Bring Larks and Heroes (19 page)

22

The north wind set in later in the morning. Halloran woke with a light fever and a cough, but had no time to indulge them. He came to Byrne's but just in time to see the boyo, dressed for church-parade, vanishing downhill through the Marine hutments. Halloran stumbled after him. There was a terrible lack of harmony between the wide blue of the bay and the fig-trees exercising in the wind on one side, and on the other, his own undigested fear and shallow breathing and spongey ankles.

Byrne heard the scrabbling of feet on the shaley hillside, recognized Halloran and waited for him in peace. And peace was rare in Byrne.

‘You have to take me to Hearn.'

‘Yes.' Byrne frowned in an uncharacteristic way, like a man of affairs. ‘Yes. I've been looking for you. There's so much to get done.'

‘Never mind that. Take me to him.'

‘You're in a rush. Anger and all.'

‘Anger? I'll say anger!'

‘Why?'

‘Brother Hearn's lying, that's why. I'll give him
brother!
'

‘You might give him away too.'

‘Never mind. Take me just the same.'

Closing his eyes gently, Byrne stood for a while with his mouth open in thought, intelligently poised on a sentence. But he grunted down whatever it was he had intended to say and led Halloran away. From the back, he did look depressingly like a new man. He walked as if he were illustrating what Hearn had said, ‘There is a purpose working in us.'

It was a mild day to the eyes although the wind was up. Winter had somehow softened the lines of the forest which still seemed a place of self-contained and ancient ease. Halloran felt free since it made no claims on him, not soliciting his admiration as forests elsewhere did, and weakened his sense of moving on a path plotted by somebody else.

Today, not being in fact as angry as he would have wished, he was able to follow in his mind the way they went. They veered to the west slightly and after half a mile, came to marshy land and beyond it, the boulders where Hearn was hidden. Once more the ornate, Biblical pass-word was traded.

Hearn rose out of the stones. Phelim was astounded at his vigour, for he seemed to have succeeded in rebuilding himself – on a lean scale, perhaps; yet very nearly completely a new man. And he'd been warm last night. He was wearing a dark, hooded coat made from the pelt of some Antarctic creature. The whaler had been Christian indeed to Hearn.

‘You've been a pharisee with me,' Halloran said.

Hearn lifted an ear but not his eyes.

‘I beg your pardon.'

‘Don't bother begging my pardon. You haven't told me the whole story. Three hundred pounds of meat, you say. See how I trust you, you say. I tell you every thing to the nearest ounce. Like hell you do!'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Three hundred pounds of beef won't feed
you
halfway to America, let alone any of the others. So it seems your whaler is getting no profit out of you at all. A rare man he must be!'

‘There
are
rare men.'

‘Yes. Most of them aren't whalers,' Halloran contended, although he'd never met any whalers and was prejudging them.

Hearn stood waiting. He could afford to play with his breath and, amazingly, he had breath to play with today. His grey face seemed made to dominate in pulpits; it had been harrowed but now owned an irrefutable repose, as if it had survived immensities, as if the worst had been.

‘But you hardly understand the captain's problem,' he said. ‘His need is stores.' Hearn coughed then, not from his illness, but like any mere temporizing windbag. ‘Stores, you see.' Then over his eyes which had been momentarily vulnerable, a thick skin of infallibility took only a second to grow. ‘Stores, not profit. Now he'll be able to take in stores at Valparaiso, which is straight over there.' He pointed eastwards at the unintelligible warp of forest. ‘Seven thousand miles certainly. But between here and Valparaiso, what we have taken from the store will keep three or four men alive.'

‘I still don't believe it. I still don't believe he'll come. It isn't worth his trouble. There's no profit in it and it's not like him not to want profit.'

After all, Halloran thought, cats want milk and whalers, like all men of business, want profit. It is a law of nature.

‘Profit isn't all things to all men, you know,' Hearn told him.

‘I'm not going to risk my life on that proposition.'

And certainly within Halloran, life ran pale and prone to argument but not to tranquil faith.

‘Has he told you everything, Terry?' he asked. ‘Has honest brother Hearn who wants your soul told you all the story?'

