The Lovely Ship

by Storm Jameson

  William Adam Todd, called Sweet William in the town, was a lean man with legs so widely bowed that anatomically he was more of a monkey than a man. His face was in majestic contrast. The portrait that hangs to this day in the bank at Danesacre, showing discreetly only a head and shoulders, is that of a Victorian gentleman of the sternest period, powerfully browed, large-nosed and firmly jawed, a massive creature of massive emotions savagely repressed. He had a spiteful tongue, and kept a wife and a large family of daughters in adject terror. At meals he was served alone at the head of an immense table; round its foot clung his female dependents eating the meagre scraps of Sweet William’s meal of yesterday. Once he tied his eldest daughter to a thin rope and led her down to the pleasure-gardens on the west cliff. He scandalised the frequenters of that respectable family resort, strangely called the Saloon, by hobbling her to the leg of his chair and sending her to sit a dozen feet away: he said she had been insolent. This action of his was considered by most people to have overstepped the bounds of justifiable severity. No one, of course, disputed his right to rule his household in any way he chose, but it was distinctly felt that he should not have risked distressing the less Spartan instincts of other people. And there was something distressing about the posture of that lean, still youngish woman, with the faint flush on her thin cheeks and the hands folded in her lap twitching every time they came in contact with the rope. . . . Sometimes he whipped his daughters, though they were all of mature years.

  He greeted Mary with an overpowering courtesy, scampering round his room to fetch a footstool on which he disposed her feet, standing back to admire his effect.

  “Exquisite,” he said. “What a foot for a dance. You may not believe it, my dear, but I have a passion for the waltz. I don’t dance, because my legs are capable of moving off in two different directions to spite me, but Ehren on the Rhine ravishes me; my body squats on its hoop on the ground and my soul flies through the sky like an archangel. I have only danced once and that was with my wife before I married her. If she had not been a poor-spirited wretch she would have refused to stand up with me. Can you wonder I despise her?”

  Mary explained her errand. Sweet William heard her out and then began to build a rampart of books on his desk. When he could no longer see over the top, he addressed her at length, poking his head now and then round the barrier to see how she was taking it.

  “These are modern times,” he said. “Very modern. Shockingly modern. A woman in shipbuilding, it’s an awful thing. Nothing in the Bible to suggest that female labour would have been acceptable to build the Ark. How I ever came to advance you fifty thousand pounds I can’t think. And now that the Joint Stock company are taking me over my sin has found me out. Here they were, in this room, poking round: ’What loans are out, Mr Todd? What security, Mr Todd? For what period, Mr. Todd? Fifty thousand pounds to Garton’s. ’Aha,’ I said, ’come and look out of my window. There, across the other side of the harbour, there’s Garton’s. See that beautiful ship building there now.’ I rubbed my eyes, I stared, they stared. There was no ship. The Yard was idle. Idle! Empty! I blinked, I slunk from the window, I said: ’The ship must have been finished and taken away in the night.’ But they didn’t believe me, and the end of it all was that they refused to take over the bank unless Garton’s fifty thousand pounds is repaid at the end of the term. What could I do? There were no ships to show them. Oh, poor Mark Henry, God bless his soul, he was a dissolute ruffian, but he did use the Yard for building ships.”

  “Mr Todd.” Mary struggled between laughter and rage. “You knew quite well there was no ship on the stocks at Garton’s. There’s not a ship being built in the town. And equally well you know that Garton’s security is as good as any in England. You advanced that money on the Line, the Works, and the Yard; they’re still there, and freights will go up again.” She put her head round the books and William Adam Todd screamed.

  “Don’t you look at me. I can’t do anything for you. There weren’t any ships when I took those Joint Stock pelicans to look. Shipping is no security nowadays. No security, no security.” He waved his arms. The topmost books of the pile fell down, and he glared at Mary, defying her to approach him over the ruin.

  Mary sat still; the wide panelled room, its windows opened to the harbour, receded before her eyes. She was very angry, and exceedingly puzzled. William Todd was a mountebank. He was also the shrewdest and hardest business man in the county. His refusal of credit to Garton’s was a deadly stroke. What puzzled her was his motive in misleading—no other word for it—the purchasing Company about Garton’s. He knew that the security was good enough, for all the present pinch. Something more than the disobliging nature of Joint Stock “pelicans” was at the bottom of things, and whatever it was, it was no whim of the bank manager’s. Sweet William was full of whims; he was whim-ridden and the town’s familiar buffoon, but he never let whims into his business. He was the sanest lunatic in Danesacre, which was full of lunatics, sane and insane.

  Sweet William watched her. His eyes gleamed through a fine growth of reddish hair. Suddenly he leaned forward and said quite calmly.

  “I regret I couldn’t persuade the Joint Stock people. I regret we’re putting you to inconvenience. I know it can only be temporary, since your resources are large and I have confidence in you. You’re not a woman, you’re a sensible creature. I have confidence in Garton’s. I would risk a good deal on the future of Garton’s.”

  The quietness of his manner was terrifying after his late performance. Mary was startled. She recovered herself quickly.

  “But not,” she observed mildly, “your assurance to the Joint Stock people that Garton’s is a safe debtor.”

  William Todd shot out of his chair and toddled across to the window. Mary thought he had retired again behind his clown’s make-up, and half expected him to go down on all fours and roll about the room like an animated croquet hoop. But he turned round with a placid face and his hands in his pockets.

  “You misjudge me,” he said. “You do indeed. The most sensible of creatures and you misjudge me. Is it my legs you don’t like? I don’t like them myself but I have a head as well as legs. Haven’t I just said I would risk a great deal on Garton’s?”

  Mary sighed and rose. She attempted no further argument, but all the way back to her house was puzzled by an elusive sense that she had missed some significance in the bank manager’s antics. Impatiently dismissing everything but the reality of defeat, she felt her heart beating with a sudden emotion. Things might be bad, but their badness was exciting.

  In the hall, she met her husband, dressed for riding. He had just returned from his ride and he invited himself to take tea with her. Mary was too absorbed to notice the wistful air with which Hugh looked round her sitting-room before dropping into a chair.

  “I don’t believe I’ve been in your room a dozen times since we came to this house,” he observed. “Either you’re not in it or it’s full of Richard. I’m very fond of Richard but, upon my soul, Mary, I never get you to myself for a moment.”

  “Do you want me to yourself?” Mary asked idly.

  “Why not?” Hugh smiled at his wife. “You’re better company than the rest of Danesacre.”

  “Hugh,” Mary said, stirred out of her preoccupation, “do you regret very much coming to Danesacre and marrying me?”

  “I regret a good many things, but not marrying you, and my regrets matter to no one but me. They matter least of all to you, my dear. Why did you tell me you weren’t in love with Hardman? You treated me decently enough nine years ago; I hope you’ll allow me the chance of helping you—not to Gerry Hardman. I couldn’t quite do that. But if you stay here you’ll be unhappy, and if you run away with him you’ll be just as unhappy. Tell me how I can serve you, and I’ll do what I can.”

  “Thank you, Hugh,” Mary said. “I’ll tell you what I intend to do, before I do it. I’m sorry I lied to you about Gerry. I knew my own mind then but not his.” She tried not to speak stiffly.
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  She was trembling. This surprised her.

  “Do you know it still? Have you made it up to running away? I suppose not, or you wouldn’t be worrying about Garton’s. You would, of course. I can imagine that you would prepare for an elopement with all the neatness in the world.”

  “I can’t help it,” Mary said under her breath.

  “Such a queer girl you were when I married you, a mixture of stolidity and romance. Earth and air, the elements are all wrong.” Hugh laughed. His mouth was compressed with pain. As if seeing him for the first time since she had schooled herself to look at him without a tightening of the nerves across her chest, Mary noticed fine lines round his eyes, and a deep one dug straight across his forehead. The hair above his ears was grey. She was shocked, and filled with an absurd sense of tenderness and anger, as if she could not help resenting the years that had taken away her young fastidious lover.

