September 9, 2010

And The Deep Blue Sea by Charles Williams 1971(9)

'I want a gun,’ he said.
‘La madre.’
‘Where is it?’ Goddard leaned back and could just
reach the head of the dropped fire ax. He set the
pointed side of it on Sparks’ throat. ‘Why not tell me
now? When this goes through your voice box, you’ll
have to point.’
‘I haven’t got one.’
‘I guess I should have told you,’ Goddard said. ‘I’m
short of time.’ He began to press on the ax.
‘If I had a gun, I’d be glad to give it to you.’
‘Sure, I know. And where.’
‘Listen. If you’ll take that thing out of my throat,
maybe I can tell you so you’ll believe me. I hate you. I
hate your guts. I hate all of you arrogant pigs. But if I
had a gun and thought you could stop that murdering
cabrón, I’d give it to you.’

And The Deep Blue Sea by Charles Williams 1971(8)

‘I’m sorry.’
‘It was five months ago.’
Why? he wondered. Was it the imminence of death, or
some latent tendency to spill himself he’d never
suspected before, just waiting for a captive audience
with no bra to get in the way? Since he’d walked away
from the hospital that afternoon in his private and
invisible bubble he’d never said anything to anybody
except to call Suzanne and tell her that Gerry was
dead, he would be home in three hours, and not to be
there.

And The Deep Blue Sea by Charles Williams 1971(7)

now we’re prepared for the next bulletin that he’s dead.
Or are we? He thought uneasily of Madeleine Lennox.
No, she was all right. She was up; he’d heard her
taking a shower.
Karen excused herself and left. He finished his
poached egg and lit a cigarette while he drank another
cup of coffee. When he went outside and walked aft, the
bos’n and two sailors were knocking out the wedges
that secured the tarpaulins on number three’s hatch
cover. Smoke was filtering up here and there around
the edges of it. Another man was unrolling a fire hose.
He wondered if they had gas masks aboard; the smoke
was going to be pretty bad down there.
He reached for a cigarette, but discovered the pack
was empty. He tossed it over the side and went back to
his cabin for another. As he was tearing the cellophane
from it he was arrested by the faint sound issuing from
the open door of his bathroom. He frowned, and
stepped inside to be sure. The shower was still running
in the one next door. After nearly forty-five minutes? He
hurried out into the passageway.

And The Deep Blue Sea by Charles Williams 1971(6)

make you long for the Norwegian fiords, Captain.’
He nodded and managed a wan smile. ‘Yes. And it’s
been nearly two years since I was home.’
Lind said to her, ‘But it just takes one winter gale in
the North Atlantic to make this look good again.’
'I agree with you,’ Madeleine Lennox said. She began
an account of being on a freighter that had been hove
to for three days in the Bay of Biscay and how
eventually she’d been physically exhausted just from
And The Deep Blue Sea — 109
the endless holding onto something and trying to keep
from being thrown from her bunk.
Captain Steen interrupted her in a voice not much
more than a whisper. ‘If you’ll excuse me.’ Goddard
looked around. Steen’s face had gone white and was
stamped with anguish as he pushed himself to his feet.
He started to collapse, but caught himself with a hand
braced on the table.

And The Deep Blue Sea by Charles Williams 1971(5)

‘It’s perfectly safe,’ he reassured her. The darkness
was impenetrable after the flash. ‘Sparks grounds his
antenna, and it acts as a lightning rod.’
‘Thank you, Dr. Faraday,’ she said. A groping hand
brushed his arm, and then she was against his chest.
‘Who the hell needs science?’
He took her in his arms; if she needed comforting,
why be a churl about it? She felt very slender and soft
inside the nylon robe, and her arms came up around his
neck. In the next jagged flash of lightning he could see
her uptilted face with the eyes closed, waiting to be
kissed. He kissed her. Her mouth opened under his,

And The Deep Blue Sea by Charles Williams 1971(4)

Karen frowned thoughtfully. ‘No, they came aboard at
different times; Mr. Krasicki just before we sailed, I
think. Then he must have become ill almost
immediately; we thought for the first day or so he was
just seasick, until Mr. Lind said he had a fever. They did
see each other once before today, though.’ She told
them about the episode when Goddard was being
rescued. ‘It was the same thing,’ she added. ‘I mean,
the impression that Mr. Krasicki thought he recognized
Mr. Egerton, but Mr. Egerton had never seen him at
all.’

And The Deep Blue Sea by Charles Williams 1971(3)

‘You asked me if I was the mate, remember? Not
chief mate or first mate.’ Lind opened a closet. ‘I’ve got
some slacks here that might fit you. How big are you?’
‘Six feet one,’ Goddard said. ‘One-ninety.’
‘Should be just about right then.’ Lind handed him
two pairs of light flannel slacks. ‘Some Chileno drycleaner
shrunk ‘em. And here’s another sport shirt, a
drip-dry.’ He added socks, belt, a pair of slippers,
handkerchiefs, and a spare safety razor.
‘Thanks a million,’ Goddard said.

