The Black Tide

I was taking a chance in saying that, but he only grinned at me. ‘Been makin’ enquiries, have yer?’

‘Where’s the ship?’ I asked. I thought he might be drunk enough to tell me. ‘Abu Dhabi, Dubai—’

The grin faded. ‘Yer don’t ask questions, mate. Not if yer wantin’ a job a’t o’ me. Got it?’ He leaned forward, the glassy eyes staring. ‘You’ve no idea, have you — no idea at all what a man like me ‘as ter do ter turn an honest silver thaler.’ There was sweat on his forehead, his eyes glazing, and he was breathing deeply so that I thought for a moment he was going to pass out on me. ‘But this is different.’ He seemed to pull himself together. ‘The men I need — they got ter be …” His voice trailed away and he was silent for a while, staring down at his glass as though thinking something out. Finally he lifted his head, looking straight at me as he said, ‘I got ter be careful, see.’ His eyes held mine for a long moment, then he refilled our glasses. ‘You sold that cottage of yours?’

‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘I’ve told them not to put it on the market till the spring.’

He lifted his glass, swallowing half of it at a gulp as though it were beer. ‘Won’t fetch much, will it?’ He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, smiling. ‘Yer wife dead and yer book in the dustbin, in a bit of a mess, ain’t yer?’ His eyes creased, smiling at me as though somebody in a bit of a mess was what life was all about. ‘Got anything tucked away?’

He said it casually, but I sensed that the question was important. ‘How do you mean?’

‘You got enough to get here …’ He sat there, waiting.

‘Just enough,’ I said. ‘That’s all.’

‘No return ticket?’ I shook my head.

‘Christ, man! You took a chance.’ He nodded. ‘So you’re out o’ bread an’ no way of getting back to the U-kay, no prospect of finding work there anyway?’

I didn’t say anything and he grinned at me. ‘Orl raight, so I still got a berth for a second mate.’ He leaned forward, peering into my face. ‘But wot makes you think you’re the man for the job?’

‘Depends what it is,’ I said. But he wouldn’t tell me that, or who the owners were, not even the name of the ship. It was double rates and an end of voyage bonus, so what was I worrying about? ‘You want the job or don’t you?’

I knew then that I had no alternative. To find Choffel I would have to commit myself. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You got any money at all, apart from what you’ll get from that cottage?’

‘Enough to pay the hotel bill, that’s all.’ I didn’t know whether he was fishing for a bribe or not. ‘No dole money, no redundancy?’ ‘I don’t qualify.’

‘So you got nothing. An’ now yer wife’s gone…’ He thumped the table, gloating at me. ‘You got nothing at all, have you?’ He sat back, smiling and lifting his glass in his big fist. ‘Orl raight, Trevor — yer on. Nantes-Paris, then Paris-Dubai, an’ after that you wait until we’re ready for you, everything laid on — hotel, swimming, booze, girls, anything you want. Just one thing though—’ He reached out a big hand and

gripped my arm. ‘No tricks. An’ remember — it’s ‘cos of me you’re getting the job. Understand?’

I nodded. I hadn’t been in the Gulf all those years not to recognize the glint in his eyes. ‘How much?’ I asked.

‘Voyage money will be paid in advance. You hand me half of it, okay?’ And he added, ‘You’ll still be getting full second mate’s pay. And you keep the bonus.’ The bonus would be five hundred quid, he said — ‘So you don’t ask questions, see.’

And so it was agreed. For half my pay I put myself in his hands, committed to an unknown ship and an unknown destination. ‘I booked your flight, by the way.’ He grinned at me slyly. ‘Did that soon as I heard you’d checked into the hotel.’ He emptied the bottle into our glasses and when we had finished it, he got hold of Varsac and we had a meal together. There was more wine and cognac with the coffee. The talk turned to sex, interminable sordid stories of the Gulf. Varsac had been in Jibuti. He was very funny about the madame of a brothel who changed into a man. And Baldwick became morose. I mentioned the Petros Jupiter again, asking him whether he knew anything about the engineer he’d recruited, but he stared at me with such drunken hostility that I didn’t persist. He knew I had been getting at something, but he was confused and he wasn’t sure what. In the end I went to bed.

My room was close under the eaves. It was cold, |the bed not aired and I couldn’t sleep. The window rattled in the gusts and I kept thinking of that girl, the