In “The Old Phoenix”

We were walking up Croke Lane to the train station after our Tuesday night parade. I’d been in Croke Lane many times, but never noticed it before. Indeed there was little to notice, just a small door between two of the old warehouses, with a sign, “The Old Phoenix”, and written underneath in chalk, “Sea-farers’ nite”.

Well, we were sea-farers, of a sort, Navy volunteer reservists, who had just spent the evening in the drill-hall polishing up our relic nine-pounder cannon for an inspection scheduled for the following Sunday.

I won’t say we were actually feeling mutinous—polishing the cannon had even been fun in its way—but it was not exactly what we had joined the Reserves for.

In two years we had had just three weeks at sea, spare luggage in a frigate, plus some weekend boat-work. We were rated as Able Seamen, but we felt that was a courtesy title. Tom worked for a bank, and I’m a landscape gardener with my own work-force. Still, we were in uniform. From within we heard a dim buzz of voices.

“What a dive!” Tom remarked, “Looks like a clip-joint out of Conrad.”

That did it. Something told us that here was a place for real sailormen. We’d not seen it before, but little joints like this change all the time. It would be interesting to see what its interior was like.

We pushed open the door. A bouncer-type (or so I assumed) with a florid display of tattoos and gold ear-rings, glared suspiciously at us from under beetling brows, but said nothing. We took three or four steps down into the main bar.

Our impression from the street had definitely been deceiving. It was not the low dive we had expected, but large and comfortably furnished. There were three impressive centre-pieces: a cannon, not unlike the one we had been polishing a little while before, fully rigged with training tackle, an Admiralty-pattern anchor, and an old sailing ship’s figurehead (Real or replicas? It was hard to say). There were polished brass portholes for windows, though they could hardly open onto anything, and charts and model ships of various ages on shelves around the walls. The models, I could see—this was one of the first things that struck me—were beautifully made and accurate. There were also old and tattered flags, along with compasses and sextants—museum quality, some of these. I was surprised that I had not known about it before.

But I hadn’t much time to take in the thematic decorations before I was struck by the clientele. “Sea-farers’ nite” was evidently an institution—or was it some sort of club like The Society for Creative Anachronism holding a meeting? Some wore the boots and turtle-necked jerseys I associated with working sailors, but several were in fancy dress. There was a tall, thin, nervous-looking man in the uniform of a captain of Nelson’s Navy, and with him a stockier man dressed as a lieutenant. “Look!” I pointed with my elbow.

“Hornblower and Bush!” Tom said. I remembered he was also a devotee of Forester.

“Look! There’s Long John Silver!” One of the men at a table near the bar had lost a leg at the thigh and had capitalised on it to dress as a brilliant imitation of the old pirate, bandana round his forehead, above piercing eyes. To incorporate an amputation into a fancy dress certainly showed a wry sense of humour. And those gimlet eyes looked as though they were used to splitting horizons.

There were others, in a variety of costumes, some shabby, some elaborate.

There were little snuggeries around the wall, and we found a couple of chairs in an unoccupied one. In keeping with the atmosphere of the evening, we ordered grog.

“I like this place,” Tom said after a while, and called for another drink.

Tom has been a friend of mine for a long time, and I know his good points. I also know his bad ones. The worst of them is that he can’t hold his drink. He gets drunk quickly, and goes rapidly through a phase of babbling out confidences about himself to a phase of thinking, annoyingly, that he’s perfectly sober.

However, there’s not much I can do to stop him. He’s quite harmless in his cups, and we weren’t driving anywhere. The train stopped almost opposite his house—he didn’t even have to cross the tracks. On the other hand, if he were seen drunk in uniform by an officer, there would be trouble. I did the usual thing one does in these circumstances—kept an eye on him. He wasn’t likely to be robbed—we had only a little money on us.

“I wonder if they’d let us join the club,” he said after a while.

“Maybe,” I said. “But I think you’ve had enough.”

Of course drunks take no notice of what you suggest to them.

“They’re trying to escape from it all,” he went on.

I guessed they were.

“I tried to escape once,” he said. “I was touring England. I got to Glastonbury, of course.”

Of course. He’d made a few cryptic references to his English trip before. I’d gathered that it had been a disappointment.

“Not for the so-called music festival. Just on my own. But it was no good. Dope-smoking hippies. They weren’t the real thing at all.”

“What was the real thing?”

“I don’t know. The dope-smokers didn’t have it, just as the suits don’t have it. I’ve felt equally far from both of them.”

“Beggin’ your pardons, mateys!”

It was “Long John Silver”. He had propelled himself to our table with a good deal of nimbleness, using a single crutch—the old-fashioned kind, with a pad under the arm-pit rather than a ring around the elbow. He had certainly taken the authenticity of his costume seriously.

“Ye have the look loike Able Seamen,” he said.

“We are A.B.’s, yes,” Tom told him. No need to explain too much there. Given that we were in uniform, his guess had hardly called for vast powers of inductive reasoning, though our soft, smooth hands and faces might have spoilt the picture if he had looked too closely. I leave the digging in my business to employees.

“Have ye heard o’ Cap’n Nemo and the Nautilus?”

“Of course we have,” I said, playing along. “I’m surprised you have though. Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea wasn’t written in your time.”

“A date or two makes no matter here, matey. Written it was.”

“I see.” That was as good an answer as any to a rather silly observation.

“After oi slipped moi cable from the old Hispaniola with a sack o’ the blunt, oi knocked about a bit,” he went to. “Sea-cook oi was again … shall we say, but them waterfronts are terrible bad places, full of tempytation, and … well, once a gintleman o’ fortin, always a gintleman o’ fortin. I kept clear o’ England, though, and especial o’ ships headed Bristol way. No good poor ol’ Long John being reckernised there, and endin’ up keepin’ watch o’er the shippin’ from a gibbet on an ’eadland … But the seas are wide, mateys, the seas are wide …”

“Yes,” said Tom, “The seas are wide.” His voice was getting a little slurred now, and there was a faraway look in his eyes.

I’m not usually a rum-drinker, but the grog they served at “The Old Phoenix” was something else. It seemed to fill the veins with honey and fire. It was an effort to stop at the end of the first glass, an effort which, I noticed, Tom didn’t make when “Long John” refilled his glass from an old-fashioned can.

I picked out another word or two elsewhere from the yarning men: sea-words that stood out from the general buzz of conversation. “Broadside” … “Galleon’s Reach” … “Albatross”. From one of the other conversations, between two men in battered monkey-jackets, I heard a different word, pronounced like a name: It sounded like “Pom Pom Galli”.

Where had I heard that name before? I generally have a trick memory for useless information. That was it! It was the name of an island in John Wayne and Lana Turner’s odd but curiously memorable film The Sea Chase. Palm trees swaying in a tropic breeze. And that was the only mention of it anywhere that I could recall. The Sea Chase had been fiction, of course. And Pom Pom Galli didn’t really exist. Well, it was not surprising to find another movie buff here.

“So, mateys,” said “Long John Silver”, “what with one thing and another, oi ended up aboard o’ the Nautilus, under Cap’n Nemo. A lot of it was strange at first, but it’s a snug berth. Aye, a snug berth …”

I noticed now, in an opposite corner of the room, a figure very different to all the others—tall, majestic, clad in some sort of white material like, but not exactly like, silk, with a white gem bound on his brow and, over his shoulder, oddly enough, a recurved bow. He was girt with (now why did I say “girt with”?) I mean he was carrying a sword, straight, but apparently not a Naval sword, in a jewelled scabbard that was certainly not part of any uniform. I was puzzled by what character he was meant to be, then I remembered The Lord of the Rings: Earendil the Mariner.

“Here’s the Cap’n hisself,” “Silver” went on.

A tall, dark-haired man came over. He wore a blue reefer jacket, its only decoration a small silver seashell such as might have come from a girl’s charm-bracelet, upon the left lapel. Captain Nemo. A dead ringer for James Mason in the film of Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea. He had been talking to a man in—was it sixteenth-century dress?—with boots and high pleated collar.

