The White Schooner (2 page)

Streaks of cloud scudded across the Aegean sky above Patmos, and from Chora looking across the bay to Scala the wind could be seen to strike the water in eddying gusts, while billows of smoke from the island steamer coming in from Leros were snatched from the funnel and blown low over the sea.

‘It’s a squally place in a northerly wind,’ said the lanky young man sucking orange juice through a straw.

The girl with freckles and red hair nodded but didn’t look up.

‘Glad
Zuleth
a
’s
snugly alongside,’ he said.

‘Famous last words.’

‘What time did they say?’

She sighed and put down the paper. ‘You’re determined I’m not going to read this, aren’t you?’

‘What time did they say?’

‘At, ’ow do you say, meeday,’ she mimicked. ‘We shall be ’appy eef you weel veesit us.’

He shook his head. ‘Not very good. You could do better.’

She dropped her voice and spoke hoarsely. ‘Ve haf not too much variety, but plenty good Sherman bee-er.
Ja
wohl
.’

He laughed. ‘That’s better.’

‘What was his name?’

‘Helmut.’

‘Helmut what?’

‘Don’t know,’ he said. ‘He was the character with the bushy beard. The one with a faceful of fuzz, whiskers, and brass rings in his ears was Francois.’

‘You didn’t tell them our names,’ she said reprovingly. ‘Very gauche.’

‘They didn’t ask.’

‘They were nice. Picking up my scattered veg like that.’

‘Pretty obvious, wasn’t it?’ He stifled a yawn.

‘What was?’

‘The way you dropped it.’

‘Rubbish.’ She flicked at his nose with a straw. ‘You’re
jealous. That lovely schooner. My dear, they must be rich.
Rich,
madly
rich
.’
She sang the words.

He looked at his watch. ‘Come on. It’s a quarter to go. Let’s go.’

He beckoned the waiter and paid the bill. Gathering their parcels they went across to the taxi, a tired looking Renault, and told the driver to take them to Port Scala.

As they walked down the quay to the schooner the lanky young man looked at it with a critical eye. ‘Staysail schooner, Bermuda rigged,’ he said.

The girl looked at the long white hull, reflected sunlight dancing on it, the masts standing high above the water. ‘She’s beautiful,’ she said. ‘No wonder they call her the
Snowgoose
.’

The name was on the stern transom, below it Piraeus, the port of registration.

‘Look at the size of the exhausts,’ he said. ‘She must have bloody great auxiliaries.’

He could tell from the coachroofs and portlights that the schooner had crew space forward, the main accommodation amidships, aft of that a well-equipped cockpit and aft of that again more accommodation, probably the owner’s suite.

A man with leathery skin and a greying beard was in the cockpit polishing brightwork. When he saw them he called down the forward companionway. Soon afterwards two young men appeared.

‘
Bon.
You ’ave come,’ called the Frenchman.

‘Of course.’ The girl smiled. ‘I don’t think we told you our names. I’m Ann Alexander. This is my husband, Dougal.’ She felt she was being over formal and grinned to hide her
embarrassment.

The Frenchman pointed to his companion. ‘This is Helmut. I am Francois.’

‘Yes,’ said Dougal Alexander. ‘You told us this morning.’ His wife frowned at him.

‘Welcome on board,’ said Helmut. ‘Meet the
Snowgoose
.’

‘She’s beautiful,’ said Ann Alexander.

They followed the German down the forward companionway and along an alleyway between cabin doors to a small saloon. It was simply furnished with settees, a central table, a
bookcase
and lockers. There were signs of interrupted industry: two typewriters, a litter of typewritten sheets, note books,
cameras, paints and brushes, and sketches in water-colour and pen-and-ink.

Helmut gestured with his hands. ‘Excuse the rubbish, Always it is like this. We cruise to work.’ The deep voice and hoarse German accent gave the words weight.

Drinks were produced, formalities soon forgotten, and the talk became general. The English girl explained that they lived in Athens where her husband worked for an oil company. They were spending their holiday cruising in
Zuletha
,
a ketch which belonged to friends in Athens. There was chatter about cruising in the Aegean, about the islands they had visited and their boats.

Dougal Alexander looked round the cabin. ‘What’s the size of this monster?’

