The Lovely Ship

by Storm Jameson

  Mary observed him while he listened to a shipwright’s excuse for coming late. A lean and melancholy man, he explained that his wife had fallen on her back and he had stayed to fetch the doctor.

  “Surely,” Mempes said smoothly, “you could have attended to her yourself,” and had moved on before the shaft pierced the other’s hide. The brief incident was characteristic of Mempes. He expended on the men in his charge an irony that they resented without understanding it, and he suffered because they disliked him. Yet he had a knack of handling them. Garton’s Yard remained free of trouble when other yards and other ports were in violent disorder. He had an intuitive sense of coming trouble, and provided he could refrain from laughing at the wrong moment, more often than not he contrived to avert it.

  On their way to the ropemaker’s, they met a buxom young woman who blushed and paled at the sight of Mempes. Mary admired the elegance of his greeting. She said so, and he flashed her a humorous glance.

  “Do you think she liked it?”

  “I am sure she did,” Mary answered gravely. “I expect she loves you. Miss Flora had a brother who drowned himself for love.”

  The young man groaned gently. “Ere I would say I would drown myself for the love of a guinea-hen, I would change my humanity into a baboon,” he said.

  Mary did not understand the quotation and left him, a little offended. Mempes looked wistfully after her short, retreating back. He was sorry that the child did not like him. . . .

  Except for her self-ordained holidays, Mary’s life in Mark Henry Garton’s house was sufficiently industrious. She rose at six and studied divinity for an hour with Miss Flora. After breakfast, and for the rest of her day until tea-time, she worked with the tutor whom Mark Henry had engaged for the Lings, and from absence of mind never discarded. For this young man, a Dutchman of the name of Wagener, she had a real affection. He neither thrashed her nor scolded her, and in the intervals of giving her a very solid grounding in Latin and arithmetic, he talked to her about his life.

  “At fourteen I was the most pious of boys. I was everything a mother would like her son to be, and my father hated me. Then I went to the University and learned to play the flute and read all the books in the world. I wanted to see the world, so I ran away with a man and his wife who owned a travelling booth. I couldn’t act—in Compiègne I was hissed off the stage in Hamlet for my accent, which was that of a Dutch boor. So I faked up plays for them out of my reading. I had successes, Mary, that are pleasant to remember. It was a jolly life on the whole, going from fair to fair in France, drinking the wine of the country after the performances with men and women streaked with paint and warm with exertion and excitement, ripe for anything. Those were days—and nights. Jolly people. No unnatural ideas about washing their bodies, so that they retained all their natural odours and added to them the smells and sweats and cheap scents of the audience in the booth. When you kissed the little soubrette you kissed every fair ground in France, and the smell of trampled grass, and dust and spilled wine and the scent of hedges and fields and women’s warm hair and the exhalations of wet earth and the breath of cheering crowds—oh, life, life, Mary. I dare say I should have been there still but for an unfortunate incident in which I admit I was to blame—but youth, extreme youth, is thoughtless and rash. I was nineteen then, and I am twenty-six now, and I am prepared to admit that I made a fool of myself. However—those days unfitted me for a serious life.”

  “You ought to be serious,” Mary said earnestly. “A painted wooden tablet hangs on the wall above our pew. It’s very faded, and I can only just read it by staring at it till my eyes smart. Be ye doers of the word and not hearers onely, deceiving your own selvs. It means that we should all work hard to fit ourselves to lead a good life.”

  Wagener looked at her comically. “Then why did you run away before breakfast yesterday morning to see the Mary Gray launched?”

  “I don’t know,” Mary confessed. “I couldn’t eat with the thought of her taking the water and me not there. It was splendid. There were flags, and people cheered, and old Mr. Smithson fell in the harbour, and when they dragged him out he said he was eating his way through the mud to the pier. The band played and the sun shone on the water. And the Mary Gray stood out to sea like an angel. When she was out of the harbour I went up to the cliff top to watch her out of sight. The wind was right for her and she lay over to the waves like the lady she is. When she’s fullrigged she’ll carry thirty-four sails, counting three skysails, moonsails, and sky-stunsails. I was talking to her male in the Yard the other day. He said stunsails were almost no use, and the Old Man liked crowding on everything he had until the whole lot was fit to tear itself to ribbins in the forties. What do you think of that? She’s off to London and then to Australia. My uncle says they’re scooping gold out of the country with a knife. I don’t know whether to believe him or not. Everyone’s going. I thought of going myself. My uncle has three ships building in Nova Scotia for the Australian trade, and he’s going to take three frigates off the Indian for it. . . . When I came home yesterday morning he thrashed me. So did Miss Flora. She hurt the worse, and prayed too. Ah well, it was worth it.”

