The lad stopped on the stairs, but didn't turn about.
'Our dad,' he said.
'Is he in the house?'
'No.'
At the bottom of the staircase, the lad had paused to straighten a crooked stair rod.
'What do you mean?' I said. 'Is he not in the house just at present, or is he never in it?'
The lad straightened up, standing foursquare before me in the narrow space and folding his arms. He looked bullet proof, and big with it. Did he mean to put the frighteners on me? I stood my ground.
'Never,' he said.
'Well, let me see now,' I said. 'Would your old man be dead?'
'He would. How do you take yer tea?'
'What's that got to do with it?'
'I'll be attending yer in t’morning,' he said, taking a step closer towards me. 'I'll be bringin' yer 'ot water in a jug and tea… in a cup.'
'Well, that's just how I like tea,' I said.'… In a cup.'
No flicker of a smile from the lad.
'Two sugars,' I said. 'When did your old man die, if you don't mind my asking?'
'Two year since. Milk?'
I nodded. 'And plenty of it.'
'Seven o'clock suit?'
'Fine.'
The old man hadn't killed Blackburn at any rate… Unless the lad lied, but I somehow didn't think so. He was indicating the nearest closed door, and saying, 'Sitting room. Fire's lit in there.'
He then told me a cold tea was served on Sundays in the dining room, and carried on down the stairs. Remembering about the shipwreck, I approached the door of the sitting room. It faced the right way to give a view of the sea. I could hear muttered voices from within.
Chapter Sixteen
I looked up as the iron wall of the chain room cracked. The door was slowly opening, and it seemed that I was returning to this dark corner of the ship from hundreds of miles away. Blue cigar smoke came in first, like something curious, and I wanted it to go back because it brought the sickness rising up again. The grey Mate stood in the doorway, and he held up an oil lamp, which swung with the ship, and gave his face a bluish tinge.
'The old man wants a word,' he said, the white foam rising at the backs of his teeth.
'What are you talking about?' I said. 'You're the old man.'
But I knew from Baytown days that the captain was always 'the old man' on any ship, regardless of age.
'Wants a word about what, exactly?' I then enquired, just as though there were many other things I ought to be attending to on the ship.
'You are to continue your story,' said the Mate. 'Your recollections.'
And he seemed to be trying out a new English word. The best thing would be to have it out with him straight away. His lamp had illuminated the length of rope, but I could hardly stoop to catch it up and I doubted that my hands would work properly anyway. He opened the first hatchway, and I stumbled into the companionway. He opened the second, and we were out onto the fore-deck under a dark blue sky and a moon that was full. The fore- sail was still rigged; it trembled in the wind, and so did I. The Captain waited a little way ahead, standing by the mid-ships ladder. One of the two of them must have held the revolver, but I could not see it just at that moment.
I looked up. The smoke from the funnel was pale blue and ghostly against the dark blue of the sky. It would come out at odd intervals, not connected to the beat of the engines. Smoke was unburnt carbon; the stuff could kill you if inhaled in a confined space, but that didn't mean that the fellows who made smoke were evil. Any man with an honest job made smoke in quantities, and I wondered about the men in the engine room of this no-name ship. Did they know about me? I doubted it, for the engines and the stoke hold were aft, and no man was allowed for'ard when I was out of my prison.
We walked on red-painted iron. Sea swirled over it, although not so much as before, and now the waves were almost pretty against the full moon. Some were set on following us, others drifted off crosswise, and they made the deck slippery in parts. What's wanted here, I thought, is a mop – and a big one. Mr Buckingham would scarcely have approved of the situation. Was he a real man? I could not decide. He was the fellow who bought a mill that was kept idle through the negligence of the railway company in not delivering a piece of machinery. Would the carrier be liable for profits lost by the mill being kept idle? No. Loss too remote. My ability to think was returning by degrees, but try as I might to recall those final hours in Scarborough, my recollections stopped somewhere about a giant needle, a quantity of razor blades, a wax doll, a paper fan and a paraffin heater in a blue room.
We walked on the starboard side of the ship, and as I looked over the sea, I thought I made out some deepening of night at a mile's distance, but it was more than that.
'Land!' I called ahead to the grey-faced Dutchman.
'Nobody knows you there, my friend,' he said, not turning around.
It looked homely enough all the same. I saw in silhouette two houses and what might have been a church clustered together on a low cliff. We were going at a fair lick, and they seemed to be riding fast the other way, but I kept them in sight as long as I could. Lights burned brightly at the retreating windows, and I was grateful to whoever had lit them.
The Mate had motioned me to stop. I looked beyond him towards the mid-ships, and another man had taken the place of the Captain at the ladder, this one much younger, hardly more than a boy. I saw him clear by the lamp that hung from the rail near where he stood. He wore the regulation galoshes but also a thin, ordinary sort of suit. I was certain that he was not the man who'd been at the wheel during my first visit to the chart room, which meant that there were four at least in on the secret. The kid had made some signal to the Mate, who was now leaning somewhat against the gunwale, and looking aft. Some delay had occurred in taking me into the bridge house, if that was in fact the programme. Perhaps there were some loiterers aft who might catch sight of me unless they were put off.
I looked again towards the land. It was not above a mile away, and the famous Captain Webb had swum twenty-five, or whatever was the width of the Channel. But he had trained for years; he was in peak condition and had covered himself in grease, whereas I was half dead from cold to begin with. A sudden burst of sea came, and the crash of the wave was replaced by the sound of a bell in the darkness, and this one was not aboard the ship. It approached – or we approached it – at a great rate, and it came into view after half a minute, clanging inside a revolving iron cage. Here was a warning buoy of some sort, a tattered black flag flying from the top of it. Perhaps we were too close to land; perhaps this was the best chance I would get to strike out for the shore. But there were no welcoming windows to be seen now, just a low line of cliffs that rose and fell, but always in darkness. I wondered whether such continuous blankness could occur in my own country, or whether some disaster had over- taken the place since I'd left.
I was still held in check by the Mate. I glanced at the face of the kid at the mid-ships. He looked pale in the white light of the moon and the white light of the lantern; his eyes were restless, but I did not care for the expression that came over his face when they landed on me.
'I would not be you, mate,' that look of his said, 'for worlds.
'
Chapter Seventeen
