Acts of Mutiny (27 page)

His work caused him no problems.

The thing in his nature she had never spelled out to herself came as the shock. He was happy enough with the weaponry; in his element. Maybe he was more excited by the weapons than by her. That was vile, yet such a liberation. It fell like a stroke, God given, almost.

And it was true. So true. And that was why she could do it. She could act unilaterally. Upon the instant. With no more dithering, no more uncertainty. He was without love. Hugh. Of course! He did not know the meaning of the word. And she – incredible to relate – had never noticed.

There would be time enough to work that puzzle out. For the present, she would be direct. She would approach Robert Kettle and ask him to behave heroically with her instead.

She changed her clothes. She was satisfied. For surely the problem of the children would become clear. She did not, could not love Hugh.

It was only then – when all that was settled in her mind, the fine words and intellectuality of her self-descriptions had evaporated, and she was cleaning the silly varnish off her nails – that she finally realised. The real truth of the matter was how routinely Hugh would hit her. And how hard. And she cried for the sorrow of it – and also for the gladness that now she might perhaps begin her life again.

So it came about on the boat deck as I described at the outset. The sun that evening – some evening or other between Aden and Colombo – dropped without ceremony into the Indian Ocean just to the left of the ship’s wake, scorching it for a moment or two with orange flares. And, on cue, there rose a warm, slightly scented breeze from the sea. There the lovers’ agreement was reached, as you have heard.

Mr Chaunteyman was in our cabin, and Erica was dressing for dinner, that very evening of Robert and Penny’s tryst. He had his hands on her shoulders while she brushed her blonde hair, teasing the waves of her perm.

‘There’s an awful thing in the hold. I spoke to it. It fell from outer space, into the sea. Finlay Coote shut me in the pets. I went down and then it was all dark, all different. I promised not to tell. But I’m willing to break that once. I thought you’d know what to do. It’s sub-thermal-kryptonial.’ I made an irritating buzzing noise like my imagination of a Geiger counter – until they told me to shut up. ‘It gives off lines around the pipes.’

‘You brought him too many of those comics, Dave,’ said Erica.

‘Don’t go on at me. It’s not my fault.’

‘I’m not going on at you. I didn’t mean it like that. Honest, Dave. Now don’t get in one of your moodies with me, love.’

‘Yeah.’ He turned to me. ‘So there’s a space monster in the hold. How many tentacles has it got?’

‘It doesn’t have tentacles. It’s made of metal. Brass, I think. Something like that. Only all gone black. It has lines. The lines are creeping up the pipes, going everywhere.’

Erica craned her neck round. ‘Has something scared you? Has someone been saying things—?’

‘No. I’m not scared of it. We have a deal.’ I used an American phrase. ‘But everyone else ought to be mighty scared. It could go off.’

I saw Erica exchange glances with Mr Chaunteyman in the mirror. ‘It could go off, could it?’ she said. ‘Very fishy. We don’t want that. Phew.’ She shifted herself back and forth in his hands. In the reflection I noticed his fingers pointed down the front of her shoulder-straps, lying over the bare flesh below her throat.

‘Dead whale. My, oh my,’ said Mr Chaunteyman. ‘It could go off in a big way. I’ll say, honey. Thar she blows!’

Erica giggled.

‘I thought I could tell you. Just you. Dad’s not on the ship, is he?’

Another glance passed between them in the glass, anxious this time.

‘OK. No. That’s good, Ralph. That’s good.’ He gave me some coins from his trouser pocket. ‘Why don’t you go get yourself a drink of fizz. Give us twenty minutes before we have to go to dinner, hey? Then you can stay up. Find your little friends again. Meet us in the lounge when we have coffee. Hey?’

‘I thought I ought to warn you. I’m taking a risk, telling anyone.’

‘Sure. Sure. You did the right thing. Now give us a little time on our own, can you?’

‘See what ideas you’ve given the boy, Dave.’

