Victor Canning: characters, themes and locations

Abu Gul (His Bones are Coral)

Proprietor of the Latalla Hotel.

Achmed (His Bones are Coral)

The driver used by Professor Maraccini and his daughter.

Barota (His Bones are Coral)

Italian warship that had been scuttled off Suabar during the war with a cargo of high explosives, as well as the gold bullion that the Professor is planning to retrieve.

Begas (His Bones are Coral)

Tribe from western Sudan, more commonly spelled Bija or Bijas.

Britannia (His Bones are Coral)

One of two hotels in Suabar, the other being the Latalla in which Howard stays. The Britannia is presumably the more expensive, and it is where the British community holds regular dances.

Cairo (His Bones are Coral)

Where Howard and Ricky are based and from where Howard flies his missions.

Calabria (His Bones are Coral)

Province in the south of Italy, boyhood home of the Professor.

Chianti (His Bones are Coral)

Italian red wine with characteristic bottles enclosed in straw. It is Chianti flasks floating to the surface that give away the presence of the wrecked warship Barota.

Ciano, Galeazzo (1903-1944) (His Bones are Coral)

Italian fascist politician. See Mussolini

corals (His Bones are Coral)

Professor Maraccini is writing a book on corals and coral-reef formation.

diving (His Bones are Coral)

Howard has done some diving in the Med, and goes about it confidently when needed.

dog (His Bones are Coral)

"... a large black dog, the friendliest mixture of miscegenation and clumsiness that I have ever seen." This animal is adopted as a pet on the launch and brings about the final disaster. In the film a similar role is played by a small boy.

drugs (His Bones are Coral)

Howard's cargo of heroin is his first and disturbs his conscience. In the end he throws it into the sea, but only after he is assured that his partner Ricky does not expect him to bring it back. At the time drugs were certainly on the wrong side of the clean/dirty divide in criminality, and Canning was slightly daring in having a drug-runner, albeit repentant, as a hero.

fishing (His Bones are Coral)

The professor fishes for tuna from his launch, "trolling a great spinner". At the climax of the story he catches a large tunny-fish. The bleeding carcase of this fish falls overboard while he and Howard are diving which leads to the Professor being killed by the sharks.

Florence University(His Bones are Coral)

Professor Maraccini works for the biology department there. Canning knew Florence well from his war service.

Fuzzy-Wuzzy (His Bones are Coral)

The word Howard uses several times for black Sudanese. It is difficult to be sure how far the implicit racism is limited to the character and how far it infects the author. On outside evidence, I think it is mainly the character.

Gemini (His Bones are Coral)

The fact that Howard's star sign is Gemini, while Ricky's is Libra, is a recurring image in the story. Howard feels he has a twin personality, that he calls Gemini Two, incorporating his wicked side. Horoscopes and star signs do not occur anywhere else in Canning's work except in The Rainbird Pattern where they are essentially ridiculed.

grig (His Bones are Coral)

"He was as cheerful as a grig, whatever that is." Archaic simile. Grig is either 'a merry person' or possibly a cricket.

Hagara Reef (His Bones are Coral)

The reef outside Suabar on which the Professor is working.

hammerhead (His Bones are Coral)

A stuffed hammerhead shark on display in the Latalla Hotel is where Howard conceals his packets of heroin.

horoscope (His Bones are Coral)

See Gemini

Howard (His Bones are Coral)

See Smith, Howard

Latalla (His Bones are Coral)

The second hotel in Latalla, the one where Howard stays.

Magdalen Bridge (His Bones are Coral)

Howard plans to send a postcard of Magdalen Bridge, Oxford, to Ricky to signal his giving up of criminal ways.

manometer (His Bones are Coral)

Diver's instrument to measure depth.

Maraccini, Professor (His Bones are Coral)

The professor who engages Howard as his assistant in his diving. He is professor of marine biology at Florence University and collects for an aquarium at Naples.

Maraccini, Reta (His Bones are Coral)

'Daughter' of Professor Maraccini, though it eventually emerges that she was adopted from refugee status at the end of the war and he treats her as his mistress. Central figure in the book. She and Howard fall in love, but there are many slips.

