How To Be Brave (20 page)

‘It’s Christmas,’ said Rose.

I couldn’t say that her dad wouldn’t be home yet. I couldn’t say that I didn’t even know when it might be or that sometimes I was terrified he’d be killed and never get home at all. I couldn’t say that I wasn’t sure I could get up and do the things I must. I couldn’t speak.

‘Is it cos I called you a coward?’ she asked. ‘That day I was grumpy. I didn’t mean it, you know.’

The bed moved again and her feet pitter-pattered to the landing and back. I tried to breathe. To get up. To be a mother. The bed gave again at Rose’s return and I heard lancets rolling around in the diabetes box, like stones on a beach.

‘Let me make you better,’ she said, putting her finger pricker together.

‘No,’ I said.

I was the storyteller; I was the magician.

‘Let me do the words,’ she said, and pricked her finger end.

Blood flowed, thick and rich. She caught it in the strip.

‘It’s only fair I do some story,’ she said. ‘Listen to this. I went on the lifeboat again last night. I snuggled down between the sleepy men and stroked Grandad Colin’s hair and whispered right in his ear how proud I am of him. Just the way you said it to me last night. I always know who he is, even in the dark. He just smells right. Even though he looks like a scarecrow now, all hairy and ragged, he still smells like us. I said I’d think of a story to stop his nightmares and make the wooden floor more softer. It’s dead uncomfortable. Not even a sheet. I said I bet he misses spider webs in rain. And butterflies. And birds. He used to go bird spotting with his dad. On the ocean a bird means land and safety, you know.’

Rose patted my head, gentler now.

‘I said,
If you don’t live I’ll disappear, Grandad. Can I call you Grandad? You’re really my Great Grandad, but I like Grandad better. If you don’t live, Grandad, I won’t be able to come back and stroke your hair. I’ll just dissolve like a salty ghost.
So then I got a bit of the canvas logbook and drew us all in there; you and me and Dad. I wrote above it that I was learning how to be brave, and he was making it a lot easier. I wonder if he’ll find it? This morning when I woke I thought of him and Ken having their tiny bit of water and horrid dry biscuit and milk tablet with the others. I saw them looking out at sea for sharks and dolphins and birds and a ship.’

Rose showed me her blood meter; she was six-point-two.

My tears dried and I touched her face. ‘Let’s get breakfast,’ I said.

‘Can I have chocolate cos it’s Christmas Day? I don’t care about my blood sugars today. Go on, go on!’ She was a child again and so I easily slipped back into my role as mum.

‘We’ll see,’ I said.

‘That means no. Oh,
please
! Can I open some pressies before I eat?’

‘We’ll see,’ I said.

She danced around the bedroom. ‘Two
we’ll see’s
means a yes! It’s the law!’ On our way downstairs she said, ‘I’m going to do my blood test from now on. And I’m going to help you do the story too. We can take turns. Think how good it’ll be if I do it?’

‘No, you don’t ha…’

‘I want to – I can’t wait!’

‘But I’m supposed t…’ I tried.

‘You’ve got to learn to share,’ she said.

So no more trading her blood for my words. No more blood friends forever. What kind of exchange was it going to be if Rose did so much of the work, bringing the blood
and
the words?

I’d kidded myself all along that the trade was to help her but I realised it had been for me too. So I could keep her for myself. But she didn’t belong to me; she belonged to the sea and the sky and the past and her future.

And I had to let her go.

Before Rose learned to read – and long before we created the book nook – I used to read stories to her at bedtime like most parents do for their pre-schoolers. She once asked me, ‘How do words in books know where to go and who to be friends with?’ I can’t remember how I answered, but her question comes to me every time I read my newest paperback. How carefully did the author think about which words they put together?

Rose and I ate our Christmas dinner at four so she could have her teatime injection just after. I carefully served us a medium portion, not wanting to waste the slightest bit. We hadn’t been to the lifeboat yet; she’d been wrapped up in opening gifts and testing out her new sewing machine on scraps of material and watching festive cartoons and pulling all the crackers in the box, one after another. I was glad. She should be a child on Christmas Day and I didn’t want to break the spell with talk of hunger and thirst and insulin.

