I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow; a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man; his tarry pigtail falling over the shoulders of his soiled blue coat; his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails; and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid white. I remember him looking round the cove and whistling to himself as he did so, and then breaking out in that old sea-song that he sang so often afterwards:
Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest —
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
Noble’s mother’s lips twitch. “Go on,” she says, looking up from her mending. Perhaps it wasn’t such a great idea reading to her after all. Maybe he should have settled for the Dickens. He stifles a yawn. Not quite the bottom of page one and the man with the pigtail, not content to merely sing about rum, is now calling for a glass of the stuff. Isn’t Treasure Island supposed to be a children’s book? Noble soldiers on, mouth so dry he wonders if the Bushmills has seared his saliva glands closed.
He had taken me aside one day, and promised me a silver fourpenny on the first of every month if I would only keep my “weather-eye open for a seafaring man with one leg,” and let him know the moment he appeared. . . .
How that personage haunted my dreams, I need scarcely tell you. On stormy nights, when the wind shook the four corners of the house, and the surf roared along the cove and up the cliffs, I would see him in a thousand forms, and with a thousand diabolical expressions. Now the leg would be cut off at the knee, now at the hip; now he was a monstrous kind of a creature who had never had but the one leg, and that in the middle of his body. To see him leap and run and pursue me over hedge and ditch was the worst of nightmares. And altogether I paid pretty dear for my monthly fourpenny piece, in the shape of these abominable fancies.
Noble glances up at his mother. She’s enjoying herself. The story of course, but also, he suspects, the fact that reading aloud is punishing him. Dinner felt good going down, but his brain is back to aching, his bones to feeling tender. Maybe he caught a chill sleeping rough last night. He drains his glass of water and she takes mercy on him.
“I’ll make us a cup of tea, shall I?” she says and disappears to the kitchen.
Noble rests the book, spine up, in his lap and rubs a shaky hand across his eyes, trying to push his hangover to the back of his brain. A shot of that rum the captain is forever knocking back would be more use than tea. A little hair of the dog.
“Hair of the dog,” some sergeant had roared in his ear. He’d been in a crowded lamplit pub. In the heavy gilt-edged mirror above the bar he could see the low-slung pall of cigarette smoke drifting above a tight scrum of heads. The hissing from the gas lamps on the yellowed walls sounded like someone trying, through the dissonance of shell-shocked, battle-fatigued laughter, to get his attention. Noble didn’t want to lose Lawson again but there was already something different about his brother. And not just in his face, which was leaner, with a line down either side of his mouth that cast his smile in parentheses. Quite uncharitably Noble thought how they made his brother more attractive, how now even more girls would throw themselves at him.
Noble hoped that Lawson had made it to the bar and was ordering them drinks. He was slowly elbowing his way between soft cap, hard cap, flat cap and bare head when suddenly a large red-faced sergeant blocked the way. The sergeant’s eyes were focused somewhere on the space between Noble and the glass of whiskey in his hand, which found his mouth at regular intervals. With his right hand he clamped Noble’s sleeve.
“Hair of the dog.” The sergeant burped whiskey in Noble’s face. “Hair of the dog,” he roared again, in case his audience had missed it the first time. “Roman cure for dog bites . . . stuck hairs of the dog that bit you into your wound, they did.” No one stared, despite his pitch and volume. Noble wanted to jerk his arm away and push on, but he couldn’t, that damned English accent having reduced him to schoolroom obedience.
It was the sergeant who staggered off, Noble apparently not his ideal audience.
Past the curve in the bar, leaning against the back wall, Lawson was surrounded by a group of Lancashire Fusiliers. Like the sergeant he was drinking whiskey, a man’s drink. But then at seventeen Lawson had already lived a life Noble could only imagine. He had killed men and watched his friends die. With his free hand he painted the air, his laughter and his flashing eyes punctuating his story. The centre of attention, as always. But something had changed. Noble could see it in the way Lawson held himself; something had reconfigured his stance, the set of his shoulders, the line of his jaw.
