I'll Never Be Young Again (7 page)

Every moment was new to me on the passage to Oslo, and there were a thousand and one things to make me wonder, or smile, or curse, and the work was hard, nor did we ever get much sleep. I dare say I should have grumbled if it hadn’t been for Jake, who seemed eternally to understand the light and shade of my moments, the heights and the depths, and he had the power of knowing when to throw a word at me and when to leave me alone.

The hardships and the monotony were forgotten when I remembered that each minute we were getting farther north, and the summer evenings stretched themselves indefinitely with scarcely a breaking up of day into night. The ship would slip over the surface of the water with every rag set to catch a breath of the inconsistent wind, and suddenly the sun would be gone without my having known, and no cover of darkness would fall upon the sea, only a hard white light that seemed to be born of distant mountains and cold glaciers, a light that belonged to a rushing stream set in a forest of great hills and the silence of lakes, frozen in midsummer.We were in the midst of the sea with no land near to us, but there was something in the stark purity of the air that told us these things existed ’way ahead to the north of us, and I was aware of a dumb sorrow in me that I could not explain for the beauty of what lay around me and I had not seen.

Then I was glad of the presence of Jake near to me at all times, for a horror would come upon me because of the vast solitude of space and the solitary splendour of the regions where we were drifting; even the white stars seemed cold and terribly remote, and we, poor human beings on our little ship, were wretched and pathetic in our attempts to equal their wisdom, nor had we any right to venture upon the imperturbability of these waters.

Something inside me wept I knew not why, and my heart hungered for unattainable things that had no name, so that I would gaze upon the still sea bathed in its white light with a shudder and a strange despair, till Jake stood beside me on the deck, and the touch of his shoulder and the smell of his cigarette brought me to some sense of reality, I clutching at the sound of his voice so natural and unafraid, as a crumb of comfort and a sign of security.

Then perhaps there would be a shift of wind, and a call from the mate on the poop to go aloft or lay a hand on the braces, so there would have to be a forgetting of one’s thoughts, shy and unexplained, and a casting of mind and body into this business of wind and sail.

It would seem to me that the smell of ships and the sea was in my blood now, and I had never known any life but this.

 

We docked in Oslo early one morning before the sound and movement of the day. A large tramp steamer had come to her moorings before us, and the belching smoke from her funnel made a curtain in the sky, so that all I could perceive of Oslo in the faint light were the forms of many ships, the ugly cranes of the docks, and stretching away from this the old town on a hill, and on the left the buildings of the modern capital, with a sparkle of blue water and blue hills beyond.

Jake and I were paid off with the rest of the crew at Oslo, and we looked back with regret to the steel outline of the barque that had been our home. For all the discomfort we had endured there had been moments of glory and exultation and the thrill of this first adventure could not surely be surpassed.

I resented the idea that when the
Hedwig
sailed again there would be some strange Norwegian snoring in my cot in the dingy fo’c’sle, for places where we have lived intensely become part of ourselves, I always think. However much now Jake and I might resolve to return when the barque was out of dry dock, I felt there would be other things claiming us by then and the
Hedwig
would belong to the past as surely as the bridge over London river belonged to the past, with the sailor as vanished as the boy who trembled at death.

Even now, with the spars of the ship hidden from view by a tall crane, I turned forgetting her a little, and looked towards Oslo and the blue hills beyond. We said good-bye to the boys, some of them had their homes far away, one or two were going to look for another ship. It seemed odd parting from them, after having worked side by side and eaten and slept with them. My friend the Norwegian made some joke and waved his cap and smiled, but I knew I would not see him again.

Jake and I wandered about looking for shops in Oslo. There were avenues of trees and trams, and the colour of the buildings was yellow. I got some dungaree trousers and a pair of canvas shoes, and a blue cap with a peak, but Jake only bought a toothbrush and a map.

