The Love Beach (2 page)

'I'll buy it for you,' mentioned Conway.

'Thanks,' she said, looking at his scarred arm. 'How did you do that?'

'Crocodile bit me,' he lied.

'As long as it wasn't a woman,' she said easily.

'The Portuguese discovered the Apostles,' said Pollet. 'The British and the French colonized them and fought over them. And they still fight over them ‑ each one trying to get rid of them on the other. They produce nothing of worth, they are not strategically placed, they are not the sort of location to drop a test H‑bomb, even. In a word, they are worthless.'

'There's St Peter's and that's the main one, right?' asked Davies. 'What are the others like?'

'St Mark's is the home of a peaceful pagan tribe,' said Pollet, ticking it off on finger. 'St Paul's is inhabited by mad Christian natives, completely barbarous. Then there is St Luke's, a sweet island I think; St Barnabas, where there is an active volcano; St Matthew's and St John's, which have primitive tribes, and some smaller isles, just rocks really, in between.'

Rice, the engineer, said across the table, 'Those pistons will need doing this time.'

'Time enough,' said MacAndrews not looking over the paper.

'You said that last trip. We'll be under sail before we're finished.'

Davies, thinking of his butter and 'fats, said: 'There's no chance of you not continuing to sail to the Apostles regularly is there?'

'Till we sink,' sniffed MacAndrews glancing away from the page. 'It's the only sea route known to our navigating officer, Mr Curry. The day we go anywhere else, Mr Davies, we're in trouble.'

Greta turned and looked directly at Conway who was separated from her by Rice. Rice, an obliging man, leaned forward out of her view. The mess steward was bringing around beef stroganoff. There was a lot too much pale sauce for a meal on a pitching ship. 'Mr Conway,' said Greta, 'why are you going to the Apostles?'

Rice was stabbing his stroganoff with a leathery piece of bread. 'He's on government work,' he said, as though protecting Conway from further questions,

'What work is that?' she pressed. She started to eat and made a face at the food or at her reading husband, the sour expression starting with one and finishing with the other. 'It's time we got a cook aboard who can cook,' she said.

'Dull government business,' Conway grunted answering her first remark. Davies thought that was a lie for a start. If something was dull, Conway was the type to shine it up when it came to talking about it.

Rice said: 'Which dull government is that for?' He was the oppressed little man who thinks of a pun once a month and hopes that everyone will laugh, is never surprised when they don't, and they don't.

'The dull Australian one,' said Conway. 'Nothing to get excited over. The Apostles, anyway the British half, not the French, gets orders from London, but just to keep us colonists happy. the natives in one of the outer islands, St Paul's, come under Australian trusteeship. We look after the blacks there.'

'You've never shipped with us before,' said Greta. She was now making a continuously unpleasant face at her food.

'My first trip. I don't always wet‑nurse them. It's somebody else's job.'

Davies said: 'You've been in Vietnam, haven't you?'

Conway had his fork halfway to his mouth. He let it drop back. 'Where did you get that?' he asked. He stopped reacting immediately, as if he became aware of it, and pushed the ashen meat into his mouth.

'You went on about it the other day. On deck. The first day, out of Sydney.'

'The day we split the rum,' said Conway remembering. ,Just romancing. I was there with the Aussie army but I got invalided home. Rheumatic fever.'

'Great place for rheumatic fever, the Apostles,' said Pollet. 'Especially now, in the wet.'

'I won't be there too long,' said Conway. 'Not long enough to catch anything ‑ except what I want to catch.'

Davies was lying on his bunk in the way a dead man is fixed in his coffin, arms across the chest, feet touching. It was a narrow bunk. Conway was moving about in the next cabin. It was three o'clock in the morning and the ship was rolling heavily in a near‑placid sea. Directly above Davies was the wheelhouse and he could hear MacAndrews banging about on his big feet. You could never hear the Melanesians because they had no shoes, and Curry, the mate, who was the only other person ever to be on the bridge, always wore basketball boots, so he was no trouble. But tonight the skipper trod heavily. They were waiting to go through the reef and into the lagoon of St Peter's Island.

