The Killer Mine

CHAPTER ONE The 'Arisaig' Reaches Cornwall

The fo'c'sle was hot with the heat of the engines. Yet I shivered as I set down my glass and reached for the bottle. The glare of the naked light hurt my eyes. I filled my glass again. The liquor spilled fire down my throat as I drank, but it did not warm me. I was cold through to my very spine. Boots rang on the steel deck above our heads. A body stirred in its hammock, snorted, rolled over and then settled itself again. The hammock swayed like a bundle of straw to the roll of the boat. The sour odour of human bodies mingled with the fumes of the cognac and the blue fog of tobacco smoke made my eyes smart.

'What's the time?' I asked. My mouth was dry — a dusty cavity in which my tongue moved like a rubber pad. The words came harsh and unnatural as I put the question.

'You speak me what is the time two minutes ago?'

'Well, I'm asking you again,' I said harshly. Damn all Italians to hell! Why did I have to sit drinking with an Italian? Must Mulligan have Italians in his crew? But the British wouldn't drink with me, blast 'em. The Egg was only drinking with me because he was drunk and would drink with anybody. Or was it because he enjoyed watching the fear that welled up from the chilled hollow of my bowels? He was laughing at me. I could see it in his dark eyes. 'What's the time, damn you?' I shouted at him..

He pulled a large silver watch out of his breast pocket and turned the ornate gilt face towards me. A quarter past three. If Mulligan was right in his reckonings we should be in sight of the English coast. We had passed the Bishop Light well to starboard at dusk.

The Egg put the watch back in his pocket and picked up his glass. He drank with a noisy, sucking sound. His thick lips shone wet in the swinging light. They smiled and his eyes watched me.

What was he thinking? What went on under that bald skull of his? The lips were cruel, the eyes — brown like a dog's, dark like a passionate girl's — were cold. 'God damn it,' I cried. 'What are you smiling at?' I felt anger surge up in my body drowning the chill of fear so that my body seemed to swell out until the cramped fo'c'sle was too small to hold it. His sallow eyelids flickered and when I looked into his eyes again they were wide so that I could look through to the rotten core of him. He did not speak. He just gazed at me with those wide-open, cruel eyes.

The anger left me and I felt cold again. 'God damn all Italians,' I heard myself mutter. How long had I been drinking? What did it matter? What did anything matter? I was clear of Italy. England lay ahead, out there in the darkness beyond the steel bulkhead.

The man who had stirred in his hammock rolled over on to his back, stretched his arms and then sat up, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. 'Wot, drinking again, Emilio?' he said to the Italian. 'Gawd! don't yer never stop drinkin'?' He peered down at the bottle. 'Cognac, eh? Where did you get that? Bet yer've ripped open one of them cases.'

The Italian smiled. 'You like a drink, Ruppy?'

'Don't mind if I do,' the bos'n grinned. 'But Gawd 'elp yer if the skipper finds yer bin at the cargo. Mulligan ain't pertic'lar wot 'e does ter blokes that get in 'is 'air. All right. I know you're pretty quick with that knife o' yours. But 'e got a gun, ain't 'e?'

The Italian's bald skull cracked in a grin that showed the white gleam of his perfect teeth. 'Signer Mulligan, he is on deck, yes? He not come down here. The stink, it is too much for him.' And he laughed silently.

'Well, it's your funeral, mate.' Ruppy swung his legs out of the hammock and slid to the floor. He buttoned his jersey into his trousers and pressed both hands into his belly as though thrusting his guts into place. He suffered from hernia — that was why he was called Ruppy. He was thin and scrawny with the face of a turtle and an Adam's apple that moved up and down in his scraggy neck as he swallowed. A two days' growth of sparse, grey stubble grew out of the seamed dirt of chin and neck. He brought out an enamel mug and filled it half full from the bottle. 'Well, 'ere's to the bleedin' perisher wot pays through the nose fer short measure on them cases.' He wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his jersey and looked down at me, swaying gently to the motion of the ship. 'S'ppose you're trying to get up enough courage ter go ashore, eh?' The sneer was unconcealed. 'Why the hell didn't yer stay in Italy? That's where your sort belong. All right. I know why yer shipped a't o' Naples. You had ter, that's why. Soon as there weren't no British Army, the Ities got nasty an' turned on yer. Don't blame 'em, niever. Runnin' away — reckon that's all you ever done.'

