THE ANCIENT Read online

  The operator made no reply and Esther was about to hang up, assuming the call was terminated, but a few seconds later she heard the connection being made. It was weird hearing Mort’s voice so far away, a voice that belonged in another world.

  “Yeah?”

  “AT&T. I have a call collect from Callao, Peru, from Esther Mulholland. Will you accept?”

  “What?”

  “I have a call collect…”

  “Yeah, yeah. I got the stingy bastard call collect bit, sweetheart. Where the fuck you say it’s from again?”

  There was a pause as the operator pondered whether to hang up on the profane recipient or not, and then she said curtly, “Peru. South America.”

  “No shit!”

  Esther heard him chuckle.

  “And it’s Benny Mulholland’s girl, you say? The one without the fuckin’ dimes?”

  “Will you accept the call?”

  “Huh? Like all of a fuckin’ sudden I’m an answerin’ service for her old man? Tell her to send a fuckin’ postcard.”

  He hung up. The operator cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, caller. The number will not accept.”

  “I gathered. Thanks.”

  Esther put the phone down gently. She had absolutely no idea why she’d made that call. Even if a miracle had happened and Mort Lenholf had taken her call, what did she expect him to do? Benny would be blind drunk by now, asleep in the green armchair in front of a blaring TV. Mort could hammer on Benny’s trailer door as long and hard as he liked but she knew it would take a sledge hammer to the kneecap even to make him stir. And the thought of her dad being able to help out in a situation like this was equally ludicrous. Benny Mulholland had probably just enough cash left from his welfare cheque to get ratted every night until the next one was due.

  He wasn’t exactly in a position to call American Express and have them wire his daughter a ticket home. She decided she had simply been homesick. Only for a moment, and only in a very abstract way, since home was ten types of shit and then ten more. But it had been an emotion profound enough to want to make contact, and now it left her feeling even more bereft than before. Despite having been to the most remote and inhospitable corners of Peru on everything from foot to mule, it was the first stirring of loneliness she’d felt in the whole three months of travelling.

  Esther sighed and turned back into the room. The formation team of drinkers were now all looking her way. The men, although similar in posture, were varied in nationality. A handful were obviously Peruvian, their faces from the unchanged gene pool that could be seen quite clearly on thousand-year-old Inca, Aztec and Meso-American sculpture. Stevedores by the look of their coveralls, and not friendly.

  There was a smattering of Filipinos and Chinese, some with epaulettes on stained nylon shirts that at least meant they were merchant crew and not dangerous. Only one face looked western, but it was such a familiar mess of mildly intoxicated self-pity mixed with latent anger that she looked away quickly in case she somehow ignited it. The barman was staring at her with naked hostility, but it was another kind of look in the assembled male company’s eyes that was making her uncomfortable. Esther wished she wasn’t wearing shorts. One of the Peruvians taking a very long look at her tanned, muscular legs said something that made his hunched companions snigger like schoolboys, and a flicker of indignant rage began to grow in Esther’s belly. It was important to leave, so she lifted her pack and made for the door.

  “He’s pissed off on account you didn’t buy a drink.”

  It was an American voice coming from the western face. Esther stopped and faced him, but he had already turned to the TV again, his back to her.

  “Who is?” asked Esther in a voice smaller than she would have liked.

  “Prince Rameses the third. Who d’you figure?”

  Esther stared at the back of his head until her silence made him turn again. He spoke without taking the cigarette from his mouth so that it swayed like a conductor’s baton with every word.

  “The barman, honey, that’s who.”

  “I guessed they don’t serve women in here.”

  He took the cigarette from his mouth, blew a cloud of smoke and squinted at her. “They don’t. Only liquor.”

  Most of the men had joined this objectionable man in turning back to the TV, maybe thinking western man to western woman was a cultural bond too strong to break or maybe because they were simply bored with the task of making her uncomfortable.

