a topsider in the tropics, Harry thought, but lousy when the weather got cold. Lascars were a rum lot. though, with their praying-deck, and their muezzins or jemadars or whatever to keep them in line. It seemed to work, too, for they never got drunk, fought, or went adrift. But you could never get to know them, even supposing you wanted to.

Three different tribes on one ship. And even among the whites there were three sub-divisions: these, those, and the don’t-knows.

He was flipping round his third sofa when he saw a young lad drift into the bar, his jacket unbuttoned, eyes gummed up with sleep.

“You Prince?”

The boy grunted.

“Well, get stuck in, mate. I’m in charge and I don’t take the can for nobody.”

The boy didn’t reply, but turned his back and began to dust.

Harry laid for kids’ breakfasts in the saloon and went below to change into his whites. Joe had made up the bunks and was sweeping out. He was a good peak boy, all right, but Harry wanted to kick his butt-end to hurry him along. At last he was finished; none of the others had shown up, and Harry was alone with Lennie, who, needless to say, was combing his hair. Harry went down to look over the small lad’s shoulder and run a comb through his own tough, ginger waves.

“Old Dad’s got the dead needle to you, ain’t he?” he remarked, laughing easily. “What you done to him. then?”

Lennie’s serious glance met his in the mirror. “Has he?”

Harry shrugged. “Seemed like he was picking on you.”

Tilting his head, Lennie examined the lie of his hair. It looked perfect to Harry, but its owner seemed dissatisfied. “I didn’t notice,” he said composedly.

… You really are a cool one! Harry was forced to admit. “What does he have to do before you notice? Dot you on the bonce?”

Lennie walked away, buttoning his comb into his pocket.

“Happy little soul, ain’t you, son?” Harry observed, sarcastically indulgent. “What you doing in the M.N. anyway? Dodging the call-up?”

Lennie stood still as Harry returned to his bunk, and, as he brushed past, stopped him with a light hand on the chest. For a second, despite the absurdity, Harry’s scalp twitched with the suspicion that Lennie was about to do something violent, insane, like clawing his face or flashing a knife.

But all he said was, very gravely, with a searching glance, “Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot,” said Harry, climbing up for his mug and irons.

Lennie waited until Harry met his eye, and then asked seriously, “Do you think I’m small for my age?”

Lennie’s hair, when you looked at it, was obviously intended to jut forward in a fringe, flat from the crown. By combing it back he added an inch to his height, but it needed a lot of combing.

“No, not specially. Why?”

Lennie gave a small pout. “Some of the lads reckon I am. They call me short-arse and that. Do you reckon I’ll grow?”

“Bound to, mate,” said Harry kindly. “This is the life for it, anyrate.”

“I think I’ve stopped growing,” said Lennie darkly.

“I don’t see as it matters. You know what they say, little but good. There’s plenty of blokes your size. Besides it’s a dead loss being tall in the M.N. You keep bashing your nut on things.”

Lennie turned away, not looking much consoled, as Willie and Phil raced into the peak, tearing off their jackets and unzipping their jeans.

… Old Dad must really have it in for Lennie, Harry thought, to call him a little runt and that. Under the circumstances it was a pretty deadly insult.

At crew’s conner Harry ate alone. Diamond Lil, at the head of the queers’ table, smiled and gave a palace-balcony wave. Marilyn, seated at the bottom, looked sullen. Willie, Phil, Lennie and Bruce sat down together. Dad was in a quiet corner with some leathery old salts. He removed his dentures to deal with the bacon. Marty was with some plate-house toughs. Ron sat near the door and went round twice for a complete breakfast. Young Prince dawdled by, holding his plates so listlessly that the porridge was almost on the deck. He looked a right dream, that one.

Prince had a pair of white gloves tucked through the epaulette of his white mess jacket, and, sure enough, sat down with the other bellboys. If he wasn’t a first-tripper, Harry thought, that could be an advantage.

Then, as it came up to seven-fifteen, he went in to have a look at his kids. The eldest were at the deuce, a brother and sister, rather superciliously English. Wing Commander Walsh’s children, going home from Woomera. The girl had been at Geelong Grammar and was wearing the blazer. At the six-table only one high-chair case, thank God. Also three small girls, and a slightly older German boy, pale and self-possessed, working hard to make the herrenvolk grade. One empty chair.

The high-chair case was a flushed, pugnacious boy. Old enough to talk, his mother said, but simply wouldn’t try.

“It’s slops for us, I’m afraid.” she sighed apologetically. “I might try shovelling in a little porridge. I hope it isn t lumpy? He gets in such a temper if it’s lumpy ”

She was a cheerful sort, in spite of it all. and seemed to understand what a boring nuisance young kids were. “I m afraid he’s going to make some poor girl a simply ghastly husband,” she said.

“Cereals mit milk.” said the German boy officiously.

“When have you had cereals mitout milk? Harry asked.

The baby’s mother chuckled sympathetically.

“Hullo,” he said to the three little girls, “and who are you?”

“I’m Joyce,” said the eldest politely. “That’s Ina, and that’s Babbie.”

Ina, the middle one, was in full nurse’s rig and carried a bandaged doll. She was a solemn child, with that none-of-your-lip look that nurses get.

Ina likes to order for herself,” said Joyce. “I’ll order for me and Babbie, She doesn’t know what she wants.”

“Then let’s do that,” said Harry. “As sharp as you like.” He bent down to Babbie’s level. She was blue-eyed and rather cute “And how old are you?”

Babbie said something in her own tongue, and Joyce explained. “She says she’s four. She thinks she can talk, but she can’t really.”

“Harry Hemsley used to do that act years ago,” said the baby’s mother. The little girls stared at her darkly.

While they were making up their minds Harry went to the deuce. The boy looked shy and rather sullen under his superciliousness, inhibited by an expensive, illiberal education. The girl was already feeling her way towards poise and confidence.

“Scrambled egg on toast,” said the boy gracelessly.

His sister gave an airy, mocking smile. “I thought you would.” She ordered something else.

Subsequently they never ordered the same dish. There was an element of rivalry, some dishes being smarter or cleverer than others. It was an elaborate, secret game, based on their family jokes and class conventions; but Harry was never able to crack the code. He could only tell by their demeanour as they left the table which one had scored the highest mark.

Joyce ordered. Ina ordered. No, nothing for the doll. Harry watched the mess they made on the table-cloth.

“One missing,” he observed to the baby’s mother, who introduced herself as Mrs Poole.

“That’s Wendy,” said Mrs Poole, pulling a face. “We’ve met. Rather a painful scene in the nursery. When it comes to rocking-horses, Wendy could give Pat Smythe a few points on staying in the saddle.” Slop went the porridge, down the bib, over the tray, onto the floor. “Georgie, you horror!”

Babbie ate in tiny, slow thimblefuls, wide-eyed, watching Harry’s movements. Carl, the German boy, clicked his heels and marched away. The Walsh children went – the boy sulking, the girl pertly victorious. Mrs Poole, apologizing for the mess, carried off her scowling, spluttering burden. Babbie ate on and on and on, with a barely-discernible mastication.

Lennie’s kids had already gone and he was stripping the splattered linen. The saloon was emptying.

“Come on, love!” Harry urged. “Shovel it in!” He took a hand with the spoon.

“My, what a charming domestic scene!” said Diamond Lil, sweeping past.

When Babbie’s plate was empty she lifted it up and passed it to him, with a mute, supplicatory gesture that completely disarmed him. He thanked her and watched her toddle away behind her sisters.

“A bloody wet-nurse now!” he said to Lennie. who had already laid for breakfasts and was looking quietly smug.

“My dear, you’re so good with children! ” said Lil gaily, when he was rinsing his cutlery. “Does it bring out the mother in you?”

“Dirty little buggers! ” Harry muttered, finding a marmalade smear on his jacket.

“Oh, nasty!” said Lil, quite shocked. “But do come over to the cold meats. I must introduce you to Patience… . This old cow I dethroned.”

“Some other time, Lil. I’m all behind as it is.”

“Oh, come on. She won’t eat you. She’s lost all her teeth anyway.” She led Harry across the galley. “Did I tell you the saucy old bag wanted to stay on as Queen Mum, or Regent, or some such? Went down on her rheumy old knees and begged and implored me. Of course I wouldn’t hear of it! I know the sort of things she says behind our royal back! There’s not much happens on this tub that I don’t know!” She fluttered her lashes candidly.

“Okay,” said Harry laconically. “I get the message. I’ll watch my step.”

After all, it’s my ship … Oh, I have that dreary old man up on the Bridge to steer it for me. I’m just not mechanically-minded. But they’re all our dear subjects.”

“How long you been aboard, then?”

“Oh, ages, dear. Five or six trips … I’m not mathematically-minded. And I must say it gets gayer all the time. She dropped her voice to a murmur. “Here she is, the old boot. You don’t have to curtsey. She’s only a commoner now, and common as they come.”

They went into the cold meat store, and a fat, motherly queer gave them a prim smile.

“Why, I can smile, and murder whiles I smile,” muttered Lil, showing her teeth. “She hates me really. She dreams of being restored to power by a coup d’etat!” Aloud she said, “Patience, I want you to meet one of our new subjects.”

“Charmed, I’m sure,” said the other, holding out a damp hand. “I’m Patience Strong, and this is my Quiet Corner.”

“Harry Shears,” purred Lil. “Isn’t that delicious? Sounds so madly savage!”

‘Well, I never,” said Patience, doing her favourite impersonation of a chatty old body from the country. “And a red-head, too! Whatever next! Are you gay?”

“Who’s Gay?” asked Harry, wilfully obtuse.

Patience screamed and threw her apron over her head.

“Now you’ve upset her,” said Lil. “We’d better leave before she gets hysterical.”

“ ’Bye for now, Moira,” said Patience, emerging from her apron.

Harry stiffened. “Come again?”

“Don’t try to fool me, dear. I saw straight through your incognito! Why, I’d know that red hair anywhere!” She nudged Lil. “The Red Shoes, don’t you remember?”

“Do you mind?” said Lil coldly. “Keep your festering elbow to yourself, wench!”

“It’s not Shears, it’s Shearer! Used to dance with the Royal Ballet, and married that gorgeous TV man! You know!”

“You crease me,” said Harry indistinctly, choked by the effort of sounding flippant.

Lil was watching with lips parted in a knowledgeable, twinkling smile.

As Harry passed the end of the grille, he heard Lil ask. “What do you think?”

“Camp as a row of tents, that one!” said Patience emphatically. “They can’t fool Auntie!”

Tensely Harry walked on into the saloon, conscious of the tightrope stretching before him.

Chapter Six

Miss Withers was down on the stroke of nine-fifteen. “Haven’t we forgotten something, Shers? she asked with faintly-satisfied approach.

“Madam?”

“My glass of water, Shers!’’ Her spiky finger tapped the table. “For my little pill.”

“I was hoping you’d not be needing one,” he said glibly, “after such a calm night.”

“Calm?” She stared at him, poking about behind his eyes for a shred of mockery. “You think that was calm?”

“Calm for the Cyclamen,” he amended. “After all, what can you expect with no stabilizers?

“In any case, Shers.” she said stiffly. “They are preventative, not curative, pills.”

“Ah, well, you know what they say. Prevention is better than cure.”

“That’s exactly what I am saying!” she snapped.

“All, well, there you are!” he said admiringly.

When he returned with her water and “nice, firm” toast, he found his table augmented by the two missing bloods. Wing Commander Walsh was older than he had expected; a grey-moustached, solid, sedentary type. Evidently a wingless wonder. Mr Renolds was even older, tall, lean, bespectacled; the boffin type, Harry gathered from their highly-technical conversation, which sounded rather like a page or two of Neville Shute. One of those quiet Aussies, with an accent that was hard to place if you weren’t in the know. Neither looked as if he’d be much trouble, or spend too much time and effort being impressive. In fact they never even looked at him when he took their orders. The ideal type of blood.

Miss Withers had decided that they were on her social level, and was trying to squeeze a word about the weather into a duologue about assisted take-off.

The Arnolds came bouncing down, merry and bright, waving to their cobbers in the saloon. The Head Waiter, standing close to their route, gave a stiff mandarin nod when they spoke to him. Lou was in a sleeveless summer frock; and Ern, under the uniform dark plain Aussie suit, wore an open-neck shirt.

… What on earth will they wear when the weather gets hot? the Mother Superior was plainly debating. Sun-top and shorts? Raffia hats? Shall I have to send them back to get properly dressed?

… It must be a dodgy business, Harry thought, having to tell the bloods to adjust their dress. Dodgy being a blood, too, if you weren’t born to it. Nobody told you the rules. You had to learn by horrible experience. Often, early on in a voyage, you’d catch a glimpse of someone beyond the glass doors, fleeing in horror to change.

“Morning all!” said Ern.

Renolds, of course, was immediately embarrassed by his compatriots, and his accent became increasingly stateless. Harry found the Arnolds quite good sorts, lively and genuine. A welcome relief from the stuck-up old bitch opposite. Auntie Betty would have liked them, and she was a pretty fair judge of people.

… Except in the case of her common-law husband, of course. But that was a mystery to everyone who knew her, and perhaps to herself as well. Nor could you explain why Danny should want to go back to see the old devil, and scrape together a steerage fare when he found he couldn’t work his passage home.

“I’m just curious,” was all Danny would say, his serious face concealing his feelings. “And I want to see the world a bit, like you done. Stuck out here in the backblocks you don’t see nothing. What’s so funny in that?”

Only natural, Harry had said, to calm Auntie Betty down. Nothing funny in it. What was funny, though, was Danny signing on as a bellboy on the Cyclamen from Tilbury, and, on his short visits during the Sydney turn-rounds, showing no signs of wanting to come home to stay. And then, after that last trip, they had learnt by cable, and then by letter, that he would never come home at all. The small, pitiful bundle of his personal effects had arrived by registered mail to prove it.

So why had Danny stayed so long in the M.N.? Harry had questioned him on his visits to Picton, but the reasons he gave seemed hardly adequate. How was the life? Oh, okay. How was the crew? Oh, the usual mob, you know. But you could make a bit of money if you handled the bloods right.

Danny had been afloat long enough to know he wasn’t going to see much of the world unless he worked his way through Lloyd’s Register. All you ever saw was a few square miles of half a dozen ports, providing you were free to go ashore in the first place. You saw a string of Flying Angel clubs, pubs, cat-houses, fun-fairs, souvenir shops, and wogs of various colours. The rest of your world was water, and the oceans all looked alike. So that your shipboard interests, whether drinking, gambling, fighting, or sitting tight and saving your skin and your money, all your loves and hates, were confined within the fo’c’sle.

So why had Danny signed for three trips on the Cyclamen? You couldn’t call it adventure, whatever it might have been in the days of sail. Was it for money, freedom, love, or what?

Hurtling out through the crowded galley. Harry told himself that the answer could only have been in the fo’c’sle. It was a very long shot. It could only be a matter of luck if the answer were still aboard, but at least there must be clues still scattered around. Enough to piece the story together. They couldn’t have blotted Danny out of their minds entirely. After all, he had served three trips, and he had died.

He had to make four visits to the cold meat store, and Patience eyed him with a prim, fact finding smile but did not speak.

Rinsing his silver to set for kids’ lunches, Harry spotted Marty in the steam of the plate-house, and yelled at him. “What are you on? Getting your weight down?”

“Get knotted!” Marty roared jovially, crashing a tray of crockery into the washing machine.

He sauntered across to lean on the counter, his torso sleek with sweat. “Got a smoke on you, tosh?”

“Sure,” Harry gave him one. “I thought we was all wingers in our peak?”

“And I am, only I’m on the Chain Gang.” Marty seemed unperturbed. The hard work didn’t hurt him in the least.

“What, first trip?”

Marty winked. “I didn’t fancy this U/S caper, so I bummed them up I’d been a waiter in the Officers’ Mess, and they made me up to A/S. But I got in bad with one of my bloods. Snotty-nosed little bastard. He didn’t half keep me on the trot, changing his bleeding mind and that, so I went right up the wall and threatened to fill him in. So, anyrate, he reported me to the Mother Superior, and I got took up before the Old Man and logged.”

“Grim,” said Harry, laughing politely.

“Oh, it ain’t so bad as they make out,” said Marty amiably.

“You speak for your bleeding self!” grunted a hairy-chested simian type.

“I mean, we’re through by half five, while you lot are still sweating your guts out! ”

“I’m going straight back to fill my bloods in!” Harry promised.

Marilyn came mincing up, doing an imitation of a flapper. “Ooh, you gorgeous beast!’ she said to Marty, lisping slightly. “Let me mop your manly chest!”

“Watch it, dolly, or I’ll be after you!” Marty warned, grinning happily.

One of the plate-house toughs caught her round the waist and carried her off, like Persephone, into the hissing steam. They began to tease her and pull her about, while she kicked and squealed.

“Help!” she screamed delightedly. “I’m being raped!”

As Harry passed the Quiet Corner, he saw Patience’s mottled round face pressed to the grille, mouth slack with discontent, eyes bulging.

… Not you, dear! he thought vindictively. Your day is over!

His after-breakfast strap-up was to rinse several dozen electro-plated milk jugs, toast racks and coffee pots in the sink behind the tea and coffee counter. His companion was a tall, middle-aged, languid queer with receding hair and a ravaged, beaky face. She worked well and didn’t chatter, but he couldn’t fathom her remarkable lassitude until he smelt her breath.

“Christ! How d’you work it?”

The queer gave him a watery, imperious stare. “What?”

“Get stinking this time of day?”

“I have it for breakfast,” she said wearily. “And I’m not stinking!”

“Not much, you ain’t!”

“Stinking is flat on your back! And wouldn’t the Mother Superior love that! She never takes her eyes off me. hoping I’ll drop something. But she’ll have to be fly to catch this one!”

She flung down her dishcloth and tottered away, with tiny, scrupulous steps, along her own tricky tightrope.

“Watch your step, Rita!” called Patience cattily from her corner. “Don’t look now. dear, but there’s a pink elephant behind you!”

“Lace up, you old boot! ‘ said Rita wearily. “You bore me.”

There was a fifteen-minute break, and Harry went up for a breather and a smoke in the cool wind off the greasy, grey swell and the grey shore. There were white-caps on the horizon to southward, and a feeling in the chill air that the Antarctic was too close for comfort

Then he went down to feed the kids, and the missing Wendy turned up late. A skinny, petulant child who looked like a bundle of trouble. Too well-dressed, too many pink bows, even for the First Class. Enormous, smug-looking doll in several quids’-worth of clothes. Her mother, who called herself Mrs Avon-Gore, was a rabbity little woman with one of those ringing, country-house voices so useful for calling dogs to heel. She was close on forty, which, when you looked at Wendy, explained a lot.

“We might try a little chicken,” she said dubiously, with an anxious, sidelong glance to see how Wendy took the suggestion.

The girl ostentatiously prinked her doll. The other little girls stared broodingly.

“I don’t think it’s any use trying the beans,” complained Mrs Avon-Gore, with a pitiful half-smile, demanding sympathy. “I’m afraid we had an ice-cream upstairs, and it’s rather spoilt our appetite.”

“Come on, Georgie,” said Mrs Poole composedly, stuffing her infant. “There’s a nice healthy, hungry boy!”

They tried the chicken. No luck. They poked at the veal. The vegetables were a wash-out, and none of the three sweets came up to expectations. It was the excitement, Mrs Avon-Gore explained in an aside: it always upset us.

“What’s your name?” Wendy demanded, with provocative impudence.

“If you’re very good,” said Harry heavily, “you may call me Steward.”

Wendy pulled a sour, yellow face. “Haven’t you got a proper name?”

“I’m sorry, miss,” said Harry drily. “We’re not allowed to have names.”

Mrs Poole chuckled, and Mrs Avon-Gore gave a martyred sigh.

“Apfel pie mit soce,” said Carl.

“Treacle tart, please,” muttered Alistair Walsh, unsure of his choice.

“Ha! ” said his sister triumphantly.

“Well try and do better next time,” wailed Mrs Avon-Gore. “Say ‘thank you’ to the steward.”

Wendy wrinkled her nose at him and was marched away.

“The moral of that,” said Mrs Poole, “is to have your children before you’re thirty.”

Harry cleared and re-set for second lunches, and then went in for crew’s conner. He joined Willie, Phil and Lennie at their table. Willie, croaking excitably, was relating how the Head Waiter had copped Ron guzzling ice-cream in the silver locker.

“Going ashore tomorrow?” Harry asked, when Willie paused to wheeze for breath.

Willie worked his mobile features into deep indecision. All his expressions were carried to extremes. He had no emotional half-tones. “Don’t know, mate. Phil’s on key watch, sod it!”

“I may get someone to stand in,” said Phil optimistically. “Anyrate I’m off the next day. And what’s there to do in Melbourne? Mouldy old dump!”

“Find a bit of crumpet,” said Willie. “What more do you want? Jam on it?” His voice cracked. He burped, said, “Pardon me! ” drew in his chin, patted his narrow chest, and tried again in a lower register. “How about …?”

“Ain’t it time your voice broke?” Harry asked.

“I had this bronchitis thing, see, when I was a kid.” Willie bent across the table, waving his hands. “Something chronic. I nearly croaked… .”

“You’re croaking now!” said Phil.

“And when I come round it left me like this.”

“Oh,” said Harry.

“Mind you, it was no bleeding wonder.” Willie pursued, his voice lowered dramatically. “Sleeping on the stones in this crumby old cellar, with just a few rags over me. And rats. After they took me stepmother off to the work-house. And the rain pelting in through the roof… .”

“You bloody liar!” yelled Phil delightedly. “Rain coming in through the roof of a cellar?”

Willie nodded sadly. “The rest of the house was gone, see? They flogged it to pay the mortgage.”

“I think I saw the film.” said Harry drily.

“That’s it!” Willie rasped excitedly, “I was in it!”

Through all of this Lennie ate stolidly on, without smiling or glancing up from his plate. Maybe he’d heard it all before. But he didn’t even seem to be listening.

“Going ashore tomorrow, Lennie?” Harry asked.

Lennie, addressed, glanced up vaguely, his eyes unfocused. “Might do,” he shrugged. “Depends.”

Then it was time to remember Miss Withers’s glass of water and serve the bloods to lunch. They were all down today, including the Margravines at the deuce: an important-looking woman, and one of those dough-faced, featureless hockey-addicts, with an accent of strangulated gentility and thick ankles, who suddenly turns into the Deb of the Year and is next seen grinding her teeth at the flash-bulb, arm in arm with an eligible earl. Harry, sensing their importance, was as deferential as time allowed; but eight covers was rather a push, with a full ship and an overcrowded galley. It was purely by chance that he didn’t miss the Wine Steward altogether.

He was stacking dishes at the cold press, his back to the tables, when a voice that he instantly recognized asked “Something for you, sir? Madam?”

The Arnolds ordered beer, and the Wing Commander a hock. Harry turned casually as the W/S went to the deuce. So he saw Bernard first from the back. About his own height, but slighter, thin grey-brown hair, cropped very close, flat on a rather domed skull, like separate pen-strokes. Like shading on a swift sketch to indicate hair. Nothing odd in that, of course. A lot of the crew had very close cuts for the tropics, but Bernard looked a trifle old to get away with it. Thirty to forty, anyway.

Bernard turned away, when the Margravines declined to order, and Harry put him at forty, but youthful-looking, his skin brown and healthy like a countryman. The eyes were most noticeable: dark, penetrating, melancholy. The nose was thick-nostrilled, blunt, where you expect an ascetic point; the lips full but dry, not florid, with a repressive downward twist at the corners. The overall effect was one of gravity and introspection. His movements were measured; and his eyes moved slowly, under thoughtful lids, considering Harry’s face as he walked quietly past.

… What a creep! was Harry’s instinctive reaction.

When Bernard returned to serve, Lennie, who had been absent before, came in from the galley, and Harry saw the quick glance they exchanged across his table.

As Bernard departed, Lennie made an unnecessary trip between the tables to cross his path, and said something, his face momentarily alert. Bernard, his back to Harry, murmured a reply but did not pause.

… Now I wonder? Harry pondered. Is he the reason why Lennie is unpopular in the peak? If so, it doesn’t look as if he’s grown out of it.

When the bloods had gone and Harry was stripping the tables, Bernard silently returned for his bottles. Not that one necessarily made much noise: the perfect winger was as unobtrusive as a shadow: but Bernard seemed to be quieter even than that – a quality of stillness enveloped him. He moved too easily for his years. Even though forty was no great age, there was something offensively lithe about his carriage; something of the stripling in his deportment that did not match those thin grey strokes of hair.

“You’re new, I think?’’ asked Bernard, in this smooth, warm, rustic, yet emotionless voice.

“ ’S’right.”

“Who are you, then?”

“Harry Shears.”

The bottles clinked on Bernard’s tray. He straightened up, looking across the table.

“Shears?” he said wonderingly. “Shears?” The dark eyes probed anxiously, questioning yet baffled.

“What of it?”

“Nothing of it,” said Bernard, his eyelids lowered. “Nothing at all!”

He turned and walked swiftly away, a hand clasped tightly on a bottle to stop it from rattling.

… Oh yes? Harry told himself excitedly. Oh yes?

Chapter Seven

From then on Harry kept his eyes open for Bernard. At crew’s dinner he sat down with the other Wine Stewards. They were the cream of the wingers. They had to be. They had to sound educated and convincing. You couldn’t flannel your way through a wine list, as you could through the fancy foreign names for corned beef hash and faggots.

For instance, if a blood asked for Salpicon de Poule Bretonne, and you hadn’t a clue, you could murmur discreetly, “Frankly, sir, I don’t recommend it.” If they’d set their heart on it, though, you could give them a pitying smile and say, “I’ll have a look at it, sir, and let you know.” Then you rushed out the galley, yelling, “What the hell’s this Salpicon rubbish?” And they gave you a plate of chicken.

“Who’s our Wine Steward?” Harry asked Lennie casually.

Lennie gave him a brief, disinterested glance. “What?”

“The one at our tables.”

“Oh, Bernard,” said Lennie, chasing a pea round his plate.

“I think I’ve seen him before somewhere. Bernard what?”

“Norrie.”

“Bernard Norrie?” Harry rubbed his chin. “No, don’t know the name. How long’s he been aboard this tub?”

“Oh, years,” said Lennie tonelessly.

“What ship was he on before?”

“How should I know?” Lennie protested irritably. He still didn’t look up from his plate. “Ask him if you’re interested.”

“Don’t put yourself out, mate!” said Harry sourly.

Presently Bernard rose from the W/S table and left the saloon, nodding to several but speaking to no one. He and Lennie had at least this exclusiveness in common. Maybe they were both in disgrace?

Harry watched Lennie under his lashes, aware that the lad was uneasy at the scrutiny.

… If that were true it was a puzzle. For what could they do, either separately or together, that would turn their mates against them? In the fo’c’sle almost anything was permissible. Even manslaughter was usually more bad luck than malice. The only crimes for which you could be ostracized were treachery to your mates, grassing, thieving from the peaks, or stirring up trouble. If Lennie and Bernard had been copped in bed together the crew would just laugh and pull their legs. Willie and Phil, who were pretty simple lads, might feel choked off if they’d thought better of Lennie. But no one else would care, unless they were secretly jealous. Certainly Dad Mustoe wouldn’t go so out of his way to be vindictive unless he was a very odd, puritanical old salt.

All the bloods were down for second dinners, and. what with the rush, if Bernard visited the alcove Harry missed him. They had dressed tonight, and they were quite a collection. The Margravines were dead smart, and Miss Hathaway passable in a grey jersey thing with a string of coal-nugget beads. But Miss Withers was in a chilly metallic green sheath, all silver buckles and straps, like some sort of chastity device … And you know what sailors are! Harry hummed to himself.

Mrs Arnold was the pick of the bunch in a violet satin thing, dressed overall with broderie anglaise and pink bows, which, she told Miss W.. she had made herself for the W.E.A. Presentation Ball. Miss Withers looked as though she could well believe it.

The W/C and Renolds wore dinner jackets, and Arnold a loose dark suit, since evening dress was only obligatory on Gala Nights.

On his trips to and fro, Harry caught snippets of Miss Withers’s attempts to cut the Arnolds down to size.

“… and then, of course, the Ballet …” Miss Withers dreamily concluded a long catalogue of the cultural jags that had once made up her London whirl.

“Oh, my goodness, we saw that French Ball-ay when they came to Sydney, didn’t we, Ern?” cried Mrs Arnold enthusiastically. “Just beaut! All those girls in long white skirts! But, my, when those men in tights came on! … I didn’t know where to look!”

Miss Withers contracted inside her chill chrysalis. “Indeed …” she said faintly. She took it out on Harry. “I can’t touch this, Shers. It’s frightfully underdone.”

“Shall I fetch another, madam?”

She closed her eyes. “No, I don’t think I’ve the energy to go through that again … I’ll just try a little dessert.”

Next time round, Mrs Arnold was saying, “And now I suppose you’ll be seeing some of this Indian Ball-ay?” She gave an illustration, bending back her fingers and giving her neck a few dislocating jerks,

“Hootchy-kootchy! ” said Arnold encouragingly.

“Good gracious, no!” said Miss Withers, aghast.

“Oh, it’s lovely, dear! ” cried Mrs Arnold. “We saw some in Sydney, didn’t we, Ern?”

“I’d no idea,” said Miss Withers frostily, “that all this went on in Sydney! I seem to have missed it.”

“There now!” said Mrs Arnold sympathetically.

“You must remember. Miss Withers,” interposed Renolds nastily, “that we’re only just emerging from barbarism.”

Harry’s after-dinner strap-up was to polish silver entree dishes, under the surveillance of the officious Goanese in charge of the silver locker. By sheer long-frequently life-long, service, the Goanese usually wormed their way up into all the positions of trust below Leading Hand. The whites seldom resented it; for, after all, who wanted the job?

The ship wouldn’t touch Bombay homeward bound, and Harry was glad of it. Bombay was the Goanese home port; and there was something a bit too morbid about the sad little wives in saris, the doll-like children, the melancholy faces of the long-contract husbands, that turned the Goanese quarters into an ephemeral Eastern bazaar.

“Doing your thirty pieces of silver, Moira? inquired Diamond Lil brightly. “It’s symbolic, you know.”

“So’s my arse,” said Harry.

Marilyn had been trapped by some toughs in the cold sweet store, and was screaming deliriously “Help, oh help! My honour’s in danger!”

“You hope!” said Lil scornfully.

Harry was about to snub Lil when he saw Bernard passing with a tray of bottles.

“Do they get cork money on this ship?” he asked to direct Lil’s attention,

“Hi, Bernard!” said Lil, with a guarded smile.

“Hullo, Derek,” said Bernard gravely, his glance moving slowly from her to Harry as he passed.

“Who’s Derek?”

Lil pouted. “That’s my maiden name! Isn’t it ghastly? Really, my dear, some parents have no taste at all. Even when I was in the womb, I was begging and praying to be a girl. And kicking like mad, incidentally. But for some absolutely lu-natic reason, they wanted a boy.”

“And look what they got ”

She sighed. “Of course, if I had been a girl I’d never have come into my kingdom!”

“Queendom.”

“Odd, though, isn’t it? So I fooled them in the end, see? Bernard has a theory that everyone gets what they want in the end.” She licked a fingertip and smoothed her eyebrows, her smile wandering gently round the galley to see if this bit of “camp” had been observed. “Ships are always ruled by queens, you know. The line of descent is matrilinear.”

“That’s interesting,” said Harry, stirring it up. “But if my name was Lil and someone called me Derek I’d bust him on the snout.”

“Oh, he calls all us girls by our maiden names.” said Lil. frowning slightly. “One of his quaint little ways.”

“What are the others?”

“Besides, dear,” said Lil, deliberately evasive. “I’d never bust anyone on the snout. Not ladylike. I’d stab him with my hatpin.”

“Is he gay, then?” Harry asked outright.

Lil fluttered her lashes and teased her curls. “Oh, he’s just Bernard …” she said archly. “He has his own speciality, you know.”

“Okay, Joe, you polish and not so much talk,” said the Goanese.

Harry told him to get stuffed, and Lil said “Bye, Moira,” and pranced away. He was left with the odd impression that Lil didn’t know what Bernard’s speciality was. For it wasn’t like a queer to be reticent, and loyalty didn’t come into it. They prided themselves on being bitches. If stumped they would maliciously improvise: and Lil was far too intelligent to be stumped.

That wasn’t the last of Bernard for that day. After his strap-up, Harry took a mug of cocoa back to the peak and found the poker-school in session. Bruce was holding up the play with an argument about the bidding; Ron was guzzling intently on his bunk; Lennie, once again stripped to a singlet although the night was even cooler as they forged southward, was, as usual, in the world but not quite of it.

Presently, outside the open door, someone asked “Library open tonight, Bernard?”

And Bernard replied that he was just going down there.

Harry looked up brightly. “Oh? Where’s the library, then?”

“In the crew room,” said Phil. And, to Willie, “I’ll see you, you bastard.”

“What you have to do?”

“Just see Bernard,” said Willie, glancing aside at Lennie, his hoarse voice deliberately needling. “Anything you want on this ship, just see Bernard. Bernard’ll fix it. Ain’t that right, Lennie?”

Looking up with calculated vagueness, Lennie murmured “What?”

“So, Bernard’s the bloke to see, eh?” repeated Harry innocently.

“Yeah …” Abashed by Lennie’s cool stare, Willie became more impudent. “He’s like the sort of welfare officer, see? Looks after the boys and that.”

“Sounds like he’s well in,” murmured Harry, watching them.

Impetuously, Willie jabbed his fist into the air and clasped his elbow. “Up to here! ”

“Play your cards,” said Lennie, very bored.

“Yeah, play your cards!” cried Phil uneasily. “And quit jabbering, you croaking tadpole!”

Harry slid off his bunk. “I’ll just stroll down and see what they’ve got, I just fancy a read.”

“I got some paperbacks in my locker,” said Willie, as though to make amends. “James Hadley Chase and that.”

“No, I want something on Child Welfare,” said Harry. “Before I start filling the little bleeders in!”

There was the usual racket in the crew room: a slapstick game of ping-pong between a pair of toughs who had muscled in on an orderly game; cards and beer-drinking at the tables; darts whirring and plopping: a balloon-fat screamer playing the piano. Patience Strong, hands to bosom, was rendering The Rose of Tralee very soulfully. Marty and some of the U/S roughnecks were taking the rise out of her. Rita, the cadaverous queer, was drinking alone at a corner table.

Before some glass-fronted bookshelves. Bernard was talking to the fat Third Steward; one or two quiet-type wingers were leafing through the battered books, and a gang of bellboys, sullen and pale from insufficient sleep, loitered like street-corner toshers.

“Hiya, Carrots!” roared Marty, waving, and Harry went across to him. “Looking over the talent?”

Harry pulled a face. “Nothing here I fancy.”

Patience broke off her song to exclaim indignantly. “Get you, Moira, you saucy bitch!”

Marty made nothing of this, Harry noted, and his laughing grin didn’t alter.

“Some right old boots aboard this tub!” Harry observed. Marty laughed again but didn’t commit himself.

When the Third Steward ambled off, the bellboys edged closer to Bernard, leaning on the shelves to listen, sometimes amused, while he talked to them. His voice didn’t carry across the room. They seemed to like him, though … Would Danny have liked him or thought him a creep?

Harry got up casually and strolled across the room to look at the shelves.

“Well, what you want to do, Brian,” Bernard was saying, in his grave, reasonable voice, “is to tick off the dishes on your menu. It’s no good trying to memorize them and then getting into a blind panic. Once you start, you know what you are, you go right up the wall.”

The bellboy sniggered.

“I mean, you can’t go round the Captain’s table saying Was yours the fish and chips? can you?”

Fair enough, Harry thought. Harmless enough. This bellboy, Brian, worked as a commie for the top table, running dishes from the galley for the Old Man’s prize Goanese.

Bernard, half-turning, saw Harry and gave him a dark glance that was neither recognition or rebuff.

“What do I do about getting a book?” Harry asked.

“Just pick what you want and sign for it,” said Bernard, turning to fiddle with some cards in a box.

“Anything any good?”

Bernard glanced up. “It depends what your tastes are.”

He was very neat in a crisp P-jacket, with a black pullover underneath. His chin, although bluish, was newly shaven. His manner and appearance certainly suggested a person of trust and responsibility on the ship

“The Cruel Sea has just come back, if you like that sort of thing,” suggested Bernard, politely helpful.

“I’ve read it, ta.”

“And there are several Nevil Shutes, Alistair Macleans, that sort of thing. Not much besides popular fiction, and a lot of it’s rubbish, I’m afraid. But we’re not allowed to buy books. We have to take what we’re given. Which means what other people don’t want to keep.”

“Well, that’s life,” said Harry, unsure of how to handle him.

“That sounds like cynicism,” said Bernard, in a tone more reproving than jocular, and yet not really priggish. Just a grave and reasonable statement of fact. After all, it should sound like cynicism! It was cynicism! It seemed odd, however, Harry thought afterwards, that anyone should question cynicism in the Merchant Navy. What other attitude could you possibly adopt?

“Thanks, anyway,” Harry said, signing for a Raymond Chandler that he might or might not have read before.

He strolled away, flipping through the book, and the bellboys moved back for more fatherly advice.

… He really is well in. Harry thought. He’s got the perfect cover for his speciality, whatever it may be.

But, when he got back to the peak and stretched out on his bunk, he was forced to ask himself Is that all it is? Just that they resent his position? And despise Lennie for sucking up to him? No more than that?

Chapter Eight

The “Cyclamen” struck a heavy swell rounding Wilson Promontory in the night, and Harry, not yet having regained his sea-legs, awoke feeling grey and liverish, and over tired from his first full day afloat. Young Prince was late for his scrub-out, and Harry snarled at him to shake himself up.

The boy gave him a sullen glance and wearily trailed his duster over the leatherette. It was a grey, rolling morning, with gusts of rain rattling like volleys of ball-bearings on the windows of the bar.

Presently, feeling less morose, Harry stopped and lit a cigarette. “Want a drag?” he asked the boy.

Prince gave him a wary glance, shook his head and turned away.

“Going ashore today?”

“Don’t know yet,” said Prince, sniffing and rubbing his nose with his sleeve. “Most likely get back to kip. I feel knackered.”

“You didn’t ought to play cards all bleeding night, then!” The boy grunted, unimpressed, and moved off to the far end of the bar, staring out at the menacing sunrise as it rose to his line of vision and sank queasily away.

“First trip?” Harry asked him.

The boy half-turned, wilfully obtuse. “What?”

“Your first trip?”

“No, is it yours?”

“Cheeky little bugger,” said Harry.

Prince shrugged. “I ain’t seen you on this ship before.”

“There are other ships.”

Prince drew his finger along a window ledge, testing for dust. “No, it’s my second.”

Then the purposeful tread of someone on scrub-out rounds sounded in the passage way, and Harry stubbed his cigarette and palmed it.

“Shears,” said the First Steward. “We’re running continuous dinners tonight, so you can go ashore after lunch.”

“Thanks, First.” Being so new to the ship, the concession was unexpected.

“Do your strap-up first though, mind.”

The ship was tied up at Port Melbourne by the time he served breakfast; and it made a nice change, not having to come through the automatic revolve from the galley at an angle of 45 degrees. Miss Withers announced that she was going ashore at the first opportunity. “Anything to get off this wretched ship, and away from all these people …” She looked pointedly at the Arnolds’ empty chairs. Although, to be fair, she looked pointedly at everything, being made that way.

In the shore-pass queue at the First Steward’s office after lunch, Harry saw Marty, Diamond Lil, and the four young lads from his peak. He wondered which to join, going ashore. Not Lil for a start. Too dodgy to fraternize with the girls to that extent. Nor Marty. A deep-drinking session and probably a brawl with those heavyweight Aussie cops. So he overtook the lads on their return and asked them about their plans.

“Same old thing!” said Willie, waggling his tongue and jerking his pelvis. “I can’t seem to let it alone!”

“Not if I’m coming, you ain’t!” rumbled Bruce. “I ain’t catching nothing ashore. I got my girl waiting for me, and I’m going home to her clean!”

Bruce said such humourless, forthright things all the time, quite unaware of the reaction they caused. Behind his back, now, Willie puked in mime.

“Stop aboard, then, you old misery!” yelped Phil, as excited as a puppy at the promise of a walk.

“You want to get some experience, mate!” said Willie disgustedly. “Go home to her clean? You’ll go home dead ignorant!” He winked at the others, while Bruce, flushing sombrely, began to change. “Look at him! What a bleeding waste! I don’t know why they gave you one. Bruce, straight I don’t!”

“Don’t you fret about me,” muttered Bruce, surly but proud.

“Useless! You should be a bleeding parson like Saint Bernard!”

“Who’s a parson?” Harry asked … Yes. that was Bernard to the life, of course! Unfrocked vicar!

Willie glanced slyly at Lennie. “Well, you know … I bet old Bernard’s never had it in! What’d you reckon, Lennie?”

Lennie frowned, unknotting a shoe-lace. “Why ask me?”

“You practically live in his bleeding pocket, don’t you?”

Phil was starting to look uncomfortable. Bruce, pensive, seemed to be becoming aware that skin-and-bone Willie was jealous of his body. Harry, the onlooker seeing most of the game, realized that Willie had the needle to Lennie for much the same reason. After all, height wasn’t everything. Willie and Phil were volatile, febrile, but otherwise meagrely endowed. Bruce and Lennie were members of that other co-existent race, the short, stocky primitives. Maybe the bad feeling in the peak sprang from the fact that Lennie knew this and liked to taunt them? It would certainly explain the old man’s vindictiveness.

It was still raining as they tramped down the old wooden wharf towards the rather forbidding frontier-town waterfront. Not that it depressed Harry, who knew Melbourne well enough. As good a place as any on the route to spend a day ashore. Normally, if the day was fine, he would head round the Sound to Brighton sands for the swimming. Today, for various reasons, that was not on the programme.

There was a foreign ship tied up abeam of the Cyclamen, crammed with sombre Greeks or Italians, waiting to be allowed ashore and shipped out to some hypothetical township beyond the Great Divide.

“Look at them poor bleeding dagoes!” croaked Willie. “I don’t fancy their chances in this bastard hole!”

“Aussie’s all right,” said Harry mildly. “You got to get used to it, that’s all.”

“Don’t give me that!” said Willie, obstinately chauvinistic. “Look at the licensing laws for a start!” He cupped his hands and roared at the immigrants. “Go home, you suckers!”

The silent spectators at the rail, in black shawls and broad-striped suits, watched with sad, dark eyes as the quintet trudged on through the drizzle.

“Where’s Ron?” Harry asked.

“On teas,” said Phil. “And old Dad’s not been ashore in years.”

“You got someone to do your key watch then?”

“Well, yeah …” said Phil uncomfortably. “Well, Bernard did.”

“Oh, no!” groaned Willie incredulously. “Not you too!”

“I told you I was going to ask him!” said Phil indignantly. “You know how it is. You want anything fixed, you ask Bernard. He’s a good bloke for that.”

“And what else?” Willie demanded, tugging up his overcoat collar. “You be joining his other little games now?”

“Don’t be daft!” said Phil disgustedly.

Waiting in the rain on the station, Willie sulked, but he couldn’t keep it up. On the rackety train ride through the tin-roofed Colonial suburbs to Flinders Street Station, he recovered sufficient high spirits to read, chant, and finally set to music, the long list of prohibitions posted in the carriage. The top favourite was It is forbidden to protrude any part of the person from the window. Willie naturally regarded this as a challenge, and the others, reconciled by helpless, hysterical mirth, bounced and rocked on the wooden seats.

“Cor!” groaned Phil, massaging his rump when they alighted at the terminus.

“Don’t blame me, blame Bernard!” said Willie, mocking but no longer aggrieved. Phil punched his arm and they scuffled happily.

This time Lennie had heard the remark, and his colour deepened although he gave no other sign.

The rain had slackened almost to nothing, like a damp London day. Melbourne was supposed to be the most “English” city, but that was mostly wishful-thinking and an attempt to excuse the drizzle. However it was comfortable and rather sombre, like an old-established family business in a provincial town. Not so flashy and Americanized as Sydney: more strait-laced and earlier to bed; its libido squarely sat-upon by the Returned Veterans (who seemed remarkably puritanical for old soldiers), the Salvation Army, and whatever; but still a good place for a bit of fun if you knew where to look. And at least Miss Withers should notice that the grass was greener.

They had a heavy meal at a Hot Eats bar shabby enough to put them at ease. On the way Willie whistled, croaked and gestured at girls, Phil showed almost as much interest in cars, Bruce stared owlishly into gift shops with his girl in mind, and Lennie paid no heed to anything except his own reflection in shop windows and mirrors. Passing a barber’s, Willie thumbed at an illustration of a crewcut and suggested “Go on. Len, nip in and have one of them! Make a man of you!”

“I’m okay,” said Lennie complacently, smoothing his nape.

“Look a right pouf with all that hair! If it grows any longer, mate, you’ll have to move in with the queers!”

“Oh, let him alone!” said Phil, slinging his arm round Willie’s neck and dragging him along. “Why don’t you mind your own for a change?”

Lennie, undisturbed, considered himself thoughtfully in the mirror provided.

“You vain little darling,” Harry said.

Lennie gave a surly grunt. “Oh, don’t you start!”

Over lunch Willie turned his attention to Bruce, who was a more rewarding target. “Go on, Brucey, we’ll find one for you. Pick you a right one who’ll do it all for you, being as you’re so dead ignorant.”

“Don’t be a nit!” said Harry, coming to Bruce’s defence. “How can he be ignorant? He’s a swede-basher, ain’t he? Well, then, I bet he’s been putting heifers to the bull, and all that caper, since he was six years old. That right, Bruce? Tell ’im, boy!”

Willie yelped with delight. “Yeah, and I bet that’s all he knows! Cor, can’t you see it?” He mimicked Bruce’s accent. “ ‘Yow’ll ’ave ter get down on yore ’ands and knees, m’dear, and I be acomin’ creepin’ up be’ind yer!’ Bash, bash, bash. ‘There yer are, m’dear. Next ’eifer, please! ’ ”

Unable to reply, and quite ungrateful for Harry’s defence, Bruce munched on stolidly through his grilled steak and salad.

They went to a bar and downed a few pints of Victorian beer, until Willie returned to the subject of Bruce’s nuptials. “And then Annie be sayin’ to im ‘Take off thy moleskin trousers, Brucey m’dear.’ And Brucey says ‘I bain’t adoin’ that afore you leave the room, Annie. Tain’t proper, like, afore a woman!’ ”

Phil rocked and gasped with laughter, and Lennie suffered a small, unwilling smile.

“ ’Sides, Annie, ’tis perishin’ cold up here ont’moors, and I bain’t atakin’ off my moleskin trews afore the Spring!’ ”

“Belt up!” gasped Phil in agony.

