by Max Hennessy
‘Praise be,’ Old Boxer said fervently. His tones were light but there was a hint of seriousness underneath his gaiety. ‘The first thing that always occurs to me when I get ashore,’ he said, ‘is what an old bum I am.’
‘Oh, dry up, mate,’ Yorky said, glancing up from his paper. ‘Always so cheerful, you are, when you’re out on the razzle. Why don’t you smile and give yer face a joy-ride, ’Orace?’
‘Damn me, my name’s not ’Orace, you old grannie. I was called after Nelson. Nelson, you old windbag, do you hear ? What do you think he’d have done if Hardy had called him ’Orace?’
‘If you’re called after ’im,’ Yorky said, ‘I’ll bet ’e spins in ’is grave like a bloody ’ummin’ top every time ’e sees you ashore. Blimey, fancy a bloke like you leading the Royal Navy into action!’
Old Boxer sat down. His face was bitter and that inexplicable curtain of silence had fallen on him.
‘Cheer up,’ Yorky grinned. ‘’Ere, let’s ’ave another and I’ll carry you to the Board of Trade for paying-off meself. Come on, you ain’t goin’ to see yer ole shipmate turn ’is back on the sea without a fiddlin’ little drink to see ’im off, are yer?’
Old Boxer’s depression had disappeared entirely by the time we reached the Board of Trade building. We were signing off there and drawing our pay in the drab rooms where the names of ships and the times of their arrivals and departures were scrawled on blackboards. But he wasn’t alone in his mellowness, for the rest of the crew had been hanging around the bars killing time as well and they were now propping up the walls and corners, their eyes dull, their voices noisy. The old endless, pointless forecastle argument was going strong, as it had been ever since Drake sailed to meet the Armada:
‘She does, you know.’
‘She doesn’t, you know.’
‘She bloody does.’
‘She bloody doesn’t.’
‘Just one to see you away, Yorky,’ Old Boxer said as we trooped outside again, ‘and then you can shove off.’
‘I wouldn’t mind something to eat myself,’ I pointed out. ‘Eat!’ Old Boxer stared. ‘Leave that to the little men. The years are creeping up on me and I’ve only a short time left. Let’s enjoy ourselves.’ He was gay again. It was that gaiety that was usually followed by foul temper or maudlin stupidity. You could always tell. Once he started using fancy words he was well on the way. ‘Tonight, I feel a giant. I’m the Emperor of Rome. I’m the King of Spain. By God, I do believe I’m the Pope!’
‘You’ll be a flamin’ nuisance afore the night’s out,’ Yorky commented dryly. ‘I know you, ’Orace. I’ve told you afore. I told you last time we was ashore in Jamaica that you were a dirty, drunken old man. ’E didn’t know where to put ’isself,’ he ended in an aside to me. ‘Did you, ’Orace?’
‘Ach, you muling ninny,’ Old Boxer said cheerfully. ‘You self-centred, pot-bellied old windbag.’
Yorky wagged his head, unmoved by the insults. ‘You’re always the same,’ he said. ‘Allus start off on me. Allus open yer big trap and try to talk me down. Cunning as a doss-house rat, you are.’
Somehow, we found ourselves in a dark place full of aspidistras and marble-topped tables.
Old Boxer gaped round in disgust. ‘My God,’ he said, ‘it’s as cheerless as a workhouse fire. Call up the liquor, Yorky, before the chill gets into my bones.’
That drink became two and eventually three. Within the hour Yorky had fished his concertina from under the seat. ‘’Ow about a tune, mates? “Shenandoah”? “Old Bull and Bush”? “Tararaboomdeay”? “They’re Shifting Father’s Grave to Build a Sewer”?’ Within another hour we were on the street again, with Yorky swopping insults with the landlord, who glared at us from his front steps.
‘Go on, get away with you,’ the landlord said, ‘before I call a bobby. Picking fights with a chap’s customers!’
* * *
As the day drew on and the grey damp night shut down the three of us dodged from one dockside dive to another. It was nothing new. We’d repeated the same procedure every time we’d touched port in the past few years.
We swaggered down dripping alleyways that re-echoed with our noise, splashing through the puddles, oblivious to the water that spotted our trousers. From parlour to tap-room we went, from fun fairs where the loudspeakers made your head ring to fish-and-chip queues or coffee-stalls for a bun or a cup of tea.
