Grand Canary

by A. J. Cronin

  Pressed by the force of outside influence, the board met – a full meeting – in camera. The governor, like Pilate, washed his hands; the protests of the discerning few who believed in Harvey proved unavailing; there was a sort of scurried feeling that the incubus must be removed.

  Upon the day following the meeting, Harvey went into his laboratory and found an envelope upon his desk. It was the formal demand for his resignation.

  Incredulously he faced the shattering injustice of this final blow. It was beyond reason. The very walls rushed in upon him.

  Four years’ work, his whole soul straining in the cause of science; four years’ searching for the heart of truth; and now – he saw it in a flash – outcast, no position, no opportunity, no money. And his name a public obloquy. With luck he might secure himself, perhaps, a paltry assistantship to some unknown practitioner. But for the rest – he was finished.

  An agony of self-satire was in his soul. Without a word he rose, burned the records of his research, smashed the flasks which held the product of his work, and walked out of his laboratory.

  He went home. He faced the situation with a scathing, pitiless irony. But he wanted to forget – to forget as quickly as he could. And he began, not from weakness, but from a bitter hatred of life, to drink. His attitude was not heroic, but derisive. Alcohol – it was a drug: and as such he would use it. He was alone; the thought of women had never entered his head; and, with no capacity for friendship, only Gerald Ismay, the surgeon, had been there to witness this spectacle of saturation.

  But Ismay had been there. Yes. Each day of those three deadly weeks he had been – quite mildly – there; and by insinuation and insidious tact had finally advanced the suggestion of this voyage.

  Why not? A man might drink the better and lose himself the quicker upon a lonely ship. He had agreed, unthinking of the trap which Ismay had contrived. And now he was here; aboard this wretched ship; deprived of liquor; feeling so ill the sensation was like death.

  All at once he turned his head upon the pillow and with a start came back to himself. Someone had knocked upon the door. And immediately the handle turned and Jimmy Corcoran sidled his bony frame into the cabin. For a moment he stood grinning ingratiatingly, hat still on head, then he flexed both arms as though nonchalantly to elevate dumb-bells of enormous weight.

  ‘How goes it, me boy? In other words, how does it go? D’ye feel muscle comin’ back on ye yet?’

  Harvey stared at him with an injured eye.

  ‘How do you know that it doesn’t go?’ he muttered.

  Corcoran smiled again – in a friendly, intimate way. He touched his hat a shade farther back.

  ‘No lunch, no tay, and now, by the looks on it, no dinner. Faith, it wouldn’t take a detictive to see that ye was out. And, knowin’ somethin’ about the old K. O., I just looked in to see if you was scramblin’ to your corner again.’

  ‘The Good Samaritan,’ sneered Harvey.

  ‘Sure.’

  A short silence came; then, at a sudden thought, Harvey raised himself upon his shoulder.

  ‘They’ve been talking about me.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Jimmy agreed; he hitched up his trousers and sat down easily upon the settee. ‘They’ve been talkin’ about ye all right. Had the whole of yer history weighed in and tested. A gintleman was sayin’ things. What they don’t know about ye now could be writ on a threepenny piece. But don’t get yer rag out. Stay cool and stick yer chin down, fella.’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ cried Harvey in an agony of irritation, ‘don’t call me that. Call me anything under heaven but that.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Jimmy agreeably.

  A silence fell, during which Harvey pressed his damp hand on his brow; then suddenly, with a concentrated bitterness of tone, he exclaimed:

  ‘Why do you come in here? Can’t you see I want to be left alone?’

  Jimmy pulled the metal snuff-box from his waistcoat pocket, dipped in a broad forefinger and thumb, inhaled gravely, then dusted himself gently with the palm of his hand.