“So Annie says ‘Take off thy trews, Reuben m’dear, and come to bed. I’ll keep thee warm!’ And Brucey says I bain’t adoin’ it, woman! ’Taint ’ealthy, sleepin’ two in a bed. Happen I might catch summat, and I be stayin’ clean!

But Bruce had had the pint that tipped the scales, and roared incoherently, bovine and wrathful, his pleasant, simple features twisted into a facsimile of rage. The table lurched and the glasses went flying. There was raucous encouragement from the six-deep press around the bar. Harry and Phil got between them and hustled them to the door.

“Pack it up!” wheezed Willie, rubbing his throat. “Can’t you take a bleeding joke, Bruce?”

“Not like that I can’t!” said Bruce, turning with cumbrous dignity and plodding away down the street.

They called but he would not come back.

“Ah, sod him, let him go!” said Willie moodily. “Stupid bloody turnip-head!”

“I like the way his mate stood up for him.” Harry commented.

They looked at him blankly.

“Lennie.”

Willie, enlightened, sneered. “Lennie’s nobody’s mate.”

They looked round for Lennie, but he, too, had gone.

“He don’t like a fight,” said Phil pityingly, “Might get his hair untidy.”

They didn’t visit any more bars, knowing from experience that there would be no women except a few wives and girlfriends in the lounges. They looked into a couple of milk-bars and presently Willie sighted some talent at a corner table. They looked young but not too innocent, and Willie rubbed his hands and waggled his tongue.

“You’re out of luck, mate!” he said to Harry.

… I am that! Harry thought ruefully. But not in the way you think!

“Don’t worry about me.” he said. “1 ain’t Bruce. I’m old enough to find my own.”

He loitered at the jukebox while the lads went straight down to join the girls, Harry knew it was his cue to drift away, but still nursed a hope that the day wouldn’t be wasted. There was a young Greek soda-jerker, a curly-headed Olympian gone a-begging. Harry straddled a bar stool and talked to him over a milk-shake while the kids in the corner were getting acquainted. Fortunately no more talent entered the bar, so Harry didn’t have to go through the motions of a pick-up.

“You like it here?” Harry asked the Greek.

The youth pouted, olive, smooth, mobile-featured; and, in their glances, while they talked about the climate, they spoke, as it were, an older and more civilized tongue.

After a while the kids came past arm-in-arm, the lads looking masterful, the girls reserving judgment.

“Come on, mate!” cried Willie excitedly, slapping Harry’s back. “Going to a dance-hall. You’ll find something there!” To the girls he said “He likes the mature type, see?”

The girls pouted, looking at Harry with sidelong interest. He sensed their disbelief. He glanced back in farewell at the Greek and saw the disbelief echoed and confirmed.

The dance-hall was as lively and noisy as you’d find in Melbourne, and provided Harry with a better cover. He danced with a few good-natured, sun-tanned, muscular girls, making sure that he bumped into the others, and spent the rest of the evening in dark corners, scarcely consoled by the soft drinks which were all that the licence allowed.

Eventually he spotted Phil drooping alone in an alcove, and went across to him. “Where’s your dolly, then?”

“I reckon she’s stood me up, the cow!” he said glumly. “She said she was only going to powder her nose.”

“Where’s Willie?”

“I ain’t seen him for a bit.” Phil stared morosely into his empty glass. “I reckon he’s skipped off out of it without telling me, the rotten sod.”

“Come on, then, let’s slide. We’re doing no good here.”

“He might come back,” muttered Phil, a faint hope gleaming like a candle-flame behind his waxen features.

“Never! Not Willie! If he’s got it in, he’s got it in. And if he ain’t, he won’t come back and admit it!”

Phil allowed himself to be led back through the wet, shining streets to the station. He looked ashamed whenever Harry caught him glancing back. He knew it was a waste of time.

Slumped on the hard carriage seats, they lit cigarettes and stared out at the rain.

“Well, honestly!” said Harry, chuckling reminiscently. “They’re a right lot in our peak, you got to admit. Croaking Willie, Guzzling Ron, Dead-on-his-feet Dad, Marty chasing the queers …”

“He don’t!” said Phil sharply, raising his head.

Meeting Harry’s stare, he shrugged uneasily. “Least I don’t reckon so. It’s all talk. I ain’t never actually seen him …’’

“And the old swede-basher,’’ Harry continued. “And that sly little number, Lennie. I don’t get that one at all. I’m just not with it. Bit weird, ain’t he?”

Phil shrugged. “How?”

“I don’t know. He don’t give much away. And all this hair-combing lark.”

Phil twisted down his lips. “It’s just his way. It don’t mean nothing.”

“Yeah, it’s a right old ship,” said Harry, letting it pass. “They have much trouble on her?”

Phil’s pale eyes gleamed dully in the shadows. “Such as?”

“Oh, bundles, carve-ups, punch-ups. that sort of stuff.”

“Depends on how many Paddies she has on board. No one been killed so far as I know.”

“But 1 thought you said …?” Harry leaned forward. “Didn’t you say my first night aboard, that you lost someone last trip?”

Phil blinked nervously. “Did I? When?”

“On the well-deck. You said someone went overside homeward bound.”

“Ah, I was pissed,” said Phil, as though that explained everything.

“What was it, though? Accident or suicide, or what?”

“How the heck should I know?” cried Phil, his voice cracking boyishly with irritation. “I wasn’t there, was I?”

“Weren’t you?” Harry clasped his knees to steady himself. “But what do you think? You must have an opinion.”

“I don’t think nothing!” Phil asserted. “I just don’t think about it!”

“Well, what do the others think?”

“Ask them!”

“Who?”

“Why are you so interested, anyway?” demanded Phil defensively.

Harry grinned, pretending astonishment. “A bloke goes overside and I’m not supposed to be interested? Don’t give me that! … You ain’t interested because you know. It ain’t news to you!”

“I don’t know nothing, I tell you.”

“Well, who does, then?”

“Oh …” Phil shrugged defeatedly. “Lennie … that lot.”

Harry caught his breath, his face stiffening. “Really?”

“Yeah, they know all right!” Phil muttered, rather shamefacedly. “But don’t talk about them, for Christ’s sake! They give me the creeps! ”

“But, listen …”

“I’m shagged!” grunted Phil, leaning back and closing his eyes. “Let’s get some kip, can’t you?”

He would say no more. From the station to the ship he staggered wordlessly, as though too drunk or sleepy to talk. It looked like a put-up job, but Harry couldn’t shake him out of it. Anyway he had shown enough interest for one night.

He lay on his bunk, feigning sleep, watching Lennie come in very late, undress and climb aloft. Then he lay in the darkness, when the lights at last went out, listening to Willie’s account of a highly-unlikely orgy, and staring at the unmoving shape of Lennie’s head. So close that he could reach out and touch it.

… Oh, Christ! he thought. If only I could see what ticks inside that skull!

Chapter Nine

On the second day in Melbourne Harry was put on gangway duty between lunch and tea. There was very little to do, as the Victorian passengers would not be coming aboard until the following afternoon. The three days in port were used for extensive stores-loading to stock up for the long haul home, since, as a matter of economics, hygiene or Commonwealth solidarity, they took on very little at the tropical ports. The loading parties sweated away on the wharf, as fast as the leisurely pace of the Aussie wharfies allowed. Marty was among them today, obviously resentful and profanely saying so. Yet you could see him exulting in the ease with which he handled the loads; he couldn’t resist the impulse to show off; while the weedy little Leading Hand in charge alternately jeered and crowed with amazement and didn’t touch a thing … The monkey’s paw technique. Typical exploitation of simple brawn by guileful brain. Marty was just the type to fall for it. As no doubt he’d have fallen for all the usual gambits in the Guards. My, what big muscles! Did I mention that I’m a physique photographer? You must come down to my studio . . . Having a little party tonight. Yes, he knew the score, that one.

The weather had cleared, and Harry leant on the rail with Bruce who was sharing the watch. Their peaked caps tipped back, they relaxed in the sun, smoking furtively in cupped palms when the deck was empty.

“I thought I was on with someone called Whittington? Harry remarked when Bruce appeared.

“Bernard asked me to stand in for him. I ain’t going ashore so I wasn’t bothered.”

“Didn’t enjoy yourself last night, then?” Harry asked casually.

Bruce shook his head sombrely. He had been the last into the peak the previous night and had apparently been drinking somewhere on the ship. As a reprisal for the insult to his girl, he had sulked consistently, quite unaware of the amusement he gave the others, who winked and sniggered behind his back. His conversation, largely composed of weighty dicta of stupefying banality, was, in any case, no loss.

“You a mate of Bernard’s then?”

Bruce glowered. “I ain’t nobody’s mate. I just said I’d do this bloke a favour. I’m fed up of laying on my bunk, that’s all.”

“I’ve never seen you lay on your bunk yet!” said Harry. “When you ain’t playing cards, you’re writing them twenty-page letters to your girl.”

“I don’t want no mates on this ship.” Bruce scowled at the loading party. “I just want to get a good drop, and sign off, and sod ’em all. I don’t bother with nothing else.”

“I thought Lennie was a mate of yours?” asked Harry mildly. “But I must say he dropped you right in it last night. If you’d been in a punch-up on your own he’d have been a great help, sliding off like that!”

“Lennie?” Bruce curled his lip and said no more.

“You paying off at Tilbury, then?” Harry asked presently.

“Maybe.”

“How long you been aboard?”

“Just out and back. I was on the Cyclops before… .” Bruce moved his shoulders restlessly within his white jacket. “I used to think she was a rotten old hulk, but she were a sight better’n this.”

“You don’t reckon this ship then?”

Bruce made the same movement, like a farmyard beast wary of an unfamiliar scent. “Just something about her … Things going on, you know … Maybe it’s the blokes.”

“Seem pretty much the same bunch as you’d find anywhere.” Harry flicked his butt down into the greasy riband of water between the ship and the wharf. Fag packets, rubbers, potato peel; the trail of rubbish that they left across the oceans of the world.

“The rest of ’em in our peak’ve done several trips though, eh? Except Marty and me?”

“That’s their look-out not mine,” said Bruce ungenerously.

“Look at Marty, the great stupid ox!” jeered Harry. “Sweating his guts out for that sly little weed! ”

Bruce snuffled contemptuously, not really seeing the funny side.

“What do you reckon to him?”

“Marty?” Bruce shrugged. “Seems okay. Except for going with the queers.”

Harry gaped at him. “I thought you said you did?”

Bruce flushed. “I said I go down their peaks for a laugh!” he said self-righteously. “You get a bit of a giggle down there, not like our peak. And they always got drinks, and spirits, and that. Old Lil’s bloody generous, you know. And she don’t mean no harm.”

“Depends what you call harmful, said Harry, adopting a safe, intermediate position.

“Well, I mean, what Marty does is his own business.” said Bruce, with dogged rustic emphasis. “I mean, suppose he does knock about with them? You can’t pick up nothing from queers!”

“No, nothing they can treat you for,” Harry soberly agreed.

There were very few bloods aboard for afternoon tea. and they finished early. With a couple of hours to waste before laying for dinners, Harry suggested that they go along the foreshore for a swim. It was too far to Brighton, but there were plenty of quiet spots where the flat shore slid smoothly out into the Sound.

I’ve only got a slip,” said Bruce dubiously, showing a glimpse of black satin in the neat swiss roll of his towel. “Not one of them skirt efforts.”

“Nor’ve I. I had to have one for the baths in Picton. but I slung it.” Harry squinted along the shore to the brick pill-box.

“It don’t seem to matter much. They don’t bother unless there are dollies about.”

“The dollies don’t care!” Bruce asserted. “I seen ’em on the Sydney beaches, and they’re interested all right. It’s the blokes as clamp down on you.”

“They’re under-sexed,” said Harry. Another of those colourful legends that no one quite believed, like Scotsmen being stark under their kilts.

“The dollies are hot enough, I can tell you!”

“Well, you old hypocrite!” laughed Harry, clapping him on the shoulder and leading him into the pill-box. “Thought you never went near them? Saving yourself for Annie, or whatever?”

“I don’t go the whole way, that’s all,” rumbled Bruce.

“Now then, cut it out!” Harry advised jokingly. “Don’t start sulking with me! You don’t want to take things to heart so. They don’t mean no harm. It’s only a giggle, see?”

But Bruce would not be wooed from his displeasure, and contrived to make the motions of disrobing a subtle reproof, tucking in his shirt-tail and turning his back to get into his slip.

“Well, I don’t like it!” he grumbled. “Weird sort of girl you must have if you let ’em make dirty cracks like that!”

Harry shrugged it off. It wasn’t worth telling Bruce to grow up, and then spending the afternoon alone.

“Put a jerk in it. This place stinks.” It did, too. A primitive enclosure, roofless, with a slimy cement floor, one end unapproachable because of a swarm of lazy brown flies playing a frenetic, ceremonious leapfrog.

However it was great on the foreshore, the sand not too powdery for easy walking, nor hot enough yet to burn. No seaweed, no tar, no litter. Just a silver-grey sweep, like a scythe-blade, pointing into the haze where the hills curved seaward to lock the vast anchorage. The water crept temperately up their limbs, until, standing thigh-deep, they could look down and study their wavering toes. The cool sand at the wavelets’ edge was ribbed like a palate, enticing to the soles; and, after some desultory swimming, they stretched out on the firm, moulded verge and dug their fingers into the sand, discovering water and tiny fragile shells.

… Whom would I like to share this with? Harry asked himself.

He turned his head and glanced under his lashes at Bruce’s flushed, simple profile. Fair enough, good country colour, clear skin, white teeth, yeoman build; but so bloody stolid; encased in a smug, loin-derived complacency. His only problem, his sole motivation, was keeping clean for Annie. Fattening like a bull calf for the marriage feast, whole and unspotted.

Harry turned away and searched for a cigarette, conscious of an aching emptiness.

“You got a girl back home, Ginge?”

Harry rolled onto his back and blew some smoke at the sky. A gull swung sideways overhead, fanned out on a current of air.

“Sure, a mob of ‘em,” he said lazily. “Who ain’t?”

“I mean a steady.”

“Nah, not yet… . Anyrate. I’ve been in Aussie nearly a year, so I don’t know, they may have been all whipped up, eh?”

Bruce refused to accept this. “You could’ve written, though, couldn’t you?”

“I’m not the letter-writing sort. I leave that to you authors… , Anyrate, which would I write to? None of ’em was anything special.”

Bruce grunted and rolled onto his elbow to get a light from Harry, who concealed his grin at the sight of the tattooed hearts on the forearms: Mother on one arm. Annie on the other. They’d got their bull calf branded, all right!

“How about in Aussie? Didn’t you have a steady out here?”

“Oh. nothing serious. Just knocked about, you know.” He kept his face averted, squinting at the distant ships, until Bruce had settled down again. “Anyrate I didn’t know if I was stopping out here. So what was the use?”

“Would you’ve done?”

“What?”

“Stopped out here?”

“I thought about it…” But that had been right at the start, when Danny had been there. When they had lain in the sleep-out, talking long into the insect-ringing nights, about the land they would buy, the stock they’d breed, the terrific modern station-house they’d build, somewhere outback beyond the mountains on undeveloped soil. With Auntie Betty to keep house, and Danny’s kid sisters running wild: and in time, no doubt – although they pushed it to the edge of anticipation, their own children growing strong and joyful in the sun.

“What sort of a place were you on?” Bruce asked.

Harry told him it was nothing to write home about. Twenty head of cattle, a modest local dairy connection. A dog, a pair of horses, a rabble of hens scratching wild in the orchard. A weatherboard house in a stretch of red dust and yellow grass, with a grey haze of gum-trees sealing off the horizon, and the morning sun catching the tin roofs of the neighbours. A small factory going up in a nearby paddock, and a shopping centre being assembled piecemeal along an unmade road a few miles away.

“Another ten years and it’ll be a built-up suburb. It’s a go-ahead country, say what you like.”

“Why didn’t you stop, then?” Bruce repeated, with insular scorn. “Seeing as you liked it so much?”

“I’m going home to see the old man.” Harry made use of Danny’s lame excuse. “I might come back, though. But you need capital for farming, and the sea’s the best place to get it. I might do a few trips and then jump ship in Sydney.”

“What, and lose your pay?”

“Only for the trip out, and that’s cheaper than the lure, ain’t it?”

“You can get out for ten quid now,” said Bruce reprovingly.

“Oh, yeah, I can see myself doing that!” Harry sneered. “You know how they treat them poor bloody emigrants! I’d sooner sweat my guts out in the galley. Anyrate, if you go adrilt in Sydney, you may lose your pay but you take your dropsy, so you’re quids in! ”

“That what you done this time?”

“Turn it up!” Harry dug him in the ribs. “I was paid off with dysentry!”

He squinted at the sun, remembering Auntie Betty coming down the hospital ward like a southerly buster, in her best pink hat and summer dress. So plump and freckled, so warm and alive; a lively incarnation fleshing out the wan, drab spectre he had remembered from her London entombment: those raging, shouting, weeping days in the old tenement, with the neighbours thumping on the wall, and the cops coming when a bottle crashed into the street: before she gathered up her two skinny, string-haired girls, and her pallid, nail-biting, flinching son, and left the old devil flat.

Danny couldn’t come to the hospital, she had said. He’d wanted to, but he couldn’t. Someone had to mind the farm and those mad-headed girls. And Harry’s sudden alarm had modulated into a temporary disappointment, remembering their clandestine revolt in the tunnels and holes of the tenement, the feverish plans to murder the old devil, the stealthy alliance, the furtive consolation of their miseries; the interlocking cogwheels of their private fantasies.

So Harry had sweated out the cure in the sun-blinded ward, with the harbour running like white fire between the slats, and the summer calling strongly, keeping the smouldering bush-fire of his impatience alight. And the day had come, as all days eventually did.

“Don’t talk to me about money!” Bruce grumbled. “Though I reckon when I pay off this trip I’ll just about have enough to put down on this place I’m after.”

“Where’s this?”

“In the fen country outside King’s Lynn.” Bruce sighed, filling his chest and relaxing with a groan on the sand. “Mind you, I could do with a bit more. Might make another trip or two, just to have a bit in hand, like.”

Harry looked across at him quickly. “Don’t let the sea get you, boy!”

The other grunted scornfully.

“I’ve seen it happen to better blokes’n you. Absolutely dead choked. Swore blind they’d never go back. Yet, sooner or later they’d spent their loot, and back they came, winging around with the rest of the suckers.”

“Not me,” said Bruce obstinately. “I got something to go home to. I don’t spend my shore leave in seamen’s hostels, you know!”

Harry smiled wryly at his cigarette tip, recalling that he had given the same advice to Danny. With little apparent effect. But, then, he had been in a savage, black mood, baffled by Danny’s decision, unable to accept his lame explanations. At that moment any advice would have been suspect.

But that had been much later, right at the end.

On that first morning drive out through Picton, in Auntie Betty’s station wagon, no such ending could have been envisaged… . For there was Danny, in mud-powdered jeans and flying cowboy shirt, pounding down the red-dust trail to the slip-rails, waving an old bush hat and yelling like a maniac. And heaving, flushed, tousled; the dreaminess, the sullenness gone, his dark eyes open and attuned to wide horizons.

Harry turned away and stubbed out his cigarette, burying it deep.

“Have another dip soon,” muttered Bruce, wiping the sweat down his chest.

… Later that night, with hair slicked, neat suit, polished shoes, this vigorous strangeness had melted away and the dreaminess returned as his eyes shadowed in the moth-fluttering darkness. The English reserve lay like an ice-pack under the sunburnt dust of Australian openness, the pallor under the light tan; for he never burnt really dark, for all that, at night, his lashes and hair were almost black. He stood taller, sat wider, spoke with a broken, deeper note. He could ride a horse, catch crayfish, milk a cow, mend the radio, kill spiders in his sisters’ room, drive the station wagon. He didn’t bite his nails: they were broken with work. The strangeness was nothing after all. Nothing that mattered. The essentials were unchanged.

And the aching longing subtly enlarged its hollowness to encompass, enwrap, its object.

“I’m sweating like a pig,” Bruce complained, sitting up and considering himself with profound attention. “Coming for a splash now?”

“Yeah, in a minute,” said Harry, having lit his cigarette as an excuse to linger ashore. “I’ll just finish this fag.”

He didn’t want to leave this soil before he had to. This realization had been forming slowly throughout the afternoon. He dug his fingers down into the sand, clenching an elusive handful. Not this soil. This edge of the great water-colour sweep of territory that stretched away into the red-rock emptiness of the sun-dried heart. The ash and amber tones that threw up a purple crust of hills, fibulated with pale spines of skeletal trees; illusory, uncontrasted, so that a journey through this half-awakened land was in itself a mild somnambulation; motion without change, marked only by the ticking computations of a tireless mileometer: this land, so real and firm beneath his palm, whereon, for one short, burning summer, the impossible had seemed close enough to touch.

Harry, twisting his lips to hold the cigarette, rested his hands on the shore, watching Bruce plodding solemnly onward, dissolving his thighs in shimmering distances.

… Of course I loved him. he admitted bitterly. What choice did I have? That’s how I’m made. But at least he never knew. I was always too careful for that… .

Chapter Ten

Only four of Harry’s bloods turned up for dinner  that night, and three of Lennie’s, so there was time to loiter and talk.

‘Where d’you get to last night, then?” Harry asked him.

Lennie remained impassive. “What’s that?”

“You slid off a bit sharp, didn’t you? I looked round and you’d gone.”

Lennie shrugged. “I got choked. Old Bruce gets on my wick. He’s always trying to start something.”

“Well, these country boys, they’re a bit on the slow side. You got to make allowances.’’ Not that anyone could be slower than Lennie, but flattery might work wonders. “I mean, you’re a city bloke. Walsall, ain’t it? Well, in the city you got to be quick off the mark, see what I mean? You been dodging through the traffic all your life, belting after buses and that, while old Bruce has been plodding after his cows. I mean, look at me, I’m the same.”

Lennie looked at him, under his lashes, with a pert hint of a smile.

… I don’t reckon I can fool this one! thought Harry, slightly uneasy.

“Where you from then?”

“Lewisham,” Harry told him.

“Cor,” said Lennie, unimpressed. “That’s a right dump!”

“The only good thing what ever come out of Walsall was a football team,” replied Harry. “And that didn’t last long.”

Lennie pulled a face and stroked his hair. “Don’t talk to me about football. My old man’s bent about it. He was always on at me to play. And I would’ve done, most likely, if I was taller.” He looked up at Harry, sombre-eyed. “You’d never think my old man was six foot two, would you?”

“Get away!” said Harry politely.

“And my brothers are five-eleven and five-nine.”

“Well, you know what they say. Little but good.”

“Yeah,” said Lennie moodily, moving away towards the long mirror.

“I was wondering,” said Harry, following. This bloke Bernard, he’s the arch-fixer on this ship, ain’t he?”

Lonnie’s gaze steadied in the mirror. “What of it?”

“I just wondered… . Does he fix for anyone? Do you have to drop him or what?”

“Depends what it is,” said Lennie, colouring. “I mean it depends if he’d fix it… . But drop him? Drop Bernard? Don’t be daft!”

Harry shrugged. “No offence, I only asked. I wondered if he could do anything about my silver?”

“Such as?”

“This bloke Macready must’ve skipped off with half of it. I’m short of everything, and more getting whipped all the time… . So I spoke to that slimy wog in the silver locker and he practically told me to take a jump. So I wondered if Bernard could wangle any?”

Lennie shrugged. “Ask him.”

Then Miss Hathaway appeared, and Harry broke off to serve her. Later, while she was talking to Renolds and Walsh over coffee and biscuits, Harry, having cleared as much as he could, went over to where Lennie was standing at ease. At that moment Bernard came striding through the revolve with a tray of bottles.

Harry jerked forward “I say, Bernard…’’

“Sorry, can’t stop!” said Bernard apologetically. Old Man’s table 1.”

“I just wanted to ask …”

“Come down to my peak. All right?” Bernard gave a brief smile over his shoulder and swung away. A tall bellboy with a fruit basket crossed in front of him, and he paused a moment to say, “Patrick, can I have words with you after?”

Harry narrowed his eyes, but the boy’s reaction seemed natural and casual enough. Hard to be sure. Flattered? Disturbed? Innocent or guilty?

“Seems a good bloke,” he said to Lennie.

“Oh, Bernard’s okay,” said Lennie, pursing his lips as he looked inside a coffee pot.

“Seems to take a fatherly interest in the bellboys, if you don’t mind me saying,” Harry pursued, in a light, easy tone empty of inference.

“Yeah, gets in a sweat about them sometimes,” said Lennie, frowning quickly. “About they don’t get enough supervision. He reckons the Company ought to do something about it.”

Harry sniffed amusedly. Bernard had a point, though. The bellboys had an official “lights-out” at ten-thirty, but the hard cases were still playing poker any time until midnight, or later still if they’d been drinking. Their peak was officially out of bounds to others, but they didn’t post sentries outside. No one seemed to regulate their shipboard drinking and smoking, and what they did ashore was their own funeral. And any theoretical safeguards were waived when the Line was crossed and the weirdies went wild.

Just a giggle, perhaps to a really tough nut; a salutary dose of indignity to keep him in his place. Harry, in his time, had fought back and escaped the worst by sheer pugnacity, having been tall and heavy for his age. But what sort of a nightmare would the Equator be for a soft, sensitive lad? And how tough, under the surface, had Danny been?

Crossing the Line was the zenith of the trip coming out. Homeward bound it passed unsung, the crew saving their energy, their paint and drag, their last fingers of gin, for the final saturnalia of Channel Night.

And on Channel Night, the last trip home, Danny had gone overside into the dark, bitter sea.

The bloods were rising, and Harry went to draw back Miss Hathaway’s chair. “You won’t see me until tomorrow evening, steward,” she said, “but don’t think I’ve deserted you. I’m spending the day ashore.”

As they moved off, he heard her telling the men that she was lunching in hall at Melbourne University. Then she came back and said in a hushed, private voice. “By the way I should tell you that I’ve asked to be moved. Please don’t be offended, the service is excellent.”

She had a gleam in her eye that was almost a wink. She knew well enough that the service was downright slapdash by shoreside standards. “If it comes off I shan’t forget you.”

“Thank you, ma’m,” said Harry, registering inner dismay. Half a bar at the most, and she’d looked like a safe bet for a fiver. Though you couldn’t blame her for wanting to get out of this noisy, smelly corner.

Harry raced through his strap-up, ran to his peak, shaved and changed into a clean P-jacket. “Going ashore?” he asked Lennie.

“Might go down as far as Smoky’s for a pint,” said Lennie unenthusiastically, settling down to do a thorough job on his coiffure.

“May see you down there then,” said Harry. “I just want to see Bernard about that oojit first. Where’s his peak?”

Bernard’s was a six-berth peak, which was the best you could hope for below Leading Hand rank. Four Wine Stewards and two P.R.As. All very respectable on the face of it. Bernard and two others were at home, and he was playing chess with one of them, a W/S in his late twenties, very intellectual-looking, with library-type spectacles and no lips.

“Ah! Hullo, Shears,” he said, glancing up, but wearing a meditative frown as chess-players do.

“Oh, I’ll come back later.” said Harry, uneasy in the rarefied atmosphere. No bottled beer, orange peel, odd socks and fag ends on the floor; no mouth-organs; no pin-ups; no stolen conner being scoffed.

The opponent shook his head. “No. I’m stymied. Let’s put it on ice for a while.”

“Whatever you say.” Bernard gave a quiet, satisfied smile. “Want to note down the positions?”

“No, I trust you,” said the other, yawning. He got up and left the peak.

“Now what was it?” asked Bernard pleasantly, and Harry told him.

“We can but try,” said Bernard, glancing politely away as Harry, feeling ill at ease, shifted his weight from one foot to the other

The other occupant put on a towelling robe and went off to the showers. Bernard closed the portable chess set and put it in his steel cupboard.

He glanced at his watch. “I expect Pereira will still be there.

He’s very devoted to his silver. I shouldn’t be surprised to hear that he slept in the locker.”

Somehow when Bernard made a joke, even as mild as that, it didn’t sound funny. His tone was so careful not to imply any criticism of Pereira that the quip was emasculated.

Harry reminded him that he hadn’t locked his cupboard.

“I don’t believe in it,” said Bernard quietly. “I find that if you trust people they will trust you, and treat you accordingly.”

Harry grunted. “Kleptomaniacs excepted.”

“That’s a sickness,” said Bernard more severely.

“But should you put temptation in their way?”

“They’re welcome to anything they find in my locker,” said Bernard, leading the way aft, “if it makes them feel any better.”

… Thanks for the invitation! thought Harry sardonically.

The galley was empty, except for the odd wingers drinking stewed cocoa from the urns, or scrounging a filling for sandwiches. Pereira, a lean-faced, balding Goanese, was still in the silver locker, checking his tally of trays in racks that corresponded to the saloon tables. Harry didn’t know what this was supposed to prove, since the contents were usually deficient, and a winger would have to be right up the wall to leave his tray anywhere but here, under lock and key. But Pereira had a beady, gloating eye, and possibly liked to brood over these tangible symbols of his power.

He was very respectful to Bernard, speaking English with the usual quiet lisp: very basic English with all the verbs in the present tense and a shortage of conjunctions. The Goanese were a withdrawn, unsociable group, more Eastern than Western, despite their dash of Portuguese and their rabid Catholicism: a tiny colonial anachronism stuck like a thorn in the elephantine side of sensual, slovenly, pantheistic India. Harry distrusted them as an extension of the Company, to whom they were shackled by such long-term bonds, whose boots they licked, and whose confidence they appeared to enjoy. Sly bastards, in fact. Tale-telling, officious and smug.

However, Pereira was only too pleased to do Bernard’s friend a favour. He clucked his tongue sadly over Harry s depleted tray. “Why you no ask?”

“I ask,” Harry assured him. “You say no dice.”

Pereira gave a sad, forgiving smile. “Is no good you ask before all. All want. You ask me alone, I give you.”

“I’m asking now.”

Pereira showed his white, ingratiating teeth and gave an oriental bow, hands lightly joined. “And I give you now!”

The business was thus concluded, and they parted, bowing and smiling, before Pereira bolted himself once more within to resume his meditations.

“Satisfied?” said Bernard mildly.

“Sure, ta very much!” Harry dug out his cigarettes, offering one which was declined. “I must say you handled him a treat. I just can’t get on with them.”

“They’re all right when they get to know you.”

“Yeah,” said Harry. “Like dogs.”

“You shouldn’t say things like that. Bernard advised, “even as a joke.”

Harry grimaced privately at this piece of priggishness, but said encouragingly, “You should be a liaison officer or something.”

Bernard raised his rounded, questioning brows. “Isn’t that what I am?”

Along the alley they squeezed past the queue at the beer hatch, and Bernard asked a young winger. How’s the stomach?”

“Okay, Bernard. I’m trying some beer on it tonight.”

“There you go again!” Bernard shook his head in mock severity. The real scoutmaster touch.

Marilyn was pouting at the end of the line, hand on languid hip. “Hi, Bernard.”

Hullo. Robin,” said Bernard without warmth.

“What I mean is,” Harry continued, “if you’ve been on this ship so long, how come you’re still a W/S?”Disgraced? Busted down? “I mean, you know what a shortage there is of good Leading Hands! Look at this lot we’ve got! A right old shower! And with your education and that…”

“I’m sure you mean that kindly,” said Bernard, twisting down his lips, “but I happen to like being a Wine Steward.”

“You’re one of the lucky ones, then.”

“How’s that?”

“Not all of us can get the job we’d like.”

Bernard paused, looked severe. “I don’t accept that, Shears. One shouldn’t accept one’s limitations so spinelessly. A man’s potentialities are almost boundless … I’m convinced, because I’ve seen it happen, that within very broad limits, a man can do and be whatever he desires!”

He raised his glance over Harry’s head, serious and troubled. “Being is more important than doing, of course.”

“Thanks for the moral uplift,” said Harry sardonically. Bernard’s expression lightened: as though Harry had reacted predictably to a snap check. The latter felt the back of his neck growing hotter and damper than the atmosphere of the working alley warranted.

“Besides,” said Bernard, “if I were a Leading Hand I could only order people about. I prefer to persuade them.”

“To do what?’ Harry asked innocently.

The other hesitated for a moment, smiling at the ground. “To try my Chateauneuf du Pape, for instance.”

“Oh.”

“I have to overcome even more complex prejudices than you wingers do. Wine is much more snob than food. People become involved in the mystique, or else alarmed by the whole business. On one hand I have the bon vivant who wants to air his winesmanship, and on the other the ignoramus or antisnob, terrified of dropping a clanger. Diplomacy is called for.”

“Yes, I imagine …” They had reached Bernard’s door, and Harry forced himself to meet the unsettling gaze. “Were you ever on the Cyclades?”

Bernard shook his head. “Why?”

“I thought I might have run into you somewhere before?”

Harry sweated with the effort of playing it cool. “I remember when you first heard my name you acted as if… .”

A passive animosity spread slowly across Bernard’s face and his eyes hardened, probing, dark with disapproval. “Your name sounded familiar, that’s all.”

Harry nodded offhandedly and turned away. “Well, thanks for fixing Pereira, anyrate.”

“Not at all,” said Bernard civilly, going into his peak and shutting the door.

Harry found Marty in his peak changing into civvies.

“Come on down to Smoky’s and I’ll stand you a schooner.”

“You got yourself a date,” said Marty. “I’m skint.”

Harry slid off his working gear, and. dodging round the table to get to his cupboard, tangled with Marty who was doing the movement in reverse. Marty chuckled and clutched him, saying “Have this dance with me!”

“Not now dear. I’m busy,” said Harry, kneeing Marty gently.

… Marty obviously had a problem there. Harry decided, freeing himself. “I shan’t come out if you don’t behave. My Mummy warned me about men like you.”

Marty roared, properly chuffed with himself… . What a barrack-room that must have been!

“Come on, you great slob!” He shouldered the docile hunk out of the door. “But keep your distance!”

“My, what a charming couple!” said Patience, pouting primly from her doorway. “She’s a bit old for him, though!

“Where’s your lace curtain, dear? asked Harry. To Marty he muttered, “Don’t look now. The village postmistress!”

“Old boot!” Patience screamed after them.

… Turn it up! Harry warned himself. Enough’s enough!

No real need for alarm, though. It was just the relief from the strain of squaring up to Bernard.

They met Willie and Phil in the weatherboard store at the end of the wharf. Some of the dago immigrants had been allowed this far into the promised land, and stood about in sad-eyed groups, drinking lemonade and considering the pin-tables, koala toys and poker-work boomerangs with understandable dubiety. No sign of Lennie after all.

Willie’s latest fairytale romance – or hobgoblin seduction, took him the rest of the evening to relate. It had allegedly happened on the beach, which accounted for deposits of sand in unlikely places as he undressed. He rattled on to an accompaniment of spinal agitation, heaving, gasping and eyeball-rolling, like the least equivocal sort of tribal dance.

“No wonder you’re so bloody thin!” observed Harry, when the noise began to subside.

“It’s the dollies,” croaked Willie weakly. “They’ve fairly wore me out!”

Then he leapt off his bunk, like a puppet late on its cue, clutching up his baggy underpants, cursing and hopping about.

“What the heck’s bitten you?” Phil sleepily demanded.

“My sodding life-jacket!” Willie gasped. “We got Boat Drill the day after tomorrow, and the First said he’d log me if I go up without it again!”

Harry searched the cupboard tops and found one marked Macready. He put it under his pillow. “And keep your thieving mitts off of that!”

“Friendly!” croaked Willie. “I suppose you’d stand by and watch me drown!”

“Watch you?” mumbled Dad. “I’d encourage you!”

“Leave off!” said Harry. “A couple of corks’d keep you afloat!”

In slacks and singlet he took his towel up towards the showers.

As he went up the companionway, a door opened and a young voice said, concluding some remark, “… Deal me out. I got to see someone.”

Pausing, Harry saw a lad going down from the bellboys’ peak, and, on an impulse, turned back to follow him. This was the boy whom Bernard had said in the saloon that he wished to see. There might be nothing to it, but it was after bellboys’ lights-out. A bit late for legitimate business.

The lad went quickly down the working alley, and, reaching the forward hatch, turned out of sight round a corner. This was the Goanese quarter, but they were all asleep, for they were called before the whites. Their peaks faced the tarpaulined covers that closed off the hold at deck level. The area was fenced with removable uprights, spaced a few feet apart; and, in calm weather, when the topsiders removed the upper hatches to let the sunlight in, it filled the alley with barred shadows, creating in the centre a kind of souk where the Goanese hung their striped laundry, smoked and considered the implications of mortality.

Reaching the corner. Harry saw the bellboy vanishing past the last of the bars on the farther side of the hatch. Just out of sight, Bernard’s voice said, “Ah. there you are, Patrick! … Lennie, did you know that Patrick was one of us?”

He paused to light a cigarette and then circled the hold. A short alley on the farther side led to a pair of swing doors. Half a dozen Goanese peaks. No one in sight.

Frowning, Harry went quietly past the peak doors. Not a sound from any of them. The swing doors were motionless, but opened soundlessly and closed at once with powerful, silent springs. It was possible that they had passed through, except that this was passenger accommodation. Just beyond the doors was a baggage room, and then the Tourist D Deck cabins. An empty white passageway stretched towards the stern, its stillness underlaid with the thrumming, hypnotic threnody of the engines, which at moments, like an anxious heart-beat in the night racing and overtaking the ticking of a clock, suggested a wild, ecstatic burst of rhythm: Fred Astaire let loose among the pistons.

The baggage room was locked, its keyhole revealing darkness. Rallied, Harry went back to take his shower, staring across the empty room at the mirrors as though his puzzled expression might offer him a clue.

… One of us? One of what? … What on earth were they doing in the middle of the night? Holding a Boy Scouts’ Jamboree?

Chapter Eleven

The last thing Harry did that night before turning in was to obliterate with a stub of indelible pencil the crudely-lettered Macready on the life-jacket and to print Shears above it.

He had already noted that on the Boat Stations roster outside the crew room, his name had not yet been substituted for Macready’s. Stations were to be called on the first day out from Melbourne, and with any luck the omission would not be spotted before then.

He fell asleep waiting for Lennie to return to the peak.

The next day promised fair, although according to the grapevine it was rough in the Bight. Harry woke to the grey-dawn realization that he had a problem to face. If he was going to give up, this was the last chance to do so. He could jump ship in Melbourne easily enough. He had the fare. He had his passport. True, the Agents had his Picton address and would set the cops onto him, but he knew the district well enough to dodge them. So if he went adrift it must be today. The next port, Fremantle, would be worse than useless, with the whole dusty continent between him and safety, and the railway and airports watched.

Young Prince seemed dopier than usual and Harry worked off his low spirits on the boy. He had one of those haircuts, close up the sides and tufted on top like a pineapple. Hair of that intermediate brown that looks fair in a good light. But the style made him look slovenly even when he wasn’t. Half the buttons were missing from his P-jacket, and his plimsoll laces were broken and knotted several times. Prince, however, didn’t respond to the lash, and Harry continued through the morning more disagreeable than ever.

During a free hour before lunch he went back alone along the foreshore for a swim. He was glad of the solitude so difficult to achieve on the ship. There was already quite a lot to sort out, even though it didn’t seem to lead anywhere. There was a danger, too, that his involvement in the turmoil of shipboard life, and the sheer hard slog, would expunge the recollections of Danny ashore. That must not happen. So, lying on his back in the sun, he forced himself to try and remember everything that Danny had said about his short life afloat.

When Danny had first arrived back in Sydney aboard the Cyclamen, Harry had been overjoyed, naturally assuming that the boy had craftily worked his passage home and was going to jump ship. To his astonishment this proved not to be the case. Incredibly Danny seemed to like the life. With each succeeding visit, as Danny showed no inclination to pay off and start their long-planned venture beyond the mountains, Harry’s astonishment had turned to indignation, bitterness, resentment. So, deliberately, he had paid little heed to Danny’s sparse anecdotes. Eventually, of course, the boy no longer confided in him. They had parted for the last time with sullenness on Danny’s part, and jeering hostility on Harry’s. A calamitous error: but how could he have foreseen that one day he would be hoarding these scraps and shards of reminiscences?

And what did they amount to? Not a single name of Danny’s shipboard friends. No mention, he was sure, of a Bernard or a Lennie. None of the usual scandals and intrigues of the fo’c’sle had seemed to have involved the boy himself: he simply reported them. He gave the impression of leading a dull, dutiful life. His occasional letters recorded no sensational happenings. Rough seas, calm seas, ports of call. The usual round of petty complaints.

… And on his last visit to Picton, had there been any change in Danny?

Harry sat up, frowning, shaking his head. It was a waste of time. Already his memory was cheating him. He had played so many imaginary scenes with Danny, exorcizing the lure of the sea with dazzling, unanswerable arguments, that the reality shifted beneath the gloss of fantastication, merged, unfocused, drifted out of reach, like a fish gliding under a sun-reflecting surface.

He closed his fists and opened them, as though he had grasped the fish for a moment and now it had gone. Then he scrambled to his feet and returned to the ship. Before going below to lay for kids’ teas, he went on deck to watch the departure and cheer the drunken stragglers down the dock-side. Some three hours later, before second dinners, he returned to the almost-deserted well-deck. The long dog’s-leg turn, close inshore to the southern barrier of the Sound had been negotiated, and the ship was nosing gingerly down the buoy-marked lane towards the narrows of the Rip. It was evening on the ocean beyond the wreck-sparred rocks and whirlpools, and night already, the soft blue night of Australian summer, inland towards the Dandenongs. The officers stood at stations on the fo’c’sle head, and a row of passengers gawked solemnly from the glazed promenade, awed by the pervading tension.

Leaning on the rail, Harry studied the concentric eddies that pocked the sunset-coloured water: as though a hundred bathplugs had been pulled from the ocean bed.

“Well, I’ve done it now, Danny,” he said, watching the wreckage-littered shores move past, and the gap begin to close with the distance behind them.

Miss Hathaway was down first for breakfast, although the weather was blowing up rough and the storm frames were ready. She took her usual seat, smiling wryly. “You haven’t lost me after all, steward.”

“Glad to have you back, ma’m.”

“Thank you!” She gave an exaggerated bow and smile.

“All the same, I’m sorry you didn’t get a better table. I know it’s a bit noisy here.”

“I don’t object to noise as such,” she said, studying the menu.

“I might try the kippers today… . After all, are ships ever silent? But there’s noise and noise… .” She glanced down the table. “However, better the devil you know, and so forth. Do you think you could rustle up some nice chunky marmalade? I don’t really care for this stuff one pours out.’’

When he had served the Margravines, he returned to ask her: “Are you going through to Tilbury, ma’m?’’

“Yes, indeed!” Over a forkful of kipper her eyes glowed. “To Cambridge! Isn’t that exciting? I’m a sort of anthropologist, and they’ve invited me to lecture… . Oh. and women’s institutes, and sewing circles, and suchlike. People seem much more interested in Australia than they used to be. Since the Seventeenth Doll. I suppose they’ve finally got over the idea that it’s all ex-convicts and quaint furry animals.”

When she talked she seemed an eternal twenty-five, an ageless graduate ready for an all-night gush, on gin and Turkish cigarettes, with Bela Bartok on the turntable. “And I had such a nice surprise yesterday. I was asked out to Melbourne University to lunch, and they gave me a degree! Just like that! One of those honorary things! … My dear man, I didn’t know where to look!”

“Well, what do you know!” said Harry brightly.

Pale, withdrawn, and under the weather, Miss Withers silently took her place, raised her empty tumbler and sighed despondently “Oh … Shers!”

“I don’t like to pour out before you come down, ma’m.” said Harry glibly. “The dust settles so quick.”

“Dust?” she murmured incredulously. “On a ship’?”

“You’d be surprised, ma’m,” he said. Wouldn’t wc all?

Miss Withers dug out her pill-box. “I’ll have some fresh toast, I think … when you’re free… .” When you’ve done talking to that woman!

“Do us a favour, Lil.” said Harry, falling in behind her in the galley queue. “Tip some porridge down the neck of that sour old bitch on my table.”

“1 don’t serve anyone with porridge!” said Lil icily. “I wouldn’t demean myself. It’s cereals or nothing. If anyone dares to ask for a hearty breakfast on my tables, I just cut them dead. They don’t do it twice.”

She gave Harry an up-and-down stare over her shoulder. “And don’t get too close to me, Moira, you saucy bitch. You’ve been poaching!”

“Which one was that, dear? I have so many.”

“Jump to it, cowboys!” roared the galleyhand at the toast press.

“Peasant!” said Lil contemptuously. “You know very well!” she added to Harry.

“We share the same peak,” said Harry innocently. “It had to happen.”

“Oh, don’t come the foolish virgin with me, dear!” said Lil briskly. “You know the score all right. So just watch your step, my girl. My royal spies are everywhere!”

Harry grimaced and clapped his hand over his rump.

“Oh, very funny! ” said Lil disdainfully, nose in air.

Harry cleared and set for children’s lunch, washed the milk jugs, and scurried forward for a quick drag before Boat Stations. Passing the crew room, he held his breath and glanced at the roster. Macready’s name had not yet been amended to read “Shears”.

At five minutes to eleven he took his peaked cap and lifejacket and locked himself for a furtive smoke in the lavatory. It was the nearest thing to privacy on the ship, and even here, to avoid detection, you had to squat with your heels on the seat, since there was an eighteen-inch gap under the walls and doors.

The alarm bell rang in the alley and feet hurried past. A few minutes later the Third Steward bawled from the doorway. “All out?” He didn’t come down past the cubicles, but gave a grunt suggestive of bending to glance along the floor. Harry had taken the precaution of leaving the door a few inches ajar.

The rigmarole on the Boat Deck could last a half-hour, and with any luck it would today. Being the first call on the homeward voyage, doubtless they would put on an extra show, lowering a boat here and there to reassure the bloods. Harry waited a few minutes and then slid out into the alley and down to Bernard’s peak.

The high-minded fool had stuck to his principles for the cupboard was unlocked. Having identified Bernard’s bunk, Harry first glanced into the wooden locker above it. The contents were standard and uninteresting. Mug and irons, a stack of clean handkerchiefs, and the usual free-issue Seamen’s Bible. The cupboard was equally neat. Changes of uniform, a pile of laundered shirts and underwear, a medium grey suit, expensively plain, black and grey knitted ties, black leather shoes, grey suede shoes, black towelling robe, black satin swim briefs. No colours at all, not so much as a stripe in a shirt or a contrasting clock on the black or grey socks. A short white raincoat was the only exoticism – an odd choice, perhaps, for his age-group. No hats. Black muffler and leather gauntlets. Bernard must cut quite a distinguished figure ashore. Harry had envisaged baggy grey flannels, leather-patched sports jacket, one of those dun-coloured raincoats – the usual depressing pepper-and-salt of a middle-aged bachelor’s outfit. Perhaps that modish, close-cropped hair should have given a clue.

