Alligator Playground

Call Me Sailor

‘CALL ME SAILOR,’ he said, as if there had been a saint of the kind way back in history and it was the proper first name for a man like him. Such a moniker must fit somewhere, and time would tell, though women collecting their kids from school saw what a suitable name it was as he stood by the pillar, enjoying a short pipe of tobacco such as no shop ever sold, and looking at white clouds above the slate roofs of the estate as if to foresee the malice of any weather on its way.

The tall leathery-faced man replaced by Sailor had given no hint of his departure, such birds of passage being soon forgotten, until one morning Sailor stood by the gate in dark blue dungarees as if it had been his post for years.

Short white hair came to a line at the back of his neck, and his face was of such pinkness from being scrubbed every morning that the features had little time to settle into place until the afternoon. Prominent lips didn’t go much towards handsome, they all agreed, and there was little definite shape to his nose, but the lit up blue of his eyes suggested absolute ease with himself, and confidence in getting unlimited trust from others.

Such eyes shone as if he would like to own any woman who looked at him, though most saw him as no more than an amenity for which they were grateful. Some regarded his smile as too facile, a turn of unhappiness to the underlip noted by those whose lives hadn’t been of the calmest.

Kids took to him because his authority gave them a frisson of fear, which brought obedience. The previous caretaker, with his permanently worried face, saw them as grains of sand slipping through his fingers into danger before he could get them safely across the pavement, but Sailor let them know he was their shepherd, his smouldering briar indicating the lollipop woman at the roadside: ‘They’re all yours, Madame! Take ’em away!’ Out of his orbit, they spread alone or with whoever met them into the various drives and crescents of the estate.

Ann noticed him on her way to get fags and a paper from the little Pakistani supermarket on the main road, even before she had agreed to look after Teddy Jones while his mam and dad went on a ten-day bargain holiday to Turkey. The job wasn’t as easy as she’d thought. Six-year-old Teddy was a cheeky little swine, and she had only to go into the garden to shake crumbs for the birds to come back and find him opening cupboards and pulling doilies all over the floor.

If you wanted the house to stay neat you couldn’t let him out of sight for a second. While she was vacuuming the bedrooms he hauled her dictionary off the shelf and scrawled its pages with a biro, for which he got a slap across the face. He could tell Bill and Edna what he liked, because after they had gone she heard that other neighbours had turned them down flat when asked to take charge of him.

On the second afternoon Teddy ran from the school gate like a limb of Satan and headed straight for the road. Mrs Grant the lollipop woman, about to step out and halt the traffic, was touching her glasses into their proper focus when a black low-slung hatchback came at such a rate that, everyone agreed, if kids had been on the crossing the school would have commemorated a day of tragedy for ever and ever.

Teddy was blank of mind, and nobody could guess the paradise he was running to. Nor had they time to think of him as a goner, because like everything that happened too quick it had already happened.

Nor could anyone swear they saw Sailor move. For someone close to sixty he made lightning look slow. If Teddy survived to be an adult he would probably never recall the not ungentle arm holding him inches from speeding bumper. Maybe he thought it was a game, even when Sailor, once they were clear, put the biggest fist he had seen to his face and said: ‘Run like that again, lad, and you’ll get this for your dinner. And not with custard on it, either!’

Something must have got through, because Teddy’s smile didn’t reach full growth, though he squirmed free to strut by the lollipop woman, who was still too shocked to give him the guidance he obviously needed to keep him in the land of the living.

Ann saw it all, and got hold of his arm for the sort of shaking that would send him into the middle of next week and back again without him knowing where he had been, but it turned short and feeble because there didn’t seem much in his young head to rattle. ‘You stupid little thing. Didn’t you see that car?’

‘What car?’

‘I got his number.’ Mrs Grant, as good as her word, wrote it on a pad. ‘There was four young lads inside, so you can bet it was nicked.’

Sailor tapped his pipe against the wall and put a boot on the dottle. ‘They’ll get away with it, though. Nobody cares enough to put ’em inside for five years.’ He went back to his stand at the gate. ‘I’d hang the buggers. I’d let ’em know life’s a battlefield.’

Teddy gripped her hand for comfort, called her auntie on the way home, and wanted to know what was for tea. She blamed herself, thinking that if she had been at the gate two minutes earlier he would have run to her instead of going like a newborn bull across the pavement. Bill and Edna would have screamed blue murder with grief if he had been killed or injured, so it was thanks to God he hadn’t. Only on opening the front gate did she realise the caretaker hadn’t been properly thanked.

She tucked Teddy into bed and told him a story about a family who lived in a copse on the edge of the estate, of how the favourite came running out of school and got killed by a car. When he began to cry she read nursery rhymes till his head fell sideways, then eased him snugly into the sheets.

In the living room she switched on the telly. ‘You’d do better reading a book. Or why don’t you knit me a scarf? Better still, come out with me for a walk.’ Sidney had wanted her to talk. He always said she didn’t talk enough, and now he was three years dead she regretted the time wasted on silence.

He had been chief clerk in government offices downtown, and when he laid his head on the desk, one afternoon, its weight was such as to stay there till he was put lifeless onto a stretcher. The placid black tom called Midnight brushed her ankles, and for months after Sidney’s death had roamed the house looking for him. Still not one for talking to people, she conversed in silence with herself, as if it were her only means of thought. The cat slept on the hearth, the black hump suggesting it hoped to see Sidney on waking up, which was more than she could say for herself. All the same, she imagined the smell of Sidney’s tobacco, and recalled two unopened tins she hadn’t had the heart to take from the cupboard upstairs.

‘That was good, what you did yesterday.’

She had come early so as to thank him properly. In mid-April it was impossible to tell whether the wind was blowing blossoms or it was about to snow. ‘I never saw anything so quick.’

He stood away from the pillar, as if her compliment came from an officer of the watch. ‘He was lucky.’ He boomed at Teddy: ‘Weren’t you? Nearly had to carry you home in a plastic bag, didn’t we? People would have thought you was a goldfish pulled out of a pile-up on the motorway!’

He squirmed from Sailor’s grip, and Ann fastened his coat, sending him along the asphalt path towards the school door. ‘You saved his life, and that’s a fact.’

‘They teach you to look sharp in the Navy.’ His blue eyes burned her, and she turned away, yet didn’t want to leave. Other women would soon be at the gate with their children. ‘I was in from a boy, and ended up master artificer. If you weren’t quick you were dead. It was a harder school than this one.’

Half a bottle of whisky, or maybe rum, would have made a fair present, but it only occurred to her now. ‘Do you like being a caretaker?’

He plaited his fingers and pressed so that every knuckle cracked, signalling embarrassment at her interest. ‘It’s a doddle, but don’t tell anybody, or they’ll kick me out and hire a robot. I was made for it. I have a cold sluice at six, and start at seven to fix the heating. Then I make sure everything’s shipshape before the kids swarm in. I knock off at eleven, and don’t go on again till they come out. There’s a bit more to do when they’ve gone home, but it suits me.’

Any ounce of trouble in his life must have been taken very easily. He liked to talk, and she to listen, but she let him get on with his work, and went to buy something for Teddy’s tea, apart from his favourite sausages or hamburger steaks.

On Teddy’s final afternoon she got to the school even before Mrs Grant at her lollipop station. Sailor was filling his pipe from a leather pouch as he sway-walked between the trees of the playground. She had put on lipstick, changed into a white blouse buttoning at the neck, and switched into a skirt instead of everyday slacks. The mirror had shown her skin as smoother since Sidney’s death, though it could be the light, or wishful thinking that said dark skin kept its texture more than fair. At forty there was only a fleck of grey in her tied back ponytail.

She took the two tins of Gold Block from her plastic bag. ‘I thought I would give you these. My husband bought them three years ago, so it might have gone off. I don’t like things going to waste.’

