Honey Harlot (6 page)

Two men had dodged back into the shelter of the companion-way but now emerged and came with us. When we were out of earshot of the cabin, Volkert Lorenzen came up with me and caught me by the arm. He muttered, low-voiced, glancing fearfully aft towards the stern deckhouse, ‘Stowaway. Crew not knowing nothing. I swear; tell the Master, crew not knowing.’

She led the way to where the roof of the fore deckhouse, where the crew lived, was raised six feet above the level of the deck, and in its shelter, stopped and turned to me. I stopped also, standing there, rigid with terror; so much, I think, in those days was ascribed to faults in myself that I believe it was the terror of guilt, as though J had been panty to her coming aboard. She saw something of my utter abandonment to fear, I suppose, for she put out her hand and touched my arm, looking at me kindly and pityingly. ‘Come, Sarah,’ she said. ‘Don’t be so anxious. I mean you no harm.’

‘For God’s sake,’ I stammered out, ‘what are you doing here?’

‘Whatever she’s doing,’ said Gilling, laughing, ‘it’ll not be for God’s sake.’ And he put his arm about her waist in a familiar gesture. ‘Wicked bitch, what could you mean by it?—smuggling yourself aboard and none of us knowing all this while.’ He glanced meaningly at me. I stammered: ‘She’s been hidden aboard all this time?’

‘Well, I haven’t just swum out to you,’ she said, always laughing; leaning back negligently against the wall of the cabin, her hair shining in the cold, bright sunlight reflected back by the mirror of the sea.

‘No one knowing anything?’

‘Only poor witless Blockhead,’ said Gilling, ‘smuggling food to her.’

‘
He
didn’t know I’d come aboard,’ she said quickly. ‘Don’t make trouble for him. Once I’d revealed myself, he couldn’t let me starve, and he’s only a child, the great innocent hobbledehoy.’ She looked at me as Gilling had, and Volkert Lorenzen earlier. ‘Be sure to tell the Captain that.’

I couldn’t take it in, I stood staring at her, unable to believe my eyes. ‘You’ve been here, aboard—?
Why?
Why have you come, what do you want?’ But deep, deep in my heart, far beyond my wits’ understanding, I knew what she wanted. She had not done yet with the soul of Captain Benjamin Briggs.

‘Just an ocean voyage,’ she said, airily, ‘and to see foreign places.’

‘You can’t hope to remain until we touch land, and he not know of it? And he shall know of it this day; and when he knows of it—’

‘Well, and what when he knows of it?’ she said, raising a wicked eyebrow, teasing me. ‘What will he do?’

‘He’ll put about and take you back to New York, that’s what he’ll do.’

‘My poor little Sarah,’ she said, ‘I fear, you know, that he’ll not be able to do that. For what a tale would be told—and who would tell it!—of how the high and mighty, the God-fearing, tub-thumping, righteous Captain Briggs had kept a waterfront harlot all this time aboard his ship, pretending never to be aware of it—he who knows every nook and cranny of any vessel he sails in, and watches every move of his men

‘None will ever suppose for one moment that he brought you aboard.’

‘They’ll suppose it all right,’ she said, ‘for I’ll tell them that he did.’

I was confounded, my mind was a misted maze of twistings and turnings, I hardly knew what I said or did. I burst out at last: ‘But why should you do this to him, why should you try to harm him?’

‘With his preachings and moralisings,’ she said, ‘has he not tried to harm me? With his warnings of hell fire to poor sinners wanting only to hold a woman in their arms after the long journey or at the start of a new one. Coming to me, trying to frighten me by threats of hell and damnation from my only way of earning a crust of bread

My eyes filled with tears. ‘You said you repented. You asked him to help you.’

‘Poor little Sarah,’ she said again. And her eyes lost their laughter, she turned to the two men. ‘My heart misgives me,’ she said. ‘I’d forgotten her, this poor, bewildered girl. I don’t want to injure
her.
’

Gilling shrugged it off roughly. ‘Let her hold her tongue and he need never know that you’re here.’

‘He soon finds her, Andy,’ said Lorenzen. ‘He is putting in everyvere this sharp nose of his.’

‘He’ll not put it into a curtained-off bunk where a man lies snoring.’

They exchanged glances and all three went off into laughter; and I saw it all, or in part at least, I saw it. I said: ‘She’s no stowaway. You smuggled her aboard, you’ve all known of it all along.’

‘Well, no matter,’ said Gilling, ‘as long as you don’t tell
him.
It’s him you want to protect, so keep quiet, let us enjoy our pleasures and he’ll be none the worse off and none the wiser.’

