Acts of Mutiny (16 page)

I thought of my diminutive blue suitcase. ‘D’you want to see my magic things?’

‘Where are they?’

‘In our cabin.’

‘Is your mummy there?’

‘No.’

‘All right.’

The cylinder of brilliant sunlight from the porthole created a special, glowing bar above my suitcase’s battered blue. Finlay peered in. There was a packet of itching powder; lemon juice for spy writing; the rubber toad; a bandaged-finger illusion stained red as if it still leaked; a nail-through-the-finger trick that might have caused it; two false beards with elastic; scarlet plastic starlet lips I held in my teeth; trick cards; swap cards of aeroplanes.

There was also a shoebox, and to my consternation Finlay opened it. Inside that were graver things: part of an amplifier on a bit of grey chassis; a sealed-up metal box; a soldering iron that would not work; the Holy Bible I had at school; my sheath knives, three daggers and one with a handle made out of a deer’s foot; a compass my grandad gave me; a
Letts Schoolboy’s Diary
with secret diagrams; my shrunken head; a flattened sheet of Plasticine that had gone dull-coloured and not like girls’ skin at all; and the embarrassing picture from Erica’s
Woman
magazine.

Her first choice was the folded picture – homing in before I could hide it: the illustration of two lovers embracing.

‘What’s this?’

‘Nothing.’

‘It’s romantic’The woman wore a ball gown, the man a dark suit. She clasped the picture to her front and looked at me strangely.

I said, ‘It’s stupid.’ But I watched for the moment when Finlay, holding it by its edges, would bring the picture sufficiently away from herself. Then I snatched it back.

‘Oh, Plasticine!’ she said, swooping again. ‘Let’s make people. A family of animals. Let’s make a farm.’

‘No!’ I put my hand over it. ‘All these things I’m getting rid of. They’re not toys, you know. They’re not girls’ stuff. They’re magic. They tell you things. I’ve said, haven’t I? I had a special jar of stuff. I left it by a doorway in Port Said. I’m getting rid of it all, now Mr Chaunteyman’s come.’

‘I’ll help you. Let me help you.’ She grabbed the toad.

‘No!’ I put the lid down on her arm. ‘You’re only supposed to look.’ But she proved too resilient and yanked the toad out. She sat there on her heels, holding it up to her nose.

‘It smells like rubber chocolate.’ She smiled to herself. ‘Ugh.’ Then: ‘You hurt my arm, dill.’

‘Mr Chaunteyman brought it from Disneyland.’

‘Oh!
Bambi. Lady and the Tramp.
Can you go to the films and get things? Can he do that?’ Her face was earnest, spellbound. ‘Could he get me something? A dog?’

‘No, stupid.’

‘Don’t call me stupid. Don’t you dare call me stupid. You’re just a Pommy. I won’t bother bloody playing with you.’

A girl had sworn. I had never heard that.

‘You think just anyone can get things out of films.’

‘No! I didn’t say I believed that. I didn’t. Disneyland. Get a bag, Pommy!’ She held my eye. ‘Anyway. I’ll hide the toad. Let me hide the toad. I’ll hide it in your bed. I’d like to see you get into bed and think there’s a horrible slimy toad crawled into the bottom of your sheets; and when your foot touches it … Aaaah!’ She mimicked me screaming. We both smiled, she with a certain seriousness, as if she relished my falling into her trap. I thought of her snooty, beautiful Australian mother. And then of my own, with her bright red lips, her wired bras, and her American admirer.

‘Give it back. It’s mine.’

‘No!’ She hid it behind her so that I was forced to wrestle for it. ‘Don’t you touch me!’ I had been up close against her for a moment, and now had let myself down. I came within an ace of hurting her. She smelt of soap and clothes, and, very slightly, of food.

‘Mad boy! You look really stupid. You look like a bloody squid. Is this your bed?’ Our steward had been in and the bunks were tidy. Everything was neat and in its place.

‘No. It’s my mother’s.’

