Slow Boats Home
Page 51
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We said goodnights and goodbyes outside my cabin.
‘Ta-ta, then,’ said Keith. ‘Don’t forget, if you come Wirral way ….’
‘Good luck, Gav,’ said Frank with his doughy, innocent grin.
I felt I had known them half my life. Neither was young any more. They were Ancient Pistol and Corporal Nym. They were old-fashioned, skiving British sailors, free from illusion and ambition. I would miss them, but it wouldn’t do to say so.
I didn’t see them again. Next day things were different. Dock workers, agents’ men and customs officials took over the ship. Loading would begin almost at once. With new men aboard and a new destination ahead of her, the Kaina had become a stranger; she had no time for me any more.
I took a final mug of tea with Magda in her spotless galley – she actually twisted her grumpy mouth into a smile for me as she poured it. Then I went to say goodbye to Tom Newby. A radio handset fizzed at his elbow, and a rough Plymouth voice snarled from it ‘… and tell ’er she can get stuffed!’
‘Oh dear,’ Captain Tom said, smiling and switching it off. ‘Sounds like the BBC.’
He held out his hand. ‘The end of the line, eh?’ he said in his soft Welsh voice. ‘Ay, the end of the line.’
I took this good man’s outstretched hand; and that was that.
The end of the line came swiftly now, and with it came the deep, cold ache of something loved and lost. A taxi dumped me at Plymouth station. The express train to London normally had a dining-car, but today when it pulled into the station the ticket collector told me that the station staff had forgotten – forgotten! – to attach it. So I sat with an empty stomach, staring through the carriage window at the weeping English countryside, and thought once more of that distant beginning. The dusty books of adventure high up in my grandmother’s old attic in Bude with its view of the Atlantic Ocean had tantalized my mind with Stevenson’s dream of
Tales, marvellous tales
Of ships and stars and isles where good men rest.
That dream had beckoned me away to sea as a boy and I had resisted it almost too long. Now at last I had returned to tell the tale and the dream was fulfilled.
Copyright
This ebook edition first published in 2015
by Faber & Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
All rights reserved
© Gavin Young, 1985
The right of Gavin Young to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–31018–0