Heavy, p.22
Heavy, page 22
“I’m afraid,” said Maureen, acknowledging this, “That I am still not so sure about your rather grotty little murder.”
“I must bear responsibility for that,” the Captain admitted, sitting heavily back in his chair. He rested one arm on the table: it was lightly-muscled, not too hairy. “That could have ended differently, Miss Phelps, but I can’t regret it as much as I should like. One learns things, in the observation of suspect individuals, and sometimes one learns things that bias one.”
“He was a spy?” Maureen suggested.
The Captain shook his head. “Rather less useful and more grubby,” he said, “and I’m afraid he offended some sensibilities of mine I should have abandoned long ago. One gets to see these people at their worst, in my line of work, and, well. One sees what they do when no one is watching, if you follow me.”
“A pervert, then?” Maureen asked, fascinated. Many of Diane’s acquaintances were officially Perverts, but she’d always found them very boring until now.
He shook his head again, and with some delicacy said, “One finds that they behave in a certain… manner… towards their wives, and towards their children… that is ungentlemanly.”
“Ah,” said Maureen.
“And I’m afraid there is in me a certain inconvenient, shall we say, chivalry?” The Captain grimaced at the end of his cigarette, resting in his hand. “One doesn’t like to admit to being swayed by emotion, Miss Phelps, but as I said, I owed you an explanation.”
“I understand,” she said, with a slow nod. “But what happens now?”
“Well,” said the Captain, sitting back in his chair. “That rather depends on you. You have a keen eye and ear and a good deal of courage. I should like to be able to trust you. But I can scarcely insult your beliefs by suggesting you temper them, Miss Phelps, and if you dislike my aims I cannot have you running about the place upsetting them. Do you follow me?”
“Quite,” said Maureen.
“Perhaps we could enter into a gentleman’s agreement,” said the Captain, extending his hand once again. “I will hold off on reporting you to my superiors when we make landfall, if you will do me the courtesy of assisting in a little work that makes use of your very obvious skills.”
“Mm,” said Maureen. “One assumes if I refuse I see the inside of a brig or the wrong end of a barrel.”
The Captain made a helpless gesture. “I would prefer it if we could collaborate, Miss Phelps. You would make a far greater ally than foe.” He leaned forward over the desk, and looked her in the eye with a worried expression. “And I am short on people I can trust, Miss Phelps.”
Maureen sat back, and extended her hand.
The door handle turned. The Captain gave the handle the same worried look he had bestowed on her, and Maureen understood. He didn’t trust Irene Gaitskill either.
“We have an entente,” she said.
“Splendid,” said the Captain, shaking her hand. “I am quite relieved.”
* * *
The journey to the Port of Kotka took a week, at ten knots, in weather Irene would rather not have walked about in. It made her hair even less manageable, and aboard a ship there was little opportunity to regain her poise.
She had never been on a ship before. She had never been out of England before. All Captain Foley would tell her was that they were putting in at the Port of Kotka and then heading North in convoy; she had no idea where Kotka was, and no idea how long it would take them. Irene accepted that it was the Captain’s prerogative to share knowledge with her as he thought appropriate, and that it was kindness that he had given her any inkling of their goal at all, but she wished, all the same, that there had been some warning.
Mother and Father would worry, if some message were not sent to them. Her work in the Chelsea branch would be taken up by someone less precise, someone more slap-dash. If not properly cleared, this excursion would count against her – Irene stamped down on the thought. Of course the excursion was properly cleared. Captain Foley was a model of professionalism. Colonel Braithwaite would have appointed him to it in every particular.
She was pleased to find that seasickness did not affect her.
Carrying a tray of soup to the two men whose liberty was judged detrimental to the safe running of the ship, Irene wondered if this meant that her father had been a sailor. Or if it merely meant that God, in his infinite wisdom, had decided that his Plan for her did not include nausea.
