Warm Clay

By Mike O'Donnell

Adam Faulkner is delivered from the sea onto a burning desert coast. He has to learn to live in his hostile new world. No one knows where he pitched overboard and a religious holiday has just begun. Rescue is on hold. In despair, Anita enlists the help of Adam's Civil Servant brother, Tom and veteran MacDowall, to seek her lover somewhere on the barren Merinam peninsula where inhabitants and vegetation are as scarce as water. As in life everywhere, time is the enemy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mike O'Donnell
• Release date: May 7, 2014
• ISBN: 9798215493403

Mike O'Donnell

Mike was a slow starter at the writing game. For the first two years of his life he seemed intent on eating and sleeping. Once these skills were mastered he did begin to make his mark, mostly with dirty fingers, lumps of mud and soft crayon. His father was in the RAF (as was his Sergeant Mum during the war) which meant that every so often the family moved on. He was therefore very nearly educated at a lot of schools; two weeks and three days at one lucky establishment. He did eventually learn to wield a pen, but mostly for activities other than writing. As all his forebears, he entered the Armed Forces. Three grandparents in the Army, both parents in the RAF, so he joined the RN. (Historical note: Great uncle George Rowe survived the Titanic and surprisingly he wasn't to blame. He was ex-RN.) The RN was extremely educational. Mike learned how to get blisters on his feet from marching and tabbing across Dartmoor, the Brecon Beacons, and a variety of parade grounds; and on his hands from sawing, chipping and filing cast iron and lumps of steel. He was professionally sick in the Atlantic, the North Sea, and up in the ice during the contretemps with Icelandic fishermen. And, because he was young he wasn't too well in a couple of ports like Hamburg and Amsterdam - water wasn't involved. He left the Navy, tried as many jobs as possible to see what made the world work, and sold a few pathetic stories. After four years servicing the Sultan of Oman's Navy and ten years trying to keep some of the Royal Army of Oman's radio equipment going he had a BA(Hons) and an MBA and sold about fifty stories.

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Prologue

Present Day

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Retired Admiral Mohammed Kebir turned the crudely sharpened thin strip of metal in his hand - an old key tally. He smiled at the name stamped on the scarred surface. A name from his uniformed past. What was it, twenty-five years ago? He looked across the transom of his sleek power boat to the military side of the port. He could picture the old grey freighter at her usual berth. He had put to sea from there times without number. She had long ago been scrapped.

Where did you find it? In the souk?

Anything and everything could be bought and sold in the honeycomb of back alleys in Bustan's bazaar.

His friend laughed. You think someone would pay for an old piece of scratched metal? No. Saif Ali found it. They were looking for a site for a new micro-wave mast up in the Merinam. He wondered how it got there. No one voluntarily goes to bake in that particular oven, and I remembered it was your first ship. He...

Mohammed sat forward with a jerk. The table shuddered more violently than from the wash of a passing speedboat; the red tea slopped in their glasses.

In the Merinam? Where exactly? He had recognised the significance of the 'No. 2' stamped beside the ship's name.

ACT ONE

May 1988

-1-

Despite the flat calm of the blue sea, Adam Faulkner was unaware of the black-tipped triangle slicing through the water towards him. Even if his swollen cheeks and gummed-up eyes had allowed him to see the approaching fin, it meant nothing. He had been in the water too long, slipping in and out of consciousness since dawn.

Adam was as detached from the outside world as an unborn baby - the warmth of the ocean and its pulsing tidal rhythm mimicked the protecting amniotic fluid. The gentle wash of tide and wind had rocked him towards the wide arms of the bay and out of the current that had carried him this far.

The shark habitually patrolled the bay in a foraging sweep before the turn of the tide. Curiosity attracted it since there were no natural magnets of blood or helpless thrashing. Adam made no motion, he had stopped swimming some time in the night. The tropical saltiness of the ocean and a well-stuffed kapok jacket kept his head clear of the water. Although he was conscious, there was no outward sign except the occasional flubber of his swollen and cracked lips as he mumbled unintelligibly to himself.

