Jamrach's Menagerie (13 page)

Resting on an elbow, he leaned over the table and looked me in the eye. ‘Here’s something, Jaf,’ he said. ‘Never forget.’

When Dan Rymer drank he became his true self. His eyes twinkled, his lips puckered, his limbs loosened up.

‘What, Dan?’ I laughed, made mad and bold by the strong red wine. It had a metal ic edge and reminded me of that thin taste blood has when you bite your lip or your teeth bleed.

‘On with the words of wisdom!’

‘That’s it,’ he said, ‘just that. Never forget.’

‘Never forget what?’

He was smoking a long brown cheroot and he waved it elegantly, creating eddies of startlingly bright blue smoke.

‘That smoke,’ he said seriously, ‘never forget the sight of that smoke as long as you live,’ and he hummed ‘Tobacco’s But An Indian Weed’.

They brought us more wine, and some smal cakes, very sweet and moist, bright yel ow.

‘These are good,’ he said, tucking in, and we gorged ourselves, ‘these are the
ultima thule
of cakes. These cakes are what you were born for.’ He grinned. His arm gestured in a loose circular movement. ‘Have you seen the Madonna?’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked stupidly, draining my glass and immediately wanting more, grabbing the bottle and pouring, spil ing a few drops. You couldn’t see how much was in the bottle, but it was good and heavy. The kitten was dislodged from my armpit and slithered to the floor with a disgruntled mew.

‘The Madonna,’ Dan repeated, ‘come and see, she’s over the stairs.’ I didn’t want to get up, but he’d risen and gestured me over to where the angel with the mandolin stil produced heaven from the tips of her brown fingers.

I fol owed.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘one of the most beautiful things you’l ever see.’

I looked up. The real girl, the mandolin girl, was on my left-hand side. Her music had faded now, she twinged and twanged the instrument in a random, desultory manner.

There was a painting at the top of the stairs, painted right on the wal , the Madonna spreading out her cloak, sheltering the world. How they do it, those paintings, some of the ones you see. You can’t see her eyes, but you know what they’re like, you just know.

‘You know,’ Dan Rymer said, breathing warm booze breath on me, ‘I have a wife.’

‘I know,’ I said.

‘I love my wife.’

That tal fair woman with babies at her skirts, in her arms.

Greenland Dock. London. Dear London. Oh, Greenland Dock. Oh, fried fish and grey skies and the smel of the market on Watney Street as a new day dawns.

‘She was born in the marshes,’ he said, ‘out of town.’

‘I saw her.’

‘Saw her?’

‘On the quay.’

‘Of course,’ he murmured, ‘of course you would have done.’

We gazed in a trance at the Madonna. I looked sideways and saw the mandolin player idly regarding me with no interest at al . I needed another drink. Back at our table I fil ed my glass near to the brim. I might be sick, yes, but it was far away, not yet. I didn’t care.

‘Oh, when I was your age,’ Dan said, sitting down once more opposite me, ‘oh when, oh when, oh when …’ and waved the hand that held his drink, slopping some over his fingers.

A broad-faced woman sat down beside him and kissed the side of his face. A tiny key hung from a blue ribbon about her neck. He put an arm round her waist and began to sing, throwing back his head and closing his eyes.

Western wind ablow,

Small rains rain.

My dear darling in my arms

And a warm sweet bed again.

God, he had a voice. Not your average voice, but a voice. I got the tears again, my stupid drunk heart. From the corner of my eye, I saw Tim and a girl slip through a door. My heart gave a sigh, a sinking fal . My sweet warm bed was nowhere. The kitten had returned.

‘Her name is Alice,’ Dan said.

‘Alice,’ I echoed.

‘Alice.’

Alice, oh, Alice. Where is my Alice? In my lap the kitten vibrated.

Dan Rymer’s eyes crinkled with laughter and his lips turned down. He poured me more of the strong red drink and hoicked up his col ar. The woman beside him closed her eyes and laid her head on his shoulder, and he wore her like a cloak. When he leaned across the table, she came with him like a fox’s face on a rich lady’s stole. Speaking in a low and confidential tone, he said, ‘Did I ever – did I ever – ever tel you about the time I saw an angel?’

I shook my head. God, I was ful . The firelight in the hol ows of his face made him very old, shockingly old.

