THE BONE SHIP , By: Dowling, Terry

The awful truth of his situation dawns on Paul Rodan much too late when his search for an antique model ship leads him to Australia, in this tale from a new collection of horror stories.

When Mrs Davinon brought in the tea and the plate of dark coconut-frosted cakes, Paul Rodan lost his concentration all over again. He had hoped he could manage the old traveller’s trick: half-closing his eyes and imagining where else he could be. In England, certainly, that went without saying, inside like this where it was cool enough. Somewhere in the United States, San Francisco in the summer, yes. In Africa perhaps, Johannesburg or Tangiers, even parts of Asia, but in the highlands there, out of the terrible humidity.

It was a favourite game, and it had only just started to work when Mrs Davinon arrived with the tea and the cakes and ruined what was possibly his final chance for now. The ceilings of her house were high enough, this spacious parlour large enough, cool enough, tastefully furnished enough, and the ceiling fan gave it the right cosmopolitan touch (India was there then; India, or it might have been Singapore, Shanghai or Hong Kong), but the woman’s alarming accent and the plate of wretched coconut and chocolate sponge cakes brought him back to the parlour of a two-storey Victorian (one-time) mansion in Parkes, in central-western New South Wales, in Australia of all places. In Australia!

The Gautier-Davinon search had led to Australia. Who would have thought?

“How do you take your tea, Mr Roddin — is it Roddin?” the woman asked, looking to Paul like failed gentry in some period film — wearing a neat, once-stylish grey dress, flat shoes, closely coiffed hair still brown enough amid the grey, a good face with sharp dark eyes. She had to be in her 60s, either that or life in this godforsaken town had been especially cruel. A doctor’s wife, going by the dull bronze plaque beside the front door: Dr C. Davinon, and widowed by all counts, judging by no mention of a husband in their phone call, and no sign of one since he’d arrived. Or even a doctor herself, though probably too old (and too old-fashioned) to be practising. It explained the house: once stately, now almost beyond her, both woman and house hopelessly déclassé.

“Rodan, Mrs Davinon. Rodan. Like the flying creature in that Japanese monster movie, if you know it.”

(Japan, yes! A stretch, but he might have been in some old embassy building in Kyoto or Osaka, and wished that he was, that the search had led there. There were some good bone ships in Japan. But not the Gautier ship. Not the Felice.)

“I can’t say I do, Mr Ro-dan,” she said, pronouncing it with too much inflection, too much emphasis, letting him know she was a dutiful study. “I don’t keep up with the latest films any more.” She offered him the cakes and he took one. “But like I say, I only hope I’m not wasting your time. There must be other Davinons.”

Oh there were, there were, as he knew only too well-in Montreal and Ontario and in Marsala on Sicily. In Madrid, Trieste and Buenos Aires. Hundreds in Paris, thousands all over France. But the research and the search had led here, to Parkes in this horrid, blazing, Australian summer.

He wiped crumbs away carefully. “The facts are quite conclusive, madame,” he said, realising that he sounded frightfully formal. Something about the old house, about this quaint, premature relic of a country doctor’s wife, seemed to make it appropriate. “As I said when I phoned, all the evidence points to the Davinons in Parkes. I am very hopeful.”

More than hopeful. That was why it had been a phone call from Sydney, no letters of introduction, no polite enquiries. He was sure of his facts and he was on a time limit. Others were on the same trail.

“Well, we’re the only Davinons in Parkes. The family has been in this house since 1845.” She pronounced it as “Davinnens” as if to rhyme with “paraffin”, one more vile atonal anglicisation Paul had lived with for so long. It was Paul’s single rebellion: keeping to the French “Duh-vin-non”, with its stress on the second “n”.

And now the woman was frowning with polite concern.

“When I said on the phone that my great-to-the-fourth-grandfather brought his father’s things from Paris, I tried to make it clear that they’ve been looked over again and again.”

Paul concealed the excitement he felt, the very real wave of — yes — agitation that came over him. So near, so very near. It was such an intimate, urgent feeling.

“But they took nothing away you said, Mrs Davinon. You said they looked through the papers, but you and your husband allowed nothing to be taken.”

“That’s right. Charles was very strict about it.” She leaned over and poured him more tea. “Apart from the historical society people, everything has been kept in the attic untouched for 60 years. But looked over again and again before that.”

