Jamrach's Menagerie (29 page)

Sam. How could I forget old Sam? If I closed my eyes he was there. If I closed my eyes anything was there: Ishbel, Meng’s fireplace with its meerschaum pipes, the corner of Watney Street.

We sailed blind al day and al the next.

‘How far away do you think it is to Chile?’ asked Tim.

Dan laughed. ‘A little way yet.’

‘At least two weeks,’ said Gabriel.

Mr Rainey had ripped his shirt open at the front and, stil sleeping, was scratching fretful y away at three red sores the size of shil ings that had formed a triangle on his hairless chest.

It rained. The weather at sea is like running paint. Al the sky smudges. The shades of sky move in a dance, run along the curving horizon, take on form. The east was a shining slate and shimmered at us like a god. Mr Rainey slept in the rain. It cooled our sores. We held up our faces to catch the drops and it ran in our eyes and washed al sweat away, singing like a choir, mil ions of voices in perfect harmony.

The boat began to buck and prance. Big waves rol ed under us.

‘It’s coming. Down sails,’ Dan said.

The gale raged al night and al the next day and al the night after that. There was nothing to be done with the boat.

We lay low, al huddled together in the bottom. When darkness came we held onto each other, every man clutching a fistful of cloth, a hand, a shoulder, an elbow.

Every few minutes sheet lightning flashed across the sky, and we’d see each other’s ghastly lit-up faces, big-eyed and stark.

On the third morning the wind dropped and the sea calmed, and we raised the masts again and sailed no more than an hour, before a sound like a gunshot reached us from a great distance. It was on Tim’s watch and he cried out: ‘It’s them! It’s them!’ and al of us rose and stared against the glaring sea.

I saw nothing.

‘It is!’ exclaimed Gabriel. ‘I see them.’

Then we al saw the tiny dark stain very far away, west, and Mr Rainey took out his pistol and fired once into the sky.

A faint roar was our reward.

We cheered, hurt our throats.

‘Impossible,’ Dan said. His hand gripped my shoulder, trembling. Though he smiled like a madman, he looked scared. His watery blue eyes, never blinking, were fixed with something akin to horror on what approached, and it jumped into my head that the boat would reach us and we’d see it was ful of dead men stil going about their business. Their sores would have run mad, covering every inch of them.

Their eyes would be ghastly.

‘Mr Rainey!’ the captain hailed us.

We could see their faces now, their good old ordinary faces: Captain Proctor, Wilson Pride, Yan, Simon, Dag and John. Al smiling.

Mr Rainey pul ed himself together and cal ed across that we were al fine and dandy over here and in very good spirits.

I was on watch one day when something hit the sail and fel into the boat.

Fish. Another. Another.

There was a scramble.

A whole host of fish. Beautiful things, flashes of silver leaping from the sea and flying like shearwaters, some the size of a finger, some as long as a foot, skimming close to the surface, touching down from time to time, only to take off again. They had bird’s wings at the front behind their heads, and little finny ones vibrating at their tails. A dozen or so landed in our boat – three or four of fair size and lots of tiddlers. We gorged, raw. It was like eating the sea.

‘See?’ said Dan. ‘See? Providence,’ pul ing bones from his teeth.

‘Providence!’ Gabriel laughed. ‘Providence can go either way.’

‘So it can,’ said Dan. ‘For now it’s with us. Rainey, are you al right?’

‘No. I’m bloody not al right. Do I look al right?’

He’d gone al bug-eyed. Since we’d eaten the other hog he’d been getting terrible headaches and spent a lot of time rubbing his forehead and the backs of his ears. Dan was pretty much our skipper now. A month had passed. Heat, sudden, heat by day, cold by night.

‘I don’t think I can take much more of this,’ Gabriel said dreamily.

‘My face feels funny,’ I gobbed.

‘It’s al right, Jaffo,’ Tim said.

‘No.’

‘It is. It
is
al right, you know.’ He had a curious, stiff smile.

‘Yes,’ I replied. My tongue stuck to the back of my teeth with a bitter, gummy slime, which gave off a vile stenchy taste as rank as a Bermondsey sewer.

‘Ah, landlord,’ he mugged, ‘a flagon of your best!’

‘You’l get your ration soon,’ Dan said.

Our mouths would have dripped if they could.

