The Quick and the Dead (4 page)

In this seafaring of mine, Bertie was the ideal companion. Our voyages were infrequent; I consorted mostly with boys nearer my own age, and these knew nothing of this adventuring; and so, by happy chance, aided perhaps by an instinct in ourselves, the game was never staled for us. Nor indeed had we, in those days, ‘the black art to dispense' a several satiety to every sense: our impulses were unforced, our pleasures untroubled by thought, and we did nothing too much. It is a cool dusky evening that I find most vivid in memory. We sit on the deck of our craft, with night slowly gathering round us. Above our heads stretch the branches of a giant elm; below is a sea of tossed and waving grass. It is a sea in the convention of our game, and soon, in the fading light, its actual appearance will lend colour to the pretence. We stare out
upon a rain-swept sky, and our eyes follow the greying contours of the links. The Links Road, as usual, is deserted: at best it is but a green track, first trodden, they say, by the feet of Ancient Britons. There is rain still in the air; it comes and goes, fitfully. The wind is rising; its cry, lonely and wandering, is like the voice of an ancient, half-remembered grief. We have been rained upon, Bertie and I; if we gave any thought to the question we should perhaps feel wet and cold. And we are both, I fancy, in some degree sensitive to the mood of the scene, the mystery and melancholy of the hour. If so, we savour it without thought or question: it adds zest to our pretending, enriches the music of our fancy. We enter the Sargasso Sea, which we conceive to be a kind of vegetable soup; and thence, in a rising wind, proceed to the Spanish Main. Our gallant craft moves like a swan over the heaving hills of water. Her sails fill; she gathers speed; she flies; she is a bird flying. Whence came such notions and similes into our boyish minds is more than I can pretend to know: all I recall now is the vividness and detail of my fancy—the sound of creaking wood and straining tackle, the noise of waters, the occasional sudden slap of the sail. Bertie, loyally seconding my fictions, was an apt partner
in any emergency. ‘Pirates on the starboard bow, captain? Right. I'll load the gun. Now the gun's loaded. Bang, bang.' The pirates sank. Cheerful and efficient was Bertie: he initiated little or nothing, but he was quick to act on a hint, and in his infant fashion he was a good and industrious embellisher. If I decided to invent an island of palms, I could safely look to Bertie for the fixtures and fittings—cannibals, wigwams, missionaries, skeletons, buried treasure, and the like. He had read little; he was not, as I was, the seasoned companion of men of thirteen and fourteen whose mothers, some of them, committed suicide, and whose fathers knew men who had telephones installed in their houses. His school, poor child, was an inglorious establishment at Hadley Rise: a mere score of boys collected for tuition in a private house. But of such books of adventure as he
had
read, of such glimpses of the larger world as
had
been given to him, Bertie made the best possible use. Perhaps I enjoyed his company more than I knew. It was he, I remember, who discovered a mutiny aboard; and he who knocked down the chief mutineer with a belaying-pin. ‘I wonder what a belay-ing-pin is like?' he said to me, as it were aside. The victim of his valour had just been taken below and put in irons: the mutiny was already
over. ‘Something like a rolling-pin, but bigger, and made of iron,' I answered, at a venture. ‘And what's it for? … I suppose,' said Bertie thoughtfully, ‘it's just for knocking people down with?' I supposed so too: I did not connect the phrase with an admonition so often on my lips during these cruises. ‘Belay there!' ‘Ay, ay, sir!'—this was a recurring refrain in our nautical dialogues. That mutiny at sea represented one of Bertie's highest flights; and for his smart handling of the situation I made him a gracious speech, in the pauses of which he whispered anxiously: ‘Have I got to say anything, Claud, when I get the medal?' In a conspiratorial undertone I hastily instructed him in his part. Then unction reinflated my voice; Bertie went down on one knee; and I, suddenly changing my character (‘I'm Queen Victoria now—don't forget!' I hissed), pinned the medal to his breast. ‘God bless your Majesty,' said the honest seaman. ‘I only done my duty.' We once had a fire on board; we were often shipwrecked; and all such disasters were announced, or predicted, in a ritual speech. ‘Captain, the craft's in jeopardy!' Bertie would inform me; and at that proud word
jeopardy
, which possessed for us a unique and potent charm, the hour would blossom for us
in exotic glory, the adventure begin. We were not, I think, abnormally imaginative children; nor were we daydreamers. We were honest actors living intensely in the play but making no confusion between the world of pretence and the world of perception. Already, within the limits of our capacity, we were realists, with a wholesome appetite for knowledge and experience of the actual, in its myriad forms. It is your realist, not your sentimental dupe, that can appreciate the true savour of romance: those other palates are too gross.

