Now We Shall Be Entirely Free Page 10

  He was still watching (the man was trying to tug something large from under the mud, the rib, perhaps, of a drowned colossus) when a woman came up and stood beside him on the wall.

  “You look like a nice one,” she said. He thanked her. She was young, ruined. Lie with her and you would wake up with a fever you would not get better from. They talked about the man on the mud. She said he was always out there. She said she thought he would sink into the mud one day or that the tide would catch him.

  “Would he not float?” asked Medina.

  She said he would, but upside down.

  He smiled at her. Even the whores, he thought, are exact, practical. She wanted to know where he was from and he told her. He asked her (for he was longing to ask someone) if she had ever heard of a city called Cordoba, and when she said she could name all the principal towns of Hampshire and Devon and knew the names of three or four cities in India but had never heard of Cordoba, he told her about walled gardens with fountains, the scent of jasmine, about roofs where you lay all the summer night an arm’s reach under the stars. He wanted to build a city in her head. After all, she knew what a wall was, a fountain, had seen stars even in Portsmouth, and that was all imagination required, but the day was progressing and the woman had other things on her mind.

  “Are we going for a walk,” she said, “or what?”

  Sharing the sea wall with them were two hawkers, one with a basket of yellow flowers, one with a wooden bucket of small flat fish that bubbled and squirmed over each other’s bodies. He asked her which she preferred, and after examining both flowers and fish and putting a finger sweetly to her chin, she chose the fish. He bought her a half-dozen. The hawker wrapped them in newspaper. He handed the parcel to Medina who presented it to the woman.

  “You will remember Cordoba?” he called as he backed away. She nodded but he had already lost her. Another man was standing in his place on the wall looking out to sea, and the woman, her parcel of fish held like a posy, was slowly approaching him . . .

  At the boarding house (he had hoped that finding it again would be difficult, might even be impossible) he went up the bare steps to the room, then paused at the door, five, six seconds, listening to sounds he could make no sense of. Going in he saw that Calley had shifted the table from its place under the slope of the roof to a new position, directly under the window. He was leaning over it.

  “Thought you’d fucked off back to Spain,” said Calley, without looking round.

  “I considered it,” said Medina. He edged closer until he could see what Calley was up to. In one hand he had a small saw; the other hand held down a gun, a carbine, pressing it to the table. He was cutting through the shoulder stock.

  “You’re in my light,” said Calley, though the light, what there was of it, came from the other side of the table.

  Medina sat on the bed. He took off his boots, his coat. He thought of telling Calley about the man with the boards on his feet, the mud-skimmer, thought he would probably like the story. Instead, he stretched out on the bed and pulled his coat over himself. Within a minute, he was asleep, dropping through the trapdoor of himself and falling, falling, until he came to with a gasp, a shudder. How long had he slept? Half an hour? Longer? Long enough to feel that something had shifted, that in sleep (it had been like a fever sleep, the last of a fever) he had put away resentment and discovered a quality of unhappiness he could, for now, endure.

  When he sat up he saw that Calley had finished his work. The gun—one of those English cavalry carbines with a barrel no longer than the distance between a man’s fingertips and his elbow—was lying on the table. The room was scented with the oil he had rubbed into the cut wood.

  “You would be fortunate to hit the door with such a gun,” said Medina.

  Calley nodded. He too seemed to have found a new mood, purposeful but calm. “I would,” he said. “If I was standing next to it.”

  “Point-blank,” said Medina, pleased to have recalled the expression, one he had learned from English dragoons.

  “I will load it,” said Calley, “with rat-shot. You know what that is?” He held out his hand, a dozen of lead-shot cupped in his palm. “These,” he said, “will tear a man like canvas.”

  Later he showed Medina the slings he had sewn so he could carry the gun inside his coat. Showed him the gun hidden. Showed him how it came out again.

  5

  He was seasick from Penarth to St. David’s Head. Expecting it did not make it any easier. In his sleep, the Jenny became the transport to Lisbon. He heard horses whinnying in terror though there were no horses on the ship, and as far as he knew no animals at all other than some hens in a coop on deck. Also, presumably, an untellable number of rats and mice.

  He lay in what they had called his cabin, the space between two bulkheads, a curtain separating him from the passageway. He lay on the cot-bed, vomiting into a jug. No one came to visit him, or once—though this too he may have dreamed—the master pushed his head past the curtain in such a manner as to make it seem his head was floating . . .

  When the worst of it was over he fell into a deeper sleep, and on waking, pulled on his boots, groped his way along the passage, climbed a ladder to the open hatchway and emerged on to the deck like the devil in a stage play.

  The wind was brisk but the sea—grey, scalloped—was calm enough. To the north, a mile or two in the distance, the Welsh coast showed itself in patches of green and grey. It looked, he thought, as if it might be raining there.

