by Max Hennessy
Before he could be stopped he’d slid away with the ease of a professional boxer escaping a clinch and was half-way through the door in a moment.
The man whirled. ‘No, you don’t!’ he shouted. ‘I know you, Pat Fee!’ And he was out of the door after Pat, and I was left alone almost before the scene had registered on my mind.
‘A proper card, that Fee,’ the barman pointed out casually as he wiped the sloppy counter. ‘I dare bet you half a dollar you’ll not see ’im in ’ere for a week or two.’
I finished my drink thoughtfully, my mind busy, and went to the door. There was no sign of Pat or his pal.
I shrugged. I was still thinking about Minnie. I’d forgotten Kate suddenly in remembering Minnie, and I felt better. I lit a cigarette and, putting on a roll to let everyone know I was just home from sea, I ran down the steps.
I was so busy cutting a dash with myself I never saw the woman I crashed into until it was too late.
‘Now look what you’ve done,’ she said, her voice shrill with indignation. ‘If only people would be more careful, there’d be fewer accidents.’ She pushed her hat straight, jerked her skirt and jacket into their proper places and began to smooth herself down.
‘People who don’t look where they’re goin’ shouldn’t be allowed on the streets,’ she went on loudly as she bent to pick up the parcels she’d dropped. ‘Well?’ She turned and looked up over her shoulder at me. ‘Don’t think of helping people, do you? An’ who’re you staring at? What you think I am? A tart, or something?’
I couldn’t say anything at first. I was gaping at her, delight in my eyes, my mouth in a wide smile.
‘Minnie,’ I managed to get out at last.
‘Who do you think you’re Minnie-ing?’ she said indignantly. ‘My, you’re a fast worker, aren’t you? You’ll be askin’ me out next.’
Then, as she saw me staring in obvious admiration, her temper softened and she thrust at her hair with plump white fingers, flattered and embarrassed.
I was still gaping, startled that she should appear so unexpectedly. All the anger I’d felt at Pat’s comments on her disappeared as I grinned at her.
She was no different from the Minnie I remembered. Just a little more mature. Just a little fuller and rounder. Her bosom was deeper and softer, and there were lines at the corners of her eyes. But otherwise she’d not altered a scrap. She was the same Minnie who’d kissed me to make me wet my britches and then had laughed at my embarrassment. But I’d forgotten all that now. To me, fresh home from sea and soft as any sailor over a girl – soft as a brush, I was – this was no bawdy Minnie, lusty and sensual. This was the Minnie I’d dreamed about in the night watches, the Minnie I’d sentimentally pictured as I chipped rusty ironwork and slapped on paint in the steaming heat of the tropics. This was the Minnie whose figure and face and soft body had come to my mind on torrid nights on the Equator, and given me sleepless, tossing hours, until the distance and the passage of years had finally made her image faint.
‘Minnie,’ I grinned, ‘don’t you remember me?’
She stared, then her full, red lips opened in a broad smile that showed strong white teeth, as sturdy and animal as herself.
‘Well, if it isn’t young Jess!’ She stared at me in genuine pleasure. ‘My Gawd, you’re a bit of a one, aren’t you? A proper card, you are.’
‘Remember that kiss you gave me, Minnie?’ I asked. ‘Before I went off to sea?’
‘Went off to sea, did you?’ Her eyes widened. ‘My word! You’re a caution. Of course I remember it. Let’s give you another for coming home.’ She flung her arms round my neck in a full-blooded hearty gesture and planted a noisy wet kiss smack on my lips.
I suddenly remembered what Pat had told me.
‘Heard your Ma was sick,’ I said awkwardly. ‘Sorry about it, Minnie.’
‘Sorry? So am I.’ She suddenly looked downcast and bent to pick up her parcels. ‘Hospital. That’s where she is, and me runnin’ the pub on me own.’
‘Looking after that place on your own?’ I asked. ‘Aren’t you frightened?’
‘Frightened? What, of them old bums as come in there? Not me.’ She looked capable of dealing with anyone or anything as she spoke. Then she was suddenly drooping and miserable again. ‘But I get sick of it, Jess. ’Tisn’t the work that’s hurting me. I’m strong as a horse. But I get scared in case Ma dies.’
