by John Harris
He was a curious enigma. Education was manifest in every word he spoke. At sea, he was as different as chalk from cheese from the man we knew ashore, and as the days progressed on that first voyage and the Archibald Harvey put the long miles between us and England, all the raw bitterness dropped away from him, all that melancholy sense of wreckage that clung to his huge frame. Into his drawn features came a spark of life and interest as he taught me navigation and forced out of me an unwilling promise to sit for a mate’s ticket. His great shoulders straightened, and he seemed to draw in his sagging belly and become a giant of a man, sure-fingered and confident, capable and reliable.
But, as port followed port, and the North Star gave place to the Southern Cross, I watched him drink himself stupid in God-forsaken dives where no self-respecting sailor went. Whether it was Marseilles or New York, Cape Town or San Francisco, whether it was some huddle of clay dwellings with biscuit-tin roofs or a group of charcoal-smelling wattle huts under a fringe of palms, Old Boxer always came back aboard drunk. As drunk as he could possibly get, with whatever money he could lay his hands on. The cheaper the stuff the better, it seemed. Arak in Abadan. Palm wine in Freetown, Vaauwjaapie at the Cape. If he couldn’t get ashore he bribed bumboatmen or the crew of a water-boat to bring the booze to the ship’s side or got a dock worker to smuggle it aboard. Every time he touched civilisation he seemed to set out methodically to soak up all the sense in him with rum.
I dragged him out of Port Said cafés where half-naked Arab girls danced to a barbaric tune with clicking anklets of jingling coins. Out of smoky waterfront dives in Singapore where wailing wind instruments and gongs made the music for Balinese dancers. From Cape Town shebeens and from Honolulu huts. From reach-me-down holes-in-the-wall in Freetown where the vultures waited like rusty old spinsters on the corrugated-iron roof-tops outside in the glaring sun, and the women were as black as the ace of spades.
I dragged him back to the ship weeping with drunkenness, the two of us staggering and stumbling in and out of the railway lines all the way along the docks. I fished him out of the harbour in Freetown when he fell out of the launch that had ferried us out to the old Cherrapunji that was lying up the Bunce, and he was so canned he’d have drowned, surrounded by his floating parcels and hat and a pumpkin he’d picked up from somewhere.
I fought off a naked black harlot in Valparaiso where he was trying to booze some strength back into him after a murderous trip round the Horn where the sea had whipped two men off the deck of the Ballymena clean as a whistle. She’d threatened to carve his heart out, and I had to tap her over the noggin to get him away. But all the same I spent the night with him in the calaboose there, among the lice and the cockroaches, among the beachcombers and bums and good-for-nothings, and the shining buck niggers who sprawled on the floor, their clothes under their heads for pillows. I helped him next morning out into the sunshine, trembling and ashamed of himself, his face grey and hollow in the glare.
The years and his furious, bitter mind inevitably began to leave their mark on him. As one trip followed another, and ship took the place of ship, he grew more careless of his appearance and his moods grew more violent – whether it was soured bad temper and vicious sarcasm, or the overwhelming tenderness for me that made it so difficult to leave him to stew in his own juice when he was drunk. London or New York, he always ran out of cash long before his leave was over and had to pawn something or borrow to pay for his digs. Or at the very worst leave his kit behind as security for a debt he never paid.
It was an accepted fact in the forecastle that he had a secret, but whatever it was he kept it securely locked away. It never saw the light of day and brought down a curtain of silence in front of me or Yorky whenever we unwittingly nudged some unhappy ache. It was something that shut us both out and cut off laughter like a knife.
“Closer’n a duck’s be’ind, old ’Orace, when ’e’s like that,” Yorky complained. “Gives me the creeps, it does. My old Ma’s like that sometimes. Mopes round the ’ouse like she’s ’ad ’er ’ead fast in the mangle, and everybody wonderin’ ’oo’s to blame.”
Whatever it was, it was like an inflamed wound and drove Old Boxer back inside himself, inside a hard shell we couldn’t penetrate, and made him cold and angry and bitter. It drove him, abject and inhuman, into all the evil corners throughout the Levant and the Far East; even, it was said, to opium.
