Getaway

by John Harris

  “I reckon so.” Willie nodded and grinned, relieved. “We’ll get the other anchor out first, though, just for safety.”

  Rosa turned to Joe and kicked him in his fat ribs. “You drunken old fool, you,” she stormed. “Just when we needed you.”

  Willie pushed her to the ladder. “Look, Mama,” he said. “Leave him till later. We got to get a wriggle on. We haven’t got much time and I’m getting scared.”

  Four

  The wind seemed to be rising still as they struggled to heave the heavy anchor out of the locker. Its noisy lament as it whined across the lagoon had grown more powerful and its buffets several times threatened to topple them into the water as they worked.

  The Boy George was digging her nose deeper into the water now, so that great gouts of spray were flung upwards to whip across the deck in low stinging arcs that rattled like shot against the ventilators and the cabin top. The deck was greasy with moving water and lurching to every snatch of the anchor chain, so that they stumbled as they moved about, bent double against the wind and falling over ringbolts and equipment in the darkness.

  They dragged out the lengths of greasy chain cable and flaked it along the deck, Willie thrusting it upwards from the locker, taking most of the weight as he passed it to Frankie, while Rosa, one hand always on the rigging for safety, stumbled forward dragging it behind her through the waist of the ship where the water was coming in green through the scuppers and sloshing backwards and forwards round her feet. They had pushed Joe to one side so that he lay in the shadows with only the lamp to keep him company, rolling inertly against Willie’s feet as the ship moved.

  “If only he’d been sober,” Rosa panted as she fought her way along the deck, her skin beaten raw by the hammering of the iron-fisted wind. “If only he’d been sober.”

  “Now, listen, Frankie,” Willie panted when they had shackled the chain to the anchor. “I’ve talked to Joe. I’ve read things. I’ve learned a lot. If we shackle something heavy half-way down the cable, it’ll keep it from snatching. If we don’t do that, this wind could break the chain or lift the anchor. Ain’t that right?”

  Frankie nodded and Willie went on, looking up at her as she crouched with the lamp alongside him in the meagre shelter the winch provided. “What we got that’s heavy?”

  Frankie thought for a moment, while the wind beat her hair into her eyes with blinding force. The rain had started again now and sheeted down on them in squally gusts that plastered the clothes to their bodies. From the entrance to the lagoon they could hear the mountainous, monotonous waves smashing against the rocks and bursting through the pass in a welter of foam and flying scud.

  “We got some coal weights,” she shouted. “They were in the bilges aft when we took her over. They’d taken an auxiliary engine out or something and they put ’em there to make up the weight. The screw didn’t bite.”

  “OK, kid, I’ll get ’em up.”

  Laboriously, they got two of the weights forward to the plunging bow, where they were almost thrown to the deck by the sudden thudding jolts as the anchor cable checked the ship’s lift on the crests of the seas. Drenched by the water that came over the forepeak, Willie shackled one of them to the chain of the anchor that was already out. Then he fastened one end of a rope to the weight and the other to the deck and, as the Boy George rode forward between gusts, managed to slip the shackle over the fairlead and ease the weight into the water down the chain.

  “OK,” he shouted. “Now we’ll do the same again.”

  They finished shackling the second weight to the chain of the new anchor, then they stumbled aft to the engine room and fell thankfully below deck out of the blast of the wind, their feet scattering the tools that had been jolted from the racks. Around them the planks and ribs of the Boy George creaked – not now with the regular protests of a ship in a swell, but with the tortured squeaks of agonized wood as each gust flung her against the chain. Willie glanced at Frankie’s pale face and bent to the starting handle.

  “Now for it, kid,” he said with a grin. “Soon be safe. We’re all right for juice and she’ll ride all night the way we fixed her.”

  He swung the handle, but the engine was like a lump of dead metal.

  “Oh, Christ,” he said bitterly, his smile dying immediately. “Don’t say she’s going to let us down now!”

  He dragged at the handle again, but once more there was no sign of life and he looked up at Frankie, his face drawn with sudden alarm, before he bent to the engine again.

