Heavy, p.21
Heavy, page 21
I wanted to like myself too, Pig thought, frozen on his spine. We don’t always get what we want.
* * *
Dragged like baggage across the roads of the South of England, it became apparent that whatever plans this agency had for Ernie, they did not currently involve more torture. He sat up in the back of the car beside the silent woman and her darting eyes, and tried to work out how, exactly, this could be maintained.
In the front of the car there was no indication of what was being discussed.
It was bizarre to see them together again, Ernie mused. After everything that had happened, Foley had somehow managed to either forgive Jack – unlikely, Ernie certainly hadn’t – or had decided to keep an eye on him. What had happened to the man’s face? What was he doing working for an intelligence agency?
He glanced at the woman who’d sent him out, and brought him in. She sat like she had a poker in her behind, and stared at the padded partition as if she were trying to bore through it with her eyes. Something going on there, but what?
Ernie worried at this all the way to Tilbury.
The docks were no surprise: something about Foley’s manner suggested the start of some journey, although he’d been expecting an airfield, they couldn’t have been too far from Biggin Hill.
By the time Jack came to heave him out of the car, he was thirsty, and hungry, and itching under his bandages.
Jack tried to set him on his feet; he stank, in this close proximity. Old sweat, old booze. Ernie wished to hell he’d a cigarette, a pipe, some snuff to blot it out.
They boarded a ship. Someone was scampering around behind them, on the quayside, like they were dancing the tarantella. Ernie tried to concentrate: the ship had an ominous name; Northern Destroyer, and was a recent build. Something prepared for cold waters, tall waves, and equipped with an ice-breaker. This, he thought, boded ill for the possibility of being dumped in Nigeria and left in exile.
Foley and his little shadow – Irene, he’d said it when they got out, Irene, Irene – abandoned him in a cabin with Jack. Faith in Jack’s temperance was, he thought, a little of a stretch. Perhaps he’d changed, perhaps Foley had some evidence of that.
Jack tossed him on the lower berth of two like old laundry, and sat with his back to the door. It was, Ernie admitted, a transformation that he would never have predicted. Jack Ridell in his mind – on the rare occasions Ernie had much time to think back to Surt and its tormented alumni – had either the collar of the clergy or a pleasant, reassuring presence in an asylum or a prison. Somewhere he couldn’t do anything like that again.
* * *
After four days at sea, eating the kind of soup that would only have been welcome on Surt or in a gaol, pissing in a bucket that usually already had some of Jack’s sick in it, Ernie gave up. There was no mileage in sulking, and Foley and Irene were not coming back to question him.
He sat up in the berth, bent beneath Jack’s bunk. His arms hurt, but the movement was now, it appeared, possible. He braced himself against the roll of the ship, and said, “I didn’t know you got seasick.”
On the top berth, Jack Ridell groaned.
“I mean,” said Ernie, trying to pretend that he remembered nothing of Jack that had happened after that point, “you weren’t sick on the Taunton, were you?”
Jack said, “I hadn’t already been on a sinking ship back then,” and rolled over noisily.
Ernie blinked to himself. He touched the tips of his fingers together, stared at the rough, raw nail beds. In all his thoughts, though the swirling mess of memory, planning, held-off grief, vanishing hopes, and the constant background radiation of pain, he’d not once considered that getting on a ship should bring him any fear.
“Lightning never strikes the same place twice,” he said, with an optimism he didn’t feel. Jack was right: if they struck something now, they’d drown. He was helpless, and the former choirboy was locked in with him in a room with no windows.
He recalled their earliest conversations, the boys on the ship. The slow exchange of life histories, or as much life history as a child could generate. The jokes, the scuffles, the bragging – Jack had been an incredible braggart, but there had always seemed to be genuine pride behind his proclamations.
And the singing, he remembered that.
“Remember when we sang Land of Hope and Glory on the Taunton and the mate told us it was Land of Atom Bombs and No Return and Captain Renwick boxed his ears in front of everyone?” he said, as if remembering a dream.