Anger surged up in me again, drumming at my temples. I banged my glass down and jumped to my feet. He was such an insignificant, wizened little object. What right had he to sneer at me? I felt my hand clench. With one blow I could smash him against the steel of the bulkhead.

That's right — go on, 'it me.' His watery eyes peered up at me. 'Go on,' he cried again, "it me, why don't yer? Ain't yer even got the guts ter do that?' he sneered as I lowered my fist. 'No — afraid of Mulligan. That's what it is. You've always bin afraid o' something, ain't yer?'

'What do you know about what makes men afraid?' I cried.

'As much as most men,' he snapped back. 'I did me time in the Army, didn't I? Three years before the war and then Dunkirk and fru the desert to Alamein. Wasn't my fault, was it, that I got a rupture an' they slung me out?'

'Sure you done your time,' I said.

'Sawd me country through like any decent man, that's wot I done. Rank o' corporal I 'ad when me belly went back on me.'

'All right,' I said, 'So you saw your country through. But look at you now — a rotten little scab running liquor for a crook that got his dough in and out of North African ports whilst you were sweating in the desert.'

'Well, a bloke's got to live, ain't he?' He gulped at the cognac, rinsing it round his mouth like a mouth-wash. His Adam's apple jerked as he swallowed the liquor and breathed out fiercely. 'Ain't that so, Emilio?' he asked, turning to the Egg. 'A bloke's got to live. Wot d'yer fink the ruddy Ministry o' Labour offered me when I got discharged as unfit fer dooty? — a job da'n the mines! An' me wiv a rupture the size of a barn door got in the defence o' me country. Liftin' the barrel of a bleedin' ack-ack gun, that's 'ow I got it. Now I ast yer — do I look like a Bevin boy? I got me rights, same as anybody else. So I sez to meself, Charlie, I sez, you fer a job wot's easy on the belly, and wot pays fer the time yer servin' your country.' He thrust his face suddenly close to mine. 'You comin' the 'igh an' mighty! Blimey, who d'yer fink you are ter be tellin' me I'm a scab and a racketeer? Wot yer goin' ter do when yer get ashore, anyway — you just tell me that?'

'I got a friend in Penzance,' I said, stung by his sneering face. 'Sent me word he could get me a job.'

'An' told yer Tom Mulligan would give yer passage to England, eh?'

'How did you know?'

"Ow did I know? 'Cos yer ain't the first we brought back from It'ly, that's why? If your pal put you in touch wiv the skipper, then the job he got fer yer ain't no better than wot we're doin' on board the Arisaig. Gawd strewf, 'ow the 'ell d'yer fink the likes of you live in England? You ain't got no hidentity card, no ration book — in the eyes of the officials yer don't exist. Yer a floatin' population of scum wot lives off the Black Market. An' if yer want my advice, yer'll make straight fer London when we've landed yer. That's the safest place for your sort. Join the spivs and petty twisters wot 'ang ara'nd the race courses and the dawgs. Yer'll be safe wiv them — fer a bit.' He belched and heaved at his stomach.

I sat down again. God, how I hated myself! I felt the tears burning in my eyes and put my head in my hands to hide my sense of loneliness. A hand suddenly rested on my shoulder and Ruppy's voice with all the habitual harshness gone out of it, said, 'Come on, chum. Don't take no notice o' me. Yer'll feel better when yer seen yer fam'ly.'

I shook my head and wished he'd go back to his sneering. 'I've no family,' I said.

'No fam'ly! Blimey! That's tough. But yer got friends, ain't yer?'

