Making Shore

by Sara Allerton

  ‘The engine was just weighing us down. You know it was, Mick. There wasn’t even fuel enough to get us far. We’ve not lost anything yet.’ But even Joe’s defence was beginning to sound a little more like dubious prevarication. ‘Just wait. It isn’t over yet.’

  ‘Course it bloody is. Look at ’im,’ Mac waved a scornful hand in my direction. ‘Look at ’is face. He’s bloody frightened. Even he doesn’t think it’s gonna work.’

  Everyone looked at me and, fully conscious that my expression might easily betray the victory of deepening doubt, I struggled for inscrutability, forcing my eyes to concentrate firmly on the pipe in front of me.

  There was a short silence before Mac, sensing weakness, pressed home his point.

  ‘Well? Ask him. You ask him if he thinks his stupid fucking idea was any good. Go on. Bloody ask him!’

  I was aware suddenly that even Fraser had stopped pouring on the other side of the pipe and that he too was watching me, waiting for my answer.

  ‘Cub? Well, do you Cub?’ It was Big Sam’s voice, cracked and low, almost pleading with me to keep his fading hope alive.

  ‘Course he bloody does. So does Fraser. So do I. Just hold your horses.’

  ‘Shut the fuck up, Joe. We were asking him. Well?’ Mac yelled.

  ‘I thought it would. I think we need to give it longer… I can’t be sure…’

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Mick howled, turning roughly away towards Jack and Cunningham and barging his way furiously between them.

  ‘You can’t ask him,’ Joe cried at Mick’s retreating back. ‘He’ll always tell you exactly what he bloody well thinks and at this moment, course he thinks he’s gonna fail. You’re all breathing down his neck, threatening him with God knows what if it doesn’t bloody work. But I’m tellin’ you, he’s as near as dammit worked it out. It isn’t over yet. Give it time to come through.’

  But, determined by Mick’s disgust, most of the others, cursing us and swearing bitterly, began to follow suit, getting up and shambling slowly and resentfully away, shaking their heads as they went and casting cold-eyed backward glances at both the hard work and the worthless hope they’d wasted at our bidding. Some found their places and slumped down, defeated and exhausted, surrendering their disappointment to the soporific lethargy induced by the impenitent sun. But I saw Mac head purposefully across to Murack and Billy who, with Butler and Cunningham, formed a huddle by the mast where they remained, talking in low voices and stealing sidelong looks from time to time, down the boat at Fraser, Joe and me, who remained doggedly working on the fire and dousing down the pipe with water.

  Fraser, taking care to make no comment, had picked up his tin and started pouring again while Joe, rolling his eyes, had squatted back down on the ledge and put out his hand ready to receive the next empty tin. He had stopped humming.

  Another five, perhaps ten minutes slunk slowly by, until, all of a sudden, Fraser leapt to his feet, making me jump. ‘Look, look, it’s coming!’ he cried, ‘it’s coming through. Would you look at that! Water! We’ve done it. Cub! Joe! We’ve bloody done it!’ He hopped from foot to foot, pointing and laughing at the slow but steady dripping water plopping into the Horlicks tin below. I struggled to my feet, almost crying with relief and Joe grabbed me round the shoulders and shook me tightly, ‘You bloody did it, Cub! You really bloody did it!’ Everyone was suddenly back up in the stern, crowding round us, slapping me on the back and ruffling my hair.

  ‘Calls for an extra ration of water all round, I reckon,’ the captain said, shaking me by the hand. ‘And you deserve it more than most!’

  We stoked up the fire and left it burning with a gleeful Mick in charge of soaking the rag-clad pipe, while Clarie went to dispense the last of the water from our original supply. An extra tablespoonful each had never tasted sweeter. Joe took Fred’s down to him presuming that Fred, who had remained motionless and apparently unmoved by the excitement going on around him, was not yet quite aware of the reason for our jubilation. It took me a while to notice that Joe had crumpled down next to him, head in hands.

  By the time I got to them, he had covered up Fred’s face.

  ‘He’s dead.’ He swallowed thickly and looked up at me, his horrified face cast in ghastly disbelief, as if he hoped against all hope that I might be able to refute it. I sank down heavily opposite, landing on the seat around the boat’s rim and all I could think of was that we had been too late. We had found a way to make fresh water but it was just too late for Fred.

