The Poseidon Adventure (31 page)

Miss Kinsale's thin, white arm emerged from her covering after some trouble with her long hair, to wave. She said, 'I do hope he'll take care of that child, after all she's done for him,' and then added in a curiously matter-of-fact-voice, 'But I don't suppose he will.'

Susan cried, 'Oh, but he couldn't leave her now. And didn't you see, he was holding her.'

'. . . and a bottle too,' Miss Kinsale concluded severely. 'He was drunk and so was she. He'll leave her, of course. I know men like him.'

Muller said, 'Actually something much worse is very likely to happen. He'll marry her and on the way back from the Register Office, she'll start to try to reform him.'

Susan thought:
How very odd to be sitting here in this boat this way, engaged in such a conversation.

The other lifeboat finished its crossing and made for the liner.

Jane Shelby had already hungrily ransacked it with her eyes as it went by. Now she was aware that her husband's gaze was intent upon the white wake from its stern. He was shaking his head from side to side, unconscious of being observed. 'He wasn't there,' he said. He looked utterly miserable and forlorn.

Jane Shelby felt a pang at her heart and she thought:
What are we all doing here? Where have all these ships come from? Who are these people? What have they to do with us? Why have we lost my Robin? How dare we still be living? For what purpose! It's all so meaningless.

And out of this came yet another, but this one was firm and clear.
I must repair the damage I have done. To destroy this man and all that is left, is just as senseless as everything that's happened to us all. Somewhere it must stop.

Aloud she said, 'Richard, give me your hand. I need it.' He looked at her in astonishment for a moment, unsure of himself and her and then took the hand she extended.

Jane said, 'We shall be needing one another to grieve together,' and then added, 'I didn't mean any of the things I said down . . . down there,' and she glanced up at the wall of the Poseidon, but already the 'down there' was beginning to dim as something that had been dreamed rather than lived through. 'I was out of my head; out of my mind with grief and worry about Robin. I didn't know what I was saying. It wasn't true, any of it. I was simply lashing out blindly. Dick . . . we've lost our son!'

Shelby looked at his wife in amazement, moved with emotion and yet simultaneously filled with elation, as much of the self-confidence of which he had been deprived flooded back into him again. Now that she was admitting that she had not meant them, he could not even remember any more the things she had said that had so destroyed him. They did not matter; they were not true; he had been rendered whole again. He reached for her, pulled her close to him and held her. He whispered, 'I'll try to make it up to you somehow.'

Jane covered the inward shudder she could not suppress at the cliché, by moving closer inside her husband's arms.

Susan regarded her mother with admiration and grew a little older.

Despite the tropical sun now climbing into the sky, Muller felt suddenly depressed and chilled. Intuitively, without wholly hearing he had picked up Jane's gesture and everything about him was in rebellion against the wantonness of the taking of the life of a child under circumstances of the utmost cruelty. For the rest of her days this mother must be tortured as to how he had perished and to what extent she herself had been to blame for his loss. How could one both rejoice that the drunken Englishman and the poor, besotted lump of a girl who had attached herself to him were safe and at the same time mourn for the death of Belle Rosen? What was one to think of the futility of the other lives in their party snuffed out? The brave and lunatic Scott; the stuff of which saints were made? The much-sinned-against Linda? And for what great purpose had the Turk Kemal been preserved -- to return to his country and thereafter to find another job -- four hours on and four hours off, tending the lubrication of yet another piece of machinery? And would Rogo be any good thereafter, without his woman to torment him?

And why had he himself survived? For Nonnie whose life and person henceforth had been given over into his hands? And into what category did Nonnie fall? Reward? Punishment? Delight, or a millstone around his neck? For even now as he held her close to him, his thoughts turned to his friends and he asked himself: 'What on earth will they all say?'

Martin's head had emerged like a turtle's from his carapace of blanket and his eyes behind their gold-rimmed spectacles, too, had quested over the rescued in that other lifeboat. He half-feared, half-hoped he would see a figure, or catch a glimpse of thick, burnished hair or a flash from those eyes in which he had so often lost himself. But Mrs Wilma Lewis was not amongst them.

Martin thought to himself:
So, I am to be let off scot free, after all. Saved and maybe even a hero when the papers get the story. And I'm nothing but a rotten little runt who spent his holiday servicing a randy widow. And nobody will ever know; no punishment, no trouble. Adultery on the house.