‘But I wish him to be the wiser,’ said Mary. ‘Do you think it was for you that I cajoled the crew to bring me aboard? You flatter yourselves—what I’ve done since has been simply to pay you off—and handsomely enough I suppose you’ll agree?—you and brother Bob; and Marten’s turn will come and Good’s, who already grows crazy with hunger. I may even have to fob off the hobbledehoy, I daresay, with some feeble pretences.’ She made a little grimace, shrugging. I said: ‘You’re vile. You’re disgusting.’

She looked me over with a sort of compassion. ‘Poor Sarah,’ she said for the third time. ‘Have you already learned something of the vile and disgusting? It wouldn’t surprise me.’

I felt the hot flush rise to my face, too well aware of a common knowledge which she referred to. It had never been spoken of between my husband and me—God forbid!—but I knew what had happened that day that he went to her; I knew. Sick with shameful memories, I was too overt in my reply. I said stiffly: ‘I am a married woman.’

So much sweetness there was in her: I will say it always, despite all that happened—so much of sweetness! She looked at me almost with tenderness. ‘Poor little married woman,’ she said. ‘You are too good for all of us.’

The sun shone down, the cold, clear winter sun, and scattered the sea with brilliants. There was a following wind, we were under full sail, the whole ship seemed straining forward like a greyhound on the leash, with the slap, slap of the water against the hull and the ceaseless creaking and groaning of the rigging which had become already a part of the background of one’s life. She keeled a little to one side—to port, to starboard, (I’ve told you I never mastered more than a word or two of nautical jargon, and indeed what chance had I?—that was the last hour of any peace of mind I ever had aboard the brig, which bore her very name, the Mary Sellers, the Mary Celeste)—and cut her way through the heaving waters with their white spray splashing the tips of the ever shifting, moving, gently rolling world of waves. The salt breeze blew across my face as I stood there, I felt it cool and fresh and invigorating as though I had fainted and a flask of smelling salts was being passed under my nostrils. It seemed to pull me together, to help collect my thoughts from sheer, blundering protest and helplessness; from the ludicrous idea that in all this I was as much to blame as they. I said to Mary: ‘May I not speak with you, alone?’

It was then that I learned for the first time that her name was not given to her for her colouring alone, but for her habit of endearment—which, however, may indeed have arisen from the nickname and not come before it—of using ‘my honey’ as one might say my dear or my darling. She used it with a touch of the Southern accent which perhaps she had picked up from the darkies along the waterfront. ‘My honey,’ she would say or ‘my honey sweet,’ and she said it now. ‘Why, my honey!—do you think you’ll wheedle me with those young griefs of yours out of my fell purpose? For you won’t, you know.’

‘You teach him Mary!’ said Gilling, urging her on to wickedness. ‘We’ll have him the talk of the watersides half across the world.’

‘What has he ever done to you?’ I said. Nothing. I think life had dealt to Andrew Gilling many vicious blows and he returned them blindly, not caring who suffered, as a chained dog will bark and snap at all who pass by. He shrugged and grinned. ‘I like to see the bear baited,’ he said.

‘And you, Volkert? I know that my husband has done wrong—’

I thought that Mary gave me a sharp glance, as though to bid me say no more and for the first time in my maze of unformulated uncertainties, it came to me that the men might not know of her hold over him, that this was a secret power she hugged to herself and would wield as it suited her alone. I said, ‘I know that my husband has done what you think a wrong to you all, in condemning your ways in preaching against you, against what he thinks of as sins. But he’s truly sincere in it…’ I caught her eye with a different look in it this time and my voice trailed off. Volkert said, growling: ‘Some is married men. If such talk is reaching my home

‘We don’t sail in northern waters.’

‘Who knows vere a ship may sail or vere news may travellingk?’

‘Will it really be news,’ said Mary, ‘that Volk and Boz Lorenzen have not abstained from a bite at the apple now and then, throughout three long years of starvation?’

‘And with such an orchard to feast in,’ said Gilling, putting out a hand towards Mary in a crude caress.

She turned aside his arm, glancing at me. ‘Behave yourself in decent company,’ she said; and suddenly: ‘Someone coming!’

Soft soles, padding along the deck. She stepped back into the shadow of the companion-way and would have disappeared altogether from sight, I suppose, but it was the first mate, Richardson. He paused when he saw me standing there with Gilling and Volkert, stopped dead when he saw Mary, and said with a stream of oaths that shocked my soul, ‘What are you doing above decks?’

‘Oh, come, Bert,’ she said, ‘I’m doing no harm. He’s asleep in his cabin, and I stifle in that pigsty below.’

‘You must stay in the deckhouse.’

‘It’s worse than the pigsty itself, always one or another snoring in his bunk.’