'No,' I told him. 'Only the fellow in Penzance. You see, I left England when I was four. The only thing I can remember about England is when I was on the deck of a ship that took us to Canada. My father pointed the coastline out to me. It was just a grey smudge on the horizon. That and the day my mother went away — those are about my earliest recollections. We lived at a place called Redruth in Cornwall. That's where I was born.'

'But if yer went to Canada when you were four, why the 'ell didn't yer join the Canadian Army?'

'I didn't stay in Canada. After my father died, I went to Australia, to the gold mines. I was twenty then — a miner, like my father. After the war had been going on for some time I got a ship to England. But France fell and Italy came in and we Were held up at Port Said — so I joined Wavell's mob. This is the first time I've been to England since I was four years old.' Damn him — why had he started me off like this? Why didn't he go on sneering at me? I could stand that. I began to swear. It was a pointless waste of words, but it forced the tears of self-pity away.

'You oughter've gone back to Canada, chum,' he said. 'There wouldn't 'ave bin no questions ast there.'

'I couldn't get a ship,' I said. I reached out for the bottle and poured myself another drink.

'Yer don't want no more o' that firewater,' he advised, putting a restraining hand on my arm that was like the claw of a bird. 'Yer goin' ashore soon and yer'll need to be sober.'

But I took no heed, filling the glass and draining it at a gulp.

Footsteps sounded on the companion ladder. The door opened. 'Hey, Pryce! The skipper wants you.' It was a dumpy little man they called Shorty.

'Okay,' I said.

He went back up the companion ladder and his feet sounded again on the steel deck as he made his way aft towards the wheelhouse. The unfastened door slatted back and forth to the movement of the ship. I took another drink and then got to my feet. The watch off duty swayed in their hammocks. The steel walls, peeling and greasy with dirt, dipped and rose, dipped and rose. The naked bulb swung dizzily before my eyes. The Italian watched me. His eyes were on my belt and they glittered like live coals. I hitched up my trousers and my fumbling fingers bit into the flesh of my stomach as I felt for and found the outline of the money belt around my waist.

'What are you staring at?' I snarled.

'At-a nothing, signore,' he answered, and his eyes reverted to that soft, expressionless brown.

'You're lying,' I said.

He shrugged his shoulders, spreading his arms and drawing down the corners of his mouth, a picture of abject docility and innocence.

I took a step towards him. 'So that's why you're drinking with me, is it? You thought you'd get me stinking. You thought you'd rob me, eh?' He cringed away from me, those brown eyes suddenly mirroring his fear.

'Better go up and see the skipper, mate,' Ruppy said, catching me by the sleeve. But I suddenly wanted to hit the Italian — just one blow to show what I thought of the whole bloody race of 'em. And then I realised it would do no good. It wouldn't change his nature — it wouldn't make him any less avaricious, any less cruel. It wasn't his fault. He was a Neapolitan and it was the dirt and filth and poverty of Naples that had made him what he was.

I shrugged my shoulders and went up into the clean wholesome air of the deck. The night was still and dark with the sails flapping idly like bat's wings spread against the velvet backcloth of the sky that was all studded with stars. There was scarcely a breath of wind. Over the side our navigation lights showed a flat, oily swell. The tall masts of the little schooner swayed back and forth across the Milky Way and her gear creaked and groaned as the sails drew fitfully. I went aft, watching the faint, white blur of our wake as the engines drove us steadily towards the land. Every now and then a beam of light swept across us from a lighthouse on our starboard quarter. Almost astern was another, but below the horizon, so that it was like a faint flicker of the Northern Lights. And over the port bow, yet another blinked with monotonous regularity, hidden behind a mass of land that showed every now and then against the sudden brightening of the night.

The clean smell of tar and sea-wet cordage was strong after the sour fumes of the fo'c'sle. I breathed in great gulps of this fresh, salt air as I made my way towards the little wheelhouse. But a hand seemed clutching at my brain so that I couldn't think clearly. I stumbled over a coiled-down length of rope and fetched up at the rail gazing at the smooth, black surface of the water that I sensed rather than saw. I felt the long, flat swells rolling under our keel and gazed towards that dark line of coast that leapt into being every time the light flashed in our direction. And then I looked again at the smooth, comfortable swelling of the sea. It looked so inviting, so restful. Whilst out there, where the coast showed black, was danger and uncertainty.

