The Dutch Wife (22 page)

“Sounds incredible!” Rowland said. “Nothing like that ever happens in Canada.”

“Oh, you’re Canadian?” the Conductor said.

“Yes,” said Rowland.

“Well,” said the Conductor, “then I’m really surprised you don’t know about Carrick. A Canadian was suspected of being responsible. Then he died too, so they never did find out.”

The Conductor had to move on to other parts of the train. Rowland added Carrick to the list of things he’d find out more about. He looked over at his fellow passenger to see if he’d been listening to the conversation. But those eyes stayed determinedly shut, even though his eyelashes fluttered occasionally, making Rowland more certain than before that he was playacting. He contented himself with making notes on what the Conductor had told him. He planned to do some research into these matters some day.

THE TRAIN ARRIVED IN GLASGOW.
The other passenger took his duffle bag down from the rack and exited the compartment without a word. Rowland went to the station cafeteria and ate a cheese sandwich. Then he walked a mile or so down to the river, where the ships were docked. He saw a rundown-looking building, with an even more rundown hotel in it, like a rotten tooth in a mouthful of rotten teeth. The hotel was called the Hochmagandie. Rowland went inside. The hotel bar didn’t seem especially respectable and was occupied mainly by sailors and women whose eyes were black with mascara. The receptionist was a tiny man with shifty eyes over a black leather nose-cone covering whatever was left of a nose.

Rowland booked a room. All in all, he stayed there for three days. In the mornings, he’d check out and, with his bag slung over his shoulder, walk along the miles of docks on either side of the river searching out ships bound for North America. But the strike that had driven him from England afflicted all the main passenger lines here, too, so each evening he had to check back into the Hochmagandie.

He now pinned his hopes on finding a freighter that would take him along as a passenger.

On the third day, a dreary Saturday, he’d spent hours walking the north bank. A sudden heavy squall sent him scurrying for shelter into a tavern on the windy corner of a sooty tenement building. It was called the Tartan Arms, its dirty sign like a bleeding wound in the soot.

Rowland went to the bar and had to make his way past a half-dozen men in the soiled dungarees of dock workers. They were gathered round a sailor who had drawn cheeks and yellowish skin. “Drink up,” he was saying. “It’s on me. Come on, mates, don’t be shy.” He was a small man and spoke in a high-pitched cockney whine.

Pints of beer were served to the dock workers.

“Cheers!” said the little man, holding up his glass. They all drank deeply, then he smacked his lips. “How good that tastes,” he said. “I never thought I’d drink a pint of beer again, mates. I’m lucky to be off that death-ship, I can tell you.”

The dockers listened politely to the man who’d bought their beer. Rowland listened too.

“As I was saying, we sailed from the West Coast of Africa,” the sailor said. “We were half-way to the Cape Verde Islands, and that’s when some of the hands came down sick. We thought it was some kind of fever. You expect fever if you’ve been in Africa. So we didn’t worry about it. But this was altogether different. The sick ones were sweating a lot, then, after an hour or two, the sweat changed into blood. And blood started coming out of their eyes and out of their ears, and everywhere else.” The sailor’s voice became dramatic. “I’m telling you, mates, I saw it with me own eyes. And, blimey, within an hour or two they were all dead, every one of them. Yes, every single one of them.”

The men in the pub sipped at their beer and nodded. They seemed a bit embarrassed because the way the sailor told his story was so stagy—even for an Englishman. But he was buying the beer, so they kept listening.

“Whatever that fever was,” the sailor said, “it spread round the ship. Most of us started to sleep up on the deck where the air was fresher, and that helped. But then the Chief Steward came down sick, then the men who’d helped look after the ones that died. My pal, Joe Murphy, was one of them that croaked, and he was as tough as nails. There were fifteen died altogether. Some of the men wanted the skipper to head for the nearest port so’s they could get off the ship. But he said no port would let any of us on shore. We’d just have to keep going till we got back here. So we did.” He took another drink from his glass. “Now that I’m off her, I won’t ever go back aboard. You’ve seen her anchored right out there on the river. She’s got a new Captain now and the company’s trying to sign up some men so’s she can get on her way. She’s still got to get to Nova Scotia with her cargo.”

