by Carol Birch
‘What now, Dan?’ I tugged at his sleeve like an infant. My voice came out high and throttled. My chest ached as if I was going to cry, but it wasn’t because of the situation I was in. It was something to do with the way Dan put an arm round us both when we got in the boat, me and Tim, and the way he’d been acting all the time, as if this was just part of the day’s work, the kind of thing that happens all the time. ‘Not to worry, lads,’ he’d said, same as ever. ‘Seen worse than this, I have, believe me. Don’t worry, I’ll get you home.’ He’d even smiled at us. Smiled. As if nothing was wrong. I felt strangely towards him, as if he was Ma or something – reminded me of how she used to say cheerful things in the very old days when we lived in Bermondsey, me and her, when there was shouting and screams coming through the wall. Listen to that lot, Jaffy, she’d say, cocking her head and smiling. Life in all its glory. Come here, shall I sing a song?
Yes, yes, things were bad, but we’d get through. We always did.
‘What now?’ said Dan. ‘Well, as the captain said, Jaf, we stick together. Travel with the wind. Plenty bread, plenty water – if we’re careful – a good sixty days. We’ll meet with another whale ship long before that, I reckon, hard not to hereabouts. And if the worst comes to the worst, we make South America. No question. Tough little boats, these are.’
Mr Rainey looked at him as if he knew it wasn’t so.
‘Don’t you fool us, Dan,’ Tim said. ‘We’re not stupid.’
‘I don’t fool, Tim,’ Dan said, glaring at him. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about and I do. Keep your head and do as you’re told, and we’ll all get home.’
The captain’s boat drew alongside and we lit the lanterns. Our portions were doled out. I looked over and imagined being in that boat and was glad I was in this. It was safer. Dan and Gabriel and Yan knew what they were doing. The Captain’s boat had Skip, sitting there with his white moon face as blank as a plate.
‘You’re going to be hungry, boys,’ Dan said. ‘Get used to it.’
A chunk of hard bread and two swigs of water. The hogs got a swig too; we had to keep them alive. No baccy. No drink. Oh God, give me a smoke and the slow burn of rum. A man of liquor, Rainey was sweating for the lack of both. His hands shook and his eyes lamented. He looked like someone who was feeling sick and trying to ignore it. That’s how the whole world felt. Stupid and silent, all of us, till Skip, looking down at the lump of hardtack in his hands, said in a horrified voice, ‘It was all my fault.’
‘Idiot,’ said John Copper, ‘’Course it wasn’t your fault.’
‘It’s me,’ Skip whimpered. ‘I’ve been horrible.’ His nose ran.
‘That’s as may be,’ the captain said sternly, ‘it’s neither here nor there now. Eat.’
‘I’ve killed Mr Comeragh. I liked Mr Comeragh. I’ve killed them all!’
‘Enough!’ barked the captain.
Skip put his head down and nibbled miserably at his tack.
‘Billy thought it was,’ he said a moment later.
‘Thought what?’ asked Dag.
‘Thought it was my fault.’
‘Yeah, well Billy didn’t know his arse from his elbow, did he?’ said Tim.
‘Enough!’
We bobbed on a sparkle of waves, side by side, chewing like cattle. There was a nippy wind. The grinding of my jaws was loud in my head, click-clack of bones. Our hog, sitting roped between Gabriel and Yan with an air of stolid endurance, was a hairy old beast with a rounded belly. I gazed at it and wished I was an animal, to know nothing and never think ahead.
‘Mouthy little brat, Bill Stock, wasn’t he?’ said Tim to no one in particular.
‘Yeah,’ I said after a while, ‘he was, wasn’t he?’
Some time in a high-tossed dawn, one by one we arose drenched, yawning and groaning from the belly of the boat. The wind had blown all night, and the hog had shat. We got our hardtack and a drop of water and sailed on. Thank God these boats did not sail easy, for it kept us on our toes. Better to be occupied than idle. Someone had to man the steering oar. Someone had to fix and hammer and bale. Someone had to keep watch. We were overladen and low in the water, and the sea slopped in all day. We tried to catch fish, but had no means. We had wood from the ship. Gabriel set to whittling a spear.
