by Bill James
‘Crew in the dinghy lifted her from the sea and applied artificial respiration, successfully, thank heavens. I swam back to look for Captain Corbitty between the two ships. I had seen him about to dive or jump into the sea just before I did. I feared he might have realized Emily would be pulled under the King Arthur and had gone to her aid, but found himself pulled under, also, and not released. I believe this is what happened. It is a tragic loss. He will be greatly missed by his family and by all who knew him around the Channel.’
The final cutting in the scrapbook reported parts of the Inquiry. The chairman said about Ian’s father:
‘This crew member of the King Arthur put the safety of a passenger above considerations for his own, personal safety. His action was in the great tradition of bravery at sea – the acceptance of risk for the sake of others. Captain Corbitty of the Channel Explorer showed this same courage, this same respect for the traditions of the sea worldwide. Tragically, it cost him his life.’
In the last paragraph of this cutting, Captain Dominal made his denial that the ships had been racing. He said:
‘This idea is unthinkable. It was a terrible accident caused by a combination of unfortunate factors. The pleasure steamer service of the Bristol Channel has lost an excellent officer.’
A couple of years after this, Ian’s father said there would be a ceremony to unveil a memorial to Captain Corbitty, and that Ian could come with him to see the event, if he liked. His father would be invited, of course, because he had done a lot to make the accident not as bad as it could have been, although still bad. Ian said, yes, he’d like to go, but he worried because his father’s voice didn’t sound good when he spoke of the ceremony, sort of making fun of it. He often made fun of what other people were up to, as though he found them rather stupid, or not as sensible as himself, anyway. Ian used to think there might be people not as sensible as his father, but he hadn’t met very many. Most probably it would anger his father if someone got a lot of fuss and a memorial. He didn’t like others getting a lot of fuss, even though dead, as was evidently necessary for a memorial. People still alive never had memorials. They didn’t have to be remembered. They were here.
Ian’s mother had said she would not be going to the memorial ceremony. Much later, of course, he realized why she wouldn’t attend. At the time he thought it was simply because Ian’s father could behave in a ratty, difficult way when there was a crowd. Ian had sometimes seen how ratty his father’s rattiness might get – his eyes gone very narrow through rattiness, and no blinking, just a ratty gaze. But Ian felt he ought to say, ‘Yes, Dad, thanks,’ when his father invited him, because Mr Charteris probably thought he was being kind and he’d be hurt if Ian refused. That would look as if he’d hate to be present in case his father did something in his own ratty way to ruin things. Perhaps Mr Charteris would behave all right. He might tell himself that the Corbitty family and the council had obviously thought very carefully for a long while about the idea of a memorial, and it would be cruel to kick their special day to bits. Yes, one side of Mr Charteris might tell himself this, but would the other side – the ratty side – be listening?
A crowd of about thirty had gathered by the time he and Ian arrived. ‘And here’s Emily,’ Mr Charteris cried. ‘Married now, I hear, but invited, naturally, and still Emily Bass to my mind.’ Ian thought his father looked really pleased and all right, as he greeted her. ‘Emily, this is my son, Ian, who loves tales of the sea.’
She was small, pale, pretty, still shy looking, still clever looking, her fair hair cut short now. She said: ‘Isn’t this a lovely idea, Ian? I feel so special – a ship’s master sacrificed himself for me. For me. I will always feel such gratitude and respect for that name, Corbitty. Also, of course, for your father.’
Ian saw strong rattiness begin to take over parts of his father’s face, most parts, which was usual for full rattiness. He stared at her. His stare had no blinks. He would not like being mentioned second, after Corbitty. He remarked to Emily: ‘Yes, a great man, Captain Corbitty.’
‘Certainly,’ she said.
‘I got you out, you know,’ Ian’s father replied.