  “Why did you tell them where you’d been? They would have thought you were studying with me, like a good girl.”

  “They asked me.”

  “You never tell lies, do you?” Wagener said. “I wonder why. I tell them by the hundred. It’s a social duty. People can’t stand the truth. No one ought to go round being so truthful as you are. It’s indecent. Why, Mary, you might as well go round naked.”

  Mary frowned, and Wagener, feeling reproved, bought his way back to favour with his flute. He played the Wanderers Nachtlied to her, and for that air, than which no air more poignant or more lovely was ever made, Mary forgave him everything, even his want of earnestness.

  She thought of her mother and tears filled her eyes. . . .

  After dinner she sat with Mark Henry Garton in the dining-room. He was sunk in gloom, and told Mary that he was done for.

  “Imagination has been my ruin,” he said earnestly. “Don’t have anything to do with imagination, Mary. Stick to probabilities, and if you must punt do it on the ready in a small way. Look at me. I can’t be content with Garton’s Yard, but I must go and start a blast furnace at Middlesbrough. Why? You ask me why? Of course you do, and I answer that it’s because I am a fool. I go over there—for nothing—just to pass the time of day with an old friend, heaven rot him, and place an order for engines for that steamboat we’re going to build. Think of that, Mary. The first steamship in Danesacre and I’m building it. That’s one for old Smithson, and his miserable Spital Yard. Spittoon Yard, I call it. Why, a hearty smoker could fill one of those dry docks of his in an afternoon.”

  Mark Henry bounced on the sofa. It was of new, shiny horsehair, and he was only saved from sliding off by clutching at the window ledge behind. A plant pot crashed down and Mark Henry surveyed the fragments and scattered earth with rising fury. “Plants,” he said. “Plants! Rot all plants. The place for plants is the garden, and not too much of that, and I won’t have my house turned into a shrubbery for all the horse-faced dragoons who ever masqueraded as the gentle sex. I could tell you things about women, Mary—well, throw the damned things out of the window. Go on, all of them.”

  He came to her help, and with a fearful delight Mary saw Miss Flora’s pots of musk and trailing greenery hurled down the slope of the garden to crash against the Yard wall. Mark Henry enjoyed the sabotage. He said something about Attila, and when Mary asked a question, told her that Attila knew how to deal with women.

  “Rapine,” said Mark Henry darkly. “A firm hand. I’ve known women rapine was too good for. Gr-r-r! Woman, woman, lovely woman, give her a pot of musk and she thinks it’s the Garden of Eden.” He slammed the window down and surveyed his work with a satisfaction that turned rapidly to gloom when Mary reminded him about the blast furnace.

  “Going to Middlesbrough to buy a boiler or two
, and buying a whole damned furnace. What d’you think of that? I bought everything. I bought a complete iron mill, with blast furnaces, and a small separate works alongside, where they’re making boilers and marine engines. It was all the fault of that fellow in Vyner’s. Says: ’You can’t have your boilers in March. We’re working for the Government.’ ’Government be damned,’ I said. ’I’ll show you whether I’m to be hindered by a lot of nincompoops in office,’ and I went down into the town and there I met young Gossop. He was pea-green, and they said he’d been losing heavily in the Funds. I said: ’D’you want to sell your works?’ and be damned he did. And I went over to the bank and arranged it there and then. And there we are. Gossop’s—no—Garton’s Iron Works. And I can have all the boilers I want, and when I want ’em. Oh, I’ll be buried in a boiler. I’ll shut myself in one and roll down the cliff. Soon as I get home I’m told that the new brig was run down off Hartlepool last night by a damned great schooner. On her first voyage, and all hands lost. Carrying coal, she was, and I hope they’re using it to roast ’em where they’ve gone. Dark night. I’d give ’em dark night if I could get at ’em. They’ll be refusing to sail at night next. What with their tea and their sugar and benefit clubs and higher wages, we’ll soon be sending every man on board with a nurse. Mary, whatever you do, never give in to these Unions. They’re ruining us. They’d like to see me cutting capers for ha’pennies on the Scotch Head. In every port, from Peterhead to London. Putting ideas in the men’s thick heads. Devils. Mind what I say. Don’t you ever give in to them, Mary. Promise.”