I shook myself and felt for the belt around my waist. My eyes were tired. I was exhausted, drained of the will to go on. It was the same feeling that I had had that time up by Cassino when the patrol… I shivered and turned quickly towards the wheelhouse.

Inside it was warm and bright. Shorty stood at the wheel, his gaze alternating between the faintly glowing compass and the black night outside with the feebly slating sails. Mulligan was bending over a chart, a pair of dividers in his hand. He looked up as I entered. He was a thin, meagre little man with a craggy face, sharp blue eyes and a hare-lip that gave him the look of a stoat. He wasn't the sort of man you'd expect to find in command of anything, let alone a ship. But a devil looked out of those bright blue eyes and he had a tongue on him that was worth two full-sized men when it came to driving others. That tongue, sharp and rasping as the rough edge of a steel file, could get men moving faster than a pair of outsize fists. Men were afraid of that tongue and of those sharp little ferret eyes. He'd talk to a man, quiet and soft as a kitten, till he'd discovered his weakness, and then that tongue of his would get to work so that the man hated and feared him.

I held on to the edge of the chart table as the ship swayed and dipped. Mulligan watched me. He didn't speak, but just stood there gazing up at me, a sarcastic little smile on his deformed mouth. 'Well, what do you want me for?' I asked. I couldn't stand him staring at me. 'Are we nearly there?'

He nodded. 'There's our position.' He pointed to the chart. 'That's the Longships Light way to starb'd noo. We'll drop ye off at Whitesands Bay, just north o' Sennen.' His voice, with its queer Scots accent, droned on, giving me directions and pointing out landmarks on shore for my guidance. But I didn't listen. How can anyone listen to a voice purring out of a half Scots, half French parentage when the cognac is mounting to his head and making the blood hammer through his veins? The voice suddenly changed and the new rasp in it penetrated my mind. 'What about yer fare?' The question was repeated in a sharp, staccato bark.

'I paid it to you when I came aboard at Naples,' I reminded him. What was he getting at? My brain struggled to focus on what he was saying. 'I paid you fifty pounds in English notes. And it was twice what I ought to have paid.'

'That's as may be,' he answered, and his eyes never left my face. 'You paid me for a passage to England. But ye didn't pay me for putting ye ashore at dead o' night on a desairted stretch o' the coast. Smuggling a man into England is agin the law. It's dangerous, man, and Ah'm no willing ter take the risk wi'oot Ah get something oot of it.'

'See here, Mulligan,' I said angrily. 'You agreed to take me to England for fifty pounds. You knew what risk you ran when you took my fifty quid. Now you keep your side of the bargain.'

He peered up at me with that crooked, twisted smile of his. 'If that's the way ye want it, man, all reecht. We'll take ye on to Cardiff where we're bound and put ye ashore there. But Ah'm warnin' ye — they're awfu' strict at the docks there and unless ye ken yer way aboot — '

'Come off it, Mulligan,' I said and stretched out my hand to grip him by the collar and shake some sense into him. But he backed away from me, showing his discoloured teeth as he stretched his hare-lip to a grin. His right hand was in his pocket. I forced myself to relax. No good quarrelling with the man on whom my safety depended. 'What's your price?' I said. 'I'll give you an extra ten pounds.'

He shook his head and laughed. 'Ye'll be landed at Cardiff or ye'll pay my price,' he said.

'And what's your price?' I asked him.

'One hundred and thirty pounds,' he answered.

'A hundred and thirty quid!' I gasped. 'But that's — " I broke off.

He was laughing. I could see it in his eyes. 'That leaves ye wi' exactly twenty pounds.'

'How did you know how much I'd got on me?'

