He got out of bed, stripped to the warm noon, and examined for the nth time the S on his flank. It was burnt deep; the dead skin like a luminous plastic. It could not be disguised, however cunning the cosmesis. He dressed quickly, as to hide the problem from sight, giving himself a cat-lick and a once-over with his Philishave. Then he took a swig of Old Mortality and water and went out on deck. It was a glorious blue day, Ionian, no longer Adriatic. In the distance, to port, lay Southern Greece – Kyparissia? Philiatra? Pylos? Tomorrow they would be in the Aegean, dodging through the mess of islands. Then Marmara's womb, through the vagina of the Dardanelles. Then the Bos-phorus, then the Pontus Euxinus – Kara Dengis to the Turks. The Black Sea. Would his grave be there? He shivered in the sun. Black black black. The sea that supported no organic life below one hundred fathoms. Five enough for him. He thought he saw Roper, twitching, hic-cuping. Why? I was wrong, I was wrong, O Jesus Mary Joseph help me. I take back all I said. I want to go home. Home? For a dizzy moment Hillier puzzled over the word, wTondering what it meant. It spelt itself out for him against the Ionian noon. He saw it as four-fifths of a Russian word. HOMEP- nomyer- number. Home had something to do with a number, a number he felt he ought to know, since it was the clue to going home. It was urgent, this matter of a bloody number. In what way urgent? Had it not come to him last night and had he not tossed it away like an old cloakroom ticket? He was not merely slack; he was corrupt.
There was a fair amount of noon drinking going on on deck, passengers looking out at Greece with Pimms and Gordon's and Campari in their mottled paws. Hillier went to the bar on the recreation-deck and drank very quickly a Gordon's and tonic, then a vodka and tomato-juice, then a very large Americano. Think think think. He saw himself carried safely ashore in the guise of a dead man, Wriste one of the bearers. The uniformed thugs stood to attention and saluted the corpse. He looked more closely and saw it was really a corpse. Roper wept. You've let me down you bastard. He w^ept with self-pity.
Hillier wondered seriously, in his depression, whether he had a worm inside him. His breakfast seemed a whole dawn away. He went into the dining-saloon, seeing tycoons and their women in shorts. Wriste had arranged things. The chief steward pulled back his chair at the table of the Walters family. The children looked pale and peaky. Mrs Walters was holding her mouth-corners down with an effort, occasionally dabbing dry eyes. She sent away a near-untouched plate of goulash with evident regret. No, she would have nothing else. Well, perhaps a little macédoine of fresh fruits soaked in Southern Comfort, topped up with champagne. We must keep our strength up. The children sincerely ate nearly nothing. And, added Mrs Walters, some Irish coffee, very strong.
'What news?' asked Hillier softly, as if already at the funeral. This girl – Clara, wasn't it? Was that her name? -was really delightful with her delicate boxer's nose and hair you wanted to eat, insomniac arcs, blue blushes, under her brown eyes. She was wearing an orange and black shift dress with diagonal stripes, a little black stole careless on her lap. She was neither reading nor eating, merely mashing up the buttock of a meringue with a pastry-fork. She was indifferent to Hillier's presence. The boy, in a newspaper shirt, ate a honey mousse in tiny spoonfuls. The woman answered Hillier. She said: 'They don't think he'll last the day out. Very low. In a coma. But he's had his life, that's a consolation. He's had all he ever wanted. We must try and look on the bright side.' Suiting the words, she attacked her macédoine.
'What's going to happen,' said Alan, 'to Clara and me?'
'We've been through all this before. What happens to any children when their father dies? Their mother looks after them, doesn't she?'
'You're not our mother,' said Alan truculently. 'You don't care a bit about us.'
'Not before this gentleman, please.' This woman could have a nasty temper, Hillier saw that. He ate some boned veal loin en croûte with a noodle soufflé and julienne of young carrots and celery. He drank a '49 Margaux. The girl suddenly cried: 'Nobody cares. You sit here stuffing yourselves and nobody cares. I'm going to my cabin.' Hillier's heart melted for her as she got up, so youthfully elegant, and made her way out with young dignity. Poor, poor girl, he thought. But he had things to ask. He asked: 'This may seem a callous question, but what do you propose to do when the time comes?'
'How do you mean?' said Mrs Walters, her macédoine-filled spoon arrested in mid-passage.
'Funeral arrangements. One has to think of these things. Transportation. Burial. Chartering an aircraft. Getting him home.'
'You can't charter aircraft in Russia,' said the boy. 'You'd have to take the State Line. Aeroflot, I think it is.'
'I hadn't thought about all this,' said Mrs Walters. Instinctively she looked about her for a man, her fancy man. But she stopped looking. Fancy men are for fancy things. 'It's all a nuisance, this is. What ought we to do?'
'Bury him at sea,' said Alan, 'with a Union Jack wrapped round him. That's how I'd like to be buried.'
'I don't think that's usual,' said Hillier, 'not when you're so close to a port. The done thing is-' He noticed that Clara had left her little black stole behind; it had sunk to the floor on her sudden rising. He carefully footed it towards himself, then held it between his ankles. She would get it back quite soon.
'The done thing is what?' asked Mrs Walters.
'To see the purser about seeing the carpenter about a coffin. To see the purser anyway. They may have coffins in stock. A cruise like this must encourage coronaries. Or perhaps you ought to get the ship's doctor to sort things out. I'm afraid I've not had any experience of this sort of business.'
'Well, why do you start telling us all about it, then?'
'It's ghoulish,' said Alan, 'that's what it is.' It was, too, agreed Hillier to himself. Ghoulish was what it was. 'It's as though you don't want to give him any hope at all.'
'One ought to be prepared ' said Hillier. 'John Donne, Dean of St Paul's, had his coffin made well in time and used to sleep in it. Sometimes thinking about a person being dead gives them a new lease. Like Extreme Unction. Like an obituary printed prematurely.'
'I don't want to hope,' sniffed Mrs Walters over her Irish coffee. 'I want to face facts, even though they are painful.'
'You were being a bit ghoulish, weren't you?' said Hillier to Alan. 'That business of the Union Jack, I mean.'
'It's different,' said Alan. 'More like heroism. The death of Nelson I was thinking of.'
Hillier ate his dish of asparagus with cold hollandaise. 'Any help I can give,' he said. 'Any help at all.' The difficulty would be getting the genuine corpse overboard. He'd need help. Wriste? Some plausible story to Wriste about that swine Theodorescu stealing his passport and he just had to get into Yarylyuk to see a man about a Cyrillic typewriter. It would mean a thousand dollars or so. Better not. He could do it on his own, prising the coffin open and fireman's lifting the groaning cadaver to the nearest taffrail. Man overboard. He'd have to go over with dead Mr Walters so that there should be someone live to be rescued. But the corpse would float perhaps. Lead weights? Hillier groaned as he fancied that corpse would groan.
The Walters boy and woman prepared to leave. 'Are you going to the sickbay now?' asked Hillier. He was; she was going to have a large brandy in the bar, needing it, she said, the strain terrible. 'A nice present, was it?' said Hillier to Alan. 'From Mr Theodorescu, I mean.'
'It's all right,' said Alan. 'Just what I needed.' They went. Hillier had some pears porcupine. Then some Lancashire cheese and a bit of bread. Then some coffee and a stinger. He felt he needed to build himself up.