October Ferry to Gabriola

by Lowry, Malcolm

  “Trouble is, too, I forgot to bring a sedative…She’s hemorrhaging pretty badly.”

  “There isn’t a doctor on board?”

  “Not that I know of—the other sailor’s gone to speak to the captain.”

  “What sort of anesthetic did she have?”

  “A.C.E.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Alcohol, chloroform and ether…She just won’t take gas.”

  “Gas. I thought they blocked off—didn’t she have a local?”

  “She won’t take nothing but this here A.C.E. No injections. She had a wisdom tooth out in 1933 on her birthday, very successful operation and she sticks by it. The same treatment, I mean. And the same dentist. Sticks by him too, even though, to tell the truth, he hasn’t got no certificate. He was up north with Wiley Post. Very nice fellow when you get to know him, though.”

  “Wiley Post?”

  “Yes, Wiley Post and Will Rogers too.”

  “What’s Will Rogers got to do with it?”

  “It’s like this. She just won’t bow to any of these new-fangled specifics. No persuading her.”

  “Then a little more alcohol won’t hurt her, would it, on top of the anesthetic? What about a slug of gin?”

  “If she can get it down.” Mrs. Neiman shook her head, then nodded it. She even attempted a smile of sorts.

  “Thanks a lot,” said Mr. Neiman.

  “It won’t stop the bleeding but it’ll ease the pain.” Ethan had produced his bottle of rare cordials (rarefied by tangy cassia from China, fragrant coriander from Czechoslovakia, spicy juniper from Italy, Valencia peel from Spain) and unscrewed the cap in an instant, surprisingly, though it was true his former efforts had probably loosened it, while the other sailor disappeared through the door (from which Jacqueline now emerged with a look of slow bewilderment) to fetch a tumbler. Ethan poured a quartern of gin into the tumbler and handed it to Mr. Neiman. “I’ll leave you and Mrs. Neiman the bottle, if you like.”

  “No, that’s fine and dandy.”

  “Tell me if you want any more. Have one yourself.”

  “No thanks. This is more than enough. The bleeding’ll probably stop in a minute.”

  Jacqueline and Ethan stood by the rail carefully staring the other way.

  “You’re sure there’s nothing more we can do,” Ethan whispered, and Jacqueline shook her head, though gravely: she looked unnaturally worried, even slightly antagonistic.

  “Poor thing. No, the nuns came in again just as we left, and they can help her better than we can, if there’s anything to do.” Her voice trailed off despondently.

  “What a damn shame. Let’s hope she’ll be all right. Oughtn’t she to be in the lounge where it’s warmer?”

  “She’d better not move, the way she is.”

  “I’m not sure the nuns will approve my treatment.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  Chapter 36

  Not the Point of No Return

  SHORTLY THEY BECAME AWARE that the mountains and forests were sweeping past them in a wide arc. The ferry was going about. No doubt of it. Standing now out of earshot of the Neimans they watched, dismayed, their ferry with helm hard over still swinging steadily round.

  Compassionate and appalling, and in Ethan’s experience, quite unprecedented act, as heartening in its respect for the individual as it was totally if ambiguously discouraging at this moment to the Llewelyns—the skipper was putting back to Nanaimo for the woman in black.

  “Never mind, Jacqueline, sweetheart.”

  “But we’ll be too late! It’ll be dark!” cried Jacqueline. “We might just as well get off ourselves and stay in Nanaimo.”

  “Hold on. Remember success or failure of all human effort is influenced if not actually controlled by planetarium.”

  “But——”

  “Don’t cry, my truelove—Remember mysticism is produced by a conbustion of the grey vascular matter in the sensorium.”

  “But darling, I can’t——”

  “Not forgetting also that it may be combined with intellectual action, in which case the grey matter in the cerebral hemisphere undergoes oxidation as well.”

  “Oh God…you idiot…Where are you going?”

  “I was going to see if the gin had killed Mrs. Neiman…No,” he said, returning, “she seems distinctly better.”

  “Clown.”

  Frère Jacques

  Frère Jacques

  It was a sad Frère Jacques.

