‘We had docked that day.’ He was remembering it so powerfully that although he did not move a muscle, we stood on deck with him. ‘It was a black night and dead quiet. I heard a splash.’ He closed his eyes a moment. There was a silence. He still had not moved. His great hands lay in loose fists on the table before him, not moving. Yet we heard ripples flow out and break softly against enclosing dock walls. ‘I looked over.’ Dan stared ahead of him, not blinking. We saw him bent over a rail at a black cold sea. ‘There was nothing,’ he said. ‘But I had my duty. I climbed and jumped.’ Even Rose let her knitting lie in her lap, and became part of the story. ‘I went down and down, my arms above my head.’ Dan clenched his fist and the cloth of his sleeves bulged out. For a terrifying moment we watched him sink through the lightless harbour water under the black hulls of ships, ‘I saw him. I grabbed.’ Dan’s body stiffened slightly. His hand opened and the fingers flexed rigid on the palm. We saw the hand clutch at something slippery. ‘I pulled him to the surface by the hair. He was fighting, I hit him.’ Dan clenched his fists tight, his head went back, his chin came forward, he half-shut his eyes. ‘I shouted. No one heard. No one on deck. Everyone on shore. First night in harbour for six weeks. I held him and I shouted. I held him and I shouted again. Then I dragged him up the side of the ship.’ Dan gripped his teeth together and the veins swelled in his neck. We saw him heave the Lascar up the ship’s dark side. ‘I put him on deck and worked on him till he came round, ft was a Lascar. Drunk. Can you blame him, sir? The officers’ mess sent for me. Dan, have a drink, they said. Sir, thank you, I said. But I’ve had enough for one night. Ask me for a drink another night.’ Dan half-shut his eyes, and looked woodenly dignified. ‘The Captain came to me.’ Now Dan’s deliberate stupidity was an insult to all authority. ‘I won’t forget this my man.’ ‘Sir,’ said Dan, and he suddenly saluted, with a smart quiver. The shock of that movement was like being slapped: it was only when his hand quivered at his temple that we realized he had told the story without gesture, with no more than an occasional tightening of a muscle. It was with a sting of astonishment that we saw the man was still sitting on the bench by the table. He had come to himself, sitting loosely, looking around dazedly, mouth open over prominent white teeth, taking in the bare dusty room filled with the fancy-dress gentlemen in their curly wigs and black robes. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes.’ Then he violently crashed his fist on to the table and shouted: ‘But that doesn’t help me, does it?’ I’ll never forget this, my man, the Captain said to me, and that’s the last I heard. Justice, they call it. Justice!’
‘Dan,’ said Flo, warningly, giving ingratiating smiles to everyone.
‘I don’t care who hears,’ shouted Dan, over the drone from the Court, through a door left slightly open because of the heat. Someone from inside the Court tiptoed over and shut the door. Every eye followed the squat figure in folds and tags and pleats of grimy black, who frowned at us so portentously that the young Counsel blushed: he, like the rest of us, had forgotten his surroundings. ‘Not so loud, please,’ he said.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Dan automatically.
There was a high titter from the other doorway. The old lady, white-faced and trembling with hatred, glared in at us from among other faces, which were curious or amused or indignant. Our lawyer gave her a puzzled glance and might have asked who she was, but Dan was speaking again. ‘When I left the Navy I had four hundred pounds. Do you know how I got that?’
‘There are certain traditions of the British Navy,’ said Counsel, conveying that he found the word Navy, on Dan’s lips, repulsive.
‘Oh. I know that,’ said Dan, as if delighted to be reminded, sharing them, so to speak, with Counsel, ‘For people with the money there’s nothing like it. I was personal servant once to the Surgeon Commander. His wife was in England. Ah, he knew how to enjoy himself. There was a girl.