‘You’ll be all right, Minnie,’ I clumsily tried to reassure her. ‘You’ve always got the business.’
‘That’s just the trouble,’ she snapped. ‘I haven’t. If Ma pops off, what happens to me? The licensing bench’ll have the licence off me right sharp, and no messing.’
‘Licence?’ I gaped, uncomprehending.
‘Yes, stupid. The pub! They won’t let an unmarried woman keep a pub. Didn’t you know that?’
‘Oh! Won’t they?’ I hadn’t been aware of the intricacies of the licensing laws.
‘Think I’ll not conduct the place properly,’ she said savagely. ‘Ma’s all right, being a widow. But I’m not a fit and proper person, not being married. Reckon I need a man about the place, they do. Off their onions, they are. Lot of old grannies. Queen Victoria stuff, that is. A man!’ She made a gesture that was very much like a spit. ‘Man! I can manage that lot as comes in the Steam Packet with one hand tied behind me back. Still’ – she gave me a sidelong glance and her eyes were veiled suddenly – ‘perhaps I could do with a man about the place sometimes, come to think of it. Come on home with me, Jess, and have a drink. I get a bit lonely at times. We can catch a bus along the road.’
‘Never mind the bus,’ I said enthusiastically, gallant as you please. ‘Let’s have a taxi.’
‘A taxi? My word.’ Minnie laughed. ‘I haven’t been in a taxi since I went to Pa’s funeral. You in the money, or something?’
‘Six months’ pay!’
‘Six months’ pay! My!’ Minnie took my hand in her hot, moist palm, ‘At sea all that time? Well, come and have a cup of tea with me and I’ll give you a meal such as you haven’t had since you left home, I’ll bet. I’m on me own. It’ll be cosy, just the two of us.’
I smiled down at her, conscious of a pulse in my temple that had started to throb.
‘Just me and you,’ Minnie said. ‘Won’t that be nice?’
V
From the moment that Minnie took me home I was a dead duck. I never left her alone in the days that followed. Sailors are simple people really, and I was no match for her slick sophistication, and for wits that had been sharpened by contact with men every day of her life. She had me trussed and hog-tied in twenty-four hours. Within two days there was room for no one but her in my brain.
Neglecting Dig, I began to hang around the Steam Packet, waiting for a chance to see her, smoking too many cigarettes, drinking too much ale and getting too little fresh air. I’d been admitted freely into the untidy back kitchen to do my drinking and Minnie would come with her glass of gin and talk to me while the rest of the Steam Packet struggled along with only an elderly barman to keep them company. It was there, even, with a cat pawing at one leg, that I had my suppers, prepared by Minnie’s own hands.
She was a clever woman, crafty even, and I never knew what she was thinking, or what was going on behind those veiled eyes of hers. She wasn’t in love with me. I knew that. She liked Pat Fee’s type best, the sort who could buy her things, but she seemed to snatch at my company just then as if I was the only eligible chap in the town. I suppose, if the truth were known, the reason for her mateyness was that Pat Fee’s interests were elsewhere just then. Several times in the past he’d had his eye on the Steam Packet, but he’d made the mistake of taking his embraces to other quarters just at the time Minnie’s Ma had gone to hospital. When I came home they were passing through one of the not infrequent periods when they weren’t on speaking terms.
As for me, I was being a fool, I knew, but I couldn’t do anything to stop it. There was something about Minnie that took the spine out
of my resolution. She was a lusty animal who needed a man’s arms round her and his lips on hers. She returned my embraces with gusto and enjoyment, and with twice the enthusiasm because she needed me to keep the licence. The Steam Packet was as much to Minnie as her life. It had been the source of income to her family for two or three generations, and I expect she couldn’t imagine herself living anywhere else.
Kate Fee might have saved me from my own foolishness, but there was a coolness between us that Minnie didn’t help to disperse. Had Kate only known it, I needed her tenderness and serenity after the tumult of life at sea. I needed her gentleness after the rough vulgarity of forecastle conversation that was centred around women, booze and ships – in that order. There’d been other girls in other ports but they’d been merely milestones in a sailor’s life, and in the warmth of Kate – like the warmth of a happy house – there was something that had been missing all my life. In the shabby, threadbare house in Atlantic Street there was precious little affection to spare for anyone with Ma as she was, and less still for me – the unwanted child.
