The Doomed Oasis

II. THE WHOLE TRUTH
1. Escape to Saraifa

Everdale Road was in the Grangetown district of Cardiff. It was one of those terrace streets of grim Victorian brick, roofs hunched against the wet west wind, windowed eyes peering blindly for the view of river and sea that was blocked by other similar houses. Two streets away and you could look across the Taff to the litter of cranes, the glimpse of funnels that marked the Bute Docks. It always depressed me, this area of Cardiff; it lacked the squalid colour of Tiger Bay, the bridge across the Taff seeming to cut it off from the toughness and sense of purpose that gave a lift to the real dock area. The street was deserted except for one car, a small black saloon. It stood outside number seventeen, and as I drew in to the kerb behind it, I glanced quickly at the house. There was nothing to distinguish it from the others, except the number. A light was on in one of the downstairs rooms. Neat lace curtains were looped back from the windows.

I got out and rang the bell, wondering what I was going to find inside. Trouble of some sort; nobody ever called me to this district unless they were in trouble. And the voice over the phone — it had been a woman’s voice, low and urgent, near to panic. I glanced at my watch. Four-thirty. The light was already going out of the cloud-filled sky. A slight drizzle gave a black shine to the surface of the street.

Across the road a curtain moved; hidden eyes watching, something to gossip about. I knew the black saloon parked at the kerb. It was Dr Harvey’s. But if there was death in the house then the curtains would have been drawn. My hand was reaching out to the bell-push again when the latch of the door clicked and voices sounded:’ … nothing else I could have done, Mrs Thomas. A case for the police … you understand, I hope. And the ambulance will be here any minute now.’ The door was flung open and Dr Harvey bustled out, almost cannoning into me. ‘Oh, it’s you, Grant.’ He checked in mid-flight, black bag gripped in his hand, no overcoat as usual, a young, fair-haired, very serious man in a perpetual hurry. ‘Well, I suppose you’ll be able to make some sort of a case out of it in court. The boy’s certainly going to need legal advice.’ There was no love lost between us. We’d tangled over medical evidence before. ‘Got to deliver a baby now. Can’t do anything more for that chap.’ And he almost ran out to his car.

‘Mr Grant?’ The woman was staring at me uncertainly.

I nodded. ‘Of Evans, Jones amp; Evans, solicitors. You telephoned me a little while back.’

‘Yes, of course.’ She held the door open for me, a small neat-looking person of between forty and fifty with deep-set, shadowed eyes. Her hair was greying, swept straight back from the forehead, the face dead white against the dark background of the passage.’ Will you come in, please.’ She shut the door behind me. ‘Dafydd didn’t want me to call you. But I thought you wouldn’t mind as your firm it is that handles that little allowance for me.’

It was the first I knew we acted for her in any way. I thought she’d phoned me because I’m willing in certain circumstances to take a case without a fee. ‘What’s the trouble, Mrs Thomas?’ I asked her, for she was standing motionless as though unwilling to let me go further into the house.

She hesitated, and then almost in a whisper, ‘Well, it’s Dafydd really, you see. He came back — and then…. Oh dear, it’s all so difficult to explain.’ Now that she had shut the street door, I could see no more than the outline of her face, but her voice, trembling to a stop, told me she was having to fight to keep control of herself. She was frightened, too. ‘I don’t know what he’ll do,’ she whispered. ‘And Sue not here. Sue could always manage him when I couldn’t.’

‘Sue is your daughter, is she?’ I knew it would steady her if I asked questions.

‘Yes, that’s right. She works at the Infirmary, but I didn’t phone her because she’d never get back here in time.’

‘And David — that’s your husband?’

‘No, Dafydd’s my son. He and Sue are twins. She understands him somehow.’

‘I see, and he’s in some sort of trouble?’

‘Yes.’ And then she added hastily, ‘He’s not a bad boy, not really.’ She drew in her breath quickly as though gathering herself together. ‘If I hadn’t written to him like I did, it wouldn’t have happened. But I’d had about all I could stand, you see, and then he came home and there was a bit of a row and Mr Thomas, he said things, you see, that he shouldn’t have done, and suddenly they were hitting out at each other. It wasn’t Dafydd’s fault. He’d had a terrible shock, poor boy. And Mr Thomas, he’d had a few beers, and then-’ She sucked in her breath again as though gulping for air. ‘Well, then he had this stroke, you see, and I called Dr Harvey right away and then I telephoned you because I knew if meant trouble for Dafydd.’ It had all come out in a rush as though she couldn’t contain it any longer. ‘My husband looked so bad, you see,’ she added lamely, ‘and I didn’t know what would happen. I just didn’t know what to do, Mr Grant — not for the best, as you might say. And then Dr Harvey came and he said there wasn’t much hope for him and he phoned the police so it’s glad I am that I called you now. You’ll know what to do and what Dafydd should say to them. He’s not a bad boy,’ she repeated in a voice that was suddenly on the defensive. ‘Just a bit wild you know.’ And she added quickly, ‘Mr Thomas hit me you see.’

There was a family row, in other words?’

‘Yes. Yes, you could call it that. But I wouldn’t like you to think that because Mr Thomas was a bit of a drinker there was anything wrong between us. He’s good at heart, you know.’

‘And he’s had a stroke you say?’

‘Yes, that’s right. That’s what Dr Harvey called it.’ She seemed to have got a grip of herself. ‘Come in now won’t you, Mr Grant. He’s lying on the couch in the parlour. And Dafydd’s there too. I expect you’d like a word with him. But don’t try and rush him, please,’ she added in a whisper, and I got the impression she was afraid of her son. ‘He needs a bit of handling, you see. And he’s had a shock as I say — a dreadful shock.’ She pushed open the door and stood back for me to enter. This is Mr Grant, Dafydd — Mr Grant the lawyer.’

The room was lit from the ceiling, a stark, glaring light without compromise. It showed me a couch with the body of a man lying on it. He was in his shirt sleeves, the brass gleam of a stud showing where his shirtband had been loosened. His eyes were closed and he was breathing with difficulty, his rather heavy, florid features fallen away so that the bone showed through the flesh. The nose had the veined look of a heavy drinker. Close against the gas fire, one elbow on the mantelpiece, leaned a youth of about twenty. He was rather over-dressed in a jacket with a lot of elaborate pockets and tucks and a pair of tight-fitting trousers. His face was as white as his mother’s; the same features, too, except that the nose was more beaky, the jaw stronger. He didn’t shift his position as I entered the room, didn’t even look up. He was staring down at the gas fire and his immobility was oddly disconcerting.

Close by his feet was a litter of broken glass from the smashed front of one of those over-pretentious china cupboards. The mahogany beading as well as the glass had been broken in the struggle and the bric-a-brac with which the cabinet had been filled, mostly white china souvenirs from seaside towns, lay in confusion on the worn carpet. A vase, too, lay where it had fallen from the table by the window. It was unbroken, and beside it lay a much-thumbed photograph album spilling press cuttings. There was something a little macabre about the whole room; nothing cleared up after the struggle and the father lying there half-dead on the couch with a blanket tucked round him; and the mother and son standing, facing each other, absolutely still.

I could feel the tension between them. It wasn’t hate, but it was something just as strong, an emotion so violent that the man on the couch, myself, the state of the room didn’t exist for them.

‘Well, now.’ I addressed the boy, my tone as matter-of-fact as I could make it in that sort of atmosphere. ‘Suppose you tell me what happened.’ But it was like talking to a brick wall. He had a sullen, withdrawn look.

‘I’ve told you what happened,’ his mother said in a whisper.

‘Quite so, Mrs Thomas, but I’d like to hear it from your son.’ She looked deathly tired. I turned to the boy again. ‘You’ve had a shock,’ I said gently. ‘It’s natural you should be a bit dazed by what’s happened…. ‘ But even as I said it I knew the boy wasn’t dazed. The knuckles of the hand that gripped the mantelpiece were white with pressure and there was a muscle working at the back of the jaw. He was holding himself in like a boiler under pressure and I wasn’t sure how best to handle him. His gaze had shifted now and he was staring at his mother. I felt sorry for the woman. ‘Listen to me, young man,’ I said. ‘I understand Dr Harvey has called the police. They’ll be here any minute now. If you want me to act for you, then you’d better start talking now, before they arrive.’

A slight movement of the shoulder, that was all the answer he made. It wasn’t a shrug, more a muscular twitch as though he was impatient for me to go. ‘Mr Grant is only trying to help, Dafydd.’

‘Dammo di! What the hell good is a lawyer man now? It’s done, and arguing about it won’t alter anything.’ His voice trembled. And then he turned on me, a flash of pale amber eyes, and told me to get out, the words violent, laced with obscenities.

‘Dafydd!’

But she was frightened; she had no control over him. ‘All right,’ I said, and I moved towards the desk where I’d left my hat. ‘I hope for your sake,’ I added, ‘that your father’s condition isn’t serious.’

‘He’s not my father.’ The words flashed out from between clenched teeth. ‘I’d have killed him if he’d been my father.’ I turned to find his pale eyes fixed on his mother. ‘1 mean that, Ma. I swear I’ll kill the swine — if lean ever find him.’ The words had a violence and a bitterness that appalled me.

‘He’s not himself,’ his mother murmured. ‘He doesn’t know what he’s saying.’ Her hands were plucking at the apron round her middle and her brown, doe-like eyes were wide with fear. She knew he’d meant it.

‘You’d better get control of yourself,’ I said. ‘You’ve done enough damage for one day without threatening more and frightening your mother.’

But now the pressure inside him couldn’t contain itself any more. ‘You get out of here.’ He said it quietly and because of that his words had force. ‘What’s happened here is nothing to do with you or anyone else. It’s between my mother and me.’ He spoke through clenched teeth as though he were still trying to keep some control over what he was saying. And then suddenly he lashed out wildly, all control gone: ‘When you’re suddenly told you’re illegitimate, and your sister’s illegitimate, too, you want to know a little more about it, don’t you? You want to talk it over with your mother — ask her a few questions, find out who and what the hell you really are.’

He flung out an arm, pointing dramatically at the album on the floor. ‘See that? Uncle Charles’s scrap book. She subscribed to a press-cutting agency. Every story the newspapers published about him — it’s all there, pasted in with loving care. My own mother clinging to the worn-out bed of an old love. Jesus Christ! It makes you want to weep. And me and Sue coming up the wrong side of the bloody blanket, and being fooled into calling that poor drunken sot Dada.’ He stared at me balefully. ‘Eight years old I was when I first stole a peek at the contents of that book. A relation, that’s what she said, an uncle of mine. Started me getting interested in Arabia, it did. I thought he was a bloody hero. Instead, he’s just a low-down, dirty heel who left my mother flat. Well, what do you say to that, eh? You’re a lawyer. Maybe you can tell me what I ought to do about it?’ And he glared at me as though I were in some way responsible.

