by Carol Birch
‘Don’t think.’
I looked up and saw Dan’s face wet with tears. Or was it the rain that had just begun, a sweet English drizzle?
‘I killed Tim,’ I repeated. It seemed important I should acknowledge this as truth eternal, an irreversible fact to be absorbed by the universe. Dan’s eyes closed and the water poured down. I couldn’t say if he was laughing or crying.
‘You’ll have a long life, Jaf,’ he said. ‘Don’t waste it on this.’
‘Send a ship,’ Skip cried, a shrill seagull’s voice that echoed in my ear.
But it wouldn’t make any difference, I had still killed Tim. For ever and ever amen I had killed Tim.
My moan was changing into a stupid childish crying, a miserable wipe-my-nose and pick-me-up sort of a grizzle. Clouds of grey and black boiled in front of my eyes. I went somewhere strange, somewhere far and lost as a rock on another world, and forgot how I got there or where I’d come from or what name I had or anything at all apart from a subtle and steady push towards some surface far above. When I got up finally from this and my head cleared I saw that Dan was praying silently, moving his mouth, leaning his head against the side of the boat, asking God to take care of Alice and the kids. Skip was lying down with his arms round his head. And there was the smidgin of hardtack and the couple of inches of warm water, and the gun, and the invisible fear thing was gone.
‘Let’s eat what’s left,’ I said.
So we did, breaking the tack into three and passing the cup round, sipping small long-held mouthfuls. It took about half an hour before it was gone. That’s how long we spun it out. Then like old men by the fire after a good dinner we sat back in contemplative silence. The rain was like silver rods whispering and shimmering, piercing the sea. That was beautiful, soothing. Skip lay back down and said he wasn’t getting up again. He said there was no point. He smiled and closed his eyes and put his arms back round his head and said he was going to sleep, but was up again immediately. Then down, then up, down, up, with his horrible eyes, down, up, like a dog with worms, standing in the heaving bow screaming he saw a ship, a ship, then, oh God, a low rumbling laugh because, oh hell, there’s an eye pierced on every spar, all googling and bloody, and they’re turning, every bleeding one, on us. ‘You want me dead!’ he screamed, whether to us or his big god or the sea or the demon I’ve no idea, but whatever it was it seemed to strike him down at once, for he spun about and dropped, holding his head and screaming at the top of his lungs.
We took hold of him and tried to hold him from thrashing too hard. He screamed and screamed, twitching all over his shoulders and arms, froth at the corners of his mouth.
‘Nothing to worry about, Skip,’ Dan said, ‘nothing at all.’
He calmed down a little and we laid him down with a bunch of rags under his head.
‘There, see, you’re all right,’ we said to him.
He called for water. Called for a candle, though it was light. He called for Polly-dog and his ma and pa. Three hours he chattered but made no sense, and he never again opened his eyes, though he said he saw tall things with horns approaching, smiling, on the restless sea. Late in the afternoon he died with his head on Dan’s knees, bravely rambling till the very end, which came as a terrible convulsion that shook the boat as if we’d landed a shark.
I remember you a strange misty morning man in the yard, early life, early morning, Mr Jamrach standing in the light from his office door, and you there with a whiff of the ocean about you, the wild places that called. You sang ‘Tobacco Is An Indian Weed’ on the Wapping Steps. Where else could I go after that? Look at us now. Dan’s my mirror: scooped hollows in his face, eyes like pits. I look like that too. Skin shrinks. Lips turn black, teeth stick out.
‘Need to shorten sail,’ he said. ‘You do that while I get on with this.’
I did. I looked out over the rippling babble of waves and heard, as I had heard before, for Tim, for Gabriel, the cleft and slurp and rasp of the knife. For Skip.
Smash. Hatchet.
Dog’s lick. Marrow.
Close eyes, suck.
Close eyes, suck.
