The Last Train to Scarborough (14 page)

'There
en't one in't back yard.'

'But
you don't
have
a back yard, do you?' I asked, thinking of how the rear of
the house gave on to what was practically a sheer
drop.          *

He
shook his head.

'So
it'd be a bit hard to have a toilet in it, wouldn't it?'

I
glanced down under the bed, and Adam Rickerby looked on alarmed as I did so. A
fair quantity of dust was down there, but not the object I was looking for.

'There's
no chamber pot,' I said.

He
eyed me sidelong, looked away, eyed me again.

'This
room doesn't
have
a chamber pot,' he said.

'I
know,' I said. 'That's what I'm saying.'

'Want
one, do yer?' he said, very fast.

'Yes,'
I said, 'that's what I'm also saying.'

A
note of music arose: the sea wind in the little iron fireplace - a very pure
sound, like a flute.

'Cabinet
fer yer clothes,' he said suddenly, indicating the wardrobe.

'Yes,'
I said, and the silence that followed was so awkward that I said, 'Thanks for
pointing it out.'

Had
he taken the point about the chamber pot? It was impossible to tell.

'Coal
an' wood in't scuttles,' he said - and just then there came a great bang and a
scream from beyond the window.

The
lad remained motionless, as I barged the bed aside to get a look. Red lights,
like burning embers, drifted peacefully down through the black sky towards the
harbour.

'I'd
say a maroon's just been let off,' I said, and I looked at the lad, who was
frowning down towards the bed.

'Appen,'
he said.

'What
does it mean?'

'Could
mean owt,' he said.

'Well,'
I said, 'that can't be right,' at which he looked up at me quite sharply 'If a
maroon could mean anything, they wouldn't bother firing one. I'd say a ship's
been wrecked.'

And
the lad didn't seem to think much of that idea, because he just turned on his
heel and quit the room. I went out after him, and caught him up on the floor
being decorated.

'There's
t'toilet,' he said, indicating a white-painted door. 'Paint's all dry.'

Evidently,
then, he did not mean to supply me with a chamber pot. It struck me that he
was a very inflexible youth.

'Where's
everyone else in the house?' I said. 'I want to see about this shipwreck.'

'Sitting
room,' he said. 'Next floor down.'

I
followed him down towards the first landing. On the way we passed three framed
photographs I hadn't noticed on the way up. I turned towards them expecting to
see sea-side scenes. Instead there was an old man giving me the evil eye. He
hadn't mustered a smile for any of the three, I noticed, as we descended under
his gaze.

'Who's
that?' I enquired, although I knew the answer in advance on account of the pile
of grey curls atop the old man's head.

The
lad stopped on the stairs, but didn't turn about.

'Our
dad,' he said.

'Is
he in the house?'

'No.'

At
the bottom of the staircase, the lad had paused to straighten a crooked stair
rod.

'What
do you mean?' I said. 'Is he not in the house just at present, or is he never
in it?'

The
lad straightened up, standing foursquare before me in the narrow space and
folding his arms. He looked bullet proof, and big with it. Did he mean to put
the frighteners on me? I stood my ground.

'Never,'
he said.

'Well,
let me see now,' I said. 'Would your old man be dead?'

'He
would. How do you take yer tea?'

'What's
that got to do with it?'

'I'll
be attending yer in t’morning,' he said, taking a step closer towards me. 'I'll
be bringin' yer 'ot water in a jug and tea
...
in a cup.'

'Well,
that's just how I like tea,' I said.'... In a cup.'

No
flicker of a smile from the lad.

'Two
sugars,' I said. 'When did your old man die, if you don't mind my asking?'

'Two
year since. Milk?'

I
nodded. 'And plenty of it.'

'Seven
o'clock suit?'

'Fine.'

The
old man hadn't killed Blackburn at any rate ... Unless the lad lied, but I
somehow didn't think so. He was indicating the nearest closed door, and saying,
'Sitting room. Fire's lit in there.'

He
then told me a cold tea was served on Sundays in the dining room, and carried
on down the stairs. Remembering about the shipwreck, I approached the door of
the sitting room. It faced the right way to give a view of the sea. I could
hear muttered voices from within.

I
looked up as the iron wall of the chain room cracked. The door was slowly
opening, and it seemed that I was returning to this dark corner of the ship
from hundreds of miles away. Blue cigar smoke came in first, like something
curious, and I wanted it to go back because it brought the sickness rising up
again. The grey Mate stood in the doorway, and he held up an oil lamp, which
swung with the ship, and gave his face a bluish tinge.

'The
old man wants a word,' he said, the white foam rising at the backs of his
teeth.

'What
are you talking about?' I said. '
You're
the old
man.'

But
I knew from Baytown days that the captain was always 'the old man' on any ship,
regardless of age.

'Wants
a word about what, exactly?' I then enquired, just as though there were many
other things I ought to be attending to on the ship.

'You
are to continue your story,' said the Mate. 'Your recollections.'

And
he seemed to be trying out a new English word. The best thing would be to have
it out with him straight away. His lamp had illuminated the length of rope, but
I could hardly stoop to catch it up and I doubted that my hands would work
properly anyway. He opened the first hatchway, and I stumbled into the
companionway. He opened the second, and we were out onto the fore-deck under a
dark blue sky and a moon that was full. The fore-sail was still rigged; it
trembled in the wind, and so did I. The Captain waited a little way ahead,
standing by the mid-ships ladder. One of the two of them must have held the
revolver, but I could not see it just at that moment.

