I'll Never Be Young Again (20 page)

I saw Jake and myself running away from the café, a man stretched hideously with a knife in his back, and mingled now with the pattern of this was the Belgian boy, his hand to his mouth, wailing a tune.

‘Jake,’ I said, ‘why don’t they do something? What in the name of God is the use of all this hanging about - this waiting about? Why doesn’t somebody do something?’

I listened to the pitch of my own voice; it was higher than usual, strained somehow. I caught hold of Jake’s arm.

‘You don’t have to worry,’ he said. I knew that, and I knew it would not do any good, whatever I did, whether I cursed or whether I stayed silent. I could not stand waiting, though; I wanted to be able to move about, to haul at things, to work in some way. I saw that there was relief in the excited chatter of the other fellows, in the string of curses.

‘How long are we going to carry on like this?’ I asked.

I went on talking without expecting an answer.

‘They oughtn’t to have left Stockholm,’ I said; ‘that’s where the mistake was made, in ever leaving Stockholm . . .’

How I clung to them, my silly patter of words. ‘To put some idiot in command of a vessel, who can’t find his way in a fog - especially on this coast. A lot of bastards - that’s what they are - a lot of bastards . . .’ I said. Maybe if the mist cleared we would be able to get away, perhaps Jake was wrong in his calculations and Brest was not far, not really far. Yes, no doubt Brest would be quite close. When the mist cleared we could look around, and the skipper would realize he could not make a fool of us any longer. Brest would be all right. I was glad I had thought of this. I saw myself walking in the streets there, having a drink somewhere, leaning against a bridge. It was impossible that these things should not be.

‘Jake,’ I said, ‘why in hell doesn’t he go back to Brest?’ My words were not convincing, though, not angry enough - they trembled in spite of myself, pleading a question. Jake looked down on me. His hair and his lashes were wet with the fog.

‘We’re not near there,’ he said, ‘we’re not near anywhere.’ ‘Yes, but look here,’ I started, and then I trailed off, unable to finish my sentence, unaware of the very words I should choose - ‘Yes, but look here. . . .’ I did not speak any more, I felt dazed and bewildered, as though some sort of stupor had taken hold of me and would not let me go. The silly jingle of the mouth-organ no longer haunted me. I made up a dream of standing in the garden at home, pointing the library window to Jake and saying carelessly: ‘If we go in we should disturb my father.’ It was funny how clearly the picture came to me. And I saw Jake walk through the open window, and touch my father on the shoulder, and they smiled as though they had known each other for a long while, and their faces seemed suddenly incredibly alike - merging finally into one.

‘You know,’ said Jake, the Jake in my picture, ‘you know that Dick writes too,’ and my father nodded, while I stood a little aloof, almost superior, rocking backwards and forwards on my heels.

‘
Il y avait une blonde . . .
’

but then that had not anything to do with it at all. There was no need to bring that in. ‘Jake,’ I said, ‘Jake . . .’ and the picture went, and I was here on the deck of the
Romanie
beside him, peering through the curtain of mist.The bell rang from the bridge again. Somebody called out hoarsely from the fo’c’sle head. It was the Belgian boy, who had been stationed there as a look-out. He stumbled down the ladder towards us waving his arms. There was an answering shout from the bridge.

‘Listen,’ said Jake, ‘listen . . .’

I caught at my breath, shuddering from head to foot, cold, alive. Suddenly there came to our ears the sound for which we had waited - the sound I had so often conjured in my imagination at safe moments, and now unmistakable and sinister, demanding to be heard. The roar of it drummed in my ears, horrible, unseen, so near yet intangible, drawing closer - triumphant and mocking at us who swept so steadily towards it, driven on and on, helpless in the cloud of mist.

Sullen and insistent it would not let us go, this sound of the sea shattered against rock, this crash of breakers on a hidden shore.

 

They ran blindly here and there upon the deck, sobbing, shouting, little figures of men, their faces grey with fear. I ran with them. I was one of them. We tore at the lashings of a boat. The mate passed me, lifting his hands, screaming something in my ear. I hit out at him, I struck him down, and my feet passed over his fallen body. Someone tore at my throat with his fingers, clinging to me, babbling like a little idiot child. I shook him from me, I pushed and thrust my way against the shoulders of the others, who fought wildly and helplessly with one another, caged animals bereft of all humanity.

