Arthur McCann

by William Pitt

  I went back to the Cockatoo Paradise Loungette and Bar and sat drinking again, watching the evening eating the hills at the back of the island. Lights buttoned our ship in the harbour. There was a girl called Monique in the bar, a Creole girl, who shuffled about serving drinks, swaying from her thin hips to the American jazz music coming from a wind-up gramophone. I had only heard her speak French so I had not spoken to her, just nodded when I wanted another drink, and sat trying to make the solid form of Pamela nudge out the pink memory of Mrs Nissenbaum from my poor congested mind.

  This was Friday and quite a few people from the port came in, sitting around at the straw tables, drinking, talking loudly in French and jiving in the extraordinary way they did in those days. There was a fat planter flinging a coloured girl of about fifteen all over the place, through his legs, around his sweaty neck, showing her white knicks and brown legs to everyone and anyone who wanted to have a look. Some of the others from the ship arrived but they knew I was suffering from terrible melancholia so they did not even look at me.

  The Creole girl, Monique, went over to my shipmates and asked them something about me. I knew this was so because all their faces came over in my direction at one moment. She was leaning right over their table, her skirt hoisted up the back of her legs. Then she came to me and, having put her tin tray on the bar, she opened her arms to me and invited me to dance. I stood up, unenthusiastically I suppose because my mind was still a conflict between the dead Mrs Nissenbaum and the live Pamela. Their images kept nudging each other out of the frame of my imagination like photographs in one of those bioscope things with slides on a screen. Still, common politeness made me stand and put my arms about her so that we could dance. So occupied had I been with my inward agony that now I realized that I had noticed nothing about this girl, not her hair, nor her eyes, nor the shape of her body, which was very unusual for me and still is. I had not even realized that the reason she shuffled everywhere was that she was wearing woolly bedroom slippers with pom-poms on them, like my mother and my aunts wore in the winter at home.

  The wind-up gramophone was playing 'La Composita', a record so elderly and worn that the violins sounded like snores. I have always been quite a showy tango dancer and I ran her across the floor, swaying her over my knee, and unwinding her, so that her woolly bedroom slippers fairly skimmed across the floor. All the time I kept my melancholy face. We were the only ones dancing and quite a lot of the people were watching us and they must have noticed the tragedy in my expression.

  One woman, wearing a sort of white hunting suit, watched me all the time. I could not help noticing as we swooped by. I suppose my glance must have got left behind once or twice, because she smiled and when the dance was finished she crooked her little finger and invited me across to the table.

  You could tell that she was the sort of woman who called men to her like that. By crooking her little finger. And they went. I went. She was sitting next to a man in his thirties, dark and tired looking. He had a broken leg, the plaster cast thrust under the straw table, the mummified foot projected from the end. She said this was her husband, M. Jacques Grasse, but he spoke no English.

  'I speak some English,' she recited.' I am Annette Grasse. I am twenty-nine years. I have red hair and green eyes.'

  I confirmed this for myself. She looked like Greer Garson, with whom I had been in almost demented love all through my childhood. After seeing Random Harvest I had gone down by my boyish bed and prayed that by some genetic miracle Miss Garson's age might be arrested until I could catch up with her and claim her as mine.

  I used to imagine the headlines - ' Greer Garson Remains Twenty-two. Doctors Baffled.' And all the time I would be gloating and growing.

  'My husband not dance because he fell from his 'orse,' she said. 'But we will dance.'

  With no more preliminaries than that we were dancing. I had not said a word and neither had her husband. A waiter put a bottle of whisky and a glass in front of him and he poured an initial drink as though it were the fore-runner of many. He stared straight ahead and threw the spirit down his throat, then poured another. But this time we were whirling away from him.

  'You are sad,' she observed. 'How old are you? Very young with black hair and brown eyes. And big hands. You have very big hands.'

  'They're still growing I expect,' I said at last. 'I'm not eighteen yet.'

  'I am just waiting for my 'usband to have his leg better -then phutt! I leave him,' she said frankly.

  'Why don't you leave him now?' I suggested in my bravado. ' He won't be able to run after you.'

