Sailors on the Inward Sea Read Online Free Page A

the Nellie’ s wheel, repeating over and over, like a child, that she was mine.

I BECAME MASTER of the Nellie on 17 June, 1924, not quite two months before Conrad died. All things considered, he was lucky to have survived so long after that disastrous journey up the Congo in 1890, where a parasite-bearing mosquito descended from the green air somewhere near Matadi and infected his aristocratic blood. Of course, you know as well as I do that he hardly got off scot-free from that quixotic adventure. I have friends who live with the lingering effects of malaria but none who suffers from malarial gout, a filthy disease he fought with a great deal of courage, his other ailments filling in when it was resting. As a consequence, visiting Conrad was always an uncertain business. You never knew whether he would be up to it or, if his physical problems were in remission, if his mercurial mood would let him tolerate company. I remind you of this because I had been eager to see him even before Harrison and I fell to reminiscing about the old days. Coming into possession of the Nellie added a new urgency. The boat had a special meaning to Conrad and me that you don’t know about, Ford. I thought that, all things considered, he would be pleased, but I wanted to surprise him and so I wrote, saying only that I was back in London, newly retired. Rather than proposing a meeting time, I asked him to write to me at my post office address and set a date.
    I started my restoration project the next day. A number of things needed attention, the bad patch on the deck being particularly offensive since it was in exactly the spot where we used to gather our chairs in a circle and swap yarns. I spent that morning at a lumberyardgoing through all the teak, sighting down the planks to make sure they had been properly dried and were not warped, finally choosing a dozen. Over the next week I worked until dark ripping out the rotten boards with the help of a man from the lumberyard, who saved me from hurting my back. The rest I did alone. Planing the wood, drilling holes for dowels, laying the planks in was painstaking work that called on all my carpentry skills. As I recall, I had just put on the first coat of sealant when I received a letter from Conrad saying that he and Jessie were coming up to London in a few days to consult with their doctors and would be staying at the Brown Hotel. I rang him as soon as they arrived, using the telephone at a nearby ship chandler’s shop. The news about Jessie was alarming. She had gotten increasingly lame and there was some doubt whether the treatments would have a lasting effect. Conrad had his own problems, but for all that he was eager to see me and we agreed to meet the next morning.
    â€œIn your rooms?” he said.
    â€œNot exactly. On my boat. I bought the Nellie.”
    I explained what had happened and he was politely enthusiastic, saying that he was happy for me and Harrison. It would indeed have been terrible if she had fallen into some stranger’s hands. His feelings about the Nellie were very complex, the boat having become something of a personal icon to him as a writer. She was also linked to an old anxiety of his that went back a quarter of a century, almost to the beginning of our friendship, regarding a matter concerning the two of us and his character Charlie Marlow. It had never meant much to me, but vexed him deeply, so much so that whenever we saw each other, or spoke on the phone after a long absence, he needed to be reassured that I had kept my mouth shut. He asked again while we were on the phone, not in so many words—he never did—falling back on indirection that would have made Henry Jamesproud. I answered in kind, peppering my response with pronouns. “Good, good, good,” he said. Then he asked how he could find the Nellie and was clearly pleased when I told him that she was tied up at her old slip. “I’m glad you’re back,” he said.