Frankie Love came from the sea, and was greatly ill at ease elsewhere. When on land he was harassed and didn’t fit in at all. The orders he accepted without question, though a hundred grumbles, from almost any seaman, were hateful to him in a landsman’s mouth. There was a deep injustice, somewhere, in all this. Landsmen, in England, depend entirely on the sea: yet seamen, who sustain them, don’t regulate the landsmen’s lives and have to submit, when landlocked themselves a moment, to all the landsman’s meaningless caprices.
At the Dock Board the chief had said there was no ship for Frankie. Those were his words, but his eyes said, ‘I get ten pounds from you before I put you in the pool.’ But Frankie had only three-pounds-seven from the Labour. At the Labour exchange they’d asked what he could do. How to begin to explain to the quite nice young feller in the striped Italian jacket? On a ship he could do anything: off it, nothing, didn’t want to – he was all at sea. ‘But you can do a bit of labouring, can’t you?’ said the clerk, quite friendlily. How to tell him that a merchant seaman can be nothing else – that to do nothing else is a first condition of being a merchant seaman? The feller, trying to be helpful, had called over Mister someone who’d looked over the papers, said not a word to Frankie but, just in front of him (two feet from his face behind the grille), ‘He’s young enough for manual labour – twenty-six.’ And, ‘A bad discharge-book, too: adrift in Yokohama and repatriated at official expense.’
Frankie stepped back and stood there, feeling powerless and sick; and watched the next-comer, an Asian seaman with a turban. The Asian, at the wicket, smiled and smiled, and, as they questioned him, understood less and less. ‘Can’t you speak proper English?’ somebody shouted at him. Frankie, in his days of glory, would hardly have spoken to the Asian at all: but now both of them were sea princes exiled in distress. He stepped up again and said, ‘This man speaks two languages – ours and his. It’s more than you can – think of that!’ They answered nothing, said, ‘Next, please,’ and the Asian still stood and smiled.
Frankie walked out into Stepney, withered and disgusted. The clients round the Labour, apart from being landsmen, were mostly layabouts: professional scroungers such as you couldn’t be on board a ship – your mates wouldn’t wear it, let alone the officers. He found the Asian standing near, and turned to share with him his deep contempt for London. In the old days, Frankie thought, he and I would have signed on as pirates down by Wapping: and why not? Frankie became aware the Asian was inviting him to share a meal. ‘I’m skint,’ said Frankie, not because he was but in refusal. The Asian slightly shook his turbaned head and took Frankie gently by the arm: the gesture was sufficiently respectful, and they set off together in silence. Round two and a half corners they went into a Pakistani café with a smell of stale spices, a juke-box, a broken fruit-machine, and several English girls.