The Boat (4 page)

She hadn’t been on a bike before. She kept leaning the wrong way, which he didn’t like. She was clinging on to him for dear life, which he liked a lot, and she was screaming in his ear, which he also liked. It felt so good to be the wielder of thrills.

Unfortunately, as they sped down Rocks Lane heading for Putney, he noticed a police car too late, right after he’d overtaken it. He turned left as soon as he could and ignored the blue flashing light in his mirror but when the car pulled up alongside he was forced to acknowledge it. The copper in the passenger seat was making that slow dabbing gesture policemen like to do. Johnny waved, signalled – or would have if he’d put the bulbs in – and pulled over by the church where the homos do it in the woods.

‘Don’t worry, Clem,’ he said, keeping the engine running; he didn’t like to turn it off in case it never started again. Clem didn’t look that worried. In fact she looked rather excited.

‘Here,’ she said brightly, rummaging around in her enormous bag. She’d never been in trouble with the police before but she wasn’t at all bothered. There was something invincible about Johnny. With him she felt safe, he was brave and fearless – he’d sailed across the ocean. ‘Have a pear drop so they can’t smell the booze.’

He took one. He hadn’t had a pear drop for years, that sweet–sour taste of childhood.

They watched the police car stop and the doors open. Two of them got out. One was on a walkie-talkie and the other, a tall bloke with a swanky gait, was putting on his helmet. As he approached, the shorter one started giving the bike a once over.

‘Turn the engine off!’ he said to Johnny.

Johnny pretended he couldn’t hear him.

The tall one joined in, ‘Turn the engine off!’

‘If I turn it off, it might not start up again,’ Johnny said loudly.

The short arse took it upon himself to turn it off. Then he stepped back from the bike and began prowling around the front of it. ‘Well! Well! Well! What have we here?’

He actually said ‘Well, well, well,’ as if he’d learnt it in pig school. ‘No brake lights? No indicators? No helmet?’

No insurance. No MOT and no licence either, but that could wait.

‘No rear numberplate?’ chimed in the tall one. Johnny didn’t know why they were asking all these things as questions, but didn’t feel obliged to answer.

‘Can I see your licence, sir?’

‘It’s not on me,’ he said, to which the short-arse made a grand show of getting out his notepad.

‘Name?’ he said.

Johnny wasn’t an idiot. He wasn’t going to give his name – that was for sure. He looked about him for inspiration.

‘Hood,’ he said. The policeman started writing it down. ‘Robin Hood.’

He felt Clem give him a little pinch on his waist, but she didn’t say anything. The policeman’s upper lip curled as he looked up suddenly from his pad. But Johnny could see that he’d already written HOO…

‘Don’t you waste my time, you little jerk.’

‘Honest,’ Johnny said. ‘That’s my name. Robin Hood.’

The policemen looked at each other. ‘Are you fucking deaf?’ That was the tall one.

‘That’s my name, sir,’ Johnny said, all meek and humble.

‘Well, you can come down the station and write it out for us then.’

‘OK,’ he said, weighty with emotion now. ‘Look, I can’t help it if my parents were jokers. I’ve had to take grief all my life and I swear I’m going to change it soon as I get the chance but what can I do? Robin Hood is my name. I’ll get my birth certificate if you want.’

Johnny could see a little chink; the short-arse was wondering if he was full of shit after all.

‘Do I look like I was born yesterday?’ the short-arse said, but he was definitely wondering.

Johnny shrugged, depressed by his life’s burden. ‘It’s the truth.’

The copper glared at Johnny and then turned to his mate. Eventually he wrote it down in his little pad before turning his attention to Clem. ‘And you, love?’ he asked. ‘What’s your name?’

She leant forward, peering at his jottings. ‘Marion,’ she said clearly. ‘Maid Marion.’

It was quite chilly now that the sun was sinking down behind the mountains. It was the end of March and the evenings were cool. Johnny was on the upper deck looking back across the fishing boats out to sea to where they had just come from: Turkey. The land was no longer visible; it had merged with the royal blue of the horizon. He stepped up on to the wooden guard rail for a higher angle but there was still no sign – visibility had been poor all day. He looked back along the
Old Rangoon
and marvelled at her ugliness. She was a hundred feet of quite spectacular bad taste, a millionaire’s plaything, a floating tower block of unseaworthiness, a flash pile of plastic made for sipping cocktails in some poncey harbour. He had never imagined himself aboard such a monstrous vessel. But then again, there were lots of things he had never seriously imagined – like being married to Clemency Bailey, for one, and having the world unfurl before them.