Watching her fashion a small purse from an old pillowcase, I forgot how upset I’d been earlier. How unhappy I was that Jake would be away for longer. I just enjoyed Rose’s creative activities. While she pinned bits of ribbon to silk and chose a brown button from the many coloured ones and slowly stitched, her cheeks coloured pink. Now that she’d regained most of her weight, she looked a picture of health. I think she actually forgot about diabetes for a magical moment.

But she hadn’t forgotten about helping with the story.

I found a radio station playing old-fashioned hymns and began washing the pots while Rose finished her purse. The swish of soapy water and the sound of
Silent Night
had me for a moment at sea, so acutely that I smelt salt in the bubbles, heard soft groans, felt a hand grip my arm, and heard Colin asking how long now.

‘Let’s go to the book nook then.’ It was Rose’s hand on my arm. I looked at the clock – suppertime, already.

‘Did you get the diabetes box?’ I dried my hands.

‘Of course. It’s my turn to do it.’ Rose bounced off.

I followed her and sat on the cushion opposite where she’d flopped. ‘You mean your blood?’ I asked.

‘Yes –
and
the story.’

‘How will you know what happens?’

‘Same way you do, silly,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen the diary. Then some of it just comes, doesn’t it? I just get inside Grandad Colin’s head somehow. And you forget he tells me bits in my sleep.’

‘And your injection?’ I asked. ‘You want to do one?’ I knew I should be happy she’d come on so well, that she’d adapted to and accepted her condition, but I was terrified still to relinquish my care.

‘I’ve let you do them today because I didn’t want you to be sad,’ she said, though I knew she’d been nervous, building up to it.

I had prepared and done the blood test and injection at breakfast, lunch and Christmas dinner, not mentioning that she’d said she wanted to and hoping that maybe she’d changed her mind. I saw her watching carefully, assessing how I twisted the dial and made sure there were no air bubbles.

‘I’m doing this one,’ she said now. ‘No more being a baby.’

‘You’re not a baby.’

‘Anyway we can do everything together, can’t we? Two together is the best. Isn’t there that saying – two heads are better than one? Like when you can’t think of the right word for something and Dad says it. I can do that too, you know.’ She paused, then said, ‘Wish Dad had rung when I was awake.’

‘It was only a quick call,’ I told her. ‘He said he was sorry he couldn’t be here with you and hoped you liked the sewing machine.’ I still couldn’t tell her he might not be home as soon as she thought.

‘I did.’ She glanced over at it on the table, surrounded by gaudy offcuts, buttons and thread. I knew she had missed Jake today. Every now and again she had gone to stare at his photographs on the living room wall, whispering things to him that I’d never know.

‘Did you still enjoy Christmas?’ I asked, thinking how different it must have been to other years. She had diabetes now, her dad was away, and Santa no longer existed.

‘It was special,’ she said.

There was a knock on the door and I left Rose to go and open it. A gang of teenagers wearing scruffy Santa hats and brand new trainers shuffled close together in the glare of my hallway light and began singing
Silent Night
. I couldn’t help but smile. Their voices did not harmonise but grated and contrasted like sand and stones. I counted the teens; twelve, like those remaining on the lifeboat. For their bravery, I handed over five pounds.

I returned to the book nook.

Rose was hunched over, saying, ‘Bloody dickhead.’

‘Language!’ I said. Then, ‘What are you doing?’

‘Trying to do my blood.’ She showed me her finger.

‘You should’ve waited for me.’ I sat next to her, realised she was close to tears. ‘What is it?’

‘It just won’t come – my blood. I’ve dried up! Like the men on the boat!’

Laughing gently, I said, ‘No, you haven’t. Are your hands cold? Is that it? Let me warm them up.’

‘No,’ she snapped. ‘They’re warm. I totally did everything I should. I made the finger pricker and wriggled my fingers and pricked my skin three times. Where’s my blood?’

