The White Voyage (7 page)

There was a double bed in the room to which she admitted him, covered with a tattered silk counterpane, of faded gold patterned with faded roses. The only other furniture consisted of a cheap wash-stand and a chest of drawers, and two upright chairs. On the chest of drawers stood a large marble clock, flanked by prancing horses. It had been her mother’s, she had told him on a previous visit, and it would fetch nothing anyway.

She was a woman in her forties, who even in her youth could not have claimed anything resembling good looks. Her body was tired and slack, her face fell in sad wrinkles from the dyed blonde hair, and her eyes were dulled and unhappy. She wore a red, woollen wrap; where it was torn at the elbow one could see part of a stained blue nightdress.

She asked Thorsen for two thousand francs, and when he gave her the money she put the notes carefully under the clock. Then, opening the wrap, she went to the bed and sat down wearily.

Thorsen began to curse her, at first gently, feeling his way among the obscenities like a man reluctantly paying out money. He spoke in Danish, and she looked at him, blankly, neither understanding nor caring. He warmed to it by degrees, his voice thickening and growing louder, the obscenities coming more plentifully and with less and less meaning. After a time, he broke into foreign languages – German, English, snatches of French. Although she understood these, she gave no sign of caring or of resenting them. Thorsen grew more violent and less coherent. He shrieked at her, standing close by where she sat. But she showed only indifference, and although he raised his fists as if to strike her, he did not touch her.

At last his voice cracked and broke on the torrent of filth. He stood for a moment staring at her, his eyes wild, his face distorted with rage. Then, suddenly changing, he dropped to his knees beside the bed and put his head down on her knees. He wept, and she soothed him, talking to him in French, monotonously on and on.

Although some of the other men tried to persuade him to go ashore with them, Carling stayed on the
Kreya
. He went down into the forward hold to make sure that everything had been left in order by the French dockers, and stayed down there, resting his arms on one of the wooden stalls from which the horses had been taken, smelling the horses and the hay.

For him it was a childhood smell. He had been born on a farm in Fyn, the eldest of four sons of a small farmer. But it had been the seas that fascinated him, not the land, and when he was fifteen he had left, going first to Odense and then to Copenhagen. There had been no regrets. Even when, on account of Tove, he had thought of leaving the sea, he had not thought that he might have been mistaken in giving up farming. Tove would never have been a farmer’s wife.

But what would she have been – what had she been? The question, rising all unexpectedly through the quiet melancholy of his mind, pierced him again, and with a new twisting sharpness.

‘Tove!’ he cried aloud. ‘What was it? What should you have told me?’

The horses that were left champed at the straw. In his agony, Carling fled back again to childhood, bridging the years with that smell, those untroubled easy sounds. But his mind played traitor to him: he was in the big kitchen, a boy of five or six, unregarded, listening to the sound of the pot bubbling on the fire, and the slow, quiet talk of his elders.

‘Where?’

‘In the barn – the little barn.’

‘And how, then?’

‘With his belt.’

‘And with what reason?’

‘It’s not known. Her, maybe.’

‘In Hell – for her?’

‘No man knows another’s mind.’

‘But in Hell,’ his mother said. Her voice had in it wonder and dread. ‘We know that.’

Carling spoke aloud again, to the present, to the world where torment was ever at hand and hope a thin fugitive.

‘No!’ he cried. ‘That’s not true.’

A horse began to kick the planks that held it in, with steady, patient strength. Carling thought of Dublin; the answer was there. Next time she would speak. Next time he would know what it was she had not said to him – the only why that mattered in the world. He would not leave until she had spoken. He would learn the truth and, one way or another, he would find peace.

The wind rose with the tide. It was Force 5 by the time the
Kreya
was clear of the harbour, and it rose steadily as they beat northwards up the Channel. It came from the south-west but there was no warmth nor softness about it. Cold squalls of rain soaked across the seas from time to time. The night was black, and apart from their radar eye they drove into it blindly.

On the bridge, Mouritzen said to Olsen:

‘Nasty enough. And it’s going to get worse?’

‘So they tell us. At any rate, we’re getting a lift from it. We’ll save oil on this leg, and a few hours.’

‘Yes. Have you had the hatch closed?’

Olsen shook his head, his lips pursed. ‘Not necessary. You can keep an eye on things from time to time.’

‘Yes, let the poor beasts have some air, while they can.’

Olsen raised his eyebrows. ‘It’s our job to keep them in the best possible condition for delivery. That’s in the contract.’

‘Yes,’ Mouritzen said. ‘So it is.’

‘I’m going to get some sleep.’ Olsen said. He yawned, and flexed his arms. Mouritzen found himself yawning in sympathy, and Olsen noticed it. ‘You should have got your sleep this evening,’ he said, with some severity.

‘I’m all right.’

‘What was it you said to me the other day – that I’d have been better off on an all-cargo ship? That’s true of you, Niels. You find passengers too much of a distraction.’

‘Not too much, I think.’

‘You don’t think straight; that’s the trouble. Once we’ve cleared Amsterdam, I suppose it will be the Simanyi girl again?’

‘No, no.’

With a grim satisfaction, Olsen said: ‘You are not your own master, though. They look at you and smile, and you are as helpless as a little child.’

‘Lately, I’ve been considering the advantages of marriage.’

‘Marriage? For you, there are no advantages. Only another complication – something else to distract your mind with. Do you think you would stop chasing the others, if you had a wife back in Copenhagen?’

‘Why not? When a man has found what he needs, he stops looking for it. Isn’t that obvious?’

Olsen paused, his hand on the rail, preparing to go down the stairs.

‘And what is it a man needs, Niels? A man like you? When you have solved that problem, you will know more about yourself. Then it will be time to think of taking a wife.’

Mouritzen called to him: ‘Tell me what you need yourself, Erik, and then perhaps I will solve my problem.’

‘I?’ Olsen laughed. ‘I have found it already. I need nothing. Nothing!’

They were getting into the Straits as dawn broke, grey and wet on the starboard bow, and the seas were beginning to run very high. Before he went down for breakfast, Mouritzen ordered the hatch battened down over the hold where the horses were stabled. He told Olsen this. Olsen was already at the table, eating bacon and egg.

‘Yes,’ Olsen said. ‘Good. Everything going well?’

‘We’re still running in front of it,’ Mouritzen said. ‘The difficulty will lie when we change course.’

‘That will not be for a long time.’

‘The forecast is for gales strengthening and continuing in all areas.’

‘So we save still more time and oil.’

Mouritzen sat down at his place. ‘No sign of the passengers for breakfast. I suppose Thorsen is busy?’

‘Yes. This is the time when Thorsen earns his pay. I do not envy Thorsen at times like these.’

The door opened and Mouritzen looked, expecting to see either Thorsen or the boy, Ib; but it was Josef Simanyi, and Nadya was close behind him. She was dressed in dove grey slacks with a pink blouse, well open at the neck. She looked very fit.

‘Ah,’ Olsen said, ‘we have visitors! So the storm does not take away your appetites?’

Simanyi grinned. ‘My wife stays in bed, and Stefan is praying to the Virgin, but we two are hungry.’

‘You should get Thorsen to cook that fish you caught yesterday,’ Olsen said. ‘Here he is. What are the conditions above stairs, Thorsen?’

Thorsen smiled slightly. ‘There will be no more down to breakfast today. I will bring yours for you in a minute.’

Simanyi said: ‘She is a stout ship, the
Kreya
.’

Normally they kept the places which Thorsen had given them at the beginning of the voyage, but with Møller and six of the passengers absent to do so now would mean having tracts of empty space between them. Smiling at Nadya with a frank and open friendliness, Thorsen said:

‘It will be better if you move in closer, I think. Will you sit beside Mr Mouritzen, Miss Simanyi?’

Nadya smiled in return. ‘I am glad to do that,’ she said.

‘Yes, a stout ship,’ Olsen said, echoing Simanyi. ‘You need not fear the gale when you are aboard the
Kreya
. Your son may pray to the Virgin for the sake of his stomach, but the rest of his body is in no danger.’

Nadya said: ‘You look tired, Niels. You have been on duty?’

‘Yes. Soon I am going to bed.’

‘Poor Niels. You have a hard time. So much duty, so little sleep.’

She looked at him, her face not quite innocent. Mouritzen smiled at her.

‘I am grateful for your sympathy, Nadya.’

Simanyi said: ‘Think what it must be like on the little fishing boats in such weather as this.’

Olsen laughed. ‘You must keep your fishing for the harbours, Mr Simanyi. A catch is more certain there, too.’

Nadya said to Mouritzen in a low voice: ‘I am most sympathetic to you, Niels. Surely you have not forgotten that?’

Mouritzen looked away, embarrassed. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I have not forgotten.’

‘I am patient,’ Nadya said, ‘and I am forgiving. Do you not think I am an excellent woman, Niels?’

He nodded. ‘Yes, excellent.’

She smiled. ‘Eat your breakfast. You look hungry.’

The gale strengthened during the morning, and the wind grew colder; there were frequent showers of sleet and hail. With the wind in the south-west, the
Kreya
continued to run before it. The heavy seas broke over her stern and bows, but she was fairly dry amidships.

Returning to the bridge at two o’clock, Mouritzen was surprised to find their course still steady on north-east. He mentioned this to Olsen.

Olsen said: ‘I tried her on an easterly tack during the morning. She takes a poor grip; we’re too light.’

‘So?’

‘I would sooner beat into a storm like this than cross it. If we change course about seven we can head south to the Wadenzee.’

‘What’s the forecast?’

‘Bad.’

Mouritzen looked at the chart. ‘About fifty miles north-west of Hook. We could still make Den Helder.’

‘East by north-east,’ Olsen said. ‘Nearly broadside on to it, and loaded with air instead of ballast. No, we shall do better by staying on our course.’

The ship shuddered, plunging her bows into a high cliff of water. They felt her go down, steady, begin the upward surge.

‘When she does turn,’ Mouritzen said, ‘it will be more than ninety degrees. She will be broadside to it then, all right.’

‘For minutes,’ Olsen said, ‘not for hours. Keep her steady on course, Niels. I think I will take a nap.’

All round the north-west coasts of Europe the winds were ravaging, like packs of hunting wolves. When Olsen took over again, Mouritzen reported to him a still bleaker weather outlook, and three distress signals already picked up.

‘Anything near us?’

‘One in the Irish Sea, one off the Hebrides, the other north of Bergen.’

‘Good.’ He smiled with a cold humour. ‘This is no weather for rescue operations. Have they made contact?’

‘Yes. But the one north of Bergen has little chance, I think. She is taking a lot of water in her engine room. The lifeboats have gone out from Bergen, but they’ll be hard put to reach her in time.’

‘What is she?’

‘The
Firkar
. German – eleven hundred tons.’

‘God help them,’ Olsen said, ‘if there is a God. I would not like to swim in this. We’re in a foolish trade, Niels.’

Mouritzen said: ‘I’ve never known you admit to folly before.’

‘Nor do I now. If the trade is foolish, the tradesman need not be a fool.’

‘Then why choose the trade?’

‘In my case, it was not a choice. My father was a sea captain. He was a big man, and by being small I disappointed him. I did not wish to disappoint him altogether. So I took up his trade.’

‘You’ve done well at it.’

Olsen smiled again. ‘I would have been a good doctor, too. A better doctor than a sea captain, maybe.’

Before dinner, Mouritzen went to see Mary and Annabel. He knocked at the door, and she called him in. She had put Annabel into the bottom bunk, and was sitting beside her reading a book. She put it down as Mouritzen entered the cabin. She looked pale, but she smiled at him.

‘How does it go?’ Mouritzen asked gently.

‘I think I’m getting used to it,’ Mary said.

‘And Annabel?’

Annabel said, in a weak voice: ‘I feel sick. I’ve been sick a lot, and I still feel sick. Will we be in Amsterdam soon?’

‘As soon as we can be.’

‘How soon is that?’

‘If you go to sleep,’ Mouritzen told her, ‘when you wake up we will be in Amsterdam.’

‘I can’t
go
to sleep,’ she said, ‘while I feel sick.’

‘Maybe you are trying too hard,’ Mouritzen said. ‘Sleep is like happiness. It is no good chasing it; it likes to creep up and catch you. I will tell you a story about a troll. Do you know what a troll is?’

She moved her head slightly on the pillow. ‘No.’

‘A troll is a little man with a hump on his back, who can work magic, and is always playing tricks on human beings. The trolls are cousins to the leprechauns, I think. Now this troll, whose name was Kikkipik, lived beside a lake, in the far north, where in summer the sun shines all day and all night long, and in winter there is no sun at all, but a night-time that goes on for months and months. Now at one time, Kikkipik had lived with his brother, but …’