Isvik Page 20

  That night I was woken by a thin, tinkling sound and sat up wondering where the hell I was. There was movement below me and I remembered that I was in the upper berth of a two-tier bunk and Iain had one of those wristwatches with a built-in alarm. I drifted off again only to open my eyes almost immediately to the sight of a head level with mine and arms reaching up. The wool of a sweater brushed my face. ‘What the hell’s up?’

  ‘Nothin’. Somethin’ Ah have to dae, that’s all.’

  An almost full moon filtered through racing clouds to give a pale light and I watched as he pulled on his rubber seaboots and slipped out of the room. I rolled out of the upper berth and padded down the corridor to the bathroom. I needed a pee anyway. It was 03.17 and I was just in time to see him climb into a waiting car and drive off.

  It was almost five before he returned. But when I asked him where he had been all he said was, ‘Go back to sleep.’ He undressed and got quickly into his berth.

  ‘You’ve been gone almost two hours.’

  ‘Ah had to make a telephone call. Now shut up. It’s cold outside and Ah want to sleep, even if ye don’t.’

  I didn’t ask any more questions, just lay there listening to the wind. London. Via satellite. It had to be London. Europe anyway. Otherwise he wouldn’t need to make the call in the middle of the night. But what was it about, and why now? What was the urgency? Questions buzzed around inside my head and I think there was a glimmer of dawn before I finally dozed off.

  I don’t know whether it was the overpowering sense of being imprisoned in a world of cloud and rock, the wild remoteness of it and the everlasting bludgeoning of the wind, but everything seemed to take longer than expected. And there were setbacks, of course. Coloni received a message to say his mother had been injured in some sort of political disturbance in Valparaíso, so instead of cooking for us, he decided to go home. Iris and Nils continued taking turns at the galley stove with the inevitable result that the dynamo that would run off the free-turning prop when we were sailing arrived by air from the States before the alterations to the drive shaft were complete. And then the ship had to be slipped, not once, but twice, first for the scraping, repainting and antifouling of the hull, then a second time for replacement of five defective keel bolts. Several items Iris had arranged to be flown in proved to have been wrongly listed and had to be sent back. About the middle of the month Nils discovered metal fatigue in two of the seacocks, the worst being the inflow to the heads, which meant that for all of a week, till we could slip yet again and fit replacements, we were using a good old-fashioned shit bucket. And all the time, work going on internally while I wrestled with rigging and sails, mostly on the open deck.

  The one good thing was the Australian pair finally making up their minds to come, the wife’s partners having agreed to her taking up to a year’s sabbatical. Will join ship end-November – Andy and Go-Go Galvin, they cabled. And I had a piece of luck, too. The ship’s library, in addition to all the necessary navigational books, a Bible, a Book of Common Prayer, accounts of Antarctic expeditions and a dozen or so lurid paperbacks, contained one or two self-help books, among them one on the rigging and canvassing of sailing vessels. It had been written for an age when wind was still the motive power for most of the world’s shipping, so that, though technically out of date, it was invaluable for some of the work I was doing, particularly wire splicing, and if we were rolled over and had to jury-rig the ship it would be a life saver.

  Re-rigging the ship for an Antarctic voyage inside of a week, after she had been lying idle for over a year, was quite impossible. A month at least was my estimate after I had sorted everything out. We were all working flat out and the only break we had was on the second Sunday when Isvik was on the slip and the Yard closed. For once the forecast was good. We took the semi-rigid rubber boat and went south towards Dawson Island, finally beaching it in a little cove of black sand and gravel on the shore of the Brunswick Peninsula just before the dog-leg that took the Strait north-west through miles of narrow channels to the Pacific. Moraine boulders were piled in rounded heaps and we walked inland through tufted heaps of tussac grass, climbing well up the scree-covered slopes to picnic in a spot where we had a magnificent view of the Strait and the channels and islands further west. The sun was shining, the water a deep indigo-blue and the air so crystal clear that it seemed as though I could stretch out my hand and touch the gleaming white of Sarmiento far to the south-east in Tierra del Fuego.

