A crewman told him a meal was to be served in the dining room but that there’d be no formal dinner until the following evening, after they left Hull. The captain would join them then. That suited Paul. The fewer people he met the better. Cumming had told him to keep his head down and that’s what he planned to do.
Pinker was still fussing with his luggage in the cabin. It had occurred to Paul that Pinker might actually be Hart. Even though the man said he was a commercial traveller and looked like Paul’s idea of a commercial traveller, not a secret agent. He was rather thin, balding and wearing a moustache, perhaps to compensate. His face had the colour of early primroses which, nice enough on the flowers, seemed to Paul too yellow on skin to look healthy. Not yet too old for conscription, Paul suspected Pinker’s jaundiced complexion and hollow-chest had kept him out of the army. Without entirely abandoning the thought that Pinker could be Hart, Paul decided it best to let the man broach the subject first. If he wasn’t, then whether Pinker fitted Cumming’s criteria as someone ‘to watch’ was altogether a different matter.
‘Harold Filbert,’ Paul said awkwardly as he had neglected to introduce himself earlier.
Pinker, volunteering for the top bunk and having finally finished putting away his gear, dropped onto the lower and pulled a sample of his wares from a box beneath it. Paul took the chair and examined the boot Pinker gave him.
He was from Northampton. ‘The home of good boots’. His company, convinced of an imminent German defeat, had despatched him to take advantage of the countless subjugated Teutons who would be in need of good boots.
‘The Hun’s finished,’ Pinker insisted, ‘but following up behind the army’s no good. You have to be on the spot. Have your operation up and running before anyone else. That’s where we’re one step ahead of our competition.’
Pinker’s plan — or his company’s, to be exact — was to be based on the Danish-German border in the region of Schleswig-Holstein, from where they would be able to sell to a captive — or at least conquered — market. Paul had never been one to dampen another’s enthusiasm, but he did wonder why Pinker expected the Germans to buy English boots rather than those of German manufacture if they needed them.
‘They won’t have any choice, will they?’ Pinker argued. ‘It’s common knowledge that an obligation to buy British goods will be part of any terms of surrender.’
‘Will it?’
‘Stands to reason. Besides, there’s the quality. He might be the “beastly Hun” and all that, but no one has ever suggested that your average German on the Clapham omnibus, so to speak, doesn’t know a decent boot when he sees one.’
Paul didn’t know. The only Germans he had ever encountered hadn’t been on omnibuses going to Clapham or anywhere else. But something was worrying Pinker. A series of furrows creased his balding forehead.
‘Never been there, that’s the only thing. Learned a bit of German but it’s not the sort of thing a man can go around practising at the minute.’
‘No,’ Paul said. ‘I suppose not.’
‘Have you been there by any chance? Schleswig-Holstein, I mean?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
The only thing Paul recalled about Schleswig-Holstein was that the last century it had been the centre of some infernally complicated political question or other. There had been a remark of Palmerston’s he remembered from school that said of the three people who did understand the Schleswig-Holstein question, one was dead, one had gone mad, and the other… well, he didn’t remember that bit. He knew where Schleswig-Holstein was, being to the south of Denmark, but he had never been there. The closest he had ever got was hundreds of miles away, in the mud they’d called Passchendael and, given what had happened to him there, he wouldn’t want to get much closer.
‘Pity,’ Pinker said. ‘But if a man wants to advance himself he goes where his company sends him, doesn’t he though? And jolly lucky to get a berth, by all accounts. This service has been suspended since the beginning of the war. My office has been trying to get a toe into Denmark for two years. Don’t mind telling you it was all a bit of a rush when we got the nod about this sailing. General opinion was nothing would start up again till after the war. The fact is, old chap, up to now a man couldn’t get permission to travel to the continent for love or money if he wasn’t in uniform.’
‘I suppose not,’ Paul agreed absently.
Pinker nodded at him. ‘Not in it yourself then, Filbert, if you don’t mind my asking.’
Paul wondered if, like the woman on the train, Pinker took him for a shirker as well.
‘Medical discharge,’ he said.
‘Best out of it if you want my opinion,’ Pinker agreed.
Paul hadn’t particularly so he said nothing else.
Pinker, oblivious, rubbed his hands together. ‘Well, Filbert, how do you feel? Got your sea legs yet? What about a bite to eat?’
Paul actually felt fine, despite discovering he was a bad sailor the last time he’d been on a ship. Odd given his parentage, he supposed. Although just because his father had joined the navy didn’t necessarily mean that he had been much of a sailor either. He certainly hadn’t been much of a swimmer.
‘So far so good,’ he told Pinker, and followed him out of the cabin.
They went on deck. What Paul had seen of the rest of the steamer hadn’t altered his first impression of the boat. The superstructure, he had been alarmed to find, seemed little more than metal hung together by a skein of rust. He wondered if it was cynical to think that when the War Office had released the vessel specifically to get him and Hart to Russia, they had taken the opportunity to rid themselves of a rusting tub no longer fit for service. It didn’t fill him with much confidence for the voyage ahead, particularly if they needed to out-run a U-boat. In fact the whole outlook looked gloomy. A thought that made him think of Hart again. Where on earth was the man? Paul was on his way to Finland and, contrary to Cumming’s assurances, on his way alone.
Hartless.
Which at that moment just seemed to sum up the entire business.
The wind had freshened. The steamer’s engine vibrated through the deck as it made headway into a swell. Paul followed Pinker into the dingy saloon. A sofa and a few worn armchairs circled a threadbare rug, all illuminated by dim lights. Small side tables had been bolted to the floor beside the chairs. As they entered a bar steward approached them, feet braced against the rising sea.
Paul asked for a whisky and soda; Pinker a bottle of beer.
‘Better make the most of it, sir,’ the steward said. ‘She’ll be a dry ship once out of British waters. Being Finnish we have to observe their prohibition on alcohol.’
Paul cast around for somewhere to sit. All the chairs were vacant although none looked very comfortable.
‘Didn’t I see two other passengers come aboard?’ Paul asked the steward as he placed the whisky on one of the tables, making Paul’s choice for him. ‘Dark fellows. Bearded.’
‘Very likely, sir,’ the steward said, his skin pockmarked, as if he’d had a brush with smallpox. His name was Turner, he told them.
‘Anyone else expected?’
‘In Hull, sir. A gentleman of the cloth, I believe.’
‘A priest?’
‘A parson. A reverend gentleman.’
‘Going to Finland? What on earth for?’
‘Couldn’t say, sir. To convert the ‘eathen Finn, perhaps. Cold cuts and a cheese platter in the dining room, when you’re ready, sir.’
Paul suspected Turner was being insolent but couldn’t tell from the expression on his cratered face. Not that he wasn’t used to insolence; men under his command had often been insolent. It had irritated him and he’d frequently lost his temper with them at first. Until they had started dying. After that it had seemed as if suffering a little insolence was a cheap price to pay for not being among their number.