Hammond Innes: The Strange Land

‘I have to go there. It’s important. I have to go to Kasbah Foum.’ He spoke in a whisper, his voice urgent. ‘Wade told me that the Caid’s son …” He stopped there and his eyes closed again.

That mention of Wade brought me back to the problems of the moment. ‘What happened to him?’ I demanded. ‘What happened to Wade?’

But he didn’t answer. His eyes remained closed. It was then I began to get uneasy. The police would have be informed that he was Kavan. And then there would be an investigation. It might take some days … Where’s Wade?’ I asked him again. And when he still didn’t answer, I took hold of him and shook him. ‘What happened to Wade?’ I was certain he wasn’t unconscious, and yet… ‘You’ll have to explain to the police,’ I told him.

‘The police?’ His eyes flicked open again and he stared up at me. There was something near to panic in his face.

‘They’re coming here tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow.’ He said it as though it were some distant thing like a mountain peak that had to be faced and overcome.

‘It was Wade’s boat,’ I said. ‘You couldn’t have left England without him. He was the skipper. What happened? You must tell me what happened.’

‘Wade’s dead.’ He said it in a flat, toneless voice. There was a sort of hopelessness in the way he said it.

So Wade was dead. Somehow I wasn’t surprised or even shocked. Maybe I was too tired and my senses were dulled. All I knew was that if this was Kavan, then Wade had to be dead. And then I remembered how he’d said he was alone on the boat, that he’d come single-handed from England and an awful thought came into my mind. ‘What happened?’ I asked. ‘For God’s sake tell me what happened.’

He stared at me, his eyes clouded as though he were looking back through time to a scene that was indelibly imprinted on his mind. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know how it happened. He just seemed to jump over the guardrail into the sea.’

There was a pause and then he lifted his head and stared up at me and it all came out of him in a rush. ‘It was off Cape St Vincent. It had been blowing. The seas were terrible; great big seas, but not breaking then. It was night and I remember the St Vincent light was winking at us on the port quarter. There had been a bad storm, but the wind had dropped and it was a clear night. The sea was big and confused and there was a lot of movement. And we were tired. I was just coming on watch to relieve him. We were both of us in the cockpit. Then the jib sheet broke. The sail was flapping about and I had hold of the helm. It was difficult to hold the boat. She was yawing wildly and Wade jumped out of the cockpit to get the sail down. He was tired, that was the trouble. We were both of us tired. He jumped out of the cockpit straight into the sea. That was the way it seemed. He just jumped straight over the guardrail.’

He pushed his hand through his hair and glanced up at me. ‘You believe me, don’t you?’ His voice was agitated. ‘There was nothing I could do. The boat sunk away into a trough and then he was in the water. I saw him reach up to catch hold of the side and a wave came and he disappeared. I threw the lifebelt to him. I think he got hold of it. I don’t know. It was dark. The moon had set. It took me a long time to go about single-handed and I didn’t see him again, though I sailed round and round that area till dawn and for a long time after.’

He lay back, exhausted. ‘That’s all,’ he said. ‘That’s how it happened. There was nothing I could do…’ His voice trailed away. His eyes closed and he drifted into unconsciousness again, or maybe it was sleep. His face was relaxed, his breathing easier and more regular.

Youssef came back then with four wine bottles filled with hot water. I got some underclothes from my suitcase, wrapped them round the bottles and slipped them into the bed. Then we got Kavan stripped and I washed his body with hot water, rubbing hard with a towel to restore the circulation. His back and buttocks were covered with salt water sores, little nodules of suppuration that bled when I rubbed them. Patches of white, scabrous skin flaked away and his feet and hands were soft and wrinkled with long immersion.

‘Is going to die?’ Youssef asked.

‘Of course not.’ I spoke sharply, conscious of the Arab’s fascination at the white European body lying naked and hurt and helpless. We got him on to the bed and I piled the blankets on top of him and then I sent Youssef for a doctor I had known, a Frenchman who had lived just across the Boulevard Pasteur.

Then at last I was free to slip out of my own damp clothes. I put on a dressing-gown and lit a cigarette. I would have liked a bath, but the hotel was inexpensive and Spanish and its occupants were expected to use the public baths or go without. I sat on the bed, thinking of the girl and their meeting on the beach. Of course, they had recognised each other. That was why he had collapsed. It was the shock of recognising her. He had said he was Wade and then she had turned away and disappeared. There was no longer any doubt in my mind. This man lying on my bed really was Jan Kavan. But why had he said he was Wade? That was the thing I couldn’t understand. And he’d been scared of the police. Why?

I dragged myself to my feet and went over to the chair where my clothes lay. Both his letters were in my wallet — his original application and his note saying that he would be sailing with Wade on Gay Juliet.

Youssef returned as I was getting out my wallet. The French doctor had moved. Nobody seemed to know where he now lived. I looked at Kavan lying there on the farther side of the big double bed. His eyes were closed and he was breathing peacefully. It was sleep he needed more than a doctor. I let it go at that and paid Youssef off with two hundred peseta notes. Then I switched on the bedside lamp and checked through the letters.

It was the one in which he had applied for the post of doctor to the Mission that chiefly interested me. I knew it all, of course, but I was hoping that perhaps there was something I had missed, some little point that would now prove significant. I ran through it quickly…

I will be quite frank. I am 38 years old and I have not looked at a medical book since I obtained my degree. Nor have I at any time practised as a doctor. I studied at Prague, Berlin and Paris. My father was a specialist in diseases of the heart, and it was for him I passed my examinations. Already I was primarily interested in physics. All my life since then has been devoted to scientific research.

Normally I would not think of applying for a position as doctor, but I gather from your advertisement that you are in desperate need of one, that you can pay very little and that your Mission is in a remote area amongst backward people. I am a man of some brilliance. I do not think I should let you down or prove inadequate for the task. I am a Czech refugee and for personal reasons I wish to get out of England. I have the need to lose myself in work quite remote …

I folded the letter up and put it back in my wallet. He was a Czech refugee. He had been a scientist. He had personal reasons for wanting to leave England.

There was nothing there I had missed.

He had cabled acceptance of my offer. The final letter had merely announced that the French had given him a visa to work as a doctor in Morocco and that he would be sailing with Wade in the fifteen-ton ketch, Gay Juliet, leaving Falmouth on 24 November, and arriving Tangier by 14 December, all being well. He hadn’t mentioned his wife, or even the fact that he was married. He hadn’t explained his reasons for wanting such remote and out-of-the-way employment and he hadn’t haggled over the ridiculously small salary which was all I had been able to offer him.