Sailors on the Inward Sea (3 page)

That institution is housed in one of those utilitarian buildings one sees all along the waterfront, its brick facade pierced by small windows that appear like black squares from the street, the cavernous foyer lit by a few dim bulbs in sconces that hardly brighten things, the gloom filled with echoes of footsteps and voices and doors being opened and closed. I had just stepped inside when I saw Harrison, my old friend who owned the
Nellie.

He was resplendent in his formal getup, looking as if he had the keys to the exchequer tucked up in his ample waistcoat. As I had
been away two years running a merchantman out of Singapore, Harrison and I had a good deal of catching up to do. When in due course he asked why I was at the Port Authority, I sheepishly confessed that I was interested in buying a boat, a barge to be exact.

“What on earth for?”

“To live on.”

I made a vague gesture toward the high ceiling and asked if he knew where I might find a chap called Simmons.

“Listen, Malone, why don't you wait a bit . . . unless you're afraid someone will beat you to it.”

He couldn't call the thing “her,” it was that low in his esteem. You can imagine how I felt.

I said, “I don't imagine the line will be very long. What's on your mind?”

“The
Nellie.
I have to let her go. I've known for a few weeks.”

“Why?”

“Arthritis.”

He held out his hands and I saw the swollen knuckles. His doctor had been after him to stop sailing, but he had persisted until the exchange of pleasure for pain had become one-sided.

“I'm sorry,” I said, shaking my head. “We're getting old.”

“We
are
old. Conrad has gout, keeps him down for days at a time.” He regarded me seriously. “Since you're in the market, why not take a look at her? She's in need of some refurbishing. It's important to find the right person for her.”

Excited, torn between sympathy for Harrison having to give her up and the sudden hope that I might escape the ugly brown thing that belonged to Simmons, I thought of the
Nellie
's graceful lines and the way she handled under sail, easy enough for me to manage alone. Then I imagined a long string of zeros stretching her price to a king's ransom.

“I couldn't possibly afford her.”

Harrison screwed up his eyes and mentioned a sum far less than I expected. “Or thereabouts,” he added.

Anything in the immediate vicinity was still beyond my means, but I couldn't get her out of my head. At the same time, in my mind the seiner took on a startling resemblance to water-logged driftwood.

“All right,” I said, “let's have a look.”

SHE WAS TIED
up at Tilbury Dock, her faded white hull gleaming, the lines that descended from the crosstrees looking as delicate as a spider's web. There were signs of rust. Near the bow a section of the deck was discolored by rot. But these were minor imperfections. I imagined the pleasure of working on her, the satisfaction, the way she felt moving before the wind, which I had never forgotten. I had a sentimental attachment to every spar and plank. I wanted her. There wasn't anything that would have made me happier.

After inspecting the cabin we came up and Harrison lighted his bulldog, disappearing in a cloud of sweet-smelling tobacco that always perfumed the deck when the five of us were together. The smell brought with it a vision of him and the rest of the gang sitting around a lantern, listening as I went on about my adventures.

He gave me a long, appraising look.

“What do you think?”

“I can't put my hands on that kind of money.”

I hated saying so because I assumed it would be the end of the discussion. He squinted at me through the smoke.

“How much can you afford?”

I did a quick calculation. Coming close to what he was asking meant serious debt, more than I could take on. Money had never
been very important to me, but it was now. I was embarrassed having to admit that I had amassed so little in my lifetime, ashamed mentioning what I could pay, a ridiculously low sum, humiliatingly low. When I did, Harrison's eyebrows went up. I think he may even have flushed.

“I told you,” I said, trying not to sound too despondent, “that's the best I can do.”

He pursed his lips, nodded, stuck out his hand.

“Done.”

It took a few moments to understand. Harrison was doing me an enormous favor, changing the conditions of my future when I was at the point of accepting the barge as my home. He was always generous, even in the old days before he could afford it, but this crossed over the line to charity. My pride rose up, a miserable sensation because I knew I was going to lose far more than I'd gain.

“You'd be giving her away for that,” I said. “I can't let you.”

“Don't be stupid, Malone. You know I never do anything that's not in my best interests. It's true and I make no apologies. The fact is, the money doesn't matter. I don't need it. What I need is the
Nellie,
but I can't have her. I've been dreading the prospect of selling to a stranger more than I can tell you. I'm serious, Malone. This way she stays in the family.”

“Well,” I said.

“I want you to have her. You'll be doing me a favor.”

Our exchange was more subtle than I have suggested. I have left out the gestures and the expressions, the almost bullying tone of his voice, all of which made it a bit unclear whether or not I was compromising myself, but he had given me a way to hang on to my self-esteem and once I knew that it was all over.

“There's no one I'd rather do a favor for,” I said with a grin.

After stopping at my bank, we went to his office, where his clerk
drew up the bill of sale. We signed and then the clerk handed it over to me and I held it reverently, our signatures still wet, the
Nellie
's name as big and bold as a lighthouse. The document had the gravity of a sacred text for me and I must have looked rather foolish staring at it, though Harrison was discreet as always. Once the clerk had put it in a thick envelope, Harrison produced a bottle and we had a drink to celebrate, reminiscing a little about the old days. He said he hoped we might all get together again and I told him we would. We both missed those gatherings, missed the camaraderie, the interesting talk, and looking back on that moment now I seem to remember that my nostalgia and probably Harrison's as well was colored with a desire to defy time and turn back the clock awhile to happier days. We had a drink to that too, and when we touched our glasses we looked into each other's eyes and what I saw in Harrison's he must have seen in mine, an acknowledgment of all the years that had slipped through our hands.