Old Boxer and Yorky were still in town but keeping out of my way as Old Boxer had promised. Their money must have been running low, though, because I knew they’d begun to borrow on the wages of the next voyage. I saw them occasionally, bleary-eyed and stale-looking, often unshaven, their clothes rumpled through being slept in, Yorky with the inevitable parcel under his arm, bursting through its brown paper like a fat man’s stomach through his waistcoat. They were still living at Pat Fee’s lodging-house, feeding on sandwiches and buns and fish and chips.
When I met them they were diffident and cautious, as though the two of them, one vast and ramshackle, like some crumbling wreck, the other small and plump and white, rough and ready and Yorkshire as Ilkley Moor, had plotted to let me spend my leave in my own fashion, away for once from the sort of haunts we’d been in the habit of frequenting ashore.
It was ‘Having a good time, Jess?’ or ‘Ready for going back yet, Jess?’
My replies were always non-committal. I was too deep in my affair with Minnie to know exactly what was happening to me. She affected people like that, so they didn’t know whether they were coming or going. All I knew was that I was unsure of myself and my future. But I’d long ago made up my mind on one count.
‘I’m not going to take my ticket this trip,’ I said. ‘It can wait a bit longer. I’ve decided to enjoy myself instead.’
‘Don’t be a damned fool!’ Old Boxer snapped immediately. His look was sour with a fortnight’s drinking.
‘There’s plenty of time,’ I pointed out. ‘All the time in the world.’
‘There’s never plenty of time. I thought there was plenty of time and look where I’ve ended up.’
‘But you was so keen, mate.’ Yorky shoved his concertina from one arm to the other with an asthmatic wheeze as he spoke. ‘You can’t go off like that. We was looking forward to the party when you got your ticket, me and ’Orace. Jeeze, we’ll push the boat out that night!’
‘You can’t go anywhere without a mate’s ticket, you young fool,’ Old Boxer said irritably. ‘You don’t want to live in the forecastle with a bunch of old shellbacks like us for the rest, of your life, do you?’
I hesitated. ‘Might even take a shore job,’ I murmured. The idea had occurred to me some time before, but I was ashamed and half afraid of it, and I’d tried to forget it.
‘What!’ Yorky’s sudden start set the concertina squawking. ‘A born sailor like you?’
‘Shore job! Tchah!’ Old Boxer spluttered his disgust. ‘You talk like a Sunday-school teacher all of a sudden. What’s come over you? What is it, Jess?’ he asked more gently. ‘When a man like you talks like that it’s either a ship or a girl.’
‘It isn’t a ship,’ I said. ‘I’m in no hurry. That’s all.’
‘Dammit, you’re right, too,’ he agreed. ‘Then it’s a girl.’
I shrugged and nodded.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Suppose it is.’
Yorky had moved in front of me and was staring up at me excitedly. ‘Well, by gum,’ he said. ‘Is it that dark young lady I saw you with?’
Old Boxer was silent. ‘Thinking of marriage, Jess?’ he queried after a pause.
‘Might be,’ I admitted.
He scratched at his two-day-old beard, his fingernail making a rasping sound on the stubble.
‘Be careful, lad,’ he said earnestly. ‘Be careful, for God’s sake.’
‘Careful?’ I stared. ‘What for?’
‘Sailors are notoriously sentimental creatures, lad, especially where women are concerned. If only because they go for long periods without their company. Sure you aren’t seeing her through rose-tinted glass?’
‘’Course I’m not,’ I growled.
‘Well, what the devil is it?’ He stared at me with suddenly bright eyes. ‘Are you ashamed of her?’
I looked up sharply at him but his expression told me nothing of the thoughts that were going on inside his head. His words had caught me unawares, though, and for a moment I didn’t know how to answer. In the end I decided I couldn’t explain and I said nothing.
