Complete Works of Nevil Shute Page 10

  At last she spoke. “What are you doing here, Mr Stenning?” she inquired evenly. There was a note in her voice that stung me up a bit.

  I raised my head and looked her straight in the eyes. “I’m getting water for my cruise,” I said. “Now I’m going to be rude. What are you?”

  I guessed that that might be something of a home-thrust; she looked at me narrowly for a moment, but didn’t speak. I got out my pipe and filled it slowly while I thought things over a bit; by the time I threw the match down on the sand I had made up my mind — more or less.

  “See here, Miss Stevenson,” I said. “I’m going to speak pretty plainly. I’m getting mixed up in a lot of funny business that I don’t understand and that I don’t like. Don’t mistake me. Compton pulled me out of a damned unpleasant crash, and I’m out to help him all I can. I’ve already broken the law for him in every position. If the police got me now they could plant about five sentences on me for various things I’ve done since I shot off on this trip. I don’t care two hoots about those. What I do care about is that there’s a lot going on behind the scenes that you know all about and that Compton knows all about, and that I know damn-all about. I mean Mattani, and Marazan, and all that.”

  She started. “Who told you about Mattani?”

  “You did,” I said. “At Stokenchurch. You were talking about it so loud that evening while I was writing my report that I couldn’t help picking up bits of it. I told you then that I didn’t want to know what you were up to. Well, I’ve changed my mind. I want to know what I’m in for. That is, if I’m to carry on. If you like I’ll give up now and go home. I don’t want to do that; I’d very much rather carry on and see Compton through this thing and out of the country. I mean that. But if I do that, then I’ve got to know what’s going on. You see? You’ll forgive me speaking straight to you about this. It seems to me that you’ve got something fishy going on here, something that’s a thoroughly bad show. Something that’s dangerous. I ran up against it in Exeter. Now if I’m to carry on I want to know what I’m in for.”

  She was evidently puzzled. “In Exeter?” she said.

  I told her about the note that I had found in my bed addressed to Compton. “That’s the sort of thing that shakes a man,” I said. “It put the wind up me properly.” Then I told her how I had been knocking about the Channel till I had run short of water. “I didn’t see how this particular Marazan Sound could possibly have any interest for you or Compton,” I said. “I thought that there must be another one or that I hadn’t heard right. It seems that I was wrong.”

  She nodded. “This is the place,” she said. “You know it well?”

  “Not well,” I said. “I’ve anchored here once or twice.”

  She turned, and looked out over the blue, rippling water to where the Irene was lying quietly at her anchor. “Will you take me on board?” she said.

  I pushed the dinghy down the sand, paddled out with her through the shallows till she floated, and rowed off to the vessel. The saloon was in a terrible state. I had used it as a lumber store during the days that I had been at sea; on the floor of the saloon was all the movable gear from the decks, the buckets, petrol cans, boom crutch, companion, and all the hundred and one oddments that are invariably falling overboard unless they are below. The remains of my breakfast lent a sordid appearance to the scene. I got the bucket and chucked the plates into it, and passed it through into the forecastle. Then I came back to the saloon and cleared a space on one of the settees for her to sit down.

  “You won’t mind if I do the lamps,” I said, and began to swab round one of the sidelights with a pad of waste.

  There was a silence, so far as there is ever silence on a small vessel. A bee had invaded the cabin and was noisily investigating a jam-pot; I suppose he had come from distant Tresco. The vessel swung slowly on her heel with a faint grating and a scrunch from the anchor chain. A warm patch of sunlight slid across the floor and up my leg; away aft the rudder was clucking gently in the pintles. Presently the girl spoke.

  “Denis saw Mattani yesterday,” she said. “I am expecting him in Hugh Town by this evening’s boat.”

  I grunted. “And who may Mattani be?” I inquired.

  She didn’t answer; I could see that she hadn’t got over my arrival in the Scillies yet. That seemed to have shaken her. She was suspicious, though what she suspected me of doing I couldn’t make out.