Jack said, “Remember when Captain Renwick ran us aground.”
“I’m not going to forget that, am I?” Ernie sighed. “Don’t think about it.”
“What good does not thinking about it do?” asked Jack, in the voice of someone who had nothing to do but think about it. Ernie tried to swallow his frustration. That someone like this could still pity himself should have been incredible; but of course, it was always the worst kind of monster who wanted someone to tell them how hard they had it. The District Officials had been the same.
“Captain Renwick called you a perfect example,” said Ernie.
“Of what.”
“English fortitude,” said Ernie, with an internal sneer. “Live up to it.”
English fortitude. Aryan Perfection, more like. Renwick had his opinions, and they weren’t hidden. Ernie knew how close he’d come to being left first on the quay, then on the deck as water began to swirl up around his ankles. He could have been lucky and stayed in London to face the bombs that never made it with the other racial defectives, if he hadn’t been fucking famous.
“I left mine somewhere in those fucking mountains,” said Jack. The word sounded completely alien in his mouth: Jack Ridell the boy hadn’t sworn. He’d had eyes like blue saucers when Simon casually called one of the other boys a pair of knackers. Then again, Jack Ridell the boy had a voice like flute, not a congested foghorn.
Mountains, thought Ernie, confused. The reference wasn’t to Surt, at all.
He stared at the underside of Jack’s berth. A little perspective, he thought. Surt was a long time ago. If it weren’t for Foley, for Jack, sitting here on this tin can ship with him, he wouldn’t be thinking about it at all.
Perspective. Once he’d thought that what happened with Swineheart – he put his hand over his mouth, all the same – that this was the worst thing that he could ever be involved in. And now: missing teeth, fingernails. Breathing like he was drowning, all the time. Arms like rags. Legs that might never work again. Pissing in a bucket. Simon dead. Xiao Huli dead. Promises to both broken. Promises to himself, broken.
A flicker in the back of his consciousness. Oh, and that Haxonbury, shot in the back. Still. That had been inevitable.
* * *
On the fifth day at sea, there was a conversation outside the locked door loud enough to be eavesdropped on.
“Hiding in the supplies,” said a man’s voice. “Gave Peter a right ding around the bloody ear.”
“Where is she now?” asked a second.
“Don’t waste your time,” said the first, “I wouldn’t touch that with yours.”
Ernie slumped back on the bed as the voices moved away. Jack was asleep: gurgling and groaning like a man with his face in a bucket of porridge. He supposed the injuries must make it all but impossible to breathe nasally. His sinuses would be a wreck, too.
He felt his chest with his left hand. Agony. The shape was nothing that a human body should be able to achieve, and the pressure burned him. He withdrew his hand.
There was, he thought, wryly, no more opportunity to trade on his bloody looks.
* * *
In the cargo, Maureen quickly discovered that stowing away was rather dull.
She had everything she needed: there were dried rations in astonishing numbers, and the hay – why on earth was there hay? – was comfortable enough to sleep on, and warm, too. Blankets were there in bundles that would have made black marketeers weep—
Maureen firmly suppressed the memory of the spiv lying face-down in the dirt.
—and although she’d have liked a little more water and some fewer rodents the whole set-up was almost luxurious compared to some of the other scrapes she’d gotten herself into. There were even cartons upon cartons upon cartons of cigarettes. The ship might have looked mercantile, but she would have bet a whole week’s wages on this being a military supply run.
Maureen tried not to think about what would happen to her wages, or indeed her job, at this point.
The trouble with having nothing to do as the ship dragged on and on and on and on and on was that it left one with the ability to review rather more of one’s recent memories than one really wanted to. She fished out a notebook and a pencil stub, and began compiling her observations with an editorial eye:
+ Bandaged man now travelling with Military Intelligence Man,
Mr. Ridell, and Frumpy Little Dark Woman.
+ Spiv dead
+ On board a ship, surrounded by mysterious supplies.
+ No sign of quarry in some time.
