by John Harris
“Don’t be too long, Jess,” he said, then he hurriedly added:
“But don’t worry about me. You can see me any time. Your Ma’s fairly well just now and she wouldn’t want to see you if she had one of her spells.”
Ma’s room was in its usual semi-darkness and as I entered I found myself wondering with amazement how anyone could live in such self-entombment for so long. Dimly, I saw the figure in the bed, swathed round with clothes; cheap magazines on the floor and on the eiderdown; dead flowers in vases. Ma was always too occupied with her grievance to empty them.
I edged into the room, half-suffocated by the stale, warm smell of it.
“Hello, Ma,” I said loudly, half hoping she was asleep so that I needn’t disturb her. “It’s Jess.”
The interview was a difficult one. I was as uncomfortable as usual before her. There was no longer any love left in her for anything except herself.
“Been long enough making up your mind to come home,” she said.
“Never had a chance before,” I lied cheerfully. “Never paid off here before.”
“Forgotten your old Ma,” she complained. “Now you’ve grown up you’ve no time for her. Expect it’s girls and that. They always say boys soon grow out of wanting their Ma.”
“No, Ma,” I said. “I haven’t forgotten you. See, I brought you a present.”
I passed over a silk shawl I’d bought in India years before. As a matter of fact, I’d bought it for Minnie, then decided she wouldn’t like it, and it had been in my kit-bag ever since. I’d remembered it at the last minute and dug it out for Ma.
I needn’t have bothered, though. She hardly looked at it.
“Shan’t ever need it,” she said. “Never get around to sitting up these days. Proper bedfast, I am.”
I knew she was lying because half her magazines and a bowl of fruit were on the dressing-table out of her reach, and the knowledge that she was putting on a show for me destroyed what little sympathy I had left for her.
“Bedfast,” she repeated. “And nobody comes near me half the time. And me unable to help meself. That Dig never bothers these days.”
It made me angry to hear her talk like that. I knew Dig was wearing himself to a frazzle running up and downstairs for her, doing the shopping and the errands, getting up practically in the middle of the night to clean the house before he went to work. Besides, I could tell she pottered about the bedroom in her aimless fashion, because her bedroom slippers were under the bed and her dressing-gown was over the chair. I suddenly wondered whether I was just the result of a night out on the spree, or whether Ma had once been intelligent and attractive – sufficiently to make a man want to take her in his arms.
“What’s the matter?” Her voice interrupted my thoughts suddenly. “Gone quiet, haven’t you? Never a word for your Ma.”
I struggled on for about a quarter of an hour, trying to make intelligent conversation with her, but she wasn’t interested in the ships I’d been in or the countries I’d seen. I could see she was trying to read a magazine out of the corner of her eye and I gave up in disgust.
Outside on the landing I listened to her while she gave me a list of instructions to be passed on to Dig. I felt I’d like to go in and shake her out of her silly self-sympathy.
Once, I suppose, I’d regarded her with affection – as a child, I must have done, because she was my mother – but now there was nothing left to love. Even the dreary whine that came through the door irritated me. I found I couldn’t feel anything for her but anger for the misery she’d caused Dig. I felt almost that there was no kinship between us; that she was nothing more than a disembodied illness, and even that largely imaginary. There were half a dozen questions I’d been intending to ask her for a long time but I knew they’d always remain unanswered now; part of the past, far beyond the dark wall of bitterness she’d erected between herself and the rest of the world.
That autumn the weather was mild and sunny for a spell, with warm, bright days full of light breezes. Old Boxer and Yorky seemed to have disappeared into some back-alley haunt of their own and I rarely saw them. When I did, they were grey-faced and stale with liquor, only out in the daylight for food.
I moved my belongings to Dig’s on one of Wiggins’ barrows and, with Dig’s aid, borrowed one of the dinghies from the boat-yard to make full use of daylight far out beyond St Andrew Head. I drifted idly in the sunshine as I trailed a line over the stern for pollock, just as I had as a boy, staring deeply down into the dark waters, forgetful of troubles, and the restlessness that made me itch to be off to sea again.