There were a lot of books, a second-hand selection with small print, dim titles and broken spines. None of them looked like fiction. A dictionary, some reference books on wines and spirits; the rest were works on philosophy, comparative religion, Eastern mysticism, Translations of the Upanishads and Vedas. Dull, heavy-looking stuff. Thrust between them were writing pads, letters, exercise books filled with scratchy, thin notes. Harry flipped through them quickly but they were in an almost unreadable hand, like medical prescriptions. There were page references and marginal jottings, which suggested that Bernard was engaged in some study, perhaps for an extra-mural degree.

Dissatisfied, Harry leafed through the last batch of notebooks, and a sheaf of photographs cascaded onto the deck. As he bent to gather them up he heard distant footsteps. He shuffled the photographs, gaining a hasty impression of shore-side views, harbour scenes, groups of wingers, all the usual stuff. Then, from the middle of the pack, as he closed them in his palm, Danny smiled briefly up at him.

Cursing, beginning to sweat, he thumbed through them once more, found the snapshot, blinked incredulously, and slid it into his hip pocket. He returned the others to their place inside the notebook.

He paused, holding his breath, unable to hear any movement now outside. There was one thing more in the cupboard, a leather zip-bag, which he quickly opened. He reached in, stared, and touched a folded garment of starched and pleated white linen. He could make nothing of it, and there was no time left to shake it out. He closed the bag, shut the cupboard, and slid warily out into the alley.

He reached the ladder to the galley before he was stopped. An officer whom he had never seen before, but who looked, as they all did, the dead spit of Lord Louis Mountbatten, snarled suspiciously, “What do you think you’re playing at?”

“I was sent down to look for defaulters, sir,” said Harry, moving deferentially past.

“Oy!” shouted the officer. “Who sent you?”

“An inspecting officer, sir. I don’t know his name.” He went into the saloon before the officer could reply.

“You’re for it mate!” cried Willie delightedly, sighting Harry as the mob poured down from the Boat Deck. “See you on the Bridge!”

Harry was “for it” a few minutes later, but left in suspense a further twenty minutes outside the Chief Steward’s cabin, while a Goanese B/R went in and out with coffee and biscuits.

“Why weren’t you at Stations, Shears?”

“I was taken short just before the bell, Chief,” Harry said, noting the chintz curtains and cushions, cocktail cabinet, cut flowers, little touches of luxury. “I belted after the others, and then I remembered I didn’t know my boat number, so I slid back to have a look at the roster … and, Chief, I wasn’t on it!” He managed to sound bewildered, even hurt.

The Chief looked rattled. “Damn it, couldn’t you use a bit of savvy? You know you’re a replacement, so obviously you take his place in the boat! Do you need to be told?”

Harry spread his hands helplessly. “I couldn’t remember the bloke’s name!” It was, he thought, foolproof, because the roster was a strict cross-section and not in peak order. So that all the chefs or P.R.As. wouldn’t go down together.

“Macready! ” the Chief snapped.

Harry clapped his hand to his forehead, looking anguished. “Oh hell!”

“It’s no excuse,” said the Chief, concealing his awareness that his staff had blundered. “You know you have to stand to, and you should damn well be there! Why didn’t you ask?”

“What? Go running from boat to boat with the inspecting officers on deck already?” Harry asked incredulously. “And I didn’t know the Captain wouldn’t be having a look from the Bridge.”

The Chief plainly saw the justice of this, and eyed his steaming coffee cup. “All the same, you had no business to stay below!”

“Chief!” cried Harry indignantly. “I stood by on the main companionway! That’s what we always done on the Cyclades when they made a muck-up of the roster!”

“I’m not interested in what they did on any other ship!” said the Chief, stung. “We re not in the habit of making mistakes on our rosters. I’ll have your name substituted. And don’t let it happen again, Shears!”

“Right, Chief,” said Harry, conveying the right degree of hurt reproach.

The Chief Steward sniffed, as the quickest way of changing his manner and expression, and sipped his coffee. “Settled in all right?”

“Yes thank you, Chief,” said Harry, still quietly hurt but careful not to overdo it.

“Right, cut along then, Shears.”

“What’ll you get, mate? Chain Gang?” asked Dad Mustoe, with fake sympathy, when Harry returned to the peak to ditch his cap.

“Nah, he cried on me shoulder.”

“You fly bastard!” said Willie. ‘‘You could get away with murder! ”

… Let’s hope it won’t come to that! thought Harry grimly, remembering the photograph.

He went back to the lavatory, lit a cigarette, and, when he felt sufficiently composed, drew the photograph from his pocket and smoothed it out.

It was an ordinary snapshot, postcard-sized, taken in brilliant sunlight, the shadows sharp and compact. Taken close inshore to a wild, mountainous coast. Mount Wilson? The backside of Gib? Not bleak enough for Aden. Too high for Pantellaria. Nothing like Cocos Island. Had the Cyclamen made a Med. or Pacific cruise? It could just possibly be Tahiti, except that the peaks should be sharper and more dramatic.

A white rail crossed the centre of the view, with Danny sitting upon it, one foot on deck, one raised on a bar, hands spread out, arms braced, shoulders slightly hunched, flattening his torso and stretching his ribs; hair falling down to his nose, shadowing half his smile. A towel hung on the rail under his hand. He was naked.

Beside him another youth leaning out over the rail, glancing back with a half-smile of surprise, about to speak, perhaps to protest. A plump youth, unknown to Harry, his haunches bland and innocent in the sunlight.

On the other side was Lennie, stretched out at an angle, with legs crossed, resting on his elbow, leaning towards Danny, his mouth rounded, as though with a laughing objection. He was shorter than Danny, Harry confirmed, but otherwise more mature.

Close to the camera, blurred out of focus, part of a lad sitting on a low object, perhaps a bollard. A leg from knee to hip, a slope of bony shoulder, arm resting on thigh, face turned three-quarters away. Pineapple haircut. Could it be young Prince?

Something was draped over the “bollard” and the deck. A towel, most likely, except that it fell neatly and crisply into pleats, like a linen kilt.

Harry studied the photograph, his neck growing hot, his pulses thumping. Even on this more detailed inspection there was nothing that had escaped his first hasty scrutiny. He had noted the gold cross and chain that Danny, like Lennie, wore; and this at least set the time of the photograph. For the cross had made its appearance on Danny’s last visit home. Harry had scoffed, “What’s this? You got religion now?” Danny had answered with surly evasiveness, but obviously it had been only a craze among the bellboys, like those St Christopher medals that the yobbos wore in London.

But it meant that the shot had been snapped during the last voyage out or the last voyage home.

Yet how was the photograph taken? Where on the ship was it possible to sunbathe in the nude, if that was what they were doing? Certainly not on the fo’c’sle head, which had no corners that were not under surveillance from the Bridge. There were narrow stern decks above the screws, and the Lascars’ praying deck, but all were overlooked.

And, under such circumstances, if it had been a candid-camera joke while the lads were changing, then why were they undressing on the open deck? And would they be so relaxed?

It was not, he had to admit, even remotely pornographic, though you wouldn’t pass it round if ladies were present. The propriety of the situation would depend on the context – the factors he did not know. None the less it was odd. They seemed too much at ease. Lennie might, and with reason, be a show-off; but how had Danny and Prince (if it was he) become so liberated from their inhibitions?

As such photographs went, no doubt it was innocuous enough. It would depend upon what use was made of it. There was no evidence that Bernard had taken it, or why he should have done so, if indeed he had. His possession of it chimed in well enough with his “welfare officer’ attitude towards the lads. One could, obscenely, imagine him slobbering over it; but that was, to be honest, no more than a perverted wishful-thinking.

The vital question remained. How and where on the ship had it been posed?

Then Harry gasped in exasperation and beat his fist on his knee. It was an iron rail, not a ship’s wooden one, that they leant upon! And it was sunk into concrete, not bitumen and timber! That wasn’t a tree-clad shore but a mountain!

Yet where on earth ashore, in what tropical or sub-tropical port, could they meet and behave in such a fashion?

Somewhere on the regular run, since the ship had made no diversions on that last voyage. So, a villa outside Sydney? Danny would not be there, since he had spent all his free time at home. In Melbourne? Perth? Colombo? Bombay outward bound? Not Aden or the Canal ports: they were too barren or too flat. And it was hard to get ashore at Gib. It couldn’t have been a rendezvous in England, because the whole feeling, the angle and brilliance of the sunlight, was markedly tropical.

So, where in the world?

Chapter Twelve

They struck bad weather the second day out from Melbourne and fought it for the next three days across the Bight. For the wingers it was indeed a running battle, and it was hard at times to say who was winning. The only undisputed loser was the Purser, whose bonus would be reduced by the breakages. For the stewards there was a certain exhilaration in the satisfying crash of someone else’s glass and china, and the opportunities for slapstick were limitless. Miss Withers and Mrs Margravine seldom appeared at table, Miss Hathaway and Mrs Arnold missed a meal or two, and the odious little Wendy was absent throughout. The rest of the bloods had to cope with the chaotic service, slithering cutlery, slopping sauces, and the tiresome restrictions of anchored chairs and table frames. Serving in the alcove was particularly tricky. It was bad enough, once you had skated out of the bellowing throng in the galley, to negotiate the revolve with your tower of plates at a Pisan angle, and then to poise them on the dummy waiter, tensed to leap back and forth with the roll, serving a dollop here and there, and springing to the rescue of the sliding plates on the dummy. You needed a sharp sense of rhythm and balance, and eyes everywhere. An additional hazard was the dummy itself, which had a door that let down on a chain, and, under pressure from a heavy roll, would open unannounced and cascade the contents over the deck. You had to keep an eye on that as well.

As though that wasn’t bad enough, in the alcove, you also had to time your rhythmical dodging back and forth to miss the wingers who shot past with the speed of skiers on a hard-fought run. And once in a while the revolve would ring with crashes and curses, and would open unkindly to reveal a winger sliding round, funfair-style, on his tray, in a greasy trail of food and broken china. The Arnolds thought this a great giggle. The mops came out at once, but. even so, the next few wingers might go skidding dizzily, throwing up their trays and adding to the confusion. Bruce, pursuing a flying plate of veal, once missed Miss Withers’s ear by inches. A blancmange tipped itself neatly into Mrs Arnold’s vacant chair, and sat there quivering, while Miss Hathaway collapsed in hysterics and the Head Waiter swooped down to absolve and excommunicate as required.

Out in the galley, where slopped liquids turned the deck into an ice-rink, tumbles were commonplace. The muscles ached with the effort of combating the pitch and roll; the need for constant vigilance was exhausting. By nightfall you were dead on your feet.

It was quiet in the peaks, then, since everyone was shagged, but sleep didn’t come so easily. The fo’c’sle took the worst of the tossing, with the bow-wave thundering against the hull and flying up into any incautiously-opened porthole; so that an inch of water washed back and forth under the cupboards, disturbing your sleep, between the heavier punctuations of the white-caps and the thud of falling kit, with an irritating, whispering undercurrent of fag packets, bottle tops and orange peel.

The forecast was bad all the way to Fremantle, and Harry mutinously resigned himself to three wasted days. It being such an effort to keep awake and alert, no one was in the mood for the sort of reminiscences he hoped to coax from them. Their only topic was the amount of crockery they had managed to smash. It was biting cold on the spray-lashed decks, and they were ordered back into blues.

It was murder getting up at five forty-five, after what felt like ten minutes’ uneasy sleep. Harry shambled along in a daze, eyes half-closed, fingers fumbling with buttons, the first rough dawn, to find Prince there before him.

“What’s up with you?” he muttered viciously. “Couldn’t you sleep?”

The boy shook his head, holding onto a chair while he bent over to dust it. He seemed dopier or feebler than usual. From windward the spray flew up against the bar windows and sheeted across the empty deck. No swabbing needed today. No doubt the topsiders were mashing-up somewhere in the dry.

“What’s up, then?” Harry strolled over to the boy, who swayed as he straightened up.

Prince’s face seemed greyer than the morning light warranted.

“What is it? Seasick?”

“Bit,” said Prince through tight lips. “I’ll be okay.”

“Don’t be a mutt! Go sick, they won’t say nothing. They’d sooner have that than you being sick all over the place!”

Prince shook his head. “No, I’ll be okay.”

Harry put a hand on his shoulder to steady the boy as he swayed again, and they collided gently as the ship rolled and righted itself in a sudden tremendous trough. “Wow, that was a big bastard!” Harry said, with forced heartiness, holding onto the boy. “Don’t be such a goof, Princey! You don’t get logged for going sick. And they won’t give you no medals for being a hero! Don’t start playing the Casabianca!”

The boy looked up at him with clouded, puzzled eyes. Shy but not soft. His nose was rugged, almost a bump, and his eyebrows coarse, questioning arches that grew together. The question they asked at the moment was what Harry’s hand was doing on his shoulder… . A very good question, Harry thought, removing the offender.

Prince’s jawline was heavy, his teeth rather large, slightly protruberant, so that his lips bunched forward to cover them. The touch of real distinction was an old hare-lip. healed with a scar under his left nostril, that gave a lift to his lips somehow pathetic, curiously appealing.

… But not for me! Harry told himself firmly.

“Well, get stuck in then!” he said shortly. “If you’re set on being a martyr, but more fool you!” He gave the boy a brisk, dismissive slap on the shoulder. “And please don’t spew up here, because I ain’t going to swab it up!”

The next morning Prince didn’t appear and Harry did the dusting alone. The following dawn he was back. “They gave me the day off,” he said. “The quack give me some stuff to take … I didn’t want to, but Bernard had a word with them.”

Harry scowled, caught off his guard by an unexpected back-stab of jealousy. “Oh, you know Bernard, then?”

Prince looked surprised; and, after all, it was an absurd question. Everyone knew Bernard. Harry decided not to amplify the question at the present. For of course he knew Bernard. Wasn’t he the spiky-haired boy in the snapshot? He must have been.

“Want a drag?” He went over with his cigarettes. “They won’t come round today, not when it’s rough.”

“Ta,” said Prince, taking one with a slight fumble. He glanced wonderingly at Harry over the lighter flame.

“That is if you’re strong enough?”

“I’m okay now.”

Harry blew out smoke, smiled, relaxed, and ruffled the boy’s hair. “Who scalped you?”

Prince stood unresisting, dragging on the cigarette in a solemn, helpless fashion. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Depends what it’s supposed to be… . But if any bloody Goanese done that to me, I’d have his guts.”

“I had it done ashore,” Prince said. “I always have it short, like. It don’t need so much messing about with then. You don’t hardly get the time to comb it, it’s all such a bleeding rush.”

“I thought you said you never went ashore?”

Prince frowned, eyebrows bunched where they joined over his humpy nose.

“Didn’t you say you’d sooner have some kip?”

“Well, not every time,” said the boy impatiently. “I go ashore sometimes, like. It depends.”

Harry did some dusting, humming awhile, to make the questions sound more artless. “You been ashore most places, then? … How long you done? Two trips, is it?”

Prince seemed startled that he had remembered. “Yeah … well, most, I suppose. Except, well, Gib … but you can’t get off there. Nor you can’t at Suez.”

“What d’you reckon to the others?”

The boy shrugged. “Okay. You get a bit choked after you seen ’em once, though … Aden’s all right if you got the money. I mean for cameras and lighters and that. But even then you got to get them through the Customs, ain’t you?”

“True enough,” Harry agreed. He told him about a bellboy on the Cyclades who had hidden a whole suitcase full of loot on the ship, dodged the Customs check by carrying it around all day through the passengers’ quarters, taken it ashore down the First Class gangway, right among the bloods, and dumped it on the wharf. Then, as luck would have it, he was stopped by one of the dock police while trying to sneak it out. The copper had asked him what he had in the case, and he’d said, right saucily, “I got, let me see, thirty watches, four cameras, two dozen lighters and six hundred fags!” And the cop had aimed a boot at his tail and said, “Go on, git out of it before I clip your earhole!”

Prince snickered, leaning against a chair, almost at ease.

“What you do at the other ports, then?” Harry asked. “You know people ashore, or what?”

The boy twisted down his scarred lip. “Nothing special. Knock around with some of the lads and get some decent conner for a change.”

“I could’ve give you some addresses in Sydney,” said Harry, “Still, next time, eh?”

“I ain’t bothered with seeing people.”

“And Melbourne’s okay, though I don’t actually know no one there. Of course at Fremantle you got to have time to go into Perth. There’s nothing at the port.”

Prince pulled a face. “Sleepy hole, Perth is.”

“Bombay and Colombo I mostly make for the Flying Angels. Get away from them screeching wogs.”

The boy nodded and smiled, tipping ash carefully into a pedestal ashtray. “Colombo’s okay if you know where to go. I’ve never bothered with Bombay. It’s always been too blooming hot.”

“Hotter still in Colombo.” Harry observed mildly. “What do you do with yourself there?”

“Oh, just knock around, like.” The boy picked up his duster and shook it out. “The shops is pretty fair, though, and the Mission and that… . And them launches they have across the harbour. Great!”

“Depends what you like.” said Harry. “Depends how you get your kicks?” He hadn’t seriously hoped for a reply.

Midday, at crew’s conner, Harry glanced up from his plate and across the saloon to the bellboys’ table. Prince was looking at him. Not to smile nor to seek acknowledgment. Just to look.

… Oh Christ! thought Harry anxiously, staring down at his plate. But I’ve got to know where that snap was taken. That’s all that matters!

At dinner that night, Harry finally spotted where Prince worked. He was a commie from the cold buffet to the top tables. Occasionally Harry saw him moving back and forth behind the prize wingers with plates of cold meat, or standing at attention, anonymous, beside a gilt-fluted pillar. Having identified him, Harry let the matter rest and did not look again, for fear of attracting attention, but reassured by the knowledge of where to find him.

On the last morning out in the Bight, the boy reacted to his greeting with a lapse into reserve.

“Going ashore tomorrow?” Harry asked.

Prince shook his head. “I’m on keys.”

“Nor am I,” Harry said. “I can’t stick Fremantle. Might have a pint but that’s definitely all. I reckon if the weather clears, like they say, I’ll get some sunbathing hours in. Look, I’m fading already!”

He pushed up his striped sleeve and exhibited his arm. Prince glanced at it aslant and carried on dusting.

“I suppose you get pretty burnt, though, eh? Being as I’m fair-skinned it’s a waste of time really. If you got red hair they reckon you get skin cancer.”

“Yeah,” said the boy, holding open the neck of his jacket and folding in his chin to glance down. “Soon goes, though.”

Harry moved over and rested a hand on his shoulder. “Cor, dear! Look at that 1 A real live hair! ”

“There’s a lot! ” said Prince indignantly, restive under the touch of Harry’s fingertips.

“What’s up?” Harry asked.

The boy shivered. “Nothing,” he said, staring at Harry, trapped by his arm against the chair back. “Look, I got to do the dusting… .”

“That’s a good boy,” said Harry, sarcastically indulgent, smiling and releasing him. “Look, do us a favour. Go ashore tomorrow and get the rest of it cut off!” He ruffled Prince’s hair and turned away.

Lighting a cigarette, he stayed at the far end of the bar, dusting round the windows until the boy had gone, with a muttered, “See you …” and his pulse had quietened down.

They rounded Cape Louis that night, and the weather eased. In his restless slumber, Harry sensed the change and sank into a deeper sleep. He was awakened by the grinding and squealing of derricks overhead, and realized that the ship was at rest.

“You not going ashore then?” Harry asked the boy, while they stared side by side out at the tin roofs, the railway sidings, the red-tiled bungalows climbing a dusty hill to a memorial plinth. “Bit of a dump, ain’t it?”

“I said I’m on keys,” muttered Prince, avoiding his eye.

“What, all day?”

“We sail early, don’t we? There’s no time.”

Harry grunted, not pursuing the topic in case it sounded like an invitation. That was much too risky. Useful to get the boy alone somewhere, and then maybe the story behind the snapshot might come out. But Fremantle was too small, and would be crawling with crew who had slipped ashore for a pint or a game of billiards. The streets were too wide and bright.

“You going?” Prince asked hesitantly.

“Nah,” Harry yawned and moved away. “I’m choked off with the lousy hole. Reckon I’ll just get some kip while those noisy bastards in my peak are out. Croaking Willie’s got a mouth-organ now, and one of these days I’m going to shove it down his neck.”

Marty was on stores-loading again. They really had the knife into him, he moaned. The others, after morning strap-up. tore into their civvies and belted off to get into the shore-pass queue.

“Where’re you lot off to?” Dad Mustoe asked. He was on gangways, but it didn’t bother him. He hadn’t been ashore at ports of call in years.

“Kyffer!” grinned Willie, doing his erotic gyrations.

“What you ain’t never had! ” said Dad witheringly.

“I’m going to have a good scoff,” said Ron judiciously, at which they groaned and chased him down the alley.

Bruce loitered, his hand on Harry’s bunk. “You not coming ashore then, Ginge? Don’t you fancy a drink?”

Harry shook his head and closed his eyes. “I’m not bothered, ta … I feel knackered today.”

Disgruntled, Bruce shifted his feet. Ever since the swimming in Melbourne he had taken to sitting on Harry’s bunk, indulging in an Old Moore’s Almanac of rustic prognostication. He frequently lulled Harry into a doze, his vowels bumbling pleasantly like pigeons in a hayloft. Bruce was handsome, brown, clean, wholesome as a farmhouse loaf. Full of vitamins, the salt of the earth, the good seed. Rita described him as “quite a dish”, and possibly she knew. But it would be a bit too like bread and bread, or else Bruce didn’t honestly know which side his bread was buttered. The task of putting him right on this point would be far too wearisome. In any case, he was a first-tripper on the Cyclamen, and couldn’t know anything that mattered.

“Where’s our Lennie, anyrate?” Harry asked Dad when they were alone.

“Little short-arse’s got the day off. Went ashore hours ago. Gone into Perth, most likely.”

“What? On his jack?” Harry concealed his sudden alarm. “Nah, he’s got mates, right enough,” said the old man witheringly. “If you like to call ’em that.”

“I don’t think you reckon him!” Harry laughed, as though amused by Dad’s censorious tone.

“I hate the sly little bastard!” said Dad vehemently. “I wouldn’t trust him not so far as I could kick him.”

“What did he ever do to you, then?” Harry jested. “Straighten up too soon?”

“I ain’t no back-stabber, son!” Dad took out his dentures, examined them closely, and slid them back with an angry snap. “And if I was, I wouldn’t look twice at him!”

“You reckon someone else does? You reckon that’s his game?”

Dad came over, bandy-legged, until his pugnacious chin was level with the bunk. “I’m bloody sure of it! I mean, all this hair-combing and showing hisself off. Right little pouf, if you ask me!” He shook his head several times. “Oh yes, there’s a few like that on this ship… . That’s why I don’t like him being in here. They’re all good lads in this peak.”

Harry rolled over to reach some cigarettes from his locker, so that the tension should not show in his face. And you reckon they go ashore and do it somewhere?”

“I don’t know about that,” Dad ruminated. “No, not for me, ta. I never smoke tailormades… . No. I shouldn’t be surprised if he goes on the game alone ashore. There’s a lot of ‘em do. That Patience brought a wharfie back on board in Sydney, did you hear?”

“Get away!”

“Straight up! Right there in the peak, with all the other girls fluttering in and out, jealous as hell!” Dad gave a tired grunt. “Bloody disgusting. That’s the sort of thing as gets the M.N. a bad name.”

“And you reckon there’s a bunch of them at it?”

“I reckon there’s one or two I could name,” said Dad slowly. “And if I catch ’em, by Christ I’ll shop ‘em and not think twice about it. I don’t care about the older ones, they can do as they please. But chasing kids is one thing I can’t abide.” He reached up and laid a hand on Harry’s knee. “I can tell you, son, I keeps my eyes peeled for them as knocks about with the bellboys.”

“Yeah, I don’t blame you.” said Harry, fighting to sound casual. “Just as well someone keeps an eye on the little nits.”

“I mean, look at that business last trip home! You read about it? Kid going overside? I wouldn’t mind betting there was something like that behind it!”

“You think so?” said Harry stonily.

“Well! ” Dad smartened himself up. “Best get on with it, and here’s hoping I get a good drop! Tight-fisted bastards, some of these Aussies!”

… In other words, thought Harry grimly, his brief panic subsiding, he knows no more than I do!

He closed his eyes and drifted unhappily towards sleep, hardly disturbed by the groaning and thumping overhead.

Until a hand on his ankle shook him gently to wakefulness, and he raised his head and saw Princey grinning awkwardly up at him.

Chapter Thirteen

“You didn’t go ashore, then?” Prince observed.

“I said I wasn’t, didn’t I, dope?” Harry mumbled, turning on his side to face the bulkhead. “Let us get some kip, can’t you?”

He glanced down under his elbow and met Prince’s solemn stare from under the bar at the foot of the bunk.

“You got whopping great holes in your socks,” said the boy, sliding his glance back down Harry’s body to the soles of his feet.

“Okay, so are you going to darn them for me?” Harry growled.

“If you like,” said the boy jerkily, half in fun, glancing confusedly round the peak. “I can, you know.”

“Oh, I’ll bet you’re very handy with your needle.”

Someone went past the open door but didn’t stop. Harry frowned and closed his eyes. “You off keys now, then?”

“No, I got another two hours to do… . They all gone ashore, then?”

“Two of ’em’s working by.” Harry looked at his watch and groaned. “Christ Almighty, is it lunchtime already? … What’s it like topside?”

“Pretty fair.” Prince went to lean from the porthole, the breeze, trapped by the scuttle, tufting his short hair. The bleached glove fingers, tucked through the epaulette of his starched jacket, waved into the sunlight like the antennae of a sea flower.

“Guess I’d better get with it,” sighed Harry, swinging over the edge of the bunk and unzipping his jeans. The boy glanced back at him, lips bunched over his big teeth as though about to offer a dutiful kiss to a bewhiskered great-aunt. In the navy serge his legs looked painfully thin.

“Hot enough to sunbathe, you reckon?” Harry poked out his hand, and slid up an explanatory palm, in a casual-seeming gesture, as if to steady himself. Not so skinny there. A comforting handful, enough to arouse a swift, hard throb of unequivocal interest.

“Might go topside after lunch and have a bash.” He listened for footsteps in the alley. “Yeah, feels pretty warm at that!” It was warm, all right. And the interest was briefly mutual.

Then he moved tactfully away and got out his blues. Prince straightened up and walked away, not looking at him, but frowning to concentrate on fastening his neckband. “May see you, then,” he said in a wobbly voice.

“Yeah, you do that,” said Harry discouragingly as the boy went away.

Only the Margravines and Miss Withers came down to lunch, the latter as prostrated by the heat as she had been by the rough weather. You had to hand it to her. She might be a neurotic spinster, but she was pretty game to travel at all, dragging her jangling nerves around the world like this. It must be hell every mile of the way: and pills and gentility were no real substitute for whatever they were supposed to replace. No wonder she got into such a state over the Arnolds, for having such a whale of a time without any gentility whatsoever, and fun in bed to follow.

… Come to think of it. I suppose I’m a spinster! he thought. Though no one could say I’m inhibited. Yet I seem to have had my fair share of hell. Because it’s the games that went wrong that you remember, the chances you muffed that make you curse yourself forever after, not the games that went right. I bet if. like they say. your life passes in strip-cartoon form before your eyes while you’re drowning, that it’s your failures you regret. If there was anything to this Hell business, I reckon it would be that too. Not your sins, oh no, but your failures to sin and be merry while there was time, that you’d kick yourself for and grind your teeth for all eternity.

Lunch was over early, but Harry was delayed awhile at his strap-up by the leisurely pace of Rita, who was doing the washing-up.

“What’s up with you, dear? Get with it girl! What are you swaying about for now? The ship’s tied up!”

“Will someone please hold the earth still?” Rita drawled. “Oh no, not again!” Harry bent towards her and sniffed her breath. “What are you trying to do? Set up a world’s record?” Rita was too far gone to be touched by witticisms of this sort. “I was absolutely stinking at dinner last night,” she said musingly. “Worst I’ve ever been. In the end my bloods got so alarmed that they helped themselves, bless their hearts. And the Mother Superior had her beady eye on me the whole damn time. Honestly, ducky, I don’t know how I got through!” She passed a hand over her drab, receding hair to which still clung a frivolous reminiscence of a marcel wave. “I had to apologize to them this morning, and they were terribly sweet. They said they thought it was marvellous how I managed.”

“Gawd! The old bitch on my table would have shopped me straight away!”

“Oh, mine are really very decent. A bit piss-elegant, but human. They know about me, of course. In fact, frankly, one of them, this fair-haired dish, I think he’d be interested if he didn’t have this lumbering cow of a wife with him… .”

“When did you start hitting it so hard, then?”

“I was in the profession, ducky.”

“Was?” Harry grinned ironically.

“Don’t be bitchy, Moira. The theatrical profession. The second oldest.”

“Why did you take up this game?”

Rita pulled a long, wry face. “I was a chee-ild actor, ducky. And the chee-ild grew up. And went off.”

“Oh?”

“Nobody notices a child being a bit camp, but once I got in with the gay world it stuck out a mile. I was outrageous, of course. And there aren’t many parts for us. Or there weren’t then, before these Royal Court playwrights were born. They had to pretend we didn’t exist. All the men in those drawing-room plays were frantically male, and I couldn’t act butch to save my life. I just wasn’t that good, ducky.”

Rita sighed repugnantly and wrung out her dish-mop. “And I didn’t have a shilling for the gas, or the price of all those hundreds of aspirins. I can’t stand blood, and I’m scared of water. So I joined this charming haven for society’s outcasts.”

“Here, oy, that’s a bit steep!” Harry objected, in immediate self-defence.

“Grow up, Moira!” said Rita jadedly. “The only reason why people go to sea is to get away from land. And the only reason why they let us swarm aboard and swish about in our drag, and drink ourselves into Kingdom Come, is because otherwise the ships would have nothing but wogs for crew, and there’d be self-service in the galley!”

Harry finished up in silence, whipped some fruit from a dessert basket, hid it in a napkin and smuggled it back to the peak.

… .After all, what was there to say? It was near enough the truth. He himself had joined to get away from home, and from his growing involvement in Danny’s misery, as much as to avoid the call-up. He had stayed afloat because by then his tastes had matured, and society’s watchdogs ashore were on the look-out for him as much as for Rita, although his protective coloration was better.

Dan Mustoe was snoring in the peak, his dentures grinning cheerfully from the table top. Harry changed into his bathing slip, slung the napkin out of the porthole, and took the fruit, book, towel, cigarettes and sunglasses up to the fo’c’sle head. On his way he passed the crew room, and glimpsed Bernard talking to some wingers, and the sight of him came as a relief. For if, as Dad suggested, Lennie and some of the kids were mixed up in some dirty business, then Bernard was clearly the ringleader. For hadn’t Bernard spoken of “One of us”? One of what else? A ping-pong team?

So if, as the snapshot suggested, they had a meeting-place in one of the ports, then Bernard would need to be there as well.

… I ought to try and get a line on Bernard, Harry told himself. If I could find out where he goes ashore, then I’ll be getting pretty close to it!

Topside, the sun was noticeably warmer than it had been in Melbourne, and in the lee of a deckhouse, out of the breeze, there was quite a bite to it. Harry stretched out on the scrubbed-white, tar-smelling boards, pillowed his head on the towel, ate a pawpaw and closed his eyes. Presently, under his lashes, he saw Prince come up the ladder and pause at the top, uncertainly, the glove fingers dancing on his shoulder.

A few minutes later there was a light thud on the boards beside him, and Harry opened his eye. “Oh, not you again!” he groaned.

Prince was kneeling beside him, skinny and brown in a yellow bathing slip. “Snazzy!” said Harry, snapping the elastic waist with his finger.

He glanced round casually but there were still no other sun-bathers on deck. The forward hold had been battened down, and the derricks were deserted.

“I’m going to be in trouble, though!” Harry remarked, stretching his body to examine himself. “I had to wear one of them blasted things with a skirt, you know, it’s the regulation, and I’ll burn like blazes if I don’t watch out! ”

There was an inch of untanned skin above the waistband of his slip, and crescent-shaped areas at the tops of his thighs. The rest of him was not truly brown but the reddish, raw colour which was the best his pigmentation could manage. Prince inspected him solemnly, slighty awed, and then pumped his pillow into shape on the deck.

“Pillow!” said Harry. “Brainwave!”

“I’ll slip down and get yours if you want,” offered Prince hesitantly.

“It’s okay, ta. I’ll go without.”

“Or have the end of mine if you want.”

“What, and get your dandruff? Do me a favour, mate!” … Wouldn’t that look just too cosy if anyone copped them?

“I’ll get yours, then.” The boy was already on his feet.

“Well, don’t get spotted!”

“They won’t catch me! ” laughed Prince, bounding away and skidding down the ladder, hands only, not touching the rungs. He thumped onto the well-deck below.

… Famous last words? Harry lit a cigarette and closed his eyes, smiling, filled with a deep, warm sense of well-being. Prince sneaked back and dropped the pillow over his face. Harry hauled him, squirming and panting, across his lap and slapped his rump; sparking, like a flint on steel, a shattering incandescence of contact: the diabolical chemistry of attraction.

“Okay, settle down!” Shaken. Harry thrust him off. “If you want to play silly buggers, pick on someone your own size!”

Flushed, Prince flung himself down on his stomach. He lifted a corner of Harry’s towel. “Oh. fruit eh?”

“Help yourself,” sighed Harry. “But don’t scoff the lot!”

The boy propped himself on his elbow, eating slowly, looking down across Harry towards the sea.

“Where you from, anyrate?” Harry asked.

“St Mary Cray.”

“Gawd, that dump! No wonder you signed on!”

“What you on about?” Prince demanded. “It s all right, it is! Great little place!” He spat out an avocado stone. “Don’t know why they make such a fuss about these things. I reckon they’re mucky.”

“Cheeky little bugger! Whip your own next time!”

“No, I was choked off with school and that, see? And my old man was on at me to take up his trade.”

“What’s that?”

“Erection moulder.”

Harry hooted with laughter. “Is that like a tool hardener?”

“Don’t be rotten!” Prince slapped him lightly on the chest. “Anyrate it’s blooming good money.”

“There many of you back home? Or are you the eldest, or what?”

Prince nodded, his mouth bulging with fruit. “Mob of us.”

“What do they call you. anyway?”

The boy, frowning, chewed and swallowed. “Who me? You mean Prince?”

“You daft or something?”

The boy cleared his throat and shrugged uneasily. “Well … Princey, that sort of stuff.”

Harry laughed. “At home?”

“I sort of don’t use my Christian name, see?” He squatted on his haunches, rather tense, staring back towards the dusty shore.

“No. What is it then? Clarence? Hubert? Eustace? Julian? Roderick? Alistair? Beverly? Algernon?”

“It’s Daniel,” Prince muttered.

“What’s wrong with that?” asked Harry coolly. “Dan? … Or Danny? … Okay, ain’t it? No worse than Harry.”

The boy shook his head, his face averted. “Well, they just don’t use it, see? There was this other kid on the last trip, and they called him Danny. This Danny Sparrow, his name was. And they called me Princey.”

“Yeah, but he’s not aboard now, is he?”

“No . . Prince scowled, rubbing his hands. “But they got in the way of it, see?”

“Sounds crackers to me.” Harry’s voice sounded to himself so faint and incredulous that he wondered the boy didn’t notice.

“Well, I s’pose they don’t like to, really… . It was this kid what went overside, you know? Last trip home? … I s’pose they reckon it’s unlucky or something. They don’t like to talk about it.”

“You knew him?”

“Well, he was one of us bellboys… .”

Harry leant seriously towards the boy. “Why d’you reckon he done it?”

Prince shrugged violently, almost shuddering. “Search me!”

“Must’ve been some reason though, eh?”

“Look, I weren’t there!” cried the boy fiercely. “I know sod all about it!”

Frowning, Harry sat up and looked at his watch. “Hell, I’ll have to go ashore after all! I’ve forgot to send an air-letter home, and Colombo’ll be too late!”

“Oy, your fruit!” Prince shouted.

“Stuff it!” Harry called back to him, and went skidding down the ladder.

Only just in time, too! Diamond Lil and her court, in sunglasses, happi coats and shady hats, were making their way towards the sun-deck.

While old Mustoe snored on his bunk. Harry spread out an air-letter on the table, lit a cigarette and frowned over his difficult task. It was slow work, for he hated writing, and letters never came easily,

“Dear Dad”, he wrote… . For what else could you call the old devil? This might be a waste of time, but it was grim to think he might never have been officially informed. Yet who would have done so? Danny had named his mother as next of kin, and the Company’s letter of condolence had not suggested that they knew of an extant father somewhere. No messages had been exchanged between Lewisham and Picton, Harry was certain.

“I am writing to ask if you heard the terrible news about Danny? I expect you will have seen it in the papers, but I didn’t think to write you, as I was stranded in Aussie with troubles of my own. I was staying with his Mum and she took it very well. Anyrate, in case you missed it, I’m sorry to have to tell you that Danny was lost at sea, homeward bound last trip, a few months back. It was a great shock to us all, you can imagine.

“Well, Dad, as you will see I am an A/S on the ship now, I had the good luck to sign on for a replacement and you can guess why. Could you drop me a line, please. Dad, to one of the Canal ports, if there’s anything you know why Danny did this? I’m sorry, l should have said, it looks as if he jumped. It was too calm for an accident, and they reckon he was sober.

So did he say anything to you last time he was in London? Or did you hear anything from anyone on the ship afterwards? I’m set on finding out, Dad. So please write if you can, because after paying-off may be too late. Meanwhile hope you’re keeping fit. I’ll be in Tilbury around the end of Jan. and will look you up if that’s O.K. with you? Must close now Running out of space. Your Son, Harry.”

… Not that the old devil ever really cared, Harry thought, as he quickly changed into civvies. But at least he should be told the facts, and be allowed to help if he could.

They sailed from Fremantle between children’s teas and second dinners, and Harry went back to the head to watch. They slipped away from Australia without fuss, a modest, parochial farewell, as offhand as any Aussie could wish. Before he returned to the saloon the continent was no more than a long white chalk-stroke of beach underscoring a grey scrawl of bush. At dinner, between serving courses, he went through the empty Children’s saloon and opened a porthole, to find that the lines had been erased from the grey-blue slate of the horizon.

“Danny!”

It was an eerie coincidence! … Almost as though a very special, complicated trap was baited for him. As though a higher authority than the Company had at last got down to his name on the roster.

… Am I going towards, or sailing away? he wondered. Taking him with me, or leaving him behind?

Chapter Fourteen

Prince, dusting the back of a chair, stiffened but did not move away as Harry crossed the bar.

“Hi, son… . Happy in your work?” Harry felt warm with sleep, not yet at the point of wakefulness where night thoughts became daytime impossibilities: not yet sufficiently alert to get the shakes. He didn’t allow himself too much time to think, but relied on the automatic pilot of his predatory instincts.

The boy was ashen, distressed, beginning to shiver.

“You like it?”

A Lascar with a mop cut a swathe of rippling gold across the deck, but it was dark enough within the bar for moderate intimacy.

“What?” The boy did not move, however.

“You want to?” Harry murmured against his ear. Be my boy? You know?”

“Yeah, if you like …” Prince gulped. “I don’t mind.”

Harry tilted up the boy’s chin, saying seriously, “Look, you know what they’re like, and how they talk, and that… . So take it easy, eh?”

“I know!” said the boy indignantly, freeing himself, and suddenly blinking tears.

Patting him comfortingly, Harry smiled wryly and moved away. “We’ll fix something up.”

… I know how you feel, mate! he told himself bitterly. But this isn’t Ancient Greece. This is the world we live in. knee-deep in smut that rubs off on everything, and we have to beat it, and make the best of it.

The crew went back into whites as the ship sailed on into tropical summer, and the heat had its customary effect on the passengers’ morale. Overnight the atmosphere changed from Angela Thirkell to Somerset Maugham. The strapping Aussie girls in the Tourist Class, all set for marathon hikes through Yugoslavia and Morocco. came down to meals in suntops and shorts. Bare knees dimpled wantonly up and down the companionways, and the Boat Deck, the topsiders reported, was just a knocking shop after dark. There were the usual tall tales of Bedroom Stewards, and even the Table variety, making time in two-berth cabins with obliging twosomes. The consensus of fo’c’sle opinion was that maiden ladies only took sea trips in the hope of having it away with some lucky matelot; but you never heard reports from anyone who failed to substantiate this comforting theory.

Willie, despite the heat, was in an erotic frenzy over a young wife on his table, who, he assured them, was, with deliberate intent to provoke, making progressively revealing modifications to her neckline. He had to keep rushing out for drinks of water, which, he swore, just went up in steam.

“Sex maniac!” said Dad Mustoe contemptuously. “I seen her, and she’s got a massive great brute of a husband who could break you in half across his knee. She wouldn’t look twice at you, you tadpole! You might tickle her to death, but that’s about all!”

“It’s the heat, see?” Willie croaked excitedly. “She can’t help it! It’s a sort of madness, see? … Honest to God, sometimes I’m feared she’ll chase me out the galley and have me on the hot press!”

“Smack between the spinach and the mash,” said Marty, upending a beer bottle.

“Forget it, son,” said Dad, in his brown-papery voice. “You ain’t got the equipment!”

“No, but I got the technique!” said Willie sharply, smiling round in hope of confirmation.

“I tell you what,” said Harry, “you best try the old love sign on her, then you’ll know for sure.”

“What? What’s that?” Willie gibbering, leant across the table and grasped Harry’s shoulders, shaking him violently. “I got to know!”

“Calm down and I’ll tell you. You take her a plate of dessert, see, with a banana and two oranges. And if she takes the banana, and peals it very slowly, and pops it in her gob, you know you’re on. If she slices the banana, you’ve had your lot, and if she takes an orange, beat it quick before she slings it at you.”

Willie stared round excitedly, looking for support, and then said cynically, “Ah, nuts, you’re kidding.”

“Okay,” said Harry, deadpan, “don’t believe me.”

He glanced over at Dad, who was nodding and smiling in private amusement. “Where’s Farmer Bruce tonight?”

“The girls is having a party,” said Dad. “They go wild, same as the bloods, when we get to the tropics.”

“Eh?” Marty roared, wiping the beer froth from his lips with the back of his hand. “Why weren’t I invited, then?”

“You’re too rough,” said Harry, and the others laughed. “You tear their undies.”

Marty grinned, pulling on his jeans and swaggering off down the alley, bellowing, “Lil? Where are you, you old boot?”

It was steaming hot in the peak; the skuttles were out, catching stray wisps of breeze; and they were stripped like Lennie, with the exception of Dad, who kept to his baggy old underpants. Lennie and Ron dozed, stark on top of their bunks, and Phil, Willie and Harry slumped around the table, spread out so that one limb did not touch another. Phil, a cigarette drooping, was fighting to stay awake, nodding and jerking. It looked, Dad said, like a butcher’s shop.

“I suppose you reckon you know a lot about women, being as you’re so old!” muttered Willie, comically aggrieved.

“I’m always willing to learn,” smiled Harry lazily. “You got something to teach me, then?”

Dad chuckled asthmatically, tapping his chest like a barometer “You married, are you?”

“Not at the moment,” said Harry smoothly, with an adequate hint of mystery.

“Ah,” said Dad, staring at the bunk above.

Prince went down the alley, hands in pockets to hold up his jeans, a towel slung over his thin bare shoulder. He glanced into the peak and across the table at Harry, meeting his eye quite vacantly, without pause or acknowledgment.

… Good boy! thought Harry, quietly exhilarated.

“Yes, my missus skipped off and left me, the old bag,” said Dad musingly. “And she took the bleeding furniture with her. Cleaned the place out. Just because I was helping the Government out.”

“How was that?”

“Shortage of mailbags,” said Dad drily.

“Ah, well, you’re better off without her,” Harry said consolingly. Grievous bodily harm? He stood up and stretched. “Gawd, look at that!” He slid his palm across his chest and stomach. “I’m sweating like a pig! ”

“It’ll be worse before we get to Suez,” said Dad. “You’ll be roasted alive in that bleeding galley.”

“Cheerful! ” said Harry, tucking a towel round his waist and collecting his washing gear.

There were half a dozen men shaving at the basins, and three of the six shower cubicles were occupied. There were three showers against each bulkhead in a corner of the washroom, and they were thus completely visible, especially in the basin mirrors. They had curtains which were never drawn, since such a show of modesty was equated with secrecy. Also it would spoil the fun of the onlookers, because the salient feature of the showers was that they had no overhead spray but only a slanting jet, of tremendous force, which caught the unwary squarely in the genitals. Also the thermostat was very wayward, so that the sword became without warning scalding hot or shudderingly cold.

Prince was in the first cubicle on the left, back turned, soaping himself slowly. Harry took the first on the right, which was opposite, and did a slow, thorough job on himself. After a while the boy became aware of him, glanced casually over his shoulder, and continued to lather his narrow chest. A couple of wingers finished shaving and went away; another came in. A shower was vacated: two were occupied.

Marilyn dawdled in, trailing her mauve towelling skirt, and a few chesty types roared at her, “Men only!”

“Grow up!” she said nasally, simpering. “Mixed bathing is here to stay!”

They chased her, screaming, into the lavatory, and came back with her towel, which one of them prepared to sling out of the porthole, while she clung to his arm, whimpering, “No … please, please! … Oh, Princey. someone, stop the brutes! … Moira, please!”

Harry ignored the appeal, as though it could not possibly apply to him. Marilyn went down on her knees. “It’s all I have left in the world! I shan’t have a rag to my back! … I’ll do anything … anything!”

“Now’s your chance!” Harry told the others, who guffawed.

Prince glanced at her, sneered, and turned away.

Finally they let her go, and she got a safe distance beyond the door before yelling, “Nasty old he-men. taking advantage of an innocent virgin!”

There was a further bout of screaming down the alley, and presently five plate-house toughs strolled in, chuckling and flicking their towels like masters of a slave-ship.

“Right, now who’s coming out of the showers?’’ demanded one ape-like monster. He padded up and down, staring with small, mean eyes into the cubicles.

“Do you mind?” protested Harry, covering himself. “These ain’t the Cages, you know!”

The tough grunted and crossed over to Prince. “ ’Kay, sonny boy. time’s up! You’re clean as you’ll ever be!”

Prince glanced despairingly across at Harry, who, with a brief flicker of his eyes, told him to go as it was hopeless. He turned away to rinse himself and didn’t look back until the tough was bawling a song in the opposite cubicle and the boy had gone.

When he got below, a procession of mattresses was making its way out of the peak. “Too sweating hot in there.” complained Phil’s voice from under one of them. “Were going to sleep topside.”

“Great!” said Harry. “I reckon that’s favourite. I’ll join you.” He glanced up the alley and noted that the bellboys’ door was open.

In the event it proved fruitless, for they were still too far south. A chill breeze soon sprang up and drove the foolhardy vanguard back below.

“It was murder!” Harry told the boy next dawn. “Fairly froze ’em off me!”

