by John Harris
Dig watched her sweep out of the door, ridiculous in a foolish masquerade of dignity, his eyes unhappy and hurt.
He’d been looking after Ma ever since she’d begun to imagine she was ailing; doing the housework, cooking the meals and trying in addition to earn his living and scrape a bit of pleasure from words written on cheap lined notepaper.
“What brings your Ma downstairs?” he queried, shaking his head like a boxer fighting off the shock of a blow.
“Awkwardness,” I wanted to say. But he never blamed Ma – never once all the time I knew him – so I kept the words in my throat and said nothing.
“P’r’aps there’s something she wants,” he suggested.
“No, I don’t think so,” I said, and there was a strained silence.
Dig stared at me for a moment, then, almost instinctively, he picked up a book from the sideboard, a leatherette-backed volume given away with nine companions in a newspaper publicity campaign. He fingered it gently, lovingly, speaking to me over the top of it, as though most of his mental concentration was on the book.
Only half of his apologetic mumble reached me.
“…time you started work,” I heard, and my eyebrows shot up.
“Work?” I said, startled.
Dig had moved towards the window so that the sunshine that edged over the tall, blank wall of a warehouse opposite fell across his thin, sensitive face.
“Yes, Jess,” he said, and his eyes were still on the book, as though he were unable to look me in the face.
“I hoped,” he was saying, “you’d continue your studies a bit longer, but it seems you don’t like school and you’re always with that Boxer chap.”
“I needn’t be,” I pointed out.
“I know you needn’t,” Dig said, turning over the pages of the book. “But you are. He encourages you.”
I stubbed my toe in the carpet, playing with the frayed edges round a worn patch. “Seems to like me to go with him,” I admitted. “Says I’m the best deck-hand he’s ever had.”
“Because you’re the cheapest, I expect,” Dig commented.
He glanced shyly at me over the top of the book as though half afraid of defiance, then he slapped it to with a bang that stirred the dust in its leaves, and tossed it on to the table.
“Jess,” he said with an unusual briskness, “I’m not much of a one for telling a story, but it’s time you knew a bit about Old Boxer. You’ll have heard it all before, I expect – or at least his version.” Already his eyes were on the bookshelf again, and his fingers were touching another volume. “Boxer’s a good-for-nothing,” he said.
He paused, as though wondering if the word were too strong. “Such a shame,” he commented thoughtfully. “He’s a lot of good in him if he’d only give people a chance to find it.”
It was just like Dig to say that. He was generous as they come, and full-hearted, for he’d always disliked and been a little afraid of Old Boxer. The old man, huge, shabby, imperious for all his meagre station in life, had always been rude to him. Adventurous as a backyard fowl, he’d called him more than once to his face.
Dig frowned at the threadbare carpet that showed the paper underneath in parts and took the book he was fingering from the shelf. He fiddled with the fly-leaf for a while before continuing.
“I suppose,” he said, “you couldn’t hardly call me a success. Mind, I’ve not gone backwards like he has. I was born around here and I was brought up here. And there are worse places in the town to live in than this. After all, it is a house. It isn’t an old barn like he’s got, with the rain coming through the roof and rats making love of a night underneath the floor-boards. Old Boxer’s been used to better than that, you know, Jess. You can tell that. He wasn’t brought up in a two-by-four a stone’s throw from the docks.”
It was true enough what Dig said, and it was generous of him to say it the way he did. Anybody else but Dig would have accused Old Boxer of putting on airs and graces. In fact, everybody I’d ever heard talk about him did. But they were wrong and Dig was right. The airs and graces Old Boxer wore were bred in him. He’d been used to them all his life, and it was because they were so natural to him that they made everybody detest him – even people like the Mayor, whom he’d treated with a cold contempt that seemed to suggest he was only a piffling little solicitor.
“He’s not made much of his life,” Dig went on, interrupting my thoughts, “going down the nick the way he has. Boozing and that. Wasting his money. Letting that boat-yard go to rack and ruin. Mind you,” he added, half embarrassed, “give him his due: give him the occasion and he’d come up to it, I’ll bet.”
