Old Filth (17 page)

 

A
fter a torrid and joyless Christmas with the brides- and grooms-to-be—gravy and turkey from somewhere and gin galore—Eddie was ready for the voyage to his father. He'd given ten pounds to Alice and promised her a postcard. He would have given wedding presents to Les Girls, but would have had to ask them for the money. He had only the money for the journey to Londonderry to pick up his ship; that and his Post Office Book with fifteen shillings in it and a new cheque book he didn't know how to use.

The day dawned. The vestibule door slammed behind him and his luggage was in the car, the watch on his wrist.

Both brides had
genuinely
(they said) intended to see him off from Liverpool—the journey from Bolton was short—and had dressed for it in excellent pre-War mufti of tweed and diamond-pin brooches, uniforms set aside; but at the last minute Hilda was called away by her beau to discuss some marital arrangement, and Muriel drove Eddie to the dock alone. There they got out of the car, she landed him a smacking kiss, said how she envied him a wonderful voyage into the sunshine and out of the War—

“Aunt Muriel—?”

—and how they would
miss
him, and how she was looking forward to seeing him in Oxford after the War—

“Aunt Muriel, I'm sorry—”

“Yes?”

“It's just that I have no money.”

“Dear boy, you're going to have plenty of money. You'll have all that we are having to give up, now that you're gone. Your allowance.”

“Yes. But I mean for now. I've only about a pound.”

“You won't need money on board ship.”

“Something might go wrong. We might be stuck half-way.”

“Oh, Eddie—what a fusspot. Alistair's meeting you.”

“I'm not sure how long—”

“Well,
I
don't know. I don't know that I've much with me. Would five pounds—?”

“I think I shall need perhaps a bit more.”

She scratched in her purse and came up with seven pounds, twelve shillings and sixpence.

“There,” she said, “you've cleaned me out.”

Then she was gone, dropping from his life unlamented and unloved. He felt shaken and depressed, as if another boy, a sunny, golfing chap, would have done better.

 

She tooted her horn at the harbour barrier. The clashing and hooting, the crowd at the ferry. He saw her big amiable face as she turned the corner.

The ferry was no trouble. The sea, hatefully grey, was thank God calm. He stood at the rail watching the submarines of the English Navy busy in the Irish Sea practising the sinking of U-Boats. The West coast of England dwindled behind him.

There were tickets in code on his suitcase, and someone beside him watching the U-Boat exercises said, “You'll find plenty of them things if you's away over the water. Stiff with U-Boats.”

On the train towards Londonderry—blank scenery—the idea occurred to him that he should have roused himself to take an interest in what lay ahead. He did not even know the length of the journey. Then it all slid away. He wondered languidly if he'd even find his ship.

But somehow here he was at the dock of a huge bay and some sort of official had his name on a list.

“Travelling alone? No group? Don't think we'll tie a label on you” (Eddie towered over him). “All plain sailing up to now?”

“Yes thanks.”

“But no more plain sailing for a while. The convoy's not ready. She'll be in harbour at least three weeks.”

“Three
weeks
?”

“Yes. Here's your billet address. Don't worry, we won't forget you. Can you get there by yourself or do you want a school bus?”

“I'll find it. I've left school.”

The man looked at him curiously as he turned away.

“What's the bus fare?” he called, but the man was gone.

 

He found the bus, and the journey was not very expensive and he got out in green mild country to the West of the city and saw that he was to be on a farm where a maidservant greeted him and brought him a glass of buttermilk. He was at present the only lodger.

“Evacuees comes and goes,” she said. “Poor little souls, crying and that, and hung with tickets. See
me
letting a bairn go where there's none it knows. Who's sending yous off, then? You's old for an evacuee. Or is yous home abroad then? Or is yous not for fighting?”

He hated her.

 

He walked in the fields, helped on the farm. The empty days followed each other. Time stood still. When the servant girl—she smelled of earth and corn and her eyes were aching and knowing—passed behind his chair at dinner with the tatey stew and the heavy suet puddings she leaned very close over him. Sometimes she ran her warm hands through his hair. One night she came to his room and tried to get into his bed, but he was terrified and threw her out.

