Road To The Coast

by John Harris

  Unaware of her thoughts, almost unaware even of her presence there among them as their indignation broke out in noisy explosions of anger, they tried to make out what had happened and, gradually, as they talked, the violent events following the explosions became clear.

  As the single shell which had hit the ship had exploded on the bridge, the four officers who had been standing there had simply disappeared and the Lascar on the wheel had recovered his senses to find the ship swinging back into the Saolito in a great curve. With no one to give him orders, he had rung the engine-room telegraph for astern and finally, as the ship slowed down, for stop engines.

  The conversation, noisy with anger, swung to an assessment of the blame and before they knew what had happened, it had developed into a free-for-all of indignation and fury, of accusation and counter-accusation, with Grundy on his feet, his face flaring and frightened, denying the charges of desertion levelled at him by Dodgin in language that seared Grace’s ears.

  In a moment, they were all involved in a frightening little melodrama that was a compound largely of frayed nerves, with Dodgin holding a bottle by the neck, his weaselly face and long nose out-thrust at the Second Mate’s pimply visage.

  ‘I tell you I don’t know what happened,’ Grundy was saying, a little too loudly, his eyes desperate. ‘You know what it’s like when you’re dazed. I don’t even know where I was.’

  ‘Well, wherever you was,’ Dodgin shouted, ‘you’d have been better on the bridge. We might have been out of here by now if you’d stayed there, instead of sitting like a winged duck with that bloody battery on the Punta de las Rosas there, waiting to have another go at us. I always did say you were a yellow bastard. I always have. I always will.’

  The hatred, the long-standing hatred that had clearly existed between the two of them, surged up like some witch’s brew coming to the boil, then Ash – by his calmness and size, apparently above all the pettiness of the squabbling – stepped between them and pushed them apart.

  ‘Put a sock in it,’ he commanded. ‘No need to get your shirts off. We’ll be all right. God will provide.’

  His personality alone seemed to quieten them. None of them had ever seen him before that night, but for some reason they accepted his domination without question.

  The uproar began to subside, then Grace found Dodgin, his attention diverted from Grundy, staring at her, his thin nose wrinkling with distrust as he switched his misguided viciousness in her direction.

  ‘I’ll bet we’d find they’re not English, if we inquired,’ he said, appearing suddenly to lay the blame for the whole affair on them. ‘Throw ’em back overboard,’ he went on quickly, lashing out in blind vituperative accusation. ‘Let the bastards drown, I say. After what they did, I’d shove ’em under with a baulk of timber and enjoy it. We don’t want no refugees on board of here. Let ’em look after themselves. Bloody Wop bastards, I’d shoot the lot. Line ’em up against a wall, men, women and kids, and mow ’em down. And laugh while I’m doing it. I’ll bet they’re all fifth columnists.’

  He seemed to be conducting some sort of feud with himself, with Grundy and anybody within reach, and he seemed to have seized on Grace and Teresa with a demoniac glee as fresh subjects for his dislike.

  ‘I hate dagos,’ he said wildly and was about to launch into another diatribe of anger, when Ash put a great hand on his thin shoulder and turned him gently away from Grace.

  ‘Strikes me, old lad,’ he said quietly, ‘you’re not going to be any too popular yourself, if you don’t shut up.’

  Dodgin glared up at him but allowed himself to be pushed to one side. ‘They beat me up in Santa Fé last time I was here,’ he said loudly. ‘Alvarado’s bloody gang of police. Just because I was drunk.’

  He moved away, savage, bitter, willing to take it out of anyone he could, and for a moment they were all shouting together again. All except Dainty, who took out his pipe, stared at it, and began to fill it from a bar of plug tobacco in his hand, cutting at it with a curved horn-handled knife while the arguments and the indignation flowed round him in waves.

  His face was sunken and ravaged with booze and hard living, and a beak of a nose jutted out above a collapsed mouth that seemed like a sewn-up wound in his unshaven face. As he toyed with the pipe, he shoved what appeared to be a maid’s mop cap to the back of the grey hair that fell greasily over his lined forehead. His hands were greasy, too, and the few clothes he wore, the bedroom slippers on his feet; his complexion, everything about him seemed to have been in contact with the engines he so obviously tended, and appeared to have absorbed some of their lubrication.