  We had agreed not to talk about fitting-out problems and we lay in the sun drinking from the bottle Iain had humped up in his backpack. With the fish and cheese sandwiches Iris had brought the world seemed a different place, gentle and relaxed. And then she suddenly said, ‘Carlos is arriving on Friday.’

  Iain had been telling us how ten to fifteen thousand years ago early man had crossed from Mongolia to Alaska by way of the Aleutian chain of volcanic islands and then, over a period of some five millennia, had worked his way down through North and South America until finally he had reached Tierra del Fuego, living out the winters virtually naked except for the natural hair of his body. He talked about Fitzroy, the naval officer who had carried out the first detailed survey of the waters we were looking down on, and of Darwin, who had joined Fitzroy in the Beagle for a second voyage in which the survey had been completed, followed by the long voyage home via the Galapagos and other islands, including New Zealand. ‘Five years it took them, the first tae of them spent in these waters, so Ah would guess Darwin’s first tentative thoughts about the origins of species started here.’

  The range of Iain’s reading was a constant surprise to me, and he had that rare ability to remember what he had read so that he could pass it on. And then Iris, by that non sequitur announcement of Carlos’s imminent arrival, showed that, far from listening to him, her thoughts had been on the voyage and what lay ahead.

  ‘Why?’ She must have given Iain some idea of the boy’s background, for he didn’t ask her who he was, just that explosive question – ‘Why?’

  ‘Why? I don’t know why.’ She was lying stretched out, her head against a pillow of lichen-covered stone, her eyes staring straight up at the incredible blue of the sky. ‘All I have is this message.’ She fished a crumpled sheet of paper from the pocket of her anorak and handed it to him.

  Arriving Punta Arenas 1700 27 Nov – Carlos Borgalini. He read it aloud, then handed the paper back to her, and I thought what a pity it was to have to worry about that wretched boy on the one really good day we had had since our arrival. There was nothing much she could tell us about him anyway, only what we knew already. ‘Ye’re sure he’s Gómez’s cousin?’ Iain had just bitten into a cheese sandwich and his mouth was full, so I don’t think she heard him properly. He swallowed and repeated the question, adding, ‘Ye’re quite sure?’

  ‘You have only to look at him to see he is some sort of a relation,’ she said sharply.

  ‘Borgalini. Who is Borgalini?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She said it too quickly and he glanced at her.

  ‘Ah think ye dae. He is closely connected with that woman of yer father’s, Rosalli Gabrielli. Accordin’ to Rodriguez, that is, so why dae ye say he is a cousin?’

  She didn’t answer that.

  ‘Is he a cousin? Or is he really somethin’ closer?’

  She shook her head. ‘He is Ángel’s cousin, not mine. That is all I know.’

  ‘And Ángel is not your brother?’

  She was silent, frowning.

  ‘That’s what ye told Pete. When he was with ye at the hacienda.’

  ‘Did I? I don’t remember.’

  He was silent for a while, juggling with two small stones that were white like sugar cubes. At length he murmured, ‘Somethin’ wrong somewhere.’

  ‘Wrong? What is wrong? I don’t understand.’

  ‘My information …’ He stopped there, the click of the quartz-like cubes the only sound. ‘Pass me the bottle.’ He held out his hand and she gave it to him,
watching him as he put it to his lips, her eyes fixed in an almost mesmerised stare.

  ‘What is this information? What is it you are thinking?’

  He had turned so that he faced her, his body propped on that deformed arm of his, the sleeve of his anorak empty, the metal forearm and hand stuffed incongruously into his pack. ‘Let’s get this straight, Iris.’ He had reached over and was gripping her shoulder with his left hand, holding her so that her face was close to his. ‘Yer father was born Juan Roberto Gómez. Following the annulment of his marriage to Rosalli Gabrielli he went to Ireland and married yer mother, Sheila Connor. After that he hyphened the tae surnames and called himself Juan Roberto Connor-Gómez. That right?’

  She nodded, her eyes locked with his.

