Grand Canary

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• A. J. Cronin
  
• Chapter One
  
• Chapter Two
  
• Chapter Three
  
• Chapter Four
  
• Chapter Five
  
• Chapter Six
  
• Chapter Seven
  
• Chapter Eight
  
• Chapter Nine
  
• Chapter Ten
  
• Chapter Eleven
  
• Chapter Twelve
  
• Chapter Thirteen
  
• Chapter Fourteen
  
• Chapter Fifteen
  
• Chapter Sixteen
  
• Chapter Seventeen
  
• Chapter Eighteen
  
• Chapter Nineteen
  
• Chapter Twenty
  
• Chapter Twenty-One
  
• Chapter Twenty-Two
  
• Chapter Twenty-Three
  
• Chapter Twenty-Four
  
• Chapter Twenty-Five
  
• Chapter Twenty-Six
  
• Chapter Twenty-Seven
  
• Chapter Twenty-Eight
  
• Chapter Twenty-Nine
  
• Chapter Thirty
  

Born in Cardross, Scotland, A. J. Cronin studied at the University of Glasgow. In 1916 he served as a surgeon sub-lieutenant in the Royal Navy Volunteers Reserve, and at the war's end he completed his medical studies and practiced in South Wales. He was later appointed to the Ministry of Mines, studying the medical problems of the mining industry. He moved to London and built up a successful practice in the West End. In 1931 he published his first book,
Hatter's Castle
, which was compared with the work of Dickens, Hardy and Balzac, winning him critical acclaim. Other books by A. J. Cronin include:
The Stars Look Down
,
The Citadel
,
Three Loves
,
The Green Years
,
Beyond This Place
, and
The Keys of the Kingdom
.

He was still a little drunk as he came out of the sleeping-car with Ismay and walked along the platform towards the baggage office. And he was still bitter – charged with that searing bitterness which, like an acid, had consumed him, drunk or sober, for the past three weeks. The platform swayed gently beneath his feet; the cold haze of morning that filled the high arches of the station pressed round him like a thick sea mist. He saw nothing. He walked rigidly like a man in a dream. He drew up.

‘A cabin trunk,' he heard Ismay explain, ‘checked in from the London sleeper. The name is Leith.' The clerk, pulling a pencil from his ear, ran down the list.

‘Consigned to the
Aureola
,' he said. ‘Right. Slade's agent is here.' And without turning his head, he shouted:

‘Slade!'

A man with a mottled face hurried forward, an invoice book clutched to his reefer coat, a finger pointed to the peak of his gilt-badged cap.

‘Dr Leith, sir. Yes, sir. You'll leave everything to me, sir. I'll meet you with your luggage at the Princes Jetty. Ten o'clock sharp, sir. This here is your voucher.'

He scribbled on a blue sheet, tore it raggedly, and, looking indeterminately from one to the other, finally offered it to Ismay.

‘Sign here, sir. No – on my slip, if you please.' His nicotined fingernail made a crease on the crinkling paper. ‘Nothing more to come, I suppose?'

Ismay shook his head, half turned to offer the book to Leith.

But he thought better of it. As he wrote neatly
H. Leith
he said to the porter:

‘Many people travelling?'

‘Eight passengers this trip, sir. A full cabin list. Nice business for Slade Brothers – oh, very nice, sir.' From his subservient satisfaction he might have been principal shareholder in the company; and with an air even more proprietary he added – producing the title triumphantly: ‘ Lady Fielding and party are travelling, sir.'

Leith, listening with a set face, moved his hands restlessly in his raincoat pockets and shivered: after the steam heat of the train it was cold upon the draughty platform. He had not slept; his head was numb; the sudden shriek of a departing engine set a nerve twitching in his left cheek.

‘For Christ's sake, Ismay,' he broke in jerkily, ‘how long are we going to stand here?'

At once Ismay swung round.

‘All right, Harvey, all right,' he exclaimed in his mild persuasive voice.

Harvey sneered.

‘If you must have your little society gossip, let's get out of this blasted wind.'

‘We're just moving,' Ismay said quickly. ‘ This instant.' He dismissed the porter with a shilling, and as they started off together he pulled out his watch. ‘Nine o'clock. We'll breakfast at the Adelphi.'

‘What do I want with breakfast?'

Ismay slid his eyes towards his companion, gave him the shadow of a smile.

‘Then we'll kill an hour in the lounge.'

‘What do I want with the lounge?'

Again Ismay smiled, a wry, acquiescent smile. They had emerged from the station into Lime Street, and, on the pavement, swept by a fine drizzle of rain, fronted by smoke-smeared buildings and sluggish clanging trams, environed by all the bleary life of a half-awakened provincial city, Ismay paused.