  Grace watched him, hardly able to understand that the Captain and that whisky-smelling engineer who had pushed past them had simply disappeared within a few feet of them before they had even taken shape from the shadows.

  ‘Well’ – the ash dropped from Dainty’s pipe in little sparks as he spoke, and dribbled all down the front of his vest – ‘it’s all right everybody yelling, but it gets us nowhere. What are we going to do, that’s the point?’

  ‘How about a drink?’ Ash said, breaking across the multitude of suggestions that were flung at the old man. ‘I’ve always found a bit of a jug-up helps at a time like this. Brings the colour back to the old cheeks.’

  They became silent, all of them wondering why they hadn’t thought of it too, and Dainty grinned, nervously, showing pink empty gums.

  ‘Mister,’ he said, pushing his mop cap farther back, ‘that’s the best idea I’ve heard in a long time.’

  He disappeared and returned with a bottle of whisky. Turning from pouring the discreet thimbleful he considered suitable for Grace, he faced the others. The dull light in the deck head glinted on the golden liquid in his hand and with his twisted little body and his ravaged face he seemed for a second to Grace like the spirit of debauchery incarnate. Then his hesitant, defeated voice shuffled out and the image was gone.

  ‘Well,’ he said. It’s no good putting it off any longer. Somebody’ll have to sort this lot out. Somebody’ll have to go ashore and phone the agents. There’s no other way of doing it. And I can’t speak the bloody lingo,’ he concluded flatly, as though that fact relieved him of all responsibility.

  His gnarled face seemed blank still with stupefaction, as though he recognized his own inadequacy in a situation with which he’d never before been confronted. Probably all his seafaring life had been spent below deck among the thumping, upright pistons he tended, most of it in slab-sided, listing ships like the Ballaculish that stank of hides or guano or rotten fruit, or colliers where the coal made itself obvious on the edge of a man’s plate at mealtimes, and even got into his bunk with him at night.

  Doubtless there had been little in his passage through the years that had left him any more fitted to deal with an event in which protocol and diplomacy were obviously required, than there would have been in Captain Phizacklea’s had he survived.

  ‘Sombody’s got to do it,’ he said again, as though he were begging them to take the responsibility off his shoulders. ‘Who’s it going to be?’

  Grundy cocked a thumb at Ash, glad to draw attention away from himself. As he turned his face to the light, it seemed greasy and unhealthy and weak.

  ‘He can speak the lingo,’ he said. ‘I heard him in the boat when they came alongside.’

  ‘OK.’ Dainty turned to Ash. ‘I don’t know you, Mister,’ he said, looking up, dwarfed and shrivelled-looking. ‘But it looks like it’ll have to be you if there’s nobody else. It wouldn’t be much good me going, and that’s a fact.’

  Grace looked quickly at Ash, wondering how he would react after all their efforts to get aboard the ship to the suggestion that he should go ashore again, but his face seemed blandly indifferent.

  ‘I’ve not set foot off a ship in foreign parts since they carried me off with malaria in Capetown during the war,’ Dainty went on. There was a note of self-excuse in his words, as though he sensed they all knew he was dodging his duty. �
��I’ve no use for it any more. I’ve had me whack of booze and women three times over.’ He sniggered nervously. ‘Once you get your store teeth in, the women won’t look at you, anyway.’

  He gestured apologetically towards his sunken mouth and looked at Grace. ‘Fell off a shelf in a blow on the way over,’ he explained. ‘The donkey man trod on ’em.’

  He looked round at them all again, his empty mouth working. As for now,’ he concluded, ‘the best thing you can do, Ma’am, is get that kid to bed. She looks like she needs it. We can sort this lot out in the morning.’

  He stared at Teresa, still incredibly asleep on the settee in spite of the noise – his face, dirty, ravaged with the wretchedness of the ancient ships on which he had spent half his life, still with a trace of compassion in it.

  ‘You’d better use the Captain’s cabin,’ he said. ‘It’s big enough for the lot of you and he won’t be wanting it any more.’

  Ash picked up the sleeping child gently and followed the old man as he shuffled before them into the alleyway and into the big cabin next door.

