The Forgotten Story (11 page)

The restaurant began to fill up. There were many ships in the bay, the summer gales of last week having forced the smaller ones to run for shelter. The crew of the windjammer had also been allowed ashore, but so far only the three mates had arrived at JOE VEAL'S. The rest were celebrating their release in a succession of public houses.

Ned Pawlyn arrived about five-thirty, and when he knew that Joe was about again he pressed Patricia to go out with him for the evening. This she agreed to do, but only for a limited time, and they were back soon after seven. Pawlyn then went with her into the kitchen, anxious to help. Later in the evening nine of the windjammer crew, all Finns or Swedes and all in a merry state, arrived for supper. They ordered a slap-up meal and tramped into the upper restaurant; but finding the three mates there they turned round and tramped, laughing and talking, down to the lower restaurant where they would be free from the oppressive influence of authority.

Shortly after this Anthony had to take another milk drink into Joe and was told to stay while he drank it. All this week he had been anxious to ask his uncle for details of what his father had written, but there had been no opportunity to do so. Now, with some trepidation and spoken apologies for troubling the old man, he brought up the subject.

Joe peered at him with watery eyes over the top of the repulsive glass.

‘I've only met your father once,' he said, ‘so how can I tell what he means? Of course he's offered to pay for your schooling, for I haven't the money to spare. But I doubt if what he offers will cover the cost. And a young fellow like you eats up a pretty penny in the way of food; then there's clothing and what-not. We'll have to see.'

‘Doesn't he want me to go out to Canada at all?'

‘I went prospecting once in my young days,' said Joe. ‘It isn't a time when you want somebody
attached
to you. You've got to be free. You've got to travel light and travel rough. He says he'll be in Winnipeg in the spring; maybe you'll be able to join him then. But you can't just do nothing here all winter; he sees that. Your aunt'll see about a school, see which we can afford on what your father's sent. 'Tisn't a lot he's sent; we've got to cut our coat according to the cloth. Can't be ambitious on a few pounds.' He put down the empty glass and shuddered. ‘Pah! Pobs … Babies' food. No stuff for a grown man. That's what this life does for you: when you're young you feed on milk; then when you grow up you grow to know what's good; when you're old you have to go back to milk again …' He hastily re-lit his pipe.

Two customers entered. They were the bosun and sailmaker of the windjammer, both Germans. The sailmaker was an inoffensive, pleasant little man; but Todt, the bosun, square-built and fair-haired and mean, although one of the best sailors afloat, was hated in his ship. They parleyed for a few minutes in guttural tones, then paid for their meals and went in. Following almost on their heels came three more men off a Penzance tug which had brought in a damaged brig that afternoon. Two were weather-beaten west-Cornishmen; the third, who had had a little too much to drink, was a red-haired Scottish engineer. While they were discussing what they should have, a single customer entered. It was Tom Harris.

He stood back while the other men were being satisfied. There was not so much of the dandy about him tonight, Anthony thought; he was wearing a cap and a tweed suit.

Joe had bristled at the sight of him, but he said nothing until they were alone. As the other three men disappeared he put down his carving knife and fork and took out his pipe to wipe down his moustache with the mouth-piece.

‘What do you want?'

‘I'm glad to see you up,' said the younger man in an uncontroversial tone. ‘ I'd heard you were unwell.'

‘Never mind that,' said Joe. ‘What do you want?'

‘A meal. It's not Sunday today.' Harris glanced along the counter. ‘This is a clever way of running things. There's something about an array of cooked meats and fowl and other tasty dishes that appeals to the glutton in us all. The sight of them together –'

‘I don't want any of your advice,' Joe said, trembling with weakness and annoyance. ‘If you've come to see Patricia you'll be disappointed.'

‘I want a meal,' Tom Harris said. ‘Nothing more. I'm in Falmouth for the evening and have come to the place where I can get the best meal. It's a matter of business. I think it's against your principles ever to refuse a customer, isn't it?' He took out a sovereign and put it on the counter.

