His voice was as ill-tempered as his look. The air was filled with catcalls in reply.
‘Falla Båtsman! …’
‘Inga bra, bawsted! Inga bra!’
‘Satan och Satan; kyss me, Satan!’
When it seemed that there might be a scene, several newcomers entered the room and the worst of the noise died down. But the pasty-faced Swede still went on giggling.
Then the lame accordionist struck up a tune and several people hummed and whistled the chorus. After a few minutes some of Unde Perry’s friends pushed him forward from his corner. With a self-conscious grin he took up his usual position beneath the figurehead of the Mary Lee Melford, pushed back his hair with two fingers and began to sing.
‘There was a youth, a well-loved youth
And he was a squire’s son;
He loved the bailiff’s daughter dear
That lived in Islington.
Yet she was coy and would not believe
That he did love her so;
No, nor at any time would she
Any favours to him show.’
Tom Harris finished his cigarette and stubbed it out. He was well aware of the amusement he was giving the Swede, but he ignored the man with good-humoured tolerance. All the same, the consciousness of being laughed at, together with the circumstance of seeing his wife flirting with another man, had frayed the edges of his temper.
There was applause when Perry finished. He grinned again and turned to the accordionist, wiping his good-humoured, feckless, indolent face. Tom Harris got up to go.
Perry began the verse of a popular song of the eighties. Tom took his cap from a convenient hatstand while the Swede went off into a fresh burst of giggling. The solicitor went across the room to the table where his wife was sitting and spoke to her. Ned Pawlyn, in an instant changed like a dog from playful pleasure to prickly dislike, sat and glowered at him but did not speak.
Perry reached the chorus, and all those who had finished eating, and many who had not, joined in the rollicking song.
Explosions of violence in public places usually occur without the least warning to the majority of people indirectly concerned. Ill-temper, enmity, malice, have flourished unawares in their midst. No one has seen or suspected anything. Two, four, half a dozen people may be quietly reaching a point of white-hot anger while all about them others read or eat or are entertained quite unaffected. Only when these emotions reach flash point are they communicated to spectators through the medium of action. Of such insensitive clay are we made.
It is as if gunpowder has been quietly scattering itself about the room. No one notices, no one cares. All tramp where they please, kicking or stumbling with impunity. Then someone drops a lighted match.
The room was noisy but peaceful. Square and low and raftered and full of smoke, with its ancient bow windows looking out upon the winking lights of the river and harbour, there was a faintly Continental air about its decorations as well as its company. Perry, with his bold, lazy, brigand’s face, stood under the painted figurehead singing his song while an old man, with a wooden leg and a bald head shining in the gaslight, accompanied him upon his battered accordion and many of the company joined in. Near the service hatch and underneath a picture of Admiral Pellew in action against the Malay pirates, two Germans, with the air of starving men, were rapidly finishing off large plates of pork. In the corner window-seat a respectable, staid-looking young man in a neat respectable tweed suit was conversing with a pretty girl and a dark-haired sailor. In the middle window-seat was a mixed party of six and in the other corner window-seat two hard-bitten Cornishmen were arguing good temperedly with a red-haired engineer. Stretching across the width of the ancient brick fireplace was a long table containing the nine Norsemen from the windjammer. The rest of the tables were all filled. There were model ships on shelves and ships in bottles, and dark smoky oil-paintings of ships hung on the yellow-painted walls.
Into this comfortable cosmopolitan scene a lighted match was dropped. It flashed and flared suddenly at the corner table by the window. The man in the respectable tweeds was speaking to the girl, and the sailor lolling on the opposite side of the table made a remark. That was the match. The man in the respectable tweeds abruptly leaned across the table and smacked the sailor across the face with his open hand, the sound being heard clearly and sharply above all the other noise. In a second the sailor was up, had grasped the other man by the throat, and pulled him across the table regardless of the plates and the cutlery and was trying to force his head down.
Chapter Eleven
The singing persisted only for a few moments against this unfair competition. First the diners stopped. Then Perry stopped. Then the cripple stopped; and everyone’s attention was on the scuffling couple in their midst.
Ned Pawlyn had never in his life known what it was to be so grossly insulted as by that open-handed smack. A straightforward punch he would have accepted with far less malice.
For a few moments he went berserk, pulling his struggling opponent across the table by sheer muscular strength before Harris could break free. Then, while Patricia shrank back against the wall, he pursued the half-strangled Harris round the table, hitting him almost as he chose until the solicitor staggered back into the table containing the two Germans and sat on the knee of Todt the bosun. At this there was an unholy shriek of laughter from the drunken Swede.
Todt swore and dragged his pork away from a tweed elbow and thrust Harris to his feet again. Harris stood up and drew breath. There was a look in his eye which Pat had never seen before. He took off his coat and dropped it on the floor. Then he went out to Pawlyn with a will.
It is possible at this stage that had Perry stepped forward with an air of authority and thrust himself between the two the clash would have ended there, or at least been transferred to a more suitable venue out of doors. But Perry was a man concerned in avoiding his own troubles, not one to interfere in other people’s. And Patricia, who should have run upstairs for her father, found she could not move. She was like a witch who had been playing with forbidden potions and was now aghast at the spectre she had conjured up.
