"He asked me if I went to church or chapel," Stafford explained. "I said I didn't go to either (he meant a'fore I came to sea) but that some o' my friends said their prayers in St George's Fields."
"What's funny about that?" Jackson asked, and Rossi repeated the question, adding: "You can hurt yourself inside, laughing like that."
Stafford's features were now serious: he was faced with sheer ignorance, and he always delighted in instructing his shipmates. "I was making a little joke, see, about goin' to chapel. To the chapel in St George's Fields. There's only one chapel there -" he began laughing, "- and that's the one belonging to Magdalen Hospital, see?"
"No," Jackson said briskly. "This looks like one of your long jokes that has us all falling asleep."
"Yus, well, I'll shut up then and you can entertain the mess - song or story, eh Jacko?" Stafford asked sulkily.
"Oh come on," Rossi wheedled, now intrigued at the idea of a chapel in a place called St George's Fields. "Tell us about this saint. Why does he have his own chapel?"
"My oath," Stafford said despairingly, "I dunno, s'just a place darn the uvver end o' Blackfriars Road. Why's everybody suddenly interested in it?"
"Because of you," Gilbert said mildly. "You started to tell us a joke about it."
Stafford ran a hand through his hair and sat up straight, a look of desperation about him. "Chapel," he said slowly, as though feeling his way through a fog. "Church or chapel Gilbert asked, and I said some of my friends went to chapel in St George's Fields ..."
He rubbed his head, trying to restore the train of thought, but he had drunk his own rum issue and Gilbert had passed over his, and Jackson had paid him a tot for a favour done yesterday. Finally, he remembered. "Yus, well, I was really tellin' Gilbert that my friends were - well, young ladies who had to make their own living, if you get my meaning."
"Whores?" Gilbert asked.
"Well, yes, but that's a strong word."
"St George's Fields," Rossi said relentlessly. "Accidente, San Giorgio mi aiutaP'
"Wotchew rattling on abart, then?" Stafford demanded suspiciously. "Speak English!"
"I was asking St George to help me," Rossi said, "but you need his help more. Now come on, start again. First, we have the chapel in St George's Fields."
"Well, the chapel belongs to Magdalen Hospital," Stafford said, as though that explained everything.
"And . . ." Jackson said encouragingly, "what sort of hospital is it? Like Greenwich Hospital, for seamen?"
"Nah, nah, nan!" Stafford exclaimed. "That's the whole joke - it's for 'The Reformation and Relief of Penitent Prostitutes'!"
"A sort of Stafford family home, like Mr Ramage has St Kew, eh?" Jackson asked drily.
"You don't believe me," Stafford complained, "but it's run by dukes and earls and rich merchants. Has a surgeon, several apotharies -"
"Apothecaries," Jackson corrected out of habit.
"- yes, s'what I said, and parsons. One's the chaplain and two more take it in turns to preach each evenin'. And the matron - she's a hard old biddy, I can tell you."
"How can you tell us?" Rossi inquired innocently. "Surely you've never been 'penitent'?"
Stafford realized he had talked too much, but as Jackson and Rossi (and Mr Ramage) knew that his job before the war, after an apprenticeship to a locksmith, was hard to describe, there was no need for secrets.
"One of my sisters," he said, offhandedly. "She got mixed up with that bad lot around Blackfriars and before we knew what had happened this pimp was threatening to cut her wiv a knife."
"Then what?" Jackson asked, realizing that there were still aspects of Stafford's past life he knew nothing about.
"Well, when Neilley (that's what we call her 'cos she don't like plain 'Nell') when Neilley got the word back to us, me and some mates went darn to Blackfriars and called on this pimp."
"And murdered him?" Rossi asked. Having spent a childhood in the Genoa slums, he was genuinely interested how the day-to-day problems of life in London were solved.
"Nah, that's 'gainst the law," Stafford said airily. "We just took Neilley and left 'im for dead."
"There is a difference?" Gilbert asked, who had been trying to translate for Louis, Auguste and Albert.
"Oh yus, indeed. Murder's a capital offence in England, you know that. Get topped if you're caught. You know," he explained, seeing the blank look on Gilbert's face, "'topped' - hanged. So we just cut him up a bit, like he'd threatened to do Neilley, and if 'e died later 'cos he 'adn't the sense to stop bleedin', that's 'is affair."
"What about Neilley?" Jackson asked, puzzled by the connection with Magdalen Hospital and the dukes, earls and parsons who ran it.
"Oh, at first she took on a bit. She'd got a bit o' a taste for the life, if you get my meaning, but I persuaded her a stay at the Magdalen would put her right. Prayers and poultices, that's what she needed for a few weeks. She didn't agree, but she went all the same, and I used to go darn there a couple of times a week, just to make sure Neilley was paying attention to what all those dukes and earls and parsons and apotherums were telling 'er."
"Was she? Many peoples is talking," Rossi observed.
"She was listening an' prayin' an' taking her medicine," Stafford said. "The matron was watching her, special."
"What, you paid the matron for special attention?" Jackson asked doubtfully. It did not sound like Stafford who, he thought, had always taken what he wanted, providing the lock could be picked.
"Well, not exactly paid 'er," Stafford admitted, for the first time looking uneasy. "Just sort of 'inted to 'er that if Neilley wasn't right as rain by St Swithin's Day, an' penitent too, matron might find 'erself in need o' a lot of prayin' and medicalatin' too."
"Medicating," Jackson said. "You're a rough lot. What happened to Neilley? Was she the 'penten' you were telling us about?"
"Yus. Well, all that was going on abart the time the press took me up. My fault, 'cos I knew the word was out for a hot press, but one night I was drinking heavy down Fetter Lane an' reckoned I knew me way back 'ome without any of the gangers spottin' me, even though I couldn't see straight."
"And?"
"An' I was wrong. I sobered up in the 'old of a receiving ship anchored off the Tower with 'alf an 'undred other rascals that the pressgang had just rounded up, an' there we all were, screamin' at the top of our lungs that we'd fight the French wivart swords or pay."
Wide-eyed, Gilbert exclaimed: "You were all shouting that?"
"Well, not 'xactly shouting if you get my meaning, but we thought it. We was all recovering from too much drink, an' if anyone 'ad actually shouted, the noise would've done us an injury."
Jackson explained: "Staff sometimes exaggerates a little."
Gilbert nodded and turned to translate for the other Frenchmen, but if anything Stafford's story grew in the translation: like Stafford himself, Gilbert was not one to let facts spoil a good tale.
The Frenchmen listened wide-eyed, glancing at Stafford from time to time. Between them they had lived as fishermen or on the Count of Rennes' estate. Brest was small, built round its port, the river and the naval dockyard. A city like London, with its capacity for sin and which offered such scope for lively fellows like Stafford, was more than they could imagine.
Stafford, his ten minutes of glory at an end, leaned against the ship's side and went to sleep with the Atlantic swirling past his head, separated by only a few inches of oak.