The three metre long shark circled effortlessly, closing in on each orbit. The slowly bobbing blue-coloured shape resembled no familiar prey and its size ensured it was treated warily. Although bravery is not a shark’s strong suit, nature has made it always eager to eat. The vicinity of the sandy beach denied the predator time to further investigate. With the tide’s assistance, Adam drew closer to the protection of the shallower surf. The shark closed in.

The first pass was a fast nervous bump as if testing Adam’s consistency and response. The thump rolled him over and for the first time in hours his arms moved feebly in a helpless swimming reflex. The shark’s second run was the real thing and it turned its sickle-shaped gaping maw upwards at the last moment to bring its teeth to bear. Sharks do not waste time with niceties such as chewing, they seize a mawful, rip it away and swallow. In its eagerness to feed, it misjudged Adam’s rolling motion but nevertheless grasped a sizeable portion of the thick kapok jacket. It gave a characteristic twist of its body and came away with the left shoulder of the coat.

The jacket was made by Pitcairn and Glover of Canley Mews, London, specialists in tailoring designed for tropical use, and it was stitched with thick nylon thread. As the attacker turned away to swallow its prize, a stout strand snagged and cut sharply into the tender side of the shark’s mouth. Although the twine snapped in the blink of an eye it gave the sleek assailant a fright. If there had been blood, then in minutes the water would have churned with other feeders, but the kapok mouthful had no redeeming features and the nervous shark headed for deeper water to seek tastier prey.

Adam choked and retched as the swirling water filled his nostrils and slack mouth. He had no idea what was happening to him. The fearsome teeth failed to break the skin and no other predator appeared. Fifteen minutes later the warm surf delivered him gently onto the white shelving beach nestling between the two legs of the headlands.

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-2-

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At the time the shark was mauling Adam’s jacket, Anita Rutherford clambered stiffly from the elderly camouflaged Bell 215 helicopter. It had put down at the military end of Qamran airport two hundred and fifty air miles to the north-east. Her mind and body felt numb after a long night followed by the three-hour jolting in the uncomfortable Bustani army helicopter. She arched her back and tugged the damp shirt away from her spine as Flt Lt Mike Day jumped down from the right-hand pilot’s seat.

Sorry about the headwind, Anita. Always makes the trip more tiresome.

Only too grateful to get here, Mike. You know what it’s like during Eid. No one wants to know you once the holiday’s started.

I’m surprised that includes one of the royal horse doctors. Next to the Palace Guard, the Sultan’s horses take precedence. If the Boss had his way even the Guard would come second to his string of oat and hay yafflers.

Anita smiled as she slung her overnight bag across her shoulder and hefted the leather case of medical instruments. Mike didn’t know how right he was. As far as the Sultan was concerned, nothing was as important as his racehorses. He was an educated, enlightened modern Arab ruler but when it came to Arab stallions, he was as fanatical as his great-grandfather who had seen men beheaded because they failed to treat the Sultan’s mounts with adequate respect.

Mike fell into step beside Anita, both eager to escape the waves of hot air rising from the baking concrete runway apron. Where are you off to now?

To the ship, for a long shower, as soon as I get through Customs and Security.

Ah yes, to the rest of the gee-gees.

Gee-gees is definitely not the right term for millions of rials worth of prime racing stock. The Sheik of Qamran would give an arm and a leg for the Sultan’s string.

Oh yes. But whose arm and leg that’s the question? Mike pointed to the Operations building. This is where I leave you. I’ll catch you later.

Right, Mike. Thanks again for the lift.

She watched the green flying-suited figure for a moment and then turned. She was impatient to get to where the Dolphin was docked. Adam had agreed to meet her at the ship although the helicopter trip meant she was early and he wouldn’t have arrived yet. She could indulge in a long refreshing shower.

She pushed open the swing door and walked gratefully into the icy coolness of the air-conditioned airport building. Her Royal Staff papers would ensure her passage through the Sheikdom of Qamran’s Customs and Security with the minimum of fuss. Besides, she knew most of the officials after making many trips from Bustan. Although she was only Assistant Veterinary Surgeon to the Royal Stables she had an honorary rank of Royal Staff Major which helped reduce delays and which showed how important the Sultan thought his racehorses.

Despite every assistance it was half an hour before a damp and drained Anita ascended the gentle slope of the ridged gangway onto the converted Bustani coaster, Dolphin.