‘Fifteen metres on the waterline. Thirty-five ton’s
displacement
,’ said Helmut.

‘And three of you manage her?’

‘Four. We have two paid hands. Dimitrio, a seaman, and Kamros who cooks and looks after the engines.’

‘Big ones, aren’t they?’

Helmut drained his tankard. ‘Big enough. And your ketch. You have a motor?’ He looked at Ann Alexander.

‘Yes. A mini one. Keeps us out of trouble, though. When we can start it.’

She looked round the cabin and saw the typewriters. ‘You say you cruise to work. Is this it?’

Francois made a face. ‘I know what you think. Is this work? Yes. Very much. We have been commissioned by a publisher in Berne to make a yachtsman’s guide for the Mediterranean islands. They have chartered this schooner for us. We have her for six months. There is much to do.
Beaucoup
de
travail!
’

‘You lucky so-and-so’s.’ Dougal shook his head slowly. ‘What a marvellous job. Were you always yachtsmen?’

‘Of course,’ said Helmut. ‘It is not possible otherwise.’

‘What language will it be in?’

‘English, French, German,’ said Francois.

‘When will it come out?’ The girl turned to her husband. ‘We must get it, Dougal.’

The German hunched his shoulders and puffed his cheeks. ‘Who knows? We have just started. Only one month already. After six months at sea then, well—we must do much ashore. In Berne they say to finish in December. This is fantastic. It
is not possible.’

‘Are you doing the Aegean or the whole Med?’

‘Everything. The lot.’

‘Blimey,’ said Dougal. ‘No wonder you’ve got big engines.’

Francois switched the subject to Patmos and wanted to know when they’d arrived and where they were going. While her husband was explaining, Ann Alexander was thinking how striking these two men were with their thick dark hair, acquiline bearded faces and quick intelligent eyes. The
Frenchman’s
mandarin moustache, the gold rings in his ears, the red handkerchief knotted inside the blue denim shirt, reminded her of a character from
Treasure
Island
.
The German,
brooding
and phlegmatic, was the bigger, heavier man. She picked up a watercolour sketch which lay on the table.

‘Where is this?’

Helmut leant over her shoulder. ‘Leros. Port Lakki, from the south-west.’

‘Memorise it, Ann.’ Her husband held out his tankard for the Frenchman to fill.

She put down the sketch. ‘It’s jolly good.’

Helmut groaned. ‘Don’t say that. He is already too
conceited
.’

She looked at Francois. ‘So you are the artist?’

‘Also the photographer,’ he said. ‘I illustrate, he writes. Naturally the illustrations are better than the writings.’

Several beers later Dougal Alexander noticed the two men looking at their watches, exchanging glances. He consulted his. It was nearly half past one. He signalled to his wife and stood up.

‘I wish,’ said Francois to Ann, ‘that we could offer you lunch. But we have very much to do and—’ He looked round the cabin in a melancholy fashion. ‘No facilities.’

‘Sweet of you to think of it,’ she said. ‘But we couldn’t have stayed. Anyway it was lovely and I think you have a most beautiful schooner.’

When they had said their good-byes and were walking down the quay towards the
Zuletha
she said, ‘Nice, weren’t they?’

‘Quite pleasant.’

‘Especially Helmut,’ she said.

‘The way the Frenchman looked at you, I think he’d have liked to paint you.’

She smiled at him shyly. ‘Oh, do you really think so,
darling
?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘In the nude.’

‘What a mind you have. Lovely boat isn’t it?’

‘Yes. I’d have liked to look round it.’

‘Me too. Funny they didn’t offer to show us.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said gloomily. ‘I suppose they only asked us down to see you.’

‘Nonsense,’ she laughed, hoping he was right.

When their guests had gone, Helmut and Francois went back to the saloon. The German unlocked the port door in the forward bulkhead. Inside was a small well-fitted radio cabin, its equipment more extensive than was usual in a boat of that size. Putting on headphones he sat on the stool in front of the console, switched on the receiver and made adjustments on the control panel. Then he took off the headphones, looked at his watch and turned to his companion. ‘I thought they would never go.’

‘Yes. I also began to worry.’

‘He is lucky to have such a crew,’ said Helmut.

