The Lovely Ship

by Storm Jameson

  Millenniums were all very well, but Mempes had seen them before, and knew what the aftermath of a millennium was like. He could remember nothing in the way of millenniums like this of the seventies, climbing from its glorious beginning with the gates of Suez opening, to a dazzling noon in this summer of 1874. And he knew that this was the turning point of the curve. Freights had gone to their limit. Every damned thing in the country had gone to its limit. What else could you expect with that Jew at the head of it? Ugh! Mempes twitched the muscles of his shoulders. If he had been a dog the hair would have bristled along his back. He had the same sense of danger that a dog might have.

  And Mary refused to listen. A touch of something suspiciously like Radical rascality was creeping into her attitude. She had started a system of bonuses at Garton’s Yard, and with some hesitation extended it to the Iron Works, where it was more successful. Mempes’ ears reddened with indignation when he thought of it. The fantastic idea occurred to him that it was to propitiate Prendergast’s spirit, so violently thrust out of life, that she was offering him this small concession to his beliefs. The colossal silliness of the thought brought him up at a sharp turn. The fact was that Mary was developing convictions. Mempes had seen as many people ruined by convictions as by falling freights, and Mary’s were already embroiling her with her fellow shipbuilders in Danesacre. She had met and talked to that infernal agitator Plimsoll, and had thereafter made a voluntary offer to the Board of Trade to accept their ruling in the matter of the loadline for her ships. Mempes groaned in spirit. He faced her about it. She sighed. She disliked offending her own class, but she was too obstinate to withdraw.

  That, of course, was the whole trouble, her damnable obstinacy. She was no fool. She was doing at Garton’s only what every shipbuilder and shipowner in the country was doing, over-building, over-spending, over-chartering. She was spending far too much money on trials and research. Garton’s profits were large, of course, since both Yard and Works had been making more money than either made in Mark Henry’s day. But the firm’s reserves were smaller in proportion to the turnover than ever before. How much smaller, Mempes had only just discovered. The discovery was written all over the back of his head for the awed clerks to read. If they had seen his face, they would have found it written there even more plainly, in deep lines running from nose to chin and brows drawn into one unbroken thicket of grey hair jutting over restless eyes.

  But no one dared to look at his face, as he stalked through the outer office on his way home. He shouldered his way down the pier, seeing no one, and paused for a moment on the bridge to look up the harbour. An old sea captain stood at his shoulder. Suddenly he spoke to Mempes.

  “See yon ship,” he said, pointing to a small barque that lay moored in mid-stream, with a broom tied to her masthead, a signal that she was for sale. “That was my ship.”

  The regret in his voice reached Mempes through the thick cloud of his own troubles.

  “A good little boat,” he said gently.

  “Shoo’s a bonny ship,” the other murmured. “A bonny bonny ship. Suddn’t ha’ been shogged off yet.”

  “One of Burdon’s boats, isn’t she?”

  “Too small now, they say. Shoo wasn’t too small for th’ old man. Young Burdon doesn’t know a good ship when ah sees un. Why, fellow’s never handled a rope in ah’s life. They’ll tek her for coaling.” He addressed his lost ship again in a voice of indescribable longing.

  “Eh, thoo suddn’t carry coal, thoo bonny thing.”

  Mempes left him standing on the bridge with his hands clasped firmly round the rail, and his weathered face turned stiffly to the harbour, a queer figure of an idealist. Walking down Harbour Street towards the Yard he thought bitterly of the day when Garton’s would move to the Tees. Vast sums of money were being expended on building new yards there. Money poured in and poured out again, leaving nothing behind for the lean years Mempes saw coming. And Mary was talking of selling the Line. Well, if she was going to sell, now was the time, before freights began to drop. Mempes could not bring himself to urge it on her. Something would have to go; Garton’s was far too big and covered too many interests. But to sell the Line: Mempes drew his lips back from his teeth in a kind of snarl. The thought was unbearable. It would reduce him to the position of that poor devil on the bridge.

  He quickened his steps. In the Yard the first person he saw was the new Yard manager, talking to Mary. Mempes halted, and retracing his steps went up into the sail loft, from which, through a low dusty window, he could watch Mary and Gerry Hardman walking slowly, absorbed in their conversation, across the Yard. He sat down grimly, sideways to the window, and continued to watch them. His attitude was that of a spy. He knew it and did not care.

  Hardman’s head was too close to Mary’s and her face, upturned to his, wore an expression Mempes did not like to see. She admired the fellow. The very turn of her head as she walked, her eyes searching the fastidious animated face near her own, gave her admiration away to the jealous eyes watching her from the sail loft. Mempes pulled himself together. He had nothing to say against Gerry Hardman, who was a good enough manager and an excellent engineer, the best Garton’s had ever had. Danesacre said he had a tile loose about the need for better ships’ engines, and Mempes had heard that he gave up half his days and almost his nights to it. Like enough. There was a look about him as if he slept on a hard bed and got up when he fell out. Mempes rather relished the idea. The “beggar” knew how to work, though, which was something in these days. He was reorganizing the Tees-side works, moving the boiler and engine works away from the blast furnaces to the site near the docks that that old fox Mark Henry had bought before he died. It cost money of course, but do the fellow justice, he was not wasteful, like that fool who had got himself killed. He knew where he was going when he made experiments. A queer elusive fellow. Rather to his surprise, Mempes found himself thinking that if Hardman had not been so much his junior he might have been on friendly terms with him. But—friendship. No. His friends were all dead, the men he had drunk with, who knew how to drink, play for decent stakes, and conduct a quarrel like gentlemen. The breed was dead. . . . Though Hardman was not a puppy. That was a good stroke of his, getting the order for engines for the new warships. He had raised a laugh against himself in the club by declaring that the triple expansion system was perfectly practicable and that he was only waiting for chance and a far-sighted customer to try it out. He would wait a long time when freights began falling, Mempes thought grimly.

  The two of them were almost under the window now. Their voices came up clearly to the invisible listener. Gerry Hardman’s voice, low-pitched and pleasant.

  “I wish you’d remove George Ling from me, Mary.” Called her Mary, did he, damn him. Mary was laughing at him, with her eyebrows arched in amused surprise.

  “He’s so clumsy and unpleasant an object that I can’t stand him, especially in the morning. He’s hairy, too. I dislike the George Lings of this world, Mary. They’re such comfortable decent settled people. They think what they’re told, being entirely inaccessible to ideas; they eat to repletion and take pills. They tell you about it, too. Heavens, how I dislike them.”

  “I can’t dismiss George,” Mary said thoughtfully, “I did him out of a fortune.”

  “All the more reason for getting rid of him,” Gerry said sincerely.

  Mempes twisted his neck round to get a better view. He missed Mary’s low-voiced answer. Talking of George Ling, were they. Well, there was nothing in that. A moment later, they moved into the direct line of his vision. They had ceased talking, of George Ling or anything else, and were looking across the Yard, with an identical expression on their faces, as if both saw the same thing. Mempes followed the direction of their glance, but there was nothing to be seen, only the sunlit harbour clearly visible through the bare ribs of the new boat, and the blue distant line of moor. He brought his gaze back to the unconscious pair. Now they were looking at each other. That fellow’s face was very
still and his eyes rested on Mary’s with an expression in them that brought Mempes to his feet, the blood surging in his ears. He had no right . . . Mary’s hand trembled upward and dropped again to her side. A faint smile touched her mouth to a lovely softness. Mempes strugged to control himself. Talking innocently of George Ling and looking like that. It was damnable. It was a vile and intolerable flouting of all decency. With some vague idea of putting a stop to it he started for the stairs. Half-way down he stood still. There was nothing he could do. Mary was her own mistress. If she liked to become Gerry Hardman’s who was to stop her? She had no husband. And he, Mempes, had no rights over her, not so much as the right to criticise her. By God, hadn’t he? Every one had the right to criticise a thing like that, when it happened among decent people. Had it happened?

  When he returned, mastering with difficulty the trembling of his limbs, to the window, those two were out of sight.

  3

  Mary had thought that there was no need to tell Gerry anything about herself, but in the end she found herself turning over the years of her life for things to interest him and make him laugh. She brought him experiences, flashes of wit, and laughter, as she had once brought Hugh costly shirts and diagrams of engines. A profound humility filled her when she thought of him and she was afraid she had nothing that would keep him at her side, nothing to satisfy so fastidious and restless a mind. Entirely unconscious of duplicity, she had fairly entered on the dangerously engrossing business of adapting herself to Gerry Hardman’s moods. A powerful instinct was at work in her, forcing her to throw off the reserve and timidity under which her youth was gradually being submerged. If Gerry had come a little later he might have found a woman as tired and distrustful as himself, in whom there was nothing to rouse. The woman his coming recalled to life was a complex creature, with the shy and violent emotions of the younger Mary existing beside a strange new tenderness and sympathy, irresistibly soothing and attractive to this man. He was so eager for it that he was afraid. He led Mary a pretty dance. One day thinking that she was progressing in knowledge of him, she found him on the next so aloof, so withdrawn into himself that she despaired. Yet she never gave him up. She seemed where he was concerned to be without pride. Never would she have stooped like this to conquer a mood of Hugh’s. She did not know herself. By every subtle device that suggested itself to her she coaxed him back to warmth and life. There was to her something profoundly wistful and appealing in the way he retired into himself, like a child who has forgotten how to play. She rejoiced in her ability to bring him alive.

  She shared his thoughts about the Yard, she liked looking with him at the smooth virgin flank of the ship on the stocks; she discovered trivial things about him, that he liked Indian sauces and walking in the rain, that he smoked too much and hated himself for it and made fretful attempts to give it up and failed. And she hoarded these scraps of knowledge as if they were some sort of charm against misfortune, the misfortune of losing her friend.

  She carried out one of her plans, and she and Richard and Gerry rode in the early morning, clattering up the hill behind the house to the country lanes and the moor. One morning Richard’s horse fell with him. Gerry was the first to reach the slender body crumpled up on the heather. He looked up as Mary, white and despairingly composed, dropped from her horse beside him.

  “He’s all right, my dear. Your boy’s all right.”

  Richard was dazed and lay for a long time with his head on his mother’s knee. She forgot Gerry and everything else in the world except the thought of her inalienable bond with Richard. She had got him when she was too young to know the value of the gift, but not too young to value it even then, and every year made him dearer to her. She was a little ashamed of her pride in him, his good looks, his aristocratic manners—the languid Roxby manner to the life—his manifest quickness of brain, so unlike her own plodding methodical mind. And she tried to pretend that she was just the mother of an ordinary son. The pretence deceived no one, not even Richard, who knew quite well that however much his mother seemed engrossed in the cares of her extraordinary life, he had only to address her in a certain tone of flattering softness to have her ail ears and anxious longing to understand and please him. She would say: “Ah, you can’t get around me like that, my son,” and all the time she was being got round and rejoicing in her shameful weakness and in the innocent smiles of the deceiver.

  The thought that he might have been killed turned her faint. She had never envisaged so atrocious a possibility. If she had not had to sit quietly to support Richard she would have sunk down on the moor, unable to sustain her own trembling body.

  Gerry Hardman sat quietly a few feet away, patiently waiting for the other two to remember him. When Richard’s colour came back and he stood up, Mary looked anxiously at her friend.

  “We’d better ride home,” Gerry said.

  “I’ll contrive a leading rein for Richard,” Mary suggested.

  “No.” Gerry was decisive. “Richard must ride home properly. Do you want to make a fool of the boy?”

  Richard was up on his horse already and smiling down at his mother. His brown face and seventeen-year-old length of limb made him suddenly a different person from the child he had been. Mary looked helplessly from boy to man. The years that made Richard dearer to her would remove her farther and farther from him, until when he was a man she would be only an old woman to him and he would never cease to be a little boy to her, her little boy.

  The thought did not cross her mind—it would have crossed, in real or ironic consolation, almost any other woman’s mind at such a moment—“I have my daughters.” The truth was that Mary neglected her daughters. Not physically, of course. She saw that they had the best nurses, directed by the failing but still admirable and incorruptibly devoted Miss Flora. She sometimes thought thankfully of the moment when Wagener had prevented her from casting Miss Flora off. What should she have done without her? Miss Flora did everything for the two little girls, ordered their frocks, supervised their meals, their daily walks, their prayers. Banished, except for special occasions, from the house above the Yard—which was in fact not large enough to have accommodated them and their attendants in any comfort—they lived in their roomy cottage on the edge of the moors a life not unlike that of an early Christian colony. It was altogether too Christian for their excellent nurse, but for whose softening presence Clara and Sylvia would have run some risk of being crushed by simplicity and good example.

  Mary descended on this colony at frequent and always unpredictable moments, with a fierce energy that covered her impatience to be gone. “Well, my babies,” she would say, “how are you? Good? Happy?” She kissed them both, with an impartial affection, examined their samplers, frowned on Sylvia’s bitten nails, and accepted the shyly-offered gift on which Clara had been working since her last visit. Then she was gone, oblivious of the child’s heavy eyes and trembling lip. She did not mean to be unkind. She thought she was a wise and sensible mother. Unconsciously, her mind had persuaded her that these mites were Hugh’s rather than hers—his property, with which she ought not too intimately to interfere. She saw to their bodily and mental welfare and left all inquiry into their spiritual state severely alone. It was not devotion, but it was at least less wicked than present-day habits of poking at a child’s mind with a treatise on psychological workings. Clara and Sylvia Hervey had the good fortune to belong to an age that knew nothing of complexes. Consequently they had none that Miss Flora, with her cup of Senna Tea, could not cure.

  Having visited them, Mary forgot them for days, until a sudden twinge of memory sent her hurrying off to see them, often when she was already very tired. If she had no devotion she had a profound sense of duty.

  It was different with her son. She never felt that she owed him a duty. He was hers. He belonged to a part of her life so much simpler than the present that sometimes she had a dim feeling that she and Richard were of the same generation. And then came moments of dreadful knowledge, like this
, when she knew that they were divided by impassable gulfs. Never would she be able to look at Richard and think: “I am all in all to him. In him I have a sure refuge.” She was not and could not be all to him, and the older she grew the less she was to him. She seemed to be facing a future of unendurable loneliness.

  Her strong common sense rallied against this mood of despair. She glanced from Gerry to Richard. “You two understand each other, don’t you?” she murmured ironically.

  Richard said with grave mischief: “Men have to understand each other. I understand Mr. Hardman, but you will let me ride home properly, won’t you, mother? Let us go round by the low road. There is a new bridge over the beck, so fine it is a pity you should not see it at once.”

  Gerry lent her a hand for her mount and smiled at her. But the moor had become an empty place for Mary. She searched it with her eyes. There was nothing anywhere for the old woman waiting in young Mary Hervey’s heart.

  “You came too late,” she said to Gerry. “I can’t count on you, can I? Why didn’t you come before?”

  Gerry understood her at once.

  “I forgot you were the only thing that mattered,” he said in a low voice. “It’s so easy to forget. Now that I’ve remembered it, you’re unattainable. Do I want you to be attainable by so ordinary a man as I am? Probably not. I like to think of you as a little aloof and sure of yourself. Shall we ride home? . . .”

  On another occasion, she told Gerry about Prendergast, very much ashamed of the story of the strike when she came to tell it. “If I had not been so selfish, thinking only about myself, it wouldn’t have happened,” she said humbly. “You see how really worthless I am.” At this moment she really did feel herself worthless, a hasty reckless fool, too inexperienced to do anything properly, and too conceited to learn better.