She decided that it would be sensible to at least check they were still aboard. If she were trying to avoid being followed she’d have either switched vessels at Tilbury or leap ship in a lifeboat somewhere in the channel and arranged to be picked up by someone else, leaving the initial craft to continue on its way as a Red Herring.
Then again, Maureen thought, they didn’t know she was following them.
She made her foray at night, because there would be fewer people around to spot her.
She crept along the corridors of the ship, unlit cigarette in mouth, borrowed cap pulled down, purloined boots – somewhat too large but jolly sturdy – shuffling on the floors to avoid excessive noise. No sign of anyone to begin with, only the empty night and the crew required to keep the ship moving relentlessly on through the lightless sea, and then—
Maureen ducked behind a staunchon, flung herself into the shadow of a staircase as the rain lashed at her. There was the little dark woman, carrying a tray!
She leaned back around. The woman had stopped at a door, taken out a key. She caught her breath.
The door opened. The woman placed the tray inside, as if feeding an animal, and stepped back out of the room. She relocked the door.
Maureen nearly bit through the end of her cigarette. The dark little woman turned on her heel, heading back across the deck. Her footing was unsure – clearly she was no sailor – and she went slowly, with a kind of forced dignity that Maureen didn’t think a great deal of.
The little dark woman slipped, and threw out an arm to save herself.
The movement brought her to an angle where she faced the stairs. Maureen’s eyes met the dark little woman’s eyes, and she tried to melt back into the shadow, but it was too late.
“Under there,” said the woman, grabbing a passing sailor, “under the stairs.”
Maureen lowered her head, ready to bluff it out. She wasn’t quite sure what she was going to say, yet, but she supposed they couldn’t know everyone on board a ship of this size—
The sailor acquiesced without argument; he stepped into the shadow and caught Maureen by the elbow before she could react. “Here,” he said, not entirely unfriendly, “what are you doing?”
Maureen said, “Dancing the bloody hornpipe,” with a deal of sarcasm.
“You don’t belong on this ship,” said the sailor, jerking her arm. “What d’you think you’re doing?”
By way of an answer, Maureen kicked him in the shin, and took off along the deck. She might have been Discovered, she thought as she tried to vault over something in the dark, but there was still the option for hiding if she could just get far enough ahead.
Something tripped her.
As she rolled onto her back, she saw the dark little woman standing over her. Even in the dim light, with the rain drops reflecting back the glow of an overhead lantern, she could see the severe, schoolmarmish expression on the woman’s face.
“Of all the ships you had to pick to stow away on,” she said, as the sailor Maureen had kicked caught her up.
He yanked her to her feet without any gentleness and twisted one of her arms up behind her back. Maureen tried to twist out of it, but his grip was strong, and her arm began to hurt rather quickly. “At least let me light this,” she muttered, pointing her cigarette at him defiantly. He took it away instead.
“Who exactly are you?” added the dark little woman.
“Who exactly are you?” Maureen asked, somewhat rattled.
“I am Irene Gaitskill,” said the dark little woman, which meant absolutely nothing to Maureen, “and I am on the ship’s manifest, and I am supposed to be here. You, on the other hand, are stowing away on a charter, which is a crime.”
Maureen managed to shrug with the shoulder that wasn’t being painfully twisted. “You’ve kidnapped someone,” she said, taking a wild guess. “At a guess I’d say that’s a crime too.”
To her surprise, Irene Gaitskill gave her a very sour look, and said, “The needs of Her Majesty’s Security outweigh the rule of civilian law, as you well know. Stand up straight.”
Rather than point out that she couldn’t at this precise moment, Maureen said, “Whatever for? If you shoot me while I’m bent over I’m just as dead.”
Irene Gaitskill looked confused. “Who said anything about shooting? I just want to know why you’re on this ship.”
Maureen glanced over her painful shoulder at the sailor, who looked bored, annoyed, and damp, with her bloody cigarette tucked behind his ear, and said, “You shot that racketeer.”