Then, after a week and still no ship, he found himself looking for her and when she came over the fields with the buttermilk his heart began to beat so loud he blushed.

“Is there no letters you should be writing? Is there nobody should know?”

He felt her kindness and that night wrote, on scented paper she gave him from her bedroom drawer, to his school. He told them about Oxford and that his aunts had despatched him to Singapore. He thanked old Oils who'd taught him history and asked him to tell Oxford how he'd been powerless to stay and would be back as soon as ever he could. He could not write to Oxford himself. He was too wretched. He felt weak, guilty, a schoolboy, a pathetic child again. And he couldn't tell Oxford where to reply.

Then he wrote to Sir, but could find nothing to say that mattered. In neither of his letters did he mention Pat Ingoldby. His weakness and self-loathing numbed him. He began to stammer again, and so stopped talking. When he woke one night in his white clean bed, the room full of moonlight, the old closet, the bare floor, the ewer and wash-basin and soap dish on the marble washstand, the pure whiteness of his towel for morning, he turned to the girl and let her do what she wanted.

Which he found was what he wanted. And she made it easy. The next night he was waiting for her and took control. “You's wonderful,” she said and he said, “Well, I'm good at games,” and she laughed into the pillow. He had a feeling that the farmer and his wife knew. The next night she didn't come. He was desolate. Desperate. “Where were you?” he said next day, but she stared and went out to do the dairy. She was in his room that night again but he did not enjoy it. As she washed in the soft soapy water in his bowl she said, “How much money is yous going to give me?” and when he said he only had a few pounds she didn't believe him. “All right then—you can give us yous watch.”

He said, “Never. It was my father's.”

At breakfast there was a message brought by a farm boy that his ship was near to sailing. He packed and was at the bus stop without breakfast, leaving a shilling on his bedroom mantelpiece. The leaving of the shilling pleased him. A man who knows the rules. A Christ Church man. A man of the world. The buttermilk girl had disappeared.

 

And when he reached the dock this time, he felt jaunty and no longer worried that he'd be herded into a group of small children and weeping parents. He presented his papers to an office on the quay. A whole fleet now lay at anchor. A mammoth fish tank of troop-ships, battle-cruisers, destroyers, freighters, cargo boats, awaiting release.

An old-time tar spat over the rail of his own ship.

“Is this the
Breath o'Dunoon
?”

“It is, so. Step aboard.”

“Am I the only one?—the only evacuee?”

“Not at all, there's one other. He's below.”

Eddie clambered with his case down three metal ladders into smelly darkness and walked along a narrow passage that dipped towards the middle. It was way below the water line. Les Girls had not been interested in classes of cabin on the
Breath o'Dunoon
.

Nobody was to be seen. The sound of the sea slopped about. There was a dry, clicking noise coming from behind a cabin door.

He opened the door and found two bunks at right angles to each other, so narrow that they looked like shelves, each covered with a grey blanket. On the better bunk, seated cross-legged, was a boy, busy with a pack of cards. One of his very small hands he held high in the air above his head, the other cupped in his lap, and between the two, arrested in mid-air, hung an arc of coloured playing cards, held beautifully in space. As Eddie watched, the arc collapsed with lovely precision and became a solid pack again in the cupped hand.

“OK, how's that?” said the boy. “Find the lady.”

He was an Oriental and appeared to be about ten-years old. His body, however, seemed to have been borrowed to fit the cabin and was that of a child of six. The crossed legs looked very short, the feet dainty. The features, when you looked carefully, were interesting for they were not Chinese though the eyes were narrow and tilted. He was not Indian and certainly not Malay. After thirteen years, Eddie still knew a Malay. The boy's skin was not ivory or the so-called “yellow” but robust and ruddy red.

“OK then,” said the boy, “don't find the lady. Just pick a card. Any card. OK?”

“I have to settle in.”

“You'll have months for that. We're in this rat hole for twelve weeks.”

