The Penal Colony (42 page)

“Yes. We leave on Friday night, if the
weather’s good.”

King’s face lit up. “That’s great, Routledge.
Really great. Of course, it’s terrible about Fitzmaurice, and I’ll
be sorry not to have your ugly mug around any more, but all the
same …” He smacked his fist into his palm. “Hell’s bells,
Routledge, but that’s great! Three days from now you could be on
your way!” He peered round at his shelves. “Where’s my Black
Label?”

As they sat drinking, Routledge gave King
some of the news from the Council meeting. Sibley, Foster, and
Appleton had delivered their final reports on the day’s damage.
With the death of Fitzmaurice the number of fatalities had risen to
seventeen, but was unlikely to rise any further: Bryant and Phelps
seemed to be out of immediate danger. All the dead had now been
buried. Not counting those who, unseen, had been carried away by
their comrades, at least forty outsiders had perished, many of them
by burning. The number of injured outsiders was extremely high.
Pope was dead and the rest of Houlihan’s brain gang were in
disgrace: Feely had been released and was now in charge at the
lighthouse, while two of Nackett’s men had resumed control at Old
Town. It was unlikely that the attack would be renewed for a long
time yet, if ever. Obie, who had supplied this information, had
again asked the date of the launch and had again been fobbed off.
However, as a reward for his services, and to keep him quiet on the
question of future boat-building, he would, despite his past, be
offered a probationary place in the Village.

Work was in hand to repair the border
fortifications, the main gate, and the electronics workshop. The
windmill would be rebuilt as soon as possible. Plans to reduce the
impact of the two months’ suspension of helicopter drops had been
drawn up and rationing of paraffin had already started.

Thaine was still in the cave. At dusk, the
first available time, Betteridge had been sent down there to
relieve Chapman and to take Thaine food and drink and news. Chapman
had returned to the Village and reported that the ketch was
virtually complete and ready to sail. All else being well, she
would leave as planned.

Two factors made Friday ideal. First, it was
the night of the new moon and hence, secondly, an especially high
tide which would reach almost to the cave mouth. This tide was due
at forty minutes after sunset, giving slack water at nightfall when
the launch had to be made. Slack water would allow the reefs to be
negotiated in much greater safety; a strongly ebbing tide might
draw the ketch on the rocks, while a flow tide would make the work
of the swimmers much more arduous. The launch had to be made at
nightfall in order to get as far as possible from the island by
daybreak. Thaine had estimated that it would take no longer than
six hours to swim-push the ketch beyond the Magic Circle, giving
two hours’ sailing time before sun-up. At a minimum cruising speed
of five knots, this would put twenty-five kilometres between the
escapers and Sert before the optical cameras again became fully
functional. The duration of the whole voyage to Courtmacsherry
would be something like forty-eight hours. Landfall would be made
on Sunday night.

“That’s a good time to arrive,” Routledge
said. “But then leaving on Friday depends on the weather. If the
sky’s clear we’ll have to wait. The infrared would be too sensitive
to risk it.”

“What’s the forecast?”

“Good. Cloud building from the south.
Possibility of rain.”

King’s expression became more serious. “If
this getaway comes off, Routledge, you realize it could mean the
end of Category Z?”

“I know.” Routledge put down his glass. His
adrenalin had run out: and that was all that had been keeping him
going. He had not slept in over forty hours.

King, acknowledging this signal that
Routledge was about to depart, suddenly smiled and said: “I’ll make
you a promise. If ever I’m transferred to the mainland and you come
to see me, I might even let you win a game with that pathetic
fianchettoed bishop of yours.”

* * *

The speed with which Routledge had become a
member of the crew had left him completely unprepared. It was
impossible to adjust so quickly to the knowledge that, one way or
another, he now no longer faced a lifetime on Sert.

The remaining hours and days passed so
rapidly that there was not enough time for all the farewells he
wanted to make: to each of the villagers, to the way of life that
had become his, and even to the island itself. When, in the first
twilight of Friday morning, he arrived at the cave, he found that
in his hurry to be gone he had forgotten to take his leave of the
house. Most of his possessions he had bequeathed to King and Prine;
most of the rest had gone to the common store. As luggage he had
been allowed only a few snapshots and one other item of sentimental
value, the belt King had given him at Christmas. Everything else
would be provided at the other end. Assuming they got there.