Prince nodded sullenly and shifted his position, as if belatedly embarrassed by Harry’s nearness. “I was game to go up,” he said chokily, “but none of the others wouldn’t.”

“Just as well. You’d have looked daft up there on your jack.” Harry yawned and stretched. “Ah well, soon be warm enough for all-night deck games… . Fag?”

The boy shook his head, his face puffy with shyness.

“Might go up and take a late shower tonight,” said Harry, through the side of his mouth, cupping a match in his hands. “About eleven, might be a bit quieter.” He rested his hand on the boy’s uncombed head. “Eh?”

Prince shook his head quickly to free himself, with a warning jerk of his shoulder, and Harry saw a whole tribe of Lascars gathering shadowly against the dawn. “The Pundits are massing on the Frontier!” he observed, returning to his own end of the bar.

Morale being low at the best of times in the alcove tables, the downward tropical trend was less noticeable; at least until Lou Arnold started coming to table in a cotton dress with a bare midriff (accompanied by Ern, open-necked and coatless, showing a wiry pot-scourer of chest hair). Miss Withers, in the best Maugham tradition, adopted towards her the pained reproach of poor Mrs Davidson for the unfortunate Sadie Thompson.

The children degenerated wholeheartedly at the first hint of relaxation among their elders. The high-chair case, red as a ruby, bubbled and fumed and beat his mother with whatever lay to hand. “I’m afraid the sun’s got at him,” Mrs Poole apologized. “I really ought to have read some of those books on care and maintenance, but I never got round to it.” The high-chair case, a midget Doctor Johnson, glared at her with wordless scorn and dipped his bib into the gruel. “And now, of course. I’m going to have this other one. Why does one never learn by one’s mistakes?”

Harry gave her the usual look of polite astonishment, as though she had suddenly swelled up before his eyes. “Oh yes? What are you hoping for? A boy?”

“Or else a girl.”

She blinked when Harry laughed, and Mrs Avon-Gore looked aghast and all but clapped her hands to Wendy’s ears.

Leaving the table, Georgie dropped a trail of cutlery from his swaddling clothes as his mother carried him away. She came back, helping Harry to recover them, and looking really alarmed. “Oh dear! I wonder if it’s kleptomania? Or do you think he’s too young to catch it?”

“I should have him immunized, just in case.” Harry suggested.

Meeting Bernard on the well-deck that afternoon, while taking a breather before kids’ teas, Harry complained. “You’re dead lucky not to have kids’ meals. My lot are driving me up the wall!” He wondered how long it would be before Bernard discovered the loss of the photograph.

“They’re always at their worst in the tropics.” Bernard shook his head to decline the offer of a cigarette. “I don’t, thanks.”

… Not that you would! Harry thought. And I’ll bet you don’t drink. So what do you do for kicks? “For instance this little brat, Wendy. We had a terrific dust-up the day before yesterday because she wanted the one pink cake on this plate of fancies. One of the other kids had already bagged it. you know, licked her finger and poked it. and this Wendy howled the place down and kicked one of the others on the shin. But, fortunately there were two other Mummies there, looking daggers, and so her Mum, this soppy old cow, name of Avon-Gore . .

Bernard nodded. “I know her. Rather difficult woman. But I think she has problems.”

“Who hasn’t?” Harry shrugged. “So yesterday this brat nipped down and pinched the pink cake before the other kids got there, and so they did the sniffing and sobbing, while she sat and smiled like the cat what’s had the cream. So I told her to turn it up, and she grassed to her Mum, and so forth… .”

He smiled and waved his cigarette. “Anyrate I’ve fooled ’em today, I made some swaps, and so they’ll find six pink cakes! All identical!”

Suddenly, as if taken off his guard, Bernard laughed. And that was an odd thing because it made him look older, with lines stretching round his mouth and eyes. He laughed briefly, almost guiltily, as though he had no business to do so: as though laughter, being usually at someone else’s expense, and only to be earned by their discomfiture, was flatly against his principles.

“That sounds like good psychology,” he said, choking his laughter with merciless efficiency and burying it under a slab of gravity.

“It’s sheer self-defence.”

Bernard looked out over the rail, saying quietly, “I expect you’re good at that, too.”

Searching for an opening, Harry asked casually. “You interested in psychology and that sort of thing?”

Bernard’s eyes moved slowly to consider him. “In what way?”

“Well, you were saying you needed to be diplomatic, and that, to flog your wines to the bloods… . And I suppose it all boils down to psychology?”

“What doesn’t?” Bernard agreed.

“I mean, being on the ship so long, and being intelligent and that, I suppose you can’t help studying people. I mean you can’t get much closer to them. We just about live in each other’s pockets.”

Bernard, who had begun to look puzzled, said, “Ah, you mean the crew?”

“Ain’t we people?”

“I thought you meant the passengers, and of course one never gets close to them. I suppose head waiters can become a sort of father figure, but seldom a wine steward.”

“All the same,” said Harry innocently, “I’d have thought they were more your sort than the crew … I mean, let’s face it, most of us are scum.”

Bernard’s face lengthened severely. “Oh? … You think so?”

“I mean, like I said, you being educated and intelligent, and that, you must feel out of it. But I suppose you have hobbies, and such, to break the monotony?”

“Monotony?” echoed Bernard, quietly amazed. “This … this seething cauldron of humanity, monotonous?” He spread an incredulous hand towards the fo’c’sle.

“Well, I’d’ve said so… . Oh, when I was a kid I used to try and believe we were all different, but now I think we’re pretty much alike!”

“Oh,” said Bernard blankly. “Like ants?”

“And I suppose, what with the library, and chess, and going ashore… . You go ashore a good deal, do you?”

“Of course, why not?”

“And I suppose the time soon passes?”

“Is that your ambition, then?” Bernard slowly raised his episcopal brows. “Oh yes, it’s easy enough to kill time, as someone said. If you like it dead.”

Harry sniggered politely, taking this for a joke, and wondering how to press his advantage.

Bernard sidetracked him neatly. “Tin interested to know why you should describe yourself as scum?”

Shrugging uneasily, Harry smiled. “Aren’t we all? It’s all in a manner of speaking.”

“Yes … but I hoped you’d be more specific.”

Harry grinned, masking his discomfiture. “Ah now, that’d be telling!”

Bernard nodded. ‘That’s what 1 meant about your being good at self-defence. Neat footwork, guard well up. quick recovery. Why are you always on the defensive?”

“Aren’t we all, though?”

The older man looked at his watch, and then commented quietly, “For the second time, Shears, you forgot to say ‘Ain’t.’ ”

Harry forced himself to meet the relentless black eyes. “That’s your refining influence.” he said steadily. “You’re learning me to speak proper.”

“I’m sorry.’ said Bernard, turning away. “I shouldn’t have said that. It was quite unnecessarily rude.”

… Now who was getting a line on whom? Harry asked himself, very ill at ease.

The thought that he had somehow given himself away to Bernard (had that “learning me to speak proper” been a bit too camp? Bernard was no fool), worried Harry so much that he sought an occasion to correct the impression. That night, luckily, the library was open and Harry returned his thriller. The crew room was still fairly empty, as the men were below queueing at the beer hatch. Only two bellboys present, having a go with the darts before the toughs arrived to take over.

“Thanks,” Harry told Bernard. “Have you anything a bit more … er … elevating?”

Bernard stared at him without much warmth, and Harry sensed a deep, implacable disapproval. “Well, as I said before, it depends on your taste.”

“I think maybe my taste wants an overhaul,” said Harry brightly. “Can’t you do something about it? Suggest something? Use the old psychology? Bring the refining influence to work?”

Bernard looked briefly displeased. “Well, there’s some Dickens, and Trollope, and even Hardy.” He studied Harry and seemed to find an answer. “No sense in jumping in at the deep end, though. So perhaps De Maupassant. These are short stories, but see how you get on with them.”

“Well, why not?” Harry flipped unenthusiastically through the book and read the last few sentences. “Let’s have a bash at this culture lark. We got to learn sometime, ain’t we?” He glanced slyly at Bernard. “Oops, sorry. I mean, what is it? Aren’t we? … Haven’t we?”

The other shuffled his card-index and looked cross. “I said 1 was sorry about that.”

“No,” said Harry, with an attempt at candour, “I thought it was smart of you! … I mean, actually I can speak properly if I want to. I got into grammar school, as a matter of fact. It was bright of you to spot it. This old psychology thing really works, then?”

Bernard did not look in the least mollified. “Then why don’t you speak properly?”

Lowering his voice confidentially, Harry explained. “It don’t do in the fo’c’sle, you know. They just think you’re putting it on. A toffee-nose.” He felt his brain flick sharply like a spring-blade knife. Like a duellist, he waited for Bernard to lunge. And Bernard was better armed, no doubt about that!

“I don’t approve at all,” said Bernard coolly. “I hate to see any natural advantage being wasted.”

“Well, it’s my loss,” said Harry, parrying feebly. “I know what suits me best.”

“I don’t doubt that it’s your loss,” said Bernard feelingly. “And I don’t doubt that you think you know what’s best. Don’t we all? But if you’re so sure, why bother to come and explain it to me?”

… Ouch! thought Harry, inwardly wincing. “Sorry if I’m boring you,” he said flippantly. “I was only making conversation.”

“I ask you again, why are you always on your guard like this?”

For a moment, under the slightly mesmeric stare, Harry weakened. Bernard had the quality of a touchstone: you felt dismally convinced that you could never deceive him.

“It’s … well, the way I’ve had to live.” said Harry tensely, despising his surrender but powerless to avert it,

Bernard considered him a moment more, and then turned away as though the spectacle was too melancholy to bear. “Then I’m sorry for you, Shears,” he said.

Harry seized his book and left the room, blundering into Prince in the doorway, brushing against him, yet hardly conscious, until he reached his peak and drew his breath more easily, that he had done so.

Chapter Fifteen

As the “Cyclamen” headed north towards the line the social life of the fo’c’sle moved out onto the well-deck and the head. They spent every spare minute there, cutting corners off their work, skimping jobs and taking the chance that it wouldn’t be noticed, since, after all, the heat affected officers and Leading Hands as well. It was worth the risk of a logging, a reprimand, a fine, to get out of the sweltering galley, the steaming alleyways, the sweating peaks. Of course you ran new risks, rushing out in a lather, chest and stomach bare under a flapping jacket, to stand in the breeze. Everyone caught “galley throat”, and dragged through the endless hot days, weakened by waves of feverish chills, persistent coughs, running noses and smarting eyes. With a bit of luck, you could manage a break between dawn scrub-out and laying breakfast, and smoke your first cigarette of the day while the sun steamed up out of the ocean. You went back topside at eleven, after your strap-up and before kids’ lunches. If you weren’t on afternoon teas, you got a couple of hours in the sun, to strip off and laze, even to sleep if there was someone you could trust to waken you. Prince, who had a natural aptitude for subterfuge, was just the boy for this.

Every day, during the crossing of the Indian Ocean, Prince roused Harry in time to lay for kids’ teas, and very adroitly too, coming past from wherever he had been lying among the bellboys, and toeing Harry gently while he paused to stamp out a butt end. Sometimes, deeply asleep in the sun, Harry would be taken by surprise, waking with a startled groan, ready to curse some clumsy winger. On other days, dozing lightly, he would lie in wait for the summons, and flicker his eyelids open a moment, for the quick interchange of glances before the boy, poker-faced, made his way down to the ladder, his thin brown limbs gawky with tension, the knobbles of his spine gleaming in his rather round-shouldered walk, hair tufting, small rump pinched and absurd, half in, half out of the yellow triangle; the sight of him filling Harry with a tremulous, painful response, as debilitating as socially-acceptable love but even less dignified. And at the ladder he would turn to descend, until, with his chin at deck level, he would look back at Harry with the lifting twitch of his scarred lip that had to serve for a smile when they were not alone.

When, after a discreet interval, Harry went below, the boy would be watching artlessly from the bellboys’ peak to make sure he had succeeded in his task.

But it was in the evening that the head really came to life. Deck games on the well-deck, sometimes a sing-song, a rush for a quick dip in the swimming pool during the hour it was reserved for the crew, and then a general gathering along the rails to watch the sun’s transfiguration and the barbaric splendour of its fall, a giddy, mad Tamburlaine, luxuriating apogee of decadent magnificence; gorgeous, comparisoned Roi Soleil declining in a world running red as blood. Their silence bordered on an act of homage; indeed, for the majority, only a thin, residual sophistication of some twenty centuries overlaid the primal ignorance of the sunworshippers: and worship was a logical response, since, in the yawning hiatus of the Indian crossing, the sun and the ship outstared each other in a world wiped clean of terrestial irrelevances.

… If only I had the words! Harry thought more than once. But how do you describe this? Even grammar school doesn’t help you there.

On the second night out from Fremantle, finding Bernard beside him, he broke the devotional silence to put the question to him. “1 suppose everything’s been said about sunsets already? … Well, how would you describe it? You being a man of education.”

“I think I’d better put you right on that point, said Bernard mildly. “Like you, I went to grammar school. Like you, I suspect, I left too soon… . True, I went to college for a while, but I didn’t complete my studies. I thought I’d do more good outside.”

“What sort of college?”

“Theological.”

“Oh … well, you’ve obviously made better use of your time since.”

Bernard let that pass. “Yes, I suppose everything has been said about sunsets. About most things, in fact, but that’s really beside the point. One has to go on saying the important things, over and over, in the language of the day. And languages die more quickly than people realize. After all, Ruskin and Carlyle may have written some very significant things, but the language they wrote in is dead. Nobody reads them now. Except pedants.”

“Yes, but isn’t it a waste of time, saying things over and over,” said Harry impatiently, “if it’s there already in black and white?”

“But where is it?’’ Bernard smiled faintly and spread his hand. “Do you know? … In the libraries, yes. But what good is it doing, gathering dust on a shelf? … In any case, no one can read everything. Not even the vital things. And the balance of importance shifts. It’s relative. The things that were significant to the Victorians are less so to us. A new assessment must constantly be made. Like they rearrange the museums now, to make them catch the eye.”

“Yes,” said Harry, slightly at a loss, “but the chap in charge puts the things in a showcase in the way he thinks they look nice … I mean the way he thinks they’re important. And who’s he to judge?”

“An expert, probably,” said Bernard drily. “You don’t get curators from the Labour Exchange… . And he functions as an artist. That’s what the artist does. He makes his selection of significant things, words, shapes, colours, sounds, and shows them to you. That’s communication. That’s art.

Bernard studied him briefly, as though making sure he was awake and worth the trouble. “Take you, for instance, as the man in the street…”

“And a backstreet at that,” said Diamond Lil emerging from the gloom beyond Bernard.

“You may know vaguely that Plato said something about philosophy… .”

“Or, to be exact,” said Lil, “that Plato said that Socrates said… .”

“Just a moment, Derek,” said Bernard patiently. “But do you read Plato? No.”

“Correct,” said Harry. “Two marks to the panel.”

“But supposing someone you would listen to, would pop up on your TV screen … a personality … Lady Sneerwell, the famous quiz-mistress? And she gives you an up-to-date summary of Plato’s views in the language of the day? Then the chances are that you’d listen, and even take something in.”

“I don’t guarantee it,” said Harry, impressed but sardonic. “I think I know Lady Sneerwell. She gets a bit boss-eyed reading the teleprompter.”

“All cleavage and chandelier earrings, the gaudy bitch.” said Lil. “And what are you having such a cosy chat about?”

“We were trying to describe the sunset.” said Bernard, sighing. “Come on, Derek, we all know about your artistic sensibilities!”

“Unkind!” said Lil, pouting slightly. “That’s the other ones, Bernard! When will you learn? The ones that go round saying ‘Look at Shakespeare, Wilde, Gide’. All we have is dress sense, a passion for trivialities and an infallible memory for gossip.” She glanced casually seaward and drawled, “Indeed methinks ’Tis very like a whale.”

“Interesting,” said Bernard, “but hardly conclusive.”

“Sunsets are a bit too self-revelatory.” She sounded like an intelligent woman trying to be witty over cocktails. “Like what you can see in an egg yolk on St Valentine’s Eve… . Have I got my folklore straight?”

“Approximately.” said Bernard. “But please explain.”

“Try and stop her!” Harry muttered, lighting a cigarette.

“I mean it terribly depends what you see, doesn’t it?” Lil tried to sound arch but seemed aware that it didn’t fit the company.

“And what do you see?”

Lil touched her fair curls into place, face masklike, extraordinarily feminine, slitting her eyes against the glow. “Well… boats, galleons… . Madly chi chi. Like a Grafton Axworthy décor… .”

“Who?” asked Harry and Bernard together, except that the latter said, “Whom?” They exchanged a small, unwilling smile.

“Oh, you’re the end!” Lil sighed. “He’s just the gayest thing in stage designers, that’s all. He has a thing about the sea. Everything has to have shells, conches, bits of seaweed. Like this, I mean… . See that fourth cloud along? A sort of gilded nautilus with a mauve Triton running behind?” She gave a mock-romantic sigh, sending herself up in case Bernard was not quite matching her mood. “And then, let me see, a faraway golden city. There … about a million miles away on that lavender mountain. See it? Sort of Edmund Spenser. With a fairy prince, and so forth… .”

“Thank you,” Bernard interrupted quietly. “I think that’s quite revealing enough. How about you, Shears?”

Harry shrugged. “I pass. It’s not in my line. What do you see?”

“You asked me how one described a sunset?” Bernard had an enviable assurance. A one-man Brains Trust. He would give serious consideration to any question submitted, and answer it, confident that he could hold your attention with an interesting reply; even if the essence of the answer was that he hadn’t a clue. “One can, of course, indulge in imagery like our friend here. Or one can simply describe the shapes and list the colours. Or again, one can be technical and describe the cloud formations and weather conditions.”

“Yes,” Lil persisted, “but what do you see?”

Bernard, his hands on the rail, stared out into the mirrored spectacle with a quizzical interest, as though the ship were drifting abeam down a marvellous subterranean river towards the molten blaze of Eternity, and said calmly, “I see the sun setting.”

“Is that all?”

Bernard struck his palms on the rail, his tone incredulous, staring at Lil. Isn’t that enough?”

The caravels stretched in a column of route across the sky, sailing an amber current. A cortege bound for ritual dissolution in the night; turning, like peacocks, their brightest pennons briefly to salute the sun, in tatterdemalion elegance. And the far golden citadel, disenchanted, left an imprint of gilded turrets etched on a grey infinity, like the coinage of some irrecoverable past.

With an ache in his chest, and a burning behind the eyeballs, Harry turned away from Bernard and found Bruce on his other side.

“We used to have some fair old sunsets at home,” said Bruce, with leaden-footed rustic complacency.

Lil was singing soulfully. “Someday my prince will come… .”

Harry looked again at the long flushed roll of cloud, stretching out like a sandbar behind the phantasmal fleet, elongating tenuously, trailing a delicate point across the night. The roseate flush of scrubbed young flesh, titillated by awakening pulses.

He turned away in silence, remembering Prince under the shower, flicking his eyes once more in that brief, anguished gesture of dismissal. The dark huddled shapes already on the deck, and the faceless authority of the sunset-coloured Bridge, filled him with an intolerable, familiar sense of menace.

Presently he went below to fetch his bedding, timing his movements to separate himself from his peak-mates, particularly from Bruce, who was still trailing him with the dumb reproach of a browbeaten woolly sheepdog.

He laid his mattress where he customarily sunbathed, in the lee of a deckhouse, the pillow wedged against a paint-blistered air vent that curled its trumpet mouth over him. Not too close to that blasted great bell the topsiders kept ringing to change the watch. It always seemed to be eight bells when you were in your deepest sleep. Overhead spanned a web of singing wires, and the fore-mast light described a small, regular arc across the stars. It was the sea that whispered you to sleep, rather than the deep, buried heart-throb of the engines.

The sunset burned itself out, the embers cooling into the falling ash of dusk. There were outbreaks of starling twittering from up in the bows, where the queers nestled, roosting exotically. They were answered and eventually silenced by more full-throated cries. Occasionally Marilyn screamed. But they were only the riff-raff. Diamond Lil and her entourage had gone below.

Harry lay on his back, head pillowed on arm, the breeze gently lifting and smoothing the sheet over his bare chest. He smoked a cigarette, watching the mattress-burdened shadows padding past to sink into groups, hummocked like colonies of seals. A pair of husky males, to complete the analogy, barked and wrestled over a question of precedence up among the screamers. The sounds died gradually and were washed away by the creaming hiss of the bow-wave.

On the edge of sleep his heart thumped suddenly, racing into a pounding, accelerating gallop that dried his lips and brought the bile to his throat. He drew down his hand to touch the tentative fingers that had stroked his bare arm, turning casually on his hip to face the deckhouse shadow.

“Hi,” breathed Prince against his ear.

Chapter Sixteen

The bell clanged and the dove-grey light forced itself under Harry’s eyelids. Instantly alert, he rolled onto his stomach and peered round the air shaft. Archaically turbanned and smocked like a boys’-adventure corsair, the look-out picked his way through the huddled sleepers back to the prow, soon to be gilded as a living figurehead leading the ship into the dawn. Harry slid his hand, butterfly-soft, down the boy’s back to give his rump a warning shake, and, lips to the warm sleeping ear, murmured, “Princey!”

In a moment the boy had wakened, blinked fearfully at Harry, and had gone as he came, slithering sinuously, flat against the deck, around the corner of the deckhouse.

… Something tells me I didn’t debauch that one! Harry thought, rolling onto his back and outstaring a waning star… . He’s had some practice. But let’s not ask too many questions. Let’s not complain.

He closed his eyes, relaxed, waiting for the dreadful, hearty footsteps on the ladder, the shouted summons, the stewed tea getting cold in the peak.

The sun sprang out of the sea like the Lion of Judah, rattling spars and tossing a mane of brilliance, so that the water paled at the sight of it, and the ship obediently clad itself in golden livery. Five albatrosses, or, formed a heraldic device abaft the ship.

The sun cast its spears low through the windows of the bar, transfixing the Lascars who swarmed infuriatingly all round the deck. Harry and the boy, perforce, kept to their own ends of the room but invented excuses to meet and pass.

“Where were you, anyrate?” Harry asked him.

“Just round the corner,” said Prince gruffly. “With the lads.”

“Didn’t they notice nothing?’’

“Nah,” the boy sounded surlily proud. “They were spark out. Snoring like pigs.”

Passing him presently, Harry touched him and said. “I don’t want you to take all the risks. I’ll come tonight.”

“Nah,” said Prince scornfully. “It’s too dodgy. You’re so blooming big you’d be spotted.”

“True enough,’’ said Harry wonderingly, slightly perturbed by the cockiness. He bit his tongue to keep it silent … No questions, mind! No sense in spoiling things yet. Still three days and nights to Colombo, and, with luck, the weather might hold as far as Aden. After that, to judge by past experience, it would be difficult. After Aden the rack began to stretch and the screws to turn.

‘Good morning, ma’am,” said Harry brightly to Miss Withers. She was down first and he had her pill-swill waiting. “How’s the weather suiting you?”

It wasn’t of course; it was now too hot. So she would like a quick breakfast since she didn’t feel like “coping” with the other bloods.

Harry hustled obligingly, feeling sorry for the old misery. Life was a dreary affair for a bottled-up spinster. Also, of course, he had only three days left in which to charm a good drop out of her.

But he felt kindly disposed towards everyone. It was going to be a lucky day. Already, since scrub-out, he had seen Prince in the working alley, had queued behind him for breakfast (couldn’t do that too often), and, by a miraculous chance, had gone through the revolve with him, a coincidence that had unsettled them both. As he served Miss Withers to her handful of cereal, he could see the boy in the distance, moving about with plates of ham and tongue, tossing his hair with that curious sideways flick, an atavistic remembrance of a schoolboy forelock.

Throughout the day’s routine, which, back in harness, he performed without thought, just as he remembered orders at table without consciously memorizing them, his mind fed upon lush, erotic images, more fanciful than practical under such circumstances, more satisfying in anticipation, by their very nature, than in achievement. This exploratory infatuation he knew and suffered, even enjoyed, for what it was; at times sardonically amused by the juxtaposition of his decorum at the tables and his extravagantly indecorous speculations; the dovetailing of an opinion on the availability of fresh coffee into a roseate, frenzied vision of young, compliant, responsive flesh. At other times, alarmingly, this unexpected concretion of his constant dormant desires, betrayed him into an aberrant vacuum from which the external world was briefly eliminated; the shape of a spoon, a soup plate in his palm, the smooth skin of a virginal sausage would trigger a brief, devastating explosion, threatening his self-control with a calamitously ill-timed incandescence.

Yet even this did not seriously trouble him until, in the morning break, he went up to the well-deck to see that Cocos Island, close in to port, was no more than a bowing torment of palm trees in a thickening grey squall. Cursing savagely, he turned up his collar as the rain lashed across the deck and dripped from his nose and chin, hanging its spiteful pendants on his earlobes.

He stood no nonsense from the kids, his glance continually turning to the rain-starred portholes, and. at dinner, had to summon all his control to cope with the Arnolds’ hearty pleasantries.

After dinner and strap-up, the boy, so much in evidence all day, vanished from sight. Harry made desultory trips to the crew room and the washroom, and tried to invent a valid excuse for visiting the bellboys’ peak. At length, exhausted by his dejection, he stretched out in defeat on his bunk, listening to the rain on the scuttles and Willie on the mouth-organ trying to master Love Is A Many-Splendoured Thing.

Despite the downpour it was scarcely cooler in the peak, merely more humid. Harry stripped and lay with a punka-jet directed on to his face, staring in a despondent silence at the pipes and riveted plates close overhead,

“Fancy a beer, Carrots?” asked Bruce, coming over to give him a shake.

Harry shook his head and closed his eyes, and Bruce wandered out. Lonnie and Marty were absent. Dad laid out in a half-doze, Willie on the edge of his bunk sweating over his harmonica. Phil lethargically whitening his shoes.

“What you got there, Gutzer?” Willie asked when Ron darted in with the usual covered dish.

“Bit o’ that cold duck,’’ said Ron, hunching up in his corner. “I just fancied it.”

“Greedy hog,” said Dad tonelessly, eyes closed, dentures giving a menacing click. “I hope it chokes you.”

Ron ate like a monkey with light, neurotic movements of his fingers, a twitching, suspicious glance at nothing over his shoulder, back bent, small eyes fixed and concentrated, the great wedge of eyebrow running down his nose. All his senses turned inward. He dwelt in his intestine.

“At least he don’t make no noise with it,” grumbled Phil. “For Christ’s sake stop that horrible bloody racket! Why don’t you learn to play it?”

“How can I learn to play if I don’t practise?” Willie demanded.

“Well, do it somewhere else before you drive me up the wall!” Phil’s boyish face was puffy and sullen. He suffered badly from the heat, and, in spite of salt tablets, had collapsed in the galley at midday and felt a fool in consequence.

Willie blew a raspberry on the mouth-organ, closed his eyes and had a bash at The Yellow Rose of Texas.

Rubbing his blanco distastefully off his fingers (he was extremely, almost femininely, neat), Phil said “That does it!” He set his shoes to dry and took up his neatly-folded towel and plastic toilet bag.

“Going for a shower?” Harry inquired. “I reckon I’ll join you. I’m fairly sticking to the sheet.”

The washroom was deserted.

… This would never happen for Princey and me! Harry told himself sourly. “You okay now?” he asked Phil.

“Yeah.” The fair youth sidled cautiously into the shower, shielding himself against the treacherous down-thrust of the jet. “The heat always lays me out.”

“You didn’t ought to be on the tropical runs, then.”

“I know,” said Phil petulantly. “I wouldn’t stick it if it weren’t for my mates and that.”

Harry smiled to himself, recognizing the lingua franca of slipshod syntax: another grammar school boy on the run.

The heat certainly didn’t help Phil. It dried him out. Without his breathless exuberance he was as snuffed as a cold candle. That was apt enough, because his colouring and texture were curiously waxen, and his modestly-developed body had a flowing, sculptural neatness like a waxwork. A lifelike impression of schoolboy athlete who would be tubby in ten years’ time and bald in twenty.

“You and Willie been on this hulk all the time, have you?”

Phil nodded, spluttering as he soaped his face.

“Straight from school?-’

“More or less.”

“You were a bellboy, then?”

“Yeah, for a kick-off … Ain’t we all?”

Harry began to sing disarmingly, breaking off to observe with a laugh, “Didn’t old Bernard tick you off for saying ain’t’?”

“Well, you know …” Phil sniggered. “He’s always trying to educate you, and that …”

“He was up to his tricks even then, was he?”

Phil turned his back, soaping his shoulders, the suds dribbling down over his waxen haunches. “Oh, the same old stuff …”

“And I suppose he was after you, like the rest?”

Phil peered over his shoulder, soapy-eared. “What?”

“I mean he takes a great interest in the boys!” Harry jeered.

“Yeah … well, it wasn’t in my line, though.”

“So he’s given you up for lost, I suppose?”

Phil humped his shoulders. “Oh, he don’t never give in. He’ll have anyone, I guess, if they’re interested …”

… No wonder Willie disliked Bernard so much!

“What about Willie?”

Phil giggled, regaining some of his animation under the excitation of the shower. “Old Croaker told him to get knotted!”

Harry continued to sing and to revolve these statements in his mind.

“Mind you,” Phil added, rinsing himself and stepping out to flick off the water, “Old Bernard’s all right. I suppose, if you like’ that sort of thing. But I had enough of it at school.”

. . .So I should imagine, mate! Harry thought, considering Phil in this light.

Then Willie came slouching in, bent-kneed like Groucho Marx, wearing an embarrassed grin to hide his climb-down. “Okay!” he rasped. “Back to your own cubicles!”

“You bloody croaking beanpole!” cried Phil, relieved, splashing water at him.

“I can see I’m not wanted,” said Harry, rinsing and drying himself. “I’ll leave you alone together.”

… Now that was mean! he told himself, going down to the peak… . Why did I have to spoil it for them? Isn’t it tough enough?

“Turn that light out, son, and let’s get some bleeding shuteye,” mumbled Dad from the shadows. Supine, Ron was huddled like an Auschwitz victim. It was still raining in desultory squalls and the deck was wet under the scuttles.

“Some hope of that!” said Harry, snapping up the switch. “Not with that noisy bastard Marty still to come!” He stretched out on top of his sheet, with the punka-jet twitching the fine blond hairs on his limbs, the oily chestnut tangles of armpit and pubic hairs, the springy ginger close-cropped on his head that felt so like a doormat. Somewhere close at hand, Lennie was talking quite animatedly. Not whimpering this time.

Bernard seemed to have pretty catholic tastes, Harry observed. His approach seemed to work best with the reserved, introspective ones. Or the just plain stupid ones, perhaps. Lennie, Princey, and this bellboy, Patrick, who was also “one of us”, was he not? Patrick was a tall, hulking, tousle-haired lad with a very Irish jaw and a grin that widened with shyness. Yes, they all had something in common.

No wonder Phil hadn’t fitted in with that click. Except when under the weather, he was much too lively and open, too impudent. Too healthy and normal, if “normal” was valid currency as a shipboard term.

Harry lit a cigarette and watched the smoke whorled away by the air jet.

For how normal was anyone? Which were the normal ones … The screamers tried to pretend that everyone was like themselves; they called you “Moira” and such, and tried you out with camp expressions to see if your eyes lit up. And of course there were, at the other extreme, the butch types too dull to catch the general drift, who misunderstood or wilfully forgot the things that happened to them, as they did to any man. But, those apart, everyone really knew the score, and all you did was to take up an established attitude towards it. And that depended on who you were, where you lived, the job you did and the money you earned.

In fact the world was mostly divided into those who did and those who didn’t dare.

Lennie’s voice was slightly raised, and Harry lifted his head from the pillow on hearing Bernard’s name.

The voices were coming over the bulkhead from the next peak.

“Show us those that Bernard took.” Lennie had asked.

Harry eased himself into a sitting position, drew up his knees, and raised his head slowly into the space between a pipe and the bulkhead. By angling gingerly he could look down with one eye into the adjoining peak. He saw the top of Lennie’s head, his shoulder and his thighs, and the best part of the winger sitting beside him on the top bunk immediately beyond the partition. They had a photograph album open between them.

The other was a stocky young Welshman with a lively, gnomish face and a lecherous droop to his eyelids, who was nicknamed Ram. Harry had not associated him with Bernard. He hardly looked the type, except that, like Lennie. and as his nickname implied, he seemed in some respects over-mature.

“Yeah, that’s it,’ said Lennie, leaning over to obscure the page. “Terrific place, though. You didn’t come last time, did you?”

“No, I was on keys,” said Ram.

Their unguarded tones suggested that the peak was otherwise empty.

“Coming this time?

“Well, hope so, boy. Depends on the roster, though, don’t it?”

“Don’t be daft,” said Lennie. “Tell Bernard and he’ll get you off … he can always wangle it for any of us.”

“What? The Chief know where we go, does he?”

Lennie shrugged. “What’s it to him? Bernard’s well in. And what happens shoreside ain’t the Chiefs look-out.”

He moved back to his former position and Harry stared down at the page.

“It’s terrific is that swimming pool! ” Ram said.

Lennie sighed contentedly. “Yeah, and at Mount Lavinia.”

“Jesus, man, it was hot enough for a bath, last time we went! ”

Harry stared at the two photographs on the page. One was a blurred group of lads in swimming costume. The other was sharp and clear. Almost 3 D, the way it leapt out at you. Just a view of the mountain seen beyond the white terrace rail, with Lennie in a mid shot. Prince’s head and shoulders, and, almost out of the frame on the other side, a bare forearm and a hand resting casually on a towel.

Harry’s eyeball ached, watering, blurring the focus, staring at his half-brother’s hand.

Then, hearing the lads coming down the alley, he slid quietly back into a sleeping posture, while his mind raced frantically, trying to place the terrace in relation to Mount Lavinia.

… Swimming pool? But you swam from the rocks at Mount Lavinia! And surely the low hills behind were terraced with paddy fields?

… Two days! he told himself despairingly. Only two days!

Chapter Seventeen

“Well, only two days to Colombo,” said Harry brightly next morning, noting that the dawn was clear and promising. “You going ashore, did you say?

The boy shrugged. He seemed in a bad mood. “You?”

“Depends on the roster, don’t it?” Harry knew this wouldn’t worry Prince, since apparently Bernard could wangle whoever he liked ashore.

Taking advantage of the momentarily-empty decks beyond the windows, Harry crossed to sling an arm round the boy. “Pity about last night,’’ he said, and gave him a cigarette.

While he lit it, obeying an uncontrollable impulse, he asked casually “Whose boy were you last trip?”

Prince stared at him, half comprehending, the cicatrice whitening on his upper lip. “Come again?”

“Don’t be daft.” said Harry gently, grinning and ruffling his hair. “I ain’t bothered … I only asked … Old Bernard, was it?”

The boy thrust fiercely away from him. “Don’t be rotten!” he said repugnantly, suddenly blinking.

“Look, it was a joke …” smiled Harry weakly, aware of a grave tactical error.

The boy ran out of the bar and hurried down the passageway.

“Oy! What about the dusting?” Harry called after him, but Prince didn’t look back.

Well, that was bloody clever! he told himself savagely.

During the day he noted a small but curious fact. Outside the alcove, while Harry was serving lunch, Bernard stopped and spoke to the boy, who had just marched through from the galley ignoring Harry completely.

“Prince,” said Bernard warningly, “look sharp, they want you at the buffet!”

The boy nodded and hastened away, and Bernard came on to try and flog the bloods something to wash down the rather tough beef. “Hullo, Shears,” he said in passing.

… “Shears,” Harry thought. Well, fair enough, since Bernard evidently didn’t wish to get on to familiar terms with him. Even though he called everyone else by their Christian names … Everyone except Prince.

Just force of habit, as the boy had suggested? Or did the name of Danny awaken painful memories for Bernard too?

Or was Prince, for some reason, in disgrace?

“Yes, madam, you were the saute?” If the little nit had confessed to Bernard, well, too bad for all concerned. No sense in looking for trouble. Maybe he’d soon have enough on Bernard to keep his mouth shut.

“Harry!” cried Lou Arnold, flicking her jewelled fingers with a faint, odalisque tinkling. “When do we cross the Equator?”

“Sometime after lunch, ma’am. They’ll tell you on the loudspeakers. But you won’t feel a thing.”

She beamed at him, prepared for the gag. “How was that?’’

“Well, sometimes if the tide’s out there’s a bit of a bump.”

“Oho,” said Miss Hathaway roundly. “None of your Ancient Mariner stuff!”

“And will King Neptune come aboard and start lathering people and chucking them in the pool?” Lou excitedly demanded.

“Not homeward bound, ma’am. Not unless you absolutely insist.”

He caught the eye of Bernard, who was returning from drawing a blank with the Margravines, and the latter gave him a slightly conspiratorial smile which confused Harry even further.

… Anyrate, what am I so bloody cheerful about? he asked himself angrily.

Prince kept out of Harry’s way all morning, but in the afternoon break on the fo’c’sle head, passed by on his way to sunbathe. His glance avoided Harry with every appearance of deliberate intent. True, he was walking with Patrick’s clumsy hand on his shoulder, and two other bellboys at his heels, but this was more than natural caution. If all had been well between them, Harry thought, a brief flicker of a glance would not have been too much to expect.

He rolled on to his stomach, casually watching the group cross the deck, and noted another small but curious phenomenon. Lennie and Ram were sprawled a little further forward, but, when Prince crossed in front of them, they looked blank and gave no sign of acknowledgment.

… Bernard has them well trained! Harry thought. It’s a very secret society, I must say!

True, there was a reason for excessive caution, because a party of queers, in raffia hats, beachwear and sunglasses, were gathered on coloured rubber mattresses and tartan rugs, having a gay little picnic just ahead of the two wingers. As far as the bellboys were concerned, whether first-trippers or not, it was wise not to attract too much attention today. There was no real precedent for a Line-crossing orgy homeward bound, but doubtless the girls were planning a party and one thing could lead to another. The extremists could always be relied on to aggravate a bit of mayhem.

Bernard, on the other hand, seemed to enjoy a magnificent neutrality. There was gossip and jealousy, of course, but these could be easily offset by his popularity and prestige. He appeared briefly on deck during the afternoon, fully dressed, not bent on sunbathing. (Did he never strip off and bask like ordinary mortals? Never take a shower?) He said hullo to the bellboys, to Lennie and Ram. to Diamond Lil and the girls, and to a couple of butch types who were resting after a grunting, sweating bout of catch-as-catch-can. He spoke to someone up in the bows, and, returning, even said “Hullo. Shears, hot enough for you?” to Harry. Fair shares all round.

But no one was neutral! So where did he belong? A genuine lone wolf, perhaps?

… And what else am I? Harry considered. Is that what we have in common? And why we hate each other’s guts? Am I getting closer to him than I know because I’m poaching?

“Lone wolf” sounded romantic when you said it to yourself, and yet it had a dismal, hollow ring. But he had no other choice. There was no easy way out, such as there was for the screamers. They could be as outrageous as they liked, because they succeeded or failed at that level. They had to be widely self-advertised for what they were, a logical if incomplete alternative. But for Harry, for the lone wolves, the approach could never be so barefaced: it must be masked with a sham of masculine indifference, a reticent obliquity. And much more was at stake, other emotions involved – affection and tenderness as well as desire. Screamers had no such problems. On their superficial plane, their guiding passions were malice, jealousy, and callous, greedy promiscuity. And nine-tenths of it, to be honest, was just talk.

… We aren’t really a substitute for anything, Harry thought glumly. We just take advantage of a temporary lack of affection, a sense of insecurity. We’re sneaking opportunists. Or, to put it into fo’c’sle idiom, we get stuck in while the going is good.

Harry closed his eyes, unable to sleep, wondering if Prince would still come by to rouse him. He shut out the image of Patrick’s hand on the boy’s shoulder. Only screamers were jealous.

He was aroused by a hot pin-prick on his stomach. Prince had paused to light a cigarette and had flicked the match at him. Harry registered annoyance, in case the incident had been observed, rubbed his stomach and said sharply “Oy, watch it, mate!”

Patrick grinned cheekily, and said to Prince “What’s this? Smoking now?”

“Oh, I’m full of tricks!” said the boy airily.

He went down the ladder with Patrick on his heels, so the question of whether he would or would not glance back at Harry did not arise.

The boy then disappeared for the rest of the day. Impossible to say that it was deliberate, since, amid the general scurry, meetings could only be by chance. But he was at his post at dinner, by the cold buffet, away across the animated wasteland of damask, silver (and tonight, fancy dress), yet made no excuse to approach the alcove.

“I’ve just dropped a ghastly clanger,” drawled Rita, widowing after Harry into the ice-cream queue. “I asked one of my bloods what she was supposed to be – she looks a cross between a pirate wench and the Queen of Sheba – and it transpired she was in her ordinary evening drag!”

The whole business of the phoney galas was a terrible bore, and they made such a mess to clear up after. It was pathetic to see the bloods gaily trying on paper hats, blowing whistles and throwing streamers, pretending to be bosom pals with people they would hate again at breakfast.

Miss Hathaway looked decent and demure as a Quaker Girl. W/Cdr Walsh had hired a Regency Court dress, a bit tatty, with lace that dripped into the soup. His clipped grey moustache didn’t quite go. Renolds was going to be one of those part-time temporary pirates with eyepatch. paisley scarf and full evening dress. Miss Withers absented herself. Lou Arnold was boozed-up already. And she really was the Queen of Sheba, in a huge pink wrap-over skirt that didn’t quite wrap over enough, black-ringleted wing like a string box gone berserk, peacock-styled coronet, and a silver bust-holder from which her bubs threatened to emerge any time now with an audible, juicy plop. Renolds eyed them nervously, and eventually put the eyepatch over the nearside eye. The W/Cdr’s thin straight mouth trembled continuously under the impassive moustache.

“Well, Harry, what do you think?” She flung out her arms with near-disastrous results.

“I’m not allowed to say, ma’am,” he told her gravely.

Lou elbowed him fiercely in the ribs and said “Go on, be a devil!” Miss Hathaway had a sudden choking fit and withdrew inside her bonnet.

Arnold was in evening dress, and would be changing later, he told them, while his wife looked roguishly disapproving. Harry could guess in to what. A pink bow and goosepimples. There was always one of them that had to come as Cupid. Nice little problem for the Purser, anyway.

The festive spirit infected the fo’c’sle, if only in mocking echo, in ironical parody. A lot of scoffing in the peaks, as the food was better than usual. (For all their fancy names they were the same old basic menus.) The queers were squealing gaily, changing into full drag and warpaint, and scuffling pettishly over mirrors and powder-puffs. They were going to give a concert in the crew room, someone said. Lil had promised to render her signature tune Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend.

Harry went up early to shave, to get away from the racket and brood over the possible waste of another night. The washroom was empty, and he lengthened his stay by taking a leisurely shower. Then Marilyn came in and said, rather too knowingly “Oh my Gawd, not you again! Do you live here, or something? You’re always on show!”

“Belt up, you poxy wench!” said Harry surlily. “Don’t look, then, if you ain’t interested.”

“Don’t start flashing at me, you horrible, long, red beast! You revolting lump of raw meat!” she simpered. “I know all about you, dear!”

They all said that, of course, but for a moment Harry wasn’t absolutely sure.

“You shower a bit more often, and you’d get rid of them spots,” he said to hide this sudden alarm. “You pox-ridden bitch.”

Marilyn pouted into the mirror and patted her face. “I’m on the turn, that’s all. It’s my change of life.”

“Well, well!” said Harry, breathing more easily. “And what are you going to be next?’’ … And that’s what a guilty conscience does for you! he told himself.

It was murder down in the peak. Willie and Phil were playing harmonicas, Bruce was arguing with Dad, Ron munching through a pawpaw with the singlemindedness of a termite. Noise flowed up and down the alley; people ran past and bottles clinked. Harry took his swimsuit and towel and went topside, up the ladder to A Deck and along the crew’s route to the swimming pool.

From horizon to horizon a mass rally of grey feathers in open order sailed across a bitter yellow that had an unsettling green tinge of infinity. Behind the chintz curtains of the A Deck cabins, glasses clinked, and the unique, shrill merriment of Gala Night echoed between the bulkheads. Beyond the glass doors of the lounge (secured on this side in case any blood should stray out and be contaminated, if not actually assaulted, by the passing crew), paper hats and streamers eddied over a swirl of black and pink shoulders and a giddy kaleidoscope of clashing colours. Now and then the condescending tones of the First Officer, badly miscast as Lord of Misrule, announced oxer the speakers that Housey-Housey or the Slippery Pole or some such mad frivolity, was about to commence.

There were a dozen of the crew around the pool. Few of them were in the tepid, salty water for more than a minute at a time, because once in, there was nothing to do except splash those on the brink, or clamber out and shove someone else in. It was too small for swimming, and not in the least refreshing, and only served as an excuse for the bloods to wear their swimsuits and show off the configuration if not the detail of their geography.

“And here’s another mug!’ cried Marty, tackling him very low and hurling him gleefully into the water.

Harry called him a bastard. Marty told him to say that again. He said it again. Marty leapt on to him and tried to hold him under. He wriggled free and held Marty under. They grappled, twined and grunted. They came up and gasped.

Marty did an impersonation of a seal. Then they climbed out and Marty said “Who’s got a bukshee fag?”

“Hold on,” said Harry, looking inside his slip.

“I’ll smoke that instead!” roared Marty, grabbing. They fell into the pool.

Harry climbed out, and someone pushed him in on top of Marty, who held him under. He fouled Marty and got loose. They sat on the edge and gasped, and Harry said “I’ve got some fags in my gear,” so they called it a night.

The crew had a changing room under the bar. Marty swaggered across, beating his chest to taunt the bloods who were gawking, glasses in hands, through the windows that Harry and Prince dusted at dawn.

“No wonder it gets so bloody dusty!” Harry complained, watching a great fat cardinal flicking cigar ash around.

Patrick and another bellboy were changing modestly in a corner of the room. Marty leered at them as they went out. “Wonder if old Bernard’ll hide ’em out again?”

Harry raised his eyebrows, studying Marty with an envy that it was useless to try and dissemble,

“He does, outward bound, you know!” Marty confided. “But it’s a bloody mystery where!”

“They don’t do nothing to them going home,” Harry objected, with an ungovernable spasm of protective anguish.

“I don’t know so much!” Marty winked suggestively. “Depends how it takes ’em, like. You know what the queers are when they’ve had a few gins! And there’s plenty more what join in, and swear blind afterwards they was drunk and didn’t know what happened! We had a right old shindy on the way out. The bastards were even after me! But I banged a few of their nuts together and they soon cooled off.”

“Where did he hide ’em, you reckon?”

Marty shrugged massively, giving himself a lovingly attentive towelling. “They weren’t nowhere in the fo’c’sle, because we practically tore the place apart.”

“We?”

