Jamrach's Menagerie (30 page)

The wind dropped. Every now and then someone spoke, but I forgot what they said at once. Every now and then I got my portion. I kept feeling my chin to see if I was getting a beard, but nothing. Only the captain stil shaved. Rainey was shaggy as an old dog. It made him look handsome and terrible, like an Old Testament prophet with his tormented eyes. Salt was drying us by degrees. Salt fish al of us, salt fish with wide open round eyes goggling at the sky. Our faces al had the same skinned, wild look about them and the bones of our skul s were cutting through. Wet hair curled on our shoulders. Our eyes gleamed. We were hard brown and weathered, knobbled like branches, and our togs were rotting through.

The sails blew out their cheeks. On into sunsets and sunrises. They said we had to be very careful with the water, just in case.

‘It won’t last, wil it?’ Simon said in a matter-of-fact way.

‘It wil if we’re careful.’

‘It’l rain soon.’

‘The rain won’t help.’

‘How long to Chile?’ asked Dag.

The captain sighed. ‘Depends on the weather. Perhaps twenty days.’

No one spoke. Twenty days.

‘Don’t fret,’ the captain said, ‘there’s no need to cut the ration yet, but if nothing happens in the next – six – days,’ he hesitated fractional y, as if he was making the decision on the instant, ‘we may have to.’

‘But we couldn’t manage on less,’ John Copper said. Skip put his arms over his head and started moaning.

‘What’s the matter, Skip?’

He just shook his head and moaned on, a sing-song humming as he rocked.

‘Oh, leave him if it makes him feel better. Moan away, Skip, only not too loud.’

‘It’s because I kil ed the dragon,’ Skip said, looking up at us. ‘That’s why everything happened.’

‘Mad.’

Rainey raised himself up from the bottom of the boat, set his hands upon the gunwale and stared ahead with glaring eyes. It was a blazing hot day and the sun was almost at its zenith.

‘Cover your head, man,’ said Dan, but Rainey silenced him with a stiff gesture.

‘Shh!’

‘What?’

‘Listen!’

Nothing.

‘What is it?’

‘Can’t you hear it?’

‘Can’t hear a thing.’

‘Jaf, can you?’

I shook my head. The shaking of my head set up a humming in my brain.

We were al listening now.

‘Poor thing,’ Rainey said, his eyes fil ing with tears. ‘Poor thing.’

‘Where?’ said Skip. ‘Where is the poor thing?’

Where else could the poor thing be but there, in the sea? It wasn’t here with us in our little boat. Nor over there, in the captain’s. Al there were wel enough. What could be crying in the sea or the air?

Tears poured down Mr Rainey’s cheeks. ‘My God, my God, my dear God,’ he said, ‘let this thing pass.’

Mr Rainey was only a man after al . A very strong one up to a point, but he was going down. Dan got him lying down and wiped his face. ‘You’ve been swal owing seawater,’ Dan said. ‘No more now. Here.’ And he gave Mr Rainey his own ration of water there and then, and had only a tiny drop himself left for later. ‘Lay off the seawater, man,’ he said, ‘it’s no good. Kil you, man. Lay off it now and you’l be fine.’

‘Yes,’ said Mr Rainey, his teeth chattering.

‘Now hold together. I mean it. You give up and let go and what happens? You get a boat over the horizon the very next morn.’

A storm came from the southwest and we were back at the baling, except Rainey, who remained at the useless place where the steering oar had been before some rough sea took it, weeping stoical y and staring out at – what? A flash of lightning. The sky growling. If he dies, I thought, we can have his portion. He turned away from the sea, his tears unanswered. He lay in the bottom of the boat, talking to himself. Sometimes he laughed joyful y, sometimes cried like a newborn and cal ed on his ma. Horrible to see that big man in that state. ‘Maria!’ he cal ed. ‘Maria, Maria,’ he groaned.

‘His wife,’ said Gabriel.

‘Yes, yes, we al think on our wives,’ said Dan. ‘Are you a married man?’

Gabriel nodded.

In the evening, just before dark, Mr Rainey sat up and wiped his eyes and licked his gummy lips with his slow gummy tongue. ‘Wel ,’ he said, ‘here we are.’

‘So we are,’ said Gabriel.

Tim put his hand in mine. ‘The sky,’ he said, looking up.