Irene Gaitskill seized her by the wrist, pulling her out of the grasp of the sailor. “Come with me. Now.”
She had a grip like iron; Maureen would never have expected it of someone so prim-looking. She twisted in the woman’s clutch, snatched her cigarette back from behind the sailor’s ear, and tagged along after her as if she were being towed along by a determined small puppy.
* * *
In a small cabin with a framed nautical map on the wall showing most of Scandinavia, Maureen was offered a chair. She was also offered a light for her cigarette, “Or,” said the man offering it to her, “I have one which is rather drier than that, if you’d prefer.”
Maureen squinted at him. The man who’d presumably shot the spiv in cold blood didn’t really seem the type: he had untidy hair, was in his undershirt and braces, and looked thoroughly embarrassed to be found in this state, leafing through a book with an intent expression. He also looked as if he rather belonged on a bill advertising one of the rare new pictures that were put on.
She took the dry cigarette, and accepted the light.
“Now,” said the man with the gun, the dry cigarettes, and the apparent control of the situation, as the door opened and closed, allowing Irene Gaitskill to fade from the scene, “if I introduce myself, would you mind doing the same?”
Maureen pulled on the cigarette and said, “That seems fair.”
“I’m glad you think so,” he said. He extended his hand. “Captain Richard Foley.”
“Maureen Phelps,” said she, shaking it firmly.
“I’m not familiar,” said he, with a frown. “What brings you to my charter?”
Maureen, sensing that she had the upper hand, said, “Captain of what, exactly? I shouldn’t think you were a military man.”
“Well,” said Captain Foley with a self-effacing smile, “In a technical sense we’re part of the armed forces, but you’re right in a practical way, Miss Phelps – and very astute. I haven’t been near a battlefield in my life. Rather more of a paper-pusher, I’m afraid.” He regarded her with a shrewd look, and added, “You, on the other hand, probably ought to be doing your Service, and aren’t. You have a clear drive and determination and you evidently know a thing or two about concealment.” He took out a cigarette himself, and lit it. “The forces are missing out on you. Why is that?”
Maureen said, “I disagree with their aims, Captain, and I don’t know that I agree with yours.”
“Mine?” he looked surprised. “What of them?”
“You gunned a man down in cold blood,” said Maureen, resting her cigarette hand lightly on the table. Saying it made it less real, rather than more; it made a talking-point of the cold morning image of the weedy little spiv lying face-down in the ploughed field with a bullet in his back. She readjusted a hair pin. “I can’t say I’m in favour.”
“Oh,” said the Captain, raising his chin. “The man who kidnapped my operative?”
I knew it, thought Maureen.
“A regrettable incident,” said the Captain, getting up with a sigh. He had rolled up the sleeves of his undershirt, but was still wearing his watch. “I must say. I feel I owe you an explanation.”
Maureen took another pull on her cigarette and sat back in her chair.
“I don’t know how much you know about my department,” said the Captain, wandering around the small cabin with his cigarette smouldering in his hand. “A good deal more than you’ve let on, I should imagine. But I should like to tell you that you may have a few things twisted up – it comes with the territory, you see. If one has to keep secrets in order to protect the sovereignty of the nation, one is also forced to deceive the populace – it is distasteful, Miss Phelps, and it sits poorly with my own ideals, but in a time of war we are forced to make unpleasant compromises. And so—” he gestured vaguely to the room in which they sat, “I hear rumours of my own organisation which are flagrantly wrong, unsettling, and laden with the words of frank propaganda.”
The ship rolled. Maureen’s stomach growled.
“It is the way of things, I suppose,” sighed the Captain. “You see, one can hardly make an announcement to the population to say ‘we wish to protect your lives, but we also can’t have the balance between Communist and Capitalist getting too far in favour of either side’.”
Maureen nearly choked on her cigarette. She extinguished it carefully on a paperweight, and let it lie on the top of the desk before her.
“Somewhere between the two,” said the Captain, with a warm smile, catching her gaze, “lies true socialism. The art to this business is to try to steer the country in that direction without it becoming panicked. You must know how stupid people can be.”