Often Kate was with me, her thin suit covered by one of my jerseys, the wind in her hair, her cheeks glowing, her eyes bright with happiness. She’d been unwilling at first. She was afraid of the sea and disliked the motion of a boat, but she’d agreed in the end.
“How long are you going to be home, Jess?” she asked me as we lolled over the gunwale. We were idly holding fishing-lines. Our hair was tousled with the breeze and our feet were in the bilge-water that sloshed around in the bottom of the boat.
I was non-committal. I was enjoying myself at home – more than I could have imagined. Life was better than I’d felt it could be. “Dunno,” I said cheerfully, keeping my eyes on a snarl in the line I was untangling. “Got another week or so before I must go to London to take my ticket. After that I might come back here again. Or I might go straight off to sea. Depends how the money spins out.”
I saw her look at me with a sudden fear. In the past few days we’d drawn closer than I’d believed she’d allow.
“Do you want to go back, Jess?” she asked, and she seemed to be hardly daring to anticipate my answer.
“I don’t know,” I grinned. “Sometimes I do.”
My eyes must have had a faraway look as I spoke, for Kate suddenly seemed cold and she shuddered. But it wasn’t the nip in the air that caused it. It was the old trouble. The trouble that had made her hesitate when I’d asked to see her again that first night I was home; that thing that was always popping up between us. It had caused more than one odd moment of coolness in the past few days. She was fighting against her own emotions, reminding herself persistently that I was a sailor with a sailor’s instincts. Ashore I was unreliable, untruthful and restless. God knows, she must have realised I was a bit different from the shifty-eyed rat who’d fathered her, but that didn’t help her. Every time she saw that look in my eyes – and it’s a look that comes to every matelot’s eyes occasionally, even though he doesn’t know it’s there – she was telling herself that the town couldn’t hold me, that I’d more wandering to do before I could stop.
There was something powerful pulling at me, she was saying to herself, and in a way she was right. It was a strong pull. It had all the weight of the seven seas behind it and all the world besides. There was too much of the sea in me now for the narrow ocean that lay beyond St Andrew Light to satisfy me.
When a man’s been washed by spray from half the oceans of the world and blown by half its gales, it puts something into his system that can’t be thrown off overnight.
“Couldn’t you settle here, Jess, if you wanted to?” Kate asked suddenly, and she looked as though she were probing a wound, as though she didn’t want to hear my reply.
“Might,” I smiled. I couldn’t lie to her. She’d have known straight away. “But not yet. The place seems so small.”
I was thinking of the width of ocean that gives a man a feeling of freedom from all the chafing ties that bind him to a landman’s life, just as they’d held Dig to home – an office, a sick wife, his friends, all those things that held him tight to the dark town I could see rising and falling over the bow of the dinghy. I remembered suddenly the tall, shuttered houses of Copenhagen, the hot oven-draught of Kissy Street in Freetown, with its stale-smelling bars set on the edge of the sizzling red road that ran to the bush through the beaten-out-tin dwellings, and the soft beauty of blue Table Mountain rising sheer above Cape Town.
&
nbsp; “There’s such a lot to see in the world, Kate,” I said, slowly. All the desire to stay in England was slipping away from me again. I felt I’d only touched the fringe of travel and must explore further before I stopped.
There seemed a shadow between us now, as though a cloud had crossed the sun, and the soft wind that blew from the south had taken on a chill. I pulled in my line and hauled the brown lugsail up so that it fluttered in the light breeze, shook itself out, then swelled and filled. Kate watched me silently. Her expression seemed to say something had been stolen away from her.
It was growing dark as we drew silently alongside the wharf and neither of us had spoken. I made fast the painter and jumped ashore, heaving Kate after me. Still in silence, we unstepped the mast and lashed the sails and carried them to the shed where they were kept.
The place was dusky with evening as we put away the canvas and turned towards the door.
“Kate.” I saw her jump as I spoke suddenly out of the darkness.
I was conscious of the difference in her demeanour. The liveliness had gone out of her. “I’m sorry, Kate,” I said. “I don’t know what I said to hurt you.”
