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  HOME FROM THE SEA

  Mel Keegan

  DreamCraft

  Other Mel Keegan historical novels

  from DreamCraft

  Fortunes of War

  Dangerous Moonlight

  The Deceivers

  An East Wind Blowing

  White Rose of Night

  HOME FROM THE SEA

  © 2013 by Mel Keegan

  All rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity between real persons or other characters, alive or dead, is strictly coincidental.

  This edition published in June 2013 by

  DreamCraft Multimedia.

  ISBN: 978-0-9872328-7-8

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever, including but not limited to lending, uploading and copying, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  DreamCraft Multimedia

  Box 270, Brighton 5048, South Australia

  Chapter One

  At four in the afternoon on an April day on which winter seemed to be making a determined effort to return, The Raven was quiet as a tomb. Jim Fairley stood behind the bar, rag in one hand, pewter tankard in the other, gazing through the little square window panes at an iron-gray horizon under a sky that promised no good to seamen by nightfall. A gale was coming up. After six years of watching the same sky through this very window, Jim could read it like a book. And sometimes six years seemed closer to sixty.

  The wind was already starting to roar in the chimney, and he knew he should fetch in firewood, fill the water jugs from the big barrels under the eaves and put up the shutters. Gale or calm, The Raven would be crowded by seven, and between then and midnight he would be busy. It was not the only tavern on the road from Exmouth to Budleigh, but it was the best. Jim did not water the ale, he served full measure of rum, and he kept a table that was well respected.

  The aromas of rabbit pie and salt beef, stewing apples and figgy duff had already begun to make the mouth water. Mrs. Clitheroe was back there in the kitchen, singing to herself, talking to the old black cat and the terrier that kept down the mice and rats. The old lady had no ear for a tune and was three-quarters deaf into the bargain, with a broad Lancashire accent and a girth to be measured in yards, but there was no better cook this side of Exeter itself, and Jim had long ago realized he was lucky to have her.

  With a sigh, he set down the last of the tankards and poured a small rum for himself. The sound of cork squeaking out of bottle alerted old Fred Bailey to the possibility of a refill, and he raised his head from its pillow on his forearms, which rested on the scarred surface of the table in the chimney corner. He was the only customer at this time in the afternoon, and for every glass he paid for, he drank three. Jim gave him a wry look. Bailey replied with a gap-toothed grin and hunted through his pockets for a copper before he came swaggering up to the bar.

  In his day he had been a sailor – a topman in the king’s navy, if he was telling the truth, and Jim saw no reason to doubt him. He told stories to curdle the belly and set the hair on end, of storms at sea that almost swallowed warships, and the eerie calm in which the sea shone at midnight with its own light, while the voices of strange creatures sang out of the weird green twilight.

  He was old now, stooped, with the reputation of a rummy, but on days like this one Jim actually envied him. At least Fred Bailey had something to remember. When he had a couple of sheets in the wind and drowsed by the hearth there, his mind would be miles and years away, reliving adventures Jim could only dream about, with the kind of mates Jim had never known, and probably never would. The Raven, he decided as he poured another small rum for Bailey, was hardly the most exciting place in the world.

  Yet the tavern was his home, his business – his prison, if he wanted to be dismal about it. He knew he had nothing to complain about, and even if he had sobbed on the shoulders of the locals, they would only have scorned him. Jim Fairley was just 26. He owned The Raven right down to the last stick of firewood and keg of rum in the cellar. He had 60 silver shillings squirreled away in a leather sack under the bar, hidden beneath a broken stone known only to himself. And he had his life – and all four of his limbs, when he could so easily have been dead or crippled.

  His left leg irked him but it was still attached in place, it was warm and it worked well enough to get him around, so long as he did not walk too far or too fast. Today it ached a little, reminding him keenly of London chimney smoke and the rumble of coach wheels … of his father, and more pain than a lad of fifteen years should ever have had to learn about.

  The day was long ago, but so sharp in his memory, it could still eclipse the present. For an instant Jim actually saw the street, felt the red-hot bar of pain, before he deliberately thrust the unwelcome scenes aside. He pushed the mug across the bar toward Bailey, and then toasted Fred in the dark rum. “Your health, Master Bailey.”