Mussolini, Benito (1883-1945) (His Bones are Coral)

"... three cases of gold bullion. A secret consignment tied up with some dirty work in Italy … Mussolini, Ciano, someone feathering their nest …" Mussolini was the fascist dictator of Italy until his death in 1945. Ciano was foreign minister under Mussolini until 1943. He was executed by partisans in 1944. Canning had served in the army in Italy from 1943 to 1946.

Naples (His Bones are Coral)

Professor Maraccini has a connection with a Naples aquarium.

Norfolk (His Bones are Coral)

"Once as a boy I had been locked in a Norfolk church in broad daylight and had found myself prevented from shouting for release out of some feeling of outraging the holiness of the place if I did." Howard compares this feeling with the loneliness of diving.

Oxford (His Bones are Coral)

Where Howard plans to settle with Reta in England. Canning had spent most of his teenage years in Oxford.

Paleta, Enrico (His Bones are Coral)

Previous assistant to Professor Maraccini. Buried in the Protestant Cemetery of Suabar. We surmise that he fell in love with the Professor's daughter Reta and was killed on his orders.

Port Sudan (His Bones are Coral)

Where Howard had picked up the drugs after delivering a passenger and where he has taken off from before the crash.

Protestant Cemetery (His Bones are Coral)

Where Enrico Paleta is buried and where Howard is attacked by the Professor's thugs.

Red Sea (His Bones are Coral)

The only sea on which Sudan has a coastline.

Reta

See Maraccini, Reta

Ricky (His Bones are Coral)

Cairo-based criminal associate of Howard Smith. We never learn his surname. Howard sends him several cables asking for funds or instructions and gets unhelpful answers. At the end of the book we learn that Ricky has been arrested.

Rose Revived (His Bones are Coral)

Name of the pub near Oxford where Howard talks of staying with Reta.

Saunders (His Bones are Coral)

British commissioner in Suabar. "He didn’t have to tell me he was Winchester and Oxford."

SCUBA (His Bones are Coral)

Howard talks of "an automatic compressed-air diving lung", though what he refers to would nowadays be called scuba-diving gear. The equipment was first developed towards the end of WW II, but the term SCUBA (acronym for "self-contained underwater breathing apparatus") was not coined until 1952. Obviously Canning did not know it or feared his readers would not know it.

sharks (His Bones are Coral)

“The shark is a coward. He is happier if you pretend not to notice him. The only thing that makes him dangerous is blood in the water—so I do not harpoon the fish when he is near,” says the Professor. Later Howard sees "... four sharks. Smooth grey-and-white torpedo-like shapes, and the biggest one about twelve feet long. I was scared. I didn’t like them. I didn’t like the shape of their mouths or their small fixed eyes. I didn’t like the way they moved. I didn’t like the wicked scimitar curve of their tails. I couldn’t think of anything about them that I liked. Served as steaks with the best sauce in the world I would still have disliked them." Eventually the Professor is killed by sharks after a bleeding tunny-fish carcase is dropped into the water above him and Howard. Howard escapes but believes Reta has done this deliberately, until we later learn it was an accident caused by the dog.
In the making of the film an extra was killed by a shark.

Smith, Howard (His Bones are Coral)

Hero of the book. He is a former Fleet Air Arm pilot now working in partnership for a shady Cairo entrepreneur called Ricky, ferrying industrial diamonds, arms and illegal immgrants around Egypt and the Sudan. His latest cargo includes heroin, which worries him.

Suabar (His Bones are Coral)

Fictional town on the Red Sea coast of Sudan, scene of the story.

The Times (His Bones are Coral)

English newspaper. Howard says that he does not read it but only uses it wrap his shoes.

Wilde, Oscar (His Bones are Coral)

Howard misquotes the famous lines from The Ballad of Reading Gaol after the death of the Professor. " 'For each man kills the thing he loves. Some do it with a sword, some do it with a word.' Something like that." The actual lines are:

Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!