Ingenious Pain Page 14

  Patiently, he sets to work, restoring his universe.

  In town, to the casual observer, the three of them are like a family. Gummer remarks on it; even Grace seems taken with her part, and when, in the tap-room of the Anchor, Israel England, pimp, points out the likenesses - father's hands, mother's nose - she turns to James and detonates in the region of his cheek a kiss of oysters and porter.

  From the Anchor to the Sailor's Return, then to the Black Horse, the Queen Anne, the Star, the White Horse, the Grapes; back to the Black Horse; then roaring and skittish into the Lobster Pot, Gummer cracking his forehead on the lintel, but for the moment as insensitive to pain as the boy, the youth, the young man behind him.

  Grace dabs with her handkerchief, orders gin and hot water. They drink as if they have not drunk in days. Only James sees what is happening, sees the hands held like playing cards hiding the men's mouths, hears the faint susurration of their plotting, knows without quite understanding it, the presence of danger. If he speaks now, will he save them? Does he care to? He looks over at Gummer. He was not sorry to see him in the bush, the sly grin, the quick, amused eyes. But Gummer has changed, or he himself has changed. What was it he liked about him? That Gummer recognised him when the others did not, or at least pretended they did not. For that there was a store of goodwill, a meagre store, all used up now. 'Down the hatch, Gracie!' says Gummer. A fellow in white ducks, hands tattooed with blue webs, goes out, looks along his shoulder at the boy as he passes. To meet those eyes is to become a confederate. James meets them; he says nothing.

  The others finish their drinks and stagger out. It is dark now. Gummer dances, very freely, then, propped on the boy's shoulder, shouts: 'This is what you'll never know,' waving his arm to introduce the night. 'I pity you. Pity you. Christ!' He crashes on to his knees. Grace hauls him up, works him on to her back, clasps his arms about her neck, his head drooped on her shoulder, toecaps dragging on the ground behind. James looks around for the sailor, thinks he sees him in the shadow of a boarded chandler's shop; he and another.

  Homeward now, James at the tail. Gummer sleeps serenely on the woman's back. The moon peeps out, gives the streets a black shine. Somewhere to the rear of them, the men are following. At the door of the house James glances back but the street is empty. Grace says: 'Help me with him.'

  James takes the feet. The stairs are very narrow, very dark. Grace lights a candle at the fifth attempt. Gummer is on the bed, mouth slack, a peep of white between his lids. Grace pinches his cheek. He wakes, sits up and sings: 'Bring forth in Sabine jar the wine four

  winters old, O Tally-arkus . . .' Then falls back, smiling, deeply asleep. To James, Grace says: 'Bolt the door.'

  James goes down. There is still a little of the fire left. He finds a stub of candle on the shelf, lights it from the embers. He opens the front door, two inches, and goes upstairs to pack his bag. The orrery he wraps in his velvet coat, buries it deep in the bag, then carries the bag down to wait by the fire. It is a short enough wait. There is a noise, soft, like the nosing of a dog in garbage. He goes to the door. The man is standing there grinning, a cosh in his hand. He puts a finger to his lips. James points upward.

  To one behind him, a huge Chinese, the sailor says: 'Stay here, Ling-ling. Look after our new shipmate. Warren, Kinnear. With me.'

  As they go on the stairs James sees that their feet are bare. The Chinaman puts things in his pocket. It does not look like stealing. James, who gave only three of Canning's snuff-boxes to Gummer, gives the fourth to Ling-ling. The Chinaman takes it, strokes the top with his finger. He says: 'They call me Ling-ling, like bell. My name Easter Smith. My old name Li Chian Wu.'

  From the ceiling, a mighty thud, as if someone has picked up the bed and flung it down. One of the seamen, Warren or Kinnear, staggers down the stairs, spitting teeth. From above, Grace Boylan screams: 'Murder! Murder!' Ling-ling goes up. Thuds, oaths, the sound of something large and empty smashing. A sudden hush, then Ling-ling with Gummer in his arms and behind Ling-ling the other sailors and then Grace Boylan, descending on hands and knees.

  'Oh mercy,' she cries, gulping a great sob out of her heart. 'He's sick, can't you see? Sick. Some awful catching sickness. Green shit. You'll all be dead by Monday.'

