The Forgotten Story (3 page)

These old black winding stairs with rickety banisters and creaking boards. They climbed half a flight and two full flights to an attic.

‘You'll find yourself a bit at sea at first,' said Patricia, on whom her stepmother's welcome had left no impression. ‘It's with being altered for the restaurant that has made the house confusing.'

She opened an old door and showed him into a bedroom with a ceiling which sloped three ways from a central part where it was possible to stand upright. There were all sorts of odd crossbeams. A large iron bedstead decorated with brass knobs was the chief article of furniture. The window was on floor level.

‘You can see most of the harbour from here,' she said helpfully.

He went to the window and again his spirits began to rise. The view was fine.

‘Thanks awfully … Patricia,' he said. ‘ You've been … Thanks awfully for meeting me at the station.'

‘That's all right,' she said, pulling off her hat and shaking out her curls. She met his frank gaze and smiled. ‘You'd do the same for me. Tea in ten minutes. Don't wait for someone to shout, will you?'

She ran off down the stairs humming.

Tea was the one meal at which Joe Veal consented to sit down and partake of food in the bosom of his family. He never ate breakfast, and dinner and supper were served to him on a little table behind the counter of the shop where he could supervise the orderings and preferences of customers. But the café was usually empty about tea time; the trip-bell was set to work over the shop door, and Joe and his pipe came down into the kitchen to tea.

Anthony ate buttered scones and drank several cups of hot tea, and absorbed all the newness about him and glanced diffidently but candidly up at the faces of this family into which fate and unfair bereavement had suddenly thrown him. Two months ago he had been at school at Nuncanton in the Vale of Exmoor; he had taken his home and his existence for granted, accepting it as unthinkingly as he drew breath. Now he was here among this family of strangers – related to him perhaps, for Uncle Joe was his mother's brother-in-law – but still strangers, of a quantity and quality unknown.

Anthony instantly took a liking for Perry, Uncle Joe's brother. Uncle Perry was bigger and younger than the other man and had a jovial, rollicking air. He had strong black hair which he wore rather long, and a lock of it was inclined to fall across his forehead when he laughed. He had a plump fresh-complexioned face and roving black eyes. It was a face which might have belonged to a buccaneer.

Joe made very little of the boy by way of greeting. He took his strange square pipe from a corner of his mouth and said, ‘Well, Anthony,' and shook hands with a jerky gesture like someone turning the handle of a door, then put his pipe back in its corner. Anthony thought he looked not unkind but over-busy about his own concerns, which was natural in a man with a restaurant to supervise. Anthony felt that he ought to offer some thanks for the hospitality which was being extended to him, but by the time he could muster a sentence the opportunity had passed.

Uncle Perry's greeting was different. He said, ‘
Houd vast
, now; so we've taken another hand aboard. Greetings, boy! I could do with a second mate.' He laughed as if he had made a joke and thrust back his hair and looked at Aunt Madge and laughed again.

And Aunt Madge, earringed and small-featured and monumental, went on pouring tea.

After the meal Anthony was left to wander about the building and to make himself at home. The building was old and ramshackle and as smoky as Joe himself. From the shop one went down five steps into the lower dining-room or up five steps into the one above. Both were square rooms with windows looking out upon the bay and very low black rafters which made tall men instinctively bend their heads. The one kitchen served both rooms by means of a manually operated dumb waiter. The family lived and fed mainly in this kitchen, but Mr and Mrs Veal had a private drawing-room next to their bedroom on the second floor. Besides these there was an office into which Joe retired from time to time and smoked his curious pipe and counted his gold.

As the evening advanced customers began to come in. Fat brokers from the town who knew where there was a good meal, Chinese dock hands, captains of casual tramp steamers, sailors out with their girls, passing travellers, local clerks and apprentices, Belgian fishermen. They varied from week to week as one ship left the port and another put in.

Anthony watched the rooms fill up in some astonishment. Everyone smoked, and very soon the atmosphere was thick and blue. Everyone talked and argued, and presently a man with one leg came in and sat in a corner and began to play an accordion. He did not play it loudly and the sound only just emerged from among the sea of voices, but there was something in the music which added a touch of colour to the room.

