The Carp Castle

by MacDonald Harris

  The Captain comes to Charing Cross Station, walks down the narrow street behind it, and crosses the river on the Hungerford Bridge. At the other end of it is Waterloo Station. The Captain gazes at it curiously. He tried so hard to destroy it ten years ago that its present intactness and solidity, even its ugliness, seem to him an affront to his dignity as a German officer. This thought, an unworthy one as he knows (the thing was full of people after, all) mingles in his mind with other, more complicated thoughts; darker thoughts; unfitting thoughts for a summer day with trees dappling the pavements. He passes a nanny pushing a pram, a pair of lovers, and a Bobby wearing a coal-scuttle and swinging a club. Very orderly, English society. There seems to be a great calm in the air, a properness, a respect of each person for the others and their rights, the way they pass with dignity on the pavement instead of each one trying to push the other off the curb, the Bobby seems to have been put there to approve of things with a benevolent air and to help old ladies across the street. England is what people had in mind in inventing civilization. At least, so the Captain infers from his experience of London, which consists of the mile or so he has walked from the Strand to Waterloo.

  Where is he exactly? He takes a map of the city out of his pocket and examines it; it has been folded so many times that it is wrinkled like the face of a patriarch. Actually it is an aerial chart left over from the War; it is the one he carried in the control car of the L-14 on the night of that fatal raid on London. On it the trajectory of the Zeppelin squadron, from the East London docks to Battersea, is marked in a fine red line with a French pen. The two railway stations and the bridge connecting them are circled in the same ink, with lines crossing in each circle like the sights of a gun. Just now, in his hotel room, the Captain has made certain calculations and added other marks. The Zeppelins were at eight thousand feet, the wind was seventeen knots, and it would have taken the flaming L-23 a little over two minutes to fall. The Captain measured on the chart, and in the garden of Lambeth Palace he drew with another pen, in black ink, a tiny Maltese cross.

  Now he goes on down the embankment, which is not named on his aerial chart but is called Riverside Walk. People pay no attention to him, except for an occasional glance. He seems to be some kind of foreign naval officer, and he is walking along the bank of the river studying a map. London is the city of eccentrics. Probably he only imagined before that people were staring at him. When he reaches the place he has marked on his chart he stops. On one side is the Thames, on the other is an old brick palace where a bishop lives. There are gardens, other buildings, and a chapel but he can’t see much of them because of the high brick wall. The Captain finds a gate and looks through a kind of peephole in it. Through it he sees an attendant coming up to see what he wants, and probably to chase him away. He turns and walks off casually down the pavement.

  Pretending to be a Norwegian, he looks around with a simulated casualness. The leaves are dusty in the bishop’s garden. A pair of larks swoops over the wall. On the river a tug goes by pushing a barge full of sand. There is no trace of skirt-chasing, champagne-loving Bobo Winckelmann and his crew. No scorched bricks, no mark on the pavement, no specks that might be the traces of old German blood. Whatever was mortal of his comrades has been whirled and whipped in a circle, raised up in a vortex, and dissolved into the air. The tiny particles of their being have been redistributed. Floating afar, drifting with the wind, they have gone into the earth to be reborn as cabbages, or grass to be eaten by cows. Nothing is lost. The milk made by the cows may be drunk by humans and converted into brain cells which might conceivably blame him, the Captain, for their abrupt metempsychosis. He feels a blackness descending, a dark wing of mortality, and brushes it away with a gesture.

  Consulting his chart again, he crosses the river to Westminster. After a little way he comes to a news kiosk and stops. The papers report that crowds are visiting Croydon to look at the League of Nations tethered to its pole. There is a photograph showing Moira descending the gangplank followed by Aunt Madge Foxthorn and some members of the Frieze.

  WARTIME MEMORIES

  ZEPPELIN OVER LONDON

  A woman stares at him. “Ain’t you one o’ them from the airship?” He walks away. Remembering that he is still holding the chart, he folds it up and puts it in his pocket.

  *

  As soon as he has shaved and perfumed himself with Cologne water, Joshua Main goes straight to one of his favorite London pubs, the Orange Tree in Chelsea. He is greeted with glad cries of recognition. “Hallo, Josh,” says the host. He is known to barkeeps in every part of the world from Sydney to Hongkong and London. Now that he is a member of the Guild he is obliged to curtail his drinking a little, but the pledge as he interprets it applies only when he is in the presence of Moira or is likely to be in the next hour or so. There is a good deal of back-slapping and crying of greetings from one part of the pub to another. The barmaid gives him a good hug, which makes him grin. He orders a pint of bitter and sips it happily, surveying the other guests in the pub with a paternal air. He is a well-built man, cheerful, rubicund, with a luxuriant growth of gray hair. His mouth turns up at the corners as though he constantly has an impulse to smile but is repressing it. He has a rich Australian accent and makes it sound like music.

