The Doomed Oasis (6 page)

“A letter's no good. I wrote him already—twice. He never answered.” He looked up at me. “This Captain Griffiths, is his ship the
Emerald Isle?
She sails regularly to the Persian Gulf.” And when I nodded, he said: “That was the ship I tried to stow away on. I was fourteen then, and a year later I tried to sign on. She's in port now, is she?”

“Yes.”

“When is she sailing?”

“Tonight.”

“Tonight?” He looked up at me, suddenly eager, like a dog being offered a walk. “Tonight. When? What time?” He had jumped to his feet, all the tiredness falling from him. “For Christsake, what time?”

I hesitated. It was no part of a lawyer's job to get involved in a criminal case. My duty was plain. “The sensible thing would be for you to give yourself up to the police.”

He didn't hear me. His eyes had fastened on the envelope I had left propped up on the mantelpiece. “Were you taking this down to the ship tonight?”

I nodded, and his hand reached out for the envelope, clutched at it. “I'll deliver it for you.” He held it as though it were a talisman, his eyes bright with the chance it represented. “That's all I need. The excuse to go on board. And they wouldn't catch me this time, not till we were at sea.” He glanced at the window, balanced on the balls of his feet, as though about to take off the way he had come. But then I suppose he realized I should only phone the police. “Will you let me take it?” His voice was urgent, his eyes pleading. “Once on board the
Emerald Isle
… Please, sir.”

That “sir” was a measure of his desperation.

“Please,” he said again. “It's the only hope I got.”

He was probably right at that. And if I didn't let him take it, what other chance would he ever get in life? He'd escaped from Borstal. He'd escaped from the police. With that sort of record he'd be lucky to get away with three years for manslaughter. After that he'd be case-hardened, a criminal for life. And there was the sister, too. A nice girl, that. I sighed. “I'm supposed to be a lawyer,” I reminded him … or maybe I was reminding myself. “Not a travel agency for boys who've escaped from the police.”

“But you'll let me deliver it, won't you?”

What the hell can you do when faced with youth in all its shining innocence and eagerness. “All right,” I said. “You can try it, if you like. But God knows what Griffiths will do.”

“All I want is the chance to meet up with my father.”

I realized then that his mind had leap-frogged all the obstacles; he was already mentally sailing the coast of Arabia in search of his father. “All I'm giving you,” I warned him, “is the excuse to get on board that ship. She sails at nine thirty. And those documents have got to be delivered into Captain Griffiths's hands, understand?”

“I'll give them to him. I promise.”

“You know your way about the ship?”

“I knew every corner of her once. It'll come back to me as soon as I get on board.”

“Well, kindly remember that I'm a solicitor. When you're caught, as you will be eventually, don't implicate me. Shall we say you walked into my office to get legal advice, saw the envelope I had forgotten, and took it on the spur of the moment? Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I'll take you down to Bute East Dock now,” I said. “After that you're on your own.” I hesitated. It wasn't much of a chance I was giving him. He'd no clothes other than what he stood up in, no money probably, nothing, not even a passport. But at least I'd have done what I could for him—what I'd have hoped somebody would do for a son of mine if he'd got himself into a mess like this. But then I hadn't a son; I hadn't anybody. “Better clean the blood off your face,” I said and showed him where the wash-place was. “And you'll need something to hide your torn clothes.”

I left him in the lavatory and went through the office to the cupboard under the stairs. There was an old overcoat that had been there ever since I'd taken over the place, a black hat, too. He tried them on when he'd finished cleaning himself up. The coat wasn't too bad a fit, and with the sweatband padded with strips from an old conveyance the hat was passable. I wondered what my uncle would have said if he knew to what use these sartorial relics of his were being put. And because I wanted him to realize how slender his chances were, I said: “If you're caught before the ship sails, don't try and bluff it out with Captain Griffiths. Tell him the truth and say you want to give yourself up to the police.”

He nodded, his face bloodless, his pale eyes almost fever-bright with the nervous tension that was building up in him. The dark coat and the black hat accentuated his pallor, accentuated, too, his beaky nose and the strong jaw. In the old lawyer's cast-off clothes he looked much older than his nineteen years.