“Oh, I just went along for a giggle,” said Marty blandly. “I wanted to see what they did, like.”

“In the passengers’ quarters?”

“Must’ve been. But don’t ask me how.”

“Lot of fuss over nothing,” said Harry casually, turning his back on Marty. “It don’t do ’em no harm! Christ, if they’re that soft they didn’t ought to go to sea. They should stop home with Mummy!”

“Just what I say,” Marty agreed. “Way I look at it, you got to face up to these things, ain’t you? I mean, in the Brigade, you know … Well, some of the dodges they get up to. Well, it might sound a bit weird if I was to tell you. I mean, you get a lot of these characters hanging round the barracks, and that.” For the first time he sounded vaguely uneasy, and his bluffness didn’t quite conceal it. “But, I mean, the way I look at it, it’s just a bit of a giggle, see? You don’t want to make nothing of it, or, I mean, Christ, where are you? If you’re going to start worrying about things like that …”

“Well, there you are!” Harry agreed, his back still turned. “Anyrate,” said Marty happily, “I reckon old Bernard may have to do his stuff tonight.”

“You heard something?” Harry glanced across his shoulder. Marty’s face, emerging through his singlet, wore a cheerful evasive grimace. “Well, you never know your luck, do you?” For a moment he had the odd impression that Marty was trying to warn him. But he dismissed the thought … The oaf was surely too thick-headed for that?

Chapter Eighteen

The lemon sky perversely turned to an unripe acidulous green. The army of feathers dissolved, and a sombre brown bolster of cloud lay upon the horizon, muffling the dull bronze glimmer of the sun.

Harry collected his bedding from the empty peak and went topside to bag his sleeping space. In the glimmer of the first stars and a nail-paring of moon, amid occasional dramatic drifts of light from doors and portholes, and velvet stretches of warm darkness, the crew was gathering on the well-deck, perched on the rails, hatches and ladders, or leaning over from the fo’c’sle: a theatrical, indeed operatic, effect: almost a scene from Billy Budd. Three harmonicas and an accordion were playing, with tentative interruptions from the learner-trumpeter, and the company was indulging in those sentimental ballads that seamen really do sing, when it’s warm and dark enough, and the mood is on them. The Rose of Tralee, with Irish tenors to the fore, A Long, Long Trail, and Lili Marlene. Then, perhaps in mockery of the para-naval pretensions of the Bridge, What Shall We Do With The Drunken Sailor? which was probably the only sea shanty they knew. Dad (toothless) and a couple of old-salt cronies, tried to follow with Shenandoah, but were shouted down. They had a scurrilous marching song instead, the M.N. version of When There Isn’t A Girl About.

Harry leant over the rail of the head, smoking and watching, unable to relax. In the brief pauses for coughing and shuffling before a new song took hold, the water hissed and purred along the hull far below, where the flying fish still fled in green-glittering shoals, making their clumsy, panic-stricken glides, toppling and spinning when they hit the surface, extinguished like phosphorescent sparks. In the pauses, too, the sounds of revelry floated forward from the public rooms.

With the waning green light picking out the superstructure, as the sky and ocean interpenetrated in the dark, Harry was aware of the ship as an entity, slightly ludicrous, frighteningly small; a stark little seaside hotel chugging across the curvature of the earth with its cargo of monstrous inanities, paper hats, winning numbers, spot prizes, cocktail sticks, sets of souvenir menu cards; along with those shipboard banalities, the tedious, brief loves and hates that spread like cobwebs among the bric-a-brac with which the Company sought to distract them from the terrifying isolation and the brazen impudence of their endeavour.

Now that the sun had gone, a lambent trifurcated fan of light was spreading upward, as pale as watered honey, tinged with this spine-chilling green, imprisoning in its beams tiny, intricate twists and threads of vapour; cabalistic pictograms. the hieroglyphs of some unspoken tongue. But the bloods were busy crying “House!” and straddling the slippery pole to fight with pillows, and the crew were singing Show Me The Way To Go Home.

“Don’t ask me again.” said Bernard’s quiet voice, “it defeats me. Perhaps it’s better not to try.”

“What’s that accent you have?” Harry asked, to make conversation, because reflective silences with Bernard were intolerable.

‘Hertfordshire.”

“Oh yes?”

“St Albans,” Bernard sounded reproachful. “I know they all sound like Mummerzet to you sophisticated Londoners.”

“How d’you know I’m a Londoner?”

“Oh, please!” Bernard protested rather impatiently, moving closer to the rail over the well-deck and staring down. He seemed to be unusually restive tonight.

… Well. I did tell Lennie! Harry reminded himself… . Of course they go running to Bernard with their bits of gossip. All except Princey, I hope! But would Bernard speak to me if he knew? Has he come to check up? Or is turning the blind eye part of his racket?

Bernard, however, was more interested in the scene below. There was some ironical cheering, the harmonicas played the National Anthem, some of the company rose and a few abased themselves, as Lil stepped out onto the deck.

“Dear subjects, they said you were calling for me!” she said, in a shrill, South Kensington tone. “I’ve just come out on the balcony for a moment.” She waved her hands stiffly outward from the elbow, inclining to right and left as she toured the deck. She wore a long, white clinging gown, white gloves, drop earrings, silver high heels, and what looked like a silver fox stole, over an unobstrusively false bust.

“God Almighty!” said Harry.

Lil was followed by Rita in red velvet, Patience in a gay print frock and a flowered straw hat, and others in less successful travesty. Rita and Patience were manifest imposters, sending themselves up by walking hand on hip and waggling their rumps; the rest of the rabble dropped inelegant curtseys, finger to chin, and jostled for precedence. But Lil exhibited an absolute mastery in her impersonation.

“So as to deceive, if possible, even the elect,” said Bernard, with quiet, sad distaste.

“Well, it’s a talent of sorts,” said Harry grudgingly, feeling that this was rather hard on Lil.

“Actually,” Bernard murmured, “Derek has a remarkable gift of mimicry, if you like that sort of thing.”

The crew had caught the mocking spirit of the occasion, and were roaring. “Speech!”

Lil was handed up onto the hatch-cover, and the mouth-organs played a ragged fanfare. After some hushing and bickering, she declared, “My loyal subjects, gathered as we are today, on this happy occasion, on our royal yacht, to celebrate yet another successful crossing of the Equator, under the able command of our gallant Captain … er … er… . Ooh, I’ve lost me notes!” (Loud aside) “What is the dreary man’s name?” (Prolonged ironical cheers).

Several passengers were gaping down from the Promenade, cooling their gala heads, and Harry wondered what they made of the scene. The dear boys doing their amateur theatricals?

“And in conclusion may I wish each and every member of our great family of nations, whether large or small, near or far, black or blue, gay or butch… .”

The rest was drowned in a great uproar, from which occasional phrases surfaced “near and dear to us …” “united as we are in the common weal …” “from whom we may be separated at this festive time …” only to be swamped again, with cries of “Belt up!” and “Old boot!” from a gang of toughs, followed by counter cries and a scuffle.

“… and long may I reign, happy and glorious, world without end, Amen!”

Lil, startled by a pinch on the rump, then screamed, leapt down into the midst of her retainers crying. “Treason!” and fled from the scene, pursued by a having mob of wingers. The screaming died away below.

Then, close below, there was a more vicious uproar and a sobbing cry of genuine distress from Marilyn.

“Excuse me.” said Bernard tensely, passing Harry and going down the ladder.

As he reached the well-deck the other sounds stopped, and there was a curious, whispering silence. Everyone seemed to become aware of Bernard at the same moment, and he to sense their antipathy. Harry saw lips turning to mutter from ear to car, sly grins, and a sudden air of tight, inexplicable hostility stiffening the lounging attitudes of the men. The music prompted them, and, in twos and threes, they joined in to sing “Oh, Danny Boy… ”

Harry gripped the rail, peering down into the shadows, trying to pick out the instigators of this disturbing demonstration. Some of the singers appeared to be shame-faced, faltering when Bernard turned in their direction, or else singing louder in a weak bravado: but otherwise it seemed to be spontaneous. There could be no doubt as to its significance. It was an ugly thought that a boy’s death meant less to them than the chance of mocking a social superior, or boot-licker, or arch-fiddler, or whatever they resented Bernard for being.

It did not necessarily mean, Harry told himself firmly, that they implied Bernard’s responsibility for Danny’s death. It need only mean that they would like to think so.

Nor was it unanimous, for Harry could pick out several who where not singing. He watched Bernard turn very slowly on his heel, outstaring them all; but, from this altitude, his expresssion could not be seen. Then he walked slowly away below; and, almost immediately, Lennie rose and followed, with Ram and another winger close behind. The other Wine Stewards went down together; but this, Harry suspected, was from a different kind of loyalty – class solidarity. And, with their departure, the singing began to falter.

Patrick and two other bellboys, scowling with embarrassment, strode defiantly across the deck. A curiously touching gesture, like young Christians volunteering for the lions, it finally shamed the well-deck into silence. So that when Prince came quietly past Harry, from somewhere up in the darkness of the bows, and down the ladder, his footsteps pattered through the stillness.

Harry glanced down at his awkward bowed head and shoulders and felt he had been shut out of something rather noble. Mock-heroic, perhaps, but…

“All right, lads! ” cried someone heartily. “Let’s have Nellie Dean!”

When the singing had recommenced, Harry yawned and stretched, slowly descended the ladder, had a word about the weather with Bruce, and went below.

The peaks were silent and the whole fo’c’sle sounded empty. The bellboys’ door was open, and Harry went up and looked inside. He still did not know which was Prince’s bunk, except that it was not one of those visible from the door. The bunks were still made up, so it was impossible to say if any of the boys were proposing to sleep topside. Perhaps, after this, Bernard would warn them against it? They were, after all, less vulnerable down here, even though none of the doors could be locked or bolted (a precaution against mutiny rather than depravity, no doubt).

Harry returned to his own peak. Lennie’s P-jacket had gone from its hook… . So they had made themselves presentable!

… Did that mean that they were, after all, going into the passengers’ quarters? Or did they have a leader or protector up among the higher ranks?

He hastened down the alley.

Neither sunsets nor sing-songs had any attraction for the Goanese. They squatted at their doorways, mending clothes, cutting hair, smoking, idling, perhaps reflecting on the latest bulletin from their beleaguered home invested by the remorseless tide of history as much as by the radicals of Hindustan. A naturally subject people, they had simply transferred their subservient allegiance from the Portuguese colonial despots to the shipping companies with no noticeable alleviation of their spirits. Portuguese melancholy and Indian laissez-faire was a pretty stupefying combination.

Harry, debating the quickest routes to the passenger decks, went round the hatches to the short alley that led to the baggage room. He went casually along to the swing door, tried the locked door of the baggage room, and considered the humming emptiness of the white passageway beyond. Returning, he paused at the last peak door, noting with slight surprise that it was unnumbered. Quite a breach of M.N. tradition! Usually every mortal thing, and mortal being, had a number plastered on it!

Then he heard voices within. Being out of sight of any Goanese for the moment, he bent to the keyhole but could see nothing. The voices were clearer, but he could not distinguish what they said, except that several seemed to be speaking at once, although the tone was not argumentative. The timbre was deeper than the shrill gabbling of the Goanese, that comic babu voice that sounded so very like Welsh, as the Goon Show had discovered to its profit.

Very gently Harry tried the handle and established that the door was locked. The fact that it had a lock was, in itself, remarkable.

There was a noise behind him, and he flicked his fingers, frowning, as though he had forgotten something in the passengers’ quarters. He swung round on his heel, passing a small, rotund Goanese who had just come through the swing door. Harry went into the passageway, let the door swing almost shut, and then peered through the crack, because something about the Goanese had aroused his curiosity. His back was towards Harry, who formed an impression of a solemn, middle-aged man with a balding head and heavy spectacles. The most significant thing was that he wore a plain dark suit unlike any type of Goanese uniform… . A Goanese or Indian passenger? If so, what was he doing in the crew’s quarters? Or some sort of civil liaison officer? Labour official? Interpreter?

The plump visitor had stopped at the locked door, appearing to listen while his fingers dug into a waistcoat pocket. A key glinted, and the man let himself into the peak, bowing and smiling, and murmuring “Good evening,” as he closed the door behind him. Harry stepped out into the alley and heard the key turn in the lock.

Dad Mustoe and Ron were asleep in the peak, and Bruce sitting moodily over an array of beer bottles.

“Community hymn-singing over, is it?” Harry asked.

“Lousy rotten lot they are,” muttered Bruce resentfully. “I were just enjoying it, too.”

This was too public a place to press for details, and in any case Bruce, as a first-tripper on the ship, couldn’t know very much. So Harry said, “You going to drink all that on your jack?”

Bruce pushed a bottle across the table, and they drank and smoked in silence, until Harry announced that he felt shagged and would turn in topside.

“Yeah, I might join you,” said Bruce reflectively.

… Well, that would be a nice complication! Harry told himself wryly… . Though I guess I’ll need company tonight.

“Yeah, see you up there, I expect,” said Harry. “I got to go for a slash first, though.” No use, really, taking chances with Bruce. The screamers would really get out their hatpins if they caught him poaching.

The sunset was over and the deck clumped with silent shapes under the humming wires and the incredible stars. Harry sauntered, rather dejectedly, over to his bedding, about to straighten it out with his foot when he found the hummock of sheets surprisingly resistant. He made a show of scratching and yawning, conscious of his silhouette visible against the starlit water, undressed and slid under the covers.

“Where’d you get to, you nit?” he breathed against Prince’s ear.

The boy tugged his earlobe. “Where’d you expect? I said I’d come.”

“Look … I’m sorry for what I said about Bernard…”

“It’s okay.” A whisper being expressionless, Harry could not tell how the boy had taken it.

“But he was great tonight, eh?”

Prince grunted and burrowed deeper into the pillow.

… But Bernard had been great tonight, and that was a fact. Whatever his game was, the cunning swine, he certainly had the courage of his convictions. You had to hand him that.

Chapter Nineteen

The next morning, five days out from Fremantle, at second breakfasts, Harry made a further discovery. He saw the tubby Goanese/Indian again, at the top corner of the saloon, eating with the engineer officers, the C. of E. chaplain, the doctor, and other middle-rankers. His back was towards Harry, but the black suit and thinning hair were unmistakable. The man must, therefore, hold some comparable official position on the ship. Some sort of Welfare Officer or Union representative?

Was there a tie-up between Bernard and the Goanese? Or was it just an arrangement to use the peak that provided such a cunning hiding-place for the boys and whatever they did? Cunning because the Line-crossing orgies and similar frolics never stretched to include the Goanese quarter. This social division was the nearest approach to a colour bar, but it was erected by mutual consent – a party wall rather than a barricade. The Goanese seemed to regard the degenerate antics of the whites with fatalistic incomprehension, and showed no wish to participate. There was only one active Goanese queer, a fat, sloppy galleyhand who traded under the name of Lulu. She was a double outcast. Whatever the Goanese did for kicks, playing fantan, smoking hemp, swigging rum, or climbing into each other’s bunks, they did it quietly within the relative privacy of their peaks. In any case, as long-contract men, they had their reputation for industrious sobriety at stake, while the whites behaved as if they had a reputation for licentious rowdiness (as indeed they had) to maintain.

In the morning break, Harry went down to the Goanese “bazaar” and joined onto the barber’s queue. While awaiting his turn, he wandered about, keeping a casual eye on the unnumbered peak on the far side of the hatch, and reading the crew notices. Quite a number of the bulletins bore the names of Portuguese convents and missions in Goa, adorned with smudgy vignettes of S. Francisco Xavier or Martin de Porres, eyes turned heavenward, wreathed in lilies; but the messages were in Hindi, or something like that. Appeals for sinking funds, no doubt. The Goanese were reckoned to be very religious. No doubt they had prayer-meetings somewhere on the ship. There was no chaplain for the R.C. passengers, so far as Harry knew. The C. of E. members of the crew could, in theory, fall in for Morning Service in the Boat Deck lounge, but he had never heard of anyone doing so, except a lunatic U/S on the Cyclades, and he got paid off at Tilbury for his cheek. “I hope you’re sure you’re going to heaven,” the First Steward had threatened him, when this Bible-struck clown demanded his rights, “because your life down here is going to be sheer bloody hell!”

The Goanese looked an odd racial mixture and came in several shades of brown. The barber, with his round, jolly face and wavy black hair, could have passed as a Samoan. Despite his greater contact with the whites, however, he spoke no better English than the rest of the wogs. But at least, like them, he avoided the absurd misuse of I.C.S. and public school slang that made so many half-educated Indians sound so fatuous.

So the unwanted haircut was a waste of time as well as money, since it proved impossible to introduce the subject of Bernard into the barber’s slightly surrealist monologue about the availability of pawpaws at dinner last night (or else tonight, or tomorrow night) with a nebulous antagonist named Fereira (or Pereira, or Riveira). No one went into the unnumbered peak: no one came out. It could hardly be an ordinary peak at all.

The duty roster for Colombo was already displayed, and Harry noted with satisfaction that he would be free. So also, of course, were Bernard, Lennie, Prince. Patrick, and the other two bellboys who had joined their walk-out from the singsong. Unaccountably Ram (Thomas E.) was down for teas.

Going up for his afternoon sunbathe, however, Harry cheeked again to see if he could identify, by their conspicuous absence from the duty list, any other possible members of Bernard’s gang, and saw to his fury that his name had been substituted for tea duty in place of Thomas E.

“You conniving bastard!” he raged.

Well, this was one occasion when he couldn’t run to Bernard and ask to get wangled off. Harry cheeked for another possibility. Dad Mustoe was also on teas, and Willie was on Key-watch.

“You going ashore on your jack?” he asked Phil, finding him alone In the peak.

“Yeah, why not?” asked Phil moodily

“I’m looking for someone to swap for teas.”

“On your way,” said Phil. “You’re still looking.”

“Thanks, mate! I’ll do the same for you someday!” Harry threatened and stormed up to the head.

No use asking Bruce, because, for reasons of sheepdog sentiment, he wouldn’t want to stop aboard and let Harry go ashore.

Harry made his way round the groups of sunbathers and found Marty stretched out among some plate-house toughs beside the queers.

“Going ashore tomorrow, Marty?”

“Too bloody true, I am!” Marty roared cheerfully. “First time they’ve let me off in port the whole bloody trip.”

“Don’t tell me what your plans are,” said Harry sourly. “I can guess.”

“Too bloody right!” Marty grinned, to an accompaniment of grunting chuckles from the toughs.

All the queers looked shocked and bitter, and Patience said “Vile, dirty beasts!” like a Victorian aunt. They lost their monopoly in port, of course, although little more than their vanity was affected.

Returning from drawing a blank with Marty, Harry passed a group of bellboys in a sheltered corner between the foremast and steel breastworks of the prow look-out. Prince was sitting between Patrick and another lad, all three in ritualistic attitudes, flushed but slightly smiling, bodies erect, legs crossed so that the feet rested atop the inner thighs.

“Okay,” said Harry lightly, “now let’s see you untie yourselves.”

There were only a few unimportant, neutral wingers dozing within earshot, and the feat was remarkable enough to justify a passing comment. Indeed it would have been suspicious not to have noticed. Even so, Prince looked embarrassed and quickly untwisted his legs.

“Brilliant!” said Harry sardonically. “What’s this? Yoga or something? Why ain’t you in a circus?”

The silence, broken only by the soft plash of the bow-wave, seemed endless, and Harry was stumped for a casual remark to bring it to an end. Prince had nothing to say and was alarmingly close to a blush. The other boys seemed intent — perhaps too much so.

Fortunately at that moment the Lascar look-out performed his absurd, archaic ritual and struck a dull, futile note on his bronze gong. Harry turned away, shading his eyes, and picked out the crescent-sailed fishing boat dead ahead.

“She’s a long way from home!” he observed to no one in particular, and went away without looking back at the boys.

It struck him then that his relationship with Prince in public could never again be natural and easy. Not that it had ever been carefree; because shipboard conditions, malicious exes and spiteful tongues, could never allow that. But he could no longer hope to make a light remark and receive a casual answer sufficient to disguise the nature of their deep involvement. Best to avoid one another, except alone and in the dark. And that was going to get harder all the time.

He went back to his usual place on the deck and lay down to bask, but felt too uneasy, too unhappy, to relax and sleep. So this was one of the times when he lay with half-closed eyes to see if Prince would come by and waken him.

Eventually the boy went by with his mates. He had thought of a new dodge. He was trailing his towel negligently, his hand on Patrick’s shoulder, telling him the tale; and. as he passed, he swept the towel along Harry’s leg, dropped it, bent to retrieve it, and tweaked Harry’s big toe. As the latter opened his eyes he caught a glint of mischief in Prince’s scarred smile and averted gaze, before the boys went jostling and pushing down the ladder.

. . Well? he asked himself, sitting up disconsolately to light a cigarette… . Is that the last time we play that little comedy?

He slouched miserably down to the peak to find Ron huddled on his bunk, munching avidly through a plate of nauseating fancy pastries.

“God Almighty, how can you!” Harry cried repugnantly.

Ron looked up plaintively, pink cream round his lips. “I’m hungry.”

“I reckon you got worms, mate!”

“Well then, they’re hungry,” said Ron composedly, biting through an Eclair.

“Going ashore tomorrow?”

“Don’t know. Might.”

“Want to swap teas with me tomorrow? I got to get ashore,”

“Might.” Ron considered him beadily. “How much?”

Harry shrugged. “How much do you want? Half a bar?”

Ron frowned, his composite eyebrow darting down his nose. “I mean how much conner?”

“Well, what do you fancy?” asked Harry, amazed by Ron’s gruesome consistency. “Don’t ask for the hog’s head off the cold buffet, because the Mother Superior’d do her nut if anyone ate that!”

“Lamb chop, fruit salad and ice cream?” suggested Ron tentatively.

“You’re on!” Harry assured him. “With cheese and biscuits to follow!”

He found himself singing as he ducked down the alley to work; and Bernard, passing him, smiled quizzically. “You sound happy, Shears!”

… No thanks to you, you bastard! thought Harry viciously.

That night on the fo’c’sle head, watching the stars misting over with the warmer air currents from the land, Harry asked himself again Is this the last time, then?

He couldn’t ask the boy, who was already asleep. The answer, in any case, lay somewhere on the island ahead, or scattered about the ship, locked in a dozen minds that would not tell what they knew.

… If you could be a burglar of minds! If you could find a set of keys to break and enter skulls and poke about with a torch. If you could pull a job on those memory vaults, would you understand, even then? Would you be able to fit the bits together and make sense of them?

Dusting the bar at dawn, they didn’t talk about Colombo, Harry being afraid to mention it in case his insistence made Prince suspicious. At breakfast he gave Miss Withers the full treatment for a change, shoving in her chair, shaking out her napkin and handing her the menu, even though she must know the breakfast by heart. All those little silver-service flourishes that he never bothered with down in the alcove, among such low-caste bloods, out of sight of the top tables. In fact when the Arnolds were on their own he usually slopped down the vegetable dishes and let them help themselves. They didn’t know any better.

He whisked his napkin round the tumbler and set it sparkling before her.

“No more of those nasty little pills, thank goodness.” she said, almost brightly. She was dressed already in her grey travelling suit with a silk scarf pinned by a cameo brooch.

“Oh yes, of course, ma’m,” he said, politely astonished. “You’ll be leaving us today, then? I was forgetting.”

She nodded. “I’ve been transferred to the High Commissioner’s office… . He’s a very close friend of my brother’s, you see. I shall be working on the Colombo Plan.”

“Ah, I thought it would be something like that,” said Harry sagely. “Grape nuts, is it?”

“I think I might try the porridge. If it’s not lumpy. I shall need something to sustain me in those nasty little launches.”

“Well, it couldn’t be worse than we had in the Bight.” Harry said confidentially. “1 expect you know this ship is a very bad roller? … Well, don’t let it go no further, but there were a couple of times in the Bight when she nearly.” he breathed it. “turned turtle!”

“Good gracious!” gasped Miss Withers, paling, as much from the intimacy of the confidence as from the matter confided.

“Now don’t let on I said so, ma’am … I mean, they don’t want to alarm the other people going on to Tilbury.” He added significantly, “We’ve still got the Bay to cross!”

He left her gazing into space, as if entranced by a vision of headlines I Was On Doomed Liner … Englishwoman Tells Her Story… .

This invention paid off well. She thanked him for his services, and hoped she hadn’t been too much trouble; but, after all, delicate people were such a bore to everyone. She left an envelope in his palm. It had been ungummed and re-sealed rather hurriedly, and a pound note had been added to the two that were folded together.

… Sucker! thought Harry, not unkindly, wondering what life had to offer her besides this. Just playing the lady for the benefit of cynical waiters and other domestics? She needed a subject race to bolster up her wilting, anaemic ego. So maybe she’d come to the right place. No wonder she’d hated Australia, where Jack was as good as his master and dared you to deny it. But here she could sit on the verandah, clapping her hands and shouting “Bearer!” until they got tough enough to tell the whites to stuff their Colombo Plan and get to hell out of it.

Oddly enough, he was hanging over the well-deck rail during the morning break when he saw her going down to the launches. She had one of those faded felt hats that Society women wore at points-to-point, like their gardener’s old trilby turned inside out. She was all nose, knees and elbows, clutching the rail and having a dickens of a time with her heels in the perforations of the treads. She carried her full kit of umbrella, plastic mac, handbag, gloves, box camera, and T.W.A. bag (but when had she trusted herself inside a plane?). She teetered back and forth for quite a time before getting up the nerve to take the proffered brown hand and the big step across to the warping launch.

She looked very insignificant down there, swamped in the colour and liveliness of the harbour, Englishwomen were extraordinary creatures. Nothing beat them. If the Leviathan, the Kraken, the Loch Ness Monster, rose to confront them, they shooed it off with their brollies. Or inquired the way to the nearest teashop. Harry didn’t feel in the least like laughing.

He felt even less amused when he saw Bernard, in his smart grey suit, going down to leap nimbly aboard the launch. He waited until it had chugged away before accepting the assurance that none of Bernard’s boys were with him. Somehow he had imagined them all trooping off in a body, like a Boy Scouts’ ramble.

Perhaps Bernard thought that he was too close to the truth, and had called off the meeting? Perhaps none was arranged for today? And it was just a coincidence that the whole gang were on pass here?

Perhaps there had never been any meetings ashore?

But that was to ignore the implications of the photograph he carried in his wallet.

After lunch he tore through the dish-washing, hurled himself into his civvies, and belted along to the queue, adjusting his dress as he ran. He didn’t see any of Bernard’s lot in the line-up. But quite likely Bernard was able to collect the passes in bulk and dish them out to his favourites. There seemed to be no limit to his powers.

The queue shuffled forward as the sleepy Third Steward thumbed through his untidy pile of passes. Harry, his agitation mounting, snatched his pass and raced away up to the port on the passengers’ B Deck, and there, to his huge relief, saw Prince and Patrick just ahead of him. It was a marvellous piece of luck. He hung back in the shadow, regaining his breath, and letting a few more bloods slip in between. When he reached the edge of the fierce sunlight, he looked down and saw the boys on the floating stage and launch curving in some fifty yards away. At the moment when their attention was concentrated on the launch’s arrival – they were obviously longing to lend a hand with the ropes, eager to look like real seamen for a change – he went lightly down the steps and stood in the group behind them. The boys leapt aboard, and. naturally, stood out on the narrow deck; and, a moment later, Harry ducked and went into the cabin. If it got choppy in the harbour and the spray started to fly, the boys would come inside and that would be that. Harry sat tensely between a mother with two near-hysterical kids, and an elderly, unimpressible American couple, staring at the calves of the two lads beyond the tiny cabin window. Prince wore a cheap, thin grey suit of one of those fancy silk-flecked materials that looks like a rag after the first rainfall. Cut in the usual semi-teddy style with narrow endless trousers and a three-buttoned, flapless jacket. Both lads carried haversacks just large enough for swimming gear.

The crossing was smooth, although the Cyclamen was anchored well out, and there were plenty of cross-currents from zooming launches, and lighters and bumboats crammed with jabbering, full-skirted natives. Once they reached the jetty it was easy enough to keep the boys in sight, up past the money-changers and the Customs checkpoint.

Then there was a very nasty moment, when Harry had to hang back in the archway of the Customs House, letting the boys draw ahead across the dazzling open square towards the taxi rank. Even in the shade it was ferociously hot, and Harry, from past experience, had dressed in a plain suit, collar and tie, and carried no camera. It was the best way to avoid being harried by beggars and touts, and even then it didn’t always work, because some of them were definitely psychic.

At the last possible moment, when the boys were climbing into a cab, Harry ducked his head and pelted round the square, keeping close to the wall, and fetching up against the white-bearded prophet, or jemadar, or whatever, who had a financial interest in the taxis. He tipped this dignitary satisfactorily and was allowed to hurtle into the next taxi.

“Follow that cab!” he told the driver, and leant back, sweating and heaving.

… I wonder why it doesn’t sound silly when they say it on the films? he asked himself, giggling idiotically with relief.

Chapter Twenty

One thing was certain: this was not the way to Mount Lavinia. The taxi had gone inland and Harry was on unfamiliar ground. He had not been following the route with much interest. Colombo was all very nice, but rather like an Eastern Sevenoaks, lacking the squalid excitement of Bombay. In both cities the Victorian aspects of the old Raj were much the same, the barrack squares and God-awful statues, but in India there was something else. You had only to step off the main streets to feel the dark weight of an alien culture bearing down on you: hanging saris from those Cheltenham balconies, piddling on those Broadstairs colonnades, filling that dusty fragment of Frinton with dying white cows, refuse, pariahs and starving widows. It was the only port of call on the Tilbury-Sydney run where you were brought face to face with an infinitely older, wiser, sadder, more deeply-rooted race than your own.

In Colombo there was none of this. The colonials seemed to have had it all their own way. It was neat and orderly, the natives looked healthy and decorous, or no more than permissibly exotic. Even though the touts were as much of a nuisance, they tended to quail subserviently at a reproof from a mem-sahib.

Out in the residential districts of gruesome Charles Addams villas lurking in primeval gardens of bloated waxen blossom, like Reigate gone native, it made you wonder where the Singhalese, the Tamils, and that lot lived. Were they tidied away out of sight, like in Jo’burg? Was it all tin shanties and potbellied brats, somewhere out there on the steaming edge of the paddy fields?

Harry began to grow uneasy as the taxi, discreetly following its pathfinder, drove on through increasingly rural suburbs. The walls were high and ancient, lichen-smeared like jungle temples, set back in thick, untrodden verges of wild grass, with banyan and pepul trees spreading massively to undermine the winding gravel lane. It was before one of these secretive walls that the leading taxi stopped, and Harry’ rapped on the glass.

“Very slow,” he said, and the taxi bumped along the lane, while he watched the boys alight, ring a bell beside a gate in the wall and be admitted. “Okay, drive on.”

They passed the wall but Harry could see nothing beyond. At least there were no windows from which he could be spotted. A half-mile further along the lane, he stopped the taxi, waited until it had turned and gone, and then retraced his steps.

It was sultry and quiet in the lane, but for the hum of insects in the trees and lawless grass verges. A cylinder-hooded cart, drawn by a tiny Brahmin ox, passed him, and the bearded, emaciated driver goggled and cried, “Taxi?” Harry shook his head and waved him on.

The high garden walls had a contained, mysterious quality, like temple precincts. When he reached the stout gate by which the boys had entered, he listened unavailingly and continued past it. This was much more difficult than he had envisaged. Not at all like Mount Lavinia – a popular resort where his appearance would be no more than a long coincidence.

Beyond the corner of the garden a narrow lane dipped down into the banyan shade, and Harry went softly along it, wondering if illegal entry might be the solution. The wall, damp but solid, was ten feet high, though that was typical of the district and not necessarily suspicious. When he reached the first of the massive ribbed and fluted trunks, he was halted by a thin echo of laughter. The tree was close against the wall, beginning to grow into it as the huge corrugations of its bark multiplied like Cyclopean sinews in a straining arm. It offered plenty of footholds, although Harry had uneasy thoughts about cobras under the roots.

The top of the wall was a miniature hanging garden, a tiny Malabar Hill of spear-headed mosses and flowering weeds. Beyond it a shrubbery and lawns sloped away into the encirclement of a banana grove. The house was just visible, a two-storied affair, surprisingly modern, close to the road but too low to be seen above the wall. Its modernity blended unobtrusively, however, with the old brown-stone terraces and griffon-guarded steps on which it stood, the circular pool set in the lawn, and the acorn-spire and dome of a small dagoba that rose within the grove.

Seven young lads were splashing about in the stone-rimmed pool. Prince, Patrick, Lennie, Ram, and three others. The seven who had walked away in protest from the sing-song. A fleshless old man, bald-headed, deeply bronzed, apparently also naked, sat cross-legged on a stone bench beyond the pool, watching their antics. Bright birds flashed like gems in the shrubberies where magnolia, poinsettias and rhododendrons opulently blossomed.

… A regular Garden of Eden! Harry thought, hearing for the first time the true sound of Prince’s natural, spontaneous laughter.

The old man sat immediately opposite and could quite easily look in Harry’s direction, so he lowered himself cautiously to the ground and made his way back to the road.

A minute or so after he rang the bell, the gate was opened by a bland, respectful but rather wary bearer.

“I’m sorry to trouble you,” said Harry. “But could I speak to Mister … to a chap called Prince? I think he’s visiting here. Young lad off the Cyclamen.”

“Ah,” said the bearer impassively. “You please wait, I ask, sir. This way, sir. One moment, sir, please.” He closed the gate and led Harry across a narrow court of weed-rimmed paving stones.

… Don’t they call you sahib any more? Harry wondered nervously, inspecting the blank, modern, anonymous frontage of the long, low house.

Inside, though, it was a lovely place. Black marble floor and a curve of black stairs. Plain white walls framing the glazed prospect of the terrace, banana palms and dagoba summit. No furniture except a very stark bench, the only ornament being a statue, almost life-sized, in an alcove. The stone looked modern but the manner of carving antique; a certain smoothness to its rotundities, stylized curls of hair, dimpled navel, like those tilings in the Indian Museum. And it was either a bearded Buddha, at a rough guess, or else a naked Christ, which appeared to offend both conventions of religious art; since wasn’t the Buddha always cleanshaven, and didn’t Christ wear, at the least, a loincloth and a crown of thorns?

Then, hearing a slight shuffling above, he saw Bernard peering down the well of the staircase.

“Good heavens! Shears!” said Bernard, sounding politely surprised but not particularly rattled.

“Well! Bernard! That’s a bit of luck!” Harry cried, simulating astonishment and striding eagerly to the foot of the stairs.

“Is it?” Bernard smiled, descending. He wore a white towelling robe, ankle-length and rather hot for the time of day. His feet were bare. His hands were tucked out of sight into his sleeves, so that he looked a cross between a mandarin and a monk. He seemed perfectly composed. “The bearer said you were inquiring for Prince, I think? He’s having a dip just now, so I thought I’d see if there was anything I could do.”

“I’m sure you’re the bloke I want to see,” said Harry. “Though I didn’t reckon on having to ask you to fix things on your day off! … Actually I only asked for Prince because he was the one I saw… . Naturally if I’d known you were here… .”

“What seems to be the trouble? Lost your wallet? That’s the usual thing, I believe.” Bernard turned away towards the windows, sounding slightly scornful. He never lost his wallet, of course.

“No, it was this stupid nit of a taxi-driver. I asked him to take me somewhere interesting. He seemed bright enough. ‘Yes, sir, you come along, sir’ All that stuff. But I soon got the idea he was just giving me the run-around … And then, as luck would have it, I spotted these two lads in a taxi… Prince, you know, the bellboy who works on my scrub-out, and this mate of his… . So I told my bloke to follow, thinking they’d be bound to be going somewhere decent. Even if it was only Mount Lavinia again…”

“Wrong direction.”

“Yes, but I was lost by then! He had me so confused that I hadn’t a clue… . Anyrate, well, their taxi stopped here, and I thought, ‘Well, that’s it. They’re on a private visit’. So I told my bloke to drive on, hoping it would lead to somewhere interesting. But it doesn’t, does it?”

“You’d get to Mount Lavinia eventually,” Bernard conceded with a smile. “By driving round the island!”

“Exactly!” Harry cried. “So, well, I paid off this crook and walked back here. I thought the lads might know if there was anything round here worth seeing, and if not, perhaps they’d tell me where to phone for a taxi back to town… .”

“Quite an adventure!” said Bernard drily. “I must say that it isn’t at all how I’d have pictured a seasoned traveller like you behaving on pass. Do you do this sort of thing very often?”

“Look,” said Harry shortly, “I’m sorry if I’m interrupting anything. Is there a telephone, please, so that I can call a cab and get out from under your feet?”

Bernard deliberated a moment and then said calmly, “No. you aren’t interrupting… . But this is a private house… . I don’t quite know what you were expecting?” His Torquemada brows went up. “Some sort of disorderly establishment?”

“Come off it!” Harry laughed uneasily. “Hardly… . And I shouldn’t think those two lads are exactly the type to rush off to the cat-houses!”

“Well, no …” said Bernard with a slow smile. “That’s why they’re here… . Along with one or two others. The house belongs to friends of mine. I brought the lads along to keep them out of … that sort of mischief.”

… And what sort of mischief do you put in its place? Harry wondered

“However, now that you’re here … unless you’re still bent on discovering something of interest? I’m afraid we can’t offer that.

… Perhaps you’d like to join us?”

“Well… if you’re sure I’m not in the way?”

“Quite sure,” said Bernard, turning to lead the way upstairs. “My friend will be pleased to meet you.”

Following upstairs, Harry noted that below the edge of the towelling robe trailed a hem of mustard yellow cotton.

… Now what the heck? he asked himself… . Is this the big give-away? Is Bernard in drag?

As soon as Harry stepped out through the glass doors onto the first-floor terrace he knew that he had reached some sort of goal. It was like that film trick were they animate from a still and the action begins. For this was the filched snapshot coming to life. There was the white rail, and there the mountain beyond.

“Wow!” said Harry reverently. “This is quite a place! Nice friends you’ve got! “

“Well, I think so,” said Bernard mildly.

“Is that Adam’s Peak?”

“It’s in that direction. That’s the edge of the plateau.”

Harry stepped to the rail to hide his expression from Bernard. Because it was impossible to play this quite straight and he could not bear to suffer Bernard’s probing gaze before his emotions were properly masked. The rail that he gripped was as warmed by the sun as if Danny had just lifted his hands from it.

The lads were sprawled about the rim of the pool, staring down, perhaps at goldfish among the lotus stems. The bronzed old man was pointing something out, his lean arm following its progress through the water.

“What’ve they got down there?”

“Some golden carp,” said a quiet, meticulous voice from further along the terrace. “But they are not happy that their home becomes a swimming pool.”

Hearing the lisping chi-chi accent and the careful choice of words, Harry was not surprised, on turning, to find that he had been addressed by an Indian, a Singhalese, or whatever. He sat on a wicker chair with one leg folded youthfully under him. Tall, lean, bronzed rather than brown, his shaven head made the slope of his forehead seem unnaturally acute, and the hooked, fleshy nose exceptionally prominent. Typically, his lips were fully moulded yet seemed to be compressed and stretched sideways in the narrowness between the nose and delicate little chin. He wore gold-rimmed sunglasses. Mercury glasses, perfectly opaque. But these were secondary impressions, because, most strikingly, he was draped in the pleated saffron robe of a bonze.

“Mr Jayavarman,” said Bernard, leading Harry by the elbow, “I should like to present Mr Shears.”

The bonze offered his dry hand and dry smile. “So pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“I must apologize for busting in like this… .” Well, how did you address a Buddhist monk? Sri? Guru? Bernard’s Mr didn’t sound quite right.

“Please sit down.” Jayavarman gestured towards a wicker stool. “I am sure you would like to have a cup of tea?”

Harry glanced at Bernard, who had propped himself against the rail.

“Excellent idea,” said Bernard. “Since we are depriving Mr Shears of the hectic delights of the Flying Angel Club, we should make some restitution!”

The monk clapped his hands, and the motion altered the toga-like draping, so that the sun glinted for a moment on a small gold crucifix that hung round his neck.

… Something screwy here! Harry thought.

Aloud he said, “You have a lovely house! ”

Jayavarman, who had been murmuring to the bearer, turned back with a smile. “Thank you. But it is not entirely mine. It belongs to several of us.”

“I must say some people have all the luck! Fancy being able to escape from our floating hell to a place like this! … You been coming here quite a time?”

Bernard posed against a rail, just about where Danny had leant. The saffron robe now showed within the loose towelling coat. (He must be baking! Harry thought. Is this a penance? The crucifix gleamed at his throat.

“Oh yes, we’ve known each other for years.”

“We were friends at college,” said Jayavarman.

Harry blinked at Bernard. “Oh? 1 thought you said … ? Well, didn’t you say it was a theological college?”

“You have a good memory,” said Bernard quietly. “Quite true. We were both interested in theology.”

“But, excuse me, wasn’t it only for … ?”

“For Christians? Jayavarman smiled and touched the crucifix. “That is so. And I am a type of Christian.”

Harry, bewildered, gestured at the saffron robe.

Jayavarman smiled again. “I am … we are … also a type of Buddhist.”

“Just as Christ and the Buddha are types of perfection,” said Bernard. “And perfection is what men seek.”

The bearer placed the tea on one of those dangerous tray-topped gateleg affairs, and Bernard poured out. He spoke in some dialect to the bonze, who bowed his head, looking slightly disapproving.

“Please smoke if you wish,” Bernard said. “It’s unfair to impose our restrictions on you.”

“I will if you don’t mind,” said Harry, doing so. “You mind if I ask you something about this?”

“Of course not,” said Bernard lightly. “It’s not a secret… . Except, to a certain extent, locally. Religious feelings can run rather high in Ceylon.”

“Yes,” Harry dragged on his much-needed cigarette, “this is some sort of new religion, then? … Like, what’s that thing the beatniks do in the States? Zen, is it?”

“Zen!” Jayavarman was gently derisive. “Zen is not a religion. Just an intellectual discipline… . Relaxative?” He glanced at Bernard.

“Purgative,” Bernard supplied.

“Oh? Well, what’s that other thing?” Harry frowned, flicking his fingers. “A mate of mine, very highbrow type, got interested in it. Used to go to meetings up in Highgate.”

“Sounds like Vedanta,” said Bernard sardonically. “Always reminds me of that gorgeous line from The Confidential Clerk, I think. ‘And then I discovered the Wisdom of the East’.”

“Yes, Vedanta!” Harry smiled. “But he packed it in when he found out how much you had to give up!”

Bernard nodded and massaged his smooth blue chin. “Well, yes, Vedanta is a synthesis too. But altogether too much emphasis on the intellectual discipline. Fair is fair, and man is flesh as well as intellect.” He glanced down at the lads stretched round the pool. “We don’t believe in extremes. We are guided by a spirit of compromise. We don’t punish the body for being burdened with a mind, or exalt the one at the expense of the other.”

“The Christ and the Buddha,” said Jayavarman slowly, “were flesh and blood like ourselves. Otherwise they have no meaning for us. You may impose an abstraction on the intellect, but flesh cries out for flesh. The Christ is God. He is also Man. Therefore God is Man.’

Harry had a deep, instinctive distrust of all religions. His dominant experiences were of repressive Lord’s Day Observance restrictions of his pleasures, and the cheese-paring joylessness of charitable institutions. But, to keep the conversation going, he asked, “But how do you manage to,well, worship both of them? … I mean, I know nothing about church and that, but isn’t it against the rules?”

“If perfection is attainable,” said Bernard gravely. “I mean, if it’s worth trying at all, then the model must be universal in appeal. The Christ and the Buddha have divided mankind because they have been given attributes, or the attributes have been stressed, which appeal exclusively to a Western or an Eastern seeker. A synthesis of their highest qualities, therefore, becomes a truer model of perfection for both.”

A tiny black bird with a red-vented tail swooped down to perch on the rail, and Bernard extended a finger towards it.

… If he starts charming birds out of the trees, that’s my lot! Harry told himself. You won’t see my arse for dust!

The bird, however, regarded Bernard with deep suspicion.

“That’s all very well,” said Harry, “but what about the rest? The pagans and that? And the Lascars? And what about the Hindus?”

Bernard smiled. “One must make a start somewhere. We are only at the beginning.”

In the distance, beyond the banana grove, a gong boomed in some reverberating vault. Bernard glanced at his watch. “Oh dear, is it that time already?”

Jayavarman rose, adjusting the elegant pleats and removing his sunglasses. He offered his hand to Harry, keeping his eves downcast. “It has been an interesting experience to make your acquaintance, Mr Shears. I hope Mr Norrie will bring you to see us again.”

“Thanks very much.” Harry tried unsuccessfully to force the bonze to raise his eyes.

“You will please excuse me now.” He bowed his shaven head and turned away, padding down the terrace on his flat, bare feet.

Presently Harry saw him descending the steps below, following the seven lads as they made their way towards the dagoba in the grove. The bronzed ancient was winding himself into a yellow robe, like a mummy getting back into its wrappings; and away amid the banana palms, saffron cotton glinted in the dappling sunlight, fluttering like golden moths towards the temple. Harry could form no estimate of the numbers.

“I’m sorry I can’t ask you to join us,” said Bernard impassively, “but this part of the proceedings is private, you understand.”

Harry scowled, controlling his jealous anger. “And the lads … are they … ?”

“Only in a very mild way,” said Bernard soothingly. “As I say, it keeps them out of mischief.”

He took off his towelling robe and handed it to the bearer who had appeared beside him. “And now I must ask a favour of you.” He loosened and re-arranged the draperies. “It was not an oversight that I didn’t invite you down to join the boys, nor seated you out of sight up here. I would be grateful if they did not get to know that you have been here.”

He gave Harry a probing stare. “You see, I bring them here as a reward, if you like, for good behaviour. And they might be upset if they thought… .”

“What’s wrong with my behaviour?” asked Harry, smiling tightly.

“That’s not my province … except where it might affect the lads,” said Bernard temperately. “No such contract exists between us … and I doubt if such paltry rewards would have much effect on you.”

“Try me!” Harry grimaced impudently. “Every man has his price! ”

“I don’t dabble in moral blackmail. And, as I say, you’re not my concern.”

“Well, that’s nice!” Harry mocked him. “That’s very unchristian … and very unbuddhist, ain’t it?”

For a moment Bernard deliberated, as if tempted to undertake Harry’s salvation. “It’s not as easy as that, Harry.” he said sombrely. “You have still a long way to go… . Or else you have gone too far.”

He turned to usher Harry along the terrace. “And now, if you’ll excuse me… . We have called a taxi for you. This one won’t overcharge you.”

In the black and white hall, Bernard said. “See you at dinner this evening, no doubt… . And please, not a word to anyone. After all, you stumbled on it by chance, and the least you can do is keep silent.”

“You can trust me, Bernard,” said Harry sardonically. “I wouldn’t know how to describe it!”

