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I’ve just walked from the stern of the ship to the bow, along the main deck. This time, I didn’t see a single human being. You’d think you were on an empty ship. And apparently this is what I’ll get for most of the voyage. We’ve been on the move for nearly two hours and the land is well behind us now. I’m at the bow of the ship, in the middle of the forward deck, with the wind beating at me. I’m looking at what should be empty sea by now, though there are three or four ships coming towards us. Otherwise… Absolute silence. No sound of human activity. Sometimes you hear the water drumming distantly against the hull, you hear the wind, but you hear nothing else. Not a sound. It’s so quiet, I must be hallucinating. This surely must be a ghost ship.

We’re now passing east of the fishing fleet and there are a hell of a lot of boats out there. We’re close to the outer edge of the fleet, the eastern edge. The boats are spread out all the way back to the western horizon. The seagulls are still behind us, hundreds of seagulls scavenging, and the fishermen are out there in their hundreds, scavenging just like the seagulls.

It’s now five in the afternoon and the sea is much calmer. We’re heading directly into the setting sun, so our direction is due west. And the setting sun today is this wonderfully vivid, slightly distorted, shiny white disc, with an aureole of crimson light. It seems to be floating out of the sky and coming slowly towards us. It’s like a great, glowing, majestic flying saucer. And from the sun outwards, north and south, the sky is a rapturous pink, blending into blue… dark blue, then azure blue… right above the ship. The sun’s pouring its light down over all the great stacks of containers. Throwing this lovely light over the blue, green, orange, brown and white containers: a virtual mountain of steel containers, burnished in golden light.

I went for an early lunch because I was bored and again I was the only person there – apart from Zhan, as usual. I love listening to him when he tries to speak English. I love trying to work out what he’s saying. He definitely sounds like a Peter Sellers Chinaman to me, particularly when his ‘R’ becomes an ‘L’. My favourite came when I was having my curry and he asked me if I ‘like the lice’. And although I wasn’t thrilled by the thought of eating lice, I still managed to gobble down my rice.

I’ve just had a stroll around the whole ship, up and down the various walkways, all along the main deck, from bow to stern and back again. As usual, though we’re steaming away to Singapore, there isn’t a sign of a human being on board, apart from little old me. So I am, indeed, still all at sea on the ghost ship.

I’ve just forgotten the name of the port we’re going to dock at. I knew it earlier on, but now I’ve forgotten it. These lapses of memory are disturbing. I’ve just remembered (being forgetful, after all) that when I was passing through Frankfurt airport to make my connecting flight to Shanghai, I completely forgot the name of my destination. I just went blank. Stood there a couple of minutes, desperately trying to recall the name. Knew it was in China – had it right there on the tip of my tongue - but just couldn’t call it up. Couldn’t think of the word ‘Shanghai’. For about ten minutes I simply couldn’t recall it. So if some security-or-passport official had said to me, ‘Where are you going, sir?’ I’d have stared blankly at him and he’d have become very suspicious, maybe thinking I was Osama Bin Laden, what with my grey beard and all. And only yesterday, when they were doing the safety drills and I was trying, in my mind, to describe the lifeboats, I couldn’t think of the word ‘fibreglass’. I thought, ‘I must remember to put that little detail in.’ But I just couldn’t think of the bloody word. You know? Fibreglass! Then, eventually, I remembered it and forgot it, remembered it again and forgot it again, on and on. So I ended up going down to my cabin and pouring myself a beer and drinking it while trying to think of this word… Plastic…polystyrene…polyurethane… What the hell is it? And then it finally came back to me… Fibreglass, fibreglass, Shanghai, Shanghai… A sure sign of age, right? Brain-rot. Not helped by alcohol, of course, as I’m sure any doctor would tell me. Not that I’ll ever be dumb enough to confess to my sins.

Lots of clouds, but also lots of blue. The sea is a greenish-blue with that bluish haze on the horizon. And the other ships are spectral, almost incorporeal, in that same haze. We’re still heading due south, of course, and the land seems to taper off down there, or it’s curving away, but it will probably reappear as we come closer to it. I can still see that strip of land off the port side, lying to the west, and there are even more boats on the horizon. A beautiful silvery light all along the horizon, forming a sharp, glittering blade between sea and sky. Bright sky above the horizon, rising to darker clouds. Water still greenish-blue. Now green, now blue, depending upon the light. The Elisabeth Schulte is practically gliding through that languid, seductive sea, though either it’s manned by invisible men or it truly is a ghost ship.

