The Action Read online

  Stone looked at the silver lighter before he put it back in his pocket. Inscribed on it were the words ‘To Alec From Anne With Love’. Anne had been his wife. When she found out the truth about him she had left him and gone home to her mother’s house in Belfast. She had been blown up by an IRA bomb soon afterwards. Years ago now, and it hurt more than ever. He leaned back in his chair, cleared his mind of sadness with a conscious effort, and extended his feet. The blue smoke from his cigarette curled lethargically above his head and climbed slowly the still, hot air until the air conditioning fussily swept it away. Stone stared out of the window. If he closed his eyes until the lashes almost met, he could cut out sufficient glare to see the faint line of the horizon where the painfully bright blue-white of the sky met the equally painful green-white of the sea. He drew on his cigarette again and let the smoke out in a long, carefully controlled breath as though smoking were some sort of arcane yoga exercise. According to the old-fashioned thermometer on the wall outside the bar door, the shade temperature was 120°F. Stone longed for England, home and coolness more with each drop of sweat which trickled down his torso.

  The bar steward brought the whisky at 1535.

  Stone continued to look out of the window until his eyes began to water, then he shook his head, slightly angry with himself. It was childish, always testing himself - and yet he seemed to do it automatically now, like a wrestler thoughtlessly squeezing a rubber ball to strengthen his forearm while doing other things. He was always exploring the boundaries of his capability - always finding out how long he could look at the sun. He reached his long hand out absently and picked up his drink. The ice chimed against the glass; Stone’s hand was shaking. He looked at it for a moment with a detached air, then lifted the glass to his mouth with his usual self-aware gesture. He looked around the bar, suddenly, as though he had just heard a sound, but there was nobody there. He drew on his cigarette again and glanced at his watch: nearly a quarter to four.

  None of this interrupted Stone’s train of thought. Even the regular habits and steady drinking which had filled the last two weeks had been another such game: he had never before studied himself under conditions of opulent routine, where the greatest danger came from ice injudiciously swallowed, and the greatest failure would be to get falling-down drunk. The temptation was to get drunk as quickly as possible and to stay that way until Southampton. But instead, he worked to a simple, unvarying routine - getting as near drunk as he could manage while still being sober, four times a day.

  Just before 1600, Mrs Gash bustled into the bar, calling, “Letty? Letty?” in her strident Bronx voice. Stone nodded at her with his usual absent half-smile. Mrs Gash went “Yoo-Hoo!” and waved at him. Stone nodded again. Mrs Gash started to walk towards him, slipping off the ermine stole which, even in this heat, habitually adorned her doughy shoulders. But just as she did so, Miss Buhl - Letty - answered her call with all the careful promptness of an English professional travelling companion. Mrs Gash turned to talk to her. Stone went back to his whisky. He liked Mrs Gash enormously: her broad vivaciousness and studied vulgarity charmed and amused him.

  From the moment she saw his dark, brooding profile, she had been asking Stone to do a turn. She had seen his Hamlet some years ago at Stratford. He might have obliged her, had Eldridge Gant not been aboard. To do any acting in front of Gant would be the equivalent of a carthorse racing a thoroughbred. He might just as well have taken on Branagh, Olivier or Burton.

  Stone finished his whisky, brooding darkly over his lack of true genius, and signalled the bar steward for another. Then he crushed his cigarette which had burned down to the filter. Mrs Gash and Miss Buhl sat in the comer by the door, looking like a frog talking to a sparrow. The bar steward came over with Stone’s drink and placed it carefully on the table. Stone nodded his thanks. The steward turned and began to walk back to the bar. Then the floor seemed to rise in a brief blister. Stone’s whisky jumped into the air and then settled back with a small, distinct, click. The windows vanished outwards in a hail of deadly shards. Mrs Gash was thrown back against the wall. Miss Buhl was thrown to the floor. Stone was lifted out of his seat. His shins crashed painfully against the table. His chair toppled over but his body, rolling with the shock, automatically saved him from greater injury.

