“Come on, then,” he said, blowing the moustache away from his lips. “Dive in now, and come here to me.” They flashed together from the raft, eager and emulous.
Dermot and I, tousle-headed, standing on the quay, looked at one another, towels in hand.
“All right, Bill?” he asked, quizzing me.
“Yes,” I said. “It seems to be all right. Yes, I think so.”
And I felt a bit ashamed that I had never bothered to teach Nellie that rudimentary breast stroke that had filled her with pride, that Donnelly had so easily dragged her out of the kitchen. I went up to the house wondering whether in a great many things I had not given up too soon with Nellie. But it was too late to start bothering about that now. I looked back across the river, and saw Oliver and Rory patiently following the shouted instructions of Donnelly. Leaning on the rail of the Jezebel, Captain Judas was watching them through a pair of glasses.
*
It was part of the Heronwater tradition that people came down to breakfast when they felt like it. Dermot was there, sitting at the long refectory table that he had himself made, and Donnelly, Nellie and Rory had appeared too. “Nellie,” Dermot was saying as I entered the room, “I am an ambassador, charged by this sprig”—he waved his long hand towards Rory—“to make a request which he is afraid to make for himself. Namely, luncheon sandwiches for two.”
“That’s easy,” said Nellie. “Why didn’t you ask me, Rory?”
Rory slowly coloured. “Because there’s a woman in the case,” said Dermot.
“I know a good place for blackberries,” said Rory, keeping his face down to his plate. “I’ve promised to take Maggie there. It’s a long way. You have to take lunch,” he added defensively.
“I know it,” said Oliver, who had come into the room. “I know a short cut. I’ll show you.”
“We’re going the river way,” Rory said, his earnest pug face puckered. “We don’t want a short cut.”
“I’ll take some lunch and go the short cut and meet you,” Oliver promised.
Rory looked up, with the frown on his face deepening. “I’m showing her, not you,” he said.
Oliver stood by the door, very tall for his age, beautiful with the golden brown of sun and sea on him, and a flush spread up his face to the very roots of his weather-bleached fair hair. Rory didn’t want him, and had said so. “Very well,” he said, and came and sat at the table, lordly and self-possessed. Rory looked at him with anguish in his ugly face, affection in his straight eyes; but Oliver’s eyes were aloof. Rory’s grappling for a contact came to nothing.
Oliver was on the quay when Rory and Maggie set off in the dinghy. He made it appear that he was there by accident. He kept his back to the departing boat and skiddled flat stones across the water. “Now, Oliver,” said Donnelly when the dinghy was out of sight. “What about that trudgeon? Undivided attention. You’ll beat Rory at it yet.”
Oliver picked up another stone and skiddled it across the water. “I don’t think I’ll bother, thank you,” he said, and didn’t look round.
*
I had not yet done any writing at Heronwater. It had been simply a holiday place; but that day I found my mind in the jumping dithery state that meant I must sit down and sort out my ideas. Fortunately, I was deserted. Oliver and Eileen went off with Sam Sawle in one of the sailing dinghies, taking food, a kettle of water and a teapot with them. They would have a good day. Sam would land them on some beach where there was plenty of dry driftwood; they would make a fire, which was always a satisfactory thing to do; they would bathe, and then have one of Sam’s “nice hot cups of tea,” and altogether they would have the sort of generally-messing-about day that the district could so excellently provide.
Dermot and Sheila, Donnelly and Nellie went off in the Maeve, intending to make a day of it, too, with the Helford River for their destination. You see how Nellie was flowering? Nothing I could have said or done would have prevailed upon her to spend a day in the motor-boat; but there she was, and there was Donnelly, his rich voice rolling back over the water, as the boat disappeared round a bend, upraised in The Wearing of the Green. He certainly had a way with people.