Captain Foley had been distracted, vague about his plans, vague about why he was keeping Mr. Ridell locked up with the recovering Mr. Shoe. Mr Ridell, disquieting with his face and with his excised file and with the dishonourable discharge from extended service, but obedient and non-seditious, bothered her too. She had the distinct, if groundless, impression that she was being punished.
It stung.
Mr. Shoe appeared to be better. He took the medication he was given: he asked her questions about their destination which she refused to answer. He asked her questions about herself which she thought it best not to answer. He told her stories, in fragments, as she came to take away the tray.
Dutifully, she reported them all to Captain Foley.
“He’s lying about that one,” said Captain Foley, when she returned with one such story. He did not look up from his notes. “Be careful he doesn’t turn your head, Irene.”
“No, Sir.”
“He’s what the Americans call a slippery customer.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“He’s no doubt working on Mr. Ridell,” said Captain Foley, “but I expect better of you, Irene.”
“Yes, Sir,” said Irene.
She took another tray to the incarcerated men the next evening. Mr. Ridell did not pause to acknowledge her: he was very seasick, and had the slops bucket clamped between his knees. For such a dangerous, treacherous man – his Army report, after the withdrawal of his pension, had been damning – he seemed pathetic like this. The other dangerous, treacherous man only tried to get her to join him in a chorus of a song she didn’t know.
“Try Nearer My God To Thee,” she heard Mr. Ridell croak as she closed the door. “She’s Church.”
“I don’t know your stinking church songs,” said Mr. Shoe.
Irene turned to cross the deck. The wind was unduly strong, and the deck slippery. She wished someone else could be brought in to handle the food, but if the Captain only trusted her with it, then it was she who should bring it: she gripped the tray in one hand and the bowls in the other, and took smaller steps.
It was only by chance that she looked under the stairs and spotted a sailor taking a cigarette. The face lit up under the gap was a female one. Irene wasn’t sure she recalled any women sailors on this vessel – they were still rather rare – but the business of not falling down had her preoccupied.
She had made it most of the way to the galley when a voice behind her shouted, “MISS, IF YOU BOX ME AGAIN I SHALL THROW YOU OVER THE FUCKING SIDE.”
Irene dropped the tray and bolted back across the deck, skirting what felt like an unending obstacle course.
“Is something the—”
One of the sailors was holding a woman in his arms. For a moment Irene was sure that her destiny for that day was to prevent a rape, and the idea frightened her so badly that she could not finish the sentence.
“I found her skulking about,” the sailor proclaimed, demonstrating the woman with tinted hair. “She’s not one of ours.”
“I suppose you’d better take her to the Captain,” said Irene, losing interest. Women of Loose Morals must occasionally sneak on board ships for the purpose of finding trade, and it was none of her business. Only God was able to judge what was in their hearts.
“Which?” asked the sailor.
Irene frowned into the darkness and the rain. “Whichever Captain is supposed to deal with this,” she said, and went back to look for the tray.
* * *
They docked at the Port of Kotka after a week at sea.
It was snowing.
Irene waited inside the Port Master’s office by an entirely welcome fire as the ship was unloaded: Mr. Ridell and Mr. Shoe had been given coats, Captain Foley remained elsewhere with the Port Master and an interpreter. By the map they must be perilously close to the Russian border.
She was not sure why she wasn’t surprised to see the woman with the tinted hair waiting, silent, smoking, in an armchair at the offices of the Port Master, but there was something about her presence that seemed as if it had been arranged. Certainly no one was paying any attention to her.
Irene hoped, rather fervently, that the ship’s cargo contained gloves. Her hands felt like two small blocks of ice.
Heavy: Twelve
The Tuesday that the train came in was a bad one. Doreen, Vjekoslav, Albert, Graves, and Witham went down with dogs to meet it, and they couldn’t see beyond the lamp at the front of the damn sled.
Unloading took longer than normal because Foley was back, and he wanted to explain what was happening. Doreen put her hands inside her coat. Like most of the British captain’s ‘explanations’ it contained a whole lot of justification and rhetoric and no fact, but she nodded along with her colleagues anyhow. He represented Braithwaite, as he was keen to remind them.
