in front of them.
Dan was restless with suppressed belligerence. He needed to regain his position. He kept shooting glances of resentment at the pink-cheeked boy who had humiliated him, and al Rose, who had treated him like a child. But the discovery that these guardians of morality not merely overlooked but encouraged a good lie had made him feel their equal. We were all relaxed by now out of boredom. Flo had unbuttoned her coat. Aurora was asleep. Dan was leaning his weight on the table in the easy way he would have used in his basement.
‘You wouldn’t remember the war, sir, would you?’ said Dan to Counsel, who flushed angrily. ‘I served right through the war. Perhaps you could tell the Judge that. It’s more than some can say.’
‘My good man, it has nothing to do with the case.’
‘I saved a man’s life. And now I can’t say who’s to live in my own house.’
‘Mr Bolt, I’ve already told you, it’s irrelevant.’
‘He was a Lascar. And what gratitude do I get, nothing!’
Rose hissed resignedly: ‘Oh, my God, that tears it, if he’s going to start. I hope he doesn’t forget to tell how he did six months’ hard for nearly killing a man in a bar.’ She took out her knitting, which she had brought with her in case of just such an emergency.
Counsel, the lawyer, and various knots of people in doorways or seated on the benches had their eyes fixed on Dan. Every one of them looked slightly irritated. It was the facinated irritation caused by a phenomenon we don’t understand. The fact was, Dan was holding their attention simply by sitting there, and they didn’t know why. The angry power of his body was not evident, muffled as it was in the commonplace suit. And his face expressed nothing but the desire to express — it was long, flattish, yellowish, and almost contorted with his frustration at not being able to communicate.
‘Yes, he was a Lascar,’ said Dan, aggrieved, ‘a black man if you like, but he was human, and I could have died.’
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ said Counsel, Dan turned the hot beam of his eyes at him, and the boy became silent.
‘There I stood on deck,’ said Dan. ‘We had docked that day.’ He was remembering it so powerfully that although he did not move a muscle, we stood on deck with him. ‘It was a black night and dead quiet. I heard a splash.’ He closed his eyes a moment. There was a silence. He still had not moved. His great hands lay in loose fists on the table before him, not moving. Yet we heard ripples flow out and break softly against enclosing dock walls. ‘I looked over.’ Dan stared ahead of him, not blinking. We saw him bent over a rail at a black cold sea. ‘There was nothing,’ he said. ‘But I had my duty. I climbed and jumped.’ Even Rose let her knitting lie in her lap, and became part of the story. ‘I went down and down, my arms above my head.’ Dan clenched his fist and the cloth of his sleeves bulged out. For a terrifying moment we watched him sink through the lightless harbour water under the black hulls of ships, ‘I saw him. I grabbed.’ Dan’s body stiffened slightly. His hand opened and the fingers flexed rigid on the palm. We saw the hand clutch at something slippery. ‘I pulled him to the surface by the hair. He was fighting, I hit him.’ Dan clenched his fists tight, his head went back, his chin came forward, he half-shut his eyes. ‘I shouted. No one heard. No one on deck. Everyone on shore. First night in harbour for six weeks. I held him and I shouted. I held him and I shouted again. Then I dragged him up the side of the ship.’ Dan gripped his teeth together and the veins swelled in his neck. We saw him heave the Lascar up the ship’s dark side. ‘I put him on deck and worked on him till he came round, ft was a Lascar. Drunk. Can you blame him, sir? The officers’ mess sent for me. Dan, have a drink, they said. Sir, thank you, I said. But I’ve had enough for one night. Ask me for a drink another night.’ Dan half-shut his eyes, and looked woodenly dignified. ‘The Captain came to me.’ Now Dan’s deliberate stupidity was an insult to all authority. ‘I won’t forget this my man.’ ‘Sir,’ said Dan, and he suddenly saluted, with a smart quiver. The shock of that movement was like being slapped: it was only when his hand quivered at his temple that we realized he had told the story without gesture, with no more than an occasional tightening of a muscle. It was with a sting of astonishment that we saw the man was still sitting on the bench by the table. He had come to himself, sitting loosely, looking around dazedly, mouth open over prominent white teeth, taking in the bare dusty room filled with the fancy-dress gentlemen in their curly wigs and black robes. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes.’ Then he violently crashed his fist on to the table and shouted: ‘But that doesn’t help me, does it?’ I’ll never forget this, my man, the Captain said to me, and that’s the last I heard. Justice, they call it. Justice!’
