Jamrach's Menagerie (36 page)

‘What was yel ow?’ I asked.

Skip hauled his eyes onto me like heavy sacks. ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said.

‘No, you don’t.’

‘I know everything.’ His eyes changed, made a sideways flip from anger to horror. It wasn’t him looking out from his eyes. ‘You want me to die,’ he said.

‘I do not.’

‘Sit down,’ said Dan, pul ing on his shirt.

‘You want to kil me.’

‘I do not.’

I didn’t. I wanted to smash his face in though for making me remember how I kil ed Tim.

I kil ed Tim.

Sounds stupid but I only realised it at that moment. It was like fal ing from a great height.

‘I kil ed Tim,’ I said, sick to my stomach.

‘You didn’t!’ Dan tried to sit up but fel back.

I began to moan, a straggly lowing trail of a thing that meandered along absolutely separate from me like a ribbon proceeding out of my mouth. I shoved my fists in my mouth to stop it. It wasn’t me, it was a thing in my body forcing its way out, I had no control over it. And as it keened on, lost in the slop and slap of waves, something invisible got into the boat with us. I tried to hide behind Dan. Blind bloody gut-cramp fear, not to be fought.

‘Leave me alone,’ sobbed Skip.

Dan struggled himself upright, a wild-looking thing, ragged old death’s-head man of the sea. ‘To me,’ he said.

We three hunched in the bow.

‘Don’t think,’ Dan said.

The sticky hold of fear. I was a fly trying to lift at least one of its thread-like legs from the syrup.

‘Make it stop,’ I said.

‘Don’t think.’

I looked up and saw Dan’s face wet with tears. Or was it the rain that had just begun, a sweet English drizzle?

‘I kil ed Tim,’ I repeated. It seemed important I should acknowledge this as truth eternal, an irreversible fact to be absorbed by the universe. Dan’s eyes closed and the water poured down. I couldn’t say if he was laughing or crying.

‘You’l have a long life, Jaf,’ he said. ‘Don’t waste it on this.’

‘Send a ship,’ Skip cried, a shril seagul ’s voice that echoed in my ear.

But it wouldn’t make any difference, I had stil kil ed Tim.

For ever and ever amen I had kil ed Tim.

My moan was changing into a stupid childish crying, a miserable wipe-my-nose and pick-me-up sort of a grizzle.

Clouds of grey and black boiled in front of my eyes. I went somewhere strange, somewhere far and lost as a rock on another world, and forgot how I got there or where I’d come from or what name I had or anything at al apart from a subtle and steady push towards some surface far above. When I got up final y from this and my head cleared I saw that Dan was praying silently, moving his mouth, leaning his head against the side of the boat, asking God to take care of Alice and the kids. Skip was lying down with his arms round his head. And there was the smidgin of hardtack and the couple of inches of warm water, and the gun, and the invisible fear thing was gone.

‘Let’s eat what’s left,’ I said.

So we did, breaking the tack into three and passing the cup round, sipping smal long-held mouthfuls. It took about half an hour before it was gone. That’s how long we spun it out. Then like old men by the fire after a good dinner we sat back in contemplative silence. The rain was like silver rods whispering and shimmering, piercing the sea. That was beautiful, soothing. Skip lay back down and said he wasn’t getting up again. He said there was no point. He smiled and closed his eyes and put his arms back round his head and said he was going to sleep, but was up again immediately.

Then down, then up, down, up, with his horrible eyes, down, up, like a dog with worms, standing in the heaving bow screaming he saw a ship, a ship, then, oh God, a low rumbling laugh because, oh hel , there’s an eye pierced on every spar, al googling and bloody, and they’re turning, every bleeding one, on us. ‘You want me dead!’ he screamed, whether to us or his big god or the sea or the demon I’ve no idea, but whatever it was it seemed to strike him down at once, for he spun about and dropped, holding his head and screaming at the top of his lungs.

We took hold of him and tried to hold him from thrashing too hard. He screamed and screamed, twitching al over his shoulders and arms, froth at the corners of his mouth.

‘Nothing to worry about, Skip,’ Dan said, ‘nothing at al .’

He calmed down a little and we laid him down with a bunch of rags under his head.

‘There, see, you’re al right,’ we said to him.

