After the Rain (9 page)

“You had better take a look round, Mr. Clarke,” Arthur said.

“I have drunk blood,” said the man. “Ham, Shem—both dead. My wife left me, you know, before the
Word was fulfilled; she took Japhet, and went to her married sister in Ruislip. When we were very thirsty, we drank the blood of our Shetland pony, but the two boys died. More has occurred than was foretold.”

“Where is the grain?” Arthur said.

“Inside. And the seeds in tins. Flowers too. Beauty should not vanish from the earth. I bought nasturtiums since they were cheap, and marigolds, and London Pride. No gardens without flowers.”

“Let me know what you find, Mr. Clarke,” Arthur said.

Getting through that door was like walking into a grave. Each forward step I took built up the force within me that wanted to turn and run out again. I tried to cover my nose and mouth against the stench, breathing through the chinks between my fingers, but it did little good.

All the interior of the ark was one large room. The animals lay there, dead in their stalls, their bodies already bloated with decay and filthy with ordure. To one end were piled sacks of grain and roots; the rain had rotted them, but I could see a number of bins that must contain seed, and the contents of these would be in good condition. I made a move to open them, but before I could reach the bins I felt my dizziness begin again, and knew that I should faint if I did not return to the deck outside.

I made my report to Arthur. “Can we carry the bins away with us?” he asked.

“Not really. They’d sink the dinghy.”

“Very well. We must devise something else.”

“What about the man?”

“He is in no state to be moved,” Arthur said. “You can see that for yourself. Let us make him comfortable where he is.”

“And come back for him?”

“Unless you would care to stay.”

“I don’t think I could,” I said. “The stench … I suppose he’s grown used to it.”

“Yes.”

I bent over the man. “Look,” I said. “We’re going away now, but we’ll come back tomorrow. We’re going to leave the water bottle with you. We’ll bring food when we come.” The man did not reply; he had talked himself out, it seemed. But he stared up at me, and his eyes blinked, and I think he would have nodded his head if he could.

We returned to the raft more quickly than we had come. Except when he gave the order to rest, Arthur was silent, his lips tightly pressed together in thought. When the journey was almost over, he said, “I have decided. We cannot bring the grain to the raft as easily as we can tow the raft to the grain. We shall do it tomorrow.”

*

In fact, it was not a task that could be finished in one day; my promise to the scarecrow man was broken. First there was the straining and sweating at the paddles of the dinghy to get the raft to move at all; then, even after our effort had become effective, it could not be
diminished, for the raft never gathered enough speed through the water to allow us to rest for a while as it coasted. We all took turns, even Arthur himself, in shifts of four while a leader chanted the time of the strokes. We rested only at night and during the fiercest heat of the day.

I did not expect the man still to be alive when, on the third day, we reached the ark, but he was. He lay where we had left him, and when he saw me he only said, “You were here before”. The water bottle was empty, and we gave him more, and the women brought sacking to make him more comfortable, and fed him with the fish stew that was our usual diet. The men, under Arthur’s direction, transhipped what of the ark’s cargo could be useful to us. When we had finished, the light was almost gone. “We must pull away a little for the night,” Arthur said. “This is not a healthy atmosphere to sleep in.”

Again in the dusk we strained to set the raft in motion, and took up our station about thirty yards away. “That should be enough,” Arthur said. That night, as on the two nights before it, we went to bed as soon as we had eaten, falling asleep almost on the instant.

At perhaps two o’clock in the morning, I awoke from a dream of flames as Arthur stepped on my foot. He made his way to his own place, and lay down; I could see him clearly in the flickering orange light that filled the cabin, as I could see the sleeping faces of Banner, Hunter and Tony Ryle. I rose and went to the
cabin door; Arthur half turned on his pallet, and I knew he was watching me. I went out on deck. The sky was bright with orange and yellow light from the burning ark. The fire had taken hold of the great central storehouse that we had rifled so short a while before, and the flames jumped high in the air from the hole in the roof, lighting up the whole of the forward deck where, it seemed to me, I could see the scarecrow man, his arms spread wide, his head flung back. He stood there for a moment like the figurehead of a doomed vessel. Then a dragon’s tongue of flame came from the open door behind him, licked him once, and he was gone.

Muriel stood beside me on the deck. My face was scorched, my throat dry. “He murdered him,” I said. “Arthur murdered him.”

