David Oldman - Dusk at Dawn

The rhythm of the engines and the sway of the boat had finally lulled him to sleep and it was light again when next he opened his eyes. Yet, despite having slept, he felt exhausted.

‘Rise and shine, old chap.’

Pinker was standing in the middle of the cabin. He held a toilet bag in one hand and a towel in the other, his face the colour of his name.

‘Time for breakfast, Filbert. I’ve been up top and taken a turn round the deck. Sun’s shining. Calm as the proverbial mill pond.’

Paul grunted and turned over.

‘No? Suit yourself.’

Paul heard him fussing for another minute or two then the cabin door closed and everything was silent, except for the throbbing of the ship’s engines. He wondered whether he should get up. He wasn’t hungry and was sure he could wait until lunch, although a cup of tea would have been nice. On any decent ship the cabin steward would have brought one. Not that he had ever been on a decent ship. The last time he’d been at sea had been on the hospital ship coming back from France and he hadn’t known much about that. The time before, going out to France, he’d been as sick as the proverbial dog. Nothing to do with rough weather; his nausea had been due to his apprehension at the thought of having to go over the top once at the front. He wasn’t a professional soldier. He had been far from sure he was even going to make a decent amateur. He had volunteered, but only because the rest of the male population had and he had felt conspicuous out of uniform. Initially he had thought himself fortunate to have been commissioned. Volunteering, it turned out, had found favour with some bachelor member of his mother’s family with ‘pull’ for whom the lack of male progeny and having ‘young so-and-so’ at the front, left him without bragging rights among his peers. By then though, the horror of what Paul had let himself in for had begun to dawn on him; stories about the attrition of inexperienced subalterns had filtered back home, and confirmation of it as plain as day in the newspapers’ casualty lists every morning.

If the thought of it happening hadn’t been so shaming he might have hoped to fail the training. Although in that case he supposed they would have taken him into the ranks, and the infantry soldier’s chances of survival weren’t much better than a subalterns. As it was, he had the impression that he had only just squeaked though officer training. The trick of the thing, he had found out belatedly, was not in being able to tell others what to do, but in getting them actually to do it. In the end he had got his commission, not in one of the better regiments, of course, but in a decent-enough line regiment. One, at least, that would provide bragging-rights for his mother’s relative. And it hadn’t taken him long after moving up the line to discover that bragging-rights in London drawing rooms were far preferable to the mud-filled trenches and the pervasive stench of death in France.

With the smell of death in his nostrils — if only imagined — Paul knew he wasn’t going to get any more sleep. He climbed out of the bunk and took the opportunity of Pinker’s absence to retrieve his greatcoat from behind the man’s boxes. He checked the imperial roubles were still in place and decided upon a bath.

It was while soaking and letting his mind run over events that he began to consider once again how the man whom Kell had warned against had known Paul would be on the steamer. Paul hadn’t known himself before going to see Cumming, yet the fellow in the cap was already following him. How had he known who Paul was?

He sat up abruptly, slopping water onto the floor. Where had they got their information from? Not him, obviously. Paul had broached the question to Cumming but had been side-tracked by everything else. Now it was evident to him that the information must have come from Cumming’s office. Or Kell’s. Or from Hart, come to that.

Paul climbed out of the tub and dried himself off. Why hadn’t this occurred to Cumming? Paul would have liked to ask him again only it was too late now, of course. He sat on the side of the tub and tried to think it through.

Did it mean there was a spy in Cumming’s office? Or in Kell’s? Was Hart the spy himself? No, that wouldn’t work. Why would Hart want to betray Paul and have him killed in London when he could get the Bolsheviks to do the job for him in Petrograd? Or even the Germans in Helsingfors? He could even tip him over the side of the boat himself once they were aboard. Although that would require some sort of explanation for Cumming later. And, of course, Hart would have to be on the damned boat to do it.

Paul dismissed that idea and speculated as to whether the man in the cap had been watching Hart while Hart was watching Paul. That would explain how the man in the cap had got onto him, but not why Paul had spotted the man but hadn’t spotted Hart.

It was too confusing and the threads kept slipping out of his grasp as he tried to follow them. He gave up, shaved and dressed and went back to the cabin.

Pinker hadn’t returned and Paul dropped into the chair and lit a cigarette. The man’s attaché case lay on the top bunk and he wondered if he ought to take a quick look through it. It wasn’t something he would have dreamed of doing under other circumstances, but supposed Cumming would expect it of him if the opportunity arose. Paul looked down the corridor to see if the coast was clear, then locked the cabin door.

The case was a cheap leather affair, the corners bumped and the stitching coming undone in places. Pinker hadn’t locked it, which suggested there’d be nothing inside worth looking at but, having taken the thing down, Paul sat it on his knees and opened it, supposing he’d better make sure.

There was some paperwork concerning Pinker’s boot company in Northampton, a book of invoices, a catalogue listing various wares and their prices, and a couple of books. He’d noticed Pinker reading a cheap novel earlier but these weren’t novels. He flipped through the pages. One was a German primer and the other a German-English dictionary. There was also a school exercise book in which Pinker had written some German words. Paul didn’t know any German beyond the few insults the men had learned to shout across no-man’s-land whenever the trenches were close enough and, out of curiosity, looked up the words Pinker was trying to learn in the German dictionary. He had just found the verb, to buy , and saw how Pinker had conjugated it when the door handle began rattling.

Paul hurriedly stuffed the books back in the attaché case and closed the clasps.

‘Just a minute,’ he called.

He pushed the case onto the top bunk, pulled his own shirt out of his trousers and unlocked the door. Pinker looked at him questioningly.

‘I was dressing,’ Paul said, his face flushing.

‘Right-you-are, Filbert,’ said Pinker.

‘I’ve had a bath,’ explained Paul. ‘Good breakfast?’

‘Not bad, not bad. The Russians were there and the ladies. Oh, and the Reverend Pater, breathing fire and brimstone over everything.’

He looked around the cabin, his eyes falling on his attaché case, not quite in the same position as Paul had found it.

‘Well, Paul said quickly, ‘Time for a turn around the deck,’ and hurried out before Pinker had chance to say anything else.

He found the saloon empty except for the steward, Turner, who Paul could see through the open doors of the dining room clearing away after breakfast. The man looked up at Paul and stopped what he was doing.

‘Sorry, Mr Filbert, but the cook’s finished serving breakfast. Is there anything else I can get you?’

‘A pot of tea, if you would,’ Paul said.