He was the tenth crewman down. Already
waiting, sitting close to the walls of the cave, were Thaine,
Ojukwo, Redfern, Peagrim, Carr, Blackshaw, Gunter, Reynolds, and
Thursby. Chapman had also come down to assist Betteridge, who had
been here since Tuesday: the two carpenters would retrieve the
trolley after the launch and remain on hand with flashlights and a
line in case there was trouble immediately inshore.

“What’s the weather doing?” Thaine said.

“Still cloudy,” Routledge said.

In the dim glow of a solitary pressure lamp,
he acknowledged the others and took his place beside Thursby.
Before him, dominating the interior of the cave, almost filling its
length, stretched the dark, smooth bulk of the ketch.

She exhaled a smell of glue, timber, wax, her
own special odour of newness. With her bows tilted downwards,
facing the beach and the open sea, she was already anticipating her
own departure; she was the source and focus of the rising sense of
excitement in the cave. As his eye marvelled at the clean beauty of
her lines, Routledge could not help but wonder whether in some
inanimate way the ketch could feel the excitement too. Her creation
was complete. He could name each of her components, but he could
not name what she had now become.

Almost filled as she was with water, she was
imposing a tremendous burden on the trolley. The turf-packed tyres
had been crushed nearly flat, and for a moment Routledge doubted
whether the ketch could be moved at all, still less wheeled down to
the sea.

Franks and Appleton arrived five minutes
later. Unlike the others, they had not brought dry-suits or fins,
for they would be travelling inside the hull, taking turns at the
pump and the helm. Appleton had brought a packet of letters from
the other villagers to their families and friends, to be posted
beyond the censor’s reach, and Franks, from a bulky holdall of food
and water, produced a pocket radio which he tuned to BBC Radio Four
and placed among the stones near the mouth of the cave.

The first weather forecast of the day came at
five to six.

“… light rain already affecting Northern
Ireland will spread slowly south and east, reaching Wales and
western districts of England by mid afternoon …”

Franks held up his hands to silence the
excited reaction to these words.

“… a wet picture I’m afraid for the weekend,
extending into Bank Holiday Monday, with temperatures rather lower
than the seasonal average.”

After the news bulletin and a farmers’ price
report came the shipping forecast. There were no gale warnings. The
tinny loudspeaker, driven by a woman’s voice, gave a general
synopsis of falling pressure. Then came the vital information, the
sea area forecasts for the next twenty-four hours. For sea area
Lundy, in which lay Sert, and for the neighbouring areas of Sole,
Fastnet, and Irish Sea, the story was much the same. “Lundy, west
or north-west three to four, drizzle or rain, poor.” Light winds,
rain, poor visibility. Except for the wind direction, conditions
could hardly have been better.

The second shipping forecast of the day,
broadcast at five to two, showed little change. Routledge did not
hear it: he and most of the crew were sleeping, making themselves
as comfortable as they could. By the time he awoke, at half-past
five, the drizzle had begun. Twenty minutes later the third
shipping forecast reported a slight northward shift in the wind,
but was otherwise unchanged.

“That’s it,” Franks said, and switched off
the radio. “We go tonight. Three and a half hours to launch. We’d
better have supper.”

The two paraffin stoves had been lit earlier
and now Chapman handed out the coffee. This was the last hot drink
Routledge would have until Sunday night. Munching on a sandwich, he
looked round at Franks, who was again studying the charts of Star
Cove. Routledge looked at Thaine, spooning yogurt from a plastic
tub; at Peagrim and Thursby, everyone. He wanted to speak. He
wanted to say that, no matter what happened tonight, even if it all
went wrong and he drowned, he would rather his end came here, with
them, than anywhere else on earth. He wanted to tell them how much
the past ten months had meant; how the Village and the island had,
completely and irrevocably, changed him and the way he viewed the
world. But he could not. He was tongue-tied, silenced by the
intensity of his own feelings. His future, formerly so complicated
with mainland hopes and dreams and contingencies, had been reduced
at last to black and white, to yes or no, on or off, alive or dead.
And he was equipped for it. He had been prepared; was ready to
accept whatever this voyage held.

