Sailors on the Inward Sea (12 page)

“He deserved it,” Conrad told me all those years later as we sat on the
Nellie.
“I understood what drove him to put his hand on the telegraph lever and send the ship away, that it was more likely than not that he believed the
Valkerie
had torpedoed Edward's ship, and it
made no difference. It made no difference that he couldn't help himself or that anyone in the room, under the same circumstances, would also have been sorely tempted to let those Germans drown. I include myself, Malone. As I told you, had I been in Fox-Bourne's shoes I'm almost certain that I would have gone at least as far as to take hold of the lever, all my hatred, all my need for revenge concentrated in my hand, in the feel of the cold steel, the anticipation of the chimes ringing. If there had been only one or two men in the water . . . What would have stopped me and the others was the numbers. All those men in exchange for my son did not add up.”

He shook his head back and forth and looked down at his hands. Then he leaned forward, as if he wanted to make sure I missed nothing he was about to say. The officers were conferring in whispers, Austen half covering his mouth with his hand while Conrad and the others waited in acute discomfort for whatever the panjandrums would say. He gazed at the
Brigadier,
then shifted sideways in his chair, the length of the room coming in view. Throw out the leather furniture, add a few dozen turbaned, dark-skinned men, punkahs moving humid air, and it could have been the Eastern port where Jim had listened to another board inquiring into the circumstances of another collision at sea, one that could well have been even more catastrophic than what happened with the
Valkerie,
the magistrate excoriating Jim, pronouncing judgment on him before the poor man opened his mouth, doing so in the name of the craft, canceling his certificate because they had to in order to maintain the way they thought about themselves and their profession. He was musing on that terrible scene, comparing the situation with Fox-Bourne's, which was close enough so you couldn't fit a piece of paper between it and Jim's, when Admiral Worthy announced that he and his colleagues would consider the charges in private. As they rose and went out the door, Conrad was convinced that they were off to measure a
rope. He could practically see it, he said, down to the tiny filaments standing up along it like hairs on a dog's back.

I didn't see the rope quite so vividly, but the scaffolding surrounding the
Brigadier
suddenly took on a distinct resemblance to that of a gallows. “By God,” I thought, “Fox-Bourne deserves to swing.” How could anyone deny it? Then I remembered the root cause, Edward's death, the echo of it in Whelan's death, the German captain shooting as if he were taking target practice, and the picture turned hazy around the edges. I'd like to know how you see it, Ford. I'd like nothing better right now than for you to clear your throat and say, “It seems to me . . .” This fraught moment is, after all, not so different from situations you have dealt with in your books.

OUTSIDE, CHAMBERS,
Higgins, and Scorsby gathered round a bench where the helmsman was sitting while Fox-Bourne crossed the grassy area in front of them, walking briskly toward a path that ran between two buildings, where he disappeared. The men were shaken and so was Conrad, who wanted to be alone and decided to wander down to the docks. The new plate still hung from the crane's cable. Several men were gingerly guiding it into place while another was giving hand signals to the crane operator, the plate going lower an inch or so at a time until its holes were exactly opposite the bolts protruding from the
Brigadier'
s hull. There was a pause in the work, then another signal and the plate made a hollow sound as it slid into place. While it was still echoing, in the hull two workmen spun huge nuts onto the bolt ends.

All that remained to do was weld the joints. With a quick jerk of his head, a welder brought his mask down and a moment later his torch flared to life, sending out a blue-white flame that thinned as he adjusted the oxygen, the stiletto shape reflected in the square of dark
glass. Conrad averted his eyes, imagining the steel melting into small circular knobs that would be ground flat and smoothed before the painters went to work. Within days no one would ever know the
Brigadier
had suffered a grievous wound. The injury sustained by the navy and its tradition would be smoothed over in the same way, Fox-Bourne going off to the fate decreed by the board, the officers and helmsman returning to duty. He would go home, the sun would shine on the sea, the outward signs of the tragedy gone except in memory, which could neither be welded nor ground smooth nor repainted. In memory the fog would remain, the yellow cylinder, Whelan pitching forward, the Germans in the water, the sound of their voices.

