Authors: Derek Beaven
I smile foolishly at him. The impression he has ruined for me is that Erica plays a gramophone in the middle of the lifeboat, that the swimming-pool of the
Armorica
is contained right within the gunwales of our wretched tub, and that we are all getting ready to dance and take dips. I hate him for returning me to my flimsy, soaking clothes. Then my eyes open and there are the same speechless faces, the same heave of the lifeboat, the chasing clouds, the intolerable cold. I renew my grip on the rope and start to shiver.
‘That’s a good sign,’ the man says.
‘Yes,’ Erica replies.
I am very hungry.
Erica moves to touch me. ‘Cuddle up, Ralph.’ I shrink away. I cannot bear her near me. A military aircraft with two propellers slung under each wing scratches about in the cloud base, turning once, and turning again.
The second day of rain gave way to a profound calm. It was not my hallucination that in the afternoon we sighted two of the other lifeboats, far away. We waved, they waved back. On the horizon there were smudges of smoke, but they did not alter course. I did imagine one was the
Armorica
still burning. Then I remembered.
As for the third day, a tropical sun came out and dried us up. And shortly after that there was the smudge that turned into the frigate.
Hatred did for the
Armorica
, we can be sure of that. Hatred is an oddity. That it exists is undeniable. Perhaps it is scattered through the universe, between the stars.
A floating city, Penny thought, before she boarded at Tilbury. There are some shipwrecks that are part of our folklore. There is no need to spell out their names; we are all brought up on them. They are famous because they staged themselves. They lead us to believe such losses always happen in the glare of publicity. The
Armorica
was not so big, nor so close to home. As an officer I am ashamed, and as a man.
It was given out that there had been a fire and a certain loss of life, and that the wounded vessel had been towed up to Jakarta. That is what we survivors were told, and what the Press were told. Let me remind you that there was at that time no satellite communication, no front-line journalism, no instantaneous world-wide news network such as we have today. Australia was the other side of the globe. The long-range jet had only just been invented. Portable videotaping equipment had not.
And in so vast and rudimentary a territory as Australia then was, the news of the sinking could fragment itself, one account appearing in this state newspaper one week, but denied the next week in that. A shape here, an outline there. Popping on to the ABC’s radio news as a lead for two evenings but disappearing for ever after. The pattern is not an unknown one, even now. But in any case, stories had to work hard to escape that continent in those days. Witness the test fall-out details, which were not welcome in England. Neither were those of radiation research, nor of the human guinea-pigs. So far out of sight, so far out of mind, as far as the old country was concerned.
Reuters would have it world-wide, of course, though in the UK there might well be phone calls to certain newspaper proprietors about the national interest and military secrets. There might even be D-notices. The odd snippet of Australian footage might trickle home to London eventually, in a newsreel of survivors; shown in this Movietone cinema or that, but referred to only once or twice, perhaps, on the Home Service, or nudged out of television space altogether by some larger, more pressing domestic crisis. To be picked up later. Or not.
Questions might even have been asked in the House. But answers can knock some matters stone dead. There were no pictures of the sinking ship, therefore no loss. A crime at sea is the most perfect, for the victim buries herself. Everything depends on the witnesses. Albatross-eyed, but lacking the missing evidence, I am making sense of what must have been.
You will still not believe me. There are times when I do not believe it myself, dare not. It would be told, though, this tale. I am detained by it. A thousand families at either end touched in some way and no furore? No marches, petitions, protests? A whole ship? No screaming headlines? Exposures, investigative documentaries, royal commissions, private prosecutions?
No, none of that. Ships go down all the time and we hear nothing. Passenger ships, too. And many far worse things go unseen. But that is not the point. It never matters really how many separate people know, are desolated, have their lives broken. So long as they are kept in isolation. So public life, too, loses its memory; I too signed the promise after we were picked up.
After the adventure of rescue came their delivery to Adelaide, almost as if nothing had happened, almost by sleight of hand.