She said: ‘Often I speak to my husband and my friends of the undaunted captain who flung himself into the dark, dark sea in a valiant though doomed effort to save me, while also mentioning your father, Ian, naturally. It’s really fairly unusual to have a distinguished man die for you, isn’t it? Off came his cap with gold braid on it, I believe. Oh, such an occasion then, and such an occasion now.’
‘I got you out, you know,’ Mr Charteris remarked again. ‘Many a newspaper cutting I have at home describing this, haven’t I, Ian?’
‘Many,’ Ian said.
The memorial to Captain Corbitty was an inscribed flagstone cemented into the pavement right at the entrance to Penarth pier. Ian’s father carried a very good wreath of roses and greenery. He was the kind who would consider it a duty to spend quite a lot on a wreath, so it would not look cheap against anyone else’s. And a wreath meant somebody was dead and wouldn’t be a pest around the place any longer, so the flowers should be regarded as a kind of giggle. At first, he held the wreath in one hand low down by his side. Ian thought it was best like that because flowers didn’t really go with his father’s kind of face, or not fresh flowers anyway.
Although the Captain was buried ashore, people attending the ceremony had been asked to bring a wreath if they could, and, at the end of the little ceremony, to cast it on to the waves from the end of the pier, showing respect and sadness, because, of course, the accident had happened in the sea. Ian thought his father looked quite all right with the wreath, as though he often carried wreaths and kept them down by his side. Mr Charteris got some true grief and regret into his face, and into the slow, sort of heavy, solemn style he walked on the pier, which seemed to show that sorrow had taken a lot of his energy, with only a small amount left for moving about and carrying the wreath. Ian felt frightened by this big show of pangs. He guessed his father had something really rotten ready to spoil the do.
The tide was up. A square piece of blue curtain hid the memorial at first. Ian watched the vicar in charge today bend now and uncover it, with a big, important swirl of his arm. Ian could read quite well by now and saw what the inscription said: ‘Captain Lionel Corbitty died near here in August 1934 while selflessly trying to rescue a young woman from drowning. His family wholeheartedly remember a very gallant sailor and gentleman.’
The dog-collar man made a short speech saying how pleased he was that the Corbitty family had decided to commission this stone, and that the local council had agreed it should be laid there. All those coming on to the pier would be bound to see underfoot the commemorative message. Particularly he hoped youngsters would observe it, then ask their parents to tell them more about the very brave, self-sacrificing man.
‘And, speaking of youngsters,’ he said, ‘I think it would be a grand idea if to conclude matters now it were the children present who cast the wreaths out on to the waves, symbolizing the link between a noble past and their own beckoning future.’
People applauded and some grown-ups handed the wreaths to their children immediately. Ian’s father didn’t seem to want to part with his. Dog-collar approached, though, and with quite a large smile and creepy voice said, ‘I expect you wish to make your own, individual gesture to the Captain – so understandable – but this will be a unique opportunity, don’t you think, for your boy to become part of the fabric of our community and its admirable history of which you are a considerable element?’
After a while, Ian’s father seemed to feel silly clinging on to the wreath and handed it over. In a small, slow procession with other children, Ian carried it to the end of the pier. A folding card with writing on it was tied to a carnation stalk. He wondered whether his father didn’t want Ian to read it. This could be why Mr Charteris had meant to drop the wreath from the pier himself. The card was in a small, transparent cellophane envelope that florists gav
e with a wreath so ink messages would not run and blur in the rain at a grave or funeral. When Ian was hidden from his father by the children behind him in the procession he quickly opened the envelope and read Mr Charteris’s words. Luckily, none of them were too big for him.
‘Remembering Top Dog Corbitty today, who failed twice. (One) he lost the race and (two) he idiotically fucked up his try at rescue by getting his head banged by a boat.’
Ian carefully pitched the wreath and its accurate card on to the smooth surface of the unclean sea and watched them float slowly away, bobbing gently on the swell, quite a waste of money. He felt glad he’d had the chance to read those words, and liked to think of currents carrying them to who knew where, far across the world, such as Japan or Africa, because, as his father had said, the Bristol Channel might not be a major piece of sea but it was connected to many other seas – even oceans. He thought they showed his father was still just as he usually was – alive, ratty, ready to spot others’ mistakes and even tidily number them off years later, not at all in need of a wreath himself yet.
