Iron Ships, Iron Men

by Christopher Nicole

  ‘Right away, Miss Marguerite,’ said a negro, dressed all in black save for his white shirt and collar, who was supervising the female servants, and hurried from the room.

  ‘You can’t be hungry,’ her sister protested. ‘I do declare, Marguerite, but you are the end. I couldn’t eat a thing right this minute.’

  ‘The steak is for the gentleman’s eye,’ Marguerite Grahame pointed out, leaning over Rod gently to smooth the hair back from his left eye, which was certainly extremely painful, and out of which he could hardly see.

  ‘Oh, my!’ Claudine came closer to bend and peer at him, which he enjoyed, as he could peer back. ‘Oh, you are hurt. If I’d had a shotgun I’d have blown those Yankee rascals clear to hell, I swear I would.’ Then she smiled, and became even more lovely. ‘And we don’t even know your name, sir.’

  ‘Bascom.’ Rod tried to rise, and was gently pushed back into his chair. ‘Rodney Bascom.’

  ‘Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr Bascom,’ Grahame said, shaking his hand. He had retained sufficient of what must, in his youth, have been a considerable handsomeness to prove he was the girls’ father, but the whole had swollen into a massive, alcoholic and, as he had demonstrated on the street, temperamental arrogance, as his body had also become massive and overblown. ‘You’re not a Yankee, that’s for certain.’

  ‘I am English, sir.’

  ‘I knew it. Anyone who ain’t a Yankee is a friend of mine, I can tell you that.’

  ‘And he saved our lives,’ Claudine reminded her father.

  ‘Sure he did,’ Grahame agreed. ‘Jacob ...’ he addressed his butler, who had just re-entered the room, carrying a large raw steak, on a silver tray. ‘Send up some brandy for Mr Bascom. And for me too, by God.’

  ‘And for us as well,’ Marguerite Grahame said with her habitual quietness, meeting her father’s gaze with perfect equanimity.

  ‘After an experience like that, I am sure we need it as much as you.’

  ‘By God, but you’re right,’ Grahame agreed. ‘Make that four, Jacob.’

  ‘Right away, Mr Grahame. Your steak, Miss Marguerite.’

  Marguerite took the steak and knelt on the rug before Rod, to the alarm of her maid, who hovered above her like a guardian angel. But Marguerite continued to ignore her as she leaned forward to press the meat against Rod’s eye. He was enveloped in her perfume, and overtaken by a most exciting sensation, as her bodice was resting against his thigh. To compound his feeling that he must have been murdered by the mob and drifted into heaven, Claudine now knelt against his other thigh, seeming to enclose his body in a wealth of sweet smelling flesh.

  ‘Easy, now, easy,’ their father said. ‘You don’t want to smother the boy.’

  Rod could think of no more sublime fate, and some of the pain was already receding from his eye. A full goblet of brandy soon had him feeling wildly exhilarated, if disappointed that, in order to take their own drinks, the two girls were forced to release him and stand up.

  ‘English, eh?’ Grahame inquired, offering him a cigar. The two girls sat together on the settee opposite him, gazing at him, while their hair was finally pinned into place. Neither of them had actually acknowledged even the presence of the maids, much less what they were doing. Nor, Rod realised, had any of the three of them troubled to introduce themselves — they apparently took it for granted that he would know who they were. ‘What brings you to the States?’ Grahame asked him.

  ‘It’s a long story,’ Rod said.

  ‘Oh, do tell us,’ Claudine requested.

  ‘Now, Claudine,’ her father protested. ‘We have things to do if we are going to catch that train tomorrow. And if we don’t catch that train, we won’t be home for Christmas. You know that’s going to upset your Ma.’

  ‘We don’t have anything to do, Pa,’ she said. ‘Not any more. I’m not going out on that street again until all those horrid people have gone home. And then I’m only going as far as the railroad station. We shouldn’t ever have come here. The shops are no better than in New Orleans. And the people just don’t like us.’

  ‘You could have a point,’ Grahame agreed; Rod was beginning to suspect that he always agreed with his daughters. Then he grinned. ‘I sure as hell don’t like them.’

  ‘So we have all the time in the world to listen to Mr Bascom’s story,’ Claudine asserted.

