The Closed Harbour

by James Hanley

  There was the loose Michelin poster swinging away from the wall, and there in front of the door the battered-looking lamp that was never lighted. Its door was closed. He did not knock but pushed against it, and it did not give. He turned the handle, the door gave to him, he pushed and went inside. He stood still in the half darkened lobby, then he felt for the bolt and shot this back. The sound echoed through the house.

  "Who is there?"

  He recognised Madame's voice, but did not answer. He knew where he wanted to go. Mounting the three stairs he went off down a long narrow corridor. When he came to the door he wanted he heard voices, girls chattering. He gripped the handle and pushed, there was some resistance. Seized with a sudden fury he threw himself against it.

  Behind it stood two naked women.

  "Shift your great arse," Marius said, he still knew where to go, what he wanted, he had already seen her lying in the bed. She was still asleep.

  "Lucy."

  "Christ! She looks even more naked when she's asleep," staring down at her, the mouth was partly open, "I could not see her more clearly if she was split wide open."

  "Lucy! Wake up."

  He began shaking her. Behind him the two girls were still so astonished by the intrusion that they remained speechless.

  "Here, you bitch, wake up," Marius shouted, "come on," his hands gripped her shoulders, "damn you for a bitch, wake up, was I talking in my sleep last night? Was I drunk, very drunk?"

  Lucy slowly opened her eyes, then instinctively raised her hands and covered her bosom.

  "Who the hell are you?"

  "You know who I am. You knew last night, and the night before, tell me what did I say last night?"

  "What do you want?"

  The expression on her face angered him, "injured innocence, by God."

  "Not you. Was I talking in my sleep last night. What did I say? Lucy, please tell me what I said."

  His manner changed, she at length sat up in the bed. Her mouth was still open, and she continued to stare at him.

  "For God's sake," he said, "can't you wake up, at least you would not look so ugly. Lucy, please tell me, tell me now, what did I say?"

  "Tell you what?" She yawned, stretched up her arms. "What bloody right have you in here, you haven't even paid."

  He caught her arms and pulled them down, he leaned over her.

  "I beg you to tell me this one thing, Lucy, what did I say, you must have heard me, we weren't both snoring like pigs, I'm sure, I know I parroted in my sleep, but what was it I said. Please, Lucy."

  He added, without meaning too, "that Labiche was here, too, that fish—."

  "How do I know what you said, let go of my arms, I don't know who you are. Anyhow I hate your suit, get off my bed."

  She pushed vigorously and he did not resist. He turned, saw the two girls.

  "Please," Marius, said.

  They went out without a word, he was alone with Lucy.

  "Madame will be here any moment, I have to go shopping with her. It is my morning."

  She went and sat down at the dressing-table, and he sat watching her.

  "This flesh-house stinks of the cheapest perfume," Marius said, "what kind do you use, Lucy, I could find you better smelling stuff than that."

  She washed in the basin, combed her hair, smiled at herself in the glass, she could see him sitting there.

  "You do not even take off your horrible cap," she said.

  He removed this and flung it to the floor.

  "Is that snake still crawling about your upper arm?" she asked.

  "What did I say last night. Christ blast you, can't you answer?"

  "You certainly do not look like a captain, Mr. Marius. There! Now that is Madame, you had better scoot," but the door opened and Madame Lustigne was standing there.

  "What are you doing here?" she asked, she had not recognised him. "We have our hours of business like everybody else."

  "It is that nice man in a peasant's suit," Lucy said, she turned and added, "I am quite ready, Madame Lustigne."

  "Go and get your breakfast," Madame Lustigne said, and was so determined that she should not miss it that she took the girl by the arm and pushed her out through the door. She came back and faced Marius.

  "This sort of thing does not help anybody, I heard you come in, you might try not to be so clumsy another time. What do you require now that you may not have at the proper time, Captain Marius? It is half-past ten o'clock. Are the gangways everywhere pulled up and the ships gone?"

