The Golden Keel / The Vivero Letter

IV

Walker was too far gone to walk home that night, so I got his address from a club steward, poured him into a taxi and forgot about him. I didn’t think much of his story – it was just the maunderings of a drunk. Maybe he had found something in Italy, but I doubted if it was anything big – my imagination boggled at the idea of four truck loads of gold and jewels.

I wasn’t allowed to forget him for long because I saw him the following Sunday in the club bar gazing moodily into a brandy glass. He looked up, caught my eye and looked away hastily as though shamed. I didn’t go over and speak to him; he wasn’t altogether my type – I don’t go for drunks much.

Later that afternoon I had just come out of the swimming pool and was enjoying a cigarette when I became aware that Walker was standing beside me. As I looked up, he said awkwardly, ‘I think I owe you some money – for the taxi fare the other night.’

‘Forget it,’ I said shortly.

He dropped on one knee. ‘I’m sorry about that. Did I cause any trouble?’

I smiled. ‘Can’t you remember?’

‘Not a damn’ thing,’ he confessed. ‘I didn’t get into a fight or anything, did I?’

‘No, we just talked.’

His eyes flickered. ‘What about?’

‘Your experiences in Italy. You told me rather an odd story.’

‘I told you about the gold?’

I nodded. ‘That’s right.’

‘I was drunk,’ he said. ‘As shickered as a coot. I shouldn’t have told you about that. You haven’t mentioned it to anyone, have you?’

‘No, I haven’t,’ I said. ‘You don’t mean it’s true?’ He certainly wasn’t drunk now.

‘True enough,’ he said heavily. ‘The stuffs still up there – in a hole in the ground in Italy. I’d not like you to talk about it.’

‘I won’t,’ I promised.

‘Come and have a drink,’ he suggested.

‘No, thanks,’ I said. ‘I’m going home now.’

He seemed depressed. ‘All right,’ he said, and I watched him walk lethargically up to the club house.

After that, he couldn’t seem to keep away from me. It was as though he had delivered a part of himself into my keeping and he had to watch me to see that I kept it safe. He acted as though we were partners in a conspiracy, with many a nod and wink and a sudden change of subject if he thought we were being overheard.

He wasn’t so bad when you got to know him, if you discounted the incipient alcoholism. He had a certain charm when he wanted to use it and he most surely set out to charm me. I don’t suppose it was difficult; I was a stranger in a strange land and he was company of sorts.

He ought to have been an actor for he had the gift of mimicry. When he told me the story of the gold his mobile face altered plastically and his voice changed until I could see the bull-headed Coertze, gentle Donato and the tougher-fibred Alberto. Although Walker had normally a slight trace of a South African accent, he could drop it at will to take on the heavy gutturals of the Afrikaner or the speed and sibilance of the Italian. His Italian was rapid and fluent and he was probably one of those people who can learn a language in a matter of weeks.

I had lost most of my doubts about the truth of his story. It was too damned circumstantial. The bit about the inscription on the cigarette case impressed me a lot; I couldn’t see Walker making up a thing like that. Besides, it wasn’t the brandy talking all the time; he still stuck to the same story, which didn’t change a fraction under many repetitions – drunk and sober.

Once I said, ‘The only thing I can’t figure is that big crown.’

‘Alberto thought it was the royal crown of Ethiopia,’ said Walker. ‘It wouldn’t be worn about the palace – they’d only use it for coronations.’

That sounded logical. I said, ‘How do you know that the others haven’t dug up the lot? There’s still Harrison and Parker – and it would be dead easy for the two Italians; they’re on the spot.’

Walker shook his head. ‘No, there’s only Coertze and me. The others were killed.’ His lips twisted. ‘It seemed to be unhealthy to stick close to Coertze. I got scared in the end and beat it.’

I looked hard at him. ‘Do you mean to say that Coertze murdered them?’

‘Don’t put words in my mouth,’ said Walker sharply. ‘I didn’t say that. All I know is that four men were killed when they were close to Coertze.’ He ticked them off on his fingers. ‘Harrison was the first – that happened only three days after we buried the loot.’

He tapped a second finger. ‘Next came Alberto – I saw that happen. It was as near an accident as anyone could arrange. Then Parker. He was killed in action just like Harrison, and, just like Harrison, the only person who was anywhere near him was Coertze.’

He held up three fingers and slowly straightened the fourth. ‘Last was Donato. He was found near the camp with his head bashed in. They said he’d been rock-climbing, so the verdict was accidental death – but not in my book. That was enough for me, so I quit and went south.’