  And, drowning it, sombre, funereal, majestic, and with clacking needle, Aunt Hagar strode forth once more in Ethan’s brain. And now he thought he knew what Gwyn might have been trying to say to him in the C.P.R. building which, incidentally, they were now once more approaching (and at which, the evening boat from Vancouver—another prisoner in the dock—could be seen distantly but distinctly and meekly, lying much as the afternoon boat had been lying this morning). When he’d seen his young brother off that last time, drinking beer with him in the Exchange Station Restaurant in Liverpool, it hadn’t been the first time he’d seen him off on that fatal trip, as it happened, but the second. And it was that hyrkontrakt that was the trouble! Ethan had seen him off from the same station the day before, impressed enough by his brother’s guts (for it can require the strength of a healthy will sometimes to make even a fatal mistake) in taking the job at all, and the parting had been a wrench for them both. Gwyn (who must have been frightened half to death—Archangel, the White Sea, the very words were enough to put the fear of God into you) had then traveled by train—and by slow train it can be one of the longest hours of all God’s journeys—to Preston, joined his ship, which was to sail the next day, only to discover in the morning, with a gigantic hangover, the ship having meantime warped over to the coal pits, that as a foreigner, from the Norse standpoint, he could not sign on with the captain, who had not been aboard the previous night, in Preston, as he had been told, but must return to Liverpool where there was a Norwegian consulate, a point on which Ethan might have advised him. In Liverpool again, having settled matters somehow with the Norsk Konsulat, he ran, quite by accident, into Ethan himself, which produced the second and last occasion of their drinking beer together and getting their good-byes over. Yet how much added desperation of will—for Ethan had offered his brother every inducement to stay—was needed now to take that second train, and on arrival once more in Preston (a town scarcely less black for being the birthplace of Francis Thompson, and which was besides deserted for the wakes), to force his steps down through the rain a second time to the dreary Ribble docks where his ship was on the very point of sailing without him. How much more it must have required of him then to walk, at the last moment, that impossible tenuous plank from the coal tips. And the vessel bound for Archangel of all places; where most likely he would never have been able to get ashore, even had one wanted to. For it must have been as if his original impulse to go were drained already of all its romance and adventure, and nothing remained but the horrible anger, the platitudinous reality, the bitter nonego, the ordeal that was to end in his even more bitter death. But this recollection did not come to Ethan like a warning. On the contrary there was something almost jocular and encouraging about it in its dismal way. Gwyn too had a sense of humor. And Ethan began to laugh.

  “Oh God, I knew when I saw that woman in black—” Jacqueline was saying.

  “Come now, less evil omens, my love. She’s no more an evil omen than you are…I was going to say that all we needed now was to see an albatross, but I’ve gone one better than that, I’ve just seen an albatross while talking to a priest. Moreover it’s Edgar Allan Poe’s birthday.”

  “I thought he died a hundred years ago today.”

  “That’s true too.”

  “You didn’t really see an albatross?” Jacqueline brightened for a moment, raising her eyes.

  “I did.”

  “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “I told you, I was talking to this priest. The pri
est has invited us to visit his chapel situated on the side of a cliff…I hoped you’d see the albatross. Then I was afraid you’d think it was another bad omen.”

  “I wish I’d never heard of these Gulf Islands. I think there’s something sinister about them. Daddy used to tell me there was a black magician called Brother Twelve who lived on one with his disciples, practicing evil rites. Gabriola will probably turn out to be a leper colony, with only five inhabitants…If we ever get there.”

  “No, that’s another Gulf Island.” The poor lepers had gone away or died, their dwellings fallen, yet fishermen still told tales Ethan had heard in Eridanus of seeing them, on moonlit nights, wandering among the ruins and silver driftwood. “You’ve overlooked the one that used to be a prison island,” he said. “How do you mean if we ever get there?”

  “Look at the sea.”

  “You seriously think—?”

  “You don’t suppose I’m so mean as to make such a fuss about going back if I thought the skipper was doing it simply for that poor woman. With that nursing home and all, she could get treatment on Gabriola.”

  “We only have to ask to find out.”

  “What I need is a drink.”

  And it was true, Ethan did not want to ask either. And it was also true that the weather was getting much worse. There was a tearing wind. On this reverse trip the ferry was pitching into a rough crossflowing current with a sort of abandoned bounding corkscrew motion. One moment it felt as though she were being borne up and along the swells like a surf rider, the surf travelling in the wrong direction. The next moment she seemed sinking deeply in the trough making no headway.

  “Well, I’ve got the bottle open.”

  “Then hand it over.”

