Soldier, Sail North (1987)

by Pattinson, James

  Jessie began to instruct Miller in the theory of Communism. It was she who advised him to read the works of Karl Marx. But Miller preferred to hear her telling him about such things. To Miller only one thing was more difficult than reading, and that was writing. So he listened to Jessie’s teaching, and while he marvelled at the power of her mind he thought about the body that pulsed with life under those thick, virginal clothes; and he wondered how he might possess it.

  Yet, because of her intellectual ability and her class, Miller was never at ease with Jessie. In moments of self-revelation he imagined how he must appear when viewed through her eyes—he, a man of the slums; he, a prostitute’s bastard. Sometimes, in an agony of self-pity, he would weep in the secrecy of his bedroom, cursing the misfortune that had made him as he was.

  At other times he was more cheerful. After all, was not Communism the creed of equality? And was not Jessie Craddon a true Communist? Therefore she must believe in equality. She, of all people, would not hold his birth and upbringing against him. Indeed, for her there might be an attraction in a man so obviously misused by the capitalist, bourgeois society of England. So thought Miller in his more sanguine moments; and at such moments the world seemed a good world, and he would whistle between his broken teeth.

  Miller felt he would always remember an evening in May in the year 1937; so much happened that evening; it might well have been that the events of just a few hours altered the whole subsequent course of his life. Had things turned out differently he might have been a different man; he might have been happy. Well, you could never tell at the time how you were going to be affected by events; you could never tell what a certain course of action would do to your life. That was the swine of it. If you could only see, if you could only judge the consequences, how differently you might act! But you were blind, and you could only grope blindly. That was the swine of it.

  Miller and Jessie had been to an open-air meeting. It was a warm, pleasant evening, and Miller suggested that they should walk back to Jessie’s lodgings. He had often taken her home before, and she agreed readily enough. They walked up one street and down another; and Jessie talked and Miller listened; but all the time he was thinking how wonderful it would be to have her in his arms, to have her always. The desire was so strong in him that he could feel his hands sweating, and his breath came sharply in little gasps. Yet he was afraid because, though she belonged to the party and worshipped the creed, she had nevertheless been born in far different circumstances from those in which Miller had been born. He was inferior, and he knew it. Suppose he took her in his arms and she repulsed him with disgust! Then it would all be over, all his bright dreams, all his hopes. So he hesitated; so, as Jessie talked, his desire battled with his fear, and he hardly knew what she was saying.

  It was late; darkness had fallen on the streets, and where they walked the street lamps were oases of light with deserts of shadow in between. In one of these deserts Miller screwed up his courage and stopped walking.

  “Jess,” he said, “wait a bit.”

  She halted also and stood looking at him questioningly. He took her hand and pulled her into an alley which led off the street, a narrow alley made dark by the encroaching houses.

  “Jess,” he said, and his voice was hoarse, “you must listen to me; you got to listen to me.”

  He could tell by her voice that she was smiling in the darkness, and she did not attempt to draw her hand away.

  “I’m listening, Fred,” she answered.

  “Jess, I don’t know how to say this; I ain’t no good at speeches; I never knew how to talk—not like you, Jess, not like you. Nobody never learnt me, an’ that’s gospel—true as I stand ’ere. I never ’ad a chance really—not a chance.”

  He was full of self-pity and near to tears. If she had laughed at him he would have lashed out like a child in a temper; he would have struck her, trying to hurt her for the way she had hurt him. But she did not laugh; she stood there, saying nothing, waiting for him to go on. He could see her only dimly, could not tell what expression was on her face, whether it was of pity or contempt or something else.

  After a while he went on speaking, and his voice was still hoarse.

  “I don’t know what you’ll think of what I’m going to say. Maybe you’ll laugh; maybe you’ll be angry. You’re such a long way better than what I am—miles above me; that’s the trouble.”

  “No, Fred,” she whispered. “No.”

  But he went on vehemently. “Yes, you are, miles above. What am I? Something dragged out of the gutter! That’s true. My mother was a whore; you may as well know that; somebody wouldn’t be above telling you, anyway.”

  “We can’t pick our parents, Fred.”

  “No; but it makes a difference, say what you like. Now, you, you’re educated; you talk decent; you got brains. That’s what makes it all so damned silly.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Not but what,” he continued, speaking hurriedly now, “not but what I mightn’t better meself. I got brains, too, if I like to use them. I could learn; I could get on. I know blokes with less’n my start make good, work their way up an’ get big money, stacks of it. P’r’aps I could too.”

  He seemed to have forgotten Communism, the Marxist theory, the creed. He felt her hand pressing his.

  “Fred,” she said, “Fred, this isn’t what you stopped for. You could have said this as we walked. What did you really want to say?”

  Suddenly the spirit seemed to go out of him; he felt deflated, hopeless.

  “What’s the use?” he said. “What’s the use? But I got to say it. I got to tell you. Jess, I love you.”

  He expected her to start away, to call him a fool, to laugh at him in derision. She did none of these things. She said softly, “Fred, I love you as well. I thought you knew.”

  They stayed in the alley until they heard the sound of approaching footsteps. Then Jessie freed herself and said, “We must go. Mrs Porter will think I’m lost; it’s late.”

  He kissed her once more, and they went out into the street and walked on. But now they walked hand in hand and talked no more of Marxism, but were silent, breathing the fresh night air, and each feeling that from amid the slums around them they had plucked a flower of rarest beauty.

  It was ten minutes before Miller realized that they were being followed. Glancing back over his shoulder, he had seen three men, but at first he had suspected nothing. Then a feeling had come over him that all was not as innocent as it seemed. The street was very silent and empty, the hour late. He could hear the sound of his own and Jessie’s footsteps jumping up from the pavement and echoing back off the drab houses across the way. There seemed to be no life in those houses; except for himself and Jessie and the three men thirty paces behind, the city might have been dead.

  Miller stopped walking, holding Jessie back by the hand. The three men stopped also, huddled under a lamp-post, a silent, menacing group. Two were wearing caps; the third was bare-headed, and the lamplight falling upon him showed up his face, a face hideously, jaggedly scarred. Miller’s breath came in a sharp, hard gasp.

  “What is it, Fred?” Jessie asked. “What’s wrong?”

  He said, “Those men under the lamp-post—they’re following us.”

  She looked back at the men. One of them was lighting cigarettes for the other two, and the smoke drifted up, writhing about the street-lamp, vanishing in the air.

  “What makes you think that?” she asked.

  “I’ve seen them before; they’re Blackshirts.”

  “Even so—”

  He said urgently, “Let’s go on; let’s get away from ’ere.”

  They began walking again, and the three men followed, keeping the same distance, not closing the gap, not letting it widen. Miller felt panicky; he could feel the sweat pricking out on his forehead. He wanted to break into a run, but he held himself in check by an effort of will. He would have welcomed the sight of a policeman, but the street was deserted.
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  He began to think furiously. Somehow he must shake off those three men. They were not following him for amusement; there was something deadly purposeful in the way they came on, saying nothing to each other, hurrying only when he hurried, but always there.

  “Jess,” he said, and his voice trembled a little, though he tried to keep it level, “we’ll take the next turning, and then run like hell for the next. We’ve got to give ’em the slip.”

  She understood. Some of his fear had communicated itself to her, and she did not argue. “All right,” she said. “I’m ready.”

  Half a minute later they were in the turning and running. Fifty yards farther on was another turning; they raced into it and continued running. Two minutes later they were stopped by the wall of a building stretching across the road. They were in a cul-de-sac.

  Miller began to swear, softly, fluently; but Jessie put a hand over his mouth.

  “That’s no use,” she said. “And in any case we may have eluded them—that is, if they were really following us.”

  “They was following us all right,” said Miller. “You don’t need to ’ave no doubts about that. They was following us. One of ’em was a bastard I bashed a while ago. He’ll ’ave it in for me. Blast ’em! ’Ere they come!”