  “If I tell Denis that you are here,” she said, “will you meet him this evening?”

  I glanced up at her. “Very glad to,” I remarked. “But what if some inquisitive person comes and asks me who I am before this evening?”

  “You mean if the police have followed you?”

  I nodded.

  “I think that would be the best thing that could happen now,” she said wearily “ — for everybody.”

  I nearly dropped the lamp. “I’m damn sure it wouldn’t be the best thing that could happen to me,” I said indignantly. And then I stopped, because I saw that she was serious. I think it was then that I first realized that I was no longer playing a game of hide-and seek that I could take up and throw down when I liked. I hadn’t taken this business seriously up to date; to me it had been merely the excuse for a holiday of a novel and diverting kind. Now I was beginning to see it differently. The first thing I saw was that though I might not have been taking it very seriously, other people had; in this girl’s face I could see that she was most miserably anxious. Whatever it was that she was afraid of, she had the wind right up. I was most awfully sorry for her.

  I filled the little tank with paraffin from a can and set it in the lamp. “See here, Miss Stevenson,” I said, “I know you think I’m playing some funny business on you. Well, I’m not. I don’t know what it is that you think I’m up to, but whatever it is, I’m not doing it. That’s the first thing. The second thing is this. I’d better see Compton this evening. I suppose your trouble is that you can’t tell me about Mattani till you’ve seen him. Is that it?”

  “That’s it,” she said.

  “Well, don’t let that worry you,” I remarked. “I’ll see him this evening and we’ll have a chat about things.”

  She hesitated. “I think you ought to know, Mr Stenning,” she said, “that he carries a pistol — as a precautionary measure.”

  I laughed.

  “Well,” I said. “I hope he’s got a licence for it.”

  On deck one of the halliards was flapping merrily against the mast; through the planking of the hull I could hear the water tinkling along the topsides. I finished cleaning the second lamp and deposited them both in the forecastle.

  “Cheer up, Miss Stevenson,” I said. “Really, I’m only a sheep in wolf’s clothing, though I don’t expect you to believe me.”

  “I believe you now,” she said. “At first I thought you must be one of Mattani’s people.”

  I laughed. “Well, don’t you go taking any chances,” I said. “You say Compton arrives by the afternoon boat. I’ll be on the look-out for him on the beach there any time after six o’clock. Then he can tell me what’s happening if he wants to, or else — well, anyhow, he’ll let me know what he wants to do. Will that be all right?”

  “That will do, I think,” she said. “He’ll have to come here, anyway.”

  “You might tell him to keep his finger off the trigger,” I observed. “Nasty dangerous things — I never did hold with them. Though it would be almost worth while being punctured to find out what it is that you find so interesting about this place.”

  She moved out of the saloon and went up on deck into the little cockpit. I followed her. On deck she stood for a moment looking over towards Marazan.

  “It’s quite shallow over there, isn’t it?” she said.

  “I think so,” I replied. “A small boat can get about in it all right.”

  “Not a steamer?”

  “It depends how big she was.”

  “Seven hundred tons.”

  “Good Lord, no. I supp
ose a seven-tonner could get in at high tide, but she couldn’t lie there when the tide fell. It’s no earthly use as a harbour, if that’s what you mean.”

  “No,” she said wearily. “That’s what the boatman told me. I didn’t believe him till I saw it. But we know that it has a use. Mattani uses it, because it’s so quiet, I suppose, so desolate.”

  I wrinkled my brows a bit over this. “What does he use it for?” I said.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. But Denis may have found out by this time.”

  I turned and looked out over the pool, mellow and rippling in the morning light. “He could have a pretty good bathe in it, anyway,” I remarked, “if he’s that way inclined. Fishing, too — I bet those rocks outside are full of conger. Birds ... study of wild life.” I knocked out my pipe upon the rail and turned to face her. “I don’t think we shall do much good discussing it till I’ve had a talk with your cousin. But I’d like you to know that whatever he has to say, you can count me in on this.”