  The bar steward took off. His tray flew one way, his neatly-folded cloth another. His body curled in mid-air until his knees were pushed against his chest. His head snapped back and then forward so that his body followed, seeming to dive head-first into the bar. His neck caught the sharp, brass-bound outer edge, his full weight pivoting on the first two vertebrae of his spinal column. There was an audible crack and his arms and legs shot out, widespread and rigid. His body cartwheeled over the bar to smash into the bottle-racks on the wall.

  Stone never really heard the explosion. There were a few moments of darkness and he suddenly found himself sitting on the floor, bruised and dazed. Glass was tumbling off the bottle racks behind the bar. Mrs Gash was swearing colourfully, and Miss Buhl tutting somewhere behind him. He knew with a certainty born of experience that the bar steward was dead.

  The only thing he couldn’t work out was why, on a perfectly steady table, set solidly on the floor, his whisky glass should start to slide away leaving a trail of whisky to glisten in the suffocating sunshine and dry instantly like the track of a giant snail on the bright polished wood.

  At 1600 Eldridge Gant glanced up from the pages of Eugene O’Neill’s classic drama Long Day’s Journey into Night. His eye caught the clockface above the door in his stateroom and he thought, “1600”. Then he smiled. He hadn’t thought in military time since ’Nam and yet he had caught himself doing it more frequently of late - perhaps because he was on board ship, perhaps because of the interview he had given to the Straits Times in Singapore which had brought back so many memories.

  All this thought was fleeting. He glanced back down at O’Neill’s deathless words even before the red second hand jumped on. Not only was Long Day’s Journey into Night Gant’s favourite play, but he had also agreed to take the part of James Tyrone on Broadway later in the year, with the promise of a transfer of the whole production to the West End of London after an extended run in New York. He had decided to come back from Singapore by sea in order to give himself a rest, he had told the Straits Times reporter - among so many other things - and to give himself a chance to get out of the consumingly powerful character of his Macbeth which had taken the Far East by storm over the last few months. But he was looking forward to London especially, and outdoing even Olivier’s legendary James Tyrone - perhaps even doing it at the Barbican if the Royal Shakespeare Company would let him.

  As a younger man, Eldridge Gant had been hailed as the new Orson Welles of the American cinema, but the Viet Nam War had put an end to that. He had joined the Army, much against everyone’s wishes, and for four years he had seemingly disappeared into the ranks. In fact, he had joined the Special Forces and spent two years shuttling back and forth between the John F Kennedy Center and various war zones as part of the advisory service called the Military Assistance Training Advisor Department, but universally known from its initial capital letters as ‘Mill around ’til ambushed’.

  He never discussed what he did and rarely even thought about it. When he came out, his life in the cinema was over for two reasons.

  First, he was no longer bankable. Secondly, he discovered within himself the need for a live audience - the fear, the excitement, ‘the roar of the greasepaint the smell of the crowd’ as Wilde or Barnum had put it. He had set about rebuilding his career, therefore, exclusively on stage, and nowadays he transcended comparison even with Barrymore. He was in fact the American Olivier that Time magazine had called him: the greatest actor of his age and generation, that generation being too old for comparison with Branagh and the young Turks of the Brat Pack. He was a household name in four continents - although he was rarely glimpsed even on television - and had the almost totally unrestricted entrée o
f the truly great into almost every country in the world. The President had hinted when last they met that if the policy of detente continued to flourish, then Gant could pick his own company and take any great play he wished to be performed in Beijing itself.

  Gant was tall, bony but not thin. He had a mobile, expressive face and large, long hands seemingly made for gesture. When he was at rest, or when concentrating, as now, Gant seemed almost featureless. He was handsome in a conventional way - lacking the classic profile of Redford, Gere or Brosnan or even Alec Stone - and his face did not gain any memorable power until it was animated by some strong emotion, real or (as was more usual) assumed. Eldridge Gant in the flesh left an impression only of height - he was as tall as Eastwood and Heston - and of white hair and of indefinable power.

  Now, at 1600 Gant was totally at peace. Only his restless eyes and hands betrayed his total absorption in O’Neill’s words as he turned the pages of his priceless signed First Edition of the play, one of the more expensive gifts among the many left in the Purser’s office by his legion of admirers before the Wanderer sailed.