Davies heard Conway move out of his cabin. He more or less knew where Conway would be going. He was surprised when his own cabin door was pushed open. Conway put his head in, saw Davies was awake, and stepped in like a large burglar.

'I'm going to have a chat with Mother MacAmdrews,' said Conway.

'I thought you might be.'

'Well, she's lonely. Christ, she's only about thirty and shegets nothing.'

'She's been giving you the agony?'

'No. She hardly mentioned it. But the way she looks. Well, you know, mate, it's
there.
She's only getting all that fat on her because she's eating too much. Compensation.'

'While her old man's on the bridge.'

'Yes, that's about it. She says he always goes up to see the tub through the reef. These are the sort of nudges she was giving me after dinner tonight. Wasn't that meat stuff bloody awful?'

'Couldn't touch it,' said Davies. 'The beef I mean, not Mrs MacAndrews. So why are you telling me?' He looked cautiously at the Australian.

'Help,
just a little help. That's what I want,' smiled Conway. 'You can hear the old man thumping about overhead, can't you? You will also be able to hear him coming down from the bridge. Well, if he does that while I'm in there, jump across the corridor and bang on the door. It's only a few yards.'

'God, you've got a cheek,' said Davies.

'Old MacAndrews doesn't care,' said Conway to pacify Davies's puritanism. He was unsure whether Davies didn't like the object or the method, or both. 'As long as he's got his batting averages and all that he's happy. She's told me so. He wouldn't like to walk in on it, that's all.'

'It wouldn't be cricket,' suggested Davies.

'A great humorist,' commented Conway. 'Is that okay, then?'

'I'm not sure it is.'

'I've got lots of influence in the islands,' said Conway. 'Official influence, you know. I'll introduce you to plenty of people who need butter and fats.'

'Get stuffed,' said Davies mildly. 'Anyway, how do you know I won't drop off?'

'You wouldn't do that,' said Conway. He went out and left the door open. Davies closed it, then got up and opened it again. He listened for MacAndrews's footfalls above. He was still walking the bridge.

It was not unusual for him to lie awake at night, anyway. Now he was doing it for Conway, and indirectly, he consoled himself, for the well‑being of Trellis and Jones, wholesale grocers, exporters, and importers, of Circular Quay, Sydney, and through them the well‑being of Isslwyn Davies, and the natives of the Apostle Islands who would be getting their butter and fats on time for the first time in their turbulent history.

MacAndrews was still above, sounding like a man laboriously using a big wooden mallet on the boards, hesitating between strikes, have a puff and a blow, and then continuing for a while before stopping again.

It was funny, wasn't it, he thought, that last Sunday at home, before he had gone to catch the ship for Australia.

After all, it was November, and it was all the wrong time to go to the beach. But the children had wanted
to go and Kate had said that it would be all right as long as it didn't rain.

'It's all very well going to Barry Island in August and it rains,' she said. 'At least you can get in and have a cup of tea somewhere but there's nothing open now.'

'They want to go,' Davies had said looking at the children. 'And it's the last day.'

That last day. The words kept on being repeated all the time, didn't they. He said them, and Kate said them, and David and little Mag. The last day. The last time they would be together in Wales, of course, is what everybody meant. And they weren't sorry about that. After all, Australia had more sun than Wales, and better houses and much better beaches, and it was cheap at ten pounds each. Almost as cheap as Barry Island.

They got the train from Newport and there was hardly anybody on it, not like a summer Sunday. David and Maggie pushed against the window, the boy standing and stretching, the girl kneeling on the plum railway upholstery. He and Kate sat on opposite sides and smiled at them and then at each other. He became aware that the cuff of his shirt was still frayed. She had promised to mend it too. She saw him looking at it and grinned. He could see her sitting back there now, her nice face and her hair done up by herself. It looked all right too. Her coat was getting old, but she wouldn't need a coat in Australia. She would get a nice tan too, going out on the boat, and he would meet her in Sydney, and they would be able to start again. He had answered her smile and nodded for her to come across to him and sit beside him. Sometimes they were a bit too much like parents. Doing that he felt a little childish, it was like trying to get her in the back seat of his old car when they were first going out together. They did not have that any longer either.