  She was standing very close to him, and he watched her high bosoms, they seemed to prance at him.

  "I came to talk to Lucy," Marius said.

  "You are yet miserable, you are now here four months and a day. And yet no ship."

  She watched him swinging his cap as he sat there.

  "Not yet," he said.

  "Shame. Shame. So unfair. My poor captain, tell me, did you in fact kill the creature?"

  When he did not answer she went on, "you are unhappy, yes, well of course I can see that. Many people are, my Captain, very many. Outside in the world everything is well—you, will come with me, Mr. Marius, we will have breakfast together, in some way I like you, yet I do not know why. Come along."

  She caught him by the arm, he followed her out.

  "I see that you have washed yourself and even changed," she said.

  "Poor creature," she thought, "he has lost what he calls his ticket, how he talks when he has had a drop. A captain, a sailor, a bum."

  In the narrow corridor she paused and smiled up at him.

  "At half past ten in the morning, sailor, I should not do this for anybody else, but then you are a sailor, and they are our best customers and I am honest enough to value their patronage."

  The small poorly lighted room gave Marius a feeling of claustrophobia.

  "Sit down, Captain. Now I will bring in the breakfast," and she left him.

  There was a uniformity about these rooms, all small and of the same size, they might have been tailored, the same curtain on the windows, the same floor covering. Only Madame Lustigne's bed was different, and this was of wood, the best oak.

  Marius admired a sheer cleanliness here, absent from the other rooms, it lacked their scruff and stuffiness, and also the window was open. The bedsheets were of the purest linen, and clean, the blankets thick and a warm green in colour. The whole covered with a heavily decorated counterpane.

  "A sailor's payment," he thought.

  The window was small and barred. The sight of it un-nerved him yet he did not know why. He stood by it, looking down into a courtyard, where he saw a mass of litter and debris, and a great clothes-line of shifts, in varying colours, from orange to the brightest blue, bellying in the breeze like sails. He walked slowly round the room. At the altar he stopped.

  "Always the Virgin, when it isn't Magdalene," he muttered.

  The dressing-table fascinated him. He sat down on the small stool, looked at everything at once, and then piece by piece, particularly the array of bottles, of all shapes. One after another, he lifted the objects up and examined them. He unscrewed each fancy bottle and smelt it. A number of brightly-coloured tubes contained paint, perfume, lipstick, miraculous mud, Eau-de-Cologne, mascara. A single silver-backed hairbrush, some loose hairs, shampoos in bottles and packets, powder clotted on the corner of the mirror like a small white cloud. He picked up two tiny handkerchiefs.

  "This is what smells," he said, holding them to his nose, "this is the perfume that stinks out the house."

  A photograph of Madame, ten years younger, he thought, and looking her very best, did not attract him. He was sitting there, idly eavesdropping, when the door opened and Madame returned with a tray.

  "You like my room, Captain?"

  She put down the tray.

  "This is most unusual, and I do not mind, do you?"

  "I am not hungry," Marius said.

  "But you are thirsty, I'm sure," replied Madame, she began pouring out coffee.


  "I have just had coffee, indeed, my breakfast."

  "Tut! tut! Have more," she said.

  "You may talk to Lucy this evening if you wish to, and everything will be the same as usual, Captain, three hundred francs. Perhaps I can save you some time and indeed expense. I miss nothing of what goes on here, Captain. If you have talked in your sleep last evening, then be sure I already know what you have said. There is an hour in the morning when my girls and I get together, and most often the night's customers are discussed. It is most interesting, though we have our dull evenings like everybody else, beds are subject to a rise and fall, to economic laws, at least I find it so—"

  He had her hand in his own, he pressed hard. She smiled at him and said, "well, Captain?"

  "Did I talk in my sleep last night, I know you would have heard me, I am loud-mouthed when I am drunk, it is just my nature, I have been called a fog-horn in my time, Madame."

