Jamrach's Menagerie (32 page)

‘You know, it’s funny,’ said Tim, ‘I feel hungrier than ever now.’

‘Me too,’ I said.

‘That’s the way of it,’ said Dan. ‘Don’t fret, we’ve plenty for a good ten days.’

We got a strip of meat for breakfast, along with our tack. I made mine last a long time. Dan hummed a tune, lol ing back against the prow, arms slung across the wood. When I caught his eye he winked. ‘Al ’s wel , Jaf,’ he said. ‘Al ’s fine and dandy.’

Sometimes stil the captain and Dan would put their heads together and conference, as if there was anything to be done, but very little was going on any more in the way of navigation. Skip grinned and mumbled, sometimes laughed in a weary way. Tim cursed and swore. Gabriel muttered prayers, a wistful, rhythmic humming in my ears. Simon simply wasn’t there. His body was, of course, but he never played his fiddle any more and hardly spoke or bothered to move unless he had to. He hardly looked up to see when a shark stalked us for a time, or when a crack of thunder sounded in the west, or when silent lightning clamoured in an empty sky. Dag chewed his nails though there was nothing left of them. I thought of Ishbel’s awful hands. Poor Ishbel.

What hunger she must have had to eat herself like that. Very painful it must have been. I saw her clear then, and another huge kick of home got me, the Highway, the Docks, me and she and Tim, street Arabs running about.

‘Do you remember?’ I asked Tim.

‘Of course,’ he said as if he could read my mind. Then he leaned forward and grinned and ruffled my hair. ‘Little Lascar, is it?’ he said.

Heat pressed down, making it hard to think.

‘Hear that?’ said Skip.

‘What is it?’

Gabriel laughed shortly. ‘Now we’re al mad,’ he said, and went back to praying.

‘Listen.’

It wasn’t real y a sound. More the vibration in your ears when a thousand miles of emptiness presses on them. More a sense of the elements putting us in our place.

‘Look out there,’ said Dan. He put his arms round me and Tim. ‘My boys,’ he said, and tears ran from the brown corners of his smal sad eyes. ‘My boys, I’l take you home safe. One way or another. Didn’t I promise old Jamrach I’d bring his boys safe home?’

Something’s

happening.

The

sea

is

changing.

Strangeness, like twilight or weather, fal s upon the earth.

‘Children,’ Dan Rymer said, tears in the wrinkles of his face.

‘How old are you, Dan?’ I asked.

He grinned. ‘Sixty-two,’ he said, ‘last time I looked.’

‘You’re very old,’ Tim said.

Dan laughed. ‘The old man of the sea!’

The sea didn’t care. We were nothing.

‘What is it?’ asked Dag.

‘Shh!’ The captain covered his eyes.

‘Hold hands, boys.’ Dan said. ‘We face this thing together.’ He was wings, we huddled under. I heard sound above the clouds, one voice or many, impossible to tel : a human, animal thing, many-stringed, childlike, wild as a crying baby. Nothing wilder than that.

‘Hold hands,’ he said.

Tim grabbed my hand. His face in mine, wild-eyed, smiling. ‘Jaffy,’ he said, ‘old Jaf.’

‘Together, boys,’ Dan said.

The captain’s boat drew close.

‘Haul to, haul to,’ a voice said.

The sound of timbers striking timbers.

‘Mr Rymer!’ the captain hailed, ‘al ’s wel with you?’

‘Al ’s wel !’ Dan replied.

‘What’s this coming in, do you think? Storm?’

Dan sniffed the air like a dog. ‘Coming in,’ he said.

The sound swel ed in my ears and exploded. I was lying against Dan’s arm. His lips were next to my ear.

‘Good boy, Jaf,’ he said. ‘You lie down now and sleep if you can. Don’t worry about a thing. Soon be home.’

He made me and Tim lie down as if we were infants, we had to close our eyes and pretend to sleep to please him. It kept him happy. Dan was singing sleepily, pissing over the side of the boat. ‘When other lips and other hearts their tales of love shal tel …’

‘What’s happening, Dan? What’s happening?’

‘Nothing. It’s al right.’

I remembered Skip. Turned my face. ‘Skip,’ I said, ‘you stil sane, boy?’

He smiled. ‘Was I ever?’

‘Here,’ said Dan, and raised me up, put water to my lips. I peered over the gunwale. I saw the captain’s boat, dark against a red background. Slumped forms there, al sleeping in a coming night. No one keeping watch. That cannot be right.

Skip gripped my arm, hard, the forearm just below the elbow, sharp on the inside.

