The Closed Harbour (3 page)

"Now if I were to hear a sudden knock, then I would go down, and at the front door I would find one from the Heros office.

"Manos fell down the hatch this evening and was killed. They are looking for a skipper.

"Perhaps," thought Marius, "I am truly finished."

He lifted the latch, then dropped it, he had heard the feet moving downstairs.

"Soon she, too, will go to bed."

Madeleine returned to the small sitting-room, took her chair by the window and sat down. Looking out she realised that everything tired her, the sight of the sea, the yet merciless sun, the hard light, the restless tormenting breakers, the ships, that, from this window looked so much like toys. She sat stiff, tense, and remained so for some time. Later she heard Marius go out. She saw his tall figure pass the window.

"Poor Eugene, I am yet sorry for him, and yet I hate him."

She laid her hands flat upon the table and looked at them.

"I am not like the others," she told herself, "I never was. But I know what I am."

Rising from the chair she crossed to the mirror on the wall and stared into it. She pointed a finger at the reflection and said slowly, "this is you. I wonder which one of us will wear out the other."

She walked about the room, undecided, aimless, she looked at the clock again and again. No, it was too late for the priest now, something must have kept him back.

"And when he comes I will say yes, because it is best for both of us," her mind leaping back days, to a simpler time, a happier time, "there was never any other place but Nantes.

"I am tired too, I am even tired of being tired, perhaps I will go to bed also. Yet it is so early. Still
...
"

She shut the door silently behind her.

"I am closest to her, we are closest to each other. It will be like that until the end. He will always look another way, he is not of us."

She found her mother lying awake, staring at the low ceiling. She crossed to the bed, knelt, she said her prayers aloud. Then she undressed and climbed in beside her. She put an arm round the old woman.

Madame Marius felt the head heavy upon her breast, felt the body heave, listened to the sobs. She neither spoke nor moved. This was not new, this lying together, clutched and clutching, this silence and this weeping, it was a year of age. After a while she spoke. "He has gone?"

The daughter's head moved a little, this meant yes. Later, as the light began to fall, they fell asleep, bound to each other, easily, casually, as children do.

II

"T
HERE
IS
something I have to do today, yet I cannot for the life of me think what it is," and Monsieur Follet went round and round in his swivel chair, head high, thinking hard. It was a certain method of reviving the memory. Suddenly he stopped, "Ah, of course. That rise for Labiche."

"Labiche," called Follet. "Labiche."

He might have been calling his dog. Nevertheless it was a man who came, four foot six in height, large-headed, extraordinarily broad in the shoulder. A dwarf-like creature in the fifties. Aristide Labiche was of curious shape. At the Heros he was referred to as the "pregnant man," and sometimes "the little bull." His bulbous nose was a standing joke amongst the staff. He had a heavy, sensual chin. Monsieur Follet had some regard for him. He worked hard, he was loyal, it was rare to discover that Labiche was
not
at his high desk, his head lost in a mass of documents. He liked Labiche's eyes, which were large and of a soft brown; he thought they looked exactly like those of his retriever, and sometimes that they should have lain in a woman's head.

"Ah Labiche! Please sit down."

"Yes sir."

"What are you working on at present?"

"The
Orlando's
time-sheets, sir."

He glanced up questioningly at the other, it was not often that he was asked to come into the director's office.

"Of course, that overhauling job, yes. Healthy, Labiche, or unhealthy?"

Labiche only smiled, giving Follet a wonderful view of his single gold tooth. There were the inevitable jokes, Labiche expected them, they came.

"Still working hard for the salvation of France?" he asked, his fingers tapping on the blotting pad.

Follet's slow, somewhat greasy smile was not returned.

"Have I any important appointments today, Labiche, you have such an excellent memory."

"Manos at three o'clock, sir," replied the other.

"That brings me to the point," said Follet, "it links up at once with an efficiency, a loyalty that I wish to reward. As from Friday, Labiche, your salary goes up by one hundred francs a month."

Labiche got out of his chair, stood erect, looked at the director.

"I am grateful, sir," he said.