With these thoughts Conrad returned and found the others where he had left them. Fox-Bourne was standing off some distance, looking drawn and worn. They waited half an hour before the door swung open and Worthy's aide emerged, beckoning to them. They went over, expecting to be conducted inside. Instead, the aide said that the board would reconvene in the morning at nine o'clock sharp.

“We all smelled something,” Conrad told me. “We didn't know what it was, but none of us liked it.”

THERE WAS AN
unbearable dinner that night in the mess. They were pariahs, the center of attention for every officer regardless of rank, for the steward and his assistants, even the servers, everyone in the room conscious of what they had been doing on the far side of the base and unconcerned, so far as Conrad could tell, with whatever facts may have come their way. Their sympathy lay with Fox-Bourne, who had had the good sense to stay away. There was little conversation and that was conducted in subdued voices, the sound
of cutlery clicking against plates steady as a dripping faucet. Conrad felt sorry for his companions. Retaliation, shunning, all the tribal manifestations of anger over betraying one of the clan was suddenly real. He did the only thing he could think of, bringing up the various reasons for the board's delay. The board of inquiry might be reluctant to pass judgment on one of their own. They might want Fox-Bourne to stew in his own juices. They might have gone aground over some issue and could not make up their minds about the degree of his guilt or the severity of his punishment. All the while he thought of Fox-Bourne lying in bed, staring into the darkness at his ruined career figured in an image of the
Brigadier
's mangled bow, the Germans black as seals, the yellow cylinder, the fog, wondering what the man felt in the way of regret, remorse, shame, aware that if he suffered from any of those emotions he had separated them from what he felt in his heart of hearts as Edward's father and champion.

As they walked out of the mess, the other officers watched them silently, the clicks of their knifes and forks muted, their footsteps ringing, echoing; Chambers, Higgins, and Scorsby pale, chagrined, frightened by the consequences of their testimony. Conrad admired them all the more and he was angry enough so that after the four of them were outside and went their separate ways he thought seriously of returning to the mess and speaking from the doorway, saying that he had seen everything, that Fox-Bourne was guilty as sin, that he had disgraced them, every one of them, disgraced what they stood for, that those junior officers were only doing their duty and in the process risking their careers. The only reason he refrained was that he knew every word he spoke would have made matters worse.

He could not sleep. He felt uncomfortable in his skin, as if his nerves were exposed, and so he turned on the light and rummaged through his Gladstone bag for the books he had brought along, Turgenev's
A Hunter's Notes
and Crane's
Red Badge.
He had begun
rereading “Bezhin Meadow” on the train and finished it, wishing again that he knew Russian so he could enjoy the flavor of Turgenev's style undiluted. He then leafed through Stephen's book, looking for the passage where Henry Fleming turned tail under the red sun. He was drawn to it by the remembered gravity of the language that limned the young soldier's disgrace and he also remembered, as he read, his own words about Jim, seeing the power of that emotion as more subtle than it appeared on the surface because it harbored within itself, like a seed in a pod, both destruction and confession, and that by allowing oneself to feel disgrace, as Henry Fleming did and Jim could not, the emotion was like a prelude to redemption. He sat there under the light of the reading lamp a long time thinking about how elegantly, how truly Stephen allowed his young hero to see himself, thinking at the same time about the scene that would unfold in the morning at Lowestoft, the officers delivering their verdict while Fox-Bourne sat unmoving, staring straight ahead, wondering if the man had the strength to see himself as the board did or whether, like Jim, he would discount the verdict and wander down the years believing that he had been misunderstood.

