Close to the Wind (16 page)

And now that he was closer, Vex seemed bigger than Malik remembered.

He would only just be able to point a finger in his face. And what would a man like Vex do if someone
accused him of stealing? Papa had said he was one of the richest men in the city, and it would be his word against that of a child.

Malik took a step back and turned round toward the washing. Accusing Vex wouldn’t get the diamond back. It wouldn’t find Mama or get Papa on the ship. He was sure about that. Vex would probably just laugh at him. Yes, that was how it would be. Malik would be brushed aside and Vex would get away with it. He had already gotten away with it and there was nothing Malik could do except stay out of his way and hope that Vex didn’t see him and cause trouble.

He shifted the rucksack on his shoulder and walked away. The boy ran past him and saw Booty in his arms, and Malik heard him shout, ‘Cat!’, but Malik didn’t even glance back and when he reached the steps to the hold, no one had followed him.

He descended down into the gloom. A queue of women stood outside the bathroom, clutching dirty laundry to their chests. In the family rooms, parents had pulled their beds together and hung up shawls to screen themselves from the sight of others. Malik caught glimpses of them keeping their luggage and their children close.

He walked along the line of bunks in the dormitory till he reached his own bed. In the bunk opposite, the young boy with the comic was waiting for him. He smiled at Malik and held up a silver ball he’d made from paperclips. ‘I did it for the cat.’

Malik put Booty down on the floor and the boy rolled the ball under the next bunk to his. Booty crouched and then sprang after it.

‘He likes it,’ said Malik. ‘But he won’t do it for long. He’s not a dog.’

The boy offered Malik his hand. ‘I’m Alex.’

They shook on it.

‘My name’s Malik and my cat is called Booty.’

Steffan and Oskar returned to the dormitory, bringing an apple with them.

‘Where did you get to?’ Oskar asked Malik, as he put his bag back on the top bunk.

‘It was you who disappeared,’ Malik objected. ‘Miss Price was looking for you.’

‘She found us.’ Steffan sat down next to Malik. ‘She confiscated my keys.’

‘They didn’t work anyway.’ Oskar bent down
below the top bunk. He had a knife in his hand, and he offered Malik a slice of the apple. ‘You should eat this. We won’t get much else.’ He nodded at the group of four boys kneeling with Booty on the floor. ‘You could charge them for playing with that cat.’

Malik took the slice of apple and bit it. ‘You’re wrong, Oskar. We’re getting supper at six. Miss Price will come down to fetch us.’

Oskar looked at Malik as though he pitied him. ‘We saw the cooks making dinner. We’ll be lucky if it’s edible.’

‘It’s true,’ said Steffan. ‘They were boiling up bones in a pot. It smelled disgusting.’

Malik thought of the food he’d eaten in the past few days. Bits of bread and fruit and tuna from a tin. If supper was hot, it couldn’t be that bad.

When Miss Price arrived, she made the boys line up in pairs. She put Oskar and Steffan at the front where she could keep an eye on them, and she made sure that Booty was left behind – Malik had cut a length of twine and he tied one end to Booty’s collar and the other to a foot of the bunk, making sure it was long enough for the cat to walk a metre or so from the bed or to jump up and sleep on the mattress.

There were to be two meals each day, after the first-class passengers had finished breakfast and before the same guests went to supper, although today everyone was eating later because of the delay in boarding the ship.

Miss Price marched the children up the stairs and out onto the deck. At the door of the canteen they had to wait in line and shuffle in behind the boys from the other dormitory and the families who were already there. When they got inside the door, the room was stifling and smelled of stewed cabbage, but Malik didn’t mind. He’d forgotten how hungry he was.

One of the dinner ladies served stew from a large stainless steel pot, a single spoonful per person. Another added two boiled potatoes and a forkful of greens. Malik could see the steam rise from the pots as he edged forward, could see the thick brown stew. He took a set of cutlery from the box at the front of the serving table and he held up his plate – he’d seen better food in his school canteen, but it smelled quite good once it was on his plate. He found a place at a table next to Oskar, who was already on his last spoonful.

‘What’s it like?’ he asked Steffan.

‘Rubbish,’ said Oskar, with his mouth full. ‘I told you it would be.’

Malik ate his supper. It wasn’t as good as Mama used to make but it was still the first real meal he’d had in days. He finished everything on his plate and none of the boys had food left to scrape into the slops bucket as they were ushered out to make room for the first-class passengers.

Miss Price sent Malik to the kitchens for a plate of scraps for Booty. He knocked and asked for the cook, then waited outside the swing doors till they brought him a tin plate wrapped in silver foil and a small empty bowl for him to fill with water. He carried them back along the corridor and down into the dormitory, where he found Alex squatting on the floor with Booty on his knee.

‘Do you want to feed him?’ Malik folded back the foil to reveal some ends of cooked liver, chopped up small with a spoonful of gravy. Booty would like that. He gave the plate to Alex. ‘Here. Put it in a corner where it’s nice and quiet. Animals don’t like to be disturbed while they’re eating.’

Alex put the plate down just under the bed, then he went to fetch some water for the bowl.

Later, when Miss Price was sending them off to
the bathroom in groups of six, Alex came and took hold of Malik’s hand. ‘Can Booty sleep on my bed tonight?’

Malik panicked. ‘No,’ he said quickly, and he shook the other boy’s hand free, then immediately regretted it. He touched the boy’s shoulder. ‘Look. He’s in a new place with new people and he has to know that I’m here to look after him. Think how you’d feel if it was you.’ Then he added, ‘I’ll put him on the outside of the mattress, so you can see him from your bed.’

