Honey Harlot (14 page)

She came out of her cabin. She had flung about her body the cashmere shawl as some sort of cover for her nakedness. Gilling had started forward but she came up to us first. She caught at the upraised arm, pressing her body against him so that in shame he could not force his arm down against her slighter strength as he might otherwise have done. ‘You thing of filth!’ she said to him. ‘You craven creature, choosing the small and defenceless to wreak your vengeance on! Well—you’ve done for yourself now!’ And she stood away from him, triumphant. ‘I swore I’d make no trouble for you—while you left this poor girl unharmed. That no longer holds good. So, Master Briggs, look out for yourself! For you shall pay—and pay—and pay!’ She turned and left us. ‘Go back to your bed, Sarah,’ she said, turning at the cabin door, ‘lie down and try to rest yourself, poor little thing! He’ll not interfere with you.’ And to Gilling: ‘Get back up on deck. Tell the men, tell them anything you like. He took me, back in New York, rolled with me like an animal on the floor of my room and me as naked as I stand before you now! Captain Morehouse bet with me and I won. Tell all the men; no promises of mine hold good any more. From now on, Honey Mary is free of this ship; and he’ll pay and pay

Even now I crept forward. I said to her, imploring: ‘Mary! Have mercy! What harm has he done to
you
?’

‘He is a craven creature,’ she said. ‘He makes me sick.’ She went back into the cabin and slammed-to the door.

I crept back into my own cabin, huddled on the bed, crouched there in my decent long flannel nightgown with its high neck, edged with a little frill of its own flannel, scallop-edged, feather-stitched on, with its full sleeves gathered at the wrist. No man but my husband had seen me in my nightgown before and he only as I scampered across the room, wriggled out of my wrapper, then hastily crawled into bed lest I appear indecent in his eyes… (Indecent! When you think of what was to come!) And now… He came into the room. He stood there, his face grey against the creeping of the dawn through the glass above his head: his eyes black as coals and his black, jutting beard. He said: ‘Did you see her stand there?—naked. Did you see her stand there with her body naked, unashamed?’ And he fell to his knees at the small central table and put his head in his hands and cried out aloud: ‘Oh, my God! Oh, my
God
!’ I didn’t know whether he cried out or whether he prayed. And if he prayed—what it was that he prayed for? I didn’t know whether he prayed because once he had held that naked body in his arms; or, in the depths of his soul, that he might do so again. I think he did not know himself what prayer he prayed.

A
COWARD ALWAYS WAS
her charge against him; but he was perhaps not wholly a coward then. For when at last he rose from his knees, his mind had been made up to a course of action which I think had nothing in it of cowardice. ‘Sarah,’ he said, ‘I shall dress now and then wait in the saloon for you. Dress yourself as quickly as you can; and then come to me there.’ (To think that husband and wife should undress and dress together in the same room—even at such a time, unimaginable!) I did as he bade me. When I came to the saloon, some breakfast had been placed upon the table. No one else was there. He ate steadily while I tried to choke down some crumb to sustain me for the day of dread ahead of me; we drank our mugs of bitter coffee; the ship made no movement, whatever storms raged within the hearts of men, in the boundless vasts of nature all about us, no breeze stirred. When he had done he wiped his lips and beard carefully, looked me over critically, took me by the wrist and led me up to the deck. Goodschaad was at the wheel. My husband went up and took over from him. He said: ‘Summon the men. Wake up any that are sleeping; muster the whole crew before me here.’

Richardson, the first mate, came before the rest. He ran up the two or three steps that led to the poop deck. He said: ‘I’m sorry there should be this trouble. It’s been none of my making, sir. I stand by your orders.’

‘You were here,’ my husband said to him. ‘You saw the man go down to the saloon.’

‘No, sir,’ said Richardson. ‘I saw nothing. The wheel moves not a fraction, there’s no need to do more than keep an eye on it. I moved away many times. I didn’t see him go.’

Now the men began to appear, the four Germans, Martens, Goodschaad and the brothers Lorenzen, the cook, eyes agoggle, and, slouching along behind them, insolent and triumphant, the second mate, Gilling. My husband said to Richardson: ‘Go down and stand with them.’ I had stood by wretchedly, against the rail, silent; now he took me again by the wrist and moved forward the few paces that were all the space between the wheel and the rail of the poop deck. His eye glanced automatically about the ship to see that in the windless calm all attention might for the next few minutes safely be diverted from her. His hand holding my wrist in his tight grip was steady. He said: ‘I have something to say to you.’