“Oh yes,” Muriel said. “My husband too. Arthur takes what he wants. After all, he has to, hasn’t he, if we’re all to respect him?”

She turned, and walked inside the cabin. The sky grew brighter as the flames spread over the whole of the ark. Somewhere in the heart of the fire there was an explosion. A baulk of wood, flung high into the air, came flaming towards us like a shooting-star, fell just short of the side of the raft, and disappeared. Then, with a long hiss as the burning wood touched the face of the water, the ark sank.

One of the beliefs that we used to hold in the Army was that the Authorities put saltpetre in the N.A.A.F.I. tea, and by that means prevented the more lustful among us from running wild; a counter view was that the hard work and exercise to which we were not accustomed had the same effect. Meanwhile near any Army Camp the bushes bloomed with limp rubber sheaths, and the bellies of a few unlucky local girls began to swell; neither saltpetre nor exercise, it seemed, were enough in themselves to destroy desire.

Arthur had no saltpetre with which to dose us, and the work was light as we lay becalmed, but of course we were not very well nourished; at any rate he had no trouble with us in that way. One falls so quickly into a habit of living. It was not making love to Sonya that I missed, but something much more important to me, that feeling of being together which we had shared in the dinghy, but which now seemed to have been lost. We were no longer a pair, it seemed to me, but part of a group of eight; I felt that I had no more part in Sonya than the others had. “We’re never alone together
nowadays,” I said, as we cleaned fish in the galley for the evening meal.

“We’re alone now.”

“Not really. Someone might come in.”

“Do you want us to be alone?”

“Of course I do.”

“What do you want to talk about?”

“I don’t want to talk about anything. I just want to be with you.”

“You’re with me all the time.”

“Oh, never mind.”

“Well,” Sonya said, “if you’re going to go off at me about it….” She put down her knife, and wiped her fishy hands on her bikini. Then she led me out on deck, and down the ladder into the hold. At the bottom of the ladder she turned and faced me. “We’re alone now,” she said. “You needn’t worry about being overheard, if you don’t shout.”

“But we’re not….”

“What?”

“You can’t just
be
alone,” I said. “You have to be in the mood. It’s a state of mind.”

“All right,” she said. “Let’s go back. When you’re in the mood for being alone, we can come down here again.”

I said, “You don’t understand.”

“Yes I do,” Sonya said, “you are a fool. Do I have to ask you to kiss me, or what?” I took her face between my hands, and kissed her. Her body pressed against mine, and my arms slid down her back. I swayed, and
very nearly fell over. “I think we’d better sit down,” I said.

As we lay on the floor together, Sonya snuggled into me, shivering a little under my exploring hands. For some time we lay there, silent. Then she said, “Do you think I don’t miss
you
?”

I kissed her again passionately, and she placed my hand back on her shoulders. “Not now,” she said, “it’s not important.”

“But——”

“After all, it’s only sex,” she said. “We can have that at any time. Let’s just be together now.”

“But a moment ago——”

“You were being stupid about it, and I got angry,” she said. “Do you think I haven’t been feeling the same way? I never have any part of you; you’re always with the others, and you all talk and talk, and I get bored. But I couldn’t tell you I wanted to get away from them; you had to ask me, and you never did. I used to come down here every day to practise with Tony, and I kept wondering when you’d see——”

“With Tony?”

“Well, of course. We only use it for practising, and the rest of the time it’s empty. Nobody ever comes here.”

My hand, which had been stroking her shoulder, stopped, and lay still. “I think we ought to be getting back on deck,” I said, “they’ll miss us.”

“Who cares if they do?”

“Arthur wouldn’t like it.” I kissed her again gently.
“Come on, darling,” I said. “He’ll only make a rule about it if he finds out. We can come again.”

Sonya said, “All right,” and I helped her to get to her feet. We held hands as we walked across to the foot of the ladder. I had to walk a little wide to avoid Tony’s improvised weights.
After all it’s only sex
, I thought, and then,
I come down here with Tony every day.

At the top of the ladder, just before we were visible from the deck, Sonya bent down and kissed me on the mouth. “You are strange, you know,” she said, and we walked back to the galley in silence.