  The three men did not hurry; they knew there was no way of escape. They spread out across the street and advanced slowly. In their hands they carried short pieces of thick lead piping.

  “They’ll kill me,” whimpered Miller. “Ain’t there no way out?”

  He looked round him desperately, and saw that he and Jessie were standing beside a pair of stout wooden doors, about nine feet high. He looked up at them, but they were too tall for him to climb. He could not reach the top with his hands, and there was no foothold. Then he heard Jessie speaking rapidly.

  “Get on my back, Fred. It’s you they’re after; they won’t touch me. Get on my back and climb over.”

  As she bent down the three men seemed to guess her purpose, and they began to run. Fear gave Miller strength; he put one foot on Jessie’s back, gave a leap, grabbed the top of the door, pulled himself up, swung over, and dropped on the other side.

  He fell heavily, wrenching his ankle; but he picked himself up at once, for already he could hear some one else climbing the door. He could just discern by the dim, reflected light that he was in a builder’s yard, and he began to pick his way between stacks of timber, piles of bricks, dumps of sand, wheelbarrows, hand-carts, and other paraphernalia. He had gone only a few yards when he heard a soft thud and realized that at least one pursuer was also in the yard. He bent low, making use of the ample cover, and knowing that if he moved silently the other man was unlikely to find him.

  But suddenly a beam of light flickered across the yard and began to move about, sweeping over the blocks of concrete, porcelain sinks, an old tin bath. Miller whimpered again. The man had a torch.

  Miller dodged round a stack of timber, and the torch-beam splashed over it and showed, leaning against a wall, a ladder. Renewed hope flooded Miller’s heart, and he leapt for the ladder and started to climb. It was then that his pursuer saw him, and, giving a cry of rage, ran for the ladder also. But Miller was already astride the wall and feeling better. He waited there until the man was half-way up the ladder; then he thrust suddenly with his foot and sent the ladder toppling back into the yard. He heard a crash, a cry of pain; and then he dropped lightly down from the wall into the street behind and ran.

  The following morning as Miller was going to work he felt a hand on his shoulder. Turning, he saw big George Denver.

  “I want a word with you,” Denver said; and his voice sounded strange to Miller; almost, one might have thought, menacing. Miller stopped.

  “What is it, George?”

  “Keep moving,” Denver said. “We can talk as we go. You were at the meeting last night?”

  “Yes,” Miller said.

  “Jessie Craddon was there too.”

  “Yes,” Miller said again.

  “You and Jessie,” Denver said, “left together. You were seen going off together.”

  “Well? What of it?”

  “Did you go home with Jessie?”

  “I don’t see what that’s got to do with you,” Miller said; but he spoke half-heartedly; he was frightened.

  “I said, did you go home with her?”

  Miller looked up at Denver’s face and saw that it was grim, the mouth set in a hard line. Miller said, “No, I left her.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know—straight, I don’t. Somewhere. What’s it matter, anyway? Why are you so interested? There’s no ’arm in walking ’ome with a girl.”

  “Not when she gets home. Jessie didn’t.”

  Miller’s stomach began turning to water; his lips trembled. “She didn’t? Then what—”

  “Jessie,” Denver said slowly, “was found in a blind alley with her skull battered in.”

  Miller watched the hills sliding past as the Golden Ray steamed up the Tuloma river. Under their covering of snow, with dark pines thrusting up here and there, they looked like the pallid faces of old invalids, dotted with the growth of five-day beards. Between them the Tuloma flowed silently down to the Barents Sea. There were ice-floes on the river, and the air was cold and crisp, the sky a pale, washed-out blue. Somewhere, far, very far overhead, an aeroplane was drawing patterns upon the sky. Miller could scarcely see the plane, but he could hear the beat of its engine throbbing down through layer after layer of thin Arctic air, and he could see the white, swelling bandage of its vapour trail.

