Jamrach's Menagerie (34 page)

The four of us drifting. Singing. Our arms round each other, al jol y boys. Me, Tim, Dan, Skip. If it threatened storm we huddled close together, tenting our backs to shelter our fronts and faces, breathing our combined breath of sour salt bile. We stil had some meat, but we had no fire. We had ribs. When we finished the meat we stil had some tack and a bit of water now and then. But you can’t sing for ever. Your voice stops. You open your mouth and nothing works. A soft wheezing hiss, fragile as a dewdrop, is al , and no one hears because of the greater salt hiss of the sea. Your voice stops and your brain runs out of the top of your head and you soar very high and see from above the curving rim of the world, blue blue blue, far as the eye can see. One of Ishbel’s old songs runs in your head, the mermaid with a comb and a glass in her hand, her hand, her hand, with a comb and a glass in her hand, and her face appears, a round pale moon, very solemn, and with it the sound of a knife grating against bone or hard sinew or something. I had nothing to do with it, any of it, I was far, far away above the clouds. Her face was the knife cutting. Her face was whatever it was I was in and couldn’t get out of. At the end there would be a straight line stretching both ways for ever, and it would be the end of the sea and the lip of the last waterfal , a fal into white nothing, the foam spray of it rising to meet you long before you could make out anything of the crashing impact below. That’s where we were going, drifting, each one of us soaring high and always returning into our eyes and seeing what was there before us, facing each other. Al without speaking, we four joined hands for the plunge.

One day I woke and my tongue was out of my mouth. It had turned into a creature I did not know, lazy and fat, swel ing and oozing as it thrust its way out into the light through the slack hole of my mouth. My own tongue made me retch. This brought tears to my eyes, which I grateful y drank. Was then I think I saw Skip’s demon, a cloven-footed grinning thing like a shadow on the sky, looking sideways at me with bright intel igent eyes ful of mischief. The sky was dark, a morning of rol ing black cloud, a quiver on the sky, the sea moaning. I saw it. I looked at Skip, but he was mad, sitting there grinning like his own demon and frightening me with his glare. His whole face had changed. His eyes stuck out painful y, big goggling bal s above the sharp lines of his bones. When I looked back the demon had gone.

I asked for water. That is, I gestured at my mouth and made a noise with my throat, a kind of bark. But Dan said:

‘Not yet.’

What fol owed was a tantrum of the soul, within and completely silent. It’s not fair, I cried. It’s not fair! I didn’t do anything bad!

At last I got a little water, enough to wet my fat tongue. Dan trickled it on my lips from a cup. ‘Come on, Jaf,’ he said,

‘buck up, boy.’

Water. For a little while we could speak.

‘This is ridiculous,’ Tim said.

‘I want to go home.’ Skip hugged his sides.

Home. Hope Ma’s al right. She should be, Charley Grant’s a good sort. Home, Ma, Ishbel, never get back, never go home, never again. A burning place in my chest.

Something to hold against the terror, a blanket. I’m alive, burning brightly with a head ful of everything that ever was, our Bermondsey home, the Highway, the tiger, the birds, the smel of lemon sherbet.

The night returned, darker than most.

In the morning we drank again, and ate a scrap. Dan showed us what was left of the food: a square of hardtack about the size of a matchbox. We laughed at it. ‘This is ridiculous,’ said Tim, in a tone of mild exasperation.

‘Enough’s enough. Look at us.’

‘Oh, boys,’ said Dan, ‘we’re stil breathing.’

We four joined hands. Skip’s face stil had that gawk-eyed look on it, his tongue stuck between his teeth. Dan was a hunched brown leathery thing, shiny like a polished idol in Jamrach’s shop. God knows what I looked like, and Tim was a bony brown elf with wide blue eyes and white hair fal ing down around his face. Smiling. ‘This is no good,’ he said, ‘it can’t go on. No more.’

Dan said, ‘Something wil happen.’

‘Don’t, please don’t tel me.’ Skip with his eyes on stalks.

Don’t bulge at me like that, I would have said if I could. His hand in mine was spiky, returning to bone.

‘Help me,’ he said.

‘Yes, yes,’ said Dan.

‘Help me.’

‘Skip, it’s—’

‘Help me help me help me …’

His bones go crunch and I look down at his hand crunching mine, our bones together.