Old Boxer led the way. One moment he was noisy and hilarious, magnificent in his superb contempt of everyone around him, the next shuffling and bowed and sour. Yorky’s eyes were dull by this time and he’d acquired a second parcel, a new suit and a pair of braces. One end of the braces hung through a tear in the paper.
The time was a noisy nightmare of clattering traffic and taxis: a sailor’s not the one to argue about the price of transport on his first night ashore. One smoky room followed another, and note after note changed hands as the party grew wilder and bigger with the addition of a Latvian greaser and the donkeyman off one of Yorky’s former ships, to say nothing of a couple of Yorky’s young ladies, brazen-faced harpies in cheap jewellery, the sort who’d do their own grandma in for a glass of gin and a drag at a ship’s Woodbine.
There was a restless hour at the cinema which I’d just begun to enjoy when I was hauled away again to a bar-room harsh with bright lights and gilt mirrors. There was an argument with a bobby and a brawl with a coster, a shoving match that ended in maudlin embraces.
Eventually, long before closing time, I had to drop out of the party. ‘I’m going home to bed,’ I said. ‘I’ve drunk enough to float a battleship. I’m sick of it.’
‘Sick of it?’ Yorky said, and his drooping eyes opened. ‘The night’s young, kid. Use yer loaf!’
‘You can’t go away like that, dearie,’ one of the women said, clinging to my arm. ‘We was just getting to know you.’
‘Such a nice, well-be’aved young gentleman,’ the other smirked. ‘Full of fun, I bet.’ And she winked archly at me.
‘Let the lad go!’ Old Boxer broke the chain of linked arms and thundered the words unexpectedly. ‘He’s had enough. Let him go and sleep it off. He’s not like the rest of us with a sponge for a stomach and a spirit keg for a nose. Ought to have gone long since, if the truth were known, instead of trailing through these damned alleys after us. If we’d had any sense we’d have sent him. Go home, Jess. And sleep well. Get to the devil out of here to where it’s decent and clean.’
He turned to Yorky and the others, and the two women hurriedly let go my arms as he glared at them. ‘And one word out of any of you,’ he stormed. ‘And I’ll drive it back down your throats with this.’ He flourished a half-empty rum bottle and they shuffled off slowly and unwillingly. I stood in a dark archway out of the drizzle and watched them move unsteadily away, shepherded by Old Boxer, then I turned away, suddenly dog-tired and sleepy with drink.
And as I did so I stumbled and almost fell into the arms of Kathleen Fee.
* * *
Katie Fee had grown into a tall, frail-looking girl with dark eyes and a pale face that belied the strength in her.
She must have had a heart as big as the King George the Fifth Graving Dock, for she’d lifted herself by sheer will-power out of the dark streets and the drab, vicious environments where she’d been reared, clean out of the farthest backstreets of Dockland, where the long, straight rows of terraced houses ended by the river in crazy alleyways and dark courts. I’d had letters from her, so I knew.
As a child she’d seen the corners of these courts filled at night by amorous sailors and their painted lady-friends, and festooned with strings of shabby grey washing during the day. She’d seen her father bring home every kind of dockside tart he could find when he came from sea. She’d seen him beat her mother stupid, and in every sort of drunkenness, and finally watched him die of injuries received in a dockside brawl. She’d seen her mother work herself to a standstill trying to keep going the lodging-house he’d left her with, a tall teneme
nt with a ladder of a staircase, where she’d never charged enough.
When her mother had died, her heart broken by overwork, Kate had cut herself clean away from Pat and found a home in lodgings at the other side of the town, a cheap place, all she could afford. A homely enough place, I suppose, but one where she was often lonely.
And maybe she was extra lonely that night, for when I bumped into her she seemed to clutch eagerly at my conversation as though it were an oasis of friendliness. I knew she was glad to see me. I could always tell what she was thinking. Her face was too honest for her to hide her feelings.
‘Jess,’ she said when she saw me. ‘Jess Ferigo.’
I raised my hat clumsily and tried to make my eyes focus on her. But they were dizzy with drink and for a moment I thought she was just another dockside tart trying a pick-up.
Then I realized that her neat figure had none of their blousy tawdriness, and I held my hat unsteadily to my chest and frowned, struggling with the vague familiarity of her pale features.
‘Sorry, miss,’ I said. ‘Can’t seem to place you.’
Then Kate must have seen I was far from sober, for she spoke more slowly, like a teacher to a daft child.
‘My name’s Kathleen Fee, Jess,’ she said carefully, as though she were afraid I wouldn’t remember her. ‘Surely you know me?’
I stared, then I smiled as I managed to get her features into focus.
‘Sure, yes,’ I said. ‘Now I can tell. Got a bit of a headache,’ I added by way of explanation. ‘Making me a bit dizzy.’
Kate smiled. ‘You need a coffee,’ she said quietly. ‘Come on. You could do with sobering-up before you go any further, Jess.’
I grinned. I couldn’t help it. It was so naive and frank.
‘Yes, I could,’ I said. ‘I’ve had too much. I’ve been trying to get away from the docks since midday, Still’ – I shrugged – ‘it’s the first time I’ve been in the town for donkey’s years. A chap feels like celebrating.’
She took no notice. ‘In here,’ she said, turning into a small tea-room hard under the lee of a shipyard wall. ‘Have you been home yet?’ she added.
I sat down, conscious of my unsteadiness. I was trying to kid her I wasn’t drunk, but I was just a bit too precise in everything I did to be convincing. She didn’t seem impressed, anyway.
‘Hadn’t thought of going home,’ I admitted, and I felt a bit of an oaf as I spoke. ‘Only likely to be here for a short while. Going up to London to sit for my mate’s ticket. Officer, y’know. Back to sea in a day or two.’
This wasn’t strictly true. I’d more than three weeks at my disposal before I’d got to present myself for examination, but I felt that Kate wouldn’t be interested in my reasons for preferring Pat Fee’s lodging-house to Atlantic Street.
Her voice was gentle as she replied, and her eyes were wide and dark. ‘Of course you must go home,’ she said. ‘Your father would be upset if you didn’t.’
‘Would he?’ I asked, frowning. Somehow I’d imagined that Dig, with his shy, aloof manner, would have learned to do without me. I’d thought he’d have taken refuge in his books and managed to put me aside, clean out of his dusty life. I’d had a few letters from him at first but I’d never answered them.
I stared at Kate’s pale, earnest face. The café was warm and the drink was making me dizzy again so that her features were more often blurred than not. I opened my mouth to explain a few things to her then I shut it again with a click. The words I wanted just wouldn’t come in the right order. Besides, I told myself, she wouldn’t be interested in the fact that Dig wasn’t my father. Obviously she imagined he was.
‘Do you think he’d like to see me?’ I queried, more for conversation, and because the simple words were all I felt I could trust my tongue to form just then, rather than because I was really concerned.
‘Of course he would,’ Kate said. She pushed my coffee towards me shyly, and she seemed suddenly and oddly happy to be doing things for me.
I began to smile at her. I was feeling steadier after the coffee and a little more sober. Suddenly, in the bright, gaudy café, the afternoon and evening I’d spent with Old Boxer and Yorky, hanging round the dark taverns of the dock area with hard-eyed harpies and drunken hangers-on for pals, seemed a dream that was miles away below the surface of my consciousness, somewhere down a deep well that sent confused echoes up to me. For years I’d done little else ashore, whether in England or abroad, nothing apart from chasing Old Boxer in and out of pubs. I suddenly realized how much I missed conversation, how much I missed delicacy in the forecastle, and just how much Kate’s cleanness and decency and her shy words fulfilled the need.
‘How is Dig?’ I said awkwardly, fiddling with my spoon. ‘How is he? And how’s my Ma?’
Kate told me and, as I thought of Ma, I wondered if I’d been a good enough son to her. But my concern was only the remorse of a sick visitor who hadn’t made his calls. Ma had never given me the chance to be a good son.
Kate must have seen me frown, for she laid her fingers lightly on my wrist. ‘You will go home, Jess, won’t you?’ she said. ‘I don’t know why you went to sea. I suppose it was some quarrel that’s none of my business. But you must go home. He needs you.’
As she spoke I felt ashamed of myself for my treatment of Dig, who, throughout the years, apparently hadn’t lost faith in me.
‘He’s never ceased to wait for you, Jess.’ Kate was still speaking in a low, earnest voice. ‘He’s a good man, Jess, and he deserves kindness.’