And then he suddenly moved, a quick step forward that brought him face-to-face with me. ‘Now you just get the hell out of here and let me talk to my mother alone, see.’ His eyes had a wild look, the sort of look I’d only seen once before on a boy’s face, but that had been in the midst of battle.

I’d known how to deal with it then. But this kid was different. It wasn’t only that he looked tough; I had a feeling he was tough. Well, I’m not exactly soft, but I don’t walk into things with my eyes open. But then I glanced at Mrs Thomas, saw how scared she was of him, and after that there was nothing for it but to stand my ground, not knowing what exactly he’d do, for I could feel the tension building up inside of him again. He was like a spring coiled too tight.

And then the ring of the ambulance bell sounded down the street and the violence suddenly died out of him. It drew up outside the house and a moment later two hospital attendants came in with a stretcher.

The attention of the three of us was focused then on the man on the couch. He murmured as they shifted him, an inarticulate sound, and Mrs Thomas, fussing over him now, spoke his name. The tone of her voice had a quality that is only possible between people who have shared their lives together, and it seemed to reach him, for his eyes flicked briefly open and he murmured her name. ‘Sarah.’ It came thickly from his twisted lips, obscured by the effort of moving half-paralysed muscles. ‘Sarah — I’m sorry.’ That was all. The eyes closed, the face became clay again, and they took him out.

Mrs Thomas followed them, sobbing uncontrollably. The door swung to of its own accord and the room was still. ‘I shouldn’t have hit him. It wasn’t his fault.’ The boy had turned away and his shoulders were moving. I realized suddenly that he was crying. ‘Oh God!’ he sobbed. ‘I should have known. If I’d had any sense, I should have known.’

“You couldn’t have known he’d have a stroke,’ I told him.

He turned on me then. ‘You don’t understand.’ The tears were standing in his eyes. ‘He and I — we hated each other’s guts. I can see why now. But at least he stood by us, poor sod.’ And he added viciously, ‘He was a damn’ sight better than my real father. If I can ever lay my hands on that bastard-’ He checked there and gave an odd little laugh. ‘Bastard! That’s funny, isn’t it, me calling him a bastard.’ He turned away then, brushing the back of his hand across his eyes. ‘I wish I hadn’t hit him,’ he said quietly.

‘He’ll be all right.’

‘You think so?’ But then he shook his head. ‘No, he’s going to die. That’s what the doctor said. He was the only father Sue and I ever knew,’ he added, ‘and now I’ve killed him.’

‘Don’t talk nonsense. It’s not as dramatic as that. He’s had a stroke — and anyway you’re entitled to defend your mother when a man hits her.’

He looked at me. ‘Did she say that?’ And then he laughed, a little wildly. And after a moment he said, ‘Yes, that’s right — he hit her.’ And he added, ‘Christ! What a bloody mess!’ The door of the ambulance banged in the street outside and he turned to stare out of the window. The engine started and it drove off. As though its departure had started an entirely new train of thought, he swung round on me. ‘You’re Whitaker’s lawyer, aren’t you?’

The name meant nothing to me, but then no doubt Mrs Thomas’s allowance had been arranged by Evans years ago and it would be handled by my clerk as a matter of routine. ‘Whitaker is the name of your father, is it — your natural father?’

‘That’s right. My natural father.’ He spoke the word slowly, savouring it for the first time. And then he said, ‘I want his address.’

‘Why?’

‘Why the hell do you think?’ He was back at the window again. ‘A bloke’s got a right to know where his father lives, hasn’t he?’

‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘But I’m afraid I don’t know his address.’

‘That’s a lie.’ He came back to me, his eyes searching my face. ‘Well, you’ve got it on your files, haven’t you? You could look it up.’

‘If he’s a client of mine, then I’m not at liberty to disclose-’

‘Not even to his son?’

‘No, not even to his son.’ I hesitated. The boy’s temper would cool and after all he’d a right to know where his father was. ‘If I’ve got his address,’ I said, ‘then I’ll write to him if you like and get his permission-’

‘Oh, don’t give me that crap. You know bloody well where he is.’ He caught hold of my arm. ‘Come on. Arabia, it is — somewhere in Arabia. Tell me, for Christ’s sake.’ He saw it was no good then and began to plead: ‘Please, I haven’t much time and I got to know. Do you hear? I got to know.’ There was a desperate urgency in his voice. And then the grip on my arm tightened. ‘Let’s have it.’ I thought he was going to hit out at me and my muscles tensed, ready for him.

‘Dafydd!’

Mrs Thomas was standing in the doorway, her hands plucking again at the apron. ‘I can’t stand any more.’ There was an edge to her voice that seemed to get through to him and he relaxed slowly and stepped back from me. ‘I’ll come for that address,’ he muttered. ‘Sooner or later I’ll come to your office and get it out of you.’ He was back at the window again, looking out. ‘I’d like to talk to my mother now.’ He stared at me, waiting for me to go.

I hesitated, glancing at Mrs Thomas. She was still as stone, and her eyes, as they stared at her son, were wide and scared-looking. I heard the slow intake of her breath. ‘I’ll go and make some tea,’ she said slowly, and I knew she wanted to escape into her kitchen. ‘You’d like a cup of tea, wouldn’t you now, Mr Grant?’

But before I could reply and give her the excuse she needed, her son had crossed over to her. ‘Please, Ma.’ His voice was urgent. There isn’t much time, you see, and I got to talk to you.’ He was pleading with her — a small boy now pleading with his mother, and I saw her weaken at once. I got my hat from the roll-top desk where I’d left it. ‘It’s all right, Mrs Thomas,’ I said. ‘I’ll leave you now.‘There was a phone on the desk, an old-fashioned hook-up instrument standing amongst a litter of books on greyhounds and racing form. ‘You can always phone my office if you want me.’

She nodded dumbly. She was trembling slightly and I could see she was dreading the moment when she’d be left alone with him. But there was no point in my staying. This was something that lay between the two of them, alone. ‘Take my advice,’ I told him. ‘When the police arrive, be a little more co-operative with them than you have been with me if you want to avoid trouble. And stick to your mother’s story.’

He didn’t say anything. The sullen look was back in his face. Mrs Thomas showed me to the door. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘He’s upset.’

‘It’s not unnatural.’ I was remembering how I’d felt when I learned that my parents were divorced. I’d heard it first from a boy at school and I’d called him a liar and half murdered the little swine. And then when I discovered it was true, I’d wanted to kill my father and had had to content myself with a letter, which for sheer brutality had been inexcusable. ‘It’s a pity you didn’t tell him before.’

‘I always meant to,’ she said. ‘But somehow-’ She shrugged, a gesture of hopelessness, and as I went out to my car I was wishing I could have done more to help her.

As I turned out of Everdale Road a squad car passed me. There were four of them in it, including Sergeant Mathieson of the Cardiff CID. It seemed an unnecessarily large force to answer Dr Harvey’s call, but I didn’t go back. It was past five already and Andrews would be waiting to clear the day’s business.

Andrews was my clerk. He was also secretary, switchboard operator, office boy. Poor devil, he had come to me with the furniture and the two-roomed, dingy office, all that remained of my uncle’s once-prosperous business, which he had left to me in a fit of misplaced optimism, for though I’d passed my law exams, I’d never practised. There’d been the war and then I had drifted to Tanganyika and tea-planting, a venture which had turned out badly, leaving me virtually broke at the time of his death, so that the legacy of that miserable place seemed like the smile of fortune.

‘Know anything about a Mrs Thomas?’ I asked Andrews as he helped me off with my coat. He had drawn the curtains and with the coal fire burning brightly in the grate, the place looked almost snug, despite the dust and the piles of documents and the black deed boxes littering the floor by the open strong room door. ‘It’s a matter of a small allowance she claims we handle for her.’

‘Mrs Thomas is it?’ I had seated myself at the desk and he stood over me, tall and slightly stooped, the skin stretched taut as vellum across the bones of his long face. ‘You know, Mr Grant, almost half our clients are named Thomas.’ It was part of the game that he must always make the simplest thing appear difficult.

‘It’s one of your old clients,’ I said. ‘Something I have apparently quite unwittingly inherited from the old man.’

‘From Mister Evans, you mean.’ That, too, was part of the game, and because his position was privileged I had to humour him. ‘All right, Andrews. From old Mr Evans.’ The firelight flickered on the lined, hang-dog face bent obsequiously over me. He’d been with my uncle since before he was articled and had stayed with him right through his long illness until he had died two years ago. God knows how old he was; his scrawny neck, covered by a hard stubble, stuck up out of the soiled stiff collar like the flesh of a plucked fowl. ‘Well, what about it?’ I said impatiently. ‘I inherited so little in the way of business that it rather narrows the field. Does the name Whitaker ring a bell?’

‘Whitaker?’ His Adam’s apple moved convulsively. ‘Ah yes, of course. Colonel Whitaker. A little matter of a settlement. It used to come to us quarterly from Bahrain in the form of a banker’s draft, which we cashed and forwarded to an address in Grangetown.’

I asked him to get the file. But of course there wasn’t any file. However, whilst I was signing the letters, he managed to dig up some record of the arrangement. It was written on the firm’s notepaper in my uncle’s sloped writing and went back to before the war. In it Charles Stanley Whitaker undertook to pay to Sarah Davies the sum of twenty-five pounds quarterly for a period of fifteen years, or in the event of his death, a lump sum from the estate equivalent to the balance ALWAYS providing that such sum … The clue to what it was all about was contained in the final paragraph, which read: THIS settlement to be binding on my heirs and assigns and to be accepted by the said Sarah Davies in full settlement of any claims real or imagined. The signature at the bottom was a barely decipherable scrawl, and below it Sarah Davies had signed her name in a clear, schoolgirl hand.

‘If you ask me, Mr Grant, the Colonel got this young lady into trouble.’

The dry snigger with which Andrews accompanied this appraisal of the situation annoyed me. The young lady, as you call her, is now an unhappy and rather frightened woman of middle age,’ I told him sharply. The son, according to this, is nineteen and he’s only just discovered that he’s illegitimate. There’s a twin sister, too. Not a very amusing situation.’ And Whitaker — was he still in Arabia, I wondered? ‘Do you think the man has any idea he’s a son and daughter here in Cardiff?’

‘I couldn’t say, sir.’

‘Have we got his address?’

The bank in Bahrain. That was the only address we ever had.’

And Bahrain was in the Persian Gulf. But it was over three years since the last payment had come through. He might be anywhere now — back in England, retired, probably. ‘A pity we haven’t got his address,’ I said. I was thinking that the son must take after his father: the beaky nose and strong jaw were both physical characteristics that didn’t suit his circumstances. This is all we’ve got on Whitaker, is it?’

Andrews nodded.

Then how the devil do you know he’s a colonel? There’s no mention of colonel in this settlement.’

Apparently Andrews had seen his rank given in some newspaper story. ‘Something to do with oil concessions, I think. There was a picture, too, with some sheikhs in flowing robes and Colonel Whitaker in the centre dressed in khaki shorts and a military cap.’

‘How did you know it was the same man?’

