Endangered Species (42 page)

It was all too depressing to think about and he was moved by the terrible thought of his own death. He stirred, chilled by the cool wind which at last blew into the stifling room.

How did the boat people feel, mewed in their cage across the bay on Stonecutter's Island? Did they feel beleaguered, an endangered species like himself? Did he, Captain John Mackinnon, sometime a ship-master in the British merchant marine, share the sense of being an outcast with the refugees?

He shivered; not in the material sense, certainly, for he had his uncaring country to return to, a modest house and
the soporific comforts of modernity to pamper his old age. But something of their plight had touched him, marked him with the common bond all humans share.

‘John,' Shelagh stood in the doorway, ‘are you all right?'

‘Yes.' he said, ‘I couldn't settle. I thought you were asleep. Didn't want to disturb you with tossing and turning.'

‘I don't mind.' She was beside him and he felt her hand reach for his and smelt the warmth of her and the familiar fragrance of her hair.

‘Is the baby all right?'

‘Of course.'

‘I was thinking of those two. Alex and Tam.'

‘They seem very happy.'

‘Yes,' he said abstractedly.

‘Romantic even,' Shelagh added.

He grunted agreement. Yes, they were romantic all right; but what was romance other than someone else's life, at a distance, uncomplicated by the minor irritations of daily trivialities?

‘But that wasn't what you were thinking, was it?' Shelagh asked.

‘No . . .' He paused, uncertain how he could explain it, knowing the task was impossible, quite beyond him, the fruit of his own unique experience. Perhaps she too had arrived at similar conclusions by other paths; perhaps there had been another, Akiko-like, in her own life.

‘What
were
you thinking, John?' Shelagh persisted, and her voice was huskily intense, a measure of her desire for intimacy.

It struck him then that he must explain, that he had time to explain if only he could marshal the words. Moreover he was obliged to explain, for no longer had he to discard a train of thought because she was not within a thousand miles of him; no longer had he to try and spell it out in his awkward way in a letter or, worse, abandon it as still-born, forgotten, a small piece of the deprivation suffered by every
sea-estranged couple.

‘I was thinking about hope,' he began at last, willing her with every fibre of his being to comprehend what this simple sentence had cost him, ‘Without hope, we're finished.'

And he took her in his arms, seeing again the girl in the farmhouse and forgetting the daily burden of infirmities he increasingly bore.