In the howling wind, their noses freezing, Foley turned to her and said, “Lieutenant—”
He said it the British way, the way that accounted for all the misspellings in Albert’s paperwork.
She didn’t salute him. It was too darn cold.
“I have some recruits on hand. They’re your responsibility, but one of them will need to see the inside of the infirmary for longer periods before he’s fit for the machines work,” said Foley, his hands inside a muffler.
Doreen pretended that she’d said something and that the wind had swept it away. Foley beamed at her and returned to shaking frozen hands with Vjekoslav, Graves…
She tapped Witham on the shoulder, and bent to his ear. “Get them into the sled before Foley talks them to death.”
She went with him to the side of the train and opened out the cargo doors. Warm air spilled out like hot sauce down the side of a cake, delicious and comforting. Doreen peered up into the yellow lamp light as the thick air and furious wind threw fistfuls of snow around in temper.
None of them were in irons this time, so she guessed he meant it when he said recruits.
There was a little mixed-race girl in uniform, who’d half-scalped herself trying to do her hair like a white girl, the poor fool. There was a mixed boy, too, older, crippled, wrapped in blankets and in need of a shave. A white girl who’d taken her approach to style from the book labelled fuck you, from which Doreen had read extensively and for which she immediately warmed to her; a man who’d had his face pushed through something sharp, and not been allowed to clean it afterward, who was white, fair-haired, and taller than everyone but her.
They all looked miserable as hell, and Doreen was sure it wasn’t all because they’d had the wintery breath of the Station poured onto them so fast.
“Get in the sled,” she said, without wasting breath on any Foley-style ‘explanations’. “We got a few more miles, but then you can rest.”
None of them tried to run, which was a blessing. The snow was good for that; folk who came here from further south – and there wasn’t a whole lot further north for them to come from – got intimidated by it. They saw plain in the poor visibility that there was nowhere to go.
Inside, she said, “Witham, give them the holiday talk.”
Witham swung about on the bench, raised his voice over the wind as the sled got going, and half-shouted, “You’re wondering why we have a railway out here in peasant country.”
Doreen thought they were likely wondering how much goddamn farther it was until they stopped dying of the cold and maybe what in heck was going to happen to them when they got there, but she let Witham go. He’d practiced this. He didn’t get to do it so often.
“When we took back this patch of territory from the Russians about eighteen years ago,” Witham bawled, like he’d been personally responsible, “They were using it to transport prisoners of war up where they couldn’t go dashing off to join our side.” He waved his arm through the falling snow. “The trains they were using were much less comfortable than the one you came in and we had to do some work on the track, but it’s the same infrastructure.”
No one answered him.
“Let the enemy do most of the work for you is a profound adage brought down by several major military strategists—” Witham went on, taking a breath.
Doreen elbowed him in the side until he sat down. “You done enough,” she murmured, when he looked hurt. “Wait ‘til they can hear the rest.”
At the Station proper Olga came to take away the mares and get them fed and sheltered. Doreen left the recruits with Witham and went to look for Petersen, who was sitting in the infirmary almost on top of the fire, like a gargoyle, smoking a pipe over a Tijuana bible with intense concentration.
“Doctor,” she said, in defiance of his unfinished degree, and deference to his ego.
“Busy,” said Petersen, not looking up from his titty book. “You aren’t due another infusion until Friday, don’t nag me.”
“We’ve got visitors.”
“I’m not putting it away just because some poor saps have come up here to die,” Petersen scowled, turning a page. “And I’m hardly going to offend you.”
“Foley sent me to say one of them needs medical attention,” said Doreen, noting the insult for future use. “And as you’re the nearest thing we have to medical attention, I guess you’re the one who has to provide it.”
