Rogue Male

by Geoffrey Household

  Of the days and nights that passed on the tributary and the main river there is little to write. I was out of any immediate danger, and content—far more content than I am now, though no less solitary. I didn’t exist, and so long as I was not compelled to show my papers there was no reason why I should exist. Patience was all I needed, and easy enough to keep. I recovered my strength as peacefully as if I had been the convalescent I pretended; indeed, thinking myself into the part actually helped me to recover. I nearly believed in my motor accident, my elementary school, my housekeeper, and my favourite pupils about whom I prattled when I fell in with other users of the river or when I took a meal in an obscure riverside tavern.

  From nightfall to dawn I moored my boat in silent reaches of the river, choosing high or marshy or thickly wooded banks where no one could burst in upon me with questions. At first I had taken to the ditches and backwaters, but the danger of that amphibian habit was impressed on me when a farmer led his horses down to drink in my temporary harbour, and insisted on regarding me as a suspicious character. Rain was the greatest hardship I had to endure. After a night’s soaking I felt the chill of the morning mist. A rubber sheet was unobtainable, but I managed at last to buy a tarpaulin. It kept me dry and uncomfortably warm, but it was heavy, and hard for my hands to fold and unfold. Only the most persistent rain could force me to use it.

  I made but sixty miles in the first week. My object was to heal myself rather than hurry. I took no risks and expended no effort. Until the back of my thighs had grown some sturdy scars I had to kneel while sailing or drifting, and lie on my stomach across the thwarts while sleeping. That limited my speed. I could not row.

  In the second week I tried to buy an outboard motor, and only just got out of the deal in time. I found that to purchase an engine and petrol I had to sign enough papers to ensure my arrest by every political or administrative body that had heard of me. I must say, they have made the way of the transgressor uncommonly difficult. At the next town, however, there was an old-fashioned yard where I bought a business-like lugsail and had a small foresail fitted into the bargain. Thereafter I carried my own stores, and never put in to town or village. With my new canvas and the aid of the current I could sometimes do forty miles a day, and—what was more important—could keep out of the way of the barges and tugs that were now treating the river as their own.

  All the way down-river I had considered the problem of my final escape from the country, and had arrived at three possible solutions. The first was to keep on sailing and trust to luck. This was obviously very risky, for only a fast motorboat could slip past the patrol craft off the port. I should be turned back, either as a suspicious character or an ignorant idiot who oughtn’t to be allowed in a boat—and the chances, indeed, were against my little twelve-foot tub being able to live in the short, breaking seas of the estuary.

  The second plan was to embark openly on a passenger vessel—or train, for that matter—and trust that my name and description had never been circularized to the frontier police. This, earlier, I might have tried if I had had the strength; but as my voyage crept into its third week it seemed probable that even the most extensive search for my body would have been abandoned, that it would be assumed I was alive, and that every blessed official was praying for a sight of me and promotion.

  My third solution was to hang around the docks for an opportunity of stowing away or stealing a boat or seeing a yacht which belonged to some friend. But this demanded time—and I could neither sleep in a hotel without being invited to show my papers to a lodging-house keeper, nor in the open without showing them to a policeman. Whatever I did, I had to do immediately after arrival at the port.

  Now, of course I was thinking stupidly. The way out of the country was laughably easy. A boy who had merely hit a policeman would have thought of it at once. But in my mind I was a convalescent schoolmaster or I was a ghost. I had divested myself of my nationality and forgotten that I could call on the loyalty of my compatriots. I had nearly thrown away my British passport on the theory that no papers whatever would be safer than my own. As soon as I came in sight of the wharves, I saw British ships and realized that I had merely to tell a good enough story to the right man to be taken aboard.

  I moored my boat to a public landing-stage and went ashore. I made a bad mistake in not sinking her; it did occur to me that I should, but, quite apart from the nuisance of sailing back up the river to find a quiet spot where she could be sunk unobserved, I disliked the thought of the friendly little country tub rotting away at the disgusting bottom of an industrial river.

