arriving back carrying nothing but ghosts once the illnesses that lurked in the jungle had taken their grip. Some said it was the lands themselves that were cursed, damning any civilized man foolish enough to visit. Others blamed the savages and their magic, and their attempts to poison the soul of the white man. Whilst Martin found no reference to either theory in his medical volumes he knew that it stood to reason that at least a quarter of the men he watched would die of such affliction. Yet they, like he himself, had boarded regardless. Indeed, to his knowledge, there was never a shortage of those willing to enlist and bed down in the vermin-ridden corners of the merchant fleet. This curiosity, he thought, watching the toils of the crew against the shifting backdrop of the restless sea, had to be worthy of debate and investigation, and he made a note to question the captain on his views later in the voyage, once he was sure he had gained his confidence.
But such a day seemed far off as the Anne followed her early course towards Cape Verde, blown by the favourable wind. Captain Henry kept himself remote, locked in his cabin with his papers, issuing instructions through his bosun and mates. It was only the purser he had time for, and the two would be in conference from dawn to daybreak poring over the balance sheet, if quarterdeck gossip was to be believed. And so it was that Martin found himself becoming fascinated with his more accessible new shipmates: some old like the master craftsmen on board, riggers and carpenters bearing the scars of a lifetime spent at sea, all bent bones and rotten teeth, with sallow skins that were testimony to endless scurvy-plagued voyages; others younger, boys hardly in their teens but already marked by the poverty and brutality of their childhoods ashore. Martin would watch them and wonder if their adoption of the sailor’s life was a noble defiance of the hand that fate had dealt them or a surrender to the inevitable. Were they like him, chancing a final throw of the dice in the hope of a different kind of life on the seas or merely succumbing to a different kind of servitude from the one they could expect on land? Irrational though he knew it was, he felt more of an affinity with the men climbing the masts and rigging than he did with his cabin-mates on the quarterdeck. That he who was educated, like them, and born into the relative middle-class privilege of officer life should somehow feel removed from them and more at one with the common crew was a cause of an unsettling disquiet. Was this not the trip that was going to cure him of such conceits, were these maritime endeavours not the ones that would so occupy his thoughts as to leave no room for such subversive and ungodly meanderings in his mind?
That was the problem at this stage of the journey, the paucity of stimuli to exercise his faculties. For all that he chose to observe the men of the ship at work and amuse himself with the formulation of theses as to each one’s past and future prospects, he knew that these were not his charges and represented neither reason nor purpose to his presence on the Anne. No, he would have to wait for his work to begin, once they were moored off the African shore. Then the trading would start and his scant medical knowledge would be put to the test. Which of the negroes on offer would make the best slaves, which would be most likely to survive the trip to the Americas, which hid the fever they were already surrendering to? Ship’s Surgeon. A gloriously impotent title, he reflected bitterly. Who amongst the crew would seek his advice for their ailments? None. They would be better served following their own instincts, given the inadequacy of his expertise. Somehow the tawdry nature of his qualifications seemed ever more transparent now his maiden voyage was underway. Conversations with his fellow officers had been strangled, stunted affairs as he struggled to conceal what he felt were ruinous shortcomings. Ship’s Surgeon. By what right did he answer to this preposterous title? By virtue of the handful of lectures he had attended, by virtue of the boxful of dusty volumes he had brought aboard to saddle the Anne with even more dead weight? Yes, these, and a curiosity which did not always serve him well when dealing with figures of authority, and the ten guineas which had secured him his practitioner’s certificate. No, the privilege he had been born with had brought him to the title, his space in the quarterdeck cabin and his exemption from onerous duties on deck. Was this the reason for the vague sense of guilt which ate at him with a growing relentlessness, the same sense of guilt which he had taken to the sea to escape? Perhaps, he thought without pleasure or emotion, perhaps. For this identification was worthy of no respite, it was a diagnosis without cure. All he could do was wait for Africa, wait to busy himself amongst the savages; at least they were unlikely to be inquisitive about his past.
The stringy guy in the vest and cut-off jeans turned out to be called Henri. Once you were up close to Henri you could appreciate why he didn’t tend to talk much. Not that I hadn’t seen worse teeth, just that they usually belonged to horses or ancient shrunken heads. Once you were up close you could study his skin colour and still be none the wiser as to whether this was a tan or ingrained dirt. For all this, my first impressions of the man were accurate, he was cool about most things; cool with you if you were cool with him. I’m about to describe how I, on the face of it, ripped him off after he’d trusted me enough to give me my start in the apple donut trade, although I can’t say I meant to rip him off from the start, it was just the way things worked out. Anyway, in advance of going through how this came to be, let me also point out that for every franc, centime and pastry that I took from him I would estimate that I repaid him twice or threefold in increased revenue from my efforts and those of the recruits that I brought to him. I’m sure he knew this and would be cool if I were to see him right now. And how I would like to see him now, a friendly face; could he take me back to those times?
Henri’s van took us to the beach where we would meet with the car of Henri’s pal. Henri’s pal’s name is not relevant, he was just the supplies man, he had made the journey to the bakery whilst Henri had been gathering his itinerant workers from the campsite and a host of other equally prestigious Riviera addresses. We, the contents of the van, were then introduced to the contents of the car, the donuts. Our mission was then explained to us in tones of exhortation. That mission was simple and straightforward: sell the bastards, lots of them. At least, that was how it was explained to me on that very first day, in a mixture of Henri’s, and giggling German chicks’, pidgin English. They knew I would have a hard time that day, they must have been pissing themselves at the look of bewilderment on my face as I was kitted out like a cinema ice-cream girl – minus torch – with my tray of donuts, bag of change and patch of land to patrol. I was shown the rendezvous point where the van would come to collect me and my leftovers at the end of the day’s toil. The money I would be paid was dependent on my own success in selling; this was made very clear, together with the final, crucial, part of the briefing.
I never figured out whether this was Henri’s own personal scam or whether he was part of a higher chain. Quite who had decided that what the droves of horizontal French crammed up beside each other under an eighty-degree-plus heat like a giant herd of poisoned wildebeest at the side of the waterhole really wanted, and wanted with a perverse craving that defied all logic, was apple donuts ripened under the sun by being walked up and down the beach all day was never made clear. The chances are that if I’d have met that person on that first day, the encounter would have resulted in extreme violence. I trudged my way through the few narrow corridors of sand left uncovered and unclaimed by beachtowels for over three hours without selling a single crumb. Occasionally I would pass a fellow hawker from the morning crew and would be dismayed to see their inventory now significantly depleted. Mine seemed to be breeding in the tray – I’d started with around thirty and must have had over forty by lunchtime. It did strike me of course, that I was at a disadvantage in not being able to shout my pitch in French. Somehow I’d forgotten to ask how this might be done, maybe I’d just assumed that English was the recognized tongue of seaside cake selling. Around midday I sat down, defeated, ready to rest my burning feet. Suddenly, an ambush. A pack of predatory old crones waddling along the beach perimeter by the road fell victim to a strange hunger. Seven donuts later, they left. I had my first sale.
To understand the point of it all is to understand that I had let them come to me. Unwittingly, sure, but I had toiled and toiled and not sold a single thing until I had stopped and stayed still and thought of something else. It seemed obvious later that nobody was ever going to buy from a stressed-out malcontent with a bead of sweat dropping from his nose. No, they were only going to be tempted by someone at ease with himself, someone confident in the power of his goods to attract purchasers by their own merits. Forgive me for lingering on the details and understand that there were lessons I learned on that beach, that