Follet was struck by the dignified, though somewhat ridiculous pose.

"That's all right," he said. "But do not give it all away, Labiche, you are a far too generous man—"

"No sir."

"There was an altercation outside my office, Labiche," said Follet, "you are in the next office to Philippe, you can see everything that happens."

"It was that Captain again, they say he's a Captain, looking for a berth. He is always asking for you, Monsieur Follet."

"So I gather."

Follet stuck his thumbs into his vest and sighed, his voice sounded tired.

"Sometimes, Labiche, I'm sick of the very sight of sailors, that's why I've delegated Philippe to do all the interviewing, given him the requisite authority. This city, it stinks with them. But you, living where you do, there's no need for me to enlarge on it," and he saw the little clerk smile. "Yes, far too many, and not-enough ships, Labiche. Come to think of it, it's cruel. What we owners lost in tonnage in two wars, is nobody's business, I suppose. Consider Heros. We've seventeen ships and once we had something like seventy, think of it, and every berth occupied, packed tight, securely locked, not another berth, not a single one, and a waiting list today of over two hundred.

"An odd thing, Labiche. I'm struck by the number of men seeking to get to the Orient, something starting there perhaps, but my broker is silent," he gave the clerk a quick pat on the back, it made the dust fly.

He got up, "this rise, Labiche, it is purely between ourselves."

Labiche stared. It gave the episode a conspiratorial air, yet to him nothing seemed more simple, one more clerk getting a rise in salary.

He was moving towards the door, Follet following, who now picked up his hat and gave Labiche a final instruction.

"Tell Marcelle that Manos will be at my office at three o'clock prompt, and that he's to make the usual arrangements."

"Very good, sir," and Labiche went out.

Follet called after him, "tell Philippe I'm ready, it's a quarter to one."

"Yes sir."

"If Labiche ever dies," he thought, "the Saint Vincent de Paul Society will collapse, little Labiche is the rock that holds it up."

Philippe came in.

"Ready?"

"Ready," Philippe replied.

They both went out.

Labiche, after this unexpected call to Follet's office, and his more unexpected rise in the estimation of the Heros concern, had returned to his own cubicle, sat down at his desk. He was soon buried deeply in the
Orlando's
affairs. He was a very careful man, conscientious, scrupulous. He not only dotted down the last minute and the last sou for the ultimate benefit of the Heros Company, but would often, in imagination, go aboard the ship upon whose time-sheets he happened to be working. He was generally escorted to the best cabin, then sailed away in her, the Captain's special guest for the remainder of the voyage.

In the twelve years in which he had worked in the redbrick building behind the Rue Lens, he had sailed many voyages, travelled to many countries. He had, indeed, been round the world six times. This apart, he had never at any time travelled further than the Place de Lenche or the Cannabiere except on a single occasion when he had gone to Lyons with a party of the Saint Vincent de Paul Society, of which he was the local secretary.

And every evening, promptly at five o'clock, he ran down the iron stairs and out of the building, to mount his bright green and redoubtable bicycle, on which he pedalled furiously until he reached the bottom of the hill. Thenceforth he climbed, laboriously, up and up, what Monsieur Follet had once described as climbing into hell. And it was somewhere on its second floor that Aristide Labiche lived with his wife and two children.

Heros liked Labiche, he was so faithful, punctual, he gave a good day's work for what might not be a good day's pay. Monsieur Follet had not forgotten that this year he had promised him a rise. Now, Labiche toiled away with the time-sheets, all the time enjoying a feeling of happiness, like a long, secret, un-ending smile, that shone inwards like the sun.

That their best clerk was able to split himself into two persons was a matter upon which the Heros concern was entirely indifferent. So long as the clerical side functioned well, all was well. What Labiche did after five o'clock was his own business. The Heros would never interfere. All knew how his spare time was spent; they admired him in a distant, cynical sort of way, but they never commented upon it.