And The Deep Blue Sea by Charles Williams 1971(3)

‘You asked me if I was the mate, remember? Not
chief mate or first mate.’ Lind opened a closet. ‘I’ve got
some slacks here that might fit you. How big are you?’
‘Six feet one,’ Goddard said. ‘One-ninety.’
‘Should be just about right then.’ Lind handed him
two pairs of light flannel slacks. ‘Some Chileno drycleaner
shrunk ‘em. And here’s another sport shirt, a
drip-dry.’ He added socks, belt, a pair of slippers,
handkerchiefs, and a spare safety razor.
‘Thanks a million,’ Goddard said.
‘I’ve got a weak stomach. Can’t eat with people who
never change their clothes.’ Lind tossed off the rest of
his drink, and shook his head. ‘I don’t see why in hell
you couldn’t have had scurvy, at least. Pick up a guy
drifting around in a million square miles of ocean on
some woman’s diaphragm, and he’s healthy as a horse.’
* * *
And The Deep Blue Sea — 45
Cabin B, in the starboard passageway of the promenade
deck, contained two bunks on opposite sides of the
room, a desk, closet, and small rug, and had its own
shower. Lunch was served at twelve thirty, Barset said,
and dinner at six. There was no bar, but he could buy
anything he wanted from the bonded stores. Goddard
looked over the list and ordered six bottles of
Beefeaters gin, a bottle of vermouth, and three cartons
of Camels.
‘And would you ask the cabin steward to bring me a
pitcher and some ice?’ he added.
He showered, put on a pair of Lind’s slacks and a
sport shirt and the slippers, and stowed the rest of his
meager possessions. Closet space was going to be no
problem. The cabin steward pushed open the door and
came in without knocking. He was young and looked
tough, with a meaty face, green eyes in which there
was no expression whatever, and shoulders that
strained at the white jacket. Brutal hands with a
number of broken knuckles held a tray containing ice
and a pitcher. ‘Where you want it?’ he asked.
‘On the desk,’ Goddard said. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Rafferty.’
‘And where are you from, Rafferty?’
‘Oakland. Or maybe it was Pittsburgh.’
It’s done to death, Goddard thought. If he were trying
out for the young storm trooper or the motorcycle
hoodlum I’d turn him down as a cliché. Rafferty put
down the tray and asked, with just the right shade of
insolence, ‘Why?’
‘I don’t know,’ Goddard said. ‘But in Oakland or
maybe it was Pittsburgh, somebody probably told you
about pushing open doors without knocking.’
‘I’ll try to remember that, Mr. Goddard, sir. I’ll try
real hard.’
‘I would, Rafferty,’ Goddard said pleasantly.
‘Inevitably in this vale of tears you’ll run across some
mean son of a bitch who’ll dump you on your stupid ass
the second time you do it.’
And The Deep Blue Sea — 46
There was the merest flicker of surprise at this
unusual reaction from the square world; then the
turntable started again and the needle dropped back
into the groove. ‘How about that?’ Rafferty said. He
went out.
Goddard mixed a pitcher of martinis, for the second
time today a little disgusted with himself. But maybe he
was simply becoming aware of people again and had a
tendency to overreact, the way sensation is
exaggerated in a part of the body that has been numb
for a long time. He poured a drink over ice and went
out into the passageway. He remembered the dining
saloon was aft, next to Barset’s quarters, so the lounge
should be forward. There was a thwartships
passageway here with doors opening onto the deck,
port and starboard, and a wide double door into the
lounge. He looked in.
There was a long settee across the forward end with
portholes above it looking out over the forward welldeck,
several armchairs, a couple of anchored bridge
tables, and some bookshelves and a sideboard. A
blonde woman in a sleeveless print dress was standing
with her back to him, one knee on the settee as she
looked out an open porthole. She was bare-legged and
wore gilt sandals, and her arms and legs were tanned.
‘Mrs. Brooke?’ he asked.
She turned. He was conscious of a slender, composed
face with high cheekbones and just faintly slanted blue
eyes. The sailors were right, of course; she was pretty,
but it was the impression of poise that interested him
more. She smiled at him, the eyes cool and supremely
self-possessed. ‘Yes. How do you do, Mr. Goddard.’
‘Nobody ever saved my life before,’ he said, ‘except
possibly a few people with iron self-control who didn’t
kill me, so I’m not sure of the protocol.’
‘Well, I didn’t really save your life. I just happened—’
‘Mrs. Brooke, there were witnesses, so there’s no way
you can weasel out of it. Cop out, and throw yourself on
the mercy of the court.’ He indicated the glass. ‘Do you
drink?’
And The Deep Blue Sea — 47
‘We-e-ell, not to excess,’ she said gravely. ‘But I do
have a small one now and then with motion-picture
producers I meet floating around on rafts.’
‘I’d say you still had it under control. So if that
includes ex-motion-picture producers, how about a
martini?’
‘Thank you,’ she said. He went back to his cabin and
brought out the pitcher and another glass.
He poured her drink, and they sat down at one of the
bridge tables. ‘There are certain biographical data,’ he
said, ‘that we require here in the Central Bureau of
Heroine Identification.’
‘It’s confidential, of course?’
‘Oh, absolutely. It’s processed by our computer
complex buried under Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and purely
benevolent in aim because it protects you from
annoyances like privacy or forgetting to report all your
income. Now, all I know about you is that you’re
blonde, very attractive, probably of Scandinavian
descent, you hate airplanes, and you have insomnia and
twenty/ twenty vision. What kind of file is that?’
‘Flattering,’ she said. ‘And largely inaccurate. For one
thing, I don’t hate airplanes.’
Oh, don’t be frightened, Mrs. Brooke,’ he assured