By now the whole gang of Chinese seamen had gathered around me, all drunkenly inviting me down to their Smoking Room to continue the party. ‘No, guys, please,’ I said to them. ‘I’ve got to get back to my cabin. I’m sixty years old.’ Then this other Chinese guy said, ‘No, no, you can’t be that old.’ So I said, ‘Yes, I’m sixty years old.’ And he said, ‘No, no, you only look about fifty.’ Then another Chinese guy said to him, ‘No! Forty! This man cannot be fifty. He’s forty!’ So I tugged my grey beard and said, ‘This is genuine.’ Then someone else said, ‘Oh, he’s done something to his hair.’ In fact, it was Bombay Donald, who, drunk as a skunk, then said to me, ‘Your hair is amazing; it looks so young.’ And I said, ‘What are you talking about? I’ve got grey hair, damn it.’ And he said, ‘No, you don’t. You have silver… It’s kind of silver hair. It’s not normal hair.’ And I said, ‘Well, it is normal hair.’ And he said, ‘No, it’s a lovely platinum colour. Not grey. Platinum… Like the men in Hollywood movies have it.’ So I thought, ‘Oh, he’s completely barmy. Pissed obviously.’ Which I was, as well. So then, being as pissed as Bombay Donald, I said, ‘Ah, you should talk to my woman, Patricia. You should definitely talk to her about it. You can’t tell her I don’t look my age, because she always insists I look twice my age.’ Which made them all burst out laughing. Then I said, ‘You have to ask the women, you know, to get the truth.’ And they all laughed again. Then one of the Chinese seamen put the icing on the cake by saying, ‘You must be a very tough guy to come on a trip like this as your age. You must be a real macho man.’ Yeah, right, I thought. A macho man at sixty years old, with an enlarged and potentially cancerous prostate. Hey, give me a break, folks.

Lots of land out there now. There are dark clouds directly above the ship, but the sky is a radiant pink-streaked blue and the clouds, which have surrealistic shapes, some with eyes and ears and lips – I keep imagining I’m seeing faces – are outlined with brilliant silver, giving the separation between them and the sky a magical three-dimensional effect: cut-outs shaped by the hands of a benign god. And the land of Sumatra, with spectacular hills, is silhouetted in that familiar blue haze, under that dream-like sky and those dramatic cloud formations, all outlined with that dazzling silvery light, mixed with pink and blue.

I’m just recalling that last night I was in a deep and drunken, or deeply drunken, philosophical conversation with Bombay Donald, talking about how I’ve always felt that I was a natural-born sailor and was surprised at how my son, Shaun, is so keen on cargo ships and loves his work with the shipping company. As I told Bombay Donald, I don’t know where Shaun got it from, since he was born and raised in London, well away from the sea. Then I told Donald how Patricia once insisted that I had seaman’s eyes, blue eyes, eyes the colour of the sky, always focused on the middle distance. Which meant, at least according to Patricia, that I was a natural seaman. I said, ‘Bullshit!’ to that theory, so Patricia did her research and came up with the information that the name ‘Harbinson’ historically is ‘Son of Harbin’ and ‘Harbin’ is a black fish, a coalfish, from the Hebrides. Then Bombay Donald, being a practising Christian and of a somewhat mystical disposition at the same time - either he's deeply religious or he likes his drink, perhaps both - Bombay Donald said to me, 'Well, what's Shaun's date of birth?' And I said, 'Second of May.' And he said, 'Ah, well, he's a Sagittarius! And that, of course, is the sign of the fish.' So there you have it: I'm a fish of one kind, Shaun's a fish of another kind, and that explains our natural gravitation towards the sea and the ships. Perfectly logical, isn't it? Except that Shaun, being born on May 2, is actually a Taurus, the Bull, sign of the Builder. So that gets rid of another fishy theory, though I still remain the son of a coalfish, a natural born sailor.