I waited in silence as he paused. The leaves of the book whispered as they were turned over idly, then Dig put the volume aside with a gesture of futility.
“But why can’t he always come up to it?” he asked.
He looked again at me. His lecture was not having much effect and he must have realised he was drifting away from his original subject.
“You’re fifteen now.” He seemed as he spoke to be bustling himself back to earth. “It’s time you left school and made something of yourself. It’s hard lines, Jess,” he observed, and I had a feeling he was sorrier about it than I was. Perhaps he’d had hopes for my future that wouldn’t ever reach fruition. “You’ll have to start work on Monday. I’ve got you a job on the newspaper.”
“On the newspaper?” I was aware of a feeling of bitter disappointment.
The worst I’d expected was a summons to the boat-yard, and the sunshine and the smell of the river and new wood. Where I could watch the tugs plying between the ship-yards and the river mouth, and bear the boom of their sirens as they butted and tugged the great vessels upstream to the repair yards, grey and rusty and weatherbeaten, steam trailing away in feathers from their hulls down the wind.
“Yes, Jess,” Dig said, and his face was in shadow as the sun sank beneath the great grey wall opposite that brought evening to Atlantic Street before its time. “It’s better to learn that trade than the boat-yard. There’s nothing much doing there just now. And they say newspapers are always the last to feel a slump and the first to notice an improvement. I’d like to see you secure.” He stared again at me over the top of the book, aware that something was wrong. He seemed to be trying to convince himself he was right in his decision and was seeking confirmation from me. “Don’t you want to or something?”
“Dunno.” The problem seemed to be far too big for me just then. I’d never thought much of earning my living. Money hardly had any meaning for me. I was decently clothed, well fed and all my amusements seemed to cost me nothing.
“Had you a fancy for something else?” Dig watched me anxiously as though afraid his fumbling might turn me against him. “I managed to use a bit of influence for you. They think highly of me, you know.”
His lie didn’t deceive me any more than it did him. I knew as well as he did that he had no influence at the newspaper at all. But, I suppose, in choosing a career for me he’d hoped I might take up where he left off and carve out a living for myself as a journalist or something.
He’d persevered for a long time trying to interest me in it, and to a certain extent he’d succeeded. I knew all the words even if I couldn’t string them together in the flowing manner Dig fancied. But I often wrote other people’s letters because I could do it quicker than they could, and could think of things to say when they’d chew a pencil to splinters trying to sort out something interesting.
But that was only because Dig had taught me the know-how and the minute he let up on me I always dashed off to the river and borrowed a dinghy or bummed a lift on the ferry that ran over to St Clewes. I’d even worked the beaches with Old Boxer during the summer or taken holiday-makers up-river…
I saw the look of disappointment on Dig’s face as I frowned. He must have seen I didn’t want to work indoors.
“Good openings, Jess,” he said cheerfully – more cheerfully than he felt, I knew. “Make something of your
self. Nothing blind-alley about it. And jobs aren’t easy to get these days. What do you think? What’s your idea?”
I was silent. I was awed by this tremendous decision that confronted me. There seemed to be only one career I could think of that I’d ever seriously considered.
“Wun’t mind being a sailor,” I said, and Dig whirled and stared at me.
“What?” he said, and his eyes were startled and hurt.
“You know,” I said. “Go to sea.”
Dig turned on his heel suddenly, more quickly than I’d ever remembered, and stared through the window across the drab little street.
“I’d just as soon you went to the Devil,” he snapped.
Three
The dying sun was casting pink rays across the evening sky like a great open fan when I managed to escape out of the house at last and make my way to the river. Over in the east, where the last of the sunshine fell, St Andrew Light shone like a bright pencil as the glow fell on its whitewashed surface. Beyond it was the steely sheet of the evening sea.
I sighed with relief as I put the Atlantic Street area behind me. I always did. Every other alley seemed to have an iron-railed swing bridge at its end, or a level crossing. In its crowded shop windows you could always find a cat dozing on the cards of patent medicines. Yelling kids played like moths round the gas-lamps long after dark and shabby men and women hung about outside the pubs – the Mariners’ Rests, the Chain Lockers, the Anchors, and the Starboard Lights, one on every corner, one at every passage end.