‘Well, I couldn’t be sure. But I don’t think there could be two of them out in that area.’

He was probably right there. ‘I’ll ask Captain Griffiths about him.’ A man who spent his life taking his ship in and out of Arabian ports should know, and he was due in the office at five-thirty., ‘Is the conveyance on that property of his ready now?’

Andrews produced it from the bottom of the pile, a bulky package that looked as though it contained enough deeds to cover a twenty thousand acre estate instead of a little cottage on the Gower Peninsula. There’s still a map to be inserted in the conveyance. Otherwise it’s all there, title deeds, searches, everything.’

I told him to get on to the man who was doing the map right away. ‘Griffiths wants all the documents before he sails tonight.’ The phone rang. It was Mrs Thomas and I knew by the tone of her voice that something had happened. They came just after you left and I’m so worried, Mr Grant, I don’t know what to do. And now Sue has got back and she said to ring you. I’m very sorry to trouble you when you were so kind and came out here all for nothing, but you did say to telephone you if I needed any help and so I thought perhaps-’

‘Just tell me what’s happened, Mrs Thomas,’ I said.

‘Well, you see, they’ve taken Dafydd away and-’ Her voice broke down then. ‘I’m so terribly worried about him, Mr Grant. I don’t know what’s going to happen. So determined he is, you see. Once he’s got an idea into his head … always been like that he has ever since he was little, you know. Nothing would ever make him change his mind once he had made it up.’

‘Never mind about what’s in your son’s mind. What happened when the police arrived?’

They just said he was to go with them.’

To the police station?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘For questioning, was it?’

They didn’t say. I asked them why they were arresting him, but they wouldn’t tell me. Been in trouble he has, you know, and them behaving as though-’

‘Did Sergeant Mathieson say he was arresting him?’

‘No, he didn’t say that exactly. He just said he was to come along with them. But it’s the same thing, Mr Grant, isn’t it?’

‘Did he charge him?’

‘No. No, I don’t think so. He just said he was to come along, and he went. He didn’t try to resist or anything. They just took him and now I don’t know what is going to happen to him.’

‘Mrs Thomas,’ I said. ‘There’s something I want to ask you. Can you tell me where Colonel Whitaker is now?’

The quick gasp of her breath and then a long pause. ‘No. No, I don’t know. But somewhere in Arabia it will be.’

‘He’s still alive then?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘You’ve heard from him?’

Again the pause. ‘No. No, I never heard from him. Never.’ And she added quickly. ‘Only the allowance. Very good he was about the allowance.’ She sighed. ‘Never a penny I took for myself, but spent it on Dafydd. Clever he is, you know — a quick brain and good with his hands. I thought perhaps he would become an engineer.’ Her quick tongue ran on, about the books she’d bought him and how she’d sent him to night school, and I let her talk because it seemed to help her. ‘He couldn’t understand it when the money ceased. It was then he began to run wild, you see; down in the docks all the time and his heart set on getting to Arabia. Speaks Arabic you know.’ She said it with pride, and in the same breath added, ‘I tried to discourage him, but it was no good. He had books, you see, and all those Arabs down in the Tiger Bay district. In the blood it is, I suppose — in the blood and in their stars. And that book of cuttings. I should never have let him see it.’ And then she added, ‘A pity you weren’t here when they came for him. I know it would never have happened if you’d been here.’

‘Well, don’t worry about it any more,’ I said. ‘I’ll phone them and find out what it’s all about. Have you heard how your husband is?’ But she’d received no word from the hospital. ‘Well, that’s good,’ I said. They’d have been in touch with you if they were worried about his condition. I’ll phone you if I’ve any news about your son.’ I put the phone down. ‘First thing tomorrow, Andrews,’ I said, ‘get on to the newspapers and see if they’ve anything on their files about Whitaker. What that boy needs right now is a father, the sort of father he can look up to.’

I hurried through the rest of the business and as soon as Andrews had gone, I phoned Dr Harvey’s surgery. ‘George Grant here,’ I said when he came on the line. ‘Any news of Thomas?’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘and it’s bad, I’m afraid. I’ve just had a call from the matron. He died in the ambulance on the way to hospital.’

‘I see.’

‘Did the police pick that boy up?’

‘Yes.’ It could well mean a charge of manslaughter. ‘Has anybody thought of notifying Mrs Thomas that her husband is dead?’

The matron is telephoning her right away.’

‘About time, too,’ I said. Incredible how soulless an institution can be. But, in fact, it was the boy I was worrying about more than the mother. ‘They’ve taken David Thomas into custody,’ I said.

‘Good.’

His comment angered me. ‘Why did you consider it your duty to notify the police? Did you know the man was going to die?’

‘I thought it likely.’ And then, after a pause, he added, ‘He was a bookie, you know. Greyhounds mostly. Heavy drinker, heavy smoker, immoderate in everything, if you get me. That type goes quick. But I couldn’t be certain, of course.’ And he added, ‘Frankly, I wouldn’t have expected the boy to stay there till the police arrived. I’d have thought he’d clear out. Probably would have done if you hadn’t been there.’

‘I wasn’t there,’ I told him. ‘I’d left before they arrived.’

‘Oh well, doesn’t make any odds. He’s no good, that boy.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘Oddly enough,’ he said on a note of asperity, ‘I don’t hold with boys hitting their fathers. Far too much licence allowed this new generation. He’s a street arab, that boy — dock arab rather.’ He gave a quick, awkward laugh. ‘It’s the war, of course, but that doesn’t excuse them entirely.’

I asked him then to tell me what he knew about the boy. But he couldn’t tell me much. The Thomases had only been going to him since the start of the National Health Service, and he hadn’t set eyes on the boy more than once or twice. He’d grown up with the dock gangs, he said, mixing too much with the Arabs, had been in and out of a number of jobs and had finally been sentenced for his part in the beating up of a rival gang leader. ‘I imagine he’s only just been released from Borstal,’ he said. ‘Dockside toughs like that are the devil in my parish.’

‘And that’s why you called the police?’

‘Well, he killed his father, didn’t he?’ His voice sounded on the defensive.

‘You don’t make much allowance for human nature,’ I said.

‘No. Not with boys like that. You try stitching a few flick-knife wounds and bicycle chain gashes; you’d soon see it my way.’

‘All right,’ I said, and left it at that. He didn’t know Thomas wasn’t the boy’s father or what had caused the row between them. ‘Life’s not all as straightforward as you chaps see it in your clinics,’ I said and put the phone down.

By then it was five-thirty and Captain Griffiths had arrived. He was a small man with a pointed beard and a high, cackling laugh, and he wore a tweed suit which was a little too large for him. This, and his scrawny, wrinkled skin gave him a shrivelled look. But though he was not an impressive figure, long years of command had given him the knack of making his displeasure felt. ‘You promised me the documents before I sailed, man.’ He thrust his beard at me accusingly.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘You’ll get them. When are you sailing?’

‘Nine-thirty on the tide.’

‘I’ll bring them down myself.’

That seemed to satisfy him and since he showed an inclination to chat, I asked him about Whitaker. ‘Colonel Charles Stanley Whitaker,’ I said. ‘Do you know him by any chance?’

‘Yes, indeed. The Bedouin, that’s what they call him out there. Or the Bloody Bedouin in the case of those that hate his guts and all his Arab affectations. That’s the whites, you know. The Arabs call him Al Arif — the Wise One — or Haji. Yes, I know Colonel Whitaker. You can’t trade in and out of the Gulf ports without meeting him periodically.’

‘He’s still out there then?’

‘Oh lord, yes. A man like that would never be happy retiring to a cottage in the Gower.’ His small blue eyes creased with silent laughter. ‘He’s a Moslem, you know. He’s been on the Haj to Mecca, and they say he keeps a harem, and when it isn’t a harem, there’s talk of boys…. But there.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s just gossip. If I took account of all the gossip I heard on my ship there wouldn’t be anyone with a shred of reputation left. Too much time, you see. Everybody’s got too much time, and the damned humidity…. ‘ He gave that high-pitched cackling laugh. ‘But dear me,’ he went on, ‘there’s a real character for you. You don’t find men like Whitaker back here in Britain — not any more. One-eyed and a patch, and a great beak of a nose that makes him look like a bloody bird of prey.’

‘And you’ve met him?’

‘Yes, indeed. I’ve had him on board my ship, too — often and often. I’ve had him on board in all his flowing Bedouin robes with the silver of his great curved khanjar knife gleaming at his girdle and the black agal of Arabia round the kaffyah that covered his head; yes, and holding court on my own boat deck with the prayer mats out and his bodyguard all round him, armed to the teeth.’

‘A sort of Lawrence?’ I suggested. ‘Well …’ He sounded doubtful. ‘He hasn’t quite that standing with the political crowd. Too much of an Arab.

Changing his religion like that, it made a difference, you see. But the oil boys all treat him like God, of course — or used to. But for him the Gulfoman Oilfields Development Company wouldn’t have had a single concession out there. And then there was his theory — the Whitaker Theory, they called it. He believed that the proved oil-bearing country that runs down from Iraq through Kuwait, Dahran, Bahrain and Qattar would be found to continue, swinging south-east along the line of the Jebel mountains, through Buraimi and into the independent sheikhdom of Saraifa.

Well, there’s no knowing whether a man’s right about a thing like that, except by prospecting and drilling. And there was Holmes, you see — he’d had the same sort of bee-in-his-bonnet about Bahrain and he’d been proved right.’ ‘And Whitaker wasn’t?’ I prompted, for he had paused, his mind engrossed in the past.

‘No. It cost the Company a lot of money and nothing but dry wells for their trouble. And now things are changing out there.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘There’s a new type of man coming to the top of these Middle East oil companies, technical men who understand oil, but not the Arab. Whitaker and the world he represents — it’s doomed, you know; finished. You can’t lord it in the deserts of Arabia, not now, with the oil flowing and half the world trying to grab a stake in it. And he’s the manner of a ruling prince, you know. He might have been descended from the Prophet himself the way he behaved at times.’

It was an extraordinary picture that Griffiths had drawn for me. When he left to go back to his ship I felt that my drab office was the brighter for the colour his musical tongue had brought into it. I put some more coal on the fire and settled down to finish the day’s work.

It was about half an hour later that I was interrupted by the sound of the street door bell. It startled me, for I very seldom have a caller after office hours except by appointment and a glance at my diary confirmed that I’d no appointment for that evening.

My visitor proved to be a girl, and as she stood there in the driving sleet, clutching her bicycle, she seemed vaguely familiar. She had the sort of face that comes together around the nose and mouth, a face that was attractive, rather than pretty, its composition based on the essential of bone formation. She smiled, a little nervously, a flash of white teeth, the bright gleam of pale eyes. I remember that it was her eyes that attracted me at the time. She was just a kid and she was brimming over with health and vitality. ‘Mr Grant? I’m Susan Thomas. Can I speak to you a moment, please?’ The words came in a quick rush, breathless with hurrying.