Lying in the bunk, with the thin mattress all lumps beneath him, Davies smiled up at the ceiling on which Captain MacAndrews was still bumping. Kate had refused to go across the gap in the compartment and he had laughed and had surrendered and gone across to sit by her instead. He had held
her hand while the train ran through the marshy Welsh plain that goes down to the Bristol Channel.

It was a solemn day, grey but mild, with no stirring on the marshes and the ships in Newport Docks sitting up in the distance as though they were voyaging on the grass and reeds and mudflats.

'Mam,' said David. 'is that Dad's ship? Is that the ship for Australia?'

Davies remembered answering for Kate. Kate had told Mag to be careful not to fall from the seat. Mag, who was four, said: 'We are going on the ship too! We're going too!'

'Soon,' he had assured them. 'Quite soon. When I write a letter to Mam.'

Kate had put the little girl on her lap and showed her the sea‑birds from the Channel who had come to winter in the marshes. They went through Cardiff, Bute Street trying to get its Sunday morning eyes open, and then to Barry where they got a taxi to the beach because the little seaside station was closed at that wrong end of the year.

What a day that had been. What a wonderful last day. He had never realized the beach was so big and he had been going there all the years he could remember. All the rubbish of summer had been taken away by the huge tide and by the corporation workmen. The sand was flat and damp, the sea grey and tired, and there was no one there but a man taking a mongrel for a walk. The road made by their footsteps went clearly along the sand into the remote end of the beach and up there the man could be seen throwing stones for the dog.

Davies and Kate, hands held, each holding the glove of one child, walked the empty beach. David and Mag wanted to go into the sea or make sand castles. Kate told them they could draw pictures and write their names in the sand. Davies walked her on a little way. A dozen oyster catchers, strangers, black and white with orange beaks, hobbled about like men on crutches.

'Never see them down here in the summer,' he had said. 'Don't blame them,' replied Kate. They seemed to have less to discuss today than ever. He was going to tell her again, how good it would be in Australia, but he stopped himself. He had already said it. The funfair was all closed up and covered with sheets of tarpaulin and canvas, like an exhibition waiting to be unveiled. The cafés and the hotels across from the beach looked out to the slate sea and the cold ships moving on it, speechlessly and with blind, shuttered eyes. No one, it seemed, had anything to say.

'We'd better go back,' she had suggested, half turning as she said it. 'We can't leave them too far behind.'

'No, of course,' he said. The ' children were drawing and digging by the shore and had not looked up. Davies turned and as he did so caught Kate and clumsily folded his arms about her. She was a bit taller than he was and it had always embarrassed him to embrace her standing up. It had probably looked just as odd on the beach, on that last day, but there was no one to see or to laugh. He put his lips to her cheek and turned her head so that they could kiss properly. It was not timed very well, not very successful he thought now, but they kissed anyway, miles from anybody but David and little Mag.

'It'll be all right, you know,' he had said. 'It will, truly, Kate.'

'Yes,' she had answered.

It had been a wonderful last day.

Conway pushed against the cabin door. 'Didn't go to sleep on me did you?' he said.

Davies turned. 'I didn't,' he confirmed. 'Did she?'

Conway breathed a laugh without any sound coming out. He angled his head to hear the boots of MacAndrews. 'Still navigating eh? He's a fine skipper that.'

'And you're a fine bastard,' said Davies.

Conway said: 'And you're a great butter and fats salesman, not to mention adulterer's look‑out. Thanks.'

'I wasn't sleeping anyway. The boots keep me awake.

21

Were you well received, or is that being a bit indelicate for a mere adulterer's look‑out?'

'Very well received,' nodded Conway. 'You should try it yourself. She's open all night.'

'No thanks. I'm married anyway, and I keep to it.'

'Do you?' said Conway as though Davies had revealed some strange hobby. 'Where's your wife. In New South Wales?'

'No, the old one.'

'Oh, I forgot, you're one of those bloody Taffy people.'

'And adulterer's look‑out.'

'You should try it some time. Help you a hell of a lot. You wouldn't be so worked uD and intense.'

'I told you, she's in South Wales.'

Conway said: 'That's a long way to go for a shag.' He went out and closed the door. Davies heard Captain MacAndrews clump down from the bridge and he realized that the ship was riding still in calm waters.