‘I’ll go home,’ I said seriously. ‘I promise you I’ll go, Kate.’ I frowned and rubbed my hand, across my eyes, feeling stupid and oafish. My mouth was sour and my stomach queasy with drink. ‘I’ve been a bit of a damn’ fool one way and another, I suppose.’ I looked at her and grinned and Kate smiled back at me. ‘And I’m sorry I’m a bit bottled. Perhaps I’ll see more of you. It’ll encourage me to slam the hatch down on the booze.’
Kate nodded in a vague sort of way, as though she hadn’t quite heard what I said. I felt she liked me, but I could see she wasn’t trusting herself to like me too much. I knew what the trouble was. I was a sailor, and her father had been a sailor. And she’d learnt to distrust sailors when they came home from sea. She’d seen her father in action ashore too often, and I suppose she thought I might be just another of the same sort, It upset me a bit when I realized what she was thinking and whom she was comparing me with, but I caught on in the end and saw her point of view. And, anyway, she smiled and finally agreed.
As we rose to go I saw an agitated figure in the window of the café. It was Yorky, pale-faced and sober, waving his arms and pulling faces to attract my attention, his nose pressed to a white splodge on the glass that was steamed inside with the heat. I grabbed Kate’s arm and hurried her to the door.
‘Oh, Christ!’ Yorky seemed to be trying to draw his breath and speak and put the parcels and the concertina he was carrying out of his way all at the same time.
Then he realized Kate was with me and he pulled himself together.
‘Sorry, me old flower, if I’ve interrupted yer,’ he said. ‘I didn’t notice your young lady.’ He raised his hat to Kate with a clumsy gesture that was impeded by a ruptured parcel and the concertina, then he burst out as though he could contain the words no longer: ‘Jess, come an’ bail ’im out. They’ve got him in the bloody lock-up.’
II
I got him out. I argued with the police sergeant for an hour. The old old story: sailor in his home town for the first time in years. Fortunately, the sergeant was new to the district and didn’t know Old Boxer.
‘Well,’ he said – he was a bit doubtful at first – ‘I’d like to help you, son, but you know how it is. Regulations are regulations. ’Sides’ – his voice rose indignantly – ‘who’s he think ’e is, anyway ? The way ’e spoke to me, ’e made me feel like a bloomin’ butler. Not nasty, as you might say, but sort of ’aughty. If I ’adn’t caught ’old of meself sharp, I’d ’a�
�� been feeling proud to look after ’im.’
I worked hard on that sergeant. I spun a yarn as long as my arm about Old Boxer’s wife waiting at home, and about his kids who were breaking their necks to see him. In the end he gave way.
‘Well, blimey,’ he said. ‘I got a son in the Merchant Navy and I wouldn’t like to think I might ’ave shopped one of ’is pals. ’E’s a bit wild ’imself, if the truth’s known, when ’e gets ’ome. Fair worries ’is Ma.’
In the end we got quite matey; especially when we found I’d been to the same school as his son. I even struck up a friendship with the lad to suit him, though I didn’t know him from Adam. It pleased the sergeant, though, and he finally agreed to let Old Boxer go if I didn’t say anything to anybody and saw that he behaved himself.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I’ll see to it.’
Old Boxer was lying on a bunk in one of the cells, his face pressed against the whitewashed wall, so that his mouth was pushed all askew. He looked pathetic and old, but there wasn’t much sympathy in me for him just then. I was angry at being dragged away from Kate.
I got him on to his feet, one arm round my neck, and sent Yorky for a taxi.
‘’Alf a sec’,’ the sergeant said. ‘Just let me ’ave a squint round to make sure the inspector’s not about. Then we’ll nip ’im out. I’ll give you a hand.’
Between us we dragged Old Boxer out of the police-station and shoved him into the taxi, on to the leather cushions that smelled partly of mildew and partly of polish. He leaned against me on the way back to Pat Fee’s until I gave him a shove, then he rolled over to the other side and Yorky had him for the rest of the journey.
Finally we lifted him out at the other end and heaved him up the stairs at Pat’s lodging-house, the whole fifteen-odd stone of him. Miles of steps there seemed, every one bare and squeaky like the last, and Old Boxer’s boots clattered on them enough to wake the dead. There wasn’t much ceremony about the way I shoved him into his room and let him bounce on to the bed.