Our Time Is Gone

by James Hanley

  ‘Months,’ he said to himself, ‘months away.’ It seemed like years. He would remember that going away as long as ever he lived. But thank heavens she was out of hospital now, and whether Desmond or Kilkey or any of them called or didn’t call to see their mother, it didn’t matter a hang now. She had said as much. ‘That’s why she damned well shifted, I know,’ thought Mr. Fury. ‘Yes. I know. Thought she might seem like she was depending on them.’

  ‘Well, that was all right, but it was a pity she hadn’t been a bit more independent all along. Hanging on to a crew like that. The whole thing in a nutshell was that they didn’t give a damn. All right so long as they were all right.’ He shifted from one foot to the other. Here was the sea, a beautiful sea, a red-hot sun, a clear blue sky. But you had looked at those things so often that now it was just as boring as having to look at your own face every time you shaved. Of course you thought about those things. In a world like this you couldn’t dodge them. He had thought of his life and her life, and all the children’s lives for the whole of his voyaging life. You had to.

  ‘But Fanny thinks it’s marvellous being a sailor. No responsibilities, no nothing. Good old stubborn Fanny, who doesn’t know one end of a rope from the other!’

  You had to laugh. Well, could she see him now she might alter her opinions. Here was the forty-seventh year of voyaging, and they wouldn’t go on for ever.

  Sometimes you wondered what you would do when you packed your bag for the last time, and said good-bye to your mates. You wondered about that armchair, and the quiet life, but all the time you knew it was all a cod. ‘All a cod! I’m no better off than when I began. And if Fanny and me can get back to Ireland we’ll think it’s just grand.’

  Eight bells rang out. Mr. Fury rushed into the fo’c’sle, and taking some cotton waste from his bunk he stuffed some wads of it into his pockets and went off down the deck with the other man. Their feet rang out on the bare deck like so many hammer-taps. The blue sea was there for every eye to see, but hardly any glanced its way. In groups of twos and threes they threaded their way down the alleyway, so reaching the door that led down to the engine room.

  One after another made his way, worm-like, down the dizzying and shiny steel ladders. One whistled as he went. One paused to clear his throat. Mr. Fury reached deck level and made his way into the stokehold. The sudden change of air made him cough. Lately he had been very conscious of this cough. The cough was a voice, it was a word telling him what he could never dodge, the truth. He was afraid of it. It worried him. Only the young and inexperienced coughed like that when moving into the stokehold that belched acrid fumes into the air. As he went towards his furnace the door was thrown open, and the relieved man’s last act was to draw forth a torrent of flame as he replenished the fire’s mouth.

  ‘’Lo, Denny,’ he said. ‘How’s she making it on top?’ and then he threw down the long steel rake, wiped down his naked body with a rag.

  ‘Nothing to shout about,’ replied Mr. Fury. ‘The sea’s blue like yesterday and there’s nothing to be seen. All clear below?’ he asked, as he drew off his jacket, then pulled his shirt over his head, and rolling them into a ball put them into the small wooden box that stood near the passage that made way to the bunkers.

  His mate looked at him. ‘Ribs beginning to show, Fury,’ he said, putting on his shirt and jacket.

  ‘They always did,’ replied Mr. Fury, laughing. ‘I was never a fleshy man.’

  ‘Well, you haven’t dried up yet, anyhow,’ commented the other, and he gave Mr. Fury a resounding slap on the shoulder. ‘How’s your missus? You were telling me some time back she was bad. D’you hear from her now?’

  ‘Oh aye! I’d a letter when we called to Mudros. She’s up and about again. One thing about my missus is that she doesn’t believe in lying on her back too long. Fanny’s a sticker,’ he went on, smiling. ‘I believe she could fire as good as meself if she were to try.’

  ‘You’re an old boaster, Fury. You and your missus! Well, so-long.’

  The man tramped heavily out of the stokehold and up the ladder towards purer air. Mr. Fury disappeared for a moment down the passage to the boilers. Then returned again. He began to rake off hot ashes.