“So you were with them while they made this recent examination?”

“Of course.” Again Mrs Davinon frowned, and Paul cautioned himself. Too keen. He was being too forward, too keen. “But, then again, Mr Ro-dan, we did not search them at the door.”

Paul made himself smile and nod, taking the rebuke. “I am deeply sorry, Mrs Davinon. I meant no offence. I have come a long way in the hope of at last settling this mystery in my family’s history. A long way in time — the years spent making such a search — and now in space, travelling here to your wonderful country. I apologise again if I seem — too eager.”

His hostess seemed mollified. She gave a smile and a nod of her own; it was all so courtly between them.

“There are no valuables. Charles and I checked. Everyone has checked. Just papers and a few oddments.”

Oddments, Paul almost parroted, but was able to stop himself. He nodded again, showing interested respect while his thoughts raced. So near, so near. Bettelmann and Lucas were half a world away, chasing their leads, quizzing other Davinons in other lands, sending out their letters and interminable emails, making their phone calls. He could take enough time. And he could use force if necessary. That was why he hadn’t registered at a motel in town yet; this way there would be no trace. Just the hire car paid for in cash, using the false ID, the false name. Easy to fob off. He was a museum acquisitions expert by profession, he’d say. Discretion was always essential. There were reasons.

So he sat sipping the awful tea, nibbling one of the — what were the horrid things called: lillingtons? livingstons? Then, judging his time, he continued.

“It is nothing valuable in the monetary sense, Mrs Davinon. It is information, documentary proof about the fate of a model of a ship. More clues perhaps. My own great to-the-fifth-uncle was involved with your ancestor in connection with it.”

“And it’s to do with this ship?” Mrs Davinon said.

“Model ship. Exactly.”

“Then what are you looking for? You must explain it, Mr Ro-dan. I’m sure I present as a country doctor’s wife and must strike you as very provincial by your practised European standards, but I assure you I am a sharp customer by my own lights and I love history. That’s part of why Charles held on to his father’s things. They’ve been passed down. I belong to the local historical society here. Some of our meetings are held in this very room. I may not have all of your conservationist’s gloss, but I am active enough.”

My, isn’t that wonderful, Paul would have said 10 minutes, five minutes earlier, but now she had cautioned him with her boast of being a “sharp customer”, and the glint in her eye warned of a native cunning. As dangerous as intelligent people were, Paul had found those who thought themselves intelligent often presented a much greater danger. They were obdurate, more wilful by far, usually less tractable.

Instead, Paul nodded as if to a peer. “May I just say as one sharp customer to another that it is a relief to be with a woman who understands the absolute importance of custodial care, madame. You are being most kind.” He deliberately laid on the continental charm, though in subtleties, he liked to think, not broad strokes. It had always worked for him before. He wanted coffee and pâté, but now, smiling wonderfully, he held out his cup for more tea as if it were ambrosia, and took another of the wretched lillington things.

He was Paul Louis Rodan, former museum acquisitions agent, now freelance raider of history and resolute builder of a history of his own, and he was very close to owning the Gautier ship, the Felice. Bettelmann and Lucas be damned!

“Now I must have the story you have only hinted at, Mr Ro-dan,” Mrs Davinon said, and reached down and brought up a small tape recorder. “If you have no objections, I will tape what you tell me. For my own records.”

“Not at all, madame.” (If it came to force, that could easily be disposed of.) Paul waited till she had set it next to the tea service on the table between them and switched it on. There was none of the “testing, testing” that amateurs so often went on with. Mrs Davinon had already practised with it. It made Paul even more circumspect. She was indeed a sharp customer.

“Madame, are you familiar with what are called Prisoner of War Models — models of sailing ships built by prisoners interned during the Napoleonic Wars?”

“Only in the most cursory fashion. I know there is some mention of it in the papers upstairs. Or, rather, a model ship is mentioned. It is made of bone.”

“Exactly. Between 1793 and 1815, the English were constantly at war with the French. During this great struggle, as you may be aware, Dartmoor Prison was built to house over 8000 French prisoners of war. Americans, too, fighting on the French side. Other prisons were used, Bideford, Norman’s Cross and the like, even old castles and the hulks on the Thames mudflats, but my ancestor, Giles Gautier, and yours were interned in Dartmoor in May 1807.”