Whorls of smoke drifted by her eyes, distorting what she tried to see. ‘Gave up the weed, did he?’

‘He had a heart attack.’

A woman teacher popped kids out of the door like beads from the end of a string. ‘It’s just the sort of tobacco I like. A lovely gift, for an old matelot.’

‘Have it, then.’

Thinking he would take her hand, she drew it away and hoped he hadn’t noticed, but his eyes saw everything. The lollipop woman stopped a bus and two cars, letting the first group across. Ann looked over his shoulder for Teddy. ‘I’m glad you can use it.’

Eyes lost their glitter as the head came close with its odour of aftershave and tobacco, and mint on his breath. A neat cut from the razor embellished his cheek like a small decoration. ‘I pack it in at seven.’ He must have known she willed him to go on, even if only to get it over with. ‘After half an hour’s spruce up I light off to The Black’s Head for a noggin or two. Why don’t you come and sit with me?’

For all he knew she might have married again. She hadn’t, but the longer you grieved the more you got used to living alone, and didn’t fancy getting bogged into anyone else’s life. On the other hand what harm was there in going for a drink? She felt warm and flattered to be asked but said, as if sixteen and knowing it never did to say yes the first time: ‘I have something on tonight.’

He was too much a man of the world to let it bother him. ‘Another occasion, then.’ The light came back in his eyes as he turned to watch the children, sorting out Teddy as if he was special, and bringing him towards her. Teddy sensed the subtle borders of aggravation while playing with the cat, and never drew out its briar-like claws. She was pleased he was learning, and well enough behaved by the end of his stay that when Edna called over the fence to say they were home she felt as sorry to see him go as he, for a few seconds anyway, was reluctant. They came round to give her the twenty pound note promised for Teddy’s keep, and a metal teapot covered in funny writing as a present from Istanbul.

The house was emptier so she talked to the cat. When it didn’t seem to listen she muttered to herself. She couldn’t be going scranny, she told her face in the mirror, because she knew she was doing it.

The hands of the carriage clock were afraid to move, though the precision of its time-keeping fingers and metal case kept her in mind of Sidney. He had handed her the receipt for safety, which showed the clock had cost two hundred pounds: ‘It’s better these days to have a pedigree object in the house than money in the bank.’

Such a prized item kept its value by giving satisfaction to look at, and pleasure to turn in the hand, more loyal as a clock than Sidney had been as a husband. If there had been any twinges in his unreliable heart he would have firebacked all that was in the shoebox at the bottom of his wardrobe.

The first letter leafed out let her know what he had been up to with a girl in the office. Rage blended with grief to keep the shock going. His constant gallantry of calling her the perfect wife damaged her forever. The perfect wife should be good enough for any man unless, being so perfect, she was too much for him to tolerate. No one could be the perfect wife, and he had only said she was so as to blunt any suspicion of his pathetic gallivanting. The real torment was that she had never thought to wonder.

Her chance of an affair with someone where she worked as a receptionist had been turned down with more contempt than necessary. She regretted it, having fancied him enough, though deceiving Sidney wouldn’t have been easy. He was too well aware of all the dodges, and such behaviour was easier for a man. When she lost her job he talked her into working part time at the local library, but last year they too had cut down on staff. At least he had left her with a pension.

After he died she had the telephone ripped out, and sometimes wished she hadn’t, though who would call her these days? Because Sidney had used it to talk to his girlfriend when she was out shopping, she couldn’t stand the sight of it and thought good riddance.

The sun in a glow of turquoise and yellow over the opposite roofs dimmed the living room, and she didn’t relish pushing in the telly button to look at pictures so far removed from her feelings. A drink at The Black’s Head would be nice, but if she met Sailor what would she have to say?

She went up to the bedroom to see if anybody was there, then came down to check the kitchen and clothes’ cupboards. Nobody was. A rattle of the curtains shut off the first star of the evening, and a man beyond the hedge cycling home from work. Being shut into her domain after dark was a relief, but her legs wouldn’t let her sit down. She put on her coat to go out and meet the chip and burger van trawling the estate for trade. A mutton chop in the fridge could wait, and veg in tight plastic would still be fresh tomorrow.

Clouds moved in and it looked like rain, but the smell of an unusual supper made hunger her first real sensation of the day. A police siren, warbling like someone fleeing the pains of hell, joined a chorus of ambulance and fire engines clearing the road to save souls who had not yet been there. She tightened the belt of her coat and hurried on in case the van pulled down its shutters and went elsewhere.

Half a dozen people talked while they queued. She stood on the pavement, her brain not latching into their words. A car slowed to take the corner, and there was still enough light to spot the peculiar sway-walk of Sailor crossing the road as if they had a date. He had on ordinary trousers and an open bomber jacket over a white shirt, which she smiled at the idea of him ironing. She noted a tie fastened in place by a gold pin, and shoes instead of the boots he worked in.

He sensed her amusement and said: ‘I haven’t seen you collecting your boy from school lately.’ Foistering young Teddy onto her must be his flattering way with women. Another was not to give time for comment: ‘The old chip van’s useful for supper a couple of times a week. Not that I mind cooking, though never a meal as takes more than half an hour. Life’s too short to stand long at a stove.’

Any woman could have told him that. ‘What do you cook?’

He put a hand on her back when the queue moved and, as if to excuse the liberty said: ‘Sausages, if I can find good ’uns. Sometimes steak, or chops, but always soup first. Or I might make a stew that lasts a day or two. Then a tinned currant pudding with treacle or custard on top. Or a bit of fruit: I must have dessert, and it’s nice to ring the changes.’

‘Don’t you ever cook fish?’

His face turned into a gargoyle of distaste. ‘Fish eat people. They love drowned sailors.’ When the couple in front were served he took another opportunity to put a hand on her shoulder, which she accepted as friendly. ‘Here you are, duck, it’s your turn now.’

She got her bundle and wished him good night. He held out a hand to be shaken, a mauler so big it covered hers. They now knew where to find each other, but he might have a wife in every port.

After emptying Midnight’s supper into his dish a week later she went to the chip van but Sailor didn’t turn up. Perhaps the drizzle put him off. Ten minutes went by, and she wondered why she was getting her feet wet and letting the fish and chips lose their warmth in her hands.

He said when they had been served, not caring that the chip man and two bikers would hear, and using the van’s light to make sure she saw his earnest blue eyes: ‘Why don’t we go back to my abode and eat our stuff there?’

On the way she was unable to see what was in it for either of them, and stayed silent, holding his burger and chips bundle while he stooped to fit the key in the lock. In the entrance hall a line of footwear from wellingtons to bedroom slippers shone ready for pulling on. Luckily his irony was obvious when he told her in the small kitchen not to look too closely at the dust. She’d never been in a neater place. He switched on a big old fashioned radio she hadn’t seen since being a kid in the fifties. The green eye glowed and news seemed to come from every wall at once. ‘Haven’t you got a television?’

‘I can see all the pictures I want in my head, without even having to switch on. There are plenty I don’t like, as well.’ She didn’t ask what they were. Scoured pans rested on a white formica top, the empty sink polished, plates and dishes wiped and stacked on a shelf. He put their coats on hangers and took them to a hook in the hall. ‘I had ants when I moved in, but they didn’t last long.’

It wasn’t cold, but he popped the gas fire into light, the spent match going into a glass dish special for the purpose. ‘The walls are nice and clean,’ she said.

He carried plates, knives and forks from the serving hatch, as well as bread and butter, and a huge green enamel pot of tea. ‘I can’t abide paper, so I stripped it off as soon as I got here, and painted the walls.’ He set the meal on a card table because the large one was covered with an unmade jigsaw puzzle. ‘It’s got a thousand pieces, so I don’t suppose I’ll ever finish it.’

