I'll Never Be Young Again (6 page)

I leant against the bulwark of the ship and the first spray licked my face, and I felt the deck rise and fall beneath my feet as the barque met the sea. The coast of England slipped away from us, strange and unfamiliar in the grey light of morning, while ahead lay a hard unbroken line of sea, and another day and another sky.

It came to me that this was the beginning of adventure, and the starting of a dream, and as I felt the sea on my lips and heard the voices of men around me, I knew that I was no longer a boy who yearned to break the shackles of home and be free, but I was sailing before the mast of a Norwegian barque, and I was a man with other men.

So I should know what it would be to sail in a ship, to be weary and worn, to be hungry and happy.

I should learn the feel of ropes, the pressure of wind in canvas, I should know sickness and torture, but beyond these things there would be a fierce wild pleasure that I could not explain, a tumult of my body and a madness of my brain, laughter, and shouting in the air.

At first there was confusion and distress, and a lost sensation of my own helplessness, and then I conquered the misery of sickness, clinging to Jake like a weeping child, and I came out of the fo’c’sle upon the deck with my belly empty and my tongue afire, and there was the barque straining to be free as I had striven, a high sea running and a high wind blowing.

There were days and there were nights when living was tremendous, and living was hell, and I worked, and I slept, and I worked again. And there was no time for thinking, no time for dreams, but only this bare fighting for existence, the hunger of an animal, a sudden calm and a sleep. I had rough hands and a growth of beard like any man, I cursed and I laughed, I fought and I was happy. Soon there would be another country, and faces I had never seen. Nothing mattered but the harsh beauty of this life, this pleasure and the pain, nothing mattered because Jake was beside me, and I was not alone.

The high masts strained under the press of the heavy canvas, looking down and from the fore-t’gallant yard the deck sheered away, long and narrow, small space for movement because of the stacked timber. We worked our way along the yard, treading the slippery foot rope, clinging with one hand to the swinging ratlin above. There seemed every prospect of a fresh breeze, and this was an advantage not to be neglected, for we were already forty-eight hours behind our stated time, and now with every sail set we must make up for what we had lost after leaving Finland, when the westerly gale had set us off our course, and we had been obliged to beat against it, snugged down to lower tops’ls, with the fo’c’sle head covered every few minutes with a grey sea. Now the wind came true from the north, and the watch crowded aloft, Jake and I flinging the gaskets from the fore-t’gallant while the great sail bellowed loose and the halyards shook, and the wind whistled in the rigging like a joyous devil.

Jake shook his head and laughed at me, his hair falling over his eyes, and I ducked to avoid a swinging blow from the shaking sail before it was sheeted home. And now I balanced myself on the foot rope, one hand on the back stay, and giddily I looked below me and saw the green water rushing past our bows, and heard the pressure of wind in the canvas and saw the figure of the cook peering up at us from his galley abaft the mast, a small dot of a figure beside the white deck-house. Then for all my torn hands and my dizzy head, and my rough clothes still sodden from the soaking they had received in the gale, I smiled back at Jake, for this was something that meant the thrill of living, and the joy of being young. Somewhere there was a bitter shamefaced boy, running down the avenue of his home to the lodge gates and the high road leading to Lessington, but here was a man who was learning to work with his hands, to fight for his life, to conquer the wild forces of wind and sea, to curse and laugh with his companions in a strange language, to fill his aching stomach with filth and be grateful, to cast himself in his cot, dog-weary, with his wet clothes clinging to him and his head at the wrong angle, and to smile and be happy, caring not at all.

Never for one moment, even with the agony of the work and the terrible fatigue, did I regret what I had done, for this was a freedom in itself and Jake was beside me.

His cot swung above mine in the dingy fo’c’sle, and there was always an assuring comfort in his presence, even from that first night at sea when we had staggered down from the deck to the watch below, I bewildered and helpless with the unaccustomed orders, and groping my way in the dim light to my cot I heard him climb to the one above me, and felt his hand touch my shoulder for a minute, and his voice, half anxious: ‘All right, Dick?’ in my ear.