her. ‘You can hate airplanes all you like, as long as you
don’t start questioning the divinity of the automobile.’
She smiled. ‘But I really don’t. It’s just that I like
ships better. Also, I work for a steamship company that
is agent for the Hayworth Line in Lima. And my father
was a shipmaster.’
‘American?’ he asked.
‘No, Danish,’ she said. She went on. Her father was
lost at sea in World War II when his ship was torpedoed
by a German submarine. Her mother remarried when
Karen was twelve. Her stepfather was an American
businessman living in Europe, later transferred to
Havana for several years and finally back to the States.
Karen had gone to school in Berkeley, majoring in
business administration, and until her marriage had
And The Deep Blue Sea — 48
worked for the San Francisco offices of her father’s old
steamship company, the Copenhagen Pacific Line.
‘Danes keep in touch with each other,’ she continued,
‘even if they become citizens of another country, so
after my husband died I asked the line if they had a job
for me in South America. I speak Spanish, of course,
from those years in Havana, so they gave me one in
Lima. I was there for a year, and now I’m going to the
Manila office. Copenhagen Pacific doesn’t have direct
service there, so I booked passage on here.’
Thumbnail biography, he thought, is a good term. It’s
impervious, and protects the raw nerve-ends beneath.
And does nothing at all, of course, to explain why a
pretty young widow would desert the action around the
game preserves where she caught the first one and go
wandering across the Pacific alone on a bucket of rivets
like this.
A man appeared in the doorway then and looked in at
them and then around the lounge as though searching
for someone. Goddard hadn’t seen him before, but
Barset’s term ‘weirdo’ came unbidden to his mind, and
he knew it must be the passenger with the Polish name.
There was no doubt he looked as though he had been
ill, and for a long time, and in spite of his outlandish
garb of white linen suit and open-throated purple sport
shirt with a figured tie draped around it, there was
something almost chillingly funereal and somber in his
aspect. He gave the appearance of having once been a
robust man who had shrunk to a rack of bones, for the
suit hung from him in loose folds, as did the skin of his
neck, and the gaunt face and the almost totally bald
head were a glistening and unnatural white as though
he hadn’t been out in sunlight in years.
‘Good morning, Mr. Krasicki,’ Karen said. ‘I’m glad to
see you’re up and around today.’ She introduced
Goddard, who stood up and shook hands.
‘You have been very—how do you say?—fortunate,’
Krasicki spoke with a strong accent. ‘You must excuse
me. I have little English.’
‘You’re Polish?’ Goddard asked.
‘Yes. But since many years I live in Brazil.’
And The Deep Blue Sea — 49
Probably a DP, Goddard thought, one of the homeless
of World War II. Krasicki muttered something and
turned abruptly and went out. A moment later
Madeleine Lennox swept in, pausing dramatically just
inside the doorway to chide Karen, ‘So! You’ve already
grabbed off our celebrity.’
She proceeded to dominate the scene with an
animation that Goddard appraised as falling somewhere
between kittenish and hectic, and which after a while
began to puzzle him as he became aware there was an
alert and cultivated mind being sabotaged by all this
determined girlishness. Normally you could ascribe it
to the desperation tactics of fifty having to compete
with thirty, but that would seem to make little sense
here where there was no competition and nothing to
compete for. They sat down at the table, Karen across
from him and Madeleine Lennox on his right. She
thanked him a little too effusively but would just have
to pass up the martini. She limited herself to one a day,
and always took that just before dinner. But he was
going to give her a rain check, wasn’t he?
She did look younger than fifty, Goddard thought,
particularly the figure, and he realized the one martini
a day was part of it, along with a rigid diet and
exercises to keep the waist in. Her face, while quite
pretty, showed perhaps a few more lines than the face
of an actress the same age, but the actress would have
had a larger and more expensive staff at work on the
project and plastic surgeons would have winched up on
the halyards once or twice by this time. The ash-blonde
hair, which was shoulder-length, had no doubt been
carefully chosen as the easiest shade for hiding the
gray, but she had fine eyes with the intelligence
showing through at moments when she forgot to be
captivating.
She’d seen Tin Can, and adored it. It was so
authentic, dear, she cooed, turning to include Karen in
the conversation; it was obvious Mr. Goddard was an
old navy man himself. Wouldn’t it be the most fantastic
thing if he’d known her late husband, who’d been in
destroyers then himself? He was the executive officer
of one in that same battle. Goddard said he was sorry,
And The Deep Blue Sea — 50
but he didn’t remember a Lieutenant Lennox, so they’d
probably never been on the same ship. He was an
enlisted man, anyway.
She knew a lot of people around Southern California,
mostly in San Diego but some in Bel Air and Beverly
Hills. It was while she was gaily tossing off these
names, all unknown to Goddard, that her left leg first
brushed against his under the table. He paid no
attention then; it was an accident, of course. No woman
could be that unsubtle. She launched into an
explanation of why she was aboard the Leander. She’d
been taking a cruise around South America on a
freighter of the Moore McCormack line, intending to
get off when she reached the Canal where she had a
reservation to board a Lykes freighter bound for the
Far East, but she’d become ill and had to go to a
hospital in Lima. By the time she recovered it was too
late to catch the Lykes ship, so she’d booked passage