* * *
Dragged like baggage across the roads of the South of England, it became apparent that whatever plans this agency had for Ernie, they did not currently involve more torture. He sat up in the back of the car beside the silent woman and her darting eyes, and tried to work out how, exactly, this could be maintained.
In the front of the car there was no indication of what was being discussed.
It was bizarre to see them together again, Ernie mused. After everything that had happened, Foley had somehow managed to either forgive Jack – unlikely, Ernie certainly hadn’t – or had decided to keep an eye on him. What had happened to the man’s face? What was he doing working for an intelligence agency?
He glanced at the woman who’d sent him out, and brought him in. She sat like she had a poker in her behind, and stared at the padded partition as if she were trying to bore through it with her eyes. Something going on there, but what?
Ernie worried at this all the way to Tilbury.
The docks were no surprise: something about Foley’s manner suggested the start of some journey, although he’d been expecting an airfield, they couldn’t have been too far from Biggin Hill.
By the time Jack came to heave him out of the car, he was thirsty, and hungry, and itching under his bandages.
Jack tried to set him on his feet; he stank, in this close proximity. Old sweat, old booze. Ernie wished to hell he’d a cigarette, a pipe, some snuff to blot it out.
They boarded a ship. Someone was scampering around behind them, on the quayside, like they were dancing the tarantella. Ernie tried to concentrate: the ship had an ominous name; Northern Destroyer, and was a recent build. Something prepared for cold waters, tall waves, and equipped with an ice-breaker. This, he thought, boded ill for the possibility of being dumped in Nigeria and left in exile.
Foley and his little shadow – Irene, he’d said it when they got out, Irene, Irene – abandoned him in a cabin with Jack. Faith in Jack’s temperance was, he thought, a little of a stretch. Perhaps he’d changed, perhaps Foley had some evidence of that.
Jack tossed him on the lower berth of two like old laundry, and sat with his back to the door. It was, Ernie admitted, a transformation that he would never have predicted. Jack Ridell in his mind – on the rare occasions Ernie had much time to think back to Surt and its tormented alumni – had either the collar of the clergy or a pleasant, reassuring presence in an asylum or a prison. Somewhere he couldn’t do anything like that again.
* * *
After four days at sea, eating the kind of soup that would only have been welcome on Surt or in a gaol, pissing in a bucket that usually already had some of Jack’s sick in it, Ernie gave up. There was no mileage in sulking, and Foley and Irene were not coming back to question him.
He sat up in the berth, bent beneath Jack’s bunk. His arms hurt, but the movement was now, it appeared, possible. He braced himself against the roll of the ship, and said, “I didn’t know you got seasick.”
On the top berth, Jack Ridell groaned.
“I mean,” said Ernie, trying to pretend that he remembered nothing of Jack that had happened after that point, “you weren’t sick on the Taunton, were you?”
Jack said, “I hadn’t already been on a sinking ship back then,” and rolled over noisily.
Ernie blinked to himself. He touched the tips of his fingers together, stared at the rough, raw nail beds. In all his thoughts, though the swirling mess of memory, planning, held-off grief, vanishing hopes, and the constant background radiation of pain, he’d not once considered that getting on a ship should bring him any fear.
“Lightning never strikes the same place twice,” he said, with an optimism he didn’t feel. Jack was right: if they struck something now, they’d drown. He was helpless, and the former choirboy was locked in with him in a room with no windows.
He recalled their earliest conversations, the boys on the ship. The slow exchange of life histories, or as much life history as a child could generate. The jokes, the scuffles, the bragging – Jack had been an incredible braggart, but there had always seemed to be genuine pride behind his proclamations.
And the singing, he remembered that.
“Remember when we sang Land of Hope and Glory on the Taunton and the mate told us it was Land of Atom Bombs and No Return and Captain Renwick boxed his ears in front of everyone?” he said, as if remembering a dream.
Jack said, “Remember when Captain Renwick ran us aground.”