“If it isn’t himself,” Lawson shouted over people’s heads, finally perhaps sensing the distant appraisal. “I got you a drink.” Lawson nodded towards another short glass of honey-coloured liquid on the bar. After weeks of hospital food and tepid tea, Noble had been looking forward to the malty taste of ale, froth in his moustache, the weight of the wide-mouthed glass in his hand.
“You have it,” he shouted back and called over to the barmaid for a pint. Lawson downed the extra drink in one backwards toss of his head. His new mates whooped and whistled, slapped him on the back.
The regulars began to thin out around ten o’clock. Noble felt gassy and bloated and more than a little light-headed. Lawson, who’d matched him pint for pint and knocked back half a dozen whiskies on top, looked cold sober. Stone cold. There was something unsettling about him. And as the others wandered away one by one and Noble found himself alone with his brother, it grew worse. The booze had loosened something in him. Whereas the other men seemed to forget, Lawson grew maudlin. He turned to Noble.
“When I close my eyes I can hear the horses screaming. And the dogs.” He fixed Noble with blank eyes. “Why d’you think that is?”
Noble shook his head. His answer was likely to be wrong.
“Someone puts a bullet through their heads pretty quickly. No one can stand it. The noise. The whimpering. The screaming.” He stared into the dregs of his ale. “Men ask you to do the same sometimes. But you don’t. A man can only scream and cry for so long. Did you know that?”
Noble shook his head again. He wanted to shut his brother up, didn’t want to hear what it was Lawson needed to say but was afraid to stop him.
“Soon enough it’s all he can do to moan, mumble to his mama. Or his girl. Or God. Then nothing. But it doesn’t mean he’s dead.”
“Time, gentlemen, please. Let’s be having your glasses now.” The barmaid had disappeared, she was in the back maybe, the landlord was left wiping down the bar. His skin was the colour of cured plaster. It occurred to Noble that the man was probably dying. Heart failure.
“I was with a buddy out there when —” Lawson had his elbows on the bar. He was in the landlord’s way, a mess of sticky beer rings corralled between his arms. “He had a wife and kids. Two little blond-haired girls. Real cute they were. Are. They still are. It’s just him that . . .” He stared into the bottom of his empty glass, as if he might find the rest of his sentence there. “You ever wanted kids, Noble? I did,” he said, without waiting for his brother’s response. “A house full of them. Six, seven, eight. More. I always wanted a house filled with kids’ laughter and scraped knees and first steps and first words, and bicycle rides and swimming, and me and the missus watching them all walk down the road to school together. You ever think about any of those things?”
“Not really, no. Can’t say I have.” It was a surprise to learn that his brother had. Lawson was still a boy. Too young to have kids himself, too young to be thinking about them.
“I got some champagne stashed for a little nightcap for us, brother. Did I tell you about the night we spent in a champagne cellar?”
It wasn’t until Noble was undressing for bed later that night that he realized Lawson had been talking about himself as if he were already dead.
Christ.
“You look miles away.”
He takes the mug of steaming tea from his mother’s hands and sips at it before setting it on the floor by his side. His mother settles herself back into her armchair. His bottle of Bushmills must be somewhere in the bushes down by the wharf. If he could just summon the energy to get up and walk down there. Whiskey would stop the trembling in his hands and ease the pressure in his head. His mother reaches for her mending and nods at him to continue. Noble picks up the book again.
His stories were what frightened people worst of all. Dreadful stories they were; about hanging, and walking the plank, and storms at sea, and the Dry Tortugas, and wild deeds and places on the Spanish Main. By his own account he must have lived his life among some of the wickedest men that God ever allowed upon the sea; and the language in which he told these stories shocked our plain country people as much as the crimes that he described. My father was always saying the inn would be ruined, for people would soon cease coming there to be tyrannized over and put down, and sent shivering to their beds; but I really believe his presence did us good. People were frightened at the time but on looking back they rather liked it; it was a fine excitement in a quiet country life; and there was even a party of the younger men who pretended to admire him, calling him a “true sea-dog”, and a “real old salt”, and suchlike names, and saying there was the sort of man that made England terrible at sea.
