Making Shore

by Sara Allerton

  ‘You’ll have to give me more! You bloody gave ’im more than that,’ Billy jabbed a finger at the retreating figure of Bob Cunningham, his mate who’d gone before him. Cunningham held his tin above his mouth, his head thrown back and his lips gaping wide as they sought to catch the last tiny droplet of water still clinging to its rim. He was close enough for me, near the back end of the line, to see the final, hesitant drip suspended, enshrined in silver by the early morning sun. I licked the peeling slivers on my lips with the dry, rough slab that had once felt like my tongue. My impatience mounted.

  ‘Ah, for crying out loud, Billy. Come on!’ Murack called out, two or three places behind him. ‘It’s the same for all of us.’

  ‘Get a fuckin’ move on, Rawlins.’ Mac, little known for tolerance, could bear the wait no longer.

  ‘No, it ain’t.’ Billy snarled. ‘He gave ’im more than what he’s given me.’

  ‘Jesus, Billy. You’ve got the same as everyone else,’ Clarie snapped in irritation. Usually so calm and diplomatic, Clarie was not easily riled, but Billy’s insistence on Cunningham’s preferential treatment, coupled with the thought of yet another day stuck in stifling temperatures, was enough to try even Clarie’s patience. ‘You’re not getting any more.’

  ‘Well, it bloody ain’t enough,’ Billy leaned in towards him, his face screwed up with scorn. He jabbed his tin forwards, up at Clarie’s face.

  ‘We damn well know it isn’t, Billy… but it’s all we’ve bloody got!’ The skipper’s voice rose in sudden anger, silencing the rest of us who’d begun to heckle at the hold up. He leant across and, surprising possibly himself and certainly Billy, pushed him lightly at the chest, forcing him back away from Clarie. ‘Now, move it on!’

  Billy took just one step back, his body stiffening at the touch. There was a split second’s pause as the implication of the action struck him. ‘You ain’t got no fucking right to touch me!’ he seethed through gritted teeth, his voice quivering at the scent of insult.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Big Sam, immediately behind him, suddenly exploded. He grabbed Billy by the scruff of his shirt with a swift, decisive hand and more or less flung him to one side. ‘We’re all of us fucking waiting, Rawlins. He’s your bloody captain. You fucking well move on when he fucking tells you!’

  Billy rounded and they faced each other. The smaller, leaner man crouched slightly, set to spring while the massive, burly frame of Big Sam towered above him, fists out front, rigid with impatient rage. I had never before even considered that Big Sam should have a temper, but now, denied water, hungry and inflamed, it seemed he’d reached the limits of his physical equilibrium. For the first time, his size implied violence and he menaced.

  Billy Rawlins was not stupid and suddenly he straightened up. Bodily, there was no contest; Big Sam would finish him with a single blow and Billy must have thought the better of it. He laughed instead, low and laced with insolence. ‘The captain? Some captain,’ he sneered, glancing from Big Sam towards the skipper and back again. He swigged the paltry contents of his cup, swallowed and then made to spit but again reconsidered. He wiped his mouth across his shirtsleeve and began to slink away. As he turned his back on Sam, he threw out across his shoulder, ‘Tell me, what exactly is he the fucking captain of?’

  Big Sam, heavy fists still high, looked immediately towards the skipper, expecting the swift and merciless response required, and if not, then at least a tacitly conveyed permission. But none came and no one spoke.

  The captain winced momentarily, stinging at the verbal slap and then swung round to look at Clarie, questioning, hoping vainly that he had perhaps misheard. But Clarie, further incensed by the disrespect, gazed back at him with angry confidence, certain that Billy would at last be dealt with for the insidious, now glaring, disregard of rank that had become increasingly more evident in his behaviour since we had left the ship. At the confirmation in Clarie’s countenance, the captain’s features hardened briefly as if he had determined in that moment to take Billy on, but as we waited, he suddenly seemed to lose conviction. His face drained of all assurance and his eyes came to rest, transfixed on Billy’s words, somewhere in the middle distance in front of Big Sam’s huge fists. He looked appalled, winded almost, and for the first time since I’d sailed with him, I saw him for what he really was: a small, old man, who, for all his toughness and experience, had already had his day. Until that point, my youth had ascribed his captaincy with kudos, with due respect, but now, I saw him frail and worried. Before my eyes, he assumed the emotional credibility of a man. From him, my eyes travelled slowly down the line of men, to Mick, to Fraser, Fred and Tomas. To Joe. They might be older but I could not rely on their maturity to exempt them from the same concerns as mine, the same all-eclipsing, demoralising thirst, the same attendant hunger. The same fear.