  'Oh no,' she pouted. 'That would not be possible. For he is 'elpless, you understand. No, I stay. But I look for somebody younger. And with two good legs. And hands.'

  'I'm leaving tomorrow,' I said blatantly. 'I'm on the ship.'

  'I know. My 'usband owns all the sugar. It is his sugar you take. What is your name and why are you having a sad face?'

  'Arthur,' I said. 'Arthur McCann. And I'm just sad, that's

  all. A bit upset. A friend of mine died.'

  'They do,' she nodded.

  'And I'm just waiting for a telegram to come because I've asked a girl at home to marry me,' I went on.

  'Marry?' She looked shocked, pulling her head back as we danced. 'That is worse than dying.'

  'She's very nice,' I insisted. 'I need her.'

  'At seventeen,' she shook her head. 'You don't need this girl. Not when you have such big hands. Come, we will go from here.'

  She pulled me insistently towards the door, not even looking behind, and I staggered with her. 'What about him,' I said. 'Your old man?'

  'He will love the bottle for a while,' she laughed. 'I will take you to the place where the little Josephine, who was the Empress of Napoleon, used to wash her feet in childhood. It is a lovely place for us. You will like it. It has history.'

  She had a car outside. She said there were only four cars in the island and two of them belonged to her. One other belonged to a lover and the fourth to the chief of police with whom she was on good terms. I began to realize I was in the clutches of a powerful woman.

  Outside the stars were looking low, mixing with the lights of the port. We sat in her car while a man from the Cockatoo Paradise brought out two bottles in ice buckets. I guessed they contained the champagne with which she was going to seduce me. It was quite a small car, nothing like as palatial as Mrs Nissenbaum's limousine in New York, but then that was hardly to be expected. It was strange, I thought, how many of my women had cars.

  This one had a sliding sunshine roof and Annette pulled it back so that we could see the studded sky and feel the dark breeze.

  'Voila,' she said leaning across to me and making it a whisper. 'We have everything. Let me see them once more. Your hands.'

  I did not know whether to feel happy or annoyed at her love for my hands. Somehow I felt it was a back-handed

  compliment; that there were better things about me than that. If I sound conceited, then I was. Not many lads of my age had experienced female admiration in its full mature form. I held out my hands as I not long before had held them out to show my schoolteacher that they were clean. She bent quickly and kissed each hard palm. I leapt forward to kiss her face, but she turned abruptly and started the car. I looked down cautiously at my hands, thinking they might have qualities I had hitherto missed. They looked the same. If her admiration was going to stop there it was not going to be much of a night.

  We drove along roads meant for mules, bumping and banging in the dark. She sang under her breath, repeating the phrases of the music to which we had danced back at the Cockatoo Paradise Loungette and Bar. After twenty minutes she rattled the little car off the road and when she stopped the engine I could hear the cascading of water in the dark.

  'The place where Josephine washed herself,' she whispered, as though the lady were still doing it.' It has history.'

  It also had a slab of rock, flat as a table, and big enough for two people to lie side
by side. One edge, however, fringed a short but sheer drop into a pool into which the cascade was emptying. There was no moon then, but the water was ruffled with muted light as it flowed and we could see it from the rock. She opened the first bottle of champagne and let the frothy tongue drop over the little cliff. The barman had provided two glasses and we toasted each other.

  'To you, mon cher, and your beautiful hands.'

  'To you, missus, and your husband's broken leg.'

  She laughed, but the laugh dropped as though ashamed from her face, and she sighed: 'Poor Monsieur Grasse and his jambe. It is very sad. But soon it will be well and I will go from this place.'

  'Don't you like it?'

  'Phoo!' She blew out her cheeks. 'It is prison. I am a pénitente. I will go to Paris and Rome and London. Are you from London, mon cheri?'

  'No, I'm from Newport,' I said honestly. 'But I know New York pretty well. Riverdale, Times Square, Welfare Island. All over.'

  She sighed and stretched herself out fully on the rock.

  'Ah, what it is to be a sailor!'

