Home From The Sea (13 page)

Toby gave a small start and turned toward him with an almost sheepish expression. “I’m being a boor. I apologize.”

“Don’t apologize. Explain.” Jim frowned around at the familiar cellar with its storage barrels, crates and cases. Sugar, flour, salt, tea and coffee were kept on the shelves in one corner; the kegs of rum and barrels of ale were stored, stacked one atop another, in the opposite corner, and between the two were crates of nails, coiled rope, assorted tools, discarded kitchen pots and rags, all manner of flotsam set down here against the day it was needed, now long forgotten and decaying.

“You’re still looking for something of Charlie’s, aren’t you?” Jim wondered, more a statement than a question. “The same thing you expected to get when you arrived here, not knowing he was dead,
rest
his soul.”

“Rest his poor soul,” Toby echoed philosophically. He shrugged. “Forgive me, but you know I am.” He hesitated and wore an apologetic look as he confessed, “I had a good look around upstairs while I was fixing the shutters. I even had a quick look around in the loft, while I was working on the thatch, in case…” He breathed a gusty sigh. “Sorry. I just thought, maybe Charlie might have hidden some of his things away where you and your father didn’t find them, and –”

“And you might get what you came here looking for, after all,” Jim finished. “You didn’t find anything, then?”

The fair head shook, and Toby gestured with the lantern in his right hand. “I’m not seeing it here, either.”

“
What’s it look
like?”

“It doesn’t matter, Jim. Honestly.”

“I told you, I’ll help you look. Whatever it is you’re searching for, I probably don’t even know I’ve got it, so – take
it,
and good health to you.” Jim swiped the lantern out of Toby’s left hand and played it around the cellar, casting evil shadows into the corners where moss grew, blue-green and malodorous. All he saw was the same old barrels, kegs, crates, cases.

“It doesn’t matter.” Toby was heading back up as he spoke. “There’s a lot to move – stay where you are, and I’ll pass the smaller things down to you. You know where you want to stash all this rubble?”

“Rubble?”
Jim echoed.

“
Stuff
, then.” Toby was back in the kitchen, and peered down at him, face lit weirdly from below.
“Ready for the small pieces?”

It took less time than Jim had imagined
to move
the mountain of
rubble
, and he gave some thought to the sheer convenience of having a second pair of strong hands at the tavern. Toby would be useful.

If he stayed; and all at once Jim was uncertain.
Toby was here
looking
for something, and if he found it – and even if he didn’t – what was there at The Raven to keep him here? He sighed as he finished stacking the oddments to make most of them accessible, even while he knew he would not need anything here for six months, by which time it would be forgotten.

He was done when heard Toby’s voice from up above, sharp with concern: “Whoa! It’s all right, Bess … come here, girl. It’s fine. It’s nothing.”

The leg was acid-hot, as if with a knife wound, as Jim climbed back up. He heard the second roll of thunder, startlingly close at hand. The first had been muffled by the cellar, but Bess was shivering by the hearth and Boxer was wide-eyed, poised on his toes as if he would run at any moment, though there was nowhere to run to. Without being asked, Toby lent his hands to get the trapdoor back into place. It landed with a solid
thud
of ancient timber on older stone, and Jim blew out both lanterns. They sat smoking on the shelf while he came to the fire to warm his hands, and he and Toby listened to the wind. It had begun to howl softly in the chimney now, like a tormented soul trying to escape some hell.

“
It’s
gunner be bad,” Mrs. Clitheroe said sagely. “
It’s
gunner be bad as the big un when I were a slip of a lass, an’ four big ships was sunk between ’ere an’ Portsmouth. Me uncle were on one of ’em, an’ ’is wife come to live
wi
’ us after, cuz the old bugger were a swine
fer
drink an’ left ’er
wi
’
nuthin
’ when the sea took ’im.”

“Damn.” Jim felt a shiver, right to the bone. He lifted a brow at Toby, who nodded.

