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ASHANTA CHUCKLED DARKLY. “It sounds like a Rupert Bear book.”
“More like someone’s playing a game with us.”
“It’s certainly different from, ‘I’m not Edith Summersby’. That sounded like a cry for help. This doesn’t. Where is the hold, anyway?”
“Deep in the hull, I expect.”
“Yes, you’d imagine so, wouldn’t you?” I could see by her face she’d already had a thought.
“What’s going through your mind?” I said.
“This is a cruise liner not a transatlantic passenger ship. The few possessions people bring, they probably keep them with them in their cabins. In which case there’s no need for a hold.”
“So maybe it doesn’t mean ‘hold’ in that sense.”
“What other sense is there?”
I rubbed my forehead. “Let’s go up to the crow’s nest. I can’t help feeling someone’s listening in.”
Maybe I was just unduly edgy. But Ashanta didn’t quibble, she even led the way, removing her heels so she could climb the steps faster. When we got there we sat down at the flagpole just like last night and looked about us. We were alone. The breeze was stronger up here.
“But what about the crew?” I said. “They must need more storage space than any cabin can provide.”
“Like what? What would they need?”
“Or the ship must stock spare bits and pieces. Linen, lifebelts, that sort of thing.”
“You wouldn’t need much space for those.”
“No one’s suggesting it’s a big hold. It may even be half-empty.”
“No, Hugo, they’d keep those sorts of things where they could be readily accessed. Not deep down.”
“Maybe the hold isn’t deep down. Maybe it’s just a time-honoured name for the ship’s storage facilities, and it’s got itself attached to a cupboard somewhere on the Promenade Deck. For example.”
She put her head on one side. “Possibly ...”
“We’re going round in circles. Either there is such a place or there isn’t. If not, then someone’s testing us to see how seriously we’re taking the Edith Summersby thing.”
“It can’t be Mason, though. If there isn’t a hold, he knows.”
“There must be a plan of the ship somewhere. I mean, apart from the basic ones in the company brochures.”
She lit up. “The library.”
The library was the size of six cabins knocked together. The walls were lined with books and there were two stacks in between them. Like all libraries, it smelt of wax polish and the silence was thick. It had a well-stocked lending section - mostly paperbacks in five sections: romance, crime, thrillers, literary fiction and classics – and a reference section of factual hardbacks like Whittaker’s Almanac, The Times Atlas of the World and The Encyclopaedia Britannica. It was here that we found a self-published volume called The History of the Cruise Ship Aurora by Derek Norman Goulding. Bound in red vellum, like something out of the eighteenth century.
I opened it and scanned the frontispiece. Published 1997.
“Turn to the contents section,” Ashanta said, leaning over. We sat down on the same chair, without taking our eyes off it.
The diagrams were all together in Appendix I. The first was a labelled cross section dated MCMXXVI, 1926. But the labels were in a language I’d never seen before: Latin script with a huge variety of obscure diacritical marks. Quite a few letter C’s, for example, had what looked like a giraffe’s head poking out of them, and all the D’s were capitalised with a halo of six dots.
“Keep going,” Ashanta said. “There’s probably a translation.”
She was right. The next page was the same diagram but in English. And there was a hold - on the lowermost deck, six floors below the floor on which our cabin was located. But this was only on the 1926 plan. On no later version – 1938, 1949, 1965, 1977, 1989 – did it appear. But nor did it seem to have been converted into anything. There was simply a blank space there, unaccounted for.
“Is there a photocopier around?” Ashanta said.
We were alone. The ship’s library was a self-service facility and it worked on faith. If you wanted to borrow something, you signed it out in the ‘Items Loaned’ log, and you were trusted not to remove anything from reference. The upshot is, when we did find a photocopier - in the corner under an antique C&B poster in a frame - and it was out of order, there was no one to appeal to for help.
“There’s always the time-honoured method,” Ashanta said, picking up the pen for the logging in and out book.
“Good thinking. But what to copy it onto.”