A few edges and three corners were fitted together, and her fingers itched to work on it. ‘What’s it of?’

He swallowed some food. ‘“The Battle of Trafalgar”. I’ve had it for years. I did some at my last place — I worked in a factory then but I had to put it back in my ditty bag for the move. One day I hope to see poor old Nelson being shot!’

She appraised the room. ‘You certainly know how to take care of yourself.’ Sidney had been waited on hand and foot, but he had been out at work all day. So had she, some of the time, but that didn’t seem to matter.

He shook the breadboard over his plate, mopping up crumbs and fat by pushing a crust around with his fork. ‘I wouldn’t be much of a man if I didn’t. I can’t stand untidiness. There was a bloke I was stationed with in Trincomalee…’

Taking no further note of time, he talked about India, China and Japan, of Temples and places she would never see, beaches of white sand running for tens of miles with no one there but himself, palm trees you had to be careful when walking under otherwise a coconut would fall on your napper, of Oriental cities so crowded you fought your way from point to point.

She listened till the tin clock on the shelf said a quarter to ten, though felt no inclination to leave, liked him in fact for talking so much, recalling how Sidney often said of her long silences: ‘I can never tell what goes on in that mind of yours. I’d give more than a penny for your thoughts.’ Maybe he was fishing to know whether she suspected his carryings on, but even if she had she wouldn’t have talked, because it was no use wasting your breath till certainty struck you dumb. As for blurting out her thoughts, such as they were, you always had to have something that was yours and nobody else’s. Tell a stranger what was in your head and it didn’t matter, but if you blabbed everything to your husband you would soon have no self to call your own. More often than not she considered her thoughts either too vague to grasp or too daft to mention.

‘The only thing I lack here,’ Sailor was saying, ‘is a garden. I used to dream of having one when I was at sea, though there was little time for dreaming. I’d fancy the spade going into English soil, mixing it with wood ash from a fire, and planting rose bushes. I’ve applied for an allotment, but they’re like gold these days.’

He looked beyond her and she wondered where to, what palm tree shoreline, or wet cornfield in summer. ‘I used to smell woodsmoke when I was sweating to death up and down the China coast. English woodsmoke, not smoke from dung fires the Indians make. Once as a lad I made a fire at the edge of a field and sat trying to keep it burning, because most of the wood was still alive. After it got going, a bloke came out of his allotment and asked if he could have some of my ash for his garden. I wanted to say no. “I’ll only take a little,” he said. “It won’t affect the fire. It’ll be marvellous for my soil.” So he scooped up the ash with his trowel and bucket, and left me a nice clean fire but no ash at all. In five minutes it’d gone out, and wouldn’t start again. Talk about barefaced robbery! Never trust anybody, I thought, as I walked home.’

‘You’ve had a very full life,’ she said, getting in a few words of her own. ‘And you don’t seem to have many regrets, either.’

He shook his head. ‘I did get married when I was young. We had a daughter, but after cat-and-dogging it for a few years I threw in the towel and went back to the Navy.’ By his tone she sensed a tale he wouldn’t like going into. ‘Vain regrets never did anybody any good,’ he said.

Her marriage had passed as if in ten minutes, with nothing worth half as much telling as the least of Sailor’s yarns. Even if there had been she was too much at ease in his cosy den to bring them up. A man who went out of his way to talk to a woman was unusual whether or not it was because he needed to. She repaid him by listening, and in any case enjoyed it. Maybe he was only talking to be polite, but nothing mattered as long as they felt at ease.

The tot of whisky he splashed out for the road caused a joyous giddiness on the way home, and before going to bed she took the framed photographs of Sidney off the shelves and put them in a box under the stairs.

She saw what a precise and careful driver he was in his banger of an Austin Countryman when he took her to his favourite pub in Radford. They sat at a corner table. ‘I used to come here in my younger days,’ he said, ‘and that’s a long time ago. What I would like to know, though,’ and he leaned close to ask, ‘is whether or not you’ll marry me.’

‘It’s a bit sudden, Sailor.’ It wasn’t. She had imagined it already. He was no longer young, a person who knew his age as well as his mind.

His pint sank to the halfway mark in one long swallow: ‘Everything always is.’

Sidney often said you never knew your mind till you had made a mistake, and who would know better, though she didn’t like thinking of him at the moment. ‘Still, if you let such a notion put you off, you’d never do anything,’ he said with that possessive smile. ‘Human beings aren’t rats in traps.’

She felt comfortable with Sailor, who had grown used to her silences and never tried to disturb them, but it was difficult to say a straight yes when she so much wanted to. ‘I’ll need a few days.’

‘I wouldn’t respect you if you didn’t.’

It was hard for both, and she wanted to dissolve the tension by getting the matter done with. She might not be clear in her mind even if a whole year went by. She liked his proposal because to marry him would mean there’d be no more big decisions to make. ‘Now you’ve asked me, don’t you want a day or two to think about it?’

He seemed surprised. She was questioning his sincerity. ‘Once something gets into my head and I say it, my mind’s made up.’ Two people suited for each other would sound foolish uttering romantic words, but he must have read her thoughts when he went on: ‘I fell in love with all I didn’t know about you, as well as with what I plainly saw. I can’t say fairer than that. I can guarantee though that the rest will take care of itself. I might not be much of a catch, but I’ll look after you, you can be sure.’

Sidney had never spoken such heartfelt and reassuring words, and it suddenly struck her that you always had to wonder what someone was hiding when they accused you of never talking. Sailor’s warm hand came onto her wrist, and she met the full blue of his candid eyes as if for the first time. ‘I do love you, Sailor.’

‘Well, I hoped to hear that, and I can’t tell you how happy it makes me. Another thing though is that there’s more than one way of answering my question, so take your time over it. When we’ve had another drink we can go to my place for a cup of coffee. Then I’ll escort you home.’

She let on about her plans with Sailor while talking to Edna by the front gate.

‘Sounds all right,’ Edna said, ‘but you’ve got to be careful, duck. If he is a sailor he might have women all over the place.’

‘How can anybody know about anybody?’ Ann wondered, convinced she knew all she wanted to know of him.

‘I’ve seen him a few times at the school,’ Edna went on, ‘and he looks a nice enough chap.’ You couldn’t put anybody off what they were dead set on doing, and who was she in any case to prophesy how things would work out? All you could say was good luck to people, and let them get on with it.

On signing the book Ann saw that Sailor’s first name was Paul, which was so far out of kilter with how she regarded him that Sailor it would be forever. Bill and Edna, with Teddy, had come into town as witnesses, and Teddy cried because they hadn’t brought Midnight, tears slopping onto his best suit, till Sailor picked him up and promised he would see the lucky cat soon enough.

A few packs of confetti were scattered over the couple as they came out of the registry office, a photographer semaphoring from behind his tripod. Ann in her smart costume smiled arm in arm with Sailor, thinking everything was good today, though she wanted it to be over since the best was yet to come.

As if just back from six months at sea, Sailor took her in his arms for their first public kiss. He stared into the lens towards an oblivion he alone could see, facing his chemical reproduction in a dark three-piece suit, and tie whose small knot showed off the impeccably ironed shirt. Getting spliced, said his stance, was a serious matter, and it wouldn’t do to lose your soul over it by not looking tiptop.

Frank Orston came with a walnut-cased wall clock as a present from the school, and they listened to its chimes in the living room to a round of double whiskies. Sailor leaned against the mantelpiece, his glass at arm’s length towards Ann. ‘Here’s to the deed that’s going to last all my life. And to commemorate the occasion in proper style I’ll take the lid off the champagne.’

He aimed the cork at the ceiling like a master gunner, all eyes upturned to the as yet invisible mark he might leave there. The explosion sent Teddy running for cover behind the settee.

