Days of Your Fathers (2 page)

‘'Ere y'are, gen'l'men! Walk up and see Mr 'Arry Breown do 'is fymous act!'

The keeper unlocked the door.

‘She won't let you touch her,' he growled disgustedly. ‘I never saw a kangaroo yet that would let itself be handled.'

The little cockney entered the cage, and crept softly through the door in the partition that led to the paddock.
The kangaroo shied away from him and sat on her hind legs, startled and ready for flight. She recognised him, but he was in the wrong place. It took her some time to reconcile the contradictory fact that a friend whose essence was outside-the-cage-ness was now inside it. He sat on the step and talked to her. After ten minutes of false starts, she hopped across the paddock and rested on her tail, looking at him. He stood up very slowly and made a step towards her. She trembled and her ears moved anxiously, but she didn't stir. He talked to her until it was safe to take one more step. Once she was under the spell of his voice, he offered her the carrot. She hopped forward on hands and haunches with the ungainly motion of a kangaroo at ease and took it. While she was eating he talked to her, humourously and gently.

She lifted her head and waited for more carrot. Instead, the offering hand came nearer and touched her muzzle. She shied, but it wasn't a determined shy. She tempted him again, ears pricked like the gracious ears of an antelope. He stroked her throat and scratched her behind the ears. She lay down on one elbow. Never hurrying, always talking, he stroked the brown back and the soft grey belly. The kangaroo fanned herself with coy detachment. At last she hopped away from him.

He left the paddock, happy as he had not been happy since childhood. He simply didn't see the men who surrounded him. The keeper was generous and enthusiastic. The others, taking their cue from him, showed no less astonishment.

‘She sure loves you!' exclaimed the keeper.

‘Loves me?' repeated the little man, still dazed by his good fortune. ‘Loves me?'

The district leader guffawed.

‘And, oh boy! Is you in love with her!'

The gibe, innocently enough meant, crashed into the smooth and shining pool of his mind. He blushed, ducking his head within the butterfly collar, and walked rapidly and guiltily away.

He never went back to Kate or to the district. That was
well for him. Yet, had he done so, he would have met with a new respect. They didn't believe that he was really in love with his kangaroo.

A Jew and an Irishman

The liner plunged down the first of the great Biscay seas and met the second with a crash and shudder that set in motion all movable objects within her. The sigh of human beings, each in his prison of panelled teak or painted iron, sounded through the
Alhaurin
like a passing ghost, while a loose water-pipe, a chair sliding across the lounge, a falling shaving-brush and the crated locomotive at the bottom of No. 3 Hold mingled their sounds with a thousand others into one distant and all-pervasive groan.

Mr Flynn, finding his feet suddenly higher than his head, was inspired to raise them still higher and to kick a tattoo against the springs of the empty bunk above him.

‘Danno me boy', he said loudly, ‘ye've been shipped to Buenos Aires like an old maid's dream. Ye're dishonoured for ever, Danno, and the little yellow man that bought your soul will be driving you to market seven days a week. Or would they be eating horse-flesh, now, in Brazil? God help you, you have the drink taken, and there's none to listen to you!'

Danno Flynn heaved himself down his bunk until the small of his back was resting upon the foot of it. From this position he could reach the bell with his big toe; he rang it; propped up his heel on the rosette, crossed his legs and fell asleep again.

His precarious balance was disturbed by the opening of the stateroom door. Mr Flynn raised his knees to his chest, and a simultaneous and violent pitch of the ship rolled him head over heels so that he came to rest on all fours.

The steward seeing this tousled quadruped staring at him from the bunk, hesitated in surprise.

‘Wuff!' barked Mr Flynn, joyously appreciating his own fantastic appearance. ‘Wuff, wuff!'

With his dark skin, his hair falling over his eyes, and the black and grey of his unshaven bristles and untidy moustache, he looked remarkably like an irate sheep-dog.

‘Is there anything you want, sir?' stammered the steward, carefully keeping all but his head and one shoulder behind the door.

‘There is,' said Flynn. ‘Will ye tell the Canine Defence League of Connemara that I am shipped to Buenos Aires?'

‘It says on your card that you're going to Santos, sir.'

‘Do you have the time now, steward?' asked Danno Flynn, seeing that conversation with this literal-minded Englishman would be difficult.

‘Eight o'clock – and the second day out from London, sir.' answered the steward pointedly.