‘Let’s wait and then
I’ll
try.’

‘I don’t want you to help me!’

‘Everyone’s allowed help sometimes, even adults. Why don’t we do some story and that’ll maybe help?’

Was I doing everything Shelley had said we shouldn’t and using the story as a crutch? What were we going to do if something didn’t work next time and Rose got distressed again, but the story was over? Should I try something else? What else was there?

Rose pulled her hand away from me and sat on it, the way she had weeks earlier when refusing to do the test. ‘Don’t worry, I’m going to do it,’ she said, reading my mind. ‘I’m just making them warm.’

‘I know you want to do the story but shall I start?’ I asked her.

‘Where are we up to?’

‘Day twenty-four.’

‘Do we have long to go?’ Rose asked.

‘How long is a piece of string?’

‘Don’t be annoying!’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘How do you think day twenty-four begins?’

‘Like all the others,’ she said. ‘But worse.’

‘I’ll begin then – and you join in.’

And so we returned to the lifeboat, stitching truth and genetic memory and imaginings together like I had at the start. Except now Rose helped and our story was a collective work.

Between Christmas Day and New Year we visited the sea many times. We floated on book pages and syllables. Sometimes Rose brought her latest fabric creation to the book nook and she attached sequins and buttons to bits of velvet or cotton while we joined our words in a similar fashion. We too added our shiny vision to the story’s fabric – Colin’s diary.

The child who had once asked, ‘How do words in books know where to go?’ now found out.

Grandad
.

‘What’s that you say now?’

Had the question come from Ken or one of the other semi-comatose shapes? Was it morning yet or did Colin imagine strings of vermilion light spreading across the water like burnt fingers, stealing the dream he so wanted to hold on to.

Grandad
.

Had he spoken the word?

‘You keep saying it, chum.’ It was Ken. He rolled over with an agonised moan and glared at Colin. Ken’s ghostly face, with salted beard and bloodshot eyes, was a cruel mirror; Colin knew how bad he must look now. ‘Your grandad’s not bloody here,’ said Ken. ‘Just us twelve.’

‘No, not
my
grandfather.’ Colin couldn’t sit up; the simple act took such effort now that most men waited a good while after waking. ‘No, I think
I’m
one. That’s what she said. “Grandad”.’

‘Jesus Christ, Armitage. Please tell me you’ve not been at the seawater an’ all. Am I going to have to bloody lash you down too for going mad?’

Ken motioned towards King, who they had tied to the mast with rope yesterday after his thrashing around in the boat’s well put everyone in danger. Hours of guzzling seawater had left the man insane, ranting about escaping the ship, the Germans, the sharks.

‘No, I haven’t. Not a drop. The girl in my dream called me Grandad. Remember, I told you about her? She actually said
Great
Grandad. But then Grandad.’ Colin pulled himself slowly up, the scratchy cotton shirt torture on skin. He felt about for the canvas log and studied the words there. ‘I’m not hallucinating. It was too real for that. She was
here
, I tell you.’

Was he saying this? Did he believe it? Every day their bodies worsened but Colin’s mind tried to cling to hope, to routine, to dreams. This one, however, had been more. In it the girl had drawn some sort of picture in the log and written words alongside it. Was he willing them to be there? Instead there were only Ken’s neatly and patiently written recordings of their ordeal.

‘I don’t know about owt no more,’ said Ken. ‘I only know I should order rations. I should try and stop the buggers that guzzle seawater. And I know we should still be watching for a ship.’

One-hour lookout duty had been abandoned yesterday. None of the crew disputed it, but Colin had asked Ken – as they retired with the sun – why he’d not announced who was on shift.

‘They can’t bloody do it, lad,’ he said.

‘But someone
has
to,’ Colin insisted.

‘How? Most of ’em can barely keep awake long enough now. Me, you, Platten and Weekes are about the only ones that can move, and we’re exhausted. Can
you
do it tonight? I know I bloody can’t.’