‘Look!’

It was getting dark.

‘Nothing there.’

‘Yes, there is.’

‘I don’t know. What?’

He saw things, of that there is no doubt. His claws, below the elbow. ‘Now! Now!’ he said. ‘Now it’s turning its face this way.’

‘Get off me!’ I shook him off.

‘Shut your stupid gob,’ said Tim furiously. ‘It was you in the first place, Skip, you said it. You. What was it? You did?

What?’

Skip covered his eyes.

‘You did!’

‘Boys, boys,’ said Father Dan.

The captain’s bread ran out, and the meat ran out. Boils erupted, our skin became volcanic. We waited for Wilson Pride to die. Yes, we did. We knew he’d be the next to go.

That’s what we’d come to now, wishing it, hoping, as he lay there burning in his dry sweat, his blue-black tongue pushing through between his lips. Our cook, who used to make us stew and duff and barley broth, and the rice and peas of his homeland, spiced up with whatever was to hand, or just a bit of salt, a radish, a few green plucked herbs of a strange island. A little fried fish. Smal fish, innards and al , heads and tails and eyes and everything. Oh, my bel y, the great hol ow of the world. Broth. Hot broth, savoury steam. Bright green leaves, blush-orange roots, silky leeks a-simmer, dancing gold liquid.

‘My ma,’ I said, ‘she used to make this broth. Ham bone if she could get it. Beans and peas. Turnips. Carrots.’

‘You let the dragon out,’ Tim was saying, ‘that’s what you did.’

‘Wel ! So?’

‘You did. You said. Let it out.’

‘Leeks,’ I said, ‘leeks are very important. You need leeks.’

Wilson doesn’t cook any more. Wilson’s gone far away.

His soul’s gone a-wandering, knapsack over its shoulder. I have been trying to talk to Tim about how I have no sense in me of right and wrong any more, and how I’m stony and fire watery, turn and turn about, and how it seems I have many, many things to tel him, but can’t speak, can’t get the words off my tongue because it’s too heavy and stupid.

Silently the captain removed the hot rag from Wilson’s forehead, dipped it in the sea and pul ed it out freshly cold, gave it a squeeze, shook it hard and replaced it on the dying man’s head.

Wilson was talking or rather chunnering, making no sense.

His big lips had withered inwards, and his eyes, when they were not closed, stared at the sky with a look near to humour.

‘I sailed with him twice before,’ the captain said.

‘Did you so?’ Dan scratched steadily at the scurf around his neck.

‘Simon, wil you shift a bit and give him more room? It’l be over soon.’

Simon shifted, so Dag had to shift too, stiffly, wincing at his swol en legs, the colour now of cooked bacon. His face crumpled and he dry sobbed for a few seconds.

Dan cal ed us to him like chickens. ‘Here, boys,’ he said.

‘No point in looking.’

We sat with him in the prow.

‘Look at me,’ he said. ‘Here is something we must do and it’s very important. It’s an order. You must remember al the words to “Tobacco’s But An Indian Weed”.’

‘I don’t know them!’ Tim protested.

‘Yes, you do. Think. You remember, that time by the Wapping Steps?’

‘Yes, but I can’t remember any words.’

‘You must try. Jaffy, what about you?’

‘I only know the first couple of lines.’

‘Good. You begin.’

Tobacco’s but an Indian weed,

Grows green in the morn, cut down at eve, We are but clay …

‘Something else,’ said Tim.

We are but clay, da-da, da-da,

Think of this when you smoke tobacco.

Tim looked at Dan. ‘Go on, Clever Clogs,’ he said.

‘“The pipe that is so lily white,”’ sang Dan softly, ‘“Wherein so many take delight; It’s broken with a touch …”’

A short pause. Wilson’s high-pitched breathing fil ed it.

‘You, Tim,’ Dan said, giving him a shake, ‘your turn. Look at me. “It’s broken with a touch.” What comes next?’

‘“Man’s life is such …”’ Tim continued, and we three in unison:

‘“Think of this when you smoke tobacco.”’

‘Happy little souls, aren’t you?’ Gabriel, irritated.

‘Skip? You know it?’

Skip shook his head. His eyes were big and glassy.

‘Soft now, Wilson, good man, let it go,’ the captain said tonelessly.

Wilson whimpered like a smal baby.

‘Look at his throat,’ Dag said.

I turned my head.

‘Jaf!’ Dan pul ed my face round by the chin. ‘Next verse now, come on.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Concentrate. You do.’

‘I don’t.’

A sound like a pumping bel ows began.

