The affair which made Judas a hero in his eyes had happened, it appeared, the best part of twenty years before. Jansen was a ship’s boy, making his first voyage. He insisted, in the pubs as we sat smoking our pipes, and in the quiet streets as we wandered from one bar to the next, on elaborating every detail: his boyish misery, the rotten food, the kicks and cursing, the gradual demoralisation of his whole being, so that when in the North Atlantic the gale burst upon his ship he had nothing left, no reserves, nothing but sheer funk, terror.
He certainly learned everything about the sea that first voyage. He took refuge in the galley at the height of the storm. “I am afraid. Ja. I shiver. There is nothing—rien du tout—but a few little bits of sail left up there; and I am afraid, sick in my guts, that the captain say: ‘Goddam you! Go and fix them sails.’ So I hide in the galley.”
The ship was wallowing, soggy, full of water. The galley floor was awash, and the galley walls shuddered under the thump of the waves. The next thing Jansen knew was that there were no galley walls to be thumped. The galley went, and he with it, choking and spluttering as though he were already done for. He was slammed by the rush of the wave against a hatch coaming, hung on, and when the wave had passed over, he saw the mainmast lying across the deck, snapped off at the foot, holding to its stump by a sinew or two and trailing its peak in the sea. It had smashed the captain and two men in its fall. The mate yelled to him to get a hatchet and help cut the wreckage free.
“And now, señores, I am not afraid. I am brave. Ja. I run to get the hatchet, and then I am in the water. Like that.” With an undulating motion of his huge outspread hand he swept a cork off the table and sent it spinning across the room.
So Jansen was spun into the North Atlantic, the only man of that crew to come out of it alive. He was washed against the floating galley, clung to it, and five minutes later saw the ship vanish in the grey water of the storm. “But my life, it is—how?—enchanted? charmed?—si, señores. I am a charmed life. There is the ship with my hero!”
He slapped Judas’s knee. The little captain looked at him affectionately, and kept his eyes modestly averted from the rest of us.
The floating galley, with Jansen clinging to it more dead than alive, was seen from the ship, but in the terrific weather no boat could be lowered. Jansen told his story well. Now he was down in the trough, gazing up despairingly at the glassy, dark-green, white-flecked wall whose tattered and toppling summit shut out from view all else that was in the world. Then the wall slipped its whole weight and bulk under him and his frail ark, and lifted him up and into and through that dither and surging of its crest. Thence, for a moment, he would see the ship, and wave with the last of his ebbing strength, then down again he would plunge into the black gulf flecked as if with snow by ten million bubbles.
In one of those seconds when he was uplifted by the water and was gazing with all hope and all despair in his eyes he saw a man poised for a second on the ship’s rail, then saw him drop off into the boiling of the waves.
“It is my little captain—ja—so small—so big a hero—eh? But he is not then a captain—no—he is no one—no long hair, no whiskers.”
Judas self-consciously combed his beard with his fingers and sipped his ginger-beer, as Jansen threw the eighth or ninth rum down his throat and reached the climax of his story. For a time, no sign of the rescuer. Upon the crest, his eyes searching the tormented water; down into the trough, with hope dying and his breath sobbing; and then Judas’s face breaking suddenly through the white fringe of a wave.
“Ah! Just so little a man, señores; but his face is like the sun coming out of the night. I lean over and grab him—so tight!—and pull him on to the galley. I feel I am saving him, for already I am so big, and already he is so little. Then he fastens his rope round a plank of the galley, and we are in tow. Ah, señores, just a little rope, no thicker than that”—he held up his thumb—“with all the Atlantic ocean rushing over it, but I am no longer sobbing, because the little rope is tied to the galley.”
“Praise the Lord,” said Judas suddenly, “and forget not all his benefits.” Then he began to sing:
Throw out the life-line, throw out the life-line;
Someone is sinking today.
