The Black Tide

My fingers where I had held him were a sticky mess. I reached for the blanket, wiping my hand on the coarse cloth. I could clean him up, but if I got water anywhere near the wound it would probably bleed again. I started to get to my feet, but the clutch

of his hand on my arm tightened convulsively. ‘Don’t go. I want to talk to you. There are things… Now, while I have the strength… I was going to escape, you see. I was going to Iran, then maybe cross the Afghan frontier and get myself to Russia. But you can’t escape, can you — not from yourself, not from the past.’

His voice was low, the tone urgent. ‘No,’ he said, clutching hold of me tighter still as I made to rise. ‘The Lavandou. You mentioned the Lavandou. My third ship. A boy. I was just a boy and my mother dying, you see. Cancer and overwork and too much worry. She’d had a hard life and there was no money. My father had just died, you know. His lungs. Working in the mines he was when just a boy. The anthracite mines down in the Valleys. He was underground. Years underground. A great chest he had, and muscles, huge muscles. But when we laid him to rest he was quite a puny little chap — not more than six or seven stone.’ His voice had thickened and he spat into the mug, dark gobs of blood.

‘Better not talk,’ I said.

He shook his head urgently, still clutching me. ‘I was saying — about the Lavandou. I was twenty-two years old… and desperate.’ His fingers tightened. ‘D’you know what it is to be desperate? I was an only child. And we’d no relatives, you see. We were alone in the world, nobody to care a bugger what happened to her. Just me. God! I can still see her lying there, the whiteness of her face, the thinness of it, and all drawn with pain.’ His voice faltered as though overcome.

‘They knew, of course. They knew all about how desperate I was. She needs to go into a clinic. Private, you see — not waiting for the National Health. And me at sea, unable to make sure she got proper attention. It’s your duty, they said. And it was, too — my duty. Also, I loved her. So I agreed.’

He stared up at me, his eyes wide, his fingers digging into my arm. ‘What would you have done?’ His breath was coming in quick gasps. ‘Tell me — just tell me. What would you have done, man?’

I shook my head, not wanting to listen, thinking of Karen as he said, ‘The ship was insured, wasn’t she? And nobody got hurt, did they?’ His eyes had dimmed, his strength fading. I loosened his fingers and they gripped my hand, the cold feel of them communicating some deep Celtic emotion. ‘Just that once, and it went wrong, didn’t it — the Lloyd’s people twigged what I’d done, and myself on the run, taking another man’s name. God knows, I’ve paid. I’ve paid and paid. And Mother … I never saw her again. Not after that. She died and I never heard, not for a year. Not for over a year.’ He spat blood again and I could see his eyes looking at me, seeking sympathy.

What do you do — what the hell do you do when a creature like that is dying and seeking sympathy? At any moment he’d start talking about the Petros Jupiter, making excuses, asking my forgiveness, and I didn’t know what I could say to him. I thought he was dying, you see — his eyes grown dim and his voice very faint.

‘We’re wasting fuel,’ I said, unhooking his fingers from my hand. I think he understood that for he didn’t

try and stop me, but as I got to my feet he said something — something about oil. I didn’t get what it was, his voice faint and myself anxious to get out into the open again, relieved at no longer being held by the clutch of his hand.

Clouds had come up and the wind had freshened. Back on the poop I put the engine in gear and headed east into the Straits. We were broadside to the waves, the dhow rolling and corkscrewing, spray wetting the parched timbers of her waist as the breaking seas thumped her high wooden side. I was hungry now, wondering how long the sbamal would blow. No chance of a hot meal until I could get the dhow to steer herself and for that I’d need almost a flat calm. But at least there were dates in the store.

I secured the helm with the tiller ropes and made a dash for it, coming up with a handful just as the bows swung with a jarring explosion of spray into the breaking top of a wave. I got her back on course, chewing at a date. It was dry and fibrous, without much sweetness, and so impregnated with fine sand that it gritted my teeth. They were about the worst dates I had ever eaten, but being a hard chew they helped pass the time and keep me awake.

Towards noon the wind began to slacken. It was dead aft now, for all through the forenoon hours I had been gradually altering course, following the tankers as they turned south through the last part of the Straits. Soon our speed was almost the same as the breeze, so that it was hot and humid, almost airless, the smell of diesel very strong. The clouds were all gone now, eaten