Chapter 1: Chapter 1
The taproom was enclosed by brittle walls.
They had often been repaired, and replaced in patches up to the point where the proprietor seemed to have conceded defeat and left the patchwork walls as an aesthetic on themselves. They were foul, and stinking, and black with the coal dust that had been hauled overhead on the unloader. A heavy tropical density charged the air. The ceiling was low, and sustained by a cross of wooden beams, under which the clientele — existing of local labour forces — showed a drunken excitement that overshadowed the vicious underlying distaste for the circumstances in which they found themselves.
On the far side of a table enclosed by the south wall, directly opposite Mary Graves, a man was standing directly over Joseph Bates, in the form of a heavyset harbour worker by the name of Barbasa.
Mary Graves watched the scene with mounting rage.
"What a menial man," Bates said, looking up at Barbasa. "Look, Graves, what an exemplary menial."
Barbasa hit Bates hard across the mouth with his left hand, bringing it forward in a slapping, backhand sweep. Joseph Bates sat there. His shirt dirty. His legs spread. His shoulders sloped in the loose shirt he wore, and Mary Graves noticed where the burnt red of his neck stopped in a white line that marked the circle left by his hat. The corners of his mouth were stained and his expression did not change, but Mary Graves watched his eyes narrow, and the flex of his fingers where they rested on the tabletop.
So they were sat in the dark of the inn between the roused clientele and the counter and the din of the taproom.
"I won't be goaded," Bates said. "Don't count on it, fala." He turned his head toward Mary. Mary looked at him. Furious. She felt Jackson shift behind her chair and watched as Bates's eyes jumped from her up to the young man. "I'm not fighting you," Bates spread his hands, tilting his chin back at Barbasa, and leaning back in his chair as if lounging.
Barbasa hit him again. Right on the mouth with his closed fist. Barbasa was a tall man, he walked slow with valgus legs due to the heavy labour he did in the harbour. He had a flat nose and rolls of skin down his neck.
Mary Graves was holding her pistol in her hand under the table. She had shoved the safety catch off and she pushed Jackson away with her left hand. The young man moved but little and she pushed him hard in the ribs again to make him move. The boy grunted and Mary Graves followed him from the corner of her eye, slipping along the walls of the taproom towards the door and Mary Graves focused on Bates's face.
The Englishman sat staring up at Barbasa from under his bushy eyebrows. His pupils were even smaller now. He licked his lips, lifted his arm and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, looked down and saw the blood. He ran his tongue over his lips, then spat.
"That won't either," he said. "I'm no fool. I'm not fighting you."
"Nenda kajitombe," Barbasa said.
"You should know," Bates said. "You chose her."
Barbasa hit him again hard in the mouth and Bates laughed at him, showing the yellow, bad teeth in the reddened line of his mouth.
"Leave it alone," Bates said and reached with a cup to tilt some fermented drink from the bottle. The wet underlay remained stuck to it. "Nobody here is allowed to kill me and this talking-of-the-hands is silly."
"Mwoga," Barbasa said. Coward.
"Yes," Bates said and made a swishing noise rinsing the liquor in his mouth. He spat in his cup. "That you are correct in."
Barbasa stood there looking down at him and cursed him, speaking slowly, clearly, and bitterly.
"That as well," Bates said. "Leave it, fala. And do not hit me anymore. You will hurt your hands."
It seemed Barbasa would truly end him then, but he spoke to Bates, putting all his contempt in a single: "Englishman." And then he turned from Bates and went to the door. The clientele settled. Mary locked her pistol.
Dr Joseph Bates was about middle height with sandy hair, a stubby moustache, a very red face, and extremely warm eyes with faint white wrinkles at the corners that grooved merrily when he smiled. He smiled at her now. "See?" He said, underplaying his satisfaction. "They can't do anything."
Mary had not often felt so decisively disgusted with him. "You're not going to finish that."
Bates's eyes immediately met hers. He put down his drink. "Graves—"
"Pay the barkeep."
"Graves—"
"Pay the man. Puke. Faint. Do whatever it is you need to do. I'm putting Jackson in the Minerva and you won't talk to him."
Bates sneered but said nothing. Mary Graves pushed back her chair and made to leave. Ignoring the looks thrown at her back and breathing in the heavy night air, she traversed the public square up to where the truck stood parked.