“I’ve seen a few bastard storms, and this one’s got the makings of a demon.” He was moving as he spoke, heading for the tavern’s front door, which he opened a mere crack to step outside.

Even that small gap let the wind whip in and Jim was quick to haul the wood back into place. They stood under the thatched eaves, watching surf crash onto the beach under a sky streaked with great arcs of lightning. The horizon was invisible in a blue-gray haze of rain, but Jim saw the whitecaps of waves, twice the height of a tall man, and the sea was gray and seething as molten lead.

A demon, Toby had said. The term was apt. The rain stung Jim’s face and he was wet to the skin in the few moments they watched the sea and sky, trying to read nature’s intent. No one was on the coastal path and no ships were in sight. They should be well out by now, with sea anchors set and a light crew of experienced hands aboard, secured to ride it out.

Lightning sheeted out the sky and the thunder boomed a scant second later, making Jim duck while his heart leapt into his throat. Toby’s hand on his arm drew him back to the door. They wrestled it open and shut, and dropped the bar across it. Jim only used the bar when a sea wind came screaming in, strong enough to test the bolt. In all his years at The Raven this was only the fifth time he had slammed that bar into place, and with the shutters hammered down, the tavern was effectively locked against the world.

“Dam
nation
,” Toby whispered, hugging himself. “I’m soaked to the bone. Will I get the big fire going out here in the taproom, or will we stay in the kitchen?”

“I’m for staying in the kitchen,” Jim decided. “It’s smaller – easier to heat and light.” He plucked at his shirt and made a face. “I’m as wet as you are. You got dry clothes?”

But Toby made negative noises.
“Only stockings and linen.
I don’t have much, as you well know.”

He only seemed to own what he could carry, and he had come looking for Charlie Chegwidden, expecting his fortunes to change. Jim sighed. “My things ought to fit you. You’re thinner than I am, but I never wore my clothes tight. You’re taller than I am, but – the same.”

“You’re going to give me your castoffs?” Toby asked in a tone of such bitterness, Jim shot a startled look at him.

“I’m going to lend you some clothes before you catch your death of cold and die at my feet,” he said sharply. “If you’re even half as good at the balladsinger’s trade as you say you are, you’ll earn nice money here and in a week you can bugger off to Exmouth and buy whatever you like.”

Toby had the grace to duck his head with a sheepish smile. “Sorry. I’m a little out of practice at being sociable.”

“So I notice.” Jim marched past him, to the kitchen door. “Edith, we’re going up to get dry. How long till supper?”

“It’ll be a good ’
alf
an hour,” she told him over her shoulder as she slid a black iron tray of pasties onto the big hob to bake. “Take thy time,
thee’s
got plenty of it.”

So Jim headed for the dark well of the stairs without a glance back at Toby, only knowing the man was following by the footfalls a few paces behind him. He lit a brace of candles on the chest of drawers on the landing, and used one to light four more on the table at his bedside. The room was dim, chill,
almost
dank. Though the shutters were secured, a draft was getting in somewhere, cold on his cheek and making the candles stutter as he set them down.

He kept his clothes in two brassbound trunks by the foot of the bed. A seaman had left the chests here for safekeeping and never returned, nor even sent a message. More than three years after the man vanished, Jim baled up his belongings and pushed the bundle into a corner in the loft, in case he ever reappeared, but the trunks were useful. He humped them into his own room, where they remained.

He threw them both open and stood back. “Pick what you like,” he invited Toby, bluff with a moment’s embarrassment. “It’s all the same to me.”

“Is it?” Toby lifted out a handful of shirts and held them to his face.
“Your things.
They smell like you.”

“The smell of me didn’t bother you last night,” Jim began, on the point of taking umbrage before he saw the soft smile on Toby’s face. “Oh.”

“They smell of …
you
,” Toby repeated. “Jim Fairley, you’re just as out of practice at being sociable as I am.”

“I reckon I am, at that.” Jim raked all ten fingertips through his damp hair. “I’ve known a few men, it’s true. Well, more than a few!
But none for more than a week, a lot for less than a day and some for less than an hour.”

