be the reason? About half a minute after, Vaughan pushed his empty plate away and fell to sucking bits of the meat out of his moustache while eyeing me. The meal ended for all shortly after, when Adam Rickerby stood up and reclaimed all the plates. There would be no dessert, evidently. Pudding was for summer only, together with all other good things.
'Will you be joining us for a smoke, Adam?' I enquired, as he approached the door with the pile of plates.
Fact was, I felt a bit sorry for the bloke. His sister was kindly towards him in her speech and expressions, but never lifted a finger to help him in his duties.
'I've t'plates to clear,' he said, the words coming with a fine spray of spittle.
'After that, then?'
'Then, I've t'plates to wash!
I gave it up, and he left the room. Fielding was good enough to wait until he was through the door before leaning towards me and saying, 'The boy is weak in the head, Mr Stringer. An injury to the brain sustained when he was fourteen.'
'He does very well considering,' I said. 'I knew there must have been something of the kind. What happened?'
Silence for an interval; and they all gave me the tale together, as though they'd rehearsed the telling of it.
'My brother was straight down the mine from school,' began Miss Rickerby.
'One of those timbers in a mine…' said Vaughan, 'that holds up the whatsname.'
'A pit prop,' Fielding put in, 'that holds up the shaft.'
'One of 'em broke,' continued Vaughan, 'and a quantity of coal came down on him.'
'Two and a half tons, Mr Stringer,' said Fielding.
'It rather put him off coal mining,' said Vaughan, who was now staring at the ceiling and stroking his moustache. 'Well… as you can imagine.'
'So you see,' Amanda Rickerby said to me, 'this house really is Paradise to my brother.'
Chapter Twenty
At length, the way became clear for my return to the chart room. The youth led me up in silence; he would not meet my eye. The Captain and Mate waited with chairs pushed back from the table, as though they'd just put away a good supper. The Mate indicated one of the chairs, and the two made no objection when I moved it closer to the stove. This burned too low as before. I asked them to put more coal on from the scuttle that stood alongside, and the Mate did this readily enough as the Captain eyed me. It wasn't as though they lacked fuel on that bloody ship. The pocket revolver was on the table at the Captain's place as before, together with coffee, bread, cold meat of some description and a round cheese. It was all I could do to look at the stuff, let alone eat it.
'Well?' asked the Captain when I'd settled down.
'I'm not at all well,' I said. 'I've a terrible headache.'
'Not what I meant,' said the Captain.
'You were not asking after my health?' I said.
'He means carry on with the talking,' said the Mate.
I eyed him. It did not seem likely to me that the common run of collier – of the sort that carried coal from the North of England to the great gas works of London – would have a foreigner as First Mate. But these two were confederates of long standing – had to be, since they were together weighing the idea of doing murder.
Most likely it was an ordinary collier, and an English one at that. Sometimes, they had funnels that were hinged, like ships in bottles, so that they could go all the way upriver – up the Thames – but the usual trip was to the mighty gas works at Beckton, which came just before the start of the London docks. The colliers were in competition with the coal trains. The North Eastern company carried coal to London over its own metals and those of the Great Northern, but most of the stuff made the long journey by sea. Had I been put on with coal? None was loaded at Scarborough, I knew that for a fact. But this ship would have passed Scarborough on its way south.
The chart room swayed like a tree house in a high wind, and for a moment I was in that tree house, for my mind still wasn't right. I looked down at my hands: the redness was fading somewhat from them, and my memory returning by degrees. 1 started talking. I did not let the Captain and the Mate see my mind entire as I spoke, and tried to make myself seem cooler towards Amanda Rickerby than I had been in reality. I talked to them about her much as I might have talked to the wife about her. I was rehearsing, so to say, the way I might tell the tale of Paradise to Lydia. It was only when, after an hour or so, the Captain once again consulted his watch and nodded towards the Mate – who rose to take me from the chart room – that I wondered whether I would ever have the chance to put the story right, and to make amends.
But make amends for what, exactly?
The Mate was descending the outer bridge-house ladder behind me, and the over-grown kid I'd seen before waited on the deck below. They had entrusted him with a gun, and he continued to look at me as though I was a dead man. It broke in on me that I was a prisoner under escort. It was as though I was the criminal; as though the Captain and the Mate were sitting in judgement on me, the hearings of the trial being conducted in instalments fitted around the performance of their duties in the ship. I supposed they could only hide themselves from the crew for short intervals.
But how long was the run to London from the northern places where the coal was dug? It was roughly four hundred miles' distance, and a ship making about six knots would do the journey in three days and nights at the maximum. By that reckoning there would be only the one more hearing to come.
I descended to the gunwale on the starboard side, facing the land, which ran along with us, rising and falling. The night sky was darker that way; the light rose from behind me. The land, then, lay to the west. I thought I made out bays, hills, perhaps a thin wood on a low stretch of cliff. And now there was a new sound rising on the air, a beating, on-rushing sound, the source of which disturbed the waves of our wake. At the foot of the ladder, a conference was taking place between the Mate and the lad.
I looked back towards the land, and now saw a beautiful, flowing ribbon of lights being drawn over the cliff top. I do not believe that I had ever been happier to see a train, even though I had no hope of catching this one. I then turned my head to the right and saw the source of the new noise: another ship, blazing light on our starboard side, the landward side. It was bigger than us and gaining on us at a great rate. I knew that I had seen this all before, and of course I was now inhabiting the scene shown on the painting in the ship room at Paradise. The very sky was the same colour: a dark blue with a rising pearly light on the horizon.
The Mate had gone aft; the over-grown kid remained. The mass of the mid-ships blocked my view in that direction, but I hoped that a row was brewing, that the crew had mustered on the after deck, pressing to know why they must keep to one half of the ship, and threatening mutiny.
The kid had evidently had his orders, for he motioned me to come down the ladder, and to move for'ard with him. I did so, with the gun on me. It was a revolver that he held, a biggish one. I could see by the mid-ships lamps that it was clarted in grease, which might mean it had only lately been taken out of storage, which might in turn mean it would be stiff to operate. But if that trigger, with the kid's finger presently upon it, travelled one quarter of an inch I was a goner.
'I hope you know what you're about, son,' I said, as we walked halfway for'ard. 'This is a serious doing: kidnap of a police officer, assault. Twenty-five-year touch if you're run in.'
The boy kept silence.
'And what about that gun?' I said. 'Are you sure you're up to firing it?'
He re-pointed the thing at me, but he was watching the oncoming ship. We both were. It wasn't a collier – too clean, sat too high in the water. It was a superior ship altogether to our own, with two funnels amidships and a high foc's'le, proudly carried. It lagged back not more than a couple of hundred yards now – not close enough to hail, but close enough perhaps to strike out and swim to.
'That gun,' I said. 'Fire it, and the fucking flash'll blind you.'
'Eh?' he said.
'Are you sure you can work it? I mean, is it double or single action?'
'You'll find out soon if you don't shut up,' he said.