Absurdly, we stood, put on our caps and saluted before we realised what we were doing. He had an air about him. Trouble again if an officer were to see us saluting a civilian. Still, it seemed to fit the atmosphere of the place.

“I see you’ve met Barbecue here,” he said. His voice was like James Mason’s, too, deep and reverberant. “I’ve just been having a word with Captain Van Der Dekken.” He gestured to the sixteenth-century seaman, who bowed in acknowledgment. “Did Barbecue tell you we’ve put in for recruits?”

“These lads look like they’d make nifty hands, Cap’n,” “Silver” told him. “Soon as I clapped eyes on them I reckoned they were as smart as paint. That one partiklar”—with a gesture towards Tom. “And A.B.’s, both of them …” Then he looked me up and down, and said an odd thing, though I supposed it was the drink, “Beggin’ yer pardon, but not you, matey. Oi sees that now. You’ve work that keeps you ’appy ’ere … ’e’s got the look on him, an’ you ’aven’t.”

Meaning I’m not as drunk, I thought.

“Well, what d’ye say, matey?” asked “Silver”, turning back to Tom. “Will ye sign articles with us?”

I had been about to ask what the subscription to their club was, but plainly they didn’t want me. I felt annoyed, and then a nastier idea took shape in my mind. Was the plan to cheat Tom out of his money? But that didn’t seem sensible. A man might be robbed in many ways and places, but I felt a meeting at a fancy-dress club wasn’t one of them. Or was I being dangerously naive?

“Silver” went on: “The Nautilus is lying in the bay. Our boat is tied up at the quay. Sign here, matey.”

He produced a yellowish scroll that reminded me of something. Tom signed it with a not very steady hand. “I’ll go!” he said. “What’s the subscription?”

“No charge, matey,” said “Silver”. “Not if you’ve got The Look.”

My suspicions hardened. An offer that looked too good to be true, usually was.

A couple of other big men came over. They too were wearing matelots’ bell-bottoms but quite unlike our uniform issue. These, like the caps they carried, had red piping which I had never seen before. They looked like my idea of crewmen aboard a rich private yacht. They also had the silver shells.

The nasty feeling in my mind was getting stronger. This club might well be harmless and innocent, but that did not mean that all the members necessarily were. One did, after all, read things in the Sunday papers.

“Don’t be a fool, Tom!” I said, but I don’t think he heard me. They all got up—“Silver”, “Nemo”, and the two crewmen. They surrounded Tom and moved with him to the door.

Time to act. “Tom!” I snapped at him, using what we had been told was called “Power of Command”. I tried to get to my feet, but “Silver” placed his crutch against my chest, and pushed me back.

“Leave ’im be, matey!” he said. “It’s what ’e’s always been looking for.”

“He’s not worth robbing!” I shouted.

“Calm yourself, matey. He’ll not be robbed,” said “Silver”. “’E’ll get what ’e wants. ’Ere’s moi davy on it!” He put down the crutch.

“So where will I find him?” I asked.

“Foind ’im,” he said. “Oh, oi don’t think ’e will.”

It took me a moment to get my breath back, then I followed at a dead run. Thanks possibly to the grog, my feet caught in a table-leg, and I fell. It took me a moment to get up again, up the stairs and out the door. I looked to left and right, but the whole party seemed to have disappeared. Five men, one drunk and one a cripple on a crutch. No body lying in a gutter in the light of the street lamps. I ran a hundred yards or so up the empty street towards the docks, then back the way I had come. Nobody. I turned again, determined to telephone the police, cursing the fact that there was no room for a mobile phone under a matelot’s tight uniform jacket and trousers. The proprietor must have a telephone behind the bar.

“The Old Phoenix” was not there. There was no door, no sign, only the blank walls of the warehouses. Frantically, I ran my fingers over the brickwork, feeling for the door. It didn’t exist.