We found a cheap restaurant where they knew about beer, and we spread the map out on the table in front of us. I could not make head nor tail of it, I wanted to get away up north to the patches of blue that looked like water. ‘They’re the fjords,’ said Jake; ‘we’ll strike them on our way. Look here, these are the mountains, and that’s Turin right in the heart of them before you get to the fjords. We’ll have to work this way, and follow the roads.’ His thumbnail was pointing to something called Fagerness, away in the wilds, and miles from Oslo.

His voice was excited, and his hair fell over his eyes. He looked younger than I had ever seen him.

Somebody laughed at another table, and the smell of food was good. Soon it would be evening, and the lights, and more people crowding together, and outside the still air and the white sky, although it was night. I thought how splendid it all was, and how I might have been dead.

‘I want to get drunk,’ I said to Jake. He laughed, he did not care.

We went out after a while and we found somewhere to sleep that night; it seemed cheap enough, and a paradise of luxury to us after the cramped fo’c’sle of the barque
Hedwig
.

I was not tired enough and I did not want to go to bed yet awhile.

‘Come on,’ I said to Jake, and we looked about us for a theatre, but there did not seem anything much on, though he suggested trying the opera; they were giving
Tosca
, and I told him to go to hell, so once more we found ourselves in one of those café-restaurant places ordering drinks. I did not think much of the night life of Scandinavia. Even the Tivoli at Copenhagen was better than this.

‘We ought to have tried Stockholm,’ I said to Jake, but he was dragging out his damned map again and did not listen to me, so I kept calling the waiter fellow to bring us more drinks, and then looking around me, but there weren’t any girls worth worrying over, and they all had their own parties, anyway.

‘We can get a train to take us to Fagerness,’ said Jake; ‘I reckon it to be about ten hours’ journey from Oslo. Then we’ll see if we can get horses and strike away for the mountains - you can ride, can’t you, Dick?’

‘Sure I can ride,’ I said, but his words seemed nonsense to me, and the air was very thick, and his voice was coming from a long way away.

I did not know how to stop myself from smiling.

‘We ought to get out to the glaciers somehow,’ said Jake, ‘but that’s right north in another group of fjords. See here’s Sandene, and there’s the Briksdol glacier we ought to see.’

‘Oh! shut up,’ I thought, ‘who cares?’ and I tried to keep my eyes focused on something on the table, but they kept wandering away to the corner of the room where there were a couple of men, and an ugly girl who had something queer on her hat, not that it mattered to me, but the light caught it and it was aggravating not to know, and some damn fool orchestra started which muddled itself up with the sound of Jake’s voice and the movement of a passing waiter.

I began to wish I hadn’t drunk so much, but it was too late now, and perhaps none of this was going on really at all, but I was asleep, and it was happening in my imagination. It would have been a relief to sweep the things off the table and stretch out my arms, and then lay my face in my hands and not bother any more. There was no fun in getting drunk this way; I ought to be talking a lot or being amusing, or singing from sheer joy and the strength of life. I knew that Jake would be able to drink anything and even then not show the slightest sign, but walk twenty miles or climb a mountain, or maybe go out laughing and kill a fellow.

I steadied my hands on the table and looked across at him, but his face did not seem to hang at the right angle, and I wondered if it was he who smiled so stupidly or myself reflected in the glass opposite.

‘You sit quiet awhile,’ he said, ‘or d’you want me to take you home?’

There was not any need to laugh at me like that, I thought.

‘Here, I’m not drunk,’ I said.

‘That’s fine,’ he said.

‘You think because I’ve lived all my bloody life buried in England I don’t know anything,’ I went on. I supposed it was my voice talking loudly, but was not sure. It did not seem to matter whose it was.

‘Never mind about all that,’ said Jake.

The silly idiot was treating me like a child.

‘I bloody well do mind,’ I said. ‘What sort of fun d’you think I’m getting out of this? You sit there, grinning at me, with your big face. I know a hell of a lot, I do. Listen here, my father’s a damned old scoundrel, isn’t he? I’ve told you about him, haven’t I? He’s just a damned old scoundrel who thinks because he can write a whole lot of rotten poetry, he can tell me what to do.’

‘Shut up, Dick,’ said Jake. ‘If you don’t sit quiet I’ll take you out of here.’