  “Well Josh, where have you been keeping yourself?”

  “Oh, here and there in the world.”

  “And what have you been doing?”

  “Well,” he says roguishly, “I’ve got religion now you know. I’ve taken up with a lady preacher.”

  There are shouts of laughter at this, mock congratulations, and speculations as to the nature of his piety.

  “You going to make a little angel with her then, Josh?”

  “Several, maybe.”

  When asked to provide details about the lady preacher, he offers several: that she is buxom, that she likes a pint now and then, that she has a sweet soprano voice, and that she is as strong as an ox. As he continues, he becomes pleased with this fiction and goes on adding to it for some time. He refuses to provide her name, but says, correctly, that she is Irish.

  “Green eyes, I’ll wager.”

  “Green eyes.”

  “And hair of gold.”

  “Golden hair.”

  “I had a girl just like that once,” says the host. “She wasn’t religious though. Thanks be to God.”

  “Well, there’s religion and there’s religion,” says Josh wagging his head. “Hers isn’t like the ordinary.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Believes in spirits and shrieking things, ghosts from the Beyond and Transmogrification.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Damn my eyes if I know, but it’s got to do with we never die and our spirits just float around for a while, looking for another person to inhabit.”

  “Oh, that’s Metempsychosis, Josh.”

  “Reincarnation I’d call it.”

  This theological discussion takes over the pub and continues for some time.

  “Does she really believe that, Josh?”

  “You can be sure that she does.”

  “And do you?”

  “Why not? It’s no sillier than what the other sky pilots claim.”

  “Anyhow, if you believe, it makes her friendly inclined toward you, ain’t that right Josh?”

  “Or say I believe it.”

  “Look at that, Josh’s pint has gone out the bottom of his glass. Never saw such a thing in me life. Bring him another, Sal.”

  “My gal Sal.” And he breaks into song. “A wild sort of devil, but dead on the level, is my-y-y-y gal-l-l-l Sal.” He has a pleasant baritone voice, with extraordinary range at the bottom; when he drops to the lower notes you would swear he was a basso. He sings another song or two, then shares a country ditty with the barmaid, who pretends to be an innocent maiden courted by a lascivious swain.

  Josh:

  Our life is but short, it’s often been said,

  So come my fair lassie,
let’s tumble in bed.

  Sal:

  My thing is my own and I’ll keep it so still,

  Yet other young lasses may do what they will.

  There is laughter and applause at this. “You ought to go in the music hall, you two.”

  “Oh, they wouldn’t have us. Our line isn’t suitable for the ladies and children.”

  “Sing us another, Josh.”

  “I’ll sing another if Sal will join me.”

  “I don’t know any other.”

  “Drink up then. Why, Josh’s pint has all gone into song. Bring him another, Sal.”

  “No, I’ve got to be about. I’ve got other friends, you know.” Glasses are lifted in his direction.

  “To your lady preacher.”

  “And your little angel.”

  “Who? Oh, him.”

  He goes out from the dusky room with its pleasant smell of beer into the sunshine. He sees a red bus going by and pinches it, not sure of what its destination is, but sure it will take him to a part of town where he knows another pub. Sure enough, he finds the bus going along the Cromwell Road and gets off at a spot near the Serpent’s Tooth, in Earl’s Court. There he spends another pleasant hour with Billy Oxley, the host, who was gassed in the War and can only speak in a hoarse croak, but enjoys a good joke anyhow. His laugh is a series of wheezes that leaves him red-faced and damp-eyed. “Oh Josh,” he pants, “you made that all up, I’ll swear by Neptune and the stars.” Bill is married to a Frenchwoman and has two half-French daughters who serve as barmaids; they make a great fuss over Josh, snuggling up to him on the bench and vying to bring him his pint. Reflecting that he hasn’t eaten all day, Josh has a sausage roll and an apple. Then, still munching the apple, he searches for the Underground station which he thinks is somewhere nearby—there it is at the corner of the road-and sets off in the Tube to a place he dimly remembers, a pub entirely below ground in an Underground station. He finds this after inquiring of several fellow passengers, two of whom agree to accompany him and have a drink with him. On the way, Josh gives an imitation of three deaf men on a train. “Is this Wembley?” “No, it’s Thursday.” “So am I, let’s get off and get a drink.” His two new friends laugh at this until finally they have everybody else in the car laughing too.

  After a pint or two with these new-found companions, Josh relieves himself of a quantity of pungent amber fluid in the convenience provided and goes on to visit another couple of his favorite public houses: the Halbert in Soho, with its heraldic shields covering the walls, and the Maid and Lamb by the London Bridge, where he finds old Paddy O’Doughterty, who was sitting there in that same corner by the chimney when Joshua first visited this place thirty years ago.

  “How does it go then, Paddy?”

  “It goes very dry, Josh. Have you got a penny then for a gin for an old man?”