I saw the thing Skip saw. It came striding and stalking with hoofed front legs on the sea, a creature of jovial reptilian cast, with the long, curled tail of a fish following proudly in its wake. When it got alongside the boat and a ship’s length off, its eyes swivelled in its head and fixed me, its lip curling delicately to reveal the long, pointed teeth of a cannibal. Then again I saw spectral ships, and fingers of smoke that crept along the gunwale. I saw a tree dripping living colours that ran with kittenish joy into and out of one another all along its elegant branches, faces that flashed a million changes, questing eyes, water-dappled ceilings, a great lost city in ruins of pink and gold. I soared above the earth on vast bat wings, mighty and proud. But I went too high, couldn’t stop myself. As if I was a balloon and someone cut my string, I went up and up and up, sucked at hideous speed, till there was nothing of me left but a thought that I was still me, whatever that was, and any second now would come the fall, inescapable. These terrible dream falls; always at the howling rushing point of no return I have woken safe: in bed, in Drago’s belly, under a table at Spoony’s with a whore cradling my head. Always, the world has returned. Good old world. This time it would not. All lost: Ma’s warm armpit, songbirds, moon over London Bridge, a small gold head in the crowd, the smell of sarsaparilla, all of it, and everything in a great surge of longing, a love I had been born to feel, and which was also required of me and the purpose of my life.
And then I fell.
Voices.
Corncrake groan of a rigging. Soft flapping of sails at peace. Sea-green, delicate little bones, white and creamy ones wrapped in my arms. We love our bones. We’ll never part with them.
A great shadow falls. Faces look down at us.
It was the passenger steamer Quinteros sailing between Callao and Valparaiso that picked us up. We were not far from the Chilean coast. I can’t remember how I got up on deck. I remember a sense of weary wonder, strange fear, a voice in my head crying out again and again as if it was angry with me. I remember a blurry gaggle of staring faces that moved gently as if some great hand was shaking them up and down. I remember a smell like frying onions, and tears pouring down my face so hard I thought they were my life blood leaving me. My legs would not stand. Arms caught me. Many voices murmured and one, strong above the rest, spoke words into my ear that made no sense. There was tapioca in a bowl, and a spoon I dropped when they put it in my hand. We were more than half mad as we sailed for Valparaiso. We sat and shivered, staring like madmen. And Dan said to me: ‘We say nothing about the Ora,’ and I nodded, my teeth chattering in my head. And we never did. I don’t know why. Felt like bad luck, I suppose.
PART THREE
15
‘Don’t look at me with those eyes, sailorboy.’
‘What eyes? These eyes? They’re mine. What other eyes should I look at you with?’
Red-haired. A little poxed but not much. Pretty face, chin too long. She has the faint remains of a scab in the corner of her mouth and I feel sorry for her.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Faith,’ she says.
‘Pretty,’ says I.
‘Want a place to go?’ says she.
I must have been grinning. She took my hand. ‘What you laughing at?’ she said. ‘You laughing at me?’
‘Have you got a place to go?’
‘I have that. You come with me.’ She led me good as gold through the streets of Greenwich in the rain. She’d picked me off the quay, from among all those sun-beat faces, those half-savage things that seamen are when they’re coming in after long years at sea, pulled me from the heave and holler of those touts and crimps and runners all wanting a piece of me. But I wasn’t green any more. I shivered as she led me through those glorious green and grey rain-sodden Greenwich streets, how beautiful and shining they were, how altogether heartbreaking. I started crying.
&nb
sp; She noticed as we reached the tall dark house. Pushing me aganst the wall just by the doorway in the hall, seizing my head between her hands and staring in my eyes with blazing grey eyes. ‘Go on then,’ she said, ‘have a bloody good cry, chicky.’
‘I’m not green,’ I said, ‘I know you want to rob me. Just letting you know I know.’
‘There we are then,’ she said, letting me go. ‘Glad we got that one straight. Come on.’
So up the stairs, one flight only, to a bare landing, where she lit us a candle from a cupboard on the left, then a door with spotted brown paint that opened onto a small room almost filled with a bed covered with an Indian cloth. The candle flickered on the ceiling and the walls, adorned here and there with sentimental pictures of violets and kittens, and there in the window was a linnet in a cage.
‘Here, Faith,’ I said, ‘what’s your charge?’
