‘Here,’ he said, thrusting a pullover at me. ‘Use that.’
I folded it up and tucked it on the rim of the boat side and there I laid my head. I knew that I was tired, my body ached, but still I could not sleep. My thoughts would not allow it. Image after image of the night’s proceedings swept before me, tangling me in their confusion and on the black, blank canvas of the quiet night, they came to me more vividly and I saw and heard again their lurid horror. Despite my fierce attempts to keep it straight, my contrary mind insisted on examining each precarious twist of our recent fate, forcing me to contemplate, in grotesquely garish detail, alternatives I would rather not have witnessed. My body, thick and bloated, swayed within the waters of my tiny, doorless cabin. I watched, powerless, as our boat was drawn inexorably beneath the savage stern. Jamie was not on the other boat, and ours, pock-marked, floated aimlessly in the darkness, a chilling graveyard for twenty men butchered by a U-boat gun.
I don’t think anyone among us slept that much. Shock, delayed by the nervous energy expended in our escape and subsequent exhilaration, slowly took its turn and bedded in. It confounded sleep. Wakeful eyes watched the passing of the night, wrestling with the rising sense of loss that sought refuge in disbelief. And every time my body sought passage to slide and shift towards the margins of benumbing sleep, I was wrenched awake again, sweating and appalled. Several times I looked across at Joe. His arms were tightly folded across his chest, his fists were clenched and his eyes remained wide open.
I must have dozed eventually though, for at least a little while, as when I roused, the grey light of dawn was making its way over the horizon. Before long, the molten oranges of the approaching sun had tinged the purple sky with swathes of pink and pastel blue and lined the early morning clouds with silver. Dawn at sea. I had always loved it, and that morning its gentle and familiar tones soothed and calmed my chattering nerves and threw the livid colours of my imaginings into sharp relief.
Others began to sit up, stretch and rub their faces. People stood to relieve their stiffened limbs and most made their way, at some point or another, to take a pee over the side.
Captain Edwards called Henderson and Calhoun up for a conference and they stood together where the two boats met. Mick and Fraser got up to join them. With the information the U-boat commander had given us, they calculated that we were about 350 miles south-west of the Canaries, and so they set our course for north north-east.
‘With a good breeze and favourable currents, I reckon we could make it in three or four days,’ Henderson said. ‘Does anyone have a compass?’ He looked around at the upturned faces in the two boats hopefully and I looked at Joe. He hesitated just a fraction of a second and then stood up.
‘Here.’ He put his hand in his pocket and drew out Maggie’s small, gold disc. It looked minuscule, insignificant in his massive palm. He leaned forward, across the heads of Moses and Jack, holding it out towards Henderson’s outstretched hand. Something of its consequence must have shown in his face though, for Henderson looked at him and then at the compass and said, ‘Good. Right then, thank you. You hold on to it, Joe. We’re going to need it.’ And he turned back towards the captain.
‘We need to share some stuff out, is what I think,’ Billy Rawlins spoke up gruffly. ‘Some of us are better off than others.’ He hadn’t come away with his hurry bag either.
‘Quite right, Billy,’ the captain smiled politely and cleared his throat. ‘All of you, keep your clothes but everything else, food, cigarettes, we’ll need to share… we’ll make a pile here.’ He pointed to the space where the middle seat met the ledge above the lockers. There was murmuring and shuffling down the length of each boat as men mumbled their dissent and reluctantly began opening up their bags and taking out precious supplies.
‘I’m not giving up my smokes,’ Pat Murack growled. ‘I’m not bloody goin’ without.’ He opened up a packet and took the majority out, stuffing them in his top pocket before getting up to throw the packet, now containing one or maybe two cigarettes, across to the pile.
‘I bloody saw that, Murack,’ Billy spat, jumping up from his seat. ‘You bloody selfish bastard!’
Murack flicked back up too and the two glared at one another across the boat. There were perhaps six or seven heads between them. ‘Who the fuck are you calling a bastard?’ he shouted.
‘Sit down, Pat. Billy.’ Captain Edwards put his arms out, though he could not have reached out far enough to stop either of them. ‘Sit down.’ Neither of them moved.