‘I’l give you a start. “The pipe that is so foul within, shows how man’s soul is …”’

Drowning. His throat squeezing. His voice forcing out from some abyss, a hol ow animal bel ow.

‘Hold steady,’ said the captain.

‘Look at his throat!’ Dag, panicky.

‘Tim! Continue.’

‘“Ful of sin,”’ said Tim.

‘Good! Jaf!’

‘Don’t know.’

‘Try.’

I don’t remember. Something about smoke and al of us returning to dust, blah blah blah …

‘“The ashes that are left behind,”’ said Tim triumphantly,

‘“should serve to put us al in mind”.’

‘Oh yes,’ I said, joining in.

That unto dust return we must.

Think of this when you smoke tobacco!

‘Now now now, one more verse, come on, boys, think hard.’

‘Smoke,’ I said.

A horrible sound, a rattling choking vomiting sound, as if the lungs of the man were heaving themselves up his throat and out of his mouth.

‘Smoke!’ Dan snapped his fingers. ‘Skip! You!’

Skip was crying.

A breath like the scraping of a nail on slate, exhaling into silent infinity.

‘“The smoke”,’ said Dan gamely, ‘“that is so …”’

‘No!’ Tim. ‘“The smoke that doth so high …”’

‘That’s it,’ the captain said.

13

They are now three in their boat and we are five. I counted on my fingers. We are eight. Should one of us move over to the captain’s boat? But who should go?

‘I want you boys here,’ said Dan.

That leaves Skip and Gabriel, and neither wants to go. We al sit, stupid with the problem. Anyway, someone says, too late now, soon be dark. For God’s sake, let’s just sleep on it.

We’ve eaten. That too has made us stupid. So we should say the prayers now as usual, but we just lie there like bloated sacks, none of us moving.

The dark night came down and there was nothing, not a star. No one lit a lantern or spoke.

After a while: ‘Oh Lord,’ said Dan in an odd tone, defiant, almost declamatory, a peculiar smile in his voice, ‘here we are … here we are stil . We are … we are …’

‘Eight,’ I said.

‘Thank you, Jaf. We are eight souls afloat. What do you say to that, hey?’

And then there was laughter, I don’t know who, me anyway, and Tim because he was next to me, trembling hard. And Dan, but I don’t know who else. A few. The covering dark gave the feeling of giggling under blankets.

When we stopped there was only the gentle sound of lapping waves, soothing. I yawned. Saliva ran again, bitter as lemon.

Strips of meat hung in the darkness, salting steadily, drying out.

Some time later: ‘Goddamn it!’ cried a voice, Jehovah summoning fire and brimstone. It was Gabriel, lurching as if to stand up, making the boat pitch.

‘Sit down!’ we al growled.

He flopped heavily down again, roaring in a cracked voice: ‘God! God! What fucking God? God’s evil. That’s what it is. God’s evil and the devil’s won. That’s what it is!’

‘Don’t talk about the devil!’ begged Skip.

‘Calm down,’ said Dan.

‘How? Calm down?’ Gabriel laughed, a humourless bark.

‘Are you mad?’

‘I may be,’ Dan said. ‘Calm down anyway.’

‘Quite simply,’ said another disembodied voice, very steady, the captain probably, though it didn’t sound like him,

‘it’s possible al of us wil die.’

A hand crept into mine.

‘I don’t want to die!’ Someone whining, I stil don’t know who. Simon, I think, though again it sounded nothing like him and it was so long since he’d spoken that I’d almost forgotten him. Someone else started crying, a fierce ragged sound.

There was a lurch. ‘Goddamn you, Skip,’ Gabriel said,

‘this is al your fault.’

‘I know, I know.’ Skip’s voice, suddenly close by my ear, so close it made the smal hairs there quiver, a pale whisper of a voice. ‘Sorry. Sorry.’

‘We should chuck you over.’ Dag’s voice, teeth chattering, hiccuping.

‘That’s enough now,’ Dan said.

‘Chuck him over!’ Gabriel with a grin in his voice.

‘Chuck him over!’ Simon joined in.

‘Chuck him over! Chuck him over!’ Tim now too, and I was about to join in when Dan’s stern voice cut through.

‘Remember I have a pistol,’ it said. ‘The first person to lay hands in anger on any one of us gets first bul et.’

Silence. Then Captain Proctor spoke. ‘I too have a pistol,’

he said.

Silence.

‘I too have a pistol,’ he repeated thoughtful y, then: ‘Mr Rymer, enlighten me please. Am I not stil captain of this –