I shook my head and wished he'd go back to his sneering. 'I've no family,' I said.
'No fam'ly! Blimey! That's tough. But yer got friends, ain't yer?'
'No,' I told him. 'Only the fellow in Penzance. You see, I left England when I was four. The only thing I can remember about England is when I was on the deck of a ship that took us to Canada. My father pointed the coastline out to me. It was just a grey smudge on the horizon. That and the day my mother went away — those are about my earliest recollections. We lived at a place called Redruth in Cornwall. That's where I was born.'
'But if yer went to Canada when you were four, why the 'ell didn't yer join the Canadian Army?'
'I didn't stay in Canada. After my father died, I went to Australia, to the gold mines. I was twenty then — a miner, like my father. After the war had been going on for some time I got a ship to England. But France fell and Italy came in and we Were held up at Port Said — so I joined Wavell's mob. This is the first time I've been to England since I was four years old.' Damn him — why had he started me off like this? Why didn't he go on sneering at me? I could stand that. I began to swear. It was a pointless waste of words, but it forced the tears of self-pity away.
'You oughter've gone back to Canada, chum,' he said. 'There wouldn't 'ave bin no questions ast there.'
'I couldn't get a ship,' I said. I reached out for the bottle and poured myself another drink.
'Yer don't want no more o' that firewater,' he advised, putting a restraining hand on my arm that was like the claw of a bird. 'Yer goin' ashore soon and yer'll need to be sober.'
But I took no heed, filling the glass and draining it at a gulp.
Footsteps sounded on the companion ladder. The door opened. 'Hey, Pryce! The skipper wants you.' It was a dumpy little man they called Shorty.
'Okay,' I said.
He went back up the companion ladder and his feet sounded again on the steel deck as he made his way aft towards the wheelhouse. The unfastened door slatted back and forth to the movement of the ship. I took another drink and then got to my feet. The watch off duty swayed in their hammocks. The steel walls, peeling and greasy with dirt, dipped and rose, dipped and rose. The naked bulb swung dizzily before my eyes. The Italian watched me. His eyes were on my belt and they glittered like live coals. I hitched up my trousers and my fumbling fingers bit into the flesh of my stomach as I felt for and found the outline of the money belt around my waist.
'What are you staring at?' I snarled.
'At-a nothing, signore,' he answered, and his eyes reverted to that soft, expressionless brown.
'You're lying,' I said.
He shrugged his shoulders, spreading his arms and drawing down the corners of his mouth, a picture of abject docility and innocence.
I took a step towards him. 'So that's why you're drinking with me, is it? You thought you'd get me stinking. You thought you'd rob me, eh?' He cringed away from me, those brown eyes suddenly mirroring his fear.
'Better go up and see the skipper, mate,' Ruppy said, catching me by the sleeve. But I suddenly wanted to hit the Italian — just one blow to show what I thought of the whole bloody race of 'em. And then I realised it would do no good. It wouldn't change his nature — it wouldn't make him any less avaricious, any less cruel. It wasn't his fault. He was a Neapolitan and it was the dirt and filth and poverty of Naples that had made him what he was.
I shrugged my shoulders and went up into the clean wholesome air of the deck. The night was still and dark with the sails flapping idly like bat's wings spread against the velvet backcloth of the sky that was all studded with stars. There was scarcely a breath of wind. Over the side our navigation lights showed a flat, oily swell. The tall masts of the little schooner swayed back and forth across the Milky Way and her gear creaked and groaned as the sails drew fitfully. I went aft, watching the faint, white blur of our wake as the engines drove us steadily towards the land. Every now and then a beam of light swept across us from a lighthouse on our starboard quarter. Almost astern was another, but below the horizon, so that it was like a faint flicker of the Northern Lights. And over the port bow, yet another blinked with monotonous regularity, hidden behind a mass of land that showed every now and then against the sudden brightening of the night.
The clean smell of tar and sea-wet cordage was strong after the sour fumes of the fo'c'sle. I breathed in great gulps of this fresh, salt air as I made my way towards the little wheelhouse. But a hand seemed clutching at my brain so that I couldn't think clearly. I stumbled over a coiled-down length of rope and fetched up at the rail gazing at the smooth, black surface of the water that I sensed rather than saw. I felt the long, flat swells rolling under our keel and gazed towards that dark line of coast that leapt into being every time the light flashed in our direction. And then I looked again at the smooth, comfortable swelling of the sea. It looked so inviting, so restful. Whilst out there, where the coast showed black, was danger and uncertainty.
I shook myself and felt for the belt around my waist. My eyes were tired. I was exhausted, drained of the will to go on. It was the same feeling that I had had that time up by Cassino when the patrol… I shivered and turned quickly towards the wheelhouse.
Inside it was warm and bright. Shorty stood at the wheel, his gaze alternating between the faintly glowing compass and the black night outside with the feebly slating sails. Mulligan was bending over a chart, a pair of dividers in his hand. He looked up as I entered. He was a thin, meagre little man with a craggy face, sharp blue eyes and a hare-lip that gave him the look of a stoat. He wasn't the sort of man you'd expect to find in command of anything, let alone a ship. But a devil looked out of those bright blue eyes and he had a tongue on him that was worth two full-sized men when it came to driving others. That tongue, sharp and rasping as the rough edge of a steel file, could get men moving faster than a pair of outsize fists. Men were afraid of that tongue and of those sharp little ferret eyes. He'd talk to a man, quiet and soft as a kitten, till he'd discovered his weakness, and then that tongue of his would get to work so that the man hated and feared him.
I held on to the edge of the chart table as the ship swayed and dipped. Mulligan watched me. He didn't speak, but just stood there gazing up at me, a sarcastic little smile on his deformed mouth. 'Well, what do you want me for?' I asked. I couldn't stand him staring at me. 'Are we nearly there?'
He nodded. 'There's our position.' He pointed to the chart. 'That's the Longships Light way to starb'd noo. We'll drop ye off at Whitesands Bay, just north o' Sennen.' His voice, with its queer Scots accent, droned on, giving me directions and pointing out landmarks on shore for my guidance. But I didn't listen. How can anyone listen to a voice purring out of a half Scots, half French parentage when the cognac is mounting to his head and making the blood hammer through his veins? The voice suddenly changed and the new rasp in it penetrated my mind. 'What about yer fare?' The question was repeated in a sharp, staccato bark.
'I paid it to you when I came aboard at Naples,' I reminded him. What was he getting at? My brain struggled to focus on what he was saying. 'I paid you fifty pounds in English notes. And it was twice what I ought to have paid.'
'That's as may be,' he answered, and his eyes never left my face. 'You paid me for a passage to England. But ye didn't pay me for putting ye ashore at dead o' night on a desairted stretch o' the coast. Smuggling a man into England is agin the law. It's dangerous, man, and Ah'm no willing ter take the risk wi'oot Ah get something oot of it.'
'See here, Mulligan,' I said angrily. 'You agreed to take me to England for fifty pounds. You knew what risk you ran when you took my fifty quid. Now you keep your side of the bargain.'