  He released her hand, and he realized at once that it was an attitude in her that had made him so quickly let go. He leaned on the back of the chair.

  "Possibly. If one is drunk, there are sometimes drunks, do try to understand Captain that you are only like some others. But if you did, well—I am the soul of discretion. Also I am quite unshockable, and I may assure you that you are quite safe here. Consider. I am myself always glad to return, if only after a single hour. I like to be in. Outside—" she waved a hand towards the window, "well—you have seen it, what do you think?"

  Smiling she showed him all her pretty teeth. She began scratching vigorously under an arm, "I believe I have a flea, and I believe that Labiche creature brought it in the other evening. Well, Captain?"

  Marius seemed as though dumb, he sat there trying to understand, trying to measure up this woman. After a while he said, "I am a lawless man myself."

  "I am not as bad as that, thank heaven. Sometimes, out there, in the world, one is imperilled, there is always somebody who will not leave you alone, somebody watching, following perhaps, people—they can be terrible—"

  She said, a little sternly, "you are not drinking your coffee," and stared at the hairy hand that completely enclosed the cup.

  "A strong creature," she thought.

  "You know now that I begin to think," she continued, "now that I begin to think, I ask myself if I really have seen you before?"

  He sipped coffee through dry lips.

  "You have, nevertheless," he said.

  "You have not your uniform to-day, perhaps that is it."

  "I burnt it."

  "Indeed? An accident?"

  "What time will Lucy be back, Madame?"

  "My name is Flo, you may call me that," she smiled across at him.

  "When I was here last night," Marius said, "a man came in, do you remember, a middle-aged, rather stout dwarf, with heavy moustaches, he was wearing a stiff black suit and a black hat, he had also an umbrella."

  "Well?"

  "A man named Labiche, I think that was the name."

  "Correct. He is a friend of mine. A charming man, very respectable, he has a wife and two children. What of him?"

  "Did he question you about me?" asked Marius.

  "He asked who you were. After all, though we have many sailors here, it is not so often that we have Captains in their uniforms. I said you were a stranger here—"

  "What did he say?"

  "He just said, 'does he come here often', no more than that."

  She filled the room with laughter, it came out in a burst, it made him sit up suddenly in his chair.

  "I can't help laughing, my Captain, you look so—what shall I say—anyhow I told Labiche that you were simply a customer. I said, people are always coming and going, I rarely look at people's faces, this may seem strange in my profession, but it's a fact. Some nights perhaps, yes, it is often a matter of how one feels."

  "I have seen him somewhere before," said Marius, "and I think he has seen me, too."

  "You speak as though you were afraid of him. He is a harmless creature, I can assure you."

  "If I could remember where I had seen him," continued Marius, "if I could remember—"

  "Perhaps you have seen him when you have gone to the shipping offices, he is just a clerk, a petty clerk with the Heros people."

  Marius struck the table with his fist. "You are right, that's where I have seen him. I wish Lucy would come back. She could tell me something."

  Madame Lustigne drew her chair much nearer, she did not speak, but sat very close to him, smiling into his face.

  The smile filled him with sudden horror, he drew back in the chair.

  "You know?"

  "People are sometimes drunk, and sometimes they may talk in their sleep, but what is that, most often rubbish. How nervous you are, Captain, I sigh to see such a strong hand trembling, is there anything the matter? Is it that you think we here may discuss the rubbish you shouted out last night? You are something of a fool, Captain, I may tell you that because in a certain way I like you, I might not be so honest with others. Perhaps that is why you are now shipless. And think of it, the sea drying up all the way from Nantes to Marseilles, you are so slow, perhaps you are least aware of it. You are also a little clumsy, I have heard of your jauntings through the city in your admiral's uniform. If you like people to be interested in you, then that is the way to do it, people will always talk, if they did not they might go mad. You are in some distress. In your sleep you told Lucy that you had killed somebody at sea, that may be true," she gave a sudden violent shrug of the shoulders, "nevertheless, even if it were I should not give you away. I mind my own business. People are murdering each other every day, Captain, and think nothing of it, nothing at all. Hiding it up in you like that, letting it fester inside you, tear you to pieces, like a tiger grown there—you understand. You trust me?"

