Arthur McCann

by William Pitt

  'Sandie's fantastic,' said Angie when we were back in the cab again. 'But she's just crazy. Lots of men. And she loves them all.'

  'Does she work at the Split Legs Go-Go Bar?' I asked. The window to the driver's seat was ajar and I saw him hunch his shoulders in a laugh. Angie briskly leaned forward and shut the glass.

  'She does sometimes. But she does some modelling and men are always giving her money.'

  'Did men always give you money?' I asked. I always make it difficult for myself.

  'Sometimes,' she nodded. 'But for nothing.'

  'True? For nothing?'

  She turned to me. 'I told you I've only been at that place ten days, nights, and I'm straight from the sticks. I would only do it for love, Arthur. I can get dollars without that.'

  Naturally I believed her. We took her luggage to the apartment and then we went out to a street market and bought some rugs and two, pictures for the walls and pots and pans, and cleaning things.

  'Do you want to have dinner out tonight, or shall we eat at home?' I asked when we had returned.

  'There's a lot you don't know about me,' she said sadly. ' And one of the things is I never learned to cook in Turnip-town. When you get back next time I promise I will.'

  'That will only be three weeks.'

  'I'll get through Cordon Bleu in that time,' she boasted. 'I make good coffee, though.'

  'We'll go out,' I said catching hold of her. 'As it's our wedding night and when we get back I'll sit in my armchair and you can make the coffee.'

  So we went. We went to Sardi's where I had last gone with Mrs Nissenbaum. We even sat at the same table by the door. I felt like a ghost sitting there and the recollections flying back again. I smiled at the head waiter as though he ought to recognize me. All that time ago. Sitting there, a trembling boy, wondering what was happening to me, and opposite that marvellous blown up woman who had been both mother and lover to me for those few weeks. Now it was I who was getting old, and sitting in Mrs Nissenbaum's place was this fresh, lovely and familiar girl, in her turn to be a substitute for the real thing for Arthur McCann.

  All through dinner I could scarcely take my eyes from her. She smiled at me indulgently through our conversations. I told her about places I had been and carefully selected things I had done in all my years of traipsing the seas. She told me about Turniptown, about the school, her home and her parents. The next summer, we vowed, when I got my long leave we would go together to see them.

  Afterwards we walked back through the city and I got both my feet caught in a patch of unmarked gluey stuff at a place where some building work was going on. I pretended I could not move from the spot, picking up my feet in turn with the thick strings of glue yawning from the pavement to my soles. She was wearing a splendid ice blue dress, but she sat on the gutter and laughed into her hands at my antics.

  Then we went to shop windows along our way and selected furniture and chattels that we would purchase when we had our real home. We even found a crib for our first child and it was then that the possibilities of the whole thing really came to me. It was the Captain's Paradise. If only I could keep Angie and Pamela on the separate sides of the Atlantic I could have the sexual domesticity I needed so badly. I told myself that I knew it could work. Poor sod.

  By midnight we were back in our close apartment and the door bolted behind us. The curtains did not fit when I pulled them across, but that district was mostly in darkness and the people sleeping.

  Angie made the coffee and she sat placidly in my lap on the one comfortable armchair in that doleful room. I had my arms complacently about her, as though we had been familiar with each other for a long time. It was a new and comforting feeling, we told each other. She glanced at her watch. 'I'm going to get ready for bed,' she said. 'Stay here, husband, and smoke your pipe.'

  'I don't smoke a pipe,' I said.

  'We must get you one,' she said, getting up from my lap. 'The image demands a pipe.' It was marvellous, I thought, feeling the small flesh of her buttocks leave my knees. She leaned towards me and kissed me on the mouth. 'I'm going to put my nightdress on, like any decent woman. Understand? It's a pity you haven't got any pyjamas. We could be really quiet and domestic then.'

  'I'll go out and see if there's a midnight pyjama store open,' I said.

  She regarded me from the side of the chair: 'It's a great game, isn't it?' she said.

  'I think it is. Keeping house,' I said.

  'Keeping house, that's it,' she smiled. 'A game for people who have never played before.'

  'We'll get better at it as we gain experience,' I said.

