Rum Affair (31 page)

It
was
Kenneth. He was kneeling on deck, swiping one-handed at the tangle of wreckage with a small half-blunted axe. I wondered fleetingly what department of government contributed it. I dropped beside him – “All right?”

“I’ll live. My left shoulder.” He looked up at Ogden. “You shouldn’t leave open clasp knives in your lockers. I’ve cut the lee shrouds. The weather ones and the backstay have gone. There’s no point in trying to save any of it unless you want a sea anchor. How long before the wind starts again?”

Ogden, on his knees too, was examining the mess. Water slopped over the gunwales and ran out through the scuppers as we leaned over to the weight of the wreckage. The seas were silent and huge, lifting the billowing mass and swaying it down all the time in front of our eyes. Ogden said: “Oh, we have maybe twenty minutes, half an hour. The sail can go, but I want to save a good spar. We could mount a staysail maybe on that.”

I said: “Call me when you want me. I’ll go below and give Victoria a rest.” As I went, I heard Ogden answer, in reply to some query of Kenneth’s: “It’ll veer, probably: my guess would be from the north-west maybe. And harder. We’ll have sea room down nearly to Ardnamurchan. But then, the tide’ll be against us. We’ll not run so hard, but we’ll have some fine, dirty seas.” He was, in a queer way, enjoying it.

I have never worked harder than I did in these twenty minutes; and in a way, like Ogden, I found it almost enjoyable. Victoria was satisfactory to work with, willing, quick and sparing herself nothing. We made short work between us of the pumping, although her face in a little while went very pale: it is hard on the midriff. Some of the water we should never get out. Both the deckhead and the bulkhead were leaking: probably they always did; maybe the extra stress had now sprung them further. But I had discovered and rigged up an Aldis, and in its light Victoria got the cooker going and we found and opened a tin or two of something sloppy, which did in fact turn out to be soup. There was a tin mug in one of the bunks which we should all have to share: the rest seemed to be shattered. Nothing came out of the sink pump, and there was no hope, now, of dry clothing. But we should do.

Up on deck, the worst of the wreckage had gone, and the staysail was up, on a temporary boom. It looked like a teacloth after
Seawolf
’s
great spread of sail. But this, with a scrap of jib, was going to steady us. Victoria, the last to have her soup, came up to see. “We’re going to make it.”

Ogden looked round. Crouched in the cockpit, he was working on his knee with ballpoint and charts, trying to calculate our whereabouts and possible drift. “We ought to. I should be there before daylight,” he said; and the little smugness in the tone lingered and died in the ensuing silence. “Where?” said Kenneth: then, sharply: “You’re not proposing seriously, surely, to try and sail on?”

Ogden didn’t trouble to look up. “We’re bound to drift south anyway. There’s quite a chance I can reach the right spot on the shore. Victory out of defeat, eh?” He looked up then, and grinned into our staring faces. “Oh, there’s a risk. But there’s a risk in staying hove-to. I’m going, anyway. And you haven’t much choice, have you?”

“Single-handed?” said Kenneth. I shut my mouth, and so did Victoria. “Won’t you need help with the sails? And relief from the tiller? You don’t suppose any of us are going to help you?” And after a moment he added: “We don’t need you now, you know, Ogden. There are enough of us to keep her afloat until help arrives. Head to wind, we can handle her as well as you can. If you sail, you’ll have to sail her alone.”

There was a long silence. In the quiet, it seemed to me I could hear above the constant movement and splash of the seas an odd and remote murmuring, like the growl of a hungry animal on a hot summer’s day. Then I dismissed it, for Ogden was saying: “Not alone. Tina will help me.” He added amiably, catching Kenneth’s eyes on his ballpoint: “Like it? It isn’t in the shops yet. You could call it a travellers’ sample. Tina, sing to us.”

“What?”
I, too, lifted my blank gaze from the pen to Ogden’s cynical face. “You’re mad.” It
was
a growling, a low, distant murmur.

“I’m not mad. I just feel like a tune. What about something good and high? The Bell Song. The Doll Song. The Jewel Song. Something with a really nice sharp
cadenza,
with a top note to finish.”

The growl had become a very soft roar. “You
are
crazy.”