Joe, still standing with his hands in his pockets, suddenly stepped across the seats and leaned down to pick up the packet. He threw it back to Pat who caught it at his chest.
‘If you don’t want to share… don’t,’ Joe said. Billy, behind him, sat back down, smirking, and everyone looked at Pat in silence. He had no dignified alternative but to reach into his pocket and return the cigarettes to their box. He flung them back onto the pile and sat down again, furious and embarrassed.
‘If that bloody Jerry’d’ve given us some fags, we wouldn’t’ve had this bloody problem,’ he muttered resentfully, turning to hide his face in the cover of the night’s retreat. ‘Didn’t have any! Probably had fuckin’ boxes of ’em stashed down there.’
‘If that bloody Jerry hadn’t blown us out of the water, we wouldn’t have this bloody problem either,’ Mick piped up, smiling and indicating with one expansive arc of his arm the boat and the mass of ocean beyond it. ‘And this bloody problem’s slightly bigger!’ A few men laughed, relieved by Mick’s attempt to loosen the tension, so few heard Moses quietly murmur, ‘Just be glad that he didn’t finish us off with that bloody great gun.’ His body shuddered quickly. I was amazed. Reputedly a mute, Moses never spoke at all, at least not to my knowledge, and to risk drawing himself to the attention of the likes of Pat Murack, a malcontent twice his age and quick to take offence, would in most circumstances have been considered dangerous. But Murack did not hear. He was still sulking in his corner.
It turned out that only about a dozen or so among us had their bags. Each man came forward, most with thin-lipped bad grace, to drop his offerings down, but even so the pile was not much more than meagre when the desultory procession finished. There was chocolate, some biscuits, a few crumpled packets of cigarettes. Joe threw in his hat too. He said with his hair and the heat down here, he wouldn’t have much call for it. Edwards, handing roughly half of the loot to Henderson, asked him then how his men were fixed for torches. They had one between the lot of them so Edwards appealed for volunteers among our crew to give a couple over. All eyes looked down, away. Sighing, the skipper took one from Billy and another from Big Sam, much to the silent consternation of them both. He shared the cigarettes out between us. Six each. The chocolate he put in the locker near his seat.
‘Not enough to last a bloody day,’ Pat grumbled, ungraciously taking his quota of fags while everyone watched the passing packets, sly-eyed, checking that the next man did not get more.
One of the deckhands, Fred Watson, got Joe’s turrie. He was bald save for three or four salt and pepper-coloured strands of hair that sprouted from just above his left ear. After what must have been years of careful cultivation, they were now long enough for him to paste up and over the top of his freckled scalp so that they almost reached his right ear. Any sudden movement or energetic activity saw them flop back down so that they dangled scraggily around his left shoulder.
‘Here, Fred,’ Mick laughed, picking it up and flinging it at him, ‘you’ll need this in this sun. Otherwise the top of your head’s gonna burn and you’ll look like a bleeding zebra.’ Although it was still very early, the sun was already strong. Its restorative rays sloped across the glittering ocean from just above the horizon, warming our faces and helping to dispel the lurking shadows of the night.
Fred grimaced and put it on. It was a small, thin, wool hat, the kind that had to stretch to fit. ‘He looks like a flaming peanut now!’ Clarie exclaimed, to cackles of increasingly i
nfectious laughter.
Breakfast added to the better humour, though it was less than appetising. Food and water, no matter how unpleasant, numbed the edgy irritation of our minds and instilled calm. The ship’s biscuits, kept in canisters, proved too hard to bite apart but doused with the water from the barrel, they softened up. Once broken open, to some they were immediately inedible as weevils riddled out from almost every crumbling pore. Tomas threw his down, disgusted, but I am not so squeamish with my food and I was hungry.
The fast-receding horrors of the night, coupled with the effects of fitful sleep, had made my head feel thick and slow, disconnected from the workings of my body, and I knew that food would set me straight. I began to pick the weevils out. They squirmed and writhed between my fingers but one by one, I flicked them overboard. Some pemmican in a tin was being passed around and, borrowing Joe’s knife, I took a liberal scooping and mashed it on the biscuit. It was foul: meaty and bitter. I forced it down, trying not to touch it with my tongue, trying not to taste. By swilling it around my mouth with water, I could work it into smaller pieces, small enough to swallow. We each got a Horlicks tablet too, which, though more palatable, had a fine, powdery consistency. It dissolved too thickly, its chalky particles clagging up behind my gums and in between my teeth. The biggest remnant clung resolutely to the roof of my mouth, and only a tablespoonful of condensed milk followed by great swigs of water served finally to dislodge it. A single square of chocolate handed out by Captain Edwards felt like a well-deserved reward.