  “Y’old bastard,” he muttered in an agony of disappointment. “Come on. Give.”

  He swung on the starting handle, his shadow huge against the bulkhead, heaving until his hands were raw and blistered, then, while he regained his breath, Frankie put her meagre weight against it and Willie worked the choke.

  “Willie,” she panted in despairing tones, looking at him with scared, white-edged eyes. “What we going to do?”

  Willie shoved his head out of the hatch and glanced at the sky. “God,” he muttered, tumbling back again. “We can’t wait all night for this bastard. It’s getting worse and we’ve moved again.”

  He bent again to work, depressed by a feeling of utter helplessness that they had no power to fight against the wind. Knowing nothing about engines, Rosa stood miserably in the background, holding the lamp for them while they worked, her eyes fearful as she saw Frankie’s fingers fumbling with tiredness.

  Willie tried the handle again with no result, then he seized a spanner and started wrenching at the couplings of the fuel feeds.

  “Try the other end, Frankie,” he said. “And put a jerk on. We’ve got to look slippy.”

  They worked feverishly, tearing their skin and flesh on the sharp edges of metal in the poor light, cursing bitterly when they dropped a spanner in their haste or a nut proved difficult, the engine room silent except for the creaks and the bubbling water beyond the planks.

  Half an hour later Rosa was in tears and Willie stared over the engine at Frankie’s weary little face.

  “She’s had it, kid,” he said despairingly. “We can’t do it. There’s only one thing for it now. We got to use the dinghy.”

  “Willie.” Frankie’s cry was a pitiful exhausted bleat. “It’s too dangerous!”

  “Frankie, if we don’t do it, the lot of us have had it. You know that as well as me. We’re still moving. We’re moving all the time. There’s a light out there. Shove your head out. It’s a church or a store or something. When I last looked it was over here.” Willie’s arm swung towards the bow. “It’s over there now. If she goes careering all over the lagoon in this lot, she’ll hit the reef or a niggerhead somewhere and that’ll be the end of the lot of us. Frankie, don’t you understand it’s a matter of life or death? We’ve got to get out an extra anchor. We ain’t got an engine to help us any more.”

  They stumbled amidships, Frankie staggering and grey-faced with fatigue as the gale beat them to the deck, and struggled to lower the dinghy. It was a murderous job, for the wind kept getting between it and the Boy George and swinging it out so that it thumped sickeningly against the side of the ship, threatening hands and fingers.

  “God, we shoulda done this hours ago,” Willie panted. “When I was agitatin’ about it. While we’d still got time.”

  When they had the boat in the water forward, Willie jumped into it through the spray that shot upwards like shellbursts and lashed it fore and aft. In the light of the lamp, Rosa could see his face was strained and taut with weariness.

  “All we got to do now, kid,” he panted to Frankie as he scrambled back aboard,” is get the anchor in her.”

  They lowered the cable into the tossing boat, Willie lying down for safety to work, the water sloshing along his legs, catching the rays of the lamp and glittering with a murderous green beauty. Laboriously, he flaked the cable on the bottom boards so that it would run free, then they lowered the heavy anchor across the stern, having to heave it up again and again as the dinghy rode
away from them with the wind. When they had finally made it fast with a lashing to the thwarts, ready for the push that would send it to the bottom, Willie climbed aboard the Boy George again.

  “All we got to do when we’ve got rid of her is shove the other weight over and adjust the cables so they both take the strain,” he panted. “Then she should be good and safe.”

  He was gasping in the humid air as they made a final anxious inspection of all the shackles and the turns round the winch, wishing Joe were sober enough to check what they were doing, wishing their experience was great enough to give them confidence.

  Satisfying himself that everything was secure, Willie turned to Frankie as she huddled behind him. “OK, kid,” he shouted. “Here I go.”

  “I’m coming too.” Frankie moved forward immediately.

  “No, Frankie, you’re not. Too easy to go over the side and you’re only a kid. I’ll handle this.”