After the bubbly it was wine, or whatever choice of liquor from bottles ranged along the sideboard. Bill, a lean long-jawed man with coal black hair, forked up ham and salad. ‘A penny bun costs tuppence now — or so my father used to say.’ He held back a ribald addition because he wasn’t sure how Sailor would take it.

Ann and Edna sat on the settee, a bottle of Cyprus sherry on the small round table between them. Midnight leapt onto the television, and Ann was glad Sailor stroked him into a purr. She lost count how many times he asked if she was all right, loved him for wanting to make her happy, and knew their marriage was forever. The romantic uncertainty of the night to come made her feel as she had when leaving the office in her teens to meet a boyfriend for a stroll beyond the bus terminal, ending by all but going the whole way in the darkest part of the wood.

Tired of playing with Midnight, Teddy clamoured for whisky, and Sailor let a couple of canary drops into a glass of water. ‘This’ll make you drunk in no time,’ which sent him tottering around the room and slurring his words.

Mrs Grant straightened him up when he fell. ‘You are a silly lad.’

‘Life’s not worth living,’ Sailor said, ‘unless you treat it as one long holiday, whether or not you have to work. So now we’ll cut the cake.’

With so much food and drink the party went on till after dusk, Teddy asleep on his father’s shoulder when Edna said it was time to leave. After they had gone every plate and cup in the house needed washing, and Sailor filled the sink with suddy water to get them clean. Ann’s energy came back in putting the food away, the fridge packed with dishes covered in Cellophane.

Sailor kissed her as she went by, looking at the clock so that he could, she thought, decently surmise the hour for going to bed. ‘I suppose there are certain things I should tell you now that we’re married, my love.’

Matched with what she ought to say would cancel both sides out, though she was pleased by his offer. No ripple should pass through their perfect day. ‘It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters now except us, Sailor.’ She kissed his worried face till the boyish smile came back, and when he led her upstairs the flush of eagerness was on both their faces. Drifting to sleep against his naked back, she knew him to be a man who could make a woman happy.

Ann offered to read the map but Sailor said he had given it a good looking over before she got out of bed. ‘All I do is set course southwest and keep my hands at the tiller. Towns are like islands, and I’ll stay clear of them when I can. It’s the same as going across the ocean to me.’

In the afternoon he steered his black Austin Countryman up the gravel drive of The Tummler Hotel, and a naval-looking man with a thick beard took their cases in. After approving the room with its four-poster bed they came down to a set tea in the lounge. A solid black-boxed body of a dog, with a jutting black box of a mouth, waddled lamely from under the next table for a piece of Sailor’s scone. ‘It’s funny getting a whiff of the sea again. Did you smell it, when I opened the window upstairs?’

‘Let’s go for a walk when we’ve finished. You can have a paddle if you like!’

‘No fear. I swam in it once, and not for fun.’ She was glad he was fuelling himself against the memory, eating to live. ‘We’ll take a look at it, though.’

Pale stones clashed underfoot. ‘I wouldn’t like to walk ten miles on this.’

She kissed his cheek. ‘Nor me.’

Cold gusts struck when they descended the hogsback from which to view the water. She watched the subtle guidance of wings on gulls riding the thermals. Sailor didn’t like the muffler-ring around the white button of the sun. ‘Stand behind me, love, if the wind starts chilling you.’

An isolated white cloud on the horizon rose like an iceberg out of the nondescript. ‘I shan’t see anything, then.’

‘Let’s walk down the bank. It’ll shield us both.’ He took her hand, finding dry patches along the muddy path. Stopping by a gate, they looked inland up a hillside of sheep. He breathed heavily, as if the walk had worn him out. Or maybe the sight of the sea had put on a year or two. She took his arm. ‘You’re tired, sweetheart, after driving all that way.’

A white-topped wave, neat as a quarter mile straight-edge, crumbled on cue at a line of pale cliffs, making way for another behind. She was surprised to see what little distance they were from the hotel, smoke at the cold end of September coiling out of its chimney. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ he said.

He stretched full length in an armchair by the lounge fire, while she read an old Georgette Heyer from the shelf, dozing towards sleep. Sailor touched her arm. ‘Come on, my love, let’s have a drink before dinner.’

Two double whiskies were followed by pints of lager with his platter of roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, boiled and roast potatoes, cabbage, carrots and peas. For her he ordered a half bottle of iced champagne, which she relished to the final fizz with the Dover sole and sorbet that followed.

He finished as if he hadn’t had a hot dinner for months, though for a big man it wasn’t so much. ‘You were hungry,’ she said.

‘Must be the sea air.’

Tramping the humps and hollows of Maiden Castle they looked both ways, at land and sea. Sailor’s energy was renewed, and when she lagged over the thick damp grass he put out a hand for her to catch up. ‘I don’t like the sea anymore.’

‘Why is that?’

‘I’ve seen too many people drown in it. Hundreds, though you had to expect that. I’ve taken against it in my old age.’

You wouldn’t think so, the way he talked with Ben the manager, who had been on a destroyer in the Falklands. They were locked into each other’s tales, alternating up to midnight with pots of beer and measures of whisky. Ann, content with her book, was happy to recall Edna’s doubt that Sailor had been a sailor. The only other guests were a couple who stayed most of the time in their room.

A week at Scarborough with Sidney had been as nothing compared to her days at The Tummler Hotel. Sailor was a man hard to know, but love was more enduring with someone you couldn’t entirely fathom. He let nothing worry him, though he was far from simple, suggesting that he had been through hard times after all. From thinking all men were more or less like Sidney she now knew there were different sorts in the world and that Sailor was one of them. He was relaxing to be with, and as long as she went on being curious she would never stop loving him.

The first thing Sailor brought from his flat at the school was a coat of arms of his last ship served on. Then came his precious life’s papers, and a Japanese tea service which he set on the living-room sideboard. ‘That’s been round the world a time or two, but it’s found a home at last.’

A paper-thin cup held to the light showed a Geisha girl with a parasol. ‘Isn’t it lovely?’ She polished the front-room table and laid out his thousand piece jigsaw puzzle.

‘We’ll do it between us,’ Sailor said, ‘in our idle moments.’

She wondered when they might be, because like all true mariners he cherished his drink. Most nights they went to the pub in Radford, sat among smoke and beer fumes at a small round table in the saloon bar. She was happy to be with Sailor because he was so obviously glad to be with her. She drank her half pint of Midland ale, while he bandied with his friends, or held her hand and told stories of his travels, pints going like magic. He ordered a whisky for them both before the towels went on.

‘Will you be all right driving?’

He steered away from the kerb. ‘With you in the car we’re as safe as houses. We’ll be back to our bread and cheese, and a nice pot of tea, in no time.’

When she stayed at home one night with the cat and watched television Sailor came back with flowers. ‘Where did you get them, so late?’

‘There’s always somebody selling ’em.’

She loved it when he brought her little gifts, and told him so.

‘You’re worth it, my love.’ He filled a vase with water in the kitchen, then drew her onto his knees. ‘First, I think of you as would like to have them. Second, I think of the poor old drudge as comes round trying to sell ’em. Third, I get selfish and think of me who’d like to do a good turn to the seller, and an even better turn to the woman I love and who I know would appreciate it. That way I get credit for everything. You can call it selfishness, if you like, but more things fit mortise and tenon in this life than you might think.’

‘You’re my young man, and I love you, Sailor.’ He was sixty, but could be any age, always sure of himself in knowing what he wanted while rarely admitting he needed anything. He was also a man of habit and regularity which, he said, made life easier for all concerned, and she liked that.

He laid the table for supper, and lit the gas for the kettle, though she told him after more kisses to fill it before putting it on the flame. ‘You must have had a drop more than usual.’