He got down from the guard rail and rolled himself a cigarette. Down on the pontoon some young Greek boys were standing about transfixed by the
Old Rangoon
’s British skipper, Charlie, who was busy folding out a portable bicycle beside them with the curt efficiency of a man accustomed to being stared at. The bike was comically small and Charlie was unusually tall and as he clicked things into place undoing various bolts and locks he seemed to be giving the impression that he was about to start some kind of circus act. A small but keen audience was gathering, watching expectantly for the juggling or sword-swallowing to commence atop his strange little bicycle. Instead, with an unnecessary scissor- jump manoeuvre, Charlie mounted the bike, nodded a cursory farewell to his fans and peddled off with out-turned knees towards Kos customs house. The boys looked up at Johnny questioningly as if he were somehow responsible for Charlie and his lack of derring-do. Johnny shrugged his shoulders and lit his fag.

Johnny himself had only met Charlie six hours earlier when scouting for work along the quayside in Bodrum harbour. He’d come across him standing on the stern deck of the
Old Rangoon
involved in a discussion with the fat man from the marina who they often used to see parading about in his shiny uniform being important. The fat man had been posing officiously at the back of a large lorry with a GB plate parked not ten feet from the stern of the motor yacht, examining the lorry’s contents from the rear sliding door. He was too huge to actually get up into the truck but was managing to exert his authority just by leaning against the back frame and mumbling into his crackling walkie-talkie from the pavement.

Johnny, observing the proceedings, had wandered round to the back of the truck himself to have a look inside. As far as he could tell some wealthy bastard was moving house: it was piled high with grand pieces of furniture and huge Harrods boxes.

A spotty Turkish youth stood between the Uniform and Charlie, attempting to translate. Johnny stood behind them eavesdropping, sensing an opportunity. He had a gift for being noticed, for appearing at the perfect moment, and right now, at this juncture in their travels, they badly needed some work. He and Clem were totally skint – work had dried up in the boatyard and they were living in a tent behind Attila’s restaurant with the equivalent of three pounds left to live on. That meant two days before they’d have to start nicking food again.

There was a military precision about Charlie, accentuated by his habit of clicking his heels together as a means of punctuating his speech. Both his accent and his beard were tightly clipped. He was quite clearly used to being obeyed and made no attempt whatsoever to speak slowly to the Turks.

‘We leave the truck here at customs as agreed, and the proprietor, as I have already explained, will be here tomorrow morning at zero eight hundred hours. The proprietor will remove the truck from your premises. Understand?’

The spotty youth’s version of these instructions sounded considerably shorter. The Uniform grunted, shook his head and waved his hands and the youth looked gloomily back at Charlie. ‘No truck,’ he said.

‘My boss has already paid you to take it,’ Charlie insisted, clicking the heels for emphasis.

The translator translated but the Uniform shook his head again and lit up yet another cigarette. ‘OK,’ Charlie persisted. ‘
We
unload the belongings from the truck and leave them with you to be collected at the aforementioned hour.’ Neither the translator nor the Uniform was impressed by this idea either.

‘Take it to Kos!’ the Uniform said, turning away with a nonchalant scratch of his balls.

‘Need any help?’ Johnny said, stepping forward. ‘We’re looking for work.’ He nodded in Clem’s direction; she was crouched down on the quayside repacking their maroon bag that his dad had made them out of the sail of a Cornish Crabber. She was a hoarder, she collected everything – sweet wrappers, matchboxes, any old tosh – and now had it all laid out on the quay like she was holding a jumble sale. Charlie rubbed his beard, his attention still on the receding oval figure of the Uniform. ‘Bloody idiot,’ he said. ‘Thinks I’m made of money…’

It seemed a fair enough assumption; Charlie certainly had the reek of money about him. He had that casual yet pressed cleanness that the rich favour: his dark neat jeans were rolled up just so, his ironed shirt was whiter than white and his deck shoes were gleamingly unscuffed.

‘Is she
not
your boat then?’ Johnny asked, looking down the
Old Rangoon
, wondering whether it was worth hanging around or not.

Charlie eyed Johnny suspiciously. ‘For God’s sake, man, do I look like a mighty great shipping magnate? Would I be taking this sort of codswallop if I were at the top of the food chain?’

