The Narrow Corner Page 5

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Me and Fred play it every night. Luck of the devil ’e ’as. I shouldn’t like to tell you ’ow much money ’e’s won off me. It can’t go on. It must turn soon.” He called out: “Come on, Fred.”

  “Half a mo.”

  The skipper shrugged his shoulders.

  “No manners. Anxious to see a paper, wasn’t ’e?”

  “And a month old one at that,” answered the doctor. “How long is it since you left Thursday Island?”

  “We never went near Thursday Island.”

  “Oh?”

  “What about a spot? D’you think it’d do me any ’arm?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  The skipper shouted for Tom Obu, and the blackfellow brought them a couple of glasses and some water. Nichols fetched the whisky. The sun set and the night crept softly over the still water. The only sound that broke the silence was the leap now and then of a fish. Tom Obu brought a hurricane lamp and placed it on the deck-house, and going below lit the smoking oil lamp in the cabin.

  “I wonder what our young friend is readin’ all this time.”

  “In the dark?”

  “Maybe ’e’s thinkin’ of what ’e ’as read.”

  But when at last Fred joined them and sat down to finish the interrupted game, it seemed to Dr. Saunders, in the uncertain light, that he was very pale. He had not brought the paper with him and the doctor went forward to get it. He could not see it. He called Ah Kay and told him to look for it. Standing in the darkness he watched the players.

  “Fifteen two. Fifteen four. Fifteen six. Fifteen eight and six are fourteen. And one for his nob seventeen.”

  “God, what luck you ’ave.”

  The skipper was a bad loser. His face was set and hard. His shifty eyes glanced at each card he turned up with a sneering look. But the other played with a smile on his lips. The light of the hurricane lamp cut his profile out of the darkness, and it was astonishingly fine. His long lashes cast a little shadow on his cheeks. Just then he was more than a handsome young man; he had a tragic beauty that was very moving. Ah Kay came and said he could not find the paper.

  “Where did you leave that Bulletin, Fred?” asked the doctor. “My boy can’t find it.”

  “Isn’t it there?”

  “No, we’ve both looked.”

  “How the hell should I know where it is? Two for his heels.”

  “Throw it overboard when you done with it?” asked the captain.

  “Me? Why should I throw it overboard?”

  “Well, if you didn’t it must be somewhere about,” said the doctor.

  “That’s another game to you,” the skipper growled “I never see anyone ’old such cards.”

  xi

  IT WAS between one and two in the morning. Dr. Saunders sat in a deck-chair. The skipper was asleep in the cabin and Fred had taken his mattress forward. It was very still. The stars were so bright that the shape of the island was very distinctly outlined against the night. Distance is less an affair of space than of time and though they had gone but five and forty miles it seemed to the doctor that Takana was very far away. London was at the other end of the world. He had a fleeting vision of Piccadilly Circus, with its bright lights, the crowd of buses, cars and taxis, and the crowd that surged when the theatres disgorged their audiences. There was a part that in his day they called the Front, the street on the north side that led from Shaftesbury Avenue to the Charing Cross Road, where from eleven to twelve people walked up and down in a serried throng. That was before the war. There was a sense of adventure in the air. Eyes met and then.… The doctor smiled. He did not regret the past; he regretted nothing. Then his wandering thoughts hovered over the bridge at Fu-chou, the bridge over the Min River, from which you saw the fishermen in the barges below fishing with cormorants; rickshaws crossed the bridge, and coolies bearing heavy loads, and the innumerable Chinese walked to and fro. On the right bank as you looked downstream was the Chinese City with its crowded houses and its temples. The schooner showed no light and the doctor only saw it in the darkness because he knew that it was there. All was silent on board. But in the hold where the pearl shell was piled, on one of the wooden bunks along the side, lay the dying diver. The doctor attached small value to human life. Who, that had lived so long amid those teeming Chinese where it was held so cheap, could have much feeling about it? He was a Japanese, the diver, and probably a Buddhist. Transmigration? Look at the sea: wave follows wave, it is not the same wave, yet one causes another and transmits its form and movement. So the beings travelling through the world are not the same to-day and to-morrow, nor in one life the same as in another; and yet it is the urge and the form of the previous lives that determine the character of those that follow. A reasonable belief but an incredible. But was it any more incredible than that so much striving, such a variety of accidents, so many miraculous hazards should have combined, through the long æons of time, to produce from the primeval slime at long last this man who, by means of Flexner’s bacillus, was aimlessly snuffed out? Dr. Saunders thought it odd, but natural, senseless certainly, but he had long made himself at home in the futility of things. Of course the spirit was a difficulty. Did that cease to exist when the matter which was its instrument dissolved? In that lovely night, his thoughts flowing without purpose, like birds, sea-gulls, wheeling over the sea, rising and falling as the wind took them, he could not but keep an open mind.