‘Do you remember when we caught fish under Tower Bridge, Jaffo?’

‘Me, you and Ishbel,’ I said.

‘Fried in a bit of butter,’ Tim said.

‘Wonder what Ishbel’s doing now?’

‘She’s washing her feet,’ he said.

The thought of Ishbel washing her feet fil ed me with joy.

‘Do you think so?’

‘Oh yes. She wonders about us.’

‘She’d have come if she could.’

‘I know.’

Mr Rainey started sneezing convulsively, over and over again.

‘He’s for the chop,’ Tim said.

Seemed likely.

‘He’l be the first,’ I said.

‘Likely.’

I yawned til tears wet the corners of my eyes. Immediately they dried. No clouds.

‘Can’t swal ow properly,’ I said. ‘I keep trying.’

‘Don’t try,’ said Dan.

‘I want to get off this … this …’ Gabriel, a great sigh. ‘Sick of the whole fucking …’

Rainey fel asleep and started snoring hoarsely.

‘He’s had it,’ Dan said. ‘Poor man.’

‘Nearly time for the sun to sink,’ said Skip.

‘Where are the others?’

‘There.’

A ghostly grey boat that dogs us always, bearing our shades, hol ow-eyed.

Dan gently woke Mr Rainey. The captain’s boat came nigh, the faces of Yan and John and Simon and Wilson and Dag. Dag’s broad face was the colour of teak, his hair white as Lancashire cheese, his whiskers wild and wiry. The captain and Mr Rainey gave out our portions.

‘Yum yum,’ Tim said.

‘Reached for a chicken, got me a goose,’ sang Gabriel.

The sores on his lips had cracked and were running into one another. His forehead shone.

‘Here, get this in.’ Dan trickled water from his fingers through my lips. My tongue unstuck.

‘I’m going in,’ said Skip.

‘I wouldn’t,’ Dan said. ‘You get salt in them sores you’l be screaming.’

‘Can’t make a difference,’ Skip replied, ‘I’m salt al over anyway. Long as it’s cold I don’t care.’

‘Me too,’ Tim said, ‘I’l come too.’

‘Don’t let go the side,’ said Dan.

So they went over, softly sinking in the cool sea, their heads bobbing alongside. It was funny. They didn’t know whether to groan for the salt sting or sigh in ecstasy as the water cooled their blood. So they laughed instead, looking at one another and giggling like children.

‘What’s it like?’ I asked.

I would have gone, but I had a feeling that if I left the boat, I’d never get back, so I just hung over and dangled my hands.

Then Gabriel too slid over the side. Had to, he said, he was burning up. Not me, said Dan. The sun would soon sink,
then
we’d feel cold enough.

The boats came together. Soon after, up goes the cry from Skip that there’s shel s under the boat, hundreds of them, and they start pul ing them off and cracking them and stuffing their mouths with the flesh from inside. It went dark, sudden like it does, and al you could hear as the lanterns were lit were the splashes in the water and the shouts of excitement. Both boats were covered. We passed over the buckets, and when they were fil ed and not a single shel left under the boats, the boys were too weak to climb back over the side, struggling to raise a knee or haul themselves up with an arm, like kittens going upstairs, pathetic and funny, laughing at themselves. Al of us laughing as we pul ed them in like heavy nets, eating the barnacles or winkles or whatever they were. Beautiful, soft and succulent, plucked living by the white neck from the brown shel . We said we’d save some, but we ate the lot in one. Al except Mr Rainey, who said he couldn’t fancy them. Couldn’t fancy them! Offer me a worm, I’d have given it a go.

‘Come on, man,’ Dan urged, ‘they’l do you good. Just one, here, try.’

‘Let me sleep,’ the poor man said, laying his head against the gunwale, folding his arms and closing his eyes.

It’s funny, the things you say when words are strictly limited.

A word was a sacred, precious, much-laden thing.

‘That was lovely fresh water,’ Rainey croaked.

He looked peculiar, al puffed up around the face and neck. I saw Dan get his mouth ready for speech, working his tongue and lips several times before he could get a word out.

‘Mad,’ he said. ‘Glory Lord.’

We’d had a norther for a while and got along at a merry old jog, but then it turned. We’d hardly moved since God knows when, crawling on like a snail on a pavement over the sea, which seemed mysteriously to have emptied itself of al life but ourselves. The birds had gone. I missed their squawking company. Fish too, scarcely one broke the surface.