Paul made an appropriate hesitation at that point, hinting ever so slightly at an emotional stake in what he was saying. “Go on, please, Mr Ro-dan.”

“Many French sailors were conscripts, so you had bakers, tailors, farmers and skilled artisans imprisoned side by side with experienced seamen. It wasn’t long before the more enterprising of these found they could augment their rations and earn money by making toys and selling them first to the trusties, then to the English officers and gentry who learned about them. These toys soon led to more desirable objects like model sailing ships, miniature replicas of specific vessels currently engaged in the fighting.

“If only you could see the beautiful model of the 120-gun Britannia at the Maritime Museum in Dartmouth, 51 inches long, or the Ocean in the Science Museum in London, or the 52-gun L’Amatone in the South Shields Museum —”

“I’m sure. Please continue, Mr Ro-dan.” Only the accent ruined her queenliness, that and her insufferable, almost wilful mispronunciation of his name.

“Some of these models were made of ivory and tortoiseshell, sometimes mahogany, but a great number were made from bone.”

“But not human bone!”

“No, madame. Sometimes whalebone, but mutton bone mostly, salvaged from refuse bins or the cookhouse, sometimes bought from the prison market if there was one. The sailors and shipwrights provided details to the jewellers and other craftsmen, who then did most of the work, and they divided the profits. It became quite a cottage industry, quite a production line: some hands carving the planks, others doing the finework using nails shaped into chisels, others preparing the rigging with threads from their garments or their own hair. The English commissioned models of particular ships, and helped provide brass rivets and fine woods for the detailing. There are supposedly several here in Australia. I know one very fine bone model belongs to the Moxon family in Brisbane, recently restored by your own Australian master model ship-builder, John Larkin. The largest, in the Waterman’s Hall, London, is said to be seven feet long, and —”

“And where do Giles Gautier and Phillip Davinon come into this?”

It brought Paul up short. My, but the woman was quick. There they were: the names of both their respective ancestors.

“Dartmoor was terribly overcrowded. While many of the model-makers lived very well indeed, other prisoners suffered in absolute squalor. They were meant to be maintained by the respective governments, but this simply didn’t happen. Many human skeletons were found when the camp at Bideford was excavated for the new gas works.”

Mrs Davinon looked suitably aghast. “So human bones were used?”

It hadn’t been what Paul was going to say at all. He’d just meant to illustrate the range of conditions at the POW prisons in preparation for explaining the Gautier/Davinon connection, working round to what was done way back in 1807 in that dismal overcrowded cellblock the poor unfortunates had christened the Oubliette.

“Not at first. But there were factions, you understand. Arrangements between model-making groups and particular trusties. Favours and preferential treatment. Dartmoor was terribly overcrowded. Giles and Phillip were both on the Felice when she was taken. They were with 36 other prisoners added to a prison block called the Oubliette. It was already filled to capacity; people sleeping on the floor, fighting over scraps of food. But Giles was a watchmaker, and your great ancestor, Phillip, a master mariner, and they began work on a model of the Felice, reinventing the wheel as new model-makers often had to do, scrounging whatever they could, but in the most horrendous circumstances.

“The Oubliette was completely full of troublemakers, hence the name: a place to put people and forget them. Giles and Phillip were accused of trying to be better than the rest and were both beaten for it. Their first model was wrecked during an incident, possibly an attempted escape. Whatever actually happened, rations were reduced as general punishment. No longer were even mutton bones allowed for their use. No metal pins and fittings. Nothing.”

“How did they manage?”

“Other fine bone ships were made under similar trying conditions. The schooner Alyson, the sloop Deirdre - using bone pins and glues —”

“But the bone, Mr Ro-dan! The bone!”

She did have a bone ship here. Paul was sure of it. This rush of emotion gave her away: her very real concern that a prized heirloom was made from the bones of humans.

“As you suspect, madame. They used human bone. It was all they had. On burial detail, they would retrieve bones from the lime pits, whatever they could get.”

“And the result, Mr Ro-dan? What was the outcome?”

“Is what I am hoping you can verify for me, Mrs Davinon. My sources say that a second model was begun, but not completed: a 35-inch model of the Felice, just the hull and main deck and very little else. The footings for the masts were barely started. Apparently my distant uncle and your ancestor had a falling out, or they were separated to other cellblocks. Stories differ. Some say disease took them, some say they died during repatriation back to France, though in 1807 1 don’t see how that could be. It’s far too early.