  Ethan, handing her the bottle, glanced at her laughing with amusement and astonishment. But the amusement was shortly replaced by a sharp sense of self-rebuke. Clown! she had called him. The fact was, though, that while he had very rarely seen Jacqueline take a neat drink before out of a bottle he had never before seen her so quietly ferocious. It was as if he had seen her for the first time, almost as if he had just met her, and the implications were not obvious. Whether she perceived it or not, the drink—and now, coughing, she was taking another one—was a criticism of him. And well was it justified! If his concern for Mrs. Neiman had been genuine, his compassion spontaneous, Ethan now thought, hadn’t his action in offering the poor woman the gin as much hypocrisy in it as charity? Odd though it was the screw cap turned so easily, hadn’t it really been the excuse his conscience needed to open the bottle so that he could have a drink himself? And the point was too that even that was, as it were, an act of public charity. Public compassion. More histrionics. Everyone would see what a decent magnanimous fellow Ethan Llewelyn was. And was not this a clue to his whole nature? Even, obscurely, his whole life? Was his new attitude, if he had a new attitude, if he had really arrived at a decision, to the Chambers case essentially any different? Charity should begin at home, even if one were homeless. And though two people could not apparently be any closer than they were nowadays, how had he neglected her, Jacqueline, and that not just during the last years but all their married life? What did he know essentially of her hidden troubles, hopes, despairs, frustrations? How much did he help? How much was he helping sympathizing now? And how much did he care? Ah, he cared! But she was not getting any younger either. And what might he not drive her to by this neglect? Far from a decent magnanimous fellow he was becoming as a husband a monstrosity of selfishness, childishness, and self-pity. And on top of that he spoiled everything with his flippancy. Did he cherish Jacqueline as tenderly as Mr. Neiman so obviously cherished his wife? Alas, that had perhaps occurred to Jacqueline too. He was becoming downright irresponsible. He had better change himself and that starting right this moment. That was more important than whether they got the skipper’s house or he built a house or whatever the hell they did. He would do what she wanted, in future. His own will was no good. It was sick. He was sick. Self-sacrifice! The priest was right. He would sacrifice himself for his wife, starting at this instant…Easier said than done. And more complicated it was already turning out even than that.

  “Thank you,” Jacqueline said, returning the bottle with a rather sarcastic and dangerous smile. “But won’t you?”

  “No, I don’t think I care to have one…Not straight.”

  “Do you mean you didn’t take one?”

  “No.”

  “Not after you got it open and gave a drink to Mrs. Neiman? You want to know why I’m so anxious. All right I’ll tell you. Because—And do you know what can happen to us?” Jacqueline said, turning up the collar of her fur coat and her head sideways, putting her nose into the collar to keep it warm, and peering out at him one dark, long-lashed eye, “we may have to spend the night in Nanaimo. We won’t be able to get in touch with the Anderson Lodge. We can’t reach Angela. We might lose the opportunity of a house altogether. If the storm keeps up we might be stuck in that sinkhole for days.”

  Ethan was silent for a moment. Then he said: “I can find out for sure what the skipper’s up to.”

  “No you don’t. You’ve got the gin. You stay where you are, Ethan Llewelyn. And you can’t find out anyhow.”

  “What are you being so confoundedly unreasonable about? Why can’t I find out?”

  “Because the skipper, doesn’t know.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I asked him. That’s why. Just before the sailor came in to tell him about Mrs. Neiman, I suppose, though I didn’t hear what the sailor said…I’ve got it figured out now…It’s sure he’s turning back for Mrs. Neiman but that’s partly because he doesn’t want to take the risk of having to turn back much later with her aboard…There’s a much more dangerous stretch of sea farther out in the Gulf and nearer Gabriola and you never can tell what the weather’s going to do from one moment to the next. So he said…So what are you thinking about?”

  “If you want to know I was thinking that that doesn’t mean we’re not going to Gabriola, and that it still remains a sporting action…and I was also thinking about my younger brother Gwyn that time he had to go back to Liverpool and sign on the ship he’d already joined the day before in Preston.”

  “You mean you’re only too glad to be going back to Nanaimo, don’t you? And do you know what I’m thinking? You don’t have to be so bloody goddam superciliously noble.”

  “No.”

  “So what will happen will be precisely this…by the way, tell me what did you decide just now?”

  “I decided not to have a drink. It is an obscure feeling, as your father would say, resembling the fantastic passions of the dead in Elysian Field.”

  “Never again? Not even now?”

  “Not until something really wonderful happens to us. Then I’ll celebrate with you.”

  “So what will happen will be precisely this…We’ll arrive in Nanaimo and you won’t have a drink.”

  “No.”