*

Soon we began to be on what Arthur called “strict water discipline”; he seemed to enjoy the phrase, which was a hang-over from his days with the Rajputana Rifles during the war. As well as cutting down on water, he took all the bulbs out of the light sockets, and locked them away in a drawer; there were to be no more readings and discussions in the cabin after supper. Everything moved so slowly in those days: the needle in Muriel’s hand describing a slow arc from one stitch to the next, the lazy progress of a broom across the galley floor, the barb of a fish-hook sinking like a wire through ice into the belly of the small fish Hunter would be using for bait. We moved through time as if it were treacle, and lay for most of the day on deck under the improvised awning of a sail, waiting in the heat for a breeze.

Once upon a time, when I had said, “I’m hungry,” it had not meant that I was in pain. I had thought that
“the pangs of hunger” meant no more than “the pangs of love”; a stale metaphor for need. But now I
discovered
that hunger was a physical sensation, an
intermittent
gnawing pain in the upper belly. We could rely on its visits; like a faithful creditor it came always at the same time in the afternoon. Hunger was a beast, to be mollified. We could not give it food, but we tried to stroke it into harmlessness. Round and round over the skin of our bellies our hands would pass to soothe and smooth away the pangs.

Since we ate a stew of fish and Glub in the evenings, our hunger was not constant, but thirst was always with us as a stickiness in the mouth and throat. We drank twice a day, never more than a couple of
mouthfuls
, and there was liquid in our evening stew, but however much they may have nourished our bodies, these rationed mouthfuls did nothing to make us feel less thirsty, and as inactivity and the heat sucked talk out of us during those days on deck, our tongues seemed to increase in size until they filled our mouths like blotting paper.

When I remember this time, it seems that Arthur always sat apart in the cabin, writing and writing in the blank volumes of the log; perhaps he liked to be near the water jar. Hunter took over the fishing
completely
. He would sit all day on the edge of the raft, his limbs slack, his head lolling a little. The sun did not affect Hunter, except as a drug; his reactions had slowed and his initiative almost disappeared, so that once when he left his post to visit the privy, we found him still
there some two hours later, sitting with the vacant expression he always wore and that only a pull on the float could disturb.

Tony and Sonya still went every day into the hold to practise. I did not know what they did there. At about the same time every afternoon, Tony would say, “Coming, Sonn?” and they would climb down the ladder, and I would watch them go, and remember my own last visit to the hold with Sonya, and try to push away the doubts and questions that came into my mind.

We were hungry and thirsty, and still the sun shone, and the air was still. Our batteries gave power but did not get it as we lay idle in the water. Hunter said that he had never known them to give out, but he admitted that he had not been becalmed so long before. The arrow on the dial of the ammeter crept slowly
backwards
, and the days went by.

“It is no good,” Arthur said. “We are still using too much power. We must cut down.”

“Cut down,” Muriel said. Much of Muriel’s
conversation
now was to repeat what had just been spoken.

“We waste power in the cooking.”

“I’m sorry, Arthur,” I said, “I don’t use more than I can help.”

“I am sure you do not, Mr. Clarke. But you
misunderstand
me. With the situation as it is, it would be better not to use any power at all in cooking.”

“Just eat Glub?”

“That would not be practical without moisture of
some sort. I suppose, Captain Hunter, that there is no supply of
liquid
Glub that we have overlooked?”

“There’s Glub in a Matchbox.”

I said, “It has to be chewed slowly to set the rich nourishing juices circulating through the system. We can’t just swallow it.”

“Has to be chewed,” Muriel said.

“I see. Well perhaps we might try Glub in a
Matchbox
two nights a week, increasing the water ration a little so as to allow us to chew. For the other evenings we must make shift with our fish
au bleu
.”

“Blue?”

“Raw.”

“Eat raw fish?”

“Others have done so. It should be cut up to release the moisture, and the scales removed. Very much, in fact, as you usually prepare it, but uncooked.”

We began on our new diet next evening. Banner asked a blessing, and we dipped our spoons into the mess. There they remained for a while, and each looked at the others to see who would be the first to taste it. Arthur lifted his spoon to his mouth, and swallowed a spoonful of fish. “It is unpleasant on the whole,” he said.

Banner said, “The Japanese consider it a delicacy.” His face twitched with disgust as he tasted the fish, but he swallowed it, and one by one we followed his example.

Only Sonya did not. She lowered her spoon, and sat with her head hanging, staring at her plate. “I can’t eat it,” she said, “I’ll be sick.”