  She yawned beautifully: 'Darling, I must go and get my clothes off. I've had such a busy day in the house.'

  'I won't be long,' I said. 'I've had a hell of a day at the ship.'

  She laughed briefly and went into the bedroom. I was slotted into that chair, thinking about what was coming. That lovely body in a soft nightdress. Waking up in the dark and smelling her hair, feeling her flesh against me. My dream had evoked a creeping erection. I wriggled to accommodate it. To hear her rustling movements in the next room and to see her slim shadow projected from the door to the floor a few feet from me, increased my anticipation. Then the doorbell rang. Eight times.

  Something was going to happen to spoil it. I knew it. I was about to get a bucketful in my face again. Angie came to the bedroom door, wearing a lovely pink nightdress that went down to her feet. She had a dab of cream on her nose. I stared at her, letting the doorbell ring another fusilade, taking in the beauty of her and having the painful suspicion that I would have to be content to remember her like that. Whoever was outside that door was going to kill it for us. It was like the Gestapo demanding entry.

  'Angie!' screamed a voice from the landing. 'Oh, Angie!'

  'Sandra,' she caught her breath and her breast and moved forward from the bedroom door. I went to help her, slipping my arm about her waist for one last feel while we were about it. We opened the door and the blonde I had seen that afternoon was standing there, weeping, blood running from the corner of her mouth, hair hanging in hanks. She stumbled in.

  'Angie,' she sobbed and fell into my girl's embrace.

  'Oh, Sandie, come on in, honey. Come in. What happened?'

  'Yes, come in Sandie,' I said lamely. I thought I felt the floor breaking up like a cracking ice floe.

  She was already in, shaking in Angie's arms, pressed against that soft nylon where I ought to have been.

  'What happened, baby, what happened?' Angie kept asking.

  'What happened, baby?' I sighed.

  We put her down in the chair and Angie told me to get some coffee. As I went into the kitchen I hit my groin in the narrow entrance and I thought I felt my thing grunt with injury added to insult and disappointment.

  When I returned with the coffee Angie was kneeling before her friend, wiping the edge of her mouth with a handkerchief.

  'She was attacked, Arthur,' she explained. 'Have you got the coffee ?'

  I gave her the coffee and she gulped at it as though she had been bombed.

  'It was Leroy,' she said to me. I blinked.

  'Leroy is a friend of hers,' explained Angie, half turning and looking up at me. Anger and jealousy, that her concern had gone from me to the woman, swamped me.

  'The swine,' I said feelingly.

  At this, Sandra threw her arms wide and howled 'I love him!' She began to weep copiously. She slopped the coffee from the cup all over my stockinged feet (I should explain that in my domestic role I had taken off my shoes, my jacket and my tie. I had a sad but convincing suspicion that this would be the total of my divestment that night).

  No one even noticed my hot, wet socks, although I leapt at the pain. 'The bastard,' sobbed Sandra.' But I love him. I love that mad guy, Angie!' Her hysterics increased and Angie, like a flamingo, enclosed her in her pink nyloned arms again. Christ, there was I in a room with two ravishing creatures and all I got was coffee on my socks.

  'He'll
kill you one day,' warned Angie. 'The pig will kill you, Sandie.'

  'I love him,' bawled Sandie again, 'And he loves me.'

  'There's different ways of showing it,' I said consolingly. They took no notice of me.

  A small, apologetic Mexican-looking man with a tearful moustache was standing at the open door when I turned that way again. He had apparently been standing there for some time and was taking in the embrace of the weeping Sandie and the consoling Angie with huge interest.

  'Señor,' he asked, when he saw I had spotted him. ' Can anybody join?'

  'It's Leroy,' I sighed defeatedly. 'He hit her.'

  'But I love him!' confirmed Sandra from the room.

  ' But she loves him,' I told the Mexican.

  'That's okay then, señor,' he said preparing to go away. 'I was just getting worried, that's all.' He waved an ineffectual Latin hand. 'Adios,' he said.

  'Adios,' I nodded, shutting the door.

