I always knew I was going to be all right, no matter what.

It ain’t reasonable, I know, considering that the entire bloodstained universe ain’t fair, but that’s what I believed. And still do. Now, before you get to thinking that I’m one of them credulous bastards what believes sunny days are just over the horizon, I got to add that me being all right is one of a very small bunch of beliefs that I have any time for.

I’m getting ahead of meself. Telling you what I think about life is supposed to come later, once I’ve gotten into me story. When you’re hooked, I’ll can give you the benefit of all the wisdom what I’ve been stowing in me hold all these years.

So, back to the beginning.

I’m not much different from most folks: one ma, one da, no sibs. Ma didn’t live too long. Fact is, I never knew her to remember much, so Da was me leading hand, so to speak. Except he weren’t there most of the time, and when he was, I couldn’t wait for him to leave. A hard voice me Da had, and a harder fist, what he often used on anyone he could best, and a fair slice of time on me -- when he could catch me. The women what he called me step-moms he larmered hard and regular, but they could run off, and they all of them eventually did, and nobody to say them anything but congratulations for getting out from under the thumb of a rare nasty bastard.

Until I was more or less grown up and looking after meself, there was always one of them unlucky women -- quite a few of them over the years too, ‘cause women thought Da had the face of an angel -- and me too -- at least, that’s what one of them told me. She went on to talk about other parts of him, too, but I’ll spare you the blushes what comes of hearing what’s best left unsaid. Anyway, there’s nothing like living a lie, so Da called himself Angel from then on, and since he was me pa, I got the name, too, like, “Yer Angel’s brat, aint’cha?” That’s when I wasn’t being called “Hey you!” and “Warf rat, look lively or I’ll give you such a bloody smack.”

Round about the time that most boys are getting their small sliver of education from the local whoever what dishes it out for cash, I was still innocent and ignorant. Well, ignorant, anyway, ‘cause.paid education ain’t in the cards for a sailor’s son living down in dockland where nobody goes ‘lest he has to, and nobody stays innocent long when there’s plenty of work that’s done mostly at night with no questions asked or answered. I was lucky. I found me an old codger what was willing to teach me to read, write a bit and get beyond counting on me fingers and toes, which was usually bare and right some cold for half the year. Back then, I thought I found him, but I know now that it was him what did the finding. He seemed ancient to me at the time, but now’s I think about it, I’d be calling him a young feller if he showed up on me doorstep this morning the way you two did.

His name was Al. Not Alan or Albert, nor Alphonse, Aloysius nor Alouitious neither. If he ever had more than the two letters to his name, he never told me, nor anyone else. He were a seaman, you could tell. Short one finger on his left hand where he decided that losing a knuckle were better than a quick trip below with the anchor, what he’d got himself tangled up in by reason of being a bit slow when it was let go from the cat-head. He told me that one himself, when he was enjoying the pint he always drank at the end of our lessons in book learning. He finished the tale by saying, “Let that keep you respectful of the fact that it ain’t all in books, lad.”

He had more’n a few of such sailor’s yarns. He was a sea-daddy to me, even though we was on land the whole time. He made me honour me ma what had left me, and me step-ma’s as well. He protected me from me Da more’n once, too, specially when me progenitor — how’d you like that word he taught me? — was after drink taken. It was Al what made me un-scared of Da, because I saw he weren’t scared of him, and that showed me I didn’t have to be, either.

When I think back, I can still hear him getting me started our first day with the numbers. “Now follow me, lad,” he said and began the old sing-song: pom, pom ti pom. Two ones are two, two two’s are four, two threes are six…and so on up to twelve twelves, which came a good many days and weeks later.

He taught me reading as well. Where he got the books, I’ll never know, but most of them was some old and real musty, like they’d been too long in a cellar and were only a damp day away from being a rat’s mattress. There were books with numbers, what had their white spaces around the edges all scribbled up by whoever had owned them first -- and maybe second and third.

And there was the book that Al made me wash me hands before I touched ‘cause he said it was what Holy writ. He never exactly told me who Holy was, ‘cause he had a notion that if you named him, her or it, you’d be followed by no end of bad luck to the end of your days, which you’d be wanting to come right speedily, it would be that horrible. Al said it was all right to say the name of the blokes who had done the actual writing down, because they was Holy’s amanuensis. There’s another pricy word he told me. Al told me Holy had many of them amanuensises, each of them a righteous sort, what had little patience with the rest of the world. They were mostly “Woe unto ye…” folks, although there was one what Al called Singing Solly who wrote a whole lot about his wife. Al told me it was all about love, and that I should put it out of me head until I was much older, and since I was of an age when boys steer clear of girls anyway, I did just that. Back then, I didn’t have the experience to tell if it were true or one of those songs the lads sing when their mothers ain’t listening.

Al liked me to read him stuff he already knew by heart, so he could correct me. First time he did it, I near dropped the book. I was gobsmacked that he would know not just the next word or two, like you do when someone gets you going on a song you've sung before, but could go on and on, page after page, with me reading along like we was doing a chorus together.

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He sure liked the writings of those old folks with names like Hosea, who was all about destruction; Nehemiah, who was a bit more cheerful but not by much; Job, who Holy never gave an even break; Jonah, the unlucky one who every sailor fears to meet, and jaw-breaking Habakuk, the sad sack, who was a rare old whiner to Holy about them who he thought deserved to be smited or smote or however you say the word for getting whacked. Thanks to all of them, I heard more than I care to remember about smiting and getting smoted by Holy, who for sure wasn’t what you might call friendly. But what can you do with or for a god who says from the outset that he’s some powerful and serious jealous? Try not to cross him, I guess. But there were so many ways how you could bring down Holy’s wrath, from messing with his name to coveting your neighbour’s house, wife, ass, ox, manservant, maidservant or whatever. I wasn’t interested in anyone’s ox, ass, or manservant. What’s more, I didn’t know no maidservants, so I decided to keep it that way for safety’s sake.

Many a time, Al would end up our reading sessions with Holy’s Ecclesiastes, a preacher-man who was long on advice. “Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, when the evil days come not nor the years draw nigh when thou shalt say, “I have no pleasure in them.’” That were one of Al’s favourites. On and on he’d go together with me reading right to the end of them little numbered bits until we both fetched up with the last words “… of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.” Then he’d mutter his favourite saying, “It ain’t all in books, lad.”

That was when he’d wink at me -- a kind’a twitch of one blue eye under a great awning of an eyebrow -- and call for a pint. “So tell me another,” I’d ask, and he’d spin a yarn for me, perhaps from some book he’d lost along the way, perhaps something what had happened to him.

One time, he looked into the middle distance and spoke low and soft. “I believe my love more fair than any she belied with false compare.” “Go on,” I said. “Tell me about her,” but by that time he had his nose in his pint, and wouldn’t say no more -- till another day, when perhaps he’d give me the words that came first, but only if I could remember what he’d said before. It made me listen, I can tell you, and learn right quick. Made it fun for me, like a competition between him and me, even when what he was teaching me wasn’t stories or songs.

Part of what he taught me was that there are different kinds of words: the grubby work-day words that I’d learned growing up by the wharves, and the book-learned words that hang together in an orderly fashion what makes sense. Al showed me there’s more: words with power, the ones what sing to themselves and make you glad that they’re coming out of your mouth. He made me swap between the ways of talking, so that one day I’d be sounding all of a piece like we was loading barges and slanging the sonumbitch in charge, and the next, speaking distinctly and with great precision as if I actually was the muck-a-muck who gives the orders.

Always we’d come back to what he called poetry. Stuff like, “For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings that then I scorn to change my state with kings.” But he’d never tell me who she was what he had loved so much that when he said the words the corners of his eyes filled up, so’s he had to knuckle them dry and sniff.

After five or more years, when Al had me to the place where I was looking for more to read, learn, and figure out on me own, one morning he weren’t there anymore. The publican at the inn where Al lived told me he’d gone away with money owing on the slate, so I paid up for him from what I earned running errands, crewing the harbour ferry, fetching stuff, cutting bait, rowing seamen to their girls, and girls to where the seaman’s ships was anchored -- all the ways a bright lad can make a handful of coins until his Da shows up and took it away like it was his right and privilege, along with a thump across me ear, like as not. I never cried from that, but I cried for Al. After a couple days when he weren’t where he should a’ been, they fished him out of the harbour, all nibbled by fishes so’s I could only tell it was him by his hand.

Da found me when I’d got back from showing the harbour master where Al’s finger wasn’t, so’she’d be buried proper with a name over him even if it was only two letters. I was blubbering quietly to meself in the room in the chandler’s shed Da called his, what I paid for so I had somewhere to be when he was off at sea doing stuff he didn’t tell nobody. He had sneaked in dead quiet, and had been standing there until I heard his foot move and I looked up, me nose all snotty and me eyes raw from rubbing them. Instead of his usual paternal greeting of a quick slap up the back of me head, he laughed at me. Without thinking, I jumped to me feet and hit him on the nose hard enough so’s I heard it crack. And then when he was doubled up, eyes and nose running into his hands, ‘cause that’s what you do when you get hit a good shot on the beak, I was around him and out the door before he could get himself together. I’d seen him fight more’n once, and he was good -- meaning real nasty. Head-butting, eye-gouging and biting if he was losing, and doing kick-face and knee-crotch if he got the better of someone.

So I kept going till I was dockside, looking behind for me avenging parent, feeling desperate, when a sailor caught me by the shoulder, pointed me at an empty dory that someone had just tied up and left there, dropped his kitbag into the stern and told me to get weaving. Off we went, me rowing, him looking at me like he was wondering about what had made me lose me professional calm with which I usually plied me trade as a seasoned wharf-rat. Over his shoulder, I seen Da on the dock, waving his fist and shouting words nobody should yell at any man, least of all his son. The wind was from where we were going, but the sailor heard them right enough to guess that I was adrift.

“Need a berth, all found, no questions asked?” he asked. I didn’t even think about it. I nodded and kept pulling on me oars. “Then swing a bit to starboard into the lee of that big schooner what’s getting ready for sea.” I nodded again, this time beginning to ask meself what I was getting into.

“Five years,” he said, like he’d heard me brains at work. “Are you willing and able?” “Yes to both,” I said. Just then the wind blew me a few more words from Da that are not fit for writing down, so I nodded again.

“I’m Smitty to me friends," he says to me. “Leading Hand Smith to the officers on the quarterdeck. What do they call you?”

“Angel’s son,” I started to say, but it just came out “Angel.”

“You said you were willing and able, so Able Angel you’ll be.”

And that’s how I got me name and ran away to sea.