* * *
The Steam Packet was only a small place, but it had stood in Gibraltar Lane near to the river since before Trafalgar. It was a square, box-like little building of grey stone. Its interior was old-fashioned and had an air of faded gentility about it that hadn’t improved under the management of Minnie’s Ma with her slap-dash, untidy, gin-drinking habits. The steam packet it took its name from had long since disappeared and given place to the oil tankers that used the docks to discharge their cargoes. But the aspidistras and the old-fashioned pictures on the walls that were popular while it still plied remained, an odd, dusty background to the brighter chintzes and cheap prints that Minnie had introduced. The place had a suggestion of having lived beyond its time. Its ceilings were cracked, its planks feeble and its doors ill-fitting so that the whole structure seemed to groan when anyone crossed the floor.
Occasionally, when I was hanging about the bar there in the glow of Minnie’s smile, I saw Old Boxer and Yorky, eyeing me resentfully from the tap-room. They were looking for a sign that the affair was coming to an end, I reckon. They were waiting for me, putting off ship after ship in the hope I’d join them. As a result they were short of cash and often on the cadge, after free drinks, with Yorky offering a tune on his concertina in exchange.
‘What d’yer fancy, miss,’ he’d say to Minnie. ‘“Down at the old Bull and Bush” or “Tararaboomdeay”?’
His repertoire was limited, but Minnie always asked for something he could play. She was sharp enough to realize his goodwill was worth cultivating.
As for me, I was indifferent to anyone’s opinion by that time. There was only one thing in my consciousness. And that was Minnie. The desire to be near her, which had been a murmur in me ever since I was a boy, had grown to a shout now and I couldn’t deny it any longer.
And I was wanting more than merely Minnie’s conversation. God knows, it was threadbare enough. I was wanting Minnie herself. I was wanting to possess her, and the thought of being married to her stood out in my brain as big as the Queen Mary. Deep down inside me, I knew I was making a fool of myself, but some trick of fate had made us so that I could never quite throw her out of my mind.
Her disagreements with the elderly barman she employed became more frequent and violent – I didn’t know then they were cunningly engineered by Minnie’s diamond-sharp little brain – and they reached their climax one night in a crescendo of strong words and high voices that left me and Minnie alone in the Steam Packet at closing time.
Minnie was sniffing loudly as she wiped a glass in a corner.
‘Dunno what I’m going to do now,’ she mumbled. ‘People, never seem to behave like you expect ’em.’
‘We’ll manage all right, Minnie,’ I said awkwardly. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll be all right.’
‘It’s a good job it’s closing time.’
‘And tomorrow we’ll sign on somebody else. Somebody who’ll do as he’s told.’
‘Don’t know what I’m going to do about that licence if Ma pops off,’ she complained. ‘Them magistrates’ll think I can’t run a pub if I can’t keep a barman. People take advantage of me proper because I’m only a girl.’ She sniffed loudly. ‘Don’t dash off, Jess. Stay and have a bit of supper with me and a drink. I’m feeling a bit low.’
There was a huge fire in the back kitchen when we went there after we’d locked the doors and hung the glass-clothes over the pumps to dry.
‘Cold outside,’ Minnie said, putting more coal on the fire. ‘We might as well be cosy.
‘People are a worry to me,’ she said as she sat back on the settee beside me. ‘You seem to be the only person I can trust, Jess. Give us a kiss.’
As I released her she stretched luxuriously and pushed the cat to the floor.
‘Hop it, you,’ she said. ‘There isn’t room for three of us on here.’ She turned and eyed me sleepily. ‘Get us another gin, Jess, love.’
She leaned against me as she sipped the drink, then slid an aim round my neck. ‘Give us another kiss, Jess,’ she said in her hearty manner. ‘A real one, this time.’
My embrace was fierce and passionate, and Minnie eventually pushed me away, laughing.
‘You are a one, aren’t you!’ she giggled. ‘Gawd, it’s gone warm in here all of a sudden. It’s you, Jess, making a girl’s blood boil.’ She looked sideways at me and began to fiddle with her beads.
‘I’m goin’ to undo me frock a bit,’ she said archly. ‘That’s the worst of being fleshy like me. I get so hot.’
She unbuttoned her dress at the throat and leaned back languorously on the sofa, eyeing me under veiled lids.
‘’Smatter, Jess?’ she asked innocently. ‘You findin’ it hot, too?’
All I could see was a white throat and the curve of white, swelling breasts, and a suggestion of satin that only partly hid the shadow between them.