There was no need even to tell his wife and make her miserable. Mingled with his relief there was still that faint sense of disappointment. Somehow, in some way he ought to have been made to suffer.

Muller turned to the officer and asked, 'Where are we? What ship are you from? Where are you going?'

'Royal Antilles Line, sir. R.M.S. London Tower. Veracruz, Havana, Bermuda and London. We're homeward bound now. We'll soon have you and your friends comfortable. You've been very lucky, if I may say so, sir.'

'Yes, I know,' put in Shelby. 'Have you any idea what happened?'

The young two-striper replied, 'Seaquake, sir. We were well to the north-west of it and didn't even feel the shock. Two other ships in the area are still unreported. They may have gone down with all hands. You were luckier. The Air Force people pitched in after the news of the quake, and one of their radar planes picked you up just after midnight and dropped flares that told them the story. We received a message from the shipping Computer Centre on Governor's Island at two o'clock this morning to proceed to this area to search for survivors, along with the German freighter. The Monroe was only two hundred miles north of you on a recovery exercise for an unmanned space capsule launched from Cape Kennedy. I expect you'll learn about all of it when we get aboard, sir.'

Shelby felt his heart contract. It was as though his son had been speaking, Robin who had known about all such things as moon shots, computer centres and recovery exercises; Robin who had never had his chance to take the pathway to the stars. The stab of pain reminded him that for Jane it must be perpetual. Men simply had different mechanisms for caring about their children. It would be agony when at home he picked up the football with no one to whom to throw it. And he saw himself again on his lawn with the ball spiralling through the air, Robin racing down field and at his call, 'Look up!' turning over his shoulder and pulling it down.

His attention was recaptured by something the officer had mentioned. 'London?' Shelby said. 'But we're Americans, we don't live there.' It was almost as though he had felt all along that at the end of the climb and if he ever broke through the skin of the Poseidon, he would find himself back home in Detroit.

'I suppose some arrangements will be made about that, sir.

Martin said, 'I want to get a message back to my wife in Chicago.'

The officer nodded and said, 'You'll be able to do that, I'm sure.'

Shrouded in his blanket to the crown of his head, Manny Rosen shivered and was heard to say, 'Mamma! Mamma!'

Nonnie wanted to comfort Rosen. She moved and the blanket slipped from her body, revealing the twisted pink breech clout, the strip tied around her breasts and the dead white skin streaked with oil. The engineman of the lifeboat gawped at her and somehow beneath the grime divined her as one of his own. He said, 'Coo, where was you at when it 'appened? A fancy dress ball?'

Nonnie's face suddenly went smaller and her mouth pinched and mean. She turned on him and spat out, 'Nark it!' In her voice Muller heard everything he both feared and loved: her vulgarity, her vulnerability, all the years of struggling and fending for herself and being at the mercy of anyone who wanted to make a joke or a pass.

He pulled the blanket around her shoulders again with one hand and with the other tilted up her small face and looked into it. The intemperate streak, the shadow of her commonness was still at the corners of her too-small mouth, yet he felt touched again.

Whether it was that her sharp instincts had picked up his emanation, or now that it was all over and promises made under duress of death in her mind were not meant to be kept, she whispered, 'You don't have to marry me, Hubie. And I'd never leave you. I'd stay with you as long as you wanted me to.'

He was being given his freedom, and against every counsel of sanity and intelligence, he struggled against it. She would be content to be his mistress until he cast her off. It was the expedient and sensible thing to do. Every instinct told him so. They would have great fun for a while and then well, the two pieces of their different worlds that they might have tried to paste together would have come unstuck. And yet he did not wish her to have the chance to leave him, to be the first to say, 'Let's call it quits, chum.' Never!

He used again the phrase he had in the bowels of the Poseidon when he had tried to comfort her, 'Hush, Nonnie! It's so impractical when you're travelling.' He felt her tense body relax and was satisfied, and yet the echoes of her class would not die away entirely and holding tightly to his decision and all his desires embodied in her, he heard his inner self querying: 'What
am
I going to do? What on earth am I going to do with this girl? What will they all say? What will my life be like from now on?'

From within the Poseidon a muffled explosion sounded and there was another bubbling eruption of water in the vicinity of the inclined bow section. An officer's cap stiff with gold braid came up with it. Muller muttered, 'So when they renamed you Poseidon, they offended the god of earthquakes.'

