Arthur McCann

by William Pitt

  This is, of course, the operation adopted should anyone fall overboard from the vessel and have to be sought for, but that day I found it difficult to concentrate. In later years when twice I was called on to perform this manoeuvre, I did so very badly, and we never found the unfortunate men we were seeking. I thought at those times that in a way their drownings were at least partly attributable to a naked torso viewed so many years before.

  The day following the indiscretion I saw the model sitting two tables distant in the college canteen. She was alone, nibbling tea, staring straight ahead. The art students were gathered at a table across the gangway, glancing salaciously at her and making wet remarks from the edges of their mouths, which I thought was odd because she was dressed in a sweater and skirt now and previously, when she was naked, they had been silent.

  Telling myself that what I was doing was gallant and courteous, I sauntered from my place to hers and sat down in front of her. She glanced up with huge dull eyes that brought no tone of recognition.

  'Look,' she sighed, indicating that she had said the same thing many times. 'I don't want to be bothered in my break.'

  'Oh, I see,' I mumbled. 'Well, I'm very sorry. I thought the mob across on that table were annoying you.'

  'I never notice them,' she said. 'Thank you all the same.'

  'And there's another thing,' I went on, half-rising.

  'I thought there would be,' she said. 'Well I'm very sorry, but I'm busy until the year after next.'

  'No, it's not that,' I protested sitting down again. 'I just wanted to apologise for bursting in on you yesterday when you were in ... in ... in the art class. Posing.'

  'Oh it was you,' she said more reasonably. 'Well somebody else having a look doesn't worry me at all. What difference is another pair of eyes? It's just that there's a hell of a draught comes through that door and I feel it in some nasty corners.'

  'Yes, I expect you do,' I commiserated. 'Anyway I'm sorry. I got the doors and the corridors mixed up. I was looking for the Navigation Department.'

  'Is that where you are ?'

  I felt pleased that she had extended the conversation of her own accord. The artists had stopped sniggering now and were looking across at me with hate and envy.

  'Yes, Navigation,' I said. 'Fourth officer's ticket.'

  'You're not going to be much of a navigator if you can't find your way around this place,' she said. 'Walking in the wrong doors. You'll be landing up in the wrong country.'

  'Sorry,' I repeated. 'I'm just clumsy like that.' I glanced up and she was regarding me with amusement. Encouraged I said: 'Anyway, I must say you looked really terrific'

  'Keep your hands on the wheel, sailor,' she said. 'And your eyes on the stars.' She finished her tea and got up, gathering her big embroidered bag and a woollen shawl from the chair. 'Back to work,' she sighed. 'Now, don't get lost whatever you do.'

  'I'll get a chart,' I said.

  She went and I looked across and got the supreme male satisfaction of seeing the expression on the artists' faces. I rose, shrugged, and walked by them, slightly expanding my chest. I only did it for show, of course. With her I thought that would be the end of it. But it wasn't. Naturally.

  Summer had come to the coast and, for those parts, it was a good summer. Our window was open to the sounds of the street and in the evenings little clouds of coal dust drifted in from the docks and settled on the petals of our potted plants. On Sundays we would go down to the cliffs or the lighthouse, or lie in bed late and then go to the putting green in the park in the afternoon.

  One Sunday both our families went on a charabanc outing to Barry Island and sat sweating on the beach, drinking beer and eating sandwiches. Each faction had tried to outdo the others with the size, variety and number of sandwiches, and the result was a horrifying wall of bread built as though in defence against the advancing tide. We had brought our own lunch and we drew a little apart from them because they were so conspicuous with their bread bastion and their piles of beer bottles.

  My mother sat nibbling tidily at the distant end of this rabble, staring out to sea as though she expected her ship to arrive at any tide. My father, stripped to the waist, for the benefit of Pamela's aunts and other female relatives, went around opening beer bottles with his bare hands, a feat much admired that day.

