The Wreck Of The Mary Deare

I remembered then what Patch had said: They’ll cling together… because they’ve got to cover themselves somehow. Who was right — Patch or the crew? My mind went back to that moment when we had grounded, when he had relinquished the wheel from the grip of his hands in the midst of that waste of sea and rock.

‘You must have some idea what really happened.’

I was conscious of Fraser again and was suddenly and for the first time fully aware of the ordeal that Patch now faced. I pulled myself stiffly up out of the chair. ‘I’ve no idea,’ I said. And then, because I sensed in the man a sort of hostility towards Patch, I added quickly, ‘But I’m quite certain he never ordered the crew to take to the boats.’ It was an instinctive rather than a reasoned statement. I told him I was going ashore then to find a hotel, but he wouldn’t hear of it and insisted on my accepting the hospitality of his ship, ringing for the steward and putting a cabin at my disposal.

I saw Patch once more before I took the plane for Guernsey. It was at Paimpol, twenty or thirty miles to the west of St Malo, in a little office down by the bassin. There were fishing vessels there, packed two-and three-deep along the walls — tubby wooden bottoms, all bitumen-black, nudging each other like charladies, with mast-tops nodding, gay with paint and the water of the bassin was poppled with little hissing waves, for it was blowing half a gale again. As the police car that had brought me from St Malo drew up I saw Patch framed in the fly-blown office window; just his face, disembodied and white as a ghost, looking out like a prisoner on to the world of the sea.

‘This way plees, monsieur.’

There was an outer office that served as a waiting-room with benches round the wall and a dozen men were seated there, dumb, apathetic and listless — flotsam washed in by the sea. I knew instinctively that they were all that remained of the Mary Deare’s crew. Their borrowed clothes breathed shipwreck and they huddled close together, like a bunch of frightened, bewildered sheep; some that were clearly English, others that might be any race under the sun. One man, and one man alone, stood out from the motley bunch. He was a great hunk of a brute with a bull’s neck and a bull’s head, all hard bone and folds of flesh. He stood with his legs spread wide, solid as a piece of sculpture on the pedestal of his feet, his huge meaty hands thrust inside his trousers, which were fastened with a broad leather belt that was stained white with a crust of salt and had a big square brass buckle that had turned almost green. He held his hands there as though trying to prevent the great roll of fat, like a rubber tyre, that was his belly escaping entirely from the belt. His clothes were borrowed — a blue shirt that was too small for him and blue trousers that were too short. His thighs and legs tapered away like a bull terrier’s hind quarters so that they looked on the verge of buckling under the weight of that great barrel of a body.

He started forward as though to bar my way. Tiny eyes, hard as flint, stared at me unwinking over heavy pouches of flesh. I half checked, thinking he was going to speak to me, but he didn’t; then the gendarme opened the door to the inner office and I went in.

Patch turned from the window as I entered. I couldn’t see his expression. His head and shoulders were outlined against the window’s square of daylight and all I could see was the people in the road outside and the fishing Boats moving restlessly in the bassin beyond. There were filing cabinets ranged against the walls under faded charts of the harbour, a big, old-fashioned safe in one corner, and, seated at an untidy desk facing the light, was a ferrety little man with twinkling eyes and thinning hair. ‘Monsieur Sands?’ He held out a thin, pale hand. He didn’t rise to greet me and I was conscious of the crutch propped against the wooden arm of his chair. ‘You will excuse me please for the journey you make, but it is necessary.’ He waved me to a seat. ‘Alors, monsieur.’ He was staring at the sheet of foolscap in front of him that was covered with neat, copper-plate writing. ‘You go on board the Mary Deare from your yacht. C’est ca?’

‘Oui, monsieur.’ I nodded.

‘And the name of your yacht, monsieur?’

‘Sea Witch:

He began to write slowly and with meticulous care, frowning slightly and biting softly at his underlip as the steel nib scratched across the surface of the paper. ‘And your name — your full name?’

‘John Henry Sands.’ I spelt it for him.

‘And your address?’

I gave him the name and address of my bank.

‘Eh bien. Now, you boarded the Mary Deare how long after the crew had abandoned the ship?’

‘Ten or eleven hours after.’

‘And Monsieur le Capitaine?’ He glanced at Patch. ‘He was still on the ship, eh?’

I nodded.

The official leaned forward. ‘Alors, monsieur. It is this that I have to ask you. In your opinion, did Monsieur le Capitaine order the crew to abandon ship or did he not?’