My hands were at her elbows now, and I could feel her warm through the thickness of the jersey as I turned her towards me. She was trembling.
I was going to kiss her, to try and put things right, but as I bent towards her she suddenly twisted and turned away. “No, Jess,” she whispered, “don’t kiss me.”
“Why not, Kate?” I said. “We’ve been happy together.”
“No, I’d rather not.” Her voice trembled as she spoke.
“Is there someone else, Kate?” I asked, puzzled.
“No, Jess,” she whispered, “there’s no one else.”
“Then what is it?” I felt a little irritated. Something was worrying her but she wouldn’t take me into her confidence, and it annoyed me. “Why won’t you let me kiss you, Kate?”
“No, Jess,” she murmured unhappily. “I’d rather you didn’t.”
I dropped my hands from her elbows. I knew what the trouble was. She’d been self-dependent too long, and she’d seen that look in my eyes in the boat out beyond St Andrew Head.
“I’m sorry, Kate.” I spoke slowly as I moved away. “I felt we’d got on well together.”
We parted awkwardly at the gate. I had an idea she distrusted me. Then I got to thinking she was looking for someone who could offer her more than I could, and I began to get angry.
“Good night, Kate,” I said coolly. “Be seeing you again sometime.”
I knew she was watching me as I walked away. But there was nothing I could do about it. It seemed to be up to her now.
Four
The following days dragged past like an old tramp in heavy weather. Even the dinghy beyond St Andrew Light seemed to have lost its attraction. Kate seemed inaccessible. During the day it seemed she was busy and in the evening she’d other interests. I’d been handed my cards…
It was at the end of this period that I ran across Pat Fee again, the same gaudy Pat as before, with the same fleshy face that had just too wide a smile and eyes that were just a little too close together, the same good looks and the same glib tongue. The same old Pat you could trust as far as you could throw a grand piano.
His clothes were flashy and he looked like the prosperous bookmaker he’d become, a long way removed from the shabby lodging-house where the smell of kippers and fish and chips seemed to cling to the damp walls.
“’Ello, young Jess,” he said, waving a cigar between his thick fingers. “Hear you’ve been seen around with our Kate. You want to be careful of her, brother. She’s ice, man, ice. She fair gives me the shivers when she looks at me. Give me a gel with a bit of warmth about her and come-to-bed eyes.”
I wasn’t wanting company just then, especially company that took pleasure in reminding me of Kate, but he slapped me on the back and grinned into my face. “Oh, come on, young Jess. Keep your hair on. Come and have a drink. Pat Fee’s not the bloke to bear a grudge. If I’ve narked you come and see it off with a pint, man, or a drop of rum if it suits you best.”
I followed him into the hotel he chose. I was indifferent for once whether he went or stayed, and hardly heard as he began to tell me how his business was flourishing.
“I’m doing fine, man,” he grinned. “You ought to see me on the job. Pat Fee keeps his hands clean these days. Still do a bit of buyin’ and sellin’ from time to time, mind you. Scrap, y’know. Money in it. Times are good just now.” He leaned forward and I noticed he’d acquired the habit of talking behind an outstretched palm – slyly, shiftily. “But it’s the betting where I make me cash, Jess, boy. Got on like a house on fire as soon as I set up on me own. Got a good tip, by the way, if you’d like me to put ’alf a quid on for you. No?” He raised his eyebrows at my refusal. “Oh, well, no accounting for tastes. Some people I know’d give their right arm for the chance.” His talk was fast, slick and oily, the market-seller’s line, the dockside shyster’s gab. Suddenly he reminded me of Nanjizel, the little shark I met the night I went to sea, the little rat in the bowler hat who’d got away with my suit-case. Remembering that Pat had had hold of my lapel in one of his more intimate confidences, I instinctively felt for my wallet.
His flow of conversation continued. It was pretty onesided, for I was answering in monosyllables, my mind elsewhere. But it wasn’t long before it dawned on me he was only seeking reassurance on something that was troubling him. I expect that was the only reason he’d bothered to speak to me. He was worried about the uneasy state of the Continent and its effect on his business.