Ken was right; how could eyes as dry as desert sand keep open longer than half an hour when the sun never gave up her watch and the salty spray never died? How could minds beyond exhaustion concentrate on an endless, unchanging horizon that never gave a ship?

Colin had vowed at the start that he would watch, even when not on duty, afraid that if his eyes left the sea for a moment a ship would sail past, unseen. Now – while Ken and Platten issued the meagre morning water ration – he tried hard to keep an eye on the ocean, which only lulled with its motion, cruelly causing sleep when he so needed to be alert.

He whispered,
Maybe today a ship, maybe today a ship, maybe today a ship.

He banged his head on the boat edge when his eyelids drooped, just to stay awake.

‘Instead they watched each other,’ said Rose. ‘Like how you watch me to check I’m okay all the time. Annoying. And like when we play
Who’s Going To Laugh First
except it was
Who’s Going To Sleep Forever First
. Scown and Fowler have gone, and they’re all very sad. Colin wishes he could have patted Fowler’s head and said sorry in proper words, but men didn’t do that stuff then, did they? Death sits next to them all the time. He’s like a real man, you know. And he’s not always a dickhead. Dickhead isn’t swearing, Mum! Anyway you said I couldn’t read
The Book Thief
– but I did. I hid it under the wardrobe and got it out when you turned off the light and read it with my torch. Death’s a real person in that too. On the boat he whispered good night without promising Colin would wake in the morning. He stood right behind John Arnold when he prayed. But by day twenty-four Arnold’s lips were so cracked that Ken said he’d take over prayers for a bit. He had to make one up cos he wasn’t dead religious or anything. He said, “Dear Lord, please guide to us a ship tomorrow. We need your help, Lord, if ever men were in need of it. Amen.” It was nice. And all the men said Amen. Colin tried hard all day to search for a ship. He sat on the foredeck and sometimes Ken sat with him. They talked about what it might actually be like if a ship came. How soft the blankets would be and how nice the food and how good the beds and how warm the nights. But most of all how much water there’d be. How much water they would drink. It took lots and lots of being good not to just jump into the sea and drink it all up. I don’t know how they didn’t. I know all about thirst too and it’s really horrible. I remember having butterflies in my tummy all the time and a fuzzy head and my throat being all tight. I think I’d have stolen water from anyone on that boat – even you, Mum. I’m sorry to say that but I would have. I would.’

‘When darkness fell at the end of day twenty-four, the twelve men could not have distinguished that day from those before it. The sun had crossed the sky; Scarface had made an appearance or two; water had been measured and devoured by all; food had been winced at and consumed by some; the boat had gently rocked; Ken had tried to catch a fish while Platten dangled Scown’s brass button; a ship had not been sighted.

Colin prayed for change – any change would be something. Change broke routine, lifted hearts. Sameness destroyed them. It came just before midnight when a great splash woke him from a dreamless slumber. Ken’s eyes shone yellow in the darkness. ‘Did you hear it too?’ he asked.

‘What was it?’ wondered Colin.

‘Scarface?’ Ken sat up, alert. ‘Wake the lads. Get my spear! Man the boat!’

He woke one or two of the crew and they half-heartedly peered over the edge. When no sharks surfaced they cursed being woken and returned eagerly to their sleep spots.

‘I definitely heard it,’ hissed Ken, confused.

Colin crawled about the boat. In the moonlight he found the mast and only rope. No King.

‘He’s gone,’ he cried. ‘King! Must’ve managed somehow to get free of the lashing. That splash must’ve been him, Chippy.’

Ken slumped down with his spear. ‘May God have mercy on him.’

‘Amen,’ whispered Colin.

‘Jesus Christ.’

What else was to be said? Another man gone. Just eleven left. Would morning bring another absence? What could Colin do except lie down and wait for another day. Dreading a return to dreamless sleep he thought,
Can you hear me? Girl who called me Grandad, wherever you are. Because I’m not sure I’m gonna make it. Can you hear me? I’m sorry but I’m not sure I’m gonna make it
.