  “Do you remember?” Hugh began, and paused. “Don’t remember anything,” he said fiercely. “Don’t remember anything that ever happened to you before, my dear. You’ll be hurt if you do. No doubt you ought to have married Gerry Hardman, but it happens that you didn’t; you married me.” Jumping to his feet he turned his back on her. When he faced round again he was the self-contained Hugh of everyday, the man who had taken the place of Mary Hervey’s young husband. He asked what the banker had said to her. A frown appeared between Mary’s eyebrows. It had made a line there as deep as any of Hugh’s, but she never noticed it.

  “I failed,” she said grimly. “I shall have to meet the overdraft. I must sell the Line, if I can find anyone to buy at such a time. I intended to get rid of it before we moved to the Tees, but not now. I shall have to close down the furnaces next week, by the way.”

  “I’ve thought a good deal about Garton’s lately,” Hugh said. “I’ve come to one or two conclusions. Do you care to hear them? Don’t look so surprised, my dear. It’s not flattering.”

  She was deeply touched by his evidence of interest in her, and spoke eagerly. “Please go on, Hugh. It would be kind.”

  “This thing”—Hugh waved a hand to encircle Yard and Line and Works—“is too big for you. It’s too big for any one person. You should have help; I don’t mean more managers, I mean financial help, a board, a company. I don’t know the jargon. You’ve got it under your hand in the town. The banker______”

  “I told you the bank won’t help, Hugh.”

  “Not the bank. The banker. Todd. William Adam Todd, knight of the legs. I suppose he’s the richest man in the county: he must be worth a million since old Todd died, and he’d give his lovely legs for a share in Garton’s. I know. He almost told me so the other day at the meet, and stopped because I wasn’t looking such as a fool as I usually do when bankers address me. A gleam of intelligence must have escaped; he shut his mantrap of a jaw and irritated his horse into trying to buck him off. A hopeless attempt, for Sweet William’s legs were locked together under the animal’s belly. But I couldn’t have mistaken him.”

  “That’s what he meant this afternoon.”

  “I’ll talk to the foxy old devil for you if you like,” Hugh offered. “You needn’t be afraid I shall compromise you. Let me try. I’d like to. He won’t approach you. He’ll let Garton’s smash while he waits to be approached. William is the most sensitive creature, as well as the most ruthless, in Danesacre.” “How do you know that?”

  “Oh I know. This town is as full of enchantments as the White Cat’s palace.”

  “Try him, then.”

  “If you want me to.”

  Mary was silent and Hugh looked at her curiously. What did she want? She was the strangest mixture of fragility and strength, narrow-minded, and obstinate as the devil. He had never understood her and he was damned if he did now. Perhaps that other poor devil did. He wondered whether, when all was said and done, anything mattered more to her than her ships. Gerry Hardman? The looks she had given him across her own dinner-table ought to prove something, but you couldn’t tell with a woman. Her eyes, very clear under their fine arched brows, gave nothing away. Queer that he had never noticed before—or had he forgotten—what a funny little walk she had, like a shy bird. He drove his hands into his pockets, startled by a sudden impulse to seize her and shake the truth out of her slender body. The room darkened round him. He was losing his head. With an effort he drew his hands out of his pockets and strolled to the door. Safe outside, he leaned against it, mopping his brow. Phew! That was a close shave. He had been as near as possible to shouting at her. What a fool he had made of himself over Fanny Jardine. Suddenly every thought dropped away from him but the thought of Mary as she was in the first year of their marriage. He recalled her face, the face of an eager girl, the yielded sweetness of her body in his arms, and her kindness. She had spoiled him, and he had hated it even while he loved her. Love! He had not known the meaning of the word. He was not sure that he knew it now, when all he wanted was to turn back into the room he had just left, and dropping on his knees beside her, look up to see her looking down, with the remembered gladness in her eyes.

