They will be ready, Meagher thought, nodding his head. They will be ready.
The storm was clearing, dark clouds racing by overhead. The sun broke through to the south, sending a sudden shaft of gold to illuminate the landscape. An omen, he thought. A good omen indeed.
Blown across England by the prevailing westerly wind, the storm that had lashed Ireland had now reached the English Channel. The passengers who emerged from the Calais packet lowered their heads and held on to their hats in the driving rain. The big man with long hair and a flowing beard ignored the rain, walking slowly and stolidly along the shore. He paused when he came to the public house, slowly spelled out the words THE CASK AND TELESCOPE, nodded, and pushed the door open.
There were a few sideways glances from some of the men drinking there, but no real interest. Strangers were common here at the dockside.
“Beer,” he said to the landlord when he walked over to serve him.
“Pint? Half-pint?”
“Big vun.”
“A pint it is, then.”
Foreign sailors were no novelty here. The landlord put the glass down and pulled some pennies from the handful of change the man had laid on the bar. The newcomer drank half of the glass in a single mighty swig, belched loudly, and thudded the glass back onto the bar.
“I look for pilot,” he said in a guttural voice, in thickly accented English.
“You’ve come to the right place, my old son,” the landlord said, putting a polish onto a glass. “That’s Trinity House just a few yards away. All the pilots you want in there.”
“Pilots here?”
“My best customers. That table against the wall, pilots to the man.”
Without another word, the newcomer took up his glass and clumped across to the indicated table. The men there looked up, startled, when he pulled up a chair and dropped into it.
“Pilots?” he said.
“None of your bleeding business,” Fred Sweet said. He had been drinking since early morning and was very much the worse for wear. He started to rise, but the man seated next to him pulled him back down.
“Try next door. Trinity House. All you want there,” he said quietly. The newcomer turned to him.
“Want pilot name of Lars Nielsen. He my brodersøn, what you say… nephew.”
“By george — it looks like our friend here is related to old Lars. Always thought he was too mean to have any family.”
“Took a collier to London yesterday,” one of the other drinkers said. “Depending on what he gets coming back, he could be here at any time now.”
“Lars — he here?” the big stranger asked.
After many repetitions he finally understood what was happening. “I vait,” he said, pushing back from the table and returning to the bar. He was not particularly missed by the pilots.
The handful of change on the bar was much smaller by many pints by late afternoon. Lars’s uncle drank slowly and steadily, and patiently, only looking up when a newcomer entered the bar. It was growing dark when a gray-bearded man stumped in, his wooden leg thudding on the floorboards. A ragged cheer went up from the pilots in the room.
“You got company, Lars,” someone shouted.
“Your family wants the money back you stole when you left Denmark!”
“He is as ugly as you are — you must be related.”
Lars cursed them out loudly and savagely and stomped his way to the bar. The bearded man turned to look at him.
“What you staring at?” Lars shouted at him.
“Jeg er deres onkel, Lars,” the man said quietly.
“I never saw you before in my life,” Lars shouted in Danish, looking the other man up and down. “And you sound like you’re from København — not Jylland. My family are all Jysk.”