Jonathan Raban - Foreign Land - A Novel

“Africa. Yes. That’d explain it.”

“Explain what?” George said, but the man didn’t say. His jaundice tan, George assumed.

He motored on up the river, determined not to let the customs man spoil the morning. He ran close to the coaster berths, where the wind had the smell of sawn pine in it and slowed past the rotting wooden skeleton of a trawler whose owner had abandoned it to the wide saltings. The spring tide was flooding through the banks of grass and reeds; the miles of marshy flatland brimmed with water like the blistered silvering on an old mirror. Ahead, Rye was a floating pyramid of rust-coloured roofs, castle battlements, a church tower with the white and red flag of St George flying from it, a personal salute. George put the wheel hard a-port and fed Calliope into a muddy dyke that trailed round the backs of cottages where toy windmills spun and garden gnomes fished in goldfish ponds.

The customs officer was waiting for him at Strand Quay. He had an alsatian dog with him, and caught George’s ropes, smiling, insufferably. “You don’t mind my bringing the dog, do you, sir? One can’t be too thorough, can one?”

Standing in the cockpit in full view of the town, George felt conspicuously criminalized. He was momentarily flummoxed by the sight of the dog climbing backwards down the ladder with clumsy expertise, its paws slipping on the rungs. He’d never seen a ladder-climbing dog before. The dog gave him a surly sideways nod and strolled into the wheelhouse. The customs man said, “We’ll only take a few minutes of your time, sir.”

Could the Dunnetts ever have had marijuana on the boat? It seemed utterly improbable, but then so did the customs man and his precocious dog. George said, “I suppose you’re only doing your job.”

Who owned the boat before the Dunnetts? He felt already guilty. Something was going to be found — something he was sure that he ought to be able to remember if he could only pierce his paralysing absent-mindedness. He tried to remember the name of his mother’s solicitor. It escaped him completely. What had he done

He followed the man and the dog down into the saloon. Lockers were being opened, drawers pulled out.

“Don’t mind us,” said the customs man. The dog stood mansized, paws up against the bookshelves, going through Conrad, Dickens and Kipling, its tail tucked politely between its hind legs.

“It’s just that I’ve got children, sir.”

“So have I—” George watched as the man removed the batteries from the radio and inspected them closely one by one.

“It sickens me, sir, the tragedies you see caused by drugs nowadays. With kids. Unemployed. Being exploited by some rich bastard feathering his own dirty nest. I don’t suppose you’d know, would you, sir, what it’s like to watch a kid turn into a junky? Watch him lose all sense of reality and just stand by helpless?”

“I am not a rich bastard. I am not feathering a dirty nest.”

“No, sir. I’m sure you’re not, sir. I was only speaking generally. I just happen to believe that any human being who destroys reality for other people deserves to be treated like … scum, sir.”

“I am not what you think I am at all—” George was shaking.

“No, sir. I think we’ll look in the bilges now, if you wouldn’t mind.”

The dog stared reproachfully at George with eyes as big as Angela’s; and it was to the dog that George said, “I’ve never had anything to do with drugs of any kind in my entire life.”

“Very wise of you, sir.”

At the end of the search, the dog relaxed. It stood with its tongue lolling, panting gently, like a pet. George reached out to pat it, and the dog grinned.

“What’s its name?” he said, desperate to establish some bridge between himself and these extraordinary inquisitors.

The man didn’t reply. He sat on the starboard settee berth, frowning at George’s waistband. The dog lifted a paw, which George shook, comforted by the feel of the cool pads on his fingers.

“Down!” the man said. The dog telegraphed an apology to George and stood staring at the roofbeams, its tail wagging.

“It’s immigrants, isn’t it?”

“No!” George said.

“Whatever you say, sir. But from now on, sir, this vessel is going to be watched. And when I say watched, I mean watched . You go into any port in British territorial waters, and you’ll find, I think, sir, that the Customs service is going to be taking quite a bit of interest in your movements. We’re not that stupid, sir. At this particular moment in time, you are the Master of a perfectly clean vessel. But you’ve given me grounds for a reasonable suspicion that this boat has been used for the illegal shipment of goods or persons.”

“There are no grounds at all!”

“I won’t argue that point with you, sir.”

The man left, the dog scrambling ahead of him up the ladder. George returned to the ransacked saloon. He felt broken. All the people he thought of as his companions on the voyage seemed to have jumped ship, leaving in their place a fat man in black serge who sat there, talking, talking, talking in the dead tones of a speak-your-weight machine. The air in the boat tasted poisoned. He burned his throat with whisky, but it didn’t help. He went out to the cockpit where he clung to the mizzen boom, trying to shake the customs man out of his head.

There was a youth on the quay — one of the hands-in-pockets mooning crew who seemed to hang round every pier and jetty on the edge of England gazing wistfully at boats. This one was staring at Calliope .

“Yours?”

“Yes,” George said.

“She’s nice.”

“Come on board if you like.” Anyone would do — any ordinary human voice or human smell to occupy the dreadful space opened by the customs man. The boy nodded wordlessly and stepped down the ladder. The soles of his training shoes were coming apart from the uppers. He poked ignorantly, admiringly, around the wheelhouse. George named things for him, and heard his voice tremble as he spoke.

“How far could you go in this, then?”

“As far as you liked.”

“Further than France?”

“Oh, yes. Much further.”

The boy let out a small, sad, envious whistle. “Fark,” he said.

George showed him down to the saloon. The boy looked round him.

“You read all them books?”

“There are still some I haven’t got round to yet.”

“Fark.”

His name was Rick. He had been a trainee fitter, but had lost his job last August. He lived, he said, on something called Supplementary Benefit. It didn’t seem to have done him much good. Clouts of greasy fair hair hung round his ears and his beaked face looked starved of blood. George fed him with Chivas Regal, which he sipped at as if he had to make the glass eke out over a long day.

George said: “Would you like to make a bit of money — fifty pounds, say — for an afternoon’s work?”

“What doing?”

“Shopping. Just in Rye. I’d give you a list and some money.”

“Fark, yes.”

“Look—” He took a book down from the shelf and hunted through the pages at the back. “It’d save time if I just ticked things on here. You … can read, can you?”

“‘Course.’ He took the book from George and demonstrated. “13 prawn curry with rice, 11 drums parmesan, 1 packet mashed potato, 6 mango chutney, 1 packet vegisalt, 12 Jiffy lemons …”

“Yes — I’m so sorry. Of course you can. It’s just that lots of people can’t … where I come from.”

“Where’s that, then?”

“Africa.”

“Fark.”

George worked on the printed list, putting ticks by it and changing numbers. “I’m going to have to give you rather a lot of money — two or three hundred pounds …”