In High Places

He had been reminded of one thing, though: the Defence Committee. Perhaps, after all, the meeting should be held tomorrow, Christmas Eve notwithstanding. The announcement about Washington would be out and he would have to gain support in Cabinet by persuading others to his own opinions. He began to plan what he would tell the committee. His raced on.

It was two hours before he retired to bed. Margaret was already sleeping, and he undressed without waking her, setting a small bedside alarm for 6 AM.

At first he slept soundly, but towards morning his rest was by an odd recurring dream – a series of clouds, which rose from the smallness of hands into sombre, stormlike shapes.

Part 3 The MV Vastervik

Chapter 1

On the Canadian West coast – 2,300 miles from Ottawa as the jets fly – the Motor Vessel Vastervik docked, between showers, on December 23rd.

The wind in Vancouver harbour was wintry and gusting. The harbour pilot, who had boarded the ship half an hour earlier, had ordered out three shackles of anchor chain and now the Vastervik was berthing gently, its big hook dragging like a brake on the silt-layered, rock-free bottom. The tug ahead of the ship gave one short blast and a heaving line snaked shoreward, others following.

Ten minutes later, at 3 PM local time, the ship was secure and its anchor recovered.

La Pointe Pier, at which the ship had moored, was one of several projecting, fingerlike, from the busy, building-crowded shore line. Around the new arrival, and at adjoining piers, other ships were loading or discharging freight. Cargo slings rose swiftly and were lowered. Box cars shunted fussily on dockside rail spurs while lift trucks squirrelled back and forth from ships to warehouses. From a berth nearby a squat freighter eased out towards open water, a tug and line boat fore and aft.

A group of three men approached the Vastervik purposefully. They walked in step, competently skirting obstacles and working parties. Two of the men wore uniforms. One was a customs officer, the other from the Canadian Immigration. The third man was in civilian clothes.

'Damn!' the customs man said. 'It's raining again.'

'Come aboard our ship,' said the civilian, grinning. He was the shipping-company agent. 'It'll be drier there.'

'I wouldn't count on it,' the immigration officer said. He had a stern face and spoke unsmilingly. 'Some of these tubs of yours are wetter inside than out. How you keep them floating is a mystery to me.'

A rusty iron gangway was being lowered from the Vastervik.

Looking up at the ship's side, the company agent said, 'Sometimes I wonder myself. Oh well, I suppose it'll hold three more.' He swung himself on to the gangway, me others following.

Chapter 2

In his cabin immediately beneath the bridge. Captain Sigurd Jaabeck, big-boned, stolid, and with a weathered seaman's face, shuffled papers he would need for port clearance of his cargo and crew. Before docking the captain had changed from his usual sweater and dungarees to a double-breasted suit, but still had on the old-fashioned carpet slippers he wore most of the time on board.

It was good. Captain Jaabeck thought, that they had berthed in daylight and tonight could eat ashore. It would be a relief to escape the fertilizer smell. The captain wrinkled his nose distastefully at the all-pervading odour, suggestive of a combination of wet sulphur and decaying cabbage. For days it had been seeping up from the cargo in number three hold, to be circulated impartially through the ship by the hot-air blowers. It was heartening, he thought, that the Vastervik's next cargo would be Canadian lumber, sawmill fresh.

Now, the documents in his hand, he moved out on to the upper deck.

In the crew's living quarters aft. Stubby Gates, able-bodied seaman, ambled across the small square mess hall which also served as a day rest-room. He joined another figure standing silently, gazing through a porthole.

Gates was a London Cockney. He had the scarred, disarranged face of a fighter, stocky build and long dangling arms which made him apish. He was the strongest man on the ship and also, unless provoked, the gentlest.

The other man was young and small of stature. He had a round, strong-featured countenance, deep-set eyes and black hair grown over-long. In appearance he looked little more than a boy.

Stubby Gates asked, 'Wotcher thinkin' about, Henri?'

For a moment the other continued to look out as if he had not heard. His expression held a strange wistfulness, his eyes seeming fixed on the city skyline, with its tall, clean buildings, visible beyond the dockside. The sound of traffic carried clearly across the water and through the open port. Then, abruptly, the young man shrugged and turned.

'I think of nothing.' He spoke with a thick, throaty – though not unpleasing – accent. English came hard to him.

'We'll be in port for a week,' Stubby Gates said. 'Ever bin to Vancouver before?'

The young man, whose name was Henri Duval, shook his head.

'I bin 'ere three times,' Gates said. 'There's better places to get orf a ship. But the grub's good an' you can always pick up a woman quick.' He glanced sideways at Duval. 'Think they'll let you go ashore this time, matey?'

The young man answered moodily, dejection in his voice. The words were hard to understand but Stubby Gates was able to make them out. 'Sometime,' Henri Duval said, 'I think I never get ashore again.'

Chapter 3

Captain Jaabeck met the three men as they came aboard. He shook hands with the company agent, who introduced the customs and immigration officers. The two officials – all business now – nodded politely to the captain but did not shake hands.

'Is your crew mustered. Captain?' the immigration man asked.

Captain Jaabeck nodded. 'Follow me, please.' The routine was familiar and no instructions had been needed to bring the crew to the officers' dining-room amidships. They were lining up outside while the ship's officers waited within the room.

