Robbie Taggart

by Michael Phillips

  Why he put up with it all, he didn’t know! Up till now his optimistic nature had maintained its supremacy. But if things kept up this way much longer . . .

  He paused to look at himself. There he stood in the middle of the barracks’ common room, mop in hand, facing the entire place to clean. How could he possibly dredge up any optimism for that? And why had he been thus dispatched to such demeaning labor? Because the brass buttons of his uniform had not been shined to Barclay’s satisfaction!

  Robbie plunged the mop into the bucket of water, then slammed it down on the innocent floor with a splat. With each forceful stroke all he could think of was pummelling Barclay in similar fashion.

  How could he, Robbie thought to himself, capitulate to the man’s warped demands! Why should he! He was an officer in the Royal Navy! No one could take that from him, nor the inherent rights that accompanied the honor—though Barclay had often threatened to do so. Whether he could back up such threats, Robbie didn’t know, but maybe that was why, after all, he choked down his ire and forced himself to comply with assignments none but a lowly enlisted man—from whom such things were expected!—ought to be made to do. One thoughtless action on Robbie’s part, like stuffing this mop down Barclay’s throat as he would love to do, would be the end of a less than brilliant naval career for Robbie. And he had no doubt the commander was watching and waiting for just such an indiscretion.

  “I’ll quit this blasted Navy,” Robbie burst out to himself angrily. “Then I’ll force that blaggard to stand up to me like a real man, without his rank to hide behind!”

  Ah, the idea was a sweet one!

  And no matter that Barclay was a good five inches shorter than Robbie, and probably a stone or two lighter—the tyrant would deserve what he got!

  But Robbie continued to shove the mop in front of him with increasingly vigorous strokes, taking out his frustrations on the compliant floor. There was always the possibility, he mused, that eventually Barclay would be assigned a ship. He was an ambitious man and would be transferred into a position where his merit would at last be recognized and rewarded. No need to throw away these last four years, even if to a man of action like Robbie they had seemed an eternity. He had the beginnings of a good career here. If he could just wait it out, some day he’d have command of his own vessel. Then all this cowering servilitude would be worth it.

  Twenty minutes later, the floor gleamed, and Robbie picked up the mop and bucket to start in on the remaining rooms. As he paused to give one final glance back at his labors, he heard a loud clamor at the outer door. Suddenly into the common room burst a dozen of his comrades. Taking no notice of Robbie or the newly shining floor, they quickly began to strip off their overcoats, soaked with the rain that had been falling briskly outside for more that an hour, shaking the garments out as they did so.

  “Hey, ye blaggarts!” yelled Robbie, gesturing dangerously toward them with the mop.

  But paying him no heed, talking and laughing among themselves, the men carelessly walked across to the fireplace, scraping their wet, mud-encrusted boots the entire length of the surface Robbie had so spotlessly cleaned.

  With an angry oath, Robbie threw down the mop and turned to leave. He’d done his job! Let them be responsible for this new mess!

  As he stepped out into the hall, as if on cue, there stood Barclay. Robbie nearly collided with him.

  “Fetching fresh water, Taggart?” asked the commander, with a sneer that seemed to indicate to Robbie that the entrance of the party of men had been no accident.

  “I’ve finished,” Robbie replied, purposely omitting the customary sir.

  “You call that finished?” returned Barclay, poking his head into the room. “Perhaps in the hovels where you were raised in the north. But not so in a gentleman’s quarters.”

  “They messed it—they can clean it up! I completed the assignment you gave me!”

  “Your orders are to clean this floor.”

  Robbie took a menacing step toward the commander.

  “Are you refusing to obey a direct order, Taggart?” asked Barclay. It was not a question, however—but an invitation.

  One blow was all it would take. Robbie could almost feel the immense satisfaction it would bring.

