Hollow Sea (32 page)

'I say there, bosun's mate?'

'Hello! Hel-bloody-lo! Who wants me now? Oh! It's you, Mr. Walters.'

'Yes. It's me! I want a couple of your men to come below with me. Can you spare me a couple? I don't want to worry the bridge at the moment. They're like hens on hot griddles up there.'

'What you want them for?' asked the bosun's mate. He knocked his greasy peaked cap to the back of his head. Mr. Walters began scratching his neck.

'I want them to carry men up on deck. Very soon I'm afraid we'll all be sleeping on deck, Bosun. I had to shift my stewards from the glory-hole this morning.'

He looked anxiously at the bosun's mate, then at the men, his expression seemed to say: '
DO
come. Right away!'

'Jackson! Morley! Go with Mr. Walters.'

'Righto! Sittin' will soon be as awkward as standing on your bloody hands in this ship,' the man, Morley, remarked. 'By God! They don't half keep you on the move, here. One minute you're here, the next minute you're there.
 
.
 
.
 
'

'Mr. Walters has a kind heart! You'll be able to bum a drink from him. The rest of you can just cut for'ard for a smoke. But no more'n five minutes. All right! Off you go.' He followed behind them, up the alleyway, turned into his own room, and sat down on the settee. His mate peacefully snored. How the time flew! And three changes of weather in as many days. His eye fell on a cockroach. He followed it as it crawled up the bulkhead. The fo'c'sle door shut with a bang, cutting off the wave of sound that flowed through the open door. 'Up you go, my hearty; up you bloody well go!' said the man to the cockroach.

Men sprawled in the fo'c'sle. Sat on the edge of bunks, leaned on the table.

'This cold tea isn't bad! Good for rinsing your mouth out, anyhow! Hang you fellows snoring away there, don't make so much bloody row!'

A sleepy voice: What's doing lads? Any land in sight, yet?'

'No! We're carrying dead. That's what we've been doing. And these can't even land, no, there isn't any land, there's nothing but goddam water. Now drop your head back, mate, and dream sweet dreams.'

'What's the idea, anyhow!' somebody asked. The speaker's head was almost buried inside the opening of the huge tin can which he had lifted up to drink from. It lay against his chest. He embraced it, and turned its end up. His voice had a curious hollow sound about it.

'There's nothing in it, mate! Ask Williams, there! He's an authority on "bleeders," he is. He can tell you something, he can. He once buried three hundred on the
Clio.
Hello! There he is again. Goddam, three minutes for a smoke.'

Williams woke up. Vesuvius woke up. O'Grady and Rochdale woke up. The men went out.

'Shut that door, if you don't bloody well mind,' called O'Grady. The door slammed to.

'I say, Vesuvius, will you shift that rotten mug of yours from the back of that door? It's done nothing but rattle, rattle ever since we sailed. Enough to drive anybody balmy.'

'Anybody going whacks with you when we get to Alexandria?'

'Ask me another! What's for tea today, I wonder? Yesterday we had roast chicken, ham and iced-lager. I hope we don't have chicken again. It bores you bloody stiff having the same thing twice! Still, it's better than the Starvation Army. What say, fellers?'

'I like that surprise pie best. We usually get it on Wednesdays. Walters has been bloody generous these last two days. My! he ain't half in a sweat, who'd dream of Mr. Walters running about with a pot? But he does, he has to. And all the others are running round with pots, too. There's about thirty of those chaps pegged out already. But what can you expect on this ship? Fairy tales. There she goes, my lads, seven bloody bells!'

'Are you better, Rochy? My, you don't half snore on this man's boat! What does your missus say, I wonder?'

They were up and dressing. 'Lucky bastard, Rochdale! Up in the bloody air. You can't smell nothing. D'you know, I think this is the unluckiest ship I've ever been on.'

'Why! God love me, why don't you go up and ask the skipper to change his course? Say WN.-West. We might go on a world cruise! How about it? We're sailing along fine, so far we haven't even sighted a sub, and touching wood, we haven't hit a mine. Don't growl. We all got a bit out of Williams's board, and now look forward to a bloody good time. We'll be in Alex. tomorrow night. Pussy-cats two a penny! Look at Rochy here, never a grunt out of him. And when he really
does
like to say something, he just goes out and vomits his guts out!'

'One bell already! Peggy! Where in the name of Jesus is that Peggy? There you are! Go and see what that cook has mixed for us now.'

'Hard-boiled eggs today,' the peggy said. 'Always is on Tuesdays.'

