Only the Ocean

by Natasha Carthew

  ‘Join us,’ he continued. ‘You’ll get to be a part of our gang. Join us.’

  ‘Why this big offer all of a sudden, what’s Rose said to you?’

  ‘Nothin much, not yet, anyway.’

  This surprised Kel.

  ‘God knows why, it’s obvious she int no drug-runner like you.’

  Kel flinched. She didn’t like to hear what she was out loud. ‘How you know I’m a runner?’ she asked.

  ‘I seen you roundabout the swamps, before I joined pirates. I knew your face was familiar. Crow, int you? You can tell me, I’m a swamp kid too.’

  Kel shook her head.

  The boy sensed Kel’s discomfort. ‘Don’t mean to dis you or nothin, Crows are a big deal in the swamps. You could do better than be draggin her around on your own is all.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Means maybe we could help each other out.’

  Kel folded her arms and waited for him to say the thing she knew he was going to say.

  ‘Girl like you,’ he continued, ‘got certain skills, int you. We could do with you on the team.’

  ‘Team?’ Kel scoffed and shook her head.

  ‘You should think about it is all I’m sayin. We know you’ve got some payday comin, but let us in on it and you can be a part of somethin with us, somethin good.’

  Kel looked at him and asked what it was he wanted from her.

  ‘I want you to tell me who the girl is.’

  ‘She int nobody.’

  ‘You’re right, she int worth it, so join us.’

  Kel shook her head. The old Kel would have made a deal, but she had got to know Rose, and selfishness had been replaced with guilt. ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘You got some control over her int you, or she on you?’

  Kel shrugged. ‘Don’t reckon.’

  ‘See I know you kidnapped her for money, or somethin better, and you’re bringin her from A to B.’ The boy stood up suddenly. ‘I’ve known all along.’

  Kel struggled to stand the same.

  ‘What gets me,’ he continued, ‘is why she’s botherin to protect you.’ He said this and he said it over as he left the room and turned the key.

  Kel leaned against the wall with the dizzying bricks circling left and right and she wondered why Rose kept from telling the truth. Maybe the tower girl thought it was better to know the beast that was Kel than these sea monsters. Kel thought about the baby too and wondered if it had been fed and then she stretched to the ground and moved enough to have a little life come to her. To move was to stop the what-why questions, but it didn’t work. Things were happening and they were happening fast and Kel knew the kids would keep the girl and work out some way to use her to their best advantage, whether Kel told them her own plan or not.

  It was only a matter of time until they sussed where the gun had come from and then they would know what the girl was worth and suddenly Kel would be of no value to them. They wouldn’t want her as part of the team whether she said yes or not.

  She rubbed her head, her eyes. Everything hurt and it was all made worse by the boy’s words.

  ‘Team,’ she said. What kind of teamwork did a gang of pirates have to offer? Kel guessed they did the same work as she did, the difference was she worked alone. She wished she could trust someone; anyone would do, if she did she could work with them, make a new kind of family to rival the Crows, get to be at the top of her game, but the pirate kids were just that and she doubted they got much done in the way of plans, high hopes. Then she thought about Rose and felt something in her gut tighten, that guilt again. Rose had become hers for the looking after and although Kel didn’t own her she owned the right to see the whole thing through. Maybe there was still a chance to set the stones of her plan back into step.

  Kel put a hand to her chest, to feel her heart beat was to know it was complete, no matter that it skipped time and played its own rhythm occasionally. She went to the door and tried to imagine the stairs and how they twisted through the neck of the serpent building. She counted out the floors as she placed them in her mind’s eye and there were many, a lighthouse full to bursting with delinquent kids. She wished she had thought of the idea first: a derelict bolt-hole from which to pinch and pilfer the high seas at whim and be safe in the knowledge that they were alone. She could have worked a mean business shipping goods all over from here. Still could, maybe.

  ‘Rose,’ she whispered, ‘where are you?’