‘How long?’ asked John Copper. Water.

The captain swal owed audibly. ‘Hour,’ he said.

‘Can’t be!

A nod.

Yan leaned over the gunwale and trailed his hand in the sea. He murmured something and scooped up a little in his palm and dashed it against his lips.

Proctor shook his head. ‘Don’t swal ow.’

‘Wait,’ Dan said. ‘Only an hour.’

‘Can’t.’ John fol owed Yan.

‘But if we don’t swal ow …’ Tim said.

‘No.’

Yan and John licked their lips. The gleam of moisture al too much.

‘Drink piss,’ Dan said thickly. ‘Better.’

I’d been thinking about that. Saving it for when I felt bad enough. We’d even had a laugh about it, me and Tim and Skip. But a boat would come before that, or an island with streams. An island, a boat, a vision, an angel, the devil in person, anything at al , please come.

‘Boys, boys, my boys,’ I heard Dan, far away, ‘I am proud of you. What a character I wil give you when we get home.

Only a little longer now, boys. Hang on.’

But I could no longer believe that this was anything but madness. We were quite out of the world, in a place like a dream, where terrors could harm and nothing was impossible. I turned away so I wouldn’t have to see them with the water in their mouths, a tightening of pain in them as the salt touched ulcers.

‘Nonsense,’ I heard Rainey say. ‘As long as you don’t swal ow, a mouthful can do no harm.’

I closed my eyes. Darkness on the face of the deep. I wanted to hear Sam singing. If I tried, I could. His peculiar gnat-like delivery that was sometimes unbearably pure. I got him singing and singing to me in my head, his old hymns:

‘God moves on the water, God moves …’ He sang it over and over and over til it started going funny, tripping along to the rhythm of the waves. God bring a boat, God bring rain, God bring manna, God this, God that. Words words words.

In my heart there was only an aching, empty place like a lost tooth, that and the empty sky and sea, and eternity, and a presence that did not reassure.

‘One mouthful then. One only.’

Dan held the cup to my lips.

One mouthful, hold, spit.

Wet mouth, for a second.

Do NOT swal ow.

It’s okay, better than piss. Piss came shortly after. It’s hideous, but you can swal ow it. It was worse than I expected and it looked so nice too, as if it would be sweet, but no such thing. It tasted the way it smel s when it’s been standing a day because someone’s forgotten to empty the jerry. A stern, bitter, unfriendly taste, I thought, though some didn’t seem to mind it at al . Maybe theirs was better than mine.

Anyway, it didn’t work, or it did, but not for long. It was a false quenching, like drinking hard liquor: wet, but in the long run thirst-inducing. So I never took to it, though you’d hear different from some, no doubt. Tim’s piss was golden, of course, and he drank it with relish. Honey sweet, no doubt.

Dirty brown, gold-haired Tim, with darker gold whiskers encroaching from his ears, and round brown hol ows about the eyes. ‘You know what, Jaf?’ he said. ‘I feel as if my mind’s going funny.’

‘Yes.’

‘Yours?’

A nod.

‘Tel Simon to play something.’

‘Simon. Hey, Simon.’

Simon sawing away at the fiddle, a merry thing. He was good, Simon. Lovely player. Could make you cry, make you smile. But it was nothing, that poor little fiddle, a voice singing against the great waterfal at the end of the world, where our smal boat plunges over and fal s for ever. Mr Rainey’s mouth was yel ow al over. And stil he would hold the salt water in his mouth because he couldn’t bear not to.

‘Long as you don’t swal ow,’ he said. He did it more than the rest of us, more than he should have, that’s why he went down so fast, I think, that and because he caught that terrible cold not long after we set off and it went onto his chest. It scared me to see so hard and big a man, a man I’d been scared of, go down. He couldn’t swal ow. His throat was closing over. His face clenched and grew naked in spasms.

His feet swel ed up like bladders. I went over to sit with him.

The movement made me dizzy and for a few seconds grey clouds gathered in front of my eyes, and my heart went mad.

I couldn’t talk to him. I didn’t know him at al . A very uneasy man he’d always seemed to me, and that at least was stil the same. Tears were trickling from the corners of his eyes and gleaming in the crinkles there.