As the hour drew nearer he recognized signs
of the same fatalism in some of the others, in Reynolds, Blackshaw,
Ojukwo, Franks himself.

At seven-thirty they began putting on their
suits, having taken a last chance to urinate and void their bowels
at the back of the cave. Each man’s suit took twenty minutes to
seal. Thaine and Ojukwo helped Routledge. Lying on his back, he
watched as they sewed tight the open vent from navel to neck,
fitted the welt and worked warm glue into the joint. When that was
done he stood up and, placing a tightly fitting polythene bag over
his head to protect his ears, pulled on the rolled rubber collar.
Thaine spread the glue and carefully unrolled the collar, making a
watertight seal.

Carr was the last to be sealed up. Chapman
extinguished one of the Tilleys and turned down the other until it
gave only the faintest light. He then removed the tarpaulin from
the cave mouth.

Franks took a final glance outside. It was
quite dark.

“You all know your places,” he said.

Appleton climbed up the makeshift ladder and
in through the cockpit hatch.

Franks turned to Chapman and Betteridge.
“Goodbye, my friends.”

“Goodbye, Father.”

“Tell Mr Foster I’m thinking of him. Of you
all.”

Then Franks too had disappeared inside the
hull, and Routledge had taken his position at the third handgrip on
the port side, ahead of Peagrim and behind Ojukwo. When each man
had fastened his safety line, Chapman and Betteridge added their
weight to the stern. “One,” Thaine said. “Two. Three. Now!”

At that moment water began cascading from the
sprinklebar along the ridge of the deck. The wheels of the trolley
turned, reluctantly at first, and, as the inertia was overcome,
more quickly. With all his strength Routledge heaved forward,
trying not to trip himself over with his fins, repeating in his
thoughts only the most mundane and ridiculous words: “Here goes!”,
and they were out of the cave, rain and fresh air on the exposed
skin of his face, pushing downhill in pitch darkness across three
or four metres of beach. The carpenters had dropped back. The force
of a breaking wave momentarily checked the impetus of the run,
lifting the bows as they smashed into the surf. Routledge, his feet
and ankles and legs hampered by water, continued running for an
instant longer before he lost his footing and the boat herself,
dragging him forward, pulled him into a horizontal position. The
trolley ropes reached their extent. The trolley stopped dead and
with a brief, sickening grinding of her twin keels the ketch was
free. His suit pressed flat against his skin, Routledge found
himself swimming. There was nothing below him. He half rotated, so
that his face was clear, and, clutching the handgrip, began
furiously kicking.

The reams of calculations he and Thaine had
made were coming good. The ketch was stable, almost submerged, with
no more than a few centimetres of the hull exposed. Taking water
now from a valve in the stern rather than the built-in tank, the
sprinklebar continued pouring out its cold, cunning mask of sea. A
second valve in the highest part of the deck supplied the cabin
with air.

Once they were beyond the surf, Routledge
heard Franks’s voice, coming through the polythene-sealed grilles
of the helmsman’s two-way address system.

“Sonar’s working!”

And so was Routledge’s suit. No water, not
even the tiniest amount, was coming in. Only his head felt wet, his
face slapped by the sea and continuously washed by the rain and the
heavy outflow from the deck.

“Any leaks?” Thaine called out to his fellow
swimmers.

There were none.

“One two three half!” Franks cried, ordering
Thursby, Reynolds, and Thaine, on the starboard side, occupying
positions one to three, to halve their efforts: the bows began
turning in that direction.

“Reef ahead! Gap depth three metres. Range
eleven metres. All half! Three four slow! Two slow! Seven eight
full! All dead slow! Nine full! Nine half! Nine slow! One ten stop!
All stop! Range seven metres. Five metres. Three.”

Below him Routledge sensed the deadly upward
thrust of the rocks. Keeping himself as horizontal as possible,
riding on the swell, he let the gliding momentum of the ketch take
him forward and over.