'Don't have so much to say. Bring the stuff along.
Now.
Haven't you heard the goddam bell? This stuff should have been here piping hot at seven bells.'

'It was here! But nobody was up. An' I took it back to the galley to keep warm. 'Sides those other fellers were sniffing round the kiddy before.'

'Peggy; you're a darling. Give us a kiss, lad. Go ahead! Get the stuff.'

Bread. Two hard-boiled eggs per man. A huge can of black tea. They sat round the table. Ate in silence. Flung the egg-shells about the table. The peggy, who would clean up this mess, stood by watching.

'I wonder why they will boil eggs hard? Damn it all! It's a complete mystery to me. Hard-boiled. Whichever route you go, whichever ship you're in, they will insist on boiling 'em hard.'

'Who cares a damn, anyhow? I never heard of anybody who did. Christ, if you complain to the cook, he gets on his high horse. "Consider yourself lucky," says he, "any one of these soldiers would give his right leg for one of those eggs." As if that has anything to do with it. Soldiers! Soldiers! What has it got to do with us? The grub's passable enough when he gets it doled out by Walters; but why
must
they half-cook the muck, and when you complain they seem hurt and say, "Lucky beggars! Look at the soldiers. Bread and cheese, bread and jam! Raisin soup. Bread and jam. Hot water!" Damn the soldiers, I say, there's no reason why we should have the dirty end of the stick just because there's a war on.'

'Ah! Confound them! It's the same everywhere now! The war's on. The blasted war's on. Every kind of lousy trick is done on you, and if you open your gob, they say, "Well, it's the war'
 
'!'

Seven bells. A man came rushing into the fo'c'sle. He sat down, frowning, kicked off his boots.

'What's up with you, mate?'

'Nowt!'

Then laugh, for Christ's sake! Williams has made a haul this trip. And tomorrow he's going to give a few bob to every man.'

'D'you know that fat swine, Walters, reads all our letters? I never knew until today. He's the censor, mind you.'

'Everybody out there! All hands to number three! We're putting these men on deck. God, it's a sight! Still, they can't snuff out below. Poor sods, a hell of a lot of growlin' goes on here, but you never hear them say a word. They just put another one below. That fellow who had both arms blown off. I think Mr. Ericson is right. The mistake was in us carrying troops at all. We were meant to be a coffin-ship. Everybody says so now! Right! All out there.'

'Aye, everybody's out.'

'Look! There's a cruiser over there, isn't it? Must be getting near land now. You always find them hanging round the coast.'

'Say there, man, mind your head, that block's swinging about.'

'I can see it,' the descending look-out man said. He looked up at the block, looked higher to see Rochdale staring down at him. Below the well-deck was deserted. All hands had gone their ways. Some to work, some to sleep, some to play cards, some to dawdle about, some to pace the deck, some to think of nothing in particular except the next meals, and a grim sort of hope that came to the surface now and again, as the eye beheld the wash of waters, for one never knew in this world of surprises, what might pop up from beneath their smooth surface. Rochdale looked on water. Looked up at the sky, the cruiser steaming to starboard and not a sign from her. Even veering farther away. 'Doesn't like us, I expect,' he said. Then a few minutes later he said, 'Well, I'm glad the mail's gone.'

He felt very lonely. This being unusual with him, he could not understand it. A kind of desolation held him in its grip now, whenever he went aloft and stood in the nest. A strange feeling of isolation, of friendlessness worked in him, but he could not have given expression to it. Always he had been calm and collected, thinking of his work, his food, his bunk, his wife and children, the little shop at home. The impression of these things was no longer full, near to him. They faded. Distance weakened the shadow of them, they were a blur, to think of them now seemed like thinking of things that never were. The familiar receded farther and farther away. Another time and another feeling plucked at him now. He was one with the surrounding atmosphere, part of the strangeness, the awe, the sort of eeriness of the atmosphere. The warmth of things remembered gave way to a something wholly unreal, ghost-like. He thought of these things, but their meaning, the reality of their existence was vague, they lay smothered somewhere in the pit of thought. Some rude hand had shut them out. The texture of the past was uprooted. He looked at the running water, and felt the loneliness upon him.