  Says the sailor with tattoos: 'I know his sickness, Mother. Good sea air will set him up. Cast off, lads!'

  She rears; he whacks her with the jack, once, and once for luck.

  Then they stream out into the night. Passers-by shrink back from them; an old woman shakes her fist. Left, left again; Gummer, still in Ling-ling's arms, limps as a doll, murmurs but does not struggle. They emerge on to the docks. Beside a bollard, a man in a blue coat, a hanger at his side, watches them come. He calls: 'Anything likely, Hubbard?'

  'Couple o' landsmen, sir. The young 'un come willing.'

  The officer peers into James's face. 'You volunteer?'

  'Yes.'

  The officer takes a coin from his pocket and gives it to James. 'Welcome to King George's Navy. Ship them aboard the tender. Tell Mr Tedder to enter this one in the books as volunteer. Sharply now!'

  They set out over the water. The oars creak in the rowlocks; the men talk lingo. They are hailed from other ships:

  'What are you there!'

  'Aquilons!'

  How tall the wooden walls of ships are! Some of the men-of-war have their guns run out and from the gun-ports comes light, music, a hubbub of voices. Gummer, curled tight, shivers in the bottom of the boat. James rests his feet on him, hugs his bag to his chest, tastes the salt breeze. A lantern shows from a ship dead ahead, a voice rings out - 'Ahoy there!' — and Ling-ling, Easter Smith, Li Chian Wu, pulling at his oar, whispers: 'This home now.'

  Kingswear, 10 January 1773 Rev Dvd Fisher to Rev Jls Lestrade Sir,

  Mr Buller at the Admiralty informs me that you are desirous of knowing something of the sea career of James Dyer whom I understand to have been your particular friend. Knowing that I sailed upon the Aquilon as Chaplain throughout much of the '50s Mr Buller suggests I might furnish you with some recollections which — craving your indulgence for the distortions of memory occasioned by the passing of some twenty years — I shall now endeavour to do. It may also be in my power to provide you with the names of other former 'Aquilons in particular Mr Munro, for whom I believe I have an old address in Bath which may yet find him.

  In order that I may situate myself in this narrative, let me say only that I came aboard the Aquilon in the spring of '53 having finished at the University — I was a New College man - the previous year. I had had hopes of a living at Mere but this falling to another I did not care to take some poor curacy and so petitioned an Uncle, then Captain of the Furious, to obtain a posting for me.

  I knew then as little of the sea and of life upon a Man of War as any Englishman may, and had I known of the hardships, the tedium and discomfort of such a life I doubt I should ever have set foot up the gangplank, and thus have missed those youthful adventures which I fear I have grown too fond of relating, much to the exasperation of my poor wife — Mrs Nancy Fisher nee

  Arbott of the Exeter Arbotts — you may know of the family — But as a man gets older he likes to look back upon those times in his life when he was among the doing part of the world and did not take his knowledge of it entire out of a newspaper.

  To come to the point, I sailed with Captain Reynolds - of whose character I shall say more anon -first to Gibraltar and thence to Port Mahon, and from there to Saint Lucia in the West Indies where I suffered with the black vomit, and but for Mr Munro's ministrations would I believe have ended my days off that unwholesome coast, as indeed did some score of the ship's company.

  We returned to Portsmouth in the summer of'54 where I left the ship to try my fortune upon terra firma, but finding myself no better off than before, I engaged again with Captain Reynolds and was but newly reinstated when I first set eyes upon James Dyer, which is to say I must have clapped eyes upon him then, for that is when the new peo
ple came aboard. I cannot, however, remember noticing him then, or indeed any of them in particular, apart from a fellow called Dabb who ran mad and leapt over the taffrail and was seen no more. As you know, Sir, it is the sad and iniquitous business of the Navy to provide for itself largely out of pressed men and you never did see such naked misery as upon the faces of those wretches when first they are brought aboard and surrounded by a world as strange to them as might be the moon. If, Reverend, you have not had the honour to walk the deck of one of His Majesty's ships I fear it is very hard for you to comprehend the world your friend had come to. The seamen themselves - in their looks, their language and their character - are quite unlike their earthbound cousins. One's ears are constantly assailed by talk of futtock shrouds and gantlines, halliards, topgallants, spars, capstans and I know not what. And, Sir, it is such a very nice world, so very particular and jealous of its customs - who may

  walk the Quarter Deck and who may not — who is accounted a gentleman and who is not — that nothing is more easy than unwittingly to give offence.