‘We
have
done it, darling. We’ve made it,’ Robert said.
‘We can still hope,’ Penny replied. ‘But doesn’t there now come the difficult part?’ She smiled ruefully. ‘There’s nothing for it. You’ll have to leave it to me, Robert, I’m afraid. He’s got to be told. It’s got to be made clear.’
They put out their cigarettes, embraced, smiled, and parted at the roadside in Port Adelaide. She clung to the memory of his words. ‘Love is an island that really exists. No matter what. You’ve taught me that. That’s where we shall live.’ He had held the little brass box she had given him in his hand.
In the first week she wrote to him every day. Sometimes twice a day. Then she tried telling Hugh. It was as though he took no notice of what she said but claimed her there and then, brutally, like a possession. And after that Penny could not write any more. Every time she picked up the pen the words ‘my dearest’ seemed to sink out of reach, as crumbs beside a lifeboat. The very paper felt soiled.
So also did the dashing blooms in their garden. They should have been beautiful. The orange tree in the centre with its little green fruits struck her as a worthless nonsense; the two fig trees had some sort of leaf blight. Once, after the boys had arrived, she binged on the half-ripe fruit and made herself ill. The violence of it gave her a grim satisfaction.
She could not approach Robert in her mind, could not make sense of what had preceded this endless summer which now seemed to be appointed for her; these flat, verandaed houses, all like her own, in their spacious plots; that insistent bird with a voice like a rusty gate; the tiny red-back spider that could kill; the regular invitations to meat-feasts outdoors at night with Hugh’s fellow researchers. The
Armorica
and its catastrophe became a dream. Something so great, so incongruous against this basking suburbanism could not really have happened, surely. Now no one ever said anything on the wireless; there were no more press reports. The Finch-Clarks made the effort to write occasionally, but, being dutiful citizens, they never mentioned the ship.
She held on to small things. The memory of Robert’s hand on her shoulder in the boat in the rain. They were sharing rations. How personal the sea was, even here, green-black, half transparent for the first inch of its down-drop – and then quite lightless when the grains of biscuit sank. How close the crazed surface of it had come. One might almost catch hold of it at last.
She grew listless and withdrew behind a brave face. Hugh hardly noticed. The boys took up at new boarding-schools. She got her driving licence – a few questions on a piece of paper at the police station – and was free to drink tea with other women whenever Hugh had a lift in to work.
And each letter from Robert, ever more anxious, bewildered, desperate than the one before, which she retrieved various mid-mornings from the letter-box on the garden gatepost, made her less able to answer.
Once or twice she did manage a reply. But she could not say what she meant. Only what she hoped for. The passage of time slipped into a long flicker of anxiety and despair. Every minute seemed to ache past, and yet the months evaporated, like spills on the cement floor of her washroom, disappearing while she watched.
In the December, on a day when the north wind off the central scorch was making breathing itself almost intolerable, two security policemen called on Robert. One picked up the empty bottle of Scotch, the other made himself comfortable in the only armchair.
‘Like a drink, do you, Kettle?’
‘Now and then.’
‘Cigarette?’ The man who was sitting down pushed a packet of Stuyvesants towards him. ‘My name’s Wheatfield, by the way’
‘Thanks. What can I do for you?’
‘I’ll get straight to the point. It’s come to the director’s notice you’ve still got a loose mouth.’
‘What?’
‘Don’t let’s beat about the bush, Bob. We both know what I mean. Shipping yarns. Salt water. Okay, you like a drink – now and then. What bloke doesn’t? Only in your case it leads to … flights of the imagination.’
Robert heard himself give a single laugh. It had a bitter edge.
Wheatfield permitted himself a chuckle, too. ‘Yeah. Who doesn’t like a few beers with his mates? But it’s come to the director’s attention that despite the personal chat he had with you a couple of months ago, there’s still something of a problem. And of course the base out here is a relatively small community, where it’s pretty bloody important to maintain morale, don’t you agree, Bob? Now, Sergeant Petter and I …’ He glanced sideways. The man who had remained standing was holding the whisky bottle by its neck above the unwashed breakfast things on the table. He left his inspection of its label to look coldly at Robert.