on the Leander. Her knee brushed lightly against
Goddard’s again, came back, made a little stroking
movement up and down, and remained. It didn’t take
Mrs. Lennox forever to finish with the weather and
move on to more significant topics; they’d known each
other about ten minutes.
She couldn’t be that desperate, he thought; she’d be
walking up the bulkhead. It was just that she was afraid
of the younger woman and wanted to tie him up with an
option. He wasn’t sure whether he was sorry for her,
amused, or merely bored. It had been months since
he’d slept with a woman, or even thought about it, and
he’d assumed, with no particular interest, that he might
be impotent.
Haggerty, during that marathon drunk when he
discovered the underground skyway, had brought up
the subject the night they’d shared the same room, and
asked him whether he was gay. He’d said no, he was
researching an article for Reader’s Digest; continence
was the new hope for alcoholics with a time problem.
Exactly, she’d said; something had to go, and she’d
always advocated sexual freedom herself. People had a
perfect right not to go to bed with each other; all it took
was courage. And now that they’d made this bow in the
And The Deep Blue Sea — 51
direction of conformity, why didn’t he open the other
bottle? He’d never known what particular hound was
pursuing Haggerty down the nights and down the days,
but he hoped she’d worked it out. She was nice.
There was the sound of chimes in the passageway
then, announcing lunch. Goddard excused himself and
took the pitcher back to his cabin. There was a dividend
in it, which he poured and drank as he dumped the ice
in the basin, still thinking idly of Madeleine Lennox. He
went aft to the dining saloon. There were two tables,
each seating eight, extending fore-and-aft on opposite
sides of the room, but only the port one was used.
Captain Steen sat at the aft end of it, with Karen
Brooke on his right and Madeleine Lennox on his left.
Goddard looked inquiringly at the dining room steward.
‘You sit there,’ the latter said, indicating the place
next to Madeleine Lennox. He was a heavyset youth
with a florid and rather sullen face. Goddard sat down,
wondering what luck of the draw had placed him again
within range of that gregarious left leg. Or was it luck?
At the same moment Mr. Krasicki entered. He seemed
uncertain as to where he was to sit, and the steward
indicated the chair next to Karen Brooke. The two
women smiled at him, and Captain Steen said, ‘We’re
very glad to see you up, Mr. Krasicki.’ The latter
nodded and attempted a smile, but said nothing.
Goddard noted there were two other places set, the one
at his left, and the one at the forward end of the table,
which would no doubt be Lind’s. The steward made no
move to serve the soup, and Captain Steen appeared to
be waiting for something.
‘Mr. Egerton said he didn’t want any lunch,’ the
steward said. ‘And Mr. Lind won’t be here.’
Captain Steen nodded, lowered his head, and said
grace. When he had finished, Krasicki asked, ‘That is
the other passenger, Mr. Egger—Edger—?’
‘That’s right, you haven’t met him, have you?’ Mrs.
Lennox said. ‘It’s Mr. Egerton. You’ll like him; he’s very
nice.’
She turned to Goddard and went on brightly, ‘He’s
English. A retired colonel.’
And The Deep Blue Sea — 52
Krasicki interrupted, his face screwed into a frown of
intense concentration as though he had difficulty
following her. ‘An English, you say?’
‘Yes,’ Madeleine Lennox replied. ‘But he’s been living
in Argentina.’
The steward had begun serving the soup, but Krasicki
paid no attention to it. He was still staring at Madeleine
Lennox with that rapt concentration. ‘For many years?’
he asked. Goddard noted at the same time that Karen
had turned and was looking at Krasicki thoughtfully.
Madeleine Lennox replied that she didn’t know how
long.
Krasicki appeared to become self-conscious under
their regard and mumbled, ‘You must excuse me. I have
little English.’ The corner of his mouth began to twitch.
He lowered his head over his soup and began to eat it
rapidly.
Both women then demanded Goddard tell them what
had happened to the yacht. With apologies to Captain
Steen, who’d already heard it, he gave an understated
account of the affair, hoping he wouldn’t have to go
through it again for Egerton.
Still feeling some of the aftereffects of his three-day
ordeal, he took a nap after lunch. It was nearly five
when he awoke, logy and dispirited. He showered and
went on deck to walk off some of the torpor. After a few
laps he mounted to the boat deck. Lind was on the wing
of the bridge. Goddard made a gesture of greeting but
didn’t go forward; as a passenger he had no right on
the bridge unless invited. He was walking back and
forth along the starboard side when the wireless
operator came up the ladder aft and passed him with a
blank stare. He was carrying a message form. At the
same time Captain Steen emerged from the
wheelhouse. He read the message, and called out to
Goddard. Goddard walked forward.
‘It’s the confirmation from our agents in San Pedro,’
Steen said. ‘They’ve received the deposit.’
‘Good. Fast work,’ Goddard said.
And The Deep Blue Sea — 53
The wireless operator spoke to Captain Steen. ‘The
station in Buenos Aires has a message for us, but I
haven’t been able to raise him yet.’
‘Well, keep trying, Sparks,’ Steen said. The wireless
operator nodded and left. ‘Buenos Aires?’ Steen said,
puzzled. ‘I wonder what that could be. Unless it’s for
one of the passengers.’
‘One of my girl friends wishing me a happy birthday,’
Lind said. He winked at Goddard. ‘They pour in from all
over the world.’
Goddard went back to his cabin, mixed a pitcher of
martinis, and lay back on the bunk propped on two
pillows as he stared moodily up at the ceiling. So? After
Manila, what? Where did you go from there? And why?
Consider the noblest of the apes, he thought; the only
rational animal, by his own admission. He throws in