There were papers in his chest and belongings in his ditty-box that no one ever saw. Papers we argued about and puzzled over and would have stolen just for the chance of a squint at them, but for his size and the weight of his fist or the cold bite of his tongue that could lacerate you like a whiplash when he was roused.
When the drink had worn off, though, there was the sea in his very bones and marrow. In the way he wore his clothes. In the way he walked and spoke and looked at us. In the cock of the jaunty grey beard he grew at sea and the glint of his eye. Old Boxer was a sailor to his fingertips, who could run rings round the rest of us, and always would be. In spite of the misery that made him sour in his moods of black depression, in spite of the bitterness that made him drink himself silly whenever he was within reach of liquor, in spite of the weakness that made him swear over and over again he was going to leave the sea and yet had never let him get beyond the first shabby hotel, there was something magnificent about him. There was something awful in his debauchery, but something more, too, something I could never put my finger on, that made me as loyal to him as Yorky, whatever his mood and whatever his condition.
It was a grey November day when I first saw familiar streets again. The Archibald Harvey was long behind me and long forgotten in the procession of ships I’d made my home, and when I first saw the St Andrew Light again I was in the Mossulu that found her grave in Tobruk harbour.
There was something vaguely oppressive in the air that day as we approached to tie up, and it didn’t come entirely from the dark surroundings. The news those days was enough to give anyone the pip. For months there’d been uneasiness in the air. Germany was scooping up great areas of land – Austria, Czecho-Slovakia, Sudetenland – and was goose-stepping all over the place, terrifying people with the armaments she was building. Italy had made a grab at Albania and was making anything the excuse to set about someone. There wasn’t much peace in the world just then, in spite of old Chamberlain’s recent visit to Hitler.
The sky was heavily overcast and low clouds mingled with the smoke and steam when the Mossulu came alongside. We sent heaving-lines ashore with her mooring-ropes, and she was winched into the quayside by her clattering donkey engines. Overhead, the grey gulls wheeled and cried. Alongside, the oily water was lashed to a muddy foam by the screws that churned over and over again the matted debris round the stern – all the oil-smeared boxes, the paper and the sticks, the usual old hat.
I stared through the flurries of rain at the tall buildings along the river bank, and the shining roofs of the dark warehouses and the cranes and the coal-chutes. There was an odd feeling in my stomach. This was my home – but I was a different person. For the first time in my life I had money in my pocket to spend in the town, and I felt mature enough to withstand any buffets it could hand out to me.
In the forecastle, the deck crew were rolling up their gear and cramming it into sea-chests and bags and trunks. Yorky, an old cap over his ear, was in the bow, trying to make a brown-paper parcel of all the odds and ends of worn-out clothing that made up his kit. He was swearing and cursing, excited by the prospect of shore leave and money in his pocket.
“Just let me shake the dust of this old cow off me feet,” he was saying, “and they’ll never catch me at sea again. This lark puts years on a chap, and I’ve ’ad enough of it. I’m goin’ ’ome to my old Ma. No more sea time for me. Not this kid. Not yours truly.”
“We’ll swallow the anchor together, Yorky,” Old Boxer said, though his voice was flat and had none of the excitement in it that showed in Yorky’s eyes.
I leaned on th
e bulkhead, watching them, knowing that neither of them meant what he said, and that they knew, too. Both Yorky and Old Boxer had lost the ability to sleep soundly away from the cry of the gulls and the smell of the sea.
I stared at the litter of paper and old clothes on the deck – discarded rubbish left for the ship-yard workers to pick over – and I had that sense of chilly loneliness that came on me at times. All the little hand-made curtains that normally decorated the cold ironwork of the bunks had disappeared. All the personal bedding. All the oilskins that swung on the bulkhead and rubbed a half-circle of dirt on the white paint. The forecastle looked bare and bleak in the light of the guarded bulb in the deckhead and the cold grey glow that crept timorously in through the portholes. The bunks had a queer, comfortless look about them, yet there’d been times when the place had seemed homely, when there was the fug of pipes in it and the wind was cheerless outside.
Abruptly I went to my own bunk and started to pack.
“’Omesick, Jess?” Yorky queried, glancing round at me. “No,” I said. “I’ll be at sea again as soon as you.”