  We dropped him overboard. We wrapped him in a piece of canvas ripped away from the redundant piece of sail. We filled the other fuel tank from the engine with sea water and tied him to it. Captain Edwards said a prayer and then we let him fall.

  I went back to making water. What else was there that I could do? I spent the day with Fraser and with Joe, pouring cold water along the pipe and emptying the Horlicks tin into our water tanks and barrel. We did not talk about it. We hid behind the immediacy of the work in hand, closing our minds deliberately to the shadows of cold, encroaching darkness that whispered their incessant fears of futility and of death.

  By the early afternoon we had used up all the Calzer oil, and the little Kapok we had left did not burn so well without it. The thin but steady trickle of water coming from the end of our spout was just again beginning to slow and falter when Fraser, suddenly breaking the silent isolation in which we’d been absorbed, put down his tin abruptly and sighed, apparently in frustration. Surprised into looking up at him across the pipe, I watched his eyes as they travelled down its length to the fuel tank and came to rest on the now dwindling fire beneath it. Unconsciously, his hand went up to rub the back of his neck and then came round to work his grizzled jaw.

  ‘I just can’t see that it’s gonna be enough,’ he said slowly, more to himself than to me. ‘Thing is, if we’d’ve been that close to the Canaries when we turned east, we’d’ve surely made the land by now. Easy, I would’ve thought.’ He shook his head as if unable quite to fathom it. ‘All I can think is that we must’ve still been well below them. Or still due west.’

  ‘So?’ I said, holding my empty tin up and out behind me for Joe to take, but keeping my eyes still firmly fixed on Fraser. He looked quickly across at me then, conscious perhaps for the first time that he had been thinking out loud and, reading the apprehension in my face, he frowned at his indiscretion. Sighing again, he let his hand fall heavily back onto his lap. ‘So it’s gonna be a damn sight further to the coast,’ he said.

  Joe, who had just returned from the boat’s rim behind me as Fraser spoke, held out a slopping tin of water over the pipe for him to take. As Fraser took it, Joe straightened up and paused, putting one hand on his hip and taking with the other the empty tin I’d been holding out for him. He waited then, staring quietly down at Fraser as though expecting him to add something more but Fraser, intent on ignoring both of us, began to pour again.

  ‘How long? How long d’you think it’s gonna be then, Fraser?’ Joe asked him softly.

  Refusing to look up, Fraser kept his eyes stubbornly on the pipe in front of him, all his attention apparently focused on the water as it fell, soaking the material and then dripping down beneath to join again the water curling at our knees. We waited, watching for some silent clue to show itself within the grim lines of his face while he struggled to blank his features in a vain attempt to hide what was really on his mind. For several minutes he did not reply but the words he would not say made clear enough his answer.

  I shot a helpless look up at Joe and glancing down at me, he raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Fraser?’ he tried again. ‘How long?’

  Fraser brought the tin down on to his lap and studied it for a moment. Then he squinted up to look at Joe.

  ‘Who can tell? Trouble is, can’t even tell how fast we’re goin’. Or how far.’ He put down a hand to steady himself as he unfurled his legs, stiff and sore, and grunting with the effort, he levered himself up onto his feet.

  ‘
But we need to make as much as we possibly can while we’ve got the strength. While we’ve still got will to do it. We still need more. We’re gonna have to find something else to burn.’

  Joe stood for a moment, regarding Fraser thoughtfully and then, nodding slowly his understanding, he looked down at me. Banging the empty tin I’d given him up against my shoulder, he put out his other hand to haul me up, saying as I took it,

  ‘Right then Cub, you heard the man. Let’s get this fire blazing up again. How about that mast?’

  But Frazer shook his head, ‘Too difficult. It’d take too long. We need to keep the fire burning. Hard to set again with no fuel to get it going.’

  We cast about vaguely for some chance idea, any idea, knowing full well that there was nothing, and before I had given myself the time to properly consider what I was about to say, the words formed in my mouth and they were out. ‘Could burn this,’ I offered doubtfully, stamping my heel heavily against the boat’s side, just above the point where the planks began to curve clear of seeping water. ‘The inner skin, I mean.’

