The Line Between

I don't answer, but I up with that naked–lady flask, and I take another swallow. This time I know what's coming, and I set meself for it, but the salt wine catches me up again, lifts me and tosses me like before, same as if I was a ship with me mainmast gone, and the waves doing what they like with me. No, it's not like before — I don't lose Ben Hazeltine, nor I don't forget who I am. What happens, I find summat. I find everything. I can't rightly stand up proper, 'acos I don't know which way up is, and I feel the eyes rocking in me head, and I'm dribbling wine like I've not done since I were a babby … but for a minute, two minutes — no more, I couldn't have stood no more — everything in the world makes sense to me. For one minute, I'm the flyest cove in the whole world.

Then it's gone — gone, thank God or Old Horny, either one — and I'm back to old ordinary, and Henry Lee's watching me, not a word, and when I can talk I say, «There's more. I know you, and I know there's more. You want me to come in with you, Henry Lee, you tell me the part you're not telling me. Now.»

He don't answer straight off — just keeps looking at me out of those nursery–blue eyes. I decide I'd best help him on a bit, so I say, «Right, then, don't mind if we do talk about merrows. Last time I saw you, you was risking your life for the ugliest one of them ugly buggers, and him having to hand over every farthing he'd got sewn into his underwear, because that's the frigging rule, right? So when did that happen, hey? We never seen him again, far as I know.»

«He found me," Henry Lee says. «Took him a while, but he caught up with me in Port of Spain. It's important to them, keeping their word, though you wouldn't think so.» He keeps cracking his knuckles, the way he always used to do when he weren't sure the captain were swallowing his tale about why we was gone three days in

Singapore. «I had it wrong," he says, «that rule thing. I expected he'd come with his whole fortune in his arms, but all the merrow has to bring you is the thing that's most precious to him in the world. The most precious thing in the world to that merrow I saved — I call him Gorblimey, that's as close as I can get to his name — the most precious thing to him was that recipe for salt wine. It's only some of them know how to make it, and they've never given it to a human before. I'm the only one.»

Me head's still humming like a honey tree, only it's swarming with the ghosts of all the things I knew for two minutes. Henry Lee goes on, «He couldn't write it down for me — they can't read or write, of course, none of them, I'd never thought about that — so he made me learn it by heart. All that night, over and over, the two of us, me hiding in a lifeboat, him floating in the ship's shadow, over and over and over, till I couldn't have remembered my own name. He was so afraid I'd get it wrong.»

«How would you know?» I can't help asking him. «Summat like that wine, how could you tell if it were wrong, or gone bad?»

Henry Lee bristles up at me, the way he'd have his ears flat back if he was a cat. «I make it exactly the way Gorblimey taught me— exactly. There's no chance of any mistake, Gorblimey himself wouldn't know whether I made it or he did. Get that right out of your headpiece, Ben, and just tell me if you'll help me. Now," he growls, mimicking me to the life. He'd land in the brig, anyway once every voyage, imitating the officers.

Now, I'm not blaming nobody, you may lay to that. I'm not even blaming the salt wine, although I could. What I done, I done out of me own chuckleheadedness, not because I was drunk, not because Henry Lee and me'd been shipmates. No, it were the money, and that's the God's truth — just the money. He were right, you can live on a seacock's pay, but that's all you can do. Can't retire, and maybe open a little seaside inn — can't marry, can't live nowhere but on a bloody ship … no, it's no life, not without the needful, and there's not many can afford to be too choosy how they come by it. I says, «Might do, Henry Lee. Forty percent. Might do. Might.»

Henry Lee just lit up all at once, one big wooosh, like a Guy Fawkes bonfire. «Ah, Ben. Ah, Ben, I knew you'd turn up trumps, old growly truepenny Ben. You won't be sorry, my old mate," and he claps me on the shoulder, near enough knocking me over. «I promise you won't be sorry.»