Jamrach's Menagerie (28 page)

‘And mine,’ said Yan.

‘It’s the sun,’ said Mr Rainey, voice chop-chop like a blade.

‘True.’ The captain squinted up at the blank blue sky. ‘The sun goes down in an hour and a half.’

‘Ten days it is now,’ said Dag.

‘Nine.’ A rare word from Wilson.

‘Ten.’

‘Nine.’

‘Ten,’ said Simon, closing his eyes.

‘Not if you don’t count the day we stayed with the ship.’

‘It’s the thirst,’ said Rainey, and his voice cracked like a schoolboy’s, shocking to hear from a man like him. I tried to open my mouth, but it stuck shut.

‘Water,’ Tim said. ‘Must be time.’

My tot of water. Silver on my tongue.

The captain looked up at the sky and down at the bottom of the boat where Pole lay on his side panting weakly in the heat. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘it’s time we kil ed a pig.’

Our hog was nameless, a stolid soul that took no notice at al when Pole began to scream. Nothing makes such a racket as a hog. Such exquisite terror. Wilson hauled him from his nook and got him over on his side. Out splayed his spiky little legs, trotters stabbing in spasm, kick, kick, kick.

Wilson held him down while Simon and Dag grabbed and dodged and had the devil of a job getting him hobbled, but he was tied in a few minutes and they lay across his body to keep him stil . Wilson cut his throat. The hog twitched on as his blood drained into the bucket John Copper held under his throat, and screamed on too, terrible sounds, vile, cutting.

Blood fil ed the bucket and slopped over into the bottom of the boat.

‘Here, Yan, pass the other bucket over,’ said Captain Proctor.

The smel made my head light, the smel of the butcher’s shop two doors down from our old house on Watney Street.

The smel in the early morning of blood and brine, the pig’s heads in a tub. The captain tipped some of the blood into the second bucket, dipped one of our tin cups in and hesitated for a moment before handing it sideways to Mr Rainey.

Rainey took it, looked down into it, closed his eyes and drank. The captain fil ed the other cup and passed it in the other direction, to John Copper.

‘Not too much, John,’ Proctor said. ‘Sip it.’

The cups went round in both directions and al of us drank except for Gabriel, who started heaving.

‘Can’t,’ he said. His eyes streamed.

‘It’s al right, Gabriel,’ Dan said. ‘It doesn’t taste of anything.’

It didn’t, not real y, but it was salty and warm.

‘I know,’ said Gabriel, closing his eyes. ‘Give me a minute.’

Skip drank as if tasting good wine, tentative, thoughtful.

His eyes closed as he drank.

The hog’s dying went on.

‘Knock its head in, for God’s sake!’ John Copper said.

‘
You
knock its head in,’ growled Simon.

‘I wil ,’ said John, but by the time he’d groped his way forward and shakily lifted the axe, the hog was gone.

Wilson had a few sips then set about his work. ‘It’s not the best knife for the job,’ he said.

The cup came round again.

The blood was already changing colour, thickening like a roux. My body twitched with joy. I’d never been hungry like this. Wilson cut the hog’s legs and head off, slit the hairy black back and put his big meaty hands in under the flaps.

He pul ed, and two great blankets of hide came away with a tearing sound. Dag hung them up on the sails for the sea to salt.

‘Here, we’l make a fire here,’ Rainey said.

‘Jump to, Skip and John, get al this cleared up,’ said the captain.

They were baling blood. Sea blood, salt blood. Skip’s eyes were wide and his lower lip drooled from its centre. The chitterlings were in a bucket, plump and shiny, grey and pink.

They smel ed like shit. The liver was a wing, deltaed with fat.

A soft bal oon of a thing, the bladder, delicately patterned.

Wilson tied its end off and squirted piss to wash blood from the boat. We cleaned up and made a fire on the top of Joe Harper’s toolbox, up out of the wet, with wood from the ship.

We’d been drying it in the sun but it was stil damp. Wilson had managed against al odds to keep a supply of dry matches. God knows where he kept them. Up his arse probably, Tim said. Who cared? So long as they lit a fire.

Now that we were doing something and had drunk, we were cheerful. Saliva returned to our mouths, thick and claggy.

Dan whistled.

We kept the flames ticking along with a few bits of rag.

‘What are you doing, boys?’ said Dan, elbowing us aside.

‘Don’t you know how to light a fire? Useful knowledge, boys, useful knowledge. Just watch me.’