The grey and white freighter had an abandoned air. At this hottest part of the day it would have been nearly deserted anyway but the Eid holidays had just begun. In both the Sultan’s country of Bustan, and this tiny sheikdom, nobody worked during Eid unless it was a matter of life and death. Anita’s case had been just that; the Sultan’s ceremonial mount at his palace in the south of the country had developed a cough. The original plan had been to travel to Qamran with Adam and the race horses in the Dolphin, but a sick stallion with a cough meant an emergency to the Vizier when the Sultan was absent. Anita had been flown south immediately. She usually accompanied the mounts every step of the way to a race meeting, by sea or air, but the Head Vet was attending a funeral in England and there was no one else to answer the emergency call.

Anita gratefully reached her shipboard quarters. Surprisingly she found the door locked and she put down her instrument case to pull out her key. The yellow curtains were drawn across the solid square windows and the lights were off. The air-conditioning was strangely silent and the cabin was baking hot and stuffy. She flicked the light switch but nothing happened. Why was the air-conditioning unit off? She never turned it off. It always became unbearably hot and she could never sleep without the cooling breeze. She dumped her bags on the wide bunk bed and the depression in the pillow and the disturbed counterpane went unnoticed. She opened the thick curtains a few inches to let in a shaft of sunlight. She turned to the air-conditioner but as her hand went to the control knob she saw that it was in the ‘full’ position where she’d thought she’d left it. Why wasn’t it working? The power must be off, which explained the absence of lights as well. The air conditioners had to be switched off and back on again to reset them when main power was restored to prevent the generator coming back on line to heavy loads. She went looking for Rama the steward or someone else to restore the electricity. It would be a waste of time having a shower and changing if she was going to be as hot as a broiled chicken when she’d finished.

The Chief Electrician, Tariq, was dozing in his small cabin behind the main switchboard and she woke him by tapping on his open door. His cubbyhole had no air-conditioner but the Pakistani Chief would not have had it on anyway. He had lived all his life in 30 degree temperatures and felt no discomfort. He barely sweated unless he had been exerting his not insubstantial bulk. His dark eyes opened and he heaved himself up, a smile creasing his round face.

Ah, Miss Anita. We did not expect you back so early, he looked at his ornate gold wristwatch. The BAC 1-11 from the south is not due in for two more hours.

No Tariq, I took a lift in Mulassim Mike’s helicopter. The One-Eleven was fully booked.

The electrician nodded. Aah. The Eid holiday.

Right. I’ve come about my a.c. Tariq. It’s not on. Neither are the lights.

Not on? I told that bloody fellow Rama to check it was on first thing this morning. We had to shut the breakers off a little time after leaving harbour yesterday. All the power to unnecessary services. We were having troubles with one of the generators and had to bring down the load. But I told that lazy fellow to reset the trip and switch it back on. I will restore the lights straight away, Miss Anita.

The electrician slipped his feet into shapeless sandals and slopped to the door.

Was it a quiet trip, Tariq? she asked as she followed him down the passageway.

Oh yes. As always. Apart from the generator. It is too short a journey to worry about. We left maybe three or four hours after you had gone to the emergency with the Sultan’s horse and we got in here just before six this morning. So we made good time, no?

No problem with the horses then?

Oh no. There was no trouble with them, Hameed would make sure of that. How should there be anyway? They have better living quarters than you or me. He chuckled. It was a standing joke that there had been a mix-up with the redesign of the Royal Sultanate Vessel Dolphin and that the horses had got the crew’s quarters. The sais and Hameed took them ashore soon after we landed. They will be in their usual stables having the best until the races begin tomorrow.

Yes, I’d better go and see how they’ve installed them. But first I must have a shower and change my clothes.

Hah. I will switch the after lighting circuits on now. He turned towards the switchboard.

The cooling unit was thudding away as she stripped off her shirt and slacks and turned the shower full on. The supposedly cold water was tepid but refreshing as she stepped in.