‘And where the devil are we?'

‘In the Bay.'

‘By God, if it's a bay,' said Danno, ‘the waves do be coming to dance in it from all the oceans.'

‘It's the Bay of Biscay, sir,' said the steward.

‘Then I'll be having a beer.'

‘Sorry, sir, bar's shut.'

‘Ah, to hell with you!' said Danno, rolling backwards and pulling the sheets over his head.

At mid-day the
Alhaurin
was a dripping nucleus of solidity between the low grey sky above her and the grey seas that she rode. The squalls blew up from the west, driving hard and low into the promenade decks. The spray and rain swept the main deck so that the hatches between the first and third class were low islands in a miniature surf that broke against them with every roll of the ship. There was no one about save an occasional oil-skinned seaman or officer paddling grimly to duty. Under the lee of the smoking-room two hardy Englishwomen were bundled up in chairs and regarding the Bay with well-bred contempt; they gave an impression of holding under their rugs Britannia's shield and trident.

Mr Flynn lurched out of the smoking-room, attired in an
old sweater and tweed trousers. He had neither shaved nor brushed his hair, and was wet, dirty and unsteady as the
Alhaurin
herself. He greeted the ladies loudly.

‘Good morning to you!'

‘A nice, fresh morning,' answered the elder Britannia cheerfully.

‘It is, ma'am. But it's a poor ship, God help us!'

‘Oh dear!' said the younger. ‘Don't you think she's safe?'

‘Safe, is it? She'd float with the gas that's in the bottled beer –' Danno raised his hand to his mouth and produced a sound as sudden and alarming as a sergeant-major's word of command ‘– and I ask you, ma'am, would ye have shipped to Buenos Aires and you knowing there's not a barrel of beer on her?'

‘My dear,' whispered the younger Britannia, ‘I'm afraid he's a little – er –'

‘Good
morning,' said the elder Britannia severely.

Danno Flynn took a turn round the promenade deck and looked in through the windows of the lounge and writing-room. The
Alhaurin
was carrying two hundred first-class passengers to the Atlantic ports of South America, most of them enjoying a three weeks' passage paid by an employer and without a worry except how to get the bar bill on to the expense account. But, under the circumstances, they were in no mood for conversation and glanced coldly at Danno's dark, dripping and cheerful face. He gripped the rails of the companion in both hands and slid from B deck to C deck, from C deck to D deck, and from D deck into a puddle of water on the main deck. In the hope of human society he splashed across to the immigrant saloon.

The
Alhaurin
in that spring of 1939 was doing good business on the outward voyage. In the third-class was a happy group of Czech and Polish peasants, contracted to work and – though they naturally did not know it – to die in the Chaco, whose passages had also been paid, and an unhappy group of thirty Central European Jews who had paid their own. The saloon stank of oilcloth, stale cucumbers and sweat. Wooden benches ran along the walls, and opposite
them were iron tables and uncompromising wooden chairs screwed severely into the floor.

On four benches Danno saw prostrate bodies ending in heavy knee-high boots. On another was a shapeless mound of greasy shawls that finally resolved itself into a Polish woman, her small son and a bundle of pitiable possessions that she did not dare leave in the cabin. In the recess on one side of the steward's pantry was a grave Jew in frock-coat and skull-cap staring at nothing and moving his lips, and in the other recess was a tall girl in a blue sweater and skirt with a red ribbon round her dark head. She was reading, and had bare, slim, impatient and rather furry legs which ended in sandals.

‘Good morning to you,' said Danno to the barman.

‘Good morning, sir.'

‘Have you a beer, steward?'

‘Draught or bottled, sir?'

‘Now would ye believe that I must walk through six inches of raging ocean to quench my thirst when they have but to carry a barrel up a pair of ladders?' asked Danno triumphantly. ‘I'll have draught, me boy, and will you take one with me?'

‘Thank you, sir.'

‘And the lady, too. Will ye have a beer, ma'am, or a drop of what you fancy?'

‘Thank you,' said the girl with a slight foreign accent, ‘but I don't drink.'

‘Ah, and what would ye say to that?' exclaimed Danno, unabashed.

He turned to the old man on the other side.

‘Will your reverence take a beer?' he asked.

The Jew looked up, startled, and met Mr Flynn's dancing eyes. What had been said to him he did not know, but, seeing that he had to deal with a rowdy, aggressive, powerful and incomprehensible Gentile, he assumed that it had been an insolence. He did not reply, and returned with dignity to his meditation.