I thought about this for a while, then said, ‘What did you mean when you said you saw Alberto killed?’

‘We’d been on a raid,’ said Walker. ‘It went O.K. but the Germans moved fast and got us boxed in. We had to get out by the back door, and the back door was a cliff. Coertze was good on a mountain and he and Alberto went first, Coertze leading. He said he wanted to find the easiest way down, which was all right – he usually did that.

‘He went along a ledge and out of sight, then he came back and gave Alberto the O.K. sign. Then he came back to tell us it was all right to start down, so Parker and I went next. We followed Alberto and when we got round the corner we saw that he was stuck.

‘There were no hand holds ahead of him and he’d got himself into a position where he couldn’t get back, either. Just as we got there he lost his nerve – we could see him quivering and shaking. There he was, like a fly on the side of that cliff with a hell of a long drop under him and a pack of Germans ready to drop on top of him, and he was shaking like a jelly.

‘Parker shouted to Coertze and he came down. There was just room enough for him to pass us, so he said he’d go to help Alberto. He got as far as Alberto and Alberto fell off. I swear that Coertze pushed him.’

‘Did you see Coertze push him?’ I asked.

‘No,’ Walker admitted. ‘I couldn’t see Alberto at all once Coertze had passed us. Coertze’s a big bloke and he isn’t made of glass. But why did he give Alberto the O.K. sign to go along that ledge?’

‘It could have been an honest mistake.’

Walker nodded. ‘That’s what I thought at the time. Coertze said afterwards that he didn’t mean that Alberto should go as far as that. There was an easier way down just short of where Alberto got stuck. Coertze took us down there.’

He lit a cigarette. ‘But when Parker was shot up the following week I started to think again.’

‘How did it happen?’

Walker shrugged. ‘The usual thing – you know how it is in a fight. When it was all over we found Parker had a hole in his head. Nobody saw it happen, but Coertze was nearest.’ He paused. ‘The hole was in the back of the head.’

‘A German bullet?’

Walker snorted. ‘Brother, we didn’t have time for an autopsy; but it wouldn’t have made any difference. We were using German weapons and ammo – captured stuff; and Coertze always used German guns; he said they were better than the British.’ He brooded. ‘That started me thinking seriously. It was all too pat – all these blokes being knocked off so suddenly. When Donato got his, I quit. The Foreign Legion was just about busted anyway. I waited until the Count had sent Coertze off somewhere, then I collected my gear, said goodbye and headed south to the Allied lines. I was lucky – I got through.’

‘What about Coertze?’

‘He stayed with the Count until the Yanks came up. I saw him in Jo’burg a couple of years ago. I was crossing the road to go into a pub when I saw Coertze going through the door. I changed my mind; I had a drink, but not in that pub.’

He shivered suddenly. ‘I want to stay as far from Coertze as I can. There’s a thousand miles between Cape Town and Johannesburg – that ought to be enough.’ He stood up suddenly. ‘Let’s go and have a drink, for God’s sake.’

So we went and had a drink – several drinks.

V

During the next few weeks I could see that Walker was on the verge of making me a proposition. He said he had some money due to him and that he would need a good friend. At last he came out with it.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘My old man died last year and I’ve got two thousand pounds coming when I can get it out of the lawyer’s hands. I could go to Italy on two thousand pounds.’

‘So you could,’ I said.

He bit his lip. ‘Hal, I want you to come with me.’

‘For the gold?’

‘That’s right; for the gold. Share and share alike.’

‘What about Coertze?’

‘To hell with Coertze,’ said Walker violently. ‘I don’t want to have anything to do with him.’

I thought about it. I was young and full of vinegar in those days, and this sounded just the ticket – if Walker was telling the truth. And if he wasn’t telling the truth, why would he finance me to a trip to Italy? It seemed a pleasantly adventurous thing to do, but I hesitated. ‘Why me?’ I asked.

‘I can’t do it myself,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t trust Coertze, and you’re the only other chap who knows anything about it. And I trust you, Hal, I really do.’

I made up my mind. ‘All right, it’s a deal. But there are conditions.’

‘Trot them out.’

‘This drinking of yours has to stop,’ I said. ‘You’re all right when you’re sober, but when you’ve got a load on you’re bloody awful. Besides, you know you spill things when you’re cut.’