  Mary promised.

  Her uncle was pleased with her. He said that she was a sensible, obedient girl, and asked her how old she was. Hearing that she was thirteen now, he sighed.

  “I wish you’d been a boy, Mary. I’d have adopted you. You’ve got hands like a boy. You’re sure you’re not a boy? Under those petticoats. Well, I couldn’t tell, could I? That woman’s capable of anything to spite me. You be off to her before she comes to fetch you. Be off.”

  Mary understood that he was talking of Miss Flora, for whom he had an irrational hatred. He considered that her sniffs were directed at him, and once at breakfast he burst into indignant speech.

  “Blow your nose, woman,” he shouted. “Don’t go on trifling with nature like that. Blow it and have done. Here, I’ll show you.”

  He produced a red bandana, and trumpeted into it with the blast of a fog-horn. Miss Flora rushed from the table. He stared gloomily after her.

  “There she goes,” he said to Mary. “Rushing about like Jonah, but no whale could stomach that. Did you ever see the jawbone of a whale, Mary? That’s one over the gate into the orchard. Drive a coach and four through it. Don’t you ever take to sniffing. I’ll wring your nose.”

  Lingering in the doorway after saying good night, Mary observed that she would like to build ships. Mark Henry was amused.

  “You can’t build ships in petticoats,” he said. “Trip up and show your drawers. I’d look rare and queer running round the Yard in drawers, wouldn’t I?”

  Mary stood her ground.

  “You don’t build the boats yourself,” she said urgently. “I wouldn’t, either. I’d tell them what to do. I know a few things about it already, Mr Mempes says steam is bound to cut out everything else. He showed me a plan of an engine, and explained the pressure and the cylinders to me. I asked him would it be a good thing if he could think of a way to squeeze more pressure out of less coal so as to leave more room for the cargo, and—”

  “It would be a damned good thing,” said Mark Henry boisterously, “and, by George, if you’re still having ideas in five years’ time I’ll take you into the firm, I will. We’ll set ’em all by the ears. Never did like those Lings. Rotten stock, eh Mary? Here, be off, be off. I’ll not have that fog-faced woman in here. Shake her up and away you go. Step handy, my girl.”

  Mary conceived the idea that he was a little nervous about the plant-wrecking. She withdrew, and went to bed, solemnly happy in the thought that her future was now settled. . . .

  Her mother came next day.

  Charlotte Hansyke had in four years changed not a little. She had broadened, and she was helping out the freshness of her complexion by various adjuncts that her brother referred to flatly as harlotries.

  “You ought not to do it, Lottie,” he grumbled. “You don’t do it properly. You could put it on badly to show what a great lady you were, or thoroughly, to show you were t’other sort. But you do it to deceive. It don’t deceive a cat, and you’re getting a bad name in the town. Decent women don’t rouge themselves up to the eyes, and go round with the plackets of their skirts torn. It’s a bad sign. You wash your face, my girl, and get Horse-whiskers to sew you up.”

  Something in Charlotte’s expression must have struck him, for he rested his hand on her shoulder in awkward kindness.

  “We all got to come to it. Your varnish is blistered, your waist running a neck to neck with your dressmaker, and you don’t feel a day older than you did twenty years ago, eh Lottie?”

  Charlotte stared at him and went away without a word. She mended her skirt, but gave up none of the tricks that displeased him. She used all her blandishments to attach John Mempes to her side. The young man paid court to her with a melancholy grace that infuriated Mark Henry, and for some reason she could not explain to herself, distressed Mary so much that she avoided both Mempes and her mother. She disliked the sight of her mother leaning on the manager’s arm. She disliked Mempes’ habit of whispering stories in her mother’s ear, which made Charlotte laugh loudly, and were always broken off when Mary came into the room, to be resumed, Mary knew, when she left. She felt awkward in her mother’s presence, and the tender longing with which she used to dwell on Charlotte’s memory, lying awake to imagine the door opening and her mother there, candle in hand, come back for her little girl, passed imperceptibly into disapproval and distrust. Charlotte did not seem to notice it, but the more sensitive Mempes did. He made an effort to win the little girl back to friendship, but her blunt refusal of his advances baffled him. Too indolent to persist, he allowed Mary to rebuff him, and devoted himself to her easier mother.