‘Well,' he remarked in a tone kept carefully reasonable, ‘I don't know the full resources of Liverpool at this hour. Not wholly exciting, I should imagine. In addition, it appears to be raining. You won't eat and you won't sit down. The ship doesn't sail until ten-thirty. So perhaps you'll say what you do want.'

For a moment Leith seemed to contemplate this distantly,with a sort of brooding derision.

‘Want,' he echoed dully, as though scarcely conscious of what he said. ‘ I want to know why the devil I'm here at all.' He paused, then his eye fell upon the other's blunt, unconquerably good-natured face.

‘Sorry, Ismay,' he said slowly, moistening his lips, ‘I'm not quite – you see –' Then his nerves got the better of him and he cried out: ‘For God's sake don't stare at me like that. Let's get to the blasted jetty if we're going. Anywhere, so long as we keep moving.'

So they set out to keep moving, steering a course through the wet streets, encompassed by a hurrying stream of elbowing clerks and typists, trudging past opening shops and cafés and offices and squat bounding taxis which invited them in vain. Beside Ismay's short, well-groomed form, clothed with the dapper opulence of the successful man, Leith's striding figure struck an arresting, almost painful contrast. He was tall, badly dressed, and spare, with an angular leanness which gave his movements a queer abruptness. His face was very pale, unshaven, the features set to a fine edge as though chiselled. In the fixed harshness of his expression openly displayed there was something burning. It was like a burning contempt of life – bitter, scornful, austere. And yet his wide, dark eyes betrayed him. They were wounded eyes with far-down glinting depths in which a sensitive comprehension lurked and quivered. His brow, too, was fine and high; feeling was there as well as mind. Yes, feeling, the dreadful feeling of despair! For now that mind, cleared by the keen wet air, lay focused to a dreary concentration. Why, he thought over and over again, why am I here? Only doing it because of Ismay; yes, because he stood by me. I don't want to go. Don't want to go. Don't want –

To be left in peace, to be by myself, to forget – that's what I want. And above everything to be alone – alone! But he was not alone; nor could he forget: the most irrelevant and trivial distractions drew him back inevitably – painfully. Immediately in front of him two little typists travelling to work with brisk calves were exchanging confidences – loud and coquettish – of their conquests of the previous night; and giggling: tehee, tehee! Snatches of their chatter came drifting back like wafts of a bad air, nauseating him.

‘Mine was a nice one, mine was. In drapery, if you please. Least, he said he was. And the band played “ Believe it if you like”.'

‘Mine had pimples, rather. But you should have seen his style. Oh, my! Swish wasn't the name.'

To him, sunk now in morbid introspection, their simpering, cheaply painted faces, their vapid minds, their weakly, rabbit bodies, endowed grotesquely with the means of propagation, became a sort of nightmare – a clownish symbol of humanity. These, and those like them, he would have benefited. Saved – that was the word; a beautiful, oh, a luscious word. But they wouldn't be benefited, they wouldn't be saved, not now. How funny, how damned funny! He wanted to laugh, to stand stock still in the middle of the wet pavement, to throw back his head and laugh and laugh.

Suddenly Ismay spoke.

‘Nearly there now'; and he indicated cheerfully a snatch of the Mersey river seen distantly between two house-roofs which lay below the cobbled street down which they tramped.

Leith, his head bent, his shoulders hunched, made no answer.

They went down the hill, past dirty plate-glass windows masking ropes and binnacles and ships' gear; through a muddle of mean dockside alleys. In five minutes they had reached the Princes Jetty. There, the ubiquitous luggage man awaited and approached them as confidently as if he had known them from birth.

‘Tender's here,' he declared at once, and, ceasing to rub his hands together, he indicated almost with ownership a small steam tug which gently rose and fell, nosing its fenders against the quay. ‘And your baggage is aboard. All correct, sir. Absolutely all correct.'

‘Well,' said Ismay, moving forward with a tentative air.

They went aboard, leaving the mottled-faced man obscurely grateful by the gang plank, and, passing forward beyond a massed disorder of trunks and leather bags, suitcases and wrapped-up travelling-rugs, beyond a small group of people staring with the nervous hostility of strangers, they stood silently in the bows.

The river, gliding without effort, was a cloudy yellow, windless and smooth, yet scored by thin curves where eddies ran; in midstream, anchored at ease, lay steel ships of burden; away to leeward some barges loitered, and always this river flowed towards the sea. Away and outwards towards the sea.

It was quiet, save for the slapping of the current, the far-off chink of hammers, the soothing rattle of a distant winch, till all at once a ferry, noisy and troubled, shot like a flustered duck towards the farther bank. Then, as in sympathy, the tug whistled and cast off its ropes. They began to sidle from the pier.