  Only a very drunk Filipino and a dull-eyed stevedore continued to stare. She was grateful for the shift in attention and it emboldened her.

  “Uh-huh? Well maybe you can explain to him it’s a shade upmarket for me. Guess I’m not dressed smart enough.”

  The man looked at her closely and this time it was with something approaching sympathy. Maybe he heard the slight break in her voice. Maybe he’d listened to her fruitless call home. Maybe neither of these. But it softened his face and the tiny glimmer of warmth in his bleary eyes relaxed a part of Esther that was gearing up for a fight.

  “Shame. Looks like you could use a drink.”

  He said it softly, almost as though he were talking to himself, and since the tone lacked any kind of lascivious or suggestive undercurrent, the words being nothing more than an acutely accurate observation, Esther inexplicably felt a lump of emotion welling at the back of her throat.

  For no apparent reason, she wanted to cry, and at the same time, yes, her mouth was already moistening at the realization that a beer would be just about the most welcome thing in the world right now. She gulped back her curiously unwelcome emotion.

  “They serve anything apart from paint stripper?”

  The man smiled, then turned to the sullen barman and said something quietly. Reluctantly the man bent and Esther heard the unmistakable rubber thud of a concealed ice-box door being closed. A bottle of beer was placed on the wooden board, the cold glass misting in the heat.

  Esther looked from the bottle to the American and back again, wrestling with the folly of continuing this uneasy relationship.

  What was she afraid of? In the last three months she had travelled and slept under the stars with a band of near-silent alpaca shepherds, walked alone for weeks in the mountains, and resisted the advances of two nightmarish Australian archaeologists.

  She had stood on the edge of the world, as awed and terrified by the green desert of jungle that stretched eastwards to seeming infinity as the Incas who had halted the progress of their empire at almost the same spot had been. A dipso American merchant seaman and a few ground-down working men were not going to cause her trouble, even if they wanted to, which judging by their renewed attention to the Brazilian game-show host now hooking his arm round what looked like a Vegas showgirl, was not high in their priorities.

  She walked forward, touched the bottle lightly with her fingers and gave the barman a look that enquired how much she owed him.

  “On me,” said her self-appointed host.

  Before she could protest and pretend that she would consider it improper, the man behaved outstandingly properly and offered his right hand as though she were a visiting college inspector and he the principal.

  “Matthew Cotton. Enriched to hear my native tongue.”

  Esther studied him for a beat then took the hand. “Esther Mulholland.” She removed her hand and touched the bottle again. “Thanks.”

  The beer was delicious. She took two long swallows, closing her eyes as the freezing, bitter liquid fizzed at the back of her dry throat.

  “They write up Pedro’s joint in some back-packers’ guide, or did you just get lost?”

  Esther wiped her mouth with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. “The guys at the dock gate said this was the only phone.”

  Matthew Cotton nodded through another cloud of smoke. “Yeah. Guess it is.”

  “Nice,” said Esther, gesturing to the room in general with her bottle.

  “It’s also the only bar.”

  Esther took ano
ther swallow, watching him as he shrugged to qualify his statement. “You off a boat?”

  Matthew nodded. “Lysicrates. That pile of shit they’re loading.”

  “Just a long shot, but has the Valiant Ellanda been in?”

  Matthew looked up at her with mild surprise. “You some kind of cargo boat fanatic?”

  “Cargo boat passenger whose boat looks like having sailed.”

  Matthew raised an interested eyebrow, then turned his glass round in a big hand as he thought. “Valiant Ellanda. Container ship. Right? Big mother.”

  Esther nodded, enthusiastically.

  “Sailed last week.”

  Esther nodded again weakly.

  “Then guess you got a little time to kill.”

  “I wish. Due back at college in ten days.”

  “They’ll live.”

  Esther looked at the bar. “I’m military. Scholarship.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  Matthew was looking at her more closely now, continuing to study her face as he drained the last of some yellowish spirit that had filled his glass. Without even looking at the barman, he gestured with the empty vessel and it was filled nearly to the brim. Esther looked away, reminded of Benny and the tiny, unpleasant ritualistic mannerisms that all alcoholics shared.

