Road To The Coast

by John Harris

  ‘My Christ,’ he said, staring with contempt at Ash. ‘You and you fine words! You make me sick!’

  Ash lifted his head heavily, like a great red bull chivvied by an angry terrier. Then Dodgin slammed the door behind him and they heard his feet in the alleyway.

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ Dainty said. ‘Somebody stop him. He’ll do something. There’ll be shooting.’

  He rushed out of the saloon and they heard voices on the deck outside.

  Ash stared at Grundy, his eyes full of hatred, then he hurried after the old man.

  Grace had vanished from the saloon when Ash returned below, but he heard her voice from the captain’s cabin. As he reached the doorway, he saw her standing in a corner with Grundy’s pimply face only a few inches from her own as he jabbed at her with the heavy parallel rule, badgering her with noisy questions, half-crouching, his black oilskin hanging down round him like a bat’s wings.

  As Ash swung him violently round by the shoulder, he seemed for a moment to be all whirling arms and legs before he fell across the bunk and lay staring up at them, the ruler clattering to the floor. For a second there was silence and they could hear the thwarted Dodgin’s voice still raised shrilly on the deck, still abusing the disappearing water boat.

  ‘What the hell are you up to, Grundy?’ Ash demanded, towering over the mate, bristling with loathing for Grundy’s obsequiousness which had turned into cowardice and finally treachery. Grundy stared up at him, his jaw working as he tried to speak.

  ‘Well, come on, let’s have it,’ Ash said harshly, the wet shirt clinging to his big shoulders. ‘Haven’t you caused enough damned trouble for one day?’

  Grundy scrambled to his knees, reaching for the ruler, and remained there as though in an attitude of supplication, the oilskin twisted round his body. ‘I want to know what he was after.’ His voice rose shrilly. ‘What was he asking that kid? He was asking her something. We’ve a right to know. We’re in it as much as you.’

  Ash gestured. ‘Not this time, you’re not.’

  ‘You’re keeping it away from us! It’s some rotten game you’re up to with him. We shall never get away from this lousy place.’

  ‘Yes, we shall.’

  Grundy scrambled to his feet. ‘When then? Go on, tell me when?’ His voice rose to a shout. ‘You can’t,’ he accused, ‘because you don’t know. Do you? Eh? Do you?’

  Ash kicked the door to, conscious of Teresa’s frightened face and the anger that had brought two spots of colour to Grace’s cheeks.

  ‘We ought to have signed the bloody paper,’ Grundy concluded. ‘And have done.’

  ‘We haven’t got the damned paper any more, you fool,’ Ash snapped. ‘It was thrown away.’

  ‘We could write another.’ Grundy’s voice fell and became soft and conspiratorial. ‘You could write it. You speak the lingo. Dodgin needn’t know.’

  Ash stared at him with a fascinated revulsion. ‘You’re a bit of a bloody Judas, Grundy, old chum, aren’t you?’ he said slowly.

  Grundy’s sagging face flared immediately at the insult and his eyes looked angry again.

  ‘You’re a nice one to talk,’ he said. ‘What’s in that briefcase of yours? It’s funny you lost your clothes but not that.’

  ‘It’s got papers in it. Personal papers.’

  ‘Money, more like,’ Grundy said. ‘I was talking to that soldier on the water boat. The one who spoke English. He’d got hold of a story about some money that had been pinched. He’s just arrived from Córdoba and they’re all laughing at it. Half a million, he said it was.’

  ‘It’s grown,’ Ash said sombrely. ‘By God, it has!’

  ‘They’re looking for some kid, too. He told me so. That’s why so many of ’em came today.’ Grundy stared at Teresa and it was obvious he had guessed her identity.

  He swung round on Ash, his spaniel eyes furious, his weak face twisted with anger, conscious of Ash’s contempt and his own humiliating hysteria.

  ‘I’m going to tell Dodgin,’ he yelled. ‘I know what he’d say. He’d say to hell with the kid. And with you too! He wouldn’t stand for it. And I’m not going to either!’

  As he reached for the door handle, scrambling to get out of the cabin as though he were beginning to regret his defiance, Ash stepped forward. Teresa screamed as Grundy brought up the heavy brass ruler and a fleck of blood welled up on Ash’s cheek. Grace saw a red light of rage appear in his fox’s eyes and she pushed him back with all her strength.