The screw top of the pickled onions was no match for his big hands. He stabbed in his fork. ‘I’ll tell you what, though…’

She laughed. ‘You’ve been thinking.’ He sometimes was, behind those blue eyes. ‘What about, Sailor?’

‘I’m beginning to feel I’ve done enough work in my life. I’ll be glad when I’ve finished at school.’ He put a sliver of cheese into her mouth. ‘Would you mind if I started taking my ease a bit?’

‘I thought you’d still got two years to do.’

‘So I have, but there are times when I wonder if it’s worth waiting for.’ The shade of uncertainty was a welcome confession of intimacy. ‘I never do anything in a hurry,’ he said in his usual voice, ‘though even if I don’t wait there should be enough money coming to us.’

On their wedding day his account had shown five hundred pounds, and how much remained was his business. He never enquired about her savings, which had been more than a thousand at the last statement. It wasn’t much these days, but as long as there was something in both books they felt secure enough.

Sailor fell into sleep soon after kissing her goodnight, and Ann knew nothing till morning when the still warm space told her he had gone to work.

At the school party she served tea and cakes, a cloth folded around the handle of the large metal pot. Sailor, togged up in beard and scarlet, shed gifts from a sack sewn up out of sheets, and said a few gruff words to make each child laugh.

When they got home he needed a glass of whisky, Ann topping up hers with water. ‘You should have been an actor, the way you charmed those kids.’

‘I should have been a lot of things,’ he said, as if he easily could have. ‘I know who I am while I’m acting, though, so you can be sure I’ll always be myself when I’m with you.’

‘I know that.’

‘I want us to have as easy a life as possible, something I’ve only thought about in the last year or two.’

She didn’t say life was already good enough for her, in case it disturbed him. Nor could she ask why he didn’t think it was, because she knew he respected her for not bothering to probe. Love depended on such unspoken treaties. ‘Do what you think best, Sailor.’

He put on the finest smile, and spread his arms. ‘Welcome aboard!’

Such a covering embrace heated her sufficiently to say: ‘You are a devil!’

‘Now you’re flattering me.’ He spoke passionately in her ear. ‘If I am, though, let’s finish our supper, and get to bed, which is where I like you most.’

Every bottle lining the sideboard on Christmas Day displayed a badge of Sailor’s popularity with parents at school. He sniffed the odour of roasting pork permeating the house, and twisted the cork from a bottle of sherry. ‘We’ll have a look at the jigsaw puzzle after our dinner. It’s time we set to on it.’

A glass of wine, followed by brandy, made her sleepy, but she looked at the painting on the box while Sailor had a go at sorting sky and bits of rigging. Dark blue to the left faded into grey at the right, slivered by the tips of masts. Between billows of white and orange she followed the trunk of HMS Victory with her fingers, solid in its girth and strength, as if cut from one great oak, down to the main deck where red-coated marines with white crossbelts held muskets ready. Men stood back from fire and shot, a fallen sail waiting to become a shroud.

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.

The slow bus seemed to be sliding backwards, her emotions melting into that pitch of jealousy which she had been too unknowing to suffer with Sidney. He wasn’t in The Black’s Head, and she didn’t find him in the Radford pub, either. She imagined herself either one step behind or one in front, weeping because she didn’t know whether or not she was being a fool. On her way home she bought supper at the chip van, and Sailor was waiting at the house.

‘Thank God.’ He held her for a kiss. ‘I thought you was gone for good.’

‘How could you think such a thing?’ But there was a lightness in his tone. ‘Have you been in long?’

‘Ten minutes,’ he said.

She spread fish, chips and saveloys, sliding the pan into the oven. ‘Where did you go? I looked everywhere.’

‘I was in The Jolly Higglers.’

She hadn’t gone there, but she couldn’t have called in every pub in Radford. ‘Were you?’

‘You don’t believe me? I was talking to a chap as deals in cars, and I sold him my old banger for a hundred quid. He’s taking it away tomorrow morning. I don’t drive much these days, and it’s only good for the knackers’ yard. Anyway, it’ll help our finances along.’

She sat before him. ‘What have you done with the carriage clock, though?’

He paused from filling his glass. ‘I’ve hidden it.’

‘You wouldn’t tell me lies, would you, Sailor?’ She looked into his eyes. ‘You didn’t sell it, did you?’

He reached for her hand. ‘I love you too much to lie. I suppose you’ll think me a bit touched, but I didn’t like such a valuable timepiece being kept on the shelf for anybody to see and carry away as soon as they broke into the house.’

She was ashamed at having called him a liar. Even if he had been she shouldn’t have said it, and he wasn’t, which made it worse. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘I’ll show you.’

He pulled a shoe box from behind cloths and tins of polish jumbled in a cupboard under the stairs, showing her the clock in the bed of a yellow duster. ‘Maybe I am barmy. The notion does occur to me at times, but so many houses around here get broken into that I had a funny feeling somebody would nick it. I like to follow my instinct, as I did when I fell in love with you and asked you to marry me.’

‘And I’ll always be glad you did, Sailor. I can’t think of a better man than you.’

When supper was heated to a tolerable crisp in the stove he fetched a bottle of whisky from behind the settee, which he had hidden as a surprise on coming in, and they laughed at a slyness made innocent only because he wanted to make her happy.

She flooded what was done of the puzzle with light, and saw that it hadn’t much increased. A completed frame hemmed the conflict in, but she longed to see the picture finished, in the hope of finding something about her and Sailor. When it was done she wouldn’t be able to use the table, but she couldn’t bear the thought of breaking it up after years of slotting every piece together. ‘That would bring bad luck on us,’ she told Sailor.

‘I sometimes think the best thing would be to burn the whole lot,’ he said. ‘I’ll never want to see it again after it’s done.’ He assembled a glimpse of clear sea. ‘Look at this space for lost souls, though.’

‘I like it,’ she said. ‘It’s so much part of you. We’ll fasten every piece onto some sticky Cellophane and have it framed. It’ll look nice on the wall above the fireplace.’

‘Anything you like.’ He pounced on another bit of the sail. ‘Your wish is my command.’

‘It’s looking wonderful.’ Both were happiest at such moments. ‘We’re really getting on.’

The face of Roman numbers was plain to see when unwrapped from the cloth. The key stopped unmistakably against the barrier of being fully wound, minutes clicking healthily as if measuring her life and Sailor’s from its snug hiding place. She knelt on the floor to feel its weight, knees sore on standing up and life itching back.

The cloth wrappings dropped from her fingers, and for a moment her heart seemed to stop. She couldn’t see the clock with the eyes God had given her. Or the devil of a timepiece had grown legs and gone walkabout, sending out rays saying come and find me. She pulled everything onto the carpet but it still wasn’t there. Sailor had found a new hidey-hole, and she already heard him making a joke of it. His mind might be unfathomable, but he wasn’t the sort to play a game without good reason, in which case she wouldn’t let the matter worry her, and saw no point asking where the clock had gone.

Whenever the vision of any clock moved across her eyes she searched every cranny, as if exploring the house for the first time, which made it easier not to let Sailor know the clock wasn’t where it should be. Even so, it was nowhere to be found, and from deciding to say nothing so as not to spoil his fun in thinking she hadn’t twigged its disappearance, she said when he came out of the bathroom looking fresh from his wash: ‘Sailor, I can’t find that carriage clock anywhere.’

His embarrassment showed as usual by a firework crackling of knuckles. She couldn’t feel regret at Sidney’s heirloom going west, and didn’t care that she would never see it again, but had asked without intending to.

He faced her across the table. ‘I suppose it’s time I told you. I owed a big bill at the off-licence, and when I showed him the clock he agreed to take it in exchange. Otherwise he would have had me in court.’ He sat as if waiting for a sentence of doom. ‘I’m sorry, love.’