He leaned back in his chair, with his eyes closed, holding his glass in his left hand and beating time with his right. The barmaid, who, here, was not so disdainful as the clergyman’s daughter, contemplated his performance for a while in silence, then said sympathetically: “You’d better be taking Dad home.”
“I think so, too,” said Dermot, dexterously concealing his full whiskey glass behind a jug; and we all clattered out into a night which was very dark though the sky was starry.
Jansen was as firm on the ground as an oak. “Now you all come back to the Kay—ja?—and we make some grog.”
We turned down this proposal with vigour.
“Then my hero will come and spend the night with me—eh, Judas, mon vieux?”
There could be no objection to that, since Judas would find the grog no temptation. We watched the tall figure of Jansen mount the gangplank, his head appearing for a moment among the stars. He stooped and took Judas under the arms as though he had been a child, and held him aloft for our inspection. “You see him—eh? Now you know why I shall do anything for him. Ja, anything. Now I make the grog. Buenos noches, señores.”
We saw him bend double and go into the cabin. Then Dermot started up the engine. The night air blowing in our faces was good, and Donnelly opened his throat and sang:
If you’re the O’Reilly men speak of so highly,
Gorblimey, O’Reilly, you are looking well.
The Maeve, with the luggage aboard, was ready at the quay to take us to Falmouth, and Oliver, Nellie and I were at the gate to see Dermot depart with his overcrowded car. They went off in a halo of dust. Donnelly, sitting on the back seat, had Rory on one side of him and Maggie on the other. One of his arms was round each.
We made our way down the path winding through the wood, which already was touched here and there with red and yellow, and got aboard. The Kay was going by, outward bound. Jansen, on the bridge, blew his whistle, and Judas came out to wave. They exchanged farewells across the water, and when the Kay was round the bend we, too, shouted good-bye. Judas fluttered his handkerchief and then rushed below, as though the sight of so many friends leaving him were more than he could bear.
All the way home that time Oliver nagged about motor-cars. When are we going to have a car? Can’t we afford a car as well as Uncle Dermot? Think how nice it would be to save all that journey into Falmouth and go straight to Truro by road.
“I like going in to Falmouth,” I said.
“So do I,” said Nellie. “For goodness’ sake, Oliver, give over whining for everything you fancy. How many boys d’you think get the things you have? Rowing-boats and sailing boats and I don’t know what. D’you think your father had these things when he was a boy?”
“There weren’t motor-cars when father was a boy.”
“And we got on very well without them,” said Nellie. “Nasty smelly things they are, anyway. I shouldn’t like to eat bread delivered in those things.”
Oliver flushed. No one had ever told him in so many words the story of the Moscrop bakery, but from things he had heard he had put the facts together, even to my inglorious employment as van-boy. I knew it was a topic he did not like. I watched his flush with amusement—a flush so beautiful on the skin that was golden brown like one of old Moscrop’s loaves. “You needn’t bring that up,” he said.
There! Now it was out! That was the first time he had allowed his resentment to escape in words.
“Bring what up?” Nellie asked sharply.
“You know what.” Oliver squirmed on his seat and looked desperately unhappy.
Nellie looked at him, the holiday colour draining from her face. “You little snob,” she said venomously. “If you’re referring to the work your grandfather did all his life and that
your father did when he was a young man, then I only hope you’ll do something half as useful when you grow up.”
Oliver’s colour deepened. He did not answer, and Nellie went on, after a shocked, wondering silence: “Well, I never did? I never expected to hear that you were ashamed of your father. Let me tell you this, my boy; if you’re half the man your father is, then some woman will be lucky.”
This was very handsome of Nellie. She was not in the habit of paying me compliments; but also it seemed to me rather amusing. Oliver was being a little fool; no doubt about that; but Nellie, I thought, was taking it with rather a heavy hand.
“Well, Oliver,” I said, “you seem to have discovered that your grandfather kept a baker’s shop and that I drove his van. Tell me, honestly, d’you think that matters a damn?”
“William!” Nellie exclaimed.
“Do you, Oliver?” He looked slowly from Nellie’s outraged face to my amused and smiling one. He shook his head.
“Good!” I said. “Because there it is. If you don’t like it, you can lump it.”
Part III
18
Nellie cocked her short-sighted eyes up to the sky and said: “The nights are drawing in.”
I had accompanied her down the long garden path of The Beeches. She paused at the gate and said, “I shan’t be long.” She patted my arm, gave me a wan smile, and trotted away to the right, to the Wesleyan chapel.
She was warmer in her manner towards me. I was forty. She was a year older. We had been married for fifteen years. Each of us realised the limitations of that companionship. Nothing had ever set it on fire; nothing had given it glory. During the last couple of years its comfortableness had deepened. I think perhaps Nellie was glad to have me to herself. Dermot and Sheila had gone to live in London, taking Eileen with them. Maeve had left Mary Latter. She had lapped up all that Mary Latter had to teach her, and now she was playing her first part in a London theatre. I hadn’t seen her in it. I should have to run up to town soon. Her work, when I had seen her once or twice with the Latter Company in Manchester, had surprised and thrilled me.
Rory was in Dublin. I knew less of him than of the others. He had written occasionally to Oliver, but now Oliver was away at school, so I didn’t see even letters.
I leaned on the gate, looking up and down the empty road. Autumn melancholy was upon the suburb and upon me, too. There was a faint wind in the beeches over my head, and they sounded dry and done. A few yellow leaves spun through the beams of a street lamp, that was contending with the twilight. Down in the meadows, where I had been accustomed to play football with Oliver, the white mist would be crawling across the fields, as I had so often watched it crawl when, a boy, I looked out through Mr. Oliver’s study window.
An inexpressible sadness settled upon me. I felt that a phase of my life was ended. Oliver gone. The one family in Manchester that had meant anything to me gone. Nellie was still there, sensing my trouble, being maternal. I wondered what she would say if I tried to carry our relationship, after a long cessation of intimacy, beyond the realm of sad male and comforting mother-woman. We still slept together and served each other in the office of a blanket. That was something. There was a nip in the air tonight.
I walked back to the house with a pipe in my teeth and my hands in my pockets. There was not even work to do. I had finished a novel a week ago—my twelfth—and I was loose-ended and aimless, a prey to harpy-emotions that came crowding out of the nostalgia of the October twilight. I felt an urgent desire to tear up my roots, have done with Manchester, and match myself against some environment that was new.
In my study I looked at the eleven novels in the elegant case that Dermot had made for them—leather-bound presentation copies from my publisher. He could afford them too; he had done well out of me. Soon the twelfth would stand beside the eleven. Then the case would be full. I had not noticed that before. It seemed to me an omen.
Leave novels alone for a bit. After all, I had nothing more to say about Manchester and the people who lived in it. Those twelve books would be a sufficient monument so far as that part of my life was concerned. The critics said I had done for Manchester what Arnold Bennett had done for the Five Towns. I had: and more. I had stayed on the spot and worked with the material under my eyes.
Prowling about, restless as a beast in a zoo cage, fiddling with this and that, I knew suddenly that I would write no more novels about Manchester. I wanted to leave the place; I wanted to go to London. Maeve was growing up. Time I thought about that play for her.
The corners of the room were full of shadow and I was ruminating in my easy chair when I heard Nellie’s voice calling from downstairs. “William! Are you there? Can you spare a moment?”
I went down and found her in the hall with a big gaunt parson. “Oh, William, this is Mr. Wintringham.”
I had seen his name on the chapel boards: the Rev. W. Wilson Wintringham. He was over on some special business: anniversary services yesterday, a lecture on “The Message of Whitman” tonight. You were no good at all to these chaps unless they could dig a message out of you. It appeared that there had been a breakdown in transport arrangements. The Rev. W. Wilson Wintringham had to get home that night and the car which was to take him to the railway station at Wilmslow had not appeared.
“I thought if you were not busy tonight—” Nellie appealed.