We’re well into the Indian Ocean and the sky is a whitish blue, rising to iridescent light blue above the horizon. There are wonderful, surrealistic clouds up there again, creating great pyramids of light that beam obliquely onto the sea. And the other ships, some of them quite close to us, when they pass through those pyramids of light, you can make out their general shapes, but because of the light you can only see a kind of bluish blackness: you can’t discern any features.

Now if you stand long enough at the railing and watch a ship passing you, and just keeping watching as it travels toward the horizon, toward that vaporous whitish-blue haze between sea and sky, the ship appears to dissolve until it becomes, gradually, just like a ghost ship. And then, slowly but surely, it becomes more and more spectral, until it finally, literally, disappears. A ghost ship, indeed.

My day’s just been made. I was taking photos of one of those narrow alleyways where the really poor, ragged people live when this girl shot out of what looked like a hole-in-the-wall bar. She was young, about fourteen, wearing noticeably clean, modern, sexy clothes – skin-tight black jeans, black T-shirt, black leather jacket – and her face was made up. Not much make-up, because she didn’t really need it: just lipstick and eyeshadow. She was truly pretty and had a lovely smile. Standing very close to me, deliberately close, she started babbling away in Mandarin, nodding frequently in the direction of the doorway behind her. Though understanding that she was inviting me in, I wasn’t sure if she was propositioning me or not. I thought she might work in the bar; the family business, maybe. So I explained in English that I didn’t speak Mandarin. Then she moved even closer to me, her breasts practically grazing my chest, and gave me a radiant smile – a real heartwarming smile – and then she held up a little doll. It was a blonde doll in a bright-red dress and yellow sweater, offering a big, cheerful, welcoming grin. And written across the chest of this cute, grinning doll were the words, ‘I LOVE YOU!’
It was the nicest proposition I’ve ever had, but I still felt compelled to say, ‘No, thanks.’

Mortality… the ageing process and the prospect of death… I’ve been obsessed with death all my life and that obsession remains, not undiminished or made easier by the passing of time. I see death in my own shadow because I am, of course, the shadow and every bit as ephemeral. And just like the shadow, as the sun shifts, so my shadow grows shorter. I now see the end coming for myself and those friends that remain. There’s no avoiding it, no getting around it, and so finally one must learn to live with it. Which is why old friends become the best friends, no matter how far apart they may be.

Page 573 of Fred Kaplan’s biography of Gore Vidal: ‘As is often the case with writers after a change of location, Gore began to feel strong creative urges.’ I happen to think that’s true of most writers. After a change of location, I often get strong creative urges, as indeed I have since boarding this ship. This may explain why I’ve moved around so much during my sixty years. If I stay too long in any one place, I begin to feel suffocated, hemmed in by the familiar, and my creative urges are drastically diminished. A change of location is like getting a new life, even if only temporarily. My imagination requires constant movement, new scenery, new friends, a new set of expectations, but I sense that this is also a running away, a subconscious flight from the grave, from the dread of mortality. There’s no getting away from it, I know, but one can make the attempt. One stays younger by doing so.
Travel on, travel on…

There are also oil refineries along the coastline, at the base of vast swathes of sand-covered rock and pure sand – great beaches upon which few men have walked, if any at all.
Imagine putting a convict down there with nothing but the clothes he is wearing. ‘Go where you like,’ you say. ‘Do what you want. You now have absolute, perfect freedom.’ And, of course, he goes mad within days. Because everything looks so close, yet is so far away. He has no food. No water. Nothing grows there. No vegetation, no flowers, not a single fruit to give him sustenance, not even a shelter from the sun. Miles of sand sweep back from the sea to the base of the mountains. The mountains soar to the furnace of the sky. There’s no way to climb the mountains. There’s no food or water there. The mountains consist of nothing but rock and sand hot to the touch. But he can, at least, see the oil fields. He knows there are people there. The rigs look close and the water is calm, so he thinks it might be possible to swim out to there. Yet this is just a desperate hope. Deep down, he knows it isn’t possible. In fact, the oilrigs are too far away for any swimmer to reach. So the convict goes mad. He’s driven crazy by thirst and hunger and, finally, by the relentless, scorching heat. Most of all, however, he’s driven mad by the sight of the oilrigs out there, so near and yet so far, and by the beauty of what he sees around him, all of it out of reach.
Only God could have created such a place to punish the sinner. That place, which looks like paradise, is actually hell.