With the towrope in place, we started up our engine and, taking our bearings from Joe’s compass and the sun, we set off north-easterly. It was not windy and the sea was relatively calm, but still the waves were challenging, buffeting the boats between them, pushing one away and down and raising up the other, so that the engine struggled with the weight of both and the towrope broke and broke again. Swearing and sweating in the beating sun, we tried to keep the boats together and on line but the sea, dispassionate, threw and skewed them sideways and apart. And the towrope broke again. Our precious fuel supplies would soon run out if the engine had to work so fiercely and besides, we were getting nowhere. Knowing that we might need some fuel to get the boats up through breakers when we reached the shore, it seemed unnecessarily reckless to squander it without restraint.
By midday, the skipper called a halt. He and Henderson agreed to separate the boats and put up sail. The air was thick, barely stirring, so there was little breeze to offer us much impetus but the sail at least would help to curb the influence of any adverse currents and, having struggled so fruitlessly in the uncompromising heat, we needed respite to recover water and recoup our misspent energies.
We ate again – a repeat of breakfast, which some attempted with more fortitude than others – and then set to, preparing the ropes and readying the canvas. It did not look as if it had ever been unleashed before, not since the old Sithonia had been built, for, grimed and greasy, its folds stuck together and screeched at their unbinding. As we hoisted it up the ageing mast, it snagged a quarter of the way from the top and no amount of twisting and jerking on the ropes or at the sail itself could loosen it.
‘We can’t do it from down here,’ Mick cried in frustration. ‘Someone’ll have to go up and unhook ’er.’ The propect of climbing up the spindly mast as our little boat lurched from side to side in the persistent swell was not attractive and several men spoke up disclaiming their suitability for the job. Tutting and shaking his head, Mick himself started forward then to make the climb but Fraser stopped him, pointing at the rickety mast and then laughingly alluding to the size of the Irishman’s girth. Mick smiled too then. He was impetuous and he was brave but he would listen to good reason and he trusted Fraser’s judgement. Fraser was more phlegmatic. He was not much given to wasting words and was well respected for it. As a result, greater store was set by what he did say and a few choice words from him to any man among us would be taken as rather more than just a friendly piece of advice.
Joe and I cocked an eyebrow at one another, nodding up towards the mast, each encouraging the other to have a crack at it. We both knew that neither one of us was right to try it and so were hardly serious. He was far too huge and I, too long and lanky.
But Tomas got up and said he’d go. He was small but broad-shouldered and his body, though slim, had a wiry strength. He proved agile and set on up at an energetic pace, making it look easy, and the rest of us called up to him, pushing him on with encouraging updates on his progress and a plethora of other helpful tips and pointless observations.
He had almost made it when the boat, cresting the top of a particularly hefty wave, plunged downwards suddenly, twisting sideways as it careened towards the bottom of the trough. Tomas cried out. Before the boat could right itself, a resounding and decisive snap appalled us all and then there came a thud, as Tomas hit the side of the boat and smashed into the water, half of the mast crashing down behind him.
He bobbed up, shaken, and grabbed on to the floating piece of useless wood beside him. We hauled him in and he sat, breathlessly swearing, half in English, half in Portuguese, while Fraser looked him over. He’d gashed his hip where he’d skimmed the boat but otherwise he was unhurt.
‘Couldn’t take his weight, I don’t reckon,’ Mac sniffed. ‘Should’ve sent someone lighter. Moses mebbe. Them darkies climb like friggin’ monkeys.’
Mac’s prejudice against any man with skin a different colour from his own had been something I had heard Big Sam complain about on board ship, but I had not, until now, heard or had to witness first-hand his crude contempt.