Oskar shook his head as he climbed up onto his bunk with a toothbrush still in his mouth. ‘All this fuss over an animal. It’s just a cat, for heaven’s sake.’

Malik tied Booty to the bunk bed again. When Miss Price put out the lights, there was only the glow of a single lamp by the door to see by, but some of the boys took out torches and read books or comics in their bunks. Malik lay on his back, listening to the hum of the engines that drove them on across the water. He had never been on a ship as big as this before. The wind had got up and the ship was rockier than it had been since leaving port. He imagined waves hitting the big steel hull and sending spray
across the large white letters that spelled
Samaritan
on the stern.

What would Papa be doing now? Would he be back at the cottage, imagining Malik asleep on the ship? And what about Mama? Malik didn’t want to think too hard where she might be, so he thought of her with Papa, the two of them together in the upstairs room of the cottage or, better still, back at home, back in her own bed, with Papa downstairs at the kitchen table, drinking coffee.

Booty settled himself down on the edge of the mattress, flicking his tail when Malik scratched at the scabs of old flea-bites which ran along his spine. His purr was louder than the hum of the engines as Malik tickled behind his ears, and the cat stretched out and arched his back. Malik put his nose into his fur and breathed deeply.

In one of the other dormitories, a mother began to sing a lullaby and her voice lifted up above the partition walls. Malik listened to her singing and he remembered the sound of Mama’s voice from the times when she had sung to him. He could see her leaning over his bed, wearing her pretty blue dress with the white flowers on the hem, the same as she was wearing the last time he had seen her. She’d be
wearing that same dress when he saw her next; he knew she would. Just thinking of Mama made him feel warmer and happier than he had been for a long time. He felt tired as he listened to the sweet, sad song and the boys around him put out their torches, one by one.

Once the singing had stopped, Malik heard a child crying quietly in the darkness. He looked across the aisle to the opposite bunk, thinking it must be Alex, but Alex was asleep, Malik was sure he was. And then he realized the crying came from the bunk above his head and it could be no one but Oskar.

When Malik woke up, Booty was gone. He knew it as soon as he opened his eyes. He felt behind his back with one hand, twisted round to double-check his bunk, then looked out across the other beds in the dormitory. The lights were on and there were boys on the move, some already dressed and some still in pyjamas.

Malik swung his legs to the floor. ‘Where’s my cat?’ he called out, and he immediately spotted Alex on his hands and knees, reaching under a bed
in the middle of the room. ‘Alex?’ Malik stood up.

The boy swung round, the paperclip ball in his hand. ‘We were only playing.’

Booty stuck his head out from under the bed and sniffed the floor. Malik came across and picked him up. ‘You can’t just take him,’ he said coldly.

‘I didn’t. He came to me.’

‘Oh yeah? How did he untie himself?’

Alex had patches of red on his knees where the floor had scraped his skin. He shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

Malik took the cat back to his bunk, where he noticed that Oskar’s bed was already empty. Alex followed close behind him and picked up the empty tin plate from the floor under the bed. ‘I could go and ask for food.’

Malik nodded. ‘That would be good.’ Then he added, ‘Thank you.’

Malik took Booty to the bathroom and tied him to the leg of the trough as he washed and brushed his teeth. The men close to him scratched under the cat’s chin and asked Malik questions about how old he was and how long he’d owned him.

When he returned to the dormitory, Alex was there with a fresh plate of food. He put it down in
the corner and they stood at a distance watching Booty eat.

‘What did you think had happened to him?’ asked Alex.

‘I don’t know. Anything could have happened. I thought he’d disappeared.’

‘There’s nowhere for him to go,’ Alex said. ‘Anyway, he couldn’t just disappear.’

Malik took a coin from his pocket. ‘Watch this.’ He flourished the coin in front of Alex’s face, held it up between his thumb and forefinger then moved his other hand across it. When he opened the hand with the coin, it had disappeared.

Alex was open-mouthed.

‘He’s got it in his pants.’ Steffan appeared from nowhere. ‘I saw him do it. He had it in his other hand.’

‘Thanks a lot,’ said Malik, and he retrieved the coin from his underpants.

Steffan said, ‘Come on, Oskar wants us up on deck now. He said we should have started work ages ago.’

The two of them went upstairs into the early morning sun. The sea was calm but Malik could taste salt in the air. They found Oskar crouching on the public deck with a stiff bristled brush and a duster.
He had written the word
SHOESHINE
on a piece of cardboard and propped it up on a footstool in front of him. ‘You’re late,’ he said. ‘I’ve been here for over an hour. If you want to work for me you need to be on time.’

Steffan looked across the empty deck. ‘Have you had any takers?’

‘I’ve had one, a fella from first-class.’

Malik turned over the coin in his pocket. ‘What do you charge?’

‘Ten.’

‘Maybe it’s too much.’

A man came up the stairs and walked out on deck. ‘Shoeshine?’ Oskar shouted at him, but he shook his head and walked the other way. Oskar stood up and stretched. ‘It’ll get busier. People will come up for breakfast soon. I’ve got a spare brush and another tin of polish. You should set up either end of the ship. I’ll come and check on you in an hour.’ He left them to get on with it.

Steffan blew his nose. ‘Oskar’s doing it all wrong.’ He picked up the pen and altered the sign to read O
RPHANAGE
S
HOESHINE
. ‘That’ll get the sympathy vote,’ he assured Malik. ‘I’ve done this sort of thing before. People can’t resist an orphan who’s willing to
work hard. If you sit on the floor with your cat, we’ll get the pet-lovers too.’