‘Dan,’ said Flo, warningly, giving ingratiating smiles to everyone.
‘I don’t care who hears,’ shouted Dan, over the drone from the Court, through a door left slightly open because of the heat. Someone from inside the Court tiptoed over and shut the door. Every eye followed the squat figure in folds and tags and pleats of grimy black, who frowned at us so portentously that the young Counsel blushed: he, like the rest of us, had forgotten his surroundings. ‘Not so loud, please,’ he said.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Dan automatically.
There was a high titter from the other doorway. The old lady, white-faced and trembling with hatred, glared in at us from among other faces, which were curious or amused or indignant. Our lawyer gave her a puzzled glance and might have asked who she was, but Dan was speaking again. ‘When I left the Navy I had four hundred pounds. Do you know how I got that?’
‘There are certain traditions of the British Navy,’ said Counsel, conveying that he found the word Navy, on Dan’s lips, repulsive.
‘Oh. I know that,’ said Dan, as if delighted to be reminded, sharing them, so to speak, with Counsel, ‘For people with the money there’s nothing like it. I was personal servant once to the Surgeon Commander. His wife was in England. Ah, he knew how to enjoy himself. There was a girl. She fell for my boss. Five months of it, every night, war or no war, being stuck in harbour on account of a torpedo. I used to let her out, three, four in the morning, five shillings a time. Plenty of money there. Dan, she used to say. I know you are my friend. Yes, miss, I used to say. She was a lovely girl. Black hair. Black eyes. Lovely figure.’ Dan let his fingers curve together on the table, with such appreciation that various eminent legal gentlemen winced and looked away. ‘I used to sit down below and envy him. Then his wife came. She went sniffing about in his pyjamas and all over.’ Dan imitated a cold shrewish drawl: ‘“Really, darling, I cannot
‘Tell them about the nylons,’ shouted Flo. ‘go on, tell them.’ Dan froze. ‘What nylons?’
‘You know, the nylons …’ Flo saw she had made a mistake, and sat smiling pathetically, while Dan glared at her.
Rose whispered to me: ‘Dan brought in nylons all through the war, he wound them round and round his body under the uniform. A smuggler, that’s what he was.’
Dan said hastily, ‘And so that’s how I bought ray house, fair and square, with four hundred pounds I had after the war.’
‘My house. My house!’ came a shrill voice from the door.
‘Who is that?’ asked Counsel sharply.
‘That’s those dirty old beasts, dear,’ said Flo. ‘Them what we’re here for.’
‘Good God,’ said the lawyer. He dropped his voice: ‘How long have they been listening?’ He rose and slammed the door.
‘But I didn’t know you’d mind,’ said Flo. ‘They always listen, dear. That’s what they’re like.’
‘Well. I really don’t know!’ said the Counsel. He looked at his watch. It was nearly lunchtime.
‘So if the Judge could take my war service and the Lascar into account,’ said Dan, remembering why he had begun his confidences.
‘I’m going to lunch,’ said Counsel, and went, deeply offended. The lawyer went with us to lunch, to make sure nothing worse could happen. It was a difficult meal. Dan’s bad temper had focused itself on Jack. ‘Yes,’ he kept saying, belligerently. ‘Yes. And if we lose the case I’ll know who to thank.’
‘Now, now,’ the lawyer said. ‘Now, now. It’s not everyone who can make a good witness.’