Philippe, a home-loving person if ever there was one, could never understand why Labiche's wife put up with it all, for the man was hardly home from his work and enjoying his supper, than his mind was made up to be out again. Madame Labiche was totally resigned to his mission, and the green hat and the umbrella, the parting smile as he reached the door was only a signal to her that another creature had fallen.

Labiche loved creatures. A man of serious purpose, with a mission in life, a clerk who sat in the dingiest of the Heros offices, but who in the evening wandered off into the dark places. One was not a member of the Saint Vincent de Paul for nothing.

There were creatures who spent more than forty days and forty nights in the desert, and Labiche was after them. There was always somebody on the rack. His brain contained a large, outspread map of hell, full of wandering creatures who could be saved. His was a continuous descending movement. He was familiar with abysses, dark corners, lost holes, concealed turnings, labyrinths. He visited the sick, prisons, hospitals, hostels for the dying, whore houses; he climbed the gangways of ships, found his way into malodorous foc'sles, then came down again, going on, scattering good intentions, scattering seed as he went. His country lay behind the locked door, the closed window, he travelled in the night as though on wings. He watched out for the bent, the stooping, the blunderers, the night leaners against walls, the lost, flat on their backs in the knocking shops. He arrived after the last word had been said, after the clock had stopped, he was the extension on Hope. Dereliction drew him as powerfully as light, he believed in redemption, the resurrection of souls.

There were depths lower than abyss, and he knew them, miseries as solid as walls, sin as affrighting and fierce as flame. Labiche never paused, but went forward, hope had the solidity of rock. Mercy was not just some blind leap of the heart.

But after the nightmare hours there was the morning, the quieter day, the ordinary, the normal hours, yet Labiche often drew after him a kind of hallucinatory thread, and sometimes the very ordinary objects in his office took on an unreality
...

"There!" he said, having finished the last of the
Orlando's
sheets, "there and he made them into a neat pile and put them away in the top drawer of his desk, which he locked. He pushed in his chair, went and looked through the window, to see the sky and a desert of roofings. He put on his hat, picked up the umbrella, and went out into the corridor. He tore down the iron stairway, he always took it at a run, as though never a minute must be wasted. He met the cleaner coming up, armed with his cloths, his brush and pail.

"Good-day."

"Good-day," the cleaner said turning to watch him go. Nothing seemed funnier to the cleaner than the sight of Labiche's odd shape careering madly down the stairs.

"Poor sod. Quite mad, I'm sure."

Labiche went off to Fred's. Meanwhile Follet and Philippe had reached Madame Gaston's establishment. They never lunched anywhere else.

Monsieur Follet was a fat man, he never sat comfortably anywhere. To-day he draped one of Madame Gaston's chairs, enjoying his lunch with M. Philippe. He toyed with a cutlet, and at the same time kept his eye on Madame, seated at her high desk, whose present function was one of dispensing smiles, as one after another of her favourite customers came in. Follet was always attracted to Madame Gaston by her wonderful red hair, he sometimes expected it to burst into flame. A glance from her to M. Philippe made him realise what a reedy instrument his assistant really was.

"You were saying?" said Follet.

Philippe sat back in his chair. "I said that Nantes bum was in again yesterday, sir."

"Indeed! I was unaware of it," replied Follet; he looked quickly round the room as though an eavesdropper lay in every corner.

"By the way, that Toulon agent says that the stuff is on the way, and a long way, too, I think. If I did not think it paved the way for future business I would never dream of accepting it, but agents are mighty people as you well know, Philippe, and one must not offend them. But the
Clarté
is held up, and her hatch yawning open for the stuff. And Manos is irritable, I cannot offend my best skipper, although he is at the nodding age. He desires to be under way by seven o'clock. I am seeing him at three o'clock. You might get on to Marcelle as soon as you get back, we
must
know when this bloody consignment is arriving."

"Yes sir."

"What did you say to this Nantes bum?"

"Nothing, sir. What does one say? If one's a parrot perhaps the same as one said yesterday. There are no vacancies, and indeed we of the Heros like to keep the concern a family affair, we do not like strangers—"

Follet smiled. "Quite so. What sort of job, Philippe."

"Commander."