  “Aye, and yours, Master Fairley.” Fred raised his mug and drank. “And you’ll forgive me for mentionin’ it, but you look peaky.”

  “I do?” Jim’s brows rose, and he gave the leg a thump with one clenched fist. “It pains me sometimes.”

  “When it gets cold, and the rain comes in, and the wind.” Bailey pressed one hand into the small of his back. “Don’t I know about it? Don’t us all!” He drank a little and considered Jim with a sobriety that was, in him, alarming. “You know what’s wrong with you? Young feller like you. Oh, aye.”

  For one moment Jim almost choked on the mouthful of rum he had just taken, and he forced the muscles of his gullet to swallow smoothly. If old Fred had even the vaguest inkling of what was ‘wrong’ with him, then Jim was in dead trouble.

  What was wrong with him?

  He needed a good one. A good long one, with one of the handsome young seamen who tromped along the coast every week from Plymouth to Portsmouth, leaving one ship and going to another. He needed a tasty sailor of about his own age, who would take a single look at Jim and just know, the way like knew like … a big, healthy lad who relished a bit of the other, a bit of rough instead of fluff, before he was on his way again and back at sea in a week, no one the wiser and both of them sated enough to hang onto sanity until the next time.

  Seamen passed by every day and many stopped at The Raven. Jim was seldom short of company, and he knew he was choosy. He could have had the big Dutchman, three days ago – but the man’s breath stank of pickled herrings. He could have gone with the blue eyed French sailor the day before – but he toyed with a knife and laughed at all the wrong remarks. He could have picked the young Scotsman with the fiery orange hair – but he was hairy as a bear. Not that there was anything particularly amiss with hairy men, Jim allowed, but his own preference was for something a little less shaggy, with a little tan on its hull, and –

  “Your trouble,” Fred Bailey was saying with keen insight, “is, you never get out. You never do … stuff.” He belched eloquently. “You never see nothin’. You never make the acquaintance of mates and enemies.”

  “I’m talking to you,” Jim argued.

  “I don’t count. I’m a customer.” Bailey frowned at him. “You want to watch out, Master Fairley. There’s a nasty old biddy called Time, an’ if you don’t watch out for ’er, she’ll catch you napping. You’ll wake up one day an’ you’ll be an old rummy, like me – well past it. There ain’t a lass in all of Devon an’ Dorset that’ll ’ave you, an’ then what’ll you do?”

  Jim almost chuckled. Bailey did not know it, but there was already not a lass in Devon, Dorset, or any other county who would have him, because as soon as the doors were locked and the lamps were turned down, the truth would be out before the candles. Lasses asked for services Jim did not have to give, and twic
e he had blamed his apparent uselessness on his injury. The leg had been his salvation.

  The truth was very different, but neither the Dorset girls nor Fred Bailey had any business knowing about it. Jim’s left leg would be weak, frail, as long as he lived, but the right was strong enough to make up for it and what lay between was as virile as any man. More than some, Jim thought ruefully as he watched Bailey trying to nurse the rum in case there was no more where it came from, which could only mean his pockets were bare. Jim could either feed him rum or rabbit pie and stewed apples, and Fred knew it was food he would be getting, not grog.

  “You,” he said sagely, “need to get out.” He gestured with the mug. “Out of this place. See the world, while you’re …” another burp, more tenor, more resonant “…still young enough to do it.”

  The worst of it was, he was absolutely right and Jim could not argue a syllable of what he had said. The Raven was his prison. But it was safe, comfortable, lucrative; and it was all that remained of his father. Jim sighed, leaned both elbows on the bar and frowned out through the tiny glass panes at a sky that was darkening gradually with clouds driven in by a threatening wind.

  He might have told Bailey that Arthur Fairley had invested every penny he had in the tavern; that he had come out from London hoping clean sea air would heal his lungs, which were rotten with the city smoke and stench. If Arthur had made the move five years sooner, the healing magic might have worked for him, but it was already too late when he bought The Raven. He was buried in the churchyard up at Budleigh, not very far from the previous owner.

  “Aye, I know,” Bailey sighed, as if he had heard every word Jim had not said. “Your da were a good man – ’e set you up, right enough, with this place … an’ ’e done good by old Charlie Chegwidden, an’ all.”

  “Charlie was an odd one,” Jim mused. “I only knew him for two weeks, mind you. Hardly enough time to get to know him at all, before he gasped his last and Doctor Hardesty was pronouncing him dead as mutton.”

  “Charlie were all right. I knew his ma, before ’im. Thirty-odd year, she owned this place, afore it come to Charlie, an’ then to you.” Bailey drained the mug and set it down on the bar before Jim with a certain deliberation which hinted broadly. “Aye, nothin’ wrong with old Charlie.”

  “No?” Jim stirred, and just as deliberately swept Bailey’s mug up with his own, and plunged both into the pail of water to wash them. “Two whole weeks, after my father bought this place, he sits at the windows. Either here in the taproom or upstairs in his bedchamber. Just sits and looks out, staring at the sea, or at the path, like he’s waiting for somebody or something. Never says a word. Never tells me what he’s waiting for, or who. And then he falls on his face on the floor, right there, and I’m sending a lad to run for the doctor. It would have been quicker to send for the undertaker.”

  “Well, watchin’ don’t make a man queer,” Bailey protested. “Charlie were a seaman, like me, ’sept ’e were in merchantmen an’ me, I were king’s navy, thirty long year. Could be, ’e were just watchin’ the ocean, wantin’ to go back to days that’ll never come again.” His voice was rich with nostalgia. “Last time Charlie shipped out, I were in port meself. Charlie went out on the Rose of Gloucester, out of Plymouth. By God, that ship were bloody notorious! But Charlie were lucky enough to be off ’er afore trouble struck. As I recall, ’is old ma took the coach down, an’ kissed ’im goodbye on the dock, like she thought she’d never see ’im again.”

  For some moments Bailey was silent and Jim sorted through piles of ancient, dusty memories until he remembered Charlie Chegwidden’s stories in useful detail. “She didn’t,” he said with a trace of wry humor.

  “Didn’t what?” Bailey yawned, issuing a draft of rum fumes.

  “See him again.” Jim stooped to retrieve the mugs and polishing rag. “The way Charlie told it, he wandered on home – oh, about eight years ago, would it be? – and his old ma was on her deathbed. She lived three weeks after he got back to The Raven, but she never woke up, never actually set eyes on him, before they took her up to the churchyard and did the necessary.”

  “Is that a fact, now?” Bailey seemed surprised. “Well, by God, I never knew that. I were at sea, meself, when the old lady passed away, an’ only learned of it when I got me boots back on dry land an’ came by for a pint. On ’er deathbed, you say?”

  “That’s how Charlie told it.” Jim’s hands could polish tankards all by themselves, they had been doing it so long. He was intent on the memories of Chegwidden – weatherworn and probably not nearly as old as he had seemed, sitting at the window on the seaward side of the hearth, gazing out, watching for something or someone who never arrived.

  When he sold The Raven to Arthur Fairley, he had only one request, and it was not so strange. He was too sick and too tired to manage the tavern, but he would sell it for a low price, if the new owner would give him a clean bed and three squares a day, for as long as he still drew breath, and then see him decently buried at the end.

  In fact, Jim’s father knew nothing at all about running a tavern, and Charlie was invaluable in those two short weeks. He would not let the new owner be cheated on the price of ale and rum, and he convinced Mrs. Clitheroe to stay on and cook.

  The churchyard in Budleigh was a busy place, Jim thought darkly. Old Nell Chegwidden was there, with Charlie right beside her; and Arthur Fairley lay on the low hillside under the big chestnut tree, where an empty space was reserved for his son.

  And may it stay empty, Jim prayed fervently, for many years to come! He had even less desire to join his father than he had to linger in The Raven for the rest of his days, waiting for the big, handsome seamen to tromp up the path, buy a jar of rum, exchange knowing glances and winks with the proprietor, and follow him upstairs for an hour of –

  “And another thing,” Fred Bailey burped. “You need to get yourself a lass, afore it’s too late. You know what folks in these parts sez about you.”