Other pastimes I had, and other companions. Jackman, a lanky dark-haired boy who condescended to me much as I condescended to Bertie Wiccombe, was the only one of my schoolfellows who lived within a reasonable distance of Adam Lane. With him I played county cricket, each of us having eleven innings and answering proudly to illustrious names. The pitch was far from smooth, and the bat had no ‘spring'; but we managed very well. Now and again Bertie Wiccombe begged the favour of keeping wicket for us; and once, to our enormous gratification and embarrassment, Jackman's father strolled into the field to watch us. And watch us he did, in grave silence and
rather shyly, as if anxious not to intrude. A match was in progress; I fancy that it was Gentlemen versus Players, and that I was busy being eleven gentlemen. I was for stopping the game, and whispered as much to Jackman the moment I had a chance. ‘It's all right,' murmured Jackman, a blush belying his casual tone. ‘It's only my pater.' Covertly I glanced again at the fascinating stranger. And I thought I had never seen anyone so tall, so noble, so quietly impressive: he might have been a king in mufti, or a great statesman, or an explorer (in sober fact he was a coal merchant). Jackman's pater was clearly Jackman's affair, not mine; but I was uneasy, feeling that we ought to invite him to join the game. He himself cut the knot of my indecision by immediately walking away; but the next time we played cricket together Jackman produced an elaborate scoring-book which his father had bought for him. ‘For the county matches,' explained Jackman. I gazed rapturously at the pages upon which such glorious fictions were soon to be written— ‘caught Hirst, bowled Richardson,' and the rest of it. ‘Decent of the old top, wasn't it!' said Jackman airily. His coolness astounded and shocked me. Was it possible that Jackman did not worship this prodigious father of
his, as I was prepared to do?

For cricket and seafaring, and for various soldiering games inspired by the Boer War (in a world remote from ours, that campaign dragged slowly on), for these delights I resorted to the green undulating acres that lay on the south side of the Links Road. On the north side stretched the links themselves, where gentlemen in red coats were sometimes to be observed stalwarting from tee to tee, followed by their caddies. The place of origin of these personages was unknown to us, and we were—oddly, as I now think—quite incurious about it. Their scarlet figures were symbols of another and a grander world than ours: vaguely, in my fancy, I grouped them with Lord Mayor's Day and Windsor Castle and (with slightly more reason) our Fox-hunting English aristocracy. Across the links ran a footpath, a public right-of-way leading in the direction of Suthergate. In earlier times, when these fields were farmed, there had been a hedge running parallel with the path, and even now, in spite of the gentlemanly influence of golf, there was a ditch that in places could be called a brook. It was with a delicious though unjustified sense of trespassing that Jackman and I, sometimes (not often) accompanied by Bertie Wiccombe, frequented the links footpath,
paddled in the brook, and sailed our home-made boats—boats made of corks, with a match-stick for mast and a triangle of paper for sail. At first I was jealously unwilling to share Jackman with Bertie, or Bertie with Jackman. Bertie, being my junior, admired me: my strength, my knowledge, my tree-climbing prowess. And though my pleasure in his admiration was largely unconscious, I became, in Jackman's presence, dimly aware of the danger of losing it, the possibility of being outshone by Jackman. The crisis came one Saturday afternoon. It must have been late in the year: I remember the day's lantern glow and delicate aroma. Autumn spices were in the air, and the very sunlight had a russet flavour. Rusty leaves from the elm above were sprinkled on the deck of my pretended ship, where I sat waiting for Bertie Wiccombe, who, on our way to the fields, had turned back home to do some suddenly remembered behest of his mother's. Not for some weeks had I visited this pile of planks; and vaguely, without defining the sensation in thought, I felt a strangeness in the idea of its having continued in my absence to be there, mute, insentient, unregarded. Something in the nature of things perplexed me, but even to frame a question about it was beyond my powers. So I sat, lost
rather in feeling than in thought; and was surprised when someone who was not Bertie Wiccombe came striding towards me across the field.

‘Hullo, Jack. Aren't you at footer?'

‘I'm not,' said Jackman. ‘I'm here, you ass. Can't you see me?'

That was the end of that. The greetings being achieved, we fell into a comfortable silence.

