The Lonely Voyage

by Max Hennessy

  ‘What the hell are you fiddling at down there?’ I was asked.

  ‘I’ve lost my bag,’ I said. I was panting and a bit desperate. ‘It had all my clothes in it. All my belongings.’

  ‘That’s right,’ the woman said, her tones more friendly. ‘I saw him come in with it, now I think on. What was it like, sonny?’

  ‘It was a brown one,’ I explained. ‘With my name on it. Jess Ferigo.’

  ‘Blimey, yes, I remember. Yer pal took it.’

  ‘My pal?’

  ‘The little bloke you come in with. ’Im with the rat face and the teeth like off a corpse.’

  I stared round wildly. ‘Where is he? Where did he go?’

  The man waved a glass of whisky at a door on the other side of the bar. ‘’E went through there. A bit sharp ’e was, too. Didn’t waste no time.’

  I hardly looked at him. ‘Thanks,’ I said and darted through the door he indicated.

  I found myself in the main street where the gas-lamps glimmered wetly in the mist. A prowling cat stared at me from an alley-end. But that was all.

  VIII

  The rain hadn’t slackened much as I made my way round all the addresses I could remember from the cards in Nanjizel’s hat-band in the hope of finding him. By that time I was in a panic-stricken haste that made me heedless of my saturated clothes. But I could have saved my breath. I hadn’t a hope in hell of finding him. At most of the addresses they’d never even heard of him. In fact, by the look of them they didn’t run to visiting-cards at all.

  At one of them, a dingy two-up-and-two-down, the door was opened by a slatternly woman with a cigarette drooping between her lips and I stared at her for half a minute before I realized she wore nothing under the dowdy kimono that covered her.

  ‘All right, son,’ she said good-naturedly. ‘’Ave a good look, then tell us what you’ve come for.’

  When I mentioned Nanjizel, though, her hair nearly stood on end with fury. ‘Just let me get ’old of that little swine,’ she said, ‘an’ I’ll screw ’is neck round. The last beggar ’e brought ’ere tried to break the joint up.’

  I trudged from one dreary reach-me-down to another. Almost without exception, they lolled over the narrow streets as though they were tired, with brown-papered windows and no lights beyond the dirty glimmer that showed the entrance. Full of weary old men they were, the human debris of the dockside. The sharks and the old mariners whose cash had gone on drink. The street touts and the wharfside lags. The match vendors and the bootlace hawkers. The newspaper sellers and every variation of seaport hotchpotch. Men without hope for the most part. Old men and men with a load of care on their shoulders, but none of them the shuffling little rat in the bowler hat I was after.

  I stumbled back to the docks, dog-tired with the tramp round the town, still not quite sober after the rum, angry with myself and everybody else…

  The fury I felt against Nanjizel had died away by the time I reached the waterfront again. Inside me now there was only a sullen, impersonal resentment. I was kicking myself for a fool. I’d lived within sight of the docks all my life, and I’d seen sailors in every stage of drunkenness relieved of their money by every dodge and fiddle there was under the sun. And yet I’d been caught by a shifty little rogue like Nanjizel, whom I ought to have spotted for what he was as soon as I saw him.

  I stopped, dog-weary, and leaned on a row of iron railings beside the dead, heavy-looking water that was lit fitfully by the reflection of the riding lights of shipping. Something inside me was nagging at me like a physical pain, something that urged me to get away over the horizon that stretched, rolling and mysterious, beyond the curtain of darkness. Everything about me strengthened it into a hard knot of determination – the bowed shop windows, with their uneven panes, full of oilskins, dungarees, knives, belts, chests, patent logs and binnacle lamps. The Africa Pilot and The Manual of Seamanship. Everything the mariner needed. The cobbled streets and the few hurrying figures that had the smell of the sea about them. The brine that coated everything when the wind blew and whipped up the water to a fine spray. Even the floating patch of garbage where half-a-hundred gulls would wheel and sweep in the morning, picking up refuse in their beaks and soaring away to circle the neighbouring vessels before swooping to dive for more.

  Out on the river a ship’s siren sounded. It was heavy and lonely, mourning on the night air that struck coldly through my clothes. I turned up my collar, suddenly conscious of weariness, and, stuffing my hands into my pockets, moved away along the docks. I’d only the prospect of a hard bed in a park shelter before me.

  As I turned a corner towards the main road my feet caught the sprawling figure of a man. He lay face down on the cobbled pavement, one arm half round a bollard. At first I thought he was dead, attacked for his pay by one of Nanjizel’s pals, then I realized he was moving, kicking feebly to regain his feet.

