Уильям Моэм - The Narrow Corner

“Not on your life.”

“Well, it’s like this. I was in Sydney. I ’adn’t ’ad a job for the best part of two years. And not for the want of tryin’, mind you. Just bad luck. First–rate seaman I am and got a lot of experience. Steam or sail, I don’t mind what it is. You’d think they’d jump at me. But no. I’m a married man too. Things got so bad my old woman ’ad to go into service, I didn’t ’alf like it, I can tell you, but there, I just ’ad to lump it. I ’ad a roof over me ’ead and three meals a day, she give me that all right, but when it come to lettin’ me ’ave ’alf a dollar to go to the pictures and get one or two drinks, no, sir. An’ nag. Never been married, ’ave you?”

“No.”

“Well, I don’t blame you. They’re near, you know. Women can’t bear partin’ with their money. I been married twenty years, and it’s been nag, nag, nag all the time. Very superior woman, my missus, that’s what begun the trouble, she thought she demeaned ’erself by marryin’ me. Her father was a big draper up in Liverpool, and she never let me forget it. She blamed me because I couldn’t get a job. Said I liked bein’ on the beach. Lazy, idle loafer she called me and she said she was fair sick of workin’ ’erself to the bone to give me board and lodgin’ and if I didn’t get a billet soon I could just get out and shift for meself. I give you my word, sometimes I just ’ad to ’old on to meself like grim death not to give her a sock on the jaw, lady though she was, and no one knows that better than what I do. D’you know Sydney?”

“No, I’ve never been there.”

“Well, one night I was just standin’ around in a bar down by the ’arbour I used to go to sometimes. I ’adn’t ’ad a drink all day, and I was just parched; my dyspepsia was somethin’ awful, and I was feelin’ pretty low. I ’adn’t got a penny in me pocket, me what’s commanded more ships than you can count on the fingers of your two ’ands, and I couldn’t go ’ome. I knew the missus’d start on me, and she’d give me a bit of cold mutton for me supper, though she knows it’s the death of me, and she’d go on and on, always the lady, if you know what I mean, but just nasty, cuttin’ and superior–like, never raisin’ her voice, but not a minute’s peace. An’ if I was to lose me temper and tell ’er to go to hell, she’d just draw ’erself up and say: none of your foul language ’ere, Captain, if you please. I may ’ave married a common sailor, but I will be treated like a lady.”

Captain Nichols lowered his voice and leant over in a very confidential manner.

“Now this is quite infra dig. , you know what I mean, just between you and me: you don’t know where you are with women. They don’t behave like ’uman beings. Would you believe it, I’ve run away from ’er four times. You would think a woman’d see what you meant after that, wouldn’t you?”

“You would.”

“But no. Every time she’s followed me. Of course, once she knew where I’d gone, and it was easy, but the others she didn’t know any more than the man in the moon. I’d ’ave bet every penny I ’ad in the world that she wouldn’t find me. Like lookin’ for a needle in a bundle of ’ay, it was. An’ then one day she’d walk up, quite cool, as if she seen me the day before, and not a ’ow d’you do or a fancy seein’ you or anythin’ like that, but: ‘You want a shave if you ask me, Captain,’ or: ‘Them trousers of yours is a disgrace, Captain.’ … I don’t care who it is, it’s the kind of thing to break anyone’s nerve.”

Captain Nichols was silent and his eyes swept the empty sea. In that lucid night you saw quite clearly the thin sharp line of the horizon.

