“Richard’s as down-to-earth as any man I’ve known,” I said.
“André,” said Jensen, gesturing largely at the waiter, who then cleared the table with his neat unobtrusive skill. “So, no mysteries for you, Richard? But I thought the sea was the last home for romantics and visionaries. No stories for us, Richard? No experiences that left you with the feeling that you thought there were some answers you didn’t want to find in your charts?”
André, neat as a bird, brought on a selection of sweets as Richard considered. Then:
“I’ve had the usual hallucinations,” he said. “I’ve seen all the mythical beings when I’ve been short on food and sleep. The fruit,” he told André. “But it was always hallucinatory. As for anything approaching Eric’s tale, no.”
“But there was something?” prompted Monica Sievel, her voice soothing and confidential.
“I’ve never told anyone before,” Richard said slowly. “I’d not seen a living soul for over a month, and then it was only a little cargo boat. Nothing after that for days. I was right off the main lanes, more or less idling, trying out a new rig for an Australian manufacturer. I’d been for a swim, with a line, of course, and I’ll swear the sea was empty when I went over the side.
“I saw a fishing-boat whilst I was in the water,” he went on. “The boards were bleached white and streaked by drying weeds. The hull was high in the water, as though she was out of ballast. I couldn’t see more than her boards and her single mast—not her people, not her upper works. I remember the pleasure I felt in the end of my loneliness. I pulled myself back to the yacht and began waving as I climbed up the side,”
Richard’s handsome face looked tired. I felt the weight of his loneliness, and the mystery he had kept to himself.
“I could see the remains of a sail—the usual island rig for that part of the world. And the baskets they use for their catch.”
“And?” prompted Jensen.
“The crew.” Richard stabbed with a fruit fork at the guavas on his plate. The waiter deftly removed the wine glasses and brought on two bottles of a German wine. “Dead, of course. The bizarre thing was that they were all in position. One man at the tiller. Another in the bows looking forward as if he could see his landfall. There was one other, and he had his back to the small cabin amidships, for all the world as though he’d been on watch all night and it was his turn to loll back whilst the others sailed the boat. I shouted to them even as I realized that they had been dead for months, for every man was dried and withered by sun and spray. Their faces and limbs were crusted so white they looked like stone men. God knows how they’d died, and so much at their ease.”
I stared at Richard, wishing I could say something that would break the heavy silence.
CHAPTER FOUR
We know—usually long afterwards—that there is a moment when we should have intervened. It passes, and this one passed, quite unrecognized.
After a while, Richard went on:
“I could have followed the boat, wherever it was going. It would have been an easy matter to board her and examine her dead crew.”
“Who says there are no mysteries?” said Fitch, pouring out the sweet, delicious wine for himself, and then for the rest of us.
“You never reported this, did you, Richard?” said Monica Sievel.
“No.”
“And you didn’t board the boat?” asked Jensen.
“No more than I’d open a grave.”
“What a fantastic story,” said Eric Fitch. “What an absolutely incredible story!”
“Neither fantastic nor incredible, Richard,” said Jensen. “Within the bounds of possibility, and entirely believable.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” said Monica Sievel. “But Anne’s getting bored with us—don’t drink the stuff if you don’t want it, dear.”
I swallowed my second glass of the fragrant sweet wine. I was becoming reckless.
“Were you anywhere in the Atlantic when you saw the boat?” I said to Richard, “Not anywhere near New York, darling?”
New York. I wanted them to hear me say it, to know that I had heard what they were talking about. I watched their faces. Jensen, with his white, larded features; Fitch, his bald head shining with sweat; the Sievel woman and her constant smile. There was something about New York, and I had altogether forgotten what it was.
“No, my love,” said Richard. “The New Hebrides belong to another world.”
Richard was still thinking of that remote sea and the salt-streaked hull, and it dismayed me to think that he was so far away from me. I looked around the three faces, the smooth, plastered face of the Sievel woman, with her impenetrable calm and her false smile; at Jensen, sweating and ironical; and at the contemptible Fitch, who was again pressing wine on me. New York, I had said, and not a sign that it meant anything to any of them; there was no response at all. I looked from one face to another, thinking all the while of my cleverness.
Surely they had heard me mention New York? Suddenly I felt cold. I had been reckless, and now, for no reason I could explain to myself, I knew fear.
Before I could begin to think of some way of diverting their attention from my deliberate mention of what I had overheard, Jensen spoke again.
“Richard, forgive me if I ask you this, but have you experienced a similar sense of wonder at any other time in your life?”
Richard gave the question some thought. Finally, he shook his head.
“No,” he said. “I’ve had the kind of half-awake sensations I’ve mentioned, but they can be accounted for in purely physiological terms.” He smiled at me and pressed my hand.
Eric Pitch said into the quietness:
“Have you seen the sea break over the cliffs below, Richard?”
Before he could answer, the Sievel woman went on:
“I wouldn’t like to be caught walking when the tide sweeps in—not nice at all!”
Jensen looked annoyed at the interruption.
“I suppose we sound parochial, Richard—there’s nothing like the kind of conditions you’ve experienced?”
“There aren’t many seas worse than the North Sea,” Richard said. “I know that. A hundred-foot wave hit a rig out in the Brent oilfield a year back. I lost a good friend in that disaster.”
“It’s a strange coast,” said Fitch slowly. “I’ve talked to the locals and they’ll tell you of waves like living things.”
“For God’s sake—” I began, for I hated the way the conversation was now turning.
Eric Fitch handed me my glass before I could continue. His slightly bulbous eyes drilled straight at me.
“You’ve seen the waves break below the cliffs, haven’t you, Anne?” he asked. “Haven’t you?”
“No,” I said. “And I don’t want to.”
“You should,” said Monica Sievel, laughing. “I think there’s nothing more agreeable than being high above the rocks and the cliffs and seeing the dark water swirling below—and all the time one’s safely above it all, and the water and the rocks are there but they can’t harm! Isn’t that the point of it all?”
“And then looking back at the Castle!” Jensen rumbled. “I think nothing can be more reassuring than the sight of the twin towers—you are in the South Tower, aren’t you, Anne?—from the cliffs! Why, it’s so exhilarating I’ve a mind to see it for myself later. Waves like monsters. You know, I can’t help feeling