  I knelt down beside him and turned him over, searching for an injury. But instead I received a blast of stale liquor in my face that turned my stomach over. He was drunk, not dead. Stinking. Canned as they come. Ripe as an old kipper.

  ‘Drowning,’ he said thickly. ‘Drowning in a bloody puddle. Couldn’t lift a hand to save m’self.’

  Then, by the light of a neighbouring gas-lamp that roared as the breeze caught it, I became aware of a sea-chest on its side nearby, and a deep-sea kit-bag lolling as drunkenly as its owner in another puddle. Horatio Boxer was the name painted across it in black, the words written in a bold, strong hand, starkly on its side. Horatio Boxer.

  I laughed – a bit lightheadedly.

  ‘Well, fancy meeting you,’ I said. ‘Fancy bumping into you tonight.’

  I suddenly felt I was among friends and the docks seemed less oppressive. Yorky wasn’t far away, I knew.

  I helped Old Boxer to a sitting position, in the puddle. It wasn’t easy. His legs and arms seemed almost boneless.

  ‘Sea tomorrow,’ he said, his voice heavy, and I struggled to hold him upright as he sagged again. ‘Little celebration. Gets me legs.’ He choked suddenly, fished in his mouth and brought out a set of false teeth which he stuffed into his pocket. ‘That’s better,’ he said, and he was trying to concentrate sufficiently to see me, In spite of the physical effort he put into it, though, he could obviously see only a few blurred lights and someone attempting to get him on his feet.

  He heaved himself up, trying to help, but his legs and arms refused to work properly. He spat out grit and rain-water from his mouth and tried again to see what was going on. But I could tell from his eyes that his vision was out of balance.

  He managed at last to get to his feet. I was trying to button his coat against the rain.

  ‘Avast there!’ His angry mind seemed to tell him he was accepting charity in the form of help and he shoved me away fretfully. ‘I can do that. I’ve got two hands, haven’t I?’ he said sarcastically. He spread them in front of him. ‘A right and a left. Each with four fingers and a thumb. See?’

  He fumbled hopelessly with the buttons, then, giving up in disgust, he staggered to a doorway where he sat down on the wet stone steps. They must have struck cold through the seat of his trousers for he tried to heave himself up again, then he sketched a shrug and gave up. His hat over one eye, he stared at me owlishly.

  ‘S’maritan,’ he mumbled, his tongue getting round the word with difficulty. ‘Good S’maritan.’

  ‘Been having a bit of a drink?’ I asked brightly. I was collecting the few odds and ends that lay scattered about – a brown paper package of soap bars, a packet of needles, a pencil and some cheap notepaper, a tin mug.

  Old Boxer squinted as he struggled to take in the meaning of the words. ‘Only one,’ he said. ‘Lasted all week.’

  ‘Where’re you goin’?’ I asked.

  ‘Archibald Harvey.’ His tongue stumbled a bit over the name. ‘Starvation bastard she is, too.’

  ‘Those your bags?’ I queried, indicating the luggage in the roadway.

  Old
Boxer gaped dully round him. He was focusing his eyes now but with a lot of trouble. He nodded and moaned softly to himself. ‘My God!’ he said. ‘My God!’

  He dragged himself to his feet with the help of the bent iron railings on the steps and stood swaying, huge in the gas-light.

  ‘Boxer’s the name,’ he announced suddenly, and it was clear he hadn’t recognized me. ‘Horatio Bloody Boxer.’

  For the first time in three years I was able to study him closely as he swayed there. He was gaunt, with his bedraggled appearance and rain-soaked muddy suit, and as he took three hurried steps backwards to keep his balance the light caught his face and I saw the years had worked hard on him. He’d been good-looking in a weak sort of way that had nothing to do with his heavy features, but now he was an old man with a hollow, creased neck. And I knew there couldn’t be much difference between his age and Dig’s.

  Old Boxer glowered as he realized I was watching.

  ‘’Smatter?’ he asked suddenly. ‘Never seen a man drunk before?’

  I noticed that shabby grandeur of his again as he spoke. I’d noticed it once before, the day we were all up in front of the beaks. It seemed pathetic, but it was magnificent, and there was no trace of shame.

  ‘You’ll see me drunk again,’ he said. ‘On the Archibald Harvey. Bottle Boxer, the Boozer’s Gloom, they call me.’

  We stared at each other in the lamplight. I didn’t know what to do next. Then Old Boxer swung out an arm in a gesture that almost put him on his back again.

  ‘My bags,’ he said grandly. ‘Get me aboard. Give you a bob.’