In the taxi, with the gate shut fast behind him and the wall and the great trees receding, he said in a booming travelogue voice, to the alarm of the driver. “And so, as the sun sinks over the knocking-shop, we say ‘Farewell to Glorious Shangri-La. where the sun always shines on the bums of the righteous!’ ”

Chapter Twenty-one

“So i asked this wog where she was.” recounted Willie feverishly, “and he took me down this ladies’ bog, see?”

Harry lay on his bunk, frowning up through the cigarette smoke at the obscene nozzle of the punka-jet. trying to find something of value in the day’s experiences.

Willie had had the same problem on a different level.

“Well, honest, you should’ve seen her! … No more than twelve years old, and four foot nothing!”

“You dirty hog!” said Phil admiringly.

… It was all very nice, Harry thought, but where did it get you? What happened in the temple? Private, the man said. That could he anything from masochism to choir practice.

“Well, I didn’t know what to do, see? … I mean, on the deck she was too low, and standing on the seat she was too high. And there was this wog bawling down the ventilator to get a jerk on! … And I couldn’t even get a stand on!”

Harry had seen Bernard at dinner, true enough. But what was there to say to him? … I like the sound of your new religion? How do I join? … No, much too dodgy. Bernard was too fly for that, and he’d as good as said that Harry wouldn’t qualify.

“So I just give her the money and scarpered,” said Willie lugubriously. For once an anecdote had the ring of truth. “I reckon it’s a swizzle. You know what? I reckon they breed ’em that small on purpose!”

Harry shook his head. He’d never get away with it, not with pretending to get religion. He’d stick out like a Vice Squad dick disguised among the choirboys, trying to cop the vicar.

Later that night he went topside with his bedding, although the weather was already cooling, and, finding Bernard alone at the rail, quickly revised his tactics. It might be worth a show of interest, after all.

“Sorry about today,” he said. “I didn’t mean to go busting in like that.”

“It’s quite all right,” said Bernard equably. “There’s no need to keep on apologizing. All I ask is that you keep it to yourself.”

Harry glanced round, lowering his voice. “But is it all right if I talk about it now that we’re alone?”

“It? … Talk about what?”

“Well, I mean, how many people on board know what goes on?”

Bernard moved impatiently. “I think you’re under some misapprehension. Nothing goes on that needs to be concealed , . . I’m asking you to be tactful, not swearing you to secrecy.”

“Tactful? What about?”

“Use your loaf, my dear chap!” Coming from Bernard it didn’t sound like an endearment coupled to a colloquialism. “If a lad has a strain of idealism, if he tries to live up to some moral standard, then how would he be regarded in the fo’c’sle? … As a nut-case. As a prig. As a freak… . Even you, having reached maturity, for all your hard shell, have to accuse yourself of all sorts of sins, which I presume you don’t actually commit, in order to – save your face? … And how much more sensitive are they? I’m simply asking you not to betray their idealism.”

“Yes, it’s a point,” Harry conceded.

“If they have to brag and lie about being bad as well as trying to be good, it imposes rather a strain,”

… Had the strain proved too much for Danny? He’d never shown much sign of idealism ashore, but perhaps it had lain too deep, and it had taken Bernard to coax it out?

“This religion thing,” Harry lit a cigarette. Been going long?”

“Quite a time, yes.”

“And are you the only white… ?” White what? Apostle? “Are they all Singhalese, or whatever, part from you?”

Bernard laughed pleasantly. “Not at all … I should say that roughly two-thirds of the ships that call at Colombo have white group-leaders, like myself, who take parties to our centre.”

“Oh, quite an organization, then?”

“In numbers, I suppose so… . But not really an organization in the subversive sense. We don’t have a network of agents, secret handshakes, or that sort of thing! … Of course all religions have to go through a catacomb stage.”

“What I don’t get is how you manage it so well. Harry frowned. “I know you’ve been aboard a long time, and you’re a sort of… .”

“A trusty?” suggested Bernard mockingly.

“But how do you manage to wangle things, like getting your group ashore? I’d have thought you’d be bogged down with the usual M.N. red tape… . Or have you someone higher up protecting you?”

“It’s not in the least illegal.” said Bernard lightly. He nodded towards the Bridge. “And why should they object to a little welfare work among the lads? They may think of me as a harmless crackpot, but the’re quite aware of their responsibilities. It looks fine on paper, but there’s neither time nor staff on a busy ship to enforce the regulations. After all, they even have a rule about bellboys not being allowed ashore unless accompanied by a stewardess.”

Harry laughed shortly. “‘But who protects the stewardess?”

Bernard smiled palely, not much liking the joke. “And once in a while, as you know, when things get out of hand, they have a purge… . And when that happens, Diamond Lil, as you call her, will have to flee the kingdom.”

“Poor old Lil,” said Harry, detecting a note of smugness. Quite true, but it was only the effeminates who got sorted out. Bernard, unless caught in the act, was safe.

“No, the objections as such come from those who would like to go ashore in parties if they knew how it was done…. It’s only common sense to be discreet. Trouble starts easily enough in the fo’c’sle, and mostly from malice or envy.”

“I suppose that’s why a lot of them don’t seem to like you?” queried Harry innocently.

“It’s inevitable,” said Bernard sadly.

There was a pause before he added, “I’m puzzled by your interest, Shears. I wouldn’t have put you down as religiously-inclined.”

“I’m not,” said Harry flatly.

“Any particular reason for that? Just indifference?”

“No,” said Harry stonily. “I refuse to crawl.”

“I see,” sighed Bernard, preparing to leave.

“But, look, can I talk to you some more about this when I’ve thought it out?”

“How can I refuse?” said Bernard. He seemed slightly affronted. “But do please pick your time.”

“Trust me.”

“Yes, I’m sure I can,” said Bernard, walking away into the darkness.

Harry had prepared himself for Prince’s non-appearance that night. The emotions of the day would have been too much for him. In that temple, without a doubt, he would either have renewed his vows of innocence, or been sufficiently debauched. Only an irresistible compulsion would bring him out on deck tonight. Harry was resigned to the fact that, by reason of his age and the channelling of his impulses, his desire would always burn more strongly than that of its object. One of those facts of life.

But supposing the effect were lasting? A genuine repentance? Well, it was possible, since one of religion’s confidence tricks was to play upon your guilt. Yet surely any normal boy played the game both ways, keeping a few involuntary slips tucked away out of sight of his confessor; making light of them, and excusing them as natural phenomena?

… Maybe I’ll come within the escape clause! thought Harry glumly, folding his arms behind his head and looking for hidden stars.

And what was Bernard’s attitude? Certainly he talked about “sins” and “morals” like all those Holy Joes did, but wasn’t that just part of the act? Was the difference about this new religion, among other things, its attitude to sex? What else could you make of that carry-on in Colombo? What other religion allowed you to strip off in the sun! Didn’t all the others go trudging through the jungles telling simple savages to cover it up. or else have it burnt off in Hell?

Harry knew nothing about the Buddhist attitude, but suspected that it involved renunciation. Christianity, of course, had defiled it. The attitude of priests and parsons, even to marriage, was, “If you can’t control yourselves, better bring her to church and we ll have a bit of mumbo-jumbo to keep the evil spirits away. The Catholics went further still, saying “Much better to give it up and be a monk. But. it you must do this disgusting thing, then you’ll do it the hard way, and have all the kids you can knock out. That’ll teach you.”

But perhaps Bernard’s group had a new approach? Surely the world should have reached the age of consent by now? All this fuss about a trivial, pleasant, physical thing. Flesh was only flesh: it was affection that counted every time.

Yet, as Harry had feared. Prince did not come that night.

Dawn brought a more disturbing development. A pudgy middle-aged winger, a real grotesque, turned up to dust the other half of the A Deck Pool Bar.

“Where’s young whatsit … Prince?” Harry grunted.

“Who?” Half his teeth were missing and he slobbered when he talked. This one was really hand-picked!

“Lad what used to be on this scrub-out?”

“Oh well…. They sent me up here at tick-on. Makes a bleeding change from scrubbing the alley, anyrate.”

“Maybe they’ve put three of us on this?” muttered Harry uneasily.

But Prince didn’t show up.

. . .You sneaking, twisting toad! Harry mouthed viciously, seeing Bernard’s back in the breakfast queue.

Prince, at least, looked for him across the tables, seeking him out deliberately: but it was too far for any sort of message to be conveyed.

… I’ll bet he hasn’t told Bernard, though! Harry tried to console himself. Bet it was Bernard who warned him I was on the scent. And, by Christ, I’ll track that conniving sod to his lair now, if it’s the last thing I do! That Holy Joe stuff doesn’t fool this boy!

… If Bernard thinks this is clever, he raged, then wait till he sees how clever I can be! Maybe if he hadn’t stuck his nose in between Princey and me, I’d have let things slide awhile. I’d have let him off lightly, so long as he wasn’t directly responsible for Danny’s death – and that don’t seem likely. But, if this is the way he wants it, right, I’ll shop him for anything I can find!

“Enjoy yourselves ashore?’ Harry asked the kids at breakfast.

“We went in a rickshaw! ” cried Joyce, echoed by her baby sisters.

“So did we! ” pouted Wendy. “We went in two!”

Ina, nursing her bandaged doll, was in a print frock.

“Where’s your uniform?” he asked her.

She stared at him solemnly. “It’s my day off.”

“Ekks mit toast,” said Carl, clicking his heels faintly under the table.

“Those awful little launches!” moaned Mrs Poole. Did you hear about this rascal being sick? I suppose it’s all round the ship … I nearly dropped him into the harbour and had done with it.”

… Here we go again! thought Harry, weaving through the galley, ticking off a mental list of cereals, fruit juice, scrambled eggs.

“And where were you all day, Moira?” purred Lil, gliding up behind him in the queue. “After a bit of chocolate?”

“Never fancied it, dear.”

“How wise you are! Indians are madly inadequate … and I know!”

“They manage to keep going, though, don’t they?” Harry observed.

Lil said it was only because they whipped themselves on with religious orgies, and started to relate something she’d seen in a Bombay temple. Someone sent a pile of dish-covers flying, and Harry lost some of the anecdote in the clatter.

“… In broad daylight, my dear!” Lil was screaming above the confusion. “Going at it like mad! … So I fainted clean away, and they had to carry me back to my ship in a litter they borrowed from the High Priest. He was perfectly charming. Treated me as visiting Royalty, of course. Ostrich feather fans, gold umbrellas, dancing boys, the lot! … My dear, the Purser was absolutely livid! ”

… And here we go again! thought Harry despondently, not wishing to dwell on Lil’s anecdote. As to what happened in the dagoba in the banana grove, imagination was not going to help.

Anyway, Marty had done what he had gone ashore to do, and had brought back the usual misprinted, mis-spelt pulp digests of obscenity, which kept him happy for hours on his bunk, roaring out quotations, although everyone told him it was filth and that he was a dirty hound.

Phil and Bruce had teamed up, eaten well at the Flying Angel, and had a wander round until the touts got on their wick. Bruce had brought a bronze slipper ashtray for his girl, although it transpired that she didn’t smoke.

Willie had slipped ashore for the brief misadventure with the Indian midget.

… And a good time was had by all, thought Harry, watching Lennie preparing to go up and sunbathe in the morning break. … And what about you, you sly one?

No use trying to coax anything out of Lennie. It would go straight back to Bernard now. No doubt the group had been warned. No use, therefore, to act the innocent, for that would be a dead give-away. The safest thing would be to appear to stick to the promise made to Bernard.

Miss Withers’s chair on the six-table remained empty, and no one seemed to be missing her. The Arnolds had been to Mount Lavinia. Miss Hathaway had lunched at the Galle Face, and that put everyone’s nose out of joint. At this point in the voyage they had seen more than enough of each other, and the hates began to grow stronger than the loves… . What must it have been like when the old devil himself was at sea, and the voyage to Aussie took six or seven weeks?

That night the fo’c’sle head was crowded as word had gone round that a noteworthy sunset was under way. It looked like a banner of welcome to the Mysterious East; a great arabesque scroll of crimson cloud, winding across the sky. They lined the rails to watch its colours melt and change, as its tagged edges wore away into the limpid, crystalline, star-pricked night.

“You see that?” Bruce nudged him and pointed at a palm-tufted silhouette of an islet sliding past to northward on the blazing sea. “Used to be an Indian Leopard Colony.”

“Yeah?” muttered Harry, too bored and despondent to be amused. He lit a cigarette and eased himself away. The crowd was drifting below. The night was cool. There were no bedding piles on deck tonight.

Harry stared sombrely at the fading banner. It could as easily have written Finis across the sky.

An epilogue followed, however.

Up in the darkness of the superstructure near the prow, he paused in his stroll, listened, and nipped out his cigarette. Prince was talking, low and urgent, rather distressed, just beyond the next ventilator shaft.

“… Yes, but suppose it was to happen?”

‘“It can’t!” Patrick muttered. ‘‘Bernard said it can’t!”

“But suppose one of us got, you know, chosen?” Prince’s voice was thin, edgy. “Like what happened to Danny Sparrow?”

“I don’t know about that. I wasn’t aboard.”

“Well …”

“Shut up!” said Patrick fiercely. “It can’t I tell you, you nit! Bernard said! ”

Chapter Twenty-two

Chosen for what?

The pipes and riveted plates above Harry’s bunk seemed to be overprinted in heavy black type with vast, formless, ominous questions.

Chosen by whom?

“Well, that’s the last of sleeping topside this trip. I reckon,” said Bruce mournfully.

Chosen to do what? Sling himself overside? Or had that been Danny’s way of saying no?

“I bet the queers are crying their eyes out tonight!” chuckled old Dad. “You get some right carry-ons on the head after dark, and that’s a fact!” His head lifted on its scrawny neck from the pillow, like an old tortoise craning out of its shell. “You’re very quiet over there, Ginger!”

I’m trying to get to sleep,” Harry muttered.

“Yeah, but your conscience don’t let you!’ Willie rasped.

“I shouldn’t wonder!” said Dad. his rustling, genial voice curiously menacing in the half dark. “Always up first on deck was our Harry, did you notice, boys? … I reckon he was onto something good up there! What d’you say, Carrots?

“I say drop dead, you wicked old bastard,” said Harry sleepily. “We ain’t all like you old salts!”

Lennie was lying on his bunk, two feet away from Harry’s pillow. If Princey had confessed, or been tricked into telling, and Bernard had passed the word, well, Lennie would know the score… . But the sly little devil lay still, breathing gently, saying nowt.

“Ah, you’re a dark horse, you are! ” said Dad, mumbling now that he had ejected his teeth.

Harry lay there tensely, sweating a little although the night was cool. Did this mean anything? Was this all in fun? Or were they turning against him now? Even if they knew nothing, could they sense the deception by instinct? Smell a rat?

“Well, he’ll have to play some other game now!” said Marty from below, so typically eager to join in any form of persecution.

He set his feet against the underside of the wire grid and gave Harry’s bunk a tremendous heave.

“Pack it in!” Harry complained, leaning over to grapple Marty’s ankle,

They played tug-of-war with the foot, while its owner, raging cheerily, struggled to raise his heavy frame into a sitting posture. He caught Harry’s wrist and dragged his foot free, working up to lean on the bunk, push Harry’s face into the pillow and ruffle his hair.

“Now then, Moira!” he guffawed. “You be a good girl or I’ll be up there beside you!”

The others in the peak hooted with laughter, edged with audible malice. Harry, aware that the pack was yapping dangerously close to his heels, made some vaguely abusive reply, letting them have their fun and sweating more fiercely than before.

… But that was the finish of it, all right! Not only the nights on deck but also the dawns in the Pool Bar… . So where could they be together now, to be alone even for a moment?

For the next two days of the Arabian Sea crossing, the weather got steadily, remorselessly, cooler and degenerated into squalls. The galley was still an inferno, but the temperature dropped too sharply at night for sleeping out. During those two miserable days Harry caught occasional glimpses of the boy, but never in private. Not until the evening of the second day, when, going down to the galley for cocoa, they met face to face. The working alley took a Z turn here, and for a couple of feet was hidden from either approach. They pressed against the bulkhead and held their breath, listening for footsteps, wasting time in sheer astonishment at their luck. Prince was still in his whites, with the decorative gloves threaded through his epaulette.

“Where you been, mate?” Harry flipped the gloves.

“I’m on coffees in the Boat Deck Lounge now.” said the boy.

“You find the dusting too heavy. then? You ask to be took off?”

“No, I didn’t!” protested the boy hoarsely, blinking with bewilderment at Harry’s tone. “Honest!”

“Just my lousy rotten luck, then!”

“Yeah,” Prince looked abashed, his scarred lip whitening. “You come out to our place in Colombo, didn’t you?” It was a question but not an accusation.

“Oh? Bernard tell you?”

Prince shook his head. “I seen you in the taxi… I was waiting for you to show up, but… . Where did you get to?”

“Bernard stopped me from coming down to you!” Harry choked on his jealous anger. “I just fancied a swim, too! It looked great! … Look, ain’t he told you not to talk to me about it? … Well, don’t! 1 don’t want to know what you do!”

“Look, it ain’t like that!” said Prince desperately, touching Harry’s arm. There were footsteps and voices along the alley.

“Not much!” Harry snapped. “Don’t try to kid me!” He brushed the fingers away from his sleeve. “I wasn’t born yesterday, you know!”

You going ashore at Aden?” whispered the boy. hurt, cocking his head as the voices neared.

“I might slip ashore Don’t know yet.”

“May see you then … ?’

“Yeah,” said Harry roughly. “Me and two hundred others!”

He continued on his way towards the galley, although the prospect of cocoa was now even less appetising than usual.

Later that night Harry was sitting in the peak, playing poker with the lads, sitting in for Lennie, when he saw Prince pass the door in his striped jacket and jeans, going aft. He played to the end of the hand (he disliked cards and was only doing this to oblige, and to combat this menacing sense of unpopularity in the peak). Then he told them to deal him out as he was going for a slash. He went down to the galley, thinking Prince might have gone for cocoa, looked into the crew room and the washhouse on his return, but couldn’t find him. He rejoined the card school, but, although he kept a fairly constant watch on the door, did not see the boy return. Nor had Lennie shown up by lights-out.

When the tea came round just before knock-up next morning, Harry saw that Lennie’s bunk was turned down, as it had been the night before, but showed no other sign of having been slept in; though this would not be apparent from the deck. As they were scrambling into their clothes, Lennie entered, already dressed and shaven, his towel across his shoulder, combing his hair with his usual pale nonchalance.

“You’re up and about early, mate! ” Harry observed.

“Couldn’t sleep,’’ said Lennie, going to the mirror.

… And what was this? Harry asked himself. All-night sessions now?

It being a Sunday as well as a landfall day, the evening duties were cut to a minimum, and dinner run as a continuous session, to give the crew a chance to go ashore and spend their last sub before home.

“I’m not going to risk those awful launches again,’’ said Mrs Poole. “And supposing this child really is a kleptomaniac? Remember the cutlery? What if he starts helping himself to cameras and lighters?”

“He’s got a bright future if he can get away with it,” said Harry, mopping up a long smear of raspberry tart from the vicinity of Babbie’s plate, while she followed his movements with an innocent blue regard.

“Aren’t there any more ports where one can just walk ashore?”

“Well, you’ve only got the pontoons at Port Said. Mind you. they wobble a bit.”

“Port Said? Aren’t we at war with them?”

“Oh, I think that’s more or less over, ma’m,” Harry told her. “And anyrate, it’s business first. What would they do with all them brass knick-knacks? Melt them down for bullets?”

At dinner Lou .Arnold inquired earnestly, “Tell me. is it true, Harry, that those awful Egyptian pilots run half the ships aground in the Canal?”

“I’m afraid I’m not allowed to say, ma’m.”

“Sometimes, steward,” observed Miss Hathaway coolly, “you’re just too discreet to be true.”

… Oh, lady! he thought hollowly. If you only knew!

By the time the covers were on the tables, the anchors had rattled down into the harbour, and the night was lively with shouts from lighters and bumboats and the noise of launches. Staring out at the lights of the port, Harry changed into his suit, well aware that Bruce was loitering to accompany him ashore. He had resigned himself to sticking close to the lads tonight, to help them over the feeling that he was a lone, suspicious bird.

“Aden’s better by day,” said Bruce. “You know them sea-hawks? Smashing, I reckon. Terrific to see hawks flying about just like ordinary birds, you know? … I mean, in the country, like, you see the odd one, but right high up… . .and coming out, there was any amount of sharks. You know old Seeley the barman?”

Harry shook his head unco-operatively.

“Well he was coming back, pissed to the eyebrows as usual, and went arse over tip into the harbour, trying to board the launch. They hauled him out just in time. A shark come up and snapped at his leg. and missed him by inches.”

“Well, well!” said Harry flatly.

But it wasn’t really fair to take it out on Bruce. You couldn’t say that Princey was a brilliant conversationalist, and most of that had been in whispers. There was nothing wrong with Bruce to look at him. In a snapshot he’d beat Princey hands down. He was meatier, healthier and everything. But something vital was missing, and it made his company drag on your neck like a hundredweight sack.

“Ready then, Carrots?”

“Yeah, all set,” Harry sighed. “We don’t need passes, do we?”

“Oh … I got yours just in case,” said Bruce, reddening as well he might.

“Oh, ta,” said Harry, making nothing of it… . I wonder what he imagines he sees in me? he asked himself as they went down and boarded a launch.

Bruce was only too eager to tell him, but, with his rustic incoherence and a vague dread of impropriety, made heavy weather of it. Willie and Phil were also in the launch, but at the wharf Bruce dissuaded Harry from following them, and they went for a beer in a mock-Eastern bar hung with Coca-Cola signs, entertained by a tireless jukebox to last month’s Top Twenty. Bruce, it transpired, didn’t want to knock around with Willie and Phil because they chased after women, and he was going home clean. Dad never went ashore. Ron was just a walking garbage can, only interested in his belly. Marty went around with the queers, and Lennie was one of Bernard’s mob. This, by process of elimination, left Harry. Not so flattering after all.

. .. But at least it means I’m still in the clear! Harry told himself with relief. If there had been any tale-telling round the peak, Bruce would have dropped me like a red-hot mangel-wurzel, the puritanical old peasant… . All I have to do is watch my step for another ten days or so.

But of course it wasn’t as easy as that. Nemesis was also ashore on pass.

Four other wingers from the First Class had come into the bar, and presently they all went out together, jostling through the bazaar and cursing the touts to hell. Inevitably they came face to face with a gang of bellboys, quite unexpectedly, as they drew back from the path of a nosing Cadillac. Prince went white and sickly and took his hand from Patrick’s shoulder; and the latter, hurt or affronted, certainly puzzled, looked from Prince to Harry, and something registered on his homely Irish face. Then the crowd swallowed them up again.

… All right! thought Harry morosely. Now run to Bernard with that!

Aden port at night was like some mad Eastern fairytale, the One-Thousand-And-Second Night. An Aladdin’s Cave filled with the loot of the Western world. The stalls were casually heaped with Europe’s and .America’s most expensive trinkets, selling off at fantastic prices, like the job-lots of a pirate’s haul. The bracing thing was that they were all luxury articles, as far removed as possible from the banal necessities of living. They gave you a vision of some exotic realm where people passed the time consulting gold watches, flicking gold lighters, and smelt of Dior or Chanel, while they recorded each other’s trivial lives on magnetic tape and 16mm colour stock. It was all quite legal, of course. Something to do with import duty or purchase tax. You could buy with an easy conscience. Then all you had to do was get it home without paying the difference. But it made you think how cheap things could be at home, if you didn’t have the Government to support.

Still, Aden at night was something to see so long as you weren’t tempted to buy. For instance those wogs in rags, driving round in American ears, flashing lighters and watches, and throwing away duty-free stubs after a couple of drags. Well, not actually rags, but all that muttoncloth they used to wrap up their purity.

It struck Harry that this new religion of Bernard’s, whatever it was, wouldn’t have much appeal for the Muslims since they made such a thing about hiding their bodies. No sunbathing for the Sons of the Prophet!

But probably they didn’t make much attempt to appeal to everyone. It was just an excuse, like any religion, to try and make a pretty picture out of the meaningless jigsaw of life, and to do what they felt like doing without fear of the consequences, since, if it brought them punishment or persecution, it also brought them the status of martyrs.

… Not just delinquents and jailbirds like the rest of us! Harry concluded sourly.

“You fancy buying anything, Ginge?’’ Bruce asked. “I might have a look at them watches. I wouldn’t mind getting one for the girl.” He went into an open-fronted booth with the other wingers, and the wogs grinned, rubbed their hands, and closed in on them.

Harry leant against the wall, but eventually got choked off with the persistence of a small Arab imp (and possibly pimp) who kept asking him what he wanted. Since he couldn’t give anything like a true answer, Harry sauntered off up the alley, and presently heard, from somewhere amid the lamplit and shadowed strollers, a cry of “Princey? Where are yer?’’

Princey was in a booth a few doors away. He was the only customer, if that was the word. It was a toyshop, full of the best British and the finest fruit of German ingenuity. Toys that nodded, danced, strutted, slithered, wagged their tails, rolled their eyes, beat drums, blew bubbles, hopped, turned somersaults, or played the Blue Danube. The Doctor Coppelius of the establishment might have been dreamt up by a Hollywood designer – so rotund, white-bearded and benign under his faultless turban, a walking cliché from some mock-Eastern “epic”. His assistant was a black-curled cherub, just visible above a high desk at the rear of the booth, writing in an enormous ledger with what should have been a goose quill, but, this being Aden, was probably a Parker or a Shaeffer pen.

In a ring of nodding giraffes, waddling ducks, and drum-beating bears, Prince squatted, utterly absorbed, lips parted, intently winding an ear-flapping elephant. He set it down reverently: it flapped its ears: the proprietor nodded and smiled into his beard. A radio somewhere faintly played a shrill Arabian song, like the head noises of a high fever.

“Well, you’re having a right old game, ain’t you?’’ Harry observed.

The boy looked up and smiled excitedly. “Smashing, ain’t they?”

“You buying the shop out, then?”

Prince, entranced, selected a crocodile and turned the key in its flank. “I thought I might get one for my kid sister.”

“I never knew you had one.”

“She’s only six,” said Prince disparagingly. “Cor, she’d go mad if she was let loose in here! ”

“Hurry up and choose one, then.”

The boy stared up at him doubtfully.

“Could take a stroll round after, I suppose …” Harry suggested vaguely.

He saw the boy’s alarm… . Well, yes, it was a mad suggestion. There wasn’t a hope of privacy, and you didn’t even know who was watching you.

Lounging casually against the wall. Harry was intensely conscious of the strollers in the soft, dappled light. A couple of Arab youths, giggling, strolled by hand in hand… . It’s all right for some! he thought.

“Bernard come ashore tonight?” he murmured.

Prince nodded and frowned, winding a coach and pair. “I think so. I ain’t seen him.”

“Well, he’d better not cop us together … I mean, he don’t seem to like me to talk to you.”

Prince rose and dusted the knees of his cheap, grey suit. “I reckon I’ll take this one. What d’you think?” He held up a Burmese dancer that rang two tiny bells. “She’ll drive our Mum up the wall with that!”

“Yeah, cute,” Harry agreed. “But why don’t he like us to talk?”

The bearded man took the doll and wrapped it in a yard of blue tissue. “Acha, baha!” said Harry (It was something you said to wogs. he had no idea what it meant). He went forward to pay.

‘No, you can’t do that!” Prince protested.

“Look, I’ve never give you nothing… .’’

“But you don’t have to, dope!”

“Okay,” Harry smiled. “It’s done now. You can settle with me after if you want. But, first, why don’t he?”

“Oh, you know! ” said Prince, exasperated. “He reckons everyone blames him for Danny … for this kid who.…”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I mean, was it his fault he went up the wall?”

“How, up the wall?”

“Oh, you know!” The boy grimaced and tapped his forehead. “Bit bent. Screw loose!”

And then, equally inevitably, Bernard emerged out of the crowd and approached them, suavely enigmatic in his smart grey suit.

“Ah, there you are, Prince,” he said mildly. “The boys thought they’d lost you.” He then glanced at Harry. “Hullo, Shears. Been shopping?”

Harry gave the parcel to the boy. “No, this is the lad’s …” he said calmly. ”Just a little argument about the price.”

Bernard eyed him sardonically. “How lucky you happened to come along.”

“Always happy to oblige,” said Harry blandly. “Any friend of yours is a friend of mine, and all that!” He patted the boy’s shoulder. “Well, you’re in good hands now!”

He stood and lit a cigarette, and watched them disappear into the shifting brightness and shadow of the populous bazaar.

“Oh, there you are!” said Bruce aggrievedly.

“Here I am,” Harry agreed.

Chapter Twenty-three

The peak was roused next morning by a tremendous clash of metal.

“Collision!” yelled Willie, leaping to the deck, writhing in his sheet like an agitated shroud.

“Yeah, with a dhow, I expect,” said Dad cynically. “Or a Portuguese Man o’ War.”

“Them bleeding wog pilots!” croaked Willie.

“Calm down,” moaned Phil sleepily. “We ain’t even into the Red Sea yet, you nit! ”

“Might’ve slipped a hook, though,” proposed Dad. sitting up and rolling himself a spill.

Willie thrust his head out of the porthole. “We still got one this side.”

There was a moderate swell this morning, and, as the ship rolled, the clatter came again.

Willie began to parody all those British Naval films. “Steady. Commandah! … Carry on, Number One! … Red bearing seven-o-one, sah! Up periscope! … By Gad. Mr Mate, there she is! The Graf von Blitzebum!… I want all steam you’ve got Mac!…”

“For crying out loud!” roared Marty, clamping his pillow over his ears.

“I cannae keep herr going much longerr. Cap’n! Numberr Two engine’s all awa’!”

Then they heard someone telling someone else to come on up the washroom and have a look at this. So. although it still wanted twenty minutes to knock-up, they followed the mob. The washroom portholes were crowded.

“Starboard anchor’s fouled,” someone said. “She’s come up arse-about-face.”

Harry felt a knuckle touch his. and found Prince beside him in the crowd. No one else seemed to have remembered in the excitement that the outboard lavatory cubicle also had a porthole. They peered out together, hidden In the scuttle from the washroom spectators.

The anchor was hanging back to front, the great flukes striking the hull as the ship rolled and threatening, it seemed, to buckle the plates. A Lascar topsider was making a perilous descent by rope to fasten a winch hawser to one of the flukes and swing the anchor round.

“Makes me dizzy to look!” Harry whispered, turning away. Like the Indian Rope Trick in reverse.

Clutching the boy’s hand he stepped back to bolt the door, and motioned Prince to stand on the seat, so that only one pair of feet should show under the bulkhead gap.

… Isn’t this the end, though? Harry thought grimly, holding him tightly and closing his eyes… . The absolute rock bottom?

“What was you saying when Bernard turned up last night?” he whispered presently. “About this kid, Danny, being up the wall? How was that?”

“Oh, you know,” breathed Prince reluctantly. “Acted a bit spare, that’s all… . Talked to himself and that.”

“I heard someone say he was drunk.”

Prince tightened his arms round Harry’s neck, in protest rather than affection. “No! He never hardly touched it!”

“Well, it was Channel Night… .”

Prince shook his head firmly. “Not Danny.”

… Come to think of it, none of the gang seemed to drink. Lennie was practically TT… . Did Bernard give them the old Mens Sana in Corpore Sano routine? There was more than a hint of Lady Astor about him.

“Well, I mean, it’s a funny time to get depressed!” Harry objected. “Going out, yes… . But one night from pay-off? Nobody wants to jump overside then!”

“He was bent, that’s all,” Prince repeated obstinately. Overhead the winch began to groan and the hawser to creak. “Why you so interested, anyrate?”

Harry shrugged. “Just so funny that no one talks about it.” He pondered a moment, and then, staring up into Prince’s serious flushed face, told him, “No … it’s more than that, actually. I happened to know his folks out in Aussie.”

The boy’s eyes rounded slowly with comprehension, and his hands began to slide away from Harry’s shoulders. There was a tremendous thump on the hull and a thin cheering drifted past the porthole. The show was over.

… But isn’t this the end? Harry thought despairingly, tightening his embrace about the reluctant boy. To have come down to this?

That evening, muffled against the sharpening wind, Harry mounted to the almost-deserted well-deck to watch the minatory blood-orange sunset. By what seemed to be more than a coincidence, Bernard was there.

They were passing one of those islets in the straits of Bab el Mandeb, the sunset flushing the dome of its tiny mosque, or mahdi’s tomb, or whatever.

“The Gate of Hell, isn’t that what they call it?”

“So I’m told,” Bernard agreed.

“Do your lot believe in Hell, then? And the After Life, and all that?”

Bernard seemed amused. “What’s that got to do with making the best of this life? The time for the pursuit of perfection is here and now, while you have a mind and body to work on. In eternal bliss or damnation the matter would be, so to speak, out of your hands.”

“Oh, I agree,” said Harry warmly. “But then I’m not religious. “

“Why ruin your chance of mental and physical happiness … and perfection is the perfect happiness … for the slim chance of a nebulous reward hereafter? It’s as obscene as saying that the only good human is a dead human!”

“But, surely, as a Christian… .”

“A type of Christian,” Bernard corrected him. “We argue that Christian doctrine has been misinterpreted. But the idea of Christ remains, as pure and simple as can be, The Christ, and the Buddha for that matter, are God made manifest. They are Man, trained like a moral and physical athlete, to the highest point of perfection. As close to God as Man can be, since God is perfection. Therefore truly the Son of God. and truly God. The point at which Man merges with Divinity. Therefore truly the Saviour, as all the Perfect Ones, the Sons of God, the Messengers, are our saviours, since in them we have our models of perfection.”

“But in the Bible…”

“One can’t place too much reliance on the Good Book, Shears. A lot of bloodthirsty Hebrew myths, pagan oddments, potted history, and wonder-working legends got mixed up with the things that Christ may or may not have said and done. The thing that matters is that, for all time, He exists. The bridge was built. He proved in Himself that man could be God… .”

“Does that mean you think you can be a god?” asked Harry, ill-advisedly flippant to hide his uneasiness. This was much more than he had bargained for. Bernard was obviously a religious nut-case. But it might lead somewhere.

“Godhead is in us all,” said Bernard soberly. “We lack nothing that the Christ possessed. A mind, a body. It is up to us to perfect them to His standard.”

But don’t you ever get scared you might be wrong? … I must admit I am, sometimes… . I mean, supposing Heaven and Hell are there all the time? Sort of lying in wait for us?”

Bernard stared with narrowed eyes at the last orange streak of light which glittered like a blade across the sky. “All a man can do is use his judgment and keep an open mind. Survival after death has yet to be proved, but there is ample evidence that a dead body decomposes very quickly. And what sort of perfection is that?”

Harry lit a cigarette, his fingers quivering. “Yes, but if you’re mixed up with these Eastern mystics and that, don’t you get any, well… hints?”

“Messages from Beyond?” Bernard studied him gravely. The words sounded ironical, but his tone had hardened. “No, Shears, we don’t get that sort of message at all… .” He spoke slowly and emphatically. “Those we do get are something quite different. … They don’t seem to have much relevance.”

“Such as?” Harry was baffled by the portentousness.

“Such as It’s time we were crossing the mountains… .”

“It’s time we were … ?” Harry echoed blankly. “But what does that mean?”

“Exactly!” said Bernard bleakly. “What?”

Out of the darkness a bellboy appeared at Bernard’s side and touched his arm.

“Oh, is it that time? Thank you, Vince. I’m just coming.”

The bellboy was one of the seven, a tubby youth who worked as runner for the First Steward. Quite a useful ear for Bernard’s mob. You could pick up quite a lot in the First’s office.

Harry watched them go below and remained to finish his smoke. The curious message re-echoed through his head, as though, by mere repetition, it was becoming unusually familiar.

He collected his mug and went down towards the galley for cocoa. Just ahead of him Bernard emerged, carrying a crisp, white bundle under his arm. Neatly folded, starched linen. The pleats were oddly suggestive of those saffron Buddhist robes.

Down to the Goanese quarter, round the hatches, towards that unnumbered peak again. Harry followed discreetly as Bernard lengthened his stride to overtake Ram and Lennie.

The swing doors to the passengers’ cabins opened and the rotund, bespectacled Goanese appeared, smiling and bowing. Black suit, black-buttoned shirt, white dog-collar.

Bernard knocked on the unnumbered door, which was opened from within. He ushered the lads inside, and the priest spread out his arms, bowing, ushering him. They deferred politely to one another, and the white bundle under Bernard’s arm shook loose, depending into stiff pleats and a deep lace edging.

As the door closed behind the priest, who had won the battle of manners, Harry started to run, silent in his plimsolls, passing the door in time to get a glimpse within. Rows of plain chairs, no bunks, a flickering of candles.

He thrust through the swing doors and leant against them, drawing a deep, unsteady breath.

… You cunning swine! he said, almost admiringly. You two-timing Holy Joseph! It’s absolutely foolproof!

Chapter Twenty-four

The next day, passing up the Red Sea with the dun-coloured coast undulating in the dust to the south-west, was uneventful except for a characteristic comic turn from Willie during the night. It had turned very cold and they had resumed their habit of sleeping in their underwear (Phil maintaining the social distinction of pyjamas). Willie woke them up, sometime after lights-out, with muttered curses and a spidery writhing of his bony limbs.

“For Christ’s sake,” mumbled Dad, “if you must do it, do it quiet. You’ll have the whole bunk down on me in a moment!”

There was a sharp tearing of linen, and Willie plunged down to the deck with his foot through the sheet.

“Ya bastard!” he screamed. “No wonder I’m so bleeding cold! Who ripped me sheet?”

“I’ll rip you and all if you don’t belt up!” muttered Marty, heaving and groaning in his bunk.

Willie stuck his monkey face through the hole and tiptoed outside. Up in the bellboys’ peak, presently, Marilyn screamed delightedly, “Ooh! Ah! I’m being seduced by a ghost! ”

“The answer to a maiden’s prayer!” said Marty.

There were distant cries of “Belt up ! ” and Willie came sneaking back, gibbering from bunk to bunk, flapping his draperies.

“If you don’t go to bed, mate,” Marty threatened, “you’ll get collectively done!”

“That’s a good word!” said Willie brightly. “You been talking to Bernard?”

To a chorus of moans from the peak, he heaved down his suitcase, accompanying himself with an absorbed running commentary. “. .. Ah, but I got a spare, see? Crafty! Fooled ya! … Make up me bunk…. Sling the other out the port… . Good night all!’’ He climbed into his bunk, twitching down until his chin was covered.

“Eh?” he said, in faint wonderment. He began to thresh about.

“Oh no! ” groaned Phil.

“Ya bastard!” Willie screeched, beating his fists on the bulkhead. “I slung the wrong one out!”

The following day, in the late afternoon haze, they steamed up the Gulf and lay at sunset off Suez to take on the Egyptian pilot, who aroused the usual glum prognostications in the fo’c’sle. From the way they talked you expected to see the Canal littered with pillaged wrecks from end to end. They also took on the authorized bumboats, hoisting them with their cargoes of gewgaws onto the well-decks. Lastly, they took on the mail.

Harry was lying on his bunk when tubby Vince from the First Steward’s office brought the mail down to the peak. There was a thin, blue air-letter from London, postmarked Lewisham, but addressed in a round, firm, unfamiliar hand.

“Dear Harry,” he read, “Your Dad is a bit off colour, nothing to worry about but he asked me to write and thank you for your letter. He was very pleased to get it and hear you are on your way home… .”

Harry glanced at the signature. “Renée Shears” … Surely not that young tart from the shoe-shop down the road? Was she the latest then? Young enough to be his daughter? Well, you had to hand it to the old devil. He certainly must have something, and it wasn’t money, looks or charm.

“Yes,” the letter continued, “we heard the awful news about Danny and you can imagine it was a big shock to your Dad. He says, in answer to your letter, that he didn’t hear from the Company direct but they sent someone from the ship to explain. Dad says it was a man called Norris he thinks it was. A P.R.A. whatever that is but I expect you’ll know. This man said nobody knew why Danny should do such a thing, but he thought he had family troubles. Dad said it must have been to do with his Mum in A., because he was getting on okay with Dad over here. Anyway this man was sure it was an accident, and Danny was very popular and all the boys were sorry he was gone. Dad says to let well alone because you can’t bring back the dead.

“1 expect it will surprise you, Harry, but your Dad and I got married two months back…”

Surprise! Harry gaped at the letter… . How on earth had she pulled it off? Was the old devil getting soft, or what?

“Also I think I’d better tell you that we have a darling baby daughter, Brenda. Your Dad is very good to me and I’m very fond of him. I think, all things considered, he’s had a rather hard time of it.”

“God Almighty!” said Harry aloud. The others in the peak didn’t raise their heads from their own letters.

“Ya cow!” Willie screeched. “Listen to what she says…!”

“Well, I’ll close now and hope to see you soon,” Harry’s letter concluded. “You may remember me, I worked in Murrays down the street from here.”

Along the margin, in the old devil’s scratchy hand, was a cryptic message. “Funny sort of accident on a calm sea, but you never know. So watch it, laddie. Yr. Affec. Dad.”

Harry folded the letter thoughtfully. The sender’s name of “Shears” was printed on the back, boldly enough to catch the eye of even the most casual sorter in the First’s office.

“Now I wonder?” he murmured aloud. How many cats had that let out of the bag?

There was never much sleeping done on a night trip through the Canal. Not that there was anything to see, even by day, once the elegant water-borne French villas of Suez were passed, except for sand and palm-trees, a crescent-sailed dhow or two, block-houses like settings for Beau Geste, and camel-toting Arabs, who sometimes obliged, in response to the jeers of the crew, by misbehaving lewdly. But by night it was freezing cold on deck, with a biting wind off the desert and a taste of sand. Indeed the notice was up ordering them back into blues: it was as though the waterway led directly from summer into winter.

Below decks it was lively enough, with the bumboat wogs spreading out their wares in corners of the working alley, and hawking leather and beadwork from peak to peak, haggling, grinning, looking affronted, but taking your money just the same, or your clothes in part-exchange, and turning the fo’c’sle into a floating bazaar.

Harry went out to stroll restlessly through the crowd.

“Don’t leave nothing laying about,” Dad advised. “They’re light-fingered bastards.”

“And keep your hand on your cobblers,” said Marty. “Their favourite trick is to slice ’em off.”

“Sometimes I think I’d be better off without them,” said Harry. He found the liveliness intensely irritating, wanting to be alone to think awhile. He had an ominous sense of a crisis approaching which he was still unprepared to meet.

For if Bernard had known what the Company didn’t know (that Danny had a natural father in London), then who else but Danny could have told him? Even if the news had reached Bernard indirectly, through the gang, what else had Danny said about his blood-relations?

Harry remembered his meeting with Bernard and the blank stare of amazement that had greeted his name… . What else could that have meant? If that had been passed off as a coincidence, wouldn’t Bernard revise his opinion when he heard from Vince (as he was bound to) about the air-letter? There’d be no talking yourself out of that! Harry decided.

Prince and some of his mates were grouped around one of the Arabs, rooting through a heap of coloured beads which the wog was trying both to sell and to protect. Harry stood behind the boy for a moment, conscious that he returned the pressure.

… And he don’t even know it’s me! Harry thought bitterly, moving away to lose himself in the crowd.

Down in the Goanese quarter another market was operating between the rails of the hatchway, like a great cage of jabbering apes. Harry rested his head against the metal of an upright, watching the assorted wogs as they bartered in a babel of pidgin English, broken Hindi and bumboat Arabic. A feeling of being himself observed made him raise his head, and, over the heads of the squatting, gesticulating rabble, he met Bernard’s eyes. Standing against a pole in a similar attitude. Bernard raised his hand and crooked his finger.

. . This is it! thought Harry uneasily, nodding and making his way round the hatch.

Have you got a moment. Shears?” Bernard asked, his Hertford vowels more noticeable when he was severe. “I’d appreciate a word with you.”

“Sure,” said Harry jauntily, “if you can make yourself heard above this howling mob.”

Bernard took a key from his pocket and led the way along to unlock the unnumbered peak. “I think we’ll be undisturbed in here.” He switched on the light and locked the door behind them.

“Oh,” said Harry, pretending surprise, “a chapel, eh?”

“As though you didn’t know,” said Bernard bluntly.

“How should I know?” Harry thrust his hands in his pockets and looked around. “Chapels aren’t in my line.”

It was the size of an ordinary ten-berth Goanese peak. Plain chairs stacked along the sides, a simple altar between the portholes, and a small vestry locker with lamps, statuettes and oddments on top. A pile of broken-spined hymn-books in a corner. A moth-eaten hassock. A smell of candlegrease.

“Undenominational or what?”

“It’s the Goanese chapel. Didn’t you know they always have one?” Bernard took down a chair and straddled it, arms folded on the back.

“Oh? R.C.? … Shouldn’t there be lamps and that?”

“No, there’s no tabernacle here. Father Moraes keeps that… . But, even so, I’d be obliged if you didn’t smoke.”

Harry helped himself to a chair, and bestrode it to face Bernard. “How do you manage to have the run of the place? You a sidesman or something?”

“I … we help Father Moraes.”

Harry cocked a wry eyebrow. “And what sort of R.C. are you?”

“Rather more than I am C. of E. And we need a meeting-place.”

“We? … Oh, you mean your boys? You mean you hold your own services here?”

“Something like that,” said Bernard composedly.

“And this priest knows what you do in his chapel?”

“We are all Catholics of a sort,” said Bernard, “and what we do, officially, is to serve Mass. There is daily Mass at five a.m., open to Catholics of all races. There’s a notice to that effect outside the crew room, but I doubt if you’ve bothered to read it.”

… Oh hell!  Harry cursed inwardly

“What else we do is not Father’s concern, nor anyone else’s. ”

“No,” said Harry levelly, “not if it don’t harm no one.”

Bernard opened his eyes challengingly. “And whom has it harmed?”

Harry drew a breath and expelled it slowly. “Which brings us to Danny Sparrow.”

“Ah,” said Bernard gently, “I was wondering when we would get to him.”

Harry stared at him across the narrow space. ‘You’re supposed to ask what my interest is.”

“I know that.” Bernard considered his nails. “Danny confided in me quite a lot. Your family background is rather … complex, but you are his natural half-brother?”

“How long have you known?”

“Well, let’s see… . When you came aboard I tried to convince myself that there could be any number of Harry Shearses in Australia. Unsuccessfully, especially as Danny had described you adequately enough. So now I’m bound to ask if the coincidence was arranged. In fact, just how drunk was Macready when he got into that fight?”

“I don’t know nothing about that.”

“Ah,” said Bernard lightly, “well, a coincidence then. But why have you acted so oddly? If you thought there was anything I could tell you, why didn’t you come and ask? Am 1 so unapproachable?”

“Because I didn’t know until today how much Danny was mixed up with you.” Harry took the air-letter from his pocket and handed it across.