After a longer shower than she would normally have enjoyed while at sea, where freshwater was precious, she put on a newly laundered white shirt and a pair of beige jodhpurs. It was time to see to her charges. She slipped on her boots and wriggled her bare toes inside them. She had still not got used to wearing full boots in this heat but she always wore them when visiting the stables on her rounds. The Bustanis respected anyone connected with horses and outward signs such as highly polished riding boots carried more weight than all the rubber-stamped passes and official credentials she possessed.

She would leave a message for Adam; he could well turn up before she was back. During the past month they’d seen little of each other. If she wasn’t flying backwards and forwards between the capital and the Sultan’s southern palace and farm, then Adam was driving around the country planning and supervising military radio or microwave installations for Technikrat. It had been a most frustrating period for both of them.

She checked her instrument case and moved to the door. It was then that it struck her. The door had been locked. Neither she nor Rama the steward normally locked it. There was no need. None of the Dolphin’s ship’s company would dream of entering without permission. Maybe Rama thought that in the Qamrani port it was necessary. Anita locked it behind her as she left.

The dockside was deserted when Anita reached the brow of the gangway. Her car had been lowered by crane from where it had been strapped on the upper deck. The R.S.V. Dolphin always carried three Japanese saloon cars for her and the ship’s officers. The two huge horse-boxes would have been the first to be unloaded and they would have long ago taken the horses to their shore-side quarters. It was a twice-yearly event in the race calendar that the Sheikdom of Qamran entertained the Gulf States’ rulers.

The ignition key was in her Corolla and she drove uneventfully to the stables used by the Sultan’s horses. She had parked the Corolla before remembering she had forgotten to leave Adam a message.

Already seven or eight magnificent horse-boxes were in evidence and Anita recognised the Qatari and the Omani trainers as they stood admiring a lovely bay mare. Even if Anita had not recognised the horse she would have known by the look of pride on the Omani’s face that this one belonged to him. It actually belonged to Sultan Qaboos bin Said but so far as the trainer was concerned that was the same thing.

The Head Groom Hameed was a dark wizened old man who never wore anything but the same decrepit jodhpurs and baggy top. He was built like a jockey. His report was clear and precise and the horses were no worse for the trip. Hameed would have taken it as a personal insult if Anita had suggested otherwise once she had made her rounds. He had slept in one of the horse-boxes on board the Dolphin and for the eighteen hour voyage from his country’s capital he had not left the horses’ accommodation. It was not from a fear of the terrible vengeance the Sultan would wreak if any mishap occurred to his horses but because there was nothing more important to Hameed than the welfare of these magnificent beasts. Hameed had never married. He was not interested in women. He had never looked on a woman with that feeling of joy and wonderment that he experienced when he saw a proud, highly-strung racehorse. Anita was thankful for this because it made her job easier. There were no false alarms with Hameed. He only called for veterinary assistance when it was unavoidable. She could safely leave the horses in his capable hands.

She got back to the Dolphin two hours later and ran swiftly up the gangway expecting to find Adam. The cabin was empty and she remembered she hadn’t noticed his Land Cruiser outside on the dock. Where was he? He should have arrived by now.

She left the cabin and went down the short passage to the screen door and onto the tiny quarterdeck. At sea it was one of the coolest places and she always had it to herself. The only other cabin at the after end on this deck was the Captain’s quarters and he invariably stayed on the bridge during short journeys. She leant on the low flat rail and looked down into the oily water. She wished Adam would hurry up. The Captain and most of the crew would be ashore being entertained by the Sheik’s small navy, as was customary during Eid, and she and Adam had lost time to make up.

Eid Al Fitr, coming at the end of Ramadan, was a welcome time of feasting and over-indulgence after the fast. when eating and drinking were forbidden during daylight hours. Anita always pitied the fasting sailors working under the burning sun, even if they did as little as possible between dawn and dusk. Certainly, it was evident from the deserted wharves and sheds that there was no work being attempted in the docks today.

After a while, the glare from the water forced Anita back to her cabin and she lay on her bed in her underwear and thought about Adam. They’d turned down several invitations for events and parties to be held during the course of the week’s race meeting so they could be together. So where was he? It wasn't like him. He always sent a message if a sudden emergency cropped up. She fell asleep waiting. It had been a long day and night for her, first attending to the sick horse, and then flying to and from the Sultan’s capital city.