  I grinned. ‘Right you are,’ I said.

  I lifted the sea-chest by its handle and stuffed the kit-bag under my arm. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s have you.’

  ‘My God!’ Old Boxer growled. He lifted his face to the sky and the rain. ‘A deck-boy who sounds his aitches! Praise be to God, a deck-boy without a snotty nose!’

  I was just going to protest when he went on:

  ‘Go home, young man,’ he said. ‘Go home to your mother.’

  I shook his arm, annoyed that he hadn’t recognized me. ‘Don’t you know me?’ I asked. ‘Don’t you know who I am?’

  He stared owlishly at me, then shook his head so violently that his hat fell off. I put it back again.

  ‘No,’ he mumbled. ‘Never seen you before.’

  ‘Go on,’ I smiled. ‘Of course you have.’

  ‘You accusing me of being a liar?’ He was indignant immediately, ‘Never, I said. Not once.’

  I decided to let the matter drop since he was obviously drunk and he went on:

  ‘Don’t go to sea, my boy,’ he said grandly. ‘Never go to sea.’

  He held out a hand to indicate the shipping nearby.

  ‘Ten days on one of those hookers,’ he said, ‘and you’ll have learned all the pornographic wit that’s ever been scraped up out of all the sewers in every corner of the world. Set a course home to your mother before it’s too late.’

  As he finished he tottered forward unsteadily. I caught him by the arm and began to lead him in rolling, generous curves along the cobbled wharf. The bobby at the dock gate stared at us through the rain that ran down the windows of his shelter but didn’t attempt to stop us.

  Following Old Boxer’s vague gestures and vaguer directions, I helped him along the wharfside. It was dark in the shadow of the warehouses, and we stumbled between the railway lines and under the towering black bows of freighters that were thrown into silhouette by the lights above their decks. Here and there a steam winch was clattering noisily as stores were hauled aboard and a few shabby dock workers huddled in doorways out of the rain near the giant cranes that reared like gibbets above us. A corrugated-iron sheet high on the side of one of the warehouses clanged and rattled as it swung in the wind that whipped the rain away.

  Once we fell as Old Boxer lost control of his feet and they got between mine. We sprawled on the puddled cobbles and the kit and the parcels went rolling away into the shadows.

  ‘Pardon me crossing your bows,’ he said gravely as I hauled him to his feet. ‘Me steering’s shot to hell.’

  I was getting tired and angry by this time. At first it had been a joke, but now it had ceased to be funny. I hurriedly brushed the mud from my clothes and, hoisting Old Boxer’s kit into position again, we set off once more.

  I was more than glad when I found myself alongside an ugly black ship with a single, gaunt smoke-stack. The deck lights that glistened in reflection on her salty sides made the wet rigging a shining spider-web of ropes, and threw the cobbles of the wharf into sharp relief. High on her bows I could see the name, Archibald Harvey, in shadowy lettering.

  ‘Come on,’ I said to Old Boxer, who had lapsed into a coma. ‘Nearly there now.’

  Together we stumbled up the gangway, Old Boxer’s feet bumping behind us, and half fell on to the narrow deck that was crowded with tangled mooring-ropes and heaped tarpaulins. Aft, coal was roaring down a chute into the bunkers and a heavy cloud of dust was settling on the wet decks. The noise was deafening.

  Forrard, in the shelter of the forecastle, were crates of hungry chickens and pigs, and they were all setting up a din of their own in rivalry.

  The watchman, who was smoking at the head of the gangway, glanced once at us, but he said nothing.

  ‘Forrard,’ Old Boxer mumbled. ‘Forrard, lad. Full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes.’

  We found the forecastle with difficulty and stumbled up the alleyway. The deck smell of tar and oil grew stronger here, and finally I found myself in a cramped space in the eyes of the ship, hard beneath the forecastle head, in a tiny triangular cabin that smelled of paint and grease and hot oil.

  Yorky was there, wearing a stiff collar and a blue suit with a gold watchchain big enough to hold a prize bull. He got up from a scrubbed bench where he’d been sitting holding his head and disinterestedly thumbing through a copy of True Love Stories.

  ‘Old ’Orace, is it?’ he queried dully, and he, too, failed to recognize me. ‘Shove ’im in ’ere, mate.’

  ‘My name’s not ’Orace,’ Old Boxer mumbled. ‘Confound you, Yorky, give me my proper tag.’

  ‘Ain’t no time to call you ’Oratio,’ Yorky said, rising and stumbling over the concertina that was between his feet. ‘Ain’t got all day. My Uncle Bill was called Osbaldestone, but nobody ever called ’im owt but Bill to ’is dying day. ’Orace should be good enough for you.’