  ‘“Whin the object of his desire has faded,”’ he quoted oracularly, ‘“then he departs and is seen no more.” That’s Playto, that is. But faith, ye wouldn’t be askin’ me to go yet awhile. Me that took a proper notion On ye the minnit ye come into the saloon. Sure, I knew booze was the trouble as soon as I clapped oi on ye. It’s sent many’s a good man for the count. I followed the beer meself in the ould days. Cyards and the dthrink – ah! –’ He sighed and looked at the other sideways with a sort of sly solemnity. ‘But divil the one or t’other am I after touchin’ now. Mind ye, despite me faults and failings I’ve always spoke the thruth. Let a man be tinder to the thruth and I’ll rispect him. And me heart draws to a man that’s had a rap from distiny. Faith, I’ve had a troublous life meself, up and down, off and on, since first I seen the light in Clontarf sixty odd year ago. Me folks was poor – proud people, mind ye, from Tralee, but poor. I got me early eddication holdin’ horses’ heads in Sackville Street, and learned me letters spellin’ the Guinness’s advertisements. Ye wouldn’t believe it, me that reads Playto like a scholard.’ He paused, as for encouragement, but Harvey’s eyes remained tightly shut. ‘ Then I went in for the game, the glorious game. A foine set figure of a lad was I. Unsurpassable. There wasn’t a man could stand in the ring against me. In Belfast I knocked Smiler Burge over the ropes with one crack of me left. Sure, I’d have been the world’s champeen if I hadn’t bruk me leg. But bruk me leg I did. And carry the mark to this day. Faith, it robbed the world of a champeen. That’s how I came to emigrate in the black nineties.’

  Harvey groaned.

  ‘Is that the end? If so, will you kindly get out?’

  ‘The end?’ cried Jimmy. ‘Faith, ’twas only the beginning. Since then hivin alone knows what I done. I marked billiards in Sydney. Then I marked time in Mexico in wan of them popgun revolutions. The next year I was in the Bull Gulch gold rush, and the next I took a pub in San Francisco. But sure, I couldn’t stand the loife. Then I tried a turn at farmin’ in the Southern States. And I liked that best of all. If ever the ship comes in, that’s where ye’ll find Jimmy C. – wid a cow and some hens in his own backyard. But I took a foolish fit and wandered off to Colorado, scratchin’ silver. And after that I travelled with Professor Sinnott’s circus. Dear old Bob, I hopes to see him soon. I’m joinin’ him in Santa Cruz, ye see – there’s business all fixed and waitin’ – a great affair. Ah, but these was the palmy days with old Bob Sinnott’s show. Every evenin’ for a twelve-month I intered the din of the untamable lioness Dominica. She’d attacked and killed three keepers – so ’twas said upon the posthers. But in the end she died on Bob and me. ’Twas somethin’ out of the monkey-house got in her grub. And thin the circus busted.’ He sighed, thrust his thumb in his armhole. ‘’Twas a sorry day, I tell ye, when I took good-bye of Bob.’

  Harvey turned restlessly in his bunk.

  ‘I wish to God you’d take good-bye of me.’

  ‘I’m goin’,’ cried Jimmy. ‘Of course I’m goin’. I can see yer feelin’ none too grand. I only wanted to inthrojuice meself and let ye know I’m at yer service. Faith and I am. And don’t be judgin’ by appearances, me boy. I may look down on me luck.’ He stopped and straightened his paste tie-pin with an air. ‘Sure, ’tis only timporary. ’Tis now I’m on the best thing ever was. Wid the Professor, ye understand. A foine affair. It’s goin’ to make a fortune for yer good friend Jimmy C.’

  He paused so impressively that Harvey was compelled to look up. And he found that disarming grin upon him. He hesitated. There was about the shabby old adventurer an irresistible humbugging charm that killed the angry words upon his tongue. For a moment the two looked at each other. Then Corcoran stood up.

  ‘Ta-ta for the moment,’ he murmured airily. ‘And don’t forget what I’ve been tellin’ ye about the man. Just say the word and he’s at your beck and call.’

  He lunged forward, tilted his hat, and with a final nod sw
aggered through the door. He wore the gratified air of one who had discharged a duty to himself and to his neighbour. Humming gently, he advanced along the deck with his eyes skinned for Mother Hemmingway. Faith, there was just time before dinner for a little dhrop of porther and a quiet hand of the cyards.

  Harvey, in his cabin, pressed his brow against the cold brass rail of his bunk.

  How, he thought, did I endure it – that anthropoid attempt to kindness? – the traditional Irishman blundering in to bolster him up with friendliness. Oh, it was lunatic, the situation. Again he twisted nervously beneath the narrow sheet, wishing desperately for sleep.

  For a full half-hour he was alone.

  Then Trout came into the cabin with a shining brass can of hot water in his hand and a frightened expression upon his indeterminate features. Bestowing the can tenderly upon the floor, he said gently:

  ‘Shall I lay out your things, sir?’

