I was on my way to fetch Meg for him when there was the bell again, this time the McCurdy family, a party of four with their visiting aunt from Saint John’s, and right behind them was Jason Mosher with his new fiancée; suddenly the place was busy in spite of the weather. Captain Johnson waited with good grace while all the seatings were done, and exchanges of pleasantries and hanging of coats. By the time everything got sorted out, the captain finally caught Meg’s attention by waving with both arms, which caused her to ignore him while taking orders from the other tables.
“Now you,” she said to him when she eventually got there. “I’m guessing all that arm waving was practice for the next time you’re out at sea and have to make distress signals.”
“Yes, indeed,” he agreed, “and with any luck somebody will save me. Right now that’ll take another beer, and a tot of rum, and what’s available for supper?” Meg took her time looking him over, not seeming particularly impressed or pleased by what she saw. “There’s kuduffle soup, lobster and dumplings, buttered peas, bread, blueberry pie for dessert. If you want something greasier you’ll have to go into town.” Meg was being Meg, and I was afraid she might drive away the inn’s only winter guest before he even moved in. But he seemed more amused than offended.
“Bring it on,” he said, rubbing his hands, and she went away. “Where are you in school, and what are you working on?” he asked me. I told him I was in grade eight because the year I was in grade three, there were only two children, my friend Jenny and myself, and we both got popped into grade four, so I was a year ahead; at the moment I was working on a history of the pirates. This got a laugh out of him. I noticed he had a paunch, although the rest of him was tough as leather. His dark eyebrows, surrounded by white hair all around, gave his eyes an intensity; when he looked at you, you were engaged.
“How’s your pirates project coming?” I told him honestly I was having a hard time starting. This seemed to amuse him, but before he could say whatever seemed to be on his lips, Robin came in through the door, Corporal MacMaster that evening, second in command of the Grey Rocks Constabulary, and in uniform. Robin was also my uncle-in-law, and therefore family, as well as another of my few friends. For a change, he was here on duty, come to see our new guest. His arrival coincided with the captain’s soup.
“You’re the gentleman with the small boat that came in with a quarantine flag?” He was talking about the rules of entry that apply to ships flying the yellow flag, sailing from foreign waters.
“Captain Charles Johnson, at your service, please have a seat. Well, dear sir, here’s my passport, and the ship’s papers.” He had them ready. “I’m cleared from Bermuda to Boston, as you’ll see, but there’s been this weather, and I’m lucky this place is where I got blown on the coast.” He repeated his story between slurps of soup while Robin had a look at his documents, making note of the captain’s British passport. According to it, he was born in Hartland, Devon, in 1890 (making him sixty-two years old), and his profession was listed as “retired mariner.” Robin was sympathetic regarding his age and difficulties, but concerned that he had come ashore without clearance from Customs and Immigration. “The harbourmaster had no authority to land you, but I can appreciate your needing to get ashore and recover. Don’t remove anything, though, and don’t go anywhere until you’re properly cleared, all right?” I heard all of this while taking a long time tending the fire.
On Robin’s way out, he stopped through the kitchen to see my mother. “Looks like you’ve got kind of an interesting old guy to fill a room for a while,” he noted. Mother agreed; the income was a godsend. He cautioned her the guest wasn’t supposed to go anywhere, or bring anything ashore until he’d been officially cleared, and said to notify him if there was any violation of that. As a cop, Robin was by the book.
He almost didn’t leave, because as he was going out the door, Klaus and Todd Moehner came in with Carl Sputz, their sidekick. Not only were Klaus and Todd rough characters who never came around the Admiral Anson, but they were the nephews of Roy Moehner, who had great influence and who wanted to take the inn away from us. I should point out right away that the name Moehner, which looks like it should rhyme with “moaner” because of its spelling, is actually pronounced “meaner,” which better describes that whole family.
“Mind your manners, boys,” said Klaus as they piled through the door. Robin took his time coating up, watching them to their table. They were exaggeratedly polite as Meg, stony-faced, seated them. “So nice,” Klaus simpered, “so genteel.”
Mother came out and went over to Robin, looking worried. It was as though a lump of lead had come down on what had been shaping into a good evening for a change. “Now they’re attacking us in a new way,” she said to him. “Do I have to serve them?” Robin nodded.
“Under the terms of your licence, you do unless they make trouble.” He would like to have stayed around for a bit, but couldn’t because he had the duty car, and the whole town to patrol, and it was a Friday night. “But if they don’t behave, call in; Jeb will get me on the radio, and I’ll come over and sort them out.” As soon as he was gone, the Moehners got louder, keeping up a mocking dialogue.
“Who’s that lot?” the captain asked, when I could return to him. He’d gotten his main course, and was making appreciative headway with it. I explained the Moehners were a family that was doing everything it could to make our lives miserable, and that these ones were fishermen, and their usual bar was down in town. “Fishermen,” he nodded. “Well, there’s fishermen and then there’s fishermen. Some good, some otherwise. Like kings and lorry drivers.”
“I propose a big drink to this . . .” Klaus Moehner was on his feet, loudly toasting the whole room, “ . . . to this old, really old . . . and I mean really, really old place, and to you really, really old people in here tonight, I want to drink to the future.” He got a nervous response from our guests, with applause from his own table, and the atmosphere dampened. I stoked the hearth, but there was a chill it couldn’t dispel. Klaus had started talking loudly to the other guests. “Retirees, are you? Still able to get out and about a bit?” This got my mother out of the kitchen in a fury.
“Oh, I beg your pardon, madam,” Klaus put his hands together as though in prayer, “and we’ll just drink these beers, and enjoy all the antiques. This is a kind of cultural event for us. We’ll be sociable, and maybe help entertain your guests.” My mother told them to keep their conversation to themselves, or she’d have to ask them to leave, and went back to her kitchen with a worried look at Meg on the way. The Moehners kept on with their game. The captain mopped up the last of his plate with a chunk of bread.
“Your mum’s a good cook, and that was a fine meal, and I’ll be back for my pie when I’ve checked out Merry Adventure.” So saying, he put on his peacoat and went out the back door to the dock. I hated to see him duck out because he seemed like the one man in the room who might be worth something if it came to a confrontation with the Moehners. That is where things looked like they were headed. Klaus had started describing the garments of the other guests, one by one, as though narrating a fashion show, and it had become too much. Mother was coming out again with her face flushed, but before she could say anything, the dock door banged open and there was the captain, on a gust of wind, looking urgent and authoritative: “My boat’s busted her lines. Who’s a boat handler? Are you chaps fishermen?” he called to the Moehner gang. “C’mon then!” and back into the gale he went.
Now the one thing that will get a Nova Scotia fisherman out of his chair, or bed, or whatever, is a distress call from another mariner. This has nothing to do with who he is, or his qualities as a human being, it is a pure knee-jerk reaction from longtime training, and the Moehner trio was up and out without putting on their coats, with me right behind them. Down on the wharf, the captain appeared to be straining to hold onto the one stern line that still held Merry Adventure, although he had a good turn with it onto a piling. The wind was streaming the vessel
from the dock, bows out.
“Help me get her in enough so we can get a bow line back onto her,” he yelled. Automatically Klaus, Todd, and Carl tailed onto the warp and hauled her back within reach. “One of you young lads—you,” he nudged Klaus, “get onto her stern, so we can pass you a bow line, and we can get her back alongside. Now you others find a dock line to throw, and I’ll hold on here.” All of this was in the dark, except for the light from the inn’s windows, and there was some confusion. “Oops,” said the captain, and there was a yell from Klaus, because just as he was stepping onto the boat, the captain let the line slip, and Klaus’s feet missed the stern, causing the lower half of him to plunge into the water. Swearing, he hauled himself aboard. “Never mind,” the captain urged him on, “get ready to take a bow warp! You other boys found the lines?” They had, and Carl sent a dripping coil of rope sailing through the air to Klaus, who caught most of it in his face. Klaus got the line secured forward, so the bow could be brought in. There were no broken ropes that I could see, and I could not understand how the lines we had secured so well had come undone. I saw something else too, a mostly-sunk safety line, unseen by the Moehner boys, who were too busy to notice anything.
“Mates, you helped me when I needed it,” the captain said as they finished resecuring Merry Adventure, “and let’s get back inside before we all catch a cold. Sorry about your taking a little dip there.” This was directed to Klaus, whose shoes were so full of water they made squishing sounds as he went up the steps, and his pants were sodden. “Nothing to be embarrassed about. I’ve gone into the pond too many times to count. Easy to do, eh?” Klaus agreed. His teeth were starting to chatter as we got back inside.
“These chaps are heroes,” the captain announced to the room. “Without them my little floating home would be a goner, and I certainly hope you’ll join me in giving them the round of applause they deserve.” He clapped vigorously, drawing in everybody, even Mother. The Moehner boys suddenly found themselves with halos, which put them off balance. “Now, what about my taking you downtown and buying you the beer I owe you? Klaus, you’re dripping a bit, so you’ll want to get some other things on, and then we can meet up.” As he talked, he was moving toward the coats, which they all seemed glad to get into. Just as the captain was preceding them out the door, he abruptly stopped, with a look of dismay. “I almost forgot, I’m not meant to leave here until Customs and Immigration clear me. I’ll have to owe you that beer until they let me go to town.” He was once again effusive in his thanks, admonishing Klaus to get into dry clothes right away, and they were gone.
“Now I’ll have that blueberry pie,” he told Meg as he went back to his table, “and maybe another rum.” To Mother, he apologised for all the fuss.
“How did your boat get loose?” she asked, phrasing the same question I’d been thinking about. He shrugged.
“My carelessness. Still blowing some out there.”
Inside, the rest of the evening was quiet. The captain ate his pie and drank his rum, and then another one after that, until all the other guests had gone. He complimented Mother on her cuisine, and announced that he was ready to turn in, so I took him up to the room that had been prepared for him. He told me he appreciated my help down on the dock, and tried to give me a dollar. It was four times my weekly allowance, but my Nova Scotia teaching was that you didn’t take money for being helpful, and so I didn’t. “How did your boat come adrift?” I asked him.
“Hard to say. She seemed good when we tied her up . . . didn’t everything seem decent to you?” It did indeed, and I started to say something about it, but he interrupted me. “I think she’ll be fine now. Ah, a real bed with sheets and dry covers.” He sat down on it and bounced a couple of times with a pleased smile. I showed him where the bathroom was and how to manipulate the hot water tap to make it work, and went back downstairs to help with the washing up.
He was the main topic of conversation between Mother, who had a good impression of our new guest, and Meg, who didn’t. Mother was making the case that not only had he paid in advance for a fortnight, but he was a gentlemanly sort of person, and whatever the problem with his boat, it certainly had gotten rid of the Moehner boys. Meg couldn’t argue with that, but Meg never let facts get in her way.
I weighed in on his side, telling them about all I had seen down on the dock. “In other words,” I explained, “he was never in any real trouble, because he could have pulled in her bow and got her secure again, probably without any help. So it was all a big diversion to get those guys out of here, and it worked.” I was very pleased with myself for having figured it all out, and with what Captain Johnson had pulled off, although I was aware he had cried wolf.
“Well, he’s just a big actor and a liar, then,” said Meg, “and I’ll be sure to keep an eye on him. He was a bit of excitement, I’ll give him that. We’ll see how he feels in the morning, if he isn’t too hungover to get himself out of bed.”
2
The Admiral Anson Inn
THE OLD MARINER was up early, as it happened, full of cheer, pumping his boat, checking the lines. The storm had eased to a gale with driving rainsqualls. Returning, he seated himself at his same table of the night before, by the hearth, with his back to a corner, and asked that I make a fire. I told him the rule about fires only on weekend evenings. “It’s the cost of the wood,” I explained.
“Damn the rule, and damn the cost of the bloody wood,” he growled. “When the North Atlantic gets into your bones, the best way to drive it out is with a sweet little fire crackling in a dear old room just like this one, and here’s where I’m going to be all day, and likely tomorrow, and tell your mum to bill me for the wood.” He produced an old wallet. “Here’s two pounds sterling; as I told your mum, it’s the only kind of notes I’ve got until I can get to a bank for some paper dollars. Will that do?” He got his fire, and a generous breakfast. While he was dealing with it, I asked if it wasn’t true that he had invented that whole incident with his boat. “Why would you say such a thing, Jim?”
I told him about everything I had seen, including his secret safety line, hastening to tell him how grateful we were that he’d disposed of the Moehner boys so neatly. He gazed at me with unreadable eyes, then smiled, beckoning me to sit down with him, which I did.
“Who have you said this to besides me?”
“Nobody, just my mother and Meg, but they won’t talk about it.”
“Mmmm. Thing is, any kind of rumour like that getting out, true or not, would probably not sweeten the feelings of those chaps from last night toward anybody here, and they might decide to pay us another visit, which would probably go a lot worse for us. Best all around is that nobody,” he tapped the table, “and I mean nobody, ever gets such a foolish notion as the one you’ve proposed to me.” His dark eyebrows lifted. “Are you with me on that?” I assured him that we all were. He sat back in his chair.
“I have a proposal for you, Jim. You’re a bright young lad, as I can plainly see, and a loyal one. Are you a loyal chap? Good. So what I need, with your mother’s permission, is some part-time assistance, as it appears I’m to be around for a while. Just little things that come up, from time to time, that you can handle between your school and chores. Being on call. For my end of the bargain, a dollar a day is the pay, whether there’s ought for you to do or not. Also, I’ll help you with that treatise on pirates that you’re trying to write. What do you say?” I must have looked stunned. To me at that time in my life, a dollar a day was wealth undreamed of.
“You’ll earn your pay. As to the kind of work, I’ll need a hand with Merry Adventure off and on, some errands, local information. For instance, you can start right now if you’ve a moment, by indulging my historical curiosity about this place. What’s the story of it?” This first question was easy enough, because the inn’s history was in our brochure.
The inn was built in 1755, or maybe 1757, depending upon whom you believe, on top of an older structure’s foundations that nobod
y knew anything about. The building we were in became an inn during the second (unless you consider it the third) English–French war by accident, according to hearsay. There are no written records, but British ships often sailed into the bay to shelter, and the inn was started then. Or so it is thought, because it was named in honour of Anson, First Lord of the Admiralty. His portrait painted on wood still hung on its iron bracket in front of our gate, repainted and re-repainted so many times nobody could guess how the original looked anymore. The last time, he had gotten a pink face and a more lopsided wig.
My listener questioned me more about the original structure’s date of building, but all anybody knew was that it was here before the nearby settlement of Grey Rocks. The inn’s advantage was in being the only one on our stretch of coast, except for Lunenburg and Chester, but they were at a distance, and Baywater did not yet exist. Grey Rocks Harbour was small, but the bay offered good close anchorage in most winds.
During the American Revolution, Grey Rocks got its share of all the Loyalists, those who stayed loyal to the monarchy. They had to get out of the former colonies, by choice or not. Those were bad times for many, but good times for the inn, and they lasted through the War of 1812 when Grey Rocks was building and manning privateer vessels. Then there came the first overland road, which passed the place by, and the fortunes of the inn took a dip. In the 1840s it housed the local jail in its cellar; in 1863, the proprietors were charged with aiding the Confederate States in some conspiratorial way, but were exonerated; in 1890 it was the hidey-hole of a royal duke and his girlfriend for a moment, far from the eyes of the world. By the turn of the century the New Englanders had started to come beyond Chester with their wealth, and the whole inn was repaired, top to bottom; the original old gun platform for the small battery guarding the harbour was made into a broad deck, with iron tables that had big umbrellas over them. A turn-of-the-century photo printed in the brochure shows them giving summer shade to elegant people.
The Brotherhood of Pirates Page 2
