We drank the last bottle. ‘You’ve given it much thought.’
‘That’s because you think of rum things in that rear turret trying to stay awake and make sure the next second won’t be your last. The navigator and pilot keep us on course, and your Sergeant Backtune wireless operator’s tapping his feet to dance music from all over Europe, but your gunner has to keep himself warm and everybody else safe. Me and the skipper were one mind when it came to surviving. One whisper and the Lanc was in a corkscrew and I was belting the guns at a shadow that tried to follow us down. But sleep is public enemy number one, so you go off for your lethal dose of shut-eye, while I slope away for a leak!’
10
I had not expected so much delay in getting the flying boat ready. Waiting released gloomy premonitions, and the problem was whether I should leave to avoid disaster, which I felt was sure to come, or stay to see whether I was right or wrong about my premonitions. If I left I would never know, and feel a fool. If I stayed, I wouldn’t live to tell myself I had made a mistake. Pride on the one hand, and curiosity on the other, had me locked.
The flying boat had been chosen from thousands of war-surplus planes, and I couldn’t help wondering about its air-worthiness. I questioned the wisdom of placing myself at its disposal, an attachment which began after my inability to bed down into the married state. I had signed a contract as wireless officer for the Southern Ocean Survey Company on board the Aldebaran, and Nash told me during an interminable series of card games that we were to assess anchorage facilities in the Cape Town-Tasmania-Antarctic triangle, for a steamship company that would acquire and recondition a couple of redundant Liberty ships. They would go into the cruise market for naturalists, amateur geographers and middle-aged wayfarers with money, who had not travelled during the war and now wanted to take advantage of the reopening of facilities.
Nash saw that it would mean almost no change of name for the company when it became known as the Southern Ocean Steamship Company. There would be work for us all in such an enterprise, ‘especially for you,’ he said, ‘as radio officer.’ He reached across the table and nudged my chest, between one game of gin rummy and the next, though my own laugh was due to the unhappy coincidence of both acronyms.
I believed nothing of what he told me. A lifetime of listening had made me suspicious. A man couldn’t survive seventy-six operations over Germany, as well as a stint with Coastal Command, and not have more cunning than was good for him. Nash knew something about the trip that I didn’t know, and under his phlegmatic aspect was a caution hard to fathom. I had no evidence as to what it was, and my curiosity was so intense that I couldn’t see a way to find out. To ask questions, however circumspectly, would lose me all standing among the crew. I had been left with nothing when Anne went out of my life except that kind of honour which, providing an all-round defence, led me to distrust everything but my own competence – such as it was.
I asked Nash when the flying boat would be leaving.
‘In about a week.’ He licked his finger before picking up a card. ‘There’ll be briefings first, though, and a few circuits around the harbour. Meanwhile, you won’t be needing this.’ He drew one of the gaudy banknotes to his side of the table, then handed me the pack because it was my turn to shuffle.
I walked to the window. The air in the room was thick with our smoking. Outside there was grit in the wind. Yesterday the houses along the street had been intact, now they were being brought down. How are the mighty fallen! Between gaps the deep blue sea had white tails curling on top. When waves hit the breakwater a geyser of smoke banged into the air and, even at this distance, looking between demolished houses, I could hear that searing rush as the liquid mass came down. Close to midday, half the block was gone. That’s how they move in this country. A date-time is set for doing a job, and then it’s done, without argument or delay.
I went back to the table. ‘A poor lookout if it’s dead calm on the day we’re supposed to get airborne, with such a load to carry.’
‘That’s not your problem. Just deal the cards and pray for luck. You might win if you aren’t careful.’
According to graphs on Bennett’s table, the wind that prevailed on most days of the year, to any number of the Beaufort scale, when otherwise it was a calm of equal deadliness, was westerly. He’d fly the Aldebaran into the wind for lift, and we would have to rise before colliding with the escarpment on the other side of the harbour.
‘They aren’t used to such big flying boats out here,’ Nash said. ‘Only seaplanes. The skipper landed it almost empty, and a double run’ll be needed to get off. If we have to taxi out to the open sea he’ll have to wait for a calm day, and on such a day there’ll be little wind for lift-off. He has his problems. You’ve just got to trust him – like I do.’
Now that the war was over, I didn’t like to make anyone responsible for my life; yet Nash was right. On the other hand, neither he nor Bennett thought it necessary that I should be told the truth about the Aldebaran’s voyage. I wondered whether the navigator or flight engineer would reveal anything when they arrived, because they too had been part of the old crew. I was the only newcomer, and became more and more conscious of the fact. I had been chosen at random, or Fate had pinned a number on me which was impossible to pluck off.
If I took a train along the coast to Lessom Bay, and found work as an operator on some tramp steamer sailing to another part of the world, my last notion of honour would go. I would fall through the safety net of self-respect to the lowest state of all, that of breaking my word – the final dereliction of duty. I had been brought up to believe that once you lost that kind of honour you couldn’t atone. I didn’t think much of this precept, for there is such a thing as loyalty to life, which means taking reasonable precautions for survival.
‘You should stop thinking thoughts,’ said Nash, when I lost again. ‘It’s not good for you. It never did anybody any good.’
‘It’s worry,’ I said, ‘not thought, and it’ll go when I’m flying.’
‘That’ll be too late. You’ll have a rash by then. Get rid of it now. Take a tip from me. We can’t afford to have anyone in the crew who thinks.’
‘All right,’ I said, ‘you win.’
‘See what I mean?’
‘I do. So deal.’
Whatever the reason, for the rest of that day I won every game.
11
A man was playing a slot machine by the coat racks. Each spinning drum lit up red and yellow. He put money in and, after pausing to let a bout of coughing rack its way through him (he simply stood upright and looked straight ahead, telling the animal inside to do its worst but for God’s sake to let rip and get it over with even if it intended killing him), pulled at the large handle as if knowing every move of the machinery inside. A juke-box in an adjoining alcove played the world favourite for that year: ‘I’ll Never Forget You …’ A glass of beer was set on the table, and he reached for a drink when his cosseting of the gamble-box brought no results.