Robert made his way through the main lounge, where Penny was sitting in the light-cone of a standard lamp, and then outside a few yards along the promenade deck. At dinner he had been most acutely, most joyfully aware of her. He had no recollection of the meal.

A dinner-suited night figure now, he peered back through the window to see her put down her brandy glass, wrap her cream stole about her shoulders and excuse herself from her party, the Cootes, the Cannings, and the Australian Freemason, Masters. She was leaving them as she had said she would. Robert turned away.

She had requested him to knock at her cabin, after the meal and the coffee.

He had no practice at all.

His feet absorbed the very gentle rise and fall; his cheek was touched by the mild winter monsoon, the eastbound sailor’s friend. How one became at home; he was completely accustomed now to the sea. He strolled down beside the rail.

The night had set in to amaze. On the horizon there was a falling moon. The
Armorica
was drenched in a soft silveriness; the nightbreath of India pressed upon its mirror, the ocean.

He brushed his lips with his wrist. They had kissed.

His footsteps drifted him yards aft towards the rear staircase; beyond the dance space even. He had simply not registered how, inside, the smug little band was knocking out a quickstep. He had not noticed the sounds, though the strains were quite loud; nor noticed through the screens the couples swaying.

His body shook with pent-up nervousness. Here at the rail, he saw how the Arabian swell of the last few days had fallen back; the wave tops were as if beaten faintly with strings of pearl. He breathed in the warm air. Right beside the hull, the water sweeping along had a milky transparency; there might have been the subtlest of lights from below as well as above.

When he finally allowed himself to look up and recall that starlit understanding with Penny by the boats an hour or two ago, he was awestruck once more. The sky was a tree and the stars nothing but hand-high fruits of burning metal. By them, dull, blighted, horn-rimmed and cabbage-smelling England was annulled: its rain, its milk bars, its sinister gangs of Teds on street corners … and he remembered as a child tracing the picture of an enchantment with his finger, until he was certain he would step inside the book of it – as surely now he had. It was a fact. Nothing was trivial.

He turned and stepped so much the closer to the aft stairs. A few couples he did not know were standing out. The odd smoker. The voices of Barry and Queenie Parsons carried from somewhere. He saw Joe’s back on the other side of a stanchion, and crept past in the shadows lest he should have to account for himself.

It was just as he had made the full length of the first class deck, that the boy Pom – the one Penny had pointed out in Aden – appeared from the darkness by the turn into the pool area.

‘How’s the sunburn?’ A breathy, almost hissing voice.

‘Much better now, thank you.’ The familiarity took him aback; the boy might have been waiting for him. But his manner was not rude.

‘I saw you come down the deck.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘You’re going to see Penny.’ It was a statement; there was only the merest interrogatory note.

‘Yes.’ Caught by the truth, he blurted it out.

‘Then I shan’t go myself. Only …’

‘Only what?’

‘Do you believe in God?’

‘No, I don’t actually. Sorry, but there it is. Hope I haven’t disillusioned you.’

‘It’s all right. My family doesn’t either. Makes you feel a bit left out, though, doesn’t it. D’you ever worry about the hydrogen bomb?’

‘What’s the use of worrying?’

‘Space. That’s what I’m interested in. Ray guns that paralyse you. And gadgets. I’ve got a book of gadgets. D’you think there’s life on Mars, or anything? Have you ever seen a flying saucer?’

‘No. I haven’t actually. But who knows?’

‘I’ve got a book. It says it’s impossible to get people off the earth. It would be like being crushed by a steam hammer. But the Russians got a dog up there, didn’t they? Do you think sharks are following us?’

‘They may be, I suppose. Look, old chap …’

‘It said on the news they were going to stop letting off all the H-bombs all the time.’

‘There’s supposed to be a complete ban in the pipeline.’

‘In the pipeline?’