another gallon of adrenaline and goes bounding over
the landscape like a goosed gazelle to save his life, and
then after he saves it he stops and looks back and says,
what the hell am I running for, my name’s not Smith.
He was roused from these somber reflections by the
sound of chimes in the passageway. He finished the
martini and went back to the dining room. Karen and
Madeleine Lennox were already there, standing talking
to Captain Steen. He suddenly remembered he’d
forgotten all about the drink he’d promised Mrs.
Lennox.
She hadn’t. Somewhat overdressed and made-up, she
accused him archly as he walked in, ‘Mr. Goddard, I
must inform you your verbal promise isn’t worth the
paper it’s written on.’
‘Guilty, with extenuating circumstances, Your Honor,’
Goddard said with a grin. I dozed off.’ He turned to
Karen. ‘Mrs. Brooke, if I’m typical of the characters you
save, I wouldn’t blame you if you went into some other
line of work.’
She smiled, and said, I don’t believe you’ve met Mr.
Egerton.’ Goddard turned. Egerton had just entered
behind him, looking very striking with the neat gray
hair and moustache, the black eye-patch, and a white
jacket over a white sport shirt. He shook hands warmly,
And The Deep Blue Sea — 54
and said, ‘Welcome aboard, Mr. Goddard.’ Beaming at
the two women, he added, ‘Sporting of you, I must say,
to go to all that trouble so we’d have a fourth for
bridge.’
Lind came in then, and they sat down. Egerton was
on Goddard’s left, next to Lind at the end of the table.
This was the side of the table next to the bulkhead, so
they were facing toward the doorway. Just as Captain
Steen was about to say grace, Krasicki appeared in the
door. He stopped abruptly, staring at Egerton.
Goddard, watching him, was aware of something faintly
disturbing about it. Krasicki gave a start then, and
came on in. Karen spoke to him kindly.
‘I think you’ve met everyone except Mr. Egerton. This
is Mr. Krasicki.’
Egerton stood up and held out his hand. ‘Delighted,
Mr. Krasicki. And happy to see you’re feeling better.’
Krasicki mumbled something and shook hands. They
sat down, Krasicki directly across from Goddard.
Captain Steen said grace, and the steward began to
take their orders. Egerton turned to Goddard, and said,
‘I understand you’re in the cinema.’
‘I used to be,’ Goddard said.
‘He’s gathering material for his next opus,’ Lind said.
‘Across the Pacific on a Hot-Water Bottle.’
There was a laugh, and Captain Steen inquired, ‘Was
your boat insured?’
‘No,’ Goddard said. ‘The theory was that if it went to
the bottom, the odds were that I would too. Sound, I
thought, but Mrs. Brooke loused it up.’
‘Women,’ Egerton agreed, ‘are incapable of
understanding dedication to a scientific principle.’
‘Exactly,’ Lind said. ‘You have to feel sorry for them.
They never experience the deep personal satisfaction of
being dead and knowing they were right.’
‘Karen,’ Mrs. Lennox remarked. ‘I think we’re
outnumbered. Should we counterattack or retreat?’
‘Maybe Mr. Krasicki is on our side,’ Karen replied.
She turned and smiled at the Pole, trying to put him at
ease in this exchange that was obviously too much for
And The Deep Blue Sea — 55
his English. But the latter was paying no attention. He
was staring across the table again at Walter Egerton
with almost maniac intensity.
‘You have—’ He stopped, appearing to grope for
words. ‘You are many years in Argentina?’
‘Why, yes, about twenty,’ Egerton replied.
‘Twenty? Twenty?’ Krasicki repeated, frowning. He
looked at Lind.
‘Zwanzig,’ Lind translated. He added, for the others,
‘Mr. Krasicki is actually quite a linguist. He speaks
Polish, Russian, German, and Portuguese, but German
is the only one I know.’
‘Zwanzig. Aha,’ Krasicki muttered, still never taking
his eyes from the Englishman’s face. ‘You have—how do
you say?— become unactive—’ He gave up then and
spoke to Lind in rapid German. Lind nodded and turned
to Egerton.
‘He says you must have retired quite young.’
Even Egerton’s natural poise was a little shaken by
that unwavering scrutiny, but he managed to smile.
‘Thank you, Mr. Krasicki; that’s quite flattering. But I
was invalided out. Spot of bad luck in Normandy.’
Lind translated this for the Pole. The dining room
steward was putting their orders in front of them, but
no one began eating. There was another exchange in
German between Krasicki and Lind. Lind shook his
head as he spoke, and Goddard’s impression was that
the Pole had said something he was reluctant to
translate. Krasicki turned to Egerton again and tried
English.
‘The—aye? The—eye?’
The two women turned their attention to their plates
embarrassed by this bad taste, but Goddard continued
to watch, aware of some undercurrent here that was
more serious than poor manners.
‘Ah—yes,’ Egerton said stiffly. ‘That, among other
things.’
It was Karen who smoothed it over. She smiled at
Goddard and asked, ‘You do play bridge, I hope?’
And The Deep Blue Sea — 56
‘A little mama-papa bridge,’ Goddard replied.
‘Nothing spectacular. And only after a careful search
for weapons.’
The awkwardness passed for the moment, and
conversation became general. Goddard continued to
study Krasicki between replies to Mrs. Lennox’ chatter
on his right. The Pole appeared to withdraw inside
himself, eating silently as he bent over his plate,
oblivious to the others except to look up now and then
at Egerton. Then in a lull he began a rapid exchange in
German with Lind. They both smiled. Krasicki turned
then and included Egerton in the conversation, still in
German. To Goddard’s surprise, Egerton replied in the
same language. The Pole stiffened, and his eyes
glittered accusingly.
‘Ah! You speak German. I thought you were English.’
‘Yes, of course I speak it,’ Egerton said easily. ‘I
attended Heidelberg for two years. Before Sandhurst,
that is.’
The others had fallen silent. Krasicki’s eyes continued
