Sailors on the Inward Sea (13 page)

The solicitors approached the table deferentially, shaking hands with the admirals, speaking in low voices, leaving together, followed by Fox-Bourne and the others until only Worthy and Conrad remained. As he watched Worthy stuff papers into his briefcase he smelled diesel fuel, the thick, earthy scent pervading the room as if the blue carpet, the tables, the chairs, the photographs, Worthy and he were covered with it. He could tell the man what he thought, that justice had been savaged, that if the admiral were to attend carefully he too would smell the oil and see it dripping from his hands, and he would have done just that if it had not been clear that it was futile and would make no difference since Worthy was merely the spokesman for the unknown man in Whitehall.

He was heading toward the door when Worthy called his name.

“An ugly business,” the admiral said when he turned round, “no way to put a pretty face on it. I want to thank you for your testimony. You were quite compelling.”

“All I did was relate the facts.”

Worthy glanced at him sharply.

“And a few opinions.”

“Based on the facts,” Conrad said, “on what I saw.”

“Yes, well, it was complicated, no doubt about that. So much to consider. I, for one, am glad it's over.”

“So is Fox-Bourne.”

“Everyone. An ugly business, as I said. We should put it behind us,” smiling as he spoke, and nodding as if he were advising a younger man, telling him that he knew best.

Conrad shifted his gaze to the window framing the
Brigadier.
Part of the scaffold was being dismantled. With the top section gone, the ship's name in large white letters was visible again.

“As if she's being reborn,” Conrad said. “The
Brigadier.”

Worthy looked and turned back.

“I suppose she is.”

“Good as new. So is Fox-Bourne, except for the voices. They were remarkable. You'd think that the sound of the engines would have made them inaudible, but it was quite the opposite. They were very distinct, as distinct as telegraph chimes.”

Not until Worthy searched his eyes did Conrad sense any subtlety in the man. It burst forth in a brief flicker that seemed to acknowledge the influence of some personage greater than himself, doing so in a way that so much as told Conrad to let it go, that there was nothing, absolutely nothing he could do. A moment later he was back in character. Reaching into his briefcase, he extracted a copy of
Lord Jim
and put it on the table, opening it to the title page.

“I wonder if I might impose on you? My wife, Diana, is an admirer of yours. Quite taken by your work. Her birthday is next week. If you could sign this, perhaps address it to her, she'll be delighted.”

Of all the things Worthy might have said, including admitting that the hearing had been a sham, a request for an autograph under those circumstances was the furthest thing from Conrad's mind. To make it worse, the admiral smiled, the kind of smile you expect from a man used to getting what he wants. And then he compounded the insult by smoothing down the title page with the heel of his left hand and holding out a pen with his right.

“A few words.”

“Damn you,” Conrad said as he pushed the pen aside. “Do you think I come so cheap?”

The smile was still pasted on his lips as Conrad headed for the door, intent on getting out of that room as fast as possible, away from the stench of diesel fumes, which seemed to have sucked up all the air. The photographs on the walls spun across his field of vision as he turned away from Worthy, ships and sailors spattered with gouts of oil, the windows too, the creamy wallpaper, the polished floor in the long corridor, the stench following him through the outer door and onto the quadrangle. If it weren't for his bad knee, he thought he might well have walked all the way up to the Scottish Highlands for one clarifying whiff of a loch's chill air.

THANKS TO THE
care Conrad took in describing the appearance of the men on the board of inquiry, I had a clear mental picture of everyone, particularly Admiral Worthy, whose type had become familiar over the years. You know it as well as I do, Ford, men who from the day they leave the service school bear the weight of a hoary tradition on their shoulders along with their insignias of rank and epaulets. They are decent fellows for the most part, faithful paladins unswerving in their devotion to duty and the Crown, willing to lay down their lives in defense of the motherland. No one would ever know exactly what words were exchanged over the phone, but I was certain that they were the big abstract ones that had formed Worthy's sense of himself since his cadet days—
honor, loyalty, patriotism
—and they made it easier for him to acquiesce to that nudge from on high, perhaps from the top floor of Whitehall. Though Conrad had not said so directly, we both knew that Brittania herself stood at the bar in the guise of Fox-Bourne and that the powers had concluded that too much was at stake for a guilty verdict. Not only was it clear that the
call of patriotism and duty outweighed the question of justice, but neither Worthy nor his colleagues suffered from a sense of betrayal because they were sheltered by the chain of command.