He rearranged his eager face into a firm expression. ‘I’ll do it, Hal; I won’t touch a drop,’ he promised.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘When do we start?’

I can see now that we were a couple of naïve young fools. We expected to be able to lift several tons of gold from a hole in the ground without too much trouble. We had no conception of the brains and organization that would be needed – and were needed in the end.

Walker said, ‘The lawyer tells me that the estate will be settled finally in about six weeks. We can leave any time after that.’

We discussed the trip often. Walker was not too much concerned with the practical difficulties of getting the gold, nor with what we were going to do with it once we had it. He was mesmerized by the millions involved.

He said once, ‘Coertze estimated that there were four tons of gold. At the present price that’s well over a million pounds. Then there’s the lire – packing cases full of the stuff. You can get a hell of a lot of lire into a big packing case.’

‘You can forget the paper money,’ I said. ‘Just pass one of those notes and you’ll have the Italian police jumping all over you.’

‘We can pass them outside Italy,’ he said sulkily.

‘Then you’ll have to cope with Interpol.’

‘All right,’ he said impatiently. ‘We’ll forget the lire. But there’s still the jewellery – rings and necklaces, diamonds and emeralds.’ His eyes glowed. ‘I’ll bet the jewels are worth more than the gold.’

‘But not as easily disposed of,’ I said.

I was getting more and more worried about the sheer physical factors involved. To make it worse, Walker wouldn’t tell me the position of the lead mine, so I couldn’t do any active planning at all.

He was behaving like a child at the approach of Christmas, eager to open his Christmas stocking. I couldn’t get him to face facts and I seriously contemplated pulling out of this mad scheme. I could see nothing ahead but a botched job with a probably lengthy spell in an Italian jail.

The night before he was to go to the lawyer’s office to sign the final papers and receive his inheritance I went to see him at his hotel. He was half-drunk, lying on his bed with a bottle conveniently near.

‘You promised you wouldn’t drink,’ I said coldly.

‘Aw, Hal, this isn’t drinking; not what I’m doing. It’s just a little taste to celebrate.’

I said, ‘You’d better cut your celebration until you’ve read the paper.’

‘What paper?’

‘This one,’ I said, and took it from my pocket. ‘That little bit at the bottom of the page.’

He took the paper and looked at it stupidly. ‘What must I read?’

‘That paragraph headed: “Italians Sentenced”.’

It was only a small item, a filler for the bottom of the page.

Walker was suddenly sober. ‘But they were innocent,’ he whispered.

‘That didn’t prevent them from getting it in the neck,’ I said brutally.

‘God!’ he said. ‘They’re still looking for it.’

‘Of course they are,’ I said impatiently. ‘They’ll keep looking until they find it.’ I wondered if the Italians were more concerned about the gold or the documents.

I could see that Walker had been shocked out of his euphoric dreams of sudden wealth. He now had to face the fact that pulling gold out of an Italian hole had its dangers. ‘This makes a difference,’ he said slowly. ‘We can’t go now. We’ll have to wait until this dies down.’

‘Will it die down – ever?’ I asked.

He looked up at me. ‘I’m not going now,’ he said with the firmness of fear. ‘The thing’s off – it’s off for a long time.’

In a way I was relieved. There was a weakness in Walker that was disturbing and which had been troubling me. I had been uneasy for a long time and had been very uncertain of the wisdom of going to Italy with him. Now it was decided.

I left him abruptly in the middle of a typical action – pouring another drink.

As I walked home one thought occurred to me. The newspaper report confirmed Walker’s story pretty thoroughly. That was something.

VI

It was long past lunch-time when. I finished the story. My throat was dry with talking and Jean’s eyes had grown big and round.

‘It’s like something from the Spanish Main,’ she said. ‘Or a Hammond Innes thriller. Is the gold still there?’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I haven’t read anything about it in the papers. For all I know it’s still there – if Walker or Coertze haven’t recovered it.’

‘What happened to Walker?’

‘He got his two thousand quid,’ I said. ‘Then embarked on a career of trying to drink the distilleries dry. It wasn’t long before he lost his job and then he dropped from sight. Someone told me he’d gone to Durban. Anyway, I haven’t seen him since.’

Jean was fascinated by the story and after that we made a game of it, figuring ways and means of removing four tons of gold from Italy as unobtrusively as possible. Just as an academic exercise, of course. Jean had a fertile imagination and some of her ideas were very good.