  He could not see many of the crew; he was not sure how many there were to be seen. The master was standing at the stern rail, staring back along the boat’s wake. Same black jacket he had worn at their first meeting, same solid posture. There was a man at the wheel, another sitting at the foot of the great mast, plaiting strands of hemp. The boy who had fetched him from the Star was holding a hen in his arms. He came down the deck with it, speaking to the bird as though to a pet. Then a man with a leather hat—a hat like a horse’s nosebag, something medieval about it—appeared up to his waist in the hatchway and took the bird from the boy. He held it by its feet and when he saw Lacroix lifted it up and called something. Lacroix, not quite hearing the words but guessing the sense, called back, “Yes!” The man grinned and disappeared.

  He stayed on deck for what was left of the day, standing just beyond the dark line where the spray landed. Clouds hurried past but the ship herself seemed to get nowhere. He grew cold, cold enough to shiver, though could not quite be bothered to go below and dig out his cloak. He did not mind being uncomfortable. It kept him aimed at the dull miracle of sea and air, of time slipping like honey through muslin.

  In the last full hour of daylight, the man with the leather hat thrust his head above the hatch again and beat a saucepan with a metal spoon. He waved the spoon at Lacroix, flourished it like a sabre. Lacroix followed him down into the ship’s underworld, past his own cabin, past the entrance to the galley, and into a low room (much wider than it was high) where a table was laid between benches. Here he was left alone, standing behind one of the benches and peering into the room’s restless zones of light and shadow. A small cat observed him from the seat of a grand but much battered easy chair, the chair itself lashed to the timber behind it.

  “You know you do not know me,” said Lacroix quietly. The cat shut its eyes, withdrew to the edge of the visible.

  The master arrived, entering by the door opposite the one Lacroix had come in by. He was followed by the boy, and a few moments later, by the sailor who had been plaiting rope. The master sat on a stool at the head of the table. The sailor and the boy sat on one side of him, Lacroix on the other. The cook, still in his curious hat, brought in a covered dish, set it on the table and swept off the lid. The chicken had been jointed and stewed and laid on a great bed of rice and cabbage. The master examined the food through its steam, nodded his approval, and after a short grace began to spoon it on
to the plates in front of him. Lacroix had not eaten since the breakfast at his sister’s house. How long ago was that? A day? A day and a half? He was, suddenly, frantic with hunger, and he followed the others’ example of beginning his food the moment his plate was passed to him.

  “The crew,” said the master, “will have their usual refreshment. You, sir, might prefer wine or brandy. I cannot answer for the wine. I would suggest the brandy. It found its way on to a Devon beach not long ago. Washed up, I suppose.”

  “Brandy then,” said Lacroix.

  The master pointed to the cook with his fork. “Erikson here will keep your score.”

  “My . . . ?”

  “Of bottles. Your score of bottles.”

  The cook left them and returned a moment later, wiping a bottle with his sleeve.

  “Will you have some with me, Captain?” asked Lacroix.

  “Well,” said the master, chewing his meat, “just enough to calm a tooth.”

  They drank from tin mugs—mugs untellable, thought Lacroix, from the one he had carried with him through Portugal and Spain. Once they had settled their first hunger, the master spoke again.

  “Erikson is our cook and purser. By the book he is also a seaman, but we do not let him near the ropes. The boy is Wee Davey. And this here is Crawley.” He gestured to the sailor beside Wee Davey, and such was the room’s dimness it was only now, as Lacroix nodded to him by way of greeting, that he noticed the tattoo on his neck. It was a bird, though what type of bird he could not have said. Not an English bird.

  “The mate, Mr. Berryman, is on watch with Suliman and Fritz. They will be down after us.”

  “Are we making good progress?” asked Lacroix. He had anticipated being able to dine alone in his cabin. He had imagined his cabin would be a proper space, perhaps with a small table and some sort of window. But the food and the brandy had greatly revived him and he was not sorry to find himself in company—company that knew next to nothing about him and seemed content to leave it that way.

  “We will be in sight of Bardsey Island by the morning,” said the master, “if we keep this wind. Is that good progress, Wee Davey?” The boy looked up from his plate. His expression was vacant, the gaze of a halfwit. Then he smiled, and for a second or two his face took on an entirely unexpected beauty, some light-of-God settling on him, and Lacroix was still looking at him when he became aware again of the master’s voice. He turned, shook his head, touched one of his ears.

  “I was saying,” said the master, raising his voice, “that Crawley has sailed as far as Greenland. He saw bergs big as Lundy. Every manner of whale.”

  “You were on a whaling ship?” asked Lacroix.

  Crawley shook his head.

  “We might see a whale on our way north,” said the master. “You would like to see a whale, eh, Wee Davey?”

  “So long,” said the boy, “as he don’t see me.” It was unclear if he meant it as a witticism but the master laughed and Crawley grinned at his cleared plate.

  With no warning, the ship broke its rhythm, juddered, rolled more deeply. It was not alarming, just enough to slide the dishes a few inches towards Lacroix. He caught his own plate as it teetered at the edge of the table.

  The master stood up from his stool. “The mate will come down now with the others. You can try their company.”

  For two minutes Lacroix had sole possession of a gently pitching room that smelled of stewed chicken and caulking tar. Thoughts seeped in; he hardly bothered to attend to them. The usual phrases, a recitation like the reading of General Orders, punctuated by a voice that seemed to cry for help and sometimes did so, unambiguously.