‘It was in Valparaiso.’

It was almost a whisper, and I leaned forward to hear, the movement causing a lick of nausea to stir faintly in some unspecific place.

‘I was lying in the gutter,’ said Dan, ‘and a smal dog had just pissed upon my shoulder.’ He took a drink. ‘“Dear God,”

I said. “Thank you. Thank you, my God. It could have been my face.”’

I spluttered. The kitten stood up and started walking round and round, digging its claws into my knees.

‘Truly, truly,’ Dan said, and the woman shifted on his shoulder, ‘thou art merciful.’

The room began to lurch about. Thin needles of kitten claw shredded my breeches and pricked my knees. Out in the night, voices played counterpoint. Someone somewhere was having a quarrel, but it didn’t sound serious.

‘The moon was laughing down at me,’ said Dan, getting into his stride, ‘sniggering from a canyon of swol en cloud.’

He squared his shoulders.

I’m going to be sick, I thought. Oh no, not again, no.

‘I shouted at the moon,’ said Dan. ‘“
Who you laughing
at?
”’ Throwing out an arm. ‘“Fat Face? Come down here and laugh, I’l show you what’s funny!”’

Dan jumped up, knocking the table skew-whiff. A bottle rol ed. The cat leapt down and the woman slid sideways.

‘“Come down, you old Pantaloon!” I cried.’

He stood, long coat gaping, wild head raised, a grim muzzlish look upon him.

‘And it was then,’ he said, sitting down again and speaking in a low voice, ‘that the angel came. Eight feet tal , I don’t know, a very tal creature anyway. Barefoot. Silver feet!

Can you imagine that? Real feet of silver, alive. And his wings. They touched the wal s on either side of the street.

And do you want to know what he said to me?’

‘Very much,’ I said.

Dan leaned towards me, lowering his voice and speaking very seriously. ‘He said, “Get up out of that, you fool of a man. Get your bleeding arse out of it and shut your stupid bloody mouth before I shut it for you.” And then he
kicked
me.’ Dan grabbed his own wrist, jutted his lip. ‘But I grabbed his silver ankle! It was cold to the touch. And
up
he flew, away,
up
with me stil hanging on, and off away back to my ship with me, and the town lights al spinning round below and the wind rushing in my ears, and the ships in the harbour al spinning round.’ He sat back, picked up his drink. ‘And he put me down on the quarterdeck, gentle as a leaf. “Count yourself in luck,” he said. “Next time I’l drop you in the drink.”

And he turned the size of a gnat and flew away. And that was that.’

I turned sideways and threw up al over the dusty earth floor. A great warm flurry of big dark women flew about me, clucking and soothing and babying. They took me out in the cool night air and held my head. Did I sleep awhile? Did I dream? The scent of roses was strong, I remember, roses or some other flower, something that bloomed at night. The stars were ridiculously bright as if the sky was shouting. I lay like Dan in his gutter, but no little dog came to pee on me. A soft lap cradled me instead, and I turned onto my side and slept. Later there was the room again, and a dance to clapping hands and jangling music, and Dan in there dancing with them, pipe clamped between smiling lips, eyes closed, arms above his head. Later stil , a hand led me to a loft, a bed, corn husks in a linen tick that crackled when I moved, the sense of other sleeping bodies warming the low space around me, the dreaming bodies of people and a few cats, from which arose a canopy of somnolence like the faint hum from a wasps’ nest in the eaves.

It was dawn and I was fast asleep when Dan shook me by the arm. We crept below, through the snoring room where we had caroused last night, past the sleeping snout of a black pig asprawl before the quietly ticking fire, past coiled cats and twitching dogs, and hens breast by swel ing breast along a stone shelf.

We had hogs on deck. Just walking about. Felix Duggan cursed and shooed them as he tried to sweep up. Silver ribbons ran down the cliffs. I looked back, but already the red roofs were out of sight. Seemed stupid to me, setting off just as it was obvious the weather was on the turn. The clouds were thick and massy, bruised here and there. The waves were noisy, buoyant. Not long after we lost sight of land, the fog came down.

‘Do you think we’l ever see a whale?’ I asked Gabriel.

‘Not in this, son.’