‘I wish you’d asked me.’

‘I should have done. I don’t know why I didn’t.’

First the car, and now this. Money had to come from somewhere for their drinking. Nobody could afford to go at such a rate. She laid a hand on his wrist, unable to bear the least sign of his misery. ‘I’d do anything for you, Sailor. You know that, don’t you?’

He nodded. They were silent, like two thieves caught out instead of one. Speculating as to who was the biggest made her smile, which gave him hope. She would rather not have known, and searching for an explanation as to why she had brought the matter out made her laugh.

The sculptured fixity of guilt on Sailor’s face dissolved. ‘There’s only one thing to do, if that’s the way it takes you. The pubs’ll be open in ten minutes, and it’ll be nice sitting there to forget our troubles, if that’s what they are.’

To prepare them for the walk he took a half-gone bottle from the top of the television and poured two powerful drinks. She liked his style, and his timing, and the first sip of whisky was as welcome as if she had been waiting for it all day.

On their way to the pub it was no longer necessary to keep up with his pace, and she even adjusted hers so that he could stay level. He sat in his usual corner, little framed hunting scenes on the wall behind, pipe well chimneying. His arm lost its slight shake after the enabling liquid of the first strong bitter had gone down.

People who had known him from his caretaker days called out: ‘Hello, Sailor, how are you? Still at that titty-bottle, I see!’

Knowing himself to be a waymark of their ordered lives lit his eyes back to a hundred watts. He only nodded, however, not wasting words, though he liked being popular. What man didn’t, Ann thought, or any man at all, come to that. Some greetings were so brazen she wondered whether he had known the woman before meeting her. Still, such attention only increased his value in her eyes, and the esteem for her in his, and she knew that the more esteem he felt for her the more he loved her, which made the love between them as perfect as any could be.

Walking home hand in hand she stopped to kiss him beneath the corner sodium, not caring what anyone might think. A feeling of carefree youth had come back to her on living with Sailor.

‘I love you.’ He relaxed his embrace. ‘I can go through the shoals and the shallows with you.’

One day he went out on his own and was away longer than usual. The sky was black with a threat of rain, and streetlights came on as he reached for the gate latch. He sat in the armchair as if he would never get up again.

She stroked his face. ‘I wish you wouldn’t overdo it, Sailor. You aren’t as young as you were.’

‘I know. I walked too far.’

‘Where did you go?’

He yawned. ‘To damn near Strelley and back. When I get going it’s hard to stop.’

‘That’s miles away.’

‘No buses went by, and when I was near home three shot by.’

‘If I’d been with you I’d have called a taxi.’

‘It’s all right, love. I’m better now I’m back with you.’

She followed him down the spirals and discovered it was where she wanted to go. If he pawned or sold their possessions it was only because she had always wanted to do the same. All that mattered was for two people to use them so that they could live the way they wanted. Love wasn’t love unless you could break free of the crushing pressures inside yourself.

She kept a glistening sort of order in the house, everything spick and span, as if to spite Fate at her surrender to the way it said she should live. Energy came from she didn’t know where as she pushed the Electrolux in and out of the bedrooms. A green cloth suitcase with a number stencilled across in black lay at the bottom of the wardrobe. She lifted it, to suck dust from the corners. What he kept inside she didn’t know. Her own papers were stowed in a cigar box of Sidney’s which she kept on her dressing table. Now and again she threw away old bank statements and cheque stubs, or took out cashpoint and credit cards when they were short of money.

She swilled dishes and cutlery, and stowed everything in its place until she felt exhausted. By the time Sailor came down from the mists of sleep, she had cooked the breakfast he was so fond of, and put biscuits and coffee out for herself.

‘I eat so much of a morning,’ he quipped, ‘that you’d think I was going to be hanged.’

‘Except it’s almost midday,’ she smiled, ‘so it’s a bit late for that.’

He took the empty plate to the sink, looking around before lighting his pipe. ‘The place is as clean as a new pin. I don’t know how you do it, my love.’

‘I have to,’ she said. ‘I like it that way.’

‘Same here. Squalor would be the death of me. You get a horror of it after a life on the mess deck.’

He went for a walk, so she put on the front-room light and gazed at the jigsaw, finding it hard to pick from the multitude of pieces. About a third was done, and the ominous French ship was taking shape through smoke and bloodshed. A chair eased her aching back, and she wasn’t sorry to lose the overall view.

Dabbling among the blue-grey of the upper right she found three pieces to slot in. Then she stared, discouraged at what was yet to be done, though glad they had accomplished so much. The mast of the Victory was reassuring in its girth. Sailor had assembled it in earlier days, his face like a child’s while it came together. She smoothed a finger up and down, as if there were no curving interlocking lines and she was carressing three-dimensional wood.

He made no mention of her progress, but sat in his usual armchair by the fire. ‘You look as if you went a long way,’ she said.

‘I did, but not too far from you, and that’s what keeps me going.’ After a silence he turned to her. ‘I saw a face I had to leave behind.’

His fear alarmed her. ‘What face?’

‘I can’t explain. I just want to rest, love.’

If there was more to his walk than was hinted at she would only find out by following him, but would die of shame if he turned and saw. On the other hand maybe the act of doing so would prove her love.

Whisky cooled his tea, and she reached for the bottle to pour some in hers as well. ‘Eating and drinking will wake me up.’ He drained his cup, and took a piece of cake. ‘Do you believe in God?’

Such a question could only be answered by saying yes.

‘Why?’

‘I’ve got to,’ she said.

He relished another fill of potent tea. ‘What sort of a chap do you think He is?’

‘I don’t know. How could I ask?’ The talk disturbed her. ‘But I’m sure He’ll look after us.’

He stroked Midnight, who jumped down, sensing his unease. ‘I think He’s got it in for me.’

‘Why’s that, Sailor?’ She couldn’t bite her tongue and keep silent. ‘Is anything wrong with your life?’

He altered tack, her question warning of further turmoil. ‘I’d just like to be able to make you happier.’

‘I’m as happy as I want to be, and it’s all because of the way you care for me.’

‘I get this ache up my left arm.’ He lifted it, let it fall. ‘It might be rheumatism.’

‘You should see a doctor.’

‘It comes and goes.’ He splashed more whisky into his cup. ‘But this puts the melters on it.’

She would believe in God a little less if He had it in for Sailor. ‘Still, you should call at the doctor’s,’ though she knew he wouldn’t, and hoped her heart would go bang before his, a massive cardiac explosion landing her in the middle of nowhere for ever and ever.

Blue veins pulsed on the back of his hand. ‘I will. But if God has it in for me I can’t say I blame Him. If I’d been Him I would have killed me years ago.’

Silence was the only way to question him. She stroked his face, a drop of clear water falling onto her hand, and he fell asleep before she could ask.

He only came alive in the morning after getting at the bottle. Nor did she feel part of the world till the first strong drink had gone down. Neither said much after it had. The lines of walls and windows sharpened as the liquor took effect, and whoever felt like it stood up to make breakfast.

Through the mist of her apparent wellbeing Sailor sat with smouldering pipe, looking as young as ever. In the hours that passed he told matelot stories in a clear voice, Ann not caring that they’d been heard before. The ghost that threatened him was harmless while he talked. After tea they sat drinking till going to bed at eleven, by which time two bottles had gone dry.

He rubbed a hand across his eyes as if to order the thoughts behind. ‘It gets worse, and I don’t know why that should be.’

She hoped he wouldn’t say, as if any revelation would be too late. ‘What does?’

‘It’s eating me to death. I’m starting to see them everywhere. I know it wasn’t my fault, but that don’t help, though I had to live through it.’