  And Billy Rawlins, for all the expedience of his words, had a point. Much as I disliked and instinctively distrusted him, I could see that he was right. Our boat was old and shabby, her peeling paint and crumbling wood providing little confidence that she would be any match for a crueller sea. With her broken mast and half-hearted sail, she was not much more than forsaken driftwood. And the captain’s crew, no longer a band of strong, fit sailors, had been reduced in just a few long days of shock and hardship to a bedraggled and disheartened group of vulnerable men. The skipper clearly could not save us, and with that knowledge the hierarchy of command looked tenuous and slowly began to fall apart. The captain, Clarie, even Fraser: they no longer seemed to want to wield dominion. They had become simply men among us, tried and sorely tested. At a loss.

  Summarily robbed of the chance to vent his anger, Big Sam stooped to snatch up his tin from where he’d dropped it, glaring still at Billy’s back. Hunching his shoulders and keeping his head down low, he lumbered back then towards the barrel, unable to look either Captain Edwards or Clarie in the eye. It may have been that he felt ashamed at his sudden and unwonted burst of temper but somehow he didn’t look ashamed. He looked confused, or worse, let down.

  The rest of us were silent. Vaguely embarrassed that the authority of the captain had been so publicly flouted and certainly disordered by the lack of his reaction, the queue shuffled slowly forward. Either not wishing or not knowing how to show support, each man accepted the couple of splashes to his tin without a word and quickly moved away.

  Billy had just regained his seat between Butler and Cunningham as Tomas and I, almost at the rear end of the queue, drew level with them. Eyes slit and glinting with frustrated spite, Billy shucked back his shoulders in an effort to reassert control, to reassure himself, if not his sycophantic mates, of his authority. Out of the corner of his mouth, he snarled in a low undertone at Cunningham, ‘Did you seen that? Big, black bastard fucking threw me! He needs a lesson that one. A good dousin’ one night mebbe?’ He elbowed Cunningham who smirked complicitly back and Billy, evidently satisfied, glanced up again in Big Sam’s direction, ‘He’s gonna get what’s comin’ to ’im, in’t he, though. Fucking nigger!’

  Evidently secure in the knowledge that Big Sam, back up in the prow, was too far away to hear him, Billy had felt confident enough to spit his venom but he had not bargained on the proximity of Wallace, behind us, who heard every vicious word. Wallace, no longer capable nor inclined to endure the outrage of such basic provocation, moved stealthily, and Billy remained completely unaware of his presence until he felt the sharp edge of Wallace’s knife pressing carefully just below his Adam’s apple, hard enough to cause the sagging skin above to pucker and to prevent him swallowing. Wallace slithered a restraining arm over Billy’s chest and, pushing his mouth up close to his captive’s ear, rasped in it hoarsely, ‘You call one of us nigger one more time and I swear I’ll have you for it, Rawlins.’ He paused for a moment and then leaning his knee in at the base of Billy’s spine, jerked him backwards suddenly, yanking Billy’s rigid body tightly up against his own chest. Billy yelped. ‘You understand me? I’m watchin’ you,’ Wallace breathed. Billy
could barely move his head to nod before his body flopped forward, sagging with relief at sudden release.

  By the time I looked back up to see how much longer it would be before I got to the water, Joe had already reached the barrel. Only he, refusing to be swayed by the likes of Billy Rawlins, was able to approach Clarie and the captain as openly as ever. He grinned as widely as he could manage, first at Clarie. ‘Don’t you be going too wild now, Claribelle. Just a dash’ll do it!’ he said, crashing his tin up under the tap.

  Coming upright then and sobering, he tilted his head almost imperceptibly and nodded at the captain. ‘Captain,’ he said affably. Captain Edwards looked slightly startled but seeing that it was Joe, he smiled, relieved. ‘Joe,’ he nodded back to return the greeting.