  “You can’t get a gin for a penny, Paddy, but I’ve got a half crown.”

  “Bless you, Josh, you’re a man o’ courage and wisdom, and a saint on top o’ that.” After a moment he mutters, “You could when I was a lad.”

  Josh has a gin with Paddy to keep him company, then he sets out farther across East London. He has got beyond the end of the Tube now and he takes a red bus to the Isle of Dogs. At the Watermans Arms the host, like himself, is an Australian and an old sailor, someone he knew in his Blackbirding days. The host asks him jovially who he has been marrying lately.

  “Oh that’s all past now, Bruce. I’ve got religion now. I don’t chase the skirts anymore and I’ve given up drinking.”

  “What’ll it be then? A pint o’ the usual?”

  “Bitter.”

  Bruce has a pint with him, for old times. Usually he doesn’t drink with the customers.

  “Many a year’s gone by, Josh. You remember the Sally?”

  “Don’t I though. A fine vessel. A topsail schooner’s a bitch to handle downwind, though, and she doesn’t beat to windward very well either. Half a ship and half a schooner. Still, we did very well in her.”

  “Those were the days. That cruise in the Carnival. And the Wesley J. Bowen.”

  “We were young then, Bruce. Not a care in the world. Didn’t mind the hard knocks. Those skippers were no angels, Bruce. Like old Keppel on the Sally. A crook and a murderer, damn his eyes.”

  “A bleedin’ old pirate, is what he was.”

  “What were we? I always felt sorry for those black lads.”

  “Not me. Somebody was going to do it. Might as well be us.”

  “Some of ’em never came back to their islands again.”

  “Most of ’em never.”

  “Crew shared the profits of the voyage. I made a lot of money in those days.”

  “So did we all.”

  “Where’s it all now, Bruce?”

  “Gone where the Dutchman left his anchor.”

  Bruce wipes the bar with his beery rag. “Times change. Now it’s all steam, and ships even fly around in the air. You hear about that dirigible they’ve got down at Croydon, Josh? Lots o’ folks going down to look at it.”

  “That so?”

  “They’ve got some high aim in mind. They’re going to save the world, or fly it to heaven or something.”

  Josh says, “Now this dirigible, Bruce, is run by a woman. When a woman runs something, it’s going to turn out different than when a man does it. I have a great admiration for the fair sex, Bruce. Always have had. And this woman that’s in charge of this dirigible is going to do something remarkable with it. She bought it with her own money. Doesn’t owe a penny to anyone. Has green eyes and sees visions.”

  “How do you know so much about it, Josh?”

  “I read the papers same as you.”

  “You sure you haven’t married her, Josh? You seem to know a lot about her.”

  “I am acquainted with her a little. Haven’t married her yet.”

  “Seems she’s got something called the Society of Love.”

  “The Guild of Love. This woman is going to do something remarkable, Bruce. You wait and watch the papers.”

  “With your help, I wouldn’t be surprised if she had triplets.” Joshua goes out into the sunshine on the quay. He watches a steamer giving three long hoots as she backs out to start her voyage to China, and a tug pushing a barge of sand down the river, the same one the Captain saw at Lambeth a couple of hours before. A woman passes and he looks to see if she is pretty; he can’t tell because she has one of these new-fangled cloche-hats pulled down over her head.

  Bruce is right about him, of course. It’s only an accident that he hasn’t married Moira yet. For Joshua is philoprogenitive, that’s the word for it. It isn’t the love of woman that drives him on, although he isn’t averse to this, but the pleasure of making babies. He’s always been like this, and he hasn’t changed at the age of sixty. That’s a long time, he reflects, as the steamer blows her whistle again to get the barge out of the way. Loves babies and loves making ’em. Women are necessary to enjoy this pleasure, of course, and he’s fond of them too.

  *

  Joshua was born in Townsville, a little seaport on the Australian coast, and ran away to sea when he was still a lad. For years he roamed around the world, on sailing ships if he could manage it; he didn’t care for those stinkpots with sweating slaves shoveling coal into their bowels down below. A sailing ship is clean, and it’s silent, and it’s one with nature, and every one’s a beauty. Even the Sally, his first ship in which he went blackbirding in the islands, creaky as she was and leaky in the seams. Old Keppel was her skipper, that son of a bitch. They steered clear of Samoa and Fiji and called at the smaller places, little spots of green in the sea with coral reefs around them. In each place they went in through the pass in the reef (tricky steering that, Keppel could handle a schooner all right) and signed up the Kanaka boys to work on the plantations in the Solomons. If they weren’t convinced by the tales of high wages and easy living, they plied them with whisky and carried them on board stiff. In the Solomons, m
ost of them died of consumption or from being beaten about the head by the overseers, or pined away from homesickness. It wasn’t a pretty business, all in all, but when you’re young you don’t brood much about such things. When they signed off they had to persuade Keppel with their fists to pay them their shares.