The North Water(10)
Brownlee nods.
“Campbell better be there,” he says. “That’s all I’m saying. If Campbell isn’t there the moment I need him, I’ll turn this cunt around and sail her home.”
“He’ll be there,” Baxter says. “Campbell’s not as idiotic as he looks. He knows if this one goes well, he’s next in line.”
Brownlee shakes his head.
“This is what it comes to,” he says.
“It’s the money, Arthur, that’s all it is. The money does what it wants to. It doesn’t care what we prefer. Block off one passageway and it carves out a new one. I can’t control the money, I can’t tell it what to do or where to go next—I wish I fucking could but I can’t.”
“You better pray there’s enough ice up there.”
Baxter finishes off his drink and stands up to leave.
“Oh, there’s always ice,” he says, smiling lightly. “We both know that. And if there’s one man alive who has the true knack for finding it, I believe it’s you.”
CHAPTER FOUR
They enter Lerwick harbor on the first day of April 1859. The ashen sky is threatening rain, and the low, treeless hills that surround the town are the color of damp sawdust. Two Peterhead ships, the Zembla and the Mary-Anne, are already lying safely at anchor, and the Truelove from Dundee is expected in the next day. As soon as he has breakfasted, Captain Brownlee goes into the town to visit Samuel Tait, his local shipping agent, and pick out the Shetland portion of the crew. Sumner spends the morning doling out tobacco rations and tending to Thomas Anderson, a deckhand with a painful stricture. In the afternoon he lies on his bunk and falls into a drowse while reading Homer. He is woken by a knock from Cavendish, who explains that he is gathering a small party of dedicated seamen for the purposes of testing the achievements of the local distillery.
“Currently the expeditionary party consists of me,” Cavendish says, “Drax, who I confess is a fucking heathen with a drink inside him, Black, who is a cool customer and claims only to drink ginger beer or milk, but we shall see about that, and also Jones-the-whale, who is a raging Taff, of course, and therefore a grave fucking mystery to all of us. All in all, it promises to be a most satisfactory evening, I would say.”
They are rowed ashore by Drax and Jones. Cavendish talks all the time, telling them story after story about the vicious knife fights that he has witnessed and the ugly Lerwick women he has fucked.
“By Christ, the ungodly stench of her quim,” he says. “You would not fucking believe it unless you were standing there.”
Sumner is sitting next to Black in the stern of the rowing boat. Before leaving his cabin, he consumed eight grains of laudanum (just enough, based on previous experience, to make the outing bearable, but not to make him look like a complete fucking fool) and is enjoying the sounds of the water plashing against the blades and the oars creaking in their oarlocks (he is happily ignoring Cavendish). Black inquires whether this is his first visit to Lerwick and Sumner confirms that indeed it is.
“You will find it a backwards sort of place,” Black tells him. “The land about here is poor and the Shetlanders show no interest in improvement. They’re peasants and they have the peasant virtues, I suppose, but nothing else. If you walk about the island a little and see the miserable condition of the farms and buildings, you’ll soon know what I mean.”
“And what about the townspeople? Do they make some profit from the whaling trade?”
“A few do, but most are merely corrupted by it. The town as a whole is as filthy and iniquitous as any port—no worse than most perhaps but certainly no better.”
“And thank fucking God for that,” Cavendish shouts out in response. “A decent drink and a good wet slice of pussy is what a man requires before he commences the bloody work of whaling, and fortunately those are the only two products that Lerwick excels in.”
“That’s quite true,” Black confirms. “If it’s Scottish whiskey and cheap sluts you’re after, Mr. Sumner, you are certainly in the right place.”
“I feel fortunate to have such experienced guides.”
“You are fortunate,” Cavendish says. “We’ll show you the ropes, will we not, Drax? We’ll show you all the ins and all the outs. You can rest assured about that one.”
Cavendish laughs. Drax, who has not spoken since they left the ship, looks up from his oar and stares at Sumner for a moment as if deciding who he is and what he might be good for.
“In Lerwick,” Drax says, “the cheapest whiskey is sixpunce a glass and a decent whore will set you back a shilling, or possibly two if your requirements are more specialized. That’s about all the know-how anyone needs.”
“Drax is a man of few words, as you can see,” Cavendish says. “But I like to blabber so we make a fine team.”
“And what about Jones here?” Sumner asks.
“Jones is a Welshman from Pontypool, so no one ever understands a word he’s fucking saying.”
Jones turns around and instructs Cavendish to go fuck himself.
“See what I mean?” Cavendish says. “Complete fucking gibberish.”
*
They begin at the Queen’s Hotel, then move on to the Commercial, then the Edinburgh Arms. After leaving the Edinburgh Arms, they go over to Mrs. Brown’s on Charlotte Street and Drax, Cavendish, and Jones each pick a girl and go upstairs while Sumner (who can never perform after laudanum and so makes the excuse that he is recovering from a dose of the clap) and Black (who insists with a straight face that he has promised to remain faithful to his fiancée, Bertha) stay downstairs drinking porter.