“I’m not going to forget that, am I?” Ernie sighed. “Don’t think about it.”
“What good does not thinking about it do?” asked Jack, in the voice of someone who had nothing to do but think about it. Ernie tried to swallow his frustration. That someone like this could still pity himself should have been incredible; but of course, it was always the worst kind of monster who wanted someone to tell them how hard they had it. The District Officials had been the same.
“Captain Renwick called you a perfect example,” said Ernie.
“Of what.”
“English fortitude,” said Ernie, with an internal sneer. “Live up to it.”
English fortitude. Aryan Perfection, more like. Renwick had his opinions, and they weren’t hidden. Ernie knew how close he’d come to being left first on the quay, then on the deck as water began to swirl up around his ankles. He could have been lucky and stayed in London to face the bombs that never made it with the other racial defectives, if he hadn’t been fucking famous.
“I left mine somewhere in those fucking mountains,” said Jack. The word sounded completely alien in his mouth: Jack Ridell the boy hadn’t sworn. He’d had eyes like blue saucers when Simon casually called one of the other boys a pair of knackers. Then again, Jack Ridell the boy had a voice like flute, not a congested foghorn.
Mountains, thought Ernie, confused. The reference wasn’t to Surt, at all.
He stared at the underside of Jack’s berth. A little perspective, he thought. Surt was a long time ago. If it weren’t for Foley, for Jack, sitting here on this tin can ship with him, he wouldn’t be thinking about it at all.
Perspective. Once he’d thought that what happened with Swineheart – he put his hand over his mouth, all the same – that this was the worst thing that he could ever be involved in. And now: missing teeth, fingernails. Breathing like he was drowning, all the time. Arms like rags. Legs that might never work again. Pissing in a bucket. Simon dead. Xiao Huli dead. Promises to both broken. Promises to himself, broken.
A flicker in the back of his consciousness. Oh, and that Haxonbury, shot in the back. Still. That had been inevitable.
* * *
On the fifth day at sea, there was a conversation outside the locked door loud enough to be eavesdropped on.
“Hiding in the supplies,” said a man’s voice. “Gave Peter a right ding around the bloody ear.”
“Where is she now?” asked a second.
“Don’t waste your time,” said the first, “I wouldn’t touch that with yours.”
Ernie slumped back on the bed as the voices moved away. Jack was asleep: gurgling and groaning like a man with his face in a bucket of porridge. He supposed the injuries must make it all but impossible to breathe nasally. His sinuses would be a wreck, too.
He felt his chest with his left hand. Agony. The shape was nothing that a human body should be able to achieve, and the pressure burned him. He withdrew his hand.
There was, he thought, wryly, no more opportunity to trade on his bloody looks.
* * *
In the cargo, Maureen quickly discovered that stowing away was rather dull.
She had everything she needed: there were dried rations in astonishing numbers, and the hay – why on earth was there hay? – was comfortable enough to sleep on, and warm, too. Blankets were there in bundles that would have made black marketeers weep—
Maureen firmly suppressed the memory of the spiv lying face-down in the dirt.
—and although she’d have liked a little more water and some fewer rodents the whole set-up was almost luxurious compared to some of the other scrapes she’d gotten herself into. There were even cartons upon cartons upon cartons of cigarettes. The ship might have looked mercantile, but she would have bet a whole week’s wages on this being a military supply run.
Maureen tried not to think about what would happen to her wages, or indeed her job, at this point.
The trouble with having nothing to do as the ship dragged on and on and on and on and on was that it left one with the ability to review rather more of one’s recent memories than one really wanted to. She fished out a notebook and a pencil stub, and began compiling her observations with an editorial eye:
+ Bandaged man now travelling with Military Intelligence Man,
Mr. Ridell, and Frumpy Little Dark Woman.
+ Spiv dead
+ On board a ship, surrounded by mysterious supplies.
+ No sign of quarry in some time.