Yorky grinned. And his grin was his admission that he was a liar. He’d threatened to leave the ship in Sydney after a free-for-all with Old Boxer, but before she was due to sail he’d come back along the waterfront, shuffling and penniless, stale with booze and dodging a moneylender…
An hour later we were ashore and I was staring at the familiar buildings almost as though we’d come to a foreign land. The streets seemed shorter and narrower and far more crowded and dirty than I’d ever remembered. I began to wonder how I’d ever managed to live in the place, and why I hadn’t choked with the nearness of the walls.
Our first call was to drop our luggage in one of the shabby establishments near the docks.
“How about a hotel?” I suggested. “It’s the first night ashore, after all. Let’s sleep in a comfortable bed.”
“The Grands and the Royals,” Old Boxer said soberly, “have never welcomed seafaring men.”
“Thank Gawd I’ll ’ave a feather mattress to bounce on,” Yorky said gleefully. “’Stead o’ them flea-pits Ernie the Weasel ’ires out. I’m goin’ ’ome, mate. Sleep in me own tiddley little bunk in ’Ull tonight.” He flourished the ticket he’d bought at the railway station as we passed, then shoved it in his waistcoat pocket. “Tomorrer night I’ll be in the local with me Ma and me old Auntie May – me with me pint o’ dark and them with their Guinnesses.”
He chuckled. “Jeeze,” he said, “the number o’ times I’ve set off for ’Ull and got no further than the first pub. Well, I’ve got me ticket this time. Safe as the Bank of England.”
He tucked his concertina tighter under his arm and picked up his parcel. “Come on; ’Orace, let’s get yer established afore I go. Ain’t only one last thing I got to do. That’s see yer settled. ’Ow about Ernie the Weasel’s, same as usual? It’s not much cop, and Ernie’s a bit of a bloody Crippen, but it’ll do yer, I reckon.”
I listened to them arguing, wondering if I ought to go home. I was itching to see the shabby house in Atlantic Street, yet I had a feeling I might not be wanted. Over the years I’d spent growing into a man I’d studiously avoided home, leaving the ship in London when necessary. I’d even spent my shore time between ships there, when they were paying off in my home town, lonely in a Salvation Army hostel while Yorky and Old Boxer took digs near to Atlantic Street and Minnie’s Ma’s. I’d been dodging something for years, it seemed, but now that I was home at last the thing I’d been avoiding was suddenly no more frightening than a shadow.
Eventually we found a drab lodging-house next to a tripe shop, a place with a dark, bare hall that smelled of cabbage; it had brown patches of damp showing in all the corners, and its stairs were as bare of carpet as its windows were of curtains.
“Ernie the Weasel’s.” Old Boxer waved a hand in an ironic gesture of welcome. “Welcome to Poverty Mansion.” He raised his voice and called imperiously down the echoing hall. “Ernie! Come and book us a berth.”
Yorky wrinkled his nose. “Pooh! Stinks o’ tomcats,” he commented. “Ernie, you old flea-bag,” he bawled at the top of his voice, “your doss-house needs a rub of the old carbolic!”
A door opened as he was shouting and Pat Fee, of all people, appeared in his shirt-sleeves, his waistcoat open.
“Upstairs,” he said shortly in answer to Old Boxer’s question. “First floor. And don’t make so much row.”
“The bloomin’ reception committee, Jess,” Yorky said sarcastically. “Look after yer ’ere, they do.”
I saw Pat peering at us in the gloomy hall, then he burst into a laugh. “Blow me down if it ain’t little Jess Ferigo growed up,” he said. “How’s it goin’, kid? ’Eard you went to sea.”
He’d grown fatter and was florid and prosperous-looking despite the dinginess of his surroundings.
There was no enthusiasm in my reply, though. I’d no love for Pat. I began to mount the carpetless stairs that were noisy with creaks behind Old Boxer, while Yorky sat on the doorstep and lit a cigarette.
“Ain’t comin’ in,” he said. “If I see a bed ’ere I might be tempted to stay the night, and if I do I’ll never get ’ome.”
Pat watched us climb the steep staircase, then he suddenly tossed aside his cigarette and followed us.
“Ain’t you goin’ ’ome?” he asked me. “Or ’ave you decided after all you don’t belong there any more?”
I said nothing. The old fierce dislike for him burned inside me like a pain.