“I know how it is.” Toby had dropped the wet clothes fast and reached out now, offering his hand.

Jim took it. The fingers were cold, wet.
“For godsakes get into dry things!
My mother used to say a man caught sickness in his lungs and his bones, running around in wet clothes. One day the ailment makes away with us all – it’s the way your old mate Charlie died, as far as John Hardesty knew.”

The mention of Chegwidden darkened Toby’s mobile face, and he turned his attention to the clothes. A shirt, a pair of britches; the stockings and linen he had dumped at the foot of the bed – some of the few items he owned, carried in the capacious inside pockets of his coat.

He was thin, hard, pale in the candlelight, and shivering slightly. On a whim, Jim snatched up a blanket and wrapped it around him, and Toby held it there as he sorted linen from britches. “If you don’t mind, I’ll dry off a little before I put on your clothes, or they’ll be almost as wet as mine.”

“Don’t get dressed on my account.” Jim managed a creditable chuckle. “You’re a pleasure to look at, in the state the gods created you.”

“Skinny and covered in scars,” Toby said disdainfully.

“Maybe you are.” Jim only shrugged. “Maybe that’s what I like.”

The remark won him a chuckle. “You’re a rare one,” Toby informed
him,
studying him, head on one side.

Something in the dark eyes made Jim’s pulse quicken. Without waiting to be invited, he took Toby by the shoulders and pressed him back, down, onto the bed. He sprawled here, all wiry limbs and fair skin, and Jim took the time to look long and hard at him, before he went down beside him and began to touch. A thousand caresses began at his face and breast and ended at the nest between the lean thighs; and there, Jim put his head down and began to work, while his own body throbbed eagerly to life.

He took his pay in groans and heavy breaths. Toby never seemed to make much noise, no matter how excited he became, but when the blood must have been like liquid fire in his veins, he whimpered. Jim heard all this, and slowed his fingers and tongue even while he relished the salt-sweet taste of Toby, and the heat and bulk in his mouth. He knew Toby was close and pushed him on now, urged and encouraged, before he held his breath and drank down the rush of blood-hot seed.

The whimpers abated, and for a moment he thought Toby wanted to rest. Jim waited there, grateful for the respite himself as he felt the tense shaft begin to relax against his lips. But what Toby wanted was very different. Astonishingly strong hands took him by the shoulders, brought him around and dumped him down, and before Jim could even curse Toby had him bare from breast to hips. Long arms went around him, lifted him into the right place, and then Toby moved against him and the straw
colored
hair was tickling Jim’s belly.

It had been too long, Jim thought with some tiny corner of his mind that was still thinking while he and Toby moved together. It had been much too long, and life had a way of racing by, never to be recovered. Was The Raven his prison as well as his home, as Fred Bailey maintained? For a moment, as Toby’s mouth, his tongue, brought Jim to a crest of ecstasy and excitement he had seldom had the time or liberty to court, he thought it might be.

The rattle of the shutter before the gale, the battering of rain lashing sideways off the sea, welcomed him back to reality. Thunder growled; the sea roared in counterpoint. Toby lifted his head and looked along at Jim with dark eyes and a wistful smile.

“You’re a rare one indeed,” he said thickly, as if his lips were still reluctant.

“I could say the same.” Jim sat up, reached for Toby’s head and kissed him hard. “Do you taste yourself on my tongue?”

“As much as you taste yourself on mine.”
Toby stretched his shoulders and plucked at the blanket. “Damn, do you feel that? It’s getting colder.”

“And I’m hungry,” Jim added. “You want to eat?”

“We just did.” Toby licked his lips.

“Yes, well you’ll forgive me if I saved a corner for pie and ale!” Jim swung his legs off the bed and deliberately refused to notice the pain in the left. “Get dressed – I’ll take your clothes down to the kitchen, put ’em over a chair in front of the fire.”

“You’re too good to me,” Toby accused as he pulled an old shirt of Jim’s over his head. It fit him as well as it fit Jim, and looked fine on him.