She decided that it would be sensible to at least check they were still aboard. If she were trying to avoid being followed she’d have either switched vessels at Tilbury or leap ship in a lifeboat somewhere in the channel and arranged to be picked up by someone else, leaving the initial craft to continue on its way as a Red Herring.
Then again, Maureen thought, they didn’t know she was following them.
She made her foray at night, because there would be fewer people around to spot her.
She crept along the corridors of the ship, unlit cigarette in mouth, borrowed cap pulled down, purloined boots – somewhat too large but jolly sturdy – shuffling on the floors to avoid excessive noise. No sign of anyone to begin with, only the empty night and the crew required to keep the ship moving relentlessly on through the lightless sea, and then—
Maureen ducked behind a staunchon, flung herself into the shadow of a staircase as the rain lashed at her. There was the little dark woman, carrying a tray!
She leaned back around. The woman had stopped at a door, taken out a key. She caught her breath.
The door opened. The woman placed the tray inside, as if feeding an animal, and stepped back out of the room. She relocked the door.
Maureen nearly bit through the end of her cigarette. The dark little woman turned on her heel, heading back across the deck. Her footing was unsure – clearly she was no sailor – and she went slowly, with a kind of forced dignity that Maureen didn’t think a great deal of.
The little dark woman slipped, and threw out an arm to save herself.
The movement brought her to an angle where she faced the stairs. Maureen’s eyes met the dark little woman’s eyes, and she tried to melt back into the shadow, but it was too late.
“Under there,” said the woman, grabbing a passing sailor, “under the stairs.”
Maureen lowered her head, ready to bluff it out. She wasn’t quite sure what she was going to say, yet, but she supposed they couldn’t know everyone on board a ship of this size—
The sailor acquiesced without argument; he stepped into the shadow and caught Maureen by the elbow before she could react. “Here,” he said, not entirely unfriendly, “what are you doing?”
Maureen said, “Dancing the bloody hornpipe,” with a deal of sarcasm.
“You don’t belong on this ship,” said the sailor, jerking her arm. “What d’you think you’re doing?”
By way of an answer, Maureen kicked him in the shin, and took off along the deck. She might have been Discovered, she thought as she tried to vault over something in the dark, but there was still the option for hiding if she could just get far enough ahead.
Something tripped her.
As she rolled onto her back, she saw the dark little woman standing over her. Even in the dim light, with the rain drops reflecting back the glow of an overhead lantern, she could see the severe, schoolmarmish expression on the woman’s face.
“Of all the ships you had to pick to stow away on,” she said, as the sailor Maureen had kicked caught her up.
He yanked her to her feet without any gentleness and twisted one of her arms up behind her back. Maureen tried to twist out of it, but his grip was strong, and her arm began to hurt rather quickly. “At least let me light this,” she muttered, pointing her cigarette at him defiantly. He took it away instead.
“Who exactly are you?” added the dark little woman.
“Who exactly are you?” Maureen asked, somewhat rattled.
“I am Irene Gaitskill,” said the dark little woman, which meant absolutely nothing to Maureen, “and I am on the ship’s manifest, and I am supposed to be here. You, on the other hand, are stowing away on a charter, which is a crime.”
Maureen managed to shrug with the shoulder that wasn’t being painfully twisted. “You’ve kidnapped someone,” she said, taking a wild guess. “At a guess I’d say that’s a crime too.”
To her surprise, Irene Gaitskill gave her a very sour look, and said, “The needs of Her Majesty’s Security outweigh the rule of civilian law, as you well know. Stand up straight.”
Rather than point out that she couldn’t at this precise moment, Maureen said, “Whatever for? If you shoot me while I’m bent over I’m just as dead.”
Irene Gaitskill looked confused. “Who said anything about shooting? I just want to know why you’re on this ship.”
Maureen glanced over her painful shoulder at the sailor, who looked bored, annoyed, and damp, with her bloody cigarette tucked behind his ear, and said, “You shot that racketeer.”
Irene Gaitskill seized her by the wrist, pulling her out of the grasp of the sailor. “Come with me. Now.”