  Ahead of the Golden Ray was the Harrison boat, astern of her the surviving tanker; ahead and astern of those lay the rest of the convoy, strung out in a long Indian file, and all moving smoothly up the Tuloma towards Murmansk. And from every ship men gazed with weary eyes upon the iron hills, and were glad—glad to see the snow and the trees and the little wavelets lapping against the shore; glad to see the occasional wooden house and the wooden jetty reaching out into the stream; glad to hear the fighter aircraft overhead; glad to see the camouflaged emplacements of anti-aircraft guns, and here and there a motor-lorry, and here and there a pony sleigh; glad to see river craft, and warships lying snug at anchor; glad above all else to know that they had left the Barents Sea, the long groping through darkness, the incessant thunder of depth-charges, the bitter lash of blown spray; glad that the outward voyage was over.

  At this moment Miller wished that Jessie could have been with him to share his entry into the Promised Land. The memory of Jessie was the only smudge on the bright shield of his happiness. But it was only a tiny smudge, for the years had heaped leaves of forgetfulness on that incident in the cul-de-sac and the builder’s yard, so that Miller no longer saw Jessie clearly as a person with whom he had been in love, but rather as a vague dream. Yet he knew that if the dream had not been so rudely shattered his life might have been very different; he might have been a better man—though perhaps a worst Communist. It was paradoxical that Jessie, devoted to the cause as she had been, should have been the one to give him ideas that had nothing to do with Communism, equality, or the overthrow of the capitalist system. But Jessie was dead, and without her there was nothing in Miller’s life but the party.

  His faith had been shaken when Russia had made her pact with Germany; he had been bewildered; there had appeared to be no easy explanation of that move. Then Germany had attacked on the eastern front and all was well; Miller found that he was on the right side after all. Russia, the land of beauty, of truth, of light, was fighting side by side with Britain. The very thought of such an alignment warmed Miller’s heart, made him less bitterly resentful of the life of drill and discipline that had been forced upon him. One had only to be patient; victory over Germany would surely come, and with it the great victory for Communism over all the western world.

  Miller saw the last rays of the setting sun glint golden on the topmost ridges of the hills; then he heard the anchor-chain rattli
ng out through the hawse-pipe, heard the anchor splash in the water and the chain continue rattling out, while the rust rose in a reddish cloud and the carpenter stood with his hand upon the winch. Then the anchor bit into the bed of the river, and the ship was held fast, swinging gently with her stern towards the sea. From the bridge rang down the signal, “Finished with engines,” and for the first time since leaving Loch Ewe the mighty heart of the vessel was still and silent.

  And Miller looked towards the land and felt that he had come home at last.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Murmansk

  FOR seven days the Golden Ray lay at anchor in a small bay that seemed to have been scooped out of the surrounding rock. Some distance up-river was the port of Murmansk, and at night the crew could stand on deck and hear bombs bursting in the town and see the anti-aircraft barrage, the glitter of heavy shells and the streams of golden tracer that seemed to climb so lazily up the sky, where the white arms of searchlights waved to and fro as though in invitation.

  On the first evening of their release from watches the gunners celebrated in their own fashion. For the first time for many days they took their trousers off. Then, clad in vests and pants, and with the stove aglow, they danced and capered to the tune of Ben Cowdrey’s mouth-organ. Ben sat on his bunk, his back resting against the bulkhead, and played until his mouth was sore. And in the narrow gangway between the bunks the gunners capered and sang. With bearded faces and tousled hair, they looked in their long woollen underclothing like so many grotesque, overgrown gnomes; and the sight of one another set them laughing, and they laughed until the tears ran down their cheeks. They were all a little crazed, a little mad; for the tension had lifted and their spirits were bubbling over.

  So they danced and so they sang, while the iron stove glowed red; and outside the long Arctic night closed upon the land with a grip of steel, and the rocks cracked within that grip, and the pine-trees shivered under an icy breath, and overhead the northern lights writhed in agony across the sky.