The next table to suffer was that of the six in the window, and this time it was Pawlyn who was retreating with Tom closely following him. The table went with them and the girl at the end screamed shrilly as she was nearly pushed through the window. The men at this table were all youngsters; one of them put his hands on Pawlyn’s shoulder but he was shaken off and brushed aside. The table continued to slide back, and the red-haired Scotsman found himself suddenly hemmed in by strange people who seemed to want to push him off his chair. He got to his feet and shouted and began to push back.
At this moment pressure was relieved by a turn in the nature of the fight. The two men grappled and went reeling back into their own table. David the waiter appeared on the stairs, gazed open-mouthed and fled.
Neither of the two men now seemed to have any advantage. They were both far too angry to remember any boxing they had ever been taught. What Tom Harris lacked in hardness of hand he made up in determination and staying power. There was something about the shape of his neck when his collar came off which suggested he would be a hard man to have done with, for all his respectability.
One of Ned Pawlyn’s eyebrows had begun to bleed, and to clear his sight he tried to break away. But Tom was still holding, and in the next scuffle he succeeded in getting two more punches to the same eye. Then Pawlyn butted Tom and sent him staggering. He arrived back once more on top of Todt, and the chair beneath them, which Smoky Joe should have discarded nine months ago, gave way and collapsed on the floor.
A jeer of satisfaction went up this time not only from the drunken Swede but from all his less intoxicated companions.
Todt cursed and rolled over and kicked Tom Harris furiously in the back. He was about to kick him again as he got to his feet, but at that moment a bottle sailed through the air and smashed against the wall above Todt’s head. He was showered with beer
and broken glass.
His attention diverted from Harris, he rose to his feet and looked where the bottle had come from. As he did this the red-haired Scotsman, irritated by the press about him, cuffed one of the inoffensive youngsters on the ear and in so doing upset his own table.
David the waiter had been up to summon Smoky Joe. Joe, his hands wavering and clumsy, rose from his seat, locked the till, gave a key to the youth to lock the shop door and directed Anthony to run for the police. Then Joe picked up his carving knife and proceeded, supported by David, to the scene of battle.
But before they reached the head of the stairs they were met by a stream of people anxious to get out. With an irritated angry wave of his carving knife Joe directed them towards the kitchen, then went on. Half-way down the stairs he halted.
This was worse than the uproar of six months ago. Stopping it was obviously beyond even his moral powers. Certainly it was beyond the physical power of a single carving knife. Not two were fighting now but eighteen or twenty. In a bedlam of overturned tables and broken crockery men were fighting desperately with each other as if the mortal enmity of a lifetime had bubbled over and was blistering their souls with hatred.
There were four Swedes and five Finns and two Germans and two Cornish sailors and a red-haired Scotsman from Ayr and two young shop assistants who had never been to Smoky Joe’s before and would never come again, and a Cornish mate and a Cornish solicitor and three or four odds and ends who had been unwittingly embroiled. The one-legged musician had retired into the most isolated corner of the room. Perry Veal stood by the fireplace shouting horrible curses and threats and eating a piece of cake.
Even now the thing might have ended as suddenly as it had begun. While light persisted reason was not far away. There would be a point when the first impulse to violence had exhausted itself and most of the men would be glad to draw breath.
Unfortunately at this point the three mates of the windjammer, having heard the noise, came hurrying down from the upstairs room. Joe greeted their arrival thankfully; he waved his carving knife towards the struggling figures and shouted quaveringly. A tall young Finn heard the shout and glanced up; he saw the mates and knew well the feel of their hard fists. So as they came down the stairs he reached up and turned off the three gas-taps of the chandelier.
Darkness fell on the room.
Patricia found herself deprived of sight. She wanted to scream; the sound choked in the back of her throat. She stared into a darkness which had not yet even assumed shape; outside there were the winking lights of the harbour shipping; these grew brighter in the corner of her retina; but ahead and around was nothing at all. Only her ears told her that the darkness, far from putting a stop to what she had last seen, had added its own secretive encouragement. The scuffling and grunting of men, the shouts and threats, the crack of dishes and the thud of furniture ebbed and flowed about her. She could press no closer to the wall, could shrink no further into the corner. Once a man thumped into the wall beside her. Then a chair fell against her legs and a bottle rolled off it.
Suddenly a man rose beside her, touched her hand and arm, following it to the shoulder. She drew in her breath.
‘That you, Pat?’ said the voice. It was Tom.
‘Yes,’ she said, feeling sick.
‘Is there any way out of this place but by the stairs?’
Anger and hostility followed relief. He had begun everything; but for him there would have been no trouble at all.
‘Well?’ he said, his voice rough and low.
‘Ned!’ she called. ‘ Ned! He’s over here, by me.’
‘He won’t answer you just yet,’ Harris said grimly. ‘What sort of a drop is it from this window?’
She would not answer. Someone, she thought it was one of the shop assistants, had got into a panic and was shouting in a shrill voice: ‘Bring a light! There’s somebody dead! Bring a light!’
