I was interrupted by a roar from my father’s cabin. It could have been a cry equally of pain or triumph. But whatever it was, it was inspired, I was sure, by more than just whatever it was he was choosing to drink. I got up from my chair, walked towards the stern and knocked loudly on his door.
‘Come in, Martin.’
There was a sea chest sitting at the centre of his desk. It was old and iron-bound and water-stained. And my father was breathless from the exertion of putting it there. I looked around the cabin. He had removed a wall panel from about waist height on the starboard side. I could make out the struts and rivets strengthening the bulkhead in the shadowy gloom of the gap.
‘I heard a rattling,’ he said. ‘I decided to investigate. This must have belonged to Harry Spalding.’
Or the Waltrow brothers, I thought. I swallowed. Or Gubby Tench. But it couldn’t have belonged to any of them, could it? The man who called himself Jack Peitersen would surely have found it during the refit. And that had been only the boat’s most recent overhaul. Surely this box could not have lain there undiscovered for eighty years? My father clearly thought it had. Just as he thought he had heard it rattling in its snug cavity, with the boat on a straight course over water as smooth as glass.
‘There’s a toolbox in the sail store, Martin.’
I nodded. I knew there was.
‘Go and fetch a crowbar or a jemmy.’ The padlock on the trunk was made of brass. It had tarnished, of course. But it had not corroded. I went and got the jemmy and came back and forced the lock. I lifted the lid of the trunk. It opened on a foul stench of marine decay. This long-dead odour could not have accrued over a matter of weeks. It was years, decades, since the interior of the trunk had been exposed to light and air.
I had to stand away to let the stink dissipate for fear that I might gag and vomit. The smell was nauseatingly strong. When it had weakened a little, diluted to pervade the cabin, I took a step forward again and looked into the trunk. It contained a badly tarnished rectangular wooden case. There had been padding put around the case and it had rotted to a putrid black paste. That was the source of the awful smell.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s an old-fashioned sewing machine,’ I said. I had seen them in antique shops, even in the houses of people who liked their homes stuffed with chintz and curios.
But I was mistaken. When I lifted the heavy box free of the trunk and set it down on my father’s desk and took off the lid, it was not a sewing machine at all. It was a record player. It was one of those primitive machines that plays recordings cut into wax cylinders. And there were three such cylinders in the box with the machine, carefully laid into a velvet bed grooved to house them. I realised that the cylinders were also to blame in part for the foul smell rising to pervade my father’s cabin. The wax had corrupted somehow and had a clinging, fetid reek.
‘Put one on,’ my father said. ‘Let’s hear what we have, Martin.’ His voice sounded sane and calm. He was quite serious. He had stumbled upon a mystery. And now he wanted to explore it.
‘They won’t play,’ I said. ‘The wax has become unstable, you can smell it decomposing. What do you think that vile stink is?’
‘Put one on.’
‘The machine will have long seized up, Dad. You can’t possibly expect it to play.’
‘Then I’ll put one on myself,’ he said. He shouldered me out of the way. His hand hovered over the cylinders and he selected one. The lights in the cabin flickered, then, dimming. I looked up at one of the portholes. The fog was bruise-coloured. You could not tell if it was night or day. He put the recording in its cradle at the top of the machine and dropped the needle and began to turn the handle. I knew what would happen, before the handle turned, when he dropped the needle on to the wax. It slotted down as smoothly as if the machine had been routinely cleaned and lubricated only yesterday.
The static of eighty years ago filled the cabin. And then the voice came, keen and high and cruel. ‘Magnus, old sport. Wanted to welcome you aboard. And your son, of course. Wanted to welcome Martin, too. Hope you’re both having a fine old time.’ There was laughter, then. And it was sardonic down the decades, reaching us. The hair on the back of my neck prickled at the sound of it. It was a sound neither sane, nor human.
‘Thought I’d tell you about the Jericho Crew, Magnus. But make yourself comfortable, sport. Take a seat. Occupy a pew, why don’t you. Please don’t worry about the machine. It will continue to function quite capably.’ My father nodded. He took his hand off the handle. He went and sat down and reached absently for his whisky glass. His face was rapt. I had lost him.
‘Took me weeks to find twelve apostles with just the right combination of qualities, Magnus. I needed the sly and the insubordinate, the savage and the self-interested. It helped enormously to have men who were both cunning and stupid at the same time. And that’s an unusual blend of attributes. A dash of cowardice was an advantage, too. I needed men prepared to do pretty much anything to guarantee their own survival in the fray. They had to be willing to submit to the necessary ceremonies, you see. There were, too, what might be termed certain contractual obligations. It helped if, above all else, they valued their own skins. It smoothed things along.
‘It was terrible at first, Magnus. They lined up the brave and the noble for me. There was lots of bravery and nobility among the American forces in France in the fall of 1917.’ On the cylinder, he laughed. ‘Those qualities were as common in the line as chocolate and chewing gum. And they were all very fine in their way. But they were no good to me in the way I intended to fight the war. Bravery and nobility would have been . . . how shall I put it? Help me out here, Magnus. You’ve been a leader of men.’
‘They would have been impractical,’ my father said.
‘Precisely,’ Spalding said. ‘Knew you’d understand, sport. Took me weeks to select my band of faithful acolytes. One of them was plucked from the cell of a makeshift military prison. Always a mistake to rape a civilian from the side you’re supposed to be fighting for. Positively dumb when they’re under age. Another two were deserters, snatched from in front of firing squads with the blindfolds already tied. And, of course, I was only starting out myself. I was pretty green, Magnus, a raw tenderfoot in the business of killing. But I had leadership quality, I think, as history proved. And I had an appetite for the work.’
My father nodded. He was no more enjoying this than he could escape it.
‘Still do, Magnus. Still possess that appetite, don’t you know. And, if anything, I’d say it’s grown.’
My father had his head in his hands.
‘We’ll enjoy being shipmates,’ Spalding said. ‘You’ll have to accept a subordinate role, of course. But you’ll be keeping the boy in line, so you won’t be on the bottom of the heap.’ The voice turned to steel. ‘And I will want the boy kept in line, Magnus. I run a tight ship. I will not tolerate insubordination. The Waltrow brothers discovered that, to their cost. So have other crewmen over the years. There is no escape on the high seas from the need for discipline.’