At that point he regarded me with half-closed eyes and asked if I had an opinion as to how Fox-Bourne would respond. Breaking into the story like that, fracturing its plane, surprised me. My thoughts were flowing along with his, indistinguishable from them, really, and that swerve into the present irritated me. Anyway, I said that as he had mentioned nothing so far that remotely suggested the man had much in the way of conscience, I thought it pretty clear that he would resist.

“Yes, I can see why you say that. I wasn't so sure,” he said, adding, rather oddly I thought, “I'm still not.”

T
HE DAY AFTER
the inquiry, Conrad woke at first light, agitated and unrested. He burrowed under the covers, drifting in and out of sleep for an hour until anxiety got the best of him and he got up, dressed, headed down to the mess. Gulls circled the Union Jack that fluttered on an offshore breeze. The rhododendrons growing against a low retaining wall seemed out of place. He was worried that the officers in the mess would be as boorish as they were at dinner and it was a great relief to find the hall almost empty, the half dozen or so men inside paying no attention to him. He hungrily wolfed down eggs and two large slices of brown bread smeared with strawberry jam, enough food to fortify him for a long walk along the perimeter of the base on a path that conveniently came out on the far side and led him down to the building a few minutes before nine o'clock. Chambers, Scorsby, and their solicitor were there, standing by the door when Higgins and the helmsman arrived. A few minutes later Fox-Bourne came along the walk, stopping a short distance away, where he waited with his back turned until Worthy's aide-decamp opened the doors and ushered them inside.

The admirals, already seated at the head table, were framed by the network of scaffolding visible behind them. Conrad glanced at Fox-Bourne, wishing that a man could be as easily repaired as a ship, the damaged parts cut out and replaced with new ones. The captain sat straight, his face rigid, eyes fixed on the admirals, who were paging through stacks of papers. Wilson leaned in Worthy's direction, whispering. The admiral nodded and looked up, saying that the
board would now reconvene. Fox-Bourne's solicitor lay a hand on his arm and immediately the captain rose and stood at attention.

“Captain Fox-Bourne,” said Worthy after clearing his throat, “the grievous loss of life even in wartime is a matter of the utmost gravity. It has called for a thorough review in which the board have made every effort to be fair. After due consideration, we find that you operated within the bounds of your authority and therefore conclude that there was neither error nor culpability. For reasons of state, this case falls under the Official Secrets Act. As such, you are all enjoined from discussing these issues with anyone, including your families. Doing so is a crime punishable by the severest sanctions of the law. The hearing stands adjourned.”

Fox-Bourne blinked as he had at the Germans' voices, his face crimson, a vein beating in his left temple. He had been prepared for the worst, for a guilty verdict, and the blood rising in his cheeks was in response to the end of his career. At that moment he was still disgraced. The rest of them were pale, including the solicitors. It was like being in a theater when a play ends and the audience is still so caught up in the action that they remain silent even as the curtain comes down, in this case a thick, magisterially designed red-and-blue curtain bearing the Crown's coat of arms erasing as it descended inch by bloody inch the collision, Whelan's death, the water pouring into the gaping hole in the
Valkerie,
the forward gun of the minesweeper exploding, the U-boat rising up like a thing in agony and slipping below the surface, the men in the water, the
Brigadier
steaming away, the facts Worthy cherished, erasing history, the blot on Fox-Bourne's record. No applause, of course, when they came back to themselves, no hoots or hisses or derisive whistles, only the turgid movement of people in shock. Fox-Bourne's solicitor clamped his hand on the captain's shoulder, squeezed, stood up. So did the solicitor representing the junior officers and the helmsman, nodding
to Fox-Bourne's man as if acknowledging his skill, though what had happened had nothing to do with advocacy. Conrad had a vision of a man in an office on the upper floors of a government building hanging up a phone and going over to the window, looking out on the lights of London. It was he or whomever he represented who was responsible for the fall of the curtain, his words to Worthy that brought it down and negated the idea of a fixed standard of conduct to which every man in the service had pledged himself.