Mr Liversage recognized her at once. ‘Chucked out again,’ he shouted. ‘Bit of a lark, eh?’
He squatted down with the group and Harriet asked where he had been all winter. He told her:
‘Cooped up indoors. Had a nasty turn; bronchitis, y’know.’ He had been staying with friends at Kifissia, an elderly English couple who had looked after him well. ‘Bully of them to take an old codger in. Lucky old codger, that’s me. They’d a lovely home.’ He described how his hostess had waked him early the previous morning, saying: ‘Come on, Victor. We’ve got to go. The Germans are nearly here.’ ‘The poor girl was very brave: had to leave everything; made no complaints. “Fortune of war, Victor,” she said. So we all came on the Major’s boat.
Very kind of the Major, very kind indeed.’ Becoming aware of Phipps standing above him, Mr Liversage said: ‘See this dog! Best dog in the world.’
‘Oh, is it?’ Phipps bent slightly towards the old man but his eyes were dodging about in search of better entertainment.
‘Collected thousands of pounds, this dog.’
‘Oh, really! Who’s the money for? Yourself?’
‘Myself!’ Mr Liversage got to his feet. ‘My dog collects for hospitals,’ he said.
He was deeply offended. Guy and the women attempted to assuage him but he would not be assuaged. He lifted his dog and went. Before anyone had time to reprove him, Phipps, too, was off, in the other direction.
An hour or so later the ships slowed and stopped. Word went round that they were being circled by an enemy submarine and the
Nox
was preparing to drop depth charges. As this was happening, Ben Phipps returned with Plugget in tow. He was in an agitated state and the news of the submarine was as nothing compared with what he had to tell.
‘I’ve found a locked cabin,’ he said. ‘When I asked Lush for the key, he got into a tizzy. He refused to hand over. I said we’d a right to know what’s inside. I told him if he didn’t open up, I’d report the Major’s behaviour to the Cairo Embassy and demand an inquiry. That made him puff his pipe, I can tell you. I’m collecting witnesses. Come on, Guy, now, get to your feet.’
Guy stretched himself but stayed where he was. ‘I bet there’s nothing inside but luggage.’
‘I bet you’re wrong. Come along.’
Guy smiled, shook his head and said to Harriet: ‘You go.’
Bored now and ready for distraction, she rose and followed Phipps, who gathered more witnesses as he went.
When they reached the main corridor, Phipps strode past the Major’s cabin and shook the next door. Finding it still locked, he gave it a masterful kick, shouting: ‘Open up.’
From inside the Major’s cabin, Archie Callard’s voice rose in anguish. ‘This is too tedious! Do let little Phipps “open up”.’
The Major answered: ‘I don’t care what he does. All I want is to get off this damned ship.’
Toby, snuffling with defeat, came out and unlocked the door. The interior was dark. Ben strode in, plucked aside the black-out curtains and revealed a store-house of tinned foods.
‘Just as I thought.’ he said. He swung on Toby. ‘The rest of us have eaten nothing for two days. There are children on board and pregnant women. This stuff will be distributed: a tin for everyone on the ship.’
Toby ran back to the Major’s cabin. His voice high with obsequious horror, he cried: ‘Major, Major, they’re taking the stores.’
‘God save us,’ said Phipps. ‘Listen to old Lush sucking up to the head girl!’
Harriet returned to the boat-deck with a tin of bully beef. The tins distributed, Ben Phipps came round in a comic coda, sharing out the Major’s toilet rolls.
‘Here you are, ladies,’ he said as he gave three squares of paper to each. ‘One up, one down and a polisher.’
‘What about tomorrow?’ Miss Jay asked.
‘Tomorrow may never come,’ he cheerfully replied.
The sun was low. With her head against the rail, watching the lustrous swell of the sea that held in its depths the hues of emeralds and amethysts, Harriet thought of Charles left behind with the retreating army, of David taken by the enemy, of Sasha become a stranger, of Clarence lost in Salonika, of Alan who would share the fate of the Greeks, and of Yakimov in his grave.
Not one of their friends remained except Ben Phipps; ‘the vainest and the emptiest’, she thought.
It seemed to her there would always be a Phipps, one Phipps or another Phipps, to entice Guy from her into the realms of folly, but Ben Phipps had almost had his day. Guy’s infatuation was waning; and, when he had seen through Ben’s last conceit, Ben would go elsewhere for attention.
If Guy had for her the virtue of permanence, she might have the same virtue for him. To have one thing permanent
in life as they knew it was as much as they could expect.
Crete was still visible, shadowy in the last of the twilight, a land without lights. That night the race began. The ship’s old engines pummelled into speed, her timbers cracked and rattled, and the passengers, clinging to anything that gave handhold, lay awake and listened. At daybreak the uproar slackened: the danger was past.
Their first thought was for the companion ships. They went up on deck to see the
Nox
and the tanker moving quietly on either side. The three old ships had survived the night and their journey was almost over.
The passengers had awakened in Egyptian waters and were struck by the whiteness of the light. It was too white. It lay like a white dust over everything. Disturbed by its strangeness, Harriet felt their lives now would be strange and difficult.
Someone shouted that land was in sight. She put her hand into Guy’s hand and he pressed her fingers to reassure her.
She said: ‘We must go and see.’ Leaving Greece, they had left like exiles. They had crossed the Mediterranean and now, on the other side, they knew they were refugees. Still, they had life – a depleted fortune, but a fortune. They were together and would remain together, and that was the only certainty left to them.
They moved forward to look at the new land, reached thankfully if unwillingly. They saw, flat and white on the southern horizon, the coast of Africa.
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Copyright © The Estate of Olivia Manning 1987
The right of Olivia Manning to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental
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First published in hardback in one volume in the United Kingdom in 1987 by William Heinemann
This edition first published in 1990 by Mandarin Paperbacks, reprinted 6 times
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