‘I called for you,' remarked Jackman presently.

‘Did you?' said I. But I was a little flattered. The mature Jackman had never before called at the house for me. In the past it had always fallen to me to take the initiative.

‘Yes. You're mother said you were out.'

‘She was right there,' I answered. An un-cordial answer. But, you see, I ‘owed him one' (as we said) for that little sarcasm of his. ‘How did you know where to find me, then?' I asked, after a moment's pause.

‘Young Wiccombe came up while we were talking.'

‘Oh.' I was visited by a premonition of disaster.

Jackman grinned. ‘He said I'd find you on the craft.'

My heart grew bitter against Bertie Wiccombe.
He had betrayed our secret—a secret too juvenile for the ears of the lordly Jack-man, as the little fool ought to have known. I was desolated and angry.

‘What are you grinning at?' I demanded hotly.

‘I suppose
this
is the craft, isn't it?' asked Jackman. His grin had softened. He feigned (as I thought) an interest in my childish fancy.

I shrugged my shoulders. ‘Yes. Of course it was only a kid's game.' As I spoke I espied the small figure of Bertie Wiccombe coming down the Links Road. ‘And here the kid comes,' I added.

We both looked towards Bertie and did not speak again till he reached us.

‘Hullo,' said Bertie. He breathed stormily, puffed with running.

Jackman returned his greeting. I did not. We were all silent once more. Bertie looked from one of us to the other, aware that something had gone slightly awry. My answering look was coldly hostile. I saw an uncomfortable grin settle upon Jackman's face and guessed that a similar contortion was disfiguring me.

With a pensive air Jackman began kicking the plank nearest his foot. ‘What's the ship
called?' he asked presently.

I stared at distance. ‘It's called the craft—that's all:'

‘Hasn't she got a proper name?'asked Jack-man. Hating him, resenting his intrusion, I turned away. What a fool I was, what a baby, not to have given her a proper name!

‘She's a jolly good ship,' remarked Bertie loyally.

‘Oh, you shut up!' said I. ‘What do you know about it?'

It was evident to me now that Jackman, contrary to all reasonable expectation, was in a mood of propitiation and friendliness, and, more astonishing still, was actually waiting for an invitation to come aboard. I divined bitterly that Bertie, ingenuous child, was prepared to accept Jackman, possibly even to welcome him: that notion was gall to me. I cannot at this distance tell whether, or in what degree, I was aware of my incipient jealousy: the thought uppermost in my mind was that Jack-man, being the eldest of us, would demand to be skipper; and it may be that by this anxiety my deeper fear was obscured.

Jackman, who was his father's son, turned to me a face of bland inquiry. ‘Do you ever have sickness aboard your ship, skipper?'

Was he getting at me? Was he making fun
of me—showing me up in front of this kid Wiccombe? ‘What do you want to know for?' I asked forbiddingly.

‘Oh, nothing much,' said Jackman. ‘I'm a doctor, as it happens. But if you're going to get your wool out—' He turned away, shrugging his shoulders.

There was a hint of disappointment in his gait, and I suddenly repented. ‘I say, Jack. Look here. Would you sign on for a trip to the Canary Islands?'

Jackman came aboard. I was safe in my command. There was a good deal of sickness on that trip, but I did not grudge him that. Indeed, as the adventure matured, I grudged him nothing, he was so clearly an acquisition.

But inside me, secretly, a worm of dissatisfaction began gnawing. My command was safe. My status as Bertie's hero was not impaired. Yet was there this mysterious ache in my soul. Going home to tea I found myself oddly reluctant to face Calamy, my Father Calamy; and this reluctance proved to be something deeper than a mere caprice, for it was in the light of Calamy's eyes a moment later, in the orbit of Calamy's instinctive un-considering charity, that I recognized my burning sickness for the self-disgust that it was. Safe in my ship's command, sure of my
Bertie's allegiance—but how I wished, facing Calamy at the table, that I had been inspired to lose these glittering trifles—to Jackman or another—in one generous, careless gesture! ‘And what have
you
been doing with yourself this afternoon, my boy?' said Calamy, with an interest quite unfeigned. Tears rose in my throat as I wondered how to answer him; and divining some distress in me, though with no inkling of its nature or cause, he broke the ensuing silence with a remark that had the effect of cancelling his question. ‘What d'you think, Claud? The Reverend Alex Rankine is to preach at Hadley to-morrow night. And he's a D.D., my handsome. What d'you say to that?'