  ‘Shall we see to breakfast then now, Captain?’ Joe asked. Despite my own discomfort, I smiled involuntarily. It took me back to the Marconi offices not so very long ago. Joe could not help but wade in for the underdog. The captain was as well aware as Joe was, that there was no real need for the rationing of food now but grateful for the courtesy, he clapped Clarie gently on the back and left him at the barrel. He went slowly down with Joe to get out the canisters.

  We’d been struggling with food increasingly for days and by this time, after nearly five days at sea, it was not necessary to supervise its sharing. No one could really swallow it. The desiccated nature of what we had, even with water to swill it down, made it scarcely edible. Now, for spitless mouths, parched and panting in the hot, reductive air, food became barely possible. We had to drag the ship’s biscuits in the sea to moisten them enough to break them open. Picked free of weevils, they were sharply salty. They made me retch. With no water spare to help dissolve them, the Horlicks tablets were an equal trial, thick and clarty, and a greasy, cloying tablespoonful of warm condensed milk held scant attraction in the blazing heat. It was at least a fluid though, and therefore manageable, but the twelve cans we’d discovered in the boat’s supplies had only stretched a little short of the first three days. Even chocolate had lost its appeal for, though by far the most pleasant tasting, it sapped away saliva and left us dry. Besides, a piece each after every attempt at food meant that the skipper’s cache had soon depleted and by sundown on the fourth evening, we had run out. We tried to eat. We knew we had to keep up strength but water, breaks for water, punctuating the seamless hours, became the focus of our existence.

  So sudden an inability to take in regular and proper food, the paucity of water and its quality, stale with age, and our enforced exposure to the throbbing sun, brought on in some, at first, violent bouts of diarrhoea. If there was time, the afflicted got up quickly, battling with their trousers to get them off, and leapt into the water to relieve their griping bowels. But more than once, particularly as we began to weaken, they couldn’t make it. Stumbling to the boat’s rim, unable to control it, and increasingly unaffected by the audience, they stuck their backsides overboard and spurted painfully until they bled. I developed the opposite problem. The dryness of the food I forced myself to swallow bound me up, packing my insides and causing me at first discomfort and then a kind of heavy, nagging nausea that did not let up. It made eating all the harder but still, I could not go.

  In desperation, some men began to drink water from the sea. One morning towards the latter end of that first distorted week, Moley Wells, tin in hand, got up and began to make his way down the boat, incurring disgruntled insults from the left and right. When he got to us, he flopped down against the stern and scooped to fill the tin. He placed it on the gunnel and sat there watching it.

  ‘What the bloody hell are you doing now?’ Mac asked, staring at him, incredulous, before rounding on Joe irritably, ‘Will you cut that out, for Christsakes, Joe?’ Joe stopped whistling through his teeth and Mac, satisfied, turned back to Moley. ‘Well?’

  ‘Getting a drink. All this flamin’ water…’

  ‘You’re not gonna drink that, are you? It’ll make you sick if you drink that,’ Mac warned.

  ‘Nah. The sun’ll burn the bad bits out of it. Sterilise it, like. If I leave it there an hour or two, it’ll be fine to drink. Ain’t that right, Sam?’ Moley turned and hollered up the boat.

  ‘What’s that?’ Big Sam propped himself up on an elbow.

  ‘That ain’t right,’ Mac shook his head. ‘You drink that, you’ll get sick. You’d be better off drinking your own piss.’ He looked up the boat to where Big Sam was half sitting now. ‘He reckons if he leaves’ is tin out full of sea water, the sun’ll clean it and make it fit to drink.’

  Sam looked dubious. ‘Might be all right. Feels bloody hot enough. Worth a try, ain’t it?’

  ‘I wouldn’t.’ Captain Edwards said. ‘Never heard that before.’

  But Big Sam had rooted out his tin and passed it down the boat to Moley. A few others did the same, Murack and Fred among them, eager at almost any cost to rid themselves of the increasingly intolerable need to quench their thirst.

  The ones that drank it did get sick. Some, like Murack, drank, at first, less than the others, but growing confident in the lack of ill effect and feeling themselves perhaps immune, continued taking it, so that days went by before the disintegration of their faculties became apparent. Big Sam too, seemed early on to have escaped its side effects and tried to persuade Joe and me to drink it, assuring us sincerely of its benefit. ‘It’s not that easy swallowing,’ he told us carefully, ‘but it keeps your mind off thirst a while.’