  Leroy, I said to myself. Leroy. Over the years I thought I could remember that name. Leroy. Then I saw the coloured whore of my youth laughing into the telephone and saying 'Leroy, that skunk!' No it couldn't be the same Leroy! He couldn't have come back to fuck things up again for me, not after all these years.

  'I'm scared,' shivered Sandra. 'I'm scared to go back. He'll kill me. I just wish I didn't love him.'

  'Sounds like it's a risky thing,' I said.

  'Arthur,' said Angie severely. 'I don't think you realize just how serious this is. This guy's a no-good. He'll harm poor Sandie if he can. Look at her now. All blood and bruises.'

  'I can't go back to that room,' said Sandra. 'I'll die in there with him.'

  'You've got to stay,' said Angie decisively. Then, as though she realized for the first time, she looked unhappily, apologetically at me and said: 'I'm sorry, darling. But she's just got to stay.'

  'I'm going,' said Sandra leaping up from the chair. 'I'm a selfish slut. Crashing in on you two tonight!' Then she collapsed into the chair again, simultaneously with my hopes, and sobbed: 'There's nowhere else I could go. Nobody I could turn to. I'm scared, Angie, honey. I'm real scared.'

  There was nowhere anyone could sleep in that apartment except in the bed, on the floor or on the table. We all three slept in the bed. Sandra and I on the flanks and Angie in the middle. It was far worse than sleeping alone on your first night.

  I lay awake, sore eyed, through most of the dark hours, holding my woman and genuinely trying not to commit accidental indecent assault on the other one. It was a very close fit in that bed and we sweated a lot through the night. But they both slept deeply. I attempted to manoeuvre Angie's body more to my advantage, but every move seemed to end with my arm or my leg being trapped in some deadening way. Eventually I moved towards her lovely sleeping face, my loins howling for her, and she turned a full turn like a slow splendid fish and cuddled close into the warmly breathing form of her friend on the other edge of the bed.

  In the morning Sandra was optimistically transformed. She would be able to handle Leroy, she assured us, because he was a great guy really. It was just that he drank. It was not wise to approach him too early in the morning, before the air had got to his lungs, because he could be difficult, but if she left it a while he would be amenable later. So she stayed with us until it was time for me to go back to the ship for my voyage home. She gave me a daughterly kiss on the cheek and thanked me overwhelmingly for allowing her refuge. Angie came quietly down the stairs with me and at the door, in a great gallery of morning sun cutting between two tall buildings, she kissed me like a true wife.

  'Gee, I'm so sorry, Arthur, honey,' she sighed. 'But I'll make it up to you when you get back. You'll know you've really got me then. And nobody will bother us.'

  'Unless Leroy is on the rampage again,' I said.

  'I don't blame you for being sore,' she whispered. 'But you were marvellous. Only an Englishman could be like that. I love you darling.'

  These last sentiments were keenly observed by a red haired youth and an elderly down-and-out who paused in their pavement journeys to listen and to see the lovely flamingo lady say goodbye to her sailor. They nodded approvingly, as interlopers quite often do in New York, and continued their passage. I went down the street to get a cab to Hoboken.

  She stepped from the doorway, attracting even more passing attention, and waving, called: 'I'll be waiting, honey!' Immediately, furtively envious men stared at me from every side and I waved and called back: 'I won't be long, baby!' If only they had known the greyness of my heart. Three weeks, five thousand miles and my wife Pamela, stretched between that moment and my return to that marvellous girl. I prayed she would stay and be there when I opened the door again.

  I found a cab and we went across the bridge to Hoboken. She didn't blame me, she had said, for being sore. I was sore. But not in the right place.

  Seventeen

  All the way down the river and out to the sea, as far as the Nantucket Light, my mind was with her and on her. I hardly remembered to slow to drop the pilot and I would not have done so if that anxious man had not tugged my sleeve some nautical miles out. When I went below I wrote a long sad chapter of 'All The Coloured Lights Of The World by Arthur McCann', and slept grumpily through the beginnings of one of the most terrible storms I have ever known at sea.