  She turned away. “I don’t see why we should drag you into our — our family dissensions,” she muttered.

  I got the dinghy up and rowed her ashore to the beach. She walked up over the island towards her boat; I sat in the dinghy rocking gently in the shallows and watched her till she was out of sight. Then I put back to the vessel. She was lying quietly to her anchor; as a precautionary measure I let out a little more chain. After that I furled the mainsail. Then I sat down for a moment in the cockpit, and stared absently down into the saloon. Apparently the urgent necessity for me to lie low was over; I was beset by an uneasy feeling that there was a storm of some sort brewing that was going to burst before the police had time to get upon my track. I’ve never been a man to go about looking for trouble; I’m not like that. This time it seemed to me tolerably clear that I’d gone and got myself mixed up in some unpleasantly violent and illegal business that was intimately connected with my present anchorage. I didn’t like it a bit.

  Joan Stevenson had warned me that Compton was carrying arms. That worried me; half unconsciously I began to cast about for weapons of defence on the Irene. I only succeeded in unearthing a battered and unreliable-looking fire extinguisher. This I rejected.

  It struck me that it would be a good plan if I were to go and have a look at Marazan for myself. There was no reason why I shouldn’t go ashore during the afternoon and walk along the beach; if necessary I could explore the Sound in the dinghy. I thought I should see just as much from the shore, though, as from the dinghy. As it happened, I saw more.

  I went ashore in the afternoon after washing up and left the dinghy on the sand opposite the vessel. The whole of the north side of Pendruan is a sandy beach on either side of the point of rocks that juts out opposite the Crab Pot. I climbed over this point and began to walk along the southern shore of Marazan. I saw nothing in any way out of the ordinary. The place was very desolate; a broad stretch of water, roughly circular, about three-quarters of a mile in diameter, lying between low islands almost destitute of vegetation. The sun was bright, and all over the lagoon I could see the pale green image of bare granite very close beneath the surface, or the glassy calm over a patch of weed. I judged that there was very little to hinder a boat that drew not more than three feet of water; for a larger craft the Sound seemed to me to be impossible.

  I went on to the end of Pendruan and the little strait that separates Pendruan from White Island. I expected to find a heavy sea breaking up against the western side of the islands with the southwesterly wind, but to my surprise the swell was not heavy and it would have been easily possible to row an open boat out from the entrance to the Sound without shipping a drop. I learned later that the set of the tide round the islands renders the entrance relatively calm in the worst weathers, a point that would be more appreciated by the islanders if it were possible to anchor a boat in Marazan.

  I came to the conclusion that there was nothing to be seen at the entrance and started to walk back along the beach, half with an idea to take the dinghy and row about the Sound. I was only a hundred yards or so from the entrance when I saw something on the beach that I took to be a dead bird. I don’t know what impulse of curiosity it was that made me go and examine it — idleness, I suppose. I turned it over with my foot, and then I stooped to examine it more closely. It wasn’t a dead bird at all. It was a mass of oily mutton cloth, such as mechanics use. It was heavy to lift; as I turned it over out fell a pair of engineer’s pliers.

  I spent a long time examining these. The cloth was covered with blown sand upon the outside, but the fabric was good and undamaged by weather, delicate though it was. The oil on it was still moist and amber-coloured; I must say that puzzled me no end. I came to the conclusion that the rag could not have been there longer than two, or at the most three, months. It could not, for example, have been there all the winter. The pliers, too, were in quite good condition, a little rusty but by no means seriously so. I was turning these over when it struck me that there was something curious about the sand on which they had been lying. It was above high-water mark and the sand was loose and powdery, but where the rag had lain the sand was heavy and discoloured. I set to work and cleared off the loose sand to the depth of an inch or two over an area of about six feet square. And then it was obvious; indeed, I had already suspected as much. The sand immediately around the spot where I had found the rag had been soaked in oil.