In the morning Death had not taken anyone else but there was little joy in this fact. When it came to early rations, Platten no longer had the strength to give them out alone and both Colin and Ken helped. John Arnold was so ill that he insisted someone else eat his portion. He said it was a waste when he would not be around for much longer.

‘Don’t bloody talk that way,’ snapped Ken.

Colin knew he had the same fondness for the boy that he’d felt towards Fowler, that he was merely trying to break him out of his miserable mood.

‘Ken,’ croaked the lad. ‘May I pray?’

Colin watched his chum swallow hard and bend down to Young Arnold. Whatever the prayer was, Colin didn’t hear. It was their moment. Colin went to the foredeck and played his game of six fish for one ship. As always, he lost.

After a while Ken put a hand on his shoulder, said softly, ‘He’s gone.’ His eyes were so full of grief that Colin had no clue what to say; so he said nothing.

‘He passed in my arms,’ said Ken. ‘I was so useless. Just held him and let him go. He said, “I’m going to die.” No fear in his voice. Then he said, “I’ve been talking to God. Some of you are going to be saved, and I think you’ll be among them.” And he gave me a message for his mum and dad that I must deliver.’ Ken put his face in his hands. ‘So many messages to be given. Such responsibility. You have to hear it, lad, in case I don’t make it.’

‘You
will
make it,’ said Colin.

‘I still have to give you Scown’s message for his wife. What if I take these messages to my grave? You owe it to our men to hear me.’

Colin’s fist found Ken’s jaw before he even realised he’d moved. Stunned, Ken backed away. ‘Don’t you fucking realise?’ cried Colin. ‘If I let you tell me then you’ll have less reason to go on! If you’re the only one who knows them, you
have
to survive! Don’t you see? I don’t want you to die, you bastard.’ Colin slumped exhausted to the floor. ‘I don’t want to do this without you. I can’t do it without you! And I have to do it. I have to get back. My mother … Stan … I
have
to.’

Ken nodded; he understood. He sat with his spear a while and let Colin doze under the canvas. Now there were ten men, only four had to endure the noon sun while six sheltered beneath the awning’s protection. The Second – with his gangrenous injuries – held a permanent position there, propped up by someone’s life jacket and fed water by whomever was nearest at mealtime.

Leak, Bott and Bamford crawled out intermittently to cup seawater with their hands and drink heartily. No one cared about it now; whatever damage was done by days of doing so was likely irreversible.

In the evening a great blue fish fell prey to Ken’s spear, as though it were a parting gift from Young Arnold. The generous portion lifted spirits and those who were still able to talk did so, softly, of what those back home were doing, of the men now gone, of days on the
SS Lulworth Hill
, which seemed a hundred years ago.

‘I’m going to start the watch again,’ said Ken. ‘I never should have let it stop. If any man feels able, then shout up. If not, I’ll go first.’

‘You need a hand?’ asked Colin, much revived by his fish morsel.

‘Always,’ said Ken.

And the two friends took the first lookout.

‘Death is black and mean, isn’t he?’ said Rose. ‘But when he comes for people who’re poorly then he’s nice, right? He should wear yellow then. Like when he came for the Second on day twenty-six. He was kind then because that poor man hurt lots but never whined. I think Colin was relieved. One good thing about there being less of them was they got more to eat. I bet they felt mean about being glad of eating more in case it meant they were glad their friends had gone. But they weren’t. They missed their friends. I miss Dad. But it’s a different missing, isn’t it? Because I’ll see him again. They must’ve been scared of ending up all on their own. Imagine being the last one to die, Mum. How horrible would that be? No, I don’t want to stop! Why do you always say that? I watched this film once with Dad about some men lost at sea and it was all really happy and lots of singing and laughing, and I got dead cross and told Dad it was all wrong. Because after days and days you’d get sad. You’d fight and argue with each other. Like us. I hate books and films that lie like that. I
know
Grandad Colin suffered. It makes me very sad. But I don’t want anyone to lie to me, because that makes me even more sadder.’