THREE
Those incidents with his father at the centre would have all kinds of strange results, some close to disastrous. And then came other incidents where Ian himself was central: at the prison gates and, of course, what had happened before, to bring him and his mother there beneath the high stone walls – the stuff the ward sister at St Thomas’s spoke of.
At first, on that morning, things had seemed fine to Ian. A warder in a navy-blue uniform and with his peaked cap on came out through the small door cut into the bottom of one of the main gates and fixed a notice. Ian reckoned that anyone could have told from the way the officer walked that this notice must be something serious. Of course, the people grouped and waiting outside the gates knew it would be serious. That’s why they had come. The warder’s legs and arms seemed too stiff and he did not look at any of the people around. Although the notice was almost too high for Ian, he did manage to read the typed announcement. It said the hanging had taken place at eight a.m.
The warder used four drawing pins, and for a while nobody in the crowd had a proper view of the notice because the back of his head and the cap got in the way. Then, though, he disappeared into the prison, still walking that stiff and very solemn walk, and Ian went forward a little and could make out the plain, hard words. The notice was signed by the governor and by a doctor in black ink over their typewritten names. Ian thought this showed matters had been done right. It made things seem tidy.
The talk in the crowd outside the gates was quiet and OK. His mother mentioned to some people that without her son this hanging might not have taken place at all. ‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘If anyone were to ask me how the investigation that led to this execution started, I would point to Ian.’
As an adult, he was ashamed of it now – his part in getting someone killed – but he knew he’d felt important. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said, ‘Ian was a witness. He had to go to the court, although he’s only eleven. It was very unusual for a boy of that age to be a main witness in such a big trial, but they made a special rule to allow him. It was in the interests of justice. That’s how I heard it described more than once – oh yes, more than once. Mr and Mrs Bell from the chip shop and myself also went into the box, of course, to say what we’d seen that night in the public shelter, but Ian did it so well that the judge gave him considerable praise. Considerable. Ian could provide the evidence because he was there when it happened. Close. Very. I was there when it happened, too, and my other boy, Graham, younger, but they did not need him in the court because Ian had said everything and it was clear.’
Ian felt people looked at him in a surprised and rather admiring way. He saw they found it all unusual. Some of them really stared, but he understood why. They were not used to boys getting someone hanged by the neck until dead. He didn’t smile when his mother spoke about him, and how he had set things going that had ended here outside the jail. He thought it wouldn’t have seemed right, because a hanging was not something amusing, although it was in the interests of justice, obviously. All of it was in the interests of justice – the jail, the wall, the warder, the gates, the death.
One of the women his mother talked to said she thought hanging too good for some. She nodded her head towards the prison gates to show she meant the man in the notice, which was all he was by then, a man in a notice. ‘Knives. Dirty. Foreign,’ she said. ‘Someone uses a knife, he deserves to get the noose, or worse. Maybe a flogging with the cat-o’-nine-tails first. Not him now, because he’s dead, but a message for the rest. The cat-o’-nine-tails cuts into their skin. Such beatings are very memorable and can be described in the Press.’
Another woman his mother talked to knew a lot about hangings. It might be her hobby, Ian thought, such as studying books and newspapers about it. She said the prisoner would fall through the trap and then they’d wait until he was still, totally still, ‘no jigging about with his legs’, because, obviously, that would show he still had life left. She told them he might spin or swing on the rope but that was different from jigging. The jigging came from inside him, his nerves still able to work. But the spinning or swinging could be caused by the wind, even though the hanged man was undoubtedly dead. Sometimes people said, ‘He’ll swing for it’, meaning get hanged. This used to be especially true in the navy when people who mutinied were hanged from what was known as ‘the yard arm’, which was high up on a mast, and sea breezes would make the body sway about. The woman told them there was a story where a wife had murdered her husband and kept frightening herself with the memory of something she’d read in the newspaper about a hanging: ‘the drop was fourteen feet’. This meant the killer went through the trap door and fell those fourteen feet until the rope caused a stop and his neck was broken, or her neck in some cases because women, too, could murder, perhaps with poison or a kitchen knife.