  'It's hard work,' I said practicably. The champagne was having a dispute in my gut with the native rum I had been drinking all the evening. I wanted to stop the talking and get her clothes off.

  'The work is good,' she said. 'It gives to you those great hands.'

  Without adding further to the conversation I took my clothes off. She did not even look at me, but continued lying out flat in her white suit, lifting her head slightly to drink the champagne (we were now on the second bottle) like a patient in bed sipping Lucozade. I felt like some ape man kneeling beside the planter's whiteclad wife. She did not move, nor look at me and although the air was tropic I felt it chill as I remained as though waiting for instructions.

  'Put your hands on me,' she said eventually, and to my relief. 'Start from the top, from my fair hair, and put them on me all the way down.'

  'Wouldn't you like to take your things off?' I invited cautiously.

  'There is much time,' she assured me lazily. 'Do not be anxious, darling.'

  Reassured, I did as she commanded, laying my fine big hands on her forehead and her soft springy hair. She closed her eyes as though I had applied a benison. Then she told me to commence the downward journey. It was very strange, I had to cover her eyes and nose, with my lower thumb against her lips. She kissed it then bit into it, so thoroughly that I quickly moved on to her neck. To my amazement she began to tremble. There was sweat on her neck. Well, with her, perspiration. Next I put my hands on her shoulders, on her white jacket, but eyes closed, she fumbled with the buttons and threw it open. Her shoulders were naked and her breasts tight balls in a white brassiere. I misjudged her excitement. I took my hands away and put them under mything, offering it to her like a gift parcel.

  'Annette,' I croaked. 'I would like to give you this.'

  Her eyes opened to slices, then closed again without interest. 'Non, non,' she almost whimpered. 'Take those magnificent hands from it. They make it look like a baby's.'

  I felt my temper rise on a tide of champagne and Port de Loupe rum, but I made it ebb again, and continued with my laundry-like pressing of her body. My palms were across her breasts, still parcelled, down to her stomach, on top of her skirt across her thighs, and then down to the less interesting areas of her knees and below.

  'Your hands,' she murmured when I had completed the journey. 'Encore, cheri, encore.'

  It was like an encore too. I felt as if I were playing some prelude and fugue on an organ, my hands laid on and off, moving gradually down. I was at her waist this time, kneeling naked at her side, my palms rubbing the light skin when there came the unlikely sound of a bicycle bell from the road above us. Through the screen of trees a single light moved like a searching insect. She did not appear to hear anything because she wriggled with impatience for me to move my hands another stage down her trunk.

  Then, through the heavy bushes came a young Creole in a grey jacket and peaked cap. He looked at me, in my nude posture, and silently handed me a telegram.

  Annette half sat up. She pulled her jacket around her when she saw him and opened her mouth as though something powerful was about to come out. But the boy stopped her with a stream of French of his own. She jerked up as if she were on a sprung hinge, emitted a distressed cry, and tried to scramble to her feet. My hand went out to her and caught her around the leg. She screeched again and bellowed at me in French. She shouted something at the boy who stepped forward and gave me one powerful push which sent me tumbling off the rock slab and down the short, steep drop into the cold pool in which Josephine had washed her feet so many years ago.

  I never saw my telegram again after that moment, I came up among the ribbons of starlit water and floating rubbish, and splashed around among wrecked boxes and tin cans deposited by unromantic villagers unmoved by memories of Josephine. I flayed all over the nasty pool looking for my telegram, but I could not find it. Almost weeping with the frustration I crawled from the water and sat on the bank. Far in the distance I could hear her car going back towards the town.

  Pamela! What was the answer? That word which had flown so far and crashed and drowned before I could see it. Would my uncomplicated Pamela marry me and save me from all the Josephine's pools of the world? Or had she found a returning soldier or a resident Yank? Naked as a caveman I crouched by the water, two empty bottles quarrelling in the stream at my feet; wondering, looking through the half light to see if I could see my lost message.

  I knew that I had to go back to the town, to the cable station where they would have a copy, or, at least the old woman would know whether or not I was a prospective bridegroom. I climbed the incline again and picked up my clothes. Then I walked naked along the track for ten minutes, by which time I was dry and could get dressed.