  Harvey did not open his eyes; without moving his head he muttered;

  ‘No.’

  ‘Shall I bring you some dinner, sir?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is there anything more I can do, sir?’

  In the cabin forward the gramophone began shrilly, for the tenth time that afternoon, to play: ‘ Give me all your kisses.’ A shiver as of pain passed over Harvey’s face. The strident melody, rich in sickly and offensive sentiment, turned in his soul with shuddering revulsion and, like a man overborne from the last of his restraint, he started up.

  ‘My head is splitting. Ask them – ask them for pity’s sake to stop that gramophone.’

  There was a quick pause, shocked as the look upon Trout’s face; then, as though a hand had snatched the needle from the disc, abruptly the music stopped. The silence, so sudden it was oppressive, lengthened until Trout said tremulously:

  ‘It’s thin, sir, that bulkhead. Your voice goes through if you call like that.’

  Then Trout went out; but in five minutes he was back, bearing on stiff extended fingers a napkin-covered tray, A bowl of steaming soup stood on the tray, and beside it a tiny silver-topped tube holding some flat white tabloids.

  ‘Some soup, sir?’ pleaded Trout, as though to exculpate himself from a grave transgression. ‘It’s nourishing, sir. Sydney soup, sir. The captain would have me fetch it up. And Lady Fielding, sir – hearing you had a headache, she asked if you’d care to have some aspirin.’

  Harvey’s lips stiffened. He wished in the same instant to scream, to curse, to weep.

  ‘Leave it, then,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Leave it by the bed.’

  Then he lay back, closed his eyes, hearing the creaking and sighing of the ship as it bore onwards, cleaving the outer darkness. Cleaving onwards, a strange symbolic force which carried him against his will. Onwards, sighing gently. As though around there were voices, strange voices whispering, whispering to him.

  Chapter Seven

  They were three days out, the wind still pouring favourably from the south-west, the Aureola riding the placid swell with Cape Finisterre fading upon her port quarter. The morning sun blazed fitfully out of a ragged sky and warm intermittent showers had flattened out the sea.

  A pad of feet came from the starboard deck, but in the saloon below Robert Tranter and his sister were seated before the open harmonium.

  ‘It’s a great tune that, Robbie,’ she said reflectively, lifting her hands from the keyboard and turning the sheets of music on the stand. ‘And you certainly sing it fine.’

  ‘Yes, it’s got a swell swing has old “ Glory”.’ His ear, held sideways towards the skylight, seemed to attend the returning tramp of footsteps above. ‘ Don’t you think we might close our practice now, Sue? The sun’s on the shine.’ He smiled, ‘I guess the choir might go up top.’

  Her fingers ceased to move; slowly she turned her warm brown eyes upon him.

  ‘But we’ve only just begun, Rob. We said an hour, didn’t we? And it’s the hour I like best in all the day – all quiet and together down here.’

  ‘I know, Sue,’ he said with a little laugh. ‘I certainly enjoy our practice. I kind of guess it’s just because I’m restless – you know the feeling – when you get your foot on the deck.’

  She looked at him intently: looked away again; pressed a long soft chord from the bosom of the instrument.

  ‘I don’t take much to the folks on this boat,’ she exclaimed suddenly and without apparent reason. ‘I don’t take overmuch to that Mrs Baynham.’

  He contemplated his white stiff cuffs, neatly projecting, linked by severe gold links.

  ‘Ah, no, Sue,’ he protested in an odd but unselfconscious voice. ‘I’ll say you’re wrong there. Yes, I’ll say you’re wrong. I feel she has good – great capacity for good in her.’

  ‘She’s guying us, Robbie. She mocks at everything, even – even at God.’

  He gave a deprecating pressure upon her arm with his large white hand and quoted:

  ‘“Let not your good be evil spoken of.” I guess, Susan, it’s none too good for us to criticise.’

  ‘You’re interested in her,’ she said quickly. ‘I can feel it.’

  He made no evasion.

  ‘I’ll admit, Susan, that I’m interested in her,’ he answered, gazing back into her eyes calmly. ‘ But it is because she has a soul to save. I reckon I’ve had to mix up with plenty women in the past. Well! Did I ever give you the slightest reason to doubt me?’

  It was true. He had encountered many women responsive to his spiritual fervour – responsive with a devotion which he had come to feel, complacently, his due. But never for a moment had he entertained towards them any sentiment which merited even a shadow of reproach. His affections were centred exclusively upon himself, on God, and on his sister.