She went into her bag and emerged with Edith Summersby’s note. Ten minutes later, I’d made a passable scaled-down reproduction of the Aurora plan circa 1926.
“Are we going down there tonight?” I said.
She pecked my cheek. “No time like the present, ducks.”
“I see you’ve been perusing my masterpiece,” said a voice out of nowhere. We jumped and turned. Derek Goulding himself stood in the half-light between where we sat and the exit. As usual, the peculiar fit of his bald head and his glasses gave him the look of someone not entirely of this world. Someone slightly menacing.
“Oh, er, hello, Mr Goulding,” Ashanta said.
“Derek,” he corrected her. “Are you looking for any piece of information in particular? I’m a walking encyclopaedia in that respect.”
“We were more interested in the fact that it had been written by an acquaintance of ours,” I said. “Viz. your good self.”
“May I be so bold as to ask you why you’ve copied the 1926 cross section?”
“It’s the oldest,” Ashanta said.
There were a few moments of silence.
“My father’s interested in old ships,” I said. “Mainly 1920s.”
“Your father, eh? What’s his name? The old ships community is a small one. Maybe I know him.”
“Charles Ellis.”
Mr Goulding scratched his carapace. “I can’t say I’ve heard of a ‘Charles Ellis’.”
“He’s not an academic,” I said. “He just does it for his own amusement. Like a hobby.”
“Dear me, you must have suffered as a child then. I suppose he dragged you off to look at all sorts of nautical oddities, did he?”
I nodded. “He was a bit of a one, yes.”
“Remember any of their names?”
I hesitated. “No.”
“I understand Captain Mason told you about the submarine that’s been following us around. Classified information. Top secret.”
“He mentioned it.”
“I expect you told him you didn’t find it very interesting. Yet now, here you are, copying a technical drawing of the Aurora. What are you trying to work out?”
“Nothing.”
His tone hardened. “Give me the book.”
I saw no reason to withhold it. It was his book, after all. I handed it over.
“I’m hardly authorised to ask you to leave the library,” he said. “But it goes without saying I consider your behaviour suspicious. I’m not sure what you’re up to, but I intend to find out. Good night.”
He put the book under his arm and marched away. When he was nearly at the exit, he turned round. “Naturally, you realise I’ll have to tell Captain Mason about this.”
“That’s fine,” Ashanta said. She turned to me. “Spill the beans, Hugo.”
I started. “What?”
“It’s the language, Mr Goulding,” she said. “What language is it?”
It was Goulding’s turn to jump. “It’s – it’s explained in the beginning of the book. Why would you be interested in that?”
“It’s elegant. We’re students. We’re interested in languages. What language is it?”
“It isn’t a language. It’s code. C&B didn’t want Cunard stealing their design. Anyway ... I don’t believe you.”
“Well, that’s nice. First Mr Wiles goes running to the captain saying we’re journalists, now you’re running to him saying we’re spies. Well, let me tell you, Mr G, if that’s your game, I’ve had it. I’m disembarking at the Falklands and going home on a troop-ship or a Hercules, or whatever does the rounds between the Falklands and Great Britain nowadays. And when Captain Mason wants to know why, I’ll tell him I’m fed up to the back teeth of being persecuted.”
“I - ”
“Do you know why Captain Mason knew we weren’t journalists? Because he knows we’re students. And that’s how he’ll know we’re not spies. And it doesn’t matter how many stories you and your snobby friends keep coming up with to keep us away from ‘the table of the elect’, he’ll always know we couldn’t be doing that - because we’re students.”
He suddenly seemed hesitant about leaving. “Is that what you think? That we’re trying to keep you away from the captain’s table?”
“I don’t think it, Mr G. I know it.”
He came towards us. I’d never seen a person cross a floor so fast before. “I promise you that isn’t the case,” he said, little more than inches away from us now.
“It might as well be.”
“But it isn’t.”
He seemed confused. He laid the book on the table and turned round with a sigh. Then he marched away self-consciously as if he thought we might be ruthlessly evaluating his remaining dignity as represented by his back and legs.