'Ye told me yersel' the other nicht. Ye were drunk and boasting of what a man could do wi' that much money, despite all the restrictions and identity cards and ration books. Well, it seems a shame that the police shouldna be given a chance.' Then his voice was suddenly hard and flat. 'A hundred and thirty quid — that's my price for a boat to pull ye to the shore. Ye can take it or leave it.'

The blood roared in my head. I felt my muscles swell. He had the chart table between us. I kicked it over with my boot. But as I went for him he backed away with a snarl and his right hand came out of his pocket with a gun. It stopped me for a second. And then suddenly I didn't care. He could plug me if he liked. I threw back my head and roared with laughter. It was the drink that had got in me. I knew that. But I didn't care. I just stood and laughed at him, crouched so puny and twisted in the corner of his own wheelhouse with that ridiculous little gun in his hand. I saw fear leap in his eyes and then I went for him. If he'd fired I don't think I'd have felt it, so elated was I with the sense of the power of my body. But he didn't fire. He hesitated. And in that second I had swept the pistol out of his hand and had seized him by the neck. The fingers and thumbs of my two hands overlapped as I closed my grip, lifting him from the ground and shaking him like a rat. 'Now what about my boat to the shore, eh?' I cried, and I heard myself let out another bellow of laughter.

I raised him so that his eyes were level with mine. I looked into them. They were so close it was like looking in through windows. And I saw he was afraid. I was glad of that and shook him so that his bones rattled. I shifted the grip of my right hand to the belt of his trousers and raised him to throw him through the window of the wheelhouse.

And then something hit me. A great explosion of pain burst at the foot of my skull. For an instant I saw the wheelhouse clear through the splitting agony of my eyeballs. My arms sagged beneath Mulligan's weight and his face came close to mine. Then my legs seemed to melt under me and everything was as black as hell as I crumpled up.

Next thing I knew was there was water on my face. It was cold and salt. I was going under again. There was a swimming blackness all about me. I struggled, thrusting upwards with my arms and legs. Again the sting of water on my face and the cold of the night air. I breathed in a great gulp that hurt my lungs. The darkness was shot with flame and then I was sinking again. This time I didn't struggle. I let the suffocating blackness steal over me. It was such a restful way to go. The water was cool and still as I sank. But the urge to live rose in me and I began to struggle upward again. My hands reached out, clutched and broke their nails against something solid. I grasped hold of it and fought my way back to consciousness. It was wood — a wooden board. It lifted slightly and then clamped down, pinching my fingers.

"E's comin' r'and, skipper.' The voice was right above me. It was Shorty.

'He's a skull on him like a rhinoceros,' Mulligan's voice replied. 'Ye hit him hard enough to split it open, yet he's no bin oot more'n fifteen minutes.'

I opened my eyes. It was dark, but I could see the darker outline of a pair of knees hunched against the stars. Then I closed my eyes again. The pain was unbearable. It was as though a great lump of lead had got loose inside my skull and was being pitched around by the movement of the sea. But it didn't hurt me to listen and my ears told me all I wanted to know. Waves were slopping at the gunnels of the boat and there was a steady creak of the rowlocks as the oars swung in and out. I was being rowed to the shore. The bow pitched violently and smacked into a small wave that slopped water over on to my face. I struggled up to my elbow.

'Ye'd best lie still,' said Mulligan in his phoney Scots. 'If ye don't Ah'll gi' ye anither crack on the head wi' the butt end o' me pistol.' His face was so close to me as he bent down that I could smell the reek of cognac on his breath.

'Okay, I'll keep still,' I breathed. My voice sounded faint and far away. I relaxed against the gunnel, the nerves of my whole body racked and wearied by the hammering pain in my head. A slight wind had got up, and over Shorty's rhythmically swinging shoulders the lights of the Arisaig danced in the ruffled water. The little schooner was hove to under mains' and stays'l. She was about three hundred yards astern of us, a graceful shadow in the faint light of the stars and the swinging beam of the Longships.