‘Ve haf hert,’ said Boz Lorenzen, grinning behind his hand.

My husband ignored him. He said: ‘It has been made known to you now what relations I have had—upon one occasion, ashore in New York—with the whore, Mary Sellers, whom you smuggled aboard this ship, I knowing nothing of it. What you’ve been told is true—or I’ll tell you precisely the truth, in case in the details you have been misled. You all know my reputation: I have tried to live my life as a man who hopes for salvation. But—I am a man. The woman came with false tears and a false story. My wife, in her ignorance, took pity on her. She promised repentance but later she let it be seen by us that for her very bread—or so we understood it—she was driven back to her evil ways. Ask my wife if it was not she who begged me to go to the woman and try to help her once more.’

So this was why I had been brought here; held here by my wrist as though in a handcuff. I said: ‘Yes. I told him to go.’

And she stood there, Honey Mary, leaning casually against the edge of the open companion-way door. ‘Trust Adam,’ she said as once she had said before, ‘to put the blame on Eve!’

There was a snigger among the men: they turned to look at her as she lounged there, in her scarlet dress with its scrolls of bold white braid, the front unbuttoned so that the blue white of the lace-frilled bodice showed against the creamy skin, and the swell of her bosom beneath it; and nestling in her bosom the gleam of the gold cross.

My husband did not flinch beneath her mocking gaze. He said, ‘I put no blame upon my wife, poor innocent. The blame is upon that woman there, that serpent writhing down the Tree of Life to coil itself about the weakness of a weak and erring man. That I succumbed to her, I acknowledge; I am a man like all of you. Because I try to teach the word of God, that doesn’t make me God—and I’m no less vulnerable than you. I fell. She will tell you vile details of that hour that I spent in her arms—half in heaven, half in the depths of hell. What she tells you may be all true, half true, not true at all—but I confess to the sin, that is all that matters—the serpent tempted me with the forbidden fruit and I did eat. Till now she has blackmailed me with threats; but the weakness of the blackmailer is that when the secret is revealed, then the fangs of the snake are drawn. For the future, she may say what she will. My name will be a byword on the waterfronts of the world—for a little while. Well, I am a man—as a man I fell and as a man I will bear the consequences of that. For yourselves—look upon me with all your eyes and see that I who tried to be strong, was weak; who tried to be Godly, spent an ungodly hour; who tried to be better than other men, was a man. And when you have sneered and sniggered to your fill—be about your business, get back to your work. If in a bad hour I failed to be captain of my soul—not for one moment shall I fail to be Captain of this vessel. And as your Captain, I give you my orders—no one shall have any communication with this woman. She may remain in the cabin she now occupies, food may be put on the table in the saloon and I shall see that she receives it. From now on, she shall be locked in there and in Portugal she shall be put ashore and may do and say what she will: she no longer has any hold over me. So—to your stations: in your duty to your Master and your ship, nothing has changed.’ He let go of my hand, went down from the deck, at the companion-way caught Mary by the wrist and, wordless, forced her down the steps to the saloon, pushed her into the cabin and bolted the door on her. She said not a word; struggled a little in his grasp but was powerless against his man’s strength. But she looked at him, I thought, with a new respect in her eyes: and a new challenge.

I kept to my cabin all that morning. I knew that he brought down Martens who acted as ship’s carpenter and had a bolt and chain fixed to the outside of the cabin door, so that it would open only enough to pass in the plate of food—she could not now force it further open as she had done before. If she made any fuss or outcry, I heard nothing of it and I think she did not. I refused the midday meal. He brought me a plate to the cabin. ‘You must eat,’ he said. ‘Stay here if you will; but you had no breakfast and you must eat.’

