Arthur McCann Read online

  Arthur McCann And All His Women

  By Leslie Thomas

  Scanned by Bill

  One

  Although I have never kept proper records I know that, during the past twenty years, I have had women in London, New York, New Guinea, Barry Dock, Liverpool, Hartlepool, Sydney, Lydney, Paris, Harris, Bora Bora, Pago Pago, Hong Kong, Kings Lynn, Florence, Adelaide, Fanny Bay, Natal, Pentecoste, Corpus Christi, Bilbao, Balboa, Brest, Leghorn, the Hindu Kush and the Rann of Kutch; five Newports, three Kingstons, two Birminghams, God knows how many places starting in Saint, San or Sante, dozens called Port Something, and a minor Australian settlement known as Birdsville.

  Not necessarily in that order.

  I recall the towns, the cities and islands, and the ships that took me there better than most of the women, which is, I suppose, to be expected. But some of the women were beautiful. (My father, a prize swine, always said: 'Never open your eyes in the morning and have to close them again'.) Some were clever, some were happy, some were sweet and good. I even thought once or twice, that they were truly mine.

  My father is well known for having bedded five of his wife's six sisters. My grandfather died at the door of a cheap dance hall and my great-grandfather is buried in a ship's barrel in Port Desire in South America. His wife thought he had gone to Bristol for the day.

  With this pedigree it is, perhaps, little wonder that my life has been both adventurous and empty. I have searched this world, tried everything and found nothing. All I wanted was a true, endearing, enduring, undying, sensual, sensible, sexual, spiritual, all-embracing, all-everything, exclusive and particular love. Again and again and again. Women have been my failing and my failure. I seem to be a man who simply cannot say no. You could say it has been my hobby. But looking back on it now, I see it has been both a long and foolish journey. Oh, Mrs Nissenbaum of Riverdale, New York (and your tragic dog, Errol Flynn); Oh, Belinda with whom I spent my wedding night (although I was married to Pamela); Oh, Pamela, for all the years the port to which the hapless sailor returned (but who admitted other vessels); Oh, Monique at Port de Loupe and Rose Kirby of England; Oh, the young girls, and those old enough to make me know better, that I have held in my clasp through torrid nights and cold, in all hemispheres, creeks, continents, backwaters and famous cities. Oh, the lies, the thrills and the pain. Oh, Angie. Oh, God. Oh, shit.

  To tell you the truth I don't know what the hell I am doing on the freezing deck of this ship, five thousand tons of rust and rubble if I ever saw it. I can't help feeling that somewhere, years ago, there was a mistake, a big mistake as far as I'm concerned. I've turned all the wrong corners and here I am in the icy Thames on a day like toothache, London one side, marshes the other, and January every bloody where. It's worse than Phillips Elbow.

  The crew are aboard, miserable bastards, and the skipper is playing the piccolo in his cabin. I don't know whether he's drunk or whether he just likes the piccolo, because I've only just joined myself. Chief Officer Arthur McCann, recently relieved of captain's duties (in painful circumstances) sailing for the south, which is a place you then sail from to go north or east or west. Eventually you disappear up your own jacksie; or reach Port Desire.

  I don't mean necessarily the actual place where my great grandfather sits dead in his private barrel. But some stinking hole like that. As I said, my great-grandmother really thought he had gone to Bristol for the day. But he sidled away to South America and while he was making love to a twelve-year-old Indian girl a potty dog bit him on the arse and he died the terrible death of rabies. I know this for a fact because I've been to the place and I got a native to read the story on his grave. The Indians thought he was a secondary god so they buried him sitting in this barrel and put a headstone over him. That he died in Port Desire only filtered back after years and my great-grandmother was too old and deaf to care then, anyway. She was always sewing ribbons on her hat saying she was going to Bristol to look for him.

  I've watched this crew come aboard today. I know some of them of old and they know me. Hobbling up the gangway with their belongings like refugees staggering five hundred miles instead of fifty yards from a taxi. You can actually see the grumbles growing on their faces when they see the ship. By the end of the first week they'll all know me and I'll know them.