“
What
! I hope not. I'm only going to Singapore.”

“Me too. Via Sierra Leone. Didn't you know? We change ship at Freetown, if one turns up. Choose a card.”

Eddie sat on the other end of the bunk.

“Go on. Pick a card. No, don't show me. Very good. Nine of diamonds. Right?”

It was the nine of diamonds.

“Are you some sort of professional?”

“Professional what?”

“Card-sharp.”

“Yes,” said the boy. “You could look at it that way. I'm Albert Loss. I'd be Albert Ross—I have Scottish blood—but I can't say my Rs, being also Hakka Chinese. Right?”

“Why can't
other
people call you Albert Ross?”

“You can, if you want. They did at school. And they called me Coleridge. ‘Albat Ross.' Right?
Ancient Mariner
. They like having me on board ships, sailors. Albatrosses bring them luck.”

“Are you a professional sailor, too?”

“I've been around,” said Loss. “D'you play Crib?”

“No.”

“I'll teach you Crib.”

“Are there going to be some more of us on the ship?”

“More what?”

“Well—” (with shame) “—evacuees.”

“No idea. I think it's just the pair of us. OK? Pick another card.”

“I'm going back on deck,” said Eddie.

“OK. I'll come with you. Watch them loading. It's corned beef. We unload at Freetown and she'll sail full of bananas.”

“Bananas? To the Far East?”

“Don't be stupid. We change ship at Freetown, hang about. The
bananas
get taken Home by the
Breath o'Dunoon
for the Black Market and the Commandos.”

“I've not seen any bananas in three years.”

“Well, you're not in the know. You can eat plenty in Freetown. Flat on your back. Nothing moves in Freetown. There's RAF there, and they've all gone mad. Talking to monkeys. Mating with monkeys.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Common knowledge. I've done this trip before. Often.”

“How old are you?”

The boy looked outraged. Eddie saw the long eyes go cold. Then soft and sad. “That's a question I don't often answer, but I'll tell you. I'm fourteen,” and he took from his pocket a black cigarette with a gold tip, and lit it.

 

Thirty-six hours later there were signs that the huge herd of ships might be thinking of sailing. Eddie asked again if they were the only passengers.

“Four months. Just you and I.”

“I suppose so.” Loss spat black shag at the seagulls. “Shag to shags,” he said. “I am also rather witty. I'm a master of languages as well. I could teach you Malay.”

“I speak Malay,” said Eddie. “I was born there.”

“Mandarin, then? Hindi. All one. Nice watch.”

“It was my father's.”

 

Days, it seemed, later they saw the last of Ireland sink into the sea. The prow of the ship seemed to be seeking the sunset, such as it was, rainy and pale. Great grey sea-coloured ships like lead pencils stood about the ocean and smaller brisker ships nosed about them. The
Breath o'Dunoon
looked like a tramp at a ball. The Atlantic lay still beneath its skin.

“We're in a convoy.”

“Well, of course, we're in a convoy,” said Loss. “We can't go sailing off to Africa alone. We're not a fishing boat. It's a widespread War.

“Mind you,” he added, “we'd probably get there faster if we were a fishing boat. The convoy always goes the speed of the slowest ship. And we're headed out to the West for days on end, to get clear of the U-Boats. Nearly to America, zig-zagging all the way.

“Am I right?” he condescendingly enquired of the Captain at whose none too clean table they were dining. The Captain ignored him and spooned up treacle pudding.

“Is that all we're going to do all the time? I've brought no books. I thought it would be just a few days.”

“You can do the cooking if you like,” said the Engineer Officer. “You couldn't do worse than this duff. It's made of lead shot. Can you cook, Mr. Feathers?”

“No, not at all.”

“I can cook,” said Loss, “but only French cuisine.”

“You can both peel spuds,” said the Captain, “but remember to take that watch off, Feathers.”

“And keep it away from
him
,” said the Engineer Officer, pointing at Loss. “Ask me, he's escaped from a reformatory school for delinquents.”