A Poor Man's House Part 5

one hand, an' one under t'other yer wi' t'other hand; knocked me half silly; an' said if he had any more o' my chake he'd send me going thereupon. 'Iss, I said, 'an I _will_ go, an' if I can't pick up a livin' on the baych wi' fis.h.i.+n' (I 'adn't no boats then, n'eet for years a'ter), an' if I couldn't pick up a livin' wi' fis.h.i.+n', I'd go to sea. An' I took an' lef the shop, an' went wi'out me pay due nor nort further about it.

"Well, I should think as I stayed away two or dree days, saying as, if I couldn' live _by_ the sea, I'd go off _tu_ sea. By'm-by, ol' Mr Cloade--I could al'ys get on all right wi' he hisself--'twer they a.s.sistants.... Mr Cloade come'd down to baych an' said as he'd rise me wages be two s.h.i.+llings, from four s.h.i.+llings to six a week. So I went back. But 'twern't for long, for I wer turned seventeen then, an'

strong, an' I knowed that six s.h.i.+llin's a week, every penny o' which mother laid out in groceries--p'raps givin' me dreepence for meself latterly--that wern't no wage for me doing more'n a man's work, early an' laate, at everybody's beck an' call. 'Twern't vitty.

[Sidenote: _BRUISED ORANGES AND BRUISES_]

"It come'd soon a'ter.... I wer sorting oranges, an' one o' the a.s.sistants called like they al'ays did: 'Widger, Widger! _Widger!_ Yer, Widger!' 'Twer al'ays, 'Widger! Widger!' in thic show--blarsted row! 'I wants 'ee to take thees yer parcel to Mr Brindley-Botton's (what used to live to Southview House) in time for lunch. Hurry up!'"

Tony, in short, put a couple of the bruised oranges into his pocket, ran off, and delivered his parcel at Southview House. On the way back, he ate one of the oranges and, boyishly, threw the peel about outside Mr Brindley-Botton's side gate. He heard someone shouting to him and--but without turning his head--he shouted "h.e.l.l about it!" airily back. Then, as it was the dinner hour, he loitered on the Green Patch to play marbles with some other lads, and to share the second bruised orange. On returning to Cloade's:

"Whu did I see but Mr Brindley-Botton's coachman wi' a little packet in white paper. 'Twas thic orange peel, all neatly done up, an' a li'I note saying as I'd a-been cheeky to him, which I hadn't, not knowingly.

Mr Cloade, he called me into his little office, asted me what I'd been doing, where I went, an' where I got the oranges.

"'Bought 'em,' says I.

"'Twas a lie, an' I hadn't no need for to tell it, seeing I was al'ays free to take a bruised orange or two when I wer sorting of 'em. On'y I wer frightened. 'Where did you get them?' he asked.

"'Up to Mrs Ashford's for a penny,' says I.

"'Did you?'

"'Yes, sir,' says I.

"'Are you telling me a lie? I can find out, mind.'

"'No, sir,' I said.

"'Be you sure you ain't telling of a lie?'

"Then I broked down, an' I said they was bruised ones what I'd a-took.

Father, he wer working to Mr Cloade's then, fis.h.i.+ng being bad, an' the master called he. _He_ walloped me--walloped me with a rope's end. An'

I swore as I'd never go back no more, an' I didn't. Every time Father tried to make me, I up an' said as I'd go to sea.

[Sidenote: _OUT DRIFTING ALL NIGHT_]

"Ay! for all I'm a man now, I 'ouldn't like to work like I did then--more'n a man's work an' less'n a boy's pay, an' hardly a penny for meself. I tells John _he_ don't know what 'tis to work like I did then. _I_'ouldn't du it no more."

But, with his father's boat, Tony did work far harder--hooking mackerel at dawn, in with a catch and out to sea again, or up on land hawking them round; out drifting all night; crabbing, lobster-potting, shrimping,[4] wrinkling,[5] or taking out frights,[6] wet and dry, rough and calm, day and night. "Aye, an' I be suffering from it now.

Thees yer bellyache what thins me every summer an' wears a fellow out, don't come from nothing but tearing about then. I wer al'ays on the tear, day an' night, in from sea to meals an' out again 'fore I'd had time to bolt down two mouthfuls. Often I wer so tired that Father'd hae to call me a dozen times afore I cude wake up, an' then I'd cry, _cry_, if I wer ten minutes laate to work--when I had summut to du on land, that was. Half the day I wer more asleep than awake, wi' bein' out fis.h.i.+ng all night. But I didn' let 'em see it. Not I! Rather'n that, I'd go up to the closet an' catch off there for five minutes, before they shude see I wern't fit to du me work. An' I never had nort o' me own for years, for all I done. Whether I earned two pound, or thirty s.h.i.+llings, or nothing at all, I never had so much as a penny for pocket-money, to call me own. I had to take it all in house--aye! an'

tips too, when I got 'em. Father, he wern't doing much then, an' ther were seven younger'n me. That's where my earnings went. An' me, as did the work, was wearing Mother's boots an' Father's jacket."

[4] Prawning.

[5] Periwinkle gathering.

[6] Freights, _i.e._ pleasure parties.

When Tony was indisputably grown up, one half of what he earned went, according to custom, to the boat-owner, in this case his father, frequently had be thu to pay for repairs and new gear. That went on for years after he was married--'hauling an' rowing an' slaving an' pulling me guts out wi't!'--until, in fact, the present Mrs Widger insisted on his buying boats of his own.

