Jessop was trying to identify whom he should tell to let him go – the barman was conspicuously intent on wiping glasses – and what tone and phrasing he should use when Daniel said, “You lot singing’s put Des off us and his supper.”
“Let’s hear you then, Des,” Joe rather more than invited. “Your turn to sing.”
“Yes, go on, Des,” Mary shrilled. “We’ve entertained you, now you can.”
Might that be all they required of him? Jessop found himself blurting “I don’t know what to perform.”
“What we were,” Joe said.
Jessop gripped his clammy hands together behind his back and drew a breath he hoped would also keep down the resurgent taste of his bowlful. As he repeated the question about the sailor, his dwarfed voice fled back to him while all the drinkers rocked from side to side, apparently to encourage him. The barman found the glasses he was wiping more momentous than ever. Once Jessop finished wishing it could indeed be early in the morning, if that would put him on the ferry, his voice trailed off. “That’s lovely,” Betty cried, adjusting her fallen breast. “Go on.”
“I can’t remember any more. It really isn’t my sort of music.”
“It will be,” Daniel said.
“Take him down to see her,” Betty chanted, “and he’ll soon be sober.”
“Let him hear her sing and then he’ll need no drinking,” Mary added with something like triumph.
They were only suggesting lyrics, Jessop told himself – perhaps the very ones they’d sung. The thought didn’t help him perform while so many eyes were watching him from the dimness that seeped through the nets. He felt as if he’d been lured into a cave where he was unable to see clearly enough to defend himself. All around him the intent bulks were growing visibly restless; Mary was fingering her red tresses as though it might be time to dispense with them. “Come on, Des,” Joe said, so that for an instant Jessop felt he was being directed to the exit. “No point not joining in.”
“We only get one night,” said Tom.
“So we have to fit them all in,” Daniel said.
All Jessop knew was that he didn’t want to need to understand. A shiver surged up through him, almost wrenching his hands apart. It was robbing him of any remaining control – and then he saw that it could be his last chance. “You’re right, Joe,” he said and let them see him shiver afresh. “I’m not dressed for it. I’ll get changed.”
Having held up his briefcase to illustrate his ruse, he was making for the rear door when Mary squealed “No need to be shy, Des. You can in here.”
“I’d rather not, thank you,” Jessop said with the last grain of authority he could find in himself, and dodged into the corridor.
As soon as the door was shut he stood his briefcase against it. Even if he wanted to abandon the case, it wouldn’t hold the door. He tiptoed fast and shakily to the end of the passage and lowered the topmost crate onto his chest. He retraced his steps as fast as silencing the bottles would allow. He planted the crate in the angle under the hinges and took the briefcase down the corridor. He ignored the blurred mutter of televisions beyond the door while he picked up another crate. How many could he use to ensure the route was blocked before anyone decided he’d been out of sight too long? He was returning for a third crate when he heard a fumbling at the doors on both sides of the corridor.
Even worse than the shapeless eagerness was the way the doors were being assaulted in unison, as if by appendages something was reaching out from – where? Beneath him, or outside the pub? Either thought seemed capable of paralysing him. He flung himself out of their range to seize the next crate, the only aspect of his surroundings he felt able to trust to be real. He couldn’t venture down the dim corridor past the quivering doors. He rested crate after crate against the wall, and dragged the last one aside with a jangle of glass. Grabbing his briefcase and abandoning stealth, he threw his weight against the metal bar across the door.
It wouldn’t budge for rust. He dropped the case and clutched two-handed at the obstruction while he hurled every ounce of himself at it. The bar gave a reluctant gritty clank, only to reveal that a presence as strong as Jessop was on the far side of the door. It was the wind, which slackened enough to let him and the door stagger forward. He blocked the door with one foot as he snatched up the briefcase. Outside was a narrow unlit alley between the backs of houses. Noise and something more palpable floundered at him – the wind, bearing a tangle of voices and music. At the end of the alley, less than twenty feet away, three men were waiting for him.
Wiry Paul was foremost, flanked by Joe and Tom. He’d pulled his bobble hat down to his eyebrows and was flexing his arms like thick stalks in a tide. “You aren’t leaving now we’ve given you a name,” he said.
A flare of rage that was mostly panic made Jessop shout “My name’s Paul.”
“Fight you for it,” the other man offered, prancing forward.
“I’m not playing any more games with anyone.”
“Then we aren’t either. You won.”
“Won the moment you stepped through the door,” Tom seemed to think Jessop wanted to hear.
Jessop remembered the notice about a competition. It was immediately clear to him that however much he protested, he was about to receive his prize. “You were the quiz,” Paul told him as Joe and Tom took an identical swaying pace forward.
Jessop swung around and bolted for the main road. The dark on which the houses turned their backs felt close to solid with the gale and the sounds entangled in it. The uproar was coming from the houses, from televisions and music systems turned up loud. It made him feel outcast, but surely it had to mean there would be help within earshot if he needed to appeal for it. He struggled against the relentless gale towards the distant gap that appeared to mock his efforts by tossing back and forth. He glanced over his shoulder to see Paul and his cronies strolling after him. A car sped past the gap ahead as if to tempt him forward while he strove not to be blown into an alley to his right. Or should he try that route even if it took him farther from the main road? The thought of being lost as well as pursued had carried him beyond the junction when Betty and Mary blocked his view of the road.
They were still wearing dresses that flapped in the wind, but they were more than broad enough to leave him no escape. The gale lifted Mary’s tresses and sent them scuttling crabwise at Jessop. “Some of us try to be more like her,” Mary growled with a defensiveness close to violence. “Try to find out what’ll make her happier.”
“Lots have tried,” Betty said in much the same tone. “We’re just the first that’s had her sort on board.”
“Shouldn’t be surprised if her sisters want to see the world now too.”
“She doesn’t just take,” Betty said more defensively still. “She provides.”
Jessop had been backing away throughout this, both from their words and from comprehending them, but he couldn’t leave behind the stale upsurge of his dinner. When he reached the junction again he didn’t resist the gale. It sent him sidling at a run into the dark until he managed to turn. The houses that walled him in were derelict and boarded up, yet the noise on both sides of him seemed unabated, presumably because the inhabitants of the nearest occupied buildings had turned the volume higher. Why was the passage darkening? He didn’t miss the strip of moonlit cloud until he realised it was no longer overhead. At that moment his footsteps took on a note more metallic than echoes between bricks could account for, but his ears had fastened on another sound – a song.
It was high and sweet and not at all human. It seemed capable of doing away with his thoughts, even with his fleeting notion that it could contain all music. Nothing seemed important except following it to its source – certainly not the way the floor tilted abruptly beneath him, throwing him against one wall. Before long he had to leave his briefcase in order to support himself against the metal walls of the corridor. He heard the clientele of the Seafarer tramp after him, and looked back to see the derelict houses rock away beyond Mary and Betty. All this struck him as less than insignificant, except for the chugging of engines that made him anxious to be wherever it wouldn’t interfere with the song. Someone opened a hatch for him and showed him how to grasp the uprights of the ladder that led down into the unlit dripping hold. “That’s what sailors hear,” said another of the crew as Jessop’s foot groped downwards, and Jessop wondered if that referred to the vast wallowing beneath him as well as the song. For an instant too brief for the notion to stay in his mind he thought he might already have glimpsed the nature of the songstress. You’d sing like that if you looked like that, came a last thought. It seemed entirely random to him, and he forgot it as the ancient song drew him into the enormous cradle of darkness.