  I bought myself a nondescript outfit of blue serge at the first slop-shop I came to, and changed in a public lavatory. My old clothes I sold in another slop-shop—that seeming the best way to get rid of them without a trace. If ever they were bought it must have been by the poorest of workmen. He’ll find an unexpected bargain in my favourite coat; it will last him all his life.

  Strolling along the quays, I got into conversation with two British seamen by means of the old and tried introduction (which has extracted many a sixpence from me)—‘Got a match?’ We had a drink together. Neither of them were in ships bound for England, but they had a pal in a motorship which was sailing for London the next day.

  The pal, hailed from the bar to join us on our bench, was a bit wary of me; he was inclined to think that I was a parson from the seamen’s mission masquerading as an honest worker. I calmed his suspicions with two double whiskies and my most engaging dirty story, whereupon he declared that I was a Bit of All Right and consented to talk about his officers. The captain, it seemed, was a stickler for correct detail—thinks ’e’ll lose ’is ticket if ’e forgets a muckin’ ’alfpenny stamp. But Mr Vaner, the First Officer, was a One and a Fair Caution; I gathered from his wry smile that the pal found the mate a hard taskmaster, while admiring his flamboyant character. Mr Vaner was obviously the man for me. And yes, I might catch him still on board if I hurried because he had been out late the night before.

  She was a little ship, hardly more than a coaster, lying alongside an endless ribbon of wharf with her grey and white forecastle nosing up towards the load-line of the huge empty tramp in front of her, like a neat fox-terrier making the acquaintance of a collie.

  Two dock policemen were standing near by. I kept my back to them while I hailed the deck importantly.

  ‘Mr Vaner on board?’

  The cook, who was peeling potatoes on a hatch-cover, looked up from the bucket between his knees.

  ‘I’ll see, sir.’

  That ‘sir’ was curious and comforting. In spite of my shabby foreign clothing and filthy shoes, the cook had placed me at a glance in Class X. He would undoubtedly describe me as a gent, and Mr Vaner would feel he ought to see me.

  I say Class X because there is no definition of it. To talk of an upper or a ruling class is nonsense. The upper class, if the term has any meaning at all, means landed gentry who probably do belong to Class X but form only a small proportion of it. The ruling class are, I presume, politicians and servants of the State—terms which are self-contradictory.

  I wish there were some explanation of Class X. We are politically a democracy—or should I say that we are an oligarchy with its ranks ever open to talent?—and the least class-conscious of nations in the Marxian sense. The only class-conscious people are those who would like to belong to Class X and don’t: the suburban old-school-tie brigade and their wives, especially their wives. Yet we have a profound division of classes which defies analysis since it is in a continual state of flux.

  Who belongs to Class X? I don’t know till I talk to him and then I know at once. It is not, I think, a question of accent, but rather of the gentle voice. It is certainly not a question of clothes. It may be a question of bearing. I am not talking, of course, of provincial society in which the division between gentry and non-gentry is purely and simply a question of education.

  I should like some socialist pundit to explain to me why it is t
hat in England a man can be a member of the proletariat by every definition of the proletariat (that is, by the nature of his employment and his poverty) and yet obviously belong to Class X, and why another can be a bulging capitalist or cabinet minister or both and never get nearer to Class X than being directed to the Saloon Bar if he enters the Public.

  I worry with this analysis in the hope of hitting on some new method of effacing my identity. When I speak a foreign language I can disguise my class, background, and nationality without effort, but when I speak English to an Englishman I am at once spotted as a member of X. I want to avoid that, and if the class could be defined I might know how.

  Mr Vaner received me in his cabin. He was a dashing young man in his early twenties, with his cap on the back of a head of brown curls. His tiny stateroom was well hung with feminine photographs, some cut from the illustrated weeklies, some personally presented and inscribed in various languages. He evidently drove himself hard on land as well as sea.

  As soon as we had shaken hands, he said:

  ‘Haven’t met you before, have I?’

  ‘No. I got your name from one of the hands. I hear you are sailing tomorrow.’