‘Sergeant Petter and I have an unpleasant duty, I’m afraid, Bob. It concerns the matter of nationality, rights of residence and so on. You do realise that this is an important strategic project up here. A significant front line, if we’re to be strictly honest. Even if it doesn’t look much.’ He grinned and spread his palms as if to apologise for the ramshackle network of concrete prefabs and army huts which formed the community outside.
‘Has there been a complaint against my work? Do you mind if I ask who you’re actually representing?’ Robert said quietly. He turned from one man to the other, raising his eyebrows.
By way of reply Sergeant Petter opened his grip and allowed the whisky bottle to drop. It shattered in the plate below it. The breakfast table became a waste of glass and white shards. ‘Sorry.’ The sergeant spoke without expression.
‘To put it bluntly, Bob,’ his colleague smiled, ‘your stay in this country is conditional on security. Watertight security. To the director it’s a moral issue. One bad apple and the rot starts. You get what I’m driving at. One communist influence—’
‘Communist?’
‘Booze and sedition.’ He drew leisurely on the cigarette. ‘It’s not just that you’re in the habit of shooting your mouth off when you go on these … benders of yours, it’s what you’ve been letting yourself come out with. Now, if it was up to me, I’d be inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt. It’s a strain up here, after all. Problems with the girlfriend. That kind of thing. We all have ’em. Even Sergeant Petter has ’em.’ He paused. Robert felt a bead of icy sweat trickle down from his armpit inside his shirt. ‘They don’t like it, do they, Neil?’ Robert dared not catch Neil’s eye. ‘The sheilas. It’s hard on a woman. They’re apt to consider their options, you know. It’s a fact. It’s got to be faced. Sometimes the tough choice gets made. I’ve seen blokes … It’s a worry isn’t it, Bob? Can make even the best men go a bit …’ He wound his finger to his forehead, and smiled.
‘But of course it’s not up to me. And the director has to consider his own … position. Basically, he’s giving you a couple of months.’ Wheatfield shifted in the chair, and reached down beside it to stub out the butt. ‘You wouldn’t consider yourself a church-going man, really, would you, Bob?’
‘Not really.’
‘Shame. It’s a bit of a man’s world up here, I realise that. Still, there are standards. There is this matter of your visits down to Adelaide. The immoral purposes.’
‘My what?’
‘A Mrs …’ He made a show of consulting his diary. ‘A Mrs Kendrick, isn’t it? Now what kind of woman would she be?’
‘A very fine woman, actually.’
But the policemen insisted on hearing the wrong emphasis. They both laughed.
‘There’s a Kendrick who works down at Salisbury, isn’t there, Neil? Quite a big wheel there, wouldn’t he be? No connection of course, Kettle. Couldn’t be, could there.’
Robert’s temper flared. If only he could get any sense out of her. If only she would say.
If Wheatfield’s gentle voice filled the gap that had opened, Robert did not hear. Syllables were like an intense pressure in his chest, like air bubbles. ‘Thirty thousand tons,’ he breathed at last. Odd, that the gasp of the metal’s weight alone should somehow rise up more eloquently than the five hundred bodies it contained.
But the policeman – or whatever he was – spoke on as if everything were in its place, and so heavy a sacrifice must lie miles beneath the unscarred surface of their discussion. His parting remarks concerned Robert’s passport. ‘It’s a precious document, you know, Mr Kettle. We’ll not keep it for longer than necessary. A few solemn undertakings you signed on your arrival here. You’ll have it back just as soon as we’ve updated our documents. Who knows, you might be needing it.’
When they had gone, and Robert had recovered from the fit of shaking which came over him, he conceded the game had been lost. Not the one he carried on with Joe – who did in fact run a long-range radio correspondence with him via the base’s non-military equipment. But the larger one he had been playing with the times he lived in.