  When the bomb in the engine room exploded Gant hit the floor, rolled into the corner beside his bunk and came up onto his feet in one swift motion. Then he was thrown onto the bunk itself as the ship lurched first one way and then the other. When the movement stopped he came off the bunk at a dead run, yanked the door of his stateroom open and swung into the passage. There, he found the Purser, whose face and starched jacket were exactly the same colour, leaning up against the wall. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, sir. I think we may have hit something. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. I’ll just go and see.” The Purser staggered off and Gant stood for a moment deciding what to do. He knew nothing about ships but this felt fairly serious to him. He went back into his stateroom and began to search quickly but methodically through his baggage. In a matter of moments he noticed that the floor was beginning to tilt and he began to work faster. He had been sitting reading in his shirt sleeves. Now he tore the shirt off completely. Around his still trim waist he buckled a black waterproof moneybelt, then he emptied the contents of his briefcase onto his bed and began to sort through the jumbled pile of papers and books. The first thing he slid into safety was the play he had just been reading.

  When Gant came out into the passageway five minutes later he had changed his casual trousers for a pair of heavy jeans. He had put on a light but substantial roll-neck sweater which he wore untucked so that it came down past his waist concealing the slight bulge there. He had Reebok trainers on his feet and for the first time in many years he wore no socks. Under his right arm he carried a lifebelt and a sunhat. In his left hand he carried a pair of sunglasses. He had tried to be as practical as possible but what he knew of shipwreck he had gleaned largely from the pages of Pericles and The Tempest. That this was a shipwreck he had no doubt and the knowledge transformed him. The indolent reader of Long Day’s Journey was gone. Eldridge Gant was enjoying himself.

  When Gant arrived in the corridor the high walls and narrow floor emphasized just how steeply the ship was now angled. He put on his hat and sunglasses, and glanced at his watch. Only some six minutes had passed since the explosion - extraordinary! It felt so much longer. He knocked on the door of the stateroom opposite his own. There was no reply so he put his head round the door and called, “Rebecca? Are you there?” There was silence, so he glanced around the room and went out. He quickly jogged to the companionway. He glanced at his watch again - 1607 - sprang easily up the stairs and walked onto the after-deck.

  Standing just by the companionway door, under the shadow behind the bridge, Gant surveyed the bustle before him. All along the port side the lifeboats had been swung out on their davits and the crew was lowering them into the still-distant water. Gant immediately took a step forward and trod in a small pool of water. His foot slipped, and, trying not to fall forward up the slope of the deck reaching like a gentle hillside to the high poop deck, he staggered back through the door behind him. As he did so there was a terrible roar and the whole deck reared up like a wood and iron tidal wave.

  Such was the force of the explosion that Gant was hurled bodily backwards. He would have gone to his death down the companionway but his lifejacket, held firmly in his right hand now, caught on the top of the bannister and brought him down winded but safe on the steps. The power of the blast slammed the door above him and as the Wanderer rolled over and over towards port, Gant rolled too, stunned and in the dark.

  After some time the ship righted herself, saved for the moment by the weight of rice and water in her holds. Gant struggled to his feet and pulled himself back up to the door. There was a great spear of 2 x 4 timber through it now but Gant managed to open it and get out. He stepped through it automatically, still a little dazed, and felt his foot slipping. He looked down and there was nothing there. Wildly he flung his hand back and caught the doorpost. Then he stood for a moment on one foot balanced precariously on 18 in of broken planking as he tried to comprehend what had happened to the deck.

  Where a few moments earlier there had been perhaps 50 men busily swinging out lifeboats now there was no one. The ship’s rails were twisted but unbroken and there was nobody standing beside them. What was left of the lifeboats hung smashed to pieces on buckled davits but all the men were gone. Gant closed his eyes for a moment, revelling in the sudden darkness after the terrible brightness of the day, and then opened them again to make sure. But there was no mistake. They were all gone. And where the deck itself had been there was now the nothingness into which Gant had so nearly stepped. Roughly circular, curving away from his precarious perch and out nearly to the sides of the ship, then closing to meet under the overhang of the poop, were the edges of a ragged hole. These were turned upwards like the edges of a bomb crater and with each sluggish movement of the ship some board or piece of planking would topple into the abyss, banging and clattering on its way down - always landing with a distant splash.