“What’s the ship called?” This question was called out by someone who wasn’t among the group at the bar.

Rowland looked round and saw to his surprise that it was the man from the train—the one with the battered face.

“The
Derevaun,
” said the sailor without turning round. He laughed to his fellow drinkers. “It sounds like a curse, eh?”

“Are they still looking for men?” the man called out.

Now the sailor turned and looked towards him. “Sure they are,” he said. “They’ll take anybody crazy enough to sign up.”

No one laughed, for the questioner didn’t look like someone to laugh at. He finished his pint calmly and left, with his duffle bag over his shoulder.

Rowland now came over to the group at the bar. “Do you think they’d take a passenger?” he asked.

The little sailor seemed annoyed at the question. His story clearly hadn’t been as frightening as he’d intended.

“How should I know?” he said.

“Where’s she anchored?” said Rowland.

“You’ll know her by the smell,” the sailor said. He looked around at his hangers-on, but again no one laughed. They were not an ideal audience. “A mile downstream,” he said grudgingly.

ROWLAND WALKED QUICKLY
along the wet cobblestones. The man ahead of him, his bag slung over his shoulder, had a long stride. Rowland caught up with him. “Hello, again,” he said. “I’m heading the same way.”

The man just grunted.

They’d been walking in the rain and gusty wind for ten minutes before Rowland saw the freighter anchored out in the river with a black flag hanging from its mizzen. In a few more minutes he could make out her name—the SS
Derevaun
. She looked even dirtier than the other freighters they’d passed on the walk down the docks. She badly needed a paint job and some of her plates were dented like the toy of a monstrous dog.

On the quay, directly opposite the
Derevaun,
a stocky man with a fringe of red hair showing under his sou’wester sat on a bollard smoking a pipe. Leaning against the bollard was a painted board that read:
QUARANTINE
. In his waterproof gear, he seemed very much at ease in the raw weather.

“Are you from the ship out there?” Rowland said.

“Aye,” the man on the bollard said, exhaling smoke. “I’m the Bosun. Are you looking for work? We’re needing crew.”

Before Rowland could answer, his companion did: “I need work,” he said.

“Have you worked on a ship before?”

“No.”

“What’s your name?”

“Will Drummond.”

“You look fit for hard work,” the Bosun said. “You’ll do fine.”

“It’s not a job I’m after,” said Rowland. “I just want to get back to Canada. Are you taking passengers?”

The Bosun puffed and nodded. “Aye. We have some cabins for passengers,” he said. Then he glanced at the notice-board. “I’m bound by law to tell the both of you the ship’s been under quarantine. We had an outbreak of fever, but there’s been no sign of it for weeks now.”

He didn’t ask Rowland his name.

THEY CLIMBED DOWN
some greasy stone steps into a bulky tender. The Bosun seated himself in the middle and rowed them out into the river towards the ship. As they approached the glistening hull, Rowland became aware of a very unpleasant smell—like a sewer that had backed up. All the portholes on the lower levels had iron bars over them.

“Why the bars?” he asked the Bosun.

“She used to be a prison ship,” the Bosun said. He reached out and grabbed the bottom of a rope ladder that dangled from the deck. He tied the tender to it and held it steady as first Will Drummond, then Rowland, his bag awkward on his shoulder, climbed aboard.

The Bosun himself, pipe in mouth, climbed slowly up. When he reached the deck he directed Will Drummond forward to the crew’s quarters then led Rowland to the Purser’s office to pay his fare.

“Welcome aboard,” said the Purser. “You’re the only passenger.”

LIKE MANY OTHER FREIGHTER CABINS
he’d spent time in, Rowland’s cabin in the midships was no bigger than a seedy closet, badly needing a coat of paint. It had its own clammy smell, noticeable even in the pervasive stink of the
Derevaun
.

He’d barely settled in when he felt the vibrations of the engine and saw through the porthole that she was underway. For an hour, he watched as the dreary riverbank with its shipyards and slums slid by. He worked on his notebooks for a while, too. But his curiosity got the better of him and he went out onto the deck. He was familiar with the structure of these utilitarian vessels so it didn’t take him long to find his way around. Amidships, he entered a dark corridor that led to a companionway. He descended several flights of narrow stairs and reached another corridor. He walked along it till he was halted by a heavy iron door. He turned the handle several times and pushed but nothing happened. Finally he leaned his shoulder into the door and swung it open.