  That was all I found. The place was where the sand sloped gently down into the water. It seemed to me that they must have used the beach at some time for the purpose of repairing a motor-boat. It would be possible, I thought, to haul a small motor-boat out of the water there and slide her above highwater mark — if anyone wanted to carry out repairs in this outlandish spot. I even went so far as to climb up on to the bank above the beach to try to discover traces of any block and tackle with which they might have hauled her from the water.

  Looking back upon that now, I am amazed that I could have been such a fool.

  I walked back to the dinghy and rowed off to the vessel, taking the cloth and the pliers with me. I deposited them in a corner of the engine locker and began to overhaul the gear on deck. During the afternoon I cooked intermittently; that is to say, I put on things to boil and forgot about them while I was on deck. In this way I amassed a considerable quantity of boiled potatoes and a leathery and unappetizing suet pudding. The pudding turned my mind to matrimony. It is at sea, I thought, that a wife is really a necessity — and here I may say at once that I belong to that stern school of yachtsmen who hold that a woman’s place is in the forecastle. I suppose almost any woman can make a suet pudding on dry land. A woman who can make a suet pudding over a Primus stove in the forecastle of a six-tonner on an ocean passage is worth marrying.

  I supped upon bully and suet pudding garnished with treacle, smoked a pipe, washed up the supper things, and saw that the lamps were in order. There was still no sign of Compton. The light was failing fast; it was about half past nine. I made all square below and went up on deck and sat in the cockpit, waiting for something to happen. At about ten o’clock I heard the sound of a motor at the entrance to White Sound, and soon afterwards a small boat came into sight, the same that had brought Joan to Pendruan earlier in the day. There were two men in it, one in a heavy ulster and a soft hat that I knew was Compton.

  I stood up as the boat came alongside and helped to fend her off. He had a small bag at his feet; it seemed that he was coming aboard for the night at least.

  “Cheer-oh,” I said. “I’ve been on the look-out for you since six.”

  “Sorry,” he replied absently. “I got hung up in Hugh Town.”

  He spoke to the man in the boat, who touched his cap, pushed off, started his engine again, and headed away towards the entrance. Compton and I remained standing in the cockpit, and watched the boat as she drew towards the point, leaving a long smooth wash behind her, watched her till she vanished behind the land. Then I turned to him.

  “Had any
dinner?” I inquired.

  I had only seen him at Stokenchurch before. I had thought then, if I had thought about it at all, that I had seen him in unfavourable circumstances, as a man who was a fugitive. One doesn’t expect a man to look his best then. But now, meeting him again only a week later, I was shocked at the change that seemed to have come over him in that short time. I knew that he was about the same age as myself, if anything a little younger, but the man that stood with me in the cockpit was already old. His face was lined and grey. There was no spring about his carriage; he moved with the unsteadiness of age — I think with something of the dignity of age as well. I was suddenly most frightfully sorry for him. Whatever he’d been doing during the week, he’d had a pretty tough time of it.

  He turned forward. “I had dinner in Hugh Town with Joan,” he said. “She told me that I should find you here. I didn’t think about you having to call in for water. You couldn’t have picked a better place.”

  “It’s very desolate,” I said.

  He glanced at me, and nodded. “Very,” he said quietly.

  We went down into the saloon. I had no drink on board to offer him; the best I could do was to put on the Primus for some coffee. When I came back from the forecastle he had taken off his coat.

  He refused a cigarette, but lit a pipe. “Joan tells me,” he said, “that you got a note that was meant for me — at Exeter, was it?”

  I told him about it.

  “What day was that?”

  “Thursday evening — the evening of the day I started.”

  He nodded. “That was before I had seen Roddy,” he said.

  I resented the intrusion of another character. “I expect Miss Stevenson told you my position,” I said. “I don’t know where I am in this matter. There seems to be a lot more in it than I thought. I thought it was just a simple matter of getting you out of the country. Apparently it’s not quite like that. Tell me, what are your plans now? I can put you in France the day after tomorrow if you like.”