He cal ed for water. Cal ed for a candle, though it was light. He cal ed for Pol y-dog and his ma and pa. Three hours he chattered but made no sense, and he never again opened his eyes, though he said he saw tal things with horns approaching, smiling, on the restless sea. Late in the afternoon he died with his head on Dan’s knees, bravely rambling til the very end, which came as a terrible convulsion that shook the boat as if we’d landed a shark.

I remember you a strange misty morning man in the yard, early life, early morning, Mr Jamrach standing in the light from his office door, and you there with a whiff of the ocean about you, the wild places that cal ed. You sang ‘Tobacco Is An Indian Weed’ on the Wapping Steps. Where else could I go after that? Look at us now. Dan’s my mirror: scooped hol ows in his face, eyes like pits. I look like that too. Skin shrinks. Lips turn black, teeth stick out.

‘Need to shorten sail,’ he said. ‘You do that while I get on with this.’

I did. I looked out over the rippling babble of waves and heard, as I had heard before, for Tim, for Gabriel, the cleft and slurp and rasp of the knife. For Skip.

Smash. Hatchet.

Dog’s lick. Marrow.

Close eyes, suck.

Close eyes, suck.

I saw the thing Skip saw. It came striding and stalking with hoofed front legs on the sea, a creature of jovial reptilian cast, with the long, curled tail of a fish fol owing proudly in its wake. When it got alongside the boat and a ship’s length off, its eyes swivel ed in its head and fixed me, its lip curling delicately to reveal the long, pointed teeth of a cannibal.

Then again I saw spectral ships, and fingers of smoke that crept along the gunwale. I saw a tree dripping living colours that ran with kittenish joy into and out of one another al along its elegant branches, faces that flashed a mil ion changes, questing eyes, water-dappled ceilings, a great lost city in ruins of pink and gold. I soared above the earth on vast bat wings, mighty and proud. But I went too high, couldn’t stop myself. As if I was a bal oon and someone cut my string, I went up and up and up, sucked at hideous speed, til there was nothing of me left but a thought that I was stil me, whatever that was, and any second now would come the fal , inescapable. These terrible dream fal s; always at the howling rushing point of no return I have woken safe: in bed, i n
Drago
’s bel y, under a table at Spoony’s with a whore cradling my head. Always, the world has returned. Good old world. This time it would not. Al lost: Ma’s warm armpit, songbirds, moon over London Bridge, a smal gold head in the crowd, the smel of sarsaparil a, al of it, and everything in a great surge of longing, a love I had been born to feel, and which was also required of me and the purpose of my life.

And then I fel .

Voices.

Corncrake groan of a rigging. Soft flapping of sails at peace. Sea-green, delicate little bones, white and creamy ones wrapped in my arms. We love our bones. We’l never part with them.

A great shadow fal s. Faces look down at us.

It was the passenger steamer
Quinteros
sailing between Cal ao and Valparaiso that picked us up. We were not far from the Chilean coast. I can’t remember how I got up on deck. I remember a sense of weary wonder, strange fear, a voice in my head crying out again and again as if it was angry with me. I remember a blurry gaggle of staring faces that moved gently as if some great hand was shaking them up and down. I remember a smel like frying onions, and tears pouring down my face so hard I thought they were my life blood leaving me. My legs would not stand. Arms caught me. Many voices murmured and one, strong above the rest, spoke words into my ear that made no sense. There was tapioca in a bowl, and a spoon I dropped when they put it in my hand. We were more than half mad as we sailed for Valparaiso. We sat and shivered, staring like madmen. And Dan said to me: ‘We say nothing about the Ora,’ and I nodded, my teeth chattering in my head. And we never did. I don’t know why. Felt like bad luck, I suppose.

‘Don’t look at me with those eyes, sailorboy.’

‘What eyes? These eyes? They’re mine. What other eyes should I look at you with?’

Red-haired. A little poxed but not much. Pretty face, chin too long. She has the faint remains of a scab in the corner of her mouth and I feel sorry for her.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Faith,’ she says.

‘Pretty,’ says I.

‘Want a place to go?’ says she.

I must have been grinning. She took my hand. ‘What you laughing at?’ she said. ‘You laughing at me?’

‘Have you got a place to go?’