‘By God, 'tis an unsociable ship!' said Danno Flynn.

‘He didn't understand you,' explained the girl. ‘My father speaks hardly any English.'

‘Like me grandad,' Danno replied. ‘But he'd understand if you asked him what he'd take – for it was not often he heard them words, he being the thirstiest man in Connemara. Beer?' he asked very loudly. ‘Will ye take a beer?'

He swayed to the motion of the ship, the surface of the beer in his glass forming an acute angle to the level of the floor. The girl's father, overcome by this phenomenon and the effort of concentrating his thoughts on a wet and noisy barbarian, collapsed upon the table with a groan.

Danno slid a hand under his shoulders and deposited him at full length on the bench with a rug under his head. His movements were so swift and confident that, though the girl had rushed simultaneously to her father, there was nothing for her to do but flutter anxiously around him.

‘What is it?' she sobbed. ‘He is worn out. Is there a doctor? Get me a doctor!'

‘I am a doctor meself,' said Danno, ‘so let you not be troubling your pretty head. 'Tis the sea-sickness, and that's all. I should not have been disturbing his reverence the way he is, making meself the last straw that turns the camel's stomach.'

‘Will it pass? Are you sure it will pass?'

‘He'll be easy when 'tis calm,' answered Danno positively. ‘Is it the first time he is at sea?'

‘The first time that either of us are at sea,' she replied.

‘Ah, to be sure! You'll come from a far country.'

‘From Austria.'

‘And have you famine there? Or would there be war with the English?'

‘Dear God! Don't you read newspapers?' she asked.

‘Every Saturday,' said Danno unashamed. ‘But would I be troubling meself with all them queer people? But I remember now. Austria – 'tis where the Nazis murdered the little president and would not let him see a priest, and dancing in the streets they were, and holding up their hands to show the blood on them. Sure, it is no place for a woman.'

‘It is,' she answered indignantly. ‘Vienna is a lovely town for any woman.'

‘Then why did ye leave it?'

‘I am a Jewess,' she replied, trying to keep a neutral tone to her voice, and furious with herself for caring what tone of voice she used, for finding it necessary to avoid either fear or challenge or pride. To say ‘I am a Jewess' brought into play a hundred complex humiliations, of which the strongest was resentment that there should be anything at all in so simple a statement worthy of such violent emotions.

‘Well, and aren't they saying the Irish are the thirteenth tribe?' asked Danno Flynn cordially. ‘Or is it the twelfth? God help me, I am always miscounting the tribes and the holy apostles. All I know, 'tis the thirteenth is unlucky.'

The smell of the saloon and the strain of listening to a foreign dialect were too much for her.

‘Oh, please!' she cried. ‘You will excuse me. I – I am tired!'

She rushed into the open air. The wind picked up her slim, swaying body and carried it away.

‘To be sure, 'tis not all of us have voyaged to Liverpool with the cattle as I have meself,' remarked Danno. ‘Will ye have a beer, steward?'

The
Alhaurin
slid sideways down an invisible slope and recovered her balance with a lurch like that of a self-conscious drunk. A crate of bottles glided across the floor of the pantry, and the steward grabbed the edge of his sink with both hands. Danno Flynn, seeing the back of his neck turn from brown to green, gave up hope of further conversation and returned to his cabin in the first-class.

Mr Flynn spent the following day drinking beer in the third-class saloon from eleven to one, and six to eleven. While the ship was in Lisbon and the bar closed, he slept it off; but when the steward, half-way down the Tagus, opened his hatch, he let in the upper half of Mr Flynn's waiting body and began to serve his charges with Mr Flynn's free drinks.

The peasant immigrants did not worry themselves to account for the continual visitor. If, having a first-class
ticket, he chose to drink in the third-class bar, they assumed – those of them who were intelligent enough to assume anything – that it was because the drinks were cheaper. To the Jews, however, he was a mystery. They could not understand why anyone should prefer the cheerless, reeking immigrant saloon to the luxury, envied and therefore exaggerated, of the first-class; but most of them, sitting in melancholy resignation before the punishment their God had inflicted on them, welcomed Mr Flynn as a comparatively pleasant chastisement. His only demand was that somebody should drink his beer and attempt to understand his conversation.