Her Victory (25 page)

The sea at that moment regarded him as nothing, as no one, as a spark to be extinguished on an impulse of fiendishness. Because he knew that the body was fragile, life brief, and existence finally meaningless, he was always wary, continually on the alert to repel danger from any quarter, cultivating a readiness of mind which created a loneliness that over the years made him appear like a man fighting to keep his grip on a deadly secret which was eating his soul away.

Someone might try to get friendly, but he was incapable of taking any steps in that direction. A man of the sea, he was blocked off at all points from the land, and now looked with misgiving on so many years spent in the condition of a prisoner who had clung to the shreds of his soul only by withdrawing into an uncertain peace at the centre of himself. Unless he had done this he would have gone down into unfeeling oblivion. The dread of losing what little he knew about himself gnawed at the tenuous connection he had with the rest of the world, or with that small part which might be concerned as to whether or not he knew of its existence. His mathematical sharpness was continually in tune with the fair conduct of the moving ship between taking departure and landfall, and at times he felt that such faculties would be overwhelmed unless he murdered either another or himself in an attempt to retain the clarity that was necessary for his work. Unwilling to take alcohol, he would long for the trip to be over, but now craved an end of all voyages that tested him to such limits.

Others who were threatened by the same malaise defeated solitude on long trips by an obsessive ingenuity, which for self-respect they called a hobby. A man's need to be absorbed often came to him like the rediscovery of the power of love, and might involve an attachment to some musical instrument, or to a collection of objects which, when laid out, created a design or picture that the heart viewed as a unique accomplishment. Outlandish schemes kept a man sane in what might otherwise have been his darkest moments. A project, no matter how futile, was necessary to keep within bounds that person who felt chaos press too close, and who knew that something effective to fix his mind on was the only solution.

Once on a tedious great circular haul across the northern Pacific, the third mate drew an outline of the world on Mercator's Projection in faint pencil on a large sheet of plywood, but then emphasized the coastlines by sticking live match heads, almost touching, to bring out the shapes of the various land masses. The map included both Polar regions, and took weeks to draw, and longer still to cut off thousands of match heads with a razor and glue them firmly so as to demarcate every gulf, peninsula and large island. The operation went on through several voyages, and Tom wondered where the man found so many matches on a single ship, till he saw him walking up the gangplank at one port of call with two huge parcels.

A closer inspection of the near-finished masterpiece showed that the colour of the match heads varied from dark brown through crimson and scarlet almost to grey, but it was pointed out that when seen from a distance they appeared to
match
well enough. It was impossible to guess what he intended to do with this impressive portrayal of the world, though he did hint that, because he considered it the finest artefact ever devised – and he claimed to have made some really unusual objects in his time – he might give it as a wedding present to his best friend who, in one of his absences, had latched himself to
his
girl-friend.

In blue match heads the third mate had yet to chart those trips he had made while this treacherous love affair progressed to its final stage. The happy couple, he said, with a dangerous flash of the eyes, would accept it as an unusual gift from a loser who had no hard feelings. They would put it proudly on their living-room wall, together with the cheaply framed pictures and flying plaster birds, and one day, as they didn't know what the map was made of, it would ignite in their overheated love nest while they were in bed upstairs doing what he himself should have been at if there had been any justice in the world, which there clearly was not – or at least wouldn't be until his unique map took fire.

He was one of the looniest, though Tom had known some not too far removed, but whose pastimes, no less absorbing, ended almost as spectacularly. On the other hand, not everyone, either on the upper or lower deck, needed a hobby. Those who did were more interesting because they became garrulous with their new interest in life. But those others who scorned the idea of taking up some hobby often did their everyday jobs without complaint. Space did not frighten them, nor time intimidate. They were the salt of the sea, as it were, and also of the earth who were born with a gyroscope of placidity inside, and a self-correcting rudder that kept them on an even keel, so to speak. They did not fight against the monotony, nor were they unaware of it. For days the sky did not unroll its grey pall of cotton wool. The ship pitched with the same unvarying motion, till their faces took on the pallor of disappointment, though what they were hoping for no one could say. Their curses went little beyond their everyday ingenuity. The ship laboured, and work was done. Every man was different. Those who had no hobby considered that there was enough to do, and barely sufficient time in which to do it.