  There was a medieval callousness about Pamela's family. Her grandmother fell down some steps while returning from the toilet on the promenade and although this was in full view of everyone, including the old lady's husband, all they did was sit, continue to chew their bread and swig their beer and shout advice and encouragement through their full mouths. Pamela and I, who were some distance removed at the extreme of the tribe, eventually retrieved her and brought her breathless and distressed into the camp. Then, at the end of the day one of the nieces, Nora, a somewhat looney girl of about fourteen, went missing and no attempt was made to find her on the crowded beach. A random argument took place as to whether, at her age, she would qualify as a lost child and be available at the Lost Children Enclosure. But nobody went to look. It was eventually decided that she had, in all probability, drowned in the sea and there was, therefore, no point in expending any energy in a search. Once again Pamela and I had to make the effort but we failed to find the girl. Everyone boarded the home-going charabanc cheerfully convinced that Nora was now floating face down towards Porthcawl on the afternoon tide.

  With only a minute to go before departure the girl turned up with a dubious looking fairground attendant and was rejoined with the family who showed, if anything, a certain disappointment at this mundane end to what might have been an interesting occurrence.

  It was the putting green, naturally, that I remember best, because of what happened years afterwards. We would go there on reasonable days and pay our twopence for the hire of the golf balls and the putters. It was in a very pleasant part of Newport Park with seats and flower beds arranged all around and a bandstand like a birdcage set at one edge. It seemed to be the only place we ever discussed ourselves. At home we never talked about our lives, not seriously, not about the bigger aspects such as what we were going to do. We knew, for example, that before long I would have to return to the sea, because my course at the college was all but finished, but neither of us mentioned it until one September day at four o'clock as we were knocking the balls towards the sunken cocoa tins thoughtfully provided by the council's parks and cemeteries department.

  'What's going to happen to us?' she said pushing a long putt almost to the edge of the first hole.

  'How do you mean?' Mine was short for I was never as good as her. She was always right up to the hole, or beyond it. Never short.

  'Well, us,' she repeated. 'Something's got to happen hasn't it? You know that. We're just going along, living, at the moment.'

  'Don't you like that?' I said surprised. 'I'm happy just living. I thought you were.'

  'You're going back soon,' she said.' To sea.' It was almost a question; not quite.

  'Yes, I suppose so.'

  'Well, are you?'

  'Yes. That's the general idea, isn't it, Pamela? That's why I'm doing the navigation.'

  'Right,' she said.' But you've never really said, have you? You've never actually mentioned going back. All I see you doing is working out figures and writing down things and playing with those little boats and arrows.'

  'But what is there to say,' I argued. ' I thought we both knew that. You helped me when I applied. You wanted me to be an officer.'

  'We weren't married then.'

  'I see,' I said. I touched her hand to show that I did, but she nudged me away and said:' I'm putting.' She swung the club much harder than she needed.

  'What can I do?' I asked. 'I'm working as hard as I can because I thought this is the way to make sure we have decent lives, that we have the things we want. A house for a start. So we can do better things.'

  'Better? You mean so we don't have to go on any more charabanc outings to Barry Island?'

&
nbsp; 'If you like,' I said feeling my temper rising just below my chin.

  'You're a snob,' she sniffed. 'I always knew it.'

  'Shit,' I said.' It's you who who wanted me to do it in the first place. To go to sea. What do you want me to do now? Tell me what you want. Would you like me to get a bike and be an errand boy? Or work on the railway?'

  'Fore!' The bellow came from behind us and we looked up to see a gathering of people in slow collision at the previous hole of the putting green. 'Hurry up,' called the man. ' It's not the Open Championship.'

  'Open arseholes,' I said under my breath.

  'Don't say that,' rasped Pamela. 'And don't say "shit" either, like you did just a minute ago. You're not on the deck now, you know.'

  She walked angrily away from the green and I followed her, stunned by the quarrel, the first we had fallen into since our wedding day. Head down she was walking along the park path in front of the people sunning themselves on the benches. I went after her and the putting green attendant came after us and demanded his putters and balls back.