'Perhaps I am too sad,' he thought, and he remembered the scene on deck when one of the young soldiers had gone mad. And seeing the others, yes, he had been sick: very sick! Retching, retching! He laughed. 'Gettin' quite nesh I am.' Oh, well, the mail was gone, that was a good thing. But even that made him think of what was going to happen next. Supposing he never got home. Supposing she was just going to stay out in these parts – going to and fro, to and fro, carrying soldiers and every time seeing those things that had made him sick? Somehow, life was all bits and pieces, there seemed to be no permanency about it, it had no definite pattern. He worried about his home, his wife and children, but he could not give expression to his feelings. 'Nothin' seems natural, somehow,' he was saying to himself. 'Everything's sort of weird.' And all that slaughter, and those men lying below. It wasn't funny, just strange, weird, and a little frightening. And you were always wondering, wondering what was going to happen. The things you used to think about, the ordinary things, distorted, thrown out of focus.

'Cheer up – damn you! You just got a fit of the creeps, you have.' Aye. Perhaps that was the root of the matter. He had a fit of the creeps. 'But is she getting anywhere? Anyhow? God Almighty, what's it all about, what's it for, and this stinking ship? Was everybody going balmy or what? '

He closed his eyes for a moment, opened them again and looked down at the sheer drop below him. Figures moved on the bridge, the ship's telegraph rang, smoke came out of the funnel, steam from her whistle, the engines hummed, everything seemed as usual.

'Perhaps I'm dreaming a bit. But damn it, you can't help dreamin' and thinkin' things up here. I'm even getting fits over the dark now! Maybe I want a dose, or a drink or something. Oh, I don't know what it is, but beggar it, it's queer, queer, that's all about it. If I think of her and the kids she seems millions of miles away, and that's funny enough, and you wonder what she's thinkin', what the kids are doin', how the shop's workin' out. But all the time, at the back of your mind you feel sort of queer, lonely. Oh, I don't know, simply don't know. Maybe if I was clever I would, but I'm not. Just an ordinary feller!'

He clenched his fists and began drumming on the edge of the iron box. Sometimes when he looked down on the water he imagined it was coming up to meet him, a tremendous cloud of water rising, overwhelming, sometimes when her nose came up he was a pin-point in space, the water was a far-away world. A wet planet. He was lucky. So was Lynch.

'The two of us are lucky! How those stewards manage to sleep, I don't know! Wouldn't be so bad if we just had the one kind with us. But having both, well it was a bit of a do.'

Rochdale's mind swung from the gigantic to the minute, from the general to the particular. He studied his hands, his fingers, his finger-nails. Funny, he was getting on in years now, and he'd had these hands with him a hell of a time, and somehow they were extraordinary to look at. But then he couldn't remember ever having noticed his hands before. He had looked at them, but not like this, the way he looked at them now.

V
ESUVIUS
rushed into the fo'c'sle. 'Alex, at eight o'clock. Can you bloody well believe it?' he said.

'Who says that?'

'Everybody's saying it,' Vesuvius said. He did a quickstep up and down the fo'c'sle deck.

'Jesus! It won't be soon enough, eight won't! We'll stink the place out, seems to me.'

'Nuts on that! What's it got to do with us?' Vesuvius shouted at the top of his voice.

'I'm not thinking of us,' the other replied. 'I'm thinking of the skipper. He must be cracked.'

'He's only carrying out the orders,' another man said. 'Anyhow, I've smelt worse.'

'I heard nothing about this,' Rochdale said. He was busy darning a sock. The foot of it was over his big hand like a glove. He plied the needle like a woman.

'You wouldn't,' a sarcastic voice came from the other side of the fo'c'sle.

'Haven't seen anything either, and I just come down from that box myself.'

'You wouldn't see anything either,' the same voice called back.

Rochdale laughed. 'Oh yes, I did,' he said. 'I could see the quay at Alex, if you want to know. I tell you this because there were two naked tarts standing there. Expect they were waiting for you, Turner.'

Rochdale broke the wool, flung the sock into his bunk and raising his hands above his head, yawned. Perhaps he might do the other one. The dog watch seemed peculiarly suited to darning. He pulled the other grey sock from the bunk, looked at the hole in the toe. The sock hung in his hand. Well, he might as well finish the job now. But he hesitated, finally flung the article back into the bunk. Apart from darning there were many things one could do in the dog-watch. For one thing he could sit there doing nothing. Shut his eyes and listen to the talk – or he could look round the fo'c'sle at the untidiness, the table covered with bread crumbs, bits of paper, the deck littered with boots and shoes. But he saw those every day, every watch. Perhaps he could sit very quiet and just think. On the other hand he could go out, sit on the hatch. There was always something to look at outside, water for instance. Water that meant nothing and the sky-line merely a question mark.