She makes no answer. It is a relief: if she were to interrupt him now he might never find the courage to keep talking.
‘We were up in the Arctic, above Norway. The ship was covered in ice. I’d been tasked with clearing some of it off the main deck – me, and a few other men. Morris was one of them.
‘I saw it coming before anyone else. This wave was huge, much bigger than the ones before it. Something had happened to my brain. I can’t explain it, but it was so cold. It was as though my thoughts were slowed down. I didn’t say anything until it was too late. Morris and I – we were right next to the rail. It swept us off our feet and over the side.’
The confusion of seeing only water where before there had been solid metal. How it had seized the breath from him. Unbelievable cold – though it didn’t feel like cold so much as the opposite, like a searing heat. He couldn’t get his breath back, no matter how hard his mouth and lungs worked. The ship, suddenly, seemed an Everest of steel, sheering unscalable out of the water. A row of tiny heads had appeared above the rail. Probably they were shouting, but he couldn’t hear anything except for the wheeze of his own tortured breathing.
He had heard a shout – or not so much a shout, more a cry, like that of an animal in pain. He turned and saw Morris, some ten yards or so further away, fighting to stay afloat. Really struggling.
He managed to pant out the words. ‘Are-you-all-right?’
And the answer had come back in agonized gasps: ‘I-think-my-leg’s-bro-ken.’
The ship wouldn’t turn, he knew this. They couldn’t: they were in convoy. Such things went to the highest level; a misstep could endanger the entire fleet. They were the last ship in the formation, too. There was nothing coming for them.
It came to him. They would die here, surrounded by miles of frozen emptiness. Not by the hands of the enemy, but by random bad luck. His mind became oddly clear and calm then, even his breath seemed to come more easily. Let it be quick, then.
And then a miracle: a tiny object against that pale polar sky, growing gradually larger. A black hoop. He had seen it in its snug compartment on deck; but never thought much about it. It had always looked more ceremonial than functional, with the name of the ship embossed in gold lettering. Now, it was everything. It was life itself.
It fell a little ahead of him.
Morris behind him, the lifebelt in front. He could swim to Morris, and then try and get them both to the lifebelt. But already it was moving further away from him; there would be another wave – and soon, he could feel the tow as it gathered itself. He might have only a few seconds’ opportunity to get to it.
No: he couldn’t not try to save his friend. He began to try to swim towards Morris. But he was dragged back by the terrible sodden weight of his clothes, his boots. He tried to shrug himself out of them, but he was so weak, suddenly, his efforts rendered ineffectual. The cold had drained his energy, eaten it from him. Morris was reaching for him, but he seemed even further away. And suddenly he understood. He wouldn’t make it. Not to Morris and then back to the lifebelt. It was one or the other.
By the time he was hauled aboard, his friend had drowned. One of the men had seen him go under. He hadn’t resurfaced. And then the next wave had come, and put an end to any doubt.
He hasn’t told anyone this – not the whole of it, anyway. The men told him there was nothing he could have done. He couldn’t blame himself.
But he did. If he had tried a little harder, if he had been brave enough to risk everything, he might have done it.
Morris’ wife, Flora. When she had asked: ‘Did you see him, at the end?’ Did she, somehow, know? She couldn’t, could she? She was only asking in the way that a wife would, of the man who had seen her loved one’s last moments. Yet all the way back from her flat, on the bus, his hands had shaken.
He finds he can’t look at Stella as he speaks. He knows that she is watching him. But he doesn’t want to see her face, to see a judgement there.
‘Sometimes,’ he says, ‘I imagine that he said something to me, that he gave me permission. You know, that he understood.’ He laughs, without humour. ‘But he didn’t. He wanted to live – he was fighting for it with everything he had left. He wanted me to save him. And I might have done it. If I had only been less of a coward.’
He covers his face with his hand. It is done now, at least, his shame laid bare. He tries to tell himself that this is something. Whatever she may think of him now, however she may despise him, he has relieved himself of the burden.
‘We do what we have to,’ she says, carefully, ‘in the moment, to survive. It is easy in hindsight to think you might have done more, that you might have tried harder.’