Bentley smiled back. That had become something of a joke between them. His head ached constantly; the blow had done more damage than could have been imagined. The thought of spirits as an anodyne revolted him.
‘No, please,’ he said. ‘I must speak of it. I wish to say I am sorry. And also…to ask.’
‘Well, ask away then,’ said Broad. ‘Although I am just a common man, so you will not get much sense out of me. But as to the spitting – you are forgiven. It is past, forgotten.’
‘Why, though? That is what I want to ask. Why is it forgiven? Why do you show me such kindness? Why?’
For a long time, Broad did not speak. His lips half formed words, then rejected them. When he did, it was to ask a question. ‘You ask me why I do not hate you? But for what? What, after all, is a spit? A face full of dribble such as my child might give me, a dozen times a day. Why not rather talk of Thomas Fox? He is dead, you know.’
The pulsing headache became instantly worse. Bentley gasped. It was his turn to be silent, his face contorted with mental agony. At last he forced words out.
‘All right then. Thomas Fox. Oh Christ, I am not forgiven! Oh Christ, I cannot be!’
There was a long silence, saving always for the creaking timbers, the rushing sea, the low moaning of the wind.
‘Yes,’ said Broad. His voice was deep, slightly husky. ‘You are forgiven, I suppose. You could not see the harm. You do not know. You are a stupid, blinded child. You could not know. God will forgive you, I suppose.’
‘But you?’ cried Bentley. Tears flowed down his face. ‘Do you forgive me, Mr Broad?’
Another pause, a shorter one.
‘Aye, I forgive you, boy. Much good that that may do you! But go to sleep, you are not well.’
William Bentley smiled through his tears, with gratitude. It was immensely important to him, this man’s forgiveness. Much more so than God’s. He went to sleep.
In later days, feeling fitter although too weak to stand, he asked a question that had loomed large in his mind, awaiting its moment.
‘You said, sir, some days ago… You said you had a child. I did not know that.’
Broad was seated near the berth, sewing a shirt. He paused in his work, and his face clouded. He had not thought of home, or wife, or child, for a long time except fleetingly. It was the only way, to crush the thoughts as they formed. It was a painful wound, somewhere deep in the blackness of his skull; an area that he avoided, sometimes almost desperately.
‘I cannot talk of that,’ he said. ‘Forgive me, it is impossible. Do not ask.’
Bentley said slowly: ‘I never thought, that is all. It never occurred to me.’
Broad spoke harsh and fast.
‘I am thirty-odd years old. I live in a village near Portsmouth, next the sea. I am well-to-do and not unhandsome. I have a wife called Mary and a baby boy. I was returning from a night of honest work to see my baby christened when I was taken. By you, William Bentley, by you! Do you forget so blessed easy! And I shall never see them again.’
He ran from the cabin, the grey old shirt left draggled on the deck. The boy closed his eyes, his burden of shame renewed. And yet; and yet…
He pondered deeply, he pondered until his brain sang, hour after weary hour. It was all too hard, too complex, complicated. A country at war against a deadly enemy; the necessity of the press; the need for discipline; the dreadful rabble that served as crew; his uncle’s…cruelty. And men like Broad. Fine men, good men, somehow noble men.
Yet a smuggler. A smuggler! Actually in trade with France, while the war raged on!
They spoke of many things in the time before Bentley was fit enough to take up his democratic appointment as cleaner of the heads, and slowly some of his attitudes cleared. He listened to Broad for hours, learned things that made him disbelieve his ears. Learned, for instance, that this man loved the French, and spoke their language fluently, and visited there often. Was, moreover, godfather to four French children, and saw his profession of smuggler as a useful and an honourable thing. He prodded, gently, at William’s memories on the subject; and yes, true it was that at his father’s estate near Petersfield, and those of his relatives, and at all the houses in London he had visited, including several admirals’, French brandy was in good supply, and brandy of the finest. Broad talked too of the causes of the mutiny, not in an angry way, or a dogmatic one, but with a sense of inquiry. The character of Daniel Swift was mulled over, and even he was not hated or condemned quite out of hand. Many of the things that had impressed Bentley most, early on, about his uncle, crumbled under the keen attention that Broad meted them. He laughed, for instance, at the boy’s timid mention of how well the captain knew his crew, recognised the latent rebellion, kept them guessing at his every move.
‘He was in the dark, you see,’ said Broad. ‘He was in the dark. At every turn he searched around for something new to fox us with, but it was foolish, the panic moves of a man quite in the dark.’
‘But surely,’ Bentley said, ‘the matter of the sports and all? That made them happy, did it not?’
‘Happy? Well, in this respect it did: that for a moment he had ended all that killing work. But do you not understand, young man, he was not keeping us in the dark so much as himself. He never knew exactly what would happen. And when it happened wrong – and viz the sports for that, young bucko, or have you forgot that too? – he blundered on with some other great new scheme. And still was in the dark.’
Bentley did remember the sports, too well, so said nothing.
Broad went on reflectively: ‘You see, your uncle lacked the art of… he could not tell… he could not guess the minds of other men. He thought – thinks – that all men’s minds are simple, like his own. But of course, the men, the people, were also merely…cattle, to be treated rough. Only he did not know how rough to treat us. He dreamed up splendid schemes to keep us up to mark, but could not see how each man would respond. Look at Henry Joyce, now. The man is an animal, a sort of innocent poor wild beast. You cannot break his spirit with a lash, but merely make him obstinate. Swift could not see such things; it was his tragedy.’
Again the acceptance, again the compassion. There was no note of rancour in Broad’s voice, no hint of hatred.
‘Good God, Jesse Broad,’ William burst out. ‘Do you even forgive my uncle!? And see some good in Henry Joyce?’ Broad smiled.
‘Forgive is the wrong word, do you see? There is nothing to forgive. Much to regret, maybe. Yes, certainly much to regret. In both of them. In all of us caught in this sorry ship. You must see the other side as well; Allgood is not alone in hating mutiny. Not a man-jack on this sorry, sorry ship who does not wish it had not happened. It is a vile, degrading thing for a loyal Briton to do, a crime of deepest dye. But it is hard: the life is hard, the food and drink are vile, the conditions degrading, the discipline… And back we come to Daniel Swift! A man who did his duty as he saw it.’
The boy said slowly: ‘There seems no hope. So much hatred in such a little vessel. The people, the officers, even the marines – all against each other, all at loggerheads. There seems no hope.’
‘You are one-sided again. Even marines are human, you know! It was a marine who fired the first shot, that set the whole thing on wheels. He may have been related to Thomas Fox. A cousin.’
‘Good God,’ said Bentley. He blinked. ‘Thomas Fox had a cousin on board here? On the Welfare? A marine?’
‘Ah well,’ Broad sighed. ‘Probably not, it seems unlikely. At any rate, we shall never know. The man who fired that shot, who killed Captain Craig, did not live for many minutes more himself.’