An awful stench caused Rowland Vanderlinden to stagger and gag. A long gloomy corridor of barred doors with caged bulbs over them lay before him. Like a diver, he took a deep breath and plunged in. He reached the first barred door and looked. In the weak light, he discovered the nature of the cargo of the SS
Derevaun
.

In that first room, or cell, he saw a group of hairy forms making strange jabbering noises at the sight of him. As his eyes became accustomed to the light, he understood that they were chimpanzees, huddled together at the back of the cell. From there, he went to the next cell and the next and saw that they, too, had monkeys of every sort in them. Pinned to the wall outside the third cell was a printed list, some of the names familiar, some not: angwantibos, gorillas, baboons, macaques, gibbons, capuchins, siamangs, chacmas, lemurs, colobus, hanumans, guerezas, marmosets, spider monkeys.

Farther along the corridor, snorting sounds came from the cells. Rowland glanced into some of them and recognized sheep and goats and other animals. Again, there was a list: anteaters, zorils, babirusas, agoutis, pangolins, aurochs, capybaras, mark-hors, muntjacs, kinkajous, jabalinas, aoudads, chigetais.

From the end of the corridor, he could hear roaring and angry growls. The doors in that area were farther apart and the cells were much bigger. Inside some of them were tigers, leopards and cheetahs. The very last cell contained four lions, growling at each other because they were in the process of being fed. The keepers, who were themselves protected by bars at the rear of the cage, were using wooden poles pitted with teeth marks to push hunks of raw meat through an opening. The keepers, a man and a woman, wore dark coveralls. The woman had black hair tied back in a bun. The man saw Rowland looking in and nodded to him.

It was Will Drummond. They hadn’t wasted any time in putting him to work.

FEEDING TIME FOR THE HUMANS
on board the
Derevaun
began after night had fallen, by which time the ship had already left the calm, dirty water of the river and entered the ocean swell. That motion woke Rowland, who’d been having a nap. He realized it was time to eat and made his way to the dining room, where crew members from the off-duty watches were already eating. They paid little attention to his entry. Sitting at a corner table were Will Drummond and the woman who’d been with him in the animal cells. He saw Rowland and again nodded to him. Rowland took this as an invitation to join them, even though he could see they’d almost finished eating. They were both dressed in their coveralls, as though they still had work to do.

Rowland introduced himself to the woman.

“How do you do,” she said very formally, without telling him her own name. She had a thin face and prominent cheekbones. Rowland would have guessed she was in her mid-twenties, but she had unaccountable wrinkles at the corners of cool green eyes.

While Rowland waited for his food they kept eating. At last she finished and put down her knife and fork. “Do you love animals?” she said to him in a very earnest voice.

Rowland was surprised at the question. “I have respect for them,” he said.

Those green eyes didn’t change, but he had a feeling she was satisfied with his answer.

“They’re the only honest beings to inhabit this planet,” she said. “It’s a great privilege for us to associate with them.”

Just then the steward brought Rowland’s meal. Will had finished eating and he took their plates away. The woman stood up and so did Will.

“It’s back to work for us,” she said, and off they went.

THE FOLLOWING NIGHT,
Rowland went to dinner a little earlier and joined them again. This time, she put out a small, thin hand. “My name’s Eva Sorrentino,” she said.

Rowland asked her how she came to be working with the animals.

“They’re for zoos,” she said.

He was surprised to hear that, considering what she’d said the night before. “Isn’t there some contradiction,” Rowland said, “between having a high regard for animals and capturing them for zoos?”

Will Drummond, who’d been concentrating on his food, now looked up. He, too, was listening attentively.

Eva shook her head vigorously. “My father said that was their only hope of survival,” she said. “He believed that before a hundred years were gone, the only representatives of most species would be the ones preserved in zoos.” Her father, she said, was a member of an Italian family whose business it had been, for almost a century, to procure animals for zoos. He had married an Englishwoman and taken the business to England, where Eva was born. Her father instilled the love of animals in her, for which she’d always be grateful. “Poor father,” she said, shaking her head sadly.