Medusa

On the wall by the desk there was a telephone communications system, also a microphone and loudspeaker, and on the desk itself there was a naval manual of some sort, a Folio Society edition of Fitzroy’s Voyage of HMS Beagle, a paperback copy of one of Patrick O’Brian’s sea stories, also a framed photograph of Soo sunbathing on a rock. It looked like a picture I had taken myself, at Cala d’Alcaufar when we had first come to Menorca. It was a shock to have this visual evidence of how much my wife now meant to this man living a monastic existence on one of Her Majesty’s ships.

‘What would you care to drink, sir?’

I turned with a start to find a round-faced young man in dark blue, almost black, Navy trousers, and white shirt gazing at me curiously from the doorway. I ordered a gin and tonic and moved back to the porthole. There was movement now, a steady stream of sailors, all in civvies, looking clean and smart with their hair well brushed, moving down the gangway on to the wharf. I counted twenty-seven of them as they walked briskly across the wharf, separating into little groups as they disappeared from view round the corner of a storage shed. A moment later Gareth Lloyd Jones came in. ‘Nobody offered you a drink?’

‘Yes, it’s coming,’ I said.

Now that I had a chance to examine him more closely I thought he looked tired and edgy, as though his new command was getting him down.

The steward came in with two large gins on ice and a bottle of tonic. ‘Fifty-fifty, plenty of tonic?’ Gareth gave me a quick grin, poured the tonic, then took a long pull at his own drink before subsiding on to the couch. ‘Well, what brings you here? That’s your catamaran over by the dry dock, is it?’ He must have caught sight of Soo’s photograph then, for he suddenly bounced up, went over to the desk, and under the pretext of looking at some papers, turned the picture face down.

Briefly I explained what had happened, finally asking him whether there was any way he could find out what the attitude of the authorities in Menorca was to me now. ‘Have you anyone there you can contact by radio?’

He hesitated. ‘Yes, but …’ He got to his feet and went back to the desk, lifted the mike off its rest and press-buttoned a number. ‘Captain. Is the Yeoman of Signals there? Ask him to have a word with me.’ He put the mike back on its rest. ‘Funny ship, this,’ he said. ‘It’s an antique really, but after being mothballed for several years and threatened with the knacker’s yard twice, their lordships suddenly hauled it back into service, gave it a quick facelift, and then fitted it out with the latest in communications systems so that to that extent we must be the envy of the Fleet. We also have sonar equipment that’s on its last legs and an Ops Room that belongs to the Ark and is on the blink …’ There was a tap at the door and he said, ‘Come in, Yeo.’ He turned to his desk, reached for a message pad and began to write as a thin man with a dark pointed beard pushed aside the curtain. When he had finished, he said, ‘Have that sent and make it immediate. And they’re to stand by for a reply. This is Mr Steele, incidentally. Petty Officer Gordon, my Yeoman of Signals.’

The beard and I smiled at each other, and as he left Gareth said, ‘It may be a little time before we get a reply to that. Meanwhile, perhaps you’d join me for my evening meal.’ And when I demurred, he said, ‘No, of course not — no trouble at all. I’ll be glad of your company anyway. Occasionally I mess in the wardroom, and I have messed with the Senior Rates once, but mostly I feed alone. It’s the custom, you know. So as I say, I’ll be glad of your company.’ He called to the steward to bring us another drink. ‘I never drink at sea, of course — ’ He spoke as though he had been in command for years — ‘but now that we’re tied up alongside …’ He gave a little shrug, as though the fact of being tied up to a quay absolved him of some of the responsibility of command.

But as time passed I began to realise that his position weighed heavily on him, more heavily than it should, even for a man newly appointed to the command of a ship. It was as though he had something on his mind, and the only clue he gave as to what it might be was when he suddenly said, apropos of nothing, ‘You know, it’s a strange thing, here I am flying the White Ensign, but tucked away against this filthy little quay, as though the Maltese didn’t want to recognise the flag that’s flown here for so many years. I’m out on a limb. Nobody wants to know us. Officially, that is. We’re sort of pariahs. I’ve been here four days and not a day has passed but the authorities have dropped hints it’s time we left. We have in fact flashed up the boilers so that we are ready to sail at short notice if we have to.’