The Frenchman made a circle with his thumb and
forefinger
. ‘Fabulous. Even in trousers. I would like to paint her.’

‘
Ohne
Hosen
—without trousers?’

‘If you like.’

‘I like.’ The German looked at his watch. ‘Two minutes more.’ He swung the stool back to the console and put on the headphones.

From outside came the cries of seabirds fighting for scraps in the harbour, the lap of water along the hull, and the whistle in the rigging as the northerly wind came gusting down the slopes above Port Scala and the schooner strained at her moorings. There was a smell of beer in the cabin, and through the starboard door cooking odours drifted in from the galley.

Francois lit a cheroot and sprawled on the leather settee watching the German huddled over the radio set, ballpoint poised over a pad.

‘Ah!’ said Helmut. ‘This is it.’ He leant forward with sudden concentration, turning the volume control. The sound of the incoming signal was just audible in the saloon. The German wrote steadily. Then he switched off the set and removed the earphones. He had not switched on the
transmitter
,

nor acknowledged the signal. They knew it would be repeated three times: on the hour, and at ten and twenty minutes past.

‘We go,’ he said, passing the signal to his companion.

The transmission had been made on an ultra high
frequency
; the originator’s call-sign was ZID; the message read:

Contact
established
Paris.
Indication
favourable
but
not
conclusive.
Prospect
travels
flight
UT A-783
Nice
to-morrow,
thence I
biza
via
Palma
following
day.
Proceed
repeat
proceed
Ibiza.

Helmut locked the door to the radio cabin and soon
afterwards
Kamros, a swarthy thickset man, brought the lunch. Dimitrio was called and the four men sat down together to eat.

At the desk there was no one about so he pressed the plunger marked
‘
Atención
.’
The
receptionista
came from the inner office and peered at him through thick lenses. ‘
Señor
?’

‘
Puedo
tener
la
Cuenta …
may I have my bill?’ he said.
‘
Numero
doscientos
tres
.’

‘
Ah,
Señor
Black
.’

‘
Si,
señor
.’

When he’d settled the bill he said he’d call back for the raincoat and suitcase, and walked out on to the Plaza de Cataluña, into the cold air and warm sun of a spring day.

The steamer for Ibiza was not sailing until seven so he had three hours to get rid of. He did some mental arithmetic. Passengers must embark half an hour before sailing. Allow half an hour to pick up the suitcase and take a taxi down to the docks. That was one hour. And the other two? He knew Barcelona too well to go sightseeing, and anyway he wasn’t in that sort of mood. He was suffering, he knew, from
loneliness.
If he’d had a constant companion in the last three months it had been loneliness. Humbly he realised there wasn’t anyone who was missing him. Rael? Not really. There were too many other things and people in her life. Maybe she thought of him occasionally. Perhaps even with affection. The uncommitted affection of an old love long dormant. A
Pompeian
affair. An ancient volcano, never again to erupt.

There would be perhaps half a dozen people thinking of him professionally, wondering what he was doing, and waiting. Sharing his task vicariously, but waiting: to congratulate him if he succeeded, to repudiate him if he failed. But that was not unique to him or his situation. It applied to many people doing many things in many places.

Two hours to get rid of. He crossed the Ramblas and the bright colours of a news kiosk drew him as the flash of a
kingfisher
draws a fish. He read the titles.
Il
Giorna,
La
Stampa,
the
Daily
Telegraph,
Kurio,
La
Nazione,
I
l
Messagio,
Bolero,
Wochen
End
,
Stampa Sera,
 
l’Humanité, Politiken,
Corriere Della Sera, Tribuna Illustraka,
 
Life, Ya, Newsweek, Elle, Quick,
Paris
Match,
Der
Spiegel,
The
Times,
Das
Neue
Blatt
 … Heavens, was there no end to them?

After the newspapers, the paperbacks. He compared
Spanish
, French, German and English titles to see if there was any pattern of literary tastes and decided there wasn’t. Presumably they represented demand. Or did they? It was cheaper to publish two hundred thousand of one well-known name, than twenty thousand each of ten not so well-known names. He flipped through the glossies, bought
Art
International
and
Studio
and felt good because he hadn’t disappointed the tired looking woman in the kiosk, and they were the latest numbers and it was important he should read them.