‘Terry knows more of it than you. That's to be expected.'

It may have been Halloran's mistake then to
stare at Byrne. Yet he believed that if Byrne could be dislodged, Hearn's purpose would be beaten. Behind Phelim's back, the seer frowned and made a sealed-lips gesture at Terry. So that only the traditional Byrne was visible, a creature of dish-eyed unenlightenment.

‘
Does
he know more?' said Halloran, as Byrne's face became even more bluntly and conscientiously ignorant. ‘You don't look much to me like a man who knows things.'

‘He'll tell us everything in the end,' Byrne said. ‘Your nose is starting to run.'

It made Halloran furious to have his nose so thoroughly betray his mortality. He became noticeably taut. Hearn could tell that he might stamp away at any second.

Hearn said levelly, ‘The captain is a man with his eye to profit, yes.' All things were level to Hearn. All valleys had already been exalted, every hill already laid low. ‘If it's any comfort to you, he spent a great part of the time ranting against his brother-in-law. He'd got some water-casks from his brother-in-law, you see, bought them on trust. He didn't know they'd been used to hold vinegar and were full of mould. The first one broached killed four of his crew. Now he's out to ruin his brother-in-law, take him to court, destroy his name. So, there you are! He's what you'd call a normal man.'

‘Thank God for that much,' said Halloran.

And he
was
grateful to find that most men were dishonest in the traditional way, conventionally vengeful, and could be trusted to be corrupt for the sane and long-established reason of personal greed.

‘Well?' he said.

‘You remember Rio?'

‘Damn good place to live,' Terry Byrne claimed. ‘Live like a king on Marine's pay.'

‘When our fleet got to Rio, you might remember Mr Blythe was busy meeting merchants of the city. He was meant to buy seed and oil, and before bargaining with the merchants concerned, he asked His Excellency to sign three of the printed promissory notes. Blythe himself was to sign them and put the amount on them when the sale was closed. As it turned out, there was no sale. For one reason and another. Blythe was meant to give the notes back to His Excellency. He didn't.'

‘Feathering his nest,' Byrne assumed.

‘I don't think so, I think he forgot them. Anyhow, there they are in a strong-box at the warehouse, and Blythe has even gone so far as to sign two of them. Just in an idle moment perhaps, just for something to do. I found the notes last month when I was helping Blythe. I said nothing, I put them back in their place and locked the box. I've promised the captain one of these.'

‘Break the box open?' asked Halloran. He made a face at Hearn's ample guile.

‘I've made it my business to have a key,' Hearn said, with his eyebrows warning Terry Byrne to be wise.

‘Once he has that note, he'll kill you and fill it out for thousands.'

‘I'm keeping the note.'

‘That's what you say.'

Hearn played with his breath for a while.

‘He'll get it from my hand in Valparaiso or he won't ever get it.'

‘Brave words,' said Halloran, even though Hearn hadn't sounded self-glorious. ‘Then he'll kill you in Valparaiso and fill it in for thousands.'

‘Do you think so?' asked Hearn without any genuine interest. ‘In any case it will be filled out already by myself for £100. He should get sixty for it from the merchants. Of course, they'll take it to the British consul, who'll say yes, it's on the proper form which viceroys alone have. And you must remember, this little town of ours was meant to be a Corinth of the south, as they say. The consul in Valparaiso wouldn't be surprised to see a note signed by His Excellency for an amount within the bounds of reason.'

‘And the beggar wants stores as well? A promissory note, all right. But there's so much danger in the other.'

‘He's in a bad way for stores, he's in a position to insist.'

‘Unlike me,' said Halloran. He tried to look
ironic, but a sneeze scattered his efforts. ‘Didn't he doubt you? How could he know just what you were at?'

Hearn nodded. He looked utterly humble.

‘Like one greater, I had wounds to show.'

‘So you did.'

‘Well?' Hearn asked after thought.

‘Don't think you've talked me round. I'll be surprised if he comes for you.'

‘Of course he'll come. He's a whaler, a man used to danger, the only danger he can't face being loss, the loss of his ship, failure to make his fortune.'