I walked slowly up the path to the house. Never before had I had Heronwater to myself. I told the maids not to bother me with lunch, and sat down at my table in the long room that looked out on the lawn and the balustrade. I always enjoyed the actual physical business of writing, and I was in full enjoyment of the delightful process that morning, pipe going, mind easy, thinking how good a place Heronwater was proving for that sort of job, when a shadow crossed the window. I did not look up. I thought perhaps one of the maids had passed. But the shadow came again, and when I raised my head with some annoyance I saw that Captain Judas was pacing the lawn, his hands clasped behind his back, his whiskered chin sunk in meditation upon his chest.
I did my best to ignore him. Let him think I had not seen him. I went on with my work. But to and fro the shadow went. There was no putting it aside. I looked up with a frown, but though Judas must have seen me, I could not catch his eye. He was evidently determined to play the part of infinitely patient waiter; but my own patience was exhausted and my mind thrown off the track. I got up and went to the open window.
“Good-morning,” I said crossly. “I was trying to get a bit of work done.”
“I hope I haven’t disturbed you,” he said politely. “Not for worlds—”
“You seem to want to speak to me.”
He combed his white fingers through the glossy white silk of his beard. “I want you to come to the Jezebel and see something,” he said, looking nervous, like a child who fears its request will be refused.
“Very well. I must leave this now till after lunch. But look, Captain Judas, you must promise me: when I’m writing you mustn’t hang about,” I smiled as pleasantly as I could. “We’re both writers—eh? How would you like to be interrupted just when the ideas are beginning to bubble—eh?”
The thought flattered him, and he began at once effusively to denounce his own dreadful manners. “Unpardonable, Mr. Essex. I’m going—at once. Some other time, when neither of us is in the divine grip—” And he began to make off swiftly on his tiny feet.
I climbed through the window, caught him up, and put my arm through his. “So long as we understand one another for the future,” I said, “that’s all right. Now what is it you want me to see?”
We were at the water’s edge, and he waved me into his dinghy. “Wait,” he said mysteriously. “I came this morning,” he was all apology again, “because I saw everyone go but you. I can’t often get you alone, and this is between you and me. Understand? I suspected it. Now I know.”
We climbed aboard and went down to his big sitting-room. There was a litter of packing paper on the table. His long-expected Greek primer and lexicon had arrived. He stood me in front of the fireplace, cocked his head expectantly, and said: “Well?”
I was puzzled. I didn’t understand what the bother was about. All I could see was that the picture of the crucifixion which had been over the fireplace was gone, and in its place was another picture, unframed, held to the wall, with drawing-pins. Upon this the old man’s gaze was fixed. “Well?” he said again, rather impatiently. “Don’t you recognise him?”
I looked more closely. It was a reproduction of a painting by Holman Hunt or Millais—I forget which—showing the boy Jesus in the workshop of Joseph the carpenter. The child stood there with his arms outstretched, and behind him on the wall was the shadow of the cross.
“Guard him well,” Judas said solemnly. “And remember I am at your side. They’ll see,” he said in a sudden rising fury, “they’ll see if I’m a betrayer.”
“I don’t understand,” I said rather coldly, though I knew at once what shape the old man’s mania was taking now.
“You don’t understand,” he said sadly. “Even you.” He shook his head. “But I—I suspected it long ago, and when this came, wrapped round my books, I knew. Why s
hould it have been sent to me?” he demanded, his excitement rising again. “It might have gone to anyone, but it came to me—to me. It confirms it. It confirms everything.”
I looked hard at the picture. There was no likeness to Oliver, save the likeness of youth and beauty. What could I do? How tell this poor crazy chap that his sustaining dreams were baseless and abortive? I simply shook my head. “I don’t understand,” I said again.
“Well,” he said, “guard his youth, Mr. Essex. Let him play. Let him be a child. Let him enjoy the happiness of this beautiful world. Now I know why I was sent to this place.” His one living eye brightened and burned and he took on the strange apocalyptic look that visited him from time to time. “Let him be happy,” he said. “His time will come again, his hour of darkness will descend, he will be betrayed. But this time they will know where Judas stands.”