  They're like wandering children. If they had a survey on which profession cries the most the seafarer would come top. Usually for himself. They are afraid because the sea is big, going out on a voyage like infants trembling towards the lavatory in the dark. They boast about the places they've been and seen and yet they often don't know the world is round. All they know is they set out and they come back, and at the end they say they'll never go to sea again. They always say that.

  But I'm one of them anyway, a one-man Flying Dutchman, condemned to sail this way and that until death. And with no reason now. At forty-two where is there any place for me, better than any other? Unless the girl in Auckland or Gosport meant what she said, which she didn't.

  I have had my adventures, however, and although I look enviously tonight at the lit buses taking men to their homes, sitting there on the top decks behind their papers, out of the snow; although I envy them, in my discomfort, for their comfort and for their everyday loves, I know that not one has ever been to Bodie's brothel in the Arctic.

  The night they auctioned off the new girls at Phillips Elbow, the thick snow of the new winter was humming down from the Pole and there was a fresh skin of ice right across the river. They did the auction at Bodie's place, each man discreetly approaching either Mr or Mrs Bodie and mentioning a price he was willing to pay to be first with one of the new season's crop.

  Bodie's is the most northerly house of ill-repute in the world, well above the Arctic Circle (unless something hitherto unsuspected is happening at Novaya Zemlya). Nobody can get in and out of Phillips Elbow, except by occasional ski-plane, for at least four months of the year, so the anxiety to be first with any of the fresh consignment is understandable because they quickly get worn out. Inside as well as out it was a wild night; by tradition, Mr and Mrs Bodie trying to fight off the eager hands of the trappers and lumbermen as the girls walked with professional allure among them in the big bar. The noise was tremendous, smothering the tunes played by the three-piece string band, also newly arrived for the winter. Before the evening was through they were soaked in beer anyway. Music came a bad third at Bodie's.

  I had a pain that night, low in my chest, and I was not enjoying the novel festival as much as I should have been. I was just as new there as the girls for I had only flown in on the ski-plane that afternoon, relief captain for the 55 Northern Swan, lying in the cold Phillips River.

  A bottle of whisky in each fist, my predecessor, Captain Happy Harrington, had reportedly gone off into the forests saying he was going to feed the grizzlies and had not been seen since. The river would be iced up in a week and the ship had to be loaded and clear before she was trapped in the Arctic until spring.

  ‘Last steamer of the year,' the pilot had said banking over the jagged river and the settlement spread at the bend that gave it the name of Phillips Elbow.' She's nearly there. Sure won't be anybody on the field.'

  I could see my new command sitting alongside the blunt jetty just before the river took its sharp turn. Two thousand tons and even from the plane she looked as though she leaked. Moving up towards her was a fat river steamer, smoke streaming joyously from its pencil funnel. I could see there were already blobs of ice on the river.' Which field ?' I said.

  'Landing field,' he answered laconically. 'They'll all be waiting for the steamer. Look at the cars making for the landing stage down there, and all those guys waiting.'

  ‘Nobody to see us down, then,' I said with concern looking o
ver the side to where the red shirts were dotted like poppies by the river.

  ‘Nope,' he said. ' I guess we'll have to let ourselves in.'

  It was then that I first felt the pain. I thought it might have been the discomfort occasioned by the prospect of the unassisted landing. I curled up for a moment but it went and I straightened in the seat.

  'You laughing about something?' said the pilot.

  'No, I had a pain,' I said.

  ‘If you don't have one now, you sure soon will,' he replied morosely. ‘The grub down there is the worst anywhere in the world. Guts-acheville, it certainly is.'

  'There's a man on the landing strip,' I pointed out with relief. He was waving the orange discs.

  ‘Devotion to duty,' grunted the pilot. He turned the nose down and we went across the river, then the congregation of men at the landing stage. They,were so engrossed with the approaching steamer that scarcely a face turned up to the ski-plane. As we came into the landing strip the man with the discs waved them indiscriminately a few times, then turned and bolted towards the landing stage. The pilot hummed understanding^ and set the plane down. We reached the exact point where the orange discs were lying in the thin snow. The hurried footprints set off from there.