“Reckon I’m doin’ better nor you now, Jess,” he went on cheerfully. As he spoke he lit a cigar with a flourish, almost as though he wanted to demonstrate his prosperity. He drew deep puffs at it as he talked, claiming an easy friendship. “Running a book now. Paying game, bookmaking. Only run this joint as a sideline. Took it over when Ma died. It’s bigger’n the one she had, and it’s just the job for making money out of matelots when they come ashore, or blokes as don’t fancy goin’ ’ome. Costs me nothin’. Ernie the Weasel runs it for me in return for ’is keep. Wun’t be ’ere now only I ’ad a bit of a to-do with the bit of fluff I kip with. Got to wait till she’s been got out of my flat.”
We’d reached the landing now, and Pat leaned on the banisters, still chatting, slyness dripping from his words.
“Me sister Kate works with your old man now,” he said informatively. “Got too big for ’er boots and left ’ome after the old lady died. Thought she might ’elp me run this place, I did. Just the job for a woman. But not ’er. Too bloody clever she was. Scholarships and that. Secretary at Wiggins’. Works late at night sometimes,” he said in tones that were immediately suggestive of unpleasantness.
I paused with my hand on the knob of a door on the landing, waiting for him to say something more.
“Gawd knows what she gets up to there,” the drawling voice went on. “Work late often, they do, I’ve ’eard. Work! That’s a new name for it. I know what I’d be doin’ if I was in an office at night with a girl.”
I dropped my bag and turned on him. “Shut your trap!” I said, and I meant every word I was saying. “Shut it or I’ll knock you backwards down the stairs. I mean it. I’ll knock you straight to the bottom.”
Pat retreated hurriedly down two or three steps. “OK. OK,” he said, changing his tone. “Only my bit o’ fun. Nothing to get snotty about. Any more of yer carry-on and out you go. This is a respectable lodging-house.”
He started down the stairs, jauntily as ever, and I itched to land a kick on his broadening behind.
“Give me love to Kate when you go an’ see your old man at the boat-yard,” he said. “I ain’t seen ’er for six months.”
I turned back and followed Old Boxer into the room we were sharing, a bleak little closet almost devoid of furniture and darkened by the wall of a warehouse outside. Old Boxer, unconscious of what had been happening on the landing, had tossed his bags on to one of the two shabby beds.
“The old familiar places
,” he said bitterly. “God, I hate ’em as I hate the thought of the hell that surely awaits me.”
There’d been a lordliness about his words as he called for Ernie, but now they seemed lost and friendless and bewildered.
Yorky appeared in the doorway then, his stiff collar lopsided already, his cap in its usual place over one ear, his brown paper parcel safely tucked under one arm, his concertina under the other. “Come on,” he said. “Shake a leg. Let’s go and find some young ladies and push the boat out.”
“Yorky, my lad,” Old Boxer said, cheering up a little, “you look like some lecherous Lochinvar, some rampant Romeo roaring for his Juliet.” He spoke as he always did to Yorky, as though he were a friend, but in a way that suggested subtly that he was an inferior.
He heaved himself from the bed to a chorus of jangling springs.
“Come on, Jess, let’s go and find him some painted little slut who’ll swop him a kiss for a drop of booze.”
“Now, look ’ere, ’Orace,” Yorky said indignantly. “That’s no way to speak. You don’t find young ladies amiss yourself.”
“I detest ’em,” Old Boxer snapped. “But I’ve human instincts like anyone else. Come on, let’s go and get a drink before we pay off.” He looked at me. “Only an eyeful, Jess,” he said half-apologetically, as we thumped down the bare stairs. “Just one to keep me going. We’ve got to kill time.”
The Town Hall clock was booming as we went outside into the damp air again, the deep notes echoing among the grey stone buildings. Knots of men whose clothes stamped them as sailors, for all that they wore the blue suits and hats of shore leave, suddenly came to life. They heaved themselves from the corners where they lounged, smoking, and headed for the pubs like a flock of pigeons at feeding time.
Old Boxer dived into a dark little inn I remembered, whose courtyard had once been used as a meeting-place for duels. Pirates on the way to the gallows had stopped in it for a hot toddy. Inside, the rooms were full of noisy men whom he jostled imperiously to one side. He was soon in earnest conversation with the landlord and offering his watch as security.