  “What they do then, if you’re late? Shoot you?”

  “Put it this way: military students don’t get a lot of slack to dress up in tie-dye vests and wave placards. And you sure as hell don’t get to pick when you show up for semester.”

  Matthew tipped the glass back and emptied half of it, baring his teeth in a snarl as the liquid drained down his throat.

  “Bummer,” he croaked.

  “You got that right.”

  Matthew turned his head back up to the TV and leaned forward on his elbows. Esther waited to see if the conversation would be continued and when it was clear that it would not, she drained the rest of her beer and made ready to go. She picked up her pack.

  “We sail for Texas. Two days’ time.”

  He spoke as though talking to the game-show host.

  “Sorry?”

  “Port Arthur.”

  Esther’s heart beat a little faster, then it slowed and sank.

  “My ticket’s non-refundable.”

  “Aw, bullshit. Most companies say that stuff. They’ll do a deal.”

  Esther shook her head. “Not with this ticket. Even the cheapest cargo ship ticket is way out of my reach. I’m only here ‘cause a geek I dated at college has a dad who works for the shipping company. Man, to think I put up with that guy’s bad breath and stinking taste in movies for at least two months to get that ticket.”

  She paused and looked at the floor.

  “And just on account of wanting to see some shitty old temple they’ve only just half dug out the grit, I’ve blown it. Big time.”

  Matthew was still looking at the screen, but he was smiling. “What’d he make you see?”

  “Waterworld, for one.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Yeah.”

  Matthew stared at the screen a little more, then looked at his wristwatch. “Gimme an hour then come by the boat. Captain’s pretty easy going.”

  Esther put her pack down slowly. “For real?”

  “No risk to me, honey. He can only say no.”

  “What rank are you?”

  Matthew turned to her, a quite different look in his eye now, one that was difficult to read but undeniably harder than when he’d last looked at her. “First officer.”

  Esther cleared her throat, embarrassed, though not quite sure why. “Right. Great.”

  He looked back at the screen and Esther took the hint.

  “An hour then.”

  He made no reply.

  She hooked the pack over her shoulder and made for the door. “Thanks for the beer.”

  “Sure.”

  The plywood door banged shut again and although there was still an inch left in his glass, Matthew Cotton gestured to the barman. It was important to think ahead. After all, he would have drained that inch before the bottle was uncorked.

  3

  As the giant crane swung on its arc, the sun shining between the criss-crossed metal girders strobed across the deck of the MV Lysicrates, and bugged the tits off its first officer.

  Matthew Cotton blinked against it as he leant heavily on the ship’s taff rail and watched Esther’s predicament with amusement. He was leaning heavily because he was only a few drinks away from the oblivion he’d been chasing since noon, and he watched with amusement because her ire was becoming comical.

  “Give the greasy little sucker some cash,” he mouthed at her, then took another deep swallow from a can of thin South American beer.

  As if she’d heard him from the unlikely distance of fifty yards, she turned her head and squinted up at the ship, gesturing violently again at the vessel to the under-nourished harbour security guard, who was no longer even looking at her. The guard flicked his hand dismissively in her direction as though warding off a fly, and shifted his weight from one bony leg to the other. She towered above this little man, and perhaps if he hadn’t sported an ancient gun in a battered leather holster by his hip, she would simply have elbowed him out of the way and walked on.

  That option not open to a woman with an instinct for survival, she was vigorously pursuing the only other one, which was to shout.

  In a moment Matthew would rescue her, but for now he was using the time just to look. There hadn’t been the time or space to examine her properly in the smoky little bar, but now he was in a position to study her without fear of spiky feminine reprisal.

  She was too far off for him to take in close detail, but already he liked the suggestion of athleticism in her angry body, the way she was practically stamping her foot, and when she mashed an exasperated hand into her hair he imagined he could register its shine.