They passed over from the other boat a shoulder, a leg, some ribs. We stuck them with knives and tools and held them in the fire, and the juices ran down and made the flames spit and fed the fire. We cooked everything as wel as we could, but we couldn’t wait long enough. The smel was driving us mad. They’d started their own fire over there now and stuck the hog’s head, eyeless, on a stick over it. The sun was beginning to go down and our fires were warm and lovely and made homely trails of smoke rise up above our boats. Among our sails hung wonderful hides, marbled pink and white with flesh and fat.

The ears cooked in no time. Wilson cut them off.

‘Who gets these?’ he asked.

‘Cut them in half and let the lads have them,’ the captain replied. That was Skip and John and me and Tim. Skip cried when he got his. Sat there chewing with a runny nose. My God, hog’s ear is food for gods. It’s tough, you can suck and chew and gnaw and it lasts for ages. Next came the tail, Simon got that, then the feet, and when at last I got my teeth into a real ham, it was pink in the middle and eating it hurt.

Agony in the pits of my cheeks, sharper than the sting of salt in the sores erupting like volcanoes on my legs. We ate the lot, guts and al , apart from the hides and some strips of pork hung up to dry. It was glorious. The captain said we could have an extra ration of water, just for tonight, to celebrate the kil ing of the pig and our tenth day in the boats.

‘We have done splendidly,’ he said, his ringing tone restored. ‘Splendidly!’

We have food enough. We have water for a good time yet, we have our spirits and we are sure of our salvation in God’s hands.

He led us in a smal prayer of thanksgiving.

We were at peace like big cats after feeding. There was a moon. The ocean was beautiful. Simon played his fiddle. We sang ‘The Black Bal Line’, ‘Santy Anno’, ‘Lowlands Low’.

Yan sang something from his country and Dag sang something from his. John sang the filthiest version I ever heard of ‘My God How the Money Rol s In’. And we sang

‘Blood Red Roses’, a song of many moods. For every occasion there is a verse to suit. For the crashing storm and gal oping wind, we would roar at the tops of our voices: Our boots and shoes is all in pawn

Go down you blood red roses, go down!

It’s fucking draughty around Cape Horn.

Go down, you blood red roses, go down!

And for now, a time of content and ful -bel y warmth: Oh, my dear mother she wrote to me,

Go down, you blood red roses, go down

My lovely son, come home from sea –

Go down, you blood red roses, go down …

… sweet and teary, some of us thinking of the mothers they’d never had, some of the one they had or the one they’d had and lost. Even my memories of home and Ishbel and Ma and everything made me happy. Al we lacked was a smoke.

Tomorrow, perhaps, a sail.

But we got no sail. Not tomorrow or the day after or the one after that, and it went on.

‘Once,’ Mr Rainey said, ‘these seas were ful of whale ships.’

The wind shifted to the north. We ate the marbled flesh from the hides til they started to turn a funny green and the captain said it was best not to take any chances, so we chucked them over and were back on the salty hardtack and warm water. The taste and smel of the hog stayed on the edge of sense, the warm slip of the blood down the gul et, the juices. Having drunk, I was drier than ever, my mouth a wretched, clamouring place. Ever east towards South America. Much talk of islands. There
should
have been islands. The captain and Mr Rainey often put their heads together and murmured over the quadrant.

‘I can remember a time,’ Mr Rainey said, ‘when you couldn’t sail more than a few days without there’d be another whale ship.’

There should have been islands and there should have been ships.

‘True,’ said Gabriel, ‘the whaling’s done for.’

‘Jaf.’ Tim’s voice, careless. ‘What if we’ve sailed into another world?’

‘There’d stil be islands.’

‘What if it’s a world without islands? What if it’s a world where there’s nothing anywhere except one great big ocean?’

By the fourth night after the hog, I was beginning to think he was right. We
had
sailed into another world, something running along next to ours, something that had always been there but invisible. It consisted only of ocean. It couldn’t be our world. Everyone knew the Pacific was ful of islands.

Where were the whale ships? What use were the compasses and the quadrant and al of the captain and Mr Rainey’s reckonings and consultations if they could not bring us in reasonable time to one of these islands or steer us into the shipping grounds?

John Copper woke us up screaming in his sleep, said he thought there were horrible wormy things with biting teeth running up his arms and sides.

‘It’s him!’ he said, shuddering as if someone had just thrown a bucket of raw fish al over him like in the old story.

‘Poking me. He’s driving me mad.’