I
looked up. The smoke from the funnel was pale blue and ghostly against the dark
blue of the sky. It would come out at odd intervals, not connected to the beat
of the engines. Smoke was unburnt carbon; the stuff could kill you if inhaled
in a confined space, but that didn't mean that the fellows who made smoke were
evil. Any man with an honest job made smoke in quantities, and I wondered about
the men in the engine room of this no-name ship. Did they know about me? I
doubted it, for the engines and the stoke hold were aft, and no man was allowed
for'ard when I was out of my prison.

We
walked on red-painted iron. Sea swirled over it, although not so much as
before, and now the waves were almost pretty against the full moon. Some were
set on following us, others drifted off crosswise, and they made the deck
slippery in parts. What's wanted here, I thought, is a mop - and a big one. Mr
Buckingham would scarcely have approved of the situation. Was he a real man? I
could not decide. He was the fellow who bought a mill that was kept idle
through the negligence of the railway company in not delivering a piece of
machinery. Would the carrier be liable for profits lost by the mill being kept
idle? No. Loss too remote. My ability to think was returning by degrees, but
try as I might to recall those final hours in Scarborough, my recollections
stopped somewhere about a giant needle, a quantity of razor blades, a wax doll,
a paper fan and a paraffin heater in a blue room.

We
walked on the starboard side of the ship, and as I looked over the sea, I
thought I made out some deepening of night at a mile's distance, but it was
more than that.

'Land!'
I called ahead to the grey-faced Dutchman.

'Nobody
knows you there, my friend,' he said, not turning around.

It
looked homely enough all the same. I saw in silhouette two houses and what
might have been a church clustered together on a low cliff. We were going at a
fair lick, and they seemed to be riding fast the other way, but I kept them in
sight as long as I could. Lights burned brightly at the retreating windows,
and I was grateful to whoever had lit them.

The
Mate had motioned me to stop. I looked beyond him towards the mid-ships, and
another man had taken the place of the Captain at the ladder, this one much
younger, hardly more than a boy. I saw him clear by the lamp that hung from the
rail near where he stood. He wore the regulation galoshes but also a thin,
ordinary sort of suit. I was certain that he was not the man who'd been at the
wheel during my first visit to the chart room, which meant that there were four
at least in on the secret. The kid had made some signal to the Mate, who was
now leaning somewhat against the gunwale, and looking aft. Some delay had
occurred in taking me into the bridge house, if that was in fact the programme.
Perhaps there were some loiterers aft who might catch sight of me unless they
were put off.

I
looked again towards the land. It was not above a mile away, and the famous
Captain Webb had swum twenty-five, or whatever was the width of the Channel.
But he had trained for years; he was in peak condition and had covered himself
in grease, whereas I was half dead from cold to begin with. A sudden burst of
sea came, and the crash of the wave was replaced by the sound of a bell in the
darkness, and this one was
not
aboard the
ship. It approached - or we approached
it
- at a great
rate, and it came into view after half a minute, clanging inside a revolving
iron cage. Here was a warning buoy of some sort, a tattered black flag flying
from the top of it. Perhaps we were too close to land; perhaps this was the
best chance I would get to strike out for the shore. But there were no welcoming
windows to be seen now, just a low line of cliffs that rose and fell, but
always in darkness. I wondered whether such continuous blankness could occur in
my own country, or whether some disaster had over-taken the place since I'd
left.

I
was still held in check by the Mate. I glanced at the face of the kid at the
mid-ships. He looked pale in the white light of the moon and the white light of
the lantern; his eyes were restless, but I did not care for the expression
that came over his face when they landed on me.

'I
would not be you, mate,' that look of his said, 'for
worlds.

The
sitting room seemed to be filled with the night sky and the black sea. A man
with his back to me stood at one of two tall windows, gazing out. Another,
younger man lay on a couch. The room was surely the biggest in the house, and
it might once have been two rooms - something about the way the floorboards
rose to a gentle peak in the middle made me think so; and the way that the two
tall windows did not quite match. They seemed to go in for knocking down walls
in that house, as I would later discover.

The
room was very old. The cornices were crumbling a little, the fireplace was
small. Worn blue rugs were scattered over the black boards, but they were too
widely spaced. Black and blue: they didn't set each other off right; they were
the colours of a bruise. The articles of furniture seemed few and far between.
Most notable of these was a very black upright piano, which had a wall to
itself and was set somewhat at an angle by the slope of the floor. The man at
the window stood some distance from an occasional table that held two books. I
could make out the title of one:
A History of the British Navy.
The man at the window turned about. He was the fellow who'd answered the front
door to me, only he looked older now. He stepped aside, as though politely
allowing me a view of the sea.

On
the harbour wall stood the harbour master's house and the lighthouse, both
white. Against the black sky, the two together looked like a glowing white
church with a round tower. The man who'd stepped aside was watching me as I
noticed the scene on the dark beach, just to the right of the harbour. Two
lines of men holding ropes hauled a boat towards the waves, beckoned on by a
man at the front, who wore a long oilskin. From this distance the men looked
tiny, the whole scene ridiculous.

The
guardian of the window put out his hand.

'I'm
Fielding,' he said.

'Stringer,'
I said.'... I saw a maroon fired.'

He
tipped his head to one side, as though questioning what I'd just said, although
he was smiling as he did it.