  ‘No, Harry,’ she cried. ‘No, for God’s sake!’

  As Grundy turned again, she snatched the enamel jug from under the bunk and brought it down on the mate’s head with a clang that made his knees buckle and scattered water and chippings of enamel all over the deck.

  ‘Listen, you greasy gadget,’ she stormed as he sagged against the door, ‘if you bring that steward yapping round here, I’ll have the pleasure of telling him just where you were during the shelling, while Phizacklea was getting killed. If you’d been up on the bridge then instead of in the saloon screaming you head off, we might have got clear and nobody would be worried about Carroll.’

  Grundy straightened up, rubbing his head, not looking at her furious face. His expression was sullen and full of suppressed anger as he turned abruptly and went out into the alleyway.

  Grace stared at the closed door for a moment, her face thoughtful, then she turned to Teresa and knelt down, holding the child close to her, so that only part of the small scared face showed above her shoulder, still staring in awe at the new dent in the water jug.

  Grace looked up at Ash, lifting her head slowly. ‘What are we going to do now?’ she asked wearily. ‘He knows too.’

  Ash lit a cigarette and blew a few hurried puffs at it before he replied. ‘I don’t know yet,’ he said.

  ‘Will he tell anyone?’

  ‘He might if he gets a chance. But I think you shut him up for the time being.’ He began to laugh softly. ‘My God,’ he said. ‘Fancy me letting a woman do the dog-fighting.’

  ‘That’s all right.’ There was a flash of the old vitality as she replied. I enjoyed it. He’d had it coming for a long time. I was afraid you’d murder him.’

  ‘I probably would have.’

  ‘Then it’s a good job I stopped you.’

  He grinned at her. ‘You and me, Grace,’ he said, ‘are like a cross-talk act. Separately, we don’t add up to much. Together, we could go a long way.’ He eyed her admiringly. ‘We’d make a damned handsome couple too, come to think of it,’ he added.

  She seemed unable to drag her eyes away from that predatory profile of his, then she saw the blood trickling down his cheek and she pushed Teresa gently away from her.

  ‘You ought to bathe that,’ she said.

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  She ignored him and made him sit on the edge of the bunk.

  ‘Get some water, Tess.’

  The child turned away, whimpering.

  ‘Poor little devil,’ Ash said compassionately. ‘She shouldn’t be seeing all this violence.’

  Grace’s face seemed hard suddenly. ‘Better this than being found out,’ she said. ‘There’s far worse than a bit of brawling in this world. Where I lived as a kid, it happened outside the pubs every Saturday night and it never did me any harm. Now shut up and let me look at your face.’

  She touched the cut gently then she took out a handkerchief and wiped away the blood. ‘Oh, God,’ she said wearily, all the courage flowing out of her suddenly. ‘What the hell have we got ourselves mixed up in?’

  ‘Come off it, Grace.’ Ash’s grin returned as her strength ebbed. ‘Things are never as bad as they seem. Keep the home fires burning. Every cloud has a silver lining and all that.’

  He put his arm round Teresa and drew her close.

  ‘Scared, little ’un?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Sure?’

  The child stared at him for a moment, then while she was still fighting to control her
self, her eyes brimmed over with tears and she flung her arms round him and sobbed.

  ‘Well, that makes two of us again,’ he said quietly, holding her close to him.

  Grace raised her eyes to him over the top of the child’s head. ‘Shall we get home?’ she asked. ‘Ever?’

  ‘Sure we will,’ Ash said confidently. ‘It can’t go on like this for long.’

  ‘Carroll seems to think it can.’

  ‘Not on your nelly. He wouldn’t dare. It’s too dangerous and he’s too scared of being found out.’

  ‘Are you just being optimistic for my benefit?’

  Ash looked up into her eyes for a second, then he nodded.

  ‘I’m being optimistic,’ he admitted quietly. ‘I’m sorry, I think we’re stuck. With all these demonstrations downriver, Carroll can do anything he wishes in the name of public safety.’

  He went on stroking the silent child’s hair then she saw the defeat in his face replaced abruptly by a glow of determination. ‘We’ve been sitting here too damn long,’ he went on, ‘getting ulcers while that clot Carroll gets away with it. It’s time I did something about it.’

