For God’s sake, I thought. Laugh. Laugh, but don’t bloody snivel. An ounce of kindness was more devastating than a week of misery.
He’d given me a pair of clean socks and a paperback novel.
I spent a good deal of the day trying to look out of the gap. With one foot on the rim of the sail bins, and my hands grasping the hatch opening, I could get my head up to the top well enough, but the view would have been more comprehensive if either the gap had been a couple of inches deeper or my eyes had been located halfway up my forehead. What I did see, mostly by tilting my head and applying one eye at a time, was a lot of ropes, pulleys, and rolled up sails, a lot of green sea, and a dark line of land on the horizon ahead.
None of these things changed all day except that the smudge of land grew slowly thicker, but I never tired of looking.
At closer quarters I also looked at the fittings of the hatch itself, which, I realised after a time, had been modified slightly for my visit. The metal props which held it open were hinged, and folded down inside the cabin when the hatch was closed. Out on deck the hatch cover was mounted on two heavier extending hinges, which allowed it to open outwards completely and lie flat on its back.
Inside the cabin there were two sturdy clips for securing the hatch shut from below, and outside there were two others, for securing the hatch from above.
So far, all as planned by the ship builders. What had been added, though, was extra provision to prevent someone inside the cabin from pushing the hatch wide open after releasing it from the hinged props. Normally one could have done this. Sail locker hatches were supposed to open easily and wide, so that the sails could be pulled in and out. There was no point in ordinary circumstances in making things difficult. But now, outside, crossing from fore to aft and from port to starboard over the top of the hatch cover, were two lengths of chain, each secured at each end to cleats which to my eyes looked newly screwed to the deck. The chains held the hatch cover down on the props like guy ropes, taut and forceful. If I could dislodge those chains, I thought, I could get out. If I had anything to dislodge them with. A couple of Everest-sized ifs. I could get my hands out through the three inch gap, but not much arm. Not enough to reach the cleats, let alone undo the chains. As for levers, screwdrivers, hammers and files, all I had were paper cups, a flimsy carrier and a plastic water bottle. Tantalising, all those hours looking out at unreachable freedom.
In between the long bouts of balancing up by the ceiling I sat on the loo lid and read the book, which was an American private-eye thriller with a karate-trained hero who would have chopped his way out of a sail locker in five minutes.
Inspired by him, I had another go at the cabin door. It withstood my efforts like a stolid wall. Obviously I should have studied karate as well as psychiatry. Better luck next time.
The day whizzed past. The light began to fade. Outside the smudge of land had grown into an approaching certainty, and I had no idea what land it was.
He came back, lowered the carrier, and waited while I tied on the empty ones.
‘Thank you,’ I shouted, as he pulled them up, ‘for the book and socks.’
He nodded, and began to close the hatch.
‘Please don’t,’ I shouted.
He paused and looked down. It seemed to be still be-kind-to-prisoners day, because he provided his first explanation.
‘We are going into port. Don’t waste your breath making a noise when we stop. We’ll be anchored. No one will hear you.’
He shut the hatch. I ate sliced tinned ham and a hot baked potato in the noisy stupefying dark, and to cheer myself up thought that now that the journey was ending they surely wouldn’t keep me there much longer. Tomorrow, perhaps, I would be out. And after that I might get some answers.
I stifled the gloomy doubts.
The engine slowed, the first time it had changed its note. There were footsteps on deck, and shouts, and the anchor went over with a splash. The anchor chain rattled out, sounding as if it were passing practically through the sail locker; behind the panelling, no doubt.
The engine was switched off. There was no sound from anywhere. The creakings and rushing noises had stopped. No perceptible motion any more. I had expected the peace to be a relief, but as time passed it was the opposite. Even aggravating stimuli, it seemed, were better than none at all. I slept in disjointed snatches and lay emptily awake for hours and hours wondering if one really could go mad from too much nothing.
When he next opened the hatch it was full daylight outside. Friday; mid-morning. He lowered the carrier, waited for the exchange, raised the rope, and began to close the hatch.
I made involuntarily a vague imploring gesture with my hands. He paused, looking down.
‘I can’t let you see where we are,’ he said.
It was the nearest he had come to an apology, the nearest to admitting that he might have treated me better, if he didn’t have his orders.
‘Wait,’ I yelled, as he pulled the hatch over.
He paused again: prepared at least to listen.
‘Can’t you put screens round if you don’t want me to see the land?’ I said. ‘Leave the hatch open...’
He considered it. ‘I’ll see,’ he said, ‘later.’
It seemed an awfully long time later, but he did come back, and he did open the hatch. While he was fastening it, I said, ‘When are you going to let me out?’
‘Don’t ask questions.’
‘I must,’ I said explosively. ‘I have to know.’
‘Do you want me to shut the hatch?’
‘No.’
‘Then don’t ask questions.’
It may have been spineless of me, but I didn’t ask any more. He hadn’t given me one useful answer in eight days, and if I persevered, all I would get would be no light and no supper and an end to the new era of partial humanity.
When he’d gone I climbed up for a look, and found he had surrounded the hatch area with bulging bolsters of rolled sails. My field of vision had come down to about eighteen inches.
I lay on the top bunk for a change, and tried to imagine what it was about the port, so hopelessly near, that I might recognise. The sky was pale blue, with sun shining through high hazy cloud. It was warm, like a fine spring day. There were even seagulls.
It evoked in me such a strong picture that I became convinced that if I could only see over the sail bolsters, I would be looking at the harbour and beaches where I’d played as a child. Maybe all that frantic sailing had been nowhere but up and down the English Channel, and we were now safe back home in Ryde, Isle of Wight.
I shook the comforting dream away. All one could actually tell for sure was that it was not in the Arctic Circle.
There were occasional sounds from outside, but all distant, and nothing of any use. I read the American thriller again, and thought a good deal about escape.
When the day was fading he came back with supper, but this time, after I’d swopped the carriers, he didn’t shut the hatch. That evening I watched the light die to dusk and night, and breathed sweet air. Small mercies could be huge mercies, I thought.
Saturday, March 26th. The morning carrier contained fresh bread, fresh cheese, fresh tomatoes: someone had been shopping ashore. It also contained an extra bottle of water and a well-worn piece of soap. I looked at the soap and wondered if it was there from kindness or because I stank; and then with wildly leaping hope wondered if it was there so that I should at least be clean when they turned me loose.
I took off all my clothes and washed from head to foot, using a sock as a sponge. After the week’s desultory efforts with salt water from the loo, the lather was a fantastic physical delight. I washed my face and ears and neck and wondered what I looked like with a beard.