Sailors on the Inward Sea (26 page)

W
ELL,
F
ORD, MY
memory of the next few days is as blurred as things seen through the window of a speeding car. I helped a friend with some brazing work. Otherwise I stayed busy on the
Nellie,
dawdling over repairs I could have finished in half the time. The hours dragged out interminably or passed in an instant. I would look up and see a ship that seemed not to have moved in an hour. One that had loomed nearby would be reduced to the size of a pinhead in the blink of an eye. When I thought about Conrad it was through the screen of the story of the
Brigadier.
Always I wondered about his nameless book. At night, when I didn't feel like visiting a pub, I read in my bunk, wrapped in an ancient afghan my dear old aunt had knitted. For reasons that escape me now, I was going through McCauley again and found some relief in his recording of the Empire's fall.

I took to walking, wandering down lanes and through squares, moving farther away from my part of the city. There was a sense of relief in venturing into new neighborhoods, even run-down places where voices came from windows or alleys, sounds of the unknown that I welcomed because they helped me keep my feelings in check. I felt as though I were looking for something the way you do in dreams, without knowing whether you're pursuing a person or an object or a place. This was especially true late at night when the streetlights played tricks, beckoning but revealing nothing. Still I was compelled to go on, half convinced that I was closing in on something, an idea, a way of understanding, a thread I might follow back to its source.

That Friday before the funeral I stayed aboard, in no frame of mind to go out in public. The previous night I had gotten my good suit out, brushed it, and hung it up to let the wrinkles fall out. It swayed on the hanger whenever the
Nellie
moved, the trouser legs approximating a man shuffling along, an image that brought to mind thoughts about my own mortality and that of the old gang, and left me uneasy over how swiftly time was passing for all of us.

Fortunately there was enough in the way of housekeeping to stay busy, and when I finished tidying up the cabin I put some fish and oysters and vegetables into a pot for chowder, seasoned the mixture, and decided to read while it finished cooking. I chose a little Conrad for the comfort of his voice. All his books were on my shelves, including those I had bought from Thomas and Sons. I tipped out
Under Western Eyes.
It had been waiting for me at a post office in Sydney when I had arrived at the end of a voyage that had been spoilt by a brush with the tail end of a typhoon. Razumov's tribulations, his determined slogging toward the light, had taken hold of my imagination for three solid days and nights. I wanted to revisit the book, but as I took it down my attention drifted from the heavy volume with its stout boards and cream-colored cloth with the title and his name in thick black letters to my remembrance of the Fox-Bourne manuscript, which might prove to be the finest thing Conrad had ever written, the last labor of an old man steeped in his art, the equivalent of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. He had put all his skill, all his passion into that story, and because of that it seemed as precious as a last will and testament. I had seen other manuscripts of his whose pages bore deep impressions from the pressure of his pen, the marks of a living hand that made the paper curl and emit a brittle sound when it was touched. By the time I finished dinner—it was an excellent chowder as I recall, thick and spicy—the manuscript had assumed the status of a relic, like a bone of a saint displayed
under thick glass. I made up my mind to see that it was preserved and properly disposed of, which meant that Fox-Bourne would have to return it directly to Jessie or to me as an intermediary. After I recovered from the funeral I would track him down. When I found him, I would make it clear that as an old and devoted friend of Conrad's I would respect his decision concerning publication, tell him that I didn't give a damn whether the story ever came to light, that the important issue, the only one that mattered, was preserving the text. The only difficulty I could foresee lay in convincing him that he was safe. I was certain that Jessie would be willing to vouch for my discretion. With that out of the way, I saw no reason why he would object to returning it.

I poured a whisky and went out on deck. Above the yellow moon rising over the city the stars burned cold and bright, funeral stars, Ford, sadly gleaming. Fox-Bourne was still on my mind. I was wondering what had happened to him and whether he still commanded the
Brigadier,
which seemed likely, when a vision of him came to me. He was sitting in his quarters, reading the manuscript beneath the dual gaze of Edward and his wife, fascinated, appalled, even sickened by the story Conrad had vividly brought back to life. At that moment Conrad's belief that Fox-Bourne might sacrifice himself on the altar of the truth seemed preposterous. The man would hate him. If he could get control of his emotions he might very well laugh out loud at the proposal Conrad had made in his cover letter. Asking him to agree to publication was tantamount to suggesting that he have himself keel-hauled as a preface to being drawn and quartered in full view of the Royal Navy. The book would never be published. With that certainty burning as clearly before me as those bright cold stars, I went below.

I
WOKE IN THE
dark and put on my suit in lamplight, inhabiting the damned thing against my will, hating the feel of the wool, the constriction of the jacket and shirt collar. Never a man for suits, I detested the glimpse of myself in the mirror. But it was for Conrad, a sign of respect. If nakedness had been required, I'd have gladly strode bare into the church. The loss of Conrad had hit full force as I dressed and I had choked up as I cinched my tie, the fellow in the mirror a blur. Indeed, I was so distraught I couldn't deal with breakfast and contented myself with a cup of coffee, which I took on deck, where I gazed blankly into the darkness.

