Fresh from sleep and a shower, in his laundered white uniform, he had the sensation of falling and hitting the sea in their midst, his body dissolving by the force of their electricity and poison.
He was drowning, the thrust of salt water up the nostrils and into the mouth as he corkscrewed slowly with closed eyes into the darkness. Tentacles of jellyfish wrapped around him so thickly they became a shroud he could not get out of, and he saw himself as an infant taken to the orphanage accompanied by the photographed face of his mother.
Memories struggled to get into his consciousness before vanishing with him for ever. He smelled the walls and tiles, sinks and toilets and blankets, the soap and the food, as well as the perfume and perspiration of whoever had carried him. He relived her clean clothes and salt tears so elaborately that he was threatened by a greater extinction than that of dropping overboard: a fear of the unstoppable reversal of life back to what was too painful to know about.
He perceived as many long-buried revelations from his past as he dared, part of him willing to go deeper providing the mysteries of his life would be explained; but a tighter grip on his binoculars brought him back to thoughts of duty and work, and the impossibility of making a choice which might cost so much that he would not survive to enjoy the results.
The wooden rail was sticky with his sweat and the salt sea air. He brought the binoculars to his side, and turned his gaze towards the mainland of Sumatra. A Dutch passenger ship passed close from the opposite direction. People on deck waved greetings. A white point of signal light flashed its name from the bridge telling where it had come from and its destination: ‘ORANJE – BATAVIA – AMSTERDAM’. He read the message aloud so as to keep control of himself, each dot and dash a thumb-tack stabbing the brain to reality. The sight of the morsed light and the voice of the man on his own ship reading the words like an echo brought him back to the fringes of his ordered life. He began to sway. He fought, but his legs were weak. He was watched by Sedgemoor at the wheel.
‘All right, sir?’
He walked a few paces without falling.
‘Touch of the sun,’ he called, loud and clear.
Sedgemoor knew what he was talking about. ‘Singapore will cure it, sir!’
‘Think so?’
He laughed, a belly-laugh from somewhere in Kent. ‘Cures everything, sir, me and the lads say, if you know where to go.’
He once asked Sedgemoor where he did roam on his shore leave there, and with a ferocious wink that could have boded no one any benefit, he replied that he was ‘off with the others to get fixed up with a nice orgy’.
He laughed. ‘But what about curing the cure, Sedgemoor?’
‘Don’t know about that, sir. But it ain’t been necessary yet, touch wood.’
5
He went up on the lift. Trolleys were pushed along the corridor by shouting orderlies who seemed to be clattering the lids of dinner-wagons or linen-tins with deliberate relish. He wondered how anyone could die peacefully in such a bedlam. Though it was day outside, the lights within were not bright enough, and the noise offended him.
A nurse saw him standing, cap in hand and holding a bunch of neatly petalled roses. ‘Can I help you?’
‘You mean to sort this lot out?’
‘More than anybody dare do.’
A sheen of dark hair showed under her cap. She had bright eyes and well-rounded cheeks. ‘I’m to see my aunt,’ he told her. ‘Name of Miss Phillips.’
A little circular watch was pinned at her breast. ‘Have you come far?’
He wanted to hold her arm, or take her by the waist. The impulse was so strong that he had to step back. ‘West Indies this time. I got in this morning.’
‘Lucky you!’
He glimpsed into a ward and saw patients in dressing-gowns sitting by beds or strolling about. ‘It was work.’
‘You see all those exotic places, though.’
‘From the bridge. Or through a porthole.’ He had nothing to lose, and perhaps something to gain from a state of mind which said it was immaterial whether or not he was old enough to be her father; a mood which came more frequently as he got older. A pace or two behind, he eyed her waist and shoulders, thinking how delectable she was. He caught her up. ‘The islands make wonderful scenery, especially from a distance, at dawn or sunset, say.’
‘You make me envious.’
‘That’s the idea!’
A ticket on the door of a private room displayed his aunt’s typed name. Clara was never a woman to be denied a place of her own. ‘How is she?’
‘Comfortable.’
They never told you anything. The hierarchy was as rigid as on a ship, beneath all the clatter. ‘Is that all?’
‘See the doctor afterwards. He’ll be in the ward by then.’
They faced each other, and he wondered whether Clara, in spite of her illness, could hear them talking. ‘Would you like to have dinner with me this evening?’
‘That’s rather quick!’
‘Quick enough, for a girl from a good family?’
‘And that’s rather sharp. But I could have said yes.’
‘Only what?’
‘I have to see my boy-friend.’
He laughed. ‘I’m consoled. Matter of having to be.’
‘You’re sweet,’ she said. ‘It might have been nice.’
‘Thank you. I’ll go back to sea a sadder and wiser man.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘It’s the truth. I always do.’
‘You’re making me feel disappointed.’
The purpose of his errand told him it was time to cut the banter. He looked through the little square window. Clara was sleeping, and seemed at peace. He went in and placed his cap on the table, the door closing soundlessly behind. No ship’s officer could fault the white counterpane, polished floor, clean windows, and flowers by the bed.
Stimulated by his recent closeness to the nurse, he could only stand and look, in spite of the vacant chair, conscious of altitude and not wanting to lose it. Air grated through thin vibrating lips. He could neither sit nor get too close to the breath of this ancient person who did not seem to be the same imposing Aunt Clara he had met at fourteen. He remembered her smelling of scent and sherry, and holding his hand at the pierhead concert, and laughing at coarse jokes while he was aware of her trying not to. If he laughed, she’d stay quiet, but when she laughed out loud and shook her head he was crushed into a silence which he now realized was fear.
The accuracy of a recollection is always distorted by the powerful anchor of the present. Compared to the strength of the present the past was surely dead. Every statement is a damned lie. Sentences ran through his mind, and left him hoping that the young nurse would come in and set his roses by the spinney of carnations.
Her feet twitched. He wanted to smooth them free of irritation and pain. It would be a small service to do for her. She had been the only person to help him, but why was he the most hated member of that family? She had loathed him out of loyalty to the others, but had made him aware that he belonged to them nevertheless. He had been a call on her sense of duty, so she’d had no option but to do what she could. He understood. It had been sufficient.
Even those who in other circumstances might have deserved more, often ended by getting far less. Complaints should never be made. Injustice was not a disadvantage providing you could work, eat, breathe freely and say what you pleased – enough to make any man or woman happy if they had it in them.
One eye open stopped his thoughts. She shook her head, as if to deny whatever was going through his mind. ‘You were flirting with that nurse.’