  'Give the man his balls back,' said Pamela and she turned away and I saw she was laughing. I put my arm around her and we walked away from the park and went home to tea.

  But on the Monday I went to the college knowing what I would not admit before, that I was studying for a life of separation. It had always been obvious, it had stood out like large clouds, but I had not turned my head in that direction.

  Perhaps intuitively, before our wedding, she had thought that marriage in short bursts was better than the long grind of the everyday thing that she saw and heard all about her. When I signed with the shipping company she had said: 'Every time you come home, pet, it will be like a new husband.' But those first months had been better than we had hoped, far better. Away from our families, up there in our rooms above the greengrocery, we had lived an unworried summer. I really loved her, even though she was putting on weight, and I am sure at that time she loved me very much.

  All through the Monday morning lecture on the North Atlantic Drift I was mentally going through the alternatives. Insurance man, Kleen-ezee Brush Salesman (a neighbour did this and earned good commission and had a house full of free, or stolen brushes), council work, the railway, building work, even the horrifying prospect of the Food Office. I saw myself returning each day, Fridays with my wage packet, to our eyrie above the brussels sprouts, and see her evening smile. But the more I thought about it the more the smile began to fade. What was I to do?

  I heard hardly a word about the North Atlantic Drift and when I went out at the break I saw the bright shawl of the model moving among a group of students in the main corridor. She was walking away from me, but I hurried and caught her up, pretending I did not see her until the last moment.

  'Oh, you,' she said. 'I've been looking for you.'

  'Me?'

  'Yes. Have you been adrift again?'

  'No, I've been on course, more or less.'

  'Listen, I'm having a few people around my place tonight. I wondered, if you weren't doing anything . . .'

  'What time?' I demanded so loudly and quickly that several students turned and looked. 'What time?' I whispered, making it worse.

  She told me eight o'clock and I went home and told Pamela I had a special evening lecture. She said she would go and see her mother and I saw her go off with my guilt lying like stale bread in my stomach.

  The first of the autumn channel fogs came up that evening and the girl lived in a street near the docks. There were coils and layers of mist sniffing about the alleys of the district when I got to her door. I had not dared to put on a clean shirt or change into my best suit and I stood outside trying to tug the creases out of my collar. As I reached for the knocker the door opened and Joanne was standing there behind a baby's cot which was blocking the entire passage.

  'Oh good,' she said happily. 'You've come. Just in time too.'

  'For what?' I asked looking suspiciously at the infant.

  'We want to take little Haroun just up the street to Mrs Richards. She's going to look after him.'

  I leaned forward and examined the baby. The baby examined me from the frontier of his sheets. He was brown with black eyes.

  'Haroun,' I said flatly. It was neither a question nor a statement; just a label.

  'Yes,' said Joanne.' He's a Persian. Well, half. His father's Persian.'

  'And his mother?'

  'Welsh,' she said. 'It's me.'

  The hopeless, leaden, feeling I had already come to know, and which, God knows, I have become more and more familiar with over the years, caught hold of my chest.

  'Where's his father?' I inquired. 'Inside?'

  'Yes,' she nodded. 'Five years.'

  ' I meant was he inside the house,' I pointed out, but it did not matter then.

  'No, he's inside Cardiff Jail. Brian will help you carry the cot to Mrs Richards. But don't be too long will you, because it's getting a bit foggy.'

  Brian, not altogether to my surprise, turned out to be Chinese. He called himself Blian. He was the only man I ever met who could not pronounce his own name.

  We trundled the cot out into the street, Brian clucking with concern, Joanne holding the door open and waving a miniature goodbye to the baby. With reluctance I took hold of the feet end of the contraption and said: 'Where is it? Just across the road ?'

  'Down stleet,' said Brian and Joanne nodded and mimicked, 'Down stleet.'

  Fog in my face, I turned and we set off towards the docks at an appropriate rickshaw pace, at first letting the cot run along on its own wheels. After a few hundred yards, however, one of the castors came off and we went into a skid and had to pick the cot clear of the pavement for the rest of the journey.