‘Of course.’ I held the door open for her. ‘Come in.’

‘May I put my b-bike inside?’ There was a natural hesitancy in her voice that was oddly attractive. ‘I had one stolen a few weeks back.’ She wheeled it in and as I took her through to my office, she said, ‘I was so afraid you’d have left and I didn’t know where you lived.’

In the hard glare of my office lighting I was able to see her clearly. The beaky nose, the strong jaw, they were both there, recognizable now. But in her these facial characteristics were softened to femininity. Unlike her brother, I could see no resemblance to the mother. ‘It’s about your brother, I suppose?’

She nodded, shaking the sleet from her blonde hair whilst her long, quick fingers loosened the old fawn coat she wore. ‘I only just got back from the Infirmary. Mother’s beside herself. I had great difficulty-’ She hesitated, a moment of uncertainty as her clear wide eyes stared and she made up her mind about me. ‘She — she’s reached an odd age, if you know what I mean. This is just too much for her.’

Nineteen years old, and she knew everything about life, all the hard, unpleasant facts. ‘Are you a nurse?’ I asked her.

Training to be.’ She said it with a touch of pride. And then: ‘You’ve got to do something about him, Mr Grant. find him, stop him from trying to kill his — from killing somebody else.’

I stared at her, appalled. ‘What are you talking about?’ I said. She was over-dramatizing, of course. ‘You’ve heard about your-’ I stopped there, uncertain what to call him. ‘About Mr Thomas?’

‘Yes.’ She nodded, her face as withdrawn as her Brother’s had been, set and white. ‘Mother told me.’

The hospital phoned her then?’

‘About half an hour ago. He died in the ambulance they said.’ There was no emotion in her voice, but then her lip trembled slightly. ‘It’s David I’m worried about.’

‘I was just going down to the police station,’ I said. ‘It was an accident, of course, but there’s always the chance that the police may view it differently.’

‘He’s got a bad record, you know. And they never got an together. Of course,” she added, ‘I knew he wasn’t my rather — my real father, that is.’

‘Your mother told you, did she?’ I was thinking that it was odd she should have told her daughter and not her son. ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘She never told me. But it’s something you know, by instinct, sort of.’

Then why in heaven’s name didn’t your brother know?’ I said.

‘Oh well, boys are so slow, you know. And it’s not something you can just blurt out, is it, Mr Grant? I mean, it’s something you feel, deep inside, and it’s sort of secret.’ And then she said, ‘What will he do, do you think? Was he serious when he said he’d kill him? I wasn’t there, you see. But Mother is convinced he meant it.’

‘Kill who?’ I said.

‘His — my father. Colonel Whitaker. He swore he’d kill him, didn’t he? That’s what Mother says. You were there. Did he say that?’

‘Well, yes,’ I nodded. ‘But I didn’t take it very seriously. It had all come as a bit of a shock to him. Besides,’ I added, ‘there’s not much he can do about it at the moment, even if he were serious. And by the time he’s released, he’ll have had a chance to get used to the idea.’

She stared at me. ‘You haven’t heard then?’

‘Heard what?’

‘David’s escaped.’

‘Escaped?’ So that was why she was here. The stupid, crazy young fool! ‘How do you know he’s escaped?’

‘The police just phoned. They said he’d escaped from a police car and that it was our duty to inform them if he returned to the house. That’s why I came to see you. Mother’s almost out of her mind. You see, it isn’t only David she’s worrying about. It’s this Colonel Whitaker — my f-father. I don’t understand after the way he treated her, but I think she’s still in love with him … always has been probably. And now she doesn’t know what to do for the best.’ She came closer to me then, touched my arm in a gesture of entreaty. ‘Please, Mr Grant, you’ve got to do something. You’ve got to help us. I’m scared to death Mother will go to the police and tell them what David said. That’s what she wanted to do, right away. She said it was her duty, but I knew it wasn’t that. She’s just about out of her mind as a result of what David’s done already. And he does have a bad record, you know. So I said I’d come to you and she promised she wouldn’t do anything until I got home.’ And she stood back, drained, her large eyes staring at me expectantly.

I didn’t know what to say. There was nothing I could do. No point in my going out and searching the city for him. A filthy night like this the whole police force would have their work cut out to track him down. ‘Where was it he escaped?’

‘Somewhere along the Cowbridge Road, they said.’

‘And your father — have you any idea how I can get in touch with him?’

Her eyes brightened for a moment. ‘Oh, if you could.’ But then she shook her head. ‘I’ve no idea where he is now. Mother doesn’t know. Did she show you the book of press cuttings?’

‘No.’

‘No, of course not, it was still lying there on the floor. The place was an awful mess.’ And then she said, ‘I checked myself because I had the same idea. But the last jutting she got was three years ago. I don’t know whether he’s been in the papers since then. Dad found out, or maybe he knew all the time — anyway, he made her stop them. That last cutting was a picture taken in Basra. But he may have retired by now. He was getting on — over fifty. And if he’s retired, then he’d probably be in England somewhere, wouldn’t he? That’s what all these people who’ve lived all their lives abroad do when they retire. Do you think perhaps David knows where he is?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘He tried to get the address out of me.’ No point in telling her that he might have the same idea that I had and try to check the newspaper files. ‘In any case,’ I told her, ‘he’ll have his work cut out to elude the police. I think you can set your mother’s mind at rest. The police will pick him up and … and time will do the rest. Your mother can see him in prison, talk to him; in no time at all he’ll have accepted the situation.’

She thought that over for a moment and then nodded. Yes. That makes sense.’ And then she said, ‘Do you think that’s why he escaped … I mean, did he really want to kill Colonel Whitaker, do you think? His own father?’

‘At the moment perhaps.’ There was no telling what the boy had in his mind. He might simply have been jealous of his mother’s affection for an old love. But I couldn’t tell her that. ‘In my opinion, it was the shock,’ I said. ‘A perfectly natural reaction. When he’s had time to think it over, get used to the idea-’

‘But why did he escape? He’s never done that before. He’s been arrested twice, you see, but he never tried to escape.’ And when I didn’t say anything, she gave a little shrug. ‘Oh well, it’ll all come out in the wash, I expect.’ She smiled briefly, but the smile didn’t extend to her eyes, which were sad and suddenly without lustre. ‘It was silly of me to come really.’ She started for the door, hugging her coat round her. ‘I should have known there was nothing you could do. It’s Mother I’m worried about. David’s in enough trouble-’ She moved her shoulders as though bracing herself. ‘I think perhaps I’ll go and see Dr Harvey. Maybe he’d give her a sedative, something to make her sleep so she doesn’t keep going over it in her mind and getting silly ideas in her head.’ She turned and held out her hand. ‘Goodbye, Mr Grant. And thank you. I feel a bit better now anyway.’

I took her back through the empty office to the street door and as she wheeled her bicycle out she asked me to telephone her if I had any news. ‘During the day you can always get me at the Infirmary if it’s important. I’d rather you didn’t phone my mother. Promise?’

‘Of course,’ I said.

Shortly after she’d gone Andrews came in with the map. By the time I had dealt with the conveyance and finished my other work, it was almost seven-thirty. Time enough to call in at the police station on my way down to the docks. What the boy needed was to be given some purpose in life.

I was thinking about this as I pulled on my coat, wondering at the chance of birth, how some people are born to parents happily married, and others … my own childhood hadn’t been all that happy. I shrugged my shoulders. Life was a battle anyway. Sex, money, happiness — it was all a struggle, like trying to build up this decrepit business. It took all the guts, all the energy you’d got sometimes just to make some sense out of life, and when things didn’t work out … I set the guard carefully in front of the dying fire, feeling sorry for the boy, sorry for myself.

I suppose I was tired. It had been a frustrating week, and now it was Friday and the week-end stretching ahead. I was feeling the need of a drink. There was a pub I went to sometimes in the dock area, a rowdy place, but virile and full of masculinity and talk of far places, a seaman’s pub that always gave me the illusion of islands just beyond the horizon. With a few Scotches, imagination could soar, leaping the tawdry problems of money and piddling lawyer’s briefs.

I went out, closing the door of my office behind me, following the white beam of my torch through the empty outer office with its clumsy mahogany counter and frosted glass panels. I had reached the street door and my hand was on the latch when I remembered the package for Captain Griffiths. I had left it propped up on the mantelpiece so that I wouldn’t forget it.

I went back to my office, my footsteps sounding hollow on the bare boards. He’d never forgive me if I let him sail without his dream of the future all set down in the mumbo-jumbo of legal phraseology. A man needed a dream, something to aim at. You couldn’t go through life without a goal. For him it was retirement and that little whitewashed cottage looking out over the sweep of Rhosilli Bay; for me it was just a solicitor’s office with new paint, new furniture and clients tumbling over each other for my services. My hand reached out for the handle of the door, and then, suddenly, there was the tinkle of glass falling. The sound came from beyond the door, startlingly loud in the empty stillness.

I switched off my torch and eased the door open a fraction, every nerve in my body tensed and expectant. I heard the scrape of the window latch, the scrabble of boots on the sill, the rustle of the curtains as they were pushed aside. A burglar? But nobody but a fool would expect to find cash lying around loose in a solicitor’s office. Perhaps he was after some particular document? But I could think of nothing I was handling at the moment sufficiently important to warrant breaking and entering. I heard him stumble against my chair and then I could hear his heavy breathing coming nearer as he crossed the room to the door. I guessed he’d be making for the light switch, and I flung the door wide and at the same time switched on my torch again.

David Thomas stood there, checked in the white beam of it. His fair hair was plastered down by the rain. His face was streaked with blood from a gash on his forehead, the left cheek bruised and filthy with mud. There was mud on his clothes, too; black, wet patches of it that clung to the sodden cloth. His jacket was ripped at the shoulder and one trouser leg was torn so badly that the flesh of his leg showed through the rent. He was breathing heavily as though he’d been running.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ I said and switched on the light. His face was ghastly white, his eyes unnaturally wide. He looked scared out of his wits. ‘Well, I don’t expect they’ll think of looking for you in my office.’ I closed the door and walked past him and put the curtain straight. Then I took the guard from the fire and put some more coal on, poking it till a flame showed. And all the time I was conscious of him standing there, watching me in silence, too surprised, too scared probably, to move. I pushed the old arm-chair reserved for clients close to the hearth. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Take your jacket off and come and sit by the fire and dry yourself out.’ He did as I told him, too startled to have any initiative of his own left. ‘Now,’ I said, ‘just tell me what in God’s name made you do such a damn-fool thing?’

For a moment I thought he was going to close up on me the way that sort of kid does when things go wrong and people start asking questions. The sullen tough-boy look had come back into his face. ‘Take your time,’ I said. ‘There’s no hurry. You’ve got all evening if you want it.’ I thought I’d try flattery then. ‘Not many chaps manage to get away from the police so soon after being taken in charge. How did you do it?’

