The Star of the Sea

by Joseph O'Connor

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Actually it was David. Like my own name, you see.’

  The boy gave a soft laugh at the strangeness of the revelation.

  ‘Yes,’ his father chuckled. ‘It is rather funny, isn’t it?’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘Well he got sick for a bit and went up to live in Heaven.’

  ‘He got sick?’

  The child knew he was lying, Merridith could see it. There was a piercing quality in his gaze sometimes: a look that was hard to ignore.

  ‘Your mama feels you’re a little too young to know.’

  ‘I shan’t tell her, Pops. Dob’s honour I shan’t.’

  ‘Well there was an accident in the house. Very sad thing. My grandpapa was supposed to be sort of standing sentry one day. Only the little chap escaped, you see. Got at the fire.’

  ‘He was burned?’

  ‘Yes, my love. I’m afraid he was.’

  ‘Was he sad? Your grandpapa?’

  ‘He was very sad, yes. My papa and mama too.’

  ‘Were you?’

  ‘Well, I wasn’t here, then, of course. But I was sad later. Surrounded by bloody girls, you see. You know what they’re like. Beastly old things. Would have been fun to have another chap about. Kick a bit of ball with. Things like that.’

  His son approached awkwardly and kissed his forehead.

  ‘I am sorry, Pops.’

  He ruffled the boy’s hair. ‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘I am, too.’

  ‘I shall draw a picture of him later. So you can see him in Heaven.’

  ‘Good scout.’

  ‘Are you crying, Pops?’

  ‘No, no. Bloody eyelash, that’s all.’

  ‘I shall be your brother if you like.’

  Merridith kissed his son’s grubby hand. ‘I should like that very much. Now pop down to Mary.’

  ‘May I get in her bed?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because.’

  ‘Why not because?’

  ‘Because because.’

  ‘Pops?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do ladies make water sitting down?’

  ‘Ask your mother. Now bugger along.’

  He watched his son slouch unwillingly from the cabin. It was too late now to go back to sleep. An ache of pity clutched at his heart. His boys had inherited his own propensity for night terrors. That might well be all they would inherit.

  Rising from his bunk Merridith put on a dressing gown and padded gloomily to the shuttered porthole, opening it creakily on to the day. The vast sky was the colour of day-old gruel, but streaked with violet and orange clouds; some pallid and ragged and tinged with black, others mottled like ancient leopardskin. Down on the maindeck, two Negro sailors were huddled up to a brazier and sharing a mug. The Maharajah was walking near the forecastle with his butler. That poor little fellow with the wooden foot was hobbling up and down, slapping his arms against himself to keep warm. A kind of solace, the normality of everything. Odd, the things from which we take our consolations.

  He found himself wondering about the two sailors. They looked so close; like brothers perhaps. There were other varieties of closeness between men; Merridith knew that and knew it from experience. Once or twice in his fleeting spell in the navy he had been propositioned by other officers, but had always declined. It wasn’t that he found the idea disgusting. At Oxford he had experimented, contentedly and not infrequently. Rather that he’d have found it disgusting with any of the ones who asked.

  He left his cabin and walked down the steel-cold passageway, pausing to knock on his wife’s door. No answer came. He knocked a second time. He tried the handle but the door was locked. The smell of fresh bread drifted from the galley like an undeserved blessing. He was badly in need of one of his injections.

  Yesterday afternoon she had come to his cabin and told him her decision. Her mind was made up. At first he had laughed, certain she was joking; experimenting with some new tactic to make the rat squirm harder. No, she had said, she had thought about it carefully. She had considered the whole picture. She wanted a divorce.

  There was a frightening tenderness in the way she said it. She was unhappy, she said; had been unhappy for some time. She felt he must be terribly unhappy, too, but she was finding his indifference impossible to tolerate. Indifference was poison in a troubled marriage. Anything could be survived in a marriage but that. She said the word ‘anything’ as though it was significant to her, a cloaked invitation for Merridith to confess.

  ‘I’m not indifferent,’ he had said instead.

  ‘David, my love,’ his wife had mildly answered. ‘We have not spent a night together in almost six years.’