‘I can look after my own principles, thank you,' Joe muttered. ‘I don't want a legal opinion on them.' But his eyes wandered to the gold coin.

There was silence. Tom looked at Anthony and smiled slightly.

‘Are you full?' he asked. ‘I can wait.'

‘It's just a trick to see Patricia. I know you. It won't do you any good.'

‘She's under no compulsion to see me. It's quite outside my control. Is that pheasant you have there? I should like some of that, with a little steamed fish before it. Come, take the money and give me what change you please.'

‘I've my fixed charges,' the old man said aggressively. ‘ You needn't think I profiteer on anybody. Have you come here to spy?'

Tom Harris looked mildly exasperated.

‘My dear sir, your daughter happens to be my wife whether we like it or not. I'm not likely to wish to bring you into disrepute while that's the case.'

Smoky Joe picked up the coin and rang it on the counter. Then he put it into the till and slid a half-sovereign and some smaller change across to the younger man.

‘Lower restaurant,' he said. ‘You'll get your first course in a few minutes.'

Joe's reason for directing Harris to the lower floor was that he knew Patricia to have been helping on the upper one, which had rapidly filled up. What he did not know was that, with the immediate rush over, Pat had gone down to the lower one to begin her own supper at a table with Ned Pawlyn.

When Tom entered they had just been served at a small corner table near the window. His eyes went as if by a magnet towards them, but his expression did not alter and he walked across to the other side of the room and took an empty table next to that occupied by the nine Finns and Swedes.

When Patricia saw him her colour changed, as it always seemed to do when he appeared unexpectedly, and Pawlyn, following the direction of her gaze, uttered a growl of dislike.

‘What's the matter with the fellow?' he said. ‘Always skulking around. Don't he know when to take “no” for an answer?'

‘He's not here at my invitation,' said Pat. ‘I told him last week; I was quite straight about it. He said …'

‘What did he say?'

‘Oh, it was nothing important. Let's forget about him.' She suddenly realised it would have been dangerous to mention her husband's objection to Ned Pawlyn in front of Ned Pawlyn. ‘Dad should never have let him in. He must know that it's embarrassing to me to have him calling here.'

‘What he needs is a lesson in how to take “ no” for an answer. I'd dearly like to give it him. He'd stop skulking if he felt the weight of my boot.'

‘Hush, hush. Eat your supper like a good boy and talk of something else.'

The meal progressed. Tom Harris was served and ate his meal very slowly. So did Patricia and Ned, for they were talking and joking between themselves. The girl paid more attention to the sailor than she had ever done before, in order to show Tom her complete freedom and independence. Ned was enchanted to find he was making progress at last.

Tom finished his second course and ordered cheese and coffee. This ordering of more food when the other dishes had been eaten was something ‘not done' at Joe's. David, the young lascar waiter, was nonplussed and went into the kitchen to ask for instructions. Presently he returned with a large piece of bread and cheese on a plate, but no coffee. Tom gave him a shilling and lit a cigarette.

All through the meal one of the Swedes at the next table, a big, blond, pasty-faced man, had been giggling at Tom Harris. There was nothing specially funny in the solicitor, but the Swede was in such a state that anything would amuse him. The episode of the coffee and cheese was altogether too much. His laughter shook the room, then he choked and knocked over a glass of beer and all his comrades fell noisily to smacking him on the back and laughing and arguing among themselves. The German bosun, eating an enormous plate of roast pork near the door, put down his knife and fork and shouted at them a command to make less noise.

His voice was as ill-tempered as his look. The air was filled with catcalls in reply.

‘
Falla Båtsman! …'
‘Inga bra, bawsted!
Inga bra!
'
‘Satan och Satan; kyss me, Satan!'

When it seemed that there might be a scene, several newcomers entered the room and the worst of the noise died down. But the pasty-faced Swede still went on giggling.

Then the lame accordionist struck up a tune and several people hummed and whistled the chorus. After a few minutes some of Unde Perry's friends pushed him forward from his corner. With a self-conscious grin he took up his usual position beneath the figurehead of the
Mary Lee Melford
, pushed back his hair with two fingers and began to sing.