The boy from Exmoor could not get over the fact that he had come to live in such a place, which to him seemed to be the height of the exotic, that
his
relatives owned and ran it. When Aunt Christine died two years ago his mother had come to Falmouth for the funeral. He could not understand why his mother had not come back to Nuncanton full of talk about this place.

Two boys of about seventeen dressed in white coats did the waiting: Patricia superintended and sometimes helped out whichever boy was busiest. Through the fog of smoke Anthony perceived that she was tremendously popular in this company. There was pleasure in merely watching her weave a way among the crowded tables. Anthony did not reason that the charm and piquancy which at a glance had subjugated a boy of eleven would be likely to have the same effect on hardened, weather-beaten men of fifty or sixty; had the thought occurred to him he would have felt it disgusting that old men should have any feelings at all. But he enjoyed her popularity without analysis of its causes.

There was great competition for her attention but no advantage taken of it when gained. Neither did it occur to the boy to see any connection between this good behaviour and the presence of the severe little man sitting in the shop with a carving knife.

Later in the evening, when the smoke in the restaurant was making his eyes prick and water, and when the clamour of dish washing in the scullery was no longer a novelty, Anthony moved hesitatingly towards the shop, found a vantage point, and watched fascinated the procedure by which each customer chose and paid for the food he was to eat.

In a lull Joe Veal saw the boy standing awkwardly in a corner, his rather scared, frank blue eyes taking everything in. He beckoned with a dripping carving fork, and Anthony came and stood by him and stared down at the almost empty dishes.

‘Why don't you go to bed, boy? Too excited to be tired, I s'pose.'

‘I'll go soon,' said Anthony. ‘I thought perhaps you might want me. Do you – do you close soon?'

Smoky Joe showed a row of small, yellow, false teeth of which one had been filed away to provide a suitable lodgment for his pipe. It was not so much like a smile as a display of a set of coins.

‘Close, boy? Not just yet awhile. In a trade like this you always have to remember you're the servant of the public, see? Can't just close and open when you want. Did Charlotte leave you any money?'

Anthony blinked. ‘Mother? I don't rightly know, Uncle. Mr Parks, the solicitor, said something, but I didn't quite catch …'

Smoky Joe's pipe had a sudden downward curve an inch from his lip, and the queer, square bowl emitted smoke from opposite the top button of his waistcoat. He took this bent stem from his mouth and wiped his moustache with it.

‘Never trust lawyers. Scum of the earth. The law's like a basket, full of holes; and it's the lawyers' job to find the holes and slip through them. Slippery, they are. There was one I knew in Java … This Parks, did he give you any money for yourself, eh?'

‘Yes,' said Anthony, staring hard at the skeleton of a roast duck. ‘Three pounds he gave me before I left. He said that he had come to some arrangement with –'

‘Oh, some arrangement. Yes, some arrangement. That's lawyer talk. We want more plates, Fanny! You're slow with the plates! Lawyers are always coming to some arrangement.' Uncle Joe fastened his terrier-like eyes on the boy. ‘Where is it?'

‘What?'

‘The three pounds the lawyer gave you. It isn't safe for a boy of your age to carry sov'rins loose in your pocket. Might lose them. I'll keep them for you.'

Anthony hesitated. ‘There's only two now. I had to pay my railway fare.'

‘Well, two, then,' said Joe Veal, holding out a dry and scaly hand. All his skin looked dry and mottled as if the natural oil had long perished from it.

Anthony felt in his jacket pocket and took out a purse. In it were two sovereigns, a shilling and a florin piece.

‘I'll have those as well,' said Uncle Joe, taking all the coins and slipping them into a deep recess of his greasy waistcoat. He puffed at his pipe and stared meditatively at the boy for a moment. ‘You're a big fellow for your age. Going to be a big man, I reckon. Is your father big?'

‘Yes,' said Anthony.

‘But, then, it don't signify. Look at me, I'm small. Your aunt was small. But Pat's shot up like a weed. Maybe we could make use of you in the restaurant, eh? How would you like that?'