  'Is the steamer that important?' I said to the pilot. 'I suppose it's the mail's coming in.'

  ‘Females,' he said. I jumped down and he threw my bag out and followed it.

  ‘Oh, women,' I said.

  'Sure, female women. It's the last steamer in for the season and they always bring the new girls on it.' As he said this he was apologetically, but quickly striding away from me and then he broke into a run and went off like a horse in the direction taken by the disc man's footprints.

  I picked up my bag and walked after him. The pain came on biliously again, stopping me, then receding. I went into the shack at the end of the airstrip but there was no one there, only a tethered husky asleep by the stove. A telephone began to ring. I picked it up.' Sammy,' said an urgent voice. 'Sammy.'

  ‘Sammy's gone to the steamer,' I said with confidence.

  'What they like?' he almost screamed. 'What they like?'

  'Who?'

  'Ferchristsake!' he shouted. 'The wimmin! The new wimmin.'

  ‘I don't rightly know,' I said.

  'Yer don't know! You sweet or som'ing?'

  'I've just got here,' I said irritably. I had the pain again. 'Anyway the steamer's not in yet.'

  'Listen, mister,' he said like a threat. 'I don't care for the sound of you. I'm stuck up here on Monro Mountain and I can't get down because o' my leg, and you can't even be civil to a man.'

  'I'll get Sammy to call you,' I promised evenly. 'But I don't think there's going to be much left over. Everybody's down there waiting. Why don't you hobble down?'

  He let out a half cry, half moan. The husky looked at me sleepily. I went out and followed yet another set of tracks towards the town. All roads led to the jetty for soon they were joined by others and then more, curving in to the main path like the branches of a tree.

  As I trudged further down into the small wooden town I began to realize fully what a remarkable day that was in Phillips Elbow. Apart from a few women, standing at their doors looking sadly or sarcastically towards the jetty, the settlement was empty. Puzzled dogs wandered about the main street. Some of the women looked malevolently at me as I passed and one called an obscenity in my direction as though I were responsible for the weaknesses and behaviour of the entire male sex.

  Then a young woman, clinging like a classical portrait of despair to a doorpost, called to me: 'Tell Neddy Shanks his wife is waiting for him, please mister. Tell Neddy Shanks to come back.' She crouched close to the doorpost and hugging it began to weep.

  ‘I'll tell him if I see him,' I promised, because I was sorry for her.

  'The bastard will be in the front line, mister,' she sobbed after me. I nodded but went on without turning.

  At the jetty the events were amazing. I suppose that being cut off from the world for so much of time has an effect on people that we who are free to come and go as we wish cannot understand. The men were six deep, jostling and pushing, cursing each other, waiting for the gangplank of the steamer to be lowered. She was standing against the jetty now, two cables ahead of my own ship. There were some people on the deck, watching and waving, but no assembly of women.

  'Harry!' bawled an anxious voice from the shore. 'Are they aboard? Have they come, Harry?'

  A man grinned from the top deck rail and shouted back. 'They sure are Benjie. They're just powdering their noses down below.'

  This information was greeted with a whoop of anticipation that I had only heard in the wildest of westerns. The men were on tiptoe, eyes afire, tongues lapping over lips. But before the expected troupe came ashore there came another diversion. A small motor bus pulled up at the jetty and a dozen women, wretched wenches, deep in furs, and cigarette smoke, disembarked and filed like prisoners towards the steamer's gang plank. I was amazed at the treatment they received. Shameful insults were thrown at them, and enormous male raspberries; some were even pushed and jostled as they flounced through the mob, each carrying a small hand-case and attempting a defiant swing of the buttocks. I realized immediately that this was the return of the last consignment of whores, weary, reviled, but not without spirit. One of the larger women returned a rudery delivered from the front rank of tormentors with a powerful push that sent one of the shorter men careering back into his companions.

  But, such was the anticipation for the new arrivals, that there was no serious scene. The final veteran woman reached the top of the gangway, turned her raddled face to the crowd, shouted mysteriously; 'You've all got it!' and raised two stubby fingers as an illustration or a curse.