‘I have that. You come with me.’ She led me good as gold through the streets of Greenwich in the rain. She’d picked me off the quay, from among al those sun-beat faces, those half-savage things that seamen are when they’re coming in after long years at sea, pul ed me from the heave and hol er of those touts and crimps and runners al wanting a piece of me. But I wasn’t green any more. I shivered as she led me through those glorious green and grey rain-sodden Greenwich streets, how beautiful and shining they were, how altogether heartbreaking. I started crying.

She noticed as we reached the tal dark house. Pushing me aganst the wal just by the doorway in the hal , seizing my head between her hands and staring in my eyes with blazing grey eyes. ‘Go on then,’ she said, ‘have a bloody good cry, chicky.’

‘I’m not green,’ I said, ‘I know you want to rob me. Just letting you know I know.’

‘There we are then,’ she said, letting me go. ‘Glad we got that one straight. Come on.’

So up the stairs, one flight only, to a bare landing, where she lit us a candle from a cupboard on the left, then a door with spotted brown paint that opened onto a smal room almost fil ed with a bed covered with an Indian cloth. The candle flickered on the ceiling and the wal s, adorned here and there with sentimental pictures of violets and kittens, and there in the window was a linnet in a cage.

‘Here, Faith,’ I said, ‘what’s your charge?’

She smiled, lopsided. Her forehead was high, with mobile wrinkles that spoke as much as her eyes. I guessed her at thirty. Business done, she took off her jacket and sat down on the bed to take off her boots. It was nice, I thought. Cosy.

Outside, the sounds of life. Footsteps that tocked along the pavement. I am home, I thought. Home.

‘Did you get this from Jamrach?’

The linnet.

‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘it’s not my room.’

I put my face up against the bars of the cage and looked at the linnet.

‘Linnet,’ I said, ‘linnet, hel o, linnet.’

‘Is that what it is?’ she said.

I cried again.

‘You lay down,’ she said, getting up and leading me firmly to the bed. ‘You got half an hour, have a nice lie down and a little weep.’

So I did. I was very drunk. I was drunk before I left the ship.

It’s al fady, through a veil. I’d paid her for half an hour, had a bit more cash in my breeches and knew she might try and steal it, and knew my head was ful of whirling clouds and that I could no more stop crying than the rain could stop pouring til its true time was up; and that made me feel the rain against the windowpane, its glowing drops moving leisurely, its song, its soft lul aby. My head hit the pil ow, a poor, hard, straw pil ow softer to me than rose petals and goose down. How could I save my money, now I was going out like a candle?

‘Here,’ I said, ‘I’ve paid for you.’

She lay down next to me and I took her in my arms.

‘You rob me I kil you,’ I said.

‘No, you won’t,’ she said indulgently, ‘’cos you got no need to.’

Couldn’t stop the tears. She wiped my nose with a smal handkerchief perfumed with lavender. That made me cry more.

‘What’s this?’ she asked.

Bruises on my upper right arm. They had not faded.

‘Nothing.’

‘That’s enough,’ she said, ‘calm yourself down now.

Here’s a nice deal: you give me one more guinea and I promise not to rob you.’

‘Done,’ I said.

No more did she. She chucked me out when my time was up and I walked along the river way to the bridge in the light silvery sifting rain, passing where we used to live in Bermondsey al those years ago. It was no better. Stil stank to high heaven. The foreshore by the bridge was filthy as ever. I sat on the steps for ages, looking across to the other side. To Ratcliffe Highway. She let me off, that woman, I thought. But then I think she knew me for a native.

I put off going home, roamed very slowly across Tower Bridge eventual y, the day nearing noon, stood for half an hour watching them landing the sugar. As yet I’d seen no one I knew, which suited me. The news had flown before. Long before we docked they’d al have known our story. It would be in their eyes when they looked at me, their knowledge of what had passed. Maybe we should have lied, but we didn’t.

God knows how I’d face Ishbel and her ma. Impossible. Part of me thought I should never have come back, should have buried myself away in some lost, forgotten corner of the world, but it wouldn’t have been fair on Ma. So I dawdled and fooled about, and it was two before I reached Ma’s. She’d been expecting me since yesterday afternoon and was out on the corner looking up the street. Same old Ma, just a bit greyer. I saw her before she saw me. Her face could have been taken for hard but I knew she was just worried. When she saw me she relaxed, mouth flexing into a twisted line of grim joy. She took a couple of steps towards me and gave me a quick hard hug.