There was a back way out of the office, and I took him out by that. It was still sleeting, and there was nobody in the street where I parked my car. We drove in silence down Park Place and across Castle Street, and then we crossed the railway and were in the maze of little streets that edge the docks. I slowed in a dark gap between streetlights and told him to climb into the back and lie on the floor with the rug I kept for my dog pulled over him.

It was fortunate that I took this precaution, for the police at the dock entrance had been alerted and there was a constable there who recognized me; a fortnight before, he had given evidence in a case I'd defended. I told him my business and he let me through. I hadn't expected the police to be watching the docks already and my hands were sweating as I drove on across the slippery steel of the railway tracks.

The
Emerald Isle
was at the far end of the Bute East Dock, close to the lock. She had completed loading and she had steam up, smoke trailing from her single stack. The cranes along the quay were still, their gaunt steel fingers pointed at the night. I stopped in the shadow of one of the sheds. The sleet had turned to snow and it was beginning to lie, so that the dock looked ghostly white in the ship's lights. “Well, there you are,” I said. “That's the ship.”

He scrambled out from under the rug. “Couldn't you come with me?” he asked, suddenly scared now that the moment had arrived. “If you were to have a word with Captain Griffiths …”

I didn't reply to that, but simply handed him the package. I think he knew it was out of the question, for he didn't ask me again. A moment later the rear door opened and I heard him get out. “I—I'd like to thank you,” he stammered. “Whatever happens—I won't let you down.”

“Good luck!” I said.

“Thanks.” And then he was walking across the dock, not hesitantly, but with a firm, purposeful tread. I watched him mount the gangway, saw him pause and speak to one of the crew, an Arab; and then he disappeared from sight through a door in the bridge deck.

I lit a cigarette and sat there, wondering what would happen now. I didn't think he'd much of a chance, but you never know; he was a resourceful kid.

I finished my cigarette and lit another. I was thinking about the constable on the gate. I ought to have realized that that would be one of the first things they'd do following his escape. And the man had recognized me. I tried to analyse my motives in doing such a crazy thing, but I couldn't sort them out. The cold crept into the car as I waited, and still nothing happened, except that the snow thickened and the dock turned dazzling white. A tug hooted out in the river, a lost, owl sound in the winter night. It was twenty minutes past nine.

Ten minutes later a whistle sounded from somewhere high up on the
Emerald Isle
and two men came quickly out of a hut at the end of the dock. They manhandled the gangway ashore and then stood by the warps. Another whistle and the for'ard warp went slack, fell with a splash into the dock. Black smoke belched from the funnel, and as the stern warp was let go, a gap opened up between the ship's side and the quay. I switched the engine on then, turned the heater up, and sat there smoking as the
Emerald Isle
locked out into the River Taff. And when her lights had finally disappeared behind the whitened shoulders of the loading-sheds, I drove back to the solitude of my flat, hoping to God I'd done the right thing.

The story of what happened to him after that I got partly from Captain Griffiths on his return and partly from a letter David wrote me. When he left me on the dock there and went on board the
Emerald Isle
there was no clear-cut plan in his mind. He knew the layout, of course. She was the only ship trading regularly out of Cardiff to Arabian ports, and she had exercised a fatal fascination for him since he was old enough to wander in the docks. It was the Somali steward and not a deck hand who met him at the top of the gangway, and on the spur of the moment, almost without thinking, he inquired whether the passenger accommodation was fully booked. The steward told him no: there were six cabins and only three were occupied. Feeling suddenly more confident, he asked to see the Captain.

Captain Griffiths was in his cabin on the port side of the bridge-deck housing, and when David was shown in he was seated at his desk checking the Mate's trim figures. He took the packet, glanced at it, and then looked up at David. “You work for Mr. Grant, do you?”

“I—I run errands for him.”

“Office boy, eh? Well, you're only just in time. We sail in quarter of an hour.” Griffiths peered up at him from under his bushy brows. “What's the matter with your face, boy? Been in a fight?”

“No. No, sir. I—I had a fall.”

“Must have been a bad one. You're as white as a sheet.” He bent down, pulled open a drawer of his desk, and came up with a bottle of whisky. “I'll give you a drink for your pains.” He gave that high-pitched cackling laugh, filled the glasses half full, and handed one of them to David. “Well, young fellow, you can wish me luck, for it's a Welsh landowner I am now.” And he slapped the packet of documents with unconcealed pride. “There's times, you know,” he confided as he swallowed his drink, “when I feel like the Wandering Jew himself, doomed to ply from one silt-laden port to another, right through to Eternity. This,” and his hand touched the packet again, “this may help me to preserve my sanity when the temperature's over the hundred and the humidity's so thick your lungs feel as though they're stuffed full of wet cotton wool and will never breathe clean air again; when conditions are like that, then I'll take these documents out and read them through just to convince myself that I really do have a little place on the Gower Peninsula where rain washes the air clean of dust and heat and the damned, Godforsaken, everlasting flies.”

“That's the Persian Gulf you'll be referring to, isn't it? Then maybe you'll know where Colonel Whitaker lives now?” He hadn't intended to ask that question, but the unaccustomed liquor had overlaid his nervousness.

Griffiths glanced up at him quickly. “Funny thing,” he murmured. “Grant asked me that same question only this afternoon. Is Colonel Whitaker one of the firm's clients?”

“I—I don't know, sir.”

“Then what made you ask about him?”

David hesitated. But if he were to succeed in stowing away on board, there was no harm in telling Captain Griffiths the truth right now. “He's my father.”

“Your father!” The blue eyes stared. “Good God! Didn't know the Bedouin was married.”

“My natural father, sir.”

Griffiths's eyes suddenly crinkled at the corners. “Natural father, you say? Well, by God, that's a good one.” And he lay back in his swivel chair, pointed his beard at the steel deck above, and cackled with laughter. And then he stopped suddenly. “I'm sorry, boy. You're sensitive about it, I can see. Have you ever met your father?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, if you had, you'd know why I laughed. Bedouin sons—and daughters. There's gossip enough about him, but never a whisper of a son in Wales, you see. I'll tell him, next time he's aboard—I'll say to him casually …” But David was spared the rest, for the bridge communicator buzzed and a voice said: “Tug coming alongside now, sir.”

“Very good, Mr. Evans.” Griffiths got to his feet. “I'm needed on the bridge.” He paused in front of David, staring up at his face. “Yes. I can see the likeness now. Any message you want me to give him?” And when David shook his head dumbly, he patted him on the arm. “Well, I'll tell him I saw you when next he comes aboard. And now you'd better get off the ship quick or you'll find yourself in Arabia with a deal of explaining to do.” And he went off, cackling with laughter, to the bridge above.

David found himself standing alone outside the Captain's cabin. An alleyway ran athwartships. Numbered mahogany doors led off it on either side. He listened, every nerve taut. He could hear voices on the bridge and down below in the saloon, but the deck on which he stood seemed utterly deserted. Treading softly, he walked the length of the alleyway to the starb'd side, as far away from the Captain's cabin as possible. The first door he tried was locked, the second opened to a glimpse of heavily labelled baggage and the startled face of a man lying prone on his bunk with a book. A tug blared so close alongside that he jumped. Cabin Number Four was empty, and he slipped inside and locked the door. And after that he stood for a long time, quite still and breathing heavily, listening to the sounds of the ship, waiting tense for the sudden outcry that would inevitably follow the discovery that he had not gone ashore.

That period of waiting, ten minutes at the most, seemed the longest he had ever known. And then a whistle sounded. It was so like the shrill of a police whistle that he reached for the handle of the door, instinctively seeking escape in movement. But then the engine-room telegraph rang from the bridge overhead and the ship suddenly came to life, a gentle throbbing against the soles of his shoes. He knelt on the unmade bunk then and cautiously pulled back the curtain that covered the porthole. He could see the deck rail and beyond it a flat expanse of water with the snow driving across it. And then the water was swirling to the bite of the screws and he knew the ship was moving.