As Conrad and I watched two tugboats work a sorry-looking hulk with streaks of rust running down her hull into a berth nearby, the smoke from their stacks drifting toward us like dirty heraldic banners carried a stench that put me in mind of the pollution he had imagined in the hearing room. Suddenly it occurred to me that the outrageous manipulation of the facts could have been even more Byzantine than I thought, namely that Northcliffe himself might have been the one who ordered the verdict. I asked Conrad if he had ever considered the possibility.

“Of course,” he said. “It was unavoidable. He had the authority.”

“What a galling end,” I interjected.

“Galling, yes, whether or not he was responsible, sickening, disgusting. But that wasn't the end.”

His gaze beneath those heavy eyelids was somberly ironic, Ford, brighter than I expected under the circumstances, his eyes hinting at something I ought to know. You remember that unsettling quality of his, I wager, since you saw more of it than I did. Just then, the horn of one of the tugboats sounded and I looked away to see it moving down the estuary before asking what he meant.

“Can't you guess?”

I wondered if the board had reversed its verdict, if Fox-Bourne had suffered a belated crisis of conscience and admitted his guilt. But surely if either scenario had occurred Conrad would have mentioned it already, relishing the irony. And then it came to me.

“My God!” I said. “You wrote about it.”

Nodding, he said, “A novel. The best I've done in years.”

I suspect you've entertained the possibility for some time, Ford, since you would have noticed the similarity between some of his fictions
and the story of the
Brigadier.
“Hullo,” I can hear you say, “what's this? It sounds as if Conrad is paraphrasing.” In the wake of Conrad's admission I realized there had been a formality in his voice and manner and telling that he never used in conversation, a rhythm that I now understood matched the pace of a tale already perfected on the page. I thought of
Lord Jim
and how the overarching shape of that book matched his story about the
Brigadier
—routine sea journeys that suddenly took a nasty turn followed by ill-considered decisions that left Jim and Fox-Bourne teetering on the edge of ruin with nobody but themselves to blame.

“I had to tell the story,” Conrad said, “for reasons that are public and private.”

The Official Secrets Act, he continued, swept the truth under the rug—those responsible for invoking it no doubt believed for the greater good. This kind of governmental intervention set his teeth on edge. The cynicism behind it forced him to consider his position as a writer and whether acquiescing to it made him culpable, too. In the days following the inquiry, he thought of little besides the Act, and the longer he considered it the larger and more imposing it seemed, as if it were an open-pit mine that scarred the countryside, a great ugly thing that dominated its surroundings, or, even more appropriately, one of those ocean canyons too deep to be measured where anything tossed in would never be seen again.

But it was not just Fox-Bourne's crime that was disappearing in the depths. Everyone sworn to silence was sinking too, leaving a trail of bubbles as they descended into the blackness, where they would be trapped by the crushing weight of the sea. Right or wrong, it was the law, and he respected the law more than most men, understood the necessity for it, but something more fundamental was at stake, his obligation as a writer. He could offend by remaining silent or by writing, and the latter was clearly the lesser evil. He began working
the day he came up into the light with a sense of purpose he had not felt in a long time. With the first sentence he felt like Razumov had departing Laspara's apartment, gravely wounded but free to walk in the cleansing rain.

