The Mermaid's Child (12 page)

The room was warm, it smelt of wood and oil. One wall bellied outward like a sail; a glazed window looked out across the river towards the crumbling Exchange building on the far bank. There was a writing desk, a narrow bunk, a washstand. A book lay open on the desk. McMichaels scraped back the chair and sat down, looking at the text in front of him a long moment before laying the marker ribbon down the gutter and closing the book. He set it to one side, drew his account book to him and opened it again. He picked up a pen, scratched down a few words, did not look up.

“So, this is your first time at sea.”

I nodded. His pen stilled. He looked up.

“Speak when you're spoken to,” he said.

“Sir.”

“This is your first time at sea.”

“My mother was a mermaid,” I told him, by way of explanation.

“What?”

“She was a mermaid, sir, and my father was a ferryman, so …”

He stared at me a moment longer. He placed his pen back in its holder. And then he spoke.

“I don't care about you, Reed; remember that,” he said. “I'm not interested in you. You are nobody. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes,” I said.

“This is not about us getting to know each other,” he said. “I don't want to get to know you. I don't want to even think about you. I don't want to have you cross my mind again until
I pay you off. All I want to know is whether you've been to sea before because I need to know if that crook of an agent has gone and landed me again with some useless soft kid still smelling of his mother's milk.”

“Yes sir.”

“And do you, Reed?”

“Do I what sir?”

“Do you still smell of your mother's milk?”

“No, sir.”

“And have you been to sea before?”

“Born to it, sir,” I said, which I did not consider to be quite a lie. “It's in the blood.”

After that, down the hatch to steerage, and the duck and scramble across the low and cluttered smoke-blued space, tripping on kitbags and trunks and outstretched feet. The conversation was impressively obscene.

Away from hatch's pale spill of light, oil lamps hung from the beams, and the air was warm and foul. I came at last to the remaining free berth, located unfortunately in the furthest darkest corner of the space, near the bulkhead. But then came the embarrassment of getting into the hammock. I was buggered if I knew how to and reluctant to experiment. I couldn't afford to make a fool of myself. Standing there with my kitbag at my feet, I observed the rest of the lower deck out of the corner of my eye, in the hopes that someone eventually would get in or out of their hammock so that I could see how it was done. But no one it seemed was moving. Or at least, not shifting from their berths. A couple of whores were doing great business, but I didn't like to stare and so never got to see how they managed to get up and down from the hammocks. The men themselves were either lying back smoking, or enjoying
a whore's exertions, or both; or they were sitting below on their seachests playing cards. Next to me, just at chest height, hanging there quite peacefully, a man lay with his eyes closed. One hand was behind his head, a clay pipe was cupped in the other, its stem in his mouth. His shirt sleeves were rolled: his arms were brown, and lean, and strong.

I'd been looking at him too long. One eye flicked open. It was blue.

I wasn't sure what to do, so I didn't do anything.

He opened the other eye too, looked at me a moment longer. He took the pipe from between his lips, opened his mouth, and blew a smoke ring up towards the ceiling. My eyes followed it. I watched it drift, disperse.

“Arse first,” he said.

“What?”

“The hammock. That's how you get in.” He shifted himself up onto an elbow, gestured with his pipe. “Stand with your back to it, grab the nearest edge and stretch it out tight, then hitch yourself up, arse first.”

“Oh,” I said. I looked round at the hammock. “Right. Thanks.”

He lay watching me. The blueness of his eyes was unsettling. I gritted my teeth, hitched myself up and perched on the canvas. The hammock swung giddily back and forth: I must have looked uneasy, or just stupid, because the man laughed.

I looked at him.

He shrugged, lay back, put the pipe in his mouth, but I was aware of him still watching me obliquely, and with half a smile. The hammock's swing subsided, and I drew my legs up onto it. I lay back, gently rocking, conscious of the decking
below me, hard, black. It was an uneasy feeling. But not half as uneasy as the sense of the space around me, populated, alive with the mutter and scuff of men.

