He noticed that many of the sailors, even those who did not know her, looked at her from across the street or glanced round as they passed. For sailors were prominent in this strange, exciting little town; dark men and lascars, Dutchmen and French. The whole town was different from any he had been in before: it was foreign and smelt of fish and seaweed and strong tobacco. It smelt of all sorts of things he had not smelt before; as they walked along amid the sun and shadow with the dust playing in whorls between the ramshackle houses his nostrils were assailed now with the odour of untended refuse from a squalid courtyard, now with the sudden strong smell of salt air and the sea. That fresh wind was like a purifier pushing through the slits of streets straight from the Channel and distant lands.
‘I wonder if you’ll ever have a stepmother?’ said Patricia. ‘I have, you know. Dad married again last year. My mother died two years ago, nearly.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Anthony.
‘Yes, it’s never the same. Good afternoon, Mrs Penrose; breezy, isn’t it? She’s all right in her way – Aunt Madge, I mean – she looks after Dad, but not like Mother did. Dad doesn’t love her: he married her because she was a good cook.’
For the second time Anthony felt faintly shocked. Patricia’s outspokenness was something new to him and as fresh as the wind. A large fat seaman with some tattered gold braid round his cuffs stepped off the pavement to make way for them and beamed at the girl. Anthony stared away from the sea up, up a seemingly endless flight of stone steps climbing the hillside, with grey slate cottages running in uneven terraces from them. But Patricia’s way was not up the steps. She still went on, along the endless winding main street which skirted the whole western part of the harbour. The wind was less boisterous here and the sun more strong, but she did not raise her parasol. He wondered if it was carried only for ornament, since the handle was so long and the silk cover really so small.
A plump little lady passed them and carefully averted her head.
‘Is there anyone else lives with you?’ Anthony ventured. ‘I mean, I haven’t any other cousins, have I?’
‘No. There’s Joe and Aunt Madge and me. Then there’s Joe’s brother, Uncle Perry. He came home from America last year. He’s made money and is looking round for somewhere to retire; but he hasn’t found anywhere yet. Then there’s Fanny, the scullery maid … oh, and one or two others who’re about, but they don’t live in. Are you tired? Shall I give you a hand with that case?’
‘Thanks, no,’ said Anthony, overcome by the thought.
She did not in fact press for the honour. ‘Well, we’re nearly there. Just up this hill and down the other side.’
They climbed a short rise where the street became so narrow that the two sides seemed about to meet; the crooked bow windows of an antique shop peered fastidiously down upon two conger eels for sale on the marble slab opposite; then the street dropped again, and Patricia turned off down a short and precipitous side-way which stopped abruptly upon the brink of the harbour.
Here, above the door of the last building on the right, there was an old and weather-beaten signboard, sorely in need of a coat of paint. On this signboard was the simple legend: JOE VEAL’S.
Chapter Two
You entered Smoky Joe’s – as the café was universally called by its clientele – through a narrow shop door, and immediately encountered Smoky Joe himself. Indeed it was not physically possible to dine in the café, whether upstairs or down, without first coming into contact with the proprietor; for it was his unvarying custom to sit brandishing a carving knife and fork on the opposite side of the counter as you entered the narrow shop; and so belligerent was his look that no one had ever dared to pass closely by him without first learning what there was to eat and then ordering on the spot the meal he wanted.
Spread on this counter were the viands which made up the choice. At one end there might be a roast turkey or a couple of chickens, with a huge leg of lamb and a piece of sirloin on succeeding dishes. Further down there was a choice of three or four kinds of pudding or tart steaming over an elaborate gas-ring.
The decision made, one could, if one wished, linger to see the portion cut off; one paid up, and the dishes were set aside to be taken into the kitchen where they were piled with vegetables and presently delivered to the customer wherever he had taken his seat.
The system was a good one. Bad debts were never incurred, complaints seldom; and so succulent was the aspect and smell of the dishes on the counter when one entered that scarcely anyone was ever put off by the gruff and grudging manner of the Tyrant with the carving knife.
In appearance Joe was short and thin with a pale slate-grey complexion and eyes like a small black terrier. His heavy black moustache drooped over a mouth which was at once obstinate and astute. In the shop he always wore a dark alpaca coat the length of a frock coat and a high wrap-round collar with scarcely any tie.
Anthony saw nothing of this on the afternoon of his arrival, for he was ushered down some steps and by a back door into a big low kitchen, where a thin red-faced girl not much older than himself was trying half-heartedly to tidy up the disorder, and a big woman with a distasteful expression was making pastry.
Aunt Madge was a disappointment. This lovely creature who had escorted him all the way from the station, talking cheerfully to him as if they were old friends, had warmed and brightened his heart. He had forgotten his tiredness, his loneliness, the fact that he was thirsty and hot. He had been uplifted in her company. Aunt Madge restored his perspective.
‘Late,’ she said. ‘Have you been. Round the sea front, I thought. Pat, you should have … Fanny needed help. Take him to his bedroom. A cup of tea presently.’
Anthony found himself following Patricia up the stairs with an impression that he had not yet really met Aunt Madge at all. In the kitchen there had been a large rather over-dressed woman, a fleshy rather than a fat woman in early middle age, with fair hair going grey, with a pince-nez straddling a short nose, and a discontented mouth built upon a pedestal of chins. But he did not think she would recognise him again. Being introduced to her was like making an appointment with somebody who forgot to turn up.
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 a
t 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.