I twisted my head round and caught the gleam of Mulligan's eyes watching me. Pain stabbed at my eye sockets as I turned my neck muscles. I shifted the weight of my body to my right elbow, so that I could look for'ard without turning my head. Mulligan made a threatening movement with the pistol, which he held by the barrel. Then he relaxed as I lay still. The shore was a black shadow reared up against the night sky. With each sweep of the oars it came closer and blacker. Soon it towered above us, blotting out half the sky with its rugged, granite cliffs, and through the still night came the steady thud and suck of waves breaking.

'Where are you landing me, Mulligan?' I asked.

'Just where I said I would,' he replied. 'Northern end at Whitesands Bay. You'll be aboot two miles from Sennen. Or, if ye climb straight up from the beach and strike inland, ye'll reach the main road an' that'll take ye into Penzance.'

I didn't say anything. The black line of the coast was very near now. I thought I could see the faint white of the waves breaking. I strained my eyes into the darkness. But it made them ache so that I had to close them.

So that was England, and only a few miles from where I was born. My father had talked so much about the Cornish coast that I seemed almost to recognise it, even in the dark. But it was a queer way to be coming back — to be landed alone from a boat at dead of night with no friend and A sudden fear seized me. I forgot the pain in my head for a second as my fingers fumbled for the belt. I could feel it there against my skin. I searched for the pocket. Yes, it was still solid and packed with notes. Or was it less packed? Had they fooled me? Fifteen minutes they said I'd been out. Time enough for them to take the money.

I glanced up at Mulligan. His eyes were fixed on me.

Was it a trick of the dark or was there a sardonic gleam in them?

'What about the boat fare, Mulligan?' I asked. 'How much have you taken?'

'Lie still,' he hissed, and he held out the butt of his pistol ready.

The great granite cliffs were very near now. They seemed reared up, high, high into the night. A line of white seethed at their foot.

I slipped my hand under my jersey, beneath my vest, till I felt the leather of the belt lying against my skin. I found the pocket. It bulged. But when I got my fingers inside it the crispness of the notes had changed to paper, as though the pouch were stuffed with worthless Italian lire. I looked at Mulligan. 'How much did you take?' I asked him.

His face was so close to mine I could see the hare-lip stretch as he grinned. 'What Ah said Ah'd take, plus fifteen quid for the inconvenience ye caused me. Ye've got five quid, me bonnie boy, and that's five quid more'n ye deserve.'

'Five quid!' And I'd had two hundred when I hailed him at Port Santa Lucia in Naples Bay. 'Why didn't you take the five quid as well?' I asked.

He laughed. It was a hard, grating sound; like the creak of the oars in the rowlocks. 'Because Ah'm no wanting inquiries made about the Arisaig. Five pounds'll last ye quite a bit. The will to stay free is awfu' strong in a man. Ah could've filled ye full of lead and thrown ye overboard wi' some old iron in yer boots. But I dinna trust me crew when it comes to murdering a man. Though it's what ye deserve.'

'How do you know what I deserve?' The anger boiled up in me, stronger than the pain in my head. 'What were you doing sailing in and out of the North African ports when Rommel held the coast? I'll bet you weren't talking your phoney Scots then.'

He laughed again. 'Mais non, mon vieux — jeparlais toujours le francais quand j'etais en Afrique.' 'Or German,' I added. Who was he to tell me what I deserved, this rotten, crooked little bastard of a Scots father and a French mother.

A wave broke and the white of its crest licked along the gunnel, wetting my sleeve and slopping water into my face. We were very near the beach now. I could see it — a faint smudge of steeply rising sand that ended in a granite wall. Damn them! Why should I let them get away with my money like that?

'Do you know how long it took me to make that two hundred pounds?' I asked.

'No — and Ah dinna care,' was the reply.

'Two years,' I answered. 'Two years up in the lignite mines near Florence. Nearly a half a million lire. I had to pay through the nose for sterling.'

'More fool you,' Mulligan snapped back. 'Ye could've made it in a single trip wi' one of the gangs operating the Black Market in the Naples area.'