  It seemed miles. Far from being just down the street, it

  was down numberless streets, around corners and through dreadful alleys that I had never dreamed existed. The fog thickened and the hooting of a ship in the channel started the baby crying. We stopped at the low entrance to a dripping alley and Brian turned and said with concern: 'Baby cly. You make baby cly.'

  Ignoring the charge, I said: 'When are we going to get there? The kid will choke in this stuff.'

  'Soon,' he nodded. His face looked sinister in the fog. 'All soon.'

  We began our jogging again, along the slimy pavements, passing hunched people who stared at us and our baby, or did not see us at all. Several women called after us through the fog that we had no right to be transporting a child on a night like that, but they, and we, were gone before it mattered. Brian threw out a right arm like a turning driver and we went at an angle across the main Dock Road where it reached the wharves.

  Coming upon the familiar street and dodging with the cot and little Haroun between the buses and blindly-driven cars, I had a real and sudden fear that I might be recognized. My numerous relations and Pamela's too lived in this part of the town. What if they spotted me in this ridiculous situation when my wife thought I was at an evening lecture? Then I thought: 'Christ! What if Pamela sees me?'

  I felt myself freeze from my ankles upwards. Only my fear kept jogging along the pavement. My head dropped down almost on my chest, with my eyes hinging up to see where I was going. Then, at a fish shop on the corner, I saw Pamela's idiot cousin, Nora, the one we lost at Barry Island. She was coming out of the lit steam and into the unlit fog, her newspaper packet of chips spread like a giant handkerchief in front of her nose. I tried to take evasive action, but I stumbled and although I recovered the movement attracted her attention. Pushing Brian, at the front, abruptly, I sent him staggering forward, and little Haroun let out a concerned wail.

  'Arthur!' I heard the girl call through the fog. 'Arthur

  McCann - is that you? Arthur . . . Arthur

  'Down the cutting,' I snarled at the startled Chinese. Obediently he wheeled and we staggered down a steep and rutted cutting between two warehouse walls, the cot bouncing like a dinghy, the child howling, our feet splashing and slipping through mud
and water. Through the eerie fog, at the top of the slope I could hear the cousin calling 'Arthur? Is it you Arthur?' She was the only one who consistently got my name right.

  Almost aching with breathlessness, our shoes soaked, mud clinging to our shins, we reached a swiftly gurgling sewer outlet, which we were obliged to ford. The fog was like wool down there and we could hear large ships moaning almost at our shoulders. I would only have been mildly surprised if we had collided with a tanker. The baby had stopped crying and his blackberry eyes were now regarding me madly from the defensive edge of his blankets.

  Brian was cursing in what I took to be appropriately Fukien as we mounted the slimy slope to the streets on the other side. When we regained the houses he confessed he was lost and we spent a further ten minutes wandering with our cot and baby in the fog, not daring to ask directions, until he at last recognized a street, and we delivered Haroun, now asleep to the doorstep of Mrs Richards. A small, ragged boy told us that she had gone to the off-licence, and refused us admission until she returned, which she did after a further five minutes, festooned with Guinness bottles and packets of crisps.

  We bore the cot to a downstairs room containing another six cots, all pushed against each other like some sort of infant traffic jam. Mrs Richards decided there was no room for even one more, so we carried our burden upstairs and lodged it among another snarl-up in a front bedroom. There were babies behind bars in every room, some white, some black, some yellow; crying, sleeping, wetting, crapping, trying to stick their fingers in their neighbour's eyes. There were alien twins in a pram in the hall and another child blissfully sleeping in a sea hammock slung from the toilet cistern to a coathook on the landing. It was the first time I realized how overpopulated the world is.

  'Blian go sod off home,' announced Brian when we were in the street again. I did not discourage him and he kindly directed me back to Joanne's house. I returned carefully, avoiding the vicinity of the fish shop where Nora might still be lurking behind the smoke screen of her chip-bag. It was much quicker going back, however, and damp, but relieved, I arrived once more outside the door from which I had started that terrible journey.