  Yells and foul language flew after her, but then a new anticipatory silence dropped over the men. There must have been a hundred or more, quickly quiet as though some miracle was about to be wrought. I remembered Neddy Shanks. Sometimes I do tactless things out of a sort of inborn and idiotic perversity, bordering on supreme stupidity. This was one of them. 'Neddy Shanks,' I called out. 'Neddy Shanks.'

  Various men pointed towards the front row, where Mrs Shanks had correctly forecast her husband would be stationed. 'What d'you want? Who is it?' I saw, to my relief that he was a small man, tough and weasel-featured, but small, and I waved in a comradely manner and called: ‘Your wife asked me to tell you to go home.'

  All round me huge faces burst with merriment, men began rolling to one side and another with laughter and from the front I detected a swift passage being forced between the bodies and I knew that Neddy was coming after me. He arrived angrily from between the shoulders of the men immediately in front. 'My wife?' he snarled, looking up nastily. 'What you been doin' with my wife, mister?'

  'Nothing at all,' I said with caution. The pain had come back. I felt myself go white. I hoped he would not hit me in that region. ' I was just passing and she asked me to give you the message.'

  I did not like the look of him at all, but a sudden shudder in the crowd took his attention away. The girls were on the way. He began to make a return burrow through the big men, calling back to me: ‘You keep away from that decent married woman, pal, or I'll be attending to you.'

  The girls were greeted with a deep, happy, roar from the men of Phillips Elbow. The first one, 'face and body enveloped in what Chicago or Montreal imagined an Eskimo wore, stood nervously at the top of the gangway, with the others pushing timidly behind her, and in the middle of them a sharp looking couple, Mr arid Mrs Bodie, urging them ashore.

  I suppose there were about twenty girls. They came ashore and were immediately pushed and touched and embraced by the ecstatic northerners. Kisses and pinches rained on them despite the violent tactic employed by the Bodies to keep the men at bay. Although he was red-faced and in late middle age Mr Bodie, using arms and hands like buffers, pushed the biggest men aside, calling: 'Get off, pigs! Get off or you're on my blacklist!' Mrs Bo
die was repeating this threat in a squeaky English voice like a retired Sunday School teacher, 'Blacklist! Blacklist!' It apparently carried a good deal of power because the men began retreating and waving their hands impotently in the air around about the troupe of new arrivals. Safely through the crowd the girls mounted the bus which had recently disgorged their used predecessors and drove off through the surrounding excitement, fists and hands banging on the outside of the windows, and promises shouted in the rudest terms.

  When the bus had gone the men of Phillips Elbow stood around discussing, then arguing over, what they had seen of the arrivals, but the party was over and they began to go back towards the town. Some of them, including unmistakably Neddy Shanks, began to run.

  Even the most charitable estimate of the majority of the new girls at Bodie's that night would not have given them much chance of avoiding starvation in any location other than immediately behind the lines of a nasty battlefield or somewhere like Phillips Elbow.

  The bar was like a barn, full of acrid smoke and smells and noise, the lofty roof rattling like a loose sail in the northern wind. MacAndrews, the inebriate chief engineer of my new command, was with me to try and drink away his depression over the strange departure of Captain Harrington. He was almost incidental to the proceedings that night, hanging morosely on to a bottle and a glass, and moaning: 'But he loved bears. He really loved them.' Every half an hour my pain would come back, sharper and filling the cave just under my lungs. The next morning we were due to sail. The ice would be thick in a few days.

  Men were sitting ten to a table and the new girls were wobbling in and out of the narrow openings. Hands and suggestions went out towards them, but both Mr and Mr Bodie cruised around like escorting gunboats with a convoy, knocking away the most demanding grasps and crying their dire cry: ‘Blacklist! Blacklist!' This continued to be a potent deterrent because the men forced themselves back, howling with the agony of the sacrifice, sometimes, and banging their fists with exasperation on the deal tables, as the whores paraded. Most of those girls would have looked better if they had kept their furs wrapped around them. Some were anxious and overweight, rolling dangerously against outstretched limbs and beer and whisky bottles stacked on the tables' edges.