She smiled, lopsided. Her forehead was high, with mobile wrinkles that spoke as much as her eyes. I guessed her at thirty. Business done, she took off her jacket and sat down on the bed to take off her boots. It was nice, I thought. Cosy. Outside, the sounds of life. Footsteps that tocked along the pavement. I am home, I thought. Home.
‘Did you get this from Jamrach?’
The linnet.
‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘it’s not my room.’
I put my face up against the bars of the cage and looked at the linnet.
‘Linnet,’ I said, ‘linnet, hello, linnet.’
‘Is that what it is?’ she said.
I cried again.
‘You lay down,’ she said, getting up and leading me firmly to the bed. ‘You got half an hour, have a nice lie down and a little weep.’
So I did. I was very drunk. I was drunk before I left the ship. It’s all fady, through a veil. I’d paid her for half an hour, had a bit more cash in my breeches and knew she might try and steal it, and knew my head was full of whirling clouds and that I could no more stop crying than the rain could stop pouring till its true time was up; and that made me feel the rain against the windowpane, its glowing drops moving leisurely, its song, its soft lullaby. My head hit the pillow, a poor, hard, straw pillow softer to me than rose petals and goose down. How could I save my money, now I was going out like a candle?
‘Here,’ I said, ‘I’ve paid for you.’
She lay down next to me and I took her in my arms.
‘You rob me I kill you,’ I said.
‘No, you won’t,’ she said indulgently, ‘’cos you got no need to.’
Couldn’t stop the tears. She wiped my nose with a small handkerchief perfumed with lavender. That made me cry more.
‘What’s this?’ she asked.
Bruises on my upper right arm. They had not faded.
‘Nothing.’
‘That’s enough,’ she said, ‘calm yourself down now. Here’s a nice deal: you give me one more guinea and I promise not to rob you.’
‘Done,’ I said.
No more did she. She chucked me out when my time was up and I walked along the river way to the bridge in the light silvery sifting rain, passing where we used to live in Bermondsey all those years ago. It was no better. Still stank to high heaven. The foreshore by the bridge was filthy as ever. I sat on the steps for ages, looking across to the other side. To Ratcliffe Highway. She let me off, that woman, I thought. But then I think she knew me for a native.
I put off going home, roamed very slowly across Tower Bridge eventually, the day nearing noon, stood for half an hour watching them landing the sugar. As yet I’d seen no one I knew, which suited me. The news had flown before. Long before we docked they’d all have known our story. It would be in their eyes when they looked at me, their knowledge of what had passed. Maybe we should have lied, but we didn’t. God knows how I’d face Ishbel and her ma. Impossible. Part of me thought I should never have come back, should have buried myself away in some lost, forgotten corner of the world, but it wouldn’t have been fair on Ma. So I dawdled and fooled about, and it was two before I reached Ma’s. She’d been expecting me since yesterday afternoon and was out on the corner looking up the street. Same old Ma, just a bit greyer. I saw her before she saw me. Her face could have been taken for hard but I knew she was just worried. When she saw me she relaxed, mouth flexing into a twisted line of grim joy. She took a couple of steps towards me and gave me a quick hard hug.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked.
I kissed her on the cheek. ‘You’ve not been standing there all day, have you?’
‘’Course not, you silly creature,’ she said. ‘I’ve been in and out.’
We stood back. I was grinning rather foolishly, I thought. Her eyes were pained.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked again, looking closely at me.
‘I’m not so bad.’
‘I never thought I’d see you again.’
‘Well, there you go.’ I laughed, a pointless snigger.
‘Come on.’ She took my arm and led me into a court with a long flagged drain down the middle and a blacksmith’s shop at the far end. The sound of metal hammering rang from the eaves, and a tall black horse stood tethered at the gate, head in its nosebag. Their house was on the left, a half door, a bucket of suds, a deep windowsill on which shells were distributed, a large scallop and a few scotch bonnets. It was bigger and cleaner than their old place, and smelled of laundry and fish and Ma’s old broth that I used to dream about on the boat. Charley Grant stood straddle-legged with his back to a blazing fire, above which a kettle on a hook vibrated and hummed quietly. His face was pink as a ham and he’d fattened up since I last saw him.