Thirst and hunger came on sharp. The world can divide, can double like vision. So could I. I was here, wide-eyed, mad-silenced, staring at the sky and the dim grey sea, the bruised and laden smudges of cloud, the waves. The rest of my life was a dream. Things went on still, sane, reasonable. The captain and Mr Rainey kept on at us all the time to keep up appearances, making us shave with the edge of a knife and rub our teeth and comb our hair, and say our prayers night and morning. The prayers were Dan’s job. He was good at it too.
‘Sweet Jesus Christ who died for us,’ a calm but ringing voice that carried between the boats, ‘have mercy on us in this troubling time. We are twelve souls afloat on your great ocean asking for help. Send us, Lord, a sail. Amen. We will now say the Lord’s Prayer …’
Twelve murmuring men, hands together, heads bowed.
Days passed.
Meaningless to speak of a tally. A long time ago Skip said time’s gone funny, and it had. It was a dream in the blink of an eye and it was a lifetime. When I think of it now it’s as if I lived another whole life a long time ago, was born into it, lived it and died in it.
‘Wake up there, Jaf.’
Dan had a shaky hand, missing his booze.
‘You were dreaming,’ he said. ‘What was it? Something chasing you?’
I shook my head. A bag of water in my chest. A dam of tears.
Dreams. The dragon, bigger than before, walking down Lysander’s deck on its hind legs like a man. I jerked and blinked the wet from my eyelashes. First thing I saw was Mr Rainey, eyes ablaze, spitting a glob of grey into his hand. His face was yellow-green, rotten. I looked about, couldn’t see the captain’s boat.
‘They’ve gone!’ I cried.
‘No no no.’ Gabriel, steady at the steering oar. ‘They are there.’
The waves rolled in deep valleys. The captain’s boat appeared and disappeared, sometimes for long minutes at a time. When we saw them they were baling like us. Never less than three of us at it and still all things in the boat were afloat, including the poor hog. I was sorry for the hog. God knows what he made of life, a peculiar thing it must have seemed to him. The hogs and us were all well salted by now. The salt put a rime about our dry lips and red eyes, made patterns on our dirty clothes, intricate as patterns in rock. Things of water, all of us. Made no difference if it rained on and off, except that it filled the boat quicker and had us all a-baling at once, muscles burning, every man in rhythm. We baled until it was our turn to sleep, slept in the water, woke and baled again. Cried, stupid. In my mind always, a warm bed and a fire. The smell of ale and sweat and ladies’ powder. We got our hardtack, got our water. Tim’s face always there, stolid, unreadable, even smiling sometimes, and the seas and skies rising and falling. Every day the same. We blew on and on. Our faces seeing only our other faces, day after day, till no one knew who was who, we were all one: a peculiar striving creature, licking its parched lips, goggling its sore eyes at the horizon.
One day the sky changed and we had clear weather come mid-afternoon. Our boats came together.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Tim said, ‘look at them.’
‘We look like that too,’ I said.
‘How’s your bread?’ the captain called across. ‘Ours is wet.’
‘Inevitable,’ Mr Rainey replied. ‘Ours too, but not all of it.’
‘Pretty much all of ours,’ the Captain said. ‘All bearing up over there?’
‘Aye aye, Captain, all here in fine form.’
‘We must lay out the bread to dry.’
Wilson Pride was already doing this, spreading patiently on top of a bit of old canvas, his face fathomless.
‘Still got your hog?’
‘Oh, certai
nly. You have yours?’
‘Indeed.’
Their hog had a name by now. Napoleon, shortened to Pole. That was John Copper.
I wasn’t hungry. There was a funny feeling in my gut, but I wasn’t hungry. My portion had served me well enough, but my mouth and throat were getting raw. The captain said we could all have an extra ration of water tonight, our first night of peace for ages. It was wonderful, that little gift of extra. It was warm and sat on my tongue, a still pond. I held it as long as I could but my mouth absorbed it.
‘All right, Skip?’ I asked him.
His mouth was set in an awkward sneer. He nodded once sharply.
‘We are making excellent speed,’ the captain said heartily. There was a big red sore in the middle of his forehead like a third eye. ‘We’re dead in the middle of the offshore whaling ground. It’s only a matter of time now, men. Meanwhile – there’s plenty to do.’
We set about fixing our leaks with Joe Harper’s tools and we spread things out to dry wherever we could.