  Gant looked down into the shadows. A bright beam of sunlight revealed a maelstrom of foam which even as he watched began to creep up the inside of the ship. Irrationally then he yelled into the hole, “Is there anybody there?”

  At 1600 Silas Wells was sound asleep in his bunk in Stateroom 5. He had had a long session the night before in the bar with Alec Stone. Among other things in a so-far fairly active life Wells had once been a reporter and his nose told him there was a story to be had about the quiet Englishman. It was certainly worth prying into - especially after the rumours which had been flying around Singapore about him before he was summarily slung out on his ear. But even if there was nothing interesting after all, he would still have a nice exclusive about Eldridge Gant and the nubile Miss Rebecca Dark. So it had been a hard night, keeping pace with Stone through two bottles of Tomintoul Glenlivet single malt whisky while plying him subtly with questions about his past and present employment - apart of course from the months he had just spent as Oberon in the Travelling Theatre’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

  When Stone had finally clammed up Wells had turned to watch the tall white-haired man and the tall black-haired girl for a moment. When he turned back Stone had gone. Wells’ eyes had narrowed and the comers of his mouth turned down - he hadn’t even heard him go.

  He didn’t hear the explosion in the engine room either, but suddenly his slight, skinny body was dumped on the floor and he sprang awake. Automatically he looked at his watch - just gone four: he’d been asleep for nearly 12 hours. He swept his long blond hair out of his eyes and sat up. At first he thought it was the hangover but then it suddenly became quite clear that the floor actually was at an angle. Like Gant and Stone, Wells didn’t know much about ships but he knew enough to get his clothes on as quickly as possible. Then, also like Gant, he started strapping things under his shirt.

  Because he had been so deeply asleep he was slower about it than Gant and he was just stepping out of his stateroom
door as the actor was stepping onto the aft deck. Wells turned the other way, however, and began to run up the forward steps. Halfway up he met Bates, the radio operator, coming down. “Seen the Captain, sir?”

  “Sorry. Important?”

  “Weather. We’re in for a bit of a blow…” And then the boilers blew up. Wells, thrown forward, hit Bates in the lower stomach as though he had been performing a rugby tackle. Bates folded forward over his shoulder and they tumbled down the companionway together. “What the hell was that?” asked Wells when he had regained his breath.

  “I was on a steamer once, maybe 20 years ago and I heard a sound like that,” said Bates dreamily. “It was the boilers going up.”

  “God save us! What’ll we do?”

  “Better get to my radio.”

  “Send for help?”

  “Well, radio our position: the old girl’s beyond help now.”

  The radio shack was behind the bridge, a wooden excrescence reaching out onto the deck. When they got to the door which had saved the life of Eldridge Gant, Bates noticed the 2 x 4 wooden beam through it. Tacked to one side of the beam was a black wire. The two men stood briefly in the doorway, shocked into disbelief, then Bates gestured to the wire on the 2x4. “That’s about all that’s left of the radio now,” he said, then suddenly he was retching, doubled forward. Wells only just caught him in time to stop him falling into the cavernous hole, and as he pulled him back into the safety of the companionway he heard echoing faintly from beneath his feet a voice crying, “Yes, here. Oh here! Help, please! Here!” He sat Bates on the steps. “Are you OK?” he said.

  “Yes. It was just that thump you gave me in the guts. Did I hear someone yelling down that hole?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who was it?”

  “I don’t know, Bates. You wait here while I go and find out.”

  Bates nodded and leaned against the bannister. Wells went down one side of the corridor knocking on the stateroom doors, and back up the other to where he had started. At this end of the corridor the wall bulged slightly but Wells did not notice. He knocked on the last door - Stateroom 2. “Yes, oh yes!” came a voice. Wells thought: Rebecca Dark, and opened the door.