  Then a noise of boots—or at least of feet. Three sailors came in, nodded shyly to Lacroix and sat in a line on the other side of the table. One—Suliman?—was as black as the man with the ship on his head in Bristol. Erikson returned with the serving dish. It was heavy again with food, like a magic pot in a fairy tale.

  “Mr. Berryman,” said Erikson, pointing to the tallest of the sailors. “Mr. Suliman and Mr. Fritz.” He served the men, then, with a wink, put another ladleful of the food on to Lacroix’s plate.

  Now that the master was on deck it was not clear to Lacroix what the correct etiquette might be. Was he the senior person at the table, or was that Berryman, the mate? He would have offered them brandy but he had been instructed not to. They ate with their heads down, forks in one hand, the other arm curled around their plates. He asked the mate what manner of night it was and the mate said it was fair and likely to stay so. After that he let them be. He finished his food, swilled down the last mouthful with the brandy left in his mug, put the bottle in his pocket, excused himself, and made his way cautiously over the uncertain floor to the tied-back door and the passage beyond it.

  At the opening to the galley—a room like a large wardrobe, a space Nell would have scoffed at, found useless—he stopped to ask Erikson for some light. Erikson fetched out a candle from the pocket of his apron. The candle had perhaps half its life left to it. The cook trimmed the wick and lit it from the stove with a paper spill. He set it inside a lamp of curved glass, where it faded for a moment then revived. “No putting us on fire,” he said, holding the light beside the sharpness of his face. “Ships burn lovely.”

  Lacroix carried the lamp to his cabin. He wedged it by the top of the cot-bed and went up on deck hoping for stars, but the night was black and the only meaningful light came from the lantern hanging at the stern. Fifteen feet below him the sea hissed by in darkness, though by leaning over the rail he could see the now-and-then flash or glimmer of spume. He shut his eyes, breathed deeply. One way—the idea coming to him quite clearly though not entirely in his own voice—one way would be to lean a little further over the rail until there was more of him hanging above the water than there was standing on the deck. Then let himself drop. Would they hear? And what if they did? Would they turn about? Start to search for him? Unlikely. Very. And soon the ship and her stern light would be far away. His clothes would grow heavy. He was a poor swimmer at the best of times but in top boots and clothes in a cold sea, the land invisible, and too distant even if he could see it, there would be no chance for second thoughts. The thing would be certain. He thought of what the master would say to William, or what he would write to him from Glasgow. With deep regret . . . unexplained . . . a most unfortunate accident . . .

  Do drowned men have headstones? Those whose bodies are never recovered? But they might screw a brass plaque to the wall beside the family pew. Captain John Lacroix of the — Hussars, lost at sea May 1809. The book of his life would be closed. Nothing to answer, nothing to explain. No more thinking or wishing. No more staring inwards at what shifted like shadows on a wall. He clutched at the rail. He was faint again, might have toppled one way or the other, might have howled (he had heard men howl), but a whip of spray broke over his cheek and the brief salt sting of it returned him to the passing moment, its innocence, its indifference. He tottered back to the hatch, clambered down and went to his cabin. He took the cork from the brandy and drank a deep mouthful straight from the neck. It was nonsense to suppose that drink didn’t help. It was how the army functioned. The navy too, no doubt. Strong drink. Copious quantities.

  He tugged off his boots, took off his coat and jacket and waistcoat. From the larger of his two bags he pulled out his oiled cloak. He wrapped himself in it, loosely, and lay on the little bed, drawing over himself the blanket he had been issued by way of bedding. It took him an age to warm up. He made a study of the shadows on the wood above him. His nose was damp, his mouth dry. He played songs in his head. “Soldier’s Joy,” “Harvest Home.” He heard a man’s feet on the deck, then the sound of the hatch being secured. Behind its smut-grey glass the flame, responding to the change in the atmosphere, the movement of the air, bent at the waist then straightened. The candle would not last much longer. He watched it, the feathered edges of its l
ight, waiting for it to gutter.

  When he woke, Erikson was there, or Erikson’s ghost. A grey shade with ribbons of daylight on his back. He had a message.

  Lacroix listened, grimaced. “Again,” he said.

  Erikson pointed upwards. “The captain. Wants words in your ears.”

  “About?”

  “That you will know when you are on the deck. But coffee first.” He held out a bowl.

  Lacroix took it and the cook slipped away, the curtain falling behind him. To cool the coffee he added a splash of brandy, emptied the bowl in four gulps, then, finding himself ravenous for light, he dressed, pulled on his boots and fumbled his way to the ladder. The hatch was open, a square like the mouth of a furnace, and he climbed out into a May morning that was cloudless, almost warm, the sea in a dazzle.

  He was, to begin with, looking the wrong way—nothing but sea and sky. Then he turned and saw, less than two hundred yards away, a ship, a naval frigate, several times the size of the Jenny. Both ships appeared to be sailing, very slowly, in parallel. Perhaps they just drifted with the tide, it was hard to tell. Some canvas up but not much. As he watched, a small boat appeared from around the back of the frigate and started to pull towards the Jenny. Four oarsmen, a man at the tiller, another standing, quite securely it seemed, at the bows.