  When I reached Port de Loupe the cable office was locked and shuttered. A despairing panic caught me. We were sailing at six that morning, I had to know before then. The only lights in the town were in the Cockatoo Paradise Loungette and Bar, spilling orange, red and green into the street. The music from the wind-up gramophone was honking in the night air. Voices and laughter came from the open front.

  I stumbled across the vacant street, weary from the weight of disappointment. I reached the step and immediately saw the boy who delivered the telegram. He was still wearing his official grey peaked cap. He saw me coming and backed away remembering the push he had delivered. Turning he spoke to the barman who was from Trinidad. The barman leaned over and said: 'Don't you hit him, man. Missus Grasse told him to do it. Everybody do what that woman says.'

  'I wasn't going to,' I said.' What was it all about anyway?'

  'Monsieur Grasse,' answered the barman, putting a grimy glass of rum in front of me without my asking. Perhaps that was for not hitting the boy. 'Made a big row. Wanted to dance like the rest. And he got out there on the floor and fell down and bang! - broke the other leg, man. The other one!'

  Monsieur Grasse's leg still wasn't so important to me as my telegram. I looked at the boy who eyed me distrustingly and shifted another pace up the bar. 'Will you ask him if he knew what was in the telegram,' I said to the barman. ' I lost it.'

  'You lost it 'fore you read it?' inquired the barman.

  'This bugger pushed me in the water.'

  'Oh sure. Yes. I'll find out. Toulouse ...' He motioned the lad nearer, but the boy said he did not know what the message was. He had not seen it. French cables he always opened and read but he couldn't understand English. The old lady from the cable station had gone home and he said he did not know where she lived, but he was probably lying. I sat, black and lost, over the bar.

  'Man, what's your trouble?' asked the Trinidad barman. 'You got a face like somebody's crapped on your best shoes.'

  'That cable,' I said slowly, drinking the rum he had given me. 'Was to say whether I'm going to get married or not. I proposed, but I don't know now whether she said yes or no.'

  Jesus! Is that all? Hell, y
ou can pay me for the drink, man. Four francs.'

  I gave him the money.' It's not knowing,' I muttered.' I don't know whether I'm engaged or not.' Over the grubby horizon of the glass I saw Monique in her bedroom slippers shuffling through the dancers on the floor. I had a feeling she was coming to get me.

  'Listen,' said the barman confidingly. 'You listen, man. It's got to be right. She said "yes" that girl of yours.'

  'How d'you know?' I said, but with some hope.

  'Because she answered. You didn't pay for the answer did you? You didn't give them the money here?'

  'No. She paid.'

  'That's what I'm telling you, man. She ain't goin' to pay for no cable if she don't want you. She's saving for a new dress for some other fucker. You get me? If she sent back an answer, man, you got yourself a bride.'

  'Christ! I think you're right!' I shouted jubilantly, the realization flowing through me.' You're right. Have a drink!' Then I let out a sound that was half a burp half a yell of exultation. The drinks mixed inside me all reached combustion at the same moment. I heard the barman laughing and calling 'The man wants to get married!' and in a whirling moment I was locked with Monique in a wild waltz across the wooden floor. We turned and bounced and I could hear my shouting and her laughing squeals filling the tatty place. Round and round, like the dipper at Barry Island. Oh Christ, Mrs Nissenbaum, I'm going to get married! Wheee! Round and round. This Monique was a good sport. Now she's kissing me! She's so happy for me! Goodbye Mrs Nissenbaum, have a nice big rest up in Heaven. I'm getting married when I get home ... tra ... la ... la .... Ding dong the bells are going to ring.

  Yes, more drinks. More for everybody! Rum on top of champagne - the in drink for the elite of Port de Loupe. My God, that's my hand on her little nipple. Have to watch it. And now she's got my leg caught in between hers! And we're still dancing around. I'm like a man with a wooden leg. A peg leg like old Murky would have liked to have had. Poor old Murky. Died on roller skates. Did he really see the giant sloth?