  The lifeboat had originally been well built. It was solid enough, with the outer shell of the boat protecting an inner lining also made of wood.

  Joe looked quizzically across at Fraser and Fraser, looking down at my feet, hesitated and then began to nod. ‘We could. Bloody hell, I think we bloody could.’

  ‘Won’t it wreck the boat? Make it weak?’ I asked, scrabbling suddenly to take the suggestion back. Taken seriously, it looked appalling.

  ‘Not if we take it carefully. From the sides where it’s driest and alternately across the bottom. I don’t think so,’ he weighed it up. ‘Preferable to taking down the mast, I reckon. When we’ve no strength left, sail’ll be all we got.’

  We asked the skipper and he agreed with Fraser that it should not compromise the safety of the boat too greatly if we did not take too much. Mick, of course, had his own ideas. He exploded. ‘You must be out of your fucking heads! What do you think you’re doing? Would you look at this! Would you just think on?’ Appealing to the others to join him in warranted astonishment, he jigged around behind, as Fraser got down upon his knees in the middle section of the boat and began to smooth his hands across the planks beneath the wash of dirty water.

  ‘We need it, Mick. We need more water. Don’t start again now,’ warned Fraser. ‘We won’t take it all.’

  ‘If there’s a storm,’ Big Sam’s low tones, full of foreboding, took us by surprise. He had generally been, up to this point, a voice of optimism. ‘Bad weather, the boat won’t stand it if you weaken it like this. She’ll break to pieces.’

  ‘Well, let’s just hope there isn’t a bloody storm then, shall we? We need more water,’ snapped Fraser. He was losing patience with the constant carping. Fighting it at every turn served only to compound our own doubts and chip away at the confidence we were struggling to maintain. He sat back on his haunches and turned to me, ‘Look in the tool box, Cub. Need something we can use as a lever. Chisel or something.’

  I turned to pull the box out from its locker and began to rake through its weathered contents. Nearing the bottom, I came across a small, blunt-looking chisel and pulling it up, I held it out to Fraser. ‘Any good?’

  He took it from me, nodding, and leaning down again, began to work its rusted tip in between the join of two short, central planks running across the bottom of the boat.

  ‘If I start down by here,’ he muttered, clenching his teeth with effort, ‘these can be drying out while we work round the sides.’ But by the time he had caught hold of and wrenched away the first one, Mick, beyond capable of calm, could contain himself no longer. Features fixed in rigid fear, panic quivered in his voice as he whirled round in the frantic hope of securing some sort of veto from the skipper, ‘Captain? Jesus, Captain, this can’t be right!’

  But the captain, having already agreed to our proposal, had moved up the boat to sit down on the seat across the prow and, though weak and trembling, had taken up a Horlicks tin, and was slowly, with shaking hands, beginning to bail. ‘He’s the engineer. He knows what he’s doing, Mick,’ he said, sighing wearily.

  ‘What he’s doing is chopping up the bloody boat from beneath our feet. There’s already far too much water coming in. Hey! Murack. Resendes!’ Mick began to cast about wildly, his accent broadening as his desperation to enlist some other voice of similar reason became increasingly more shrill. ‘Clarie, for Christsakes! You just gonna sit there, are you, and let them take up half the bloody boat?’

  Some of the others, many of them drifting on the outer reaches of rippling semi-consciousness and seeking only to take whatever refuge they could find from the sun’s virulence, had gone back to lying low, curled or hunched down in a futile effort to reduce the exposure of their bodies to the murderous heat. Largely unaware of the new dispute erupting in the stern until the heightened tones of Mick’s distraction roused them, they were slow to react.

  But Mick, impetuous and frightened, was determined not to let Fraser do any more damage to the boat before at least attaining further consensus. He made the mistake of leaning down and catching at Fraser’s arm to stop him and though he failed to take hold, the swipe succeeded in jerking Fraser back momentarily, keeling him over slightly and throwing him off balance. In that moment, Fraser’s composure deserted him completely and he was up and on him before Mick had even had the chance to move.