Not once in his entire life had Johnny ever heard anyone use the word
codswallop
.

‘Oh no, I can assure you,’ Charlie continued. ‘I’m just the monkey who sails the boat.’

Johnny strolled round to the back of the truck. ‘Who does all this belong to then?’ he asked, nodding at the truck.

‘My boss is responsible for this truck.’ He directed everything he said not at Johnny but at the Uniform, who was further along the harbour side squeezing himself into his tiny black booth and peering out of the minute window hole, giving the peculiar impression that he was wearing a burqua.

‘What’s he doing, your boss, moving house?’ Johnny asked.

‘Not him – his very important friend.’ He raised his voice for this last bit so that the Uniform might hear. ‘An
exceptionally
powerful man
, I’ll have you know.
’

‘If he’s so powerful why didn’t he get his own truck?’

‘Good question!’ Charlie said, spinning round. Johnny had at last got his full attention. His beady eyes inspected Johnny’s scruffy appearance. ‘How do you think the rich get richer, young man? They don’t ever spend their own money, that’s how. He heard that we were going down to Fethiye and asked if he could put “one or two things” on board our truck, which was coming out from the UK with a few pots of paint in it. One or two things, I beseech you!’

Charlie laughed at the audacity of it and Johnny tried to look suitably outraged.

‘My boss is livid. Livid!’ The thought of his boss’s fury clearly quite excited him. ‘I’ve never seen him like this. There’s going to be trouble. He told me to dump the stuff here at customs but that walrus over there in a box…’

Charlie folded his arms and looked over at the Uniform Then an idea struck him. He turned his attention back to Johnny. ‘Can you work hard?’

‘Yes,’

‘How do I know that?’

‘Well, you can ask anyone at the Gündüz yard. We’ve been working there for the last four weeks, twelve hours a day.’

‘And the girl?’ he said, looking over at Clem, who was now ambling towards them. ‘Is she strong? She looks a bit puny.’

‘No, my wife is small but she’s strong.’

‘Your wife?’ He laughed. ‘You look like you’re not long out of short trousers yourself. Do you have passports?’

‘Of course.’

‘How long have you been in the country?’

‘A month or so. We’re meant to be travelling through. Heading for Iran, Iraq, maybe make it to Pakistan, India.

‘All right, all right, I don’t want your bloody life story. You’re hired. I’ll pay you ten pounds each for the day. Unload the truck. Put it all on this deck. We’re going to Kos.’

So with a couple of Charlie’s Turkish crew Johnny and Clem had spent the next three back-breaking hours unloading the contents of the truck on to the stern deck and the three of them had motored across to Kos in the monstrous floating hotel that was the
Old Rangoon
.

Johnny flicked his cigarette into the oily water of the marina and wondered what Clem was up to. The Greek boys had ambled further down the quay and were fiddling about with their fishing rods. He looked down on to the deck beneath brimming with the curious unwanted cargo: piles of boxes filling all available space, a white Steinway piano backed against the marble statue, a giant oak table standing on its side with a chandelier hanging from one leg, a four-poster bed carefully taken apart, the entire contents of some Turkish millionaire’s garish home wedged on to the back of the boat.

His back ached. He stretched and yawned. With any luck they should get it all unloaded and be back in Bodrum before midnight in time for a swifty with Aussie Dave with twenty quid in their pockets. He took a deep breath of the fresh evening air and thanked his lucky stars; then he turned around and set off to look for Clem – she had to be somewhere on this vast vessel of vulgarity. He opened the sliding glass panel beside the controls and slipped inside, finding himself in a corridor along the starboard side of the boat. He hadn’t been on the upper level yet.

‘Clem?’ he called. Hung along the walls was a stream of photographs, in enlarged pixels, featuring a heavily made-up, bleached-blonde middle-aged woman striking various jaunty poses. She was not a woman who benefited from either enlargement or jaunty poses. He stopped at the last photograph where she had been joined by her family. No wonder Charlie obeyed Mr Shipping Magnate’s every command: he had the face of a boxer and the eyes of a killer. He was twice the size of his wife – which was saying something – and his banana-sized fingers, dripping in gold, looked as if they might very easily squeeze the life out of living things. In front of the happy couple were three fat-faced, metal-braced girls who would one day clearly have an issue with hair removal.