  There was something in his voice that frightened Grace. ‘Harry,’ she said, ‘what are you going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I don’t know yet. But I’ll think of something.’

  Twelve

  Ash remained subdued for the rest of the day, Grace noticed, his eyes thoughtful, and he seemed to hear only part of what she said whenever she spoke to him. As the afternoon dragged on, the rain stopped again and the skies cleared swiftly into a pale glow that seemed to have been washed clean of colour. The saffron haze that hung about the horizon blended weakly with the fading metallic blue of the heavens.

  With the disappearance of the rain, life seemed to begin ashore once more. It seemed almost as though the frogs started up as the rain stopped, the sound of their croaking coming across the silent water to the ship. Then they heard the creak of wheels as an old man drove a mule cart along the river path towards the town.

  As evening approached, Grace began to notice a considerable activity among the ship’s carpenters and several times had to move out of the path of men carrying oil drums or the heavy planks from the hatch covers. They seemed to be gathering their equipment in the space where the empty falls hung over the water, but she thought nothing of it until she returned from seeing Teresa into her bunk for the night. By this time, under a cluster of deck lights that were hidden from the town by the bulk of the bridge and the smoke stack, she saw a raft was beginning to take shape, an unsafe-looking square of timber, sealed oil drums and rope. The carpenter was just knocking in the last of the six-inch nails which held it secure and Dodgin was bustling eagerly round him, while Dainty and Grundy looked on with silent disapproval.

  ‘What’s happening?’ she asked uneasily and Dodgin turned his face towards her, his thin features animated with enthusiasm.

  ‘Going ashore,’ he said.

  ‘Who’s going ashore?’

  ‘Me.’ Dodgin grinned. ‘Me and Mr Ash.’

  Grace started at the raft. ‘On that?’

  ‘That’s it, ma’m. It’ll be all right if we sit still. We worked it out. Me and him.’

  He spoke with respect and a warm regard for Ash and his powers of command. All the bitter anger that Grundy’s goading had started in him had disappeared in his enthusiasm for action.

  ‘When?’ The chill of the night air seemed to Grace to strike colder and the sound of the frogs and the cicadas in their eternal chorale from the weeds came more clearly across the water.

  ‘Midnight about,’ Dodgin said.

  ‘I don’t like it,’ Dainty interrupted in a mourning voice. ‘Why can’t he wait till the lifeboat’s repaired?’

  ‘Oh, sod the boat,’ Dodgin snapped. ‘It’ll take a fortnight’s hard work to finish all them holes. This is quicker.’

  ‘We can wait.’

  ‘You can perhaps. But he can’t. And I can’t. We can’t swim it – not that far. So he’s trying it this way. OK?’ Dodgin stared at the old man defiantly, daring him to stop him.

  ‘If I had my way–’

  As Dainty began to protest, Dodgin cut him short. ‘Oh, for Gawd’s sake,’ he said, ‘stop arguing. Go and get steam up, like he said, can’t you?’

  ‘I’m getting steam up,’ Dainty retorted plaintively, and Grace became aware for the first time of the sounds of activity that came through the engine-room skylight and the first thin dribble of smoke that rose from the ship’s funnel. ‘With this old tub anything might ’appen but we’ll be ready when you are.’

  Dodgin turned towards Grace again, his eyes bright, the suspicion of a smile on his mouth, and she knew the hot glare of Ash’s personality had been turned on him full blast. It had more power – far more power – than that gift of the gab he was so proud of, for it had conquered the lot of them one after another, first Teresa, then herself, then Grundy and Dainty, and finally Dodgin, the most implacable of the lot, warming them all like the earth before the sun.

  ‘We’re going to float her into them weeds there’ – Dodgin jerked his hand towards the shore – ‘into that creek just above the town. Everything we throw overboard goes in there. Doesn’t take long either. Neither will this. Don’t worry, ma’m, I’ll be there with him if anything happens.’ His pale eyes shone with enthusiasm and an odd pride that he was taking part in something with Ash. ‘But it won’t,’ he concluded. ‘He’ll see we’re all right. You see if he doesn’t.’