  “I’m not a kid. I can row.”

  Willie pushed them both below deck where they could talk without having to shout against the roaring of the wind, down in the cabin where the floorboards were strewn with broken crockery that had been jerked out of the lockers again, and the blankets that had slipped off the bed and now slid about in the quivering puddle of warm water which had leaked below and slowly spread. He turned to face Frankie, his back against the moist bulkhead, his hand on the top of the once-polished table that was blurred to mistiness by the damp air, while Rosa, her arm hooked for safety round the ladder, watched them like a spectator at a theatre, the panic in Frankie’s eyes tearing at her heart.

  “Listen, Frankie,” Willie was saying, his features haggard in the lamplight. “You can’t come. You aren’t strong enough to row. Honest, you’re not. Not in this wind.”

  “I can hold the dinghy steady for you,” Frankie insisted, her eyes full of tears. “It isn’t safe for one man in the dark.”

  “Frankie, you stay here with your ma and keep that lamp alight,” Willie said fiercely. “It’s going to look good while I’m out there.”

  “I’ll lash it to the mast. Mama can look after it.”

  “Frankie,” he persisted over the crashing of the storm, “this is a man’s job.”

  “I want to come, Willie.” Frankie’s voice was shrill with fear. She stumbled against him as the Boy George butted a wave and lurched, and she flung her arms round him, holding him tightly, love and fear all mixed up together inside her.

  “Willie,” she begged. “I don’t care what happens. I just want to be with you.”

  Willie’s arms were round her now and he was speaking over the top of her head. “Sure you do, kid,” he was saying quietly. “And I’d like you to be but I want to know you’ll be here when I come back. If you go overboard what’ll I do?”

  Rosa was blinded with tears as she watched them.

  “Now, listen.” Willie’s strong hands on her quietened Frankie at last. “Just leave this to me. Suppose the light goes out? Suppose we get blown away when we let go the anchor?”

  “I don’t care,” she moaned, shaking her head. “I’ll be with you. That’s all that matters.”

  “Suppose we don’t know which way to row? I’ll do this on my own. If anything happened to you, who’d look after Joe and Mama and the others?” Willie paused, while the spray that came across the bow rattled down on the cabin top over their heads like bursts of heavy rain. “Listen, kid, I’ll tell you what: let’s have one last go at that engine. It might work now. How’s that? If it doesn’t, we’ll do the job together.”

  Frankie nodded speechlessly, thankfully, her eyes full of blessed relief and tears, and Willie kissed her quickly.

  “OK, then. You get along and keep your head down. I’ll be with you. There’s a wrench somewhere in here I want.”

  She tried to smile and hurried to the ladder. They heard the momentary shout of the wind as she opened the hatch, then it died again as the hatch dropped back and they heard her making her stumbling way aft.

  Willie made no attempt to look for the wrench and Rosa knew he had never intended to.

  “Willie,” she said, her voice quavering. “There must be an easier way than this.”

  “Maybe there is, Mama,” Willie’s face was set, as though the flesh were drawn tight over the bones. “But if there is, I don’t know it.”

  He reached across the table and rattled the curling chart in the puddles of water and spilled tea. “Look, Mama, we’re here. There’s a ledge that drops into deep water.” His hand swept across the paper. “If we drag the anchor off that, we’ve had it.” He paused, staring at his hand for what seemed ages, as though fascinated by its movement, then he raised his eyes to Rosa’s. “Mama, do you reckon we’ve done it right? The anchor, I mean.”

  The moving lamp threw shadows across his face so that his expression seemed to be constantly changing, but Rosa could see he was torn by doubt and oppressed by his inexperience. “It looked all right to me, Willie,” she said, clinging to the ladder and swinging about it as the boat moved. “I don’t know any other way.”

  Willie sighed. “Maybe Joe could think of one. I can’t. I’ve got to chance it.”

  “Willie,” Rosa begged. “Can’t we risk it till daylight at least?”