  I of course was an 'idler, like the schoolmaster — there were always several young children aboard — and such as the purser, the carpenter, the surgeon and his mates; that is, all those who did not stand watch. There were a number of advantages in this, not the least of which was that we might enjoy, under most circumstances, an uninterrupted night of sleep, while no seaman ever slept for more than four hours at a stretch, and even this meagre portion was at the mercy of the weather. Such would have been the fate of your friend- crammed into fetid quarters between decks, hammock slung side by side with his greasy shipmates, everything too hot or too cold, everything regulated by whistles and oaths and the rope's end -for the Boatswain and his mates rarely gave an order but it was accompanied by a lash - and this on a ship accounted very moderate in the severity of its discipline.

  Now, Sir, I fear you will be growing impatient to know when I did first notice James Dyer. I have been asking myself the same question while here at my desk, and have but two minutes since been rewarded with a true memory, quite as if it had been preserved in amber.

  We were in the Bay of Biscay and I was taking my regular morning turn with Mr Shatt the schoolmaster when he pointed Dyer out and said that Mr Drake - a very amiable officer, somewhat aged for a midshipman - had remarked on the boy's coolness and how he had seen him walking upright along the yards as if he had been at it twenty years. When I looked I saw a young person aged about fourteen or fifteen, dressed in canvas frock and baggy breeches, well formed, handsome, though with a rather grave expression, indeed, if I may say without offending your memory of him, a somewhat supercilious expression, and this, I doubt not, helped give rise to the rumour that he was

  well-born. Other evidences seemed to bear this out. For example, he had with him when he came aboard a bag of clothes containing some fine coats and waistcoats etc. and also a boxed orrery, which Mr Munro prevailed upon the boy to show to him. Besides these proofs — suggestive rather than conclusive — there was a persistent whisper that one of the pressed men, an older fellow, name of Gunner, who had come aboard at the same time, was, or had been, Dyers manservant. How such stories start I cannot say. I used to think they were like Herodotus's bees, self-propagating, and of course, once they exist, they very shortly swarm over the whole ship. Gunner, as far as I know, denied any such connection.

  At first I imagined how these intimations of gentility would do James Dyer no service at all among the common seamen, and yet, whether out of a natural deference to one born better than themselves, or whether on account of his great coolness, he became quite a favourite with them — which is to say they respected him, though I do not think any loved him.

  Now, Sir, Mr Dnl Tusker, my Rhetoric master at Grammar school, begged me never make a general statement without then furnishing some particular instance by which its truth may be demonstrated. Let me do so then in the matter of this coolness - or bottom or bottle or neck or whatever we shall choose to call it. I dare say you saw several examples of it yourself. I have mentioned his walking out on the yard-arms — this in all weathers. Then there was the fact that he was utterly uncowed by Mr Cladingbowl the Boatswain, who was a very considerable bully and a great supporter of 'starting', a noxious custom of unofficial beating towards which the senior officers turned a blind eye. Dyer, for sundry offences real or imagined, was beaten very fiercely by Cladingbowl and also by his mates Dominic and Muddit, such that on one occasion Mr Munro was summoned to attend and found the boy greatly marked upon the back and haunches for which Dominic and Muddit spent a week in Irons, though

  Cladingbowl scaped his just deserts until Minorca, where he took a canister of grape full-on and all but evaporated.

  What amazed Mr Munro upon this occasion was that the boy, though stunned, shewed no evidence of the suffering that must be consequent upon such a thrashing; and what amazed him further, what amazed us all, was the speed with which the welts on his back disappeared, for he was not, I think, in the sick-bay above a single day before he declared himself fit for his duties.

  Another particular that I should like to give I fear I may not in good conscience, for I was not a witness to any part of it and heard it second-hand only from Lt Williams of the Marines. It concerns an attack on the settlement of Baracoa in the island of Cuba in which your friend played a notable part. I cannot ask Lt Williams to recount it for you as the fellow was so unhappy as to succumb to the bloody flux, but Mr Drake who lives in Brixham may be prevailed upon.