  “What do they say? That I’m a eunuch?” Jim guessed.

  “Well, mebbe somethin’ like that,” Bailey muttered.

  “And mebbe they’d be something like right.” With a soft curse, Jim slapped his leg. “A lass, interested in the likes of me? It’s already too late, Fred. It was too late for me when I was fifteen years old. Don’t believe me? Go’n talk to Molly Hutchins. She’d be glad to tell you how much use I am in the dark.”

  The experience still stung. Four years ago, Molly had cornered him – a fresh, pretty girl of seventeen, looking for a likely husband. The scene ended in tears of disappointment and even a gentle kind of pity, when Molly convinced herself Jim was incapable due to old, old injuries. She mourned her own loss and his imagined plight for at least two days before she set her sights on a locksmith from Exmouth, and Jim was off the hook – chagrined, relieved, embarrassed, but at liberty.

  The mournful look on Bailey’s seamed, walnut-brown face almost made him regret telling the lie, but honesty might have been much worse. True enough, Bailey was an old seaman, but he had never looked at Jim and known. Not like the big Dutchman with the herring breath, whose hands were everywhere and who did not want to take no for an answer until Jim bit him hard enough to draw blood, and told him to bugger off, and not come back unless he had eaten nothing but rose petals, drunk nothing but spring water, for three days.

  “Well, it’s dead sorry I am about that, lad,” Bailey said with all due sympathy. “So, you, uh, you ’ad a lass afore bein’ fifteen?”

  “No,” Jim said darkly. There had been a few lads, he thought with acid humor, but no lasses. Not then, and not later. Of this he kept silent.

  Bailey’s eyes widened. “Then you’re …”

  “A virgin?” Jim choked back a ribald snort. In fact, in a way it was perfectly true.

  “Um … aye.” Bailey fidgeted in exquisite discomfort of his own making. “An’ I’m right sorry about that, an’ all. But it don’t change the other.”

  “What other?” Jim wa
s still thinking about the Dutchman, wondering what the odds were that he might be hunting for roses in April.

  “You need to git. Out,” Bailey told him. “An’ aye, I know you buried your da a long time ago, an’ I know this place is ’is legacy … but yon door’s goin’ to start lookin’ like a coffin lid if you don’t get out an’ feel the wind in your face, afore your bones start to rust up like mine.” He shoved himself away from the bar and took a few unsteady steps toward that very door. “Gotta piss. Be back.”

  “Rabbit pie, and apples,” Jim promised with a faint, indulgent smile as he watched Bailey make his way out and around in the direction of the stable and coach house, which were ten yards east of the tavern. The building stood a scant dozen yards above the beach, so close, gulls often clustered around the door to sun themselves and when the wind blew hard out of the south, the floor could be sandy.

  Today the south wind whipped inside as Bailey opened the door, and it smelt of the sea, cool and clean on Jim’s face. He breathed it in, savored it, and relished the idea that the same wind blew over the Canary Islands, the Azores, the Leeward Islands, Jamaica, Barbados.

  The names were alchemy, sorcery, and Jim knew how right Fred Bailey was. He was 26, and for more than six of those years he had stood at this bar, polishing tankards, pouring ale and rum, counting coins, watching out for customs men from the Exeter and listening for rumors of smugglers on the coast who might be carrying brandy and treats from France –

  Watching out for fine-looking seamen who enjoyed a good one … a good long one, with a jar of ale first and a sound sleep after, and not a word said to a soul.

  This was what Jim needed most, he hold himself as he stacked the tankards in preparation for the evening trade. Mrs. Clitheroe was frying onions now, and Jim’s belly growled. A voyage into exotic waters might have been grand; a roll in bed with a handsome lad would have been just as welcome, but first he needed to get to work. The firewood was unlikely to haul itself inside and he must make up the hearth, fill the water jugs and then batten down the shutters before the wind rose any further.