And while we ripped the covers from the boat we turned our faces hither and thither in the darkness, aware of the roar of the breakers coming to us out of the mist, and we cursed helplessly - bent backwards against each other in confusion, pitiless, unutterably lost.

Now the boat was swung out on the davits, and we clung to it, listening to no order, hearing no order, trampling upon one another in our fear and our distress. There were too many of us; we fought for our places with hatred in our souls, striking out desperately in a wild despair.

It was only then that I remembered Jake. I clung with one hand to the davit, I searched for his face amongst the pale idiot faces of the men pressed against me.

And ‘Jake,’ I called, and ‘Jake’ I called again.

He did not answer me, he was not there. I struggled to loose myself from the tossing arms that dragged me down; I did not want to be in the boat any more, I wanted to find Jake - he was not there, I had to find him.

‘Jake,’ I called, ‘Jake . . . Jake . . .’ and now I could not get away, and now the boat was swinging down from the davits into the sea, and I was fighting, cursing, tearing at the eyes of the men who clung to me - possessed by horror, stricken and insane.

‘Jake . . . Jake . . .’ I saw him for a moment, I saw his head flung back and his smile. I heard his voice call to me, a message of beauty never lost and never forgotten - ‘You’ll be all right, Dick,’ and one swift vision of his splendour, unbroken and immortal.

Then we were gone from him, and there was no more after that but the sudden churn of water under us, the shock of the sea in my lungs, and my heart, and I tossed like a dead thing in the shattering roar of the white breakers, sinking down, down into the blackness of eternity, swept beyond him to some shore where he would never follow me, outcast and alone. And I was clinging with numb fingers to a ledge of rock, rising out of the water, and then I was swept past this, my hands above my head, in the suction of a breaking sea, and cast like a stone, into the face of stones, bleeding, broken, the surge of sand beneath my body. And stretching out my hands and he was not there. And calling to him, and he was not there.

And ‘Jake . . . Jake . . . Jake . . .’ like a soul lost in the wilderness, with nothing but the mist and the rain, and the sound of the breakers on the shore. And later, when the mist had lifted, I saw there were high cliffs about me, encompassing a wide bay.

The tide was gone out to meet the wreckage we had brought for her, while stark and naked on the black rocks the
Romanie
held her broken face to the sky.

I sat there alone, and I saw the waves shatter themselves upon her, and I watched the rain fall into the sea, and I watched the grey dawn breaking.

PART TWO
:

HESTA

1

A
t first it was like living in a dream, an existence made up of shadows, where places and persons held no substance. Nor did it matter much where I went nor how I lived. Night followed the day, and there was the sun in the sky, or it would rain, or it would blow; there were barren stretches of land where no tree stood, there were stone villages, and little churches beaten by the wind.

There was a peasant woman washing her linen in a pool, there was a dog stretched lazily on the doorstep of a cottage flicking his tail at the flies. These things went on inevitable and undisturbed, but I did not see how I should have part in them again. It was as though the hum and the emotion of life continued around me, close, breathing and touching me not, so that I stood aloof in my own channel of existence, holding no communication with the great stream that would have passed me by. I did not matter, I was of no importance. Once I had stood upon a bridge with the certainty of death before me, and at that moment the call of living and the glamour of adventure had seemed stronger to me than they had ever been. I had looked down from a gateway and seen that the earth was good. Something within me had struggled for release, and cried for fulfilment. The air blowing upon my face, the stray dust beneath my feet, the murmur in passing of men and women, so dear, so familiar, the very sweat of their bodies and the smell of their clothes, these had drawn out to me in one last definite appeal. The tumult of living, the glory and the pain. The precious intimacy of little things. I wanted so much and so much. But that had all happened a long while ago, those old longings and those desires. I had lived them and they had not lasted. I looked about me now to see some trace of their departure, but they had vanished.

I did not care for them any more, not the sun, not the sea, nor the sky, nor the touch of earth, nor the warmth of humanity, nor anything at all.

I had my life before me and I did not want it.