  The ship, the S.S. Cohen Prince, was twenty-three years old and ten thousand tons, flagship of Cohen Overseas Lines. Travelling as a passenger on that trip was Mr Isadore Cohen, President of the Company, who had a Rolls-Royce motor car in the hold, and my job in his pocket. He had come aboard only minutes after I had arrived in my taxi from Manhattan. He was a fault-finding man at the best of times and he indicated that I must have arranged the storm especially for him.

  On the fourth night out, when the wind had raised itself to force ten and the ship was rolling and dipping like a randy elephant, the Rolls in the hold broke loose.

  At eleven o'clock I was on the bridge when I was told that the car had burst some of its retaining ropes and was tugging at the others. We were light on hold cargo that trip and I knew that it had room enough to career about if it became free. It was a silver Rolls with every finery and embellishment that Cohen money could demand, and I knew the man loved it. He took it to Europe with him and left his wife in America. Nothing must happen to that car.

  'Get two men down into the hold and secure the bloody thing,' I said to the bo'sun.

  'I've tried sir, but they want danger money.'

  There was no time to argue. ^Get that car secure, bo'sun,' I said. 'If we've got to pay, we've got to pay.'

  The bo'sun wanted danger money as well for ordering the men down there in the first place. When all the negotiations were complete, I stumbled from the bridge and went to see the situation for myself.

  Few things are more frightening at sea than cargo adrift in the hold of a rolling and pitching ship in the darkness of an Atlantic night. In the awful light down there two seamen and the bo'sun were clinging to the hold ladders while the car plunged and jerked, like a stallion trying to break out of a stall.

  'Secure it!' I bellowed. 'I didn't send you down to admire the thing.'

  I heard one of the men say 'bollocks' under his breath but this was no time to stand on ceremony. The front of the huge car was rearing up almost pawing the air with every yawning movement of the ship, the wind was hooting through the open hatch over our heads, the lights were swinging like acrobats. I had been at sea more than twenty years and I felt sick. With every fall and rise of the bow we had to hang on and be swung around like hanging cargo ourselves.

  'Double danger money for the man who secures it,' I shouted.

  Both men nodded and at the right time jumped into the floor of the hold and scrambled towards the enraged vehicle like hunters. At that moment it tore itself clear of the holding ropes at its rear and in a frightening charge went down the steep temporary hill of the hold's floor, collided with some piled bags of bone meal fertilizer, and then, as the ship reared into
the sea again, rolled backwards , to its original site. The two men scattered as it charged at them, one slipped and fell flat on the bottom boards. The bo'sun and I shouted, as though he wasn't aware of the danger, and he swivelled and rolled out of the way as the car charged back on its path again. The other seaman had taken refuge behind some piled bags and was crouching petrified. The berserk vehicle began its hideous journey again.

  At that moment Mr Cohen, president of Cohen Overseas Lines, summoned no doubt by his toadying steward, appeared at my shoulder arrayed in the only fur dressing gown I have ever seen. I had an illogical vision of my grandfather and the giant sloth he vowed he had seen in foreign places.

  'My life! My Rolls!' shrieked Mr Cohen. 'Why is this happening to my Rolls-Royce?' His face was green in the nasty light.

  'It's come free of its ropes, Mr Cohen,' I muttered. 'We're trying to secure it.'

  'Put the handbrake on!' he howled. 'For God's sake put the handbrake on. That's fifty thousand dollars worth of automobile.'

  At that moment the Rolls seemed to bunch itself like an athlete at the wind-up for a supreme effort and then it went banging down the length of the hold and hit the fertilizer sacks with the most spectacular explosion. Sacks burst under the ramming and clouds of the fertilizer were flung into the meyhem. Metallic clatterings told us that bits were falling from the car, and behind me Mr Cohen was moaning and muttering short Hebrew prayers.

  'You go,' he said suddenly, cutting into his devotions. 'You go. You're the assholing captain.' He dug me between the shoulder blades as he swung side-faced towards me with a heave of the bulkhead.

  'Me?' I asked.' But I can't, sir. I'm in charge of the ship.'

  'You won't be mister, if you don't stop that car pissing about,' he warned. 'That vehicle has been through every major city in Europe and America without a scratch. I'm not having it written off in the middle of the ocean!'