Halloran had his mouth open again when Hearn raised his right fist and pounded it down on his own thigh.

‘Damn reasons and arguments,' he said. ‘He'll do what he's meant to. So will I and so will you.'

But raw and vigorous faith had run aground before today, thought Halloran. He damned raw and vigorous faith and the ache behind his eyes, his belling ears, his tight breath. He felt as ill as Hearn should have felt but perversely refused to feel.

‘Why?' he asked. ‘Why will everyone do what they're meant to when no one has up to now?'

‘There's a pattern. I'll tell you.'

Apart from the whaler and the new age in Europe, Hearn explained, Terry knew where a warehouse key could be got. The peculiar thing was that not only was
Byrne crazed for redemption, but he had even been partner to some earlier thefts of supplies.

Halloran rolled his eyes.

‘Is this true, Brian Boru?'

‘It is,' said Terry, proud of it. ‘Of course, I was forced. And it was before taking stores was made a hanging matter. But just the same, yes.'

In fact, there was that about Byrne that reminded a person of the Easter Mass at which the deacon sings, ‘O happy guilt, to have deserved so great a Saviour.'

‘God of Mercy!' Halloran said.

‘A lot of it used to go on. It was just a bit of sport.'

‘I know a girl who's splotchy with hunger. That's not sport.'

‘You always take a serious view.'

‘Do I? That's because I have to look at shit like you from the outside. An agony you've never had to face, my boy.'

Hearn said in a soothing way, ‘Corporal'. But mainly he was allured by the pains his destiny had taken with the entire affair. ‘There's no moon on Wednesday night, and slack tide will be a quarter to midnight. About half past midnight there'll be a strong run-out tide. We won't rush it, muffles on the oars, just an occasional pull to get us into the middle. I've been down to the bay in the middle of the night to look at the tides. I know that even there we'll be helped.'

The image came to Halloran of a humourless
seal-skin coat dropping like a bad dream through the white, young town; not deviating, as the chain-cranked angels rising and descending in religious festivals in Rio did not deviate; bending at the end of its descent to watch the swirl and suck of the bay.

The key belonged to a man called Miles, Private Albert Miles. Did Halloran know him?

‘He's that tall, mean-looking bastard,' Byrne supplied, ‘who's always got someone else's watch to sell.'

‘You mix with the best, don't you, Terry?' said Halloran.

Hearn explained, ‘You and Byrne would see him together. You'd have to threaten him. You'd have to say that you wanted the key . . .'

‘If he's still got it,' Halloran said.

‘He's still got it,' sang Terry out of the fullness of either faith or knowledge.

‘. . . and you wanted him to row. And if he won't, you'd go to the officers and report all you know of him. And you'd have to tell him it's no use murdering either of you, that there's a third person who'd report him as soon as you come to any harm.'

‘A spirit of hearty brotherhood,' said Halloran.

Terry Byrne became equitable all the way down the length of his strange mouth.

‘We'll have to let him take a bit of beef. That's only fair.'

‘Yes,' Halloran said, ‘so is the backside of the whore he'll buy with it. No. No beef.'

‘It's only fair.'

‘No beef.'

‘He'd knife us.'

‘I'll talk to him.'

‘I'm not willing to die to no use,' Byrne said.

As, the sun being on his face, and his soul robust with plots, he was quite willing to die to some use.

All their dealings would be with Miles, Hearn told them. But at the same time, a guard would be needed at the warehouse and another at Government Wharf. Now Miles had a friend called Barrett and a friend called McHugh.

‘McHugh's wife to Miles,' Byrne laughed. ‘And Barrett's sort of fancy-lady to both of them.'

‘They're not to be told anything, you understand. They're servile to Miles. They'll do what you want them to if Miles beats them enough. Or so I'm told. You'll have to see the two of them are the guards for the warehouse and wharf on Wednesday night. After all, you're the orderly.'

So Hearn's eyes and intentions probed Halloran, while on the slope behind those boulders, some pigeons mourned sanely, bringing to Halloran's notice once more that he was not bound. Amongst the rocks, a tribe of grudging starlings went scrabbling, as mean, as unaspiring, as assured of the sunlight as one could wish to be.