by Ellen Datlow
“Gramps—”
“I dinnae blame that fourth jack,” he says suddenly, as if it’s the most important thing of all. “The guys inside, they wouldnae have blamed him either.”
“Why not?”
He shrugs, looks back at the tree, the fence, the sky, and his voice drops to a whisper as if he’s afraid the house will hear him. His eyes are even more afraid than before. “Because everyone deserves to escape.” He swallows. “And most times they cannae do it on their own.”
A sudden cold wind rustles the tree’s leaves, fans the hairs already standing up straight against my skin. And I realise something. Something terrible that drowns dead all of my relief at Gramps finally telling me about the Torque. This hasn’t made a difference. This confession, this lancing, hasn’t mollified either the house or its cold, black, impatient shadow. We’re still trapped helpless inside, both. We’re still suffocating inside terrible clammy dark weight. We’re still just waiting for all that fear and fury to break over our heads. Because there’s still something else. Something so bad Gramps can’t bear to even think about it, never mind talk about it. Something so bad that he’s had to give me—he’s had to give this house—what happened to HMS Torque instead. I know it.
Because something is better than nothing.
Because worse is not worst.
• • •
When it’s the worst, I can’t see, can’t breathe, can’t even scream. The world explodes around me, throws me against metal and plastic and rubber. I bleed. I fall. I crawl. I scramble to stand, battered against corners and sharp edges, borne away by violent walls of water. I bleed. I fall. I choke. I drown. My skin is icy cold. Incandescent with heat. I choke. I burn. I suffocate.
I find my scream as the boat dives down, down. Too hard, too fast. Alarms screech. My stomach drops. My heart stops. My ears pop. Dread is panic is terror is horror. Is fear.
I crawl. Clouds of wet mist close up my throat. I choke. I burn. I drown. I suffocate. I hallucinate.
A big cavernous house with red sandstone walls and Georgian bar windows.
The overheads and bulkheads crumple, rush in towards me. I put out my hands to stop them. I fall and choke and burn and drown and scream—
—Make it stop. Gramps. Make it stop.
And right before I know it won’t, it does.
• • •
—and I think, I should have died here. That’s whit I ken. This is where I should have died.
• • •
He won’t get out of bed. Maybe he’d feel better if he did, if I somehow managed to get him up and across the landing, down the stairs, and back outside, but I’m pretty sure that he’s past all that now. That we’re past it. I feel just about the worst I’ve ever felt. My throat hurts and my ribs ache, my breath is shallow. It rattles even when I’m not coughing. I have cuts and bruises everywhere, enough that I’ve had to cover all of me under clothes and make up. Normally, Gramps would notice, but not today. Today, he looks even worse than I do.
Still, he props himself up against his pillows, grins with all of his teeth when I come in with two mugs of coffee.
“How do you think the unthinkable, hen?”
I pass the mug across to his trembling hands, watch the coffee spill out over his bruised and bloodied fingers. I sit down next to the bed with a lump inside my throat so big I don’t even try to swallow it. “Dunno, Gramps.”
“With an itheberg.”
I start to cry, and he spills more coffee in trying to reach for my hands.
“It’s okay, Pinky. It’s okay.”
I stand up, push away from the bed. “It’s not fucking okay! In what way is any of this okay?”
He sets down his coffee. “Come here. Come here.”
And I go, of course, because I could never not. And I let him hold me close, rub my back, stroke my hair. Whisper in my ear, “I cannae escape this. I cannae. And you cannae save me. But I can save you.”
I draw back then, make him let me go, sit down next to him on the bed. And when he sees me shaking my head, he shakes his own in anger.
“There has to be an ending, lassie. Everything deserves an ending. And that’s whit this is.” He glances at the ceiling, the walls, the pea-green cupboard opposite the bed. “It wants an end.”
“Then tell me what that end is,” I say. “Tell me.”
His frown is impatient, nearly belligerent. “It’ll no’ help. It’ll no’—”
“I don’t care. Tell me anyway.” I look at him and I don’t look away. “Tell me, and maybe then I’ll do what you want me to do.”
He sighs, looks up at the ceiling. The house is smaller now. Its ceilings low and too smooth. Its wide panelled doors shrunken, their corners and architraves curved like lozenges. The walls are closer, their silk print wallpaper mute silver grey.
Gramps leans back against the pillows, looks down at his bruised and battered hands like he’s only just noticed them. “About a month into the war, less than six after the Torque went down, I was posted to another T class boat called the Trigon. After a spell ae patrolling for U-boats in the Atlantic, they sent us to the Med to blow up Italian boats and freighters instead. Captain was a guy called Holloway, anchor-faced through and through. A real Navy man. Some jacks thought that was always a bad thing, but no’ me.
“I was a proper boat rat by then. As used to the noise, the crush, the heat, the dark, the stink, the feast and the famine as any rat can ever get.” He smiles thin. “It was much worse than the Torque. There were boxes ae gear and provisions stashed everywhere: passageways and bunks, the showers, the After Ends. We stunk. Washed once a fortnight if we were lucky. Stayed submerged during the day and surfaced at night. Never saw the sun at all. The only thing more crowded up than us inside that steel can were the fucking cockroaches: big, black ugly fuckers that wouldnae die even if you smashed off their heads.
“I shared a donkshop bunk with two EAs: a fifer called Shiner, who got rechristened Admiral ae the Narrow Seas on account ae him spending most part ae every day honking his guts up. The other guy, Ginger, was whit we called a leg iron, a check valve. A useless arsehole. He spent most part ae every day sewn up or high. Kept a stash ae methamphetamine in our rack locker, industrial strength stuff like the Luftwaffe Stuka-tablets—built to keep you awake for days and send you around the bend while doing it. I didnae make any mates on the Trigon, didnae want them, didnae get them. I was already a Jonah. Every jack on that boat kenned I’d been on the Torque when she went down. Kenned I’d been the last one out. That kind ae thing matters, ’specially in wartime, same thing as never wanting a woman or a left-handed jack or a sky-pilot and his bible onboard either. I didnae give a shit. Just went on doing my time, working it down, waiting for the fucking war to end and my life to start over on the surface.
“I had some fear still. Some dread. No point in pretending I didnae. The Med was a much more dangerous place for a boat to be than the Atlantic. More traffic and clearer water. Harder to hide. But the war was the war by then. And a posting was a posting. You can get used to just about anything if you do it long enough.
“And then, one day. One fucking day. There was something else. Something I wouldnae—couldnae—ever get used to. Didnae even try.
“I got off watch around noon. Found the admiral had yodelled all over our bunk and the one below it, and I was tired and fucked off enough to kick up a bigger stink than he had. The chief found me another, and I was already half asleep in it afore I realised. Starboard corner ae the third compartment. Top bunk under the aft ventilation pipes.
“It’s strange whit bad familiar does—it gives you the kind ae déjà vu that yanks you back and shoves you front, till you’re no’ sure if it’s rage or dread you’ve got; if it’s a memory or a promise. Happened so often on war boats, we came up with a name for it. Bad juvu. I lay in that bunk, wide awake and trying no’ to remember for maybe four hours straight, boiling hot and stinking raw, my ear pressed up against that cold whistle vent, lis
tening to the creaks and moans ae the drowned space on the other side, till I couldnae stand it anymore. I got up. The rack lockers were never locked—anyone wanted to bone something away it wasnae like you couldnae take it back again you looked long enough—and I was fixed to eat something, read something. Anything so I could shake that bad juvu. But I never did see whit was inside that locker. Never got past opening its door.”
“DFG,” I whisper, and my fingers are cold against my mouth.
Gramps smile shakes. “All Is Well.” His eyes look black. They fix ahead, on the pea-green cupboard door.
“The Trigon was the Torque?”
He nods and swallows, and I know it’s because he can’t speak.
“Oh, Gramps.”
