Grand Canary (7 page)

‘Ta-ta for the moment,' he murmured airily. ‘And don't forget what I've been tellin' ye about the man. Just say the word and he's at your beck and call.'

He lunged forward, tilted his hat, and with a final nod swaggered through the door. He wore the gratified air of one who had discharged a duty to himself and to his neighbour. Humming gently, he advanced along the deck with his eyes skinned for Mother Hemmingway. Faith, there was just time before dinner for a little dhrop of porther and a quiet hand of the cyards.

Harvey, in his cabin, pressed his brow against the cold brass rail of his bunk.

How, he thought, did I endure it – that anthropoid attempt to kindness? – the traditional Irishman blundering in to bolster him up with friendliness. Oh, it was lunatic, the situation. Again he twisted nervously beneath the narrow sheet, wishing desperately for sleep.

For a full half-hour he was alone.

Then Trout came into the cabin with a shining brass can of hot water in his hand and a frightened expression upon his indeterminate features. Bestowing the can tenderly upon the floor, he said gently:

‘Shall I lay out your things, sir?'

Harvey did not open his eyes; without moving his head he muttered;

‘No.'

‘Shall I bring you some dinner, sir?'

‘No.'

‘Is there anything more I can do, sir?'

In the cabin forward the gramophone began shrilly, for the tenth time that afternoon, to play: ‘ Give me all your kisses.' A shiver as of pain passed over Harvey's face. The strident melody, rich in sickly and offensive sentiment, turned in his soul with shuddering revulsion and, like a man overborne from the last of his restraint, he started up.

‘My head is splitting. Ask them – ask them for pity's sake to stop that gramophone.'

There was a quick pause, shocked as the look upon Trout's face; then, as though a hand had snatched the needle from the disc, abruptly the music stopped. The silence, so sudden it was oppressive, lengthened until Trout said tremulously:

‘It's thin, sir, that bulkhead. Your voice goes through if you call like that.'

Then Trout went out; but in five minutes he was back, bearing on stiff extended fingers a napkin-covered tray, A bowl of steaming soup stood on the tray, and beside it a tiny silver-topped tube holding some flat white tabloids.

‘Some soup, sir?' pleaded Trout, as though to exculpate himself from a grave transgression. ‘It's nourishing, sir. Sydney soup, sir. The captain would have me fetch it up. And Lady Fielding, sir – hearing you had a headache, she asked if you'd care to have some aspirin.'

Harvey's lips stiffened. He wished in the same instant to scream, to curse, to weep.

‘Leave it, then,' he said in a low voice. ‘Leave it by the bed.'

Then he lay back, closed his eyes, hearing the creaking and sighing of the ship as it bore onwards, cleaving the outer darkness. Cleaving onwards, a strange symbolic force which carried him against his will. Onwards, sighing gently. As though around there were voices, strange voices whispering, whispering to him.

They were three days out, the wind still pouring favourably from the south-west, the
Aureola
riding the placid swell with Cape Finisterre fading upon her port quarter. The morning sun blazed fitfully out of a ragged sky and warm intermittent showers had flattened out the sea.

A pad of feet came from the starboard deck, but in the saloon below Robert Tranter and his sister were seated before the open harmonium.

‘It's a great tune that, Robbie,' she said reflectively, lifting her hands from the keyboard and turning the sheets of music on the stand. ‘And you certainly sing it fine.'

‘Yes, it's got a swell swing has old “ Glory”.' His ear, held sideways towards the skylight, seemed to attend the returning tramp of footsteps above. ‘ Don't you think we might close our practice now, Sue? The sun's on the shine.' He smiled, ‘I guess the choir might go up top.'

Her fingers ceased to move; slowly she turned her warm brown eyes upon him.

‘But we've only just begun, Rob. We
said
an hour, didn't we? And it's the hour I like best in all the day – all quiet and together down here.'

‘I know, Sue,' he said with a little laugh. ‘I certainly enjoy our practice. I kind of guess it's just because I'm restless – you know the feeling – when you get your foot on the deck.'

She looked at him intently: looked away again; pressed a long soft chord from the bosom of the instrument.

