Medusa

He went below then and shortly afterwards the Navigator advised me to do as he said. His hand was on my arm, steering me to the door. On the stairs outside he suddenly stopped. ‘He needs you, sir. You know the island and the people here, and you’re not a part of the ship. That’s important.’ And he added, speaking quite urgently now, ‘There’s one or two of the officers here trying to dismiss him as a jumped-up little Welshman from the lower deck promoted too quickly and not big enough for the job. They don’t know what the job is, of course, and nor do I, but I can tell you this — he’s carrying a burden hardly anybody on board yet realises, a burden I can only guess at from hints dropped by Phil Woburn, our Communications Officer. I admire him.’ He gave a quick embarrassed grin. ‘So do as he says, will you? He needs you.’

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him to keep the man away from my wife. But instead I nodded and went down to his cabin, wondering again why he had been given this particular command and what the hell the ship was supposed to do here.

I was there on my own for a good half-hour and for most of that time I was standing by the porthole which looked out past Bloody Island to the port and the Naval Base. Once one of the naval patrol boats put out heading for Cala Figuera, but a few minutes after disappearing behind Bloody Island it emerged again and returned to base. Otherwise, there was virtually nothing moving in that section of the harbour and the waterfront was too far away for me to identify the few vehicles that were on the road.

To pass the time I had a look at the books on the shelf above the desk. They were most of them reference books, including the Admiralty Pilot for the Mediterranean Volumes I and II, also, surprisingly, Kemp’s encyclopaedic work, Ships and the Sea, and beside that was Conrad’s The Secret Agent and a rather battered copy of a collection of Kipling’s verse. Opening it at a marker, I found he had underlined a passage from ‘How Fear Came’ — ‘When ye fight with a Wolf of the Pack, ye must fight him alone and afar, Lest others take part in the quarrel, and the Pack be diminished by war.’ And earlier there was a ticket to the Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, marking ‘The English Flag’. ‘And what should they know of England who only England know.’ I felt the wrench of that second line, thinking of spring and blossom, chestnuts bursting. Then Petty Officer Jarvis came in to say he would be serving breakfast as soon as the Captain arrived, meanwhile could he offer me a cup of coffee? By then it was 06.09 and I wondered what Ismail Fuxá had said in his Independence Day message.

Gareth had listened to it on the radio, of course. But when he came in some ten minutes later he couldn’t tell me what the man had said, apart from the fact that it was a declaration of the island’s independence, but he seemed to have got a very vivid impression of Fuxá himself. ‘A little like listening to a re-run of the German Führer speaking at one of the big Nazi rallies in the thirties — very emotional, the voice rising in pitch to the point of screaming, then suddenly falling away so that it seemed to be whispering in one’s ear.’ He slumped down on the settle, passing a hand over his eyes as though to rub out the weariness that showed there. ‘Quite an exercise. Very compelling, almost hypnotic. I think we’re in trouble.’ He said it so softly I could hardly catch the words. ‘They seem to have taken all the key points except the Naval Base, which suggests there were sympathisers among some of the military.’

He had contacted several of our English-speaking friends, but none of them, not even the Renatos, were willing to talk about what was happening ashore. ‘In the absence of any effective opposition they’re not prepared to stick their necks out.’ Jarvis had brought him a tray of coffee and he sat drinking it and staring vacantly at the clock on the wall. ‘It’s up to the politicians now. Everybody’s been informed — Madrid, London, Washington, and Moscow, of course. They’ll have a finger in it somewhere, I suppose. That cruiser we saw in Grand Harbour sailed yesterday evening and a flotilla of Soviet ships has just passed through the Straits of Bonifacio. Elements of the Sixth Fleet, the ships we passed through yesterday evening, have put about and are headed back into the Western Mediterranean at full speed.’ He poured himself some more coffee, drank it quickly and went out. ‘Won’t be long, then we’ll have breakfast.’