  ‘Perhaps Mr Bascom does not wish to tell us his story,’ Marguerite Grahame suggested.

  ‘It isn’t very edifying,’ Rod agreed. ‘And it’ll bore you. I was an officer in the Royal Navy.’

  ‘The Royal Navy!’ Claudine made it sound like the one thing she had always wanted to hear about. ‘Oh, you must tell us all about it, Mr Bascom. I so love a good story.’

  The brandy was now floating around both Rod’s brain and his belly, giving him, despite the various aches and pains, a most contented vision of the world, especially as at the moment that world consisted almost entirely of the two most lovely creatures he had ever laid eyes on.

  ‘Well,’ he said, and told them of his service in the Crimea, his appointment to the West Indian Station, and of the shipwreck off Cuba.

  ‘Oh, my,’ Claudine said when he was finished. ‘You’ve been in awar and a shipwreck. You must be awfully brave.’

  ‘And awfully hard done by,’ Marguerite commented.

  ‘Goddamned British,’ Grahame remarked, completely altering his point of view. ‘But those damned Yankees are no different. This McGann, where’s he from?’

  ‘His people farm on Long Island,’ Rod explained.

  ‘I knew it. A damned Yankee. He shouldn’t have called for your assistance in the first place, and got you into trouble.’

  ‘He was perfectly justified to do so, sir,’ Rod argued. ‘In the circumstances. And both he and his family have been most kind to me, in a time of great need.’

  ‘McGann,’ Grahame remarked, thoughtfully. ‘Long Island. Never heard the name before. They don’t deal in sugar, that’s for sure.’

  ‘But what are you going to do now, Mr Bascom?’ Marguerite asked.

  ‘Why, I suppose I am looking for a berth,’ he admitted.

  ‘On a ship?’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s the one profession I have, Miss Grahame.’

  ‘Now there’s a pity, boy,’ Grahame said. ‘I’d happily help a fellow like yourself into employment, that I would. But sugar’s my business. Never been to sea in my life. Never mean to, either.’

  ‘But Pa,’ Marguerite said. ‘What about theScarlet Belle?’

  ‘Scarlet Belle,’ Claudine cried, clapping her hands in delight. The black maids, having finished with their ministrations on the hair, were now kneeling in front of the settee to remove the last traces of mud from the girls’ boots — they stopped work to clap their hands as well.

  Rod wondered if there was yet another sister in this family, who from her name might be even more entrancing than this pair.

  ‘Say, now, that’s an idea,’ Grahame agreed.

  ‘You said you needed a mate,’ Marguerite reminded him.

  ‘Well, so we do. That son of a gun Roberts is going to be in gaol for the next six months. But theBelle is a paddle steamer. Mr Bascom is a real sailor man.’

  Rod had been listening to the conversation with no more than polite interest, only regretting that obviously he and the Misses Grahame would soon be parting company forever; apart from the fact that they clearly lived somewhere in the south of this vast country, he could not see the McGanns ever wishing to be friends with an obvious slaveowner — while they would be disgusted by the examples of southern extravagance and insensibility to their inferiors being displayed before his eyes. But now he was suddenly interested. A paddle steamer ... but owned by a slaveowner? He would be working for a man it would be very easy to dislike ... but who was the father of Marguerite and Claudine. Two girls who could treat other human beings as less important than the dirt on their boots ... but that was clearly the result of their upbringing, and coul
d not offset either their beauty or their charm.

  It would also mean leaving the very real shelter offered by the McGann family ... but hadn’t he resolved that that was necessary, in any event? At least for a while.

  ‘My last command was a paddle steamer, Mr Grahame,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Well, she had sails as well, as she was an ocean-going ship. But she also had paddle wheels.’

  ‘Stern or side?’

  ‘Side wheels, sir.’

  ‘Well, glory be. So hasScarlet Belle. She ain’t too popular on the Mississippi for that reason, I’ll tell you that. But ... you ever handled a ship on a river, boy?’

  ‘Well, no, sir. But I know I can handle a ship, under any conditions.’ He smiled. ‘So long as the engine works.’