Nonnie asked, 'What did you say, dear?'

Muller conquered the impulse to say, 'You mustn't call me "dear",' and merely replied, 'Nothing, Nonnie. Say goodbye to the ship.'

Nonnie began to cry again and because her cheeks were covered with oil, her tears retained their shape and slid whole, one after the other, down her tiny face. 'And all my chums.'

'I'm afraid so, Nonnie.' She buried her face in the folds of Muller's blanket. He loved her greatly.

CHAPTER XXV

L'Envoi

The cutter from the Monroe drew alongside the lifeboat and reduced its speed until the two craft were sailing parallel to one another, a few yards apart. The Commander called over, 'Is the gentleman who . . .' He hesitated and then added, 'Whose wife . . .'

Rogo shook Rosen gently by the shoulder and said, 'Manny, I think he wants to talk to you.'

Rosen's head emerged from his blanket. He blinked his wet eyes in the bright light, looking around to orient himself.

The Commander said, 'I'm sorry to bring this up in this way, sir. I haven't had the chance to learn your name yet. Your . . . Your wife's body has gone in our other cutter. She's being taken aboard our ship.'

Somehow even with his thinning hair stuck together and standing up from his skull and the vitality and roundness drained from his face, the little man managed to muster the most astonishing amount of dignity. He said, 'My name is Emmanuel Rosen. Please, can I be with her? I would like to be with her. Can't you take me?'

'Yes,' the Commander replied, 'we will. It won't be long now.' Then he asked, 'How many Americans are there amongst you?'

Martin, his leadership relinquished, seemed no longer interested. Muller replied for him, 'Six. Mr and Mrs and Miss Shelby, Mr Martin, Mr Rogo and myself.'

'British?'

Muller said, 'Two. Miss Kinsale here, and . . .' he hesitated for only the briefest moment, 'Miss Parry. Miss Kinsale was a passenger. Miss Parry was on the entertainment staff.'

The Commander asked, 'And the other?'

'He's an oiler from the engine room,' Muller explained. 'He joined our party led by . . .' He stopped, astonished at how completely the Reverend Frank Scott had gone out of his mind. Well, it was too long to go into now, and he concluded, 'He's Turkish. His name's Kemal. He only speaks Turkish, Greek and very few words of English.'

Kemal grinned and waved a hand when he heard his name.

The Commander said, 'He'll be better off for repatriation in London then, I imagine. They can send him home from there.' He raised his voice so as to include the entire group of survivors, 'I have been in communication with the Captain of the London Tower. He will take all British and Europeans. There are some Belgians, Greeks and a French couple along with some more British members of the crew in the other boat. We have had our instructions from Washington. We'll take you Americans aboard the Monroe and put you ashore at Miami, where arrangements will have been made to get you home.'

'Oh dear,' said Miss Kinsale, 'I suppose we shall have to be saying goodbye to one another, then.' She spoke as though it might have been the last day of the voyage, with luggage stacked up all about and farewells being made on the promenade deck. The others were startled. They had not yet thought to the point that they might be separated, that their odd but valiant company would be broken up. The trials they had suffered ought to have linked them together somehow for ever.

But no one knew exactly what to say to her: 'So nice to have known you,' simply would not do. Neither did expression of sympathy at the loss of Scott appear to be in order. As far as outward appearances were concerned, Miss Kinsale seemed either to have recovered from this tragedy, or mastered her emotions. And thinking these thoughts, they were reminded themselves of how strangely and completely the Reverend Dr Frank Scott had been elided from their minds. How could someone who had played such an important part in their survival have so wholly escaped them now that they were saved? He was simply gone, the mystery of him as yet unsolved. Had he ever really existed?

Jane Shelby came to the rescue with, 'Oh, how awful. We must write to one another.'

'Oh yes, indeed we must,' replied Miss Kinsale, and made a curious little movement with her hands and then laughed self-consciously, saying, 'How stupid of me! Of course I haven't my handbag any more. Browne's Bank, Camberley will reach me. It's easy to remember.'

Jane said, 'A letter addressed to my husband care of the Cranborne Motors Company, Detroit, will find us.'