  Charlotte had come up to negotiate the sale of her few remaining shares in Garton’s Yard. The allowance Richard Hansyke made her was enough to have kept her in narrow comfort in London, but Charlotte could not have lived narrowly anywhere. She did not spend money on rent. She had lived ever since she ran away to town with a friend who had a small house in Islington. But she had to have clothes and amusements, and Charlotte was not calculating enough to make the men for whom she dressed pay for either. She was in debt to dressmakers and milliners, and even, Mary gathered, listening to Charlotte’s long wandering monologues, to the friend she lived with. Charlotte talked to Mary as if the little girl were her own age. She did not seem to notice that Mary was unresponsive, and when Mempes made his appearance and she pulled herself together to be bewitching and witty, she did not observe Mary slipping from the room, with a funny mixture of scorn and bewilderment on her round face.

  Mark Henry would not buy Charlotte’s shares, except at two-thirds of the market rate, and even at that price he insisted on half the money being put back into the firm in Mary’s name. Charlotte raged. He was stubborn.

  “Sell ’em yourself,” he said. “Sell ’em in the open market if you don’t like my price. But why sell ’em? You can stay on here, you and Mary, and I’ll treat Mary as if she were my own girl. I’ll do nothing to help you rake about London like an old ship painted up to do duty as a river inn, open to all comers.”

  Charlotte was helpless. She had no idea how to get rid of her shares except by selling them to her brother, and in the end she sold them to him on his own terms. Then, furious, she announced her intention of going back to London and taking Mary with her.

  “You can’t do that,” Mark Henry said flatly. “Hansyke hasn’t given you leave to take the child away, nor likely to. He’s a cold-hearted brute, but
he’s not a scoundrel. Now, I am, but then I’m warm-hearted, and you can’t have everything.”

  So it happened that Mary was wakened once again by her mother’s appearance in her bedroom in the middle of the night. This time, Charlotte got the little girl up, and admonished her to dress herself quickly, while Charlotte packed some of her clothes into a bundle.

  “Are we going away?” Mary asked sleepily.

  “Hush,” Charlotte said. “Don’t talk. If your uncle hears us, he won’t let you go. I promised to take you to London and I will. Be quick. Never mind all the buttons. You can fasten them afterwards.”

  But Mary insisted on fastening the ultimate button and tying the last tape before she would come away. Charlotte fretted with impatience while the little girl continued her methodical preparations, but she waited, defeated by Mary’s stolid perseverance. At last she was ready, and Charlotte caught her up to carry her down the stairs.

  “You’d better let me walk,” Mary observed. “You’ll tread lighter yourself if you’re not carrying me, and I can slide down the banisters.”

  This she did and slid into the arms of John Mempes, waiting there to give his arm to Charlotte and escort them both to the carriage standing in Harbour Street. Charlotte leaned out of the window and kissed him on the mouth as the carriage moved off. “Bless you and thank you,” she whispered. “You’ve been an angel, helping me.”

  “I feel more like a less reputable person in fiction. The wicked uncle, Cressida’s uncle, in fact. Who knows what I’m helping you to? Send for me, if you want help.”

  He spoke to Charlotte, but he looked at Mary as he uttered the last words. She shrank back into the carriage, resolute not to show him any favour. Too young to put her thoughts clearly to herself, she yet had an instinctive sense that he was helping on this romantic flight less out of kindness than from an indifference that was ready to yield to any woman’s entreaties. Perhaps even, Mary thought darkly, he was glad to be rid of her mother. Miss Flora said that John Mempes was a flirt and a breaker of hearts, who led women on and wearied of them as soon as he had got them into a state when they were ready to do everything for him. Perhaps he was tired of Charlotte. She looked at the tall grave young man standing at the side of the road, hat in hand, his face pale and remote in the cold half-light of dawn. The idea that he had led her mother on must be dismissed as an inadequate comment on a situation that puzzled Mary not a little. Charlotte had surely come more than half-way. Mary sighed. She felt that she was becoming wise and worldly very quickly. The carriage rounded the bend of the hill and the romantic figure of Mempes vanished out of sight with the house, the masts in the harbour and the erection of poles and scaffolding round the ship on the stocks in Garton’s Yard.