  The moralists were having the laugh of him after all. If only, instead of talking fatuously about sin, they had warned him that he would wake up in the daylight, and feeling with sudden hands for his beloved, find nothing there. . . . Nothing? Mary was still his wife, and he had rights. All decent people would be on his side. . . . With his fingers already on the handle of the door, he laughed. His hand dropped to his side. Heaven mend his wits and save him from joining the sorry company of husbands who invoked their rights. . . .

  A few days later, with suppressed ambassadorial pride, he reported that the “foxy old devil” was certainly hoping to be approached. Mary thanked him and took his conclusions to John Mempes. Mempes received them with an odd expression on his face. What he said was odd enough.

  “Upon my soul, I thought your husband was a fool. It shows how careful we should be not to write a man’s epitaph until he is dead. I had an admirable marble ready for him. ’Here lies Hugh Hervey, a fool who drank port for pleasure and wrote very civil books.’ I shall have to throw it away, along with yours, on which I had written: ’Here lies an honest woman.’“

  Mary was disconcerted but contrived not to show it.

  3

  William Todd was obsessed by the idea that Mark Henry Garton had returned in the slender body of his niece to plague his old friend. Either that or she was reciting what the sour beggar at the other end of the table had taught her. No woman so inconceivably shrewd and unwomanly as Mary Hervey was showing herself existed. Todd was revolted. She was talking with John Mempes’ tongue in her cheek. It was against nature. The only female quality she possessed was her damnable obstinacy. Trust a woman to pursue what she wanted through a cataclysm. The “sour beggar” was taking very little interest in the proceedings. His face was hidden behind his hand, while young Hardman did all the talking, except when the owner of Garton’s put in a word. They had it all nicely drawn out between them. Garton’s yards to be moved to the Tees and combined with the reorganised engine works to form the Garton Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering Works. It was a mouthful. Willing to form a private company, was she? Kind of her. A suggestion—put forward to annoy his visitors—that the name of Todd might be included in the mouthful was stared at by the body of the enemy. Todd controlled his irritation, with an expression on his face that boded ill for the wretched women in his house. . . . The Line and the furnaces to be sold when freights rose again, but that had nothing to do with him. The Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering was what he was being invited to join, and on the whole they were all three suspiciously offhand about it.

  “Freights will go on falling,” he snapped.

  “Freights will rise next year,” Mary said coolly. “They’ve touched bottom.”

  He glared at her.

  “Garton’s is in bad case, ships laid up, no orders coming in to the Yard. And your overdraft.”

  “Quite true,” Mary s
aid. “If you don’t like the prospect, why are we wasting time discussing it?”

  Unnatural was not the word for her. It was a devil and not Mark Henry that possessed her. Mark Henry would have been flustered and roaring where she sat quietly, with pale cheeks, and great eyes following him about the room, almost as if he amused her. She was right about one thing. Freights would go up. He could see the faint signs of recovery better than she could. In spite of the overdraft Garton’s might contrive to hold on without any help from him until reviving trade brought relief. Had she any other resources? He could almost believe she had. They had been too frank with him by half. That young Hardman, an arrogant looking fellow, had told him everything he already knew about the Yard’s situation and made him free of ten years’ figures. There was nothing they had not told him except what he wanted to know and could not find out, since to ask her whether she had had any other offers would give too much away. He recalled having been told, some years ago, that Hervey had money, and common sense suggested that she would not take in a stranger if she could keep it in the family. But you never knew with women, and it was common talk in the town that she and Hervey were not on terms.

  The sour beggar had removed his hand from his face at last. Thinking it possible that Mempes had something to say worth listening to, he eyed him with an expression that said plainly: “I don’t believe a word you’re going to say.”

  What Mempes, settling his stock, said, was: “This is the third meeting, and we’re not getting anywhere. I propose that we adjourn indefinitely, until our excellent friend here has had a chance to examine the costs of the proposed reconstruction and the prospects of success if reconstruction is carried out.”

  “I agree.”

  “I agree.”