And as he spoke, from my viewpoint in the stern, a sudden movement in the middle of the boat caught my eye. Moses had flinched bodily at the insult that Mac had muttered loud enough for half the boat to hear, and as he digested its obscenity, his face contorted sharply with uncharacteristic anger and he started to his feet. With one quick, barely perceptible movement, Wallace, a broad West African who had worked with Moses in the engine room and who sat close enough behind to see his reaction, jerked him down again. Moses spun round to question it and as he did so, Wallace flashed at him a sharp look of warning, hissing up into his downturned face, ‘Leave it, Moses. Bastard ain’t worth the fucking fight. Sit down.’
Mac, Mick and most of the rest of the crew were too busily taken up with the mast to even notice what had taken place. None of them had turned a hair at Mac’s casual abuse, and though quite aware from previous voyages on other ships of the existence of the insidious order ingrained within our culture, I felt uneasy. Misfortune had been no leveller and it was evident that some among us would clearly be at a disadvantage for, by virtue of their nationality, language and the colour of their skin, they would be marginalised by some, and worse, by others, totally disregarded.
‘Moses is a bloody fireman. What the hell would he know about the frigging sails?’ snapped Murack. ‘Anyways, ain’t no use now. Look at it!’
The mast had broken a little more than halfway up. Even what was left slanted slightly, its jagged tip crowned with spiky, splintered wood.
Fraser was leaning over the side of the boat, trying to bat the broken mast top towards us so that he could get a better look. ‘Give us a hand here, lads!’ he called over his shoulder at Joe and me. We helped him paddle at the water until he could reach a hand to it. ‘Bloody thing was rotten through. Look at this,’ he cried, standing up to show the others what looked like a pitted piece of broken driftwood, about a foot long, which had come away in his hand. That it was wet did not explain that it was so soft and crumbly. He made to pull a bit off and there was no resistance; inch-thick shafts fell away between his fingers.
‘Bloody hell, Tomas, you did well to get that far.’ Captain Edwards, trying to be consoling, shook Tomas’ hunched shoulder. ‘We can still use half the mast. Mick? Get the sail up as far as possible. It’s not disastrous.’
But looking at the other boat, it was difficult not to disagree. Its sail, unfurled and w
hite and brilliant against the glinting blue beyond, was catching at the gentle undulations in the air with easy elegance, while ours hung down, disconsolate, its crumpled skirts lying listless at its feet. With only half of it exposed, it was only half efficient and making do was all there was on offer.
So severed from stability and shaken by the absence of all familiarity, we immediately sought solace by establishing security in new habits. It did not take long for each of us to stake a claim on a half-square-metre piece of territory within the boat. From that very first morning, the skipper took his place up in the prow with Fraser. Clarie and Mick occupied opposite seats behind them and Big Sam tried hard to squeeze his great, hefty body along the wooden bench between. Fred stayed up towards that end too, with Billy Rawlins and his deckhand mates. There were two of them, Cunningham and Butler, though Joe had dubbed them Billy’s boys. On ship Billy was rarely to be seen without them, and they deferred to him as if afraid.
Moses, Jack and Wallace settled themselves into the middle section of the boat with Li, a stocky-looking fireman from China whom I barely knew, and two greasers, Moley Wells and Slim Jackson. These two had lost particular friends in the engine room when the ship went down, so they, though not as young as their immediate neighbours, were edgy, still reeling with the shock. They sat along the middle seat, cocooned on every side by other men.
Joe and I fixed our position on the stern side of the last seat across the boat, near Mac and Pat Murack, with Tomas close behind. And at dusk that night Joe began his notches. Whistling carelessly, he made a groove, carving out a thin wedge from the wooden rim of the boat, just behind the rowlock for the last port side oar. I watched him slowly working it away, smoothing it off with his thumb after every second gouge and blowing off the wood dust when he’d finished.
‘We’ll need to know how long we’ve done. When we get there,’ he said by way of explanation. ‘What’s to make tomorrow any different from today? Down here the sea’s the same, the sky’s the same. The sun. The days will be the same, and the nights. They’ll probably get longer. We’ll lose count. Unless there’s a storm or we get picked up.’ He began to hum and, snapping up his knife, he put it away. ‘Gotta keep a record, so we know.’
Making Shore Page 7