They were already approaching the flank of the London Tower. She was painted white from waterline to top deck. They could hear the splashing sound of the bilge water running from her sides, and see the massed banks of the faces of the passengers high up on the promenade and boat decks. Here and there the sun splintered sharply from the lenses of cameras pointed downwards.

The Commander said, 'Third, after you've dropped the two English ladies and the engine-room hand, will you bring the Americans over to the Monroe? She'll be moving in closer.'

The Third Officer replied, 'Of course, sir.'

The Poseidon was now farther down by the head, so that the upturned keel slanted perceptibly. Only the indomitable Germans still held connection with her. Their lifeboat towing the strand of rope, now doubled, had reached the side of the freighter and was being taken aboard. There was something ridiculous yet courageous about that absurd line snubbing her sternpost.

The sight only irritated Rogo who said, 'I hope she takes 'em all with her when she goes. They murdered my buddy at Bastogne.'

And then they were under the sheer dazzling side of the steamer. Two iron doors had been opened and a set of steps let down. The lifeboat made fast. With the proximity of those faces staring at them, Muller and Nonnie had moved apart. The bowman stepped on to the narrow landing platform and the Third Officer said, 'The British passengers, please,' and went over to Miss Kinsale. He said, 'You'd better take my arm. We'll have you in some clothes and comfortable in a moment.'

The nurse said, 'Let me help you, dear,' and put a motherly arm about Nonnie who had instinctively risen to her feet at the call for the British. She turned half helplessly to Muller and said, 'I'm British. I ought to go, oughtn't I?'

He had been so wholly unprepared for this sudden turn of events, that caught off his guard, he heard himself say, 'I suppose . . . Perhaps . . .' He looked vaguely about and made not one single, solitary movement to stop her.

The nurse was shepherding Nonnie, 'You poor thing, what you must have suffered! A cup of tea and bed for you and you'll be right as rain.

Miss Kinsale was already on the platform steadied by a sailor. The Third Officer pulled Nonnie up alongside, followed by the nurse and Kemal. The coxswain gave an order and suddenly with that mysterious, unfelt movement that characterizes boats there were yards of open water between the lifeboat and the steamer.

Muller was standing up, a puzzled expression on his face. He cried, 'Nonnie! You'll be all right, they'll look after you.' And then almost as an afterthought he added, 'I'll come for you.'

Jane Shelby waved. 'Goodbye, Miss Kinsale! Good luck! We'll write.'

The gap widened. Rogo, Martin, the Shelbys and even Rosen were waving and calling, 'Goodbye, Miss Kinsale! 'Bye-bye, Nonnie! So long, Kemal!' It was all happening so quickly and antiseptically that Nonnie had not even time for tears.

Muller's voice carried to her, 'What was that name of your town?'

'Fareham Cross, outside Bristol. Avon Terrace,' she shouted, her voice shrill to make itself heard above the farewells, 'Number twenty-seven. They all know me mum and dad, there.' And then as what was happening at last began to dawn upon her, came a wail, 'Oh, Hubie!'

As distance diminished, the tiny face into a speck punctuated only by two eyes, Muller cupped his hands and shouted again across the ever-widening strip of water, 'I'll come for you, Nonnie!'

He was still in the grip of the paralysis that had caused him to let her go, and at that moment, too, was registered the certainty that he would never see her again. A feeling of desolation and emptiness seized him. What had happened? Why had he let her go? What had made him do it? Even as he saw her figure and that of Miss Kinsale vanish inside the flank of the steamer, he thought of shouting to the man in charge of the boat to turn around and go back, to let him off to join her. But he did not do so. He was unable to say the words, and the farther away they drew from the liner, the more impossible it all became.

His conscience was already beginning to resolve exactly how and why it had happened. It was of course the devilish coincidence that the London Tower should have been a British vessel homeward bound. Or, if Nonnie had only said, 'Do you want me to go,' instead of 'I ought to go, oughtn't I?' he would have continued to reply from his heart, 'No, no! I never want you to go.'

In the feeling of emptiness and misery that gripped him, he felt he was now one with Rogo, Rosen, the Shelbys and perhaps even poor Miss Kinsale. A thought of reprieve came to him:
You have still a chance. You don't have to board the American ship. The lifeboat will be going back to the London Tower. You can go with it, and where she is, slip up behind her and put your hands over her eyes and she'll be in your arms again.
The picture lifted up his spirits again.