“Maybe.” Ogden was still smiling, but one hand was slipping into his pocket and when it reappeared it was holding an automatic, pointing straight this time at Victoria’s heart. “Maybe. Mad enough to tell you to sing, dear. Sing one phrase. One note, even. Sing your party piece, dear. The last
cadenza
in
Lakmé,
with that famous G sharp in alt. Or Rupert’s young dolly bird will meet a sad end.”

“Why? No!” And as his fingers tightened on the trigger and Victoria’s white, eye-filled face went rigid with horror: “No!” I added more rationally. “No. All right. But I don’t know if I can strike it. Not after all this. And in any case, I can’t guarantee it exactly: I haven’t got perfect pitch.”

“That’s all right,” said Ogden. “I have. Sing.”

Every coloratura from the beginning of time has recorded the Bell Song from
Lakmé
: I did it in Rome. That was when I first caused a sensation by altering the top
cadenza
from E to G sharp in alt. All the same, it was a good piece of work.

Now, I looked at Kenneth, and at Ogden’s hand hard on the trigger. I drew a long, deep, quelling breath, and I prayed to the gods of ambition and hard work and justice and I felt in all the spaces of my head the high, pure note I had chosen. I opened my lips, shaped to the sound of the bell, and I sang the last pointed phrases and the rising notes of the final
cadenza
– and at the top note, I held it.

I sang into silence, and I finished in silence: a long, spreading moment of infinite quiet. Then Kenneth said, his voice unaccustomed and hoarse:
“The note isn’t true?”

Ogden was smiling. “The pariah’s daughter has a rather flat bell, sweetie. Sing it again.”

I could not move.

The cultured, bodiless voice blandly continued. “You can’t simply let Victoria die? You have the note there, all right. All you must do is produce it. A single tone higher. And if you don’t get it this time, you can try it again. I’ll tell you when you hit it. Or you’ll know when you hit it, won’t you? Won’t you,
cara, carissima diva?
”

“Valentina!” It was Kenneth’s harsh voice again. “Sing. For God’s sake sing as he asks you.”

And I could not. Even if that dirty hand tightened and the automatic went off and Victoria lost her life, I would do nothing about it. For I knew, and Kenneth now knew that I knew, that the pen lying so innocently on the bench at Ogden’s far side had much more than solid ink in its case. It was a piece of concentrated, high-power explosive triggered off by a sonic device. It was, in fact, the twin of the pen which last week had exploded inside the
Lysander.
And another copy of Kenneth’s own prototype, which I, Tina Rossi, had abstracted from his locked Nevada laboratory for my principals to photograph and return.

I have never had such a reception in my life for my singing, as I had that night for my silence. Ogden did not shoot Victoria. He waited, the insufferable, interfering fool, until my refusal was established, and all my refusal implied; and then he laughed and dropped the gun in his pocket, and said: “No, Madame Rossi won’t sing. She doesn’t want to explode in mid-ocean. She is hoping to glide homewards soon to those cosy bank accounts and those cinnamon diamonds; to the applause and the adoration and the comforting arms of Dr Holmes . . . I underestimated your ambition, Tina. I apologise. I made sure you were going to betray us: I was convinced you were flying to Rum to confide all to your loving friend Kenneth.

“What a loss to the world of music, if our attempt with the mine had succeeded! What a loss to the world of science if Dr Holmes had killed himself, there in Rose Street, a self-confessed traitor.” His voice was jibing and thin. “You could have continued to work for us then, with no risk of suspicion. If my colleague hadn’t taken Chigwell for Holmes, and killed the wrong man . . .

“Your assignation was ill-chosen, Tina. We didn’t mean you to be involved in that killing. We didn’t mean you to meet Johnson. Especially we didn’t mean you to meet Johnson . . .”

I said, through my excellent capped teeth: “Why didn’t you tell me about him? Why didn’t you make yourself known?” and saw that he was smiling. He was truly crazy.

“Haven’t I told you? We didn’t trust you, my dear,” Ogden said. “But it’s all gone now, Tina, hasn’t it? There’s nothing left for you now back on
Dolly
but handcuffs. So you and I had better make for the mainland, hadn’t we? You see, Dr Holmes, how I have a helper after all? Ogden’s mate!”

We are kept, we agents, we amateur contact people, as a rule quite separate from each other. In the chain stretching from me to the man who finally passed the ballpoint pen bomb, innocently, as a present, to one of the crew of the fated
Lysander,
I do not know what part Ogden played, and I did not know until Johnson exposed him that Ogden was one of us. On the other hand Ogden, it seemed, had all along guessed my identity. I suppose since he found me on board, he had known that he had only to expose me to make of me an ally of necessity. I wondered, a little, why he had held his hand up till now. Either to earn kudos, since I could then continue to operate. Or for blackmail.

