The Time Before This

  Copyright & Information

  The Time Before This

  First published in 1962

  © Estate of Nicholas Monsarrat; House of Stratus 1962-2011

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The right of Nicholas Monsarrat to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  This edition published in 2011 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

  Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

  Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

  Typeset by House of Stratus.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

  ISBN: 0755131371 EAN 9780755131372

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  This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  www.houseofstratus.com

  About the Author

  Nicholas Monsarrat was born in Liverpool, the son of a distinguished surgeon. He was educated at Winchester and then at Trinity College, Cambridge where he studied law. However, his subsequent career as a solicitor encountered a swift end when he decided to leave Liverpool for London, with a half-finished manuscript under his arm and £40 in his pocket.

  The first of his books to attract attention was the largely autobiographical ‘This is the Schoolroom’. It is a largely autobiographical ‘coming of age’ novel dealing with the end of college life, the ‘Hungry Thirties’, and the Spanish Civil War. During World War Two he joined the Royal Navy and served in corvettes. His war experience provided the framework for the novel ‘HMS Marlborough will enter Harbour’, and one of his best known books. ‘The Cruel Sea’ was made into a classic film starring Jack Hawkins. After the war he became a director of the UK Information Service, first in Johannesburg, then in Ottawa.

  Established as a sort after writer who was also highly regarded by critics, Monsarrat’s career eventually concluded with his epic ‘The Master Mariner’, a novel on seafaring life from Napoleonic times to the present.

  Well known for his concise story telling and tense narrative, he became one of the most successful novelists of the twentieth century, whose rich and varied collection bears the hallmarks of a truly gifted master of his craft.

  ‘A professional who gives us our money’s worth. The entertainment value is high’- Daily Telegraph

  Bar One

  When the old man started shouting, I was standing at the end of the long bar, talking to a couple of construction men and to the bush pilot who had flown me in that morning. We were in the bar of that hotel on Bone Lake, which you will only find on the very latest maps of the Ungava Bay area of Quebec Province. It’s the part of Quebec which, with its next-door neighbour Labrador, pushes up into the forlorn frozen wilderness of Hudson Strait. This was all new country, and yet already old – the leapfrog of development which was bursting out all over the Canadian northland had already made it out of date.

  We were talking about that, and progress, and girls, and my newspaper, and Russia, when the old man went into his act.

  I had been watching him, out of the corner of my eye, for some time, wondering how long they would stand for his particular level of nuisance value. You can always tell, in a bar, when someone is doomed to step out of line, even though you are not involved, and don’t intend to be. In this case, I could guarantee, from his gaunt anger, his ancient gestures of emphasis, his cracked rising voice, and the smirking of the men nearest to him, that the old man would not be with us for very much longer.

  They stood for a lot in that bar – which was probably illegal, since they called it a lounge and, for good measure, threw in some nonsense about its being a private club, members only, entrance fee fifty cents. But Bone Lake was a long way from Quebec City, and the niceties of the Provincial authority. In fact it was a long way from anywhere; nearer to the Arctic Circle than I had ever been, or (except in the strict line of duty) ever wanted to be.

  The bar had all those stage props which are best appreciated on television. The long mahogany counter was backed by rows of bottles with plain or gaudy labels, and then by a flawed mirror which reached to the ceiling. Men came in, stamping the snow and slush off their boots, beating their hands together against the sub-zero cold. Steam rose from authentic northern clothes: lumberjack shirts, fur caps, checked windbreakers, coonskin caps – all the romantic trappings which were, in fact, models of utility. It had a piano, untended, and a jukebox, constantly fed with dimes and quarters. But we were not very up to date at Bone Lake; the jukebox was playing, for the tenth time since I came in, an ancient close harmony version of Lonesome Road.

  There was even a barman called Joe, though one could tell that his name wasn’t Joe at all. It was probably Barry, or Earl. But it was part of the canon of conformity hereabouts that all barmen were Joe, just as elsewhere all mayors were corrupt and all mothers sacred. So the customers, playing the same melodrama, hammered on thebar and called out: ‘Joe! Hey, Joe! Set ’em up again!’ No one was any the worse off for this innocent charade.

  Thus it was Joe, a sleek and greasy five-foot-fiver, who was now saying, in a chance moment of silence: ‘Just simmer down, will you?’ And it was the old man who was shouting, on a note suddenly strident: ‘I tell you, I know!’

  What did he know, with such Biblical certainty? I turned again to look at him, as did many others. Across the drifts of steam and cigarette smoke, the focus was not sharp; but his face and sometimes his shoulders were in view, above the other people crowding the long bar, because he was atall old man as well as a noisy one. Yet he was tall like a ruined tower, a gaunt colossus who had ceased to bestride the world; his face had grown pinched and grey, his wispy hair thin, his neck stringy, his shoulders bowed under the weight of the years.

  He was an old man who should have been at peace among his grandchildren, and here he was shouting at a bar, beset by a ring of mocking faces.