  “But where can we put up save the Ocean Spray? What are we going to do!”

  “We could go to a cinema. They’re showing a double bill: Mr. Blanding’s Dream House and The Long Voyage Home.”

  Ethan thought of the albatross again, heeling over in the wind and then sweeping forward, with its sabre wings, beyond the S.S. Aristotle. A messenger?

  “And is this hair shirt and joyless prohibition technique to persist even if we do get to Gabriola,” inquired Jacqueline timidly, putting her hand on Ethan’s arm.

  Ethan smiled. “If you honestly think that’s in the category of the wonderful I’ll relax a bit. But not before we get there. You can take over then. God, don’t I sound sententious.”

  “Not a bit. I’ve no idea why I behaved like that. It must have been an attack of the vapours or something.”

  “Hooray, the harbor’s near, lo the red light,” Ethan sang out.

  But the outlook, as the harbor was nearing, appeared less than hopeful, though he hadn’t the heart
to say so, not to say the prospect of a drinkless evening in Nanaimo ghastly beyond words. The ferry, even closer inshore, as they were now, seemed shipping too many seas to be altogether secure with the deck cargo they had on her. Great dollops of spray, cold as snow, fell on the deck, in the motorcars, even on the washing machine, sousing it thoroughly. The screw kicked out, shuddering, and from down below came a noise like a furious motorcycle with a knocking engine. The stern with its chain and its unfinished pseudo-poop, behind which the sea gulls were steadily and faithfully rowing back to Nanaimo with them, circled and dropped down against the sky, in a manner suggesting they were in a sou’westerly in mid-Atlantic, instead of two miles offshore in the Gulf of Georgia. While the lifeboats, rising and circling and falling in concert wore, with their fresh paint, an altogether new air of potential usefulness.

  But as Nanaimo Harbor grew closer still it suddenly became much calmer. And then warmer. Though the flag still galloped aloft on the post office there was scarcely a cat’s-paw of wind on the water. They made out some drinkers drinking in the Ocean Spray, where somebody—could it be Henry Knight himself?—was watching the approaching ferry through a window. There was the almost dear old bastion: and there their very bus of this morning perhaps, bereaved of them, or a similar one, beginning its return journey to Victoria, prowling very slowly through the steep streets, bugling, now hidden behind a house, now crawling down a hill, now going musically round a corner, now down another hill, its panting clearly audible.

  And now Nanaimo did not seem so bad, even if you couldn’t have a drink there. It was even like an old friend who will have a drink anyway, even if you don’t. And now, suddenly, Nanaimo seemed more than familiar for a moment, like a town they had known all their lives, heavy with memories of hopes, frustrations, departures and reunions, news of births and deaths, despairs, joys—

  The engines were switched off.

  —There are some feelings so complicated that though they seem indefinably, yet surely, to concern some mysterious order beyond this life, which just as surely, we feel, affects our life, they rarely find conscious expression. And were we to try and express all this in terms of our belief in some supernatural concern for ourselves at such moments, a concern which seems to be leading us on to our design, or purposely hindering us from executing it, we would sound ridiculous, even a little insane. In fact, a step further, into obsession, and insanity, as William James has pointed out, is exactly what the belief may turn into. And, no doubt, as has also been said, it involves a primitive method of thinking the consciousness of civilized man has, or is reputed to have, largely discarded. There is nothing like a series of misfortunes, however, Ethan thought, to make us forget our hard-won battles against the irrational and start us thinking that way again. The Llewelyns had thought that way for so long indeed that they no longer saw anything unusual, let alone uncivilized, about the sheer multiplicity of the signs and portents and circumstances that hurtled—or which they perceived as hurtling—about their destinies, or lurked, observing them, from appropriate coigns of vantage. Certain stupid omens were of course in a different category; at best they made a joke of them, at worst a single crow could spoil a whole afternoon. They only took them with half-seriousness, or none at all, and that depending on their mood. The casual notation of omens was a form of pastime, and at that, of all pastimes, probably the most unrewarding. But what of the serious, the desperately serious, the uncanny, the inexplicable aspect of certain coincidences. The Llewelyns used to refer to a particularly coincidence-ridden day as a sign they were “in the current.” Today they had certainly been “in the current” and had scarcely bothered even to mention it. What if—Ethan now reflected—setting apart those that seemed to come about through some correspondence between the subnormal world and the abnormally suspicious—certain coincidences were really brought into being to remind us that a divine supernatural order exists?