It was that second before dark. It glimmered.

‘Where are you from, Mr Rainey?’ Skip asked.

Rainey looked at him and thought for a moment, then smiled slowly. ‘Norwich,’ he said.

Said Tim:

The man in the moon came down too soon,

And found his way to Norwich.

He went down south and burnt his mouth

From eating cold pease porridge.

‘Do you al eat porridge in Norwich?’ asked Skip.

Mr Rainey laughed and tears came out of his eyes, trickling through the dirt on his face. ‘No more than they al eat jel y in Delhi,’ he said.

We al burst out laughing. The others in the captain’s boat must have thought we were having a rare old time. But in the middle of us al laughing came the sudden throwing backwards of Mr Rainey against the gunwale, as if a giant invisible hand slapped him there. Then he went mad, banging and flapping about horribly with his head twisting and thrashing enough to break his neck, and his mouth open and his tongue rushing out and in, and his eyes squelched shut, and his feet kicking and his arms flailing. He was so broken by it, it made me sick. I couldn’t stand to see him like that, and yet he was there in front of me cracking himself to death, and with every smack of his head against the boards, I closed my eyes like you do at hammer cracks.

Dan and Tim went to him, but could get no hold.

His eyes rol ed up and up and up, blue-white and bulging.

Then the whites stopped flickering and he fel stil and was dead.

11

Inever saw anyone die til I saw Bil y Stock die. Animals, many. Never a person, never a person I knew, a Bil y Stock or a Mr Rainey.

The boats came together. We sewed Mr Rainey up in his clothes, me and Gabriel and Skip, not a word between us.

The last glimpse of his face: open-lipped, frowning, the shadow of the shroud half upon it. Blue skin. Gabriel closed the cloth over it and sewed it up with his bone needle. The captain said the prayer. Dan and Tim slipped him over the side.

‘Oh Lord, we are eleven souls afloat …’

Me and Tim and Dan and Skip and Gabe on our boat. Six over there: the Captain, John Copper, Wilson Pride, Dag, Simon, Yan.

Dan said to us, ‘You know, he was at the seawater al the time. On the quiet. That’s what did for him. Don’t you do that, boys. We’l raise a good glass in Valparaiso.’

We were at our daily ration. A cup of water. A lump of hardtack. I tried to spin it out. I wasn’t hungry like I was at the beginning, this was different. The cramps had gone, but something remained like a ghost, like I suppose it feels when they’ve cut your leg off but you stil feel it there stuck to you, itching and twitching and aching and doing al the other things a limb does. I scraped tiny bits off my hard biscuit and sucked them from my fingers. I was very good. Very sensible, I thought, not like Skip, who got through his in about five minutes and then, like a dog, watched me eat mine. Tim was quick with his too. He’d fol ow it up with an hour or two’s nibbling and sucking peaceful y and steadily on the leather of his oar.

‘What’s it like?’ I said. ‘That?’

‘Nice.’

It made the time pass a little softer. My eyes roamed, looking for food. Wood? How about that? Wood was al around. Wood. I’l mention it to Dan, I thought. It’s possible.

Leather now, we’re not so badly off. Stil a few boots around, Proctor’s and Dan’s, and belts. And now the sea-soaked stuff was gone and it was nice dry tack, and there was stil plenty of water. For now. What else? More barnacles. Must go under and look. But I was scared of going over. I felt weak, not sure I could get back in. Could be anything under there. I closed my eyes and saw scal ops fat as puffbal s, white and orange, already out of their shel s, clinging al over the bottom of the boat, blowing there like flowers under the sea, sweet as the sticky Chinese fruit we ate in … where was it? Meat. The stew my ma cooked out of fat mutton and onions and barley, the grease that floated on top of the pan, quivering as it simmered. Fried fish, steaming layers of eyebal -white flesh. Mashed turnip with the butter melting in it. Bacon frying, singing in the pan, bacon and a fried egg, round orange dome, jel y, the rashers just beginning to burn.

Barley soup, goose with gravy, liver and onions, wine, beer, gin, pig’s feet, tripe, toast and dripping. Mrs Linver’s milk pudding with a rich brown crust on top. Cream on my tongue.

Raspberries, ruby, dusted, crushing their seeds between my teeth. Juices spurting. There in the street outside the pastry cook’s shop on Back Lane again—

‘It’s my fault,’ Skip said.