He clears his throat and ends up coughing hard. Something rattles down inside his chest, trying to come up. “Wasnae all that unusual for a grounded boat to be recommissioned during the war.” His smile is the worst one yet; it makes me want to hide, close my eyes, run away. “But you were never supposed to ken it. You were never supposed to ken exactly how many men had died a slow bad death in it. Or whit they looked like, whit they smelled like, whit they screamed out in their sleep.”
“Did you tell anyone?”
“Did I tell anyone?”
“No,” I say, looking away from those black and bloodshot eyes. “You couldn’t tell anyone. You couldn’t tell them that—”
“I couldnae tell them.” He takes another deep and creaky breath. “But there was no getting rid ae the bad juvu for me. Every day for weeks, months, I went on working watches in that donkshop, walking those passageways and compartments, laying in my bunk, and all I could see or feel or hear was the Torque. Whit it had felt like to hold on, to fall, to sink, to crash, to choke. Scurs screaming at me to climb the fuck down, his arm bone sticking up through his elbow. Happy letting go ae the elbow frame, that one big crack as he bounced from the starboard engine to the port-side bulkhead, his blood pooling watery pink inside the engine hatch. Dogs screaming wild mad and blind, Shit in it! Shit in it! Whit it had felt like to blow up through a hundred and forty feet ae freezing sea, and then tread waves on top ae it, waiting for someone—anyone—to come up after. And so all that dread went from memory to promise quick smart. It followed me around like the worst kind ae boat stink. Oh, I had the fear all right, and I couldnae leave it behind, couldnae wash it off, couldnae get used to it enough that I stopped being able to smell it.
“I was convinced we were going to die. I was as certain as Hogmanay comes after Christmas. And bad enough that I couldnae function for thinking about the how. The when. Bad enough that just about the only thing I could think about was throwing a wire rope over the pipes in the head and tying a noose afore I could find out.
“And then my body got sick too. Fever, sweats, chills, insomnia, disorientation. Doc diagnosed viral pneumonia. They couldnae get me off the boat quick enough. Transferred me onto a hospital ship in one ae the allied convoys off Malta first opportunity they got.”
He looks across at me again, and his eyes are wet, shining. And I don’t need a wiki page to know what happened, what he’s going to say next.
“I never went aboard the Trigon again. Two weeks later, she was sunk by an Italian corvette off the west coast ae Sicily. All hands lost. Fifty-six men.”
When he turns his face towards the window and the back garden, he doesn’t hide his tears quick enough. They splash against his pyjama top, his long thin arms.
“Dinnae ken for sure how they died, but there are only so many ways you can die on a boat like that.”
“Gramps—”
“Sunshine pills could have blown a hole in both hulls, ruptured her enough that the Med came in and everyone drowned. Would have been the best way to go, I guess, if you had to pick, but usually those pills were like firecrackers—a lot ae fucking noise and that was about it. When she saw the corvette, she would’ve dived. Couldnae not. You only surface under attack when there’s nothing else to do. Maybe they got hit deep. And any rupture floods the boat ten times faster when you’re deep. Only thing to do then would be close all the hull valves, open the air flasks into the ballast tanks, aim the boat up, open the throttles all the way, and pray Poseidon’s been getting it regular.
“But they must have had Saltash luck with that ’cause they never came back up again. Closing the hull valves would’ve stopped the flooding, but the pressure ae all that water already inside would heat up the air enough to burn and smoke. Enough to choke you with thick hot mist. Meantime, the nitrogen would be binding to your blood, putting your head in a tight-winding vice, showing you Hell or Wee Willie Winkie on a headless horse. And all the time, you’re sinking deeper, deeper, ’cause you’re big down in negative buoyancy now and your engines are toast. The lights go out and the boat starts screaming soprano. The welds along bulkheads and overheads start to crack. Oil lines and pipework split and burst open. Operational max diving depth ae a T class was three hundred feet, remember? Crush depth, six hundred and twenty-six. The Med round Sicily’s nearly four and a half thousand. That’s how it would’ve been, I reckon. Blast wave, drowning, burning, choking, sinking, soprano. Seeing Wee fucking Willie Winkie on a headless horse, and then being crushed flatter than a Scotch pancake.”
I look at his angry profile, at the gnarly tree and its waving branches outside the window. I think of last night. I think of the night to come.
“She’s still down there. They’re all still down there. Never happened afore or since. One for the record books. A boat going down twice, most every hand lost.” His smile is twisted. “Maybe if they’d known about me that would’ve been a different kind ae record. After all, I’m the bloody one—”
“None of it was your fault! You weren’t supposed to die on the Trigon any more than the Torque! How can you think just because you survived that—”
He turns back to me, reaches again for my hands. “ ’Cause I escaped the Torque fair and square, hen. But I deserted the Trigon.”
I snatch my hands back. “No, you didn’t. You were sick! How—”
“I wasnae sick. I had a virus, sure, but it wasnae the kind got you shipped off boats.” He takes in too big a breath and straightaway starts coughing, enough that I can hear that liquid rattle is louder, bigger, deeper. He gives me that wry smile again, and I want to cry again. “I couldnae take it anymore. Not any ae it. The waiting. The wondering how and when. All that fucking fear. So I boned some ae Ginger’s stash. Enough that I passed for sick—contagious sick—and got myself off that boat afore it killed me. Afore I killed me. And I have to take the can back for that. I do, hen.”
He looks at me, nearly triumphant, and I know he’s expecting anger, disappointment, condemnation, something. And looks worse than disappointed when he doesn’t get it.
“It wasn’t your fault. For fuck’s sake, if they’d known—if anyone had gone through what you had, they’d have done the same.” I take hold of his hands so tight, I feel his bones creak. “Please. You have to let go of it. The guilt and the shame and the—”
“I cannae, Pinky. I’ve tried. It’s no’ me anymore.” He looks up at the low ceiling, across at the silver grey walls. “Some viruses, they never go away. If you’re lucky, you can get years, decades maybe, ae remission, but that doesnae mean you’re no still sick. That doesnae mean it’s no still there, right inside ae you, waiting with fists. And I’m just too old, too tired, that’s all. For the waiting. The wondering how and when.” His grip is loosening and his eyes are heavy, his irises rolling backwards with each slow blink.
“Go to sleep, Gramps,” I whisper. Even though I want him to do anything but.
“Leave this place to your mum and the Fucking Big OD downstairs,” he says, his words slurring, his fingers slipping out of my grip. And I don’t have the heart to tell him that they’ve already pissed off, dragging their suitcases and ingratitude with them. “Leave this place to the ghosts, hen.”
I light his ugly candles. Watch him slee
p. Watch his fingers twitch against the sheets. Watch the shallow rise and drop of his chest. Listen to the low rattle inside his lungs.
I ignore the house. I don’t look at its dimming windows and shrinking doors, nearing walls, dropping ceilings. I don’t smell steel and smoke and mould and shit and sweat. I don’t feel the icy cold and incandescent hot, the unstable floor beneath my feet, the lurches of my belly, the rumbling pressure inside my ears. I don’t hear creaks and bangs and rattles and rushes and klaxon alarms. I don’t see Wee Willie Winkie on a headless horse.
But when Gramps sits bolt upright with a screamed intake of breath, I only manage to breathe and scream back once the house has retreated again. I’m shaking so much my teeth are chattering.
“Lassie!” Gramps cries, and for a moment his eyes can’t find me, as if he’s gone blind.
We cling together until the end of the worst of it passes, but when I draw back, I’m the only one still crying. There’s a steely determination in his face now. Maybe even a smile. One I’m afraid of.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I say, because it’s become a mantra, an incantation. There’s nothing else I can say.
He looks beyond my shoulder, points to the dresser with a shaky finger. “There’s a big jiffy bag addressed to you in the top left drawer,” he says. “Afterwards, I want you to come back and get it.”
“Gramps. Please. It wasn’t—”
He closes his fingers over my fist, rubs my wrist with his thumb. “It’s okay, lassie. I think I ken now. I think maybe all ae these years all I’ve been doing is treading water.” His smile grows bigger. “Waiting for my boat to come in.”