“A girl?” Petersen brightened, temporarily looking up from his book. “I mean, a real girl—”
“He looks like he’s been through interrogation to me,” said Doreen, filing this insult as well. “But I’m sure you’ll want to make your own diagnosis.”
Petersen gave her a red-cheeked glare. “Push off out of my surgery.”
“I’m not the one who has to explain when he dies,” Doreen said, over her shoulder. “I hope you’ve been reading up on methods. I’m sure he has.”
She let the door close gently behind her. It would be so sad if someone mistook Petersen’s carefully-guarded stash of titty books for common furnace fuel, and it would put him in a temper for months, and probably see to it that he had to face some kind of disciplinary. She should make sure that Petersen’s titty books were stored safely a long, long way from the furnace fuel. For his own good.
Doreen gave a grim smile to no one and returned to Witham, the recruits, and the concrete bunker in which they were thawing.
They had the dazed look of anyone left alone with Witham and Witham’s extensive reading for too long. In the light of the room the injuries stood out more starkly, the hollows under their eyes, the red nail beds of the mixed boy with his prematurely-aged face.
“I’m Lieutenant Doreen Travers,” she said, once she’d shooed Witham away. “I’m going to be responsible for your training, but that don’t – doesn’t start until you get settled. Meantime, I just want your names, and you folk to not go running around the Station unaccompanied or Vjekoslav will shoot you.”
The girl with the red dyed hair flinched, just a little.
“He has a twitchy trigger finger,” she said, watching them all, “but a good heart, and he just hates Russians. So. Who are you all?” She made a conscious effort to strip out the y’all; the way she had with James, when she was trying, and when it mattered. It made no damn difference then and it made no damn difference now.
The little mixed girl, bless her scraped-back hair and her prissy little uniform, snapped an actual salute, and said, “Irene Gaitskill, Lieutenant. I work for Captain Foley as his assistant.”
Oh, thought Doreen, sadly. Oh dear.
“Nice to meet you, Miss Gaitskill,” she said, “right now you’re seconded to me, but I am sure you’ll be back helping our Captain out in no time.” God help you.
“Maureen Phelps,” said the girl with the dyed hair, grabbing Doreen by the hand and shaking it. “I very much do not work for Captain Foley, I’m just entertaining a truce with him for the time being.”
Doreen stared. “Good?” she said, trying not to laugh. “Good.”
The gents didn’t seem to want to introduce themselves. The mixed boy with the interrogation wounds was still wrapped in his blankets and looked like he might fall down any second – already sitting – and the other had propped himself up on the wall far from his fellows and was on the verge of sleep.
“Gentlemen?” Doreen said, putting her hands into the pockets of her overalls. “If you wouldn’t mind?”
“You’ve already been told,” muttered the mixed boy, sitting in his blankets.
“This might surprise you,” said Doreen, her patience beginning to strain, “but I have not. I don’t know if you’ve been in the Forces, Mister—? But information don’t – doesn’t get passed around like you’d hope.”
“My name is Ernest Shoe,” he said, staring at her shins. “And I work in music hall.”
The girl with tinted hair – Maureen Phelps – snorted. “He’s a spy, Lieutenant Travers.”
“One of ours?” she asked, although she knew damn well they wouldn’t have one of theirs in here without an escort that was more competent than this one.
Maureen just shrugged. A cigarette appeared in her hand like magic; Doreen was almost impressed. Halfway to the end of the world and the girl had kept her smokes.
“That,” said Ernest Shoe, pointing with an arm that sat wrong in his socket and a finger that had no nail, which proved he was right out of the interrogation rooms of one of the branches, for sure, “is Jack Ridell.”
“Jack?” Maureen spluttered.
“And if I were you,” said Ernest Shoe, darkly, “I’d be careful around him. Especially if the supplies up here run out.”
Doreen heard Witham’s knock on the bunker door with something approaching gratitude. Whatever had brought this collection of disparate souls together – she guessed some strange, twisted plan of Foley’s – they didn’t sit comfortable at all, and it would make putting them through their paces harder and slower.
