by Finn Óg
Interestingly, the unloading of the cargo appeared to be the most pressing matter, and so the Captain withdrew. Fran got to work.
“Who speaks English?” To my surprise, all the men raised their hands. “Excellent,” said Fran. “Who texted me?” A rather timid little man raised his paw, and the others looked at him with astonishment.
“I did not know you would come,” said the man.
“Well, here I am, brother, and if you all stick together, we can get this sorted out. More pay, and off the boat, and home to your families. But you need to stay together. Do you understand?”
The body language was fascinating. Clearly, they were afraid, some more than others. It was not at all clear, however, that they were of one mind. Fran picked out one man who had begun to glower at the sailor who had made the contact.
“What’s your problem? Are you scared of the Captain? Don’t you want to be paid a fair wage?”
This larger man was exposed, and I realized what a master of negotiation Fran was. Pick the big one in a fight, and the rest will buckle.
“Aaaah, is problem for me,” he spluttered. “I need monies for sending home.”
“How much do you send home, Brother?” Fran softened.
“Maybe… maybe. Eh, thirty dollars every month.”
“My friend,” said Fran, “you should be earning thirty dollars every day. Lookit, you should be earning sixty dollars a day, but we are people of the world, and we know you were signed up in Manilla, where exploitation is a national sport.”
“They have our sea books,” said the man.
“If you work as one and refuse to do your jobs and unload this ship, I can get you thirty dollars a day. You can join the union, and we can get your sea books, and you can all get off this ship.”
The men looked sceptical. Without the sea books, they could not work again. I knew enough about commercial shipping to work out that the papers were their license to operate. I also wondered where a breach of contract would leave them, with regard to their hiring agent back in the Philippines.
Fran lowered his tone, and began to persuade and coax them towards trusting him, and then he left them to discuss the options amongst themselves. Outside, the Captain and First Officer were trying to eavesdrop, but the hum of the ship made that virtually impossible. They demanded to know which of the crew had called Fran. He swore at them with utter contempt, and suggested to them that I was some sort of trained assassin, who would slaughter them in their sleep if they so much as scolded the crew. It was all great craic.
Eventually, Fran returned to the mess, and withdrew a laptop and papers. He signed up all the men to union membership. He made call after call, booked flights and a mini-bus, and allowed the men to prepare to dock the ship. The pilot boat returned with the real pilot on board, and the vessel tied up to the quay. The Captain signed the agreements, and I watched with incredulity as he withdrew hundreds of thousands of dollars from the ship’s safe, and began to count out the cash.
With each man paid, and their sea books released, Fran marched them off the ship and they were whisked off to the airport. The whole thing had taken less than five hours. Fran and I went drinking, and arose the next day to hear that the ship’s name had been changed, a new crew had been flown in, and the agreements torn up.
“Ah well, fuck it anyway,” said Fran. He was visibly distressed at the thought of more seafarers being treated badly. He was a mischievous little man, but his heart was in the right place.
He sighed. “I’ll get that ship next time it comes to Ireland, and we’ll do it all over again.”
So, Charlie had a new client, and I started to see a way through financially, for the first time in ages.
Fifteen
It was as if a weight had been lifted. My ability to provide for Isla had been a nagging worry; not a priority, but it did invade my head at times. I remembered how Shannon had juggled to devote time to my re-building. She somehow managed to clear the decks during my periods of leave. My intention was to do the same for Isla when she needed it. And she would need it.
I knew that whatever job I settled on, enormous flexibility would be required. It felt like my little service, “Charlie,” would give me just that. Short bursts of work, plenty of time to be there for my kid. Until I met Fran and the woman I would learn to call Charity, I’d had no real idea where I would fit in civilian society.
The main issue was how we were living. The boat was brilliant. Isla seemed to love the adventure and freedom of it. It also brought constant proximity, and that helped our recovery. I did worry that we would become too dependent upon one another, and that she would become accustomed to my company, rather than that of friends her own age. But we weren’t ready to return to land.
I think I probably used our circumstances to prolong life at sea. I justified my nomadic inclinations by telling myself that it was useful to keep moving. The pressing issue was security. Isla needed it, and until the intruder stepped aboard, we largely had it, cruising the coast and settling somewhere different almost every evening.
She needed it because we had not yet confronted her mother’s death. For a long time, I just didn’t know how. There were times while roaming an island or on a beach, when I nearly opened the wound. The temptation was to try to disinfect it, so that when it was stitched up again, it might heal. It felt as though infection could set in at any time, but that the treatment could only be performed in a fresh, clean surrounding.
We were rowing in the dinghy, the day I finally dropped it. She was behind me as I hauled on the oars. She looked ahead, telling me when I was veering off course. We were going to lift a lobster pot, and she had the binoculars and a bucket, in case we got lucky. “Isla,” I began.
“You’re not going very straight Daddy.”
“Isla, we need to talk about Mammy.”
“Ok,” she said, brightly.
Ok, I thought. Keep her steady. “We need to talk about the day she died darling,” I said.
“Oh-wuh,” she replied, like she did when I told her it was bedtime. It was as if she knew it was inevitable, but she wanted to delay it as long as possible.
“We have to, wee love, it’s important.”
“Why?”
Good question.
“Cos it’s not good to have that memory in your head, and not let it out.”
“Like the memories in your head?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Mam said you have bad memories in your head. That’s why we had to leave you alone sometimes. She said that to me. She really did.”
I could hear Shannon saying it. “Yes, wee lamb, like that. You need to get those bad memories out of your head so they can stay out as much as possible.”
“I don’t really want to talk about it,” she replied, to my astonishment. It was such a grown-up sentence for a five-year-old. Perhaps it was inspired by too much T.V.; perhaps she had been thinking about it.
“We have to, wee darlin’. It’ll be ok though, I’ll mind you.”
“Oh-wuh,” she said again, and then adopted distraction tactics. “I can see the buoy!” she shouted.
“We’ll lift the pots in a minute, Isla. First, we just need to talk about that night, ok?”
“Oh-kaay,” she relented. We were still not looking at one another, which perhaps helped.
“Can you tell me what happened?”
“I already told everyone, Daddy!” she protested.
She meant the police, I assumed, which was before I had got back from Bastion. I knew she hadn’t spoken to my folks, or Shannon’s. “One more time, Isla. Please.”
“The man cutted Mammy,” she puffed a big breath out.
“Do you know why he did that, Isla?” I asked softly.
“Cos Mammy got mad with him, cos he nearly ran me over on my bike.”
“Where darlin, where did he nearly run you over?”
“On the wheel, it was all bended over and broken.”
“I kn
ow darlin’, I mean where did it happen?”
“On the wheel daddy, I told you.”
I gave up on that line of inquiry. “Ok, when did it happen, Isla?”
“When me and Mammy were going for ice cream. I had my helmet on, Daddy,” she said defensively.
“I know you did, darlin’,” I said, trying to soothe her. “What did Mammy say?”
“She said he was full up of beer,” Isla said, which was the first time I had heard that.
“Did she?”
“She shouted at his car and he was smoking out the window.”
I thought for a moment, the fog lifting a little. “What happened then?”
“He stopped the car and said really bad words to Mammy, and I shouted, “Don’t you say that to my MAM,” and then Mammy told me to be quiet and she had a cross time with him.”
“Were they close together?”
“No,” said Isla, as she trailed off. “We just went home.”
“What happened then?”
“I think Mammy called the police.”
I knew this from the crime log, and from the phone record. The solicitor had even obtained the call and played it to me. I’d listened to an agitated Shannon react with measured incredulity, as she was told that there was no squad car available. She gave the license plate number, the man’s address, and full details of the incident, but it was clear that nothing would be done. That’s why she had gone for the nuclear option.
“What did Mammy do then?”
“She put me in the back of the car and we went to the man’s house.”
The house of horrors, built by the factory owner to house his staff, who then paid him rent.
“Ok, and what did she do at the house?”
“She didn’t press the doorbell or anything. She just went inside and left me in the car seat.” Isla sounded shocked, even now.
“How long was she in the house?”
“Superfast,” said Isla.
“She came back out straight away?”
“Uh-huh,” she said. “Daddy, you need to go over this way.” She tapped my left shoulder.
I kept rowing slowly. “What do you think happened in the house?” I asked.
“She took away the bad man’s car keys so he couldn’t drive when he was full up of beer,” said Isla.
“Did she?” This came as a total revelation to me.
“Yes,” Isla said, in a perky tone, pleased that she was being helpful.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“’Cos I saw the keys,” she said.
“But, the police never found any keys,” I said aloud.
She went silent.
Suddenly everything started to become clear. I wished, and wished, and wished I could go back twenty minutes. I wished I had never started the conversation.
I stopped rowing. Isla sat silently, her back to mine. I looked over the side of the dinghy, at our reflections. Her head fell forward.
“That’s why the man came with the knife,” she said.
I closed my eyes. I knew what was coming next.
“He shouted at Mammy to give him the keys,” her voice began to break.
“But you were in bed, weren’t you darlin’?”
“I heard the man shouting at Mammy.”
“What was he saying?”
“He was saying, ‘Where are the keys, you fucking bitch.’”
There is a shockwave associated with hearing a child swear, even if it is to repeat the words of an adult. I felt sick.
“What did Mammy say?”
Silence.
I tried again. “What did Mammy say, wee love?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know!” she said, her little voice rising in tempo and distress.
We were in it now. I knew in my heart what had happened. I knew she had been carrying it around for months, and I decided it was time to purge it. “Did you get up out of bed?”
“Yes daddy.”
“Why?” I asked, but I already knew the answer.
“’Cos I knew where the keys were,” she began to sob, deep, gulping cries.
I dropped the oars. One fell into the water, as I turned to hug her. I gathered her up onto my lap and wrapped her in tight. Her tears soaked into my shirt. I willed the pain out of her, and into me.