I was sick, weary, very much afraid; the airlessness was strangely oppressive and, ever intuitive, I had a premonition of some doom to come as yet undreamed of. He was patient and kind. I remembered how once he had seemed to place himself almost upon an equality with God; but, ‘Because I try to teach the word of God,’ he had said to the men, ‘that doesn’t make me God—I am no less vulnerable than you.’ I knew that now that the sin had been confessed and penance done, with more very sure to come, he needed no longer to defend himself with that aura of Godhead, of being something higher than a man. He spoke to me quietly, with no reference to Honey Mary; asked me to play to him a hymn tune or two on the melodeon, was not impatient as I stumbled through. ‘You’ll come to perfection one day,’ he said, ‘and it will be a—tranquillity—to both of us. We must keep our faith steady in our hearts. We must trust in God.’

If our trust in God is to be dependent upon my playing of a musical instrument, I thought to myself wryly, it will be not very secure. And, made irritable by reaction to the high emotions of that morning, I reverted in my mind to the cause of it all. ‘You forget sometimes that I come from a pastor’s family,’ I said. ‘There’s no need to preach to
me
of my duty to God.’

He said, very wearily: ‘I’m not preaching to you, Sarah. I daresay I shall preach no more. I shall hardly be thought fit to. Perhaps all I mean is that you must trust in God because you may feel that you can no longer trust in me.’

‘It’s not very long,’ I said coldly, ‘since you acted towards me as though you
were
as God.’

He said sadly: ‘Well—we both know very well now that that was hardly true.’

It was strange to know him so subdued and sad and yet my affronted heart could not relent. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Things have not been easy for me in these past weeks. But two months ago, I was a green country girl, from a background of utterly unworldly innocence in adults and children alike. Foolish, vague and ignorant, I was pitchforked without preparation into such a marriage as ours has been. Within a matter of days, I am the boon companion of a whore off the waterfront, and my husband is first God and in the next moment a savage striking me to the ground, and a moment after that, the meekest of the fallen. And what is to follow, God alone knows—and may He have mercy on all of us!’

‘If that is a prayer,’ he said, ‘then let us pray!’

‘I’ll pray my own prayers,’ I said. ‘I’ll pray for strength to get through such a life as this; and for the life hereafter, I will pray for my soul.’

‘If you’ll pray for mine,’ he said, ‘perhaps you will find more favour with God than I.’ And he quoted a favourite quotation of my father’s and therefore of my own, from the sad dispossessed queen of King Henry VIII of England. ‘I think the prayers of a friend be most acceptable unto God; and therefore I pray you to remember me in yours.’

‘You are my husband,’ I said. ‘I don’t call you my friend.’

‘Then I have no friend in the world,’ he said; and got up and stumbled over to the bed and there threw himself down and for a long time lay staring up at the low ceiling of the cabin; and slept at last. He had had little rest the night before and I think was as exhausted as I, by the events of the morning. I sat upright in one of those two wretched swinging chairs, but when I saw that he slept, I crept down to the floor and there curled for support against the carved rosewood spindle legs of the melodeon and also fell into a doze.

Was it while I played him his hymn tunes, stumbling through with those long, fine, curiously in-adept fingers of mine—that they crept down into the saloon and released her? Or were we too much preoccupied in that conversation which in fact was the last—as such—that we were ever to have together? We were awakened at any rate by the sound of feet pounding down the companion steps and through the saloon; our door was flung unceremoniously open. The chief mate, Richardson, stood there. He cried: ‘For God’s sake come, sir! They’ve got at the alcohol.’

My husband was up and off the bed, had caught up his peaked cap and was running through the saloon and up the companion steps before I had stumbled to my feet. I heard now a strange thudding above my head which I came to recognise as the sound of bare feet stamping along the decks, men’s voices shouting and laughing. I rushed after the two men and halfway up the companion-way.

Not a breath of wind. As far as the eye could see, only the limitless sea with its faint, undulating swell of unbroken heavy green glass; no motion in sail or spar or rope or in the utter stillness of the ship. Only…

Only six of the men—but for himself and Richardson, the whole of his crew—standing, reeling, rolling in a helplessness of drunken laughter, facing my husband across the width of the ship as he stood with the first mate at his side; and on the poop deck above them, Honey Mary, with her amber eyes aglow, crying out in triumph: ‘So, my fine Captain—see which of your crew will obey you now! See which of your crew will keep me caged up like a beast!’ A beast of the forest, I thought, hidden at the top of the companion-way, watching it all with terror in my soul. A beast of the forest: tiger, tiger, burning bright… A golden tigress, fearless, untameable…