Алистер Маклин - When Eight Bells Toll

‘So soon? So soon?’ He sounded genuinely disappointed. ‘But of course, if you’re worried–’ He pressed a button, not the one for the steward, and the saloon door opened. The man who entered was a small weatherbeaten character with two gold stripes on his sleeves. Captain Black, the Shangri-la’s captain. He’d accompanied Skouras when we’d been briefly shown around the Shangri-la after arriving aboard, a tour that had included an inspection of the smashed radio transmitter. No question about it, their radio was well and truly out of action.

‘Ah, Captain Black. Have the tender brought alongside at once, will you. Mr Petersen and Mr Hunslett are anxious to get back to the Firecrest as soon as possible.’

‘Yes, sir. I’m afraid there’ll be a certain delay, Sir Anthony.’

‘Delay?’ Old Skouras could put a frown in his voice without putting one on his face.

‘The old trouble, I’m afraid,’ Captain Black said apologetically.

‘Those bloody carburettors,’ Skouras swore. ‘You were right, Captain Black, you were right. Last tender I’ll ever have with petrol engines fitted. Let me know as soon as she’s all right. And detail one of the hands to keep an eye on the Firecrest to see that she doesn’t lose position. Mr Petersen’s afraid she’ll drag.’

‘Don’t worry, sir.’ I didn’t know whether Black was speaking to Skouras or myself. ‘She’ll be all right.’

He left. Skouras spent some time in extolling diesel engines and cursing petrol ones, pressed some more whisky on Hunslett and myself and ignored my protests, which were based less on any dislike of whisky in general or Skouras in particular than on the fact that I didn’t consider it very good preparation for the night that lay ahead of me. Just before nine o’clock he pressed a button by his arm rest and the doors of a cabinet automatically opened to reveal a 23-inch TV set.

Uncle Arthur hadn’t let me down. The newscaster gave quite a dramatic account of the last message received from the T.S.D.Y. Moray Rose , reported not under command and making water fast somewhere to the south of the Island of Skye. A full-scale air and sea search, starting at dawn the next day, was promised.

Skouras switched the set off. ‘The sea’s crowded with damn’ fools who should never be allowed outside a canal basin. What’s the latest on the weather? Anyone know?’

‘There was a Hebrides Force 8 warning on the 1758 shipping forecast,’ Charlotte Skouras said quietly. ‘South-west, they said.’

‘Since when did you start listening to forecasts?’ Skouras demanded. ‘Or to the radio at all? But of course, my dear, I’d forgotten. Not so much to occupy your time these days, have you? Force 8 and south-west, eh? And the yacht would be coming down from the Kyle of Lochalsh, straight into it. They must be mad. And they have a radio – they sent a message. That makes them stark staring lunatics. Whether they didn’t listen to the forecast or whether they listened and still set out, they must have been lunatics. Get them everywhere.’

‘Some of those lunatics may be dying, drowning now. Or already drowned,’ Charlotte Skouras said. The shadows under the brown eyes seemed bigger and darker than ever, but there was still life in those brown eyes.

For perhaps five seconds Skouras, face set, stared at her and I felt that if I snapped my fingers there would be a loud tinkling or crashing sound, the atmosphere was as brittle as that. Then he turned away with a laugh and said to me: ‘The little woman, eh, Petersen? The little mother – only she has no children. Tell me, Petersen, are you married?’

I smiled at him while debating the wisdom of throwing my whisky glass in his face or clobbering him with something heavy, then decided against it. Apart from the fact that it would only make matters worse, I didn’t fancy the swim back to the Firecrest. So I smiled and smiled, feeling the knife under the cloak, and said: ‘Afraid not, Sir Arthur.’

‘Afraid not? Afraid not?’ He laughed his hearty good-fellowship laugh, the kind I can’t stand, and went on cryptically: ‘You’re not so young to be sufficiently naive to talk that way, come now, are you, Mr Petersen?’

‘Thirty-eight and never had a chance,’ I said cheerfully. ‘The old story, Sir Anthony. The ones I’d have wouldn’t have me. And vice versa.’ Which wasn’t quite true. The driver of a Bentley with, the doctors had estimated, certainly not less than a bottle of whisky inside him, had ended my marriage before it was two months old – and also accounted for the savagely scarred left side of my face. It was then that Uncle Arthur had prised me from my marine salvage business and since then no girl with any sense would ever have contemplated marrying me if she’d known what my job was. What made it even more difficult was the fact that I couldn’t tell her in the first place. And the scars didn’t help.

‘You don’t look a fool to me,’ Skouras smiled. ‘If I may say so without offence.’ That was rich, old Skouras worrying about giving offence. The zip-fastener of a mouth softened into what, in view of his next words, I correctly interpreted in advance as being a nostalgic smile. ‘I’m joking, of course. It’s not all that bad. A man must have his fun. Charlotte?’

‘Yes?’ The brown eyes wary, watchful.

‘There’s something I want from our stateroom. Would you–?’

‘The stewardess. Couldn’t she–?’

‘This is personal, my dear. And, as Mr Hunslett has pointed out, at least by inference, you’re a good deal younger than I am.’ He smiled at Hunslett to show that no offence was intended. ‘The picture on my dressing-table.’

‘What!’ She suddenly sat forward in her armchair, hands reaching for the fronts of the arm rests as if about to pull herself to her feet. Something touched a switch inside Skouras and the smiling eyes went bleak and hard and cold, changing their direction of gaze fractionally. It lasted only a moment because his wife had caught it even before I did, because she sat forward abruptly, smoothing down the short sleeves of her dress over sun–tanned arms. Quick and smooth, but not quite quick enough. For a period of not more than two seconds the sleeves had ridden nearly all the way up to her shoulders – and nearly four inches below those shoulders each arm had been encircled by a ring of bluish-red bruises. A continuous ring. Not the kind of bruises that are made by blows or finger pressure. The kind that are made by a rope.

Skouras was smiling again, pressing the bell to summon the steward. Charlotte Skouras rose without a further word and hurried quickly from the room. I could have wondered if I’d only imagined this momentary tableau I’d seen, but I knew damned well I hadn’t. I was paid not to have an imagination of that kind.

She was back inside a moment, a picture frame maybe six by eight in her hand. She handed it to Skouras and sat down quickly in her own chair. This time she was very careful with the sleeves, without seeming to be.

‘My wife, gentlemen,’ Skouras said. He rose from his armchair and handed round a photograph of a dark-eyed, dark-haired woman with a smiling face that emphasised the high Slavonic cheek-bones. ‘My first wife, Anna. We were married for thirty years. Marriage isn’t all that bad. That’s Anna, gentlemen.’

If I’d a gramme of human decency left in me I should have knocked him down and trampled all over him. For a man to state openly in company that he kept the picture of his former wife by his bedside and then impose upon his present wife the final and utter humiliation and degradation of fetching it was beyond belief. That and the rope-burns on his present wife’s arms made him almost too good for shooting. But I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t do anything about it. The old coot’s heart was in his voice and his eyes. If this was acting, it was the most superb acting I had ever seen, the tear that trickled down from his right eye would have rated an Oscar any year since cinema had begun. And if it wasn’t acting then it was just the picture of a sad and lonely man, no longer young, momentarily oblivious of this world, gazing desolately at the only thing in this world that he loved, that he ever had loved or ever would love, something gone beyond recall. And that was what it was.