The older man read it quickly, his lips puckering slightly — at the mention of the legitimized baby, no doubt.

“Did the Company send you?” he asked, when Bernard returned the letter.

“You know better than that.”

“Anything you care to add to this?” Harry flicked the letter. “Trouble at home? Did you really say that? … And which home? I was with his Mum, remember, and there was certainly no trouble out there, except that we hoped he’d come back and settle down. But we didn’t make nothing out of it. We let him go his own way.”

Bernard considered him carefully. “You hoped he’d come back and settle down?”

“That’s right.”

“Why? Weren’t you doing your damnedest to get shipped home to England?”

Harry smiled wryly. “I wasn’t trying all that hard.”

“I see.” Bernard lowered his eyes. He seemed to lose some of his confidence and his hands moved restlessly on the chair back. “So you really do exist!” he said. “You really do exist!”

“What are you on about?”

Bernard slapped his hands on the chair back, sprang to his feet, and paced up and down the room, apparently controlling a spasm of anguish, while Harry watched in bewilderment. “So he really had a brother!”

“This sounds like The Importance of Being Harry.”

Bernard stood at a porthole, looking out at the chill, starlit desert sliding past. The wash broke on the dykes as gently as a kitten’s purr. “What an odd character you are,” he observed coldly. “You never seem to get your persona quite right. You’re supposed to give me quotations from strip cartoons, not oblique references to Oscar Wilde.”

“I’ve been in the M.N. a long time,” said Harry stonily, “and I’ve read a lot of books. I don’t understand all I read but I’ve got a good memory. But never mind about me. Let’s get back to Danny.”

“By all means.”

“So what trouble was he in? You’ve seen the letter. It wasn’t in London and it wasn’t in Aussie. That just leaves the ship. He wasn’t drunk?”

“He didn’t drink,” said Bernard. “I discourage indulgence.”

“And how could it have been an accident? It’s quite hard to fall overboard in a calm sea, unless you’re larking about. Was anyone with him?”

Bernard shook his head.

“Oh?” Harry narrowed his eyes. “But someone saw him go over? The newspapers said…”

“Yes, I got up to the well-deck just too late.”

“Well, what?” Harry spread his hands in exasperation. “Was he mucking about? Balancing on the rail, or something? … What did he say? ‘You come a step nearer and I jump’ ?”

Bernard stiffened. “That’s quite uncalled for!”

“Well, what am I to think if you don’t tell me nothing?” Harry grimaced to show contrition, feeling none. “You must have some idea! He wouldn’t do it for no reason, cold sober, one night before pay-off!”

“I didn’t say he was sober,” Bernard objected quietly. “I said he wasn’t under the influence of drink.”

“What’s the odds?”

“I’m talking about a state of mind, Harry.” said Bernard gently.

Harry thrust the chair away, jumping to his feet. “So you’re one of those? You say he was up the wall?”

“People who commit suicide are usually considered to be unbalanced.”

“Well, all right!” Harry snapped back. “So what unbalanced him? … Six weeks before he was a perfectly normal kid!”

“Was he?” They glared at one another across the room. “I don’t know, Harry,” Bernard confessed, shaking his cropped head. “It was nothing that happened in here. Nothing that we do. It couldn’t have been, because we are so careful. We practise moderation. We avoid all abuses of mind and body … 1 hoped you would be able … feel free, to tell me more than you have . . , I’m sorry that you’re not disposed to trust me. It was a great shock, a great sorrow. We were all very fond of him.”

“Now, honestly!” Harry expostulated. “What could I tell you? I wasn’t even on the ship! I was ten thousand miles away!”

“Yes,” said Bernard quietly, seeming to shrink a little, sounding alarmed. “Yes, I know… .” He glanced at his watch. “We’d better go. Father will be here to say his Office directly.

“What did you think I could tell you? That Danny was upset about something in Aussie?”

“How well did you know Danny? How close were you?” Unwillingly Harry dropped his glance and averted his face. “Close enough,” he said reluctantly.

Bernard paused with his hand on the key. “Yet … you do know why he left Australia?”

Harry shrugged. “To see his old man.”

“Rubbish!” said Bernard impatiently, his jaw hardening.

“That’s what he said!” Harry protested.

Silently Bernard unlocked the door, ushered Harry out, and locked up again.

“Good night, Shears!” he said coldly, turning towards the swing doors on his heel and thrusting out of sight.

Chapter Twenty-five

Nosing through the polyglot, ancient and modern, watercraft into Port Said, the Cyclamen dipped her colours and sounded her hooter as a gesture of sisterly respect towards the Cyclades, tied up near the absurd Customs “mosque”.

Harry stood at the rail, listening to the ironical, affectionate jeers of the crew, as they watched the replica of themselves slide past. Apart from the black funnels (for it was the Line’s gimmick to give each ship differently coloured stacks), the duplication was uncannily exact. The same sort of people in the same sort of poses, from the look-out in the prow, the loungers stripped on the head, past the Officer of the Watch saluting on the Bridge, the smart Firsts, Seconds, Leading Hands and whatever in the First Class, the not-so-smart in the Tourist, the downright scruffy aft, taking a breather from the laundry and the galley. A duplicate set of chefs and pastrycooks, all puffy and simpering, a nurse and a doctor in Sick Quarters; a stewardess burdened with waving kids on the play-deck. A duplicate of Harry, in peaked cap, also waiting to go on gangway duty.

Except that no one was a duplicate, he reflected. It was only from a distance that they looked alike: the closer you got, the more alarmingly different they became. Until, right close up, shuddering together under a sheet, breathing into their mouth, eyelashes tangling, the very bones grating together under the flattened flesh, you knew yourselves condemned to be forever strangers, whose secret thoughts were as incommunicable as if they came rippling through the light-years from two separate planets.

It was too far away to recognize anyone he had known on the Cyclades, although some of those pinkish blobs – perhaps in that group of youngsters on the well-deck – must be faces that had, at one time, and however briefly, obscured the universe.

“See your old ship, did you?” asked Dad Mustoe, as they went up on duty together. “See anyone you knew?”

Harry shook his head. Impossible to explain that one never knew anyone. Not worth the bother of trying. Not even to someone loved and trusted. So certainly not to Dad.

“Well, here goes!” said Mrs Poole valiantly, nerving herself for the descent to the booth-lined pontoons, that cheapjack Ponte Vecchio which led so ineluctibly towards the garish emporium of Simon Arzt. “Wish us luck!”

“You might be able to swap him for something useful,” Harry suggested, nodding at the mutinous bundle in her arms. “Try Simon Arzt. They’ll take almost anything there.

“Except cheques and Vatican postage stamps.” said Dad Mustoe, tickling Georgies nose and making a noise that probably worked wonders with fractious greyhounds.

“That’s an idea!” she said, brightening. “Won’t you get ashore?”

“Someone has to mind the ship, ma’am. Turn your back for two minutes and it’d be a heap of spare parts.”

“Can I bring you anything back? A nice brass Birmingham Buddha?”

Harry smiled and shook his head … Certainly not that! He’d had a bellyful of Buddhas.

This business, he reflected, was as big a mix-up as the Suez fiasco, with everyone trying to sound in the right, no one saying exactly what they thought, and the truth leaking out bit by bit.

The score at present was in favour of the Establishment. He, Harry, the Opposition you might say, had got nothing new on Bernard. No evidence of responsibility for Danny’s death: and, if no one else had been on deck, and nothing had been noticed from the Bridge, then there never would be any evidence and one could just as well forget the whole thing. Even if Bernard had picked him up and tossed him overside, well, you couldn’t subpoena the sea.

The rest didn’t amount to much. Bernard’s prayer-meetings might give the boys a laugh, but they weren’t a lever for blackmail. Whatever else went on in the chapel, the eight of them (or were there more?) would keep a close secret. You couldn’t bore a spy-hole through a bulkhead. There were no hiding-places inside. Disguise was impossible. Of course one could summon the Master-at-Arms and force an entry, but that would be a very long shot, for which, no doubt, they had their emergency drill, ready to whip on their surplices and open their hymn-books.

Meanwhile, damn it, Bernard had something on him! The fact that he had concealed his relationship to Danny in an effort to nose out some information. If Bernard spread the word, the lads in the peak would treat him like a leper: grassing was the one thing they couldn’t stand … And how hurt would Princey be?

“See that evil-looking thing down there, Moira?” drawled Lil, coming to pose at the rail.

“The cross-eyed piece?”

Lil flashed a smile down at the bumboats, stroked the nape of her neck, and got an oily grin in return. “What do you think of that?”

“Haroun al Raschid in disguise,” said Harry. “I’d know him anywhere. Go on and get him, girl, before he sees Patience or Lulu. They like ’em fat, you know, out here!”

“Do you think he might throw me across his camel and gallop off into the desert?”

“Sure, or take you in part payment for the bomb damage, and then you’d get a vote of thanks from United Nations.”

“And the Nobel Peace Prize!” said Lil dreamily, waving to her wog and slowly descending the gangway, bowing and smiling to imaginary photographers.

“Ah, I didn’t recognize you in your cap,” said Miss Hathaway, pausing on a tour of the deck.

“Not going ashore, ma’am?”

“Indeed I’m not!” she said roundly. “I think it’s disgraceful! All this going on as if nothing had happened! As if no one had died! How can people do it?”

“It’s their living,” said Harry. “You can’t blame the Arabs.”

“Like holding a sale of work in a military cemetery!” Miss Hathaway snorted. “Perfidious Albion, indeed!” She marched off to do another mile or two.

Harry frowned across the gaudy serpent of the pontoons to the sand-coloured mock-French. mock-Arab facades of the waterfront, garnished with palms as implausible as feather dusters. Port Said, like the stuff it peddled, was genuine imitation. Even the wogs might be stamped Made in Japan on their backsides. That was the one thing to be said for the Port of London; it was so drab that it had to be real.

… That’s about it! he told himself. Bernard’s a genuine imitation, too. A bogus holyman. He knows I’ve stumbled on something, or he fears that I have. Something I haven’t yet seen for myself. And he’s making smoke, throwing out dark hints about messages from beyond and all that rubbish, to cover his retreat.

… In which case I can stop worrying about chasing him. because he’ll chase me. He’ll have to keep checking to make sure I haven’t yet seen the truth for myself and am all set to expose him.

That night, after departure and dinner, Harry lay on his bunk and waited. Twenty-four hours since their talk in the chapel. High time for Bernard to check up, if the theory was correct.

“So this wog takes me down this back alley, see?” recounted Willie conspiratorially, to a cynical Phil, a prurient Bruce, and an impervious, peach-gobbling Ron. “And there’s this old bag and this donkey …”

“Oh, no! ” groaned Phil. “Last time you told us this tale, you blooming liar, it was in Alex!”

“Well?” cried Willie indignantly. “So what? They’re all wogs, ain’t they?”

Phil looked up, nudged him and winked.

“Shears?” queried Bernard from the doorway, looking round the bunks. “Shears? … Ah, Shears, you’ve got a book out from the library, I think?” He checked down his list.

“S’right,” said Harry, with a private smile as he rolled over to get the book from his locker. “I was just thinking about changing it.”

“Oh well, in that case come along. I’ve got a few new ones down from the passengers’ library.”

Out in the alley, Bernard said, “Sorry about that… We’ll go along to the chapel, if you can spare a few moments?”

“Sure, why not?”

In the Z bend they encountered Prince and Patrick, cocoa mugs in hand. The boys smiled at Bernard, and Prince’s glance slid over to include Harry, while Patrick glared at him with overt resentment.

“Don’t forget,” said Bernard kindly. “An early night tomorrow. I shall want you both on Sunday.”

As they went round the hatch, ducking under the Goanese laundry, Bernard glanced back to say “Seeing Prince reminds me …”

He said no more but led the way into the chapel and locked the door behind them. “I’m sorry this isn’t very convivial,” he said drily. “But as you know, it’s very hard to find seclusion anywhere on board.”

… As I know? Harry queried uneasily … Seeing Prince reminds you of what, you smooth bastard?

“What’s on your mind, Bernard?”

“The same as on yours.” He began to pace about, looking once more unsure of himself … Do I do this to him? Harry wondered.

“It’s ridiculous for us to go on sparring like this. After all, Harry, we’re both on the same side. We’re both deeply concerned about what happened to Danny.”

Harry nodded, trying to hide his wariness.

“You may think I’ve taken this all very calmly, but I can assure you that it was a terrible shock to me. Terrible!” Suddenly he sat down, tilted back his head, and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. He looked every year of his age and absolutely shagged. “The whole business was like a nightmare!”

Touchily, as though this had been an admission of guilt, he added. “I’ve told you I wasn’t responsible. I did nothing to cause him to take his life. He was treated exactly the same as the others … And do they strike you as potential suicides?”

“No,” Harry admitted.

“And yet something happened to … unbalance him! What was it? Nothing happened here, and nothing in the ship outside my supervision, because I keep a very close eye on them. With good reason, as you’ll agree.”

Harry felt his neck grow chilly.

“If he’d been bullied or molested he would have complained to me. That’s what I’m here for. In any case, as you know, it’s damn difficult to keep such things a secret.”

… As you know! That again!

“Unless there is some danger of which I’m unaware, here, within the group …’’

“That depends what you do.” said Harry coldly. All of this from Bernard sounded curiously unconvincing, as though he was just throwing out suggestions but had already made up his mind.

Bernard uncovered his face and stared at him. “Nothing like that.”

“Well, then?”

“The answer seems to be that the flaw was in Danny, doesn’t it?”

“Easy enough to say now he’s dead!” said Harry bitterly, lighting a cigarette with an angry flourish.

“I don’t enjoy saying it. And it’s not an accusation. Mental illness isn’t a crime … And that’s where I must ask you to help me, Harry, to get this thing into perspective.”

Harry glanced at him, and then at his cigarette. “Gee, I forgot …”

“Never mind,” said Bernard impatiently, frowning and pinching the bridge of his nose. “I asked you last time how well you knew Danny. Fairly well, you said? … So I wonder if you’d mind telling me a bit more about his early years. There might be a clue.”

Harry shrugged. “How do I know what’s important?”

“How indeed?” sighed Bernard. “We can’t investigate a subject in his absence. However ‘total’ your recall, it’s Danny we need on the couch. It may be a waste of time, but at least we shall have tried.”

Harry could see no way of prolonging the interview and prompting Bernard to further revelations, except by complying. So, for an hour or so, he talked about Danny’s grim upbringing in the tenement, the hopeful turn his life had taken down under, and the senseless way he had suddenly turned his back on it and gone back to the ugly past.

“Squalor has a fascination for some,” was Bernard’s comment.

“Not for the working class!” Harry said crisply.

The recital clarified nothing, except to remind Harry of how little he knew. Danny’s motive for going home to London, and for staying at sea, was as inexplicable as his reason for self-destruction. Bernard asked some questions, made some notes, but seemed as baffled as before. Through the conversation gleamed the bones of the facile proposition that Danny had consistently acted unreasonably, and therefore had been eccentric if not insane.

“I suppose,” concluded Harry sombrely, “that he was just the age for it, that’s all.”

Bernard, deep in thought, had opened another of his notebooks and was making a comparison. Harry went to the porthole and stared out at the spectral white-caps racing before the sirocco.

“Let’s recapitulate,” said Bernard presently. His voice was very quiet and controlled, deliberately negative. “Can you tel! me a little more about your relationship with Danny?”

“Such as?’’ Naturally Harry had merely pencilled this in, well aware of the inferences that Bernard could draw.

“Oh, in general terms. How did you react to his decision to return home to his father?’’

“He wasn’t returning home! ” Harry objected. “His home was with us. He just wanted to visit the old man.”

“But you didn’t approve?”

“I thought it was daft … Just chucking up every thing like that.”

“Did you fight about it?”

“Not exactly,” said Harry, frowning at his cigarette. “We argued the toss a bit.” But they had fought all right. At least, Harry had fought, using every weapon in his armoury, incredulous, despairing, bitterly hurt, losing every battle because Danny refused to stand his ground but withdrew behind a smokescreen of evasions. “Anyrate, it certainly didn’t stop him.”

“And on his visits, during the Sydney turn-round?”

“Well, naturally, his Mum and me tried to persuade him to come home.”

“You thought that would be in his best interests?”

But Danny had thought otherwise, combatting such tactics with moody silences, or else, at night in the sleep-out, playing for sympathy by groaning, shuddering and sighing, working himself almost into convulsions, while Harry lay, hard-eyed and tense in the darkness, refusing to relent.

“You thought you knew best?” Bernard repeated quietly.

The question rattled Harry. “His place was there. His Mum was running it single-handed.”

“Apart from you?”

“Oh, I was only a bird of passage,” said Harry swiftly.

Bernard’s thick brows went up and looked like staying there. “Really? But surely, didn’t you say … ? Or did Danny tell me? … That you planned to stay out there?”

“Well, yes, at the start,” agreed Harry uncomfortably.” Before he got this mad idea about going to London. But it all fell through.”

“What had you thought of doing? Going on the land?”

Harry nodded. “Moving out west a bit. Running a station. It was all pretty vague.”

“Out west? … Over the Blue Mountains somewhere?”

“It was just talk,” said Harry, refusing to be drawn. “And it didn’t come to nothing. Not after Danny scuppered it.” Nodding thoughtfully, Bernard rubbed his chin, softly grating the blue bristle. “Did he write to you?”

Harry shook his head. “Just once in a while to his Mum. He was never one to kill himself with letter-writing.”

“Did you write to him?”

Harry sneered. “Don’t you know?”

“I don’t supervise their mail,” said Bernard forgivingly.

… No, Vince in the First’s office does it for you, you snake!

“Or did you try to communicate with him in any other way?”

“What other way?” Harry jeered. “Pigeons?”

Bernard held his stare for a moment and then turned away to collect his notes. “The perplexing thing, Harry,” he said anxiously, “is that I’m more disposed to trust you when you’re vulgar than when you’re polite.”

“Gee, thanks!” said Harry sardonically. “I can be much more vulgar than that if you think it would help!”

A wingtip of spray brushed across the scuttles, and Bernard went to withdraw them and screw down the portholes. “Well, I don’t know that we’ve accomplished very much, but we’d better continue this some other time.”

“And shouldn’t we investigate your side a little?” Harry suggested flatly. “I might spot something you’ve missed. Shouldn’t I know what you do in here?”

“I suppose it might help,” admitted Bernard ungraciously, “but I should have to ask the others first. We’ll see what we can fix up.”

He unlocked the door, and then, as if remembering, said “And there’s one favour you can do me, Harry. I have a very serious reason for asking. Would you mind steering clear of young Prince in future?”

Harry tensed, demanding harshly “Come again?”

Bernard gave him a worried, apologetic regard. “We have to be very, very careful. We don’t want it to happen again.”

Amid his humiliating rage, something clicked into place in Harry’s brain, prompting him to an audacious guess. “You mean,” he snapped, “you’re scared that Prince might be chosen?”

Bernard flinched, and Harry felt a savage stab of delight. The older man quickly recovered, and then, when he seemed to have weathered it, suddenly paled and leant weakly against the door.

“Then you did . . .?” he whispered. “Then you can …”

“Many are called,” said Harry, with brutal flippancy, “but few are chosen! ”

Chapter Twenty-six

Seven days to go, and two of them wasted in battling against storms and heavy seas. During rough weather one’s instincts were concentrated on gravitational problems. The internal gyroscope left no time or energy for personal intrigue. The lads in the peak had already turned their faces towards home, and were discussing, as though the issue were ever in doubt, whether they would sign on for one final trip or get to hell out of it. Bruce left Harry alone and began brooding over snapshots of his girl, as though doing penance for having let his thoughts stray awhile. Willie and Phil argued about the composition and performance of soccer teams. Marty told them, in detail, the first three things he would do the moment his foot touched terra firma. They were highly unoriginal things, but Marty was making a belated show of orthodoxy.

Harry joined on the queue for a brief personal interview with the First Steward. “Signing on next trip, Shears?”

“No, First.”

“What reason do you give for signing off?” The First didn’t look up from his list. It was all one to him. Plenty more from where you come from, mate.

“Family reasons. My old man’s been took sick.”

“Right.” Tick. “Next!”

That gave him five days. What he didn’t know by the time they docked he could say good-bye to. Whatever ship he joined, it wouldn’t be the Cyclamen. Nor any ship with that creep, Bernard, aboard, otherwise it would lead to trouble.

… In fact I might fill him in just for the hell of it! Harry told himself sourly… . Just to say cheerio, like.

Apart from brief glimpses in the saloon, he saw Bernard only once during the rough crossing of the Eastern Med., and that was Sunday morning, when he pussyfooted into the peak at four-forty a.m. to call Lennie for Mass.

Lennie rose and dressed without a murmur, and it made Harry think that the group certainly did things the hard way, even if this altar-boy lark was only camouflage for their private shindig.

It was a wonder that this sort of thing could have appealed to Danny, who hated to get up in the morning, and had had no more interest in church than anyone else in the Shears or Sparrow households. Auntie Betty wasn’t even one of those sentimental pagans who like to lie in bed and listen to hymns on the radio.

So had Danny had to become a “type of R.C.” too? Did they go the whole hog and get baptized? Or was Father Moraes so flattered to have white boys serving his Masses that he didn’t ask too many questions?

But, after all, this religion business was just a front. After all, Danny was a growing lad, naturally inquisitive, and Bernard was an old hand at the game of satisfying their curiosity. He, Harry, knew the game well enough to recognize the signs.

Easy to guess, when you thought it out, why Danny had had to jump. He’d had enough.

That evening Bernard came down to the peak and said “Shears? Can I have a word with you?”

Harry pulled a face at the others as he followed. They seemed to assume, to judge by their expressions, that Bernard was wangling something extra special; say, a shore pass to Gib., which was very hard to get.

“I hear you’re not signing on again,” said Bernard over his shoulder.

“S’right,” said Harry contemptuously. “That should set your mind at rest.”

“It hardly solves anything, does it?” said Bernard, with a rather depressed smile that baffled Harry.

“I mean it leaves you a clear field.”

“To do what?”

“Well, I shan’t be a moral danger to your precious bellboys, shall I?”

As they went round to the chapel, Bernard, unable to contain his reply, answered in a low voice. “You’re mistaken. Shears. I wasn’t talking about moral danger. Personally I consider all these forms of infantilism distasteful. The body is worthy of better treatment. But all sexual commerce is primarily masturbatory, and there’s no point in being pious about categories. And I don’t think that affection, however or by whoever shown, can be really harmful.”

“Well, what the hell are you talking about?” Harry demanded, furious at being trapped into such a damaging admission.

“Naturally,” Bernard pursued, unlocking the chapel. “I except any form of coercion or assault. That goes without saying, But one sees that a degree of gentleness, reciprocal tenderness, goes into the majority of these shipboard liaisons… .”

“This is all very touching.” said Harry roughly.

Bernard turned to consider him. “I’m trying to say that I don’t criticize your feelings for Danny. Between half-brothers they were perfectly natural, I’m sure. But I wish you’d found some other means of expressing them.”

Harry gave an uncomprehending lift to his shoulders and lit a cigarette very deliberately.

Bernard began to pace up and down, lithe, over-youthful, poised on the balls of his feet. “Oh, I must admit I as fairly contemptuous at the time.” he said, rather agitatedly. “We distrust all that sort of thing. Mysticism is not our chosen path … I naturally assumed that it was a clever conjuring trick. I believe they do that sort of thing on the halls?”

He sat down astride a chair, fingers clasped, leaning earnestly towards Harry. “You see my problem? I can’t claim that I knew Danny intimately. Who does? Young lads are secretive creatures, always on the defensive. They don’t want to be known. They may not have much to hide but they keep it hidden.” Recalling the snapshot, the bathing pool, Harry found this mildly risible but kept a straight face. Was Bernard slightly off his rocker?

“So I had several choices. Either Danny had been put up to it — to fake the whole thing, including the Brother business — presumably to discredit or confuse us. Which meant that we had a vicious opponent somewhere on the ship, perhaps even inside the group. Though both were hard to believe.”

“Or?” prompted Harry blankly.

“Or else, well, that he was doing it off his own bat. And that was incredible. It was much too clever. It argued some knowledge of Theosophy, Blavatsky, the Hidden Masters, especially the Brothers …”

“Could he have mugged them up, whatever they are?” suggested Harry helpfully.

Bernard glanced at him suspiciously. “Well, certainly, I have books on such subjects, but I never encouraged the group to borrow them, and I’m sure they never have. It’s hardly in their line, you know. Their concern is practice, and theory is my province.”

“Well, then?”

“Whence did the messages come?” Bernard spread out his hands. “I couldn’t accept a mystical explanation, and I couldn’t believe Danny a fraud or a hoaxer. Was there a rational explanation between those extremes? Danny had told me, before the messages started, about his half-brother. Was he the instigator? If so, how was it done? … Is it too much to ask?”

Harry, lulled by the objectivity of the discussion, suddenly found himself in the witness box. “What am I supposed to be telling you?” he stammered.

“All right,” said Bernard patiently. “Then let’s try deduction. Danny received air-letters from Picton. Ostensibly from his mother. He never showed them to me, and there was no reason why he should… But did they also contain instructions from his half-brother for this elaborate practical joke?”

“Look, Bernard, I’m all at sea!” Harry protested.

The older man’s face became impassive with reproach. “We could have called it a successful leg-pull and left it at that. Except that the joke misfired and Danny died.”

“Are you accusing me?” cried Harry sharply.

“What else can I say? … Are we to believe that Danny killed himself because the joke had gone wrong? … No, because it went dangerously right! The group was thoroughly impressed, and I did my best to reserve judgment. Or because it worked so well and he was ashamed? That wasn’t in character.”

“I agree to that!” said Harry tersely. And. if it sets your mind at rest, I never wrote a line to Danny, nor he to me. I think I told you that before.”

Bernard began to stride about again. “I can’t pretend that I like you, Shears, but I mustn’t let that cloud my judgment.”

“That’s very kind of you.”

“I don’t want to believe the worst of you … But what can I do if you won’t help me?”

“Christ Almighty! What …?”

“Blaspheming doesn’t help! ” said Bernard crisply.

“What … am … I… supposed … to … say?”

“Are you, for instance, going to tell me it’s a coincidence that you used the same word that Danny used to describe himself… . Chosen? … ‘Chosen’, he said. ‘My brother has chosen me…’ ”

Harry snorted derisively. “That’s dead easy. I heard one of your boys use the word, referring to Danny! … You needled me, with your dark hints about me and Prince, and I said the first thing that came into my head.”

“Oh,” said Bernard, deflated, “and that’s all it means to you?”

“What else could it mean?”

Bernard paused, drumming his fingers on the locker top, then impulsively unlocked it and drew out a brief-case, also locked, from which he produced a notebook.

… No wonder he can afford to leave his peak cupboard open! Harry thought… I’ll bet the photos were there by mistake, but the rest of the stuff is cached here! The whips, masks, feelthy pictures, or whatever they use to get their kicks!

“Look, Bernard,” Harry suggested firmly, “why don’t you tell me the whole thing from the start? And just assume that I know nothing.”

“I can’t assume that!” said Bernard, rather fearfully. “Don’t you see my position? … Let’s just look at the messages, shall we? I kept a careful note on the last trip out and home. Danny had had a couple of isolated turns before that, but I’d put them down to mild hysteria, showing off, growing pains … I wasn’t sure.”

He smoothed out a page. “It’s time we were crossing the mountains … You’ve heard that one. Many variants … My Brother is calling me to come over the mountains, and so on. I tried Freud, but mountains don’t seem to symbolize much, and they’re an unusual dream feature. Lakes, yes. Water, heights, mazes, tunnels, elevators, confined spaces, but not mountains. I took them to represent a barrier of some sort.

“My Brother is calling me home. Many variants. Pages of them. I’ve let my Brother down … My Brother is after me, calling me, following me … Homesickness? Some feeling of guilt? Persecution complex? … My Brother is coming across the sea. Prophetic? … And here’s an odd one. My Brother says I must leave the old devil and come home.”

“We always called our old man that,” said Harry contemptuously. “There’s nothing in any of it. He knew we wanted him home.”

“No mention of his mother or sisters. But the brother crops up in every message. The brother is all.”

“He knew we’d talked about… practically agreed, to go over the range and get a bit of land,” said Harry grudgingly. “I reckon it played on his mind.”

“It was a monotonous, meaningless, distressing display,” said Bernard gravely, “and the whole thing is wrong, anyway. If he was trying to put on a show – if he knew more about spiritualism than I thought — then he’d have invented, or been supplied with, the usual flatulent, evasive claptrap about Peace and the Hereafter. That’s to say that the content of the message was wrong if someone was trying to confuse us with spurious mysticism.

“But if this was supposed to be the other thing, thought-transference, a link with a living person outside this ship, then they still don’t ring true.”

“Why’s that?”

“The language. Shears, the language! Much too formal. Danny was a working-class lad, you said so yourself. So why the highfalutin’ prose?”

“Wouldn’t he pick it up here?” suggested Harry keenly. “I suppose you read the Bible and all that? It’s very catching.”

Bernard rubbed his chin. “Possible. On the theory that the medium gets the thought and has to find the words … But 1 can’t accept the theory.”

“Nobody’s twisting your arm,” said Harry gruffly. “And if you’re accusing me of sending messages, or whatever, then one of us is crazy, and I don’t think it’s me.”

“What else can we suggest?” Bernard looked very troubled now. “You were paid off in Sydney with dysentry?”

Harry nodded.

“Any recurrence?”

“Slight touch … I think 1 told you that last time.”

“Did you? When was this?”

“Oh, a couple of months back. Sometime in the Spring … the Aussie Spring.”

“Then how do you account for this?” Bernard tapped the page. “My Brother is sick and cannot come.”

“That sounds like the Bible!” Harry interposed.

“That was in mid-October. Almost three months ago!” said Bernard, quietly triumphant,

“May I see that?”

Bernard passed over the book. The way the messages were set down it was quite possible that there were some interpolations. No evidence either way.

Harry shrugged. “I can’t account for it. Just a guess, probably. But, anyway, how did these messages come?’’

“We have a period of silent meditation,” said Bernard, folding his arms as though about to indulge. “Like Yoga. Breathing and thought control … Danny sometimes became restless and finally broke silence. He seemed to be in a sort of trance … very pale, sweating, with eyes closed. He rolled his head and sometimes foamed a little. He spoke in a fairly normal but distressed voice. No impersonation, you understand. No suggestion of acting as a medium for some disembodied voice — or whatever the iniquitous farce is. He wouldn’t answer questions, didn’t respond in any way … I treated him for hysteria and hoped for the best …”

“You took a pretty big risk, it seems to me!” said Harry accusingly. “A pretty bad error of judgment.”

“But you see my dilemma?” Bernard almost begged. “I couldn’t believe in the spiritualist hokum, nor that a lad like Danny could fake it.”

“You could have stopped him coming in here.”

“Yes, but I thought he was better here where I could watch him … And it would have been difficult to exclude him without telling him the truth. You see … and this inclined me to believe it must be genuine, whatever it was … he didn’t seem to remember a thing.”

“So we agreed, the rest of us, to keep quiet about it … Of course we had no idea we were heading for tragedy …”

Harry knotted his perspiring hands. “And on the last night… ?”

“Nothing, absolutely nothing …” said Bernard bleakly. “You can see in my record. My Brother is calling … 1 must go home to my Brother. He had said it many times before.’’

Harry let out his breath slowly. “And he came round as normal as ever?’’

“So far as I know …” Bernard looked at his hands, his chin sunk on to his chest, utterly dejected. “I believe I was busy at the time … We had stopped paying too much attention … One of the lads said afterwards that Danny seemed rather pale and tense. A bit wild-eyed, he said … And then, quite suddenly, without a word to anyone, he went running up to the well-deck and it was all over  …”

Shocked, Harry stared at him. “Just like that?”

“Just like that,” Bernard assured him solemnly. “He never hesitated, never looked back. He went straight over. He knew just what he was going to do … I hadn’t a chance to stop him.” He passed a hand across his eyes. “I ran up to the Bridge … We put about and lowered boats … As you know, he was never recovered.”

Chapter Twenty-seven

Yes, it was all very nice if you could believe it! All very pat. The group sworn to silence, a few pages of “messages”, and Danny dead. Was this the same story as the police had been told at Tilbury? What version did they hear on the Bridge? Or was this just an “explanation” cooked up for him alone? Bernard had had plenty of time from the moment he’d recognized him.

Harry was leaning against the back wall of the chapel. A mob of Goanese, probably the whole off-duty watch, squeezed together on the chairs, fidgeting devoutly. In a flurry of surplices and cassocks, almost concealing the altar, Bernard and his boys were changing, while Father Moraes vested in the corner. Along the wall beside Harry were three white wingers, but the only one he knew by name was Rita, who looked very mournful and refused to catch his eye. Harry wasn’t surprised. Churches had a fascination for queers, and, the showier the services, the bigger the screamers they attracted. A late-comer whose presence caused Harry even less surprise, was the Head Waiter, looking very sacerdotal indeed. A simple explanation of Bernard’s protection from above, no doubt.

Bernard had invited him to stay for this evening service. There seemed to be no objection to the presence of unbelievers. But perhaps Bernard hoped it would convert him, or at least soften him up? Harry knew he wouldn’t see anything very much, since this was a public performance and these were their “official” duties. But at least it was a chance to watch Prince in perfect safety.

He looked very young and solemn, raised on tiptoe to light the two tall altar candles, with a match that was just about to burn his fingers. The boy looked down the chapel, burnt his fingers right enough, flicked them and blew on them, while Patrick grinned covertly. There was a sickly smell and a curl of smoke from the corner where Bernard was puffing on a piece of charcoal.

… Really, Bernard seemed to take all this church business much too seriously for a grown man!

… And what the devil had that last remark of his meant?

For, just after Father Moraes had appeared to interrupt their talk, Bernard had said, in a discreet murmur, “The reason why I asked you to steer clear of young Prince should now be apparent. You know that his name is also Danny?”

“What of it?”

“It sounds like, well … a sinister coincidence …”

… God Almighty! Harry had reflected… And didn’t I think the same? Like the baiting of a trap?

He looked over the heads of the Goanese at the servers lined up before the altar, while the priest, his cope held out, concealed the means by which Bernard was producing a cloud of aromatic smoke.

… Well, whoever set the trap knew how to bait it!

When the service ended, Harry ducked outside to get the incense out of his lungs, and found Rita waiting for him.

“I didn’t know you were one of us,” she said.

“I’m not. I’m from the Watch Committee.”

“Oh,” she looked a bit rattled.

“Surprise to see you there. Aren’t you gay?”

“Who, me?” She gave a thin, sour grimace. “Not for years, dear… . Of course I likes me bottle, but we have to have something to console us in this Vale of Tears, don’t we?” The service seemed to have done her some good. She was one degree less melancholy than usual, and also, apparently sober.

“In that case, Guides’ Honour!” she said, winking. “Not a word to Lil or the girls! If they like to think I creep off to oily assignations in the engine-room every Sabbath, well let ’em!”

“Queen Mum’s the word,” Harry agreed.

“Let’s drink to it! I ought to have a finger left, if that cow Patience hasn’t smelt it out.’

“Not now,” said Harry cautiously, “I’m shagged.”

Rita pursed her lips, sucking in her long cheeks. “What’s your interest in us, anyway?”

“In chapel? None, really … I’m interested in Bernard if you like.” He waited for a couple of men to pass out of earshot down the alley. “You see. I’m related to Danny Sparrow.”

Rita stared at him. “You mean that poor kid last trip …?”

Harry nodded. “Funny business, werent it?”

“I suppose so,” Rita reflected. “Not that I haven’t thought of taking the plunge myself… I suppose that’s why I keep on going to church. In the hope that some of it will stick.”

“Yes, but you’ve been around a bit longer than Danny. He was just a kid. Why d you think he done it?”

Rita shrugged. “Kids do, don’t they? I mean they get depressed like anyone else. More so, by the look of them. Have you ever seen anything as woebegone as an adolescent?

Harry paused to light a cigarette. “You a mate of Bernard’s?”

“Hardly, dear … Though, mind, I’ve nothing against him.”

“Funny bloke, though. I can’t make him out.”

“Oh, he just dashes about doing good,” she sighed. “I suppose that does make him odd, come to think of it!”

“Is that so?” queried Harry mockingly. “And what’s this private carry-on they have?”

“Do they?” she said vaguely. “I wouldn’t know. Boys aren’t in my line, ducky.”

“I mean, I was wondering … D’you think Bernard had anything to do with it? With Danny being depressed or whatever?”

Rita looked severe. “You shouldn’t really pick on Bernard. He does his little best, poor man. I suppose he’s a sort of saint, and they’re always rather tiresome, aren’t they?’’

“Ho hum! ” said Harry, indulgently cynical.

Rita paused at the door of her peak. “Well, this where I live. Thanks for walking me home. Sure you won’t come in for a quick one?”

“Not now, ta.” He could hear a couple of the girls having a cat-fight inside.

“Then come to our little party on Channel Night … Or Chanel Nuit, as we call it. We talk French for half an hour every day, you know, while we’re doing our reducing exercises.”

“Yeah, I might do that.”

Rita lowered her voice. “And later on there’s this sort of memorial service for Danny. Did Bernard tell you?”

“I think he mentioned it,” lied Harry. “Sleep tight, sweetheart.”

“Trust me!” said Rita sadly. “Tight as a drum!”

On Monday the weather had quietened and they steamed across the grey, choppy sea. For the Mediterranean, even in January, it was unusually cold, and the crew resented it as an unjust extension of the winter that lay ahead of them. The social life of the fo’c’sle was grinding to a halt under the soggy weight of boredom; love affairs were cooling, irritations multiplying. There were some ugly fights, mostly from boredom.

For Harry the dullness had a suspect air. He was sure now that Prince had been warned to avoid him. Bernard also kept out of his way: and with Lennie, even at the adjoining table in the alcove, he had never had any intercourse, and if it seemed that he came less frequently on to Harry’s territory to comb his hair, well, that could be boredom too.

At breakfast on Tuesday, to his surprise, Alistair and Caroline Walsh politely said farewell, and later on the W/Cdr dropped him a couple of quid. Their plans had been altered and they were disembarking at Gib. Harry watched the children rather regretfully, wishing that he had been able to penetrate their secret world, the game of In and Out. It aroused the glum reflection that if you couldn’t get a line on a couple of kids, what hope did you have of fathoming a complex character like Bernard, with just over three days left?

Mid-morning most of the crew were topside, staring at the Rock as if it were the Promised Land, not just a half-wop joint, where everything cost twice as much as it should, and it was all uphill, and crawling with Servicemen. Harry went for a shower.

Bernard, or someone, had miscalculated badly, because the washroom was empty except for Prince.

“Well, if it ain’t my old mucker!” Harry said brightly.

Prince looked disconcerted and continued to stare at himself in the mirror stroking his chin.

“Now don’t encourage them!” Harry said, going over to him. “You’ll have to start shaving soon enough!”

“I do now!” said Prince, in a muffled, hurt voice. “And I’m growing a ’tache!”

Harry pinched the boy’s chin, tilted it up and stared closely. “I reckon I need glasses! I can’t see sod all!’’

The boy freed himself. “You not signing on next trip?”

“Well, word soon gets round! Who told you?” Harry pulled a face. “As though I don’t know!”

“You ain’t then?” Prince ran water into the bowl and rested on his hands, staring down dejectedly.

“It’s just that I’d sooner have told you myself, if I’d got the chance. But I never see you these days, do I?’’

“So why ain’t you?” Prince stared at his hands in the water. “You know why! … Or if you don’t, just ask Bernard!”

“I seen you in chapel last night.”

“And I saw you. And very pretty you looked.” Harry went to the porthole and looked across at the Rock. There were some dagoes yelling and waving from bumboats down below, and a basket went bobbing past on a cord, up to the well-deck where some poor sucker was being had. He lit a cigarette, conscious of the growing coolness between them, hating it, yet powerless to reverse the current. “You’re signing on again, of course?”

“Yeah,” said Prince dully.

“Why?”

The boy shrugged. “I need the dough.”

“You must need it bad, mate!” said Harry brutally, striding out of the washroom.

He went up on deck, forcing himself to watch the antics of the waterborne pedlars; compelling himself to ignore the disgusting knife-twisting pain in his chest, and the impulse to rush back to the washroom while there was still time.

… There’s no future in it! He told himself firmly … There’s nothing in it for you, mate! He sails with the ship, and you stay ashore, and that’s that! Finis! …

… So don’t go making a fool of yourself. Remember your age. Don’t let them get you on the run. Be top man all the time. Don’t start cringing and snivelling and licking the ground because it never, never works!

Chapter Twenty-eight

On Wednesday the chill obscurity of the horizon was pierced by fitful shafts of sunlight picking out white townships on the Portuguese coast, but it was too cold to loiter topside. The men in the peak spent the evening packing their gear and debating new hiding-places for their odds and ends of contraband.

Harry lay on his bunk, pretending to read a paperback. Hidden inside it was the snapshot, to which he returned from time to time. It was a mystery that Danny could have been so different from what he seemed. If there had been this weird streak in him, why hadn’t it shown before? Why hadn’t Danny confided in him? Why hadn’t the promise of a new life in the outback been exciting enough to hold him? , . . What the hell had he wanted out of life that only Bernard could supply?

He lay smoking, restlessly turning the pages, obsessed by the unreality of Danny’s death as it had been described to him. To have heard the facts only thrust it further away from credibility. … To have heard Bernard’s version of the facts.

From along the alley, in the bellboys’ peak, came the musical tinkling of a brace of tiny bells. That wind-up toy for Prince’s kid sister. Harry became aware, then, that in studying the snapshot he had looked at Prince as often, and as intently, as at Danny. So much so that the draped stool, or whatever, on which Princey sat, was beginning to look more and more like Mr Jayavarman’s knee.

… I’m getting dirty-minded in my old age! Harry told himself.

Biscay, next day, was choppy and grey but not notably rough. The frames were on the tables just in case, since the Bay was liable to change its mind at short notice, but everyone came down to meals except Wendy Avon-Gore. Which was a pity, since Harry had been preparing for a final assault on her mother, on the lines of “sensitive, intelligent children are always a bit of a handful, bless ’em”. You never knew but that it might bring in a quid or two.

“We getting a taxi tomorrow?” Willie demanded that night. “1 ain’t going on that perishing train. I bloody nigh froze to death last time.”

“Too blooming true,” said Phil.

“And me.” rumbled Bruce, sealing up his last letter, to go ashore at Falmouth when the Customs launch brought its cargo of inquisitors: although even one had pointed out that, no matter how long the pay-off took (depending on the number of illiterates aboard) he was bound to be home before it. But Bruce had promised to write from every port, and by Christ he was going to do it.

“Taxi? Count me in!” said Ron, loping past to sling out his plate, cutlery and napkin. “Sooner I get home to some decent conner the better.”

“Cor, dear,” said Marty, who was dressing for the queers’ Channel Night party, “I pity your poor Mum, I do straight! I bet she ain’t left the stove in years! ”

“I’m always feared he might turn cannibal,” said Willie. “Might get hungry in the night, and they’d come round at knock-up and find just a heap of chewed bones with old Ron snoring like a bastard in the middle.”

“You ain’t got enough on you for a decent hors d’oeuvre,” said Ron scathingly. “Not even on toast.”

“I’ll bag a seat if it’s going,” said Marty. “How many do they take?”

“Six… . You on, Ginge?”

“Sure, ta,” Harry said. “What about Dad, though?”

“Aah, he sticks with his mates. He don’t come with us.”

“Or Lennie?”

They all glanced up at Lennie’s empty bunk. “Aah, sod Lennie,” said Willie sourly.

Harry realized that Lennie had been missing for some time. He eased himself up into a kneeling posture and peeped over the bulkhead. Ram Thomas’s bunk in the next peak was empty. So he lay down again and waited uneasily for the summons.

But it was Rita who came for him. Rita, in her red velvet gown, jet earrings, and high heels, her make-up as blotchy as raddled Gloriana on the wane. Her sad, drooping eyes regarded Harry with profound melancholy over a moulting ostrich feather fan. “Come along, Moira! You’re late! Her Majesty’s in a terrible tizzy.”

“Oh … I’d forgotten,” said Harry, sitting up reluctantly.

“That’s high treason!’ Rita sucked in her cheeks and gave Marty an up-and-down inspection. “Do you always buy your jeans three sizes too small?”

“Nice girls don’t notice things like that,” said Marty jovially.

“I haven’t been a nice girl in years!” said Rita haughtily. “What do you take me for?” She flicked her fan imperiously at Harry. “Where’s your drag, dear? Do get a move on!”

“I’m not dressing,” said Harry, winking at the others. “I haven’t a thing to wear.”

“Oh, lawks a mussy!” said Rita, pulling a long, grave face. “Well. I may be able to smuggle you into the bedchamber through the secret entrance, but it’s Court Dress or nothing tonight.”

“Right!” said Marty, unzipping. “I’ll come in nothing.”

“You’re not coming at all, you oaf!” said Rita coldly. “You can howl with the rest of the mob outside the railings, brandishing your dreadful weapons!” She waved Harry out of the peak. “We’ll have to keep in the shadows, Moira. The mob is after our heads. The guillotine is busy on the well-deck and the sans culottes and tricoteuses are on the march… . I didn’t dare to come in my coach for fear they’d recognize me as a lady of quality.”

“I thought you said you weren’t gay?” asked Harry, perplexed.

“Well, there’s gay and gay …” said Rita vaguely. “We have to make an effort for the last ball of the season, don’t we? … One never knows, but it may be the end of the Ancien Regime. Who knows what heads will roll at Bow Street and Old Bailey ere we meet again?”

“Oh, I suppose you all go trolloping round the moment you get ashore?”

“The past is lying in wait, you know.” Rita sighed. “For all of us, scum of the seas, our charming company of dips and cosh kids, bigamists, ponces, footpads and parole-breakers, the immunity from the past ends when we cross the three-mile limit!” She tapped him on the shoulder with her fan. saying quite seriously, “Just remember that … whoever or whatever you are!”

Harry sensed that she knew very well what he was, but was, in her detached fashion, being polite. She knocked on the door of the queers’ peak.

“Who is it?” squeaked someone inside.

“Me, dear.”

“Password?”

“Itchy Palate!” Rita smiled over her fan at Harry. “That’s a euphemism. Isn’t it sweet? Her Majesty can’t bear vulgarity. She is not amused, you know.”

Marilyn opened the door to them. “Madam is not at home.”

“You saucy little cow,” said Rita, hitting her over the head with her fan and sweeping inside.

“Old boot!” screamed Marilyn. She dropped onto her knees, slapping viciously at their ankles. “Watch your great flat feet. I’ve lost one of me fascinators.”

“I should think so, too,” said Rita loftily. “Fascinators at your age. I don’t know what you young girls are coming to. If I was your mother I’d tell you to wipe that slop off your face and crawl back into your gingham and pigtails!”