  He smiled and wiped his mouth clean of the acrid beer foam; shifted a drinker’s phlegm from his throat.

  “Hey! Hector!” His shout made the diminutive man look up lazily. Though he couldn’t make out her words, Matthew assumed she had been braying at the guard in English that merely increased in volume as understanding diminished. No matter what her circumstances were, and if he were honest he was so loaded now he could barely remember their conversation, she was just your average American back-packing kid. Shout down what you can’t control. He raked around for his best Spanish.

  “Let her aboard. She’s a passenger.” He hesitated, then added for no reason other than mischief, “A little something for the crew.”

  The guard scratched at his balls and did nothing. Matthew waited. He knew these people. To react to anything immediately was a sign of defeat. Esther waited too, her eyes narrowed to slits in Matthew’s direction.

  The weary Peruvian hand motioned again, this time obliquely directing her towards the gangway, then the man squatted down and got busy picking his teeth, as though all along his objection had been that she was preventing him from performing this important task.

  She took her time coming aboard, pulling on that enormous back-pack complete with tent, hanging tin mugs and water bottles, then walked slowly forward with the gait of someone used to carrying a large burden.

  As she came closer Matthew noted the deep tan on the thighs that protruded from her patterned shorts, and the incongruously masculine muscles that made them move with grace under such weight.

  He stayed where he was, but lifted his head to greet her as she negotiated the skinny drawbridge of wood that was suspended over the moat of Pacific Ocean below. “They don’t speak English too good, those guys,” he said with what he imagined was a boyish grin.

  She stopped and rubbed at her scalp again. “You cleared it then?”

  Matthew squinted, uncomprehending.

  “With the captain?”

  He grinned, swaying slightly. “Aw, yeah. Sure. Sure I did.”

  She looked do
ubtful, and the sudden childlike anxiety that crossed her face, the expression of a disappointed kid, touched a nerve in the deep drunken miasma that was enveloping Matthew Cotton. He breathed quickly and sharply through his nose and tried to focus, tried harder to clear his brain.

  “Straight up. He’s cool. You get the owner’s cabin. It’s cunningly marked ‘owner’s cabin’ on D-deck. Through there, two floors up. Third on the right. Not locked.”

  Her face lit with relief, then a more unpleasant emotion betrayed itself as her eyes strayed to the beer can in Matthew’s fist. Pity.

  “Listen. Thanks. I owe you.”

  Matthew nodded, looking away to avoid her pitying eyes, and she walked towards the passenger block, the cups and pan clanking on her pack.

  “By the way.”

  He didn’t look round. He didn’t want to hear any addendum right now. Nor look back into the eyes of an attractive young girl who was finding a drunken older man sad.

  “Matthew?”

  She spoke his name so gently it broke his resolve and he turned.

  “Huh?”

  “I think you’ll find that grammatically, ‘little something’ in Spanish, when you refer to an object with contempt, uses the diminutive to emphasize the colloquialism.”

  The Lysicrates’ only passenger scanned the accommodation block and disappeared through the door from the poop deck.

  Matthew watched the heavy metal lozenge long after it swung shut, then drained his beer, crushed the can and threw it into the water below.

  Esther Mulholland liked to pee in the shower. When the water was perfect, the hot stream of urine that spiralled from leg to leg was without temperature. Visible, but not tangible, it joined her with the needles of water in a way that made her sigh with satisfaction. It had been so long since she had revelled in this ritual that the developed world thought so important, this rinsing of the body that separated them from the savages.

  It felt like a return. She let the hot water batter her for at least ten minutes, opening her mouth to let it run in and out, then stepped from the tiny plastic tray into the hot cabin.

  Esther put her hands on either side of the porthole and leant her forehead against the glass. The circular window looked out onto a serpentine collection of pipes, their paint peeling like a disease, and beyond them the port of Callao clanked and whined with industry.