In one way, indeed, he bade fair to ruin us; for he kept on staying week after week, and at last month after month, so that all the money had been long exhausted, and still my father . . .
He jerks awake, his neck sore from having fallen asleep with his head slumped on his chest. He reaches for his tea, now lukewarm. His mother potters in the kitchen. The last of the sun’s rays throw long shadows across the walls of the room,walls that feel uncomfortably close. The nausea has gone but his head still feels thick. He struggles to his feet, and his mother appears in the doorway, wiping her hands on her apron.
“Happen you should get yourself to bed early.”
Happen he should. A glance at the clock. But not this early. He pads gingerly into the kitchen, grabs his coat from the peg by the back door and steps out into the windy evening.
Whitecaps have gathered in the bay. Waves slap against the sides of the Esmeralda, which in turn rubs and bangs against the wharf. Her jib stays, spanking new, tremble and twang in the stiff breeze. The jib boom lifts and drops, and the bow of the schooner shudders and creaks. Noble, intent on his whiskey hunt, ears filled with wind, does not at first hear the footsteps along the wharf. Then he stiffens. Could be one of the crew, or a villager on the prowl for another bottle. He hunkers down in the bushes, heels knocking against the bottle, which he grabs, holding his breath until the person comes into view. It’s a woman, all dressed up in fancy evening attire and carrying some fancy wrap. Hetty Douglas? But then she pulls her hair from her neck and he can see it is Esmeralda.
Esmeralda in a sparkly dress and men’s boots. A contrast that common sense tells him should look absurd but which instead is unsettlingly erotic. The dress, despite lines designed to hide her curves, slithers and shimmers as she moves. Swaying fringe at the hem grazes her thighs. There’s nothing more seductive than a woman unaware she’s being watched, Noble thinks. Was the dress for Butler’s benefit? He hopes not, for Eliza’s sake more than his own. But if Esmeralda has been with Butler, why is she walking back to the schooner alone?
He drops the whiskey bottle by his feet just as the wind dies. A clink of glass on stone, a small thud as the bottle comes to rest. Esmeralda’s face tightens, and Noble, feeling both sheepish and underdressed, steps sideways from the shadows.
“Waiting for me, were you?”
“I’m sorry. I stumbled,” he lies. “The wood is rotten in places.” A half-truth. He worries the worn toe of his boot in the splinters on the wharf deck, embarrassed by his scrabbling in the bush like an animal. Esmeralda watches him, a smile gathering on her face. Noble cannot return her gaze.
“Why don’t they replace it?”
“Too expensive.” His eyes take in the length and breadth of the Esmeralda, which seems suddenly too big for her moorings. “There isn’t the need so much anymore for a wharf like this. Yours is the biggest schooner to be tied up here in years.”
“No big ships at all?”
“Some. But none as fine-looking a vessel as this. Mainly old ketches carrying salt, molasses, fabric, that sort of thing. One stops off here every few months or so.”
“My father had her built to honour my mother.”
“I thought she was named after you.”
“She was named for my mother’s famous green eyes. Even though my mother has never set foot on her deck.”
“Not much of a sailor is she, your mother?”
“Once upon a time she was. Until my parents were shipwrecked near the coast of Argentina. Now she lives alone in Mar de la Plata, has done ever since they found themselves beached there. She refused to leave even after my father had the Esmeralda built and christened for her. She claims she likes the heat. And the Spanish temperament. Some people say I look spanish.” A gust sweeps across the shoreline, ruffling the surface of the water, and Esmeralda reaches behind her neck to gather her hair, pull it from her face. The smooth olive-tinted line of her neck dries Noble’s throat. “Perhaps that’s why they live apart. ”
It’s an exotic story, like Esmeralda herself. According to the carpenters who worked on her prow, the Esmeralda was built on the Bay of Fundy. But he’s standing so close, watching the words spill from those bruised-looking lips. Her malt-coloured eyes, the sweet spicy smell that exudes from her skin and hair — everything about this girl can set him off course.