Ashanta put the book under her arm and grabbed my hand. We waited till he’d shut the door then followed him. He was slightly ahead of us when we got outside. He turned right and disappeared round the corner and Ashanta pulled me in the opposite direction. A foghorn sounded, as it so often did – more for the old-world charm of the thing than because it was actually necessary – and somewhere in the distance a group of passengers cheered their appreciation. We climbed two decks and entered one of the ship’s glass-fronted reading rooms.
She switched the light on. “We ought to be safe here for a few minutes.”
We sat down. She opened the book at the Appendix.
“Turn to the 1989 version,” I said.
We scrutinized it for a few moments. The space where the hold had been was accessible via a labyrinth of corridors and stairways and the occasional ladder.
“We enter at the lounge, yes?” I said.
She nodded gravely. I took her hand and we stood up. We switched the lights off as we left.
I don’t know whether it was because we were nervous or feeling guilty, but I couldn’t shake the notion that we were being followed. It was similar to when Wiles had been to complain to Captain Mason, but this time, stronger.
We passed through the lounge. It was busy. Everyone seemed to be having a whale of a time. A woman walked about the carpet on all fours while a man in his late forties sat on her back. A crowd encircled them singing I’ve Got You Under My Skin and clapping the rhythm. On the other side of the room, an old man picked ice-cubes out of his drink and put them in an ashtray.
We went down a floor and entered a red-lit corridor where someone was playing drum and bass. It got louder then quieter then louder again, and suddenly it stopped. The carpet got thicker. We turned right four times. Eventually we came to a chain hooked between the walls with a sign on that said, ‘Only Authorised Personnel Beyond This Point’. I undid it. Ashanta consulted the book while I replaced it.
“Happy?” I said.
She nodded. “In a few turnings, we should come to a ladder.”
But we didn’t. The corridor led straight on to a fire door with a pane of glass in the upper half. We didn’t go through it because we didn’t need to. We were back at the lounge. A vicar in a dog-collar break-danced on a rubber mat while people threw drinks over him. He looked furious.
“We need to turn back,” Ashanta said.
She led the way for about a hundred yards and stopped to consult The History of the Cruise Ship again.
“Is there any other way down?” I asked.
“This is where the ladder should be.”
“End of story then.”
She tapped the wall. It was hollow. She crossed the corridor and did the same to the opposite wall. Solid.
I nodded. “We can’t exactly punch a hole in it. We’re on an errand of curiosity, not a mission of life and death.”
“It could be a matter of life and death.”
“Except that ‘Those who descend beneath the hold, there Edith Summersby may behold’ sounds like the sort of thing Mad Men might come up with.”
“The important point to note is that the ladder’s still here.”
I folded my arms loosely. “It’s a bit of a leap from the fact that the wall’s hollow to the conclusion that there’s an eighty-something year-old ladder behind it. Anyway, even if there is, it’s walled up.”
“But suppose the wall consists of panels?”
Rather than discuss the matter, we looked up and down and from side to side. Every four yards or so there was an upright, painted the same colour as the rest so you wouldn’t notice unless you were looking for it. I shrugged.
“If we push the bits in between the lines up,” she said. “They might come away.”
I couldn’t see it myself but there was no harm in trying. We put our shoulders to it and pushed up. Nothing happened.
“I think we’re clutching at straws,” I said.
“Push down.”
We tried again, Ashanta putting in much more effort than me. I was a little wary of damaging something and having no plausible excuse. In any case, nothing happened.
“Maybe we’re not trying hard enough,” she said, red in the face and slightly short of breath.
“Why don’t we try pushing to the side?” I said. “We might as well exhaust the options.”
“I hope you’re not making fun of me, Hugo - ”
I didn’t want a row so rather than gainsay her I put my shoulder to the grindstone and pushed right. The partition slid back fairly effortlessly revealing a parallel wall about two feet away with a metal ladder bolted to it. The space between us and it descended up and down into blackness. We stared at it for a moment.
She turned to me and put her head on one side. “Do you want to go first or shall I?”