The tight lips relaxed slightly, a ghost of a smile. ‘Luck,’ he said. He was shivering and I poked the fire again, coaxing it into a blaze. They’d got a car to take me to one of their bloody jails. Said I’d feel more at home in the nick.’ His tone was a sneer.

‘And you made a break for it.’

‘Yeah. That’s right. There was only one of them in the back with me and I made a dive for it when they were driving down the Cowbridge Road. I hit the pavement and just about knocked myself out. They nearly had me then. But there was a pub I knew and I dived in there and got away out the back.’ And he added, ‘I said I’d see you in your office.’ There was a touch of bravado in the way he said it.

‘Your sister was here a little while back,’ I told him.

‘Sue? What did she want?’ He was on the defensive immediately.

‘Wanted me to help you.’

‘Help me?’ He gave a derisive laugh. ‘The only way you can help me is by giving me that address. That’s what I came for.’

‘Your mother’s worried sick,’ I told him.

‘So what?’

I lost patience with him then. ‘Can’t you get it into your thick head that your actions affect other people? Stop being so damned irresponsible. The police phoned your mother that you’d escaped and now she’s half out of her mind-’

But he wasn’t interested in the heartbreak he was causing other people. ‘She should have thought of that before she wrote me that letter,’ he said. ‘She was half out of her mind then. Did Sue tell you I’d two more months to do in a Borstal Institute?’

‘No.’

‘Well, I had. Two more months and I’d have been out and in the clear. And then I got this letter threatening she’s going to commit suicide. Your Da’s driving me to it, she said, and I can’t stand it any more. And then to come home and find she’s been holding out on me all the time, kidding me I was that drunken old fool’s son. Christ! And you talk about being irresponsible.’

‘It isn’t an easy thing for a woman to tell her son.’

‘She’d nineteen years. In nineteen years she ought to have been able to screw up her courage. Instead, she drives the old man to fling it in my face.’ He stared at the fire, his shoulders hunched, his face bitter. ‘Does Sue know?’ he asked at length. ‘Does she know she’s illegitimate?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what does she feel about it?’

‘She said she’d known for a long time — deep down.’

‘Then why the hell didn’t she tell me?’

‘1 said — deep down. Her mother didn’t tell her. She just knew.’

He looked sulky then. ‘We never kept anything from each other before.’

‘It’s not the sort of thing you want to share with anybody else,’ I said.

‘Too right, it isn’t.’ He suddenly beat his fist against the arm of the chair. ‘Christ! If I’d only known before.’

‘It wouldn’t have helped you,’ I told him.

He thought about that for a moment and then he nodded. ‘No, I guess you’re right.’ And he added, ‘I always wondered why the old man hated my guts.’ He leaned suddenly forward, picked up the poker and jabbed at the fire. ‘Guess I hated his guts, too,’ he said viciously.

‘Well, he’s dead now,’ I said. ‘Did you know that?’

He nodded and let go of the poker so that it clattered into the grate. ‘Yep. They told me that. Croaked on the way to hospital, blast him.’

His attitude to the man’s death shocked me. ‘For God’s sake!’ I said. ‘Haven’t you any compassion for the man who was a father to you?’

‘He wasn’t my father,’ he cried. ‘I told you that before.’

‘He was your father in the eyes of the law.’

I Then the law ought to be changed, oughtn’t it? You can’t make chalk cheese by a legal declaration.’

‘He supported you all the time you were growing up,’ I reminded him.

‘All right, he supported me. But he hated me all the same. I always knew that. When he took a strap to me, he enjoyed it. He hasn’t been able to do that for a long time now. But he’d other ways of getting at me, jeering at me because I read a lot, and at my Arab friends. Do you know what he’d done whilst I’d been in Borstal? I went up to my old room after you’d left. All my books on Arabia, every damn’ one of them, he’d pulled out and torn to pieces. The only books he hadn’t destroyed were the technical ones. I’d a lot of them on oil — geology, seismology, geophysics. He left me those because he didn’t think I cared about them.’ He stared at me. ‘Now he’s dead, and I’m glad. Glad, do you hear?’ His voice had risen and suddenly the tears were welling up into his eyes and he began to cry. ‘I didn’t mean to kill him,’ he sobbed. ‘Honest. I didn’t mean to.’ He broke down completely then, sobbing like a child, and I went over to him and gripped his shoulder. ‘It was an accident,’ I said, trying to steady him.

‘They don’t believe it.’

‘Did they prefer a charge?’

‘No, but they think I killed him. I know they do.’ And he burst out, ‘I haven’t a chance with them.’

‘You certainly haven’t made it any better by making a break for it like that.’ I was wondering whether I could persuade him to come back with me to the police station and give himself up. I hesitated and then walked over to the phone, but he was on his feet immediately. ‘What you going to do? Ring the police?’ There was panic in his voice.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m going to ring your home — get your mother down here, your sister, too.’

‘What for? What good’ll that do?’

‘If your mother makes a statement, explaining exactly how it happened-’

‘It’s no good,’ he said. ‘She wouldn’t do it. She’d rather have me hanged-’

‘Oh, don’t be childish,’ I said.

‘It’s true,’ he cried. ‘She told me so herself- after you’d gone.’ He followed me to the desk and his voice was intense, very serious: ‘She thinks I’m going to kill Whitaker if I ever lay my hands on him. And she loves him. After all these years, she still loves the man. I don’t understand it, but that’s how it is. You’d think after the swine had treated her like that, after he’d left her flat-’ He pulled a bloodstained handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose. ‘When I got back this afternoon the old man was giving her hell. I could hear it out in the street. He was calling her all sorts of names. I suppose he was drunker than usual. He had that book of press-cuttings in his hand, and when I told him to shut his mouth, he taunted me with being a bastard, said he’d had all he could stand of another man’s whelps. And then he turned on my mother and added, ‘And all I can stand of another man’s whore. After all I’ve done to cover up for you,’ he said, ‘you creep off as soon as I’m out of the house to mope over your lover’s pictures.’ And he flung the book at her. That’s when I went for him.’ He paused, staring at me, his eyes over-bright. ‘That book was full of press-cuttings of him, pictures some of them. I’ve grown up with that book, grown up with the man himself. I know him, know his way of life, everything about him. It’s like I told you — he was a sort of God to me. I wanted to be like him, tough, independent, an adventurer in far places. I tried to get a job as a seaman on ships going out that way from Cardiff docks, but at first I was too young, and then there was the Union. I even tried to stow away once. And now I find he’s no more than a rotten, dirty little sham who’d leave a woman to bear her twins alone. I told Ma I’d kill him if I ever laid hands on him. Remember? You were there when I said it.’

I nodded.

‘Well, she believed me. She’s convinced I really will kill him if I ever catch up with him.’

‘And you didn’t mean what you said — is that what you’re trying to tell me?’

He walked back to the fire and stood staring at it for a moment. Then he slumped down in the chair again, his body limp. ‘1 don’t know,’ he murmured. ‘Honest, I don’t know. All I do know is that I have to find him.’

‘And that’s why you came here, to search my office for his address?’

He nodded. ‘I knew you’d have it somewhere in your riles.’

” ‘Well, I haven’t.’ I hesitated. But after all the boy had a right to know where his father was. ‘Will you promise me something? Will you promise me that if you find him, you’ll remember that he’s your father and that blood is something you just can’t rub out with violence.’

He looked at me and was silent a long time. At length he said, ‘I can’t promise anything. I don’t know how I’d act.’ He was being honest at least. ‘But I’ll try to remember what you’ve just said.’ And then on a sudden, urgent note: ‘I’ve got to find him. I’ve just got to find him. Please, please try to understand.’

The need of that kid. … It was the thing that had been lacking for him all his life. It was his mother’s need reflected and enlarged. The sins of the fathers … why in God’s name should a sense of insecurity lead to violence in people and in races? ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I accept that.’ And I passed on to him what Griffiths had told me. ‘But then you know the sort of man your father is. Anyway, there it is, he’s still out there. And if you want to contact him, I imagine a letter to the Gulfoman Oilfields Development Company-’

‘A letter’s no good. I wrote him already — twice. He never answered.’ He looked up at me. This Captain Griffiths, is his ship the Emerald Isle? She sails regularly to the Persian Gulf.’ And when I nodded, he said, That was the ship I tried to stow away on. I was fourteen then, and a year later I tried to sign on. She’s in port now is she?’

‘Yes.’

‘When is she sailing?’

‘Tonight.’

Tonight?’ He looked up at me. suddenly eager like a dog being offered a walk. Tonight. When? What time?’ He had jumped to his feet, all the tiredness falling from him. ‘For Christsake, what time?’

I hesitated. It was no part of a lawyer’s job to get involved in a criminal case. My duty was plain. The sensible thing would be for you to give yourself up to the police.’

He didn’t hear me. His eyes had fastened on the envelope I had left propped up on the mantelpiece. ‘Were you taking this down to the ship tonight?’

I nodded and his hand reached out for the envelope, clutched at it. ‘I’ll deliver it for you.” He held it as though it were a talisman, his eyes bright with the chance it represented. That’s all I need. The excuse to go on board. And they wouldn’t catch me this time, not till we were at sea.’ He glanced at the window, balanced on the balls of his feet, as though about to take off the way he had come. But then I supposed he realized I should only phone the police. ‘Will you let me take it?’ His voice was urgent, his eyes pleading. ‘Once on board the Emerald Isle…. Please, sir.’

That ‘sir’ was a measure of his desperation.

‘Please,’ he said again. ‘It’s the only hope I got.’

He was probably right at that. And if I didn’t let him take it, what other chance would he ever get in life? He’d escaped from Borstal. He’d escaped from the police. With that sort of record he’d be lucky to get away with three years for manslaughter. After that he’d be case-hardened, a criminal for life. And there was the sister, too. A nice girl, that. I sighed. ‘I’m supposed to be a lawyer,’ I reminded him … or maybe I was reminding myself. ‘Not a travel agency for boys who’ve escaped from the police.’

‘But you’ll let me deliver it, won’t you?’

What the hell can you do when faced with youth in all its shining innocence and eagerness? ‘All right,’ I said. ‘You can try it, if you like. But God knows what Griffiths will do.’

‘All I want is the chance to meet up with my father.’

I realized then that his mind had leap-frogged all the obstacles; he was already mentally sailing the coast of Arabia in search of his father. ‘All I’m giving you,’ I warned him, ‘is the excuse to get on board that ship. She sails at nine-thirty. And those documents have got to be delivered into Captain Griffiths’s hands, understand?’

‘I’ll give them to him. I promise.’

‘You know your way about the ship?’

‘I knew every corner of her once. It’ll come back to me as soon as I get on board.’

‘Well, kindly remember that I’m a solicitor. When you’re caught, as you will be eventually, don’t implicate me. Shall we say you walked into my office to get legal advice, saw the envelope I had forgotten and took it on the spur of the moment? Is that understood?’

‘Yes. sir.’

