The Ancient. Muriel Gray
paint was peeling only in places that didn’t matter, the deck was not littered with hazardous material that constituted an offence, but neither was it particularly clean, and the hull was dulled with variegated horizontal stripes of algae that clearly were not planned to be dealt with as a priority.
Its depreciating appearance was not unusual in a working merchant fleet, particularly in this part of the world, but it was nevertheless an unsightly tub.
She had been lying in Callao for twelve days, which pleased the lower-ranking crew who had been taking the train daily to Lima, returning with a variety of cheap and unpleasant purchases they imagined might curry favour with loved ones back home.
But the turnaround time was unusual. The Lysicrates worked hard for her living. Of a fleet of ten ships, she was the eldest, and sailing as she was under a Monrovian flag of convenience, she was hardly the most prestigious. The dubious registration meant that the company could avoid practically every shipping regulation in the book, and by and large, it did. While she was still afloat, the ship’s task was to sail loaded, as often and as quickly as she could, so the fortnight’s holiday in port was not normally on the agenda. But no one was complaining. And no one seemed to mind that the captain had spent an unusual length of the time ashore. All anyone cared about was that the holds were filling up and it was time to go.
Just as Leonardo Becko, the cook, was putting the last touches to a dinner of steak and fries, the door of the last hold of the Lysicrates was rolling closed with a rumble.
That would mean it was only a matter of hours, and the crew were already milling around above and below deck, making the comfortable and familiar preparations to ensure the constant uncertainty of the sea would once more be under their control.
As they did so, the cargo in hold two shifted its bulk as the strip of daylight that moulded its rotting undulations narrowed steadily with the closing door, and the two massive metal plates met, enfolding it in darkness.
What air remained in the three to four foot gap between trash and steel seemed to sigh as the finality of the doors being secured subtly shifted the pressure. And then the broth of waste that was as solid as it was liquid was alone in the dark. Locked in. Silent. Content with its own decay.
In the officers’ messroom, Captain Lloyd Skinner was already at his table, pouring himself a glass of water, when he caught sight of his female passenger walking past the open door.
‘Miss … eh …?’
Her figure moved backwards into the door frame. Esther had changed into a cotton shirt and jeans, and with her deeply tanned flesh scrubbed she radiated a health that was out of place in the atmosphere of mundane industrial toil.
‘Hi? Mulholland. Esther Mulholland.’
The man cleared his throat, and smiled. ‘This is where you eat.’
She looked down the corridor, to the open door of the crew’s mess hall where she’d planned on eating, already accommodating five silent Filipinos, smoking and waiting patiently for their food. Esther returned the smile and walked into the room.
There were three round tables set for dinner, empty, their glasses and cutlery polished and waiting for diners. The Starsky-and-Hutch interior designer had been at work here too, adding plastic pot plants to the garish patterned fabrics, affording the room the atmosphere of a sad waiting area in a run-down clinic.
‘Captain?’ She held out her hand but didn’t sit down, waiting to be asked. This was a different deal from the voyage out here. She had no passenger rights that normally elevated the ticket holder to the status of officers, only the good will of this man she’d never met, and Esther had an instinct for making herself worthy of good will when she needed to.
The man had an abstracted expression, his attention elsewhere. ‘Eh, yes. Lloyd Skinner.’
He took her hand without rising, shook it limply, moved the book he had been reading to one side as though it were in her way, then motioned in general to the three ugly plastic padded chairs beside him like a reluctant furniture salesman.
Skinner, she reckoned, looked to be in his late forties, perhaps even early fifties, but in direct contrast to his soak of a first mate he was in such good shape it was hard to tell. Whereas Matthew Cotton was probably only scraping the ceiling of his thirties, his hair had greyed prematurely, and his face was lined, brutalized, the flesh sucked from the bones by abuse, leaving him with the mask of a much older man. Skinner glowed with health. Sandy hair topped an oval golden-brown face with distracted blue eyes and a mouth that was perhaps a little on the thin side. He was powerfully built, and the arms that emerged from his short-sleeved shirt indicated that his body hadn’t always been behind a desk.
Esther gave an internal sigh of relief that at least the man in charge of this decidedly shabby tub seemed to be halfway human. She sat down happily.
‘I really want to thank you, Captain Skinner. I mean, this is way past kindness and out the other side.’
The man coughed into his fist while looking beyond her at the open door, then at the plastic plants.
‘No problem. These, eh, tickets, are pretty flexible.’ He gestured vacantly into the air and continued. ‘Merchant ships change their schedules all the time.’
Esther’s heart started to barnacle with lead.
‘Didn’t your first officer mention mine was non-refundable?’
‘Oh, we’ll sort it.’
‘No. I mean really. It’s a grace-and-favour ticket.’
The captain looked at her properly for the first time, and there seemed to be something akin to alarm behind his eyes. ‘You have family in the shipping line?’
Esther thought about Gerald McKenzie. Thought about his clammy hands on her breasts and his awful breath in her ear. Thought about him guffawing in the darkness of the theatre at the pathetic overwrought antics of Jim Carrey, his wet mouth full of popcorn. She gulped back a combination of revulsion and shame at how she’d used him, and like so many boys before, hadn’t let him use her like he’d planned.
‘No. No. It’s a friend’s father. He works for Croydelle.’
Skinner ran a hand over his jaw and neck and looked away again. ‘Ah. Well … whatever.’
There was an awkward silence, while Esther waited for some kind of confirmation that indeed everything would be all right, but was rewarded only by Captain Skinner looking down and touching his book absently as though he wished very badly to go back to it. She cleared her throat.
‘So will that still be okay?’
‘Mm? Oh yes. Yes. I’m sure. Your ticket. You can, eh, see the purser with it.’
He smiled weakly, then looked to a figure hovering by the door to the galley, more to avoid the awkwardness of this conversation, thought Esther, than out of an eagerness to be served. The glance, however, bore fruit.
A man in a stained white waiter’s jacket approached the table, handed them both a menu encased in a thick red plastic folder like that of a cheap diner, then disappeared again. Skinner straightened his arms and regarded the menu as though it were the printed fare of a state banquet.
Esther looked at the intent on his face and quickly reviewed her first impression. She ought to have guessed that no ordinary captain would employ such a drunk for his first in command, but the level of this man’s dismissive distraction seemed out of character for a man in charge of a large ship and sizeable crew.
The captain on the Valiant Ellanda had been a straightforward industrial boss, friendly, but very much in charge, his officers a reasonable selection of men doing their jobs and enjoying the limited social life at the end of their watches. That journey had been uneventful, the company boring, but the atmosphere comforting. This was disquieting. Esther glanced down at the paperback on the table, desperate to start a conversation that would at least engage him before he changed his mind about her free passage. She expected a Wilbur Smith or