  One could be sorry for him, because the years should have treated him more handsomely. But behaviour is what we do, not what is done to us; and he should have known better than to take chances in a world which had passed him by. It was his own fault that he was attracting the mockery of this clan, sticking out his long stringy neck in order to have it pinched and tweaked. It was his own fault that the reaction was so sharp.

  My pilot, whose name was Ed – another authentic piece of characterization – grinned as he nudged me, and said: ‘The Mad Trapper’s acting up again.’

  I watched, feeling that I should be ashamed,
yet feeling only the same kind of idle amusement. My mother, I decided, would have been ashamed for me … The old man had two principal tormentors, who were even now returning to the chase; one was a great beefy fellow, blond, red-faced, sweating under the fur-lined parka which he still wore; the other a small needle-nosed man, a hanger-on, a jackal who would sidle out of the way if the going got rough. Watching, I thought of them as the Ox and the Weasel, and the names will serve.

  They had both fallen back a pace, when the old man shouted, but now they closed in again, and the Weasel said, sniggering: ‘You don’t know from nothing, gran’pa. You’re for the birds … What is it you know? Tell us what you know.’

  The old man said: ‘It’s all happened before.’ His voice was high-pitched, shaking, cutting through the low growl of all the other voices. ‘We’ve been here before. That’s what I know.’

  The man I called the Ox pushed an enormous stubby finger into the old man’s chest, and said: ‘Is that so? Just prove it, that’s all I say. Just prove it.’

  ‘I can prove it!’ shouted the old man. ‘But not for idiots like you.’

  ‘Now just simmer down,’ said Joe the barman.

  ‘Who are you calling an idiot?’ demanded the Weasel. ‘You want to watch out. My friend here doesn’t like to be called an idiot.’

  ‘I tell the truth as I see it,’ said the old man.

  ‘You won’t see anything, when I’ve finished with you,’ said the Ox. He gave the old man a slow, heavy shove, and he fell back against the bar. ‘You call me an idiot again, and I’ll break you up.’

  ‘You pushed me!’ screamed the old man. I could not see him now, but his voice – astonished, indignant, slurred by alcohol – weaved through the air between us, and found my ear. ‘You used force! … But you cannot silence the truth!’

  ‘I can give it a damn’ good try,’ said the Ox, and shoved again, viciously, at the gaunt body which still remained out of my line of sight.

  ‘Simmer down, now,’ said Joe.

  The old man bobbed into view again, his arms flailing wildly. ‘Don’t touch me!’ he shouted. ‘You – you animal!’

  Other voices now began to rise, protesting – but they were protesting their own discomfort, not the old man’s indignity. ‘Pipe down!’ ‘I came here to enjoy myself!’ ‘Break it up!’ ‘Give us a rest!’ – the chorus of disapproval made itself heard throughout the room. Some of the card-players turned from their tables, and one of them called out: ‘Hey, Joe! We’re trying to concentrate. Make him shut up.’ Unfairly, inevitably, the tide was turning against the old man. I did not think he would be staying with us much longer.

  Then I noticed the girl – or rather, I renoticed her, because I had taken a brief look at her earlier. She was not too young, not too pretty, not too alluring; she was a girl on a stool at a bar. I don’t like girls on bar stools, though I’m not making an issue out of it; if they want to wait there, let them wait there – as long as I don’t have to be a customer. Look down, look down, that lonesome road, the jukebox had been moaning when I first saw her; and I had thought, without too big a catch in my throat, how lonesome that road must be, how joyless, how not for me.

  She had been sitting on her stool, watching, killing time, sipping economically, smiling the mirthless smile of girls in bars. But now, astonishingly, she stepped down, and went forward, and said to the Ox: ‘Why don’t you leave him alone?’

  It was as if a cut-out paper doll had suddenly complained about the scissors. The big man turned, as surprised as I had been. ‘What the hell?’ he said, almost stammering. ‘And what’s it to you?’

  ‘He’s not doing any harm,’ said the girl. She was small, and thin rather than slim; her back was towards me, but the set of her head was determined. ‘Why don’t you pick on someone your own weight?’

  It might have been interesting; but, as it happened, that was the last I heard of the exchange. Suddenly the quarrel grew private; attention shifted, voices rose elsewhere, the temperature dropped perceptibly. I could see the Ox man and the girl arguing, but their voices were lower, their expressions less sullen and significant. The heat seemed to be off. I turned back to Ed the pilot.

  ‘What’s this?’ I asked. ‘Who’s the old nuisance?’

  Ed grinned again, swirling the drink round in his glass. ‘They call him the Mad Trapper – among other things. He’s always doing this. I think his name is Shepherd. Same routine every night. He starts an argument, then somebody gets fed up and he’s thrown out.’

  ‘What sort of argument?’

  ‘Strictly the rye-and-water kind,’ answered Ed. ‘There’s no sense in any of it … He always says: “It’s happened before.” Then he says: “I know”.’ He was mimicking the old man’s anguished tones with a certain skill. ‘He’s a regular feature around here.’

  ‘But what does he do?’

  Ed shrugged. ‘Gets drunk. Gets into arguments. Gets thrown out. End of story.’ He turned back to the bar, prepared to forget it. ‘What time do you want to take off tomorrow? – if we can take off.’

  We talked, and made some tentative plans, depending on tomorrow’s cold, and the chance of fog, and the time it might take to blowtorch a frozen engine into life. But my interest in the old man had not died so quickly. I was still wondering what it was all about, what could have moved him to such torment, such distraught violence. Maybe, as Ed said, it was just the bottle – in which case there was no story for me there. None, indeed. I hadn’t come these many miles to write about old drunks in bars; I could do that at home, any time, any day. A drunk is a drunk is a drunk, in Toronto or Tahiti. My hoped-for target was something better.

  But I was not quite finished with the old man, for that night; his ability to disturb and annoy was persistent, and in the end it included me. His voice, freshly raised, now made itself heard again. I looked up, to see him staggering sideways, away from the bar. The girl was pulling at one arm, and he was brandishing the other one, and shouting: ‘I have proof! Positive proof!’

  ‘Here we go again,’ said Ed.

  ‘Simmer down,’ said Joe the barman. ‘Or you’ll have to leave.’

  ‘Come on,’ said the girl, pulling at his arm again. ‘I’ll take you home.’

  ‘You take him home,’ said the Weasel, baring his teeth unpleasantly. ‘And the best of luck to you.’

  But the Ox, his overlord, was less accommodating. ‘You take him home,’ he threatened, ‘before I take him apart.’

  The old man suddenly drew himself up. ‘You are a barbarian,’ he said, very clearly, with tremendous authority. Then, just as suddenly, he seemed to suffer a collapse of spirit; defiance faded into a trembling fatigue; one could divine now that the tall body was as gaunt and frail as the face. Shambling, flapping his arms, he allowed the girl to lead him towards the doorway.

  They passed close by us. I found myself watching the girl, wondering about her motives, wondering why, of all people, she had been the only one to take the old man’s side. Maybe he had some money left … I found that I could not extend her much credit, nor belief; harlots with hearts of gold were only good enough for Broadway; hard fact inevitably proved them to be selfish, greedy, and corrupt in all things. What else could they be?

  The old man’s eyes were closed as he shuffled by: the girl might have been leading a blind cripple. But when he reached the door, his voice rose, on a final burst of energy.

  ‘It has happened before!’ he shouted over his shoulder. Then the door swung outwards, and the strange pair were gone, with the girl serving as a crutch under his elbow. One had to admit that she was the only one to come out of this with any sort of a plus sign. I hoped it would be worth her trouble.

  ‘It’s all happened before, to him,’ said Ed, with a laugh. ‘And that’s for sure.’

  ‘Who’s the girl?’

  ‘Called Mary. Mary, Mary, not too contrary.’

  Lonesome Road had started up again. Look up, look up, and seek your Maker, sang the jukebox. I felt il
l at ease, for no known reason; the incident, which should have been funny, was now merely pitiful. I was sorry that I had laughed – that any of us had laughed. Old men, however foolish or crazed, deserved something better than laughter at the end of their own long lonesome road.

  ‘Now we can all simmer down,’ said Joe the barman, appearing suddenly in front of us, perky as a canary. ‘What’s it to be?’

  ‘Nothing for me,’ I said. ‘Early start … I see you just lost a good customer.’

  ‘Oh, him.’ Joe, swabbing down the bar, sniffed his disdain. ‘He’s just a nut. Though to hear him tell it, he’s the only one in the whole wide world who isn’t.’

  I Was There

  For at least three weeks I forgot the old man, and the girl Mary, and their offbeat exit from the bar at Bone Lake. I had work to do, work which grew steadily more fascinating. I was there in the northland because I had been sent there, by an editor who despatched us lesser mortals to our deaths in tropical hurricanes, or to a yawning doom at local council meetings, with an equal zest. Bill Bradman had been my taskmaster on the Toronto Journal for five years; he was just beginning, very slowly, very grudgingly, to admit that, given help, advice, a series of recurrent jolts, and lavish slashings of his blue pencil, I could occasionally be trusted to turn in a story which presented certain shadowy aspects of the printed truth.

  This northland assignment was my first big one. I had started out by thinking that I could whistle my way through it with a typewriter, two fingers, and a little leg work. I came swiftly to realize that the assignment, like the north, was really big.

  What I had in mind – no, even that is an exaggeration – what Bradman had in his mind, and had therefore implanted in mine, was a series of articles which would bypass the customary romantic, frozen-north nonsense, and present the Canadian northland in its true aspect, which was industrial pioneering on a gigantic scale. (‘None of your Mountie-bank stuff,’ Bradman had cautioned me, with a grin which changed to a glare when he saw that I had got the joke.) For nearly two centuries, North America had been discovered, opened up, planted and peopled, on a roaring axis which ran from east to west. Now the compass had swung, and the long legs of progress were striding northwards on a brand new trail. I wanted to find out, and to tell, what that trail was like. I wanted to tell it, in the first place, to Canadians, because by and large we know as little about its real pattern as do the Formosan Chinese.