‘I don't take much to the folks on this boat,' she exclaimed suddenly and without apparent reason. ‘I don't take overmuch to that Mrs Baynham.'

He contemplated his white stiff cuffs, neatly projecting, linked by severe gold links.

‘Ah, no, Sue,' he protested in an odd but unselfconscious voice. ‘I'll say you're wrong there. Yes, I'll say you're wrong. I feel she has good – great capacity for good in her.'

‘She's guying us, Robbie. She mocks at everything, even – even at God.'

He gave a deprecating pressure upon her arm with his large white hand and quoted:

‘“Let not your good be evil spoken of.” I guess, Susan, it's none too good for us to criticise.'

‘You're interested in her,' she said quickly. ‘I can feel it.'

He made no evasion.

‘I'll admit, Susan, that I'm interested in her,' he answered, gazing back into her eyes calmly. ‘ But it is because she has a soul to save. I reckon I've had to mix up with plenty women in the past. Well! Did I ever give you the slightest reason to doubt me?'

It was true. He had encountered many women responsive to his spiritual fervour – responsive with a devotion which he had come to feel, complacently, his due. But never for a moment had he entertained towards them any sentiment which merited even a shadow of reproach. His affections were centred exclusively upon himself, on God, and on his sister.

Born in Trenton of pious parents, he was one of those individuals who seem destined for the ministry from their earliest days. His father, Josiah Tranter, was an unsuccessful tradesman, a bearded, ineffectual little baker – rigid adherent of the Sect of the Seventh Day Unity – who leavened his loaves with Leviticus, whose doughnuts even had a stale and spiritual flavour. His mother, Emily by name, a quiet woman with a zealous eye, had come from a sound Concord stock. She was silent, good, sustaining successive business failures of her spouse with commendable patience and fortitude. Her happiness lay in her children, particularly Robbie to whom beneath her tranquil surface she was passionately devoted. And indeed Robert merited that devotion. He was dutiful, intelligent, instinctively fervent, never in mischief, and when visitors would pat his head and demand: ‘ Well, son, what d'you think you're gonna do?' the boy would answer quite sincerely: ‘I'm going to preach the gospel.' And with delight his high intention was fostered and encouraged. A tract even was written about him by a visiting pastor who had dwelt at the baker's house, entitled: ‘ Saved at the Early Age of Nine.' Thus he knew betimes the ardour of salvation.

Susan, inevitably, though of a tender disposition, took a back seat in the home. She was devoted to her brother; she was a good girl: but she was not a paragon. Thus whilst Robert entered theological college she was allowed without demur to enter as a probationer-nurse at the John Stirling Hospital.

The years rolled on and the day of Robert's ordination gloriously arrived. What a moment of pride for the little baker and his wife! Forgetting the toil and rigours of those years of scrimping sacrifice they dressed in their sober best and entrained joyfully for Connecticut.

But there was sad perversity about that train. Six miles out of Trenton it fouled a point and ran into the embankment. Little damage was done: only two lives were lost. But these were Josiah and Emily Tranter. Robert, of course, was painfully upset. There was a touching scene when the news was broken to him as he came out, ordained, from Unity Temple. Susan said less. She could not be expected to feel the blow so keenly. But she fainted twice in the ensuing month whilst on duty in the wards They said at the hospital she had a heart lesion and advised her kindly to relinquish the idea of institutional work.

Thus she came to live with her brother at Okeville, his first pastorate. Here she lavished everything upon Robert. She desired no more. But he, though zealous and successful, was less settled. He was restless. He had inherently an ardent and romantic mind. He wanted, though he knew it not, to see the colour and to feel the texture of the world. After one year he resigned his pastorate, entered his name for the foreign mission field.

His sincerity was known, his capabilities recognized, his step approved. It was understood that his health was not robust. Moreover, in the movement the directing mind of the Rev Hiram McAtee was turning – like Alexander's – to fresh fields of conquest. There had been, too, under special circumstances, a persistent demand from the Canaries. Robert was sent out, not to China nor the Congo, but to Santa Cruz. And Susan, of course, accompanied him

That briefly was his history. And now he faced his sister with a tolerant eye.

