Chapter 9 – The City With No Name
The City didn't have a name; there was no need, for nothing else like it existed on the face of Expiscor. The mist made it invisible from anything more than a ship's length away, meaning that only a skilled navigator could find it. Here houses are built on layers of history, memories of vice and disease, slovenliness and enterprise, fire and flood, all stratified carelessly under the living, bustling crust. The streets are awash with flower-girls and sewage, the inns with merriment and vice, all fuelled by cheap beer and negotiable affections. It is a true cliché to say that the City never sleeps, for it is alive and awake and aware all day and all night. First you can smell it, then you can hear it, then you can see it. The mist is kept at bay by huge dykes which surround the inner sanctum of unsanctity, keeping the unsavoury air relatively clear of fog. Visibility is still not great, but you can see down a whole street on a good day. How pure the rot, how unadulterated the scum, how soft the fabric of sin laid hard and bare for all to see. Yes, the dykes brought clarity, the very latest, most modern, urban clarity. And this civilisation made animal its civilians until they died and their bones became lost in another stratum of decay.
“Home,” said Jerry as the gates to the City loomed into view. “Real air at last, air with experience.”
“Har, har.” said Mungo.
Ambrosius stood in a brooding silence. He saw his mood mapped into physicality as the gates opened slowly, the mist rolling through them in great swathes ; through that threshold lay depravity and baseness, the two things which a man will seek as anodyne for a broken heart. The ship crawled through the opening and the gates closed astern with a resonant thud. The docks were little more than a stone wharf with warehouses behind and a few cranes busy unloading barrels of stock and crates of fish off the incumbent ships.
“It stinks,” said Ambrosius.
“Odour is in the nose of the beholder,” said Jerry. “Come on Mungo, lets get moored up, then we can hit the Cannery Arms for a cheeky ten pints and a good kip in a bed that doesn't rock.”
“Unless you slip the Madame a silver sixpence, that is, har, har!” chuckled Mungo.
Jerry laughed heartily, then, deftly handling the creeking wheel that steered the ship, skillfully piloted them until their starboard side was lined up perfectly with the wharf. The two shipmates made quick work of tying the ship off, then laid down a gangplank.
“Land, sweet land,” said Jerry, grinning from ear to ear. “I'll trample you until my feet get restless and my belly calls for the rocking of the mist, then I'll leave you like a two-penny girl, promising I'll be back again. I'm sorry our love-affair is so fickle.”
“They're the best kind o' love affairs,” said Mungo. “Come on, y'big barnacle's bottom.”
“You can come along if you want,” said Jerry to Ambrosius. “No pressure, like.”
“I've got nowhere else to go,” said Ambrosius.
“Very well then, the Cannery it is.”
They walked through street that led out of the docks, past the run-down warehouses, past the chandlers and sail-makers and various traders who gathered round the newly docked boats and tried to sell fresh fruit and savoury snacks to fill the long-deprived bellies of the sailors. They walked down a street full of houses with sumptuous frilly curtains and discreetly dim red lanterns in the upper windows, until they came to a building that looked like it had been constructed solely of driftwood. The smell of alcohol hit all three of them from a good twenty paces away, and by the time they were at the door Ambrosius felt half tipsy just off the fumes of the place. A man stood at the entrance with a large piece of wood with various assorted nails and bits of broken glass embedded menacingly in it.
“Afternoon, Gentle” said Jerry, nodding. “This here's Gentle Mike. Soft as a brush aren't you, aye Mike?”
“Snaarm,” said Mike.
“Mike's not that eloquent, I'm afraid, but he does his job well. Come on, let's go in.”
The three entered. At first it was as if they were back in the mist; the air was thick with stone smoke and the interior was lit only by a few cheap fish-tallow candles. They made their way over the grimy floor, inch thick with ash and dirt, to a free table in the corner. The table top was covered with the most obscene, misspelt words and the rudest pictures imaginable, all products of a filthy mind and a sharp knife. A serving wench, without asking, brought all three of them a pint of yellowy-brown liquid in a pockmarked tin cup and Jerry paid her with three dull bronze coins.
Ambrosius tentatively tasted his drink. It was unspeakably foul, and made the roof of his mouth go numb.
“Grog,” said Mungo. “Can't be more specific than that. Miscellaneous grog, the first thing any sailor asks for when he hits land. She must have sensed we were fresh off the boat. Well, maybe not that fresh, but you get the picture, har, har.”
“The first mouthful's bad, I'll say, but get halfway through it and it's more than worth it,” said Jerry. “You'll be merry as a marching band for a penny, and that can't be sniffed at. Speaking of which,” said Jerry. He took a tin out of his pocket and opened its lid, offering it to Ambrosius.