  Grahame looked at him for several seconds, while Claudine and Marguerite held hands, clearly willing their father to agree. And succeeding. He gave them a glance before turning back to Rod. ‘Well, boy, if youcanhandle a ship likeScarlet Belle, and on the Mississippi, the way you can handle those fists of yours ... you have yourself a job.’

  ‘Oh, Pa!’ Claudine cried in delight, bouncing up and down.

  ‘Do agree to come with us, Mr Bascom,’ Marguerite begged. ‘We would so like to show you Louisiana.’

  ‘Well ...’ Rod’s mind was already made up, but he didn’t want to appear too eager, ‘may I consider it?’ He would, in any event, have to explain his decision to Stephen McGann.

  ‘Of course you may consider it, boy. But only until tomorrow morning. I aim to be out of here on tomorrow’s train. Like the girl said, it was a mistake to come here. This city has nothing New Orleans don’t, save for a lot of Goddamned Yankee abolitionists. But I reckon I’ve found myself a mate.’ He held out his hand again. ‘You seem to spend your time rescuing people in distress. You’ll find we Louisiana people can be as grateful as any damned Yankees.’

  ‘Oh, yes, Mr Bascom. Oh, yes,’ Claudine said softly. Marguerite merely smiled at him, and he realised that however delightful the immediate future promised to be, it could also be quite complicated.

  *

  ‘Wilbur Grahame,’ Stephen McGann said thoughtfully. ‘I’ve heard of him, to be sure.’ He gave one of the family grins. ‘Even if he hasn’t heard of me. He’s one of the richest planters in Louisiana.’

  ‘I thought all the money in Louisiana was in French hands,’ Rod remarked.

  ‘Sure it is. Grahame fell on his feet. He worked as an overseer for Henri Martine, and as I understand the story, managed to get Martine’s daughter to fall in love with him and accept a proposal of marriage. Then Martine died, and as he had no sons, Grahame fell on his feet, as I said. You realise he owns slaves? One hell of a lot of them.’

  ‘I’ve seen some of them.’

  ‘And that doesn’t bother you?’

  ‘Well, sir, the ones I saw seemed happy enough, and it isn’t as if I’m being asked to work with them in the fields. I’m to be mate on his paddle steamer.’

  ‘Not the same thing as handling a ship at sea,’ Stephen warned. ‘Those Mississippi currents can be fierce. As for slavery ... you don’t have to carry a whip in the fields to be sickened by it. It’s a dirty business from top to bottom. But ... it’s there, I guess, and there’s nothing either you or I can do about it. It’s a matter for Congress. But you want to keep an eye open for Grahame, son. He’s a hard man.’

  ‘I’ve dealt with a lot of hard men in my time, Captain Stephen,’ Rod said, thinking of Renwick, and a few other Navy captains of his experience. As for slaves ... while conditions on the lower deck of a British warship were enormously improved on even fifty years before, the ordinary seaman was still very much a slave to his officers, and was not half as happy or well clothed and fed as the Grahame servants had appeared to be.

  More important, none of the Royal Navy captains he had ever encountered had had two such magnificent daughters, he thought; but he had not mentioned the girls to Stephen, other than in passing as members of the family he had assisted. In fact, he didn’t like to admit to himself that they were the true reasons he was jumping at the chance of working for Grahame. Surely it was the idea of getting back to his true profession, even if only up and down a river — and he had recently been reminding himself that he knew nothing of love, and had neither the time nor the inclination to find out. But there was all the difference in the world between Meg McGann and Marguerite Grahame. And even more, Claudine. He wondered if that made him several kinds of a cad? But life had treated him so badly this past year he could feel little guilt about seizing his chances where he could.

  Not that he ever intended to forget the McGanns. ‘I don’t yet know what Mr Grahame will be paying me, Captain Stephen,’ he said. ‘But this I do know; half of every month’s packet will be sent to your farm until I have discharged my debts.’

  ‘Don’t make promises you may not be able to keep,’ Stephen McGann warned him. ‘Those Creoles live high off the hog, and you’ll want to keep up with them. Just be sure that when you’re next in New England, you come along to see us.’ His tone suggested that it might not be so very long before Rod would again be in New England.

  ‘You’ve my word on that, sir.’

