Jonathan Raban - Foreign Land - A Novel

“I’m afraid I’ve always been too much of an airman to like the sea very much. Didn’t even like flying over it. I get mal de mer very easily. Tried all the pills. None of them seems to work. I always manage to end up with my head stuck over the lee side …”

“Yes,” George said, “it’s flying that does that to me.”

“Same with Cynthia. She hates the air. I suppose it’s not really given to most of us to be at home in more than one element. I’m air; Cynthia’s sea. Ironic really, when you think about it.”

George said: “I was in the Navy for a bit — and since then I’ve always had to do with ships.”

“Betty Castle said something about that, yes. You know her, of course. She’s been an absolute brick to us, you know. Heart of gold.”

“Yes,” George said, and thought, poor sod.

“She’s been awfully good with Cynthia …” The wing commander looked across at George, fishing for some sort of knowing response.

“Has she—?”

“Oh, marvellous. Marvellous. Cynthia’s in so much better shape than she was. Without Betty, I can’t think what we’d have done. She’s been a pillar to both of us.” He carried his teacup carefully to his mouth. It wobbled badly, and tea splashed the travelling rug in which the wing commander had been wrapped.

“I’m going to have to watch my step, you know,” he said. “When I do sell the boat. It was bought for Cynthia, really. Only I turned out to be such a ruddy awful sailor.”

“Perhaps you shouldn’t sell it,” George said.

“No choice. Look at me … And then there’s the simple matter of the L.s.d. involved: it’s rotten for Cynthia, all this — she’s not used to having to count pennies.”

“I don’t want to make things more difficult for you.”

“Frankly, old boy, you’ll be taking a millstone from round our necks. I sometimes think that if only I’d had a bit more bottle in me, I should have scuttled the thing for the insurance money long ago …” The good side of Dunnett’s face contracted into a small, unhappy smile. “I knew a chap who did that once. Got clean away with it. Nobody said a word.”

“We had quite a bit of it where I was in Africa. It was supertankers there, usually. There’s a spot just off Liberia where the continental shelf is only five miles out. You can leave the ship in seven hundred fathoms of water and have a pleasant row ashore. Lots of people do it. It’s a profitable way of spending an afternoon.”

“Yes,” said Dunnett. “But I’d be the charlie who gets caught.”

“Well I suppose most of us think that. Luckily for the world. But it’s astonishing how many of the real charlies don’t get caught.”

“You’d … like to buy the boat—” Dunnett’s voice was anxious, papery.

“What are you asking for her?”

“Oh … I loathe talking about money. I don’t know. Whatever she’s worth. Say … oh, heavens … twenty thousand?”

“I couldn’t possibly. Not at that price.”

“What were you thinking of?” The wing commander’s baby pinkness was draining from his face.

“I did try asking around. Toms said eleven. Someone else said twelve. Rupert Walpole said he thought about ten. That seemed the general range.”

“Could we — perhaps — do you think? — say … eleven?” “Hadn’t you better call in some second opinions for yourself?”

“No, no, no — this is an arrangement between gentlemen—”

The Peerage, the Baronetage, the Knightage and the Landed Gentry crowded in as witnesses to the deal.

“Well, if you’re sure about that, Wing Commander—”

“Oh …” Dunnett said, disclosing his dentures, “do call me Roy.”

George was woken by a slanting beam of watery sunlight. Lying spreadeagled in his parents’ lumpy bed, he felt weightless and hyper-alert, like a cosmonaut on a spacewalk. His first thought was that this must be an attack of the mild, rather enjoyable tropical fever that sometimes visited him as a reminder of his luck in dodging the crazy shakes of malaria. George’s fevers took the form of extended bursts of elation. They lasted for forty-eight hours at most. He sweated a lot. Writing, he found his hands skidding out of control across the page. Simple things struck him as vivid and particular.

He reached for the plastic bottle of Evian water on the bedside table and took a long swig from it. He touched his forehead. It was dry and cool. So it wasn’t fever. George blinked, stretched, wriggled his toes; content in himself for the first time in many weeks. It had been a hell of a long time since he’d last felt his spirits rise with the sun.

In the narrow gap between the flowered curtains, he could see the mouth of the estuary — the colour of bronze, as smooth as treacle. The depression, which had come swirling in from Iceland, had turned north and headed up to the Baltic, leaving Cornwall rinsed and shining. Much the same sort of thing seemed to have happened to George’s depression. It was, to his amazement, gone.

Well? And wasn’t it a liberating notion — as exciting in its way as a perfectly planned burglary, or one of those insurance rackets that tantalized old Dunnett? Buying the boat would be an exchange … a transfusion. Good blood for bad. Calliope for Figuera . Just being able to phrase the name to himself was new. Pleased and surprised, George toasted himself in Evian water.

Figuera .

It was a name attached to a locked room on the attic floor of George’s head. He always did his best to avoid passing it. Occasionally, on an incautious and forgetful ramble, he came face to face with the room, and averted his eyes from the door. Sometimes the room’s contents appeared to him, in disguise, in bad dreams.

How extraordinary to be able to think it this morning. Figuera. Figuera . Just like that.

The curfew had begun, and George had hurried home through streets empty except for the Portuguese soldiers in their armoured cars. When he reached his apartment, the phone was ringing. Its querulous, scolding note made it sound as if it had been pealing unanswered for a very long time.

“George?”

The line was terrible.

“Is that … Teddy?”

“Sure is, baby.”

“Teddy! You old bastard — how are you? Where are you? Still in Angola?”

“George …”

“Oh, sorry.”

“I’m fine. I’m in a bar.”

George thought he could hear the whooping laughter of the drinkers through the crackle.

“Listen, George … We may get cut off … One question. You know that Pan-African shipping convention in Lagos next month?”

“Yes. I’m going there.”

“You are? That’s great, George. Great—”

“Will you be there?”

“Me? No, I’m not going. But you’re sure you can make it?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Fantastic. That’s all I wanted to know.”

“Shall I … see anyone there that I know?”

“Yeah,” Teddy laughed. “A lot of goddam shipping bores. Anyway, what’s happening there?”

“Nothing much. The odd demo. The curfew’s getting irksome.”

“Tough shit.”

“Teddy?” But the connection had been broken. There was nothing on the line except a lot of bronchial rattles and wheezes.

He flew to Lagos with a small splinter of anxiety lodged somewhere in his mind. At the convention, he loitered for a while in the emptying hall at the end of the first plenary session. Each time he went back to his hotel he asked if there were any messages for him. Boyce of Mombasa wanted a drink; Ashworth of Freetown proposed lunch. No word from Teddy or his friends. The convention dragged. George ached to be back at work.