‘I’ll take you down to Bute East Dock now,’ I said. ‘After that you’re on your own.’ I hesitated. It wasn’t much of a chance I was giving him. He’d no clothes other than what he stood up in, no money probably, nothing, not even a passport. But at least I’d have done what I could for him — what I’d have hoped somebody would do for a son of mine if he’d got himself into a mess like this. But then I hadn’t a son; I hadn’t anybody. ‘Better clean the blood off your face,’ I said and showed him where the wash place was. ‘And you’ll need something to hide your torn clothes.’

I left him in the lavatory and went through the office to the cupboard under the stairs. There was an old overcoat that had been there ever since I’d taken over the place, a black hat, too. He tried them on when he’d finished cleaning himself up. The coat wasn’t too bad a fit and with the sweatband padded with strips from an old conveyance the hat was passable. I wondered what my uncle would have said if he knew to what use these sartorial relics of his were being put. And because I wanted him to realize how slender his chances were, I said, ‘If you’re caught before the ship sails, don’t try and bluff it out with Captain Griffiths. Tell him the truth and say you want to give yourself up to the police.’

He nodded, his face bloodless, his pale eyes almost fever bright with the nervous tension that was building up in him. The dark coat and the black hat accentuated his pallor, accentuated, too, his beaky nose and the strong jaw. In the old lawyer’s cast-off clothes he looked much older than his nineteen years.

There was a back way out of the office and I took him out by that. It was still sleeting and there was nobody in the street where I parked my car. We drove in silence down Park Place and across Castle Street, and then we crossed the railway and were in a maze of little streets that edge the docks. I slowed in a dark gap between street lights and told him to climb into the back and lie on the floor with the rug I kept for my dog pulled over him.

It was fortunate that I took this precaution, for the police at the dock entrance had been alerted and there was a constable there who recognized me; a fortnight before he had given evidence in a case I’d defended. I told him my business and he let me through. I hadn’t expected the police to be watching the docks already and my hands were sweating as I drove on across the slippery steel of the railway tracks.

The Emerald Isle was at the far end of the Bute East Dock, close to the lock. She had completed loading and she had steam up, smoke trailing from her single stack. The cranes along the quay were still, their gaunt steel fingers pointed at the night. I stopped in the shadow of one of the sheds. The sleet had turned to snow and it was beginning to lie, so that the dock looked ghostly white in the ship’s lights. ‘Well, there you are,’ I said. That’s the ship.’

He scrambled out from under the rug. ‘Couldn’t you come with me?’ he asked, suddenly scared now that the moment had arrived. ‘If you were to have a word with Captain Griffiths-’

I didn’t reply to that, but simply handed him the package. I knew he knew it was out of the question, for he didn’t ask me again. A moment later the rear door opened and I heard him get out. ‘I–I’d like to thank you,’ he stammered. ‘Whatever happens — I won’t let you down.’

‘Good luck!’ I said.

‘Thanks.’ And then he was walking across the dock, not hesitantly, but with a firm, purposeful tread. I watched him mount the gangway, saw him pause and speak to one of the crew, an Arab; and then he disappeared from sight through a door in the bridge deck.

I lit a cigarette and sat there, wondering what would happen now. I didn’t think he’d much of a chance, but you never know; he was a resourceful kid.

I finished my cigarette and lit another. I was thinking about the constable on the gate. I ought to have realized that that would have been one of the first things they’d do following his escape. And the man had recognized me. I tried to analyse my motives in doing such a crazy thing, but I couldn’t sort it out. The cold crept into the car as I waited and still nothing happened, except that the snow thickened and the dock turned dazzling white. A tug hooted out in the river, a lost, owl sound in the winter night. It was twenty minutes past nine.

Ten minutes later a whistle sounded from somewhere high up on the Emerald Isle and two men came quickly out of a hut at the end of the dock. They manhandled the gangway ashore and then stood by the warps. Another whistle and the for’ard warp went slack, fell with a splash into the dock. Black smoke belched from the funnel, and as the stern warp was let go, a gap opened up between the ship’s side and the quay. I switched the engine on then, turned the heater up and sat there smoking as the Emerald Isle locked out into the River Taff. And when her lights had finally disappeared behind the whitened shoulders of the loading sheds, I drove back to the solitude of my flat, hoping to God I’d done the right thing.

The story of what happened to him after that I got partly from Captain Griffiths on his return and partly from a letter David wrote me. When he left me on the dock there and went on board the Emerald Isle there was no clear-cut plan in his mind. He knew the layout, of course. She was the only ship trading regularly out of Cardiff to Arabian ports, and she had exercised a fatal fascination for him since he was old enough to wander in the docks. It was the Somali steward and not a deck hand who met him at the top of the gangway and on the spur of the moment, almost without thinking, he inquired whether the passenger accommodation was fully booked. The steward told him No; there were six cabins and only three were occupied. Feeling suddenly more confident, he asked to see the Captain.

Captain Griffiths was in his cabin on the port side of the bridge deck housing and when David was shown in he was seated at his desk checking the Mate’s trim figures. He took the packet, glanced at it and then looked up at David. ‘You work for Mr Grant, do you?’

‘I–I run errands for him.’

‘Office boy, eh? Well, you’re only just in time. We sail in quarter of an hour.’ Griffiths peered up at him from under his bushy brows. ‘What’s the matter with your face, boy? Been in a fight?’

‘No. No, sir. I–I had a fall.’

‘Must have been a bad one. You’re as white as a sheet.’ He bent down, pulled open a drawer of his desk and came up with a bottle of whisky. ‘I’ll give you a drink for your pains.’ He gave that high-pitched cackling laugh, filled the glasses half full and handed one of them to David. ‘Well, young fellow, you can wish me luck, for it’s a Welsh landowner I am now.’ And he slapped the packet of documents with unconcealed pride. There’s times, you know,’ he confided as he swallowed his drink, ‘when I feel like the Wandering Jew himself, doomed to ply from one silt-laden port to another, right through to Eternity. This,’ and his hand touched the packet again, ‘this may help me to preserve my sanity when the temperature’s in the hundreds and the humidity’s so thick your lungs feel as though they’re stuffed full of wet cotton wool and will never breathe clean air again; when conditions are like that, then I’ll take these documents out and read them through just to convince myself that I really do have a little place on the Gower Peninsula where rain washes the air clean of dust and heat and the damned, Godforsaken, everlasting flies.’

‘That’s the Persian Gulf you’ll be referring to, isn’t it? Then maybe you’ll know where Colonel Whitaker lives now?’ He hadn’t intended to ask that question, but the unaccustomed liquor had overlaid his nervousness.

Griffiths glanced up at him quickly. ‘Funny thing,’ he murmured. ‘Grant asked me that same question only this afternoon. Is Colonel Whitaker one of the firm’s clients?’

‘I–I don’t know, sir.’

‘Then what made ‘you ask about him?’

David hesitated. But if he were to succeed in stowing away on board, there was no harm in telling Captain Griffiths the truth right now. ‘He’s my father.’

‘Your father!’ The blue eyes stared. ‘Good God! Didn’t know the Bedouin was married.’

‘My natural father, sir.’

Griffiths’ eyes suddenly crinkled at the corners. ‘Natural father, you say? Well, by God, that’s a good one.’ And he lay back in his swivel chair, pointed his beard at the steel deck above and cackled with laughter. And then he stopped suddenly. ‘I’m sorry, boy. You’re sensitive about it, I can see. Have you ever met your father?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Well, if you had, you’d know why I laughed. Bedouin sons — and daughters. There’s gossip enough about him, but never a whisper of a son in Wales, you see. I’ll tell him, next time he’s aboard — I’ll say to him casually-’ But David was spared the rest, for the bridge communicator buzzed and a voice said, Tug coming alongside now, sir.’

‘Very good, Mr Evans.’ Griffiths got to his feet. ‘I’m needed on the bridge.’ He paused in front of David, staring up at his face. ‘Yes. I can see the likeness now. Any messages you want to give him?’ And when David shook his head dumbly, he patted him on the arm. ‘Well, I’ll tell him I saw you when next he comes aboard. And now you’d better get off the ship quick or you’ll find yourself in Arabia with a deal of explaining to do.’ And he went off, cackling with laughter, to the bridge above.

David found himself standing alone outside the Captain’s cabin. An alleyway ran athwartships. Numbered mahogany doors led of fit on either side. He listened, every nerve taut. He could hear voices on the bridge and down below in the saloon, but the deck on which he stood seemed utterly deserted. Treading softly, he walked the length of the alleyway to the starb’d side, as far away from the Captain’s cabin as possible. The first door he tried was locked, the second opened to a glimpse of heavily-labelled baggage and the startled face of a man lying prone on his bunk with a book. A tug blared so close alongside that he jumped. Cabin Number Four was empty and he slipped inside and locked the door. And after that he stood for a long time, quite still and breathing heavily, listening to the sounds of the ship, waiting tense for the sudden outcry that would inevitably follow the discovery that he had not gone ashore.

That period of waiting, ten minutes at the most, seemed the longest he had ever known. And then a whistle sounded. It was so like the shrill of a police whistle that he reached for the handle of the door, instinctively seeking escape in movement. But then the engine-room telegraph rang from the bridge overhead and the ship suddenly came to life, a gentle throbbing against the soles of his shoes. He knelt on the unmade bunk then and cautiously pulled back the curtain that covered the porthole. He could see the deck rail and beyond it a flat expanse of water with the snow driving across it. And then the water was swirling to the bite of the screws and he knew the ship was moving.

He took off his hat and coat then and lay down on the bunk under a ship’s blanket, listening with his ears attuned to every sound. A gong sounded for the evening meal and there was movement in the next cabin, the gush of a tap, the bang of a suitcase. The shrill of the whistle on the bridge was answered a moment later by the tug’s farewell blast on her siren. The beat of the engines increased, and later, after they had slowed to drop the pilot, the ship began to roll.

He slept during the night, rolled from side to side of the narrow bunk. But when daylight came, he lay awake, tense and hungry. Footsteps sounded in the alleyway, cabin doors slammed, somewhere a loose porthole cover rattled back and forth. The hours of daylight seemed endless, but nobody came, nobody even tried the handle of the cabin door. It was as though he didn’t exist and perversely he felt deserted, lost, forgotten in this strange world he’d been thrust into by events.’ He had no watch so that he’d no idea of the time. The sky was grey with a low wrack of cloud, no sun. The violence of the movement was exhausting and towards nightfall he was sick, retching emptily into the washbasin. Nobody seemed to hear the sound of his misery, nobody seemed to care. The seas, thudding against the bows of the ship, made her tremble, so that everything rattled, and each time she buried her bows the noise of the impact was followed by a long, shuddering movement that seemed to run through his tired body as though he were himself being exposed to the onslaught of the gale.

Night followed the day at last and he slept; and then it was day again. Darkness and light succeeding each other. He lost count of the days, and when the sun came out and the sea subsided, he knew he was too weak to hold out alone in that cabin any longer. The moment had come to face the future.