I had always admired
Under Western Eyes,
Ford, perhaps more than any of his novels, and could easily see why he called up Razumov's spiritual victory to describe his own struggle with his conscience. I suppose it was inevitable that the question of writing would lead me back to how our day began with his evocation of “the old thing,” which I had been given to understand was somehow connected to the story, but I had seen no connection during the course of the day, and none now that it was drawing to a close. That was fine with me, quite a relief, actually. I asked what his agent thought of the book.

“Pinker hasn't seen it,” he said.

“But it's finished?”

“Yes.”

Knowing how desperate he always was for money, you'd think he would have rushed into town with the ink still wet on the last page and dropped it on Pinker's desk. But then I realized that he might be leery of publishing because of legal problems associated with the Official Secrets Act.

I said, “It's 1924. The war's been over seven years. I can't believe there isn't a statute of limitations.”

“There may be,” he answered, “but that's not the issue.”

“What is?” I asked, genuinely puzzled.

“Fox-Bourne. I gave him another name in the book but it's a close portrait of him, an exact portrait, easily recognizable. The
Valkerie
incident is enhanced, put under a magnifying glass for dramatic purposes, but essentially the same. Anyone remotely acquainted with Fox-Bourne will recognize him. And the business with the U-boat
won't have gone unnoticed. You know how sailors are. There was plenty of time for the crew and officers to say what they knew before they learned of the injunction.”

“I still don't see the problem,” I said.

“The old thing, Malone, with a slight twist. This time, it's Fox-Bourne's story. So I must give him the chance that I didn't give you years ago. No one will see the book unless Fox-Bourne gives me permission to publish.”

“You want his blessing.”

“Approval, acquiescence, call it what you like. It eases my conscience and resolves the problem, once and for all.” He grinned and added, “That should appeal to you.”

“Is this why you told me the story?”

“There are worse reasons for spinning a yarn, Malone. I value your opinion of me. I wanted you to know that I could make amends.”

“This is different. For one thing, there's more at stake. You wouldn't let the government stop you. Why let this bloody bastard?”

“Outwardly it's different. But not inwardly. My situation as a writer is identical. I appropriated Fox-Bourne's story just as I did yours.”

“He told you practically nothing,” I said angrily. “You wrote about what you experienced, what you thought. But even if you'd lifted the whole thing from him, it wouldn't matter. My God, how many times have I said I don't care, a hundred?”

“But you see, that's the difference. Fox-Bourne will care. The book will matter to him, immensely. I have to give him the choice.”

“This wouldn't be happening if it weren't for Marlow.”

“That's right. But Marlow exists. Marlow is the great, abiding fact. When this is over, whatever happens, I'll be able to look the two of you in the eye, you and Marlow.”

“You're looking at me just fine right now. You've been looking at me for years.”

“You know what I mean.”

And I did, Ford, albeit grudgingly. Shifting in my chair, I glanced at the estuary, which had gone the color of gunmetal, the end-of-the-day color that would darken into night, a color and view I had known for over a quarter of a century. For a moment or two it seemed as if I were seeing the sweeping river as I had in the old days when the gang swapped tales on the
Nellie.
Just as quickly I was back in the present, irritated by Conrad's refusal to let the issue go. When I looked at him I saw the same stubbornness he had presented years earlier at Pent Farm when we discussed the Marlow question for the first time.

“Too much empathy,” I ventured, “gets in the way of clear thinking.”

“Indeed.”

“I'm serious.”

“I know you are,” he said dryly. “You must have considered the cost when you were worried about what to do with Jim. I seem to remember that your empathy covered quite a period of time, yes, and led to no end of worry.”

Having turned my observation on its head, he waited for my next effort, but none was forthcoming. Though his notion seemed absurd to me—in certain ways it still does—I had run out of arguments.

“You've already sent him the manuscript?”

“A week ago Tuesday, with a letter explaining my position. Nothing about you or Marlow, of course.”

“You know damned good and well that he'll turn you down cold.”

“Don't be too sure.”