The sea threw us up high. The sky was muddy but white at the edges. I was cold. I saw a fire in my mind, a fire somewhere blazing in a brown fug, a house, warm.

‘Hold,’ Dan said. ‘Hold tight, boys.’

‘Please,’ begged Skip.

‘Draw lots,’ said Tim.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You know.’

‘No.’

‘You know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s how it’s done.’

‘No, no.’

‘Only way. You know.’

‘No.’

‘It’s sense.’

Skip on one side of me, Tim the other. Skip grips like a madman.

‘What’s happening?’ he whispered.

‘Nothing,’ said Dan. ‘Hold fast now.’

Tim laughed. ‘It has a name,’ he said.

‘You mean lots,’ Skip said. ‘Straws.’

‘We have to do something.’

‘Not yet.’

‘The way it is at sea,’ said Tim. ‘
You
know. It’s how it’s always been done.’

‘Where do you think they are?’ I said.

‘Who?’

‘Simon. The captain.’

No answer.

‘I think there may stil be a ship.’ Dan wouldn’t give up.

‘Too late for some,’ I think I said. Thought it anyhow.

‘It could bear down on us in a second.’ He raised his grieving eyes.

‘Or not,’ said Tim, and grinned. His teeth were bleeding and his eyes were ful of tears. ‘Let’s do it. Before we al go mad. We’re dead anyway if we don’t.’

Skip’s teeth chattered loudly in my ear. ‘Oh shit,’ he moaned in a terrible deep voice that sounded nothing like him.

‘Each of us equal—’

‘Oh, God,’ said Dan.

‘… lots …’

‘There’l never be a ship,’ said Skip bleakly, ‘never.’

‘I can’t stand this any more,’ I said. ‘I’m with Tim.’

‘Wait!’ Dan cried out. ‘One more day.’

‘What’s the point?’ Tim sort of laughed, his voice high.

‘One more day.’

‘Why have
you
got the gun? Ain’t we equal?’

Dan put his head in his hands. The horizon soared high and dropped away. Soared high. Nothing happened for ages, just Skip’s eyes getting bulgier and more terrible.

‘There are demons,’ he said, clutching me harder. I wrenched my hand from his and hit out at him. Tim put his arms round me, both his arms. He was a lot bigger than me and I got a funny feeling I can’t explain, almost as if he was my mother or something. I didn’t want to get tearful now, it would be too hard, so I put it away in the back of me.

‘God send a ship,’ Dan said.

Which was stupid because, one way and another, enough praying had gone on in that boat to sanctify al the holy places of the earth and it had long since become plain that God didn’t answer. Not so’s the average idiot could understand anyway. You could cry ‘save me, save me’ al you liked but it wasn’t going to make any difference to what was going to happen. But we did anyway. Cried ‘save me, save me’ al in our own ways, with or without words, as you do, al morning and al afternoon, looking for a coast, a golden clime, til I felt my mind going again, and Dan took the gun out and laid it between us in the middle of our circle.

‘I don’t care,’ he said. ‘You can shoot me if you like.’

Al this time our mouths were steadily clagging up again. It was hours since our last drink. They frothed and gibbered revoltingly, gumming together, pul ing apart with great effort to slobber forth the words. We were hideous. A light rain was coming on, silver and grey and very beautiful. Wonderful y cool on my forehead.

‘There’s rules,’ Tim said seriously.

‘
Rules
!’ Dan threw back his head and laughed like his old drunk self.

‘It has hooves,’ said Skip.

Dan laughed harder. You’d have thought he was sitting in the gods at the Empire.

‘Anyway, you’ve got a family and al that,’ said Tim, and that stopped him laughing and had him suddenly al dissolved in tears like a big rock toppling. He hung his head and wept softly, mouth distorted in a monkey grin.

‘Equal shares,’ said Tim.

Dan wiped his nose on his sleeve, put his face down further til his shaggy head was resting on his knees, wrapped his arms tight round himself and shook hard, and that was it again for a while, as if we could only proceed in quick bursts and long vacancies. The sting brought me out of it. It had been constant and vile for a long time but for some reason in the past hour had reached the pitch of madness, special y in the cracks of my elbows, where it raged and groaned and made me yearn for claws to tear it with.

‘Drink,’ I whispered.

The rain had stopped. My tongue would go again soon.

Puff itself up like a bladder and demand air.

