Pinker interrupted his train of thought.
‘Thought I’d go up top before dinner,’ he said, standing over Paul in the lower bunk.
The colour had drained from his face again leaving it wan and oddly pinched. Paul became aware that the ship was canting to one side, the gimballed basin and jug sitting at an odd angle to the cabin bulkhead.
‘Are you all right?’ Paul asked, leaning on an elbow.
‘Right as rain,’ Pinker replied looking anything but. ‘Just thought I’d get some air before dinner.’
‘Dinner?’ He looked at his watch. ‘Have I slept? Well, I’ll see you up there, I suppose.’
The cabin was too warm, heat rising through the floor from the boilers below. What it must be like for the stokers he couldn’t imagine. Something like hell no doubt — hot, acrid with coal dust, and with the added discomfort in rough weather of being tossed around like a cork in a river. He wondered if they thought much about U-boats.
He washed his face and put on his only clean shirt, sorting out the rest of his soiled laundry for the cabin steward. He didn’t feel much like eating, he had to confess, and supposed he was beginning to feel the effects of the weather. All he really felt like at that moment was a stiff whisky and wished he’d had the foresight to buy a bottle in Hull. He considered passing up dinner altogether and not eat until he got his sea legs, reasoning there was little point in eating at present to lose the benefit in a woozy future. Still, perhaps a little light broth wouldn’t hurt. He grabbed the greatcoat to wear against the wind and made his way up top again.
Pinker was in the saloon, grey-faced and staring at the floor. Next to him and trying to converse despite getting no response sat Pater, seemingly quite unperturbed by the worsening conditions. The Russians looked less composed, perched on the edge of their chairs in a manner suggestive of a readiness to leave at short notice.
The door opened behind him and Ragna Andresen entered followed by Valentine.
‘…feeling better soon,’ he heard Valentine say but since Miss Andresen looked as unruffled as she had at lunch he assumed Valentine didn’t mean her. She walked straight past Paul, opened the door to the dining room and walked through.
‘Filbert,’ Valentine said to Paul by way of greeting. ‘Miss Andresen’s aunt is feeling under the weather. She won’t be joining us.’
‘Pinker’s none too well either by the look of him,’ Paul said.
‘Pater on hand for the last rights?’
Paul couldn’t see much humour in the situation. His own stomach had suddenly adopted a movement counter to that of the ship and he wondered if he ought to excuse himself. But Valentine appeared as fresh as a man from a good night’s sleep and Paul was determined not to lose face in front of him.
‘I wonder what’s for dinner,’ he said, caring neither one way nor the other. Then, as if in answer, the dining room doors opened again and an aroma of mutton stew wafted out followed by Ragna Andresen, striding back with a crewman in tow carrying the broth to which Paul had aspired.
‘Just what your aunt needs,’ Valentine said as Ragna Andresen passed, studiously ignoring him.
Pater glared at her and the captain turned up, issuing them through to the dining table like a shepherd chivvying his flock.
They had just seated themselves when the steamer encountered the first of a series of large rollers. Lifting and swaying sideways, it seemed to stop for a moment, levitating above the water. Then it began a sickening descent, hitting the bottom of each trough with a thunderous clap. The boat began to vibrate, shaking like a dog fresh from a river.
Pinker stared in alarm. His chest convulsed and he scrambled out of his chair and rushed back into the saloon.
‘Heavy weather,’ Captain Nordvik commented.
The meal proved more subdued than had lunch. The first officer did not appear, having to remain on duty, Nordvik explained. The captain then proceeded to regale them with morose descriptions of the worst North Sea weather systems he had had the misfortune to encounter.
Paul stopped listening. In lieu of the broth he had glimpsed earlier, a limp salad appeared, remaining lifeless despite the provocation of being harried by Paul’s fork. The steamer alternately pitched and yawed, throwing in an occasional roll for variety. The mutton stew arrived and Solokov left. Korbelov and Pater, neither looking well, faced each other across the table in a battle of attrition between God and Marx as the champion of human endurance. Indifferent to religion and philosophy, Paul spooned at his stew, avoiding the pools of oily liquid accreting upon the surface.
The remainder of dinner was conducted in silence. Sometime before pudding, with a last despairing groan, Reverend Pater conceded the future to the new scientific theory of history and retired, despondent, to his cabin. Korbelov, his pallor having taken on a viridian hue, remained long enough only to assert his victory. Soon after it turned Pyrrhic and he vomited by the door into the saloon.
Turner, taking advantage of a brief moment of equilibrium, began collecting dishes before an abrupt cant to port brought him up short by the sideboard. He slewed the dishes in his hand for a moment, like a juggler spinning plates, then dropped them. They crashed to the floor and were joined a second later by Turner himself as he slipped on the spilled residue.
Nordvik, watching the performance with the air of an old hand who had seen it all before merely observed once more: ‘Heavy weather.’
It had been dark for an hour. All Paul could see of the water was a slight white frill of foam by the hull, illuminated by the ship. Clinging to a stanchion, he gulped air, tasting the salt that ringed his lips like a rime. It brought a hint of astringency that helped settle his stomach and, slowly, the miasma of nausea that had settled over his brain like a fog cleared. He made his way gingerly along the deck and collapsed onto a wooden bench situated, optimistically in his opinion, for passengers to appreciate the aesthetics of sea travel.
He sat dozing for a while wrapped in the greatcoat, until the discomfort and the cold sent him below. He found Pinker asleep, snoring in Paul’s lower bunk, despite having volunteered to take the upper and using that one the previous evening. The man’s bag lay on the floor where he had discarded it, clothes hanging out, and, slopping back and forth at the bottom of the basin, a couple of inches of discoloured bile.
Paul looked down upon it, grateful at least that Pinker hadn’t stayed at dinner long enough to consume the stew. There was a faint aroma to the fluid but not one strong enough to compel him to empty the basin. That was the cabin steward’s job, after all, and he was no doubt used to such things.
The rolling of the boat had tempered a little and catching one leg in his half-divested trousers while undressing Paul managed to bruise no more than an elbow and a kneecap. Spurning the basin, he walked down the corridor to the bathroom to clean his teeth only to find that Pinker — or perhaps one of the other passengers — had beaten him to it. The basins were swimming with vomit, as were the pans in the two stalls. The excess washed back and forth across the floor. Tiptoeing back to the cabin he ran a regretful tongue over his neglected teeth. But it wouldn’t keep him from sleep; he had become accustomed in the trenches to going without the small luxuries of attending to one’s toilet with any sort of regularity.
He stood looking at Pinker who alternately snored and gargled some watery residue in his throat that he had failed to expel earlier. The man’s case lay on the floor, open and disregarded, and Paul picked it up and laid it on the chair. There were a few papers inside that Paul had seen earlier, a letter with a Northampton address and an empty paper bag that might once have held sandwiches. He shut the case and hauled himself into the upper bunk, turning out the light. It had been a long day and full of surprises and he hadn’t realised how tired he was until he was stretched horizontally. His stomach seemed to have settled and, if he was able to ignore Pinker’s snoring, expected to sleep well. There remained the possibility that despite leaving the Lithuanian assassin, Yurkas, in the alley, the man Kell had warned about might still be on board. He yawned. That was something he was happy to leave for Valentine to worry about. It was his line of work, after all. At least they could rule out Pinker. It was inconceivable, he decided with one of the last cogent thoughts to pass through his head before sleep, that any secret agent could make as much noise as Pinker did in his sleep…