  Kel banged at the door and called out to the boy standing guard that she was ready to talk and not just words for the sake of speaking but the truth, if that was what they wanted to hear.

  ‘What’s the racket?’ he shouted through the door.

  ‘I’ll talk,’ said Kel again and she waited for the key to turn and the door to open. They stood close and Kel realised for the first time that he looked much like herself and all the other kids that lived their lives cutting it in flood-plain country ditches.

  ‘I’ll talk,’ she said again when he opened the door.

  ‘What made you change your mind?’ he asked.

  ‘Bin thinkin, maybe we can come to some agreement.’

  ‘I knew it!’ The boy laughed and waved the knife that he had been playing with and Kel recognised it as her own.

  ‘You better come with me,’ he said and he pointed up the stairs and told Kel to lead on.

  ‘You take as long as you like,’ He put away the knife and gestured towards the stairs. ‘We got all the time in the world.’

  ‘How far we headin?’ asked Kel.

  ‘Last door before the top.’

  ‘You got Rose up there?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  When they reached the right door the boy pushed past and knocked. Kel waited patiently at his shoulder and she looked on up the stairs toward the room right at the top that had one time in its life housed the warning light. The flash that once was had now been extinguished, and all that was left of the lighthouse was a length of rock that hid in the dark and clubbed all else into submission.

  ‘What?’ shouted the girl from inside the room.

  The boy turned the handle and pushed open the door.

  The maggot girl looked across from where she was standing at the window and it took her a moment to notice through the crowd of kids that Kel stood with the boy.

  ‘She wants to speak,’ he said and he pushed Kel into the room that housed nothing but table and chairs and the big ocean sky dazzling in the round.

  ‘Where’s the girl?’ asked Kel. ‘Where’s Rose?’

  ‘She’s fine,’ said the boss girl. ‘Probably more fine than she was with you.’ She told the boy to close the door behind them.

  ‘Where’s Rose?’ asked Kel.

  ‘Safe,’ said the girl.

  ‘I want to see her.’

  ‘Int you wanna know bout the baby?’

  Kel shrugged whatever and she pretended not to hear the other girls giggling behind them.

  ‘The tower girl said he was yours.’

  ‘Don’t mean I care much, just show me Rose and I’ll tell you everythin you want to know.’

  ‘OK.’ She nodded.

  Kel waited. She could hear a clock tick somewhere above their heads like impatient fingers snapping attention to the room full of gang kids. They circled Kel and they circled the girl and whether it was expectation or hope holding out for some kind of battle Kel knew they would not be disappointed.

  ‘So go on,’ said the girl.

  ‘Tell me Rose is right: shout her and get her to shout back.’

  The girl started to laugh, she moved nearer and Kel tried to slow her breathing. She told herself not to get into a fight, because if she did it would be the end of her. She looked at the girl and saw the crazy coming into her eyes, with each second the clock ticked she moved closer to Kel.

  Suddenly the door kicked open and a boy Kel hadn’t seen before ran into the room.

  ‘It’s the tower girl,’ he shouted. ‘We worked out who she
is.’

  The maggot girl turned toward him. ‘Go on.’

  ‘That gun, it’s military, stolen from the dockyard. That tower girl is the daughter of an arms dealer.’

  ‘Bingo!’ shouted the girl and everybody cheered.

  Kel felt something shake and break loose inside and it was the feeling she harboured since infancy; the rattle of anger and of dread tearing and clawing for freedom. But she stood steady. With Dad anything other than quiet still meant the beat. She told herself this maggot girl was not worth the rise and to keep calm, to think about her heart, but when the girl pushed herself against her there was no reasoning left but the punch, she’d been found out. Kel knew she was out of options and she raised her best-shot hand and balled it and unleashed a huge one-two.

  The girl lay on the ground and her shock mirrored Kel’s own. The clock ticked on whilst the room held its breath, then every other kid in the room came for her.

  She lay with her knees to her chest and her arms wrapped around her, eyes closed as always, it was best.