So we were together from the start, both being cast in the same watch, and we ate side by side, carrying our tin of food from the galley to the fo’c’sle, and we tramped the deck by night talking of things or not talking, and picking up a smattering of Norwegian or Danish from our companions.

I learnt to take my trick at the wheel with the others, and it seemed to me that this must be the grandest moment of my life - one fine clear night it was in the middle of the Baltic Sea on our way to Finland from London, with a fair wind on the quarter, and a black sea around me, and the tall masts before me pointing to the stars.

I heard the sigh of wind in the canvas and I felt the strain of the wheel, and I looked down upon my course marked on the compass in the light of the binnacle, and there was no sight or sound of any moving thing upon the sea save us and the ship, and I felt that this moment was good and could never be destroyed.

And when Jake came to relieve me he waited a while, seeing my arms flung carelessly through the spokes as though I had been born for this, I showing off a little to both him and myself, and as he watched me I could not hide the smile on my face which would not leave me for the beauty of this moment. He did not bother to laugh at me, but he said: ‘You’re happy, aren’t you?’ and he knew.

Days and nights had gone past now though, and we were bound from Helsingfors to Copenhagen to discharge our cargo of timber, and from thence we were uncertain, but there were rumours of our proceeding round the coast to Oslo in ballast, and there to wait our turn for a freight.

It mattered little to Jake and myself, for we had no plans, only to take what chances should come our way, and when we became tired of a thing to go off on our own once more, and work or stay idle, whichever should come to our minds. The wind held fair from the north as I have said, and we made a quick passage to Copenhagen, but there was a dirty colour in the sky and we saw a long line of sailing yachts, running to their moorings before the weather broke, following close upon one another’s heels, a lovely sight in the half-light before the sun went down.

Then the sky filled with grey, and I saw the city of Copenhagen through a mist of rain that fell gently on the red roofs and the towers, making it seem like England and home.

I was as thrilled as a schoolboy on holiday, and Jake and I went ashore that night with the rest of the crowd from the ship, and we made straight for the Tivoli, the fun fair of the people of Copenhagen, where we scattered kronen without bothering about the cost of anything, riding the switchbacks and throwing darts, seeing ourselves in distorted mirrors, driving ridiculous little cars controlled by electricity, peering at the girls on the dancing-floor where some of the boys were bold enough to venture, but I felt shy about this and hung back with Jake, pretending I did not care to dance. All the time the rain fell, and we splashed about in puddles with the lights of the Tivoli reflected in them green and gold, and a band played a dance tune that was good to hear.

Then Jake and I moved off to explore the streets, and I left the Tivoli with the sound of that tune in my head and a memory of a girl with a great cloud of flaxen hair looking over somebody’s shoulder to where we had stood some minutes before, jammed in the crowd, and I wondered if I had really been shy to mingle with the other boys on the dancing-floor or if it was a desire to be on the same level as Jake, who cared only to find the cobbled stones of a market square and a canal by a twisted bridge. So we walked about the streets in the rain until I was tired, and I felt flat after the excitement of landing earlier in the evening, but Jake looked as if he could keep this up all night, taking a passionate interest in the shape of buildings and the corner of some old house, so that my mood was out of tune with his for perhaps the first time since we had been together, though I managed to hide it from him.

I could not forget that it was my first night in Copenhagen and I was a sailor ashore, and that every minute should be filled with the possibility of adventure, while here we were plodding the wet streets that might, in the light we saw them, have belonged to an English country town, and I was not sure if it was a girl I wanted or a drink or neither, but all I knew was that I wanted it to be different from this.

We got back to the landing-stage just as the rain had stopped and it was getting light.

The boys were in the boat wondering if they should bother to wait for us. They were most of them happily drunk, and a young Norwegian who spoke English told me with a sleepy grin he had picked the best girl in Denmark and had gone home with her. They all laughed at him and said he had been too drunk to do anything, and then they chaffed one another in their own language, and I watched them, rather foolish and apart, not being able to understand what they said. I wished I was drunk too and exhausted in the same way, having known something about Danish girls, and lighting a cigarette I glanced over to where Jake was crouching in the bows, his knees drawn up to his chin, his eyes narrowing as he looked away from all of us to where the dawn was breaking clear and cold over the water. I knew his thoughts were of Copenhagen shrouded still in a grey light, the green patch of colour in the sky and the beauty of a spire, and he had not listened to our chatter and our laughter.

