Hammond Innes - The Doomed Oasis

I nodded.

‘Well, she believed me. She’s convinced I really will kill him if I ever catch up with him.’

‘And you didn’t mean what you said — is that what you’re trying to tell me?’

He walked back to the fire and stood staring at it for a moment. Then he slumped down in the chair again, his body limp. ‘1 don’t know,’ he murmured. ‘Honest, I don’t know. All I do know is that I have to find him.’

‘And that’s why you came here, to search my office for his address?’

He nodded. ‘I knew you’d have it somewhere in your riles.’

” ‘Well, I haven’t.’ I hesitated. But after all the boy had a right to know where his father was. ‘Will you promise me something? Will you promise me that if you find him, you’ll remember that he’s your father and that blood is something you just can’t rub out with violence.’

He looked at me and was silent a long time. At length he said, ‘I can’t promise anything. I don’t know how I’d act.’ He was being honest at least. ‘But I’ll try to remember what you’ve just said.’ And then on a sudden, urgent note: ‘I’ve got to find him. I’ve just got to find him. Please, please try to understand.’

The need of that kid. … It was the thing that had been lacking for him all his life. It was his mother’s need reflected and enlarged. The sins of the fathers … why in God’s name should a sense of insecurity lead to violence in people and in races? ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I accept that.’ And I passed on to him what Griffiths had told me. ‘But then you know the sort of man your father is. Anyway, there it is, he’s still out there. And if you want to contact him, I imagine a letter to the Gulfoman Oilfields Development Company-’

‘A letter’s no good. I wrote him already — twice. He never answered.’ He looked up at me. This Captain Griffiths, is his ship the Emerald Isle? She sails regularly to the Persian Gulf.’ And when I nodded, he said, That was the ship I tried to stow away on. I was fourteen then, and a year later I tried to sign on. She’s in port now is she?’

‘Yes.’

‘When is she sailing?’

‘Tonight.’

Tonight?’ He looked up at me. suddenly eager like a dog being offered a walk. Tonight. When? What time?’ He had jumped to his feet, all the tiredness falling from him. ‘For Christsake, what time?’

I hesitated. It was no part of a lawyer’s job to get involved in a criminal case. My duty was plain. The sensible thing would be for you to give yourself up to the police.’

He didn’t hear me. His eyes had fastened on the envelope I had left propped up on the mantelpiece. ‘Were you taking this down to the ship tonight?’

I nodded and his hand reached out for the envelope, clutched at it. ‘I’ll deliver it for you.” He held it as though it were a talisman, his eyes bright with the chance it represented. That’s all I need. The excuse to go on board. And they wouldn’t catch me this time, not till we were at sea.’ He glanced at the window, balanced on the balls of his feet, as though about to take off the way he had come. But then I supposed he realized I should only phone the police. ‘Will you let me take it?’ His voice was urgent, his eyes pleading. ‘Once on board the Emerald Isle…. Please, sir.’

That ‘sir’ was a measure of his desperation.

‘Please,’ he said again. ‘It’s the only hope I got.’

He was probably right at that. And if I didn’t let him take it, what other chance would he ever get in life? He’d escaped from Borstal. He’d escaped from the police. With that sort of record he’d be lucky to get away with three years for manslaughter. After that he’d be case-hardened, a criminal for life. And there was the sister, too. A nice girl, that. I sighed. ‘I’m supposed to be a lawyer,’ I reminded him … or maybe I was reminding myself. ‘Not a travel agency for boys who’ve escaped from the police.’

‘But you’ll let me deliver it, won’t you?’

What the hell can you do when faced with youth in all its shining innocence and eagerness? ‘All right,’ I said. ‘You can try it, if you like. But God knows what Griffiths will do.’

‘All I want is the chance to meet up with my father.’

I realized then that his mind had leap-frogged all the obstacles; he was already mentally sailing the coast of Arabia in search of his father. ‘All I’m giving you,’ I warned him, ‘is the excuse to get on board that ship. She sails at nine-thirty. And those documents have got to be delivered into Captain Griffiths’s hands, understand?’

‘I’ll give them to him. I promise.’

‘You know your way about the ship?’

‘I knew every corner of her once. It’ll come back to me as soon as I get on board.’

‘Well, kindly remember that I’m a solicitor. When you’re caught, as you will be eventually, don’t implicate me. Shall we say you walked into my office to get legal advice, saw the envelope I had forgotten and took it on the spur of the moment? Is that understood?’

‘Yes. sir.’

‘I’ll take you down to Bute East Dock now,’ I said. ‘After that you’re on your own.’ I hesitated. It wasn’t much of a chance I was giving him. He’d no clothes other than what he stood up in, no money probably, nothing, not even a passport. But at least I’d have done what I could for him — what I’d have hoped somebody would do for a son of mine if he’d got himself into a mess like this. But then I hadn’t a son; I hadn’t anybody. ‘Better clean the blood off your face,’ I said and showed him where the wash place was. ‘And you’ll need something to hide your torn clothes.’

I left him in the lavatory and went through the office to the cupboard under the stairs. There was an old overcoat that had been there ever since I’d taken over the place, a black hat, too. He tried them on when he’d finished cleaning himself up. The coat wasn’t too bad a fit and with the sweatband padded with strips from an old conveyance the hat was passable. I wondered what my uncle would have said if he knew to what use these sartorial relics of his were being put. And because I wanted him to realize how slender his chances were, I said, ‘If you’re caught before the ship sails, don’t try and bluff it out with Captain Griffiths. Tell him the truth and say you want to give yourself up to the police.’

He nodded, his face bloodless, his pale eyes almost fever bright with the nervous tension that was building up in him. The dark coat and the black hat accentuated his pallor, accentuated, too, his beaky nose and the strong jaw. In the old lawyer’s cast-off clothes he looked much older than his nineteen years.

There was a back way out of the office and I took him out by that. It was still sleeting and there was nobody in the street where I parked my car. We drove in silence down Park Place and across Castle Street, and then we crossed the railway and were in a maze of little streets that edge the docks. I slowed in a dark gap between street lights and told him to climb into the back and lie on the floor with the rug I kept for my dog pulled over him.

It was fortunate that I took this precaution, for the police at the dock entrance had been alerted and there was a constable there who recognized me; a fortnight before he had given evidence in a case I’d defended. I told him my business and he let me through. I hadn’t expected the police to be watching the docks already and my hands were sweating as I drove on across the slippery steel of the railway tracks.

The Emerald Isle was at the far end of the Bute East Dock, close to the lock. She had completed loading and she had steam up, smoke trailing from her single stack. The cranes along the quay were still, their gaunt steel fingers pointed at the night. I stopped in the shadow of one of the sheds. The sleet had turned to snow and it was beginning to lie, so that the dock looked ghostly white in the ship’s lights. ‘Well, there you are,’ I said. That’s the ship.’