  Born in Trenton of pious parents, he was one of those individuals who seem destined for the ministry from their earliest days. His father, Josiah Tranter, was an unsuccessful tradesman, a bearded, ineffectual little baker – rigid adherent of the Sect of the Seventh Day Unity – who leavened his loaves with Leviticus, whose doughnuts even had a stale and spiritual flavour. His mother, Emily by name, a quiet woman with a zealous eye, had come from a sound Concord stock. She was silent, good, sustaining successive business failures of her spouse with commendable patience and fortitude. Her happiness lay in her children, particularly Robbie to whom beneath her tranquil surface she was passionately devoted. And indeed Robert merited that devotion. He was dutiful, intelligent, instinctively fervent, never in mischief, and when visitors would pat his head and demand: ‘ Well, son, what d’you think you’re gonna do?’ the boy would answer quite sincerely: ‘I’m going to preach the gospel.’ And with delight his high intention was fostered and encouraged. A tract even was written about him by a visiting pastor who had dwelt at the baker’s house, entitled: ‘ Saved at the Early Age of Nine.’ Thus he knew betimes the ardour of salvation.

  Susan, inevitably, though of a tender disposition, took a back seat in the home. She was devoted to her brother; she was a good girl: but she was not a paragon. Thus whilst Robert entered theological college she was allowed without demur to enter as a probationer-nurse at the John Stirling Hospital.

  The years rolled on and the day of Robert’s ordination gloriously arrived. What a moment of pride for the little baker and his wife! Forgetting the toil and rigours of those years of scrimping sacrifice they dressed in their sober best and entrained joyfully for Connecticut.

  But there was sad perversity about that train. Six miles out of Trenton it fouled a point and ran into the embankment. Little damage was done: only two lives were lost. But these were Josiah and Emily Tranter. Robert, of course, was painfully upset. There was a touching scene when the news was broken to him as he came out, ordained, from Unity Temple. Susan said less. She could not be expected to feel the blow so keenly. But she fainted twice in the ensuing month whilst on duty in the wards They said at the hospital she had a heart lesion and advised her kindly to relinquish the idea of institutional
work.

  Thus she came to live with her brother at Okeville, his first pastorate. Here she lavished everything upon Robert. She desired no more. But he, though zealous and successful, was less settled. He was restless. He had inherently an ardent and romantic mind. He wanted, though he knew it not, to see the colour and to feel the texture of the world. After one year he resigned his pastorate, entered his name for the foreign mission field.

  His sincerity was known, his capabilities recognized, his step approved. It was understood that his health was not robust. Moreover, in the movement the directing mind of the Rev Hiram McAtee was turning – like Alexander’s – to fresh fields of conquest. There had been, too, under special circumstances, a persistent demand from the Canaries. Robert was sent out, not to China nor the Congo, but to Santa Cruz. And Susan, of course, accompanied him

  That briefly was his history. And now he faced his sister with a tolerant eye.

  ‘I surely am serious, Sue,’ he went on steadily. ‘Believe me, I have a hunch that Mrs Baynham might be saved. There’s more hope for the conversion of the scoffer than the soul which is just plumb apathetic. And it would be a great happiness indeed to me if I should be the Lord’s humble instrument to bring this soul to grace.’ His eye kindled: he thrilled to the glory of the thought.

  She gazed at him in silence, touched by a troubled colour, and almost wistful. Then with a gust came a swirl of rain upon the skylight, succeeded by a laughing exclamation from above. There was the sound of footsteps upon the companion, and Mary ran through the doorway, her small white sand-shoes spattered, her wind-blown hair clustered with pearling raindrops.

  ‘It rains, it rains,’ she chanted. ‘All hands are piped below.’

  Elissa, Dibdin, and Corcoran followed her into the saloon.

  ‘By George!’ said Dibs with a nautical stagger, ‘that was a squall. Sudden if you like – what?’

  Elissa, having shaken the lapels of her coat, was staring at the Tranters. ‘ You’ve been singing,’ she announced loudly. ‘How terribly diverting. And the harmonium – too, too sweet. You treadmill upon these pedal things, don’t you? But you mustn’t stop. You must entertain us. Delicious. Too simply delicious.’ And ranging herself beside the others on the long plush settee she assumed an air of bland expectancy.