I supposed we must have sounded like a flock of cackling geese, and I did not laugh much after that, but somehow I envied Jake’s mood and I envied the boys too, and I felt very dull, for whichever way I looked at it my evening had been a failure.

I don’t think it was fine all the time we were in Copenhagen. We were kept busy most of the time discharging our cargo, and when we were free of the timber we had to set about shifting our own ballast to get the right trim.There were not many hours for going ashore with all this work on our hands. I was not sorry when we weighed anchor once more, and made for the open sea with Copenhagen astern of us in a curtain of rain.

We were making all the sail we could, for the breeze was light, and high up in the rigging Jake leaned across the yardarm, and shouted to me, pointing to a ridge of land away on the quarter. ‘That’s Helsinor,’ he said, and I could not help smiling at his excitement, and then fell to wondering at this man who had been a sailor, and a prize-fighter, and had killed his friend because of an ideal, and had spent seven years in prison, and who liked me, and who knew about Hamlet.

But there was not time to puzzle out these things, for the mate shouted up to us from the poop, his hands to his mouth, and I had picked up enough Norwegian by now to know that he was cursing us to work smartly, and put some muscle into the job, and I tore at the beating canvas and the ropes stiffened with the disuse in the harbour and the rain, the blood running from under my broken nails.

As we had imagined, the
Hedwig
was bound for her home port of Oslo, and many of the boys were talking of leaving the ship when she docked, and going ashore for a spell, for it was likely she would have to go into dry dock and be overhauled before she secured a freight, and this might take several weeks, so, anyway, the crew would be paid off. The boys could sign on with another ship when their money was spent if the
Hedwig
was not ready by then. So much we gathered from the smattering of Danish and Norwegian in the fo’c’sle, and Jake and I talked the matter over in our watch below, he smoking cigarette after cigarette stretched out in his cot, his feet on the bulkhead, while I lay below him, my head pillowed in my arms, watching the swinging light and the haze of smoke and the sleeping faces of the watch.

‘We’ll lay off the sea for a while,’ said Jake; ‘I’ll buy a map when we get to Oslo and we’ll strike inland, north of course, to the mountains.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘I don’t care how we get there, do you? We’ll walk and ride and get lifts in a truck. We don’t have to worry about anything, do we?’ he said.

‘No.’

‘I’ve got some money,’ he said; ‘we shan’t want much, as a matter of fact. That’s an advantage of prison, Dick, you’re clear of bills, and your balance mounts steadily.’

‘Oh! hell!’ I said, ‘I can’t hang on to you like this, Jake.’

‘Don’t be a fool. Who brought you on this trip, anyway?’

‘No - listen here. . . .’

‘I’m sick of your voice; go to sleep, can’t you?’ he said.

‘It’s all damn funny for you,’ I muttered, ‘but what do I look like, mucking around on your savings?’

‘Who’s going to look at you?’

‘Oh! I don’t know, but what am I going to feel like?’

‘You haven’t got any feelings, Dick.’

‘Sure, I have.’

‘Forget ’em, then, they’re not worth a cent.’

‘No, but look here. . . .’

‘Go to sleep, little boy, you’re no nerve tonic to a tired sailor.’

I laughed, cursing him at the same time. I saw that it was no use protesting, and, anyway, it did not matter very much.

I fell asleep, smiling at the thought of my father, who scarcely existed any more for me, sitting at his desk in the old library gazing out of the windows on to the smooth lawn, and I, stretched in a cot of a fo’c’sle with an unknown country before me to explore, and a rough track through the mountains, and forests, and a frozen lake, and no night and jumbled up with this the imagined approach to Oslo, another strange city, the lights and laughing, and a song and maybe a girl somewhere. . . .