  The beating didn’t take so long that Kel had time to think about mortality. To be kicked and to be punched was just that and she was used to just that. They were all the same in any case. Every kid had the caustic metal melting inside of them; they all had an axe to grind so sparks could fly.

  When the girl shouted for them to stop the other kids did what they were instructed and she told them to hurry up, bring the swamp girl down.

  Kel breathed a sigh of relief. She let the boy lift her from the floor, and she didn’t speak because nobody would be listening. The girl and her gang had stormed from the room and Kel was pushed to follow.

  Half-shoved, half-carried down the stairs, Kel wondered if this really was it. Death, and not just death but slaughter at the hands of swamp kids as good as kin. She couldn’t hate them for it and she knew she would have done the same given the circumstances. Smacking those who did not comply was her thing after all. Or it had been her thing in the swamps, before Rose and the conscience the girl had unwittingly planted in her.

  Kel followed the others and she wondered if one last-ditch attempt could be made to get away.

  ‘What gets me bout folks like yourself is you think you’re better cus there’s a bit of business bout you when we know you’re way worse.’ The maggot girl was at it again.

  ‘Why’s that?’ Kel asked.

  ‘The boy told me you was an inbred Crow and we don’t want your stinkin drug-runnin near us.’

  Kel stopped suddenly, the anger blasted from her despite the everywhere ache and she could feel her heart rip a little. ‘What you work that’s different?’ she asked.

  ‘Everythin but,’ said the girl and Kel hated that because besides the arrogance the kid was right. Nothing was worse than the business of drugs.

  She asked what could be done to make her fate better than the one which was destined but the girl said they had no use for her now because they couldn’t trust her but Kel knew that already.

  ‘I gave you a chance but there it is,’ she continued.

  ‘What you gonna do with Rose?’ asked Kel.

  ‘Same as you, swap her for guns.’

  ‘I mean how you gonna treat her.’

  ‘What’s it matter to you?’

  Kel wanted to say something in her own defence. Anything that would expose the bit of herself that was decent. The part of her that she knew had conscience and empathy wired into its fabric if she only had time and nerve enough to unpick it.

  Instead Kel stood at the water’s edge and the waves came good and took in most of her legs. She guessed it didn’t much matter if they were going to put lead in her back or sink her in the deep, because she was dead anyway.

  She turned for one last look at the lighthouse and something about the bright day reflected in one of the windows, finally she knew which room Rose was in, her face pressed against the glass, too late. Kel had been so close, touching distance. She wished there was a way to say truthfully the sorry that was in her and she hoped that Rose knew the remorse she felt inside. Kel wanted to shout it, purge it, prove to Rose that she wasn’t a bad person. All the talk of being hard was a lie.

  ‘I do feel things,’ she whispered, ‘I promise I do.’

  ‘Time to go,’ shouted one of the boys when a speedboat circled into view and Kel saw the stolen lifeboat being towed behind it and she wondered at the craziness of the kids. They were going to set her free.

  ‘Time to meet your fate,’ laughed the girl. ‘Gonna send you packin, leave you way, way out on the ocean without a paddle and see where it gets you. Miserable death I’d say, a miserable death with a million gulls snappin you gone.’

  Kel watched her take the oars out of the boat and throw them into the crowd. She climbed into the oarless dinghy and it was too big without Rose and the baby and their faces were everywhere. She sat dumb and pained in its middle and waited to be towed out into the everlasting ocean. Hell on earth heading under.

  She was heading the way she’d always known she was heading and when an hour had passed and she was at last cut loose from the speedboat she lay on her back and wondered, as always: why if it was her destiny did it take so long to die?

  Kel pulled at what clothes were still holding to hide corners of skin from the bang-bang rain, but no matter what she did the salt-soak still bit biddy bites from her flesh. Death if it was coming for her would arrive at a slip-slow pace and it would pull the sky down on top of her, inch by inch and hour by hour.

