Jonathan Raban - Foreign Land - A Novel

Three and a half years on, of course, with every chance of making the Supreme Sacrifice oneself, things looked a bit different. George wasn’t afraid of dying, exactly (the face in the window, framed by a turned-up collar of heavy naval serge, looked not at all unlike that of David Niven in “The Charge of the Light Brigade”); the big question was what the hell one thought one was going to die for . Not “England”. Not “King and Country”. Maybe some chaps really had gone over the top in the First War with thoughts like that in their heads. It might have been possible before Dunkirk, even; perhaps Rowley (who liked poetry and had once declaimed “I have been faithful to thee, Cynara, in my fashion” to George, which was pretty bloody excruciating at the time) could have done it. But it wouldn’t wash in 1943. Suppose you did go down in the Western Approaches, who would you be thinking of as your legs went numb in the water, or you tried to struggle free of your burning uniform? The conchies? The bolshies? People like Mrs Atherton who’d pulled a wangle to keep her son out of the Army? The Altarwomen’s Guild? The Rector’s sermons? Commander Prynne? Judith Pugh? It was like having a five pound note and only being able to buy a packet of Woodbines with it. If you were going to lay down your life, your one and only, you ought to be able to spend it on something that was actually worth having. If the bolshevik hadn’t been sitting opposite, George could very easily have found himself crying at the thought of what a bloody miserable tragedy it would be, to go to sea and die a virgin.

By 2230, he was on the branch line from Macchynleth to Pwllheli, where the railway ran along the shore and the sea itself was suddenly there at his elbow; sleek, black, rippled like moleskin. He loved its mysterious, consoling breadth and emptiness. The sea was only really scarifying when you were inland. When you were on it, it was too absorbing for you to feel afraid of. Far out in the sky, there was the single white flash of a lighthouse. George timed it, counting off the seconds of darkness. A hun dred-and-one, a hun dred-and-two, a hun dred-and-three … Twenty seconds. It was St Tudwal’s Island. Bardsey would be fifteen seconds, and there’d be five quick flashes. Even on a train, you could do some pretty useful navigation. He tried to find the Pole Star, but it was lost in the Welsh hills; so he guessed at where it probably was and used his watchdial to work out a rough bearing of about 296 on St Tudwal’s.

At Portmadoc, Ives joined the train. He’d come from Birkenhead by bus.

“How’s tricks?” George said.

“Shagged out,” Ives said. “And when I say shagged, mate, I mean shagged.”

“Did you have raids?”

“Her mother was away all weekend, wasn’t she? Staying with her aunt. In Southport. Oh, Southport, how I love you, how I love you, my dear old Southport!” Ives sang the words in his faulty baritone. The expression on his face was sickeningly smug. “Know how many frenchies I got through?” He held up the five fingers of one hand and three of the other. “I’m getting them wholesale now.”

George felt rotten. Admittedly Ives was twenty and had been a rating for eighteen months before getting on to the course at Pwllheli; but even so. He stared out of the train window at the wrinkled sea on which the unpatriotic lights of Criccieth were fretting. “Trust my luck,” he said in a drawl as broad as he could manage. “She’d got her monthlies.”

“It happens.” Ives sprawled on his seat, his short legs wide apart, his gas mask resting on his pelvis like a codpiece. “I knew I was all right. Know why? It was neap tides this weekend. She has hers at second springs. You could work out High Water Dover by her.” He took out a pack of cards from his greatcoat pocket and shuffled them. “Pennies up.”

For the rest of the way to Pwllheli, George was nagged by a single thought. Ives — even Ives, with his nasal accent and his fatty hands — had something worth dying for. That night, in the chalet which he shared with Pennington and Shuckburgh, he speculated for two long sleepless hours about his chances of doing it with Judith Pugh. Or Vivienne Beale.

Even in sleep George listened to the boat, feeling its creaks and grumbles as if they were happening somewhere in his own body. He wasn’t sure now if it was night or day, but he registered an uncomfortable series of taps on his tender ribcage. Damn it. One of the fenders must have come untied and a stray dinghy was bruising his paintwork. Muzzy-headed, his throat dry with sleep and old pipe smoke, he stumbled out on to the deck.

But there was no dinghy. The water on the port side of the boat was clear. George blinked at the wounding brightness of the ripples and searched for the log, or broken fishcrate, that had woken him. It seemed to be afternoon.

The log was … but it wasn’t a log, it was a body. Hanging half submerged in the sunny water, its knees and elbows were drawn up in front of it in the foetal position of a slumbering child. It rolled away on a wavelet, and came back. George heard it knock — a hesitant rap on the planks — before it turned slowly in the sea, so like a sleeper, and lay face down, a sodden mohair skirt ballooning round its plump, unnaturally white thighs.

George’s first impulse was to make it a blundering apology. Oh — I say — I’m most dreadfully sorry. It was like opening a lavatory door and finding a woman sitting there at stool. But there was no hasty slamming of the door on this one. The body was knocking again. Rat-a-tat-tat. May I come in?

Feeling stunned and nauseous, George unpacked his new braided mooring rope from the locker in the cockpit, and set out to lassoo the thing. Without success. The rope floated. Each time he tried to snare the body with it, the rope passed clean over the top, grazing the thing’s face. It was a horrible job. The face was so alive with astonishment that for a moment George wondered if it wasn’t a body at all, just a swimmer, bewildered to find herself being fished for like this by a strange man on a boat. But the eyes were very dead, wide open behind an opaque mauve glaze.

He had another go, reaching down over the boat’s side and looping the rope first under the head, then round the stiff crook of an elbow. He made a slip knot and tightened it. The body was far too heavy to pull out of the water. If he tied the rope to the end of the main halyard and wound it up on the winch … but that seemed an indignity too gross to inflict. At least for now. And he wasn’t sure that the bent arm would be stiff enough to stand the strain: he saw the body dropping from the shrouds with an incriminating splash. He looked at his watch. It was 4.50, and the fishermen would be in soon. If he left it here, it would be crushed against his beam when the scallop boats tied up alongside. As gently as he could, he towed it round to Calliope’s stern. Twice, he heard its head bump against the hull. “Oh, Christ, I’m sorry,” he said aloud, and made his awful visitor fast to the rail.

It was only when he was in the phone box at the end of the quay and dialling 999 that George realized that he and the body had been introduced. It was at the Walpoles’ Christmas party, and the body had been knowledgeable about the drought in the Sahel region. The body worked part-time for Oxfam.

“Emergency. Which service do you want?” the operator said.

“Police,” George said. “And ambulance.”

“Which do you want first?”

“Police.”

What was her name? Biddy something? No. It was … like Winny, or Binnie, or …