The sun fell out of the sky.
I drifted asleep in the dark and woke to salt. Bloody salt. Salt coming out of the bread. Salt tack, burning hot under the sun. Laid out like wares on a stall. Made me think of my home, the market people standing in the cold in their mufflers. Lick my lips, I taste salt. Lick my arm, salt. Everywhere. We frothed a little as we spoke, working our mouths and throats with gurning patience to make a little spit. Dolphins came, dancing along with our boats. Wished I still had my old telescope, but it had gone under with all the rest. Two or three days they were our companions, cheerful glimmering things that roiled and boiled and made rainbows, but we couldn’t catch one. Those eyeless faces were laughing, and after a while we started laughing with them, me and Tim, and went on for so long that Dan told us to shut our fucking traps or he’d chuck us overboard, which made us laugh even more. I had a sore inside my left elbow and another coming up on the back of my neck, and was trying not to scratch. We laughed so much that Mr Rainey, who’d been retching all day and looked as if he was bleeding inside, said, ‘Dan, knock their heads together’, and he did, but not very hard, and after that we were quiet, but had to avoid each other’s eyes so we wouldn’t start again. We got our water. It didn’t do much good. My tongue was all wiggly, drying up as soon as I got it a bit wet, tingling at the root and in the sides of my cheeks like an earache.
‘Oh God,’ I said. ‘Why the hell did I ever come on this journey?’
‘You came on this journey,’ said Tim, ‘to keep up with me. Because I was going, that’s why you came.’
It was true. ‘Well, I wasn’t going to let you have all the glory, was I?’ I said.
‘All the glory!’ Tim squawked. ‘All the glory! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!’
‘Why can’t we eat the hog?’ I asked Dan.
‘Because we’re saving it.’
‘Till when?’
‘Till the right time.’
‘When’s that?’
‘When it comes.’
I was silent for a moment, then: ‘Which is?’
Gabriel, whittling away with a knife at a piece of wood that was much too short, trying to make a spear, snorted laughter.
‘Stow it, Jaf,’ Dan said.
The captain called the boats together. Good to see again their dirty salt phizogs: the captain’s square face with fallen cheeks; the glaring black eyes of Wilson Pride; Simon Flower, his long brown hair like snakes on his shoulders; Dag, rimed white as a ghost; John Copper with sore eyes and runny nose. And Skip, sitting in the stern with his arms wrapped round himself, rocking like a pendulum. John Copper sat next to him. ‘I’m going mad,’ John said.
‘John’s finding life trying.’ Captain Proctor smiled blearily.
The surnames had all been dropped; we were all plain Johns and Tims and Simons now, apart from Mr Rainey, and the captain, of course, who was still the captain.
‘It’s him,’ said John, jerking a thumb backwards over his shoulder at Skip. ‘Driving me up the wall, he is. Keeps poking me all night saying there’s an owl sitting on the gunnel, and there bloody isn’t.’
We laughed.
‘What’s the matter, Skip?’ asked Tim.
Skip just shook his head.
‘When’s this ship coming, Captain?’ Gabriel was polishing the end of his spear. ‘I thought it would have come by now.’
‘I wish I knew. Could be tomorrow, could be the next ten minutes, could be a week or more for all we know.’
‘Could be never,’ said Simon.
‘That’s right, could be never.’ The captain threw a quick look at him. ‘But by my reckoning, we’re well on course for the coast of Chile, so if the worst comes to the worst and no ship comes, we should make a landing there in about three weeks. Weather permitting, of course.’ He looked round at us all and smiled in an encouraging way.
‘Three weeks.’ Simon drooped.
‘It’s nothing,’ said Rainey sharply.
‘In the course of your life, Simon,’ the captain added, stifling a yawn, ‘three weeks is a drop in the ocean.’
‘It’s my head,’ said John. ‘If I could just get rid of this headache.’
‘Where is it?’ I asked. ‘I’ve got one too.’
‘All over.’
‘Mine’s at the back of my eyes.’
‘It’s bloody awful,’ Skip said in a sudden tearful voice. ‘I can’t stand it.’
‘What do you mean by that, Skip?’ Dan said. ‘You are standing it. You have no choice.’