‘I’ll go when I bloody well choose, and not before. You can’t tell me what to do any more than my father. And he does write damned rotten poetry. I could write better than him if I wanted to. Do you say I can’t write, Jake?’

‘I don’t mind, Dick, tell me about it another time.’

‘I showed my father what I’d written. I chucked it down on the desk in front of him. “Read that,” I said, and he took hold of it in his hands. He didn’t know what was coming, and he read it out loud, Jake. I tell you I can bloody well write if I want to. I don’t care what my father thinks; my poem was all about wanting to sleep with a woman and the feeling you get.’

‘Yes, Dick, I know.’

‘My father didn’t understand a word; he’s about seventy; what should he care, Jake, he’s a damned old scoundrel, isn’t he? Listen, I wrote another poem, too.’

‘Shut up.’

‘I won’t shut up, why should I? I want to talk about women and things, you don’t ever want to. You’re just damned sexless, that’s what you are. Here, you think I’m drunk, don’t you, you think I’m drunk?’

‘So you are, Dick.’

‘No, I’m not. Listen, I want to go to all sorts of places and do things; I want to be famous one day, Jake. I’ll know a hell of a lot then. Listen, I want to go to Mexico or somewhere, and drive cattle, and make a whole packet of money and then come back to Europe and bust it all in Paris on women. Here, you think I’m mad, don’t you?’

‘No, Dick, only young.’

‘That’s a damned offensive remark, anyway. I’m not young. Listen, I’m going to write a book one day.’

‘Of course you are.’

‘Here, this isn’t much of a place; what sort of a town do they think Oslo is; it’s a bloody dull town, isn’t it, Jake? No girls, nothing; come on, let’s start a fight; let’s get knocking people about; I’m going to hit the red thing off that girl’s hat, here - I wish the boys were in this crowd; come on, let’s start something.’

I remember getting up, but there did not seem to be any floor and the door was zigzagging away in the corner. I could not get the feel of my feet at all.

‘Here, let go my arm,’ I said to Jake.

‘Steady, Dick,’ he said.

I was not sure whether I wanted to cry or to burst out laughing.

‘Come on, fight,’ I shouted; ‘let’s start a bloody good row.’

A whole crowd of people got up and began knocking in to me.

‘Walk straight, you damn fool,’ said Jake.

The door crashed into my face, hurting like hell.

Everyone was being unfair, it wasn’t my fault. I sat down on the pavement outside holding on to the kerb. When I shut my eyes it felt as though somebody were swinging me upside down by my heels.

‘Here, I’m going to be sick,’ I said. And it seemed to me that life was not such a grand thing after all.

6

W
e got a train and went to Fagerness in the mountains. It was only the start of them there, but right away in the distance they stretched to the sky, covered in forest, with white falls born from the snow on the summits, crashing down into the valleys below.

At Fagerness there were wooded hills, and farms for breeding silver foxes, and a shallow silent lake surrounded by narrow beaches where nobody ever went.

Jake stayed in the village, talking to some fellow about getting hold of horses, and I found a track through a wood, full of fern and broken stone, and climbed high up somewhere surrounded by the close trees, never coming out into the light. It began to rain, and there seemed something of terror in the silence of this place, with no other sound but the steady falling of rain in the trees, and the drip-dripping of it on the leaves, till I started to run, some instinct taking me downward all the time, and I wondered what should happen if I caught my foot in a root of a tree or in the loose earth, and fell to the ground with a twisted ankle, helpless and alone. I knew how I should lie there with the rain upon my face, and listen to the patter of it on the rustling leaves above me, and no darkness would come to shroud the trees and bring a relaxation of my wakened senses, for in this land night was no more than a continuation of the fading day, and the forest would seem to stand more coldly aloof at midnight than before, strange, with an unnatural clarity scornful of shadows. So I ran away from the silence, and breaking from the belt of trees I came once more with relief sweeping upon me and a glance back over my shoulder, to the village of Fagerness with Jake standing in the middle of the road looking to right and left, wondering where I had been.

‘Where have you come from?’ he said.