The other ship was starting to make us roll in a different way. I might swim into its path and wait in the water, but would the cold kill me? Would I be spotted, and if so would I be rescued? The ship gave a long, low horn-blow, like the mooing of a giant cow, and the sound threatened to deafen me and I think the kid also, for the look in his eyes was one of shock and fear. He looked down at the gun, then up at me, and something had made him talkative.
'Don't come it about being a copper,' he said. 'You're a bloody stowaway.'
'You're talking through your fucking braces,' I said.
The kid was again eyeing the other ship.
'Stowaway…' I said. 'That's what you've been told, is it?'
'And you can't kidnap a dirty stowaway,' said the kid, turning back towards me. 'You're no copper,' he said again. 'You'll be given to the coppers at the turnaround.'
'Turnaround?' I said. 'Where?'
We were close to the gunwale, practically leaning on it. I put my left hand on the cold iron, and the kid made no move to stop me. A deck ring bolt was between us, and a pile of rope. The rope might prevent him from making a grab at me, should I attempt the leap. I edged still closer to the gunwale. The sea was – what? – twenty feet below and quite black. It looked like oil; smelt like oil for the matter of that. But then again it seemed to roll almost playfully, with only the occasional wave uncurling itself to make a leap and hitting high against the hull with a slap that set the iron ringing. Now the oncoming ship was blowing its horn again, as if in encouragement, just as if to say: 'What are you waiting for, man? Make the leap!'
Chapter Twenty-One
I stayed behind alone in the dining room after the meal. I was studying the painting opposite to the fireplace because something about it troubled me.
I hung back there about five minutes, and when I came out, I saw Adam Rickerby moving rapidly towards the foot of the stairs with a giant tin of paint or white-wash in each hand. The wife had laid in a couple of similar-sized cans at our new place, all ready for me to start decorating, and it was all I could do to lift one of them. Adam Rickerby carried two with ease and was now fairly bounding up the stairs with them. Well, he had evidently washed the pots in double-quick time.
I followed him up to the first landing, where the door of the ship room was closed. Were Fielding and Vaughan already in there? But Rickerby was climbing at the top of his speed to the next landing, and again I followed him up. Coming to the floor that was being decorated I could not see him: the corridor stretched away darkly. But there came a noise from the second door down on the left. That door stood ajar, and I walked in directly to see Rickerby standing by an open window with a shrimp net – very likely the one I'd seen in the cupboard upstairs – in his hand. The low gas showed bare, flaking walls, white-wash brushes and rolls of wallpaper on every hand – and it was the green stripe again. Why did the landlady persist with that? Her colour was grey-violet, the colour of her coat and hat. The sea wind surged fiercely against the frame of the open window like a roll of drums, and I saw that behind Adam Rickerby a hole had been knocked in the wall, showing another, darker room beyond.
'Can I help you?' he said.
Of all the questions I might have asked, the one that came out was: 'Why is the window open?'
'Carry off the smoke,' said Rickerby.
'There is no smoke,' I shot back.
'It's been carried off.'
With his wild hair, the smock-like apron and the long-handled shrimp net he held, the lad was halfway to being bloody King Neptune.
'Smoke from what?' I said.
The room had one of the small iron fireplaces but it was not lit. Rickerby's gaze drifted down to an object on the floorboards by his boots, half hidden in scraps of torn wallpaper: a paraffin torch of the sort used for burning off paint. It might have smoked at one time; there might have been something in his tale.
'Why are you holding that shrimp net?'
'I mean to use t'pole.'
'For what?'
'Reaching up.'
'To what?'
'Ceiling.'
'Why do you want to reach up to the ceiling with the pole?'
'I don't.'
And I nearly crowned him just then, which might not have been so clever, given the size of him.
'I mean to reach up wi' t'brush,' he said.
'So you'll tie the brush – the white-wash or distemper brush – onto the pole, is that it?'
He kept silence, watching me. Presently he said, 'Aye,' and I wondered whether there might not have been a note of sarcasm there, and – once again – whether he was brighter than I took him for.
'What's the work going on here?'
'… Making an apartment.'
'Why?'
He looked sidelong, looked back.
'Bring in a different sort.'
'A different sort of guest? What sort?'
'The sort that likes apartments.'
Holiday apartments were more expensive than holiday rooms, and I supposed that the difference would repay knocking down walls to create them.
I believed that I had got as much as I would get from Adam Rickerby.
'I'm off downstairs just now,' I said. 'I'm off to smoke a cigar.'
Under the steady gaze of the over-grown schoolboy, and with mind racing, I turned and quit the apartment-to- be.
Approaching the ship room, I fancied for the second time that I heard muttering from behind the door, which stopped directly upon my opening the door and entering. I saw the black sea tracking endlessly past the tall, delicate windows. If Fielding and Vaughan had been speaking, they'd been doing so without looking at each other. Vaughan lay flat on the couch and again smoked towards the ceiling. Fielding sat in his armchair facing the tall windows. In that warped, wide room the fire was too small, the fireplace smaller still, and yet the room was too hot.
The gas was noisy here, as in the rest of the house. It sounded like somebody's last breath, going on for ever. Was it the gas that made the room hot or thoughts of the landlady that made me hot in it? Something had changed about the few sticks of furniture in the room. None of these quite belonged. It was as if they'd been meant for a different room, and I fancied that if somebody struck up on the piano, it might crash through the ancient floorboards. I noticed for the first time an alcove set into the wall beside the piano, with two bookshelves fitted into it. Each held half a dozen books, all – at first glance – about ships or the sea, or paintings of same, and I took them all to be Fielding's.
Set between his armchair, and Vaughan's couch, was the second armchair. The small bamboo table had been pushed towards it, and a cigar, already cut, rested on a little saucer that made shift as an ash tray. Beside it was a box of long matches: wind vestas. As I sat down at my chair and took up the cigar, Vaughan rolled a little my way, blowing smoke. His reddish, down-pointed moustache looked odder still when set on its side. Fielding also altered position somewhat, so that his gaze was now midway between me and the sea.
'I'm obliged to you,' I said to Fielding after lighting the cigar and shaking out the match. I was glad to have got my smoke going first time, for there'd only been one match left in the box – which seemed to sum up the whole house. Fielding nodded courteously in my direction, and crossed his legs, which he did tightly, in a fashion rather womanly. Vaughan watched me for a while, then rolled back to his former position.