In 1959 we got clear of our indebtedness to the bank by dint of strict economy. The yard was ours now with no strings attached and we celebrated by laying the keel of a 15-tonner I had designed for Jean and myself. My old faithful King Penguin, one of the first of her class, was all right for coastal pottering, but we had the idea that one day we would do some ocean voyaging, and we wanted a bigger boat.

A 15-tonner is just the right size for two people to handle and big enough to live in indefinitely. This boat was to be forty feet overall, thirty feet on the waterline with eleven feet beam. She would be moderately canvased for ocean voyaging and would have a big auxiliary diesel engine. We were going to call her Sanford in memory of old Tom.

When she was built we would take a year’s leave, sail north to spend some time in the Mediterranean, and come back by the east coast, thus making a complete circumnavigation of Africa. Jean had a mischievous glint in her eye. ‘Perhaps we’ll bring that gold back with us,’ she said.

But two months later the blow fell.

I had designed a boat for Bill Meadows and had sent him the drawings for approval. By mishap the accommodation plans had been left out of the packet, so Jean volunteered to take them to Fish Hoek where Bill lives.

It’s a nice drive to Fish Hoek along the Chapman’s Peak road with views of sea and mountain, far better than anything I have since seen on the Riviera. Jean delivered the drawings and on the way back in the twilight a drunken oaf in a high-powered American car forced her off the road and she fell three hundred feet into the sea.

The bottom dropped out of my life.

It meant nothing to me that the driver of the other car got five years for manslaughter – that wouldn’t bring Jean back. I let things slide at the yard and if it hadn’t been for Harry Marshall the business would have gone to pot.

It was then that I tallied up my life and made a sort of mental balance sheet. I was thirty-six years old; I had a good business which I had liked but which now I didn’t seem to like so much; I had my health and strength – boat-building and sailing tend to keep one physically fit – and I had no debts. I even had money in the bank with more rolling in all the time.

On the other side of the balance sheet was the dreadful absence of Jean, which more than counter-balanced all the advantages.

I felt I couldn’t stay at the yard or even in Cape Town, where memories of Jean would haunt me at every corner. I wanted to get away. I was waiting for something to happen.

I was ripe for mischief.

VII

A couple of weeks later I was in a bar on Adderley Street having a drink or three. It wasn’t that I’d taken to drink, but I was certainly drinking more than I had been accustomed to. I had just started on my third brandy when I felt a touch at my elbow and a voice said, ‘Hallo, I haven’t seen you for a long time.’

I turned and found Walker standing next to me.

The years hadn’t dealt kindly with Walker. He was thinner, his dark, good looks had gone to be replaced by a sharpness of feature, and his hairline had receded. His clothes were unpressed and frayed at the edges, and there was an air of seediness about him which was depressing.

‘Hallo,’ I said. ‘Where did you spring from?’ He was looking at my full glass of brandy, so I said, ‘Have a drink.’

‘Thanks,’ he said quickly. ‘I’ll have a double.’

That gave me a pretty firm clue as to what had happened to Walker, but I didn’t mind being battened upon for a couple of drinks, so I paid for the double brandy.

He raised the glass to his lips with a hand that trembled slightly, took a long lingering gulp, then put the glass down, having knocked back three-quarters of the contents. ‘You’re looking prosperous,’ he said.

‘I’m not doing too badly.’

He said, ‘I was sorry to hear of what happened to your wife.’ He hurried on as he saw my look of inquiry. ‘I read about it in the paper. I thought it must have been your wife – the name was the same and all that.’

I thought he had spent some time hunting me up. Old friends and acquaintances are precious to an alcoholic; they can be touched for the odd drink and the odd fiver.

‘That’s finished and best forgotten,’ I said shortly. Unwittingly, perhaps, he had touched me on the raw – he had brought Jean back. ‘What are you doing now?’

He shrugged. ‘This and that.’

‘You haven’t picked up any gold lately?’ I said cruelly. I wanted to pay him back for putting Jean in my mind.

‘Do I look as though I have?’ he asked bitterly. Unexpectedly, he said, ‘I saw Coertze last week.’

‘Here – in Cape Town?’

‘Yes. He’d just come back from Italy. He’s back in Jo’burg now, I expect.’

I smiled. ‘Did he have any gold with him?’

Walker shook his head. ‘He said that nothing’s changed.’ He suddenly gripped me by the arm. ‘The gold’s still there – nobody’s found it. It’s still there – four tons of gold in that tunnel – and all the jewels.’ He had a frantic urgency about him.