I just stepped out on the deck and it’s as hot as hell out there, a regular furnace. I stepped out, actually, to take a photograph, because outside my porthole window, directly in front of me, two of the Chinese seamen, wearing blue boiler suits and white helmets, are working on the top of a loading crane. One’s at a winch. He’s lowering the other one down the side of a 60ft-high crane post. They have a pulley system, so one of them lowers the rope from the top by turning the winch. The man below is sitting on what looks like one of those children’s swings, with two ropes tied to a wooden plank-seat. He has a tin of gunmetal-grey paint and he’s painting the post of the crane where the dents caused by the Seattle storm have been repaired. He’s painting the repaired parts to make them roughly the same colour as the original. So there he sits, fifty or sixty feet above the deck, no safety net below him, on his little swing, creating his little Picassos, framed by the sea and the sky, divorced from the real world. He looks like he’s floating in space, as contented as a bird on the wing. A man could have a worse life.

This trip through the Suez Canal continues to be the most disappointing part of the voyage so far, particularly given the high expectations engendered by my fond memories of making the same trip, albeit in the opposite direction, forty-odd years ago. I was, of course, expecting to go through it by day and we are, instead, going through it at night, when there’s little to see. So I did a lot of work and now I’m having a couple of whiskeys to illuminate the darker recesses of my psyche and cast light on the portals of my despair. Sounds quite poetic that, doesn’t it? I must be pissed already. I am travelling through the Suez Canal and thinking of going to bed. I just don’t believe this. And when I went down to dinner, there wasn’t a soul there. All the officers are working, don’t you know, because we’re going through the Suez Canal and that keeps them busy. In fact, last night and tonight are the worst two nights I’ve had on this voyage so far, so I think I’ll call it a day. I’m getting pissed because I’m pissed off. Yeah, that’s what I’m doing. I’m pissed off and getting pissed. Not much else to do, really.

More shooting stars! And the other stars are big and luscious. You imagine you could just reach up and pluck those stars from the sky. Some of them seem to be moving. Which of course is an illusion. But the shooting stars aren’t an illusion; they’re very clear, very bright… It’s like a big fireworks display… And look! Even more shooting stars, raining over the fleet. Now, to add to the shooting stars, I’m seeing these magical effects, where light seems to flash on and off over the dark sea. I don’t know where it’s coming from, but it’s damned unusual and eerie. This great, inexplicable glowing that repeatedly flickers on and off… There’s that light again, on the eastern horizon. It’s just out of this world. A huge, silent explosion of eerie light that spreads out and recedes, leaving starlit darkness again. Yet no sound. No thunder. Nothing. Just the roaring of the wind and the rushing sea. Not a sign of rain. I think there’s a ship out there, on the north-eastern horizon. I’m convinced I can see a light blinking on and off, though you can’t be too sure of what you’re seeing here. No wonder ancient mariners really believed that they were seeing weird and wonderful things out at sea and in the sky. It is so easy to believe that you’re seeing unidentified flying objects, strange creatures emerging from the sea: things you’re not really seeing.

I was at that age where disaster lurked around every corner, where relatives and friends my own age were dropping off the map, isolated by illness, struck down by death, and where nothing was predictable any longer – no more than anything was predictable on the ghost ship. And I knew that my son had, perhaps without realising it, given me that long voyage as a potential last fling, a final reliving of my lost youth, before the threats presented by the ageing process could snatch that kind of freedom from me, once and for all. In fact, the voyage had renewed me, pulling me out of my narrowing world, taking me far away from my shrinking horizons, giving me back my optimism and the will to continue. Now, though my horizons would continue to shrink, I could strike out in other directions, renew myself, recycle myself, just as Adi had done in Israel, with Gerry quietly supporting her. I would write no more fiction. No one wanted it anyway. Instead, I would write a factual book about my voyage on the ghost ship, about my new Indian and Chinese friends, about my incessant talking into my Dictaphone, my recording of my random thoughts, the helpless unravelling of my past. I would relive it all as I wrote about it, and see, in my mind, the ship sailing on… A ghost ship, melting into a blue haze, on the horizon forever… As long as I was conscious and had a memory, it would always be there. And as long as the ship was always there, I would always be here.

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