Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch [127]
“Oh no! Best man he ever sailed with! Here, you’d better come in.”
I stepped into a hall with walls covered in hangings and clocks and masks from all over the world, and an open door with kids running in and out.
“In there,” she said, so I went in. There were tiny tables and big stuffed chairs, a wall full of books, roses all over the carpet and a large solemn dog not deigning to get up out of its comfortable sprawl in front of the fire. In the window, two caged lovebirds sat breast to breast, eyeing the room. There were children, noisy, I can’t remember how many or who, but they took no notice of me at all till Dan appeared, clasping me to him like a long-lost son, and then they crowded round, curious, and even the dog got up. It was funny seeing Dan at home. Quite the seaman’s beard he was growing for himself these days.
“Alice!” he shouted. “Jaffy’s come!” and she came, that tall woman from a far-ago morning at the Greenland Dock (the smell of the morning air, tar, sweat, ale, me and Tim standing together and Ishbel waving, red shoes, black shawl), and stooped, smiling, to kiss my cheek.
“At last,” she said warmly. “Thank you for bringing him home, Jaffy.”
“Other way round, ma’am,” I muttered. “It was him brought me home.”
She had wide, thin lips, hard angles in her face, lines growing in the corners of her eyes. Very friendly, she was. Her dark brown eyes were steady and intelligent. “Say what you like,” she said, “you brought him home.”
One of the girls brought in tea, and I felt myself the centre of attention. I was getting used to that, me being the cannibal boy. All of Dan’s eight children were there, the biggest a slow, straw-haired boy of fifteen, the youngest a slobbery tot that chomped on its fist on a big sister’s knee. They gathered, standing and sitting, just staring. I winked at one of them, a small boy, who turned coy and looked away. Dan shooed people about, made me sit in the biggest chair by the fire and sat himself down opposite me. He leaned forward, grinning madly, to strike a match on the side of the fireplace. The dog nosed his knee thoughtfully and was rewarded with a rough scratch on its sable, loose-skinned neck. His wife poured the tea.
“Sugar?” She stood poised with the spoon.
“Three please.”
“Sweets for the sweet.” She smiled. When she sat, the way she drew her skirts about her, straightened her back and lifted her cup to her lips in one long, elegant movement reminded me of dancers I’d seen, girls at Paddy’s Goose and the Empire.
I wanted to say to her: He never stopped talking about you. It was a bit of a joke, him and his Alice. But it was all strange. I couldn’t. Something was awkward. She asked very kindly after my ma and the family and if I’d had time yet to think about what I was going to do next, and I laughed and said I was spoilt for choice. We sat for a while talking of this and that and nothing much, till she got up and herded all the others out before her, saying she was sure we two had things to talk about.
“Shall I send in more tea?” she asked from the door.
“Brandy,” said Dan.
“Brandy it is.”
The brandy was good. We sat by the fire, smoking and sipping, serene. I remember little of the conversation.
“She’s very nice,” I said, “your Alice. She’s lovely.”
He nodded. “Fell on my feet, there. God knows how.”
“You’ve got a lot of books.”
He turned his head and looked at them. “Natural history,” he said.
I got up and had a look. There were the works of Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, Charles Lyell and Thomas Huxley, although at this time I wouldn’t have known the names of any of those people apart from Darwin, a great tome of whose had had a permanent place on the bookcase in Mr. Jamrach’s office for years. One whole shelf was stuffed with Dan’s own scrapbooks and memos from his travels, and for the rest it was all animals and birds and fish and plants, and books about the sea. I picked out this and that one. Audubon’s The Birds of America. Beautiful pictures.
“Take it,” Dan said. “Go on.”
It was a wonderful book, the smell, the very feel of it. It rested