  ‘Christ, this again. Do you never tire?’

  ‘David, we are married. Not brother and sister.’

  ‘I have had things on my mind. You might have noticed that.’

  ‘I have had more opportunity than I ever needed to notice. And to wonder and be frightened about what they might be.’

  ‘What does that mean, Laura?’

  When she spoke again, her voice was quiet. ‘You’re not an old man, or a little boy, after all. I assume you must still have all the normal feelings you once had for me.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Has some other person come into your life? Please tell me if that has happened.’ She took his hand in hers and held it. Even to himself his hand felt dead. ‘If mistakes have been made, they can be forgiven, David. Forgiveness can be possible with love and truthfulness. None of us is a saint; certainly not myself.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘Is that an answer or another evasion?’

  There were only two ways he could think of to react: a shout of bogus anger or a mask of placidity. ‘Of course there’s nobody else,’ he calmly said, though he didn’t feel calm, he felt like running from the room. He was afraid that if he stayed he might tell her everything.

  ‘Then I don’t understand. Can you help me understand?’

  Whenever she approached him as a woman to a man, he had brushed her away or made some excuse. He had made her feel ashamed to want what was beautiful, the small, shared intimacies of married life: the closenesses which had once brought them such happiness and friendship. He had made her feel a whore for wanting to love him. He had become private, secretive; completely unattainable. It had started long before the death of his father, but ever since then he had been much worse. It was as though he himself had died, she said, or perhaps had become afraid to live.

  Something was terribly wrong with him; she could see that clearly. Often she had tried to help him, but had obviously failed. Being married to him required a passivity she didn’t have any more; like standing on a pier and watching a ship sink in the bay, knowing you were entirely powerless to save it. But she wouldn’t wade in further and risk being drowned herself.

  There were practical matters to consider, too. Her trust fund had been exhausted by what had happened at Kingscourt. To pay the fares to Quebec of seven thousand tenants had cost more than would have maintained the family for two years. There had also been the cost of evicting them: the driver-men’s fees. Her father had said he was extremely worried about her situation and could not continue bailing them out. If he discovered she had also gone into her capital he would be absolutely furious and cut off all her funds. He would find out soon enough that she had sold the children’s stocks and shares. There was simply no telling what he might do then.

  ‘David, I may as well tell you: he has advised me to leave you.’

  ‘What the Hell business is it of his?’

  ‘It is none of his business, of course. But he worries. He says he has heard things which do not make him happy.’

  ‘These riddles you talk in. What am I expected to say? Perhaps if you gave me the crimes I am charged with, I might be able to enter a defence.’

  ‘He has not been specific. He m
erely says I am to be careful. Sometimes he says you are not what you seem.’

  ‘Well he seems like an ass and he brays like an ass. You can tell him from me, I shall see him in the libel courts if he doesn’t learn to shut his braying mouth.’

  ‘David. Please. We need to be courageous. We have made our best efforts. We must know when to stop.’

  It had taken every bit of Merridith’s persuasiveness to convince her to give him one last chance. America would be good for them, the fresh start they needed; a means of putting all that had happened behind them. Jonathan and Robert needed tranquillity now. They had been through enough; they deserved to have both their parents.

  ‘If you think they have had both their parents in recent times, you are sorely mistaken, David.’

  ‘Please, Laura. One last chance.’

  Now it was morning the conversation seemed absurd: as though it had never happened or had happened to someone else. He wondered would she mention it. Would she pretend they hadn’t spoken? Perhaps he should fetch her a warming cup of tea. He’d go down to the galley and organise it with the cook.

  As he passed the open door of his son Robert’s cabin he saw Jonathan was in there: and he wished he had not. He was hauling a yellow-stained sheet like the folds of an old wedding dress and trying to cover his sleeping brother with it.

  ‘What are you doing in Bobby’s room, Jons?’

  The boy froze and gaped up at him, his face brightening with shame. His mouth opened and closed. He dropped the sheet.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. He sucked his gums.

  ‘What kind of nothing? Answer me this minute.’