  When a neighbouring furnace door opened the whole stokehold was drenched in the glow, and a huge shadow was flung across the floor. There was no daylight and no darkness, only the interminable glow, and climbing the acrid air the planes of heat. Near by the engine’s throb was gigantic. Having raked the ashes, Mr. Fury drew back, sat down on a load of coal just deposited by his trimmer.

  ‘Funny that fellow Ledlow asking me how Fanny was. Don’t even remember telling him about her being in hospital. Nice of him to ask, anyhow.’ He ran his fingers over his ribs, laughing to himself. All the thousands of times he had stripped to work, to wash, to rest, he had never taken much notice of himself. But the cough. Yes, he took notice of that. You had to. It meant you couldn’t take it much longer.

  ‘I suppose forty-seven years is a long time,’ he would say to himself, and he remembered that more vividly, now that Ledlow had noticed this. It had never happened before. Half his life in the stokehold and here he was coughing and spluttering just like a youngster taking his first smoke. It made him think of a particular day. He’d have to get out, of course. Couldn’t last for ever. It made him think of Fanny. Made him remember those hard-earned savings taken by her, and now they were down the drain-pipe. ‘She’s changed, but I wish she’d done it sooner,’ he told himself. ‘She sees the waste, the silliness of the whole thing, and now she’s making frantic efforts to make up for it.’ He had to admire her. ‘I know she’s working somewhere. Yes, she is working and she hasn’t let on.’

  When he thought over this, he realized how little he had done. He’d be through with the sea after this war, and beyond the old-age pension he could offer her nothing.

  ‘We’ll see!’ he would say. ‘We’ll see about all that.’

  He went back and stood by his furnace door, and from time to time he wiped his face and shoulders. ‘She’d accept help from them if they offered it to-morrow. There she and me don’t hit it. I wouldn’t take a cent off any of them. Blast the lot of them. They’ve never seemed like real children to me. I’ve always been too far away from them.’

  Here he was back again at the old game after only a year or two ashore. He might have stayed on the railway, but it wouldn’t have done. ‘It would have killed me. I never worked with such a lot of old women.’ The sea was better than that.

  ‘This damned coughing tells me I’ll have to chuck it soon.’ Well, perhaps he’d see the war out, anyhow. His trimmer came through with a load of coal. Mr. Fury began to stoke up. Oil engineer stuck his head in, a vision in white.

  ‘You’ll have to make her go,’ he said; ‘make her go.’

  The stokehold heard it, smiled to itself. Make her go? Wasn’t that their job. In every ship that had ever put to sea, it had been making her go. A fireman went up to Denny Fury.

  ‘Have you heard?’

  ‘Heard what?’ asked Mr. Fury, and upon the impact of the furnace door, a cloud of dust streamed upwards. ‘Heard what? The same old story—yes.’

  ‘No need to say a word then, pal, so long as you know. Some people in this world know everything. Some know so much.’ And he walked back to his furnace door, the remainder of his words becoming a jumble of sound, and when suddenly a mountain of coal in the near-by bunkers moved, the sound was dimmed out, a long soft slithering sound as the coal moved.

  Of course he’d heard. Every trip, every watch. Of course he’d heard. Nothing new. The calm sea, the blue sea, shimmering under the sun. But streaked with danger. Everybody knew that. Yet you never gave much thought to it. You were far too busy, too hot, too stifled for breath. You swung open the furnace door and looked into the blaze. You closed it again and heard the quick roar in that burning mouth. And the throb of the steel beyond reminded you. You were in the centre of a world, the world you inhabited in
order to make ‘her go.’

  Suddenly a ring of bells above his head. Nothing in that. Bells rang out in every watch, and what they said with their brass voices was no different to what they had said a watch ago, a year ago. Again the other fireman came over, put a hard calloused hand on Mr. Fury’s shoulder.

  ‘We’re being chased,’ he said and went off again.

  To people who knew everything you could do no more than deliver the ultimatum. ‘We’re being chased.’ Denny Fury heard it, smiled. Well, they were last trip, and the trip before. It had lost its surprise, it didn’t matter. You were chased. You weren’t chased. What did it matter? Didn’t stop you from thinking about the world at home, nor of how cool and fresh beer could taste if at this moment some fairy hand emerged complete with tray, and offered you a full glass of it.