To tell something dreadful about herself might have comforted him, but all she could do was listen, pulling Midnight onto her lap for comfort. ‘I don’t know what you mean, Sailor.’

‘It’s my first wife I’m talking about. She did it on me a few times, though I was no angel, either. We had a daughter, a wonderful girl she was, and then my wife told me she was somebody else’s. She let me know in such a way that I could see a mile off how true it was. I’d loved Melanie for ten years as my own kid, but she had been put into my wife by somebody else. I went mad. That sort of thing’s murder land.’

Ann didn’t know whether her face went flour-white or blood-orange red at the certainty that he had killed his wife, and that that was his appalling secret.

For a smile he managed a bleak jack o’ lantern grimace. ‘No, my love, I never touched her. It was too big a blow. I’d take nobody’s life. Nor have I ever gone in for hitting women.’

She wished there was some way of stopping him, because what did anything from the past have to do with the way they lived now? His blue-glow eyes looked ahead, as if he was telling everyone in the world because he could hardly bear to let her know, or recall it himself. ‘You should have told me before, Sailor.’

‘How could I?’ He turned to her, and she felt close again. ‘I couldn’t bear the sight of her, so I lit off. Not long after, she killed herself, and left a note saying it was because of me. I’d ruined her life. I was the worst person she’d known, the worst in the world. That’s why I couldn’t tell you. Nothing she said was true, but with a person like that you’ve got to take the responsibility. If I’d told her I’d forgiven her for what she did she might not have done it. It didn’t occur to me. Even if I didn’t mean it, I could have said I forgave her, then maybe she wouldn’t have gassed herself.’

‘I’ll never believe it was your fault, Sailor.’

He didn’t hear. ‘If I couldn’t believe that, I might live in peace for the rest of my life. But let me go on, because you haven’t heard the rest of it yet. Though Melanie wasn’t mine I never held anything against her. And she was my daughter by the time I’d brought her up. She left home at eighteen, and I saw her a time or two. She was happy enough. We got on so well she said she’d come and live with me when I left the Navy.’

‘That was nice,’ Ann put in.

He looked at rain making tracks down the garden window, unable to face her. ‘She did the same thing as her mother, took pills and killed herself when she was twenty. She did it out of the blue, just like that.’ His glass was empty, and he leaned towards her, his expression as dead as if he’d had no rest from the day he was born.

‘You can’t say it was your fault.’

‘I’ve got a conscience, though. The sharks were set on me, and they won’t let go.’

He had never been altogether hers, but at this moment he belonged to her more than he ever had, more than she could have thought possible. ‘It does no good to torment yourself.’

‘I know, and I feel a bit calmer for telling you. I did want to let you know about it on the day we were married, but I couldn’t bring it out. Troubles shared are troubles doubled, in any case.’

‘They wouldn’t have been, not with me.’ Troubles shared are proof of love. ‘And what if they are?’

She decided from now on to check what liquor was brought into the house, and when he came back with an off-licence plastic bag of new supplies she asked where the money had come from. ‘We can’t afford to go on drinking at such a rate.’

‘Never you mind about that, my love. We’re managing very well, as you can see. We’ll be all right, as long as the rent gets paid.’

‘That’s because I take it straight out of the pension every month.’

‘I bless you for that, but leave the rest to me.’

They tried to drink less, but two bottles were finished all the same, levels going down like sand in an egg timer. When Sailor fell out of his chair and lay full length before the fire he was hard to rouse. Bringing the story of his wife and daughter into the open had made things worse, a despairing thought she found impossible to endure while heaping blankets over his body so that he wouldn’t be cold in the night.

She rested her ear on his chest to find out if he was breathing. How daft to think he’s dead. His body shuddered, a heartbreaking sigh from deep inside. Midnight’s furry weight warmed her knees when she sat in the next chair knowing that before long she would get up and pour herself another drink.

Her credit card had gone from the cigar box, so it was obvious where the money was coming from. A smell of frying bacon filled the kitchen, Sailor singing with sleeves rolled up as he stood by the stove. Fearing the edict he knew must come, the ditty faded. She put two slices of bread in the toaster. ‘We’ve got to stop drinking, Sailor.’

His cheeks were purplish, hands shaking as he pushed the spatula around the pan. ‘Just as well stop living. Nobody knows how long they’ve got on this earth, and if I don’t drink I won’t last as long as if I do.’

Her look made him alter his mind. ‘That can’t be so.’

He set eggs, bacon, sausage, fried bread and tomatoes before her. ‘You may be right. We’ll give it a try.’

She carried two large bottles of water from the supermarket to pour into their glasses. ‘It’s time we had another go at the puzzle. It’d be marvellous if we could get to the end.’

‘I’ve been trying for years, but I was waiting to finish it with you.’ He was smiling with pleasure. ‘Come on, let’s get cracking.’

They had never fitted so many at one time. He completed the main deck of the Victory, and found the sail that was to become Nelson’s shroud, while Ann put together the uneven line of marines. ‘Now for the mizzen starboard tackle,’ he said.

He looked better after the nap. At moments she felt the hardship of resistance, and looked around for a drink, hands shaking no less than his. She caressed a glass, but wouldn’t be the first to give in, the struggle so consuming that she no longer bothered to clean the house.

Sailor came back from a walk, a half-bottle showing from each pocket. He put them unopened on the sideboard, and lay back in his chair. She sat by him on the arm. ‘What happened, Sailor?’

‘I turned a corner at the top of Hillcot Drive, and saw one of ’em.’

‘Who?’ She dreaded the answer.

‘Melanie looked at me from over a hedge, and the blood stopped in my veins. She was wearing a blue frock, and smiling like she used to be when she waited for me to come home after months at sea with a present. But she screamed, terrified. Her mother was there as an old woman, and she never was one. She came out of the door and tried to pull Melanie inside. I walked away as quick as my legs would take me. I didn’t care in what direction I made distance. They’ll chase me into the grave. Sometimes it’s all right for weeks. Then it hits me again. It gets worse.’

‘Maybe it’ll go away,’ though she didn’t see how it could, because as he talked she was seeing them herself, a flash of both by the kitchen door, doll-faces glaring at her with loathing.

He stood, pale and unsteady. ‘I’ll be in the front room, doing a bit at the puzzle.’

He took the terrors with him, as if they were built into his broad shoulders. She found him asleep, a few pieces in a clenched hand. She caressed him, then punched and pleaded till a half-opened eye made a window of light into his soul. ‘Come on, Sailor, let’s get you upstairs.’

The manoeuvre took half an hour, but she hoped he would stay in bed for as long as it took to bring him peace. The time she sat by him couldn’t be measured. Talking more about his curse would break the spell, she hoped, and it seemed to, for after three days in bed he walked almost normally to the pub, wearing his cap and the indestructible duffle coat, and using the stick Sidney had hiked with in his youth.

‘Smoke, noise and beer smells are my natural element after sea water,’ he smiled on opening the door. It had become hers as well, the one atmosphere in which she and Sailor could be alive together. ‘This’ll drive the sickness out,’ he said when they sat down to the first drink. ‘I’ve never known it to fail.’

They lay side by side in bed, and the terrors came into his dreams. He didn’t tell her, but she knew they did because they spilled into hers as well. Melanie and her mother sat in a deep armchair in the lounge of The Tummler Hotel. Ann saw the high chairs from the back, and on turning to look saw their bloody and decaying faces. The room wasn’t the same because bales of straw were scattered among grey cobwebs, and Sailor was hanging from a beam, but still living, his body turning and turning as if a high wind was blowing, at which gyrations Melanie and the old woman began to laugh.

‘What’s the matter, love?’

She grasped him. ‘I was having a bad dream.’

‘Seemed like a nightmare the way you screamed. But don’t cry. You’re all right now. You’re with me.’