  ‘Now, ye were born tae years after they were married. All very respectable. But our friend Ángel, when was he born? Dae ye know?’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘For God’s sake!’ His voice was suddenly high and sharp. ‘What sort of a person are ye? Ye go up there to Cajamarca, behave like a whore, try and trade yer body fur information about the position of the Santa Maria del Sud, and now ye pretend ye don’t know who the man is.’ And he added, in a voice that would have done credit to an elder of the Wee Frees, ‘If he is yer brother, then ye’ve been committin’ incest. That’s a carnal offence in the eyes o’ the Church.’ He paused. Then in a softer voice, ‘An’ if he’s no’ yer brother, then who the hell is he?’

  The question hung there in the cool air of the mountainside, the whole world seemingly silent and listening. A bird slid past, wings soughing as it planed down towards the water below, darkening now with the beginnings of a breeze.

  ‘Well?’

  And then she went for him, her voice trembling, her eyes staring with sudden hate, all the Latin in her coming out as she ripped his hand from her shoulder. ‘You big, filthy-minded shit. You spik to me like that again and you can go back to wherever is the name of that Glasgow slum where your drunken father spawned you.’ She was almost screaming at him. ‘All I wanted was to prove my husband right. I know Ángel has seen that ship. I know he has. I did get that much out of him. But he don’t say where. He don’t give me the position. So now I have to put up with him on the boat. And you throw it all in my face, calling me a whore, which I am not, and you know I am not. All I want is to show the world that Charles was not hallucinating.’ And she added, quieter now, ‘All right. Charles was scared. I know that. He was afraid of the ice. But there is nothing wrong in being scared. And there is nothing wrong with his brain. He don’t hallucinate. That’s what I want to prove.’

  ‘And yer brother?’ Iain’s voice, too, was suddenly very quiet, very controlled.

  ‘Ángel, do you mean?’

  ‘No, of course Ah don’t mean Ángel. Yer other brother, yer real brother, Eduardo. Don’t ye want to know what happened to him?’

  Her eyes widened, as though the reference to Eduardo was something physical like a blow, the fury quite gone out of her as she said, ‘Why do you say that? Do you know something?’ She leaned forward, gripping hold of him. ‘What is it? What do you know?’ And when he shook his head, she asked him in a voice fallen to a whisper, ‘Who are you? Please, please tell me – who are you – what are you? I must know.’

  And when he still didn’t reply, she said, ‘If you know something, for God’s sake tell me.’ The entreaty in her voice, the limpid, almost tearful look in her eyes … I suddenly had the feeling Eduardo meant more to her than anyone else in her life, even her husband. ‘Do you know what happened to him? Do you?’

  ‘No.’ He said it abruptly. And then, almost in the same breath, his voice gone hard, ‘What was the date of Mario Ángel’s birth?’ He was leaning towards her again, very tense. ‘Ah have the date yer father married Sheila Connor. What Ah don’t know for certain is what happened immediately before that. Was Mario Ángel already born then, or did Rosalli give birth to him afterwards?’

  ‘Why? What does it matter?’

  ‘Don’t be a fool. Ye know it matters. He claims to be yer father’s son. Now, dae ye know the date of Ángel’s birth or don’t ye?’

  She was staring at him, her eyes wide, breathing quickly. ‘I know when his birthday is. October 17.’

  ‘And the year?’

  ‘I don’t think I can answer that – not for certain. You see, I never saw him till he came to stay with us in the school holidays.’

  ‘You mean he was a schoolboy then?’

  She nodded.

  ‘And that was the first time ye’d ever set eyes on him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What sort of impression did he make on ye?’

  Her eyes had a sudden dreamy look. ‘He was different, totally different – different to any boy I had ever met before – quite … quite uninhibited.’

  ‘How old did ye think he was then?’

  ‘Oh, about ten, I think.’

  ‘Did ye ever meet a man called Borgalini? Roberto Borgalini.’

  ‘No. I never meet him. Why?’

  ‘He was Rosalli Gabrielli’s manager. He was also a member of the Mafia, and he was up to his eyeballs in drugs. Altogether a very nasty piece of work.’ He hesitated, then got to his feet. ‘He just could be Ángel’s father,’ he added, gathering up his things and starting back down the slope, scree-walking very fast over the first long patch of loose grey stones, swinging his pack, and the empty sleeve flapping against his hip.