I stumbled up the steps into the sunlight. I couldn’t listen to him any more. His was the only boat there. I got into it and rowed swiftly away. Let him stay there. He couldn’t reach me again today. He was beginning to give me the creeps.
*
I wasn’t in the mood to go on with my work. I went up to the house and got into a bathing-suit, then lay on the raft, sunning myself. Presently the sound of a propeller wove itself into the summer stillness, the gentle lapping of water, the rustle of leaves, the shrill cries of the oystercatchers darting in little orderly companies here and there. I rolled over and lay on my stomach, chin cupped in hands, watching the approaching ship. She was a small grimy-looking customer, carrying a high piled deck cargo of timber and flying the Danish flag. In a moment or two, as my raft began to rock in her wash, I saw her name, lettered on her black rounded stern: Kay Kobenhavn. On the bridge of the Kay of Copenhagen was an officer who with one hand was holding his white gold-braided cap and scratching a generous growth of the yellowest hair I have ever seen on man. It glowed in the sunlight like a great sunflower. The man was looking towards the Jezebel, and as he passed he pulled a string and a spout of steam projected itself into the still air and a hoarse scream, twice repeated, burst from the whistle.
I saw Judas rush on deck and wave frantically towards the Kay of Copenhagen. “Kay ahoy!” he shouted. “Jansen! Jansen!”
The yellow-headed officer waved his cap and replied, “Jezebel ahoy! Judas!”
“See you tonight,” Judas bawled, megaphoning through his hands to the retreating stern of the Kay.
“Ja! Tonight!” Captain Jansen answered. Judas watched the ship out of sight, twisting her way up the river to Truro. Then he began to walk the deck on his small springy feet, very swiftly, very excitedly.
*
Jansen had a soft place in his heart for Judas. So much we soon discovered; and when I say we I mean Dermot, Donnelly and myself. We had to meet Jansen. Nothing else would suit Captain Judas. As soon as Judas’s boat was returned that afternoon, he used it to come over and tell me what a great and wonderful man Jansen was. It was an incoherent narrative, and I could disentangle little from it except an impression that Jansen had known Judas in the days when the old man had all his wits about him, and had continued to treat him as a human being when a good many other people had ceased to do so. Jansen came once or twice a year to Truro with timber, and the friends then foregathered on the Kay and, I gathered with some surprise, dazzled Truro with the outrageous unconventionality of their conduct. I think it was the prospect of being present on one of these occasions, the opportunity to see Captain Judas painting Truro red, that made me accept the invitation at once and promise to bring Dermot and Donnelly.
We set off after dinner by road in Dermot’s car. Judas was looking unusually spruce. His small shoes twinkled, his hair and beard looked electric with brushing, and his navy-blue clothes were as neat as a midshipman’s. “You’ll see!” he chuckled, sitting next to me on the back seat. “A Norseman! A Viking! A mighty man of valour!”
“Come on, boys,” Donnelly shouted. “Get in tune for this nautical occasion.” And he began to sing “As I was a-walking down Paradise Street, with a way—hey—blow the man down.” We all sang as Dermot’s car raised the dust along the quiet road, even Judas, not given, I had imagined, to secular melody, coming in with a reedy line here and there.
We parked the car in the timber-yard at whose quay the Kay was lying. Judas danced excitedly before us up the gangplank. “Jansen!” he piped. “Jansen! Where are you? We’re here. I’ve brought my friends.”
“Goom in! Ja! Enter. Entrez,” Jansen’s deep voice boomed, and Judas made his way before us to the cabin. Jansen was shaving. A bit of looking-glass was propped against a jug on the cabin table. His yellow mop flared above a white mask of lather. He stood up when Judas entered, and then I saw why he had been sitting down to shave. He was a giant, and he advanced towards Judas doubled up, as though he were about to spring, suddenly gathered the little man in his arms and hugged him to his chest. I expected to hear Judas’s ribs snap, but Jansen put him gently back on to the ground as though he were something precious and stood there, bent over him, a grin splitting his frothy mask. “Ja,” he growled. “Mein frent Judas, mon ami—ja? Amigo. Yes, yes. Goom in, señores.”