‘He’s standing it,’ John said, ‘it’s me that’s going mad.’
‘It’s my head too,’ said Skip.
‘And mine,’ said Yan.
‘It’s the sun,’ said Mr Rainey, voice chop-chop like a blade.
‘True.’ The captain squinted up at the blank blue sky. ‘The sun goes down in an hour and a half.’
‘Ten days it is now,’ said Dag.
‘Nine.’ A rare word from Wilson.
‘Ten.’
‘Nine.’
‘Ten,’ said Simon, closing his eyes.
‘Not if you don’t count the day we stayed with the ship.’
‘It’s the thirst,’ said Rainey, and his voice cracked like a schoolboy’s, shocking to hear from a man like him. I tried to open my mouth, but it stuck shut.
‘Water,’ Tim said. ‘Must be time.’
My tot of water. Silver on my tongue.
The captain looked up at the sky and down at the bottom of the boat where Pole lay on his side panting weakly in the heat. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘it’s time we killed a pig.’
Our hog was nameless, a stolid soul that took no notice at all when Pole began to scream. Nothing makes such a racket as a hog. Such exquisite terror. Wilson hauled him from his nook and got him over on his side. Out splayed his spiky little legs, trotters stabbing in spasm, kick, kick, kick. Wilson held him down while Simon and Dag grabbed and dodged and had the devil of a job getting him hobbled, but he was tied in a few minutes and they lay across his body to keep him still. Wilson cut his throat. The hog twitched on as his blood drained into the bucket John Copper held under his throat, and screamed on too, terrible sounds, vile, cutting. Blood filled the bucket and slopped over into the bottom of the boat.
‘Here, Yan, pass the other bucket over,’ said Captain Proctor.
The smell made my head light, the smell of the butcher’s shop two doors down from our old house on Watney Street. The smell in the early morning of blood and brine, the pig’s heads in a tub. The captain tipped some of the blood into the second bucket, dipped one of our tin cups in and hesitated for a moment before handing it sideways to Mr Rainey. Rainey took it, looked down into it, closed his eyes and drank. The captain filled the other cup and passed it in the other direction, to John Copper.
‘Not too much, John,’ Proctor said. ‘Sip it.’
The cups went round in both directions and all of us drank except for Gabriel, who started heaving.
‘Can’t,’ he said. His eyes streamed.
‘It’s all right, Gabriel,’ Dan said. ‘It doesn’t taste of anything.’
It didn’t, not really, but it was salty and warm.
‘I know,’ said Gabriel, closing his eyes. ‘Give me a minute.’
Skip drank as if tasting good wine, tentative, thoughtful. His eyes closed as he drank.
The hog’s dying went on.
‘Knock its head in, for God’s sake!’ John Copper said.
‘You knock its head in,’ growled Simon.
‘I will,’ said John, but by the time he’d groped his way forward and shakily lifted the axe, the hog was gone.
Wilson had a few sips then set about his work. ‘It’s not the best knife for the job,’ he said.
The cup came round again.
The blood was already changing colour, thickening like a roux. My body twitched with joy. I’d never been hungry like this. Wilson cut the hog’s legs and head off, slit the hairy black back and put his big meaty hands in under the flaps. He pulled, and two great blankets of hide came away with a tearing sound. Dag hung them up on the sails for the sea to salt.
‘Here, we’ll make a fire here,’ Rainey said.
‘Jump to, Skip and John, get all this cleared up,’ said the captain.
They were baling blood. Sea blood, salt blood. Skip’s eyes were wide and his lower lip drooled from its centre. The chitterlings were in a bucket, plump and shiny, grey and pink. They smelled like shit. The liver was a wing, deltaed with fat. A soft balloon of a thing, the bladder, delicately patterned. Wilson tied its end off and squirted piss to wash blood from the boat. We cleaned up and made a fire on the top of Joe Harper’s toolbox, up out of the wet, with wood from the ship. We’d been drying it in the sun but it was still damp. Wilson had managed against all odds to keep a supply of dry matches. God knows where he kept them. Up his arse probably, Tim said. Who cared? So long as they lit a fire. Now that we were doing something and had drunk, we were cheerful. Saliva returned to our mouths, thick and claggy. Dan whistled.
We kept the flames ticking along with a few bits of rag.