“At any rate, both men perished; at least their names were dropped from prison records. There were no homecomings recorded after the war. All we know for certain is that the unfinished hull of the Felice was given over to your family in Paris, and that — so far as my sources show — it was brought here to Australia. I am hoping I am not mistaken, and that you have it in safekeeping here and are simply being cautious with a stranger.”

Mrs Davinon gave what looked to be a sympathetic smile.

“Such a thing would not be for sale, Mr Ro-dan.”

“I accept that, madame. I do assure you of it. I am a former acquisitions agent, as I said. No longer a collector of anything more than the history of the Prisoner of War Models as they relate to the Gautiers and the Rodans.”

“And the Davinons.”

Paul didn’t miss a beat. “And the Davinons, most assuredly. The names are inseparable. I meant only that it is my own family search that brought me here.

“I can only hope that you might let me see it and photograph it and publish its history, both for its own sake and as part of our shared family histories. It would mean a great deal.”

Mrs Davinon put one slender hand to her throat and looked off across the parlour, as if surrendering to her own run of emotions: thoughts of a model made of human bone, recollections of her lifetime with Charles, of her father’s stories of old and precious things, of the trap of years that had left her here now in this particular lacuna of time.

Paul set his cup down as gently as he could, but the smallest “chink” doing so brought her back in an instant.

“More tea, Mr Ro-dan?”

“Only if you will have some too, Mrs Davinon. As I say, in both senses, it has been a long journey. Your hospitality is wonderful.”

“Perhaps you would prefer to have coffee instead?”

Hah! A truce. Paul seized at it. Coffee, at last. But better yet, a chance to be alone while she went to make it, a chance to rally and consider his best options, to give her time to consider his requests.

“I’d be most grateful. A Frenchman — you understand how it is with coffee.”

Mrs Davinon rose. “Of course. Excuse me a moment.”

Paul rose, being his most chivalrous, the cavalier, the attentive and gracious guest, but Mrs. Davinon beat him to the tray and carried it off to the kitchen.

He sat down again, listened to the deep ticking of the clock on the mantel and the distant sounds of her moving about in the kitchen. Somewhere in this house, no doubt up in the dim stuffy attic, sat the model of the Felice, probably locked away in a trunk, the stark white hull wrapped in packing, nothing much to show anyone, but real. No longer just the rumour, no longer just the tantalising listings in old editions of Filiger’s.

The smell of brewed coffee came to him through the hall. Avignon, Paul told himself, his favourite little café, or André‘s in Marseilles, though too many of his competitors went there now, and lately to keep an eye on him. They knew how accomplished he was. But brewed coffee. It would do. In Parkes, in a blazing Australian summer, it would do.

Finally, Mrs Davinon returned with the tray and set it down between them. On it were fresh cups, a teapot and a glass plunger of coffee. He waited for her to settle, waited during the pouring and serving, paced himself with quick thoughts of Amsterdam and Berlin, Prague and Istanbul. The coffee smelled wonderful. He made sure he sipped as she did, mirroring her body language, being with her, courteous guest, completely in her hands and at her pleasure. He made a single sound of appreciation — totally genuine — and tried to seem relaxed.

“I have the story a little differently,” Mrs Davinon said, surprising him.

“Pardon, madame?”

“From what Charles’s father had passed on to him, it was Phillip who was the watchmaker, and your Giles Gautier the mariner who provided the specifications.”

“What’s that?” Again Paul was thrown, but at least it was all coming out now. He leaned forward, composing his face to show quiet interest, not the genuine startlement he felt.

“And you are correct: the two men were not repatriated. As my father explained it, they were being transferred to a prison hulk on the Thames — it often happened with recalcitrants — and the prisoners managed to take over the prison barge. They almost succeeded in making their escape, and were out in the Channel when the pursuit ship Llewelyn fired on them.”

“I am fascinated by this,” Paul managed to say. “I knew nothing of it.”

“But before that happened, Mr Ro-dan, our ancestors were both thrown over the side by the other prisoners. My ancestor perished. Yours was rescued, it seems, and lived long enough to tell of his experience of looking up and seeing the hull of the prison barge overhead as he swam up towards the light.”