It was John Doyle, captain of the foretop, the man in the berth next to mine, who was assigned to show me the ropes. On our watch, he walked the tops like they were country paths, climbed the shrouds like a squirrel. Later, I would see him come down fresh-cheeked from reefing the topsail in conditions which had bigger men sliding back to deck from half as high, green and sick with fear. And when the other men indulged, between watches, in drink or talk of wives and whores, or in who-could-piss-the-furthest competitions, or in sniping about McMichaels, John Doyle kept his own company, would lie in his hammock and blow smoke-rings, and take his rum-and-water, and was never, it seemed, insulted or mocked for his behaviour.

And I was with him, on the mizzentop, with the wind in my face, swallowing down great lumps of air as if I'd been hungry for it all my life, when he knocked a hard hand against my upper arm, pointed, and I watched as Sailortown sank into its river banks, was swallowed, at last, by its own mud.

“You'll not be seeing that again in a while,” he said.

I looked round at him, almost ready to laugh out loud, but his face was serious, his mouth a dry hard line. He shook his head slightly, seemed to be about to say something and then change his mind.

“C'mon,” he said, shifting his grip on the rope, turning himself back to the work.

The first two weeks were the hardest: my body had forgotten what real work was. My muscles were constantly tight with fatigue, my hands raw with ropeburns and blisters, my lips cracked and peeling. Like all the topmen, I went barefoot, and my feet grew strong and hard and brown, and developed a dexterity of their own, gripping and clinging almost as adroitly as hands. Like the other sailors, I tied my hair back into a queue.

I played cards, and threw the game. It made me a little more welcome. From the players' conversation I learned about the working of the ship. McMichaels was pretty much despised: it was felt that he cut corners. In Sailortown, when he should have been mustering half a dozen men, he'd only signed on me. He wouldn't appoint a mate or a boatswain or a purser. He considered them too expensive. Luxuries.

I learned my knots, I learned my ropes, I learned I had a head for heights. I learned, from John Doyle's teaching and example, that there was joy to be found in a job well done, and pleasure to be gained from the quiet and proper practice of a skill. And all the time I felt, glowing in my chest like a lantern, a sense of satisfaction and excitement: I was, at last, under way.

I remember quite clearly one evening towards the end of that first fortnight, perched on the foretop as the sun was setting to starboard. John Doyle was just beside me, showing me the working of some block and tackle. Above us and below, the sails were taut as pregnant bellies; everything was bathed in pinky-golden light. My skin was glowing from the day's sun, and the air was moist and clean. I could feel the heave of the ship beneath me, perfect and balanced as the muscled strength of a horse. I had already come to know, almost to the point of forgetfulness, the precise geometry of our pitch
and sway above. I looked up from the movement of the rope, the easy skill of John Doyle's fine fingers, and watched his face for a moment. His expression was contented, he looked entirely himself, and at ease. He glanced up: caught unawares, he smiled straight back at me.

“There's no beating it,” he said, his eyes returning to the work. “There's nothing better in the world.”

It wasn't long after that the storm hit. A week, maybe two. I'd noticed, perhaps, a shift in the wind, the cloud massing behind us, gaining, but I'd been aware of it without any sense of foreboding or apprehension. Then a slap of cold air hit me on the cheek, I looked up from the knot I was practising, and at the same moment heard John Doyle calling the topmen together. The first of them were already swarming up the shrouds. My eyes caught on John Doyle's: he called me over to him with a jerk of the head. I was on my feet and across the deck in an instant.

“Good lad,” he smiled at me. “On up you go.”

I began scrambling up, and he called after:

“Watch yourself now. Stay sharp.”

Aloft, the wind was squally, argumentative. It tugged at our shirts and hair, slapped at us unexpectedly from this way and then that. My eyes streamed with water, the breath was tugged right out of me. It was as much as I could do to hold on while older, more seasoned men tackled the reefing of the sails. Through wind-blurred vision I watched and marvelled as John Doyle swung about with perfect ease and confidence, moving along the yards as if he'd been born out there. By the time the full rig had been reefed the storm was fully on us and we were being tossed about like spit on a flat-iron. I slid and
scrambled as best I could back down to the deck, shaking and clumsy with fear. I remember clinging to the base of the mast, spray lashing my face, salt in my mouth and eyes, squinting up in wonder as John Doyle tied the last of the reefpoints and then calmly, methodically, picked his way back down.

