he did so, perhaps because the piano top was too high for the operation.
'Really, Vaughan,' said Fielding, looking on, 'it will not do; it will not do at all… I'm sorry it's not decanted,' he said, turning my way.
'Don't worry on my account,' I said, chalking up another idiotic remark. Was Fielding taking the rise out of me?
'Did nobody hear anything?' I said, extinguishing my cigar on the saucer.
'We didn't,' said Vaughan, passing out the drinks. 'We'd been at this stuff all night, one way or another. Absolutely mashed we were, come midnight.'
'I don't care for this 'we', Vaughan,' said Fielding.
'Begin at the beginning,' said Vaughan, regaining his couch. 'Blackburn turned up at about the same time you did, Jim. Supper was served directly, and it was a hot supper, then as today. One of Howard's recipes. The Lady happened to have some peculiar sort of chops and some old cheese lying about…'
'Veal Parmesan,' Fielding cut in.
'Well, it was the Lady's first railway man,' said Vaughan, 'so I suppose she wanted to pull out all the stops.'
'Who cooked the meal?' I asked.
'The boy of course, Jim,' said Vaughan, draining his glass. 'When supper was over, I asked the fellow if he'd care for a pint, and so we walked over to the Two Mariners, just as you and I did, Jim. Well, it was a bit of a washout in the pub. The fellow hardly said a word, and I came back with him at about ten past ten, barely half an hour after we'd set off. I'd forgotten my key so had to ring the bell. Howard here answered the door and let us in.'
Fielding nodded at me, confirming this.
'Blackburn then went straight up to his room,' said Vaughan, 'and Fielding joined me in here, and we had a bit of a chat about the lad: Adam, I mean. I'd seen him earlier in the day, a little before Blackburn turned up, acting in a rather queer fashion in this room, Jim. It was just as darkness was falling, and he was standing by the window there with no gas lit, and waving…'
'A shrimp net?' I put in, and Vaughan frowned.
'No, Jim, not a shrimp net. Why would he be waving a shrimp net? He was waving an oil lamp about.'
'Waving it out to sea?' I said. 'Signalling?'
Vaughan nodded.
'I thought so, Jim.'
'Perhaps the gas had run out, and he'd needed the lamp to see by.'
No answer from Vaughan; he was staring up at the ceiling. Behind Fielding, the wind was getting up, becoming unruly by degrees, and you just knew it would end badly. If that sea had been a bloke in a public bar you'd have moved into the saloon. With head cocked, Fielding watched me watching it, as if to say, 'Why are you surprised? Any man worth his salt ought to know the ways of the sea.'
Chapter Twenty-Two
'Hand over the gun,' I said to the kid.
With the revolver in my hand I would take my chances with the Captain and the Mate, wherever they'd got to. If I couldn't get it off the kid, I'd go over the side. This was the programme. I didn't believe the kid would shoot, and he might not have the chance. The other ship would overhaul us in a couple of minutes' time, which gave me about thirty seconds' leeway – thirty seconds to leap while in full view of their bridge. 'If you hand it over,' I said to the kid, 'I'll see the judge lets you off with a talking-to – got that?'
He shook his head very decidedly, but he was shivering.
'Hold on to it, and you'll be lagged for most of your life. Fire it, and you'll fucking swing.'
'Come off it,' said the kid. 'Nobody on land knows you're here.'
That couldn't be right. Somebody knew – somebody in the Paradise guest house knew. The kid was facing me, but watching the other ship with the tail of his eye. He was in a funk all right; the gun hand was shaking, but he now cocked the hammer with his thumb. It cost him quite an effort, and he had to steady the thing with his other hand, but now I had the answer to my question: it was a single action revolver, and I was halfway to being dead.
'What are you, son?' I asked him. 'Ship's cook? Captain's boy?'
'You fuck off,' he said, and from somewhere aft I heard, floating over the waves and the wind and the engine beat, the voice of the Captain. He was speaking more loudly than he ever had done to me, and with more anger, although this anger was directed more at himself, as I believed, than at any other party. 'I don't see it,' I heard him say. 'I just don't see it.'
The kid heard it too, and perhaps he wanted to talk to drown it out.
'You needn't worry about me,' he said. 'You ought to be looking out for yourself.'
'You think I'm a stowaway,' I said to the kid. 'It's customary at sea to shoot stowaways, is it?'
The kid nodded slowly.
'Stowaway,' I repeated. 'What do you think I am? Hell bent on a free ride to the bloody gas works? That's it, isn't it, son? We're on a run to Beckton with a load of gas coal. You'll come back empty, will you? Or with a load of coke? Where've we come from, eh, son? The Tyne? Dunston Staithes?'
'You're nuts, you are,' he said, but there wasn't much force behind the words. He was hatless, and his hair blew left and right. In the weak light of the dawn, I could see clear through to his scalp. He'd be quite bald in five years' time; he was wasting his best years at sea.
I pictured the great wooden piers at Dunston where the coal was pitched from railway wagons into the colliers day and night under a black cloud that rolled eternally upwards. That was the main starting point for the coal- carrying vessels. But the ship gaining on us carried a clean cargo; it had a smart red hull. I saw now that two blokes stood on the foc's'le, facing each other and still as statues. Was there a hand signal for 'Come alongside'? I ought to have paid more attention to the super-annuated skipper who had given talks on seamanship to the Baytown Boys' Club.
The kid had one eye in that direction too.
'How do I know you're a copper?' he said.
How was I to prove it without my card? My mind raced in a circus.
'Do you know York station?' I said.
'No. And what's that got to do with it?'
I could hear the throbbing engines of the other ship now, quite distinct from the roar of the sea.
'… Because I'm a railway copper,' I said, 'and that's where I work. The police office on Platform Four.'
'Come off it,' said the kid.
I tried to recollect the words on my warrant card but could not, perhaps because of whatever had happened to me. There was some stuff on it about the directors of the railway company. It was more about them than it was me, and very wordy and over-blown.
'Just you take my bloody word for it,' I said, and the kid almost laughed. Well, I couldn't blame him for that.
I put my hand out for the gun, saying, 'Give it over,' but he made no move. I'd seen the Chief take a gun off a man. He did it by force of character – and by shouting abuse. You could scare a man by shouting even if he was armed and you were not.
I glanced down at the restless waves; a wind blew up from them. The sea was waiting for me to come in – then there'd be some fun. Only you were liable to be killed outright if you jumped straight into freezing water. Your heart would attack you in revenge for the shock. I looked over again to the other ship, where the faces of the blokes on the foc's'le showed white.
They were looking our way. They contemplated us calmly, and their vessel was swinging closer.
The kid watched them too.
'Witnesses,' I said. 'I can read the name of that ship. I can hunt up those blokes later on, and they'll testify to
