“Where had he been? — where had he gone to?”
“Just round the corner. He took the shopkeeper aside and spoke to him, and gave him a pound. The woman looked as if she was going to spit on him, and marched back in behind the shop where she had come from and slammed the door. Then we went home. Here, take the tiller, will you?”
He stood up and they exchanged places. The arm of the tiller was damply warm where Delahaye had held it. Davy’s palm was wet. He was still sweating, but he was cold, too, in his shirt, and wished he had brought a windbreaker. It struck him with renewed force how absurd a thing it was to be out here, skimming over God knew how many fathoms. And people sailed for fun and recreation!
Delahaye was gathering in the sails, first the smaller one at the front and then the bigger one. “Self-reliance, you see,” he said, “a lesson in self-reliance. You got a sweet out of it, didn’t you? was all my father said. And I bet the woman was all over you. And you didn’t cry. That was the most important thing-that I didn’t cry.” He had folded the big sail expertly and was lashing it now to the horizontal part of the mast with salt-bleached cord. The boat faltered and seemed puzzled as it felt itself losing momentum, and dipped its nose and settled back with a sort of sigh, wallowing in the water, and for a second or two all sense of direction failed and the sea around them seemed to spin crazily on its axis. The sudden hush set up a buzz in Davy’s ears. Delahaye, wiping his hands on his trousers, sat down on a big oak trunk set lengthways down the middle of the boat and leaned his back against the mast. He seemed weary suddenly, and lifted his cap to air his skull and then put it back on again, but not so low over his eyes as before. “What I couldn’t help wondering, even at the time, was: where did loyalty figure in this lesson I had been taught?” He looked directly at Davy now with an odd, questioning candor. “What do you think?”
Davy’s fingers tightened on the tiller. “About what?”
“Loyalty. You’re a Clancy, you must know about loyalty-eh? Or the lack of it, at least.” His eyes were of a curious glittering gray color, like chips of flint. Davy could not hold their steady gaze, and looked away. “Come on, Davy,” Delahaye said softly, almost cajolingly. “Let’s have your thoughts on this important topic.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Davy said. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
Delahaye was silent for a long moment, then nodded, as if something had been confirmed. He stood up from the wooden trunk and lifted the heavy lid and fished about inside and brought out something wrapped loosely in an oily rag. He stood in thought for a moment, hefting the thing in his hand. “Loyalty,” he said, “it’s not valued anymore, is it. Loyalty. Honor. What used to be called common decency. All gone, that kind of thing.”
He began to unwind the rag, and as he did so Davy heard himself say something, exclaim something- Whoa! it sounded like-and he looked about wildly, as if, even out here, there might be a place to shelter behind. And yet at the same time he felt almost like laughing.
“Yes,” Delahaye said, as if reading his mind and sharing in his desperate amusement, “it is an ugly bugger, isn’t it. A Webley, Mark”-he brought the pistol close to his eyes and peered at the frame below the cylinder-“Mark Six. Pa got it off a fellow in the Civil War, I think it was.” He glanced sideways at Davy with a sort of smile. “Oh, yes,” he said, “it works. I tested it.”
He sat down again, dangling the gun in both hands between his knees. It was an absurd-looking thing, all right, big and heavy and nearly a foot long, with a chamfered barrel and a hammer at the back like a silvery tongue sticking out. There was the faintest swell now, and the boat rocked gently from side to side, the small waves making a playful chattering sound against the hull. Davy tried to get his bearings from the sky, but the sky was empty. The boat seemed not to be moving at all, as if it were at anchor, but he supposed it must be drifting, at the mercy of tide and breeze, and that it only seemed motionless because there was nothing to measure movement against. He was amazed at how calm he felt, tranquil, almost. He might have been running in a race, a marathon that had been going on for so long he had forgotten he was running, and only now remembered, when everything had come to a sudden stop. Why was he not frightened? Why was he not terrified?
“I’d send you for an ice cream, if there were any shops,” Delahaye said, and laughed, and turned the pistol about and put the barrel to his chest and pulled the trigger.
What amazed Davy was that there was so much blood; that, and the vivid redness of it, which made him think of those spiders or insects or whatever they were, tiny scarlet specks, that used to fascinate him when he was a child, as they crawled among the rosebushes in his grandfather’s garden. The blood had a faint smell, too, spicy and slightly sweet. The bullet hole in the left side of Delahaye’s chest was black in the center with a ragged rim the color of crushed raspberries. The blood had quickly soaked the lower half of his blue cotton shirt and the lap of his white trousers, and had dripped out between his legs and made a puddle in the bottom of the boat with a single rivulet running out of it. Davy had managed to ease the packet of Churchman’s out of the pocket of Delahaye’s trousers-it had seemed important somehow that the cigarettes should not get blood on them. He checked his watch, as if it was important too to know what time it was.
The gunshot had sent Delahaye sprawling, with a look of astonishment on his face, and for the first seconds Davy had thought the boat would capsize, so violently did it yaw from side to side. He pictured the two of them sinking together feetfirst through the water, down through the glinting light into the shadows, and then on into the blackness of the deep.
The awful thing was that Delahaye was not dead. He would be, eventually, that was certain-Davy had never seen anyone die, yet he knew Delahaye was a goner-but for now he was still breathing, making wheezing noises, like a child when it has finished crying and is trying to catch its breath. Once he moaned, and seemed to try to say something. His eyes stayed closed; there was that to be thankful for. He had slid off the trunk and was sitting at a crooked angle. He had dropped the pistol between his legs, and the handle was in the puddle of blood in the bottom.
Davy leaned forward, holding on with one hand to the what-was-it-called, the gunwale-he hated boats, hated them-and picked up the weapon by the barrel and flung it out of the boat as far as it would go; it landed in the water with a comical plop. He sat back, and realized at once that he should not have thrown the gun away. They would not think he had shot Delahaye, would they? But what if they did? He swore, over and over, punching himself on the knee with his fist.
He looked about, scanning the sea in all directions. There was no other vessel in sight. What was he to do? Down in the middle of the boat there was a pool of water-it was there that the single thin rivulet of blood was heading for-that swayed and shivered as the little waves nudged against the sides. It was not a lot of water, but what if it was not rainwater but seawater, coming from a leak? He remembered from films how leaks that sprang in the hulls of ships widened in a matter of seconds, until the sea was cascading in, washing sailors away and floating their bunks up to the ceilings. Maybe Delahaye had bored a little hole in the bottom, a little hole that would get bigger and bigger.
Davy looked at the dying man. His face was a bluish gray, like putty, and there was a film of moisture on his forehead and on his upper lip. His breathing was slower now. He looked at his watch and was surprised to find that not quite three minutes had passed since Delahaye had fired the gun-three minutes! It seemed to Davy that he was suspended high above the boat and looking down on all this, Delahaye slumped there, and the two puddles, one of blood and one of water, and himself, huddled in the stern, his two hands out and clutching to the sides in terror. For the first time it occurred to him that he too would die, lost out here in a sinking boat.