Just above his head, within easy reach of his left hand, was a bell push. He lay half a day, staring at the yellow bone button imbedded in its wooden orifice, before he could summon the courage to press it, and when the steward came he told the startled Somali to take him to the Captain.

Griffiths was seated at his desk so that to David’s bemused mind it seemed like that first time he’d met him, except that now the cabin was full of sunlight and they were off the coast of Portugal. The Somali was explaining excitedly and Griffiths’s small blue eyes were staring up at him. The Captain silenced the man with a movement of his hand. ‘All right, Ishmail. You can leave us now.’ And as the steward turned to go, his eyes rolling in his head, Griffiths added, ‘And see you don’t talk about this. The passengers are not to know that a stowaway has been hiding in their accommodation.’ And when the door closed and they were alone, he turned to David. ‘Now young man, perhaps you’d explain why the devil you stowed away on my ship?’

David hesitated. It was difficult to know where to begin, though he’d had four days of solitude to think about it. He was scared, too. The little man in the worn blue jacket with the gold braid on the sleeves was more frightening to him than either of the judges who had sentenced him, for his future was in his hands. ‘Well, come on, man, come on.’ The beard waggled impatiently, the blue eyes bored into him.

I would like to think that he remembered my advice then, but more probably he was too weak and confused to invent a satisfactory story. At any rate, he told it straight, from the receipt of his mother’s hysterical letter and his escape from Borstal, right through to the tragedy of his return to the house in Everdale Road. And Griffiths listened without comment, except that halfway through he took pity on David’s weakness, for he was leaning on the edge of the desk to support himself, and told him to pull up a chair and sit down. And when finally he.was asked to account for his possession of the documents that had been his excuse for boarding the ship, he stuck to the explanation we’d agreed.

But Griffiths was much too sharp for him. ‘So you took the packet from Mr Grant’s office and decided to deliver it yourself?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You say you found the door of Mr Grant’s office open. That means he’d only gone out for a moment. When he came back and found the packet gone, the natural thing would be for him to come down to the ship and give me some explanation. You’re lying, you see.’

There was nothing he could do then but tell Captain Griffiths the truth, and the blue eyes, staring into his, began to crease at the corners. By the time he had finished, Griffiths was leaning back in the swivel chair and roaring with laughter, his mouth so wide open that David could see the movement of his uvula in the red hollow of his gullet. “Well I’ll be damned!’ Griffiths said, wiping his eyes. ‘And Grant an accessory-’ And then he started in on a cross-examination that seemed to go on and on.

Finally he got up and stood for a long time staring out of the porthole at the sunlight dancing on the waves made by the ship’s passage through the water, whilst David sat there, numbed and hopeless. ‘Well, I believe you,’ Griffiths said, still staring out to the sea. ‘You could never have made all that up.’ There was a long silence. ‘You got Grant to help you — and how you did that I don’t know, considering he’d never met your father. He was risking his reputation, everything. You’ve no passport, of course? That means you can’t land in the normal way. And you’ve never had word from your father, which means he doesn’t care to acknowledge your existence — right?’

And when David didn’t say anything, Griffiths swung round from the porthole, his beard thrust aggressively forward. ‘And you stow away on my ship, expecting me to get you into Arabia. How the devil do you think I’m going to do that, eh?’

‘I don’t know, sir.’

‘Perhaps Grant suggested something?’ But David shook his head unhappily and Griffiths snapped, ‘A lawyer — he should have had more sense.’ And he stumped across the cabin and stood peering down at David’s face. ‘Is your father going to acknowledge you now, do you think? How old are you?’

‘Nineteen.’

‘And do you think Colonel Whitaker’s going to be pleased to have a bastard he sired nineteen, twenty years ago, suddenly turn up with no passport, nothing — and a jailbird at that?’

David got to his feet then. ‘I’m sorry, Captain Griffiths,’ he said stiffly. ‘I didn’t realize-’ The words didn’t come easily and his mouth felt dry and caked. ‘I’ve always dreamed of this, you see — of getting out to Arabia. I suppose it’s in my — bastard blood.’ He said it with bitterness, for he was convinced now that the world was against him, as it always had been — as it always would be. ‘I’ll work my passage,’ he added wearily, ‘and when we get to Aden you can hand me over to the authorities.’

Griffiths nodded. ‘That’s the first sensible suggestion you’ve made. And it’s exactly what I ought to do.’ He had turned away and stood for a moment lost in thought. ‘Your father did me a good turn once. I owe him something for that, but the question is would I be doing him a good turn-’ He gave a quick shrug and subsided into his chair, chuckling to himself. ‘It has its humorous side, you know.’ And David watched, fascinated and with a sudden feeling of intense excitement, as Griffiths’s hand reached out to the bridge communicator. ‘Mr Evans. Come down to my cabin for a moment, will you?’ And then, looking at David: ‘Well, now, for the sake of Mr Grant, whom I wouldn’t have suspected of such lawlessness, and for the sake of your i

father, who’s going to get the shock of his life, I’m going to sign you on as a deck hand. But understand this,’ he added, ‘any trouble at Aden and I hand you over to the authorities.’

David was too relieved, too dazed to speak. The Mate came in and Griffiths said, ‘Stowaway for you, Mr Evans. Have the galley give him some food and then put him to work. I’m signing him on. And see the passengers, at any rate, don’t know how he came aboard. His name is ‘- Whitaker.’ David caught the glint of humour in the blue eyes.

‘Thank you, sir,’ he mumbled, but as he turned away all he could think about was that name, spoken aloud for the first time. Whitaker. Somehow it seemed to fit, as though it had always belonged to him; it was a symbol, too, a declaration that the past was gone, the future ahead.

All down the Mediterranean and through the Suez Canal, the life of the ship, the sun’s increasing warmth, the sight of places all dreamed about and now suddenly come to life, absorbed him completely, each day bringing the promise of Arabia twenty-four steaming hours nearer. But when they entered the Red Sea, with the water flat like a mirror and the desert hills of the Hejaz shimmering to port, he knew they were getting close to Aden. And at Aden the police might be waiting for him.

It was night when the anchor was let go off Steamer Point, and as he stood on the foredeck directing a stream of water on to the hawsehole, he could see the lights of Crater and the black shape of the volcanic hills behind towering against the stars. His first Arabian port. It touched his nostrils with a breath of sun-hot oil waste. But instead of excitement, all he felt was fear.

Customs and Immigration came aboard. He stood by the rail, in the shadow of one of the boats, and watched them climb the side from a launch. His work was done and he’d nothing to think about now but the possibility of arrest. A subdued murmur came to him from the town, strange Arab cries, drifting across the water. Another launch glided to the ship’s side. The agent this time. And later two of the passengers were climbing down into it, followed by their baggage. The officials were leaving, too, and he watched the launches curve away from the ship, two ghostly arrow-tips puttering into the night. He breathed gently again, savouring the warm, strange-scented air … and then the steward called his name. ‘Captain want you in cabin.’

Slowly he went for’ard to the bridge deck housing. Captain Griffiths was seated in the leather armchair, his face a little flushed, his eyes bright, a tumbler of whisky at his elbow. ‘Well, young fellow, it appears that you’re in the clear. Nobody is in the least bit interested in you here.’ And he added, ‘Doubtless you have Mr Grant to thank for that. I’m sorry I can’t send him a message; the man must be half out of his mind considering the chance he took.’

‘I’ll write to him as soon as I can,’ David murmured.

The Captain nodded. ‘Time enough for that when you’re safely ashore. But it’s only fair to tell you that if I fail to contact your father, then you’ll complete the voyage and be paid off at Cardiff.’ And having delivered this warning, he went on, ‘I’ll be going ashore in the morning and I’ll cable Colonel Whitaker care of GODCO — that’s the Gulfoman Oilfields Development Company. It may reach him, it may not. Depends where your father is, you see; he’s not an easy man to contact. Meantime, I am instructing Mr Evans to give you work that will keep you out of sight of the passengers. We have two oil men with us on the voyage up the coast, also an official from the PRPG’s office — that’s the Political Resident Persian Gulf. See to it that you keep out of their way. If you do get ashore, then I don’t want anybody saying afterwards that they saw you on board my ship.’ And with that David found himself dismissed.

He saw Captain Griffiths go ashore next morning in the agent’s launch. All day they were working cargo, the winches clattering as they unloaded No. 1 hold into the lighter dhows alongside and filled it again with a fresh cargo. In the evening four passengers came aboard, all white, and a dhow-load of Arabs bound for Mukalla who strewed themselves and their belongings about the deck. And then the anchor was hauled up and they shifted to the bunkering wharf. The Emerald Isle sailed at midnight, steaming east-north-east along the southern coast of Arabia, the coast of myrrh and frankincense, of Mocha coffee and Sheba’s queen.

It was a voyage to thrill the heart of any youngster, but David saw little of it, for he was confined to the bowels of the ship, chipping and painting, and all he saw of Mukalla, that gateway to the Hadhramaut, was a glimpse through a scuttle — a huddle of terraced Arab houses, so white in the sunlight that it looked like an ivory chess set laid out at the root of the arid mountains. Only at night was he allowed on deck, and he spent hours, motionless in the bows of the ship, drinking in the beauty and the mystery of the Arabian Sea, for the water was alive with phosphorescence. From his vantage point he could look down at the bow wave, at the water rushing away from the ship in two great swathes is. bright as moonlight, and ahead, in the inky blackness of the sea, great whorls of light like nebulae were shattered into a thousand phosphorescent fragments as the ship’s massage broke up the shoals of fish — and like outriders the sharks flashed torpedo-tracks of light as they ploughed their voracious way through the depths. And every now and then a tanker passed them, decks almost awash, with oil from Kuwait, Bahrain and Dahran.

They passed inside the Kuria Muria islands at night, and to get a better view of them he ignored his orders and crept up to the boat deck. He was standing there close beside one of the boats when the door of the passenger accommodation opened and two figures emerged, momentarily outlined against the yellow light. They came aft, two voices talking earnestly, as he shrank into the shadow of the boat, bending down as though to adjust the falls.

‘ … the last time I was at the Bahrain office. But even in Abu Dhabi, we’ve heard rumours.’ The accent was North Country.

‘Well, that’s the situation. Thought I’d warn you. Wouldn’t like you to back the wrong horse and find yourself out on your ear just because you didn’t know what was going on.’

‘Aye; well, thanks. But the Great Gorde. … It takes a bit of getting used to, you must admit. He’s been the Company out here for so long.’

‘I wouldn’t know about that, old man. I’m new out here and as far as I’m concerned Erkhard is the man.’

The voices were no more than a whisper in the night. The two oilmen were leaning over the rail at the other end of the boat and David was just going to creep away when he heard the name of his father mentioned. ‘Is it true Colonel Whitaker’s the cause of the trouble? That’s the rumour.’ He froze into immobility, listening fascinated as the other man gave a short laugh. ‘Well, yes, in a way; the Bloody Bedouin’s got too big for his boots. And that theory of his, a lot of damned nonsense. He’s not thinking of the Company, only of his Arab friends.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. The Company owes him a lot.’