‘I surely am serious, Sue,' he went on steadily. ‘Believe me, I have a hunch that Mrs Baynham might be saved. There's more hope for the conversion of the scoffer than the soul which is just plumb apathetic. And it would be a great happiness indeed to me if I should be the Lord's humble instrument to bring this soul to grace.' His eye kindled: he thrilled to the glory of the thought.

She gazed at him in silence, touched by a troubled colour, and almost wistful. Then with a gust came a swirl of rain upon the skylight, succeeded by a laughing exclamation from above. There was the sound of footsteps upon the companion, and Mary ran through the doorway, her small white sand-shoes spattered, her wind-blown hair clustered with pearling raindrops.

‘It rains, it rains,' she chanted. ‘All hands are piped below.'

Elissa, Dibdin, and Corcoran followed her into the saloon.

‘By George!' said Dibs with a nautical stagger, ‘that was a squall. Sudden if you like – what?'

Elissa, having shaken the lapels of her coat, was staring at the Tranters. ‘ You've been singing,' she announced loudly. ‘How terribly diverting. And the harmonium – too, too sweet. You treadmill upon these pedal things, don't you? But you mustn't stop. You must entertain us. Delicious. Too simply delicious.' And ranging herself beside the others on the long plush settee she assumed an air of bland expectancy.

Awkwardness at once was in the air, but though Susan's flush still lingered her voice was firm.

‘We have been singing to our Maker,' she said distinctly. ‘We don't just regard that as an entertainment.'

Elissa affected a puzzled frown.

‘Can't you sing something?' she protested. ‘I mean, couldn't you entertain your Maker and us – both at the same time?'

Dibs let out his usual laugh, but Susan's eyes darkened and her lips became quite pale; she seemed struggling for words when Robert spoke.

Looking directly at Elissa he said:

‘I'll sing for you, Mrs Baynham, since you ask us. We aren't that unobliging after all. I'll sing something you might like to hear. And I guess God won't mind hearing it either.'

He swung round with a half-conscious, vaguely ceremonial air and in an undertone said a few words to Susan sitting bolt upright, rigid as a rock. For a full ten seconds, it seemed as if she would not stir, then, with a movement, almost of resignation, her body slackened, her hands reached out to the keyboard, she began to play. It was the negro spiritual ‘All God's Children,' and as the thin melodious treble of the cheap harmonium rose into the saloon Robert began to sing.

His voice was good, a baritone which, though it boomed a little in its lower and vibrated in its upper reaches, had nevertheless richness and resonance. And with full eye and straining throat he tried hard to sing his best, which made him rather emotional, even theatrical. But nothing of his mannerisms could destroy the touching beauty of the air, echoing in that cabined space and soaring outwards to dissolve thinly upon the vast dimensions of the moving sea.

Corcoran listened with lifted battered ear and faintly nodding head – to him it was a tune; Dibs, his upper lip retracted questioningly to show his yellowish teeth, was thinking of his lunch; Elissa's sulky inanimation betrayed nothing but a bored contempt. But Mary, curled upon the settee, her slender legs bent under her blue serge skirt which, drawn tautly back exposed the beauty of her thigh, listened like someone in a dream. Her eyes were utterly remote, quite heedless of the singer. Her expression, a moment ago so eager and intrepid, was now forlorn; upon her lovely face there lay a queer lost look. Shadows all fretted and perplexing floated across her vision; in her ears a fountain surged and splashed; white moonshine mingled with the fountain's note. Again she felt herself trembling as upon a deep chasm of discovery.

Suddenly the voice rose and for the last time fell to silence. No one spoke. Mary was too moved to speak. Then deliberately Elissa yawned behind her hand.

‘Thank you so much,' she said languidly. ‘I heard Robeson sing that. He did it quite beautifully.'

Tranter flushed to his ears with mortification; Susan got up with the abruptness of an automaton, began to collect her music.

Then Mary said:

‘It was lovely – lovely.' She hesitated, seeking to shape her thought, ‘Something behind it – that meaning you can't find on the surface of things.'

‘Faith and yer right, lady,' said Corcoran gallantly. ‘There's more goes on below the surface than works out by rule of three. Things you'd never dream about – the queerest things ye can't for the life of ye explain.'

There was a short silence. Then Mary rose and without a word went out of the saloon.