Road To The Coast by John Harris

Author:John Harris [Harris, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: House of Stratus
Published: 2012-07-26T22:00:00+00:00

Six

There appeared to be nothing more to be said. Dodgin seemed to have made the decision for all of them.

Carroll jerked his tunic straight. He seemed annoyed, as though he hadn’t expected the crew of a sad old tramp like the Ballaculish to show any signs of spirit. He hitched up his belt, then as he looked at them again his expression changed once more, as though he felt that a crew as wretched and devoid of discipline as this one seemed to be couldn’t possibly withstand him for long after all. They were a grubby and pathetic lot, it was very clear, and obviously the fag-end of the Merchant Service who could find no better ship than the lopsided old Ballaculish.

The odour of moping dockside streets and all their years in cranky, meanly-found ships, beggarly with poor food, obsolete as the gallows and crewed by the smallest possible number of men, was on all of them. All the unsavoury places they had known in the world from Tiger Bay to Capetown’s District Six and back again stood on their faces with the disappointment of lifetime of dreary forecastles and glory holes, and there wasn’t one of them who looked as though he had the moral strength to defy anybody.

As he turned away, however, Dainty raised his head. There was nothing courageous about his twisted little figure, ravaged by the booze he’d put away over the years, but as he peered through his bent spectacles with his dim and watering eyes there was something about him for a moment that showed a glimmering of pride.

Dodgin stood alongside him, his weasel features by no means the countenance of a stoic, an angry, hostile face whose expression suggested that he had long ago been cheated of everything that was decent and human, and bitterly resented it. For a moment, though, they were at one in their indignation at Carroll’s infamous suggestion. By whatever muddled reasoning they had reached their separate conclusions, it was clear that in their own peculiar way they had not after all wholly lost their pride. They still possessed not only more courage than appeared on the surface, but a modicum of honour too.

Only Grundy’s sickly face, flushed still from drink as it swung from one to the other of them reflected uncertainty.

Carroll watched them for a moment, as though he sensed that something had gone wrong somewhere, then he fished in his pocked and produced a folded sheet of paper which he tossed among the cups and saucers on the table.

‘I’ll leave this,’ he said. ‘Perhaps later, when the anxiety of the moment’s passed and we’re all a little more calm, you might like to read it. It only requires signing. It covers everything.’

‘What’s he leaving?’ Dodgin demanded.

When Ash explained, he snatched the paper up so viciously he knocked a cup flying to the deck. It smashed neatly into two halves which rolled round in half-circles and stopped, rocking gently on their curved surfaces.

‘That’s what I think of your lousy paper,’ he shouted at Carroll, slamming the sheet to the floor after the broken cup.

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