He walked to the centre of the plaza, on to the red, white and blue of its paved geometry, and watched the tourists feeding the pigeons. The Plaza de Cataluña, Trafalgar Square, St. Mark’s, Times Square, St. Peter’s, Notre Dame and the rest: pigeons, tourists, seedy nut salesmen.
‘Look,
honey!’
‘Oh,
look,
daddy!
’
Photographers, cameras, cinés. ‘
Stay
right
there,
honey!
’
‘Hold
it!
’
‘Wait
till
he
settles,
darling!
’
‘Oh
poof!
’
‘Gee
that’s
lucky,
I
do
declare!
’

Later he went up past the fountains and then down the Metro steps to clean his shoes at the slot machine. Then up again and across the Ronda Universidad to the café on the corner. He chose a table where the sunlight struck through the glass.

A waiter brought him black coffee and he stirred it
unnecessarily
, looking round the room and noting on the edge of his mind that Spaniards drank more wine and beer at that hour than coffee and tea. The insistent clamour of traffic drowned the speech around him and muffled his thoughts, leaving only a visual awareness: the blue and white neon sign on the corner,
El
Corte
Inglese,
beneath it a department store;
Banco
de
Vizcaya
on another high building;
Venticolor
Champi
on a passing bus; and way across the Plaza, in big letters,
Uve
Pana
Supiel.
But he knew he was looking for something else that should be there. No square of importance was without it. Like pigeons and tourists.
Coñac
y
Jerez,
very nice too, but that wasn’t it.
Bertola.
No. Ah, there it was …
Todo
va
Mejor
con
Coca-Cola.
He felt reassured. The traffic was not yet at its peak but getting that way. He started
counting
makes. Few big cars, mostly small, and Seat had it all the
way. Even the stream of black and yellow taxis, numerous as Smiths in a London telephone directory, were Seat. He ordered another coffee and with his mind coasting he stared at a passing girl. Their eyes met momentarily and she switched hers away, tossing her head. He grinned.

In front of him a slim smart woman knocked her glove off the table as she poured tea. He leant forward and picked it up and she turned and thanked him in Spanish, her brown eyes using the brief moment of communication to read his face.

The glove dropping wasn’t intentional, he decided. But after it she was classifying him as women did. I’m no good to you, he thought. I’m not rich and I sail—he looked at his watch —in one hour and ten minutes, and I cannot be deflected from what I have to do. The waiter came across and gave him the bill. As he went out he smiled at the owner of the gloves, and with the smallest movement of eyes and lips, gravely
discreet
, she acknowledged him.

Back in the Regina Royale he collected the suitcase and raincoat, tipped the porter and walked out through the glass doors, waving away the commissionaire who tried to take the bag and refusing his offer of a taxi. Absurd, he thought. Why have I to use an intermediary who has to be rewarded for a service I don’t require of him. He walked down the Calle de Pelayo until a taxi set down a fare near him, and he got in and told the driver to take him to the harbour, to the steamer for Ibiza. Wrapped once again in his thoughts, he sat back as the taxi pulled out into the traffic.

At the end of the warehouse the taxi stopped and he paid it off. He took the steamship ticket from his wallet and when he reached the head of the gangway showed it to an ageing bucolic sailor who blinked a ‘
Bueno,
señor
,’
at him and exuded the smell of raw wine and garlic. The cabin number was on the ticket, and he went to the foyer and then down the staircase. He stopped at the bottom and checked the arrowed numbers. Twenty-seven was at the end of an alleyway on the starboard side. It was a dingy little cabin smelling faintly of disinfectant and urine and stale vomit. Two doors down a lavatory gave off the same odours more pungently. God, he thought, I mustn’t try to sleep until I’m dead tired, or drunk. A typed ticket over the right-hand bunk read
Señor
Charles
Black.
He put the raincoat and suitcase on the bunk. The ticket on the other bunk read:
Señor
Juan
Bolle.
He wished Senor Bolle no harm but hoped he’d miss the ship.