  “No, Mama. We’re moving all the time. We can’t wait. Any time now she’ll take off. If we don’t do something, we’ve had it. The lot of us. You’ve had it. Joe’s had it–” he paused before he completed the sentence “–Frankie’s had it.”

  “I’ll speak for the lot of them, Willie,” Rosa said earnestly. “We’ll chance it together.”

  Willie looked up and smiled faintly. “No, Mama,” he pointed out. “I’m speaking for Frankie now. And I say she’s not chancing it. I’ve got to look after her now, see?”

  As Rosa looked at him, she realized the old aggressive youthful Willie had gone and in his place was a man, mature and responsible.

  He paused, then he reached upwards for the hatch. “I’m going now, Mama,” he said abruptly. “Look after Frankie.”

  And before Rosa had the sense to realize what he was doing, he had scrambled to the deck. A gust of wind smashed him to his knees immediately, but he dragged himself up again, heaving on the rigging. Snatching the axe from its hook as he passed, he hurried aft and, slamming the hatch of the engine room shut, slipped the catch.

  “Willie–” His face went hard as he heard Frankie’s despairing shriek and heard her fists thumping on the wood, then he slipped over the side into the dinghy.

  While Rosa was still heaving herself out of the cabin, he hacked the stern rope free and severed the bow rope with one blow, then he grabbed for the oars as the dinghy started to drift backwards. Within a few seconds, he was out of sight, blown out from the beam of the ship, straining his muscles hopelessly against the wind, watching the anchor cable slide over the stern as he went.

  Rosa saw the boat vanish into the darkness, the tears on her cheeks blown away by the wind. Heedless of the screams and hammerings of Frankie in the engine room, she crouched against the blast, waiting and muttering and praying.

  “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb–”

  Five

  The tempest blew through that night and the whole of the next day.

  Rosa and Frankie were still on the foredeck saying Hail Marys, crouching by the winch, stiff with cold and hungry, wet through and exhausted by the weather, when the dawn came, a cheerless grey dawn like a thread of pale light that showed only the white-veined water and the slanting spears of drizzle that drove in from the sea.

  When Rosa had released Frankie from the engine room, she had leapt on deck like a wild animal, frantic as she saw no sign of Willie, and for a while Rosa had thought she would fling herself into the bubbling water alongside.

  When she had finally managed to control herself they had fought together against the elements for half the night. At one point, when the first anchor had
been finally wrenched free, the Boy George had been flung backwards stern-first until the second chain had dragged taut and the anchor had bitten and held long enough for the first anchor to grip again and make the Boy George secure. Their minds numbed by the noise, their fingers bruised and split by the snatching chains, they had managed to get the second weight over the side as Willie had instructed, Frankie working with a stumbling weary fanaticism that broke Rosa’s heart.

  “Willie said to do that,” she had repeated mechanically again and again as they stumbled about the deck in the darkness. “Willie said to do that.”

  Joe appeared on deck during the afternoon. By this time, the storm was clearly abating, though the rollers were still exploding into the entrance to the lagoon so that the passage was a turmoil of white foam, while ashore the palms still bent to the smashing of the wind. The light, grey-green and murky, continued to be feeble and, astern of the Boy George, the lagoon stretched away into a mist which was still more spray than rain – blank, empty and grey.

  Joe stumbled forward, noticing the empty dinghy davits, the ropes streaming astern, and the teeth that had snapped off the winch, the bent links of the anchor cable. One anchor streamed to starboard of the bow and the other to the port, while the Boy George lay back unevenly between them. As usual, Willie’s work, while inexpert, was secure.

  He stared at them a little longer, then he clattered into the cabin, his eyes red, his tongue and throat dry. As he licked his lips, he felt the rough stubble that made his face bluish against his pallor.

  “Christ Jesus our Saviour,” he muttered to himself fighting to throw off the nausea and the blinding headache he was suffering from.

  Unable to say anything, Rosa looked up at him as he poured himself luke-warm tea from the pot she had made when they had first stumbled below. Frankie crouched on the bunk, her eyes wide and accusing as they stared at him, her face pinched with misery.