to burn into Egerton. ‘But you did not say this.’
Egerton shrugged, obviously annoyed but still
urbane. ‘Well, really, old boy, one doesn’t normally go
about boasting of one’s accomplishments. Bit of a bore
to one and all, what?’
Krasicki made no reply, but Goddard noted the
nervous twitching at the corner of his mouth. Karen
came to the rescue again. ‘I think what we should do is
find out why Mr. Goddard doesn’t speak Hollywood.’
The others laughed, and Madeleine Lennox
exclaimed, ‘Yes. What about this Mrs. Lennox bit? I
thought you were supposed to say Madeleine baby.’
Krasicki bent over his plate again, but his lips were
moving silently as though he were talking to himself.
Then abruptly he stood up, threw down his napkin, and
stalked out.
There was a moment of embarrassed silence, and
then Karen said, ‘The poor thing; he’s been very ill.’
Lind nodded. ‘And I think he had a pretty rough time
of it during the war. He has horrible nightmares.’
And The Deep Blue Sea — 57
‘Pity,’ Egerton agreed. ‘A frightful shame—all that
wreckage.’
The others began to question Goddard about filmmaking,
and the incident was forgotten. The dining
room steward went out to get coffee. Goddard was
relating a comic foul-up of some kind on a sound stage
and everybody was laughing when in the edge of his
peripheral vision he saw Krasicki reappear in the
doorway. He thought the Pole had come back to excuse
himself or perhaps to finish his dinner, and by the time
he’d got a good look at the man’s face and the foaming
madness in his eyes it was too late to do anything but
witness it.
Krasicki screamed something that sounded like mire!
You go mire!, the tendons standing out on his throat,
and the mindless, primordial sound of it lifted the hair
on Goddard’s neck. He came on, raving in some
language Goddard had never heard, while spittle ran
out of the corner of his mouth, and raised the automatic
in his right hand and shot Egerton through the chest at
a distance of six feet.
Both women screamed with the crash of the gun, and
Egerton shook under the impact of the slug. Goddard
hit Madeleine Lennox with a shoulder, driving her to
the deck on the other side of her chair, while Captain
Steen snatched at Karen and threw her down. Lind was
out of his chair then, lunging around the corner of the
table for the Pole, who went on spraying spittle across
it with the demonic force of his outcry which rode up
over the continuous screaming of the women and then
was punctuated by the crash of the gun as he shot
again. Egerton jerked spasmodically against the back of
his chair and started to slump.
Lind had Krasicki’s arm then, swinging it up and
grabbing for the gun, while Captain Steen and Goddard
were trying to get around the other end of the table to
reach them. Krasicki was still pulling the trigger. The
third shot smashed the overhead light fixture,
showering glass, and the fourth, as Lind spun him
around, shattered the long mirror on the bulkhead
across the room.
And The Deep Blue Sea — 58
Lind tore the gun from his grasp, bumped him under
the jaw with a forearm, and shoved. Krasicki slammed
backward and collapsed on deck like a bundle of rags.
The screams cut off then, and there was an instant of
unearthly silence, broken only by the tinkle of glass as
another shard of the mirror fell to the deck and broke.
The dining room steward came running in followed by
Barset, who braked to a stop, and whispered, ‘Sweet,
suffering mother of Christ!’
Goddard turned and looked at Egerton. A trickle of
blood ran out of the corner of his mouth, and under the
hand clutching at his chest the white shirt was stained
with a growing circle of red. His left hand clawed at the
tablecloth as he tried to hold himself erect, and when
he toppled and fell over sideways he dragged it with
him to the accompaniment of breaking china and a
marimba tinkling of silverware.
And The Deep Blue Sea — 59
5
Lind flipped the safety on the gun and tossed it to
Captain Steen. Already lunging around the end of the
table toward Egerton, he snapped at Barset and the
dining room steward, ‘Tie him up and sit on him. Better
get help; he’s crazy.’ ‘I’ll send for the bos’n,’ Steen said.
Goddard jumped to help Lind. They got Egerton out
from behind the table and picked him up by shoulders
and legs. Madeleine Lennox and Karen ran out of the
door, sobbing as they averted their faces from the limp
and bloodstained figure of the Englishman. Lind and
Goddard hurried down the passageway with him and
put him on the bunk in his cabin.
‘The first-aid kit on the settee in my cabin,’ Lind said.
‘And bring the sterilizer, the whole thing.’
‘Right.’ Goddard ran up to the next deck. Men were
coming out of the officers’ messroom. ‘What is it?’ they
asked. ‘What happened?’
‘Krasicki went berserk,’ Goddard said. ‘Shot Egerton.’
The sterilizer was secured to the desk with catches.
He released them, unplugged it, and grabbed up the
first-aid kit. When he hurried back into Edgerton’s
cabin, Lind was bent over the bunk. He straightened,
holding a bloodstained towel, and gestured wearily.
And The Deep Blue Sea — 60
‘Put ‘em down anywhere,’ he said. ‘A couple of
aspirin would have done just as well.’
Goddard looked past him, and nodded. Egerton was
already unconscious and obviously dying of massive
hemorrhage. Lind had spread the jacket open and cut
the shirt away, exposing his chest. Blood was
everywhere, in the thick mat of gray hair, running down
his ribs, and staining the jacket and bedspread beside
him. The pillow under the side of his mouth was soaked
with it. The eye was closed, and his breathing ragged
and labored. There was no froth in the blood on his
chest Goddard noted; he would have thought there
would be, since one or both the shots must have gone
through the lungs. He was about to mention this to Lind
when Captain Steen appeared in the doorway. Sparks,
he said, was trying to locate a ship in the area with a
