He lounged over to the printer and ripped off the protruding form. ‘Just sorting it out when you came in, boss. Been sitting up a branch siding near the airport, getting mouldy. They’re scrubbing it out now, with apologies. I’ve slapped on demurrages up to today, but told them to hang on to it till we see if there’s some kind of return load we can get.’
‘From Kenya? Should be, for a refrigerated container. That’s well done, Dave.’ I typed for some listings on my terminal, and peered down them. ‘I’ll get on to Hamilton, for a start, and see if he wants an extra half-tonne of red snapper this week. Meanwhile, could you get me those roughs on the German veg oil contract? And all that EEC crap about shipping it –’
The phone buzzed before I could pick it up. ‘Barry for you,’ said Clare, ‘about the Rosenblum’s business – urgent!’
Yes, this was real life all right.
And yet, as the day wore on, I found it wasn’t quite the same. I sank myself into my work, determined not to be distracted, not to let myself maunder over weird wonderings about last night; I kept Dave and Clare too busy chasing this way and that to chaff or cluck over me. It seemed to get results. I managed to wrap up everything that could be settled that day in little more than half the normal time. And yet it left me less at ease, less satisfied than ever.
‘Not feverish or anything, are we?’ enquired Barry, perching elegantly on the edge of my desk and flicking through a sheaf of forms as if pulling the petals off a rose. He tapped his long blunt nose. ‘I mean, you know as well as I do how bloody important every one of these contracts is, Steve. I’d far rather you took your time and went through them with your usual sharpened toothcomb than – well, skated over something significant.’
I grinned. ‘Can’t win, can I? You’ve been after me for years to speed up contracts – then today I hit one lucky streak and suddenly you’re flagging me down! They’re all right, Barry. Don’t worry about it.’
He plucked a few more petals and ran a hand over his greying yellow curls. ‘If you’re really happy about them –’
‘I’m happy. Dave’s done his usual great job, and Clare too. And you’ve been through them yourself, or you wouldn’t be sitting here asking! Go on, Mr Managing Director, sir, get your pinstriped arse off my desk! I’m happy!’
But I wasn’t. Not about the contracts I’d processed; about those I was confident. I might be twenty years younger than Barry, but I knew my job. I just wasn’t enjoying it as much as usual. I hadn’t wanted to go into every twist and turn of the business behind each bit of shipping, the way I normally did; I’d missed the old urge to linger and learn about every commodity we shipped, from foodstuffs to fine arts, an urge that had picked me up a lot of very useful background knowledge. I was suddenly more impatient of the whole sticky web of formalities, anxious to be rid of it. And Barry, being the canny businessman he was, had scented something of that. But as well as being a boss you could joke with, he was also sensible enough not to harass his staff. ‘All right, my precocious infant! I’ll go polish Bill Rouse’s desk instead, see if Accounts can catch the speed bug too and push these through in record time. Probably kill all our regular clients – the shock, you know. Er – I’d suggest you push off home straightaway and rest that arm, but if you can hang on another half-hour or so – just in case anything crops up – you know how it is …’
‘Sure. No problem, Barry.’ I wouldn’t have gone home, anyway; something told me I wouldn’t be any happier there than here. I was getting fed up with this haunting half-memory that trailed dissatisfaction shadow-fashion at my heels. I’d had a hellish, frightening time last night; serve me right for meddling with low-life. But the more I tried to think about it, the less I could remember – hardly anything now, anything clear. Faces and places were nameless blurs. As if that haze was like a conjuror’s veil, lifting to reveal emptiness; as if I really had dreamed the whole thing up, from scratch. So then why was it turning my own ordinary life upside down, my own carefully tailored slimfit Armani existence – the life I knew I could handle?
I badly wanted time to settle down and think – to remember, so I could comfortably forget. But here was Clare, bringing me one more cup of sugary coffee and hovering distractingly again. As a distraction she had natural advantages. Normally I never let them bother me; I made a point of treating her as the competent secretary she was and not as some brainless dolly. Not that she looked like one, exactly; if she fitted any stereotype, it might have been a milkmaid in a butter commercial. Her hair and eyes set you thinking of cornfields and summer skies, and the rest went with them, her slightly blunt, sensual features, all cream and freckles, her slender but heavy-breasted shape, her unselfconscious charm, bubbly but sincere. Most of the time I enjoyed it without letting it get to me, though when you are trying to think hard about something – or even harder not to – that hair on the back of your neck, that breast negligently brushing your shoulder could be damnably irritating. Now and again, naturally, it kindled fantasies, but I wasn’t stupid enough to muddy office waters, chasing a casual affair. And what other kind made sense?
That struck a tiny spark. I’d stepped back from something last night – hadn’t I? That girl – what was her name, then? What did she look like? I could hardly remember. As if I had conjured her up out of nothing, right enough; as if the whole crazy night were that kind of dream, vivid enough to jar you awake, yet impossible to hold onto, draining out of the memory and leaving only its emotions behind, like a hollow impression. I should have been relieved to think that; I wasn’t. To think you could have some vivid, shocking, living experience, something strong enough to leave such nagging echoes – and yet find the details melting away like morning frost …
What was solid? What wouldn’t melt?
My fist clenched tight around my cup. Unwisely; a fierce red rocket of pain soared up my arm and burst into a glittering blossom – an image, sharp, sparkling, alive. There she was! Katjka, her teeth sunk in the wound, myself shivering with agony, only half hearing Myrko and Jyp calmly discussing –
Discussing a ship. And its cargo. Commodities. Goods. But the damndest ones a man ever heard of. And I had this business at my fingertips.
My fingertips. I had an idea daft enough to match. But after all, why not? There’d be no harm in it. Computers can’t laugh at you. Idly, laughing at myself, I reached over to the keyboard and tapped in a call to the freight and docking databases. It might be amusing, at least, to see what they made of a query for the Iskander.
I hadn’t a second to laugh. There it was, right in front of my nose, an entry in the usual file-card form, complete with a location code for dock and wharf. But what an entry!
SS. Iskander (500 tons)
Out of: Tortuga, Santo Domingo and ports West
Master: Sawyer, Jas. G.
1st Mate: Mathews, Hezekiah I.
2nd Mate: MacGully, ‘Black’ Patrick O’R.
Supercargo: Stephanopopoulos, Spyridion