  There was the sound of shuffling steps on the companion and the skipper appeared. The stripe of his pyjamas was bold enough to tell against the darkness.

  “Captain?”

  “It’s me. I thought I’d come up for a breath of air.” He sank into the chair by the doctor’s side. “Had your smoke?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve never took to it meself. I’ve known a good many as did, though. Never seemed to do ’em much ’arm. Settles the stomach, they say. One fellow I knew went all to pieces. Skipper of one of Butterfield’s boats on the Yang-tze at one time. Good position and everything. They thought a rare lot of ’im. Sent him ’ome once to get cured, but ’e took to it again the moment ’e come back. Ended up as a tout for a fantan ’ouse. Used to ’ang about the docks at Shanghai and cadge ’alf-dollars.”

  They were silent for a while. Captain Nichols sucked a briar pipe.

  “Seen anythin’ of Fred?”

  “He’s sleeping on deck.”

  “Funny thing about that paper. He didn’t want you and me to read somethin’.”

  “What d’you suppose he did with it?”

  “Dropped it overboard.”

  “What’s it all about?”

  The skipper gave a low chuckle.

  “Believe me, or believe me not, I don’t know any more than you do.”

  “I’ve lived in the East long enough to know that it’s better to mind my own business.”

  But the skipper was inclined to be confidential. His digestion was not troubling him and after three or four hours of good sleep he felt very wide awake.

  “There’s somethin’ fishy about it, I know that, but I’m like you, doc, I’m all for mindin’ me own business. Ask no questions an’ you’ll be told no lies. That’s what I say, an’ if you get a chance of makin’ a bit of money, take it quick.” The skipper gave his pipe a pull. “You won’t let this go any further, will you?”

  “Not on your life.”

  “Well, it’s like this. I was in Sydney. I ’adn’t ’ad a job for the best part of two years. And not for the want of tryin’, mind you. Just bad luck. First-rate seaman I am and got a lot of experience. Steam or sail, I don’t mind what it is. You’d think they’d jump at me. But no. I’m a married man too. Things got so bad my old woman ’ad to go into service. I didn’t ’alf like it, I can tell you, but there, I just ’ad to lump it. I ’ad a roof over me ’ead and three meals a day, she give me that all right, but when it come to lettin’ me ’ave ’alf a dollar to go to the pictures and get one or two drinks, no
, sir. An’ nag. Never been married, ’ave you?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I don’t blame you. They’re near, you know. Women can’t bear partin’ with their money. I been married twenty years, and it’s been nag, nag, nag all the time. Very superior woman, my missus, that’s what begun the trouble, she thought she demeaned ’erself by marryin’ me. Her father was a big draper up in Liverpool, and she never let me forget it. She blamed me because I couldn’t get a job. Said I liked bein’ on the beach. Lazy, idle loafer she called me and she said she was fair sick of workin’ ’erself to the bone to give me board and lodgin’ and if I didn’t get a billet soon I could just get out and shift for meself. I give you my word, sometimes I just ’ad to ’old on to meself like grim death not to give her a sock on the jaw, lady though she was, and no one knows that better than what I do. D’you know Sydney?”

  “No, I’ve never been there.”

  “Well, one night I was just standin’ around in a bar down by the ’arbour I used to go to sometimes. I ’adn’t ’ad a drink all day, and I was just parched; my dyspepsia was somethin’ awful, and I was feelin’ pretty low. I ’adn’t got a penny in me pocket, me what’s commanded more ships than you can count on the fingers of your two ’ands, and I couldn’t go ’ome. I knew the missus’d start on me, and she’d give me a bit of cold mutton for me supper, though she knows it’s the death of me, and she’d go on and on, always the lady, if you know what I mean, but just nasty, cuttin’ and superior-like, never raisin’ her voice, but not a minute’s peace. An’ if I was to lose me temper and tell ’er to go to hell, she’d just draw ’erself up and say: ‘None of your foul language ’ere, Captain, if you please. I may ’ave married a common sailor, but I will be treated like a lady.’ ”

  Captain Nichols lowered his voice and leant over in a very confidential manner.