  The boat had been a cradle for life once and it’d swung in the hope of things, a womb of wonder guiding Kel toward a better fate, but not any more.

  The cradle had become a dig-dug grave, a flotsam object heading for the ocean floor and Kel’s bones heading the same.

  She pushed back to rest her head so she could watch the speedboat retreat and soon nothing but the grey-green wash looked back at her. She wished she had her knife to ease the pain that was loneliness. To cut a line in her arm deep and wide was to let the misery out and what was left of a good world in. She wondered about the green of land and field that was her fantasy of a good life living. In mind her future was painted with a healthy heart and a job that wasn’t foot-soldier running and she thought about the drug thing and the shame that lived there and finally above all she thought about Rose and she sat up suddenly.

  Kel realised she had never asked Rose about her dreams, never asked her what colours she painted her future. Kel’s was green and she smiled a little then because she knew for sure that the girl was all about every shade of pink and maybe that was fine. It was a comfort colour and perhaps the girl needed comfort more than she let on.

  Kel wondered about Rose up there in the prison that was the lighthouse and every thought she had in her head had its roots buried in fairytale. Dare and rescue and heroics were all at play inside, and so was something akin to doing the right thing. Rose needed her and Kel liked the idea of that. It was a new thing, but also a good thing.

  Kel leaned forward and she bent to reach down into the hallowed depths of water. She cupped her hands as if to swim and turned the water over. If she had no oars she would be her own oar, if she had no map or compass to guide then strength of will would have to do.

  Kel knew what way was the right way to head and that was toward the point where she saw the speedboat disappear. So she dipped her head to the waves and closed her eyes and it was as if everything that was inside her was now on the outside, swimming. Swimming to save both the girl and the baby that would in turn save herself.

  Chapter Nine

  There were times of constant motion when Kel gave herself up to the cause completely, even as the night arrived dark and cold and marked her soul the same. Her eyes were closed to her reflection and her mind was numb to the warm water and cold rain alike and instead she counted round and round until the second night came rolling wrap-around once more.

  All she could think about was Rose and then the baby over and over again. Time awa
y from the kid had done something to her whether she wanted it or not. It was as if she had lost some part of her body or a sane way of thinking. Something that needed hauling in was out there and lost in the ether. She could feel it tug at her, a string-thing pulling. It was a ghost feeding, suckling the spirit from her core and replacing it with sandbag guilt. But just as the burden began to feel unbearable, that was when Kel’s luck altered its course and the moon poked pretty over the horizon. Its orb was so big and fleshy it filled the dark with muscular bounce and Kel sat up to wash herself clean with midnight light.

  And then she saw it, the lighthouse, sitting stupid and struck-down by the beauty of the night. Brought here by fate when she didn’t believe in fate, fate and her strength of will.

  Kel sat back and let the draw of the tide guide her closer to shore. When the dinghy was close enough to be grounded on the rocks she sat legs dangling in the sea and from there she went fully into the water and swam toward the slipway. She lay on the seaweed slip a moment to catch her breath and watched the lighthouse for shadows and coming-going kids but there were none. No traps, no guards, no nothing: the scene had been set for rescue because it was the right thing to do. Fate and more fate.

  Kel lifted herself on to her hands and then her knees and she kept her eyes on the tower. Rose was up there somewhere, up in her tower with the gulls looping low like buzzards closing in for the kill.

  She stood with the fight filtering through her veins and growing strong as she prepared herself for the kick and climb. The tide had sucked itself away from the island rock and now nothing but jagged teeth remained. A jaw that threatened to snap tight and keep Kel for the chew. She stubbed her boot tips one-two on to the algae-greased slipway and ran toward the lighthouse like it was a thing for catching.

  She was glad to have surprise on her side. The delinquent kids would be spinning drunk someplace dark and damp, she knew this well from her nights kept at the lighthouse. They’d be all settled and unprepared and it meant that if she was careful she might pass them by completely and with that thought she went forward.