  It was shortly after the raid on Baracoa that James Dyer was taken on, at Mr Munro's request, as his Loblolly boy, that is, as a kind of assistant to himself and his mate, Mr O'Brien. This freed the boy from the rigours of the Watch and enabled him to remove his mess to the cockpit, which, despite the gloom there - it is in the very bowels of the ship — and the stink from the purser s office hard by, must have been a veritable palace by comparison to his old quarters. It also had the happy effect of placing him beyond the tyranny of Cladingbowl and this no doubt had been part of Munro's purpose in requesting him, for Mr Munro, in spite of some weaknesses common enough at sea, was a very considerate gentleman.

  It transpired soon enough that the surgeon would have no reason to regret his decision, at least as far as the question of the young man's competence was concerned. He very shortly shewed himself the equal of his work, and what he did not already seem to know he learnt without effort and became so proficient as to excite the

  resentment of Mr O'Brien. So much were Mr Munro and your friend in each other s company that I am sorry to record they became the butt of an ugly and infamous story, put about in the first instance by Mr O'Brien but then gaining general currency. I should not mention this, Sir, and risk offending you with ancient tattle, were there not certain repercussions that make the relation of even so unsavoury an episode pertinent.

  To my dismay, Munro did little to protect either his own name or that of your friend, and indeed, gave every evidence of being besotted with the boy. I cannot well explain his reluctance to act, other than to suggest that his sense of outrage had been dulled by his consumption of Laudanum which he confessed to me he took at one thousand drops a day, quite sufficient to destroy one less habituated to the drug. Rum he also took in considerable measures, partly on account of the condition of his teeth, which were very rotten and only rendered bearable by regular swilling with the spirit. Poor man, he was never quite happy, and the presence of his young assistant was such an evident boon to him it seemed quite callous to prise them apart. Notwithstanding this I determined to speak with young Dyer and stress the necessity of confronting these calumnies. I spoke with a certain frankness and proposed that he should be less in the surgeons company. He did not at first appear to understand what I was saying and when I made myself more plain he only smiled and rebuked my impertinence in the strongest language and indeed, Sir, quite made me fear for my safety, though I am not a small nor a cowardly man.

  As for Mr
O'Brien, he did at length succeed in provoking the boy, and did not, I am sure, understand what a dangerous enemy he had made. I believe I may trust to your knowledge of your friend's temperament to bear this out and think you will not be surprised to hear that O'Brien shortly came to grief. He was beaten, severely beaten, while on shore leave at Colombo. No one witnessed the encounter and O'Brien never said more than that

  he had been attacked while cutting back to the quay through some narrow streets. However, it was generally accepted as being the work, directly or indirectly, of James Dyer. As for O'Brien, he was out of his wits for a week, so that when we next touched at Portsmouth he discharged himself and was not heard of again. There were no reprisals of an official nature. It is as Captain Reynolds has it - 'The navy is no profession for milksops'

  Being now without a mate, Mr Munro petitioned Surgeons Hall to examine James Dyer to be O'Brien's replacement, and by virtue of Munro's influence with some members of the Board your friend had an early opportunity to shew his talents, travelling from Portsmouth to London in the company of his mentor and going before the Board the following day. I do not remember the precise result of the examination and yet it was sufficient for him to obtain a Warrant and I hazard he was one of the youngest ever to have obtained such a post, though let it be said that in the Navy a man - or boy - whose star is bright may rise more quickly than in almost any other profession you may think of, some having been made Captains before they are twenty, Admirals before they are thirty.

  Now, Sir, I must come to that event which will I think be of most interest to you. It is an event that shall remain at an instant's recall to my dying day. Indeed it figures largely still in the collective memory of the nation. Yet there is one matter, a curious business, I should like to relate beforehand and which I should have mentioned earlier except that other relations forced it fiom my mind. It concerns James Dyer's putative servant -Gunner — and occurred some two months after they came aboard at Portsmouth. The body of a woman was discovered in the bread-room, sewn into a hammock, a large woman, somewhat gone and very necessary to be buried before she rendered the bread unfit for consumption. An investigation revealed her to be Gunner's 'wife' — it was not so uncommon for men secretly