Below decks, the lanterns and hammocks swung wildly, crazy shadows skidding across the room. The boards pitched beneath me and the foul air of steerage made my stomach churn. I held on to the bottom of the ladder, blinking, swallowing down bile, not daring to go any further. Then a wave hit, and a shower of spray fell over me. John Doyle came down, slamming the hatch shut behind him. He stopped at the base of the steps.

“All right, lad?”

I was watching, in disbelief, as the men sat on their seachests, playing cards, smoking. Here and there a mug or shoe had come loose and was rolling back and forth with the pitch of the ship.

“Don't they care?” I asked him.

A shrug.

“Shouldn't we be
doing
something?”

John Doyle laughed. A little spurt of sound.

“We've done it. Sails are reefed and there are three men at the helm. Standard practice for these parts.”

I looked round at him. “We're not going to sink?”

“No,” he laughed again. “We're just going to make pretty good time.”

I staggered after him, across the cluttered space, lurching from seachest to hammock to sailor's shoulder. John Doyle planted his feet down on the boards like they were suckered. In our dark corner he swung open his seachest, dragged out dry clothes. I looked away, began to undo my buttons. I
ducked to rummage in my kitbag and found a dry shirt. As I crouched there facing the bulkhead I pulled the wet shirt off and put the dry one on. I slipped off my lower garments underneath. I straightened, pulling up dry britches. When I looked back round, John Doyle had changed and was lying back in his hammock, smoking.

My Da had been a sailor, way back: he'd met my mother when he'd been at sea. He'd've been like John Doyle: competent, accomplished, a good teacher. I clambered into my berth, lay back. The ship moved, and I, it seemed, lay still within its pitching hulk, slung there in my hammock. I watched smoke rings rise towards the ceiling.

By morning the gale had settled into a strong following wind. We were up in the heavens again, spreading a little canvas, when I heard a shout from below. Abrupt, harsh, not the usual sailors' birdcall. We looked down from our perch.

“McMichaels,” John Doyle said.

His face was a blurred oval; I could see the tops of his shoulders, one outstretched foot. He called again, his mouth wide and dark. My name. Reed.

He'd been watching me for days. Every time I'd turned round he'd been there, watching. Waiting for me to slip up.

I looked round at John Doyle.

“What does he want?” I asked.

He shrugged.

“Did I do something wrong?”

“You'd best just get down there. Look lively.”

“Sir!”

I lobbed the word down at McMichaels, scrambled after it.

He was already walking away when I got to the deck. I
followed, my skin prickling with apprehension. He came to a halt at the cargo hatch. It was lying open.

“Right,” he said. “Down you go.”

My mind flailed about, searching for something to say, for a lie that might still save me. He was locking me up and I had no idea why. I leaned over the rim, looked down. The hold's dark inverted arch reminded me suddenly of the pitched roof of the village church. I'd sat with my head tilted back against the pew, looking up. There had been the faint buzz of a sermon then, the gentle mutter of rain, and I had decided to be good.

McMichaels was still speaking.

“Make sure it's all in order,” he was saying. “You'll find plenty of fresh straw down there—spread it out on the shelves, report any repairs.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, perhaps too keenly, because he glanced at me, his eyes narrowing. I met his gaze, looking as blank as I could, then turned to look back down into the hold.

And the smell hit me. Coming up from the hatch, sharp and dry in my nostrils. I stepped back from the edge, blinking. I realized suddenly that the same odour had been there faintly, permeating everything, all this time.

“What are you waiting for, Reed? We have a cargo to pick up. You want to spend the rest of the voyage down there?”

“No, sir,” I said.

“Then get to it.”

I hitched myself into my hammock, lay back. The stink seemed to hang around me like a guilty secret, but I knew that everybody knew. I was aware of John Doyle looking at me, knew he was leaning up on an elbow, was turned my way,
had watched me ease myself down onto the canvas. I looked blankly up at the boards above me. I thought of the cramped storeys of shelving padded with musty straw below, the salt-rusted chains, the dark-stained boards. The stench. I hadn't realized what it had meant,
to the slaver
Sally Ann,
five years
. But now it was beginning to come clear.