It was an idiotic answer, but the man smiled kindly.
'This is the ship room, after all,' he said, and he tilted his head again, as though I should really have known that already.
'That's because you over-look ships, I suppose,' I said with a nod towards the harbour.
'And are over-looked by one,' said Fielding, and with a neat little gesture, he indicated the wall behind me where hung a painting of a ship – two ships in fact, not sailing ships but steam vessels moving with great purpose through moonlit black and blue waters, the one behind looking as though it was trying to catch the one in front. What did you say about a painting if you wanted to come over as intelligent and educated? That it was charming? That it was in the school of… something or other?
'But we are diverted tonight by the one below,' said Fielding, and he faced the window again, spinning on his heel. He wore little boots, with elasticated sides – good leather by the looks of it, but perhaps with the cracks covered over by a good deal of polish, like boots in a museum. They made him look nimble, anyhow.
'But is there a wreck?' I said, for I was determined to crack the mystery of the maroon.
'I should hope not,' said the man on the couch.
He lay completely flat, like a man waiting to be operated on. He looked to my mind… naive. It was a word of the wife's. I was naive too apparently, but surely not as naive as this bloke. His drooping moustache and long hair looked like a sort of experiment. He'd have a different moustache in a month's time, I somehow knew. He wore a greenish suit and a yellow and brown waistcoat, and that was naive too. It was meant to make him look like a swell, but he just looked as though he'd been at the fancy dress basket.
'Rehearsal,' he said, nodding down towards the beach.
'It is a lifeboat practice] Fielding corrected him, in a tone not completely unfriendly, but which suggested he'd held off from introducing the horizontal fellow because he hadn't really thought it worth doing.
'I don't like the look of that sea,' said the man on the couch, who had rolled to face the windows. 'It's sort of coming in sideways.'
He was perhaps five years older than me – middle thirties. Thin, with a high, light voice and long nails, not over-clean, I noticed, as at last he stood up, crossed the room, and put out his hand. He did not exactly have a lazy eye, but a droopy moustache, which pulled his whole face down, as though trying to make a serious person of him. We shook hands, and I saw that there was a black mark where his head had been on the couch.
'Stringer,' I said.
'Vaughan,' he replied.
He then gave a friendly smile that clashed with the downturn of his moustache, nodded towards the man at the window, and said, 'I believe it ought to be first name terms in this house, even if Howard here won't have it.'
'Then it's James,' I said.
'Now is it Jim or is it James?' he said, and he pitched himself back onto the couch in a somehow unconvincing way. I had him down for a clerk and the other, Fielding, for a head clerk, in which case I would outrank them both if and when I became a solicitor. But they both talked to me in the way people do when they want to make themselves pleasant to the lower classes.
'I'm Jim to my friends,' I said, feeling like a prize dope.
'I'm Theodore, which is a bit of bad luck,' said Vaughan. 'You can call me Theo if you like, Jim.'
'Theo, meaning God,' said Fielding from his post near the window, 'and doron, meaning gift. You are a gift from God, Vaughan. What do you say, Miss Rickerby?'
And he tilted his head at the beautiful landlady who was watching us from the somewhat crooked doorway, leaning against the door frame with folded arms, which I did not believe I'd ever seen a respectable woman do before. She said nothing to Fielding but just eyed him, weighing him up.
A gift from God?' Mr Fielding said again. 'What do you say to that, Miss R?'
'His rent is,' she said, and smiled, but only at me, causing me to blurt out 'But…' without the slightest notion of what I was objecting to. I turned to the window, and found a way out of my difficulty in the scene on the beach.
'But… who's the one at the head?' I said, looking down at the men dragging the boat on the beach.
'That's the captain of it,' said Vaughan.
'The coxswain,' said Fielding.
'Cold tea tonight is it, Miss R?' enquired Vaughan, who was still lying down, but now propping his head on his right arm.
'In honour of the new arrival,' she replied, smiling at me, 'we are to have a hot tea.'
'Oh,' I said, 'what time?'
'About nine,' she said, smiling and backing away from the door.
'Of course Mr Stringer is not likely to be keen on that word,' said Fielding, who was still looking through the window, now with a rather dreamy expression.
'Supper?' I said. 'I should say I am keen on it.'
'"About",' said Fielding, still gazing down at the sea. 'You're a railwayman. No train leaves at about nine o'clock.'
'Well,' I said, 'you'd be surprised.'
'Perhaps,' he said, smiling and turning towards me, 'but I do have some experience of railways.'
Nice, I thought. I've an expert to contend with.
'Me too,' said the man on the couch.
But somehow I didn't believe Vaughan.
'It's not tolerated on the railway,' Fielding said, 'but in this house it is the lynchpin: "about"… "roughly"… "there or thereabouts". It's the Lady's way.'
I couldn't tell whether he was cross about it, or just making fun.
'What did you say was wrong with your engine, old man?' enquired Vaughan, who'd evidently had the tale from Miss Rickerby.
'Leaking injector steam valve,' I said.
'Doesn't sound too bad. Couldn't you sort of wind a rag around the blinking thing?'
'There were other things up with it as well,' I said.
'Like what, Jim?' said Vaughan, as Fielding looked on smiling.
I thought: Are these two in league?
'Oh,' I said, 'stiff fire hole door… some clanking in the motions.'
'You know, I think I've had that…' said Vaughan.
Fielding shook his head at me, as if to say: 'Whatever are we to do with him?'
'You worked on the railways, you say?' I asked Vaughan.
'After a fashion. Tell you about it over a pint, if you like?'
This was a bit sudden.
'Where?' I said, feeling rather knocked.
'I know a decent place in the Old Town.'
I was thinking: What is he? Alcoholic? Because we'd barely met.
'I generally take a pint before supper,' he said.
Howard Fielding had turned towards the window and gone dreamy again. There seemed no question of him coming along.
'Hold on then,' I said to Vaughan. 'I'll just get my coat.'
'Meet you in the hallway in two minutes,' he said, and it seemed he meant to remain in the room with Fielding until then.
Besides fetching my coat I would change my shirt and put on my tie in place of my necker. This way, I'd be able to hold my own at supper, which was to be supper after all, and not 'tea'.
As soon as I stepped from the sitting room, the door closed behind me.
Who had closed it?
Odds-on it had been Fielding, except that he had been over by the windows, and furthest off.
I climbed the narrow stairs between the faded green stripes. The stair gas made more noise than light – a constant, rasping exhaling. Bronchitic. It troubled me somehow, and here came the old man, glaring from under his curls. He ought to have been happy with hair like that. I reached the attic storey, pushed open the door of my room, and I was checked by a sharp bang.
By the low, red light of the oil lamp I saw what had happened: the card had once again fallen from the window frame, and a surge of sea wind had hurled itself at the glass. I sat down on the bed, inched along towards the end of it, and jammed in the card once more. Coming away from the window, I swung my legs in such a way that my boots clattered against the first of the two scuttles on the hearth – the one that held the kindling and paper – and knocked it over, spilling the papers.