He accompanied me out to the street, where we said good-bye. I watched him go back inside, disappearing like an apparition into that blank-faced building where I had just escaped meeting Simmons, acutely aware of how unpredictable events are, how often what we think will happen turns out to be a surprise for good or ill. For most of my life an unexpected piece of good luck has generally made me suspicious. I am not sure I understand exactly why that is the case; maybe it has to do with seeing too many things go bad for no apparent reason in my own life as well as in others', but as a consequence I usually test my luck, weigh it carefully in my mind. But that day I was in no mood to scrutinize. My luck was as solid as a piece of gold. I walked away from the Port Authority in a kind of ecstasy, oblivious to the heat that only hours earlier had oppressed me, the
Nellie
floating in my mind's eye like some fine vessel in a dream.

I hailed a cab and returned to the boardinghouse, poking my
head into the kitchen to tell the landlord I was leaving before I hurried upstairs and stuffed my belongings in a battered sea chest. It made a terrible racket thudding on the stairs as I dragged it down to the foyer, though to me it sounded like a fanfare. I paid my bill with what must have been a rather foolish grin, and when the landlord asked if I were moving to another boardinghouse I said, no, I was through with boardinghouses, which was not to say that I hadn't thoroughly enjoyed living awhile in his. The fact of the matter was that I had just bought as fine a boat as he had ever seen and was about to move aboard.

At the docks I tipped the cabdriver lavishly after he helped me carry the chest below. It was late afternoon by the time he left, getting on toward six o'clock. On its way down through the haze, the sun brought out a glow in the sickly yellow air that must have been a depressing sight for the citizens of the town, a perfect color for the predictors of the Apocalypse who were very likely still wandering through the park. I felt sorry for the city's good citizens and fanatics alike, sympathizing with everyone who could not see that the sky was really burning like gold leaf, like a dome in St. Petersburg, on fire with color fit for a czar. I believe that I watched it as reverentially as a Druid peering along a sighting-line at Stonehenge until the brightness began to fade.

And then, in the last soft light of dusk, with the estuary turning more deeply violet by the minute, I went aft and put my hands on the
Nellie'
s wheel, repeating over and over, like a child, that she was mine.

I
BECAME MASTER
of the
Nellie
on 17 June, 1924, not quite two months before Conrad died. All things considered, he was lucky to have survived so long after that disastrous journey up the Congo in 1890, where a parasite-bearing mosquito descended from the green air somewhere near Matadi and infected his aristocratic blood. Of course, you know as well as I do that he hardly got off scot-free from that quixotic adventure. I have friends who live with the lingering effects of malaria but none who suffers from malarial gout, a filthy disease he fought with a great deal of courage, his other ailments filling in when it was resting. As a consequence, visiting Conrad was always an uncertain business. You never knew whether he would be up to it or, if his physical problems were in remission, if his mercurial mood would let him tolerate company. I remind you of this because I had been eager to see him even before Harrison and I fell to reminiscing about the old days. Coming into possession of the
Nellie
added a new urgency. The boat had a special meaning to Conrad and me that you don't know about, Ford. I thought that, all things considered, he would be pleased, but I wanted to surprise him and so I wrote, saying only that I was back in London, newly retired. Rather than proposing a meeting time, I asked him to write to me at my post office address and set a date.

I started my restoration project the next day. A number of things needed attention, the bad patch on the deck being particularly offensive since it was in exactly the spot where we used to gather our chairs in a circle and swap yarns. I spent that morning at a lumberyard
going through all the teak, sighting down the planks to make sure they had been properly dried and were not warped, finally choosing a dozen. Over the next week I worked until dark ripping out the rotten boards with the help of a man from the lumberyard, who saved me from hurting my back. The rest I did alone. Planing the wood, drilling holes for dowels, laying the planks in was painstaking work that called on all my carpentry skills. As I recall, I had just put on the first coat of sealant when I received a letter from Conrad saying that he and Jessie were coming up to London in a few days to consult with their doctors and would be staying at the Brown Hotel. I rang him as soon as they arrived, using the telephone at a nearby ship chandler's shop. The news about Jessie was alarming. She had gotten increasingly lame and there was some doubt whether the treatments would have a lasting effect. Conrad had his own problems, but for all that he was eager to see me and we agreed to meet the next morning.

“In your rooms?” he said.

“Not exactly. On my boat. I bought the
Nellie.”

I explained what had happened and he was politely enthusiastic, saying that he was happy for me and Harrison. It would indeed have been terrible if she had fallen into some stranger's hands. His feelings about the
Nellie
were very complex, the boat having become something of a personal icon to him as a writer. She was also linked to an old anxiety of his that went back a quarter of a century, almost to the beginning of our friendship, regarding a matter concerning the two of us and his character Charlie Marlow. It had never meant much to me, but vexed him deeply, so much so that whenever we saw each other, or spoke on the phone after a long absence, he needed to be reassured that I had kept my mouth shut. He asked again while we were on the phone, not in so many words—he never did—falling back on indirection that would have made Henry James
proud. I answered in kind, peppering my response with pronouns. “Good, good, good,” he said. Then he asked how he could find the
Nellie
and was clearly pleased when I told him that she was tied up at her old slip. “I'm glad you're back,” he said. “There's something I've wanted to talk to you about for a long time.” There was a sense of urgency in his voice, but when I inquired what it was he told me it was too complicated to discuss on the phone and rang off.