‘Yes, drink.’ Tim touched Dan’s arm. ‘Have to.’

Dan raised his head and looked at us with something like humour. ‘Of course,’ he whispered.

‘Equal shares,’ said Tim, reaching for the old tin cup.

Things would happen. I’d lie here and watch. If I once closed my eyes I could sleep for years and years like Rip Van Winkle and return into some other place. When the water came my way I received it as a sacrament. I kept my eyes wide open. What a bright beautiful sounding world we were in, humming and shushing al around us, bobbing us here and there, cat’s paws spinning us; what a weird violet sky. There was blood in the water from someone’s mouth.

Dan was stil crying, and it was catching. It was the cool water on my tongue tipped me over, it was so lovely. Next thing we were al crying, but not in a bad way. It was good crying, refreshing and scouring. After we drank we put hand in trembling hand and made a circle again.

‘We must al agree,’ said Dan.

We four. We look about us, into each others’ eyes, which are amazed and dancing. Skip’s eyes are bleeding, or his tears are infected with blood, one or the other.

It’s like the songs, the stories.

‘Eight bits of paper,’ Tim says. ‘Put marks on two.’

‘Two?’

‘Has to be,’ he says, ‘second for who does the shooting.

That’s how it’s done.’

‘Jesus Christ!’ I whisper.

‘We must al agree,’ Dan repeats.

‘One goes,’ Tim says, ‘or we can al die.’

Skip smears his bloody tears. He is smiling as he takes what’s left of his sketchbook from his breeches pocket. ‘Use this,’ he says. It is the last page, Horta, from inland, a whispery grey scene of rooftops, the flowers of Faial; I remember the lovely stew in the tavern and a girl sitting on some stairs. He gives the picture to Dan. It’s not large, only four or five inches square, but big enough. Dan folds it very neatly and precisely and tears it into eight smal squares.

‘Now,’ he says, laying them out. ‘We mark two.’

Smudges he puts on them. They sit there, eight little scraps, us looking at them. Not a sigh of air to move them.

‘Sun goes down soon,’ Skip says with a faint sob.

‘It’s al right, Skip,’ Dan says, looking at him. ‘You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. No one does.’

‘We do,’ he replies, stil smiling, reaches down and, one by one, folds each smal square into a smal er one, and then a smal er and then a miraculously smal er, so that we al laugh. ‘What shal we put them in?’ he asks.

‘We stil don’t have to do this,’ Dan says. We haven’t got any caps left so we’re using the tin cup. He wipes it dry with his fist. Me and Skip put the tiny pel ets of folded paper in the cup and then the cup just stands there like the Holy Grail in our midst, and we do it homage.

That moment. Life quivered in it, sharp as a raindrop. Our eyes, al of our eyes, constantly meeting, seeing ourselves reflected back.

‘Are we agreed?’ Tim picked up the cup, covered its top with his palm and shook it about roughly, then stopped. ‘This is wrong,’ he said, ‘this is a cock-up. We should have just put four in. Now they’re al mixed up and we may not get any.’

I was past it, couldn’t understand a word he was saying.

‘Oh, just do it,’ I said.

‘Are we agreed?’

‘Fucking get on with it!’

‘Dan?’

He nods. Yes. Al of us nod. Who goes first? It’s so stupid, we haven’t worked it out, no one knows who’s supposed to go first, but then Tim says it doesn’t matter, we’l al open them together.

‘Like Christmas presents,’ Dan says.

‘Exactly.’

We laugh.

‘Do it by age,’ Dan said. ‘You first, Jaf, then you, Skip, then Tim, then me. No one opens theirs til we’ve al got one.

Agreed?’

Nods.

It was Tim. Tim drew the bad lot. The rest of us drew blanks. He just looked at it. ‘It’s me,’ he said, and laughed and yel ed and wept al together, throwing the marked scrap of paper down in the centre. ‘Fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, lads, it’s me.’

‘You don’t have to do this, Tim,’ Dan cried, ‘you real y don’t.’

‘No! No, no, no!’ said Tim. ‘I do, I do.’

‘No, you don’t.’

We said nothing, me and Skip. It unfolded.

‘We agreed,’ Tim said.

Dan was stil crying. He kept stopping and starting. ‘We can’t do this,’ he got out. He coughed and went on coughing, and his eyes ran like mad.