CHAPTER TWO
I didn’t bother to clear up, I just got my anorak, picked up the containers holding the two live cormorants and shouldered my way out into the gale. One night. One single night. A split moment of time, and now everything had changed, my whole life. Clear of the cottage the wind took hold, thrusting me up the path. It was blowing a good force 9 and I could hardly breathe, the collar of my anorak whipping against my chin with a harsh whirring sound, and the waves thundering below me, the cove a white maelstrom of broken water thrown back by the rocks.
It was quieter when I reached the lane, a grey, miserable morning with ragged wisps of cloud flying in the wind, the moors all hidden. A herring gull sailed past my head, a scrap of paper blown by the gale. She would have liked that — one bird at least without oil on its feathers.
The blue van was parked in the yard of the Kerri-sons’ place and I found Jimmy cleaning out the chicken roost at the back of the outbuildings. I handed him the cardboard containers holding the cormorants. ‘The last thing she did,’ I said.
‘Okay, I’ll see they get to the cleansing centre.’ ‘Can I use your phone?’
He nodded and took me through into the house.
Jean called down to see if I was all right. The phone was at the foot of the stairs and she leaned over the banisters to ask if I could use a cup of coffee. I answered her automatically, trying to remember the departmental details given in Lloyd’s Nautical Year
Book. I didn’t want underwriters or salvage experts; I wanted the people who dealt with fraudulent claims.
But I couldn’t remember what the section was called, only that it was located outside London.
By the time I had been through Directory Enquiries and Lloyd’s of London switchboard I was sweating, my nerves on edge, tiredness coming in waves. Colchester, the girl said — Intelligence Services. And she gave me the number.
‘You all right, Trevor?’ It was Jean, looking anxious and holding a cup of coffee out to me.
‘Yes, I’m all right.’ There were beads of sweat on my forehead. ‘It’s very warm in here, nice and warm after being outside.’
‘Come and sit down then. You can phone after you’ve had your coffee.’
‘No. No thanks. I’ll get this over, then I’ll sit down for a moment.’ I dialled the Colchester number, mopping the sweat from my forehead, and when I told the girl I was enquiring about the engineer of the
Petros Jupiter she put me through to a quiet, friendly-sounding voice: ‘Ferrers, Special Enquiries Branch. Can I help you?’ But as soon as I asked him whether it was negligence, or if the tanker had been put ashore deliberately, his manner changed. ‘Have you any reason to suppose it was deliberate?’
‘The engineer,’ I said. ‘A Greek named Speridion. He took a dinghy from Porthcurno. They say he was picked up by a Breton fishing boat.’
‘It doesn’t prove anything,’ the voice said. ‘A man who’s been shipwrecked…’ There was a pause, and then the inevitable question. ‘May I know your interest in the matter? Are you representing anyone in particular?’
‘No. Only myself.’ I told him my name then and where I was speaking from, and he said ‘Trevor Rodin’, repeating it slowly. ‘It was your wife…’ The voice trailed away, embarrassed, and I heard him say, ‘I’m sorry.’ After that there was a long silence. And when I asked him for information about the engineer, where he lived, or where the fishing boat had taken him, he said, ‘I can’t answer that. There’s nothing through yet. Why not try the police, or maybe the solicitors…’ He hesitated, ‘May I have your address please?’
I gave it to him, also the Kerrisons’ telephone number. ‘Could you ring me here if it turns out to be a scuttling job?’
‘What makes you think it might be?’
‘He’s fled the country, hasn’t he?’ And when he didn’t answer, I said, ‘Well, hasn’t he? Somebody put that bloody tanker on the rocks.’
‘That’s a matter for the courts.’ His voice sounded suddenly a little distant. Silence then. I thought he’d cut me off, but when I said ‘Hullo’, he answered at once. ‘Just a moment.’ A long pause. Then he went on, ‘Sorry — I’ve got a telex here, and I was just looking at a newspaper report of what happened last night… you’ve been a ship’s officer, I see. Gulf, and Indian Ocean. You know Mina Zayed?’
‘The Abu Dhabi port?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is that where he’s headed?’
‘It’s where the tanker was loaded. Do you know it?’ And when I told him I’d been into it only once since it was built, he said, ‘Well, that’s more than most ships’ officers have.’ And he asked me whether I was ever in London.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not for a long time.’ But then I remembered about the book and the publishers I had sent it to. I’d have to sort that out, think about what I was going to do. ‘Maybe now…’ I murmured.
‘You’ll be coming to London then?’
‘I expect so.’
‘When?’
‘I don’t know — soon. It depends.’
‘Well, let me know.’ He repeated the number I had given him, promised to phone me if they heard anything definite, then hung up.
I drank the rest of my coffee there by the phone, wondering why he wanted to know if I’d be in London.
There was nothing I could tell him. I took the empty cup through into the kitchen. Jean was there, looking a little tearful as she insisted I lunch with them. ‘You’re going to leave Balkaer now, aren’t you?’
I nodded. There was a sort of extra-marital closeness between us. Perhaps it was her mixed Romany blood, but she always seemed to know what was in my mind. ‘Yes, time to leave now.’ Time to go back to the superficial companionship of officers’ quarters on some tramp.
‘Back to sea?’
I nodded, not relishing the thought.
‘What about the book?’
I shook my head. It was over a month since I had sent it to the publishers and not a word. ‘It’ll be back to the Gulf again, I suppose. But first—‘ I stopped there, my hands trembling, my mind on that engineer. I couldn’t tell her what I planned to do. I couldn’t tell anybody. ‘I’ll take a break first.’ My voice sounded faint, little more than a mumble. ‘Try and sort things out.’
She put the saucepan down carefully and caught me by the arm. ‘Two wrongs don’t make a right, Trevor. They never did.’ And she added, ‘I know how you feel, but… just leave it be, love. The thing’s done. Leave it be.’ And then, without waiting for an answer, she said, ‘Now go on down to the cottage, clean things up and come back here for lunch just after twelve. Cold ham and salad. And I’ll do you some meringues.’ She knew I liked meringues.
‘All right,’ I said.
But instead of going back to Balkaer, I went with Jimmy in his van to the cleansing station. We helped there for a while, getting back just in time for lunch. And afterwards I stayed on, enjoying the warmth of their company, the cosy heat of the coal fire. The wind had dropped, but there was still cloud over the moors and it got dark early. I didn’t think about it when they switched the television on for the news, but then, suddenly, I was sitting up, electrified, seeing it all over again through the eyes of the camera — the red glow of the blazing tanker and the ILB coming into the slipway, the three of us caught against the furnace glare of the burning oil with ragged wisps of fog in the background, and myself, dazed and speaking slowly, as though in a trance, trying to answer their questions, telling them what had happened. The wind was blowing in my hair and my face had the pallor of death in the hard glare of the spotlight.
Back at the cottage, with the aftermath of the gale beating into the cove, it was my own TV shadow, my wild, ghostly appearance that stayed in my mind, not the words I had spoken. I was tired by then, so emotionally exhausted that I fell asleep by the fire. I spent most of the night there and in the morning, when I went up to the top, above the elephant rock, and looked across to the Longships, all that remained of the Petros Jupiter was the blackened bridge housing half sunk and leaning drunkenly against the Kettle’s Bottom.