It was a summons to work as he had known it would be. Two women worked in the data centre, collecting calls from ships’ agents, then contacting the next pilot on the turn list to join the vessel, which was either approaching the mouth of the Humber or preparing to leave port. He recognized the voice at once. Marcia. He preferred her to Jo. Marcia was efficient and always respectful. He switched on the bedside light and jotted down the few details he needed.
“It’s a ship out of Goole, Mr. Bennett.” Her voice was calm. She made him think of a hospital sister in charge of a ward at night. “Russian. A cargo of wood.”
Goole was always a long job at least eight hours from door to door but today he didn’t mind that. He dressed quickly, though at this time of night with no traffic, there was less pressure. Daytime could be a nightmare. All it took was a hold-up on the road into Hull and you could miss the tide. There was no slack in the system. These days it was all stress, even the drive to the office. Emma didn’t realize that. She thought he had no emotions. That he felt nothing.
She had stirred when the phone rang, but now she was asleep again, deeply asleep, lying on her back. He had waited to find the right wife and had known as soon as he’d walked into the classroom where she’d been preparing her first lesson, that he had found her. She had been writing the Russian alphabet on the board, frowning in her concentration to keep the line straight. He’d been first to arrive and she’d ticked his name off on the register, a little girl playing at teachers. When the evening class was over, he’d hovered in the corridor, and asked if he might buy her a drink. To thank her for making the first lesson so painless. He’d said he hated school as a child and had been nervous about enrolling in adult education.
Of course there had been other women before her but he had promised them nothing, made it clear that commitment wasn’t an option. He had planned his life. He was in every sense a self-made man. The right wife had been as important as becoming the youngest first-class pilot on the Humber. He stuck rigidly to the structure, would consider no flexibility. He was ambitious, but there was more to it than that. The plan was all that held his life together. And it had worked out. Emma had been everything he had hoped for.
Outside it was still raining, but a persistent drizzle. He thought this part of the country had more shades of grey than anywhere he had ever visited. And he had travelled the world to get his master’s ticket. Grey sea mist in the summer, slatey storm clouds, a sea that was almost black. Tonight it was a dense, pale grey, like thick smoke, which bounced back the car’s headlights.
The windscreen wipers had a soporific effect and the car journey to the pilot office was so familiar that it took no concentration. Occasionally James came to a junction, saw a pub sign or a church lurk out of the gloom and became aware with a jerk of where he was. Otherwise he drove automatically, in a daze. It would have been easy to lapse into thoughts of the past in this state. Robert’s probing about his relatives had disturbed him There must be someone… We all have ancient aunts, second cousins. And then there was Keith Mantel. His face was everywhere. Staring out of the television, the front page of newspapers. It would be easy to allow himself to dwell on that. But James had trained himself to avoid unpleasant thoughts. He had too much to lose by giving in to panic. He breathed slowly and thought of Emma, the perfect pilot’s wife, gentle and undemanding, lying dreaming in his bed.
He had come to the outskirts of the city. Everywhere, along the river, there were scars of development. Half-built new roads, sleeping cranes, the skeletons of demolished buildings. Until a year before, the pilots had been based in an eighteenth-century house which stood on the corner of a pleasant street and looked out towards the waterfront. James had loved working from there. He’d sensed the men who’d gone before him when he walked through the door, imagined he could smell them, their tobacco and the salt on their clothes. It had been his way of making himself part of the tradition. For many of the men that came naturally. Their fathers and grandfathers had been pilots and they’d been boys together in the Trinity House School. Whenever he came to work, he planned his route so he still passed the old pilot office. It was empty, waiting for refurbishment, too valuable an asset to be used for the purpose for which it had been built. He slowed the car as he drove past, enjoying the lines of the building, allowing himself the memory of his first day there. Then he saw that the house had been sold. A huge notice with a familiar logo had been fastened to the front wall, between the two lines of long windows. Property acquired by Mantel Development for conversion to luxury apartments. All enquiries to our Kingston upon Hull office.
For a moment the reaction to this notice confused him. He didn’t recognize the emotion. It had been so long. Anger, of course. There was a moment of liberation when he felt he could give into it. Then there was only disgust. As if someone had ground dog muck onto a valuable carpet. And by the time he walked into the shabby prefab which had become the pilot office, he was all smiles, all quiet charm.
“What is the name of the ship? I didn’t catch it on the phone. Oh yes. The skipper’s an old friend. There’ll be no problem tonight.”
He picked up the keys to the pool car and went on his way. The M62 was almost empty and he drove too fast.
Goole is a small town, dominated by the docks. The river seems to cut right into the heart of the web of narrow streets. It must be strange to look out of a bedroom window and see a huge container vessel sliding past, so close that you feel you could reach out and touch the hull, that the seaman drinking from a mug in the cockpit might offer you a drink too. When James drove through the town it was empty. Two in the morning, and still raining. He could believe that everyone was sleeping except for him and the crew who waited for him.
But as he walked from his car to board the ship, out of the corner of his eye he saw a man standing next to a pile of containers. The figure was familiar. Hair so short it looked as if it had been shaved. The navy donkey jacket. James had to stop himself from calling out. Only later he told himself it would be impossible to have seen colour in this light. That it had been a mistake or a hallucination. He didn’t believe in ghosts.
Chapter Ten
Some men hated the night tides, the lack of sleep, the effort of making conversation with a captain who wanted to practise his English in the early hours of the morning. But James had practised the art of being pleasant until it came naturally. He could be almost asleep on his feet, but still he would look at the photos of the skipper’s wife and children back home, discuss the relative merits of the goods displayed in the Argos catalogue with a seaman who was astounded by the variety reproduced on the cheap, shiny paper, gratefully accept a mug of tea although the milk was sweet and thick and came out of a tin.
Tonight he spoke Russian. The skipper’s English wasn’t bad, but James’s Russian was better, and he was glad of the necessity to concentrate. It stopped him thinking of the glossy sign outside the pilot office. The shadowy figure on the dock. Drowned men returned to life. James had enlisted in Emma’s evening class to learn a few basic phrases: ten degrees port, Captain, twenty degrees starboard. So there would be no misunderstanding when he gave directions and he wouldn’t be dependent on someone else to translate. He’d done Spanish the term before for the same reason. But then he’d seen Emma and he’d stayed in the class all year,
working harder than he’d ever done at school, eager to impress. He had an A level to show for it. And a wife and child.
There was no room for error bringing a ship out of Goole. The River Ouse was narrow there, with concrete sides like a canal. It was tight for a boat of this size. For a containership it seemed impossible on the approach and seamen who’d never visited the port before were horrified. What is this place you bring me to? This is not possible. No, there is some mistake. James enjoyed the delicacy of the work. It was a challenge, a test of his skill.