Stubby Gates nudged Henri Duval as the group, led by the captain, passed by. 'Those are the government blokes,' Gates murmured. 'They'll say if you can go ashore.'

Henri Duval turned to the older man. 'I make good try,' he said softly. There was a boyish enthusiasm in his heavily accented voice, the earlier depression banished. 'I try to work. Maybe get stay.'

'That's the stuff, Henri,' Stubby Gates said cheerfully. 'Never say die!'

Inside the dining-room a table and chair had been set up for the immigration officer. He sat at it, inspecting the typewritten crew list which the captain had handed him. Across the room the customs man leafed through a cargo manifest.

'Thirty officers and crew, and one stowaway,' the immigration man announced. 'Is that correct. Captain?'

'Yes.' Captain Jaabeck nodded.

'Where did you pick up the stowaway?'

'In Beirut. His name is Duval,' the captain said. 'He has been with us a long time. Too long.'

The immigration man's expression did not change.

'I'll take the officers first.' He beckoned the first officer who came forward, offering a Swedish passport.

After the officers, the crew filed in from outside. Each examination was brief. Name, nationality, place of birth, a few perfunctory questions. Afterwards, each man moved across for questioning by Customs.

Duval was last. For him the immigration man's questions were less perfunctory. He answered them carefully, with an earnestness, in halting English. Some of the seamen. Stubby Gates among them, had hung back, listening.

Yes, his name was Henri Duval. Yes, he was a stowaway on the ship. Yes, he had boarded at Beirut, Lebanon. No, he was not a citizen of Lebanon. No, he had no passport. He had never had a passport. Nor a certificate of birth. Nor any document. Yes, he knew his birthplace. It was French Somaliland. His mother had been French, his father English. His mother was dead, his father he had never known. No, he had no means to prove that what he said was true. Yes, he had been refused entry to French Somaliland. No, officials there had not believed his story. Yes, he had been refused a landing at other ports. There were many ports. He could not remember them all. Yes, he was sure he had no papers. Of any kind-It was a repetition of other questioning in other places. As it continued the hope which had dawned briefly on the young man's face faded into despondency. But at the end he tried once more.

'I work,' he pleaded, the eyes searching the immigration man's face for a glimmer of response. 'Please – I work good. Work in Canada.' He pronounced the last name awkwardly, as if he had learned it, but not well enough.

The immigration man shook his head negatively. 'Not here, you won't.' He addressed Captain Jaabeck. 'I'll issue a detaining order against this stowaway. Captain. It will be your responsibility that he doesn't go ashore.'

'We'll take care of that,' the shipping agent said.

The immigration man nodded. 'The rest of the crew are clear.'

Those who remained had begun to leave when Stubby Gates spoke up.

'Can I 'ave a word wi' you, guv?'

Surprised, the immigration man said, 'Yes.'

There was a pause at the doorway and one or two men edged back inside.

'It's abaht young Henri 'ere.'

'What about him?' There was an edge to the immigration man's voice.

'Well, seein' as it's Christmas in a couple o' days, an' we'll be in port, some of us thought maybe we could take Henri ashore, jist for one night.'

The immigration man said sharply, 'I just got through saying he has to stay on the ship.'

Stubby Gates' voice rose. 'I know all about that. But jist for five bleeding minutes couldn't you forget your bloody red tape?' He had not intended to become heated but he had a sailor's contempt for shorebound officialdom.

'That'll be enough of that!' The immigration officer spoke harshly, his eyes glowering.

Captain Jaabeck moved forward. The seamen in the room tensed.

'It may be enough for you, you stuck-up sod,' Stubby Gates said belligerently. 'But when a bloke 'asn't bin orf a ship in near two years, and it's bloody Christmas…'

'Gates,' the captain said quietly. 'That will be all.'

There was a silence. The immigration man had gone red-faced and then subsided. Now he was looking doubtfully at Stubby Gates. 'Are you trying to tell me,' he said, 'that this man Duval hasn't been ashore in two years?'

'It is not quite two years,' Captain Jaabeck interjected quietly. He spoke English clearly with only a trace of his native Norwegian tongue. 'Since this young man boarded my ship as a stowaway twenty months ago, no country has permitted him to land. In every port, everywhere, I am told the same thing: He has no passport, no papers. Therefore he cannot leave us. He is ours.' The captain raised his big seaman's hands, fingers outspread, in a gesture of interrogation. 'What am I to do – feed his body to the fishes because no country will have him?'

The tension had gone. Stubby Gates had moved back, silent, in deference to the captain.

The immigration man – no sharpness now – said doubtfully, 'He claims to be French – born in French Somaliland.'

'This is true,' the captain agreed. 'Unfortunately the French, too, demand papers and this man has none. He swears to me he has never had papers and I believe it's so. He is truthful and a good worker. This much one learns in twenty months.'

Henri Duval had followed the exchange, his eyes moving hopefully from one face to the next. Now they returned to the immigration officer.

'I'm sorry. He can't land in Canada.' The immigration man seemed troubled. Despite the outward sternness, he was not a harsh man and sometimes wished the regulations of his job were less exact. Half apologetically, he added, 'I'm afraid there's nothing I can do, Captain.'