He continued to growl in a variety of languages, as he grasped my hand and made the bones crack. “I resume now to shave myself. Asseyez-vous, messieurs.”
He finished off the business with a large cut-throat razor, and his face was revealed a gleaming pink, hale as a child’s, with a curling golden moustache, and with bright blue eyes, shining with extraordinary candour. He looked at Judas, sitting in a chair with his tiny feet barely touching the ground, grinned as though the spectacle pleased him, and began to growl: “Ah, mein frent Judas...” I thought he was about to rush to the little man and squeeze him again, but he merely punched him, saying: “You save my life? No?” He nodded to us: “Ja, he save my life. I relate to you cette conte-là. But not now. Nein. First, señores, we light—no?—ignite?—Truro. But now I wash. I give myself respectfulness.”
He heaved the shirt off his back with one over-the-head pull, revealing a torso of golden bronze, rippling with muscle. Then he stepped outside the door, straightened, and we could see nothing of him from the shoulders up. I strolled through the door after him, and there he was, sluicing his face, neck and body from a bucket of water that stood on a tub. He turned to me, grinning: “Goot! Eh? To refresh the ideas! So!” His big white teeth gleamed in his ruddy face. He rolled the towel into a rope, slung it over his shoulders, and with an end in each hand sawed to and fro, grunting with pleasure.
He went back into the cabin and dressed, putting on a white shirt, a stiff white collar, a black tie, and a double-breasted navy-blue jacket. Finally he slapped his white, gold-braided cap at a slant upon his head. “Thus one is ready. Is it not, old captain?”
Judas beamed and nodded.
“Then we go.”
He walked before us, folded up, till we got out of the cabin, then he straightened to his great height, which must have been six foot four, filled his lungs with air on the deck, and drummed heartily on his chest with both fists. He looked round with his white-toothed grin at Judas. “I eat you—eh? One—two—fini!”
Judas smiled as if he would have been only too pleased to provide a morsel for Jansen. He tried to slap his friend heartily on the back, but it was as near as nothing a smack on the bottom, so that we all got ashore laughing and made our way in good humour through the timber-yard.
Jansen ashore after a voyage was clearly a man of one idea. He leaned his great shoulders against the first pub door we came to, and we all tailed after him: Dermot, Donnelly, myself, with Captain Judas in the rear. Jansen picked Judas up and sat him on a tall stool at the counter. “So, my hero, I see you better,” he said.
There was no one in the bar but a barmaid who looked like a clergyman’s daughter. She put down a novel and served us with reluctance. “For the love of God,” Donnelly whispered, “decide what you’re going to drink, and stick to it. This man’
s dangerous.” And aloud: “A John Jamieson, miss, please.” Dermot and I ordered whiskey too, Jansen rum and Judas ginger-beer.
The barmaid murmured as though it were a litany: “One Jamieson, one Haig, one White Horse, one rum, one ginger-beer.” Donnelly paid; we took up our drinks and made for a table in the corner of the room. We were seating ourselves when Jansen banged his already empty glass on the counter, had it refilled, and then joined us. It was not that he wanted to dodge standing his turn; he stood his turn with the rest of us; but he drank twice for every drink of ours. In between rounds he would, as it were, stand himself one and throw it off at a gulp.
There were five rounds that night, in five different pubs, so that Jansen had ten rums, which, as I understand these things, is pretty good going. He drank them, too, and Donnelly drank his five John Jamiesons, which is more than Dermot and I did. After the first two, we developed the technique, which was cowardly but efficient, of leaving the greater part of the drink in the glass. Even so, the very atmosphere of the pubs, and the hilarity of Jansen, and the frequent song-bursts of Donnelly, gave the evening a somewhat unusual texture for me, and woven against that background was the epic which Jansen, after four or five drinks, began to develop.
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