‘Let’s hide it in here. She’ll think a toad’s come out of her in the night.’ We both laughed at the idea. ‘Out of her … thing.’ She looked down for an instant. Then we were convulsed with giggles.

‘No. It’s got to be wrapped up. Put in something.’ An idea struck me. ‘Why don’t we,’ I snatched the toad suddenly from her, ‘play a joke on Penny. I know where her cabin is. This deck, same as ours. Why don’t we put it in her bed? In brown paper.’

‘Why in brown paper? You’re mad. Your dad’s dead, isn’t he?’

‘No. He’s alive. He’s in England.’

‘Why isn’t he here? Why does your mother sit with Mr Chauntey-Fauntey-what’s-his-dill-name? He goes arm in arm with her. I’ve seen them.’

‘He loves her. He’s looking after her. He’s taking us both away. My dad’s too … important to come. He’s working for the government.’

‘Bull. I thought you said he was in the Navy.’

And so I have opened the suitcase at last. Just a collection of trifles.

Who then would be perverse enough to imagine that in the hold, under that well-known Merchant Navy label
Agricultural Machinery, the Armorica
bore a consignment of weapons-grade hatred; bound down and sealed in the assurance that no common tempest nor disturbance of the voyage could disturb its security?

‘My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you, I desire to be present with you now, and to change my voice; for I stand in doubt of you. Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, the one by a handmaid, the other by a free woman. But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the free woman was by promise. Which things are an allegory; for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar. For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all. For it is written, Rejoice thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband. Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise.

‘We are the children of promise. You children, are the children of promise. I especially wanted to bring you this extract from today’s lesson. Who knows what a promise is?’

‘What’s he saying?’ I nudged Finlay.

‘Don’t you know what a promise is?’ She wore the sneer of sanctity.

‘Of course I do.’ The scripture sounded as intimidating as such things always did. I had only gone to the Sunday school because of Finlay. And it was only because I wanted to sound her out that I had nudged her.

She melted a little. ‘He’s going to be a missionary.’

‘That man?’

‘His name’s Mr Tingay. My daddy said. He’s going to bring Christ’s word to the Abos.’ She held her piety a moment more.

‘Mr Tingay?’

‘Tingay.’ She spelled it out in a whisper. Then her face slipped and she started giggling. ‘Mr Thingy.’ I giggled too. Everyone looked round.

Mr Tingay glared at us from behind his wire glasses, and from amidst the extravagance of his beard. ‘What is it you find so amusing, those two children?’

‘Nothing. Nothing, sir.’ We stifled ourselves.

‘Jerusalem that is above.’ Mr Tingay pointed to the roof of the dance space. The glass door-panels all down the sides had been removed at last, giving the illusion of a tent or pavilion. On either side stretched away the bright yellow-brown of the sands. ‘Jerusalem that is above is heaven. It’s where you will go if you are good. It’s where I’m going, I hope. And it’s where all your mothers and fathers are going, and all your brothers and sisters, and all the people on the ship, the captain and his crew. And all the people of this world who are in Christ Jesus.’ He intoned the phrase backwards with a clerical tang.

‘Yes, in him we may all go to heaven above. To Jerusalem that is above. All the people here on this ship today may choose salvation. We are born of a Christian country and a Christian Commonwealth. We have the chance to be good, and follow the teachings of the word. Jesus.’ He nodded his head slightly. ‘Avoiding sin. Sin is in us all. Sin is in me, in you, in our parents. And there is no help in us.’ And then his voice changed to his other mode, to engage us. ‘Who thinks they’re good?’

A forest of hands went up. Then wavered, and fell back in case there was a catch.

‘Yes,’ he said enigmatically. ‘And who thinks their mummy and daddy are good?’

The hands shot up confidently this time.

‘Of course they are. And who thinks I’m good?’

There was an overwhelming show.