“Come now, Miss Banks,” Arthur said, “it will do you good.”

“It won’t do me any good if I bring it all up again.”

“You must keep it down.”

“I can’t. I don’t want any. Anybody can have my share.”

Arthur tapped his spoon upon his plate, and gazed round the table. “There is no need for us all to stop eating just because Miss Banks is having a little difficulty with her fish,” he said. With his prim mouth and glittering spectacles, he looked like a nanny presiding at nursery tea. “Come now, Miss Banks,” he said. “You must eat your fish. Let us try again.”

“Must eat our nice fish,” said Muriel.

“I can’t,” Sonya said. I could hear tears in her voice.

I said, “If she doesn’t want it, I don’t see why anyone should force her to eat it. After all, it’s her own funeral.”

“Exactly, Mr. Clarke. If Miss Banks does not eat, that will be her own funeral. And while she is under my charge, I do not intend that her funeral shall take place.”

“Can’t she have Glub and water instead?”

“There will be no exceptions.”

“Darling,” I said, “try to eat some. It’s easier once you get started.”

Sonya lifted her head, and stared at me. I could see that her eyes were angry behind the tears. “I don’t see why
you’ve
got to interfere,” she said.

“Quite right. There is no reason at all for Mr. Clarke to interfere.”

“I’m sorry, Arthur.”

“Sorrow by itself means nothing unless it is
accompanied
by the intention of amendment. Do not interfere again.”

“No. I won’t”

“Then we shall continue with our meal. Miss Banks, I appreciate how you feel. The fish is indeed nauseous at first taste, and no good would be done at all if, after swallowing, you were to vomit it up again. If you wish, I shall ask Mrs. Otterdale to hold your nose while you eat.”

We were all quite silent now. Muriel began to rise from her place, but Arthur waved her back. “We shall avoid it if we can,” he said. Sonya took her first
mouthful
of raw fish, and followed it very quickly with a second. Arthur took a mouthful. We copied him obediently. Soon we were eating in unison, our spoons rising and falling a little after Arthur’s, and when it came to the end, our plates were cleared together.

*

Now the tigers of jealousy began to invade my mind, and I was too weak to keep them out.

Company would have helped to keep the tigers away, but I shunned company, lying for long hours on the deck feigning sleep, turning my face away from the others and hugging my arms close to my chest as if I loved the tigers and wanted to keep them with me always. And the tigers would walk through my mind endlessly, delicately, waving their tails and conjuring up pictures for me. The tigers themselves did not rend me, but the pictures they made were hurtful.

Jealousy needs no nourishment from outside. The memory of a long-past indiscretion, a misheard sentence—the tigers need only a single puff of air to give them life, and after that they make their own. For almost as long as I had lived, these tigers had lurked below the surface of my mind, awaiting only the excuse for life, and now they had it. They were my tigers. They were part of me. Bone, flesh and pelt were made out of my own insecurities, my own deep knowledge that I was not a person to be loved easily, or sincerely, or for long.
Haply that I am black
—disaster would have come in some way to Othello, even if Iago had never existed. Iago was no more than a trigger. He was a conceited man, as well as wicked, to imagine otherwise.

I lay on the deck in the sun apart from the others, and the pictures made by the tigers followed one another through my mind. Sometimes I would accuse Sonya; I would come right out and accuse her, and she would laugh at me cruelly, saying, “Well, really I don’t see why you should think you’re the only one,” and again, “It’s just sex after all.” Sometimes I would tackle the two of them together, and what a scene would follow! Anger! recrimination! remorse! regret! Each of the tigers’ pictures came complete with dialogue, superbly theatrical, superbly final. I walked out on Sonya and the curtain fell forty times a day, always to rise again on the next picture, and the next, and the next, while the
playful
tigers purred and paraded interminably in my mind.

I wanted so much to turn my suspicions into
knowledge
. I wanted so much to go down and surprise them
in the hold, but I was frightened. What if they were indeed—what if they were? Whatever unrelenting dialogue the tigers might give me to speak, I loved Sonya, and that could not be changed. I could not leave her confined as we were, it was in any case impossible to do so except by death. If I were to find out for certain, I should become the complaisant cuckold of the French stories, despicable in all men’s eyes, and in my own (the tigers gave me that picture also). And suppose I were to find nothing? It would shame me to be spying on them, and would not quiet the tigers.