  "I do not even trust myself" he said.

  "If it would ease your mind," she said.

  "I will say nothing."

  "In which case there is nothing more to be said," replied Madame Lustigne.

  "I have someone else to tell," he said.

  "Who?"

  "It does not matter," Marius said, he had turned his back on her and was looking straight at the door.

  He heard her step behind him, felt his arm gripped, heard her say softly, "wait, sit down. I will go and fetch you a drink."

  She went out and left him standing there, and he was still in this position when she came back.

  "Your drink," she said.

  She returned to her chair and sat down.

  "Everything is all right, Captain," she said.

  "Labiche is watching me," Marius said, "I knew it from the moment I first saw him."

  "You are wrong, such a harmless person as that. Why, that man is not interested in anybody except himself, a most selfish creature if you ask me."

  "He is watching me," Marius said stubbornly.

  "I think you rather like being mysterious, Captain," said Madame Lustigne.

  She crossed the room, took his hand, "for God's sake sit down," she said.

  She pushed him into the chair, she felt she might have been pushing down some paper, some old clothes, inside this suit there appeared to be nothing at all.

  "You are not ill?"

  "I'm not ill," he said.

  "I say again, Captain, please, if it would ease your mind."

  "I want to speak to Lucy."

  "You have Lucy on the brain. I know what Lucy heard, I told you. She tells me everything, they all do, that is the one subject of our conversation. Men. Why, Captain, we haven't even the radio here, we make our own news, it is much more exciting. At this very moment you should be out looking for the ship you want—"

  "Does Labiche come here every night?"

  "Well, no," she smiled, "he is a respectable man, sometimes he must be with his wife. You are getting Labiche on the brain. Indeed I think you are imagining things, Captain. Are you now afraid to go out?"

  He said "Can I wait for Lucy?" and hi
s voice had sunk so low she had to strain to catch what he said.

  "You may wait."

  She sat watching him.

  "A poor, harmless clerk," she thought, "really— and then he is so mysterious, if he were honest with me—"

  The silence had become suddenly unbearable. "You are so miserable" she said, "so miserable. Are you alone here?"

  "No. I have my mother, my sister."

  "They live here?"

  "They followed me here."

  "What do you want to do?"

  "Get away from here," he shouted at the top of his voice, "I want to get away from here."

  "Have you money?"

  "A little?"

  "Something might be done, in that case you would leave them here."

  "Nothing can be done."

  "Now you are just being impossible," she said.

  "I am unhappy," Marius said, he left his chair and went across to her.

  "May I sit here?"

  "Do!"

  He sat down on the end of the bed.

  "Why are you unhappy? Because you have killed somebody, or because you only think you have killed somebody. You are an intelligent man, Captain, you ought to make up your mind."

  "I cannot get a ship," he said.

  "Nonsense! There are lots of ships."

  "But I cannot sail them any more."

  "You have Captain on the brain, too," said Madame Lustigne. "One must be humble, you have lost a ship, it is not easy, one is always falling down a rung or two, if you have legs you climb up again."

  "You do not understand?"

  She could restrain herself no longer.

  "I'm quite sure I do not," she said and laughed. "We seem to be talking for the sake of talking. You tell me nothing. What exactly is it that you want. You come here and have one of my girls, you get drunk, you come again, you get drunk again, we throw you out, but again you come, perhaps you are in love with my Lucy. Why do you come here at all?"

  "To forget myself."

  "That is easy enough. But now you are wasting my time. I could say to you, 'get out' and you would have to go."

  "It is Lucy I want to see," he said with maddening persistency. "This morning when I woke up I couldn't find my clothes, they'd destroyed them, my clothes, my own uniform—"