'Well, I made it the honest way,' I answered him. I looked up at him out of the corner of my eyes. He was watching me intently, the pistol grasped by the barrel. He must have seen me watching him, for his hand tightened on the weapon. I shifted my arm so that my hand was almost touching his boot. I glanced at the waves seeping against the steep sandy shore. The stern of the boat lifted. We were almost in the break now. The suck of the backwash was quite loud. I shifted my weight so that I could use my arms. One heave and he'd be in the water and then we'd see who'd have the money. I felt my fingers touch the wet rubber of his sea boots. I braced my back against the gunnel. And at that moment the stern lifted again and Mulligan said, 'Reecht, boys — run her in.' He looked down at me and said, ''Mais avec toi, man petit, je ne cours pas des chances' The butt of the pistol rose and fell. My head seemed to crack like a broken eggshell and everything went black.

When I came to I thought I was in my bunk with a hangover. It was so comfortable and my head throbbed with pain. I felt, chilly and moved my hands to pull the bedclothes up. But there were no bedclothes. A slight breeze was ruffling through my hair and my feet were wet. My head throbbed and the waves flopped and seethed to the hammer of the pain. I rolled over on my back and opened my eyes.

Above me the stars were dimming with the pale light of morning. I moved my hands under me and encountered sand. The sound of a wave scattered pain through my head and water swilled up to my buttocks. I sat up with a groan and gazed about me through pain-dimmed eyes. I was sitting on a beach of yellow sand, my feet stretched over the tide mark. A wave rose up out of the half light, broke white and flooded up the beach, wetting me to the waist.

I scrambled back out of reach of the advancing tide. I fingered my scalp gently. Through matted hair my fingers encountered an ugly bump just above the left ear and another right at the back of the skull. When I looked at my hand there was half-congealed blood mixed with sand. For a moment I sat there with my head in my hands, trying to collect my thoughts. This must be England — the Cornish coast, right by Land's End. And — that was it — I had just five pounds. Five pounds and no background. It wasn't much of an introduction to my native land. In a sudden frenzy of fear I thrust my fingers into the zip-fastened pocket of my money belt. I brought out the wad of paper that had replaced my hundred and fifty one pound notes. Toilet paper. With trembling hands I shredded it through, searching for the five pounds that swine Mulligan had said he'd left me. Piece by piece I separated those sheets of toilet paper and let them drift away in the wind. Then I ran through the pockets of my jacket. Nothing. But in the right hand pocket of my trousers I found it. It was a mean little wisp of folded notes, wet and stained. But, oh God, how glad I was of it. In my fear that I had been left nothing, those five sodden notes seemed suddenly gigantic wealth.

I put them in the pocket of my belt and struggled to my feet. I felt feint and slightly sick. The cliffs reeled and toppled. I stumbled to the edge of the sea and doused my head with water till my scalp wound tingled with the salt. Then I turned and began to struggle along the sands towards the inward curve of the bay.

The dawn came reluctantly, cold and grey, showing me the sweep of the bay. The farther tip of it was thrust out into the sea and ended in a tumble of jagged rocks. The village of Sennen Cove huddled beneath the headland. The wind had freshened from the sou-west and the sea was already flecked with little white-caps. Before I was halfway across the bay, the sun had risen above the hills inland — an angry red disc that barely penetrated the mist of low cloud that had trailed with the dawn across the sky. A few minutes later the sun disappeared. An autumnal chill was in the air. I stopped and looked back. The black granite cliffs which I had left were capped with a veil of cloud. Even as I watched the mist thickened and swept down, blotting out the northern limit of the bay entirely. Within a few minutes the mist had closed down and I was walking through a thin grey void, my world reduced to sand and the surf of breaking waves. The chill of the moist blanket of the mist seeped through my damp jersey and ate into my very bones. So this was England! I thought of the sunshine and the blue skies of Italy. Forgotten in that moment was all the dirt and flies and squalor, the vindictive sneers of the Italians, the loneliness. I wished I had not come.