There were half a dozen girls, in full drag tonight, and five chesty escorts from the plate-house. Diamond Lil in her white satin and sparklers, was reclining as far as possible on a chair draped as a throne. The lower bunks had loops of curtain that more or less veiled the occupants from the public gaze. There was an enormous amount to drink.

“You may kiss my hand, serf,” said Lil, with a glittering smile of welcome.

“I’d better not,” said Harry. “I’ve got a touch of insomnia.”

Patience screamed, “The plague!” All the ladies drew back, squealing, and veiled their faces.

“Don’t be silly, girls,” said Lil calmly. “He won’t attack you if you don’t provoke him.” Harry noted the modulation from feminine to masculine pronouns and wondered what it betokened. Useless, of course, to think you could fool Lil. “You’d better take something for it,” she said.

“This one’s on me, dear,” said Rita, pouring him out a gin.

There was a scuffle at the door, and Marty, in underwear, thrust inside before Marilyn could fix the chairback under the handle. “What’s this, Lil?” he roared. “You being unfaithful again?”

“I’m faithful in my fashion,” said Lil icily. “But 1 belong to my subjects, you know that. We’re not like you commoners, we have our obligations.” She summoned Harry to her side. “Have you seen Bubbles recently?”

“Bubbles?”

“The one like the Pearly Queen … I think she’s plotting my downfall, the bitch. Something,” she added darkly, “is afoot! There’s a lot of whispering in the Palace corridors.”

“I don’t know nothing about Bubbles, but that’s the one I wouldn’t trust!” Harry nodded at Marilyn.

“What? My little handmaiden? … Ah, uneasy lies the head that wears a crown! ”

Lil then acceded to requests to sing Take Back Your Mink and The Lady is a Tramp, and did a Beatrice Lillie monologue about Maud being rotten to the core. She bestowed her favours, such as they were, on Marty, who was certainly the pick of the bunch. Marilyn sat on Harry’s lap but seemed inhibited from progressing much further in familiarity. In fact, despite the usual camp chatter, Harry sensed a certain reserve, as though they weren’t quite sure where they stood with him.

Their relationship to the louts was grimily obvious. The screamers’ misfortune (perhaps, tragedy) was that they couldn’t hope to do better than these amoral gorillas who reviled them, knocked them about, and reverted to a normal sex life the moment they lumbered ashore. They might see themselves as gracious ladies but they couldn’t hope to attract courtly cavaliers, because recessive plus recessive was, as they say, bread and bread; and all the elegant suitors with amusing Mayfair flats, Lagondas and private incomes, were on the prowl for pretty, stupid coffee-bar boys, musclemen on the make, and the sort of Guardsman that Marty had evidently been. The particular tragedy of screamers like Lil and Rita was that they were intelligent enough to know where they stood, and to forsee quite clearly, when they chose to think about it, what the future held in store. Some of the others, like Patience and Bubbles (who had now appeared with unconvincing expressions of fealty to the reigning sovereign) were hitting the bottle hard enough to dull their average wits. Marilyn, Harry decided, was just subnormal.

And what do you do for kicks?” Marilyn asked him. She pouted sagaciously. “Not that I don’t know.”

“If you know, don’t ask,” said Harry… . And if you knew, sweetheart, you’d tell the world!

Patience and another girl, who had been doing a tango to the record-player, started a fight over one of the oafs, screaming and pulling each other’s hair or wig as the case might be.

“Ladies, calm yourselves!” cried Lil, standing up on her throne and hitting out with her silver high-heeled shoe.

Harry made use of the disturbance to get rid of Marilyn, and managed to coax Rita into a corner.

“I thought you were going to that memorial thing tonight?” he muttered.

Rita, enthralled by the fight, flicked a glassy-eyed glance at him over her fan. “Oh no, dear, that’s not for us! Just for the dear altar boys!”

“Oh,” said Harry noncommittally. When the fight was absorbing all their attention and glasses were beginning to smash, he unfastened the door and slid out of the peak.

“After him, girls! ” cried Lil imperiously. “He’s gone to betray us to the rebels!”

Harry doubled back aloft and looked into the crowded, noisy crew room. A lot of shouting and drinking going on. The whole fo’c’sle was erupting with sardonic jubilation. But none of Bernard’s chosen few was there. He went down through the meditative calm of the Goanese quarter and round to rap sharply on the chapel door. There was a low murmuring within.

He knocked again and tried the handle, and Bernard asked, “Who is it?”

“Shears. Let me in, please.”

“Just a moment!” Bernard sounded sharp and hostile.

Harry smiled grimly at his watch, computing the time they would need to make themselves presentable. Jeans, P-jackets, plimsolls, cassocks, surplices; back to your places, boys; hymn-books open… . Another half-minute. Underwear and socks as well?

The door opened and Bernard motioned him inside and locked it behind him. The last chair had just grunted into place, and the seven knelt before the altar, motionless but tense, as though still holding their breath from their Yoga exercises. Ram Thomas, slower or more careless than the rest, showed a protrusive glint of flesh where he had missed a few buttons.

“You didn’t need to put on this show for me,” said Harry caustically. “You should have known I’d be alone.”

Bernard, glowering, turned away without a word and went down to one of the seven who was not so much kneeling as slumped across the improvised pew. “All right,” he said gently. “Just sit down for a while. Give him a hand. Lennie … Patrick!”

Harry felt his heart jolt and stomach constrict, seeing Prince s grey face lolling back as the two lads helped him to his seat.

“What happened to him?” Harry asked, striding across to them.

Prince’s eyes were flickering, almost closed, his lips open, showing his clenched teeth with a tiny fleck of foam at the corners.

Bernard, his hand on Prince’s forehead, gave Harry an anguished, steady look. “Just been overdoing his exercises.” he said quietly. “Nothing serious. Give him a drink of water, Patrick, when his jaw loosens. He’ll be all right directly.”

Aware of the hostility and bewilderment of the group. Harry said to Bernard, “You did invite me, remember?”

“I said I would ask the group,” Bernard corrected him. “As things transpired we didn’t think it would be a good idea after all.”

Harry understood the dilemma. Bernard had been unwilling to reveal his relationship to Danny for fear of giving too much weight to the absurd thought-transference theory. To tell them that Danny actually had a brother (supposing Danny hadn’t told them himself) would be to give a false importance to the “messages” that had sprung from his self-induced hysteria.

Lennie, avoiding Harry’s glance, came over to attract Bernard’s attention. They saw that Prince was sitting up, his eyes open, drinking from the glass that Patrick held.

“Please wait,” said Bernard, waving Harry to a chair by the door. “I shall have to have a word with you now.”

He went down the chapel, bending to have a word with Prince. The boy nodded and smiled wanly, sitting with his head tipped back and eyes shut, apparently exhausted.

Bernard turned at the altar, leaning easily against it with his hands resting on the white runner. He neither signed himself with the cross, as Harry had expected, nor made any gesture of reverence. He smiled at the gathering, and, in a businesslike tone, made a bracing little speech, telling them to be good boys, keep unspotted, and go easy on the wallop and fags. Reminding them of the procedure for keeping in touch if they were joining other ships. Reminding them, too, that, since one never knew, if anything should prevent him from rejoining the ship, Jonathan (he nodded to the eldest winger present) would take charge. Because ideals were more important than personalities. Ideals were immortal. Whoever came and went the group would grow until one day, as they fondly hoped, the Merchant Navy would be regenerated from within.

Harry felt almost sorry for Bernard. He had certainly set himself a task, and, to judge by the present gathering, he had only succeeded so far in salvaging a bunch of ex-Boy Scouts. He hadn’t made a dent on any of the hard cases.

The congregation dispersed, removing cassocks and surplices and folding them away into the locker. Patrick helped Prince to disrobe, and Bernard came down to talk to them. The others said good night, departing singly and at short intervals.

“Fit to go now?” Bernard asked, leaning over Prince.

The boy nodded and smiled, rather embarrassed.

“You’d better go with him, Patrick.”

“What happened?” Prince murmured.

“You passed out,” Bernard said lightly. “Nothing to worry about. Just excitement, I expect. A bit of shore leave’ll soon set you right.”

As they went to the door, Prince saw Harry for the first time, opened his lips as if to speak, but finally said nothing. At the point where he might have spoken, if only to mutter good night, Bernard passed between them to the door. He locked it again and was alone with Harry.

“What am I to say to you?” he asked gravely.

“Well, that was a jolly, manly little chat if you like!” said Harry contemptuously. “Just like a youth club breaking up for the hols.”

“Which is more or less what it is, whatever you may choose to think,” said Bernard flatly. “Smoke if you need to, Shears.”

“Shall I need to?”

“That depends,” said Bernard heavily.

“I’m interested to know why you changed your mind about letting me in … if it’s all as innocent as you say,” Harry challenged him.

Bernard paused in his stride and looked round sharply. “I just don’t understand you!” he said bitterly. “After all the damage you’ve done … and nearly done again … how can you come here and be so confoundedly flippant? Are you just amoral? Have you got some sort of blind spot, Shears? Should I blame you or pity you? … Have you got some destructive twist unknown to yourself?”

“That’s a fair string of questions,” said Harry, lighting up. “Where am I supposed to begin?”

“Where were you this evening? Do you mind telling me?”

“Not in the least. I lay on my bunk until about an hour ago. and then I went to the queers’ party.”

“What did you do there?”

“Drank some gin and repelled some advances.”

Bernard looked disgusted, and Harry continued. Incidentally, since some of the advances were from Marilyn … What is it you call her? Robin? … it set me wondering why you’d never tried to save her. After all, she is a bellboy too, even if she’d make a better chambermaid… .” He cocked a cynical eyebrow. “Isn’t she the type you should be working on, instead of preaching to these little lambs? Or don’t the feminine streak appeal to you?”

“There’s nothing 1 can do for Robin,” said Bernard sadly. “He needs a psychiatrist. I’ve tried to persuade him to pay off and stay ashore, but, honestly, how can one tell that’s the wisest course? The temptations may be slightly less, but the penalties are infinitely greater. 1 don’t think Borstal would solve anything. So why should I persuade him to offer himself as a victim to Society’s morbid fear of the unnatural? … It might prove what a worthy citizen I am, but what would it do for Robin?”

“True enough,” Harry was forced to agree. “But since you seem to see yourself as a man with a mission, how can you pick and choose? Shouldn’t you be out in the highways and by-ways, not just preaching to the converted?”

“Rubbish! ” said Bernard crisply. “All I am is a focal point. Those who feel a need to improve, to perfect, themselves, gravitate naturally towards us. The others are repelled. It’s as simple as that. All we can do is attract by our example.”

“Well, I must say I’m not all that impressed. Your mob is about as standoffish as any I’ve met on a ship. They freeze you out the whole time. Look at Lennie! … A month in the same peak and at the next table, and I’ve hardly had a civil word out of him!”

“Don’t underestimate Lennie,” said Bernard quietly. “I’ve learnt to respect his judgment.”

Harry pulled a face. “You mean the fault’s in me?”

“Let’s say,” murmured Bernard, “that there’s something about you that doesn’t invite trust.”

“Such as?” … Well, now or never!

Bernard gave him a deeply searching stare. “Don’t you know what happened in here tonight?”

Harry shrugged, slitting his eyes, and dragging on the cigarette.

“Shears,” Bernard sat down, looking old and worn, his fingers locked. “I know you’re fond of Prince. I don’t object to affection so long as it’s undemanding and unpossessive… . If this is really something outside your control, then I suppose there’s no help for it. But if this is something done consciously and deliberately, I beseech you to reflect that a boy’s sanity may be in danger!”

Flushing, Harry sprang to his feet. “What happened?” Bernard looked up at him. “The same as with Danny.”

“You mean … the trance? The messages?”

The older man nodded.

“But that’s crazy! … What? The same messages?”

“The same … well, similar. Derivative, perhaps… . I’m sure Prince was only voicing some feeling of panic or hysteria. As far as the group were concerned I think I explained it away as such. But naturally they’re troubled… . The resemblance was uncomfortably close… . As you saw for yourself, like Danny, he didn’t seem to know what had happened.”

Harry shrugged helplessly. “You mean … talk of a brother, and all?”

“Not exactly. Prince simply said He… . But he seemed to have remembered some of poor Danny’s phrases.”

“And this he is supposed to be me?” Harry scoffed incredulously, trying to manage an angry laugh.

“Sit down, please. This is unpleasant for both of us, and my responsibilities are greater than yours… . Shears, you deny all complicity in this … communication?”

“Absolutely!” Harry cried.

“To make it blunter still… . Did you put Prince up to this, as you put Danny up to it, to make a fool of us?”

“No … !” Harry gasped, searching round in vain for an obscenity to meet the situation.

“Then I must accept that,” said Bernard resignedly, his shoulders drooping. “I’d better tell you about Colombo… . Perhaps, after all, it was fortunate you came. You remember Jayavarman?”

Harry nodded.

“He’s an unusual man. Remarkable intuitive powers. He reminds me of what one has read of the Curé d’Ars, you know?”

“No.”

“Well, he does some rather extraordinary character-analysis. And I’m afraid he warned me most emphatically against you. … I won’t trouble you with the technicalities. Let’s just say he was convinced that you have a highly destructive personality.”

“Yes!” Harry sneered. “That’s just what you’d like to believe, I’m sure!”

“No,” said Bernard sincerely. “I find it hard to accept, because I don’t follow Jayavarman’s line of reasoning at all. I’m emphatically against that type of mysticism.”

“It’s all very interesting,” said Harry, with a return of confidence. “And how does my destructive personality work?”

“I have no option, it seems, but to tell you the rest,” said

Bernard, rising. “Tonight, how or why I do not know, Prince seemed to carry Danny’s story a step further… . I am appalled by the implications, believe me, but what else am I to say? … It was almost as though Danny spoke again!”

“Oh, please!” Harry cried. “Spare me the black magic!” Bernard stared down at him. “Prince was in great distress. He was specific, where Danny was vague, about his fears. And, by implication, about what Danny had feared. He wants me to do it, he said. He wants me to do it again… . He’s coming after me… . He’s getting closer… . He wants to make me… .”

“That’s enough, sod you!” cried Harry wildly. “Belt up, can’t you? That’s enough!” .

There was a moment of silence.

“I thought as much,” said Bernard quietly.

Unable to speak, Harry walked to the door, unlocked it, and slid out into the alley.

Chapter Twenty-nine

“How long will you have to stay on board after us?” asked Mrs Poole.

“Depends,” Harry said. “Paying-off’s a drawn-out business. We may be away by six.”

“That must be a bore,” she said.

“It’s all a bore, really. I don’t know why we do it.”

“I suppose so,” she said, in a suddenly withdrawn voice, as though aware of her dignity as a fare-paying passenger. No more funny remarks about her infant. The time for mid-ocean fraternization was over. With the stopping of the engines in Tilbury riverside, the bloods began to shake down into their shoreside social order, where wingers ranked as domestics. No longer a sturdy defender against the terrors of the deep, nor an entrepreneur from whom a smile could secure the breast of the turkey, but just those white-coated automatons you found in any shoreside restaurant, shaking out your napkin and taking your order. No more, alas, the friend in need, the mother’s help, the white hunter of the watery wastes. Good-bye to all that.

The parents came, collected their children and took them away, leaving envelopes neatly in their place. Carl insisted on shaking hands, and Wendy Avon-Gore, rather disturbingly, wept, although her mother explained that she always enjoyed a good cry and was brilliant at finding excuses for one.

At the adults’ breakfast, the Arnolds, facing out over the frosty mudflats towards the city that challenged their provincialism, had decided to model themselves on the Margravines for the duration, were sniffy about the food, called him “Shears” instead of “Harry”, and were rather mean with their tips. Renolds, the stingy bastard, never appeared at all, and Miss Hathaway said “Jolly good fun, but thank God it’s over. Another week and I’d have murdered the lot of them!’’ She gave him a fiver.

“Everything all right. Shears?” asked the Head Waiter, tripping down into the alcove.

“Yes thanks, sir.”

“Good drop, I hope?’’

“Not looked yet sir. Feels okay, though.”

The extra chumminess, Harry knew, came from the accident of having seen him in chapel. Pity he hadn’t thought of that dodge earlier, but how were you to know that Mr Parsons was one of them? … Of course, everyone knew that the R.Cs. were just like the Masons, practically a Trade Union.

“Just check your silver in, and then I don’t want to see you again,” said the Head Waiter kindly, resting his hand on Lennie’s shoulder, preparatory to having a word with him.

… It’ll be a pleasure! Harry thought… . The sooner I’m off this tub, the better. But you had to hand it to Bernard for pulling a really fast one. Brilliant! … You could just see how it happened. He’d played on the poor kid’s conscience until he’d broken down… . And even then there was only Bernard’s word for what the lad had said.

Harry stripped his tables, covered them with the plush, and took the linen up to dump it in a great mound by the cold buffet. The saloon was clearing fast, all the bloods having gone to join the passport queue, medical queue, and the rest of the caper. The Goanese wingers alone were taking their time, since few of them had anywhere to go ashore, and the sight of Tilbury in mid-winter was enough to drive anyone to hide under the blankets. Beyond the portholes, the bleared grey skeletons of cranes swayed against the lowering sky in a thin drift of snow.

As Harry approached the cold buffet, Prince turned and went away with a tray of silver cruets and didn’t look back.

… I’ll bet old Bernard was jealous as hell, though! Harry thought spitefully… . I’ll bet he’s dying to, but daren’t, or can’t, and yet he’s surrounded by it all day long… . I’ll bet he could cheerfully slaughter me, given half a chance!

The galley was emptying, too: the pastry-white, monolithic figure of the Chef was making his final majestic rounds: the last dishes were crashing into the washing-up machine to a chorus of the vernacular version of Bless ’em All.

“The Customs have just gone forward!” lisped Marilyn excitedly. “I’m going to act suspicious and maybe they’ll strip me! ” She ran off, kicking up her heels.

“Don’t know what they were looking for this time,” said Lennie, queueing behind Harry to check in his silver. “They just about tore the engine-room apart, they reckon.”

“Must be a bastard job, though,” Harry said. “Imagine having to crawl round all them pipes and turbines and that!”

“Last time they copped some hemp, I heard,” said Lennie. “Stupid blooming game that is.”

Harry wondered why the little lad was being so friendly all of a sudden. Another of Bernard’s ideas?”

“You sign on again, Joe?” Pereira asked, checking his cutlery tray.

“Not next trip, Joe.”

Pereira sighed. Another good man gone.

As they returned down the working alley, Lennie continued, “Bernard said you was Danny’s brother, or something?”

“Half-brother.”

Lennie paused to stare up at him, his babyish features alight with surprise, hand smoothing his hair. “Well, why didn’t you say, you nit? Why didn’t you tell us?”

Harry shrugged. “What good would it’ve done?”

“Well … we could’ve got you in with us, see?”

“I didn’t think,” Harry confessed. … In fact, mate, I thought just the opposite!

The Customs had reached the fo’c’sle and were giving the peaks the full treatment. You had to hand it to the bastards, they certainly knew their job. They poked their noses up the ventilators, over the pipes, behind the cupboards, inside the bedding. They made you unpack your gear, empty your pockets, and open your wallet. They nicked five obscene books off Marty and told him rather sorrowfully that at his age he ought to know anyway. When they left, Willie poked his head out of the door and told them one recondite place they’d forgotten.

“You may have something there,” said a big, genial Customs man, clamping his hand on Willie’s thin shoulder. “Jones, I want this one to strip.”

The others in the peak laughed even louder when Willie returned, mouthing curses and adjusting his dress. “Sex-maniac!’ he croaked. “I’ve probably been interfered with, if I weren’t too young and innocent to know what it meant.”

“Did you enjoy it, son?” asked Dad amiably. “That’s the main thing.”

“I might’ve done if he’d cut his fingernails.”

Along the alley the toy dancer lightly tinkled its bells as the Customs checked the bellboys’ gear. Harry took his towel and went up for a shower, (although it was hellish draughty and the floor as cold as the ice topside. Tilbury in the sleet looked quite Dickensian. You expected boats with muffled oars to be rowing escaped convicts out through the mist to the Channel packet.

There were light footsteps in the alley. Harry watched hopefully from his shower cubicle, but it was only Lennie. “Hey,” he said, sniggering eagerly, “Did you hear about old Bruce? You know he’s got this watch for his girl? He’s been wearing one on each arm all day, dodging the Customs… . Well, they nearly copped him just now!”

“How was this?” Harry soaped himself and wondered about this late-flowering friendship. Perhaps Lennie had been told to be a good boy, turn the other cheek, and let not the sun go down?

“He was standing by for lunches, and saw them coming through the galley, so he nipped into the saloon and stuck the watch in his water jug! And, blimey, if four Customs blokes didn’t sit down at his table and ask for a glass of water! ”

“Oh no! … And he poured out the watch!”

“Almost!” Lennie giggled. “He poured out three, and he could see the watch strap coming… . So he poured ’em all back in again, shaking like a leaf, and said, ‘I’ll fetch some fresh water … this is c . . c . . corked!”

Harry laughed, wondering just the same… . Don’t underestimate Lennie, like the man said.

Having filled the basin, Lennie seemed to forget his ablutions. He began to comb his hair. “I was just thinking,” he said uneasily, “about Danny Sparrow… .”

“What?” Harry turned his back. The treacherous wrench of anguish and desire was too visible in the tightening of his stomach. His muscles corded, flinching from a blow.

“You know those turns he had?”

“Yeah,” said Harry cautiously, “you mean like Princey last night?”

The comb stopped. “Oh, Princey just fainted, I think.”

“That’s not what Bernard said!”

Catching his stare in the mirror, Lennie shrugged. “Well, I don’t know. I wasn’t there.”

“Don’t give me that! I saw you!”

“No, I was out of the chapel,” said Lennie, quietly obstinate. “I went with Father Moraes to his cabin. One of us goes as acolyte, and it was my turn. I got back just before you come in. … So far as I know Princey just sparked out.”

“Bernard said he’d been talking a bit up the wall,” said Harry tensely. “Like Danny.”

“I don’t know nothing about it,” Lennie said, shrugging. “Bernard didn’t say.”

Harry stepped out of the shower and towelled himself angrily… . You had to hand it to the group – they covered their tracks like professionals!

“Anyrate it was different,” Lennie objected mildly. “Princey didn’t bite his tongue.”

“Eh?”

Lennie turned round to face him, putting his comb away. “I was going to ask you… . Did Danny have turns like that before, out in Aussie? … Biting his tongue and all?”

“Christ Almighty!” said Harry softly… . There had been, once or twice, those disturbed, moaning nights in the sleep-out. the specks of blood on the pillow in the morning… . There had been that curious frenzy in the tenement cellar, which, at the time, had seemed to have another cause… . “Good God Almighty!”

Lennie pulled the basin plug and the water gurgled away into the silence. They stared at one another across the room.

“Epilepsy?” said Harry, beginning to shake, perhaps with the cold of the floor.

The babyish lips gave a diffident pout. “I just wondered… .”

“Well? Did you tell Bernard? Did you warn him?”

Lennie stared at the towel drawn tight between Harry’s clenched fists. “Bernard said it wasn’t… . He said it would only give Danny ideas.”

“Of course he said it wasn’t!” cried Harry fiercely. “Because otherwise it was… .”

“Bernard didn’t know for sure,” Lennie persisted quietly. “He thought Danny was just showing off… . Putting on an act, like.”

“But, Christ… !”

“Bernard did what he thought was right,” said Lennie, going out of the room, leaving Harry alone with his naked, outraged, staring image.

Chapter Thirty

As the light began to fade, word went round the grapevine that paying-off would start within an hour or two. They were packed and dressed to go, ready for the final rough-and-tumble of sorting out and claiming their taxis.

“Watch your step topside,” someone advised. The companion ladders were perilous with ice, the decks like skating rinks. Out in the gloom beyond the oily river, the dim, yellow lights of the south shore bloomed like chrysanthemums in the thickening snow.

“Be a bit dodgy driving up to town!” someone said glumly.

“How far’ve they got?”

“The Bs.”

“Sod it,” Harry swore. “Be here for ever!” He realized that he hardly knew the others by their surnames.

“I’m the last of our lot,” Marty groused. “I’m a Y. So don’t you bastards go without me!”

Harry looked round the huge First Class Boat Deck Lounge and Ballroom. The first time he’d been anywhere near these public rooms. It was up here, wasn’t it, that Prince was on coffee after dinner?

Following his nose, Harry located behind the bar the pantry from which the coffees would be produced. The door was locked but there was a faint clink of cups within.

“Princey?” he muttered. After a moment the boy opened the door.

“Come in quick, then, if you’re coming,” said a crusty old P.R.A. with hooded eyes and a horny face like an ancient tortoise. “Who’s this?”

“Mate of mine,” said Prince nervously. “Want a coffee, Harry?”

“I wouldn’t say no, ta… . Perishing bloody cold out there.”

“Ah well, you got to expect it,” said the old P.R.A. “Heating’s off.” He warmed his hands on the coffee cup. “Never mind, soon be ashore now.”

“Not at the rate they’re going,” Harry complained. He took the cup and smiled his thanks at Prince. “You belting off soon as you’re paid?”

Princey, in his cheap grey suit, sat on the steel draining board swinging his legs. “Suppose so.”

“Wait for us, then… . I’m only three letters behind you… . I can get you a lift in our taxi.”

“Well, er, I’m… .”

Harry winked and the boy lapsed into an uneasy silence.

“You feeling better now?”

“Yeah.” The boy looked down into his cup.

“What was wrong with him?” the old man asked.

“Bit off colour last night, weren’t you, mate? … Excitement I reckon.”

“Ah,” said the old man vaguely. “I shouldn’t wonder. I used to go mad myself once upon a time. But it don’t bother me now. Not since my good lady passed on… . I’d as soon work by as anything.”

“You miserable old devil,” said Prince.

“What’ll you be doing with yourself?” Harry asked.

Prince shrugged. “Same as usual. Go out on me bike. Loaf around with the lads. Go over and see our auntie in Deptford. Go to the flicks. Stop in and watch the telly… . What else is there?”

“That just about covers it.”

“Blimey, you young lads nowadays. I don’t know,” said the P.R.A. morbidly. “When I was a lad it was a bloody good life in the M.N. They treated you well, you got a good sort of blokes, and you and your mates stayed together on the same old ship, trip after trip… . And what d’you get now? Sign-on, sign-off, get-rich-quick johnnies, half of ‘em on the run. Call-up dodgers. Spoil it for everyone. It’s no career any more. Just a floating sweatshop.”

“You tell ’em, Dad,” Harry agreed. “I’m paying-off for one!”

“I don’t blame you,” the old man said.

Harry stared at Prince until he had attracted his attention. “So you’ve got a telly?” Silently he mouthed the suffix “phone”.

Prince frowned, understood, and nodded quickly. Harry made a covert gesture of writing, and the boy shook his head, lips screwed up as he knawed at the underside of his scar. He slid down and came over to take Harry’s cup. “It’s all in the book,” he said jerkily.

“You can say that again, son,” the P.R.A. sadly agreed.

Harry wandered around the ship like everyone else, muffled against the cold, stopping people to ask how far along the alphabet they’d got. Willie kept darting up to him to remind him that he had booked a sixth of their taxi. At last it was time to fall in line and shuffle past the paying officers, Union officials, Customs men, picking your way slowly out to freedom through the coils upon coils of red tape.

The peak was empty of all but his and Marty’s bags. Harry snatched his own and made his way topside, saying good-bye to various muffled figures who dimly resembled the men alongside whom he had lately worked. Diamond Lil gave him a dainty peck on either cheek. “It’s all so sad, saying farewell to the dear boys!” she said weepily. “I feel just like Mr Chips!”

“Remember me!” said Rita hollowly, very drunk, in the voice of Hamlet’s father.

Staring round in the gloom, Harry picked his way down the icy gangplank, his heels skidding from slat to slat, and Prince emerged from the crowded darkness below.

“Duck out of sight over there,” Harry urged. “I’ll just find the taxi and come back. You hadn’t booked, had you?”

“No… . Well, Bernard… . No, not really… .”

“It’ll be okay, don’t worry. I’ll pay your whack… . I haven’t hardly seen you for days, and God knows when we’ll get another chance.”

He found the taxi, with four others huddled impatiently within, and dumped his suitcase. “Where’s Marty?” Willie demanded.

“He was just behind me. I’ll go and tell him to get a jerk on.”

He raced back to where he had left the boy in the lee of a warehouse. “Keep your eyes peeled for Marty. You know, that big noisy sod from our peak.” They stamped their feet and blew on their hands. “And what was all that carry-on last night?”

Prince grunted, shivering.

“In the chapel. When I came busting in. They reckoned you’d had a fit or something and started spouting a load of rubbish about me!”

The boy’s face was indecipherable in the confused light, the shadows and reflections off the snow. “What?”

Harry took hold of his shoulders and shook him firmly. “Did Bernard put you up to it? Did he? … Just wait and I’ll crown the bastard!”

“What you on about?” The boy’s voice cracked. “I ain’t said a dickybird about you! Straight up! I didn’t have no fit or nothing, I just passed out… . I mean I got dizzy. But only for a minute. I held my breath too long, that’s all!”

“You lousy, rotten swine!” said Harry savagely, through his teeth. Then he gave the boy a roughly affectionate shake. “Not you, you nit!”

Then they saw Marty, and Prince said uneasily. ‘You sure it’s okay?”

“Sure, come on. They’re all decent blokes.”

As soon as Marty was inside, and the engine running, Harry raced across with Prince. “Hey, can you take one more?” he asked the driver. “Do you mind, mates? This kid off my scrub-out, can we squeeze him in? His taxi’s gone off without him, and his Mum’s sick or something.”

“Yeah, sure,” they muttered, disapproving but disarmed. “He can bloody well sit on your lap, then!” croaked Willie. “1 ain’t having him on mine!”

“He’d break you in half!” said Harry. “Come on, son. But for Christ’s sake don’t fidget!”

… Oho, you bastard, Bernard! Harry thought, chuckling inwardly.

The taxi swung round and followed the line of traffic through the slush and gravel and rusty siding of the yards.

“Who’s on the gate tonight, Fred?” Willie asked.

“Oh, ’e’s all right,” said the driver. “Good bloke ’e is.” “Okay,” said Willie. “I’ll put the quid inside my pass, and you lot can chip in after, okay?”

“Where’s your water jug then?” Harry kidded Bruce who was beside him.

Prince had his bag on his lap, and, under the cover of it, Harry slid his hand in, under the flap over the overcoat, up between the thighs.

“Don’t you worry about me,” rumbled Bruce complacently. The taxi slowed to a halt, jerking and stopping again as the traffic passed the Dock Police post, with the faint, watery lights of freedom beyond. When their turn came, the driver said, “ ’Evenin’, George,” and handed out the passes.

The copper flashed his torch around inside, returned the passes and palmed the quid, saying, “Thank you, gents, and good night all.”

His torch played on the boy’s face. “Your name Prince?” Harry glanced out as the door opened, and saw Bernard standing there with the sleet dripping off his nose and ear-lobes. “Ah, we thought we’d lost you,” he said calmly. “But we’ve saved your seat.”

Prince began to say, “It’s okay… .”

“But otherwise someone will have to pay your share… .” The boy got out reluctantly, with the others groaning at the delay, and horns sounding impatiently behind.

“Just a tick,” said Harry tensely. “Pull up outside for a minute, will you? I’m bursting for a slash!”

“Cor, hurry up then!” Willie groaned, as Harry sprang out and the taxi moved on.

“Bernard!” Harry called sharply. “Spare a minute?”

The boy had already got into the other waiting taxi, but Bernard turned and came back.

“Yes, Shears? You still have something to say?”

“Just one thing,” said Harry tightly. He motioned Bernard out of sight and earshot of the copper.

When he got back into the taxi a minute later, Bruce was
exhibiting the Benares brass slipper. It was filled out with a bit of padded satin stuck with pins. “Pin-cushion, see?” Out came the stuffing and there was the girl-friend’s watch.

“Yeah!” said Marty admiringly. “The simplest dodges is favourite every time!”

“The simpler the better! ” Harry agreed.

He rubbed his throbbing knuckles. Bernard, too, had had a very hard chin.

Chapter Thirty-one

“Another drop of tea, Harry? there’s one in the pot.”

“No more for me, ta.”

“Thanks for the cigarettes.” Renée Shears took one from the duty-free packet on the table. “I was right out.” She looked older and thinner than when she’d worked in the shoe-shop, but that still made her younger than Harry. She’d made a special effort to look her best tonight, but the mascara underlined the anxiety in her small, pale eyes.

“I was surprised the old man’d packed up smoking,” said Harry.

“Oh, he had this bit of trouble with his chest, so they told him to lay off it for a while.”

“How about the other hobby?” Harry grinned mockingly and raised an imaginary tankard.

“You surely don’t grudge him a drink at his time of life?” said Renée. “After all he’s been through?”

… And what’s he been through? Apart from a lot of women and a lot of money?

“Not so long as he can carry it. And pay for it.”

“I’ve no complaints,” she said quietly. “I get the money for the house… . Anyrate, he’s only got his pension now, and how many drinks do you think that buys? Of course I’ll be going back to work as soon as Brenda’s old enough to be left.”

Harry clicked his teeth sympathetically.

“A couple of the older boys send him some money. George is very good…. You know, he’s got the used cars in Camden High Road? And Mike… . Well, he had that bit of trouble, but he’s out now. He’s a good lad, just a bit silly at times.” Renée pulled a face and looked at the ceiling. “And this is only a Council flat.” She looked inside the teapot and emptied the dregs into her cup. “Pity to waste it. Will you be comfy on the sofa, then?”

“Sure, ta. At least it’s a one-berth cabin!”

“You be going back to sea, Harry?”

“I suppose so,” he shrugged. “Not much choice really.” Renée stirred her tea. “I don’t know. It seems a bit aimless somehow. Just drifting from ship to ship. Especially with your education.”

“Never mind my education. It’s gone a bit rusty. The main thing is I’ve not got a trade.”

“Well, aren’t there any better jobs on the ships, except just waiting at table?”

Harry shrugged. “I suppose I could be a Third Steward, something like that, if I wanted to crawl. But don’t worry about me. I get along okay.”

“You never thought of settling down ashore?” She cocked her head as though listening for the baby in the next room.

“Doing what?” He was needled by her presumption. “I told you I ain’t got a trade!”

“You could be a waiter in a hotel.”

“No thanks, that’s a pansy job ashore!”

“You never thought of getting married?” She rubbed her hands nervously. “Don’t you have any steady girls in London?” Harry was too fagged, too bored, to lie. He frowned at his cigarette and shook his head. “Never bothered with them all that much.”

“Poor Harry,” Renée said, rather miserably. “You miss a lot, you know… . You miss all the good things.”

“Now where’ve I heard that before?” he muttered cynically.

“It’s true, dear, whatever your mates tell you. There’s more to getting married than washing dishes and scrubbing the front step… . I mean, I hate housework as much as anyone… . But you don’t mind, see, if it’s for someone you care about.”

He looked up at her quickly from the corners of his eyes, his smile twisted tightly. “And what if you don’t care for no one?”

… But I care all right! He told himself bitterly … I’m always caring! Sometimes so much that… . Only dish-washing never comes into it. Nothing permanent, nothing to build on, just a series of disasters.

“Poor Harry,” was all she said.

He pushed back his chair. “I’ll slip out for a while. Say goodnight to the old man for me. He may have dozed off.”

“Righto, dear. You got your key?” She adopted the bland, womanly smile that, like a yashmak, completely hid her feelings — all but her anxious little eyes. “Now don’t come home stinking, will you?”

“That’ll be the day!” said Harry, putting on his overcoat and muffler and going out of the flat.

It was one of these newish resettlement blocks that start to look decrepit as soon as they hit their first fog. There were porthole windows set in flesh-pink tiles on the narrow sides that faced the road. The side that a V. I. P. might see. driving by with the Minister of Housing. The rest was brick, with concrete, echoing stairways and the lugubrious austerity of a railway goods entrance. You could tell your dustbin by the number on the lid. You could tell your home by the number on the door.

Of course the old tenement had been a shocker, a disgrace to have been left standing so long. But with its demolition many irreplaceable things had gone. The attic, the cellar, the side alley, the whispering ghost of Danny.

The old devil had changed, too. Softened up. Old age creeping on and a young wife wearing the trousers. Not that she didn’t seem decent enough. She certainly had her hands full, what with him and the baby.

. . I shan’t be stopping long! He told himself. It wasn’t safe to stay too long ashore. Too many pitfalls. Too many promotion-hungry cops.

He tucked his chin down into his collar as the wind came whipping across the asphalt yard, rattling the chains of the swings, and sticking needles into his ear-drums. The snow was still on its way up from the estuary.

As Princey had said, it was all in the book. In fact there was only one Prince listed in St Mary Cray.

“Can I speak to Danny, please?” It gave him a queer feeling, between exhilaration and panic, to use that name at last applied to Prince. Like daring to touch the steel jaw of the trap.

“Dan?” A young woman’s voice, rather anxious. “Oh … er … just a minute… .” There was a muttering in the distance. “Who is it, then?”

“A mate of his off the ship.” Unconsciously Harry tried to lighten his voice: tried to sound younger, more casual, more innocent.

“Oh … is that Mr … ?” The woman wasn’t at her best on the telephone, evidently. “Dan’s here now.”

“Princey?”

“Yeah… .” The boy sounded husky. “Er … Harry?”

“Yeah. When can I see you, then?”

“Well… where are you?”

“In a phone box in Lewisham.”

The silver bells of the toy dancer rang spectrally in the distance.

“Well …” Princey was very hesitant. “Where will you be after?”

“Oh, in a pub across the street. I can wait there. The Mariner’s Arms… . The buses stop right outside, you can’t miss it… .” Harry frowned at his reflection in the mirror. “But I could come up to town if you’re free?”

“No, you stop there, Harry,” said Prince with sudden determination. “I’ll come on out to you. It’ll take a bit of time… . I mean it’s nearly nine.”

“Well, if you’d sooner come tomorrow? Or I’ll meet you up in town?” Harry began to tap his fingers nervously on the meter.

“No, I’m coming now, I’m coming straight away.”

Harry chewed his lip thoughtfully. “But, look, if you miss the last train back… .”

“I suppose you could put me up at your place?”

“Well, sure …said Harry wonderingly. “Well, of course.”

“I got to go over to my auntie’s at Deptford tomorrow,’’ Prince explained breathlessly. “So you hang on there, eh? The Mariner’s Arms?”

“You’ve got it,” said Harry, telling him how to get there. “See you!”

“Yeah,” said Prince. “I’ll see you, all right.”

Harry hung up, grimacing at the mirror and straightening his tie. The silver bells tinkled faintly, an effect of wax in the ears. He wondered if he should have said something about socking Bernard. No, better save it. Anyway, Prince had seemed to understand.

An ambulance shot past through the murk, a red-eyed tubular ghost, clanging its bell. A clock boomed nine up in the darkness, and the mimicking of other clocks echoed away down the empty streets.

… The Mariner’s Arms! Diamond Lil could have made up a song about that… . Don’t linger too long in the Mariners Arms. …

“Make it a double, Gert.” he said to the big tart behind the bar. “How’ve you been then? Long time no see!” His little finger twiddled inside his ear. Sod that wax. It rang on and on like an alarm bell. Like a burglar alarm away in the night, half wakening you from sleep.

The cash register rang a merry, smug, industrious bell.

Don’t linger too long in the Mariner’s Arms.

You never know what it may get you… .

“Another one, dear?” asked the barmaid.

A lined, freckled, ginger-headed man stared at him bleakly over a row of bottles behind the bar.

… You ugly bastard! he told himself.

If you trollop too long you will wear out your charms,

And the gay little dears will forget you… .

Telephone ringing now, strident as hell. And the cash register. He touched his ears and the noise was muted into a wild, high singing. Like that Arabian scat song when Princey was in the toyshop. Or the cicadas giving their shrill choral backing to those nights with Danny on the sleep-out.

… But they won’t forget you in a hurry, mate! He told the red-faced, grimacing image… . They may hate you afterwards but not at the time. They were with you then, feeling at least an echo of what you felt. Forgiven and forgotten? Oho, no, Mr Creeping Jesus Norrie. Anyway, who wants to be forgiven if it means forgotten too? You only pass this way once, and you need to make your mark before you go out into the darkness. Because that’s the only hereafter you’ll get – the memory you leave behind. And if it can’t be the remembrance of your sons, then other men’s sons will have to do… . And I left my mark on you, you unctious bastard!

… Just as well he went straight down and stayed there! As pretty as I’ve ever seen him, with his gay, white mac in the slush and his arms along an old railway sleeper. Playing crucified, acting symbolical even when he was out for the count… . If he’d got to his feet I’d have broke his sanctimonious neck. Not but that he wouldn’t have risen from the dead to thank me! The first genuine martyr! Statue in the dagoba and all the little boys bowing down!

Gert was answering the telephone in strained monosyllables, so it was probably something her husband through the hatch in the Saloon wasn’t supposed to hear. Marital bliss! Were the bitches ever satisfied with one man?

Waiting for service, he watched in the mirror the comings and going to and from the door marked “Gentlemen”, and presently strolled out there. Just idle curiosity, for this was a fairly notorious “cottage”. The red-faced buck navvy and the rat-faced little man in a raincoat had overstayed their time. As Harry entered the little man buttoned up hastily and scuttled out, and Harry and the navvy eyed each other sidelong in the gloom. He wondered where Marty and Lil and all the others were tonight.

But this wasn’t worth the risk, for it was well known to the police as well. And besides, with Prince coming… .

He went back to the bar where Gert was mopping up the puddles.

… The sooner I get back afloat, the better! I’ll just see Princey this once, and then… . Of course, if anything was to come of it…. But what could? But nothing.

“Where you been all this time then, Harry? World cruise or something?”

“Out in Aussie. I got stranded.”

“Go on!” Gert widened her eyes with professional, weary interest. “I was saying to George only the other day, we ain’t seen Harry Shears in must be months.”

“Yeah, I was in dock.”

“No!” Gert looked concerned. “You didn’t have one of them turns again?”

“Them what?”

“Like you used to have when you was a kid?” She wetted her lips.

Harry gave a single convulsive twitch. “I had dysentry.”

“Oh, that’s not so bad, then… . What ship are you off now?

“Cyclamen. Down at Tilbury,”

“Ah, I thought so.” She adopted a comforting air of knowing everyone’s business. “I saw she was in.”

Harry supposed that many a lonely matelot would now make a pass at her. He wondered for a moment if there had ever been a time when the unattractiveness of women had worried him. Logically, there must have been. Yet he had wiped it out of his memory. After all, he had grown up loving Danny, so that girls had been out of the question, and had gone straight into the M.N., where he’d found himself among friends, and where the image of Danny had slid like a mask from face to face.

Not that the moral issue had ever been fogged. The old devil was forever advocating the rope’s end for any crime that he himself didn’t commit. (Adultery was only human weakness, like having a drop too much.) Even in the M.N. they read you a lecture, tongue in cheek, once in a while. Don’t let us catch you! they said.

But of course Society had to protect itself and hound you down. And what was the alternative? To try the cure, against your instincts, with cold, beastly experiments, at the possible price of some woman’s happiness? Or Bernard’s solution (for others if not for himself) “Self-control, my boy!” Very cold comfort, that.

… We’re both at the same game, Bernard and I! He thought suddenly. The sex-thing is nothing, we both agree. We talk very big about “affection”. But what we mean is “possession”. We both have to have them. We have to change them, to make our mark. Only he calls it religion, so I’m just that bit more honest!

“We’ve often thought of emigrating,” Gert said. “What’s it really like out there?”

He told her what it was really like. But it was a reality he had seen only in daydreams. What station life would be like if once you got over the mountains into the unbroken territory. The fierce dawns, white noons and velvet nights, the space and freedom, the feeling of doing a man-sized job, your faculties fully extended, in a man-sized world. The spreading sense of power, like the sprouting of wings from your shoulder-blades.

That confounded clock was striking again, right overhead. Had the Council put up some sort of Big Ben over the pub? With a massive great clashing bronze gong beating out those shuddering strokes? … And the dancer going into its tinkling silver routine, and the telephones and the cash register, and the ambulance clanging and squealing to a halt.

“I’ll have to see the quack in the morning, and have my ears squirted out,” he told Gert, wiggling his fingers gently against his ear-drums. “This is murder!”

And, in the ensuing silence, disturbed by only the remotest tintinnabulation, he was shocked by a sudden fear that a voice had cleared its throat, preparatory to speaking.

“Danny?” he said anxiously, staring at his ludicrous reflection with the hands growing out of his ears… . Like hearing the roar of the sea inside a shell? Something like that?

Gert’s lips formed a polite, soundless, “What, dear?” before she flicked a glance across his shoulder.

In the mirror, Harry saw two solemn-faced trilby-hatted men in belted raincoats enter the bar, catch Gert’s eye and come across to him. Tweedledum and Tweedledee in size twelve shoes.

“Mr Shears?’’

“S’right.” Harry took his hands down slowly from his face.

“Harry Shears? Off the Cyclamen? May I see your Seamen’s Record Book, please?”

Harry took out the book, his eyes turned upward, annoyed by the interruption since he was curious to know what the voice would say.

“I have a warrant for your arrest on a charge of…

… Extreme provocation, Harry told himself swiftly. I’ll get off with manslaughter. I’ll fiddle out somehow. Though juries don’t like queers.

“So Princey shopped me!” he said… . You never learn, do you? Never trust a boy. Game and set to Bernard.

He looked at the policemen and wondered if he could explain the provocation… . Bricks in the wall of Society. Better save it for the lawyers.

He put his fingers back into his ears, quickly now, in case they flashed handcuffs. But all he could hear was the bellbuoys’ tolling, the onrushing tide, the bellowing maw of the ocean.

“Catch him! “ Gert was screaming. “Watch his head! … Watch he don’t bite his tongue!”

The bar-room swelled upward under his feet, and the glittering wave arched over him.

“Runs in his family… . His kid brother Danny… .”

And the great wave roared and broke.

Some recent fiction from

EYRE & SPOTTISWOODE

Patrick White

RIDERS IN THE CHARIOT

Paul Scott

THE BIRDS OF PARADISE

Bernard Malamud

A NEW LIFE

Robert Penn Warren

WILDERNESS

Alex Comfort

COME OUT TO PLAY

David Higham

THEY’RE NEVER FAR AWAY

Leo Vaughan

THE JOKEMAN

Eyre & Spottiswoode • Publishers • Ltd

22 HENRIETTA STREET • LONDON WC2

Table of Contents

- Winger’s Landfall
- Chapter Three
- Chapter Five
- Chapter Seven
- Chapter Nine
- Chapter Eleven
- Chapter Thirteen
- Chapter Fifteen
- Chapter Eighteen
- Chapter Twenty
- Chapter Twenty-two
- Chapter Twenty-five
- Chapter Twenty-eight
- Chapter Thirty