[Sidenote: _THE DEAD NOT WHOLLY SO_]

Our talk s.h.i.+fted to Tony's first wife, who died (and Tony almost died too) as the result of the landlord's taking up the drains, and leaving them open, in the height of a hot summer. Tony told me about her people and her native place, a fis.h.i.+ng village along the coast. He showed me photographs of her, and a framed, pathetically ugly, imitation cameo memorial, which is getting very dirty now. I knew he loved her very much. He nearly went out of his mind when she died, leaving him with four young children. The untidy little kitchen, with its bright fire, its deep shadows and its white clothes hung along the line; Tony's drooping figure, bent over the hearth in an old blue guernsey: the contrasting redness of his face, and the beam of light from a cracked lamp-shade falling across his wet, memory-stuck blue eyes.... The kitchen seemed full of the presence of the long-dead woman whom Tony was still grieving for in some underpart of his mind. "Iss, her was a nice woman," he said, "a gude wife to me; a gude wife: I hadn't no complaint to make against she."

The one shabby sentence hit into me all his sorrow, that which remains and that which has sunk into time.

The Mrs Widger that is, returned from the Dutch auction with an elaborate badly-plated cruet. "Al'ays using up my saxpinces what I has to slave for," said Tony.

"G'out! 'Tis jest what us wants."

"You won't never use it."

"We'll hae it out on thy birthday--there! Will that zatisfy thee?"

"Not afore then? I wer born at the end o' the year, an' that's why I al'ays gets lef' behind."

"Not a day before thy birthday! What'll yu be saying if I buys sauces to put in all they bottles?"

"Cut gla.s.s, is it?"

"No! What d'yu think?"

"What a woman 'tis! Gie yer Tony a kiss then."

"G'out yu fule!"

The wise fool took a kiss. We had a second supper and hot grog. We were merry. But when I said _Good night_, I saw in Tony's eyes a recognition that I had understood (so he felt, I think) some part of what he seldom, if ever, brings up now to talk about.

Only a yarn about a man's first wife.... If so, why did I go to bed feeling I had been privileged beyond the ordinary? Wives die every day; worn out, most of them. There came into my mind's eye with these thoughts a picture of the open sea; yet hardly a picture, for I was there in the midst of it. On the waves and low-lying clouds, and through the murk, was the glimmer of a light which, I felt, would make everything plain, did it but increase. For a moment it flickered up--and there, over the stormy sea, I saw death as a kindly illusion. I do not understand the wherefore of my little vision, nor why it made my heart give one curious great thump....

A cats' courts.h.i.+p beneath my window broke it off.

6

[Sidenote: _THE "MOONDAISY"_]

Five or six years ago, when I was ill and left Seacombe, as I thought, for good, I did not relish selling the _Moondaisy_. I was too fond of her. So I gave her to the two men who had asked for the first and second refusals of her, and neither of whom possessed a small sailing boat. But I reckoned without those superficial beach jealousies which overlie the essential solidarity of the fishermen. Neither man used her much. Neither man looked after her. She was a bone of contention that each feared to gnaw. While the poor little craft lay on the beach, or in the gutter above the sea-wall, the mice ate holes into her old sail and her gear was distributed half-way over Under Town.

Granfer, however, had in his cottage an old dinghy sail that fits the _Moondaisy_. Her yard and boom were in his linhay, the sheet and downhaul in Tony's. One oar, the tholepins, and the ballast bags have not yet been found. I bent on the sail, spliced the sheet to the boom; borrowed tholepins from Uncle Jake,[7] ballast bags and a mackerel line with a very rusty hook from Tony, an oar from John--and, at last, put to sea.

[7] Granfer's brother, Tony's uncle.

The wind--westerly, off land--was too puffy for making the sheet fast.

I held it with one hand and tried to fish with the other. In order not to stop the way of the boat and risk losing the lead on the sea-bottom, I wore her round to lew'ard, instead of tacking to wind'ard. A squall came down, the sail gybed quickly, and the boom slewed over with a jerk, just grazing the top of my head. Had that boom been a couple of inches lower, or my head an inch or two higher.... I should have been prevented from sailing the _Moondaisy_ home, pending recovery from a bashed skull. Everything aboard that was loose, myself included, scuttled down to lew'ard with a horrid rattle. A malicious little gush of clear green water, just flecked with foam, spurted in over the gun'l amids.h.i.+ps. I wondered whether I could have swum far with a cracked skull: the _Moondaisy_'s iron drop-keel would have sunk her, of course. Why I was fool enough to wear the boat round so carelessly, I don't know.

Anyhow, I wound up the mackerel line; my catch, nil. Such an occurrence makes one very respectful towards the fisherman who singlehanded can sail his boat and manage five mackerel lines at once--one on the thwart to lew'ard and one to wind'ard; a bobber on the mizzen halyard and two bobbers on poles projecting from the boat. He must keep his hands on five lines, the tiller and the sheet; his eyes on the boat's course, the sea, the weather and the luff of the sail. Probably I know rather more of the theory of sailing than he does; but, when a squall blackens the sea to wind'ard, whilst I am thinking whether to run into the wind or ease off the sheet; whilst by doing neither or both, I very nearly capsize, or else stop the boat's way and lose my mackerel leads on the bottom--he, almost without thinking, does precisely what is needful, and another mackerel is hooked long before I should have brought the boat up into the wind again.