‘I try my very hardest,’ he acknowledged modestly. ‘But beware of pride. In even the best of us there is sin. As in Adam and Eve, our first parents. Just when we think everything is safest, the Devil tries to tempt us.’ He jumped the words out at us, and as a group we recoiled, visibly. ‘I want to urge you all to put sin behind you. Put the Devil away. Say no to him, if you can, while you are so young. Because the only people who aren’t allowed in are sinners. No sinners can go. God says to sinners: I’m sorry. You’ve had your chance to be good. And you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t be good. You wouldn’t keep to the law. So you can’t come in.’

Several children fidgeted nervously.

‘Do you see?’ He reached for his biblical singsong once more. ‘Sin is not just keeping the law as the Pharisees do. God’s law. If we sin, children, we stop Christ being formed inside us. Christ wants to be formed in us, in our hearts. If we sin we say to him: No, you can’t come in. That hurts Christ very much. He wants to come inside us. We must all try our hardest not to sin. And we must say sorry. If we do sin the only thing to do is say sorry, and really mean it.’ And then again with his teacher bleat: ‘Now, who knows what things are sins?’

While the others were obliging, I thought of the plan of the toad. I had the creature in my pocket. I went over in my mind the route to Penny’s cabin, and imagined how it might look inside. Finlay had taken a brown paper bag from the shop. I looked at her hands, pressed demurely together in her lap. I supposed she was praying.

‘Yes. The dead shall all be raised.’ The Reverend Mr Tingay, broad in the beam and sports-jacketed, had moved on. ‘In Jerusalem that is above all our family will be with us, our loved ones from generation unto generation. Their bones shall be joined up again and they shall be clothed anew in shining flesh. Ezekiel in his sands tells us this. From the Old Testament to the New, you see?’

His words made me think of Erica’s ageing family of great-aunts and decaying widows in their darkened South London terraces. She was a permed and painted oddity in their midst; a lighted insect sipping mildew in a Dutch still life – I in her strange shadow.

‘The dead shall be raised.’

Then we had to do colouring. The wood of the dance-floor decking came through into my picture of Jerusalem above.

The Torboys children erupted from Sunday school with plans for a game of Dragnet. It was a game of spies, factions, rivalry; in practice it was an enormous hide-and-seek, taking full advantage of the ship, with so many ladders, levels, nooks and crannies. In the Red Sea days that followed it would become our staple entertainment, I remember, binding us children together, Peter, Warren, Frances, Martin, those I had only really met for the first time that morning. We would soar into flights and escapades along three open decks at once, dodging bewildered cotton and silk, buzzing regimental blazers, infuriating walrus-faced old money. I recall Dragnet in the Red Sea as a Jerusalem I began to have faith in.

But that first Sunday Finlay and I were still cautious. The Torboys children were newcomers and untried; the scope of their game appeared grandiose. We had only just found each other, and besides had our own plans. At the start therefore we exchanged a look, which related to the toad.

Then we set off together as agents on the run. We had five minutes by the main lounge clock to make good our escape. To hide in one’s own cabin was against the rules. To hide in someone else’s was unthinkable. But how should we know whether Penny would be in hers?

The matter was solved by our flight through the Verandah bar. When we came out we saw Penny standing with the woman in the sari. They were surveying Egypt together.

‘Quick! Which way is it?’ Finlay whispered.

I led her down the aft stairs to where, on the same level as ours, I had seen Penny’s cabin, back in the time of the storm.

Once Finlay shut the door behind us, I felt the interior of Penny’s privacy close about me. It was a very precise strangeness, that experience of her folded things, the arrangements of what she put in her hair, on her face, in her mouth, the framed black-and-white photograph of two little boys in school uniform, a small leather camel. There was a distinct womanly smell, a powdery, perfumy, woollen flavour; on the floor her casual shoes, on the chair back the starched petticoat of an evening dress and some strewn stockings; her long filmy nightdress thrown on the lower bunk.

‘Well? You’ve got the toad.’

‘We shouldn’t do it.’

‘Are you scared? All right. Give it to me.’ She drew herself up and held out her hand.