Jamrach's Menagerie (39 page)

Here in this world, al that I’d gone through counted for nothing. No one could know me now. Only Dan, and he’d gone back to his family. We had a dragon between us, never to be mentioned. Stil now it seemed as if the thing’s unleashing caused it al . What was the point of explaining?

Pointless. How was I supposed to go back to work as if nothing had happened?

David kept coming in and messing about with my things.

Would you believe I had souvenirs of my grief? A piece of twine, a scrap of sailcloth, a few knuckle bones. One was from Tim, the others could have been anyone’s. It didn’t matter. The rest they took from us when we were taken onboard.

‘Piss off out of here, you,’ I told him.

‘David, leave him alone.’ My mother’s voice.

Voices downstairs. The normal sounds of life.

A stone crushed my chest. I did not leave my room unless it was very quiet. Ma brought my food up and I picked at it, stuff I’d cried for in the boat. It upset my stomach. She kept on at me to come down, came and sat on my bed and stroked my hair and said everyone was enquiring after me and sending good wishes. ‘I’ve done you a lovely chucky-egg,’ she said.

‘I’m not a baby,’ I replied, floating back into the stream of time, day and night, dark and light, sound and silence, my room and the boat lapping along together, nothing between them. I lay in it like a hedgehog in the winter, huddled warm, the world above persisting beyond my care, like the heavens above the sky or the world of air above the undersea. I saw the wisdom of cats and old dogs that sleep time away.

Whenever I came up it was to sink back again. I was in this state even when up and walking about, as I did to please Ma every now and then, appearing bashful y, sitting at the table to play with my food, bringing the coal in, minding David.

That was easy. He was a placid child and he found me fascinating. That is, he took great satisfaction in studying my face with close attention, a thoughtful frown on his brow.

When he wasn’t doing that he was talking happily to his train, a long red wooden thing cal ed Dob, knocked up by Charley Grant. A few words were coming through, not just Ma and Pa: he was coming out with ‘trousers’ and ‘cot’ and ‘doggy’, and ‘baby’ and ‘drink’ and ‘raining’. And ‘no’, which he said a lot. The rest was babble. I could gain a lot of points with Ma by minding David, and I could do it pretty much in my hedgehog state, so that became my occupation for a lot of the time as I drifted, protected by the soft blanket of slothdom, thoughtless, maddeningly boring, tepid. Panic stirring like a whale in the deeps below.

One night I went out. I went to old Spoony’s and was greeted as a returning son. Bob Barry sat at my table and bought al the drinks, old faces smiled into mine, new ones picked up the story and turned my way. I was quite the toast.

God knows how I got home, I drank a skinful. They had a big dirty pot man and a new little pot boy, about nine years old, couldn’t get enough of me. I remember him in al the bright head-spin of that place, me sitting at my solitary centre, his eager snubby nub of a face looming into mine, grinning wildly. ‘Hel o, mister!’

‘Hel o,’ I replied.

‘You want me to fetch you a pipe?’

I considered. A pipe. That would be nice.

He ran away delighted, returning with a wel -packed meerschaum carved in the likeness of a lush naked woman, which he put solicitously to my lips and careful y lit. It drew beautiful y and fil ed my lungs with warmth.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘Mister.’ He stood back. ‘What was it like?’

I took my time, leaning back and blowing out a thin stream of smoke.

‘What?’ I asked. ‘Which bit of it?’

‘I don’t know. Everything.’

‘Everything?’ I laughed.

Much later he got round to tel ing me that what he real y wanted to know was what it tasted like. Was it like pork?

He’d heard it was like pork.

‘A bit,’ I said. ‘Not quite.’

‘How not like?’

‘I dunno.’

‘Was it nice?’

I didn’t answer.

‘Won’t you tel me?’

‘No.’

He wanted a story. A thing of horror. I have a story, a terrible one. But I’l tel no tales. He doesn’t understand at al : it’s not
that
kind of a story, not horror but grief I have to deal with. Too much to tel . What shal I do with it?

Live with it.

So I rol ed home and went back to bed, and if anyone came round I hid upstairs. They let me. There’s freedom in madness, I didn’t need to justify anything. The world owed me a little peace. I put my head back down under and let the sweet fishes nibble my nose. Oh, sweet sleep, sweet, sweet, sweet …

For about eight months I went on like this. Somewhere in the middle of it al Dan came to see me. I was lying on my bed dozing, and he walked in and kicked my foot. ‘Shake a leg, Jaf,’ he said.

I got up on one elbow.

‘Stinks in here,’ he said. ‘Look what I brought you.’

A bit of scrimshaw, the likeness of a parrot carved on it.

‘It’s walrus,’ he said. ‘I thought you’d like it.’

‘Nice.’ I turned it over and over in my hand.

‘How are you, lad? Your ma says you’re not up to much these days.’

‘True. Stil tired, I suppose.’ I was yawning as I spoke, and he laughed. There wasn’t a chair, so he sat himself down on the floor under the window, his coat hunched up about the back of his head. He fished out a pouch of sweet tobacco, and we sat and smoked as the darkness in the corners of the room turned blue. Little and old and twisted he looked sometimes, but the way he sat and smoked stil carried a curious quality of youth in it, and his hair was stil vigorous.

Had a nasty cough though.

I asked him: ