by Jamie Tuck
~
Ted Berry pushes Smithy up the first three rungs of the rusted yellow ladder screwed to the brown wall.
Smithy steps aboard the boat.
‘Fuckin ow,’ Berry says, trying to climb the metal rungs with one hand.
Berry reaches deck level, then heads a few rungs higher so he can jump down without using his hands.
Wedge is in the captain’s chair - like a trucker’s son sitting in his dad’s parked lorry, cigarette at his lips.
‘Ship ah-fuckin-hoy Jim Lads,’ he shouts, moving the wheel – thwop thwop thwop – to the left and then to the right. ‘Ship a fuckin hoy!’
Thwop, thwop, thwop.
A breeze drifts down from the river.
‘Man,’ Berry says. ‘You need a fuckin shower.’
‘Wha?’ Smithy says.
‘Y’stink of B.O,’ Berry turns to step aboard from the ladder. ‘Y’smelly fuckin gimp, you . . .’
Berry stops, one foot on the boat, one on the ladder and stares over Smithy’s shoulder.
‘Fuck!’ he gasps.
‘Wha?’ Smithy turns around.
His head is framed by white paint - but he looks like he’s just been shot, JFK-style, in the head. Deep red trails dribble down in thick, hardened welts followed by random outward sprays like a psychotic art student’s coursework.
‘What is it?’
‘Ehm?’
Berry steps aboard and stands beside an orange and white lifebuoy hanging on the side of the wheelhouse wall – Playfair stencilled around its circle in black ink.
‘Is it blood?’ Smithy says. ‘Jesus! There’s lumps in it, look.’
Wedge gets up from the chair and looks around the door.
‘What is it?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Fuck, I didn’t even notice.’
‘It’s blood,’ Smithy says.
‘Why the fuck would it be blood, man?’ Berry replies. ‘It’s paint?’
‘Reckon?’
‘Aye. Ehm? Maybes.’
Berry looks again, down to the door and across the buoy and up in the air where it must have sprayed – it doesn’t continue up the brown scum wall.
‘At sea?’ Berry says. ‘Ah, fuckinhell man! Ha heh heh.’
He pushes Smithy.
‘Y’twat.’
‘What?’
‘I know what it is.’
‘What?’
‘Fish.’
‘Eh?’
‘It’s a fuckin fishin boat.’
‘Aye?’
‘It’ll be fish blood.’
‘Reckon?’
‘What the fuck else could it be? Fish bleed, don’t they?’
‘Oh, aye,’ Smithy smiles, Berry pushes him up the deck. He turns to have another look at the stain – it’s as if someone has taken a bucket of offal from a slaughterhouse and thrown it against the wall.
‘Big fuckin fish,’ Berry mumbles.
