The job would be a long one, though a few pieces latched in every evening would one day get it done. ‘It’ll take us quite a while, Sailor.’
He fitted up a corner, but she supposed he had got that far before. ‘We’ll do it, my love, never you fear.’ He worked along the top line till it was almost done. ‘The sooner the better, though.’
The jumble of ships brewing slaughter touched anxiety in her. ‘You think so?’
Flattening every piece face up till none were hidden, he turned away as if he also was disturbed. ‘We’ve made a start, but let’s go up for a kip now. We can have another go after tea.’
She expected to see more of him after he retired from work, but he often went out alone and came back half seas over at well gone closing time. Pubs would put the towels on, then lock the doors, with favoured customers still inside. When he stood in for the new caretaker and went straight from school she had no idea where he ate, if he did, because he didn’t care for supper. Persuading him into a few mouthfuls, she guided him upstairs, to get his shirt and trousers off before he fell on the bed.
Some evenings she sipped a glass of whisky to ease her mind, soothing the tremor that something would happen to stop her seeing him again. Every possible mishap pictured itself, especially as he drove the car so blithely. She looked at the clock, and when such notions rushed back with their worry, she had another drink of whatever was on the sideboard.
‘Never be afraid of things like that, my own dear love. After the perils I’ve been through in life nothing can happen to me.’ He closed the door, taking a video, and a bottle bought at the pub, from the pocket of his naval jacket.
‘Where have you been, though?’
He sat with a hand on each thigh. ‘I was at The Black’s Head,’ he said in a gentle tone. ‘Ask anybody, and they’ll tell you. I got talking to Arthur Towle about old times. Nobody could see us under the smoke of our pipes. Arthur was a stoker, and we once served on the same destroyer. Afterwards I had to walk around to get some fresh air into my faculties before driving home. Tomorrow, we’ll go arm in arm, though, you and me together. I can’t have the love of my life feeling neglected.’
‘I’ll never feel that, Sailor.’
A piece of grit seemed to irritate his eye. ‘Even so, it’s only when I’m with you that I can be sure of not seeing it.’
‘Seeing what?’ She couldn’t be certain whether he meant a spectacular musical comedy, or a queen walking the Bloody Tower with her head under her left arm.
He smiled the question away. ‘Something that’s finished and done with.’
‘Tell me about it.’ The pain seemed too much for him. ‘But don’t, though, if you don’t want to.’
‘There’s nothing to tell. It’s so far in the past it’s not worth the candle.’
She put an arm around his shoulder. ‘Just as you like, Sailor.’ If there was so much to talk about that he couldn’t then there wasn’t. When he had to, if ever he did, she would hear whatever it was. They stayed up till midnight with their arms around each other, seeing the video and drinking from the bottle he’d brought.
He came back one day and unloaded six tins of paint from the car boot. ‘We’re going to decorate the house.’
Trestles were borrowed from Bill and Edna, and Sailor hoisted himself up to transform the walls into a shining scape of white. With his cap on and pipe going, he came down to lay newspapers over carpets and furniture. Ann, in shirt and jeans, did the woodwork of cupboards and skirting boards, wondering why she had waited so long to have the house re-done. ‘Now we can see each other, Sailor.’
‘Even the cat,’ he laughed, wiping the end of Midnight’s long tail with a rag soaked in turps.
In the garden he got out of his seat to dig a bed and weed the borders, though his energy seemed diminished. A trellis fence screened them from neighbours, and at the lower end clouds showed above the roof tops. He had built a feeding board for the birds, and collared doves drove sparrows from the peanuts. They rarely flew away when Sailor walked out. She watched him talking to them. ‘What do you say to each other?’
‘We have a chat,’ he grinned, ‘about the oceans we’ve crossed. We compare notes.’
He gazed at the sky, a battle with the west wind imminent, clouds distorted as if into shapes he needed to see. Midnight lay in a hump on his knees and he stroked him into a purr, another black cloud under his control.
Craving a swallow at the bottle, or wanting to read the newspaper, his knees parted slowly to let the cat fall. He filled his pipe as if putting shreds of his soul into it, then puffed out shapely billows of smoke.
When the weather was bad they picked away at the puzzle of Nelson’s last battle, Ann listening to Sailor’s stories as if she hadn’t already heard them, wanting to know what happened next in those half forgotten. He assembled a patch of the main deck, while she worked at the glowering French ship that had given so much slaughter.
‘We’ll need a month of Sundays, but we’re getting there.’ His remark signalled a break from the gloom of billowing cannon smoke behind the Victory’s deck. He reached for glasses and a bottle from the sideboard.
They played games of draughts, alternated by tots of whisky and mugs of tea. Sailor drooped in the armchair and slept. She wondered about the travels of his dreaming mind, and one afternoon he came out of sleep with skin like pale clay, dull eyes looking but not seeing. ‘Oh,’ he moaned, ‘I’m glad I’m back.’
She held his hands. ‘Of course you are, Sailor. You’re with me. But where did you go?’
The old smile was distorted by uncertainty. ‘I wish I could put a name to it. All I know is I don’t like being there. I’m in a boat, you see, and the alarm bells go. The ship’s sinking and the sky’s all dark. The flashes could be guns or lightning, because there’s no sound. It never bothered me when I was young, so why does it now?’
He tried to shut his past from her. If she knew everything she would love him more, but if she never knew anything more about him she wouldn’t love him any the less. Maybe it was only the war which tormented him. She hoped so. His medals were in a case on the mantelshelf, and she had seen the paper with his name written there, telling what they were for: ‘In the Service of the Principles of the Charter of the United Nations; Korea; the Defence Medal; the Pacific Star; the Africa Star; the 1939–1945 Star.’
‘You’re all right now, Sailor.’ Tears on her cheeks said she couldn’t be sure. ‘Nothing bad can happen while you’re with me.’
‘Don’t worry, love.’ He stroked her face. ‘We’ll be all right. You’re the queen, and I’m the king. That’s the only thing as matters.’
The pain of her spirit, so hard to endure, was dulled by a drink of whisky. ‘It’s the best thing out for lessening life’s little obstacles,’ he said.
You had to believe him, for who knew better? He must have fought through many obstacles in his life, and keeping the memories in watertight compartments was his way of making the pain bearable. Perhaps not talking made them worse, but dousing their pain with alcohol brought her and Sailor closer than if he had relinquished his guard and told all that gnawed at him.
Sidney’s prize carriage clock was no longer in its place on the living-room shelf, and she stared at the space as if to make it come back. It was plain they had needed the money, and Sailor had sold the clock that he knew was precious to her, because how else had the whisky that he brought back every day been paid for? His savings must have finished long ago.
The thought that he might be out of the house so much because he had found another woman almost caused her to faint. She couldn’t wait for him to fall against the kitchen door, but put on her coat to go out and look for him.