doctor. Lind shook his head.
‘It’s no use,’ he said. He felt Egerton’s pulse, gave a
despairing shrug, and gently lowered the wrist. ‘Just a
matter of minutes.’
‘Seems dark for arterial blood,’ Goddard remarked,
wondering at the same time what difference it made.
When you lost enough of it, you died, no matter what
shade it was.
‘Probably the pulmonary,’ Lind replied. ‘It carries
venous blood.’
Egerton’s breathing changed to a gasping rattle that
went on for over a minute and then stopped abruptly.
Lind reached for the wrist again, probing for the pulse
that had apparently ceased. He put it down and gently
raised the eyelid with a thumb to look at the pupil. He
sighed and closed the eye.
‘That’s all,’ he said.
Captain Steen lowered his head. He appeared to be
praying. Then he straightened and said, ‘I’ll tell the
steward to bring a sheet.’
Lind turned on the basin tap to wash the blood from
his hands. Goddard turned to go out. He felt something
under his shoe and looked down. It appeared to be a
tiny awl. He pushed it over against the bulkhead with
his foot and went out into the passageway, and as he
And The Deep Blue Sea — 61
neared the entrance to the dining room he heard the
sudden, mad sound of Krasicki’s voice again. He looked
in, and at the same moment Lind ran past him, still
drying his hands on a towel.
Captain Steen was in the room, along with Barset and
two other men, one of whom Goddard recognized as the
AB who’d given him the shin. The other was a squat,
ugly man in his thirties with almost grotesquely
massive shoulders and arms. He had an old knife scar
in the corner of his mouth and the coldest blue eyes
Goddard had ever seen. Krasicki’s hands were bound in
front of him and his feet were tied together, but he was
sitting up and trying to slide backward away from the
men in front of him, still shouting in that unknown
language. The squat man and the AB reached down and
caught his arms to pick him up. He shrank away from
them, and screamed.
‘Easy, Boats,’ Lind said. ‘Let me try to talk to him.’
The two men let go and stepped back. Lind knelt and
spoke quietly to Krasicki. ‘We’re not going to hurt you.
Everything’s all right.’
This had no effect at all; the mad eyes were
completely without comprehension. Lind spoke in
German. Insulated within his madness, Krasicki paid no
attention, merely continuing to rave in the language
none of them understood.
Lind spoke to Barset. ‘Take a couple of your men and
canvass the whole crew; see if anybody speaks Polish.
It might help some if we knew what he’s saying.’
‘We already have,’ Barset replied. ‘No dice.’
‘Well, we’ve got to quiet him down,’ Lind said. He
went out and came back with the first-aid kit. He filled
a hypodermic syringe and motioned for the bos’n and
AB to hold Krasicki. When the latter saw the syringe, as
old and frail as he was it took three men to pin him
down sufficiently for Lind to inject the sedative.
Goddard felt sick.
In a few minutes Krasicki began to subside. He
slumped. ‘Get a stretcher,’ Lind said to the bos’n.
Goddard went forward to the lounge. It was empty.
He wondered if Karen and Mrs. Lennox had gone to
And The Deep Blue Sea — 62
their cabins. Then he saw them pass in front of one of
the portholes. He went on deck and around to the
forward side of the midships house. They were leaning
on the rail, still looking badly shaken as they watched
the reddening western sky. He told them Egerton was
dead.
Madeleine Lennox said faintly, ‘I’ll have nightmares
the rest of my life. That poor man.’
All three exchanged a glance then with the identical
thought: Which one?
‘What will happen to Mr. Krasicki?’ Karen asked.
‘They’ll turn him over to the Philippine authorities,’
Goddard said, ‘but after that it’ll be like Kafka with
LSD. An Englishman is murdered on the high seas by a
Pole with Brazilian citizenship who’s obviously insane
and couldn’t be legally guilty of murder in the first
place, and it all happens on a Panamanian ship that’s
probably never been to Panama. He’ll be committed,
but at his age I doubt he’ll live till they figure out
where.’
‘And what about poor Mr. Egerton?’ Madeleine
Lennox asked. ‘Will he be buried at sea?’
‘I don’t know,’ Goddard replied. ‘Depends on what
they hear from the next of kin.’ It was probably another
twelve days to Manila, but the body could be preserved
by packing it in ice if the Leander’s facilities were up to
it.
Karen Brooke shuddered. ‘It’s so horribly senseless.
Just because Mr. Egerton reminded him of somebody.’
‘Some German, apparently,’ Goddard agreed. ‘The
chances are he was in a concentration camp during the
war. Incidentally, why do you say Mr. Egerton, if he
was a colonel?’
‘He asked us to,’ Karen said. ‘He was retired, he said,
and “colonel” sounded pompous and Blimp-ish.’ Tears
came into her eyes then, and she brushed at them with
her fingertips. ‘Oh, damn! He was so sweet.’
They fell silent, watching the splendor of sunset as
the Leander plowed ahead across the gently undulating
sea. Goddard thought moodily of man’s journey through
And The Deep Blue Sea — 63
this flicker of light between the two darknesses, a
journey he fondly believed he charted and scheduled in
spite of the fact it lay across a landscape subject to a
random precipitation of falling safes. Egerton lived
through the attempts of countless trained and
dangerous men to kill him during World War II, and
then was casually swatted by a frail and helpless old
man about as deadly as Peter Rabbit except that he was
mad. As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; they
kill us for their sport.
Lind came around the corner of the deckhouse then,
and beckoned to him. ‘I want to show you something,’
he said. Goddard followed him. They went back to
Egerton’s cabin. The bos’n and AB were standing
outside the door, and Captain Steen was just inside.
Egerton’s body was still on the bunk, now covered with
