'How are you, my friend?'
'We've anchored,' I said.
'Come along with me,' he said, and he was holding the outer door open.
'What became of the kid?' I asked. 'Did he jump?'
'Nothing,' said the Mate'… He got wet,' he added, at length.
'Why did he jump?'
'Yes,' said the Mate. 'Why? I would like to know too.'
Stumbling onto the deck, I saw that our ship had arrived at its rightful home, for it was now one of hundreds or so it appeared. Under the dark blue, roaring night sky, I had the impression of ships in lines stretching fore and aft; some were on the wide channel in which we were anchored – the Thames Estuary, of course – while others appeared to have been picked up and set down amid the streets. I saw a ship that had interrupted a line of street lamps; a ship at close quarters with a church. I had the impression of many smaller vessels patrolling the lines of the big ones like prison guards, and I had the idea that this was also a city of one-armed men, a city of cranes that were all lit by small white lights like Christmas trees. Most were still but every so often one would stir, as though it wanted to confer with its neighbour, or couldn't stand the sight of its neighbour, and so must turn aside. The fore-deck of our collier seemed to command the whole of the great docks but I knew I saw only a fraction of the mass; that Beckton stood only on the fringes of the London docks proper and that I had imagined beyond the limits of my vision.
'Where's the gas works?' I asked the Mate, who was eyeing me with his chin sunk into the up-turned collar of his brass- buttoned coat. He shifted his grey-bearded chin so that it came clear of the collar, and indicated an expanse that shone moonlike a little way for'ard on our starboard side – it was perhaps a quarter of a mile off. I saw a jetty crowded with cranes, and two colliers docked there. All was silent and still on the jetties, but you could see the way things would go on come first light. High-level railway lines ran back from the jetties and these penetrated the factory buildings set down amid the great fields of pale blue dust; the lines smashed through the front walls, came out through the backs and ran on to the next, like lions jumping through hoops in the circus, only these were not factories but retort houses, where the coal was taken to be burnt and the gas made. The York gas works, at Layerthorpe, ran to one retort house but here were dozens, all tied together by the railway lines and set in the wide expanse together with their companions the gas holders, which were perfectly round, like great iron pies.
'Have we made the turnaround?' I asked the Mate, and he didn't answer but indicated with the revolver that we were to walk along to the bridge house once more. As we made our way, there came one repeated clanging noise, echoing through the night, the beating heart of the London docks, as I imagined.
Once again, there was nobody about on the fore-deck, and I saw nobody but the Mate prior to being sat down before the Captain in the chart room. The chart lay on the table as before, the oil lamp and the coffee pot on top of the chart. I doubted that the Captain had given it as much as a single glance on our way from the north. He and the Mate evidently navigated by second nature or force of habit. Running the ship was something they did casually, while attending to other business.
The Mate gave the revolver to the Captain. Behind the Captain's chair, the door leading to the bridge was closed and there was no man out there. For the first time since waking, I noticed the silence of the ship.
The Captain sat with arms folded, and his eyes never left me. I would have said he was a handsome man, although he looked a little like a marionette. There was something neat, cat-like about him.
'Coffee?' he said, and he leant forward and poured me a cup.
'Do you want some carbolic?'
He knew his man had crowned me. I shook my head.
'Food?'
'Later,' I said, and the Captain flashed a look at the Mate that I didn't much care for.
'Do you want to go to the heads?' enquired the Captain.
'Come again?' I said.
'For a piss,' the Mate put in,'… or the other.'
He wouldn't say the word. They were quite gentlemanly, this pair, after their own fashion. I thought about the Captain's question: going by the state of my trousers I must have pissed myself at some earlier stage in the proceedings, but I was not going to boast about the fact if the stink coming off me hadn't made it evident. As for the other business – that had all somehow gone by the board. I shook my head.
'Then carry on with your story,' said the Captain.
'I'll start it if you tell me what happened to the kid.'
No answer.
'I reckon he was scared half to death,' I ran on.'… Now have we unloaded the coal? No, don't reckon so, because we're still sitting low in the water, and the ship'd be even filthier if we had done. When's the turnaround?'
'For you,' said the Captain, 'it could be quicker than you think.'
We eyed each other for a good while.
'Well,' I said,'… where was I?'
'Paradise guest house,' said the Captain.
'I know, but where had I got up to?'
It was the Mate who answered.
'Your engine was all fixed, but you did not take it home with you.'
He made me sound like a schoolboy with a broken toy. Still, it was no fault of his own that he was bloody foreign.
'You should have taken it, you know,' said the Captain, suddenly leaning forwards over his sea chart. 'You should have done it.'
Chapter Thirty-Three
Adam Rickerby let me into Paradise without a word. It was midday. I could hear laughter from the kitchen, but made directly for my own room at the top of the house. Climbing the stairs, I realised that Rickerby was following me, and when we came to the floor being decorated I turned and said, 'I'm staying another night.'
'I know,' he said, in his blank-faced way.
I turned and climbed the final staircase, and he climbed it two steps behind. On the attic landing, I turned again and he suddenly seemed enormous, the roof being lower there. I asked his habitual question back at him:
'Can I help you?'
'Aye,' he said, and he was lighting the gas on the little landing.
When the jet was roaring, he turned and held out his hand, saying, 'Two shilling.'
'Don't worry,' I said, 'I'm not going to make off.'
'Who said you were?'
Again, the flash of intelligence.
I paid the money over, and once again he dropped it in his apron pocket. I took my great-coat off, walked into the little room, and put it on the bed. Rickerby looked on from the doorway.
'You've ter put that in t'closet,' he said.
I turned and eyed him. I was minded to tell him to clear off.
'Why? I said.
'It's damp.'
'What of it?'
'Wants airing… You might take a chill.'
'That's my look-out, isn't it? Why are you so interested in trains, Adam?'
'Why are you ' he said, and he stepped into the room. He was bigger than he ought to've been. Something had gone wrong in the making of him. He took another step towards me. I said, 'Go steady now,' but he still came on, and I damn near told him I was a copper, and that he'd better quit the room. But he went right by me, picked up my coat and put it into the closet, threatening to have the whole thing over and setting all the hangers jangling.
'Why do you like train smashes, Adam?' I called after him, as he left the room.
'Because I don't care for trains,' he replied, and I'd broken through at last…
'How do you mean, you'd broken through?' enquired the Captain, as the rattling of the swinging coat hangers was replaced by the sound of the Mate running his hand over his grey beard, the coldness of the chart room, and the gas smell put out day and night by the Gas, Light and Coke Company.
The Captain had brought me up short. I'd barely started again with my recollections. I'd been pleased to have them returning so clear and complete, and I was forgetting that I might have to answer for them; forgetting about the gun that lay on the table, which was not two feet away from me, but it was only six inches from the Captain's right hand. It was a tiny piece, but it would do the job. What was it that Tommy Nugent had said? 'How big a hole do you want to make in their heads, Jim?'