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The Middle-eastern sun beat down at nearly forty degrees and the blue water was like warm milk. The incoming tide nudged Adam slowly up the beach before retreating to leave him resembling a drunken tripper sleeping it off on a seaside outing.

Adam’s face and wrinkled hands were lumpy and blotchy, but the skin on his forehead and nose, badly blistered both by the morning sun and the length of time in the water, had a shredded look. Puffy, cracked lips had deep vertical lines, red and raw like sliced meat, and his eyelids were swollen and gummed shut. Livid white lumps dotted his entire body. The breath rattled in his nose and throat like a derelict whose health had been destroyed by an excess of cheap wine and damp weather.

Towards two o’clock, he gurgled, showing signs of animation in the jerking of his hands and feet. His fingers opened and closed, grasping at the air, and his feet kicked involuntarily like a dog in sleep.

He should have died. There was no reason why he attempted to crawl. He was no more aware of his surroundings than he had been two or three hours previously, but he did crawl. Like the first motions of a baby he expended effort to no avail before moving quarter of an inch. His arms and legs lacked co-ordination. For some reason he struggled to move up the beach. Perhaps some deep cell memory recalled man’s genetic beginnings emerging from the sea, or it was merely purposeless movement. He made small mewing noises grossly distorted by his swollen tongue and thick blubbery lips. He did not notice as sand covered his peeling face with its countless sores and blisters. He paused once in his slow ascent to allow a thin trickle of urine to seep through his trousers into the sand. His blue jacket was the only patch of colour in the wide expanse of the desert shoreline.

From above, the bay resembled a sandwich from which a large bite had been munched. The two headlands were broad and curved. The land was the characteristic drab brown of the limestone that covered the area. The fierce desert sun had baked and burnt it, cracked and seared it, until it was the most unattractive and blasted of land-spaces. Large areas on the Arabian Gulf and Gulf of Oman had the same hellish look. It was more in keeping with a moonscape or a pallid version of the Martian landscape than the usual lush Earth of the tropics: except for the frying heat. Adam’s movements may have been the survival instinct of his burning cells to find a cooler spot.

He found it by sheer luck, or rather by the fact that for generations bits and pieces from the sea had been cast up on this beach and funnelled into the same place. Adam was just another lump of floating detritus that had come ashore with the rest of the flotsam and jetsam. Half a dozen years earlier a small dhow had gone down in a storm and large sections of it had finally grounded upon this small shelf of sand. At three o’clock, Adam’s head touched the shadow cast by the exposed ribs of the dhow, and after more scrabbling of knees and elbows he was curled infant-like into the marginally cooler shade.

Ten yards further over he would have crawled until he reached the rocks above the beach, and there he would have died, unable to advance further. As it was, he found the one element which saved him. Water. Apart from luck, he had also to thank the inventor of plastic. Amid the accumulated rubbish tossed from passing ships and torn from wrecks, were several large pieces of polypropylene. One of these had formed a shallow bowl in the shade of the beached boat’s side. Adam’s jerking left hand flopped into this pool of water.

Rain in the area was not as scarce as a casual observer might imagine. The high mountain ranges of the Jebel Al Akdhar in Oman are sometimes awash with torrential streams sweeping all before them. The wadis debouching onto the Batinah coastline are then swollen with brown flood-water, and although the summer temperatures are often in excess of 40 degrees, there are precious days in winter when it rains like an English spring. During the past week, there had been a late winter storm in the mountains and although rainfall on this island on the peninsula was slight, it had caught the tail end of the deluge. Among the things to fill with the pattering rain, was a shallow piece of non-biodegradable plastic, and Adam’s fingers touched the tingling water.

It was lukewarm but the cracks and sores made Adam’s hands throb as if it had been icy. Like a baby, he moved his damp hurting hand to his mouth and sucked his thumb. Every cell in his body craved water and the clamour as the moisture touched his tender lips was total. More by luck than judgement, his roving hand found the bowl a second time and instead of his hand coming up to his mouth, his mouth moved to his hand, and his face fell into the puddle.

Luckily, Adam could no longer feel further pain. His face had reached the point where its one unbroken torment had become a background to existence. The torture was part of him.