‘Not this time,’ said Skip, ‘I didn’t.’

‘You did,’ Simon said. ‘I saw you.’

‘No, you didn’t.’

‘My head’s kil ing me,’ John groaned.

‘Skip, you’re causing nightmares.’ Proctor rubbed his face. ‘For God’s sake, man, pul along with the rest of us.’

Wilson Pride chipped in. ‘This ain’t fair,’ he said, ‘and it ain’t wise. They should have him for a bit.’

‘You’re right,’ the captain said. ‘Yan, change with Skip.’

‘Oh Jesus.’ Gabriel lay down and covered his head.

‘Beg pardon, Captain, I’m not so sure that’s a good idea,’

Mr Rainey said.

‘Why not? The way things are carrying on, if he stays over here he’l end up done away with. We need respite.’

‘Very wel , sir,’ Mr Rainey replied stiffly, ‘but I won’t answer for him.’

‘No more need you, Mr Rainey,’ the captain said. ‘He can look to himself. Skip, I hope you’re listening to al this. Pul yourself together.’

‘Yes, Captain,’ Skip snuffled meekly, raising himself up and groping his way towards us.

‘Skip,’ said Mr Rainey, ‘if you poke one person – even
once
– do you hear? – I wil personal y throw you overboard.’

‘It’s my fault,’ said Skip in a smal voice. ‘It’s because I kil ed the dragon.’

‘You didn’t kil the dragon!’ roared Rainey.

‘I did. I set it free so it died.’

‘How do you know it’s dead?’ said Tim. ‘How do you know it didn’t get home and it’s sitting there right now on its little island with its grandchildren at its knee tel ing them al about its big adventure amongst the madmen?’

‘Sit down, Skip,’ said Dan. ‘Don’t open your mouth again.’

Mr Rainey came down with a bad head cold. His eyes watered constantly and his nose ran like a tap. ‘I’l be coughing next,’ he said, ‘it always goes to my chest. You lot better keep away from me.’

Fat chance.

‘Remember, lads,’ Dan said, dispensing our water, ‘for every day that passes we are one day closer to rescue.’

‘Aye, by God,’ Rainey agreed, wiping his nose on his sleeve.

We drank a little then baled some more, til Dag gave a shout and we saw dogfish between the boats. Gabriel reached for his spear. Shining fins, three, four, came and went. It was no good. We couldn’t get anywhere near close enough. We stalked them as wel as we could for the best part of an hour before they left us, heading west in a line.

Darkness fel complete, no moon, no stars. It was Tim’s watch, then Dan’s. I slept. When I woke, Mr Rainey, coughing irritatingly, was talking with Gabriel.

‘The boat’s gone, Jaf,’ Tim said in a wonderstruck voice.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Gone.’

‘What? The other boat?’

‘Yeah.’

‘How?’

‘It was just gone when the light came up.’

I sat up. The sea was empty. Skip woke up and raised himself slowly, blinking. No one spoke. There was nothing to be done. We drank our ration. Mr Rainey spewed his back up, nearly flinging himself overboard in the action.

‘Lie down, man,’ said Dan.

‘How can they be gone?’ asked Skip in a puzzled tone.

I tried not to think.

‘I think I wil ,’ Rainey said, blinking. His forehead was bright red, dripping.

‘
Where
have they gone?’

‘Hush, Skip.’ Gabriel put a hand on his shoulder. ‘There’s no answer to it. It’s not a question worth asking.’

‘Give us your knife, Gabe,’ I said, ‘I want to cut my toenails.’

‘Don’t cut your toes off, boy.’ He handed it over.

‘Can’t look for them,’ Dan said. ‘Nothing we can do.’

‘They’ve got the quadrant,’ I said, setting about my nails.

‘And the matches,’ Skip added.

‘No matter. We can dead reckon.’ Dan smiled bravely.

‘Valparaiso, here we come.’

We would miss the fiddle. I concentrated on my toes. My eyes fil ed. Our friends over there, their faces always glimpsed sideways, the captain big and owly, Yan’s handsome, slanted cheeks, Simon brooding, Wilson stoic, Dag’s blond shock of hair. And poor, worried John Copper biting his lips. Never see them again? They weren’t dead though, not like those other ones, and now I must number them again, for to forget is death. I laid the knife by. I was blind, ful of tears. Bil y Stock, Henry Cash, Martin Hannah, Abel Roper, Joe Harper, Mr Comeragh, Felix. Who else?