  TWO

  It struck me as odd that Carlos should be turning up here in Punta Arenas after having been arrested for the death of a girl he had never seen. Odd, too, that neither Iris nor Iain seemed unduly surprised. It was almost as though they had expected it. Iris I could understand, but Iain … The trouble was, the more I was with him, the less I seemed to know him, and all my tentative questions about his contacts with the world outside Punta Arenas met with a stony reception. Increasingly the man was become an enigma to me.

  Isvik was on the slip again and we were feeding ashore, at a little ristorante-cum-bistro just back of the dockyard. That evening after supper, instead of talking about Carlos, Iris began speculating once again on the role the Santa Maria had been intended to play in the Falklands war, asking, first Nils, then Iain, whether the Argentine Navy had intended to use her to penetrate the military exclusion zone. ‘If she was intended as a sort of spy ship, she’d have been spotted in no time and boarded, or simply blown out of the water.’

  ‘She is wood,’ Nils said. ‘She don’t show up so well on radar.’

  ‘If the British warships failed to find her, then the Harriers were bound to.’ She was looking at Iain. ‘Is that why you’re so interested in the Santa Maria? You want to find out what her purpose is?’

  He didn’t answer, sitting there, his left elbow on the table, his shoulders hunched.

  ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ I said. ‘Those old ships may be built of wood, but there’s still plenty of metal for the radar to pick up. Guns, anchors, all the fastenings, the metal bands round the masts …’

  ‘No.’ Iris was suddenly quite excited. ‘The bands round the masts, all the deck fastenings, they were plastic. Everything that was originally iron had been ripped out and replaced with specially moulded plastic equivalents.’ She had been talking to the dockyard workers, asking them about the Santa Maria. One of them had told her about the deck fastenings and she had confirmed it with a naval officer who had been in Punta Arenas when the frigate was towed in and who was now on his second tour of duty in the Magellan port. She had Iain’s attention now as she added, ‘It must have cost a fortune to modify her like that. What did they do it for if not to use her as a spy ship? They never did use her, did they?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Then how did she come to be down there in the ice of the Weddell Sea? Is that what you have come to find out?’

  He smiled, shaking his head again. ‘We don’t know she’s there. Not for certain. But if she is, and we manage to reac
h her …’ He hesitated, still smiling, then gave a little shrug. ‘Then we’ll know her secret, won’t we?’ And he added, ‘Ah’m inclined to agree with Nils. Ah think some naval officer with more imagination than sense dreamed up the idea of slippin’ her inside the Navy’s guard as a spy ship. And if that officer was high enough in rank …’ He hesitated, then, still thinking aloud: ‘Nobody could tell him it wouldn’t work. It’s never been tried, not as far as Ah know – a wooden ship with no metal anywhere and the electrics safely cocooned. Same principle as the plastic domes that protect our coastal radar defences. But, of course, the war was over so quickly.’

  ‘But after the war,’ she said. ‘They sailed afterwards. I checked when I was making enquiries in Ushuaia.’

  ‘Enquiries?’ His head came up. ‘What enquiries?’

  ‘About Charles. I think I may be partly the reason Ángel was given facilities to fly down into the Weddell Sea.’

  ‘He was testin’ the suitability of a Fokker plane fur work in the Antarctic.’

  ‘He found the Santa Maria. I know that. So he is flying two birds with one stone.’ She gave a little giggle at her verbal mix-up. ‘He had a test job to carry out and at the same time he can see if what Charles said is true.’

  Iain was frowning. ‘Ah thought he flew that test before there was any suggestion of an old ship caught in the ice down there. Did he tell ye when he flew over it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And if he flew over it before that plane yer husband was in crashed …’ He left it at that, but the inference was obvious. If he had flown the test before the plane crashed, then he had had another reason to go looking for the Santa Maria. ‘When did she leave Ushuaia?’ he asked her.

  ‘I don’t know. I ask, but there is nobody there who had seen her leave.’

  ‘But a ship like that, a centre of interest, can’t leave a naval dockyard without her absence being noted and commented on. There must have been somebody there –’