‘Concessions, yes — and a string of dry wells. The man’s a dangerous amateur. I’m warning you, Entwhistle — you talk like that when Erkhard visits you at Abu Dhabi and you’ll be out so damn’ quick-’

‘It’s Gorde I deal with.’

‘Okay. But you can take my word for it that it’ll be Erkhard who does the next tour of inspection of the development sites. And unless you’ve got something to show him-’

The voices faded as the two men moved away, walking slowly and in step back towards the deck housing. David moved quickly, slipping down the ladder to the main deck, back to his position in the bows. He wanted to be alone, for that brief overheard conversation had given him a strange glimpse of the world on which he had set his heart.

The ship stopped at Nasira Island with stores for the RAF and then on again, rounding Ras al Hadd at night and ploughing north-west into the Gulf of Oman.

On the afternoon of the seventh day out from Aden she anchored at Muscat, in a cove so narrow and rocky that David could scarcely believe his eyes; it might have been the Pembrokeshire coast of Wales except that it was a white, sun-drenched Arab town that stood close by the water’s edge at the head of the inlet. On the other side the rocks bore the name of visiting ships with dates going back to the 1800s, all painted in foot-high letters. Long, double-ended boats of palm wood, their broad planks sewn together with thongs, swarmed round the ship, paddled by Arabs whose faces shone black in the sun.

They were there twenty-four hours and in the night David thought more than once of diving over the side. The shore was so near. But once ashore, what hope had he? There was nowhere for him to go. In a halting conversation with one of the crew, a coast Arab from a fishing village to the north called Khor al Fakhan, he learned that Muscat was backed by volcanic mountains of indescribable brutality. They were almost fifty miles deep with every route through guarded by watch towers; and beyond the mountains was the desert of the Rub al Khali — the Empty Quarter. He knew it was hopeless, and so he stayed on board, and the next afternoon they sailed.

He was having his evening meal when he was told to report to the bridge. Captain Griffiths was there, seated on his wooden stool, staring out over the bows to the starlit sea ahead. The only other man on the bridge was the Arab helmsman standing immobile, his eyes fixed on the lit compass card in its binnacles, only his hands moving as he made small adjustments to the wheel. ‘Ah, there you are.’ Griffiths had turned his head. ‘When I went ashore at Muscat last night there was a slave from Saraifa waiting for me with a message from your father. You’ll doubtless be relieved to know that he’s willing to take you off my hands.’

And as David mumbled his thanks, the lips smiled behind the beard. ‘I may say I’m just as relieved as you are.’ And he added brusquely, ‘There’s an Arab sambuq waiting now off Ras al-Khaima to pick you up. Tonight we shall pass through the Straits of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf. With luck we should sight the sambuq about an hour after dawn. Now, you speak Arabic I’m told.’

‘A little,’ David admitted. ‘But it’s not easy to make myself understood — it’s the different dialects, I think.’

‘Well, do you think you can pass yourself off as an Arab?’ And without waiting for a reply, Griffiths added, ‘It’s the passengers, you see. They’ll talk if they see a white member of my crew being put aboard a dhow.’ A few words of briefing and then the Captain’s hand gripped his arm. ‘Good luck now, man. And a word of advice before you go — tread warily. It’s no ordinary man you’ve got for a father, indeed it isn’t. He’s the devil of a temper when he’s roused. So go easy and watch your step.’ And with that he dismissed him and turned again in his seat to stare through the glass at the lights of a ship coming up over the dark horizon.

David left the bridge, dazed and almost reluctant, for now the future was upon him — unknown, a little frightening. At dawn he would leave the ship and the companionship of the men he’d lived with for the past few weeks, and that last link with the home he’d known all his life would steam away, leaving him alone in a strange country, amongst strange people. It surprised him that he felt no excitement, no exhilaration — only loneliness and a sense of desolation. He didn’t know it then, but it was in this moment that he said goodbye to his boyhood.

The Mate found him sitting on his bunk, staring vacantly into space. ‘Here you are, Whitaker.’ And he tossed a bundle of clothing down beside him. ‘Ali Mahommed sold them to me — kaffyah, agal, robe, sandals, the lot, even to an old brass khanjar knife. Three pounds ten, and I’ve deducted it from your pay.’ He placed some East African notes and some silver on top of the clothes. The Old Man told you what to do, did he? Okay, so long as you greet the naukhuda with a salaam alaikum and a few more words of Arabic. And get along to the paintshop and put some stain on your face and hands. Your face is about as pink as a white baby’s bottom.’

Dressing up as an Arab for the first time in his life helped to pass the time, but still the long hours of the night stretched ahead. He lay awake a long time thinking about what the morrow would bring and about the man he hadn’t known was his father till that tragic day. And then suddenly it was light and almost immediately, it seemed, one of the Arab crew came down to tell him the sambuq had been sighted. He listened then, waiting, tense and expectant. And then the pulse of the engines slowed and finally died away. This was it — the moment of irrevocable departure. His hand touched the brass hilt of the great curved, flat-bladed knife at his girdle. He checked the kaffyah, made certain that the black agal was in its place, circling his head. He went quickly up to the after well-deck and waited in the shelter of the main deck ladder. The rope ladder was over the side opposite No. 3 hatch, one of the crew waiting there to help him over. The faint chug of a diesel sounded in the still morning air, coming slowly nearer. He heard the bump of the dhow as it came alongside, the guttural cry of Arab voices, and then the man by the ladder was beckoning him.

He went out quickly with his head down, hidden by his kaffyah. A dark-skinned hand caught his arm, steadied him as he went over the bulwarks. Glancing quickly up, he caught a glimpse of the Captain leaning with his elbows on the rail of the bridge wing and below, on the boat deck, a short, tubby man in a pale dressing-gown standing watching. And after that he could see nothing but the ship’s rusty side.

Hands reached up, caught him as he jumped to the worn wood deck of the dhow. He called out a greeting in Arabic as he had been told and at the same moment he heard the distant clang of the engine-room telegraph. The beat of the Emerald Isle’s engines increased and the hull plates began to slide past, a gap opening between himself and the ship. He turned away to hide his face and found himself on a long-prowed craft built of battered wood, worn smooth by the years and bleached almost white by the torrid heat of the Persian Gulf. A single patched sail curved above it like the dirty wing of a goose hanging dead in the airless morning. The sea around was still as a mirror and white like molten glass, and then the swirl of the ship’s screws shattered it.

There were three men on the sambuq and only the naukhuda, or captain, wore a turban as well as a loin cloth. He was an old man with a wisp of grey moustache and a few grey hairs on his chin which he stroked constantly. The crew was composed of a smooth-faced boy with a withered arm and a big, barrel-chested man, black as a negro, with a satin skin that rippled with every movement. The naukhuda took his hand in his and held it for a long time, whilst the other two crowded close, staring at his face, feeling his clothes — six brown eyes gazing at him full of curiosity. A flood of questions, the old man using the deferential sahib, legacy of India. Whenever he said anything, all three listened respectfully. But it was no good. He couldn’t seem to make himself understood.

At length he gave it up and judging that it would be safe now to turn his head to take a last look at the Emerald Isle, he was appalled to find that she had vanished utterly, swallowed in the humid haze of the day’s beginning. For a time he could still hear the beat of her engines, but finally even that was gone and he was alone with his three Arabs in a flat calm sea that had an oily shimmer to its hard, unbroken surface.

He felt abandoned then, more alone than he’d ever been in his life before. But it was a mood that didn’t last, for in less than an hour the haze thinned and away to port the vague outline of a mass of mountains emerged. A few minutes later and the sky was clear, a blue bowl reflected in the sea, and the mountains stood out magnificent, tumbling down from the sky in sheer red cliffs to disappear in a mirage effect at the water’s edge. Ahead, a long dhow stood with limp sail suspended in the air, and beyond it the world seemed to vanish — no mountains, nothing, only the endless sky. For the first time he understood why men talked of the desert as a sea.

Twice the sambuq’s aged engine petered out. Each time it was the boy who got it going. The naukhuda sat dreamily at the helm, steering with the toes of his right foot curled round the smooth wood of the rudder bar. A charcoal fire had been burning on the low poop ever since he’d come on board and the big cooking pot above it eventually produced a mess of rice and mutton which they ate in their fingers. A small wind stirred the surface of the sea, increased until it filled the sail and the engine was switched off. In the sudden quiet, the sound of the water sliding past the hull seemed almost loud. The mainsheet was eased out and the sambuq took wing. ‘Ras al-Khaima.’ The naukhuda pointed across the port bow. At the very foot of the mountains and low on the horizon, he made out the dun-coloured shape of houses, the tufts of palms. And shortly after that the coast ahead showed up, low and flat, a shimmering line of dunes.

The sun was barely halfway up the sky when they closed that dune coast. A line of camels marched sedately along the sand of the foreshore and close under the low cliffs a Land-Rover stood parked, a lone figure in Arab clothes standing beside it. He thought then that this was his father and braced himself for that first meeting, wondering what he would be like. But when the naukhuda paddled him ashore in the sambuq’s dugout, it was an Arab who waded into the shallow water to meet them.

Again the difficulty of trying to make himself understood. The Arab’s name was Yousif and he spoke a little English. ‘Coll-onell Sahib not here. You come Saraifa now.’ The word Saraifa was shouted at him several times as ‘ though he were deaf.

‘How far is Saraifa?’ The man stared at him as though he were mad. He was a very dirty-looking individual, his greasy turban trailing one end over his shoulders, a torn and very filthy European jacket worn over his Arab robes. His dark face was smudged with oil; this and the little black moustache below the curved nose gave him a sinister appearance. David tried again: ‘Saraifa … ten miles, twenty?’ He held up his fingers.

‘Saraifa no far in machine of Coll-onell Sahib.’ The gap-toothed smile was clearly meant to placate. ‘Me driver to Coll-onell Sahib. Drive very quick.’ That seemed to exhaust his fund of English, for he turned to the naukhuda and launched into a guttural flood of conversation. At length the naukhuda stepped forward, kissed his hand and touched it to his heart with a little bow. David gave him one of the notes the Mate had handed him and found his hand held in the other’s horny palm whilst the old man made him a long farewell speech.

Then at last he was in the Land-Rover and they were roaring along the sand of the foreshore, the driver bent over the wheel like a rider urging on his horse, with the stray end of his filthy turban streaming out behind him. A mile or two further on they left the sea’s edge by a camel track that climbed the shallow cliffs. Looking back, David got a last glimpse of the dhow that had brought him to the Arabian shore, and then they were bouncing past the Bedouin caravan he had seen moving along the sands. The camels stared with supercilious gaze, padding effortlessly through the sand under their mountainous loads. The men, wild and bearded, raised their hands unsmilingly in desert salutation. The silver mountings of their old-fashioned guns winked in the hot sun, and David caught the wicked gleam of khanjar knives and the brass of cartridge belts. He was seeing for the first time the desert world that was to be his home.