  ‘I must drop a line to Fanny,’ thought Mr. Fury. ‘She’ll be wondering. It’s been a longish trip. A break this time will be worth while, anyhow.’ At the next port he’d hand a letter to the mail-man. ‘She’ll be worrying.’ Yes, he took the pills. Had he written to Peter? Yes, twice in fact. How long would it be before he’d be home? Very difficult to say. There was a war on. ‘Ah sure, Fanny’s not a worldly creature at all, anyhow. Sure, she no more understands what it’s like at sea than the rake there.’

  That was the truth of it. She didn’t understand what the sea was like. He wiped his face with an already sodden rag. ‘She should never have left Ireland. She was born there—belonged there.’ Of course. And he’d had no right to take her out of it. Fanny would have been all right if she’d had a family of priests to look after. ‘Ah well,’ he thought. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have said that. She’s a good woman and makes us all ashamed. She believes and I admire her for it.’

  ‘More steam! More power.’

  The voice roared in, it struck the ear-drums. The trimmers came then. A trimmer stood by.

  ‘Why, mister, you look as if you were just going to kneel down and pray on them ashes. We’re being chased by a sub.’

  It went into one ear and out of the other. A submarine. Chasing them. Damn rot!

  ‘Come here, son,’ said Mr. Fury and the black-faced lad came over. Denny Fury put a hand round his neck. ‘Now I can see you haven’t been going to sea very long. Why, son, every ship that sails to-day gets chased one time or other. But what does it matter? Now you get me more coal, there’s a lad. They want steam, more power. And we’re going to give it them, son.’

  He stood there, watching the boy go over with the barrow.

  ‘Chased,’ he said to himself. ‘Chased,’ and then he went to the foot of the ladder and looked up. He could see nothing. The tense heat became like a film, the furnaces belched it. He picked up a can and took a drink of oatmeal water from it.

  ‘Here,’ he called, stretching out his arm.

  ‘Thanks,’ and the other fireman took a gulp from the can.

  ‘It’s a sub, I’ll bet you any money you like. I don’t like the look of it. They’re bawling up and they’re bawling down.’

  ‘Aye! Well, maybe it is, maybe it’s not. The world is full of scares. Every time I wake up aboard this bloody boat I expect to be told: “Get your lifebelts on.” It’s marvellous weather, isn’t it, and just like going over a pond? Well, this ship has dodged more subs than you’d care to count. You weren’t in her that trip she took the horses from Yonkers. That was a trip and horses are more particular than men, I tell you. You weren’t? Of course you weren’t. Hang it, just listen to those bells,’ said Mr. Fury, and then rushed back to his fire-door, for he sensed now that something was wrong, and for the third time the enormous voice bawled into them from the engine-room.

  There you were steadily stoking away at your furnace, thinking about how nice a long drink in the bar of ‘The Throstle’s Nest’ would be, thinking about your wife and your long apprenticeship at the fires, and suddenly the bells rang, the voice bellowed and you remembered. The war was on. The war that might go on for ever was still raging.

  He swung back the door and at the same time that figure in white seemed to be standing behind him, pushing at his arm, shouting into his ear.

  ‘Feed it! Feed it! Make her go!’

  Every furnace door swung open, fuel was hurled in, the fire roared, the doors clanged to. Barrows ran backwards and forwards, the coal was tipped. Up, down; up, down. The shovel swung right, left, up, down. The heat blinded, sweat blinded. The figure in white still cried:

  ‘Make her go.’

  Make her go. More coal, more steam. More power. Make her go.

  Denny Fury was in the act of stretching himself, and he distinctly heard his bones crack as he did so. He saw the lad come through with a fresh load, saw the other fireman scratching his neck. Beyond that he could not see. Slice in hand he was on the point of swinging open his fire door. But he did not reach it, and there was no need to open it. No need to open it or shut it ever again. The sound of the explosion was like thunder.

