They hadn’t been able to talk about it while in England, but their senses opened on the trains in France, even on the up-chucking storm-hauled boat across from Dover. Frank had a greater respect for George than if they had simply caught the bus that night and forgotten all about him. The injury, scars, and weeks of pain seemed unconnected with him, as if they’d been dealt by a dislodged boulder or a fall of lightning.
A passenger came out of the first-class lounge and stood by the rail, a tall young American of indeterminate age, well-wrapped in a grey overcoat and several folds of woollen scarf. Narrow blue jeans came down to the top of his cheap Spanish shoes. He had short, grizzled, greying hair and a rugged sort of pug-dog face that made him look like a ramrod Napoleon getting his first look at desolate St Helena. Frank had helped him carry his trunk aboard the night before, been cautioned as he took one end of it: ‘Steady up the gangway, pal. It’s full of books.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Frank said. ‘I shan’t crease myself.’
‘My name’s Shelley Jones,’ he said. ‘What’s yours?’
Frank called out a good morning: was he going to live on that island? ‘Hell, no,’ Shelley responded, cigarette held over the water. ‘I’ll stay a few days in Palma, then maybe get me a cab out to that monastery where Chopin shacked-up with George Sand. Then I’ll hump the hell out of it — to Morocco or some place. What are you doing then, in little old fascist Spain?’
‘I’m just waiting for the sun to shoot up.’ He turned to the empty sea and, seeing that a new tint had been born, stared hard to observe the exact birth of the next colour. He saw shades of dark green on the mountainslope that had jumped there while he watched the sea; and going back to the sea, other colours had spread themselves meantime on the horizon. ‘I’m travelling,’ Frank said, passing the brandy. ‘Drifting for a few months.’
‘As long as your wife likes it. What’s your work, if you don’t mind my discourtesy?’
‘I’m in a factory, but I’m taking time off.’
Careful to wipe the spout, Shelley returned the bottle: ‘I thought you weren’t the usual kind of Limey. I even told myself you were a working man.’ People were still sleeping on deck, huddled in blankets or overcoats against the sharpening wind. An old woman in black leaned against the saloon, eyes open in a wide stare as if she didn’t hear the clink of spoons and coffee cups inside. ‘Even an American recognizes me as a worker!’ Frank laughed. ‘There’s hope for me yet.’
Scorn didn’t put Shelley off: ‘I suppose in 1936 someone like you would have been in this country helping the Republic.’
‘If I’d had enough food in my belly to get here I might. There ain’t anything like that, in these days. As soon as we get enough bread and cheese in us we have to start looking for a soul. It’s a waste of time though.’
‘What do you want to look for?’
‘A world to build, maybe.’
‘Fine, pal. But you got to pull a few down first.’
‘I don’t mind starting that way.’
‘I almost know,’ Shelley said, ‘what the sailors of Odysseus must have felt, seeing an island for the first time, that had no soul because they hadn’t yet poured out there libations on its beaches. They carried their souls in wine-jars, and that was three thousand years ago.’
‘Cut the Homer,’ Frank said, ‘and tell me about yourself.’
Shelley had a gentle way of speech, for he liked to be ironic without giving offence. ‘That’s hard. History at Chicago. Then work on Madison Avenue. But I gave that up, though I was careful to save out of my fifteen thousand a year — to do a lot of travelling around. Sure, Frank, I’ve been around, but we won’t talk about that. I have a girl in Barcelona who I love-up and leave every few months — which brings me out to this neck of the woods. One day I think the poor girl won’t be here because she’s involved with the C N T — the good old C N T — getting their stuff printed and handed out.’
‘I thought that mob wasn’t operating any more,’ Frank said.
He smiled. ‘Well, you can never stop anybody. Look at the French, they’ve half a million soldiers in Algeria, and the shindig going on there is no big celebration for any man at all.’
‘You’ve been there?’
‘Ask me where I’ve never been,’ Shelley said, a jocular brush-off. ‘I go quietly. Pussyfoot. Back in the silent watches of my room — wherever it happens to be — I open my case and play patience, shuffle a lot of little books from one hand to the other, fan them out, and choose a passport. Soft-shoe-shuffling from hot spot to hot spot, after a few lessons in Cuba. In Spanish, you understand?’
‘If you’re not a nark,’ Frank grinned, ‘how do you know that I’m not?’
‘If you aren’t forthcoming, Frank, you cease to operate. Get me?’
‘As long as you get yourself, that’s all that matters.’ The water was like ink, ship turning in it. A light still flipped its beams from the outermost rock. More people were on deck, and an English voice brayed: ‘I say, what a fabulous colour the water is!’ His wife agreed, in a similar bray. Frank reached for the cognac, and told Shelley to drink until he no longer felt the cold. A heavy ball of blood on the horizon. Stars gave final signals. The beige houses of a fishing village passed between sphinx-cliffs. But the sea here wouldn’t accept warmth or colour from the sun, clung to its sombre cold. The wind bit now, and people kept back into the superstructure, feet shaken by the stubborn jolts of a donkey engine.
Frank went down the narrow companionway, out of the nagging wind. Myra was about to get her case from the cabin, but a Spanish woman lifted it for her. Frank took it, appreciating her help. ‘Do you want some coffee?’
‘Not till we land.’
‘Sleep O.K.?’
‘Very well. It was so calm.’
‘Let’s go on deck then. We’ll dock soon, and you ought to see the view first.’ She said good-bye to the Spanish woman, to kisses, laughter, and delicate touches of her stomach. Frank went up with her case.
The ship was turning, bows sliding along the eastern hills whose summits slumped above a bank of blue cloud, rounded the headland and carried them into Palma Bay. ‘I’ll be staying at the Fonda España,’ Shelley said. His face had lost the open truculence of early morning, a stern gaze was still fixed on the island. ‘Call me some time and we’ll have a drink.’
‘Let’s have one now,’ Frank said, ‘There’s some left.’ As though the hills had pushed towards them an unwanted cloud, the ship ran into a roll of mist, and instead of an all-flanking view of city and waterfront, the boat’s fog signal sent its blunted death-hoot over the bay. Shelley grinned, then grimaced, hands for once out of his pockets and pressed together on the rail as if praying. They drank until brown and yellow houses appeared near the shore.
The ship was snapped up by the grey-jawed breakwater, moved slowly towards the towered and pinnacled cathedral shooting up above the ramparts. Grey, jagged mountains to the left were like the fossilized end of some prehistoric eruption. The wind had died, vanished, leaving warmth and sunlight over the seaport and island. ‘I hope the kid in there can feel this sight,’ Frank said, holding her hand.
‘There’ll be a lot more beauty yet,’ she said.
‘Naples and Genoa,’ Shelley called. ‘Or New York. New York takes some beating.’ Rowing boats moved out of the ship’s track like shoals of small-fry confused at the descending presence of a bigger fish whose food they did not happen to be. Frank tossed the empty drink-bottle into green water, then moved their luggage to where sailors were erecting block-and-tackle for lowering the gangway. On one side of the bay were bright and fashionable suburbs; on the other were cranes and warehouses. The ship edged along, almost at a stop. The excitement of people on the quay, and those on the ship about to land, spanned the narrowing channel like electric current breaking down a condenser. Beneath his brandied and buoyant spirits Frank felt layers of tiredness clamouring for rest. He’d been up all night, unable to sleep, his brain matched to the racing engines of the ship.