I was a dumb stupid thing, a mass of senseless clay having no meaning, weary and lost. I was someone with no limbs and no flesh, not possessing the consolation of a mind nor the fortitude of a sorrowful heart. I was without courage. Hope was a word belonging to another language which I did not try to understand. There was nothing but two eyes that framed a picture, haunting, mournful, a picture where every detail was clear and minute, drawn with a thin dark brush, escaping no shadow, no reflection of light. My picture was one of a grey morning after the mist had gone, and a wild, desolate stretch of beach frowned upon by cliffs of granite.

The tide was gone out and the sea broke upon the
Romanie
, she lying on a ledge of rock, weird and ghastly, lifted from the water. Her sides were smashed, her davits fallen, twisted and caught in a mesh of stay and cable. Pools were beginning to form on the sloping deck, and the sea ran in and out of the hold with an odd sucking gurgle. A bar had slipped from somewhere down to the main hatch, torn open and disclosed, and this bar kept banging against the iron sides of the ship, sounding with a strange hollow clamour. A ladder hung over the bows, broken and aslant; it must have been cast there in the panic and then left. Outside the galley the white cloth of the cook still hung upon its nail, fluttering in the morning breeze, oddly alive. Inside the galley the saucepans and the mugs would be undisturbed. The figures of the women in white chalk, they would still be there, grotesque and absurd, mocking the silence. On the surface of the water the wreckage floated placidly, drifting with the tide, torn timbers and iron plates, part of the propeller, a loose arm of a davit.

There were barrels, too, and broken bottles, cases of tinned meat, a cracked basin, a sack of peanuts - they rolled sluggishly backwards and forwards on the crest of a wave.

The smashed boat lay like a gaping shell tossed high and dry upon the higher beach.

Between two rocks there was a little pool of water, warm in the morning sun. A broken dish lay here and a cake of soap, while farther away was the brightly coloured magazine that once had lain upon the fo’c’sle floor.

Now that the wind had gone and the mist, the sea sounded hushed and still. Away to the left the high jagged cliffs ran sudden and sheer, grey boulders of rock, massive and impregnable. They stretched to a sharp definable point, like the edge of a razor, and before this the sea twisted and broke, as though crashing upon unseen things. A lighthouse stood upon a rock, and another lighthouse beyond. The sea at this point would never be still, would never be silenced, but would break for ever in a turmoil of hate and exultation, leaping, shouting, wave meeting wave in a sterile embrace, horrible and cold.

To the right swept a wide clear bay, and here the water was no longer bewildered, but ran in white breakers upon a stretch of yellow sand. It seemed as though this bay should be a refuge from the wild seas that crashed beyond the point, and there should be peace here and rest.The
Romanie
leant towards it on her ledge of rock as though she cried for the touch of sand. But there was no peace and no rest, for the bay was a wilderness and a desolation, where nothing lived and nothing cried.

And the sea left other relics strewn on the wet sand with the wreckage. Gently the tide relinquished them, regretfully, with a whisper and a sigh and the water streamed from them as tears stream at the sorrow of parting. They lay on the beach separated from one another, dark and motionless, with the sun warm on their pale faces and their soft glistening hair.They lay like sleepers weary from the day’s toil, and now were happy and consoled, their heads pillowed in their hands.

This was my picture, and I wanted to become part of it too, to sleep there with the others on the shore, but they would not let me. I had to go away and live my life. I had no business to remain there lost in a dream. I had to break my mind away from it, I had to cover it, sadly, reverently, hide it in the shadowed untouched places of my memory.

I would never forget. I would never permit my picture to become dusty and worn. After all that had been and all that was to come, I should still see it, the rugged cliffs, the little lighthouse standing beyond the razor edge of the Pointe du Raz, the broken
Romanie
desolate, alone, and lastly, beautiful and forlorn, the sleeping figures in the Baie des Trépassés.

 

There were so many things to do. They kept me from thinking, after that first dumb stupor. To begin with, each fresh incident was a moment of horror and torture; there were people who clothed me and gave me food, there were questions to answer, and excited shouting faces coming upon me, one after the other, people touching me, stroking me, and I with my bad French not understanding what they said to me, being dragged away, sitting in some corner of a room - and a car rattling along a dusty road, a village, and more people and more questions. I suppose now that they meant to be kind. I suppose now that they were sorry for me. But I did not want pity, I only asked to be left alone, and this they would not do.