By now shapes and different degrees of darkness were coming to the room. Dim light reached down the stairs from the shop above.
‘You little fool,’ said Tom. ‘ Haven’t you the sense to come out of your sulks at a time like this?’
He had never spoken to her in that tone before. It made her desperately determined not to help him.
‘It’s like you to run away,’ she said, ‘now that you’ve caused all the trouble.’
He had opened the window and was peering out. He withdrew his head. ‘There are knives about,’ he said. ‘ You’re just as likely to get one as I am. Come on.’
‘Where’s Ned?’ she demanded.
‘Under the table. Safe enough, but he banged his head.’ He put his hand on her arm.
She shook herself free. ‘ Let me alone!’
He gripped her elbows with hands which had no time to be respectful. He pulled her to the window.
‘Will you jump or shall I drop you?’
‘Let me go! Ned! Ned!’ she shouted.
Someone struck a match in the room behind her, and immediately it was knocked out. ‘Bring a light!’ screamed the voice. ‘Bring a light!’
She found herself sitting on the window-sill. Fear of falling made her cling to it. Then he was beside her and before she had time to say any more they had fallen together.
The ground came up so quickly that it seemed to hurt more than if they had had some way to fall. She bruised her hand and twisted her ankle on the hard cobblestones.
As she sat up the first impression was of peace and coolness and that great emptiness of the open air which, after leaving a room full of people, seems to echo with the faint sounds of a thousand miles of space. The whisper of water came to her ears, reminding her that the tide was in.
He was already up and bent to help her to her feet.
‘I can’t get up,’ she said. ‘ I’ve hurt my ankle.’
Only the second of these statements was strictly true.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘If you’ll put your arms round my neck I’ll lift you.’
‘Leave me alone,’ she said. ‘ I can get back to the house myself.’
‘You’re better out of it at present. The police will be here any minute.’
‘Well, I want to go back. Dad will need me.’
He bent and with a big effort picked her up – for it is no easy task to lift a woman from the ground level when she offers you no help at all.
Once up, the carrying was quite simple.
‘Where are you going?’ she said. ‘I tell you Dad needs me! He’ll want my help. He’s been ill!’
‘I know that well enough.’ He walked on, to the edge of the wall and began to go down the stone steps to the water. She was afraid to struggle lest they should both fall. She could not imagine where he was going. Did he intend to take her out in a rowing-boat at this time of night and argue with her in the middle of the harbour?
At the bottom she found that the tide was not as far in as she had imagined; there was room to walk along the base of the wall among the flotsam of this morning’s tide, which was what he now did.
‘I don’t know what you think you’re doing,’ she said, finding it hard to think of the dignified protest.
He did not reply, and she stared at his profile in the darkness. His hair was over his forehead like a new Uncle Perry.
‘Dad’s been seriously ill,’ she said. ‘If he has a relapse you’ll be to blame; it was his first time out of bed; I didn’t think you’d ever do what you’ve done tonight, Tom.’
‘It’s time we all started thinking afresh,’ he said.
About a hundred yards from where they had descended a big square shape loomed up. It was a large boathouse belonging to the Royal Cornwall Yacht Club. Harris was a member of this club and as he reached it, stumbling once or twice over the seaweed and the loose stones, he turned towards the back of the house and found a small door.
‘Can you stand a minute?’ He put her on her feet, keeping one arm round her waist while he found the key. Then he unlocked the door and carried her ins
ide.
They bumped against a boat, and he set her down upon some sort of a seat against the wall while he stood by the door and lit an oil lamp which stood there. Then he shut the door and the light from the oil lamp spread itself slowly.
Patricia found she was sitting on an old couch which had evidently begun its days in the club room and was ending them here. The house was full of the usual paraphernalia of its kind: oars slung from the ceiling, rowlocks hung on nails, pots of paint and fishing tackle on shelves. There was only one small boat in residence, for the sailing season was not yet over.
He came across to her carrying the lamp. He was still in his shirt sleeves, and one sleeve was torn and his waistcoat had lost all but one button. There was blood drying on his forehead and a big black bruise on the left cheek-bone.
‘I’ll go to the police and make a statement in the morning,’ he said; ‘but you’re keeping out of this, Pat. I’m not having you in the courts again. We can stay here for an hour and then I’ll take you back.’
She stared at him again curiously, trying to fathom the change which had come over him tonight.
‘I don’t care about the courts,’ she said. ‘It’s not fair to keep me here when Dad needs me.’
‘He’s got a wife. There’s nothing you can do except become involved with the police.’
She sat there in mutinous silence.
‘Is your ankle painful?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘There’s a tap somewhere. Perhaps I could bathe it.’
She did not reply. He sat looking at her for a moment, then rose and picked up a bucket and walked over to the double doors, seeking the tap.
She watched him carefully until he was the furthest distance away, then sprang up and ran to the little door.
She reached it before he even heard her. She would have been through it before he could move but the door stuck. She pulled at it madly; there was a catch on it somewhere which she could not see; there it was; her fingers fumbled; that was it; the door opened; she was out; but on the very threshold of freedom his hands closed round her waist and pulled her struggling back again.