by Jamie Tuck
By the river, and Ted Berry stands on the concrete floor of the Neptune Yard’s Dry Dock number 3 - the name and number stamped into the massive steel gates holding back nature.
For now.
Cold concrete surrounds them, the cavernous hole smells like a blocked sink.
‘Man,’ Smithy says. ‘Are you lucky or what? That must be a hundred foot drop.’
‘I know,’ Berry says. ‘Shit the fuckin bed.’
They stand beside a white fishing boat, propped up against the four storey wall by six wooden stilts. It’s like a fairground ride, a pirate ship that pendulums back and forth, only this one white and disconnected.
And belonging for real in the sea.
‘Fuck eh?’ Wedge says, pushing Berry to the side. ‘You should be splatted all over the deck of that boat. SPLAT! Strawberry fuckin jam.’
The flying cable spool snapped the mast and landed on the wheelhouse roof, bounced to the concrete and split into two discs and a barrel. The mast sticks out across the dry dock like a wounded jouster’s lance.
The entire boat is painted white, crisp and bright above the waterline, cream and yellowing below; thin diarrhoea stains leak from rusting bolts holding the boat's wooden slats together.
Three old tyres tied to rope hang down the sides along the hull.
‘It's a trawler,’ Smithy says. ‘There's a winch at the back, look.’
A tangle of brown metal is there, sure enough, behind the half crushed wheelhouse.
Smithy points.
‘No shit Sherlock,’ Wedge says.
‘What’s it doin here?’ Smithy says. ‘Gettin fixed?’
‘Maybes,’ Berry says. ‘Aye.’
Wedge looks around the huge dry dock.
‘Hole’s a bit fuckin big, innit?’
‘Short of work, maybes?’ Berry says. ‘I don’t fuckin know, do I?’
‘Thought y’knew everythin?’
Berry turns, pain in his hands from the fall.
‘I know your head should be in the fuckin circus,’ he says.
‘Ha ha,’ Wedge says, lighting a cigarette. ‘Wanker.’
He heads off to investigate the boat like a man buying a big car.
‘How’d it get in here?’ Smithy says.
Berry looks up to the crane, it’s dangling steel cable and fish hook hanging directly over head, white scuff marks up the wall. The pipes looking suspiciously stacked.
‘Dunno,’ he lies.
He walks to the back of the boat. A draught comes down from the huge gate holding back mother nature. A thin spray of water squirts out and gathers in a green pool at his feet. She’ll always win, in the end.
‘Man,’ he mutters. ‘I hope that fuckin thing holds.’
The silver slash of the rudder sticks out from the stern, he moves it with his foot.
Thwop. Thwop. Thwop.
‘Cool!’
There’s the faint bump of the ship’s wheel turning in the wheelhouse overhead as he pushes it back and forth.
Thwop. Thwop. Thwop.
He tries to move the corkscrew propeller but it’s stuck fast, jammed and bent – embedded into the concrete.
Berry follows the wood round into the open dry dock.
‘How the fuck does wood bend,’ he says.
‘Eh,’ Wedge says, from the other side of the boat.
‘Wood,’ Berry says. ‘It bends here, looker. Why doesn’t it just like, y’know, snap?’
‘Elves,’ Wedge says, without looking. ‘The magic fuckin elves bend it. Wi their cocks.’
Berry follows one of the lines under the scum where the boat’s waterline would be. The line breaks unnaturally over an improvised bit of amateur woodwork, there’s an added lip and a pair of brown hinges.
‘Eh?’
He takes three steps back.
A long thin shape is cut into the side like a coffin lid.
‘Why the fuck?’ he says
It’s clearly a door, a door that would be underwater.
‘Here,’ Berry turns to Smithy, sitting in the sun on the broken spool. ‘Seen this?’
‘What?’ he brings his eyes down from the sky.
‘Is that a door?’
‘Dunno,’ he looks back up at the sky, sighs. He should be in town and then on the beach.
Wedge is on the other side of the boat at the front now, next to the wall, his scuffed Green Flash trainers and pink legs appear under the curve of the bow.
‘‘Playfair,’’ he says.
‘Eh?’
‘Looker.’
Berry walks under the curve of the bow.
‘Playfair,’ Wedge points at a dark oak plaque screwed to the wood. The letters look burnt into the wood with a hot iron.
‘Bad luck that like,’ Smithy says.
‘Aye? Why?’
‘Boats are supposed to have a girl’s name.’
‘You should have a fuckin girl’s name,’ invisible Wedge says. ‘Wanker.’
Berry runs his hand along her side.
‘Ow! Fuckinhell!’
He pulls it away.
‘Fuckinhell man!’
He sits next to Smithy on the busted cable spool and examines his wounds; a thick black spelk has been injected into the chicken drumstick flesh beneath his thumb - it's visible under the skin like the inside of a Bic pen.
‘Ah man. Y’fuckin bastard!’
Both hands feel as if they've been given a quick blast with an electric sander; flakes are peeling away from his palms and tiny meteorites are embedded in the white flesh.
‘That’s gonna hurt,’ Smithy says.
Berry puts the drumstick to his lips.
‘Aaaaaw!’
And pulls the two inch wooden spelk clear of the flesh.
‘Aaaagh y’fuckin bastaaaaard!’
The piece of wood sticks in the little gap between his teeth and, for a second, he looks like an inbred Oklahoma farm boy.
‘Aaaaggh y'fuckin bastard!’ he squeals again, spitting it clear.
He jumps up and shakes his hand through the musty air.
‘Shit. Fuck. Wank. Aaaagh!’
He grabs his right hand with his left, hunches forward and stares at it. He puts the wound to his mouth and sucks at the metallic taste of his own flesh.
‘Fuckin CUNT! Bastard!’
‘Hey cunts,’ Wedge says, from up above.
Berry and Smithy look up to the boat’s deck.
‘What the fuck y’doin up there?’ Smithy says.
Berry stops squealing.
‘How the fuck did y’get up there?’ he asks.
‘Piece of piss. There’s a fuckin ladder screwed to the wall.’
And there is.