  But Joe, smiling, shook his head and spread his hands apart, ‘But it’s salty, Sam. That can’t be right.’

  ‘I’m tellin’ you, it’s fine,’ Big Sam shrugged apathetically. ‘It’s your loss.’ Dull-witted now in the heavy heat, he couldn’t be bothered to argue. His eyes, blank and lustreless, blinked slow, uncharacteristic disinterest.

  Others among them, who had slugged great mouthfuls quickly, either to get by the taste or in their impatience to rid themselves of longing, fell ill within the day. Their eyes glazed over as feverishness caught hold, and shaking uncontrollably, their bodies collapsed, relinquishing all control of mind, limbs and bowels. Unresponsive and disorientated, they lay where they fell, quivering against each pulsing tremor, rambling and then shrieking out, blindly thrashing in the face of new imagined fears.

  Fred had glugged the salty water greedily, all too eager to give Moley’s theory credence. Late that afternoon, in the early stages of his sickness and therefore still able to control his thoughts at least, he tried to make the boat side to release the urgent pressure in his bowels. He fell on Billy and, unable to contain himself for longer, unleashed a fetid torrent of watery excrement, possibly the last his body could afford, which spewed out and downwards, clamping his trousers to his legs. He groaned.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ howled Billy, shoving him off so roughly that he rolled into the bottom of the boat, becoming wetter still in the inch or so of dirty water which ran along it. The sour stench of diarrhoea reached us, three yards down, on the wind. Tomas retched.

  ‘You fucking bastard. You shat on me!’ Billy, shaking with fury, was suddenly crouching over the keening Fred, his knife against his face. ‘You fucking shat on me!’ Mick and Fraser, who sat up that end of the boat, quite near to Billy, were on top of him in seconds and wrenched him up and off, but not before he had managed to deliver a vicious kick to Fred’s hunched up body, causing him to cry out again, this time in startled agony.

  Joe, already on his feet, pulled me by the shoulder. I followed him. We picked our way swiftly up the boat towards them. ‘Gerroff me. I said geroff!’ Billy yelled furiously into Fraser’s face, thrashing against his grasp. Fraser’s steeliness impressed me, for tall and ordinarily thin, he appeared no match for Billy’s whippet strength, but he held on, scarcely ruffled, and effectively restrained him. Finally, clearly disgusted, he shoved him to the side and down. Mick threw Billy back his knife and turned away.

  Joe reached Fred and, leaning down between the seats, helped him to sit up. Murmuring
to him gently, he pulled him to his feet. I took his other arm, trying hard to dissuade my rising gorge, concentrating on showing no disgust. I could not help but try to close my mouth and nostrils so as not to take in air.

  We made faltering progress back towards the stern. The others turned away their faces but did their best to move aside to let us through. Fred was weeping quietly but, compliant, he was not heavy. The difficulty lay in the three of us, stumbling across the others, getting a path wide enough to enable Joe and me to keep Fred upright. He finally fell, face forward, across the half a seat that we had made our own, but Joe pulled him up again and turned him round so that he looked out towards the ocean. Joe walked him then, his hands upon his shoulders, to the ledge of seating at the rim of the boat and helped him to sit down, his legs from the knee below dangling over the outside of the boat. Fred sat there pitifully, shivering in the blistering heat.

  ‘Get him under the armpit, right?’ Joe told me. ‘A good grip. Ready?’ Taking his other arm, we started to lift and lower him over. As soon as I began to take Fred’s weight, I felt unbalanced. Dizzied by sudden blotting colours behind my eyes and light-headed in bending forward, I cried out, ‘I can’t hold him!’ Joe yanked him back on to the ledge and Fred, sweating and mumbling, sagged between us. I sat down next to him, his stench forgotten in the psychedelic blindness I could not hold down and the strange swaying hollowness in my head. I sat a minute, head in hands, as Joe cast about. The broken bit of towrope lying in the stern sheets caught his eye. ‘We could tie that round him, and hold him over. D’you think you can help me hold him?’