At dawn, Harrison, Barnes, Kepler, and I boarded the train at Victoria Station. Since it was the weekend, and damnably early, we had the car to ourselves except for a family in the compartment next to ours, where a woman glanced at us, clearly startled, hardly surprising given that we were dressed in black and must have looked like undertakers, or maybe a band of fanatics off to proclaim the Apocalypse. The four of us suffered equally, though in different ways. Having followed the sea longer than our companions, Harrison and I had a particular bond with Conrad, the tribal attachment that can only obtain when you have shared the same trials and exultations. But Barnes made up for it with a morose observation about the empty train, and poor Kepler was conspicuously undone. Slumped against the window, he stared down at the tracks, his head jerking as the train chugged out of the station and clattered past the back sides of buildings blackened by centuries of smoke and soot. A few dimly
lit windows showed like a scatter of dying sparks. There was a church spire framed in the gloomy space between trees, rows of tracks, signals, none of it ever envisioned by Wren or any other architect worth the name, their spirits no doubt appalled that the entrance and exit to London languished in utilitarian squalor. I thought of the manuscript and hoped the others had something like it to cling to, a memory of a happy day on the
Nellie
when Conrad was in good form, an image of him, anything. If they did, they kept it to themselves.

By the time the train was out of the city we had fallen silent, our usual garrulousness banked like a fire. The monotonous clicking of the wheels came up through the floor. Whenever we caught one another's eye, we shifted our gaze. The safest thing was to look out the window. I tried to lose myself in the countryside as I once did in the sea on long voyages when the expanse led to all sorts of pleasant thoughts. But this view was too particular, too perfect, if you know what I mean. The greenness of the fields and ancient hedgerows, villages like illustrations in a book of fairy tales, looked too bloody happy, the kind of thing you think of when you hear a folk tune or read an old poem about shepherds and maids. I had no interest in sunlit perfection. I wanted clouds, rain, wind like the wind that blew while Lear bellowed on the heath.

It was even worse in Canterbury. The city was festooned with colored buntings and signs celebrating Cricket Week, the street lamps and buildings tarted up like dance-hall floozies. We all laughed, agreeing that Conrad would have been vastly amused. When our cab arrived at St. Thomas's Roman Catholic Church I saw you out in front at the edge of the crowd, Ford, standing as straight as a soldier on parade, patting your pockets like you'd forgotten something, the old nervous gesture you always fell back on when you were upset. When I approached, you stuck out your hand awkwardly and said, “I can't get used to it, Malone.”

“Nor can I,” I answered.

Pursing your lips, you said, “You look like it has sunk in.”

“Do I?”

You nodded sympathetically.

“Not far. It's just gotten through the first few layers of my hide.”

“When the word came I told myself there must have been a mistake.” You looked around and added, “Everyone's here,” staring at the crowd with a hurt expression in your eyes that seemed to suggest that you were privy to an insult or some indiscretion that passed by me. “Joseph would have appreciated this, of course, but I can't ignore the irony. You remember the years he struggled in obscurity when he said he felt as if he were writing in invisible ink.”

“It's not invisible anymore,” I ventured.

“He deserved better than he got. He was great, Malone, before the public would give him the time of day.”

“I know,” I said, “but it didn't stop him. This was the only life he was cut out for.”

“You're speaking of consolation?”

“Reality,” I told you. “There's consolation in that.”

“Yes, well . . .”

People were beginning to go inside. I looked around but couldn't find Harrison and Kepler.

“They will write things about him soon.”

“They?”

“The literary establishment.”

“As they should.”

“Yes. Overdue, of course. I intend to do something myself. It was the first thing I thought of after I'd gotten the news. I think I'll call it
Joseph Conrad: A Personal Remembrance.
”

“I'm sure it will be very fine.”

You shrugged.

“It will be what I know, the truth.”

Stella appeared then, and after saying hello to me slid her arm through yours and said, “We should go in.”

Barnes and I followed the two of you. After we sat down I caught a glimpse of Harrison and Kepler in the middle of a pew near the front. The old Irish priest's thick fingers, wrapped around the silver chalice, looked like they'd be more at home grasping a belaying pin. His lungs were strong enough to cast Latin all the way to the last row of pews in such a mellifluous voice that it consoled even those of us who were strangers to the liturgy. Given Conrad's antipathy toward religion, I knew that the presence of so many friends would surely have meant more to him than the baritone of that representative of a stern, exacting faith. But it was obviously consoling Jessie, whom I could see quite clearly.

I don't know how you feel about funerals, Ford, but I have always thought that they come too soon, everyone in a rush to put the departed in the ground, including the gravediggers standing off a discreet distance, impatiently fingering their spades. Oh, I'm aware of the physical need, but shouldn't the ceremony come later, after people have had time to absorb what has happened and think of something to say that doesn't suffer from your typical treacly sentimentality, especially when they are eulogizing a man of letters? I don't mean to denigrate the remembrances we heard from Jean Aubry and Cunninghame Graham. They were well intentioned and moving, but they had been written for an occasion which demands that those who speak practically sanctify the departed and because of that they missed, or so it seemed to me, Conrad's gnarled, pithy essence, the character that had been formed from years of the seaborne life, his quiddities. I didn't mean to go on like this but remembering the service just now made me wish again that our
friends had spoken of a man of flesh and blood who was far from being an angel but could write like one.

In any case, I was relieved when we mourners were given the signal to troop out, our footsteps on the cold stones echoing in air that bore the smell of incense and candle wax. Barnes and I followed the pallbearers as they carried the coffin to the graveyard while the priest stood at the head of that black hole in the earth, reciting ancient words of consolation. I gazed at the tombstone where the dates that so coldly graphed a life were relieved by some lines from Spenser that Conrad had chosen as an epigraph to
The Rover:

Sleep after toyle, port after stormie seas,