  ‘Phizacklea used to be fond of this place,’ Dainty said wearily, glancing around. ‘Liked to keep it tasteful.’

  He looked at the child Ash had placed on the spare bunk then he indicated the brown, faded curtains that covered the portholes, the flowered table cloth and the cheap plaster plaques hung on the side of the locker. A portrait of the dead Captain with a blonde woman who appeared to be less like his wife than his lady friend was propped up on the desk among the scattered papers, the loading sheets and the ship’s files.

  ‘I’m sure he’d have been pleased to offer it to you,’ Dainty said.

  He gestured at the bunk across the cabin from the sleeping child, with its grubby grey blankets and the faded cushions at its head. ‘The Old Man had it fitted up years ago,’ he said. ‘Like a home from home it was. Used to bring his wife along in them days. Only she ran off with a brush salesman four years ago and he never bothered much since. It’s going to be a bit of a squeeze for you and the missis on there. You’re both a bit on the big side, but I expect you’ll manage.’ He looked up at Ash, apparently still a little awed by him, as though he had never seen anyone so large, so clean and so obviously capable for a long time. ‘I should close the door,’ he said finally, as an afterthought. ‘We got rats. All old ships have got rats.’

  The door swung to behind him and they heard him in the alleyway, addressing someone outside, his voice small and thin and shuffling like himself. ‘’Andsome woman,’ he was saying, as though he were fascinated by anything that was healthy and young and clean. ‘Magnificent animal. She sure has a pair of pippins.’

  Ash glanced quickly at Grace and angrily kicked the door shut with a bang so that the muttering voices in the alleyway disappeared. He seemed disgusted with the uselessness, the pathetic hopelessness, the futility of the Ballaculish’s crew.

  ‘Don’t take any notice, Grace,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t mean a damn thing.’

  She looked up at him standing by the door, appearing to fill the whole of one side of the cabin, and she had a sudden crazy feeling that she was dreaming all this, that she was going through a nightmare and none of it was real, neither Ash nor the hobgoblin shapes of Dainty and Dodgin.

  ‘Save your breath,’ she said in a taut voice. ‘I’ve heard worse than that in my time. It’s one of the drawbacks of a shape like mine.’

  She was staring at him with wide dark eyes, conscious of the smell of damp and dirt in the ugly cabin.

  ‘You heard what he said?’ she went on. ‘Before that last little bit, I mean. “It’s going to be a bit of a squeeze for you and the Missis.” Missis. He thinks I’m your wife. What do we do now, because I’m not going to nip into bed with you just to please that set of deadbeats out there?’

  She stood holding what little equipment they still possessed and gazing at him over the top of it as she clutched it to her chest. The ship was quiet now. Someone had stopped the hosepipe gushing and there was only the sour-sweet smell of the hides cut across by the acrid scent of charred wood.

  ‘Look, Grace’ – Ash stood by the door as though he were doing his best to avoid touching her and antagonizing her – ‘take it easy!’

  ‘OK, OK.’ Grace held up her hand to indicate she was calm but her voice was unsteady and a little higher than normal. ‘I’m not scared. I’ve been fighting off men half my life. But’ – she repeated the words flatly and firmly – ‘you’re not going to sleep in here with me – not even if it looks right that you should. I’m not in the habit of popping into bed with strange men after twenty-four hours’ acquaintance.’

  As she moved towards the door, Ash stepped against it, and they stood face to face, close enough for their shoulders to be brushing.

  ‘Have a spot of common, Grace,’ he said gently. ‘If you tell ’em I’m not your loving husband, who the hell, they’ll want to know, am I then?’

  Grace slowly released the door handle and stood back, feeling suddenly close to breakdown.

  ‘Don’t you see?’ Ash went on. ‘If they start asking questions, what are you going to tell ’em? My name and your name? That I’m Henry Hackforth Ash, gentleman, and you’re no relation? Because then, they’ll ask “Well, if that’s the case, who the hell’s is that kid then?”’ He gestured towards Teresa. ‘And what are you going to answer to that one?’

  Grace’s glance followed his pointing finger. ‘What would happen if they found out?’ she asked slowly.