  ‘Well?’ he asked guardedly.

  I handed him my passport.

  ‘Before we go any further, I want you to satisfy yourself that I am British and really the person I pretend to be.’

  He looked at my passport, then up at my face and eyeshade.

  ‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘Take a seat, won’t you? You seem to have been in trouble, sir.’

  ‘I have, by God! And I want to get out of it.’

  ‘A passage? If it depended on me, but I’m afraid the old man …’

  I told him that I didn’t want a passage, that I wouldn’t put so much responsibility on either him or the captain; all I wanted was a safe place to stow away.

  He shook his head and advised me to try a liner.

  ‘I daren’t risk it,’ I answered. ‘But show me where to hide, and I give you my word of honour that no one shall see me during the voyage or when I go ashore.’

  ‘You had better tell me a little more,’ he said.

  He threw himself back in his chair and cocked one leg over the other. His face assumed a serious and judicial air, but his delightfully swaggering pose showed that he was enjoying himself.

  I spun him a yarn which, so far as it went, was true. I told him that I was in deadly trouble with the authorities, that I had come down the river in a boat, and that an appeal to our consul was quite useless.

  ‘I might put you in the store-room,’ he said doubtfully. ‘We’re going home in ballast, and there’s nowhere in the hold for you to hide.’

  I suggested that the store-room was too dangerous, that I didn’t want to take the remotest chance of being seen and getting the ship into trouble. That seemed to impress him.

  ‘Well,’ he replied, ‘if you can stand it, there’s an empty freshwater tank which we never use, and I could prop up the cover so that you’d get some air. But I expect that you’ve slept in worse places, sir, now that I come to think of it.’

  ‘You recognized my name?’

  ‘Of course. I wouldn’t do this for anyone.’

  All the same I think he would, given a story that appealed to him.

  I asked when I could come aboard.

  ‘No time like the present! I don’t know who’s down in the engine-room, but there’s nobody on deck except the cook. I’ll just deal with the cops!’

  He waited till the couple of police had walked two hundred yards up the wharf and then started waving and shouting good-bye as if someone had just gone away between the warehouses. The two looked round and continued their stroll; they had no reason to doubt that a visitor left the ship while they had their backs to her.

  Mr Vaner sent the cook ashore to buy a bottle of whisky.

  ‘You’ll need something to mix with your water,’ he chuckled, immensely pleased that he had now committed himself to the adventure, ‘and I don’t want him around while I open up the tank. You wait here and make yourself comfortable.’

  I asked him what I had better say if anyone came aboard unexpectedly and found me in his cabin.

  ‘Say? Oh, tell ’em you’re her father!’ He pointed to a photograph of a giggling young girl who was bashfully displaying her legs as if to advertise silk stockings. ‘I should surely have urgent business elsewhere if you were. Inside the water tank myself, as likely as not!’

  He settled his cap over one ear and marched out of the cabin, whistling with such an elaborate air of unconcern that any one of his young women would have known he was planning some deception. But I was pretty sure he would take no risks. His play-acting was for his own amusement and for me, his partner in crime. To the rest of the world he was the responsible ship’s officer.

  He was back in ten minutes.

  ‘Hurry!’ he said. ‘The cops have just gone round the corner.’

  We did have to hurry. The manhole was on a level with and in full view of the wharf, being set into the quarterdeck between the after wall of the chart-room and a lifeboat slung athwart ship. We took a hasty look round and I pushed myself through into a space about the size of half a dozen coffins.

  ‘I’ll make you comfortable later on,’ he said. ‘It will be slack water in about two hours.’

  I was comfortable enough, more relaxed than I had been since the first week on the river. The darkness and the six walls gave me an immediate sense of safety. I had gone to ground after the hunt, and the cold iron of the closed tank was more protective than the softest grass in the open. This was the first of my dens, and I think that it provided me with the idea of the second.

  At the bottom of the ebb, when the quarter-deck had sunk well below the edge of the wharf, Mr Vaner turned up with blankets, the cushion of a settee, water, whisky, biscuits, and a covered bucket for my personal needs.