  It deafened him. The furnace door was blown off, hurled itself into the sea through the enormous hole that the torpedo had made. He could see the sea, the blue sky, the boiling sun. He saw it, trapped. The stokehold was deluged by rushing water, by clouds of steam, by streams of hot ashes. He heard one cry so loud that all other sounds were drowned out. He cried himself:

  ‘God! We’re hit.’

  He cried it, trapped, numbed, half blinded, thought-scattered, trembling. She had been chased, she had been hit. He saw the gaping mouth of the furnace, was drenched in the blinding glare. Water poured on, rose up, leaped, gobbled the plates, the bars, the walls, the ladders. Sucked over, leaped to the fires. The stokehold one gigantic hiss.

  ‘O Jesus!’ he said. ‘O Fanny!’ he said. He said this, trapped, helpless. Alone. When the furnace blew out, when the great hole was made he saw objects hurtle past. His trimmer went out that way, body already cold, hurled into the sea. He cried: ‘O God! We’re done.’ Slobbered, it ran down his chin. He could not move. He was trapped. He was choking. He faced the sea, the bright sun, and from where he stood, held, all the world looked beautiful. Innocent blue water, drenching indifferent sun, blue sky. The morning was the end and not the beginning. Something held him by the legs, by the arms and by the neck. The water rose. The boiler burst, he could no longer see. The steel against his face was cool. The ship shuddered. The steel held him upright, pressed back his head, forced him to see out beyond the gaping hole. The ship was already trembling. The engines had ceased, but the ship went on trembling, a living thing. The stokehold was now invisible. Walls of steam rose, the sun shone through, the water rose higher, and the ship leaned over so that its topmast seemed to be endeavouring to spear the sun.

  Dennis Fury cried: ‘My God! We’re done.’

  He was done. They were beyond all knowing, all seeing, all understanding. He was alone. The stokehold held only him.

  ‘I’m choking,’ he muttered.

  The explosion had blown him backwards, he was caught between steel, the rung of a ladder throttled, the great steel plate held him upright for the throttling. Sweat poured down his body. He tried to break free, to shout, instead, slobbered, cried:

  ‘My God! Fanny! I’m done.’

  He felt the flesh over the bones must burst, the bones break beneath the weight. His eyes were full of ash dust, a livid weal from the eye to the lower ribs, a bright stripe down his body.

  ‘I can’t move. Oh, God, I can’t move!’

  The ship began to rock like a cradle. Through the white cloud the sun shone, and the smell of the sea rose up and flooded where he stood. The deck beneath him slipped this way, slipped that. The great steel ladder rocked, was torn from the plates, fell lengthwise across the stokehold; two rungs shone bright, and he saw these. Began to struggle. He tried to bend, to move to the right, to the left, to stretch himself. The steel pressed, held fast.

  ‘Oh, God! I’m done for! Done for!’

  He started to shout. Words rose, broke, scattered, a confusion of s
ounds. The stokehold flung them back to his face.

  ‘I can’t get out! Oh, Christ! I can’t get out, I’m done. Oh, I’m——’

  His head throbbed. It would not move. He was in a vice. He could not break free. He was caught.

  He had joked with the lad, smiled at the engineer’s voice, laughed at the other man’s fears. He had tried to open the fire-door, had sailed through the air, all arms and legs. Here he was, and he was finished. It was the end. Caught and held upright by an enormous steel plate and something that choked, that pressed, something he could not see. Something unnamable that pressed against his neck, and down to his heart. Was it a piece of the ladder, a girder, a door? He did not know. He could not bend to see. It was as though he were held by an iron fist.

  The ship swung, the circle of sea seemed no longer blue. It was a brass face into which he looked as he struggled, as fragments of words broke from his lips. His mouth was covered by spittle, and in it like a ruby, shone a bright drop of blood.

  ‘I’m choking! I’m choking! I can’t shout—I can’t——! I’m stuck!’

  Where were the others? Where was everybody? What did it mean? Everything. Nothing. The whole weight of the ship held him. The water rose higher. The ship shook again. He listened, he listened and heard nothing. His ears were plugged by ash, his nostrils were full of it.