  “Now this is quite infra dig., you know what I mean, just between you and me: you don’t know where you are with women. They don’t behave like ’uman beings. Would you believe it, I’ve run away from ’er four times. You would think a woman’d see what you meant after that, wouldn’t you?”

  “You would.”

  “But no. Every time she’s followed me. Of course, once she knew where I’d gone, and it was easy, but the others she didn’t know any more than the man in the moon. I’d ’ave bet every penny I ’ad in the world that she wouldn’t find me. Like lookin’ for a needle in a bundle of ’ay, it was. An’ then one day she’d walk up, quite cool, as if she seen me the day before, and not a ’ow d’you do or a fancy seein’ you or anythin’ like that, but: ‘You want a shave if you ask me, Captain’ or: ‘Them trousers of yours is a disgrace, Captain.’ … I don’t care who it is, it’s the kind of thing to break anyone’s nerve.”

  Captain Nichols was silent and his eyes swept the empty sea. In that lucid night you saw quite clearly the thin sharp line of the horizon.

  “This time I been an’ gone an’ done the trick, and I ’ave got away from ’er. She don’t know where I am and she can’t find out, but I give you my word I wouldn’t be surprised if she was to come rowin’ over that sea in a dinghy, all neat and tidy, she’s always the lady to look at, I will say that for ’er, and come on board and just say to me: ‘What’s that nasty, filthy tobacco you’re smokin’, Captain? You know, I can’t abide anythin’ but Player’s Navy Cut.’ It’s me nerves. That’s what’s at the bottom of my dyspepsia if the truth was only known. I remember, once I went to see a doctor in Singapore as ’ad been very strongly recommended to me and ’e wrote a lot of stuff in a book, you know ’ow doctors do, and he put a cross down. Well, I didn’t ’alf like the look of that, so I said to ’im, ‘I say, doctor,’ I says, ‘what’s that cross mean?’ ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘I always put a cross when I ’ave reason to suspect domestic unpleasantness.’ ‘Oh, I see,’ I says; ‘well, you’ve ’it the nail on the ’ead, doctor; I bear a cross all right.’ Clever fellow ’e was, but ’e never done my dyspepsia much good.”

  “Socrates suffered from the same sort of affliction, Captain, but I never heard that it affected his digestion.”

  “Who was ’e?”

  “An honest man.”

  “Much good it did ’im, I lay.”

  “In point of fact, it didn’t.”

  “You’ve got to take things as you find ’em, I say, and if you’re too particular you won’t get anywhere.”

  Dr. Saunders laughed in his heart. It appealed to his sense of humour to think of this mean and unscrupulous blackguard in abject terror of his wife. It was the triumph of spirit over matter. He wondered what she looked like.

  “I was tellin’ you about Fred Blake,” the skipper continued, after a pause to relight his pipe. “Well, as I was sayin’, I was in that bar. I said good evenin’ to one or two chaps, cordial like, you know, and they said good evenin’ to me and looked the other way. You could see them just sayin’ to theirselves: ‘There’s that bum again, cadgin’ around for drinks; ’e ain’t goin’ to get one out of me.’ You can’t wonder I was feelin’ pretty low. Humiliating, that’s what it was, for a man as ’ad been in a good position like what I ’ave. It’s terrible ’ow near a fellow can be with ’is money when he knows you ain’t got none. The boss give me a dirty look and I ’alf thought he was going to ask me what I’d ’ave, and then when I said I’d wait a bit, ’e’d say, well, I’d better wait outside. I began talkin’ to one or two chaps I didn’t know, but they wasn’t what you’d call cordial. I cracked a joke or two, but I couldn’t get ’em laughin’, and they made it pretty plain that I was buttin’ in. And then I saw a fellow come in I knew. Big bully of a chap. What they call a larrikin in Australia. Name of Ryan. You ’ad to keep in with him. He ’ad something to do with politics. Always ’ad plenty of money. He lent me five bob once. Well, I didn’t think ’e’d want to see me, so I pretended I didn’t recognise ’im and just went on talkin’. But I was watchin’ ’im out of the corner of me eye. He looked round and then ’e come right up to me.