“This time I been an’ gone an’ done the trick, and I ’ave got away from ’er. She don’t know where I am and she can’t find out, but I give you my word I wouldn’t be surprised if she was to come rowin’ over that sea in a dinghy, all neat and tidy, she’s always the lady to look at, I will say that for ’er, and come on board and just say to me: ‘What’s that nasty, filthy tobacco you’re smokin’, Captain? You know, I can’t abide anythin’ but Player’s Navy Cut.’ It’s me nerves. That’s what’s at the bottom of my dyspepsia, if the truth was only known. I remember, once I went to see a doctor in Singapore as ’ad been very strongly recommended to me and ’e wrote a lot of stuff in a book, you know ’ow doctors do, and he put a cross down. Well, I didn’t ’alf like the look of that, so I said to ’im, ‘I say, doctor,’ I says, ‘what’s that cross mean?’ ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘I always put a cross when I ’ave reason to suspect domestic unpleasantness.’ ‘Oh, I see,’ I says; ‘well, you’ve ’it the nail on the ’ead, doctor; I bear a cross all right.’ Clever fellow ’e was, but ’e never done my dyspepsia much good.”

“Socrates suffered from the same sort of affliction, Captain, but I never heard that it affected his digestion.”

“Who was ’e?”

“An honest man.”

“Much good it did ’im, I lay.”

“In point of fact, it didn’t.”

“You’ve got to take things as you find ’em, I say, and if you’re too particular you won’t get anywhere.”

Dr. Saunders laughed in his heart. It appealed to his sense of humour to think of this mean and unscrupulous blackguard in abject terror of his wife. It was the triumph of spirit over matter. He wondered what she looked like.

“I was tellin’ you about Fred Blake,” the skipper continued, after a pause to relight his pipe. “Well, as I was sayin’, I was in that bar. I said good evenin’ to one or two chaps, cordial like, you know, and they said good evenin’ to me and looked the other way. You could see them just sayin’ to theirselves: there’s that bum again, cadgin’ around for drinks; ’e ain’t goin’ to get one out of me. You can’t wonder I was feelin’ pretty low. Humiliating, that’s what it was, for a man as ’ad been in a good position like what I ’ave. It’s terrible ’ow near a fellow can be with ’is money when he knows you ain’t got none. The boss give me a dirty look and I ’alf thought he was going to ask me what I’d ’ave, and then when I said I’d wait a bit, ’e’d say, well, I’d better wait outside. I began talkin’ to one or two chaps I didn’t know, but they wasn’t what you’d call cordial. I cracked a joke or two, but I couldn’t get ’em laughin’, and they made it pretty plain that I was buttin’ in. And then I saw a fellow come in I knew. Big bully of a chap. What they call a larrikin in Australia. Name of Ryan. You ’ad to keep in with ’im. He ’ad something to do with politics. Always ’ad plenty of money. He lent me five bob once. Well, I didn’t think ’e’d want to see me, so I pretended I didn’t recognise ’im and just went on talkin’. But I was watchin’ ’im out of the corner of me eye. He looked round and then ’e come right up to me.

“‘Good evenin’, Captain,’ he says, very friendly like. ‘How’s the world been treatin’ you these days?’

“‘Rotten,’ I says.

“‘Still lookin’ for a job?’

“‘Yes,’ I says.

“‘What’ll you ’ave?’ he says.

“I ’ad a beer and ’e ’ad a beer. It pretty near saved my life. But you know, I’m not much of a one for believin’ in miracles. I wanted that beer pretty bad, but I knew just as well as I know I’m talkin’ to you, that Ryan wasn’t givin’ it me for nothin’. He’s one of them ’earties, you know; slaps you on the back and laughs at your jokes as though he’d fair bust, and it’s, ‘’Ullo, where ’ave you been ’idin’ yourself?’ and, ‘My missus is a grand little woman and you should see my kiddies,’ and all that; and then all the time ’e’s watchin’ you and ’is eyes look right through you. It takes in the mugs. ‘Good old Ryan,’ they say; ’one of the best.’ There are no flies on me, doc. You don’t catch me so easy as that. And while I was drinkin’ my beer I said to myself: ‘Now, then, old boy, you keep your eyes skinned. He wants something.’ But of course I didn’t let on. I told ’im a yarn or two and ’e just laughed ’is ’ead off.