One thing we were in no doubt about, the two ships coming up on us like that had been deliberate, an attempt to run us down. It couldn’t be anything else, for they had been steaming west of north and on that course there was nothing after Madeira anywhere in the north Atlantic until they reached Greenland.
We finished the bottle of brandy, deadening the shock of such a near disaster, then went into two-man watches for the rest of the night. And in the morning, with the wind beginning to veer into the west and the sky clearing to light cirrus, we could see the Desertas lifting above the horizon and clouds hanging over the high mountains of Madeira.
All day the islands became clearer and by nightfall Funchal was just visible as a sparkling of lights climbing the steep slopes behind the port. The wind was in the west then and falling light, a quiet sea with a long swell that glinted in the moonlight. I had the dawn watch and it was beautiful, the colours changing from blue-green to pink to orange-flame, the bare cliffs of the Desertas standing brick-red on our starb’d quarter as the sun lifted its great scarlet rim over the eastern horizon.
This I knew would be the last day on board. Ahead of me Madeira lifted its mountainous bulk into an azure sky and Funchal was clearly visible, its hotels and houses speckled white against the green slopes behind. I could just see the grey top of the breakwater with its fort and a line of naval ships steaming towards it. Just a few hours now and I would be back to reality, to the world as it really was for a man without a ship. It was such a lovely morning, everything sparkling and the scent of flowers borne on the wind, which was now north of west so that we were close-hauled.
I began thinking about the book then. Perhaps if I wrote it all down, just as it had happened… But I didn’t know the end, of course, my mind switching to Balkaer, to that morning when it all started with the first of the oiled-up bodies coming ashore, and I began to play with words, planning the way it would open. Twelfth Night and the black rags of razorbacks washing back and forth down there in the cove in the slop of the waves…
‘Morning, Trevor.’ It was Pamela, smiling brightly as she came up into the cockpit. She stood there for a moment, breathing deeply as she took in the scene, her hair almost gold as it blew in the wind, catching the sunlight. She looked very statuesque, very young and fresh. ‘Isn’t it lovely!’ She sat down on the lee side, leaning back and staring into space, not saying anything, her hands clasped tight together. I sensed a tension building up and wondered what it was, resenting the intrusion, words still building in my mind.
Ripples stirred the surface of the sea, a flash of silver as a fish jumped. ‘Something I’ve got to tell you.’ She blurted the words out in a tight little voice. ‘I admire you — what you’ve done this last month, the sort of man you are, your love of birds, all the things you wrote. I think you are a quite exceptional…’
‘Forget it,’ I said. I knew what she was trying to say.
‘No. It’s not as easy as that.’ She leaned forward on the lift of the boat and put her hand over mine on the wheel. ‘I don’t regret that letter, you see. It’s just that I don’t know.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t understand myself really, but I think what it was — I was reaching out for a new dimension. That’s what you represented to me, something different, something I’d never really come across before. Are you a vegetarian?’
‘I’ve eaten everything I’ve been given, haven’t I?’ I said it lightly, trying to laugh her out of the tense seriousness of her mood.
‘But in Cornwall, you were vegetarian, weren’t you?’
‘Karen was. I conformed. I had to. We’d no money to buy meat, and we grew our own vegetables.’
‘Yes, of course. I’ve still got the typescript, by the way. But what I was trying to say — I was like somebody who’s been carnivorous all her life and is suddenly faced with the idea of becoming a vegetarian. It’s so totally different. That’s what I meant by new dimension. Do you understand?’
I nodded, not sure whether I did or not. No man likes to be faced with an attractive girl making a statement of rejection, and certainly not in the dawn with the sun coming up and the sea and the sky and the land ahead all bright with the hopes of a new day. ‘Forget it,’ I said again. ‘You’ve no cause to reproach yourself. I’ll keep the letter under my pillow.’
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘And when I’m feeling particularly low…’ Saltley’s head appeared in the hatch and she took her hand away.
‘Thank you,’ she breathed. ‘I knew you’d understand.’ And she jumped to her feet. ‘Two eggs for the helm?’ she asked brightly. ‘Our last breakfast and everything so lovely. Two eggs and four rashers.’ She nodded and disappeared below to the galley. Saltley stared at me a moment, then his head disappeared and I was alone again, my thoughts no longer on the book, but on Karen and what I had lost. The future looked somehow bleaker, the feeling of separation from the others more intense.
CHAPTER TWO
It was shortly after noon when we turned the end of Funchal breakwater, lowering sail as we motored to a berth alongside a Portuguese tug. I had been to Madeira only once before, tramping in an old Liberty ship, and then the long dusty breakwater had been almost empty. Now it was crowded, for there was some sort of NATO exercise on with warships of half a dozen nations lying alongside and US off-duty sailors already at baseball practice among the cranes and stacked containers.
Saltley didn’t wait for Customs and Immigration. At the end of the jetty, beyond a complex huddle of masts and radar, with Canadian and Dutch flags fluttering in the breeze, there was a missile destroyer flying the White Ensign. Neatly dressed in his shore-going rig of reefer, blue trousers and peaked cap, he crossed the tug and was lost immediately among the stevedores working two Panamanian-registered cargo ships. He had a long walk, for the tug to which we had moored was only about a third of the way along the jetty, just astern of a Portuguese submarine and only a few yards beyond the fort, its stone wall rising sheer out of the rock on which it was built.
Nobody seemed interested in our arrival and we sat on deck in the sunshine, drinking beer and watching the kaleidoscope of tourist colour across the harbour, where crowded streets climbed steeply up from the waterfront with slender ribbons of roads disappearing in hairpin bends a thousand feet above houses smothered in bougainvillaea. I could see the twin towers of Monte and the Crater’s cobbled way dropping sheer into the town, and to the west the massed array of big hotels culminated in a promontory with Reid’s red roofs and hanging gardens dropping to the sea.
It was the medical officer who arrived first, just after we had finished a very late lunch. He was still in the saloon improving his English over a Scotch when Saltley returned. He had contacted Lloyd’s and reported the two GODCO tankers still afloat, but under different names. Fortified by Navy hospitality, he had then waited for Lloyd’s to contact the authorities and check with their Intelligence Services for any listing of the Shah Mohammed and the Ghazan Khan. It had been almost an hour before he had the information he wanted. Both tankers had recently been acquired by an Iraqi company with offices in Tripoli and both had been registered in Iraq on January 16, port of registry Basra. As far as could be ascertained from a quick check Lloyd’s had no information as to their present whereabouts, possible destination, or nature of cargo, if any. ‘And the authorities show no inclination to get Britain involved,’ Saltley added as Pamela sat him down to a plate of tinned ham and egg mayonnaise.