  ‘I was just …’ He shrugged and pushed his hands into the pockets of his britches. ‘I wasn’t doing anything. I was…’

  He fell guiltily silent and looked at the floor. Merridith gave a sigh. It wasn’t fair to set a trap for him. He could see what the child was doing; he didn’t need to keep asking him. He came slowly into the cabin and picked up the ruined sheet.

  ‘Told me you hadn’t wet in the bed, old thing. There’s no need to go fibbing about it. Let alone planting the evidence on Bobs.’

  ‘I know, Pops. I didn’t mean to.’

  ‘Very disappointed, Jonathan. I thought we didn’t tell each other fibs, you and me.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Pops. Please don’t tell.’

  Probably he should start into a lecture now, but for some reason he didn’t have the stomach for it. This early in the morning seemed a poor time for superiority, and anyway the child had had enough lectures already. ‘Run along and fetch some hot water, then, like a good scout. We’ll wash it out together. What about that?’

  His son looked up at him with a wrenching hopefulness. ‘You won’t peach on me, Pops? You promise?’

  ‘Of course I won’t.’ He rubbed the boy’s cheek. ‘We chaps don’t go tattling like girls on each other, do we? But no more porky-pies in future or it’s into the stocks.’

  The boy hugged his leg and tottered gratefully from the cabin. And at that moment something depressing caught Merridith’s attention. By the porthole, the imprint of a single dirty palm; a smallish hand, but maybe a man’s; the kind of mark that might have been made by a greasy glove.

  He would ask Laura to speak to Mary Duane about it. Really, things were difficult enough just now, but there was no reason at all for the place not to be kept clean.

  Ireland’s famine was the punishment of her imprudence and idleness, but it has given her prosperity and progress.

  Anthony Trollope, North America

  CHAPTER XVI

  THE POWER OF DARK THINGS

  THE THIRTEENTH OR MIDDLING DAY OF THE VOYAGE; IN WHICH THE CAPTAIN RECORDS CERTAIN CURIOUS SUPERSTITIONS (NOTABLY COMMON AMONG SEA-FARING MEN) AND COMES TO THE PROTECTION OF THE WOMEN OF IRELAND.

  Saturday, 20 November, 1847

  Thirteen days at sea remaining

  LONG: 36°49.11′W. LAT: 51°01.37′N. ACTUAL GREENWICH STANDARD TIME: 11.59 p.m. ADJUSTED SHIP TIME: 9.32 p.m. WIND DIR. & SPEED: N.N.W. (342°). Force 4. SEAS: Restless. Many large whitecaps. HEADING: S.S.E. 201° PRECIPITATION AND REMARKS: Extremely heavy fog. Visibility diminished to 400 yards. We have slowed to two knots.

  Last night nine of our brothers and sisters were gathered, and this morning were committed to rest in the deep. Carmody, Coggen, Desmond (x2), Dolan, Murnihan, O’Brien, Rourke and Whelehan.

  A great ‘growler’ iceberg was sighted this afternoon at a distance of approximately half a mile; the size of a large London house, more or less. A multitude of the steerage passengers came up to look and marvel, never having seen such a sight before.

  The cook, Henry Li, has come to me with a scheme by which we might relieve the sufferings of some in steerage without incurring expense to the company. (Heaven forfend.) A quantity oftentimes remains uneaten on the plates after supper and luncheon in the First-Class Dining Saloon. Bones, gristle, rinds and suchlike but sometimes fats or the skins of fish. He proposes, rather than to throw these leftovers away, or to make of them pigswill (as is usually the practice), that he stew them down to a soup to be given to the hungry, which would be in the nature of an assistance to them. I think it a compassionate notion and have agreed that he should do it. (Indeed, it ought make any Christian man feel rueful that a pagan displays more fellowship than many of the saved.)

  There is a very strange and horrible smell about the ship tonight. I do not mean the usual odour emanating from steerage where the poor people must contend as well as they can; but something much worse and quite pestilential. It beggars description.