  But when he noted that ugly smirk on Barclay’s face, he knew he couldn’t give in and provide him the satisfaction of having judged Robbie correctly as a hothead who had no business in the Queen’s Navy. He wouldn’t stoop to Barclay’s level. He’d find some other way to get even.

  But this was it! He’d clean the bloody floor again. But no more! They weren’t going to push him around anymore. No man had to take such treatment. Somehow he’d find a way to get the lot of them off his back!

  ———

  Later that night Robbie lay on his bed, exhausted. Mopping the common room floor had been but one of his duties that day. Yet worse even than the weariness he felt was the sense of loneliness. For a man who had long boasted many friends even in the remotest reaches of the world, his tenure in the Navy had proved a vast desert of isolation. As an officer he could not fraternize with the seamen with whom he would have found a welcome and common companionship. To do so would only have further prejudiced men like Barclay against him. Yet his common social station separated him from those of his own rank. There were some who were friendly enough, but always a gulf stretched between them. And the unspoken pressure from the more haughty seemed rather to be the norm.

  Tonight he felt the loneliness more than usual. Perhaps what he felt was not loneliness at all but only the frustration of being so constantly under Barclay’s thumb. He had to find a way to let off some steam or he was going to go crazy! He had not had a break from the commander’s incessant duty for weeks, it seemed, and when he had finished that evening after supper, even Barclay, whose heart was colder than stone, could not lay another task upon him.

  Tired as he was, he would give anything for a bit of fun!

  Robbie thought dreamily of the Golden Doubloon in Aberdeen. So many happy times had he spent there in the old days, laughing and talking with his friends and dancing with good old Sadie Malone. He could not remember the last time he had kicked up his heels. Yes, he would have been able to shake off all his fatigue for just one merry jig.

  He did have a few friends in London, and was well-acquainted with the pubs along the docks. Yet he hadn’t frequented these places since his last attempt, shortly after he had been assigned to duty in London. What a shock it had been to realize immediately upon stepping across the threshold that he no longer fit in. He was still the same Robbie, but now he wore a uniform and an insignia that demanded respect. No longer did the blokes feel the freedom to slap him on the back and bend his ear with their questionable tales of adventure and excitement. Now he was an officer! And in their eyes it seemed to make him a different and unapproachable person. And at the same time, something seemed to rise unconsciously within him too, a sense that he had a certain dignity to maintain on account of his uniform. Therefore, involuntarily, he found himself hanging back too.

  But if he couldn’t fit in with the kind of men who had always been his friends, and he didn’t fit in with the officers, and if his own commander seemed bent on destroying whatever his commission meant, then what was his place in the Navy? Where did he fit in? Was this what a man was supposed to endure in order to raise himself up? What good was it if you had to sacrifice your manhood in the process?

  Robbie lay on his cot and sighed. Would the days of fun and excitement and adventure ever come again? He thought of Robbie Burns’ famous line, A man’s a man for a’ that. Well, for a’ that he’d been through lately, he didn’t feel much like a man.

  Gradually the voices in the hall grew louder and piqued Robbie’s interest and curiosity. He was just desperate enough for something to do to cast off his pride and see what they were up to, even if it meant forcing himself into the other men’s company. He’d begun to wonder if he’d ever be able to regain the abandon and laughter
of his past.

  He jumped from the bed and flung the door wide open.

  “Looks as if you fellows are off for a night on the town,” said Robbie with a friendly grin.

  Before him stood three of his fellow officers, and Robbie’s assumptions seemed to be well-founded; each was decked out in his dress blues, shined and polished and veritably gleaming.

  “That we are, Taggart,” replied one. “How about yourself?”

  “Winnie,” said another, “one look will tell you the man’s beat. He’ll be for his bed tonight.”

  “So I thought myself,” added Robbie, “but sometimes a man wants more than rest. Where are you blokes off to?”

  “The Savoy. We have tickets to the new Gilbert and Sullivan play.”

  “Would you be minding another companion?” asked Robbie.

  “You might not find the theater to your liking, Taggart,” one of the men replied.

  “Have you even heard of HMS Pinafore?”

  Yearning for something—anything!—to do, Robbie chose to ignore the intended insults of Winnie’s two companions. “Actually, I like the theater very much,” he said.

  “Then why not join us?” said Winnie. “We do have an extra ticket since Gates pulled night duty. We were going to turn it in at the door, but—”

  “Don’t mind if I do!” interrupted Robbie.

  “You’ll have to change—it’s nothing but the best tonight.”

  “I’ll just be a minute or two,” said Robbie. “You fellows want to come in and wait?”

  “Oh, we’ll wait out here. We don’t want our presence to slow you down.”

  Robbie ducked back into his room, tore off the clothes he had been working in all day, and threw on his dress uniform. In his fumbling haste he took even longer with the buttons, and it took an extra minute to raise a proper shine on his shoes. But in less than eight minutes he deemed himself fit for presentation to the public. In his excitement just to be going out on the town—even if it was to a play, which would not have been his first choice as a way to spend the evening—he almost felt like a boy rather than a sophisticated twenty-eight-year-old navy man. But he didn’t care! He needed to get away from these barracks!

  He turned back toward the door, opened it, and stepped out into the hall.

  The corridor was empty, and quiet as a graveyard. His so-called friends were nowhere to be seen. The whole thing had probably been some sick joke! They were no doubt at that very moment having a good laugh at his low-bred naivete.

  Robbie slammed the door shut, then kicked his wall.

  He looked toward his bed, then back at the door. Well, who said he had to stay here and spend the evening alone! He was all dressed now. Might as well make use of it! He didn’t need them to find a good time. Since when did Robbie Taggart need anyone to show him how to enjoy himself? He’d have a good time tonight—a rousing good one!

  As he stepped outside, the cold air felt good on his skin, still hot with anger. The light drizzle did not faze him; he merely pulled his overcoat more tightly up around his shoulders and began searching for a coach. But before he had been successful, a figure stepped out of the shadows and greeted him with a salute.

  “Evenin’, Lt. Taggart.”

  Robbie peered through the darkness, and it took his eyes a moment to recognize the seaman as his old acquaintance, Willie Kerr. The two had served together on the same ship in their civilian days and now chanced to have been assigned to the same command after joining the Navy, though in far different capacities.

  “Good evening, Kerr,” replied Robbie tightly, his capacity for friendliness at the moment stretched to the limit.

  “Wot brings ye oot on a miser’ble night like this ’ere one, sir?” asked Kerr.

  “I’m off duty, and plan on having myself a good time.”

  “I can see yer change in fortune hain’t changed ye none, Robbie—ah, that is, Lt. Taggart.”

  “Not a bit,” replied Robbie, with not a little force in his tone, his defiance not directed toward Kerr so much as it reflected an anger at himself for the feeling that perhaps he had changed after all. Well, tonight was a night for the old Robbie Taggart. Tonight the lieutenant would stay behind.

  “’Course ye’re prob’bly bound fer one o’ them fancy clubs wot the officers frequent, now as ye’re a gent’man an’ all.”

  “I wouldn’t be caught dead in such company!” replied Robbie, with the hint of a smile.

  Kerr laughed. “Ye wouldn’t be ’eadin’ fer some sleazy grogshop like the Rum Runner, now would ye?”

  “That’s exactly where I’m bound, Willie!” declared Robbie, though in truth the idea had only at that moment occurred to him.

  “Wot a coincidence, fer that’s where I’m goin’ mysel’.”

  “Then do me the honor of joining me, Kerr.”

  “Ye hain’t afeared o’ bein’ seen fraternizin’ with an inferior—?”

  “Hang it all!” Robbie shouted. “You are no more inferior than they’ve been telling me I am. And besides, I’m my own man, and I’ll go where I please with whom I please. And what about yourself?”

  “I’m game, sir.”

  “Then let’s be off, man! I’ll take care of the coach.”

  Robbie flung his arm around his new companion’s shoulder and marched down the street, defying Barclay to discover him with company “unbefitting an officer.” If he made an issue of it tonight, Barclay would more likely than not find himself sprawled out on the floor trying to stop the bleeding from his nose!

  4

  Benjamin Pike

  The Rum Runner had to be among the lowest of the low public houses along London’s docks. The filth in the corners of the floor and the stench of cheap ale would have made the place unfit for human beings had the lighting not been poor and most of those who frequented it already half gone with inebriation by the time they stooped to enter its doors.

  Robbie chose to ignore the seamier side of his surroundings, trying to imagine himself at Sadie’s in Aberdeen, while valiantly attempting to reach that numbed state of consciousness that would help him forget what brought him here. He would do whatever it took to force upon himself the false impression that he was enjoying himself. Thus, after hoisting several glasses of dark ale to his lips, he stood and took off the jacket of his dress blues, tossing it aside with a flourish. If he thought he could do so without somehow the word getting back to Barclay and his winding up in the brig for a week, he would then and there have thrown away the whole uniform!

  Yet notwithstanding his frustrations, Robbie was not one to sulk, or cling long to his anger. Before long the spirited atmosphere of the place played on his sour mood and began to lift it, though it was not the sort of lifting that would last. Robbie realized, even in the midst of it, that he’d have to return to Barclay and the others. But for the moment what he needed was a good laugh. To forget, even if temporarily, would enable him to face his duties again, until the next time they became unbearable.

  He found little trouble gaining acceptance among the group of merrymakers, despite being an officer. Kerr vouched vehemently for Robbie, slapping him on the back and declaring that his old friend was buying drinks all round as a display of his good faith. Robbie remembered neither making such an offer, nor being such a “good friend” with Willie Kerr. But tonight was not a night to analyze and think deeply about such things. This was a night for fun—for the old Robbie.

  Thus, warming quickly to the part, Robbie struck up the first tune of the evening:

  “‘Here’s adiue, sweet lovely Nancy,

  Ten thousand times adieu.

  I’m going round the ocean,

  To seek for something new.

  Come, change your ring with me, dear girl,

  Come change your ring with me,

  For it might be a token—of true love

  While I am on the sea.’”

  When Robbie paused to take a breath, the whole group broke in with a raucous cheer and round of applause
, then joined in on the next verses:

  “‘There are tinkers, tailors, shoemakers,

  Lie a-snoring asleep,

  Whilst we poor souls on the ocean wide

  Are all ploughing through the deep.

  There’s nothing to defend us, love,

  Nor to keep us from the cold,

  On the ocean wide where we must bide,

  Like jolly seamen bold.

  “‘And when the wars they are all o’er,

  There’ll be peace on every shore,

  We will drink to our wives and children,

  And the girls that we adore.

  We’ll call for liquor merrily,

  And we’ll spend our money free,

  And when our money is all gone,

  We’ll boldly go back to sea!’”

  The laughter and camaraderie, however superficial, acted like a balm to Robbie. He took the arm of a pretty barmaid and danced a jig to the lively tune of “Nancy Dawson,” imagining himself back among his old friends in Scotland where he was accepted for who he was—where he belonged.

  When several choruses of the tune had been played, they fell apart, laughing and breathless. Robbie called for another song, looking around for another partner. He had just spied a likely candidate when a heavy thud on his back stopped him in mid-step. Disoriented with drink and dance, his first thought was that one of the girl’s beaus was perhaps readying to challenge him. With the gleam that hinted of battle in his eye, Robbie spun around.

  “I knew me auld eyes was still faithful t’ me!” said a raspy voice as gritty as salt.

  Stopping short, and then staring blankly for the briefest of moments, Robbie’s look of defiance gradually faded as a grin slowly spread over his face.

  “Benjamin Pike!” he exclaimed, his hazy mind still unsure whether his eyes were telling him the truth.