‘There was a youth, a well-loved youth
And he was a squire's son;
He loved the bailiff's daughter dear
That lived in Islington.
Yet she was coy and would not believe
That he did love her so;
No, nor at any time would she
Any favours to him show
.'

Tom Harris finished his cigarette and stubbed it out. He was well aware of the amusement he was giving the Swede, but he ignored the man with good-humoured tolerance. All the same, the consciousness of being laughed at, together with the circumstance of seeing his wife flirting with another man, had frayed the edges of his temper.

There was applause when Perry finished. He grinned again and turned to the accordionist, wiping his good-humoured, feckless, indolent face. Tom Harris got up to go.

Perry began the verse of a popular song of the eighties. Tom took his cap from a convenient hatstand while the Swede went off into a fresh burst of giggling. The solicitor went across the room to the table where his wife was sitting and spoke to her. Ned Pawlyn, in an instant changed like a dog from playful pleasure to prickly dislike, sat and glowered at him but did not speak.

Perry reached the chorus, and all those who had finished eating, and many who had not, joined in the rollicking song.

Explosions of violence in public places usually occur without the least warning to the majority of people indirectly concerned. Ill-temper, enmity, malice, have flourished unawares in their midst. No one has seen or suspected anything. Two, four, half a dozen people may be quietly reaching a point of white-hot anger while all about them others read or eat or are entertained quite unaffected. Only when these emotions reach flash point are they communicated to spectators through the medium of action. Of such insensitive clay are we made.

It is as if gunpowder has been quietly scattering itself about the room. No one notices, no one cares. All tramp where they please, kicking or stumbling with impunity. Then someone drops a lighted match.

The room was noisy but peaceful. Square and low and raftered and full of smoke, with its ancient bow windows looking out upon the winking lights of the river and harbour, there was a faintly Continental air about its decorations as well as its company. Perry, with his bold, lazy, brigand's face, stood under the painted figurehead singing his song while an old man, with a wooden leg and a bald head shining in the gaslight, accompanied him upon his battered accordion and many of the company joined in. Near the service hatch and underneath a picture of Admiral Pellew in action against the Malay pirates, two Germans, with the air of starving men, were rapidly finishing off large plates of pork. In the corner window-seat a respectable, staid-looking young man in a neat respectable tweed suit was conversing with a pretty girl and a dark-haired sailor. In the middle window-seat was a mixed party of six and in the other corner window-seat two hard-bitten Cornishmen were arguing good temperedly with a red-haired engineer. Stretching across the width of the ancient brick fireplace was a long table containing the nine Norsemen from the windjammer. The rest of the tables were all filled. There were model ships on shelves and ships in bottles, and dark smoky oil-paintings of ships hung on the yellow-painted walls.

Into this comfortable cosmopolitan scene a lighted match was dropped. It flashed and flared suddenly at the corner table by the window. The man in the respectable tweeds was speaking to the girl, and the sailor lolling on the opposite side of the table made a remark. That was the match. The man in the respectable tweeds abruptly leaned across the table and smacked the sailor across the face with his open hand, the sound being heard clearly and sharply above all the other noise. In a second the sailor was up, had grasped the other man by the throat, and pulled him across the table regardless of the plates and the cutlery and was trying to force his head down.

The singing persisted only for a few moments against this unfair competition. First the diners stopped. Then Perry stopped. Then the cripple stopped; and everyone's attention was on the scuffling couple in their midst.

Ned Pawlyn had never in his life known what it was to be so grossly insulted as by that open-handed smack. A straightforward punch he would have accepted with far less malice.

For a few moments he went berserk, pulling his struggling opponent across the table by sheer muscular strength before Harris could break free. Then, while Patricia shrank back against the wall, he pursued the half-strangled Harris round the table, hitting him almost as he chose until the solicitor staggered back into the table containing the two Germans and sat on the knee of Todt the bosun. At this there was an unholy shriek of laughter from the drunken Swede.