Mary Graves had, when looking beyond the passionate temper and contrariness of her character, an air of calmness and sincerity about her. Adding to all that was something indescribably proud and thoughtful. She was tall, with sardonic wit to measure, rebellious: a romantic posturing as a realist out of fear of being called a dreamer.
Gentleness, otherwise, did not always come easily to her. Mary Graves possessed a hard to suppress suddeness of passion and anger which breathed into her and demanded action, for which she had found that clasping her hands behind her back proved an effective method of grounding her spirits.
There was barely any light but what fell from the rowdy pub windows. The bulky, tout-terrain truck partially hid a slum that was built against the wall separating the pub from a tract of warehouses where a fuel company stored the coal they unloaded from the harbour. The wall was ashy. The slum was less than four feet wide. Nothing more but a steep slant which created barely enough room for two people to lie down in it. An elderly couple were sitting in the entrance cooking coffee in a tin can.
The strength that coiled up in her hands no longer seemed seething to be released, and now cooled in her veins as an ever-present and reassuring reserve of her livelihood.
Jackson was frowning when he fell into pace. "Where will you be going?" The young man asked.
"Back to the dig site."
"And the governor?" Jackson asked. His dirty blond hair caught in the warm draft that hung between the warehouse and the pub, and hung ravelled over his forehead. Excitement still shone in his eyes, although he made a misguided effort to hide it.
"The governor can call on me when she pleases. I'll roll like a dog."
"You're no dog." Jackson said.
Mary looked at the old couple and said nothing. They were filthy, scaly with age and dirt, wearing clothing that were a brusque hash of local cloth and old coffee sacks. Jackson scuffled his feet.
"Do you think Bates will mind, ma'am?"
Mary did not look away from the couple. "Get in the Minerva."
"The tailgate is loose."
"Then get something from the warehouse and pay the fellow."
❧
A line of light fell open on the patchwork cobblestone of the square and Mary watched the figure of Dr Joseph Bates leave the pub and cross the square. He was still smiling broadly at her as he let himself fall down into the passenger seat and closed the door.
"What on earth do you go to them for?" Mary spoke, not turning the ignition.
"To look at them," Bates said. He moved his tongue around exploringly inside his lips.
"I don't care for your power trips."
"I care for them very much," Bates said. "They are prettier and have more sense than most people. Don't think of it if you don't like it," he said and grinned at Jackson in the rear: "how are you, kid?"
Mary circled the Minerva round the square and turned onto the main road. Jackson rattled on, excited and nervous. And when they reached the highest point of the city, Mary imagined she saw the size of the waves in the mouth of the harbour behind, and the heavy rise and fall of the channel buoy. The water seemed wild. The dark sea was over the rock at the base of the docks, but it was too dark to truly distinguish anything, and Mary turned away and drove the Minerva downhill away from the harbour.
Bates was still in a rowdy mood. Enlivened and animate from the excitement, and willing to bet everyone else should be as well, he continued his soliloquy: "Tell him of the site, Graves. Tell him of his duties. Tell him how to conduct the remains. Where will he go, Graves, after working with you, here? After working with Henderson and me?" Bates then looked out, "where will they take their idealists and isolationists and menials? I have thought of it all day while I drank."
"What have you thought?" Jackson asked.
"What have I thought?" Bates said and moved to look at him. "It's not important, what I have thought." He turned to Mary. "Tell him."
"You're drunk." Mary said.
"Much," Bates said. He pulled his shirt straight. The dirty folds hung lamely from his shoulders. "I have drunk much. I have thought much as well."
"What?" Jackson said. "What?"
"Don't talk to him." Mary told Bates. Jackson looked sullen. And Bates was abruptly more calm.
"I have thought they are a group of illusioned people," Bates said, then. More subdued. As if talking to himself. "Led by a man who's nothing more than what's between his thighs and a veteran who's only here to destroy herself."
"Don't talk to him." Mary said.
"I won't," said Bates. "I won't." Bates looked out the window at the lights and road and the slums passing outside. His voice took on a sombre quality, then. "It's still falling, Graves." He murmured. "The whole rotten thing. It's still falling."
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