a sheet, the ends of the stretcher projecting from under
it.
‘Look at this,’ Lind said. He stepped to the head of
the bunk and pulled back the sheet from Egerton’s
face. The black eye patch had been removed and was
lying beside his check. Goddard gave a little start of
surprise.
‘I’ll be damned,’ he said. Both the eyes were closed,
but the left, which had been covered with the patch,
bore the same rounded contour of lid as the other.
‘It came off when we were rolling him onto the
stretcher,’ Lind said. With a thumb he gently pushed
the lid up as far as the iris, and then closed it again.
‘Perfectly normal eye. The patch was a phony.’
‘Why?’ Goddard asked. ‘But maybe there was
something wrong that made it light-sensitive.’
‘Photophobia?’ Lind said. ‘He obviously didn’t have
measles, and in iritis and other inflamed conditions the
eye’s as red as a grape. Anyway, it was on his passport
picture.’
Captain Steen held out the passport, opened to the
photograph. It was a perfect likeness of the slender,
patrician face, and the eye patch was there. ‘We’re
involving you in this, Air. Goddard,’ Steen explained,
And The Deep Blue Sea — 64
‘because obviously you are already involved. We’ll all
have to testify at a hearing in Manila.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Goddard said. ‘But I don’t get the
fake eye patch.’ He looked at Lind. ‘Any ideas?’
Lind shook his head. ‘No. Unless he was mentally a
little off himself, but it didn’t show in any other area.’
‘Beats me,’ Goddard said. ‘But what about burial?
Docs his passport give the name of somebody to be
notified?’
‘Yes,’ Captain Steen said. ‘The same as he gave on his
reservation application.’ He turned a page in the
passport. ‘It’s apparently not a relative, though. A
Señora Consuela Santos, in Buenos Aires. She’s being
notified now.’
Goddard nodded. Lind pulled the sheet back over
Egerton’s face, and called out, ‘All right, Boats.’
Goddard went back to his cabin and mixed a double
martini in a water tumbler. He carried it into the
lounge. It was dark outside now, and the lights were
turned on. Barset came in to draw the curtains over the
portholes, since they were directly below the bridge.
He shook his head, and sighed.
‘Ke-rist! My hair’s still going up and down like a
porcupine’s quills.’
‘Where’d they put Krasicki?’ Goddard asked.
‘In the hospital, where you were. Engineers installed
a hasp and padlock on it. Mate shot enough junk in him
to keep him quiet all night, but if he stays screamin’
crazy they may have to move him forward somewhere.
Nobody’d ever get any sleep down there.’
‘Let’s hope he quiets down. He’s not very strong
anyway; he’ll kill himself.’
‘Probably be better off, the poor old bastard. Jesus,
what a home away from home; a crazy on one deck and
a stiff on another.’ Barset sat down and lit a cigarette.
‘Tell me something. Around Hollywood, is the tail
situation really as wild as they say it is? I mean, you
pick it off trees, like oranges?’
‘I know,’ Goddard said, ‘you want to become an
actor.’
And The Deep Blue Sea — 65
‘Nah! I’m not that goofy. But I often thought I might
try to get on in the commissary of one of those studios.
Not as a busboy or anything like that, you understand;
I’ve had a lot of experience in the food business and
catering. Is it pretty much union?’
‘Everything’s strongly unionized,’ Goddard replied.
‘Umh-umh,’ Barset said. ‘Well, I’d like to talk to you
about it sometime. Maybe you could give me a couple
of contacts.’ He went out.
Goddard’s thoughts returned to Egerton and the
puzzle of the affected eye patch. It could never make
any sense at all as long as you assumed that Egerton
was what he said he was and gave every evidence of
actually being: an English officer with a distaste for
ostentation, invalided out of the army for typically
understated wounds. So the next assumption had to be
that the whole Egerton identity was a fake, an image
that had been skillfully put together by a smooth con
artist. But what in the name of God would a con man be
doing in a seagoing low-rent district like this? No doubt
there were numbers of them working the first class on
the trans-Atlantic liners, but on here if he cleaned out
the whole passenger list he wouldn’t make expenses.
Karen and Madeleine Lennox came in. He told them
about it. They were incredulous, and then as mystified
as he was. It was totally unlike Mr. Egerton. ‘Where did
he join the ship?’ Goddard asked. ‘At Callao,’ Karen
replied. ‘We all did.’ But he and Krasicki didn’t see each
other at all?’

And The Deep Blue Sea by Charles Williams 1971(2)

And The Deep Blue Sea — 22
He stared blankly, startled by the suddenness of it,
but then turned and looked in the direction she was
pointing. She ran out onto the wing of the bridge, her
arm still extended. ‘Right out there! I heard him shout!
He was waving!’ But the raft was out of the moon path
now and lost in the darkness behind it. The captain
emerged from the wheelhouse. She whirled to him.
‘Captain! Stop! Back up!’ She realized she must
sound like an idiot; what was the nautical term?

And The Deep Blue Sea by Charles Williams 1971(1)

1
At sunset the next day after the Shoshone went down,
the wind dropped to a gentle breeze, and by midnight it
was calm. Now that the sea no longer broke, the raft
stopped capsizing and throwing him, and he slept for
the first time in forty hours. He awoke at dawn,
cramped, chilled through, shivering in his wet clothes
in spite of the fact he was only a few degrees south of
the Line. After the first gut-twisting impact of returning
consciousness of where he was and what was coming,
he was able to subdue the black animal and slam the
door of the cage, wondering at the same time why it
mattered. He had nothing to lose now. And he’d already
panicked once, or he wouldn’t be here. He could have
done it the easy way.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn