Arthur McCann

by William Pitt

  He looked at me strangely, almost pleadingly; 'Do you like it?'

  I said 'It's not finished is it? That's not the end?'

  'OF COURSE IT'S NOT FINISHED, YOU BLOODY LUNATIC!' he

  screamed. I thought for a moment he was going to rush me. He half got up but he sat down heavily, wearily, again. Then he continued.

  'THERE THEY WAS, SHIPWRECKED, JUST STARING AT EACH OTHER. SAYING NOTHING. THEN AFTER THREE BLOODY DAYS . . . THIS IS THE END NOW . . . THE PARROT SAID TO THE MAN: "ALL RIGHT. YOU WIN. WHAT DID YOU DO WITH THE SHIP? " '

  He went off into screams of sweaty laughter, holding himself and rolling about. His piece of shirt dropped from

  his neck and the light breeze took it over the side.

  'Oooow!' he howled like a child. 'My bit of shirt.' He leaned over, that grotesque striped rump in the air, but it was gone, floating gaily away across the vivid waves. We both knew he would never get it back.

  He remained staring after it for a while, as though he was watching some relative's departure for a foreign land. Then he turned and smiled his fulsome wet smile at me. 'I'll have to have yours,' he said as though it were logic. 'I've got more to cover up than you.'

  'No you won't,' I whispered. I was crouched and terrified, but my hand still had the spanner hidden under the seat. 'This is my bit of shirt.'

  'Come on, dear,' he said, staggering to his raw, swollen elephant feet, making the boat pitch. ‘Let's have that shirt-tail. ‘Suddenly he shouted, 'let's have your tail! Ha! that's another joke! '

  This time I bellowed with laughter in the hope that it would humour him. He looked at me with surprise that hardened to anger. 'I'm going to have you, lad,' he announced. 'You don't like my jokes.'

  It was terrible the way he came towards me. I can't see a drawing of that Michelin Tyre Man without thinking of Gander; except he was red and he had a gigantic deep purple erection. Even under the sun I went cold. He plodded towards me over the rocking boards of the boat. His gross body was oozing sweat and this bilge was running from the corners of his mouth. His gingery hairs were stuck to his body. His tool and his toes were too terrible to contemplate. He was the most awful pineapple anyone could ever see.

  ‘see if you like this joke !' he bawled as he came on. He put his hand around his member and advanced on me like a pirate pointing a thick, coloured, sword. There we were out on the ocean and he was doing that terrifying thing. He only needed a patch over one eye.

  I don't know whether I remained still because I was frightened or calm. But I did not move from my seat at the bow of the boat.

  'Go away, Mr Gander.' I said. 'I know you're a pineapple.'

  A fearful howl blew out of him and he charged towards me over the last cross-seat then amazingly, he stopped and stood a yard away, swaying and dripping. ‘Christ, it's hot, isn't it?' he said almost as an aside. Then his gleaming face looked with savage interest at me again and he moved a fraction more. I knew he was going to get me. I knew I had to do it then. I grabbed his tool with one hand and jerked him towards me; then I hit him on his red forehead with my tool; the spanner, that is. A big bloody star sprang up on his wet skin. He tipped forward at first and I thought he was going to land on top of me, but he somehow straightened and blank-faced began to topple back. I did nothing. I just watched him. The lifeboat heaved slightly as he fell and he went cleanly over the side.

  I went to the gunwale and looked over into the bright sea. He was nowhere to be seen.

  'Mr Gander,' I called fairly quietly. 'Mr Gander. Are you there?'

  The only sound was the everlasting water slopping against the boat. I went back to my seat and, without looking at it, threw the spanner after Mr Gander. I felt suddenly very sorry for him. I thought about the joke and I laughed at it. Then I saw him again, or at least part of him. He was head and legs down in the water, his red and white striped bum floating daintily like a marker buoy.

  After ten minutes he had gone altogether and I was glad because half an hour later I saw a ship.

  Five

  She came from the horizon hysterically firing rockets and smoke flares, which puzzled me a bit because with the rescue of a shipwrecked mariner, it's supposed to be the other way around. I mean, J could see her easily enough, all three thousand tons of her, so the fireworks seemed superfluous. It was / who should have been signalling. So I let off the two Very lights from the pistol in the forward locker, pathetic little sparklers compared with their pyrotechnics. Then I watched with dismay and amazement while the ship, still a bouquet of smoke stems and bursting colours, sailed by me and went straight on, apparently not having seen me at all. When she was two miles or more away, and I was speechless from shouting at the fools, I found another Very light, a bit damp but a final hope. I loaded the pistol and pulled the trigger. It squelched pathetically from my hand and plopped over the side. I began to cry. What with having to kill Mr Gander and now this, the day had been altogether too much for a lad barely sixteen.

  I looked up from my wet hands and saw that the ship had altered course. She curled in a wide loop, still firing off the occasional joyous rocket, and came back to me. An hour later I was aboard her and they were apologizing for not having seen me first time round. They were Argentinians and they had apparently been occupied for six weeks celebrating their country's entry into the war against Nazism. The rockets and flares had been in honour of this, but because of all the noise and colour they had engendered they had not noticed my flares. In fact I was only spotted at all because the first officer had gone aft to be sick over the side (everyone was drunk, too, by the way, because they had managed to elbow their way into the war) and saw my lifeboat.

  At first, in his inane state, he thought I was fishing, and it wasn't until a fellow officer, less drunk than the rest, pointed out that I was six hundred miles from land that they had turned the ship around.

  No one spoke much English, except the Captain and he was always asleep in his cabin, but I gathered they were bound from Buenos Aires to New York and were still delirious at being allowed into the war. They had obviously counted on being admitted because although she was a merchant vessel she had a little gun mounted forward of the bridge. With this they exultantly sank my lifeboat, explaining that it was to stop it falling into enemy hands, although why they couldn't have hoisted it up on to the deck I don't know.

  In three days we were in the Hudson, sailing up towards the great piled city. Everybody on board took on a new surge of excitement, and people came out to us in small boats, all blind drunk and singing and waving flags. I went on deck in the morning and there they were all going crazy, fire floats in the river, spouting foam, all the ships' sirens sounding, and millions of people going berserk ashore.

  I wondered if Argentina's entry into the war could be a bigger thing than I had thought. Then it suddenly hit me like a bucket of hot water that all this was for ME! New York's welcome for the little English cabin boy, the lad hero, taken from the wicked sea after his ship had gone down. I began to smile. I would probably get my picture in the newspapers, and be asked to tell my own heroic story. They might even give me a woman of my own! I had heard that the Americans were generous to a fault.

  Nevertheless it seemed that the South American crew were taking less notice of me than a hero merited. They were busy letting off the remainder of their rockets and fire crackers, and shouting to the people in the boats. I waved shyly, befittingly I thought, but I could not detect anyone actually aiming their wave at me.

  Then a port official came over the side from a launch and danced a little jig with the first officer. I stood and smiled manfully at him, my youthful hand at the ready so that I could thrust it straight into that generous American handshake at the first moment. But the port official in all his braid didn't seem to see me. He was standing quite near after his jig with the first officer, however, and I gave his sleeve a tug just to show him I was around.

  'What d'ya want kid?' he asked, a bit truculently.

  ‘I'm Arthur M
cCann,' I said believing the name would immediately switch on a smile of welcome.

  'And I'm Adolf Hitler!' he exploded and careered around the deck laughing practically urinating over his joke. He ended up facing me again, however, and I said bravely: 'All right, what's all the excitement about?'

  He gave me a jovial push that sent me staggering into the first officer, who pushed me back. 'Don't you know, the war's over, you dum-dum!'

  'Over?' I blinked, and looking around at the capering Argentinians, 'That was bloody quick.'

  'Maybe we fight too good,' shrugged the first officer.

  It is very painful for me to describe the torment and embarrassment of that day. As soon as the ship got in the captain welcomed a beautiful lark-like young woman aboard and slammed his cabin door. Nobody would tell me what I should do. Everybody in the world seemed to be drunk or delirious. Eventually I went without formalities ashore and found a policeman, sitting on a crate on the jetty, who seemed to be reasonably sober and he told me to go to an office on the dockside. I went and found a boy about my own age jiving with a chair to some jazz music from a radio. There was nobody else to ask. He found a book and in between relapses when he gyrated about the room to the brass of Benny Goodman he discovered that as a distressed mariner I had to report to a department on the East Side.

  He gave me a street map and then went back to his romance with the office chair. I went out nervously into the gigantic city walking faultily for the pavement felt strange after the lifeboat and the other ship, and the buildings reared over me. I walked through canyons filled with dancing people, ticker tape snowing down, faces miles up hanging from windows. The noise boomed and resounded from the frightening concrete walls. I walked on, head down now, amazed, numb and unbelieving. Soldiers and sailors were practically having free rapes of beautiful girls at every corner, legs and arms and mouths everywhere. And here was I, sixteen, a shipwrecked kid, sunk by the Germans, almost buggered by one of my own officers, walking unnoticed, uncared-about, through all this.

  I saw a soldier disengage himself from a blonde girl, just behind a news stand. He moved away towards another female and, as the first one remained there stunned, arms open, body unoccupied, and as my disappointment and bitterness reached a pitch at that moment, I flung myself into her inviting embrace in his place.

  We had a violent kiss, perfumed with bourbon, although I couldn't place the taste right then. I felt myself crushed into her breasts under a silk blouse, with the arms folding hungrily around me. Then, on second thoughts, she pulled away and looked at me with immediate stark horror. 'Aw, for Christ's sake!' she screamed. 'Get lost won't ya!' Then she flung me into the crowd and was immediately engaged in the foulest embrace by a bloody New York fireman who had never even seen a German or a Jap.

  By the way they were celebrating you would have thought they had all escaped being massacred by a couple of hours. I saw a party of nuns singing on a little balcony and I went towards them, hoping to put my reasonable case to them. If I couldn't get hero-worship I wanted help. One of them saw me coming and lifted up her habit in a pretty un-nunly way. I turned and ran again into the awful crowd.

  Like someone staggering from a rough sea I eventually cleared the masses and found myself in Washington Square. There were plenty of celebrations there too, but because everyone seemed to be standing and singing, dancing, hugging, and that sort of activity I found a seat and sat there miserably but gratefully.

  At the other end of the bench was a man hung with rags, waking, moving his facial muscles sniffing into an empty bottle which he had retained in his hand throughout his sleep. He swung his feet to the ground and regarded all the celebrations, then looked at me.

  'Why ain't you out there gettin' a handful o' some o' them wimmen,' he muttered like an accusation.

  'I tried,' I admitted defensively. 'But I got chucked out. I'm too young, I s'pose.'

  'Young,' he said. 'Then you're lucky ain't you? No more fightin'. Just think what you've gone and missed, boy. Guys gettin' killed, but you been too young to go.' He spat violently. ‘It's us who's had the hardship o' the war. Now you got to make sure that you guys keep the peace what you ain't done nothing to earn.' He stretched himself and rose, the rags cascading down his body as he got up. 'Well, I guess I'll go an' try a handful o' some o' them wimmen myself.' He handed me the empty bottle as though it were my duty to take it and went unsteadily towards the throng at the fringe of the park.

  I remained on the bench, puzzled and sullen, until I saw a group of four or five people standing a few yards off regarding me and the bottle with disgust. I didn't care now. I got up and threw the bottle behind a hedge, then walked on to where the map said I had to go.

  On the opposite side of the city the celebrations were no less abandoned. I wondered how long, exactly, the war had been over and whether these people would drop from exhaustion before the sun went down. An Italian band was playing at one corner which I thought was strange because they'd started out on the other side. Some Chinese were burning an effigy of Hitler outside a restaurant, which also puzzled me because I'd never connected the Chinese with Hitler before. I took to creeping around corners whenever I saw a particularly violent celebration coming over my horizon, and by counting streets I came, at last, to the building where I was supposed to report as a shipwrecked sailor.

  It was a poor-looking place with green walls and dusty corridors. The door was open but although I called out several times I could not get an answer. I imagined they must be all out in the streets. I was hot and tired and hungry, and without money. My legs were throbbing after the walk, after the lifeboat. The end of the war was getting me down.

  I sat on a chair for a few minutes and then I heard a movement above me, so I went up some stairs and opened a door bearing a label 'The Welcome-Home Fund'. This seemed promising so I knocked and went in. It was a big, dreary office, and in a chair at one end was a man who was apparently welcoming home a young woman. He was sitting in the chair, and she was straddled across him, one leg each side. Pieces of clothing, his and hers, and a collection of champagne bottles were distributed about them. They were laughing and doing what they were doing as they laughed.

  Naturally I knew exactly what was going on. Rose had once tried to sit on me like that but our combined weight had broken the chair in the telephone room; I wanted to back out, but I wanted to watch them. I remained there, my hand on the door, while she rode up and down to his jerky movements. Then he saw me. And the girl, who was very pretty, turned and saw me too.

  ‘Jesus!' exclaimed the man, his face flowing from red to white.

  'Christ,' whispered the girl putting her hands on her suspenders.

  I felt I ought to say something. 'Excuse me,' I said nervously. 'I'm a distressed mariner.'

  He was already picking up a bottle from the floor as I spoke and, considering his physical engagement, he threw it with amazing force and accuracy. It hit the wall above my head and I ducked out in fear with green glass falling all round me.

  I ran down the stairs, to the entrance corridor again. They were not pursuing me. I heard the footsteps across the floor above my head again, and the door bolted loudly, then silence, so I presumed that they had gone back to their personal celebrations. Everyone was having a good time but me.

  As I was about to go out into the street again I noticed a small glass door which I had not seen before. A shadow moved behind it and, since it was a single shadow and showed no signs of dancing or hopping about, I knocked on the door and went in. There was a grey man in a linen jacket putting away some papers in a file. He was the first normal person I had seen all day. He looked up.

  'I'm looking for the Distressed Mariners Department,' I said quickly seeking to get in first.

  'You've found it,' he said. 'Just arrived?'

  'More or less,' I said. 'I've been trying to find the place.'

  'English,' he said. 'Well, it's over now, son. That part of it, anyway. Only the Japs now.'

  'They
won't last,' I said confidently, glad of someone who was speaking instead of shouting.

  'You're a bit of a kid for a DM.' he said.

  'Torpedoed,' I said bravely. 'The Krauts don't care how old you are.'

  'Well, it's all over,' he repeated softly. 'Unfortunately son, everybody's gone home or out celebrating. There's nothing I can do for you tonight. Come back tomorrow.'

  'Tomorrow?' I cried. 'Christ, I've walked miles to get here.'

  'No need to take His Name in vain, sonny,' he said politely. 'He's never done you no harm.'

  I wasn't going to argue over that. 'What can I do?' I said. 'Where can I go?'

  He began to write something on a form. 'What's your name?' he said.

  'Arthur McCann.'

  'What d'you call yourself, English or British?'

  'Either,' I said. 'I just want somewhere to go.'

  'I'm not the one to do this,' he explained looking closely at the form.' I just clear up around here. But I've seen them do it.' He handed the form to me. 'Here now, take this to the Sailors' Home on West Forty-Second, and ..."

  'West?' I said. 'That's the West Side you mean?'

  ‘Sure, son, that's where it is.'

  'I've just walked from there. It took me hours.'

  He nodded his head. 'Well, I guess I can lend a couple of bucks to a DM.,' he said. He took the money and handed it to me. I thanked him in a whisper. He told me where to get on the subway and I went out into the street again.

  Standing on the corner was a coloured girl. She smiled and I smiled too. ‘D'you wanna go to bed, honey ?' she asked.

  ‘I certainly do, miss,' I said innocently. ‘I'm dead beat.' I walked on down the street thinking that at last, and twice in the space of five minutes I had met both friendship and concern.

  At the Sailors' Home my circumstances immediately improved. They gave everybody a tot of rum and two dollars to celebrate Victory in Europe. I had never drunk rum so I sold mine for fifteen cents and I began to feel more secure in the world.