  ‘Ach, shut your rattle!’ Old Boxer snapped. ‘Yap yap yapl You’re a windy old flea-bag!’

  ‘Am I, ’Orace?’ Yorky said wearily. ‘All right. Now, come on, let’s ’ave you nicely tucked up and in bed, see.’

  ‘Thank you, Yorky.’ Old Boxer was meek all of a sudden. ‘Always look after Old Horace, don’t you?’

  ‘You’re welcome, I’m sure,’ Yorky pointed out. ‘Now, come on, get your ’ead down. You’ll be as right as rain after a bit of a kip and yer bowels moved in the mornin’.’ He nodded to me as he shoved Old Boxer’s legs into the bunk with a deference that belonged properly to a manservant. Then he tucked a blanket round the old man’s sprawling figure and sat down and held his head again.

  Then he looked up sharply. His dulled eyes were staring, ‘I’ll be jiggered!’ he said. ‘Rat me if it ain’t young Jess!’

  He grinned at me, then winced as it appeared to make his head throb. ‘Fancy seein’ you,’ he said. ‘Fancy you findin’ Old ‘Orace.’

  He shook his head dejectedly.

  ‘I told ’im not to go ashore tonight, kid,’ he went on; ‘“’Orace,” I said. “You’ll get soused again. You know you bleeden will. You allus do.” Didn’t know where to put ’isself. Didn’t know what to say. But ’e went all the same.’ He let his words trail away dismally and began to scratch himself. ‘Don’t know why I bother with ’im,’ he ended.

  Neither did I. Neither did anyone else. People just did bother with him, even the police. He had the manner that made people take trouble
on his behalf.

  Yorky reached under his blankets and produced a bottle of whisky. He took a swig and held it out to me. ‘’Ave a mouthful,’ he suggested.

  He indicated Old Boxer. ‘Scuttles ’isself with booze every time ’e goes ashore,’ he said. ‘Fair creases me, ’aulin’ ’im about when ’e comes back. Told ’im so often, I ’ave. “’Orace,’ I’ve said, ‘you’re a dirty old drunkard.”’

  He took another swig from the bottle. ‘You ain’t comin’ to sea with us, are you, lad?’ he asked, and he looked anxiously at me.

  I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said, ‘but I wouldn’t mind.’

  Yorky studied me silently. ‘’Ave a gasper,’ he suggested.

  He pushed a packet of cigarettes along the bench towards me. Then he produced a tin of tobacco and began to roll one for himself. He stared at the smoke that curled upwards as he drew the first puffs from it. ‘’Ard life,’ he said. ‘Live in ’ere, y’know. ’Ell of a place in ’eavy weather. Like a bloomin’ oven in the tropics.’

  ‘I’d manage, I suppose,’ I said eagerly. I stared round at the forecastle. It was tawdry despite the white paint. There were comfortless iron bunks covered with sacking mattresses, and piles of kit lay about, dumped down by its owners before their last jaunt ashore.

  ‘Meself, kid,’ Yorky said, ‘my tastes run to a chip-shop or a small-’olding and a few chickens when I gets the cash saved up, but there’s no accounting for tastes.’

  ‘I never knew you wanted to leave the sea,’ I said. I was surprised, knowing Yorky’s habits.

  ‘Always did,’ he said. ‘Only time I managed it, though, was when I worked ashore with ’Orace. Allus do me wages in the first two nights ashore.’

  ‘What on?’

  ‘Same as ’im.’ Yorky indicated Old Boxer, who was snoring now. ‘Same as all sailors. Booze and women.’

  He pulled on his cigarette and stared at the deck between his feet for a while, then he spat into a box in the middle of the forecastle.

  ‘It’s easy to get to sea, Jess, me old flower,’ he said. ‘Make no mistake. But it’s flamin’ ’ard to get shot of it. I’ve tried. Fancied a job shoving a broom round the gutter once. But what did they tell me when I went to sign on at the Labour Exchange? “Says ’seaman’ ’ere on yer card, mate,” the bloke said – snotty as yer please. “Seamen’s wanted down the docks – bad – and we ain’t no openings in the road-sweepin’ profession just now. Orf yer go.” I didn’t – not then – but a fortnight on the dole changed me mind. Besides, it gets ’old of you. Make no mistake about it.’ He spat again. ‘Perhaps it’s as well in the long run. Once you’ve been a sailor you never settle ashore. There ain’t a town big enough to ’old you.’