I told the Rev. W. Wilson Wintringham that I would be pleased to take him to Wilmslow. I would have been pleased to take him to Jericho or anywhere else. A blow in the fresh air was just what I needed, and since taking to motoring a year ago I had come to like it more and more. Far too much to employ a chauffeur, though that was what Oliver wanted me to do. “But Uncle Dermot’s got a chauffeur now.” Well, he can keep him.
Mr. Wintringham thanked me in a sort of consecrated basso profundo which caused his Adam’s apple to bob up and down like an egg in an old brown stocking. I invited him to take a whisky and soda—“the sort of drink Whitman would have appreciated, I’m sure, Mr. Wintringham”—but he declined, and Nellie urged me to make haste or we would miss the train.
I got out the car—an open four-seater—and off we went, Nellie beside me in front, the Rev. W. Wilson Wintringham nursing his despatch-case full of the message of Whitman in the back.
“And what do you think is the message of Whitman, Mr. Wintringham?” I shouted, as we turned left by the squat old church at Cheadle.
“Well, generally speaking, just brotherly love,” Mr. Wintringham’s bass roared over the engine.
“And how’s brotherly love getting on in this old world? I suppose you’re in a position to keep an eye on these things?”
“Rather!” he agreed heartily. “Reports from the foreign field, you know. I think you’d be surprised if you knew how the evangel of love is catching on in the world, if you’ll allow me to put it that way.”
“You think the reign of universal love and peace is appreciably nearer?” I asked, feeling like a junior reporter conducting an interview.
“No doubt! No doubt!” I could almost hear the gristly knob rasping up and down in his throat. “I predict that the next ten years will see an extension of Christ’s Kingdom on earth that will surprise those who are not watching the signs. It’s a blessed thing to be young today, Mr. Essex. The young will see signs and wonders. The poets were not mistaken—Whitman, Browning—”
“Oh, Browning. His message is that it’s good to sing in the bath.”
The Rev. W. Wilson Wintringham laughed suddenly, disconcertingly, like a horse neighing. I could feel his breath on my neck. “Well, here we are,” I said thankfully.
We were lucky in not having to wait to see him off. The train drew in as we reached the platform. A moment later we were watching the red tail-light receding and diminishing in the bloomy dusk.
A great orange disc of moon had climbed into the sky. I fixed a rug round Nellie’s knees and got in beside her. “Nellie,” I said, as soon as we were off, “I’ve finished with Man
chester. I’ve got nothing more to do here. I want to get out.”
She gave a tremendous start. “Get out! But, William, we’re so comfortable!”
“Yes, I know—too comfortable.”
“Well, I call that downright ungrateful to Almighty God,” she said, as though the Adam’s apple had got into her throat. “Too comfortable! You should give thanks for your blessings, not cry them down.”
“Nellie,” I answered, “there are two things to be said to that. One is that your religion tells you to shun comfort like the plague. Sell all that thou hast. Not peace but a sword. That sort of thing. And there’s this: that if I give thanks for my blessings, I’ll give them to two people: to your father who accumulated the capital that allowed me to start in business and to myself whose darned pig-headed determination kept me writing till I wrote something worth reading.”
She fell into a sulky silence for a while, then said: “You never think of me. You just announce what you’re going to do.”
“Do you remember,” I said, “a long time ago I announced that we were shifting from Hulme to The Beeches? Don’t you think it’s been a good thing that we did?”
She made no answer. “Very well, then,” I continued, “be reasonable. You will be consulted about the house we are to live in and everything else that concerns you, but leave Manchester I must, or I shall perish. You’ll like London.”
“London!” she breathed. “London! But I’d be terrified. You don’t understand. You must not take me away from here.”
“Don’t let’s talk about it any more just now,” I said. “Think it over quietly.”
I felt that the slight advances she had been making to me lately were chilled. She sat silent and resentful at my side. We came through Cheadle and turned left into the road that led straight home.
My Son, My Son Page 24