‘Jaf,’ he said, coming forward and gripping my shoulder warmly but awkwardly, ‘very, very good to see you home.’
‘It’s good to be home.’
A lad of about eighteen months sat in a high chair at the table, a wooden spoon clasped in one porridgy fist.
‘Looks nice, don’t he, Charl?’ Ma said proudly, prodding me into a chair opposite the child.
‘That he does.’
‘Who do you think this is, eh Jaf?’
The child had a snub, broad face and a surprisingly luxuriant growth of brown curls right on top of his head. He looked at me appraisingly, and I winked at him.
‘That’s your little brother, Jaf,’ Ma said briskly. ‘His name’s David.’
‘What!’
‘There’s a surprise for you! David! Say hello to your big brother, Jaffy.’
David and I regarded each other with interested suspicion.
Of course, it wasn’t that surprising. She wasn’t so old. Looked it though. Ma had aged. Not yet forty, I supposed. She was young when she had me. Strange it was, all this. I felt very far away. After all my time at sea, this steamy room, the child, the smiling man with his ham face and braces, the heat, the bowl of broth she placed before me, the hunk of bread, the unmistakeable air of the river beyond these walls – everything a fancy in my head, something flashing in front of my eyes at the moment of faint.
The broth was food for gods.
I found myself crying.
‘There now, it’s all over,’ Ma said, bending and putting her arms round me, swamping me with her old familiar smell. ‘Everything’s going to be all right from now on.’
‘I know, I know.’
She showed me my room. It was tiny, but the window looked out over rooftops towards the river, where the masts of tall ships traced the sky. A lovely bed she’d made up for me, with a silky counterpane patterned with red flowers, and beside it, on a squat four-legged stool, a spray of honesty in that old green jug we used to have on the mantelpiece in Watney Street. My bed. All I wanted to do was get into it and sleep and sleep. But when my head touched the pillow and Ma drew the curtains and kissed me goodnight and went out closing the door softly, my mind ploughed uneasy billows in the darkness. All the things I had to do: go see Ishbel and her mother. Get that over with. Sleep. A lot. Everyone said I needed it, the doctor on the ship, the doctor
in Valparaiso. What else? Get myself back, my mind, that is – reel it in from these far chasms and boiling seas, think about the future that might never have been. What to do now? Go out and meet the eyes. Everyone knows. Nothing was hidden. These people of the docks have lived so long with the sea and heard so many mariners’ tales, nothing surprises them. They won’t look askance at me. Still, there’ll be something in their eyes, a knowing.
I slept at last, but sleep was not restful and tossed like the sea. This was when I started to fathom these deepest deeps, and conclude nothing.
Mr Jamrach came to see me next morning. I heard his voice, he was talking to Ma, saying he’d had a long talk with Dan Rymer, and that Dan had said he would not ever go back to sea. Ma said, well, it was about time he settled down, wasn’t it? A man his age with such a young family. ‘He wants to stay at home now and enjoy what he’s got,’ she said. I could hear David chuckling in the background. He was like that. He’d sit and play with his fingers and chuckle and chatter to himself, quite wrapped up in some happy world of his own for ages.
I didn’t want to go down. I wouldn’t. No one could make me. Not yet. It was all too much for me at the moment, I’d just stay in bed for as long as I possibly could. Days even, if they’d let me. While I worked out what to do next. Sleep. That was the thing. Life now would be simple: fish, soup, warmth, sleep, baccy, beer. My head was spinning: all the sounds, the smells, the endless proliferation. Yet so many gone. So when she came in and said Mr Jamrach’s come to see you, I said I was feeling too tired to get up, and he called out not to worry, another time would do, and I turned over and tried to get back to sleep, tried hard, hard, with the light seeping in the window.
Next day though she made me get up and she shooed me out of the house. First I went to the barber’s then to see Mr Jamrach. Cobbe was still in the yard, looking just the same as ever only balder, which gave him the look of a convict. He put down his bucket and came over and embraced me gruffly, a thing I never could have imagined in a million years.