  ‘Snug as a bug in a rug!’ he declared cheerfully. ‘And what’s more, I’ve given you a safety-valve.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘I’ve disconnected the outflow. Can you see light?’

  I looked down a small pipe at the bottom of the tank and did see light.

  ‘That’s on the wall of the captain’s bathroom,’ he said. ‘I never knew we could get fresh water there. The worst of these labour-saving ships is that one never has time to find out all the gadgets. Now, you have that and you have the air intake, so if the old man notices the manhole and I have to screw it up for a time, you’ll be all right.’

  ‘Where do you dock?’ I asked.

  ‘We’re going right up the river to Wandsworth. I’ll tell you when it’s safe to slip ashore.’

  I heard steps on the deck—one heard in that tank everything that touched or struck the deck—and Mr Vaner disappeared. I never saw him again.

  I dozed uneasily until all the noises ceased; the crew, I suppose, had come on board and settled down for the night. Then I slept in good earnest and awoke to the sound of heavy boots trampling above and below me; it was morning, for I could see light at the end of my two pipes. The manhole was screwed up tight with a finality which I didn’t enjoy—not that there was the slightest risk of asphyxiation, but it suddenly occurred to me that if Mr Vaner were washed overboard I should be in the tank until the captain discovered, if he ever did discover, that he could fill his bath with fresh water by making a simple connexion. That was the sort of ridiculous fear which alcohol can dispel quicker than self-control, so I poured myself a stiff whisky and ate some biscuits.

  Then we sailed—an unmistakable jangle of sounds like a hundred iron monkeys playing tag in a squash-court. Some hours later my manhole was opened and propped, and a cold mutton chop, with a note attached to it instead of a frill, descended on my stomach. I ate the chop and knelt below the crack of light to read the message.

  ‘Sorry I had to screw you down. The cops found a boat and traced it to you. They turned us inside out this morning and all other sh
ips at the wharf. Caught four stowaways, I hear. We are outside territorial waters, so you’re OK. They know all about your eyeshade. If you’re likely to run into any trouble, take it off. I’ll slip you a pair of dark glasses when it’s time to go. Dock police reported that a chap of your build had come on board and left. I said I had been asked for a passage, and refused. If you have any papers you want to get rid of, leave them in the tank and I’ll deliver them wherever you direct.

  R. VANER (First Officer)

  PS. Try not to upset anything. Have just remembered that if you do, it will run into the old man’s bathroom.’

  I wish I could have given the dashing Mr Vaner some convincing evidence that he was serving his country instead of a—well, I can’t call myself a criminal. If there were any crimes committed, they were committed on my person. But, as I say, I do not blame them. They had every reason to think they had caught an assassin.

  Their police organization is superb; but the finding of that paralysed thing which had crawled and bled was a casual job for foresters. Only within the last day or two, I expect, when an exhaustive search for my corpse at last suggested that there might be no corpse to find, did the House extend enquiries to road, rail, and river, and learn about the boating schoolmaster who had an eyeshade and always kept on his gloves. Then the police came into action. They hadn’t picked me up, I should guess, for the simple reason that they had just begun to look for a boat with red sails and happened to miss the little yard where I changed them; but when some official noticed an unfamiliar dinghy moored where I probably had no right to moor her, she was at once identified.

  Vaner’s suggestion that my troubles might by no means be over when I reached London was disturbing. I hadn’t given the matter any thought. One’s instinct is against looking too far forward when the present demands all available resource.

  I began to speculate on what would happen if I reappeared quite openly in England. I was perfectly certain that they would not appeal to the Foreign Office or to Scotland Yard. Whatever I might have done or intended, their treatment of me wouldn’t stand publicity. They couldn’t be sure how the English would react; nobody ever is. After all, we once went to war for the ear of a Captain Jenkins—though Jenkins was an obscurer person than myself and had, considering the number of laws he broke, been treated with no great barbarity.