‘I think I should like it,' said Anthony. He put his empty purse back in his pocket.

‘Wait,' said Joe. ‘Don't ever let 'em say I was mean.' He put down his carving knife, reluctantly it seemed, and pressed some keys of the automatic till. There was a ‘ping' and the drawer shot open. He took out twelve pennies and handed them to Anthony. ‘There. That's pocket money. That'll do to buy sweets. You can spend that; different from a sov'rin. Make it last a month; then come to me for more.' His expression changed and his moustache bristled as two smart young seamen came into the shop, and said, ‘Evenin', Joe.'

‘No lamb,' was his belligerent reply. ‘You're too late. There's a bit of beef left,' he admitted reluctantly. ‘It's tough.'

Soon afterwards Anthony went to bed. He waved to Pat, who gave him a brief, brilliant, glinting smile which wanned his heart afresh; then he slowly climbed the two creaky flights of stairs and groped a way into the attic.

There was no candle in the room, but darkness had only just fallen, and he could see what was necessary by the loom of light in the west and the glitter of the first stars. From his window he could see the lights of Flushing across the creek and all the winking eyes of the ships, big and small, riding at anchor in the roadstead. The lower window would not open, but through the upper one came the strong smell of seaweed and tidal mud.

For a long time he knelt by the window absorbing the strangeness of the scene. He felt as if he were in a foreign land. But presently tiredness got the better of interest and he slowly undressed and said his prayers and climbed into bed. It was a large double bed, and once in it he was suddenly beset by loneliness and bereavement. Years ago he had slept in a bed like this, but beside him there had been the warmth and softness and all-including guardianship of his mother. Nothing then had been for him to do, to decide, to consider: it had been sufficient for him to
be
, to exist unthinkingly, in the aura of that loving, understanding, comforting protection.

Now he was alone in an alien world.

Much later he woke. He had been dreaming that someone was quarrelling violently, crying wild curses and threatening to come to blows. He had been dreaming too that someone played upon a piano and rough men sang jolly choruses. The sounds still seemed to echo in his ears.

Pitch dark and there was no means of telling the time. A soft summer wind soughed across the estuary.

He turned over and tried to go to sleep. Then a door banged and he sat up.

Silence had fallen again. He lay in bed and wished he was not such a baby, that such a waking in the middle of the night should make his heart beat faster.

Another door banged and there was the clatter of a pail. Then down in the very depths of the house, as if from the inmost recesses of its rickety old soul, someone began to sing:

‘They heard the Black Hunter! and dr-read shook each

mind;
Hearts sank that had never known fear-r;
They heard the Black Hunter's dr-read voice in the

wind …'

It was a man's voice, quavering and drunken. Another door banged. Then came the sound of feet on the stairs.

The attic was the only room on this floor; it was really built into the roof. But the feet were on the flight of stairs lower down.

All the same Anthony wished there had been some means of locking his door.

All the sounds in this house seemed to echo; due perhaps to the way in which it was built about the well of the staircase. Anthony could hear the over-careful feet stumble against one of the steps and the curse which followed.

‘Hearts sank that had never known fear-r. (Rot and blast the thing! Who left it lying about?)

‘They heard the Black Hunter's dr-read voice in the

wind!
They heard his cursed hell-hounds run yelping behind!
An' his steed thundered loud on the ear …'

Presently the drunken voice died away and silence reigned. In the distance the siren of a ship hooted. After a long time Anthony felt his muscles relax, and drowsiness crept quietly over him like an unreliable friend.

Later still he was awakened by hearing someone being violently sick.

Daylight brought a more homely aspect to his new domicile. From his window he saw that the tide was out, and many of the little boats loafed on their elbows in the mud. Seagulls crossed and recrossed the sky, flying lonely and remote as a cloud, wings scarcely moving, or suddenly darting down and fighting in a screaming, undignified pack for some morsel which one of their number had found. Two lighted on the flat end of the roof immediately below the attic window and side-stepped warily along to the corner piece. In the distance a small tramp steamer moved lazily out to sea.