The Black Tide

crude, that would mean Europe most likely — down Africa, round the Cape and up almost the full length of the Atlantic. Five weeks at least, presuming the evaporators were in good condition and the boiler didn’t start cutting out, five weeks during which I would be meeting Choffel daily, in the messroom at the evening pour-out, at mealtimes in the saloon.

The thought appalled me, remembering what had happened, thinking of Karen. Even now, with Balkaer and the Cornish cliffs far behind, I could still feel the soft smoothness of her skin, the touch of her as she lay in my arms — and just remembering the feel of her I was aroused. She had always had that ability, to rouse me instantly, by a touch, often just by a look, or the way she laughed. And then, just when we had come to Balkaer and she was doing a lot of heavy carrying, discovering she was pregnant. I could see her face. It was so clear in my mind it seemed framed in the perspex window against the star-bright night, her eyes alight with happiness and that big mouth of hers bubbling with excitement as she came out of the back room the doctor used as a surgery on his weekly visits to Sennen. ‘I’m going to have a baby,’ she’d cried and flung her arms round my neck, right there in front of the doctor’s patients.

And then six months later she’d lost it. The pains had started at dusk, quite suddenly. One moment she was sitting in that junk chair of hers, the next she was writhing on the floor, screaming. It had been a black, windy night, rain driving in off the sea in sheets. The Kerrisons’ telephone line was down and I had had to

run all the way to the Cunnacks’ farm, which was over the hill. God, what a night that had been! So much of it waiting, helpless, first for the doctor, then for the ambulance, with Karen clutching at us, her face screwed up in agony, her hair dank with sweat. And in the dawn, a wild wet dawn, carrying her up the hill to the ambulance.

By then she had miscarried and was quiet, sunk in a coma of exhaustion. She never told me what exactly went wrong, or what they did to her in the hospital in Penzance, only that she would never be able to have another child. It was then that she began to develop that deep emotional feeling for the wildlife around us, the birds in particular, and also for the book I was struggling to write.

I was thinking of her off and on all through that long night, and of Choffel, excitement, love and hatred all mixed up, until at last, exhausted and so utterly drained I could have slept for a week. The engine note changed and we began the long run down the diamond-studded sky to our destination. Soon there was movement in the body of the aircraft, then the lights were turned on full and the defense de fumer sign lit up. Blinds were raised and through the porthand windows the first pale orange glow of dawn showed the Gulf horizon in silhouette, and beyond it, just visible, the pale snow tops of the Iranian mountains. To starboard there was nothing, only the shadowy brown darkness of the desert stretching away in limitless monotony to the great wastes of the Rub al Khali — the Empty Quarter.

It was full daylight by the time we landed, but the sun not yet risen and the air still pleasantly cool as we crossed the tarmac to the terminal building. The Arabs who had looked so incongruous at Charles de Gaulle Airport in their flowing robes, with the black agal of the Bedu encircling their white kayfftah headgear, now blended into the desert sandscape and it was the Europeans in their crumpled suits who looked out of place. Varsac, who had hardly spoken during the flight, became suddenly talkative as we approached the immigration desk, and when he handed over his passport, I noticed his hand was trembling. The immigration officer glanced up from the passport, staring at him curiously. ‘Vous etes francais.’ It was a statement, the dark eyes in the dark face lighting up. He turned to me. ‘Et vous, monsieur?’

‘English,’ I said.

He took my passport and stamped it almost perfunctorily, talking all the time to Varsac in French. He was a Pakistani, proud of speaking French as well as English, and it seemed an age before he let us through with a flash of white teeth and a murmured ‘Have a good time.’

‘What were you worried about?’ I asked.

Varsac shook his head, still nervous, his face longer and sadder-looking than ever. ‘Rien. I am afraid they might have some records, that is all.’ He shrugged. ‘You can nevair be sure, eh?’

‘Records of what?’ I asked him.

He hesitated, then said, ‘It is in the Gulf, an old cargo sheep from Bombay to Khorramshahr. It is

August and we are lying with no engines, the sheep so hot the metal is blistering our hands. No morphia. Nothing.’ There was a long pause. ‘He is broken — crushed in the main drive. An engineer. Finally — I shoot him.’

I stared at him. ‘You mean a man, you killed him?’