Martin was struggling desperately to wrench his mind away from that cabin buried beneath the sea in the huge hulk. He might indeed have got off scot free, but as long as the Poseidon was still there he could think only of Mrs Lewis. Would her eyes be open or closed?

In an effort to distract himself and wipe out the picture from his mind, he turned to the detective who was watching the operation of the German freighter trying to put a steel hawser aboard the capsized liner. She had launched another boat besides the one still attached to the stern of the Poseidon by the thin filament of rope.

Martin said, 'Come on, Rogo. Now that it's all over, who were you really after on our ship?' And then added, as an idea suddenly struck him out of the blue, 'Say, look here, would it have been Scott?'

With great deliberation Rogo turned his blanketed figure towards Martin and gave him his cold, policeman's stare, the small piggy eyes peering out from a face so begrimed he looked like a minstrel man. His lips hardly moved as he replied succinctly, 'For Christ's sweet sake, why don't you leave me alone? What difference does it make now, whether I was or I wasn't? The son of a bitch is dead, isn't he? And so is my wife.' And then he added with a sudden chilly viciousness, 'And so is that big, blonde broad you were shacking up with.' Then he turned his back on Martin again.

Strangely Martin was not even startled. If anything he felt almost a curious sense of relief.

He said, 'So you knew?'

Rogo swivelled his head, 'Yeah,' he replied, 'I knew.'

For only an instant Martin wondered how Rogo had found out, before he came to the consideration of what did it matter? He had not got away with it as he had thought. Perhaps there were others as well who had known. And with this somehow his world seemed to click into place again.

Muller, who had been sitting next to Martin, had heard.
Why, you little bastard!
he thought to himself.
So you're the one who got it made with her
, and he could not keep his mind from wondering how it had been and what the grey, dry, little man had looked like, sporting with the big, voluptuous woman.

And what about Rogo and Scott, Muller was wondering now? And how many things would remain unanswered from this fatal adventure?

There was a hail and the sound of a rope slapping on to the foredeck of the lifeboat. They had approached the grey steel flank of the Monroe, lying low in the water, her deck dotted with sailors and officers in their tropical whites.

Muller saw that her superstructure was a mass of electronic gear and antennae. Both her cutters were tied up alongside. The Commander who had organized the rescue was already on board, looking down from the rail. Two sailors manned a landing companionway.

Scott and Rogo; Rogo and Scott! 'What difference does it make, now, whether I was or whether I wasn't? The son-of-a-bitch is dead, isn't he?' The detective's answer repeated itself through Muller's mind and sent him searching back for clues in their relationship during their struggle. Rogo had hated the Minister. But then Rogo had hated everyone.

The lifeboat had been made fast and the Shelbys were being helped aboard. Rosen followed, stumbling as he went, for he had eyes only for what lay wrapped like a large package towards the stern. Muller followed with Martin and Rogo as usual, bringing up the rear. Was there something, then, more sinister in the relationship between Linda, Scott and Rogo? Or was Rogo merely once and for all, fed up with the endless queries as to what he had been doing on the boat and had given a snotty answer? Muller again asked himself the question heard at the beginning of the voyage, Why shouldn't a policeman take a holiday cruise like anyone else? And then: how would a man like Scott become involved in anything that would call for pursuit by the tough guy of the Broadway squad? It was too absurd.

The steel deck of the Monroe was hot under Muller's bare feet. The Commander noticed it and said, 'We'll have you fixed up in a minute.' And then as Martin and Rogo were assisted on board, called down, 'Thank you, coxswain. Cast off!' He turned to the survivors and said, 'We have cabins and clothing ready for you.'

The names were still going around in Muller's head: Rogo; Linda; Scott. The water at the stern of the lifeboat churned white, as the propeller thrashed and the boat moved off. Muller thought:
Linda dead; Scott dead; what did the two men have to say to one another when they both went down to the poor creature impaled upon that sliver of iron? And was it only petulance because he thought his God was going to spoil his achievement in bringing the party up from the depths of the overturned ship that had caused Scott to throw himself to his death? Or, had some words been slipped to him out of the side of the policeman's mouth which had made Scott determine that it was better to die than to live? No, it made no sense, but then neither did the minister's cursing of all the old biblical Gods before finishing himself off.
It was obvious there was no further information to be had from that smooth, bland, expressionless face of Rogo and never would be.