‘Coming along soon. Look, I’m actually …’

‘There’s strontium-90 in the milk. I know what that is. My dad told me. It’s fall-out. It’s the same thing as when you’re in the shoe shop and you put your feet under that big thing with the binoculars and you can see all the bones in your toes. They look all green inside the shoes, don’t they?’

‘Yes.’

‘Only there’s something down there. In the hold, sort of. It’s not that I’m frightened for myself. But I’m not to tell. It told me not to speak of it. Couple of days ago. I think.’

He was like a Litlte talking shadow, with his solemn tones. The starlight made that ridiculous shirt he wore glow grey.

‘It wants me to let it out. To let it off. It might go off any time. So I thought to tell Mr Chaunteyman. Only they were busy. I was nearly going to tell Penny. Now I’ve told you and I shouldn’t have said anything. But I had to tell someone.’

‘You’re a bit bothered aren’t you, old chap?’

‘No.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘It’s just that it might go off. In the hold. Can a person turn into metal? A stowaway? I don’t mind for myself, but someone ought to be told. For the ship. It might … I might … It’s the ship I’m worried about. Tell Penny. She’ll know what to do.’

Some of it sounded like a rehearsed speech, as if he had manipulated the conversation round to his subject. Penny was right – Pom was odd.

‘All right. Then I’ll notify the authorities. Is that sufficient?’

‘I suppose it would be. Yes, I suppose that would be … all right. It wouldn’t be me told them. Thanks. I thought you were dead.’ The boy grinned suddenly. The starlight caught his teeth. ‘Sorry.’

And as Pom slipped past him and vanished along the decking, Robert found himself facing the aft door which would take him back into the ship’s interior, and, if he chose, down the staircase to Penny’s cabin.

He could not go. The boy’s appearance like that was disconcerting. His fear hung in the balance with desire. Just a kid. Children these days had never known a world before the wretched bomb. All that and space rockets had got right inside their minds. Television was presumably to blame. From the experiences of his own generation they were completely cut off. They must live in a dream world. They would question nothing either, poor little wretches. The children were always inventing.

He would go now to Penny; he must. She was expecting him.

He plunged inside to the lit stairhead and, with her door number drumming in his head, made his way down by the mahogany panelling, like a diver seeking a pearl.

They stood like two mannequins, as though the cabin walls were shop glass and they were on show to the night outside. Penny moved to draw the curtain across the porthole, then laughed.

‘As if the dolphins would jump up and see us.’

‘I don’t think anyone … I checked to see the corridor was empty.’

‘Well, good. But what does it matter? It’s nobody’s business but our own.’

‘I’m glad. I was worried for you.’ Robert shifted his feet awkwardly.

‘How so?’

‘In case you … In case people …’

‘It doesn’t matter. I’m prepared for that. Do you know somebody has already written to my husband? I saw the letter on the purser’s counter.’

‘Have they really? And there’s no one who’d have ordinary cause?’

She shook her head.

‘How people like to interfere. Have you an idea who?’

‘No idea at all. I don’t care; not if you don’t. I threw it out. But I shall have to tell my husband sooner or later. You do understand that, don’t you? You do understand what it is we’re doing?’

‘Yes. I think so. I believe I do.’

‘And are you scared?’

‘Terrified.’

‘That’s a good sign, isn’t it? So am I. Scared … but, strangely, not the least embarrassed.’

‘But you have so much to lose.’ Robert looked around and fixed on the dressing-table for a moment. ‘Whereas I …’

‘Maybe Hugh could get you sacked. Have you thought of that?’

He had not.

‘You want us to go on?’ She held his gaze, quite level and determined.

‘I do. I want that. I want us to go on.’ The words came out of their own accord, before he could deliberate. He was pleased; he knew it was himself that spoke.

There was a pause.

‘Perhaps you should sit down. We can’t simply leap into bed together.’

He sat in the wicker chair, flooded with relief, and a little disappointment.