  “ ‘Good evenin’, Captain,’ he says, very friendly like. ‘How’s the world been treatin’ you these days?’

  “ ‘Rotten,’ I says.

  “ ‘Still lookin’ for a job?’

  “ ‘Yes,’ I says.

  “ ‘What’ll you ’ave?’ he says.

  “I ’ad a beer and ’e ’ad a beer. It pretty near saved my life. But you know, I’m not much of a one for believin’ in miracles. I wanted that beer pretty bad, but I knew just as well as I know I’m talkin’ to you, that Ryan wasn’t givin’ it me for nothin’. He’s one of them ’earties, you know; slaps you on the back and laughs at your jokes as though he’d fair bust, and it’s, “ ’Ullo, where ’ave you been ’idin’ yourself,’ and, ‘My missus is a grand little woman and you should see my kiddies’ and all that; and then all the time ’e’s watchin’ you and ’is eyes look right through you. It takes in the mugs. ‘Good old Ryan,’ they say; ‘one of the best.’ There are no flies on me, doc. You don’t catch me so easy as that. And while I was drinkin’ my beer I said to myself: ‘Now, then, old boy, you keep your eyes skinned. He wants something.’ But of course I didn’t let on. I told ’im a yarn or two and ’e just laughed ’is ’ead off.

  “ ‘You’re a caution, Captain,’ ’e said; ‘great old sport, that’s what you are. Finish your beer and we’ll ’ave another. I could listen to you talkin’ all night.’

  “Well, I finished my beer and I saw ’e was goin’ to order another.

  “ ‘Look ’ere, Bill,’ he says: well, my name’s Tom, but I didn’t say nothing. I saw ’e was tryin’ to be friendly. ‘Look ’ere, Bill,’ he says, ‘there’s too many people round ’ere, one simply can’t ’ear oneself talk, and you never know who’s listenin’ to what you say. I’ll tell you what we’ll do.’ He called the boss. ‘Look ’ere, George, come ’ere a minute.’ And up he comes with a run. ‘Look ’ere, George, me and my friend we want to ’ave a little quiet yarn about old times. What about that room of yours?’
>
  “ ‘My office? All right. You can go in there if you want to, and welcome.’

  “ ‘That’s the ticket. And you bring us a couple of beers.’

  “Well, we walks round and we goes into the office, and George brings us a couple of beers ’imself. In person; gives me a nod, ’e does. And George goes out. Ryan shut the door after ’im and ’e looked at the window to see it was shut all right. Said ’e couldn’t stand a draught at any price. I didn’t know what ’e was after, and I thought I’d better get straight with ’im at once.

  “ ‘Look ’ere, Ryan,’ I says; ‘I’m sorry about that five bob you lent me. It’s been on me mind ever since, but the truth is I’ve ’ad all I can do just to keep body and soul together.’

  “ ‘Forget it,’ he says. ‘What’s five bob? I know you’re all right. You’re a fine feller, Bill. What’s the good of ’avin’ money if you can’t lend it to a pal when ’e’s down on his luck?’

  “ ‘Well, I’d do the same by you, Ryan,’ says I, takin’ my cue from ’im. To listen to us you’d ’ave thought us a pair of brothers.”

  Captain Nichols chuckled as he recalled the scene they had played. He took an artist’s delight in his own rascality.

  “ ‘Chin, chin,’ says I.

  “We both ’ad a drink of beer. ‘Now look ’ere, Bill,’ says ’e, wipin’ ’is mouth with the back of ’is ’and, ‘I been makin’ enquiries about you. Good seaman and all that, ain’t you?’ ‘None better,’ says I. ‘If you ain’t ’ad a job for some time I reckon it’s more by bad luck than bad management.’ ‘That’s right,’ says I. ‘Now I’m going to give you a surprise, Bill,’ says ’e. ‘I’m going to offer you a job meself.’ ‘I’ll take it,’ says I. ‘No matter what it is.’ ‘That’s the spirit,’ says ’e. ‘I knew I could count on you.’

  “ ‘Well, what is it?’ I ask ’im.

  “He give me a look, and though ’e was smilin’ at me as if I was his long lost brother and ’e loved me like anything, ’e was lookin’ at me pretty ’ard. It was no jokin’ matter, I could see that.