“You’ve been shopping.” From somewhere he draws the nerve to reach out and touch the dresses draped over her arm. Cool and expensive under his rough fingers.
“They were a gift. Like this one.” The fringe dances as she holds the garments one by one against herself, strikes exaggerated poses, pirouettes. “Do you like?”
Noble nods dumbly. He likes a lot. She smiles the way no girl in the village ever learned to smile. He imagines burying his face in her neck, running his tongue between her breasts, his hands up and down her thighs. Feeling himself stiffen, he has to look away.
“Sit with me awhile?” She walks to the end of the wharf and perches on the edge, her long legs and mannish boots dangling over the water. Noble joins her, watching the fringe lift and dance with the wind.
“You didn’t bring your whiskey?”
Heat rushes to his face and she starts to laugh. “Spoon mentioned he found you sleeping in the bushes this morning.”
“Yes, well, I was three sheets last night.”
“And feeling a little rough today?” Her mouth pulls up in a sly grin.
“I’m not a huge fan of whiskey.”
“Me neither. Too medicinal-tasting. Give me champagne any day.”
“My brother liked champagne. He shared a bottle with me once.” Noble stares off beyond the stern of the Esmeralda.
“And did you enjoy it?”
Champagne didn’t twist through your head the way whiskey did, warping your judgement and playing a maudlin game of roulette with your memories. Champagne, as he remembers, just made you silly, then left you with a headache.
“I enjoyed it well enough.”
“Then champagne it must be.” Esmeralda swings her feet back onto the dock. “Wait right here.”
She moves with animal grace. Noble tracks every gesture, every nuance as she gathers her dresses and disappears aboard the schooner. Within minutes she reappears carrying glasses and a bottle of champagne, which she hands to Noble to open. Veuve Clicquot. “If you’d like to do the honours?”
The cork pops, and Noble’s taste buds sharpen at the sight of the gas escaping over the lip of the bottle.
“To us.” Esmeralda clinks glasses.
“To us.
“And to your brother.”
“To my brother,” he mumbles. Eyes closed, he tips back his head. Nectar sliding down his throat, bubbles dancing on his tongue. He can feel his head expanding, the tightness behind his eyes draining away. He fills their glasses again.
“You must be heading out soon?” He gestures to the prow of the schooner, the new bowsprit and rigging.
“Yes, it’s just the sails left now. And they’ve been promised for tomorrow.”
“The engine should hold — until you get to a bigger port, that is. I did the best I could but I wouldn’t be putting it under any more strain than you have to. You might want to set anchor the other side of Cape split, wait till the wind is right.”
“I don’t think that’ll be necessary.”
“Well, you managed just fine coming up here. That took some pretty skillful sailing, to get up the Bay of Fundy and through cape split with the kind of damage you had. I reckon some of your crew must be familiar with the area.”
“Sometimes a whisper in the right ear can help.” she leans towards him to demonstrate. “You know, a word with the powers that be, the sea gods, witches, whatever you want to call them.” Noble can scarcely think straight for the heat of her breath on his neck.
“And then you’ll be off on another adventure?”
She lifts a hand to stroke his face. “You would like to join us, maybe?”
He hears himself laugh as if from a distance. The champagne glass twirls between his fingers. “It must be a thrilling life. Not knowing where your next port is, calling the sea your home.” How much more thrilling to be sequestered in close quarters with a woman such as Esmeralda. Unable to look at her for more than a few seconds, he glances down the length of the schooner’s hull. One of the dories is missing. They must have taken it for fishing. “I don’t know it’s for me though. For a few days maybe, but weeks and months, it might get a little lonely or claustrophobic. I think I’d miss the feel of the ground under my feet.”