  Stephen McGann’s eyes twinkled. ‘And go easy about who you decide to rescue next,’ he advised. ‘It’s a habit which could become dangerous.’

  Did he have any regrets about leaving the McGanns? Rod had to admit they were few. To be permanently in debt even to the nicest people on earth was an embarrassing situation — when the creditors would not take their money back it became positively humiliating. And it seemed as if all America was anxious to welcome a man who was prepared to stand up for himself, or better yet, for others, and if he could do so with his fists, so much the better.

  Besides, he was too excited at the prospect of the journey ahead of him, which meant first of all retracing his steps to Richmond, and then abandoning the train and taking to a waiting coach, which apparently belonged to the Grahame family, and in which the party followed the well-worn Valley Road through the Allegheny Mountains, which then joined the Great Trading Path following the course of the Tennessee River through the Appalachians before turning away into Tennessee itself. Here the trail bifurcated, the Nashville Road leading just south of west, to reach the Mississippi at the town of Vicksburg, while the Natchez Trace swung away just west of south, once again to cross the Tennessee before arriving at the Mississippi at the town which gave it its name.

  It would have been the journey of a lifetime, even without the company of the girls. A sailor from early youth, Rod was used to vast spaces, but these had always been on the seas. As an Englishman, the land for him had always been a world of islands. If he had landed at Balaklava during the Crimean War, that town too had been on a peninsula which was almost an island; he had obtained no glimpse of the vastness that was Russia beyond. Now the concept of travelling for day after day, in approximately the same direction, and every day seeing yet more and more country unfolding before him, was staggering. The mountains, the valleys, the wide rushing rivers which had to be forded with much cracking of whips and shouting and pushing, the townships, each one with a character of its own and yet distinctively American, the people, varying from lantern-jawed traders and merchants to hard-eyed mountain men in skin clothing to nervous Indians, all combined to give him a kaleidoscopic impression of this tremendous country.

  There were of course disadvantages to travelling as an employee of Wilbur Grahame rather than as a friend of the family. Despite the cold when the journey began, Rod was not invited to sit in the carriage itself, but rode on the roof, and was provided with a rifle, just in case, as Grahame said. The drivers were two hardbitten white men, who clearly thought little of their new companion, and the slaves followed behind in a wagon driven by two of their own people. The slaves did all the work of pitching camp, preparing food, and cleaning up afterwards. They were also constantly available to humour the sl
ightest whims of their mistresses, or even more their master. This was of course a repulsive concept, and yet there was no indication that they did not enjoy their roles, or that they ever suffered any physical abuse; certainly they were far better dressed and fed than most of the free blacks he had observed in the north — or than most of the black people he had seen in Virginia.

  More important, the girls themselves did not seem aware that they were the absolutely omnipotent mistresses of everything they saw. Again he reminded himself that they had been born to such omnipotence, and had never known anything different. If they hardly seemed aware of their maids when they were being ministered to, and would never think of interrupting a conversation or anything else that they happened to be doing just because a black servant had entered their presence, there were times when they laughed and joked with the black people as if they were all the oldest of friends — which obviously they were.

  Not that it would really have mattered to Rod even if they had whipped their servants every day, any more than it mattered to him that he was obviously regarded as little more than a servant himself. Taking a long, and essentially primitive, and therefore intimate, journey with two such magnificent creatures was the greatest experience he had ever had. He loved to watch them in all their moods, while of course pretending not to. Not, he suspected, that they would have minded if he had openly gawked at them all day and every day. Indeed, they expected him to. They regarded him as their protege, and never tired of telling anyone they met at the various staging posts along the way how he had taken on an entire mob of New York abolitionists with only his fists to save their southern honour. As the trail wound to the south-west, Rod rapidly came to understand that the fact that he had punched an abolitionist counted for far more than that the fellow was a member of a mob. As Jerry McGann had warned him, it seemed that feelings were running high, and more in the south than in the north, where the people, the white people, at least, felt that they were being pilloried for their higher standards of living, and their obvious wealth, as well as the lives they were able to live, rich or poor, in what seemed to them such a healthy contrast to what they saw as the factory-bound, money-grubbing Yankees.