We were standing at the cookhouse door to get the smel of pork. Wilson Pride was feeding scraps to the dog.

‘I never saw it like this,’ I said. Gabriel laughed. His sea cap was pul ed right down over his face. ‘This is nothing,’ he said.

‘I know.’

‘Hear you were sick bad last night, son.’

‘Yeah.’

‘That island stuff. You have to watch it, son. Look at me.

Do I have to get drunk al the time? Not me, son. Look at me.

You do like I do, son, and you won’t go far wrong.’

‘Do you think we’l ever see a whale at al ? Ever at al , even when the fog goes?’

‘Oh, we’l see a whale al right,’ he replied confidently.

‘You’l get sick to death of whales before this jaunt’s done; you’l see a whale and you’l say, “Ha, so what, whale, ha”.’

He gave an exaggerated shrug.

‘How many whales have you kil ed?’

He shrugged again, this time more normal y. ‘Hundreds.’

‘How old are you, Gabriel?’

‘Thirty-four. Thirty-five,’ he said.

‘Have
you
ever kil ed a whale?’ I asked Wilson Pride, who’d gone back to his counter and was pouring water over a block of hardtack so hard it could have cut a diamond.

‘Not me,’ he replied. Wilson always went barefoot. His feet were very large and flat, the heels startlingly pink, and he was always washing them. You’d see him soaking them on deck in a bowl of seawater.

‘Who told you I was sick?’ I asked Gabriel.

‘Tim,’ he said.

Of course.

The sea fooled and niggled.

Tim never got sick. Did I say?

After the Azores we had rough seas. I never saw the flying fish before this time, these swift, shimmering things that skim the waves, rainbows flying from their backs. And birds who never neared land, nobly spanned, fearful of eye, cruel clawed. In their shril , crack-voiced thousands, they clouded our ship from the Azores to the Cape Verde Islands, faithful in the rain. As for whales, not a puff to be seen. The winds tried their lungs. Proctor sent Gabriel, our best helmsman, to the wheel. We stowed away the studding sails and top gal ants in a torrent, and ran before the wind to the Cape Verdes.

They were nothing like the Azores. We anchored somewhere al drenched and bleached out, with great mountains of salt rising up against a sky the colour of dishwater. South from there the wind died down, but the rain was endless and we couldn’t get our sails dry. And when the rain stopped, we sailed into a calm that kept us crawling for days, a sleepy ship of sleepy men, a month or more out of London and al of us greenhorns believing ourselves by now to be weathered old hands. We were nearing the Equator and stil hadn’t seen a whale, but no one seemed to be worried about that. We met another ship, the
Gallopan
out of New Bedford, and so embarked upon a gam – a meeting of ships, a bit of fun – and that was my first and best gam, and went on for three or four days til I began to think that we were out here on this ocean for no other reason than to drink rum, eat Wilson Pride’s salty pork dumplings and play cards of an evening.

At last the calm ended and we were able to go our ways.

On the night before we parted company we dined on salt beef and carrots on the
Gallopan
’s deck, each of us with a thin slice of fresh bread instead of hardtack, just as the captains and mates got al the time. And after a good rich duff of plums and damson jam, Simon got out his fiddle, and one of the
Gallopan
’s men went down below and came up with a squeeze box that looked as if it had sailed the seven seas at least seven times. Everyone joined in singing al the old songs, Sam Proffit’s glassy voice ringing above al the rest, a thin silver ribbon like the silver ribbons running down the cliffs when we left Faial. It could have been a woman’s voice or an angel’s, and it drove Felix mad. ‘Grates on my bones,’ he used to say when the old man started on his Sunday hymns. Very devout, Sam was. I loved his voice. On first hearing, it was piercing and unpleasant, but it grew on you the way a bird with an irritating cal does, becoming sweeter with familiarity.

There was a big moon that night. Over on the
Lysander
a bright light burned in the officers’ quarters. There lay our ship, al at peace, the captain’s dog scratching itself happily on the deck. ‘Blood Red Roses’ they were singing. ‘Go down you blood red roses, go down.’ The high strange sound coming out of Sam’s worn black face was a ghostly descant to the rough voices of the others. ‘Go down you blood red roses, go down.’ John Copper had tears in his eyes. One of the
Gallopan
crew was singing the thread: