The Strode Venturer (11 page)

“Bugaloe, hodi—it’s all the same. Vedi is the local word.”

Bugaloe I knew. Bugaloe was Sinhalese for a certain type of sailing craft. And now I could just see the clipper-type bow of a boat poking out of the seaward end of the thatch. “Two years,” Strode said as he led the way over the wrack of reef weed until we stood together right under the bows. “A little over two years. That’s how long it is since they’ve traded with Ceylon. And all the time these boats have lain hauled out on the beaches rotting in the tropical heat.”

It was a beamy-looking boat and though it was difficult to estimate size in that dim light, it looked about two or three hundred tons. The keel was long and straight, still resting on the palm bole rollers on which they’d hauled it up the beach. I passed my hand over the wood of the stern post. The surface was rough and tired, the wood exhausted with the sun’s heat. Strode guessed what I was thinking. “Another few years and they’ll never go to sea again.” It was a pity for they had done their best to preserve their ships, moth-balling them the only way they could, under thatchings of palm fronds with the ends left open to allow air to circulate. “What stops you trading with Ceylon?” I asked Don Mansoor.

“Piracy,” he said, pronouncing it pir-rassy. “All Adduan
peoples fear piracy of Maldivian Government.” And he added with sudden vehemence: “Sultan’s men have motor launches, machine-guns. Our ships are sail and we have no guns. I am going once to Ceylon and I lose my ship. So, we can do nothing—only lay up our vedis and pray to Allah.” He glanced at Strode and again I was conscious of their closeness, the sense of communion between them.

We moved slowly down the plaited palm frond walls and stood for a moment by the stern, which was shaped not unlike some of the smaller trading dhows. A little group of children pressed close, staring up at us with wide eyes. Chains of gold coins gleamed against the satin dark of young flesh. “They still use a variation of the calabash with its water horizon as a sextant,” Strode said. “And they’ve no engines in these boats. Just sail.”

I nodded, thinking what it must be like sailing these heavy, beamy boats loaded with dried fish in equatorial waters. The monsoons didn’t reach down here; light trade winds, that’s all, and an occasional storm. Conditions couldn’t be very different from the doldrums of the Pacific. “Why did you bring me here?”

“I thought you’d be interested.”

But there was more to it than that, for he was watching me closely. Here I felt was the key to his presence on the island. It was the ships and this man Don Mansoor that had brought him back. But why?

I think if we’d been alone he might have told me. The velvet night and the shadow of that sun-dried vessel—it had a still, sad magic that invited confidence. But then Don Mansoor was talking to him. “You’re invited up to his house,” Strode said. It was already past nine, but he made it clear the man would be offended if I refused. “It won’t take long and the dhoni will be waiting. You’ll have a fair wind back to Gan.”

We moved off along a path that wound beneath a jungle growth of palms and other thick-leaved trees. The sky was blotted out, the breeze killed. The air was still and heavy with the day’s heat trapped. And then suddenly the stars
above again and a broad straight street of coral sand glimmering white and walled by dense plantations. Don Mansoor’s gai or house was built like the rest of coral cement with a palm-thatched roof. There was a well in the forecourt and the interior was lit by a roaring pressure lamp that cast giant shadows with every movement of the occupants. There was a table, chairs and a big, ornate mirror, a dresser with cheap English china displayed. But the thing I remember most clearly was a great swinging bed slung by ropes from the palm bole roof beams.

His wife greeted us, slight and dark with doe-like eyes and a beauty that was clearly derived from Ceylon. There were other, older women in the background, and as I sat down a young girl brought me a glass of some pale, amber-coloured liquid. Her soft nubile features smiled at me shyly as she moved back into the shadows with a glint of gold at waist and throat.

“It is a drink we make from faan—from the palm trees,” Don Mansoor said. And Peter Strode added, “They tie the stamen down and collect the sap. This has been allowed to ferment and is slightly alcoholic.” He was watching me curiously. “I wanted you to see the inside of one of their houses—the sort of people they are.” But he didn’t say why.

The family atmosphere, the sense of order and neatness, of a culture and a way of life nurtured and maintained in absolute isolation; it was impressive and strangely attractive so that I felt relaxed and at ease, and as I sipped my drink I found myself falling under the spell of the island. Was that what he had intended? The drink was smooth and gentle like saké, refreshing in the sultry heat. I passed a packet of cigarettes round and they disappeared like manna in the desert. Talk flowed in a haze of smoke until a bright, wiry boy, one of Don Mansoor’s sons, came in with a message, his bare chest gleaming dark in the lamplight.

Strode finished his drink and got to his feet. “I have to go now.” He spoke to the boy. “Ali will see you down to the boat.”

I said my good-byes and we went out into the night, “You’re staying here, are you?” I asked him.

“I think so. I have a meeting now. If I get their agreement, then yes—I’ll stay.”

I wanted to question him further, but I knew by the look on his face he wouldn’t tell me more than that. “What answer do I take back to your brothers?”

He stared at me and I had a feeling that the purpose of my seeking him out had been completely wiped from his mind. “Are you flying back to England?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

It seemed strange to be talking about flying in the shade of the palms on a remote coral island. “I don’t know yet. Thursday, perhaps.”

He was silent for a moment. Finally, he said, “Tell them I’ll discuss it with them when I get back to London.”

“When will that be?”

“A month—maybe two.”

He sounded very vague and I knew it wouldn’t satisfy the Strodes. It didn’t satisfy me. “The
Strode Venturer
’s bound for Aden next. From Aden you could fly to London and be there in little more than a week.” But I knew he wasn’t going to do that. Exasperated, I said, “What is there here on this atoll that’s more important to you than the thing you’ve been working towards for three years?”

He looked at me and smiled. “People,” he said. “I’ve spent nearly all my life roaming the world looking for some place to put down roots.”

“And you’ve found it here?”

He didn’t answer that. All he said was, “You’d better get down to the boat now or Gan will be wondering what’s happened to you.” He gripped my hand. “Just remember, Bailey, what you’ve seen tonight. There’s an opportunity here—a chance to build something for the future.” There was a touch of the fanatic in the bright gleam of his eyes. “And if George and Henry don’t take it …” He let go my hand. “Well, I’ll face that one when I come to it.” And
he said something to the boy who tugged at my arm.

I left him then standing like an Adduan in his sarong outside Don Mansoor’s hut and the boy led me down the long pale street of cleanly swept coral to the beach at the northern end. The dhoni was manned and waiting, and as soon as they’d carried me on board, they rowed her out through the reef and hoisted sail. In a moment it seemed the island of Midu was no more than a dark line astern. The wind was free, the squaresail bellied out; the rowers squatted idle on the thwarts and only the helmsman had work to do as the long lean hull clove through calm water with a hiss like steam.

There was a Land-Rover parked on the jetty end and an officer waiting for me who wasn’t Easton but a Lieutenant Goodwin of the R.A.F. Police. “Thought we’d lost you.” He said it cheerfully, but it was a question nevertheless.

“Yes, I’m sorry,” I said. “I was delayed.

He stared at me a moment, his eyes slightly narrowed. Then he walked to the edge of the jetty. “You dhoni-men,” he called down. “Where you from?” Nobody answered him and the dark shape of the boat shied away from the jetty. “They’re not supposed to come in here after dark.” He stood there watching as the sail was hoisted and the pale glimmer of it ghosted out to lose itself in the dark waters of the lagoon. “Well, I hope you got what you wanted.” He took me over to the Land-Rover. “I’ll drive you down to the Mess now. The C.O. wants to meet you.”

We drove off down the jetty and as we came out on to the tarmac road beside the airfield he said, “I understand you were questioning one of the crew.” He had clearly visited the
Strode Venturer.
And since I had come back in a dhoni he must know I had been out to the islands. “As the policeman here I’d like to put you in the picture.” He glanced at me curiously. “A Chinese crew is always a risk in the sort of situation we have here. But if it’s arms you were after I could have told you straight off you wouldn’t find any. I was in the Cyprus business and I’m not such a fool as to have ignored that possibility. Not that I wouldn’t be glad,”
he added, “to see the Adduans with the means to defend themselves. But I’ve got my orders.”

“I’m not interested in arms,” I said.

“No?” He forked right past the camp church. Ahead were a few palm trees, last relics of the jungle growth they had bull-dozed flat when they made the airfield. “I warned the C.O. your visit might be political. Is the Admiralty thinking of re-creating Port T?”

“My visit is entirely unofficial.”

“Naturally.” He nodded with a sly grin. “Okay. I know when to keep my big trap shut. But I think the C.O. will want some explanation.” And after that he didn’t say anything more so that I was left wondering what the hell he thought I was.

Tennis courts showed in the headlights, a sweep of lawns and palm trees edging the shore. We drew up at a long low building and he took me through into the bar, which was crowded with men all dressed alike in civilian rig of dark trousers and cream or white shirts and ties. Their barrage of talk came to me in snatches: “Mushy—very mushy it was, man … You silly bugger, didn’t you see the marks on the runway?” The same talk you get in any R.A.F. Mess. The islands were gone. I was in another world—an R.A.F. world shut in on itself with only the Adduan serving behind the bar to remind me that this was one of the last lost outposts of empire, a small dot on the map surrounded by the Indian Ocean.

The average age seemed about twenty-five. But there was an older group at the far end of the bar, among them Canning, the Station Commander. “Sorry I couldn’t meet you myself,” he said as he shook my hand. And then he was introducing me to the others in the group, Wilcox, the Marine Craft Officer, Ronald Phelps, Supplies and Services, the N.A.A.F.I. Manager, and a pot-bellied little man with an enormous handlebar moustache that made him look like a caricature of a Spitfire pilot of the last war. This was Mac, his senior Administration Officer, who said, “I’m in the chair. What are you having?”

“Beer, please,” I said.

“One Slops for the Navy, Ali,” he boomed and the boy behind the bar grinned, a flash of white teeth in a laughing brown face. As he handed me the pint glass tankard I was conscious that Goodwin had drawn his C.O. to one side.

Canning was not a man to rush his fences. He let me finish my drink and ordered me another before he broached the subject of my presence on Gan. “You’ve been out to the ship, I gather. Did you contact your man all right?”

“Yes, thank you.” And I apologized for not making my number to him first.

“Oh, that’s all right—so long as you got what you came for.” He had drawn me to one side and his gaze was very direct as he said, “Anything I should know about?”

“A purely private matter.”

He nodded and sipped his beer, letting the silence between us run on. Finally he said, “As Commander of this base, a great deal of my time is taken up with political questions. No doubt you’ve been thoroughly briefed on the situation so I don’t need to tell you that I have what the Malé Government regard as a rebel president on my hands. I am also responsible for defending the whole island group without, of course, stirring up any political mud that can be flung at us in the United Nations. As things stand the Adduan problem is an R.A.F. responsibility. If the Navy wishes to investigate the islands—either officially or unofficially—then the R.A.F. should be informed. You understand my position, I hope.”

“Of course,” I said. “But as this was a purely private matter …”

“I don’t accept that, Commander Bailey. If you go visiting the islands——” He gave a little shrug and then smiled. He had great charm when he smiled. “Well, don’t leave me in the dark too long. Sometime tomorrow I shall probably feel it incumbent on me to contact Whitehall about your visit.”

It was no good protesting again that my visit here had no connection with the Navy. He didn’t believe it.

“Meantime,” he added, “I have instructed Goodwin to
see that you don’t go out to the islands again without my authority.” And then in a more friendly tone he offered me the use of a helicopter. “It’s much the best way to see the islands. I’ll lay it on with our chopper-man for tomorrow. All right?” He turned to the Marine Craft Officer. “When is that hell-ship of yours due to leave?”

“About noon tomorrow,” Wilcox replied. “We haven’t much more to off-load.”

Canning glanced at me. “Well, it’s up to you. If you want to go on board the
Strode Venturer
again——”

“No,” I said. “I’ve done what I came to do.”

A flicker of interest showed in his eyes and was instantly suppressed. “It hasn’t taken you long.” I think he would have liked to probe the matter further, but to my relief the Movements Officer arrived with a problem requiring his immediate attention. The flight due at 23.30 had an oil pressure drop on Number Three and it was a question of whether passengers were to be kept waiting in the Transit Mess whilst S.A.S. coped with the trouble or billeted for the night. “Sorry about this, Bailey. We’ll have another chat to-morrow—after you’ve flown round the islands.” He called to Goodwin and then went out, moving with a quick purposeful stride, the police officer at his heels.