Medusa

That day I also began to think about our landfall. If we went straight into Grand Harbour, then it was unlikely I’d get ashore without being observed. The alternative, which was to slip into one of the smaller bolt holes like Marsaxlokk in the south of the island, or even drop off at the smaller island of Gozo, involved a risk that Carp could be in real trouble with the authorities if I were picked up by the police for having no papers and entering Malta illegally. In any case, when it came to leaving the island, I would have to do it secretly.

I didn’t discuss the matter with Carp. It was something I had to make up my own mind about and in the end I decided to brazen it out and tell the authorities I had inadvertently lost my passport overboard, a very easy thing to do at night if one was stupid enough to leave it in one’s anorak.

By late afternoon a heat haze was developing and we took in the clothes and bedding we had hung out to air. At six Luis relieved Carp at the helm and for the first time in three days the two of us were able to relax over an evening drink before putting the stew back on the stove. Two questions had clarified in my mind during the night watches, both concerning Gareth Lloyd Jones. First and foremost was the exact relationship between him and Evans, but all Carp said was, ‘If he’s bringing his ship into Mahon, then you’ll be able to ask’ im yourself.’

‘How long were the two boys together on that houseboat?’ I asked.

‘Not more’n three weeks, a month or so. If it’d been longer reck’n they’d’ve bin in real trouble, they was getting that wild. And Tim Evans accusing that Moira of all sorts of unnatural practices, accusing her publicly, right in front of everybody in the Ferryboat.’ He knocked back the rest of his whisky and poured himself another, staring down at his glass, lost in his recollections.

‘What do you mean — unnatural practices?’ I was intrigued by his extraordinary choice of words.

‘Well, can’t say I know exactly wot the women were clacking about, but the fact is that the boy Gareth was just about the age for it and he was there on the boat with Moira an’ nobody else for — oh, I forget now, but Tim Evans was away quite a while. Filming was wot Moira said. But I heard later he was so desperate for money he shipped as cook on a deep-sea trawler sailing out of Yarmouth for that Russian place, Novy Zembla.’

‘And he accused her of taking the boy into her bed — is that what you’re saying?’

‘Well, I was in the pub there, wasn’t I? Heard ‘im say it myself. Shoutin’ at ‘er, he was.’

‘So what was the boy’s position? Why was it unnatural?’

Carp shrugged. ‘There was rumours, you see.’

I waited, and when he didn’t say anything further, I asked him what sort of rumours.

‘That they was half-brothers. That’s wot some people said.’ He gave a little shrug. ‘Place like the Ferry, tongues wag, partic’larly over people as strange as Tim and Moira.’

‘Which of them was supposed to be the common parent?’ I asked.

‘Oh, the bloke of course. Moira was much too fly to get caught more than once. Least that’s my reck’ning. But that boy, he had hair as red as hers, an’ freckles, too. He was her kid, no doubt o’that. An’ older than Gareth. A year at least. The local paper gave their ages as thirteen and fourteen.’ And he went on to say that as he remembered it Gareth was the son of a couple named Lloyd Jones who ran a newsagent’s somewhere in the East End of London. Seems it happened when Tim Evans was working at a municipal theatre in the Mile End Road. It was then, at the theatre, that he met up with Moira. She was barmaid there, so rumour had it.

‘You mean Tim Evans was having it off with both women at the same time?’

‘Oh, I don’t know about that. Story was that this Lloyd Jones fellow had to go into hospital for an operation and his wife was left running the newsagent’s on her own. By then Tim Evans was out of a job, so she got him into the shop to help her. That’s how he paid for ‘is lodgings.’

‘By giving her a son?’

He grinned. ‘All I said was he helped her in the shop. As far as we was concerned it was the red-haired lad as was illegit.’

Luis called down to us that he had just picked up the loom of a light almost dead over the bows. After about a quarter of an hour, when the white beam of it finally lifted above the horizon, we were able to identify it positively as the lighthouse on the highest point of the island of Gozo, which is 595 feet above sea level and has a range of twenty-four miles.

With no vessel in sight, I stopped both engines and we lay to, so that for the first time in three days we could have our drinks and our evening meal together in the saloon. By then I had finally made up my mind to go straight in at first light and clear health, customs and immigration in the normal way. Grand Harbour was no more than forty miles away, five hours’ motoring at an economical eight knots, which meant three-hour watches for each of us, starting with Luis at 21.00.