The sitting room seemed to be filled with the night sky and the black sea. A man with his back to me stood at one of two tall windows, gazing out. Another, younger man lay on a couch. The room was surely the biggest in the house, and it might once have been two rooms – something about the way the floorboards rose to a gentle peak in the middle made me think so; and the way that the two tall windows did not quite match. They seemed to go in for knocking down walls in that house, as I would later discover.
The room was very old. The cornices were crumbling a little, the fireplace was small. Worn blue rugs were scattered over the black boards, but they were too widely spaced. Black and blue: they didn't set each other off right; they were the colours of a bruise. The articles of furniture seemed few and far between. Most notable of these was a very black upright piano, which had a wall to itself and was set somewhat at an angle by the slope of the floor. The man at the window stood some distance from an occasional table that held two books. I could make out the title of one: A History of the British Navy. The man at the window turned about. He was the fellow who'd answered the front door to me, only he looked older now. He stepped aside, as though politely allowing me a view of the sea.
On the harbour wall stood the harbour master's house and the lighthouse, both white. Against the black sky, the two together looked like a glowing white church with a round tower. The man who'd stepped aside was watching me as I noticed the scene on the dark beach, just to the right of the harbour. Two lines of men holding ropes hauled a boat towards the waves, beckoned on by a man at the front, who wore a long oilskin. From this distance the men looked tiny, the whole scene ridiculous.
The guardian of the window put out his hand.
'I'm Fielding,' he said.
'Stringer,' I said.'… I saw a maroon fired.'
He tipped his head to one side, as though questioning what I'd just said, although he was smiling as he did it.
'I saw it from my room,' I said.'… the room on the top floor.'
'Yes,' he said. 'It is the only one presently available.'
The man Fielding was trim, probably in the late fifties or early sixties, with carefully brushed grey hair, a high waistcoat, spotted tie very neatly arranged with a silver pin through it, and a decent, if rather worn, black suit under the smoking jacket. He seemed very proper and mannerly, although he had not yet introduced me to the man lying on the couch, who had not yet troubled to rise. I gave a bolder glance in his direction. He had a droopy moustache, and, as I thought, a lazy eye.
'Are you coming aboard tonight?' Fielding enquired.
'Coming aboard?' I said, shaking his hand. 'Well, I don't see why not!'
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