  I have ordered the whole vessel swabbed down with brine and vinegar but the abominable stink continues even as I write. I never experienced anything like it before; an overpowering reek of utter putrefaction such as one might expect to encounter from the sinkholes of an ill-kept shambles. Nothing was found rotting in the front hold or cargo hold. I am quite at a loss as to know what to do; it is greatly distressing the passengers and some of the men. For such a phenomenon to come upon us on this day of all others is a very unfortunate circumstance which will only bring alarm.

  The middling day of any voyage is regarded as unlucky, as on its own is the thirteenth day. For both to fall together, as they do this day, is regarded as particularly ill-fated by seamen. One sailor, Thierry-Luc Duffy of Port au Prince, refused to leave his quarters and come on to his watch this morning, insisting that the combination of forces indicated ‘voodoo’. (Today is also Saturday, the day of ‘the black sabbath’ in that eerie superstition.) He said to Leeson that he had been hearing a queer catlike or birdlike scream in the night. He is a very agreeable man usually, of near my own age, and we have sailed many voyages together; there is a good and long established friendship between us; so I went down to the men’s berths to see what might be done. He said this day was unholy and he would not work. I said it were sacrilege to prattle in this manner and next he would be broiling his mother to be eaten for supper by himself and Baron Samedi. (That aristocratic gentleman seems to be the voodoo-men’s devil; but he wears a top hat to conceal his horns, like half the House of Commons.) At that he laughed but still would not work.

  He said if it were sacrilege to believe in life after death, the existence of the devil and the power of dark things, then all the Christian world were sacrilegious and near enough to every last soul on the ship. Each man must believe what he liked, he said; but he did not know what kind of God it was who could send his own boy to be murdered on a tree. And as for cannibalism, the Roman Catholics would happily tell you they gobbled flesh and quaffed gore so maybe Pope Pius himself was a voodoo-man zombie. I said it was not meet to speak so disrespectfully when so many of the passengers are of that great and majestic (if doctrinally errant) faith. He apologised and said it was only a jape, adding that his own wife was a Catholic (of Eleuthera Island in the Bahamas) and his youngest daughter a postulant nun. He was quite beyond persuasion of any variety; saying he would contentedly surrender all rations a
nd go to the lock-up in chains rather than work out his watch this day. I allowed him the day but said I would have to dock it from his wages. He quite understood and seemed content.

  As I left, he was uttering some words I did not understand.

  Tonight I had necessity to punish one of the men, Joseph Cartigan of Liverpool1, who had been importuning some of the women in steerage and making shameful suggestions by which he meant to gain advantage from their present unhappy state. Apparently he had been offering food in return. I do not like at all to punish the men, but they know I will not have decent girls ruined on my ship. Summoning him to my quarters, I asked if he had wife or daughter and he said neither. Then I asked if he had a mother; and how would he care for her to be translated to a whore? He said she was one already, the busiest in Liverpool. (I swear his ears quite wriggle with insolence.)

  Chaucer asserts, in his Prologue of the Reeve: ‘Til we be roten kan we not be rype.’ If that be the case, then this Mersey-mud placket-hound is so ripe as to be practically intoxicating.

  His appeal was that he had attempted nothing save what was natural, given the length of the voyage & cetera. At that I ordered the wretch’s rations halved for three days, the moiety to be given to some poor girl in steerage. I have oftentimes observed the veracity of the late Admrl. Wm. Bligh’s remark (first captain under whom I myself served as boy, on the charting and fathoming of Dublin Bay) that when a man claims in mitigation that his actions be ‘natural’ he is invariably behaving much worse than a beast, without exception to one much weaker than himself.

  The stench now become very evil indeed. As though the ship itself were beginning to rot, or traversing a very real sewer.

  If you were to see old Denis Danihy, he never was in as good health and looks better than ever he did at home. And you may be sure he can have plenty of tobacco and told me to mention it to Tim Murphy. If you were to see Denis Reen when Daniel Danihy dressed him with clothes suitable for this country, you would think him to be a boss or a steward, so that we have scarcely words to state to you how happy we felt at present. And as to the girls that used to be trotting on the bogs at home, to hear them talk English would be of great astonishment to you.