“No, I don't,” said Ambrosius. The contents were familiar – crushed stone, a potent narcotic that was snorted by the user. This produced a high within minutes and a surprisingly pleasant trickles of stone-laced mucous down the back of the throat. To Ambrosius the habit meant nothing but death, for on it he placed the blame for the passing of his father.
“Suit yourself,” said Jerry, offering the tin to Mungo, who eagerly took a large pinch, placed it in the dimple formed by the tendon of the extended thumb on the back of his hand, and raised it to his nose. There then preceded a truly disgusting noise like slime draining down a half-blocked plug-hole and the powder disappeared. Such a social habit. Jerry followed suit, washing his snortings down with a brave mouthful of grog.
“Har, har,” said Mungo, smiling broadly, displaying a row of rotted teeth (a side effect of years of grog and stone). “That be better. Now, lets play,” he said, getting a pair of dice out of his pocket. He suicidally downed the rest of his grog and dropped the dice into the bottom of his cup. “Highest wins. I'll lay down fourpence, what say you, Jerry?”
“I'm feeling lucky. I'll see your fourpence. Are you betting, Ambrosius?”
“I don't bet.”
“You're in the City now, lad. Best find your vice pretty quickly otherwise you'll never last. Everybody's got their sin here.”
Ambrosius thought for a second. “I don't have any money.”
“I'll lend you fourpence if you pay me back nine on the morrow,” said Jerry. “I'm kind like that.”
Peer pressure is a terrible thing. “Go on then,” said Ambrosius, smiling besides himself. “I don't want to seem rude.”
“Good lad. Now you can roll, Mungo.”
Mungo put his hand over the top of the cup and shook it vigorously, whispering incantations to whatever passing gods might be listening as he did so. He rolled the dice, sticky with dregs, onto the mottled tabletop.
“Double two, bad luck matey,” said Jerry, smiling.
“I could win yet,” said Mungo.
Jerry took the cup off him and placed the dice in it. He shook and rolled.
“Four and five makes nine,” said Mungo. “You lucky trout botherer, Jerry. Ambrosius, you next lad.”
“I don't think I'll beat that,” said Ambrosius pessimistically, but he shook and rolled anyway.
“Five and six! Someone's smiling down on you, son. That's your stake back and eight pennies to boot.”
They played on through the night, Mungo and Jerry drinking first grog to get them to a certain level of drunkenness and then beer to keep them at that level until the wee hours. Copious amounts of crushed stone disappeared up their noses, until their eyes were red and pupils small and glassy. The two seafarers' faces took on a pallor as of dead men, a fine sheen of sweat beading their foreheads. Ambrosius drank only the first pint of grog, which he made last through the long night. This was partly due to his natural restraint when it came to such habits, but was also due to the fact that the grog tasted so hideous and turned his stomach sour. In truth he did not enjoy such revelry, but the dice rolled in his favour and time after time he raked in money off his new acquaintances. By the end of the night he had won just over ten pound.
Ambrosius left the two shipmates dozing intoxicated face down on the table, each with one hand still clutching a half-full cup. He went to the bar and asked for a room.
“Do you have company?” asked the buxom barmaid.
Ambrosius looked back over to Mungo and Jerry. They would sleep like kings where they were. “No,” he said.
“Would you like some?” asked the barmaid provocatively.
“Er, no thank you,” said Ambrosius with a quaver.
“Suit yourself,” said the barmaid. “There's a free room up the stairs, first on the left. I'd make sure you get the right room if I were you.”
“Thanks,” said Ambrosius.
The Smug looked different through a window with glass in it, sort of as though it were trapped like a fish in a tank. It had been peeping over the horizon as Ambrosius crawled into bed, now, after a good sleep, the orb was high and fat in the sky.
Ambrosius' teeth felt chalky and his mouth tasted foul after last nights grog, as though he had been sick. There was nothing in the room other than the bed, so he had to quest downstairs for a glass of water, which was served to him by a new barmaid with black flowing hair and an ugly face. The water looked a little like the grog.
“Would you rather have some small beer?” asked the barwoman with evident amusement, having seen the look on Ambrosius' face. “I'm afraid this city isn't made for teetotallers.”
Ambrosius nodded and took the mildly alcoholic beer. Jerry and Mungo were still sleeping at their table, so Ambrosius decided to leave them be. He took his beer and drank it in the doorway, tasting the foul air of the City as he supped.
Feeling a little merrier and marginally more hydrated, Ambrosius returned the cup to the bar and left the pub. He did not really want to have to hang out with two sailors with sore heads for the rest of the day, so he decided to see the rest of the City alone.
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