  Ash was sitting on the bunk in the little cabin to which he had moved after the first night on board the Ballaculish. He was smoking quietly when she appeared in the doorway and the place was dark, for he hadn’t attempted to switch on the light. He crouched in the glow of the dim bulb in the alleyway, staring at the deck between his feet, lost in thought.

  ‘They tell me you’re going ashore,’ Grace said.

  He looked up and moved over to make room for her alongside him on the bunk. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘What price glory?’

  She was not moved by his joking and went on staring unhappily at him.

  ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the time’s come.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s time to stop kidding ourselves, Grace. Grundy isn’t going to keep quiet much longer. He’s not the type. Soon everybody’ll know. Carroll will have those photographs soon. He’s probably got ’em now – tonight, while we’re talking and she’s asleep. Any day now, he’ll march on board and we won’t be able to lift a finger to stop him.’

  He smiled and patted her hand.

  ‘But before that,’ he went on, ‘there’s me – Harry Ash, gent.’ There were no mock heroics, no trace of breezy grandeur, just confidence in his own strength and courage. ‘Me and Horatio Dodgin and Dodgin’s Patent Raft for the Rescue of Besieged Mariners. Let’s hope to God we haven’t left it too late.’

  ‘Isn’t there any other way?’

  Ash replied with another question. ‘Have you ever woken up to the fact that in your whole life you’ve never done anything really worthwhile and it’s about time you did?’

  He studied her for a moment. ‘No,’ he said, as though he were talking to himself. ‘That’s a damn silly question and I ought to know better than to ask it because it obviously doesn’t apply to you, Grace.’ He screwed out his cigarette end in the tin lid he’d been using for an ash tray and gave her a crooked grin.

  ‘I’ve been hanging on and hanging on, Grace,’ he pointed out slowly, ‘thinking something will turn up.’

  ‘You’ve done more than anybody else,’ she said.

  He shrugged. ‘Maybe. But now I’ve decided it’s time I did something practical. That’s all.’

  She sat silently, touched by his obvious sincerity, and he watched her, aware at last he’d lived too long on optimism. It had suddenly dawned on him as he’d seen her courage ebbing away what Willowgreen had always meant by “hard work and applica
tion”. It meant very simply not running away from things, that was all; and he, Henry Hackforth Ash, who’d never run away from any man in his life and had once even won a gong in the war for being clot enough not to run away when perhaps he ought to have done, had been running away from responsibility, just as she’d once told him, ever since they took his uniform off him and put him into civvies.

  He looked up at Grace and grinned again, his seriousness gone. ‘Can’t go on putting the old yours-truly first all the time,’ he said.

  ‘You’re going ashore,’ she replied. ‘That’s good enough for me.’

  He waved a hand airily. ‘That? Oh, that’s just a bit of fun. Have a jug-up, you know. We’re running out of booze.’

  ‘You know damn well it’s not a bit of fun,’ she said angrily. ‘They’ve got guns. What’ll happen if they catch you, if they find out who you are?’

  ‘The usual, I suppose. Clink, lock-up or otherwise chokey. But I’ve been there before and in any case, I’ve told you, Carroll and his shower couldn’t even catch a cold, let alone me. So the question doesn’t arise.’

  ‘I think you’re being silly,’ she said.

  ‘Grace, old dear,’ he replied gaily. ‘I brought you aboard this old can. I’ve got to get you safely ashore somewhere. Push the boat out. Be a gent. Damsel in distress and all that. We had a motto at school. Fais ce que tu dois – adviegne que pourra. C’est commandé au chevalier.’

  ‘And what’s all that mean?’

  Ash smiled. ‘Good old Grace. I don’t know who wrote it. I never bothered to inquire. But it means Do what thou must, befall what may. Thus, for the knight, it is ordained. Only bit of French I could ever quote. Very good school, you see. Best the old man could afford. Almost broke the bank. But it didn’t suit me. Or I didn’t suit them. They asked me to leave.’

  He was talking quickly and she knew he was trying to keep her from asking questions. Then he grinned at her and came down to earth, his voice more gentle. ‘I’ve gone soft, Grace, that’s what it is. I’m ready, like a ripe plum, to drop into the laps of the milk and water brigade who earn their living honestly. Any moment now, I’ll start quoting something noble from Shakespeare. I feel as smug as a kid on a pot.’