He went up to the deck lounge. It was crowded. Mostly young people, a few old, Spaniards and foreigners in equal parts, and a sprinkling of soldiers. Some of the faces were familiar, people he’d seen on the island, but most were strangers. Not one so far whom he really knew. He bought a Campari and soda and stayed at the bar. The tables were full. Near him a young German painter he’d often seen outside the Montesol was talking quietly to a girl in a sheepskin coat, pale with unkempt flaxen hair, a baby on her arm. Wife? Girl friend? Sister? Who cared?

Next to him a young man with dark glittering eyes, tall and elegant, rolled up the left sleeve of his black jersey and caressed a hairy forearm as if it were a girl’s. A red silk scarf
accentuated
his darkness, and the blue denims stretched tightly round his thighs were like muslin round a ham. There were two Frenchmen with him and an English girl. Their clothes, their hair and ornaments, typed them. Drop-outs, hippies, flower people, maybe junkies. But they were all right, he decided: quiet, unpretentious, unconcerned with the other passengers.
Make
love
not
war
.
They believed that. But it was pure
fantasy
. Everything in his experience contradicted it. The next megalomaniac who came along thinking he was God wasn’t going to be bought off with flowers. I’m thirty-five, he thought, they’re not much more than half that. He sighed for lost youth.

A middle-aged man and his wife came up to the bar beside him. She had calm grey eyes and a skin like alabaster. He wore a high-necked jersey, a black beret, and a necklace of shark’s teeth. It was Jan Ludich, a Czech painter, and his wife. The Czech saw him and grinned. ‘
Hola,
Charles.
Qué
tal
?’—and she said, ‘Hi, Charles, where’ve you been?’

‘Muy
bien
,’
he said. ‘Madrid. For de Salla’s
vernissage.
’

‘What was it like?’

‘Good, I thought.’

‘You writing something about it?’

‘Yes.’

He didn’t know the Ludichs well but it was pleasant to have someone to talk to. They stayed at the bar chatting until the ship had cleared the harbour and the Czechs said they were going down to their cabin before dinner. By then he’d
swallowed
a good many Camparis.

The steamer was feeling the wind and sea and when he got to the dining-saloon it was less than half full. He sat at an empty table laid for four and divided his attention between the
Art
International
he’d bought in Barcelona, the menu, and his fellow travellers. The chief steward showed a young Spanish couple to an adjoining table. Black nodded to them briefly. Later, from their shy inhibited conversation, he gathered they were going to Ibiza for their honeymoon. In a detached way he wondered if he would ever have a
honeymoon
.

A steward came up with the wine, balancing the tray against the roll of the ship. Black tasted the wine and nodded, and the steward filled his glass.

The Ludichs came by and soon afterwards he heard Kyriakou’s loud voice and the Greek came in, large and florid, looking like a caricature of a bookmaker, brash check suit, cigar in mouth, red carnation in buttonhole. Kirry Kyriakou interested those who didn’t know him, who thought they saw a colourful personality. Those on Ibiza who knew him well feared him, for he was influential and ruthless. It was whispered—whispered because he was rich—that a recent suicide—a girl’s—could be attributed to him.

With Kyriakou was a younger man, Tino Costa, a tough Cypriot recently acquired by the Greek and rumoured to be his strong-arm man. Costa was big and craggy with hooded eyes, deep-set in a rubbery face. He claimed to have been a croupier at Las Vagas before he came to the island, and spoke with a North American accent.

Predictably, the third member of Kyriakou’s party was Manuela Valez, a Puerto Rican, dark, fragile and handsome. They went to a table ahead of Charles Black, and the Greek and the girl sat facing him, but his view was
partially
obscured by Tino Costa’s broad back. Black watched them with detached irony. Everything the Greek did was flamboyant, from the way he shot inches of starched white cuff—heavily weighted with gold nugget links—to the
exaggerated
ceremonial as he tasted the champagne, to which Tino Costa insisted on adding vodka. Kyriakou made a fuss because there were no flowers on the table, and when the chief steward explained that it was because of the weather, he brushed this
aside and demanded flowers. When the chief steward gave in and had organised them, supporting the vase with sugar bowls, the Greek flourished a snake-skin wallet, peeling crisp one hundred peseta notes from it, each coming clear with an audible
zip
,
to be passed to the chief steward with a grandiose flourish. As if he were knighting him, thought Black.