“You’d miss your village.”
He would miss Lillian. The thought is there without being summoned. And yet he’s sitting next to Esmeralda. So close he can smell the evening on her skin. And his mind cannot move past her body. Though it’s too windy, he wishes he could roll a cigarette, give his hands something to do. He pats his jacket pocket anyway, seeking his tobacco pouch. “no. Not the village, Not really.” A white lie. “But certainly the city life.” An out-and-out lie. He’s turning into Butler.
“You live in the city? I thought you lived here.”
“I do. I was talking about Halifax. I lived there for a few years.”
“Halifax. And have you ever been to a famous city like London or Paris?”
“London. In the war.”
“You were in the war?” Her eyes round in sympathy.
“Yes. No. I was, um, we were stationed, well, training. Salisbury Plains. Horrible place. Nothing but rain and mud. You wouldn’t believe how much mud . . .” His skin burns as shame floods through him. What about the mud at Ypres, at Flanders, at Vimy Ridge? he longs for the oblivion of another glass of champagne. Or a nip of whiskey.
“So you never were in London.”
“London? Oh yeah. I was there. A bunch of us, on leave. And my brother.”
“London is a grand city, beautiful too, when the weather is good. Did you see Buckingham Palace and the Tower of London?”
“We weren’t exactly looking for history.”
“No. I don’t suppose you were.” she leans into him, her breast pressing against his arm. Firm and full. Her dress inches up her thighs. Such long lean legs. He pictures his hand resting on her bare skin, can almost feel it travelling up and under her glittery dress. She smiles. “You were looking for girls.”
He pauses. “Lawson was always looking for girls.
“Lawson?”
“Lawson was my brother.”
“Who likes champagne.”
“Who liked champagne.”
She tips her head to one side so that her hair falls over her shoulder. Her eyes moisten and fill. “And —”
“He was killed at Vimy Ridge.”
Closer.
“For your brother,” she says. And now her lips are on his. So warm and full. He’d almost forgotten the softness of a woman’s mouth. She tastes of salt and champagne. Her hands reach up and cradle his face. Surprising hands. Strong and rough-skinned. With her tongue she parts his lips and all the warmth and wetness of her mouth is open to him. Now his hand is in the luxurious thickness of her hair. He pushes into the kiss and she responds, kissing him harder, devouring him. His head is whirling, his penis so hard he fears his skin might burst. He has never wanted a woman as much as he wants Esmeralda. Has never wanted to take a woman as he wants to take this one, wants to pull her dress up over her thighs and push himself into her. He’s losing his balance, the wharf is spinning, there’s a roar inside his head, a fury peeling back his inhibitions. He takes his hand from the back of her head and slides it up the smooth soft skin of her leg. Esmeralda squeezes his hand and in one practised motion moves it away, pulls backs and gets to her feet.
She’s leaving. He’s hot and cold. Shaking. Suddenly fiercely jealous of the other men aboard the schooner, those who work side by side with her, those who spend every waking and sleeping moment close to her. He is angry with their lust, with the way they must press themselves against her cabin door at night, desire soaking their skin, listening for her night movements, picturing the rise and fall of her breasts in sleep, the curve of her thighs. How can he bring her back?
“I killed him.” The words like stones in his mouth. “It’s my fault he’s dead.” You wanna sign up? he can see his brother’s mock salute, his face lit up as if he just found the nickel in the plum pudding. This war’s going to be over long before I’m old enough to serve. Esmeralda turns. She’s coming back, eyes holding his, the line of her sensuous mouth stricken ugly with pity. She stoops, brings his hands to her lips and kisses them; two long soft kisses. One for each hand. Her lips move to his ear.
“Your whiskey is in the bushes,” she says, then straightens and walks away.