The Wreck Of The Mary Deare

But I shook my head. ‘If he’d accepted, why put out the fire, why beach her on the Minkies?’ I was remembering the state of that cabin when I’d gone in to help him get out the rubber dinghy. ‘No, he must have taken it afterwards — after the man was dead.’

‘But why?’

‘God knows!’ I shrugged my shoulders. There were so many things I didn’t understand. I gathered the notes together and put them back in the envelope. ‘If this were his payment for wrecking the ship,’ I said, ‘he’d have been down here to collect it the instant he landed in England.’

‘Yes, that’s true.’ Mike took the envelope from me, frowning and turning it over in his hand. ‘Odd that he should have failed to collect it. It’s almost as though he’d forgotten all about it.’

I nodded slowly. And then I went up on deck and lit the riding light. It wasn’t really necessary; we were the only boat in the anchorage, and nobody was likely to come in on such a reeking night. But it gave me something to do. I lit a cigarette. It was quite dark now and we lay in a little pool of light, hemmed in by the iridescent curtain of the drizzle. The wind seemed to have died away. The water was very black and still. No ripples slapped against the topsides. The only sound was the faint murmur of wavelets on the beach. I stood there, smoking in the feeble glow of the riding light and wondering what the hell I was going to do with all that money. If I took it to the authorities, I should have to account for my possession of it. Or should I send it anonymously to form the basis of a fund for the dependants of those who had lost their lives? I certainly couldn’t send it to his mother, and I was damned if I was going to return it to the Dellimare Company.

I stayed there, thinking about it, until my cigarette was a sodden butt. I threw it in the water then and went below. Mike was checking over one of the aqualungs. ‘Care for a drink?’ I asked him.

He nodded. ‘Good idea.’

I got out the bottle and the glasses.

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to talk about it. I just sat there with my drink and a cigarette, going over the whole thing in my mind. We sat for a long time in silence.

I don’t know who heard it first, but we were suddenly staring at each other, listening. It came from the bows, a sort of splashing sound. ‘What is it?’ Mike had got to his feet. The splashing ceased and then footsteps sounded on the deck above our heads. They came slowly aft, whilst we stood waiting, frozen into immobility. They reached the hatch. The cover was slid quietly back and bare feet appeared, followed by dripping trouser legs and then the body of a man all sodden with water; he was standing suddenly at the foot of the ladder, blinking in the light, his face pale as death, his black hair plastered to his skull and water streaming from his clothes on to the grating.

‘Good God!’ I breathed. I was too astonished to say anything else. He was shivering a bit and his teeth were chattering, and I stood there, staring at him as though he were a ghost. ‘If somebody would lend me a towel…’ Patch began to strip off his wet clothes.

‘So Higgins was right,’ I said.

‘Higgins?’

‘He said you’d make for Sea Witch.’ And then I added, ‘What have you come here for? I thought you were dead.’ God! I almost wished he were as I realised the impossible position he’d put me in. ‘What the devil made you come here?’

He ignored my outburst. It was as though he hadn’t heard or had shut his mind to it. Mike had found him a towel and he began to dry himself, standing naked, his hard, sinewy body still brown with the heat of Aden. He was shivering and he asked for a cigarette. I gave him one and he lit it and started to dry his hair. ‘If you think we’re going to slip you over to France, you’re wrong,’ I said. ‘I won’t do it.’

He looked at me then, frowning a little. ‘France?’ The muscles of his jaw tightened. ‘It’s the Minkies I want to get to,’ he said. ‘You promised to take me there. You offered me your boat.’ A sudden urgency was in his voice.

I stared at him. Surely to God he didn’t still want to go out to the Minkies? ‘That was last night,’ I said.

‘Last night — tonight… what difference does it make?’ The pitch of his voice had risen. He had stopped towelling himself and suddenly there was doubt in his face. It was as though he had come here in the certainty that when he had arrived everything would be all right, and suddenly he knew it wasn’t.

‘You probably don’t know it,’ I said, trying to soften the blow, ‘but there’s a warrant out for your arrest,’

He showed no surprise. It was as though he had expected it. ‘I was walking for a long time last night,’ he said, ‘trying to make up my mind. In the end I knew I’d never reach the Mary Deare if I went into that Court this morning. So I came here. I walked from Swanage and I’ve been up on the hills half the day, waiting for it to get dark.’

‘Have you seen a paper?’ I asked him.

‘No. Why?’