In the quieter streets up-river near Wiggins’ boat-yard the buildings seemed less oppressive and the patches of sunshine were wider. The town was quiet in the evening stillness, and the shadows that crawled across the roadway had begun to paw their way up the opposite walls.
As I made my way past a sagging wooden fence to a gate that bore the faded words, “Horatio Boxer, Boats for Hire”, I got a whiff, in the smell of desolation, of salt water and seaweed, that curious scent peculiar to the coast which includes in it everything that ever came from the sea or went to sea: pitch, canvas, wood, steel and steam.
The gate was unlocked and creaking in the light breeze and, pushing it open, I passed through a maze of lopsided planks that had once been stacked one upon another but had long since fallen down in mouldering jigsaws through neglect, rotten, worm-eaten, and draped with the mildewed canvas that bad been thrown out of the sail-loft when Old Boxer had made it his home. A rat scampered among a pile of rusty fittings and tangled cordage in a gaping doorway that hadn’t seen a door for years.
Beyond the old-fashioned crane with the drunken boom, and down at the sagging wharf, the scent of seaweed grew stronger round the bones of an old ship that reared starkly from a caved-in deck. Grass grew from the piles of ash and cinders on her timbers and her mooring-ropes were rank and festooned with weeds.
Alongside her, Old Boxer’s boat lifted gently to the lap of the water. She was a small craft and old-fashioned, but sturdy-looking. Out of sight below the gunwale, Yorky was whistling “Shenandoah” in a mournful off-key note that was interrupted from time to time by the clink of his tools. He was kneeling on the bottom boards, one foot half submerged in the oily bilge-water, podgy and unshaven, in grimy dungarees and singlet. He was wiping the old converted car engine with an oily rag he seemed more to lean on than use as a cleaner. His plump tattooed arms and shoulders were white and un-burned, a pale fish-belly white that never darkened despite its constant exposure to the weather.
I leaned on the black wood of the wreck and called to attract his attention.
“Hello, Yorky,” I said.
He looked up, smiling, and pushed his paint-smeared cap back on his sparse hair. Then he went on wiping, a stub of scorched cigarette between his lips. “’Ello, me old flower,” he said in the North-country accent that had given him a name at sea which had stuck to him for ever and become the only one he seemed to acknowledge.
Yorky had turned up in the town from a ship paying off in the docks years before and had met Old Boxer drunk in the High Street. He’d helped him home and put him to bed, and since then he’d been to sea only in fits and starts.
He was now supposed between voyages to work at the ramshackle boat-yard that seemed to cower, shabby and ashamed of itself, alongside the glossy, efficient premises of Wiggins’ where Dig was employed. His duties were as catch-as-catch-can as his wages, and consisted chiefly of servicing the broken-down boat that was really Old Boxer’s only source of income, with parts begged and wangled from Wiggins’ at no expense to either of them.
I watched him poke with a stubby forefinger into a dismantled carburettor and wipe it on the seat of his trousers.
“Well?” he queried. “Wot ’appened? Tell us all about it. I suppose ’e lost ’is temper and made a bloody fool of ’isself?”
I nodded. “They sent him to prison,” I said.
He appeared not to have heard, and I repeated the words.
“Ain’t the fust time,” he said. “Always one for spittin’ into the wind.” He spoke in a monotone as though starting out of a daydream. “Shouldn’t worrit. Ain’t nothink you can do. ’Ad it comin’ to ’im for a long time.”
“I bet he’s fed up,” I said.
Yorky spat into the water. “Just another one of the various sorts of private ’ell ’e treats ’isself to from time to time, lad,” he observed. “’E’s allus been the same – sourer’n the smell o’ tomcats. Like my old Dad back in ’Ull. Never spoke except to fetch you one across the kisser.” He threw aside the rag and heaved himself up to sit on the gunwale. Slowly he lit his cigarette-end, turning his head sideways to avoid burning his nose. Within a couple of seconds it was out again.
He threw the still-burning match with a sizzle into the water and stared across the sparkles towards St Clewes.