  ‘As like as not, we’d find our heads in the old basket one-time. They want to get out of this mess, not mixed up deeper. Look, Grace, one of Alvarado’s plesanter habits was setting his police on sailors who’d had one over the old eight instead of quietly gaoling them. I’ve rescued ’em more than once. You heard what Dodgin said. Do you think he’d welcome us? He’d put us off the ship as soon as kiss your hand.’

  Grace turned towards the sleeping child again and, seeing the indecision in her eyes, Ash pressed home the argument.

  ‘She just doesn’t look English after all,’ he pointed out.

  ‘And if we can only lie low for a bit, we’ll probably get through to the Ambassador or some other chum tomorrow and it’ll be all over.’

  Suddenly the strain seemed to break inside her and she was wilting quietly from weariness and the overwhelming responsibility for the child. Before she knew what was happening, she was sobbing with a terrible desperation, chewing at her knuckles to keep the sobs from coming out.

  Ash said nothing, appalled by the sight of someone like Grace on the edge of tears. He crossed the cabin quickly and put his hands on her shoulders, and she let her hands drop to her sides and leaned against him, all the enmity and distrust she had ever felt for him forgotten. She was glad he was there. There was no equivocation about the feeling. She was simply glad and grateful for his sympathy. He put his hands gently on her cheeks and lifted her face and she let him hold her like that for a moment until the shuddering went out of her.

  ‘Go it,’ he encouraged. ‘Have a good yell. You’ll feel better afterwards.’

  She straightened up abruptly, his words a challenge as he’d intended them to be. As she lifted her head, still dry-eyed, he cuffed her softly against the jaw with his big fist, and she was surprised at the gentleness in his face.

  ‘I’m not going to cry,’ she snorted. ‘I’m not the sort to cry. I haven’t cried since I was a kid.’

  She pushed him away angrily, but behind her sharpness there was a deep feeling of gratitude. Ash was as much a contradiction of natures as anything anyone had ever thought up, with more compassion than he realized behind the deceit and the worn clichés and the racy slang he liked to use. Like many big men to whom courage and physical strength were natural and normal, he was gentler than he knew, kinder and more warmhearted.

  She drew in her breath sharply and made up her mind. ‘OK, I don’t mind about it really,’ she said at last. ‘I’ll be all right. It’s not important anyway, an
d I’m too tired to care.’

  He picked up the spare cushion from the bunk. ‘I’ll try the floor,’ he said. ‘I’ll probably get curvature of the spine, but I’ve known worse. I’d go in the saloon but Dodgin’s going to sleep on the table in there. His own cabin’s full of water. So’s Grundy’s for that matter, so he’ll probably be there too. And they might ask too many questions if they don’t spend the night fighting. I’ll move out tomorrow but, if you can stand it, it’d be safer for all concerned if I stay here for now.’

  She managed a smile. ‘I can stand it,’ she said.

  ‘No funny business,’ he promised. ‘It’ll be no worse than a railway station with the last train gone and nowhere to sleep. I’ll leave the door open, if you like.’

  She shuddered, thinking of Dainty’s twisted shape and Dodgin’s mean features and Grundy’s pimply obsequiousness.

  ‘No, by God,’ she said. ‘Shut that lot out. And you heard what he said about rats.’

  He smiled at her. ‘That’s the stuff,’ he grinned encouragingly.

  She sat on the bunk and kicked off her shoes ‘Another night in my clothes,’ she said miserably, ‘and I wouldn’t care if there were a football team in here with me. That damned boatman took everything I’d got. If you see him when you’re ashore you might get it back for me, or I’ll soon begin to look like something the cat brought in.’

  She stopped abruptly and looked at him, suddenly afraid again. ‘Will you really have to go ashore tomorrow?’ she asked.

  He was sitting on the deck now and he turned his head towards her.

  ‘It looks like it. None of that shower look as though they’re capable of doing anything much – except dropping dead.’

  ‘Won’t they ask questions? About you? The people ashore, I mean.’

  ‘They might.’

  ‘Won’t they find out about you?’

  ‘They could. But what can I do? He smiled faintly. ‘While that bunch ashore have no great love for the House of Ash, make no mistake, this shower here could hardly be called friends and neighbours, could they?’