AFTERTHOUGHT
The merchant venturer
JOHN WELLS
Socialist me Mr John Silver is a bluff, jolly man in his middle fifties, with a won- derfully roguish twinkle in his eye. The other is covered by a black patch, but he dismisses its loss 'on what folks call active service', with the same rueful chuckle he keeps for inquiries about his missing left leg, or the curved metal extension that serves as his right hand. He seems almost to revel in his disabilities, and when he conies stumping into a committee room on his single padded crutch in clothes that vie with those of Mr Leo Abse in their flam- boyant eccentricity, a red silk bandana tied round his head, one gold earring gleaming, a three-cornered hat knocked back at a rakish angle and Cap'n Maxwell, his parrot, screaming and fluttering on his shoulder, it must be admitted that he cuts a colour- ful figure, even at a meeting of the Labour party executive.
A self-made millionaire, Mr Silver is un- derstandably sensitive about the hostile interest that the press has chosen to take, in recent days, in his business undertakings, but he continues to treat his severest critics with an amused tolerance. 'Just let 'em sail too close to Long John Silver', he told me, as we sipped rum and Coke on board his 'floating office' moored off Ply- mouth Hoe, 'just let 'em come alongside o' Long John, and shiver me posy timbers if I don't blast the livin' daylights out of 'em.' His single eye bulges with good humour as he looks thoughtfully at his iron hook. 'There ain't many a man has crossed Long John an' lived to tell of it. Have you ever seen a poor writin' man, lyin' in the sea with his innards all ripped out, and the sharks a-nosin' at his giblets? Cap'n Max- well here has, ain't you Cap'n? No, bless you, lad, there ain't no call for lookin' so pale an' pasty round the gills. Long John's only havin' his joke.'
He takes a heavy pinch of snuff and in- hales it in two deep sniffs. 'No, but t'ain't no easy thing neither. makin' a million in my business. It takes a hard man, lad, an' hard drivin', there's no denyin' it. Chop an' hack an' slice an' skewer you have to. if a poor sailor man's to secure those valuable prizes in the face of your fierce foreign competition, like as His Royal High- ness the Duke is always a-tellin' of. An' when some pukin' yellerbellied cheesemite —split me bilges if I weren't within a bosun's whisker of makin' a disrespectful observation, so I were---when some bright young newspaper man comes a-wrigglin' out with his namby-pamby nigglin' about your so-called business ethics, then he ain't unliable. as t'were, to find himself bein' squeezed like a burstin' blackhead, if you'll pardon my disgustin' manner of speakin'. Long lohn's a plain man, lad, an' he says what he thinks.' He puts the empty 'bottle of rum to his eye like a telescope, and I turn the conversation to politics. Does he think. perhaps. that he is too colourful a figure for the drab monotony of parliamen- tary democracy?
Mr Silver reacts violently to this question, fline;na the bottle against the bulkhead, where if smashes, alarming Cap'n Max-
well. 'Thunder and lightnin' blast me rollocks an' shrivel me spinaker! You talk mighty like one of them Con-Servatyves, lad. Come here! Now don't you go flinchin' away when Long John grabs you with his hook. Are you one of them, lad?' I explain that I am politically unaligned. 'That's good then. Only that's what the Conservatyves said when Long John put himself up to be a Member of the Parliament along o' them. Too colourful, they says, but I knew what their true meanin' were: Long John weren't respectable enough for their fine folks: a poor sailor man not grand enough for their highfalutin' ways. Long John not grand enough for that scurvy crew o' tup- peny-ha'penny cutthroats! Why, I seen better tossed over the side o' Cap'n Kidd's lazarets to nourish the guppies.
'No, lad, when I clapped me spy-glass on 'em, I thanked me stars they wouldn't have Long John. A damn fool I'd have looked, fightin' alongside o' such feeble sparrerchested pygmies as the likes o' them. Long John were lookin' for men, lad. Men as wouldn't jib at grippin' a cutlass in their teeth as they swung in the shrouds, or plun- gin' a meat-cleaver in the next man when his thoughts were otherwise engaged. An that's how Long John come to be a Mem- ber of the Parliament with the Socialites. We're a shabby bunch, I grant you, an' there's many of 'em so poor as has the arse hangin' out o' their breeks, but as Long John always says, there ain't nothin' like a cold blast o' poverty to whet a man's appetite for wealth.
'You'd think as how they'd have cause to be grateful to Long John, now wouldn't you, lad? Golden dollars from the Americas, silver from heathen lands, money beyond their wildest dreams I've brought 'em. Paragon o' virtue I've been, too, a very paragon. Campaigned for an end to lewd filth and blasphemin' among the book writers, Long John did, an' not ashamed to set himselt alongside a pot-bellied dock. full o' clap-ridden landlubbers to do it, neither. Campaigned for patriotism, Long John did too, haulin' down the Jolly Roger an' haulin' up the Flag o' the Union. An' t'were all wind in Long John's sails, lad, t'were all wind in his sails.' Mr Silver pours himself another glass of rum, and looks down into it with a sudden touching sad- ness. 'An' they'll all sell me up the river if they can, blast their weevily eyes, every man Jack of 'em, on account of how they resent me, lad, for doing what they'd hate liked to do, and for bein' what they'd hate liked to be....' He brightens: 'an' also on account o' me being forrin. You'll gite us a read o' your piece, lad, before you publish? Long John'd appreciate that. An' so would Cap'n Maxwell.'
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