The Black Tide

There was an open hatch and my eyes, staring through the cold humidity of the atmosphere, were beginning to water. It had to be a hatch, the entry hatch to one of the fuel tanks, and a void opened up inside me, my breath held and my body trembling. Oh God, no! And nothing I could do, no way I could stop her. I saw her reach it and she paused, crouched down on the deck. ‘She’s pumping,’ Jimmy breathed. ‘She’s pumping up the pressure, building up the flame.’

She stood up, the flame much brighter as she pushed it forward. That’s what I shall never forget, that I could see her pushing that flame towards the hatch and nothing I could do to stop her. I may have screamed. I don’t know. We were too far away, the engine roaring, and nothing I could do, nothing. I could see her, but I couldn’t stop her. The mist closed in and I sat there, my mouth open, dumb and appalled, waiting.

And then, as the silhouette of the tanker faded to

a shadow, it came — a great whoosh of flame burning the fog to a blazing incandescent fire that shot upwards with a terrible roaring sound.

The engine was idling again and we sat there, stunned and in a state of shock as the heat of it hit us through the fog glare. And the noise — it was a roar like a thousand trains going through a tunnel, a great eruption of sound.

I remember Jimmy suddenly yelling, ‘It’s gone. The whole bloody ship’s gone, my God!’ And Andy muttering close behind me, ‘Tha’ll show ‘em, arl raight, poor gal.’ His hand gripped my arm, a touch of sympathy. ‘She’ll be remembered a long taime for this.’

I didn’t move. I didn’t say anything. I was thinking of Karen, wondering if she’d really known what she was doing, what the result would be. But she must have. She must have known. Oil and air, the fumes an explosive mixture. She wasn’t a fool. She’d known. Christ! And I’d let her go. I’d seen her, down there in the cove in the dim evening light, the flame-thrower there, in the bows, and I’d waved to her, and gone off up the path to that useless meeting.

The heat was burning up the fog now. I could see the bright white heart of the fire and the great billowing cloud of smoke rising like a volcanic eruption. I couldn’t see the wreck, only the rocks of the Kettle’s Bottom all red with the glare. Either it was sunk or else the smoke and flames had engulfed it completely. The effect was terrifying, the thunderous roar, the whole appalling conflagration seeming to burst up from the surface of the sea as though fuelled by some

underwater vent. Lightning flashed in the smoke and I sat there, thinking of Karen, trying to imagine … I think I must have been crying, for my eyes became crusted with salt and I could feel my mouth trembling. But the intensity of the heat burned up my tears, so that I stared, dry-eyed, at the pyre she had made for herself.

I should have known. After three years — God! I should have known. And we’d been here almost two — two years living in expectation, waiting for just such a catastrophe.

The heat was scorching my face and there was wind. Jimmy’s hand gripped my arm. ‘Hold it!’ he said urgently. ‘Nothing you can do.’ I realized then that I had been struggling to my feet. ‘Nothing at all.’ His face was close to mine. ‘Not now. Just sit there …’

Just sit, do nothing. The tanker blazing and Karen’s body — her lovely, soft body burned to nothing. Had it been quick? An explosion like that, such a holocaust of flame — she wouldn’t have known? Surely to God it wouldn’t have hurt? I tried to imagine myself there beside her when it happened, but it was no use — my mind couldn’t grasp what it would have been like, what the impact of it would have been on flesh and bone. The nerves … it would have been her nerves that took the full shock of it, reacting like a seismograph, shrieking information to the brain in that split second of exploding flames.

My head was turned, still facing the lurid heat-glow. But it was over the stern now. Andy had swung the inflatable away from it. The wind was growing,

whipping the surface of the water to spray, and it was cold — cold air being sucked in by the rising heat of the flames.