She had a grip like iron; Maureen would never have expected it of someone so prim-looking. She twisted in the woman’s clutch, snatched her cigarette back from behind the sailor’s ear, and tagged along after her as if she were being towed along by a determined small puppy.
* * *
In a small cabin with a framed nautical map on the wall showing most of Scandinavia, Maureen was offered a chair. She was also offered a light for her cigarette, “Or,” said the man offering it to her, “I have one which is rather drier than that, if you’d prefer.”
Maureen squinted at him. The man who’d presumably shot the spiv in cold blood didn’t really seem the type: he had untidy hair, was in his undershirt and braces, and looked thoroughly embarrassed to be found in this state, leafing through a book with an intent expression. He also looked as if he rather belonged on a bill advertising one of the rare new pictures that were put on.
She took the dry cigarette, and accepted the light.
“Now,” said the man with the gun, the dry cigarettes, and the apparent control of the situation, as the door opened and closed, allowing Irene Gaitskill to fade from the scene, “if I introduce myself, would you mind doing the same?”
Maureen pulled on the cigarette and said, “That seems fair.”
“I’m glad you think so,” he said. He extended his hand. “Captain Richard Foley.”
“Maureen Phelps,” said she, shaking it firmly.
“I’m not familiar,” said he, with a frown. “What brings you to my charter?”
Maureen, sensing that she had the upper hand, said, “Captain of what, exactly? I shouldn’t think you were a military man.”
“Well,” said Captain Foley with a self-effacing smile, “In a technical sense we’re part of the armed forces, but you’re right in a practical way, Miss Phelps – and very astute. I haven’t been near a battlefield in my life. Rather more of a paper-pusher, I’m afraid.” He regarded her with a shrewd look, and added, “You, on the other hand, probably ought to be doing your Service, and aren’t. You have a clear drive and determination and you evidently know a thing or two about concealment.” He took out a cigarette himself, and lit it. “The forces are missing out on you. Why is that?”
Maureen said, “I disagree with their aims, Captain, and I don’t know that I agree with yours.”
“Mine?” he looked surprised. “What of them?”
“You gunned a man down in cold blood,” said Maureen, resting her cigarette hand lightly on the table. Saying it made it less real, rather than more; it made a talking-point of the cold morning image of the weedy little spiv lying face-down in the ploughed field with a bullet in his back. She readjusted a hair pin. “I can’t say I’m in favour.”
“Oh,” said the Captain, raising his chin. “The man who kidnapped my operative?”
I knew it, thought Maureen.
“A regrettable incident,” said the Captain, getting up with a sigh. He had rolled up the sleeves of his undershirt, but was still wearing his watch. “I must say. I feel I owe you an explanation.”
Maureen took another pull on her cigarette and sat back in her chair.
“I don’t know how much you know about my department,” said the Captain, wandering around the small cabin with his cigarette smouldering in his hand. “A good deal more than you’ve let on, I should imagine. But I should like to tell you that you may have a few things twisted up – it comes with the territory, you see. If one has to keep secrets in order to protect the sovereignty of the nation, one is also forced to deceive the populace – it is distasteful, Miss Phelps, and it sits poorly with my own ideals, but in a time of war we are forced to make unpleasant compromises. And so—” he gestured vaguely to the room in which they sat, “I hear rumours of my own organisation which are flagrantly wrong, unsettling, and laden with the words of frank propaganda.”
The ship rolled. Maureen’s stomach growled.
“It is the way of things, I suppose,” sighed the Captain. “You see, one can hardly make an announcement to the population to say ‘we wish to protect your lives, but we also can’t have the balance between Communist and Capitalist getting too far in favour of either side’.”
Maureen nearly choked on her cigarette. She extinguished it carefully on a paperweight, and let it lie on the top of the desk before her.
“Somewhere between the two,” said the Captain, with a warm smile, catching her gaze, “lies true socialism. The art to this business is to try to steer the country in that direction without it becoming panicked. You must know how stupid people can be.”