He said this so many times it became true. Yes, we thought. If he hadn’t let the dragon free. So many dead and it’s al your fault. Not that we were angry with him. No point. It was God everyone was angry at. The thunder and lightning.

The stupid waves. We rode a monster.

‘Wil you shut up with that?’ Tim said listlessly.

‘Sorry,’ said Skip.

It went on and on, a day and a day and another day, until the day Captain Proctor said we had to cut the rations again.

Wilson Pride laughed. I never saw him real y laugh but that once; a rich giggling laugh that just about cracked his face open, and got us al going as if it was a great joke, this cutting of the rations. Captain Proctor sacrificed his leather belt. Precious little to make a fire with. Wilson took a couple of leaves of Skip’s sketchbook to help the flames along, and he boiled up the belt in one of the buckets and kept it bubbling there with a little water, very careful, very careful with the water now. It smel ed like the tanning factory.

Bermondsey on the ocean. He said we shouldn’t eat the belt itself, but doled out the water it was cooked in, dark and roasty and bitter, the fire of a hot drink down the startled gul et. That and my portion and it was, al told, not a bad night that fol owed. I slept cosy. The good, hot drink stayed in my stomach, a wonderful hum of ease as I drifted in dreams of bright wanderings in strange worlds that spun on and on and in and out of each other, hundreds and hundreds of them.

I woke in the night and heard Dan talking to Yan. The boats were hooked together. They lol ed each in their respective sterns, quietly conversing.

‘Like fire,’ said Yan.

‘Whereabouts?’

‘Here.’

‘How are your ankles?’

‘Terrible.’

‘No better then?’

‘Look.’

Dan shifted. A moment’s silence then, ‘Jesus,’ he said.

‘You see?’ said Yan.

‘We could do with Abel. He had a way with that sort of thing.’

‘What day is it?’

‘Day forty-seven.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Sure.’

‘Weather’s on the turn.’

‘God, let it rain.’

It did, but not til next nightfal , and we fil ed the buckets and drank. First sip, sip, then more, at last a time to drink.

‘That’s enough,’ Dan said.

His hand on mine, gentle, decayed.

‘There, see?’ he said. ‘Something always comes along.’

In the morning we awoke to the slow whining of the fiddle.

Scrape, scrape, the sound was losing sweetness yet oddly lovely, the voice going hoarse. Something was getting at the fiddle. The salt I suppose, just like it got at everything else.

‘Ach!’ said Simon. ‘No good.’

Dan shook me. ‘Up, Jaf,’ he said.

I felt light, as if I might drift up into the sky.

‘Up, Jaf.’

He pul ed my cover off. I couldn’t see a thing. Blind in the ful sun ful in my eyes.

‘Steady.’ Dan’s hand.

I knocked against Tim.

‘Watch what you’re doing!’ he snapped.

I retched. Nothing came. Things cleared.

‘Come on, Jaf,’ Gabe said, ‘take your oar.’

A huge yawn shook me. I dragged myself up. Skip was sitting next to me crying, his moon face gone beyond recal .

He was the colour of liver. His skin clung to his skul , though his eyes were stil bright.

‘Al right, Skip?’ I said to him.

He nodded.

Yan was in a bad way.

‘You’re five and we’re six,’ the captain said. ‘Take one more, wil you? This man has to lie down, we need more room.’

So Dag came on our boat and we dipped lower in the water. In the captain’s boat, Yan stretched out like a log.

John Copper groaned and held his stomach, groping down his breeches and sticking his scrawny arse over the side to drip dark green goo into the sea.

Not even worth baling these days, it was so stil . Nothing to do but lie and doze. But you keep on waking up, that’s the trouble. There’s always someone somewhere moaning or champing his mouth disgustingly, someone swearing or mumbling, waking from a dream with a cry. Always your own heart yattering on in your ears as if it’l burst. When evening came Yan refused his bread. Pushed it away. Wouldn’t even drink. Simon tried to pour it in his mouth, but he let it run out.

We ate our portions and drank our share, and al the time Yan never moved, though there was some kind of churning in his throat and his eyebal s switched about, eerily visible, as if his eyelids were transparent. After a while this stopped too, and then the captain put his hand over Yan’s face, felt for the pulses in his wrist and neck and found nothing.