  Grabbing at Mick’s shirt front and twisting it up by his throat with one hand, Fraser forced the chisel up beneath his jaw with the other, and rushed him backwards to the boat’s side. Finding Fraser’s face so close and seething with sudden rage, Mick, though broad and stoutly built, was electrified by the unexpected ferocity of the attack and cried out in terror as the taller, thinner man shoved him back, bearing down on him with eyes that flashed a dangerous lack of all control. Averting his face, Mick put his hands up to clutch at Fraser’s forearms, but his startled reflex could be no match for the whipped-up strength of Fraser’s latent fury.

  ‘I’m trying to save your fucking neck,’ Fraser hissed at him through gritted teeth, jolting Mick’s cowering frame at every separate word. ‘Interfere again and I’ll have you over,’ he jerked his head up and out at the water’s sway beyond. ‘I promise you that much, Mick.’

  In the seconds of silence that followed, Mick somehow screwed up the courage to glance upwards, askance and petrified into Fraser’s face, and Fraser saw for the first time the naked terror in his tormentor’s eyes and felt the quivering rack of Mick’s body in his grasp. Suddenly appalled, he saw what he had done. He let Mick go and stepping back, stood staring at the chisel in his hand, which remained transfixed in the midair at the height of Mick’s chest. Mick, still shaking and working to swallow, slowly stood up straight. He waited, watching Fraser warily and apparently unsure of how to move for fear of provoking further unpredicted violence. Finally, Fraser’s hands fell to his sides and his eyes crept up in search of Mick’s. Wreathed in shame, his words came soft and low, ‘We just need the water, Mick.’

  He turned away and without raising his eyes again to any of us as he passed, he went back to kneel down in the pooling water and began to work on levering out the second plank to burn.

  For the rest of the day, we kept the fire going and while Tomas and Jack continued to pour water along the pipe, Joe and I helped Fraser take up the inner lining of the boat. It was not as compact as the Kapok and it burned quickly and inefficiently, almost as quickly as we could take it up.

  And as we did so, the bilge water seeping in through the outer casing became more visible and, whether we imagined it or not, the boat seemed to creak more loudly, more plaintively. Just as the sun began to roll up the last of its insipid rays, Fraser called to us that we had taken up enough. The skipper and Big Sam were still slowly bailing.

  ‘If we take any more, she won’t be seaworthy. Let’s hope we’ve made enough,’ grunted Fraser, his exuberance at our success that morning extinguished altogethe
r. He was cheered a little though when we measured our achievement.

  ‘Seven gallons!’ Joe split his lips again, grinning at us. ‘Seven bloody glorious gallons. It’s enough, however long it takes, to get us all the way to Africa. We should have a toast.’

  He stood up and lifted up his tin with his evening’s ration of fresh water pitifully sloshing around the bottom of it. He cleared his throat and those closest to us near the stern fell silent and looked up at him. He looked ridiculous. His tattered shirt was torn and filthy and his trousers hung loosely at his hips. His neck and shoulders bowed over slightly as though he were slowly being crushed beneath the weight of some invisibly oppressive force. Physically, he was half the man he’d been in Liverpool. His skin was burnt, layer on layer scorched brown to flaking black, and his eyes, though still laughing, were raw and bloodshot. Only his hair had thrived in the heat and light. The shaggy, matted nest stuck out all over, enveloping ears, neck and nearly half his face.

  ‘To Brain Clarke – the brians behind this outfit!’ He tipped his tin towards me and then swigged, but I was the only one who tried to laugh.

  For darkness, closing in, could obscure the very best of reasoned judgements, and as the boat groaned and whined more volubly in the fading light, dark anxieties swirled, cold and dispiriting, around our feet and lower limbs, dampening any earlier sense of triumph. As the rowers took to oar to work the boat, it became increasingly clear that bailing water was now a constant necessity if we were simply just to stay afloat. Not one among us now, staring down the tunnel of the night, could fail to remain unshaken by the shrill stridence of Mick’s objections. Not only did they now look valid, but more alarmingly, absolutely justified. What use water, if the boat could not make the journey? And given that we had not already reached the coast, that journey now looked more than likely to be one of many days. The water we had made, even rationed, would not last indefinitely.