Nevertheless, the days went at a different rate for those who had a pastime. Tom had noticed that time had no meaning to a man fighting boredom and madness, but that as soon as he took up an occupation apart from his duty, having followed a sudden life-saving instinct, time slowed, and every spare minute spent with his absorbing hobby became an hour, a day, a week, a month of salvation. While it lasted he was a new man, and those who before kept as much out of his way as possible on the narrow spaces of a ship, would nod, smile, or pass an occasional remark. He had become safe. His obsession had rendered him harmless, hemmed him in by bars stronger than steel.

He was a believer who had no thought of making others take up the same occupation. He had no wish to convert anyone to his all-devouring view of a tiny part of the world. In fact total mayhem might have ensued, making an
amok
appear as a friendly gavotte, if someone had shown competing interest. But there had never been such a case, for which Tom as first officer could only be thankful, and the
nouveau
-hobbyist was a peaceful man, a menace to no one while he carved, played, scooped, sorted, painted, fluked or fiddled. All was well because it was only the beginning.

From stalking the decks unable to sit still, Sedgemoor filled in a few more numbers of different colours on a canvas which, when finished, would become a passable reproduction of the ‘Mona Lisa' fit to hang in anyone's furnished room. Or he arranged his collection of exotic Taiwan bottle-tops on a tray with a sufficiently high rim to prevent them slewing over the floor from the motion of the boat.

The Sparks on one ship rigged up his own amateur radio kit and, when not duty-bound and listening out on 500 kilocycles, tap-chatted to other hams as far off as Chile and Australia, Israel and Japan, thus adding to his wall of colourful QSL cards. Another seaman collected matchboxes and called himself a phillumenist. Someone gathered complete sets of coins from even the smallest of countries, and fixed them into the natty pockets of a large album, while others did the same with cigar bands or stamps, or paper money when their pay ran to it.

An electrician packed his leisure time by adding together all the numbers of the complete London telephone directory, so that he could work out the average digits for the millions of subscribers. He did this even before the days of electronic calculators. After finishing his eight-year task he gave a slip of paper to everyone on board with the mystical telephone number inscribed as if it contained the directions for finding the buried loot of Treasure Island.

Every merchant seaman has come across such people. To an outsider there might seem to be no spare time available, but to a sailor even half an hour can be onerous when the black dog is, as they say, sitting pretty on your left shoulder. Tom had only thought of these varied occupations, a spectrum running through his mind in idle hours, but he had seen others, to their pleasure and their cost, take them up.

A carpenter on one leaky tramp analysed all names on his home sheet of the one-inch ordnance survey map, counting the numbers of farms, villages, towns and rivers that began with any particular letter of the alphabet. He worked out how many names there were to a square mile, added up trigonometrical points and arrived at the average height, calculated the total length of roads, streets, lanes and watercourses. During the whole voyage he hadn't a minute to spare. In his dedicated fashion he knew that sheet of map better than anyone else in the world – an accomplishment which made him a proud man while his passion lasted.

There was a deckhand who learned navigation, and when the time coincided with his off-duty period he shot the sun at midday or took star sights at dawn and dusk so as to work out his own position of the ship – as if, while he believed God Almighty, he was not so sure about the captain. He had his deckwatch and secondhand sextant, and all paraphernalia necessary for his conclusions. When the captain asked why he didn't sit for his third mate's ticket, the man remarked that navigation was his
hobby
, implying that to be deprived of it would leave him with no further interest in life.