“’Ere, Jess,” he said, after beating about the bush for a while, going to Cape Town to get to Glasgow sort of stuff. “You’ve been about a bit. Hamburg and them places. D’you reckon these Nazzies are wantin’ another war?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I didn’t either. “You’d better read the papers. They’ll tell you more than I can.”
“Oh, come off it, man!” Pat had the landbound man’s respect for the traveller. “You musta seen something. All this Heil Hitler lark. Ain’t you seen that?”
“I suppose so,” I admitted. “But I’m blowed if I know what it’s all about.”
“I reckon there’s a war brewin’ up,” he said gloomily, as though he were disappointed at my inability to reassure him. “Proper gets me down, it does, too. Just when a chap’s gettin’ a bit of a business together, a dust-up comes along and knocks the bottom out of it. Still” – he brightened up – “chaps’ll still want a bit of a flutter even if there’s fightin’, won’t they?”
I grinned. Still the same old Pat. Come the end of the world, he’d be thinking up some catch-penny scheme.
Reckon I’ll get a job in the docks if the balloon does go up,” he was saying, staring at his fingernails. “They’d find me something to do. There’s a few blokes there as owes me money. Might be glad to find me something if I was to square the debt for ’em. I shouldn’t be called up if I was on important war work, would I? And I could still run me business in me spare time. Might pick up a customer or two, in fact.”
I laughed. “You’d better look slippy,” I said. “The Navy might get you first.” The sudden startled look on Pat’s face was like a tot of rum to me. “You’re just about the right age, I said, rubbing salt into the wound. “You’d look a bit of all right in bell-bottoms with those posh hands of yours holding a fender overside for a destroyer to come alongside.”
“Oh, well!” Pat feigned indifference he didn’t seem to feel. “It’s all the same. Wun’t mind if they did, really. I’ve ’ad about enough of this bloody ’ole. It’s as dead as mutton. Might even join up without ’em fetching me.”
“How about comin’ to sea, Pat?” I suggested, feeling for once I’d got the measure of him. “I’d look after you.”
“I might at that,” he said, though he flashed me a sour look. “After all,” he went on, “there’s plenty of birds. A wife in every port. I know
you blokes.” He grinned with a sudden malicious look and made a thrust back at me.
“Been along to Minnie’s since you came home?” he asked.
I glanced quickly at him and caught a sly cunning in his eye that made me feel almost certain he knew of the incident of Minnie’s kiss before I left for sea.
His words suddenly reminded me of her, and her hot, veiled eyes, and I realised I’d almost forgotten her in spite of the hold she’d had on me once. There’d been a time in my early days at sea when in a flood of sentimentality I’d sent her letters, one at every port we touched, letters she’d never bothered to answer. And parcels. Big ones. Parcels of dress material and knick-knacks from bazaars in ports east of Suez. That had been over and done with for a long time now, but as Pat mentioned her I found my lips had gone hot and dry and I had to swallow before I could speak.
“What’s happened to Minnie these days?” I asked carelessly. Too carelessly it must have been, for Pat grinned. I’d suddenly forgotten Kate as Minnie appeared in my mind, sharp and clear as if I’d seen her only the day before yesterday, full-bodied and warm-lipped, her eyes making promises she never kept. “Yes,” I said slowly, “what’s happened to Minnie?”
Pat picked up his glass suddenly and buried his nose in it.
“Minnie?” he said, and his words were hollow inside it. “Oh, she gets me down.”
As he spoke I saw his glance flicker backwards in a shifty look, and I went hot with rage as I realised there was still something between Pat and Minnie, as there always had been and probably always would be.
“What’s she doing now?” I repeated, and my voice sounded harder.
“Minnie?” Pat was fiddling with a cigarette packet now. “Lookin’ after the Steam Packet, of course. What you expect? Gawd, I don’t know,” he said fiercely. “Ain’t seen ’er for weeks. Her Ma got the dropsy, you know, and Minnie’s runnin’ the pub.”
“How is she?” I asked, suddenly desperate for news of her.
