Thomas - Arthur McCann and All His Women

Arthur McCann And All His Women

By Leslie Thomas

Scanned by Bill

One

Although I have never kept proper records I know that, during the past twenty years, I have had women in London, New York, New Guinea, Barry Dock, Liverpool, Hartle pool, Sydney, Lydney, Paris, Harris, Bora Bora, Pago Pago, Hong Kong, Kings Lynn, Florence, Adelaide, Fanny Bay, Natal, Pentecoste, Corpus Christi, Bilbao, Balboa, Brest, Leghorn, the Hindu Kush and the Rann of Kutch; five Newports, three Kingstons, two Birminghams, God knows how many places starting in Saint, San or Sante, dozens called Port Something, and a minor Australian settlement known as Birdsville.

Not necessarily in that order.

I recall the towns, the cities and islands, and the ships that took me there better than most of the women, which is, I suppose, to be expected. But some of the women were beautiful. (My father, a prize swine, always said: 'Never open your eyes in the morning and have to close them again'.) Some were clever, some were happy, some were sweet and good. I even thought once or twice, that they were truly mine.

My father is well known for having bedded five of his wife's six sisters. My grandfather died at the door of a cheap dance hall and my great-grandfather is buried in a ship's barrel in Port Desire in South America. His wife thought he had gone to Bristol for the day.

With this pedigree it is, perhaps, little wonder that my life has been both adventurous and empty. I have searched this world, tried everything and found nothing. All I wanted was a true, endearing, enduring, undying, sensual, sensible, sexual, spiritual, all-embracing, all-everything, exclusive and particular love. Again and again and again. Women have been my failing and my failure. I seem to be a man who simply cannot say no. You could say it has been my hobby. But looking back on it now, I see it has been both a long and foolish journey. Oh, Mrs Nissenbaum of Riverdale, New York (and your tragic dog, Errol Flynn); Oh, Belinda with whom I spent my wedding night (although I was married to Pamela); Oh, Pamela, for all the years the port to which the hapless sailor returned (but who admitted other vessels); Oh, Monique at Port de Loupe and Rose Kirby of England; Oh, the young girls, and those old enough to make me know better, that I have held in my clasp through torrid nights and cold, in all hemispheres, creeks, continents, backwaters and famous cities. Oh, the lies, the thrills and the pain. Oh, Angie. Oh, God. Oh, shit.

To tell you the truth I don't know what the hell I am doing on the freezing deck of this ship, five thousand tons of rust and rubble if I ever saw it. I can't help feeling that some where, years ago, there was a mistake, a big mistake as far as I'm concerned. I've turned all the wrong corners and here I am in the icy Thames on a day like toothache, London one side, marshes the other, and January every bloody where. It's worse than Phillips Elbow.

The crew are aboard, miserable bastards, and the skipper is playing the piccolo in his cabin. I don't know whether he's drunk or whether he just likes the piccolo, because I've only just joined myself. Chief Officer Arthur McCann, recently relieved of captain's duties (in painful circumstances) sailing for the south, which is a place you then sail from to go north or east or west. Eventually you disappear up your own jacksie; or reach Port Desire.

I don't mean necessarily the actual place where my great grandfather sits dead in his private barrel. But some stinking hole like that. As I said, my great-grandmother really thought he had gone to Bristol for the day. But he sidled away to South America and while he was making love to a twelve-year-old Indian girl a potty dog bit him on the arse and he died the terrible death of rabies. I know this for a fact because I've been to the place and I got a native to read the story on his grave. The Indians thought he was a secondary god so they buried him sitting in this barrel and put a headstone over him. That he died in Port Desire only filtered back after years and my great-grandmother was too old and deaf to care then, anyway. She was always sewing ribbons on her hat saying she was going to Bristol to look for him.

I've watched this crew come aboard today. I know some of them of old and they know me. Hobbling up the gangway with their belongings like refugees staggering five hundred miles instead of fifty yards from a taxi. You can actually see the grumbles growing on their faces when they see the ship. By the end of the first week they'll all know me and I'll know them.

They're like wandering children. If they had a survey on which profession cries the most the seafarer would come top. Usually for himself. They are afraid because the sea is big, going out on a voyage like infants trembling towards the lavatory in the dark. They boast about the places they've been and seen and yet they often don't know the world is round. All they know is they set out and they come back, and at the end they say they'll never go to sea again. They always say that.

But I'm one of them anyway, a one-man Flying Dutchman, condemned to sail this way and that until death. And with no reason now. At forty-two where is there any place for me, better than any other? Unless the girl in Auckland or Gosport meant what she said, which she didn't.

I have had my adventures, however, and although I look enviously tonight at the lit buses taking men to their homes, sitting there on the top decks behind their papers, out of the snow; although I envy them, in my discomfort, for their comfort and for their everyday loves, I know that not one has ever been to Bodie's brothel in the Arctic.

The night they auctioned off the new girls at Phillips Elbow, the thick snow of the new winter was humming down from the Pole and there was a fresh skin of ice right across the river. They did the auction at Bodie's place, each man discreetly approaching either Mr or Mrs Bodie and mentioning a price he was willing to pay to be first with one of the new season's crop.

Bodie's is the most northerly house of ill-repute in the world, well above the Arctic Circle (unless something hitherto unsuspected is happening at Novaya Zemlya). Nobody can get in and out of Phillips Elbow, except by occasional ski-plane, for at least four months of the year, so the anxiety to be first with any of the fresh consignment is understandable because they quickly get worn out. Inside as well as out it was a wild night; by tradition, Mr and Mrs Bodie trying to fight off the eager hands of the trappers and lumbermen as the girls walked with professional allure among them in the big bar. The noise was tremendous, smothering the tunes played by the three-piece string band, also newly arrived for the winter. Before the evening was through they were soaked in beer anyway. Music came a bad third at Bodie's.

I had a pain that night, low in my chest, and I was not enjoying the novel festival as much as I should have been. I was just as new there as the girls for I had only flown in on the ski-plane that afternoon, relief captain for the 55 Northern Swan, lying in the cold Phillips River.

A bottle of whisky in each fist, my predecessor, Captain Happy Harrington, had reportedly gone off into the forests saying he was going to feed the grizzlies and had not been seen since. The river would be iced up in a week and the ship had to be loaded and clear before she was trapped in the Arctic until spring.

Last steamer of the year,' the pilot had said banking over the jagged river and the settlement spread at the bend that gave it the name of Phillips Elbow.' She's nearly there. Sure won't be anybody on the field.'

I could see my new command sitting alongside the blunt jetty just before the river took its sharp turn. Two thousand tons and even from the plane she looked as though she leaked. Moving up towards her was a fat river steamer, smoke streaming joyously from its pencil funnel. I could see there were already blobs of ice on the river.' Which field ?' I said.