“Them cops’ll stand so much and no more,” he said. “Jeeze, the number o’ magistrates ’e’s upset with ’is bloomin’ jaw. Mouth like a parish oven ’e’s got when ’e wants to be awkward.”
He scratched himself vigorously, his face troubled.
“More’n three weeks ’e got, didn’t ’e? That ought to just about finish the stupid old clot. Ain’t got two ’a’pennies to rub together. Next thing you know, ’e’ll ’ave the bums in. This little lot’ll be sold to Wiggins’ an’ old ’Orace’ll be movin’ ’is ditty-box up to Ma Fee’s lodging-’ouse. And what’ll ’e do with the money ’e gets for it?” he asked bitterly. “Pour the lot down the drain and come up next day brisk as a bishop at a bunfight wonderin’ where it’s gone. An’ then where is ’e? ’Ave to go to sea again to keep body and soul together. Burgoo and bloody ticklers ’stead of a tiddley little outfit like ’e’s got ’ere.”
He spat the cigarette-end out viciously. “Christ, the things ’e could ’a’ done with ’isself! ’E could ’a’ made this place pay easy. The man’s a sailor if nowt else. But I been doin’ all the ruddy work an’ ’e’s been drinkin’ all the profits.”
His eye fell on the engine he’d been tinkering with, and he stared at it gloomily.
“Bleeden engine,” he said sourly.
“What’s wrong with it?” I asked.
“What’s right with it?” Yorky countered. “Wants a new ’un. That’s what. This ’un’s finished. Done. Napoo.”
I stared into the water, struggling for ideas that might help them out of what seemed to be insurmountable difficulties.
“Can’t he ever make the boat-yard pay?” I asked. “Sell things for instance?”
’E oughta, I suppose,” Yorky said. “Only ’e never will, Ain’t got it in ’em. ’E’ll sell enough to buy ’issell a bellyful of rum and then ’e’ll lose interest. Ain’t never done any more.”
I listened in silence. I’d heard Old Boxer’s history before. If it hadn’t been for Yorky, Old Boxer wouldn’t have kept his head above water as long as he had. Everybody knew that. Yorky did all the boat-hiring and repairs and sold the things Old Boxer was too lazy to sell; even
cooked his food for him when he was too drunk to do it himself.
We were both silent for a while, thinking of Old Boxer and his troubles, then Yorky spat into the shining water.
“’E came ’ere first,” he said bitterly, “nigh on twenty year ago, I reckon. You was no more’n a gleam in yer Ma’s eye. Reckon it was some ugly business somewhere ‘cos ’e’d been on the move for years afore – wanderin’ around like a flippin’ graveyard ghost.”
I tried to decide just what sort of ugly business it could have been but Yorky broke in again, obviously anxious to share his troubles. “Within a week, ’e’d ’alf the waterfront upset with ’is sarcasm. Within a month, there wasn’t one as would lift a finger to ’elp ’im. ‘Course ’e tried to kid ’em on ’e didn’t care, but ’e did. I know old ’Orace. ’Im and me’s been shipmates a long time. ’E makes a lot o’ noise – plenty o’ bluster an’ that – but it’s all rattle – just like when you bang an empty oil-drum. All noise, but ’ollow – ’ollow as you please.”
I didn’t really understand what he was getting at – not then, anyway – but I kept quiet, for he clearly wanted to talk. He paused to light a fresh fag-end, then went on in his picturesque, blaspheming way.
“Drinkin’ ’eavy, too.” He sighed. “Ever sin’ I known ’im there’s been summat wrong with Old ’Orace. Like a – like” – Yorky’s brow wrinkled as he sought in his inarticulate way to give expression to an idea – “like summat was biting ’im inside. That’s why ’e snaps people’s ’eads off like ’e does. Got a rare chip on ’is shoulder, ’e ’as.” He paused, then slapped the old engine with the oily rag. “Gawd,” he said, “what we worritin’ about ’im for? ’E wouldn’t be grateful. ’Ow about you? What did yer dad say about bein’ fetched up in court?”
“I’ve got to start work at the newspaper on Monday,” I said gloomily. “I’d sooner work here.”
Yorky stared. “You’d never git paid,” he commented.
“I bet it’s more fun.”