“That’s where my accounts resume, Mrs Davinon. The hull reminded him of the Felice — or, rather, of the model sitting on the window ledge they used as their work bench. In his oxygen-deprived state, Giles felt he was swimming back to the real Felice, reprieved, born again. I knew nothing of them being tossed overboard. It is incredible.”

“What else you may not know, Mr Ro-dan, is that when they were cast over the side, they were tied together at the waist and told that only one would be allowed back on board. Only one, you understand?”

“Surely not, madame —”

“I can forgive it. It was long ago. Perhaps they were never friends, just two men trying to do a model ship and stay alive. The survivors from the barge picked up by the Llewelyn said it was what had happened. They let the one who killed the other back on board.”

“I’m shocked. I had no idea. I’m so sorry, Mrs Davinon —”

Paul didn’t know what else to say. All this had thrown him. The fatigue from his drive down from Sydney, from his flight from Paris, was finally catching up with him, the lack of sleep, the determination to keep ahead of the others. Suddenly he was feeling exhausted.

“Please, Mr Ro-dan. I didn’t mean to upset you. Each would have been desperate to kill the other. People do these things to live. But we can make a truce between our families now, can’t we?”

“But of course, madame. Merci, merci mille fois! I don’t know what to say.” The sudden weariness was confusing him.

All this way, all this effort, and now this. His search was over.

Mrs Davinon rose from her chair. “You look tired, Mr Ro-dan. So at least let me. show you the hull that was never finished, that was passed on to my ancestor’s family by a kindly ship’s officer aided by a sympathetic trusty. You can come back and look over the papers another time.”

“Yes, yes. That would be splendid.” Paul set his cup on the table and stood, steadying himself on the arms of the chair, then followed the woman towards the dark-timbered double sliding doors at the far end of the parlour.

He felt odd, leaden was the word, definitely strange. It was as if he were weighed down.

“I keep the Felice in here.”

In here. Not up in the attic then, not wrapped up and tucked away. She had the ship down here.

Mrs Davinon slid back the doors to reveal what had once been a dining room with double sliding doors at each end. No doubt the kitchen lay beyond the second pair; it made sense.

What made no sense, what startled Paul in his growing stupor, was the stark white hull of Felice atop a narrow, six-foot wooden pedestal of the same dark timber as the doors. It stood in the very centre of the room, in a room whose walls were painted the deep rich red of old blood. Dark timber, dark red walls, the almost glowing, bleached white of the Felice.

But it couldn’t be the Felice. Paul fought to make sense of it. This wasn’t 35 inches. This was 60-plus inches, five feet long or more, a huge impossible version.

“As you can see, I have made modifications,” Mrs Davinon said. “It always seemed so small before.”

Paul stumbled, actually fell to one knee. He was seriously unwell, all the stress, all the travel. All the years of searching.

“I’m ill,” he managed to say, but even as he forced the words he saw the truth.

Not ill; he was drugged. The coffee had been drugged.

He fell to the floor. He couldn’t prevent it. He lay looking up at the monstrous white hull, seeing it like - like - why, like Giles Gautier must have seen it swimming up after killing Phillip Davinon so long ago, imagining it to be the Felice.

“But why?” The words came out slurred and wrong, but Mrs Davinon understood. Of course she understood.

Through shifting, blurring light he saw her go past the great white hull of the ship to the other set of double doors and slide them back. There, in a glance, he saw the operating table pushed back against a far wall, in a horrid, few seconds saw the two figures strapped, propped up in wheelchairs, two men, both securely gagged with white surgical tape, with their legs and arms missing and their eyes wide with drug-numbed terror. Bettelmann and Lucas.

“This — can’t just — be — revenge.” He dragged out the words.

“Of course not, Mr Ro-dan,” Mrs Davinon said, just a blur and a voice now. “It’s completion and closure, with those who know the worth of it assisting. The ship will be finished!”

Paul tried to fight the deadness but was being swallowed by the depths of the blood-red room, so that all he could do was lie looking up at the bleached white hull of the Felice, as if looking at it from beneath the surface of the ocean.

“Masts and spars, Mr Ro-dan,” he was sure he heard the voice say.

“I must have my masts and spars!”

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