The search for skill and perfection was satisfyingly endless, but a hiatus was sooner or later reached. The attraction of the hobby vanished from one watch to the next. Disillusionment was sudden, final, impossible to explain. Emptiness returned and was more devastating than before. Work and duty were not enough, and with vacuity of purpose came danger. Matchboxes were crushed underfoot, bottle-tops slung into the litter bin, and stamps torn. Paper money stuffed into pockets for spending in bar or brothel would hardly deaden the pain of the hobby's absence. The coins thrown overboard looked like the tail-end of the Milky Way disappearing into a Black Hole.

The captain of one ship devised an intricate game of naval tactics. His rule book took a hundred pages of typescript, and there was an accompanying packet of charts twice as thick. The captain considered his game suitable for commercial reproduction, saying that at the time of retirement, when he had collated every amendment, he would take it to a firm that was certain to be interested. The only thing, he said, with not a glint of humour in his grey eyes, was to finish before someone stole it from his cabin.

Tom, then second mate, did not want to remind him that similar toys were already on the market, but supposed he already knew. The captain mentioned his game on the bridge one night, and Tom asked how many points one would score for landing a shell on the flight deck of an aircraft-carrier as opposed, for example, to sinking it. Or if half a squadron of Seafires were put out of action, would more points be gained than if the aircraft were old Swordfish biplanes that had plopped into the drink?

The captain, pleased at this seemingly serious response, invited him to play a game. Tom found the book of rules complicated and contradictory, but bluffed his way through a few rounds. The captain, however, paused in the course of slaughterous engagements to alter rules which did not seem to work, and in this way Tom lost the Battle of the Coral Sea twice, and the Battle of Midway once, though he came close to preventing the disaster of Pearl Harbor. The captain cast dice, enthusiastically spun funny little tops, and moved his pieces, while Tom played with caution and perhaps, he thought later, too intently.

The game was laid on a table in the chart room, illuminated by a special light, beyond which radius all seemed dark as the ship laboured through the night. Leaning over the table, the captain placed one of his tokens off the Falkland Islands. He stood straight, and stared at the wall. The unlit pipe fell from his teeth, and scattered ash across the Arabian Peninsula. He trembled wildly, then swayed into the darker area. When he screamed and fell, Tom ran to him. The captain's limbs were stiff, but he fought to move them. Pained to see him helpless, Tom attempted to lift him into a chair.

The captain raved when Sedgemoor touched his legs and tried to straighten them. His jaws clamped. Sweat dripped from his face.

The engineer calmed him for a time, but through the rest of the night the captain's demon continued its ravings. Sparkie called the medical service, which radioed back regrets that they had an epileptic on their hands, and sent instructions on how to treat him. Two days later they steamed into Seattle, and the captain was taken ashore, his game neatly parcelled and labelled by Tom, never to be seen by any of them again.

For years he could not pass a toy shop without wondering whether old Captain Robinson had recovered sufficiently to market his weird hobby. He would look among rows of coloured boxed in the hope of seeing that he had. Perhaps the concentration of devising such a complicated and never-ending game had in fact held back the seizure for many years, yet only till such time as would make certain that the first fit would be his last as far as duty at sea was concerned.

Sedgemoor spent weeks blocking in the colours of his ‘Mona Lisa'. He one day looked at his masterpiece (‘A bit too lovingly,' said the cook), finished but for a few last numbers around the enigmatic yet for him utterly discouraging smile, and deciding he could do no more towards bringing it to life beyond the state of a mere painting, masterpiece though it might be, walked on deck with it, stood on the rail, and fell overboard.

A Filipino deck-swabber saw him go, so that he was soon hauled back. The artist-by-numbers explained to the captain, who had nothing less than murder in his eyes, that he had been taking his painting into the air to dry when a gust of wind caught the large canvas and, acting like a sail, carried him away.

8

The map of the world made from match heads by the third mate was, when complete, the marvel of the ship. Even the captain asked to see it. No one thought to remark on so inflammable a work being kept in one of the cabins. Some must have known that the match heads were lethal, but did not realize the possibility of fire should it rest too long against hot pipes.