Chapter 9

‘Bugger.’ Phipps jumped back, but it was too late, the ash had blown back into him.

‘You should be more careful, Doctor,’ laughed a voice from behind him.

Phipps jumped again and looked over his shoulder. He saw Rashid, the Indian captain, whose eyes seemed to have sprang out on stalks at his misfortune. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said, ‘I didn’t expect to see anyone up here.’ His face was already burning.

Rashid was still chuckling. ‘And what ever you do, Doctor,’ he managed to say through gasps, ‘never piss over the side; if that comes back at you, it’s a lot more unpleasant.’ The Captain buckled again in hoarse laughter, his reddened face pulsating at his own joke.

‘Yes . . . yes I am sure it is.’ Phipps said, nervously fingering the bowl of his pipe. He had already abandoned the idea of a refill and was looking for a way past the guffawing Indian. He stuffed the shiny packet of deep shag into a jacket pocket and closed his moistening palm around the pipe.

Rashid steadied himself on the deck, his amusement running down like a blocked lavatory. ‘Soon be there, Doctor,’ he said. He bent forward, clutched hold of the railing, and shifted his body back towards the middle of the gangway.

Phipps watched his lines of escape close off, if he was still determined to get away from another one of Rashid’s forced conversations, he would now have to either scurry under the Captain’s outstretched arms or push between his hunched back and the begrimed bulkhead of the communications tower. He turned away and looked back out across the whitecaps.

‘Glad I’ve finally pinned you down, Doctor; been meaning to have a word with you about your destination.’ He paused and wiped his brow with the heel of his right hand. ‘Not so safe over there these days, don’t you know?’

Phipps grimaced as the odour of Rashid’s sweaty uniform wafted under his nose. Of course I bloody well know, you idiot, he thought; but he made no reply.

‘I Supposed you’d know; but thought I’d warn you anyway. Always the sound of gunfire in those parts. Never know when a rocket’s going to drop down next to you. Wouldn’t like to stop there myself. Not me. Always glad to be sailing out of there, even on this old tub.’ He slapped the rail as if he were greeting a trusted old friend, and then he gazed out over the sparkling turquoise towards the distant landmass. ‘Well, it’s your funeral, and if you want stop in there and help them, that’s up to you isn’t it? Just keep your head down if I were you. Anyway we’ll stay out here tonight and steam in first thing in the morning. Safer that way. Then we can be out of there before sunset and not have to spend one dark hour in the place.’

Captain Rashid released the railing and stood up straight, at once freeing up two lines of escape. Phipps quickly took measure of both possibilities.

‘Oh well,’ the Captain said, ‘better get back to the bridge and check exactly where we are.’ He turned to go. ‘You are still welcome to come up there anytime you want,’ he said, ‘but you had better hurry up—not a lot of time left.’

Phipps fell into the railing as the Captain walked away; he didn’t slide right down to the deck but he certainly would have done if he could have been sure that Rashid wasn’t still spying on him. After a minute or two of hugging the warm iron his heartbeat began its uneven descent. ‘No thanks,’ he muttered in response to the Captain’s departing offer. Then he pulled himself up; and in order to focus his mind on something, he tried to find the landmass on the horizon; he scanned left and right but it had disappeared into haze.

With nothing stable to hold on to, his mind began wander and he thought about what had just happened to him, and about what had happened to him on other recent occasions when, through no fault of his own, he had been forced into the close company of other people—at the airport when he’d left London; at Eco-Aid ‘s dingy offices the day he had been briefed for this mission; at the university the day he had been fired. Some kind of pattern emerged and his heartbeat fluttered up again Things were getting a little out of control—scary even.

Human contact was the problem; unsociable the more forgiving of his colleagues called him; but until recently he’d always managed to control himself: even the physical reactions; where his stomach might cramp and his bowels loosen; or his legs might turn to jelly; or his temperature might leap and his head spin. Until a few months ago none of these things had ever prevented him from leading his life, which was far from normal but usually the way he wanted. But now the problem had cost him his job and seemed to be pushing him into a place that everyone described as a hell on Earth. He scanned the horizon again, thinking about where he was heading, and a grin sneaked onto the bottom half of his face.

Winning this assignment from Eco-Aid had been easy—even for a man with collapsed social skills. Phipps remembered the jumpered pipe-smokers telling him that he was their last hope, begging him to accept the job. They hadn’t exactly said it but it seemed that no sane man west of the Euphrates was willing to set foot in Sa’ An.

The pouch of tobacco felt sticky in the right-side pocket of his long shorts, under the fiddling of his sweaty fingers, and he suddenly remembered what he had been going to do before the arrival of Rashid. His heartbeat had almost recovered and as he pulled his hand out of his pocket the grin on his face became a smile.

Phipps looked back over the weeks and tried to identify any points of happiness: he found a few but in all of them he was completely alone and had drunk copious amounts of whisky. He then remembered the meeting, a week after he’d signed the contract with Eco-Aid and a week before he was due to leave London. Thompson Tower, Mayfair—he’d almost panicked and run down every step from the thirtieth floor. Only one thought kept him in the building; one thought made him face those two suited executives from New York. And with that thought he had managed to stay almost calm as they outlined a different set of objectives for him to carry out in Sa’ An and told him exactly how he could secure his suddenly uncertain future.

He pried open the shiny pouch and began to play with the dark-brown strings of tobacco. Rashid popped up again in his mind, making his offer of a visit to the bridge. ‘No thanks,’ Phipps muttered again. He had spent almost every second of the four-day voyage alone, avoiding the officers and crew, and he was not about to spoil the trip with even one more minute in the company of the odorous Captain Rashid of The Maharajah. At that very moment, somebody on the bridge sounded the ship’s horn and a melancholy boom rolled out over the ocean towards the distant land. Phipps looked around and saw no reason for the blast. ‘Idiots,’ he said out loud. He then banged the bowl of his pipe on the rail, only this time he made sure of the wind direction before doing so.