“I hided the keys in my bag,” she said.
It felt, to her, like an admission to a bold act. To me, it felt like a necessary pain which needed out, needed nailed, and the blame directed where it was due.
“That man was a bad man, Isla.” I placed her brow to mine, trying to look into her eyes.
“But…”
I interrupted her. “Isla, that man was a bad man. He came to hurt Mammy and it didn’t matter if he found his keys or not,” I said.
“No, Daddy!” she pleaded now, “He just wanted his keys and Mammy couldn’t find his keys cos I hided them,” she said, pushing back from me. “Mammy looked everywhere,” she opened her hands, eyes now wide open in exclamation.
“Mammy didn’t want the bad man to have the keys,” I said.
“She did Daddy, cos the man had a big knife,” she said.
I held her back into me for a while. “You saw what he did, didn’t you?”
“Mmmm hmmm.”
“Did the man say anything after he hurted Mammy?”
“He was laughing,” she sobbed, “and he went ‘aaaghhh!’ to scare me and he did scare me,” she said.
I thought of the fucker writhing in a cell in Vilnius, and hoped it had taken days of roaring anguish.
“Did Mammy say anything to you?” I asked, eventually.
“She was screaming at the man to get out, get out, get away from me, get out.”
We just rocked backwards and forwards for a while.
“I gave Mammy a hug and then I got the plasters. But she died.”
We cried together, for a short age, until the sun fell and the chill came. We were wrapped up, two sets of demons working hard inside each of our heads.
“Isla,” I said eventually.
“Yes, Daddy,” she said.
“You did the right thing, wee lamb. Mammy didn’t want that bad man to find his keys. She was just pretending to look for them. She wouldn’t want that man to drive with beer in him, cos he could have hurt another wee girl, and Mammy wouldn’t have wanted that.”
I could feel her thinking, and then she nodded into my chest.
“You did the right thing, Isla,” I said. “Mammy was very proud of you.”
“How do you know?”
“’Cos I’m your daddy and I know stuff, wee lamb. I know. Sometimes I can hear Mammy talking to me.”
“So can I,” she said.
“I can hear her laughing,” I said, not at all sure whether such confessions were useful or harmful.
“Me too,” she said.
“Mammy is always with us,” I told her, and with that a white dandelion blossom blew across the boat and stuck to the Velcro on her lifejacket. She looked up at me, and smiled, then stroked it, and rested again. As if there was the dawning of some sort of peace in her heart.
*****
Six months passed, and Isla adjusted. I can’t say that she recovered – I’m absolutely sure that she never will. Her sleeping improved, and gradually, when enraptured by the discoveries of life, as any five-year-old ought to be, her smiles, sparingly, returned. Three nights out of four she would sleep in her own cabin. I always offered her the option to bunk in with me, but after a while she seemed to prefer her own peace. That pleased me, of course, but it also left a kind of void.
Back then I had no time to address my own head issues. For weeks, I was little more than a coffee-fuelled, vacant carcass, attentive only to Isla, and ignorant of all else. I filled my time with jobs; sanding, varnishing, servicing the engine, setting the rig. The boat was in beautiful shape, but my mind was a mess.
As Isla edged towards contentment, I found my head occupied by a hostile force, distorted by noi
se. I remember exactly when it began. I was standing on the cross trees of the mast, twenty feet up and working on something which was working just fine. Perhaps it was the view from up there that did it, like an observation post from high ground, over the plains of Afghanistan. I received a radio transmission in my head, and I damn nearly fell backwards onto the deck below.
“Urgent Casi-vac required,” the squelch and the break-up were unmistakable, the volume painful. I swiped to remove an earpiece that wasn’t there. It struck from nowhere. I had not a thought in my head at that moment about Helmand, or the Corps, or anything really. It was like a cupped hand had hit me hard on the side of the head, and shattered my eardrum. I hugged the mast, slid to the spreaders, and sat still for a very long time. Only Isla’ calls shook me from what was becoming a consuming fear.
I concentrated on other things, and tried to distract my mind, as well as my body. I began to take Isla onto new islands. I’d leave her at the highest point, where she could see me and I could see her. Then I’d run around the shore. I belted hard and fast, to the point of puking. She became confused by my vomiting. I told her it was just part of training for muscles. Then I’d force myself into a hundred push-ups, while she tried to count for me. She stumbled after thirty, but we got there eventually.
I think my mind softened as my body hardened. I wanted the alertness to subside when I was alone with Isla. I wanted the pain endured in the Afghan mountains to clear from my peripheral vision. At times, it felt that if I looked anywhere other than straight ahead, the horror would be waiting for me on the edges. I kept seeing dust, and the charring on the faces of those with whom I had served. The torn lips, the exposed teeth. Men trying to talk through their disfigured faces, unaware of their permanent contortion, or their imminent death. The most frustrating dream was the one in which I was helpless to do any good. The inability to stem the flow of rich, warm blood into the arid earth of a land where no man had any business to be. I think most of it stemmed from what became the longest day of my life.