The woman explained that the group present in the jail yard at the scaffold couldn’t see whether his face still twitched after it happened because there’d be a bag over it. This was to stop him watching with deep fright for the moment when the hangman pulled the lever that opened the trap. The bag was a sort of final kindness. Also, it meant the witnesses didn’t have to watch what happened to the murderer’s face when the rope ran out and did the jolt. This could be exceptionally unpleasant for those observing. There had to be observers, so it was known everything was carried out right, in the interests of justice, but their feelings should be taken into account.
Eventually, they’d bring him or her down for the doctors to make sure he was dead. This would be after a few minutes if it went properly. Hanging should not be about strangling but about snapping the neck to cause a quick death. The job of executioner had its skills. It might seem simple, just to put the noose around the neck and pull a lever for the drop, but things could go wrong if there was clumsiness. She said not to believe tales that one hangman whispered to the prisoner: ‘Have I got noose for you?’ This was a crude, cruel joke. She said that unfortunately the bowels might discharge at the moment of the neck snap because all control was gone, and the prisoner might have had quite a breakfast, which was another special kindness offered.
As soon as they’d agreed, someone had to go up to the Governor’s secretary on special early duty to type out the notice. Hangings were always in the a.m. Or they could have the notice done already, say the day before, but not signed. The woman said she found this strange because the notice declaring the prisoner dead had already been typed out while he or she was munching egg, bacon and mushrooms at breakfast, sort of ‘dead man – or woman – eating’. But, of course, the notice didn’t have any signatures on it at the time of the breakfast, so really it didn’t count till later, after the breakfast had been finished, and so on.
The signatures could not be written until the doctors decided he was definitely gone. Lastly, the governor gave the piece of paper to the warder and ordered him to bring it out and put it on the gate. The woman said
this was what was known as the official announcement, on account of the famous rule that justice had to be not just done but seen to be done.
This did not mean all the people could watch the actual event, though they used to be able to in history, such as at a place called Tyburn. Instead, now, everybody could read the statement outside. This was why the crowd had come to gaze at the prison walls and the gates and then the notice. Luckily, it was in the summer holidays or Ian would have been at school and not able to come here with his mother. Graham had gone to play at a friend’s house.
Ian used to say the man would be hung, but his mother told him paintings got hung, men and women got hanged. He learned you had to get a more particular word for a man or woman on the end of a rope than for some picture on a hook. She worried about picking the correct words, and about correct pronunciations. She didn’t want to sound what she called ‘pig-ig’, meaning pig ignorant and rough. Ian’s mother explained to the women that Ian had been in the newspapers when he went to court. They printed all his first names, she said. That was the way they did it in courts and the papers, not just Ian but Ian Timothy Edward Charteris, to make sure of his identity. ‘Crucial – identity,’ she said. ‘And names. So that everything tied up nicely.’
But then, while his mother was talking about the knife that was used in the murder, and which several observed before and after the stabbing, she seemed to notice someone at the edge of the crowd who really upset her. Ian wasn’t tall enough to see who it was because of the people around him, but he could tell his mother had become shocked and angry. She had a way of letting her jaw slant down a bit when she felt like this, and crouched forward slightly. It reminded Ian of newsreel pictures of a boxer coming out from his corner ready to clobber. ‘We’ll go now, Ian,’ she said, and took his hand to draw him away. ‘It’s over. I think we’ve seen enough here.’ It was said in her refined, un-pig-ig voice, but with a certain amount of blare stitched into it.