Grand Canary by A. J. Cronin Page A

well, then. Let’s go. But I tell you plain I’m goin’ to speak with Mrs Baynham when we return.’ Turning, he walked off the gangplank with his head in the air.
    Suppressing a sigh, her face troubled and unhappy, Susan slowly followed him.
    Harvey did not see them go. He was in his cabin, eating moodily the fruit which Trout had brought up for breakfast. Telde oranges, thin-skinned and delicious, and custard apples fresh that morning from the market – a luscious meal. But he thought with introspective bitterness of his recent scene with Susan. He had not meant to take that tone; her intention at least was good; her quality – a downright honesty. Angry with himself, he stood up and began to dress. He had been hurt by life; and so, like a snarling dog, he wished to hurt back in retaliation, to strike at life with indeterminate, unreasonable savagery. Moreover, he must wound first lest he himself be wounded once again. It was the reflex of a stricken soul but he saw it only as a symptom of his own malignity.
    He sighed and turned from the mirror. His face, no longer pallid, was hardened by a stain of brown; his hand, with which he had just shaved, no longer trembled; his eye was clear again. His body was recovering quickly, but in his heart there ranged a scathing self-contempt. He despised himself.
    A knock sounded on the cabin door, and, lifting his head, Harvey paused. He had imagined himself alone, of all the passengers, upon the ship – left to that solitude he had so insistently demanded.
    â€˜Come in,’ he cried.
    The door flew boisterously open. Jimmy Corcoran entered, his chest inflated, filled by the glory of the morning. A new check cap lay backwards on his head, and round his neck a tie of blazing emerald. Harvey stared at him, then slowly demanded:
    â€˜Since when have you taken to knocking?’
    â€˜I thought you might be in your dishabille,’ said Jimmy, grinning largely.
    â€˜And would that have upset you?’
    â€˜Troth and ’twouldn’t. Not by the weight of one shavin’. But it might have upset you. Yer such a cranky divil.’
    Harvey turned and began to brush his hair with firm strokes.
    â€˜Why don’t you hate the sight of me?’ he asked in an odd voice. ‘I seem hardly to have been, well, polite to you since we came on this charming trip.’
    â€˜Polite be damned,’ answered Jimmy with gusto. ‘ Sure, I don’t fancy things too polite. Kid gloves wasn’t never in my line. I like a fella to call me a fool to me face and clout me matey on the back like that.’ And hitting Harvey a terrific slap upon the shoulders by way of illustration he elbowed himself forward to the mirror where he ogled himself, straightened his atrocious tie, smoothed his plastered lock and blew a kiss to his image in the glass. Then he began to sing:
‘Archie, Archie, he’s in town again,
The idol of the ladies and the invy of the men.’
    â€˜You seem fond of yourself this morning.’
‘Sure I’m fond of meself. And why not in a manner of speakin’.
    I’m the only man that ever hit Smiler Burge right over the ropes. And I’d do it again next St Patrick’s Day for love. Don’t ye know I’m the finest man that ever came out of Clontarf? Me ould mother told me so. The heart of a lion and the beauty of a faun as Playto says. And this mornin’ I’m feeling that good I wouldn’t call the Pope me brother.’ He went off again:
‘He’s a lady killer
Sweeter than vaniller;
When they meet him
Sure, they want to eat him.’
    Then, heaving round, he said:
    â€˜We’re all set for the beach. You and me’s goin’ ashore this mornin’.’ Harvey contemplated him.
    â€˜So we’re going, Jimmy, are we?’
    â€˜Sure an’ we’re goin’.’ He emphasised the certainty by smacking his fist into his palm. ‘We’re goin’