‘You’ve done a bit of snoring in a bunk yourself,’ said Gilling, ever laughing.

‘When this white lamb popped her innocent head in—and removed it as quickly when she knew herself—oh, dear!—in the presence of men a-bed!’

‘Men and women,’ said Volk. He put back his head and roared with laughter. ‘Ve two making some fine music, Mary, vasn’t it?—for frighten her away.’

‘Be quiet, you affront her,’ said Richardson. To me he said: ‘Mrs Briggs, Ma’am—I’m sorry about all this.’

‘Here’s one that really didn’t know,’ said Mary, to me, putting a hand on his wrist. ‘When you reveal all to Captain Briggs, that at least will be true.’

‘Get below,’ he said, sharply. ‘And you two men, to work!’ But he looked into my face. ‘You’re not well. Volkert, send the boy up with a mug of hot cocoa for Mrs Briggs, with two spoons of sugar in it.’ He put his hand to my elbow and steered me towards the deck rail and stood there with me, quietly. ‘When you feel ready,’ he said, ‘tell me what you know.’

I don’t know how long I stood there with him, staring down at the white frill of the water lapping at the curve of the hull below me; half fainting, I think, now that the immediate terror and strain had been lifted. The steward came up with a tin mug of steaming hot chocolate. I recoiled from it and yet when I had drunk a little, it revived me. I lifted my eyes to Richardson’s face. I said: ‘What am I to do?’

‘I don’t know myself what to do,’ he said. ‘I didn’t find her till yesterday. To tell the Captain or not to tell him? But…’ He looked away, he flushed as I had seen him flush that day when he stood with my husband on the waterfront and Honey Mary came up to them there. ‘It’s difficult for me. If Cap’n Briggs knew…’

If
you
knew, I thought. Was it possible that he had seen that name written up on the ship and had no inkling of the truth? But I remembered how she had glanced at me as though to warn me to make no reference to my husband’s weaknesses; I could know nothing then, of course, of her bet with Captain Morehouse or of any arrangements planned between them. I said, ‘Of course he must be told.’

‘I suppose so. And yet… If it need never be known? They could get her ashore in Portugal, we first dock there, and she could find another ship back to New York, or go what way she would.’

I grasped at some word, any word, of positive direction. ‘I could find money for her.’

‘Never fear, she’ll find money enough for herself,’ he said grimly. ‘With such a head of hair, she’ll never go short of gold.’

And yet I felt troubled for her, little idiot that I was. It was inconceivable to me that any woman should be all on her own. ‘But in a strange land—’

He gave me a look of a sort of indulgent compassion, lifted up my hand from the rail and for a moment I thought he would have kissed it; but he only held it warmly for a moment in his own. Rough and crude he might be, but he was a kindly man. ‘You have too vulnerable a heart,’ he said, ‘if it’s to be at the mercy of such as Mary Sellers.’

I knew that she was bad, wicked, revelling in her wickedness, was all that my father, no less than my husband, would condemn to perdition. Her way of life was beyond my comprehension, her way with men was in my eyes detestable. And yet… Living in my tense inner world of insecurity and fear, her freedom, unconvention, all her carefree courage—were somehow irresistible. Besides, there was that sweetness in her; she could be pitying and kind. I think perhaps, even now, that Honey Mary with a single careless glance saw deeper into my quivering heart, than any who knew me much better than
she
could. I might have said something of this—though nothing about myself—had not there come a sound and my husband stepped out of the afterdeck companion-way and came towards us. He walked very erect and firm, always, with only the little roll that all sailors have by habit, as though even on dry land their ship moved beneath them. He said sharply: ‘What are you doing here? Why did you leave the cabin?’

I felt the little recoil and shock of ever present dread, I knew that my face lost colour and went stiff. I said: ‘I needed some air.’

‘There is air at the stern of the ship,’ he said, ‘without coming forrard to look for it,’ and to Richardson: ‘And you, what are you about?’ and he looked up into the rigging and remarked some trouble with the sails, I don’t know what, I knew nothing about all that. Having spoken; he ignored me. Richardson said, ‘Ay, ay, sir,’ and made me a small, ducking movement, excusing himself from my presence, and left us. My husband continued to stand at the deck rail looking about the ship, searching out the smallest faults, as was his way. As he took no further notice of me, I left him and creeping back along the deck plunged down to our quarters like a white rabbit scuttling into its burrow out of harm’s way. My mirror told me how pale indeed I was, and I slapped at my cheeks to bring back some colour; my hair had been blown in the salt breeze and I unbound it and let it fall into its straight veil of auburn about my face, and only as I stranded it and bound and pinned the pale bands about my head, found how my hands trembled.