It did not now matter. Behind us the roaring was now quite distinct: it was near, and growing second by second louder. “We don’t need this,” continued Ogden, picking up the ballpoint pen between finger and thumb. “Do we? It served its purpose. Let’s confide it to the ocean. Then even if someone ever comes and sings a G sharp in alt. over it, Tina, it still will not explode.” And he rose, turning, to fling it as Victoria screamed.

It is a sickening sight, to see rolling out of the dark a long, black glistening wave, streaming dully with foam, which is advancing steadily along all its length towards you with the whole ocean in storm drawn behind it. I watched it quite without feeling, as if a bad film had intruded on some deep personal grief. Kenneth, I thought, felt the same. He sat limply across the well of the cockpit, his hands loose between his knees, and his gaze resting, almost blank, on my face. He was not seeing me. He was seeing, probably his precious, world-famous
diva
with the candid heart, who rose, unspoiled from her humble beginnings. I am sorry, Kenneth. That was me, too. But Michael was expensive, and although I was against the blackmailing at the beginning, it did permit him to live perfectly happily on his ten per cent. And having seen how easily Michael did it, I found it child’s play, myself, to toy with the grown-up, deeper, better paying end of the game . . . My God, I have never handled money like it. I was richer than my voice alone could ever have made me. But Michael didn’t know that.

We were sitting there, staring at each other still, when the renewed storm overtook us.

It was Ogden and Victoria who saved
Seawolf
in that first terrible impact when four hands on the helm were hardly enough; and we bucked and rolled in spite of our shorn pole and our sea anchor, with the seas pouring black on our shoulders and sheering down the worn decks in response to our tilt. Then we lifted our heads from the first onslaught of water, and Ogden swung the helm to the new compass point of the wind, while Kenneth began to lurch about cautiously, trimming the remaining scraps of sails, and I went below and restarted pumping. Victoria stayed, taking her orders from Ogden.

I remembered that she knew nothing, even what Ogden was accused of. And what had happened just now was a total mystery to her – except that Ogden somehow was about to shoot her, and that, asked to save her, I refused.

In everything, Victoria was solitary. Slave to the drunks, the leper colonies, the children’s missions, the jobs where no one cares if you have talent or beauty or intelligence or anything but a capacity for unremitting, unsavoury work, she got her satisfaction perhaps from our horrified alarm at her abasement. From that, and the power she wielded. We were very alike. She was calming to work with.

We took turns at the pump, Victoria and I, for a long time. It was not a matter of sailing anywhere: it was a matter once again of staying alive. The Aldis, safely lashed, had been switched off to save electricity and all the ship was quite dark. Kenneth and Ogden in the freezing cockpit spoke very little. One had to shout, against the violence of the new wind. Against its freezing impact, we had no protection. I did not care, at that moment, where Ogden took me.

After a long time, Kenneth came below. I was pumping and retching, for I who was never sick had found that there comes a time when willpower and good physique together can do nothing more. He had to touch my arm to make me look up. “You can stop pumping now. It’s moderating a little. We’re sailing.”

It was foolish to hope. I knew Kenneth. But something must have communicated itself to him, for he shook his head sharply. “North. With the tide, towards
Dolly.
The transmitter was working well until just before the mast went, and radio is one of my things. Johnson knows just about where we are . . . I’ve come for the Aldis.”

My voice did not work very well. I said: “Ogden?”

And Kenneth answered: “Ogden is dead.”

He talked, and I listened, but I didn’t take in much of it. The temporary boom, it seemed, had broken apart, and since there was almost nothing now on deck to give a handgrip, Kenneth had made Ogden fit on a lifeline before crawling along the side deck to fix it. The motion had been pretty bad, and the lifeline was an old one, rust-eaten at each end by the splices. They had found this out, he and Victoria, after the line broke and Ogden, without even a cry, had tumbled sideways like a large bony doll into the sea, the pixie cap fixed on the long, melancholy cranium. The tape had gone with him. The tape, with the conversation between Ogden and Michael Twiss, in which Michael accused Ogden of spying and Ogden had said – what? – about me.