‘I’m sorry I woke you.’

‘I’m glad you did. That’s what I’m here for. But go to sleep now. You’ll be all right.’

In the morning Sailor was comatose and could hardly breathe, but he got out of bed and came down for breakfast, a lifetime’s drill helping him to live. ‘You’ll have to see the doctor,’ she said, but knew he wouldn’t when he reached for the bottle even before eating.

The cat scratched to go out and do its business, and so, putting away the temptation of another drink, she opened the garden door to follow. Teddy shouted in argument with his mother, and the echoing smack of a hand which must have come from his father set him on a long wail of rage and protest.

Evening clouds formed a hose for letting down rain. She hoped the ululation of a car alarm wouldn’t waken Sailor, who said they reminded him of danger signals on a ship. A white sparrow perched at the nuts finished gorging then flew off with one in its beak.

The end of the June day turned chilly, and she sat mindlessly till the first drops of water told her it was time to go in. Annoyed at the smell, she assumed Midnight had messed before being let out, though he had been a well-behaved cat, ever since Sidney had put its kitten’s paws into a pat of lard so that it wouldn’t forget where it lived.

In the front room Sailor’s head had fallen among bits of the puzzle, hands loose over both arms of the chair. The car alarm stopped, and Midnight mewed as if his tail was trapped. Bending close, she saw that Sailor’s eyes were open, tear marks on his cheeks, a bottle half empty on its side.

Her hand and his damp forehead grew cold together, while Midnight played ‘in and out the window’ around her ankles, his mewing as loud as a baby’s cry. ‘What shall I do, Sailor?’ Unable to do anything, she yearned for him to tell her while holding the icy hands.

She screamed in the garden as if to get her heart going again. Edna was putting rubbish in the outside bin. ‘Whatever’s the matter, duck?’

‘It’s Sailor.’ Rain spattered the overgrown lawn. ‘I’ve got to use your telephone.’

The Pakistani doctor told her what anyone would have known. ‘What was it?’ she said, standing by the door as if to stop him leaving.

‘Liver, heart, everything. We’ll know later.’ It was Friday evening so he said she could call at his surgery for the death certificate on Monday. He clicked his bag shut and went away.

She reached for the bottle, and sloshed out a glass. That would have been Sailor’s advice. ‘Wouldn’t it, Sailor?’

‘You’ll stay with us tonight, duck,’ Edna said. ‘We’ve put Teddy on the parlour sofa, and he thinks it’s a great adventure because that’s where the hi-fi is. And we had to promise he could see the body.’

Bill scarcely credited that the doctor had helped so little. A vein at his temple turned dark with anger. ‘You mean he just told you Sailor was dead, and then pissed off?’

Sailor wasn’t with her anymore, so it didn’t much matter. ‘Yes.’

‘We’ll have to call the undertakers first thing tomorrow.’ Edna took the bottle from Ann, and emptied the brew into a flowerpot. ‘You shouldn’t drink so much. It’ll rot your guts. It’ll kill you, just like it’s done poor old Sailor.’ She swept the pieces of the jigsaw into a cloth bag. ‘I allus knew this would happen, him coming back night after night with bottles sticking out of his pockets.’

They spread two eiderdowns on the table and laid the body down. Edna cleaned up the mess and covered Sailor with the largest sheet in the house. ‘I know what to do because I helped a woman with my mother when she died.’

There wasn’t even enough spare change to buy a bottle of beer, every wallet, purse and pocket empty, but she found supplies all over the house, mostly half bottles in crannies of the wardrobe and under the beds, or behind the linen shelves, with a nip or two still left in each. Two boxes of chemical wine tasted so sour she slopped them into the toilet, wondering when he could have brought them in. An almost full bottle of White Horse, hidden in the fuse box cupboard by the back door got her through the funeral without falling down.

Edna filled in forms to get the interment costs settled by the DHSS, and Ann signed with a quivering hand. She was looking after herself but not, Edna saw, very well. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you,’ Ann said, alone with the cat after five years married to Sailor.

Edna spread papers from the cigar box and Sailor’s case over the floor. ‘It seems you’re knackered, duck,’ she said on going through them. It was a blessing Sailor had died when he did, she explained, otherwise she would have been living in a cardboard box under a bridge somewhere. ‘And just look at these gas and electric bills: they haven’t been paid for months. He’s left you in a bottomless pit, and no mistake.’

Her credit card with a limit of five hundred pounds had been overdrawn by fifteen hundred. Letters from the bank asked for repayment but, stranger still, another letter of a later date offered to lend her more, at which Edna broke into a long choking laugh: ‘Bloody effrontery! Would you believe it?’

Ann stared into space, then smiled at Sailor’s audacity of overdrawing her account to the tune of fifteen hundred quid.

‘It’s bloody villainy, really,’ Edna said, ‘though I suppose we should be grateful he was the sort who saved every bit of paper.’

Ann felt she must defend Sailor’s good name, even so. Only one suit was left out of five that once hung in the wardrobe, and she had long ago noted his precious Japanese tea service missing, as well as the walnut-cased clock from school.

‘He even got rid of that teapot we brought you from Turkey,’ Edna said. Pawn tickets cascaded from an old wallet, and a wad of betting slips fell out of a box. ‘He’s left you in a real bleddy fix.’

‘There’s no money left then to pay anything?’ She had never doubted that he had got the money from somewhere for their life of Riley, and tears fell at the thought of Sailor not seeing how she appreciated such open-hearted behaviour in doing his best to make both of them happy.

‘Don’t cry, duck, it wasn’t your fault.’ Edna took her hand. ‘You’re up to your neck in it, but the debts of the dead die with them, so let the bank whistle for their money. They can’t get blood out of a stone. You’ve got to promise not to drink anymore booze, that’s all.’

‘This is when I need it most.’

Edna unfolded her arms and picked up the mug of coffee. ‘I shan’t come and see you again if you don’t pack in the rat poison.’

‘I like it.’

‘So do I, now and again. But you’ve got to stop. You can if you want to. Me and Bill will help. One good turn deserves another. You looked after our Teddy while we was on holiday when nobody else would.’

‘I’ll do the same again if ever you want.’

‘Not if you don’t get off the drink. You won’t be capable. Think what it did to Sailor. Two bottles a day, you tell me. He must have been a man of iron to last so long. You’d have been in your bury-box as well in another few weeks.’

He had died when he did in order to save her, she would like to think. ‘Sailor was looking after me, as well.’

At the supermarket Edna kept hawk-eyes on what Ann put in her trolley. ‘I’m not a young girl,’ she said. ‘I can look after myself.’

Edna sniffed, a hand pushed over her face in disbelief. She rummaged by the till and found whisky under cat food and packets of frozen peas. Not without a tussle she put it back on the shelf. ‘I told you, no booze.’ She couldn’t keep an eye on her every minute. ‘You can have four tins of shandy a week, that’s all.’

Ann replaced two half-bottles of rum that Edna hadn’t found. ‘I don’t want anything.’

She got up from the settee. The days were longer but the nights flashed by. She didn’t dream about Melanie and her mother anymore. Maybe Sailor had taken them away. She didn’t even dream about him, and found that strange. But he was present every moment of the day.

She’d had little booze since the funeral and, looking back on a month of nights, wouldn’t taste it again. Tears fell from her thinning face as she shook the thousand pieces of the jigsaw puzzle back onto the table. Call me Sailor, he had said, in a voice never to be forgotten. His smile during however much time was needed to put it together would show her what a villain he had been to leave her in such a state, but she was getting enough from the DHSS to manage. She didn’t know whether she would glue each piece firmly till it could be framed and hung as they had talked about, or scatter the completed picture broadside into the fire, hoping to see Sailor one last time among the flames.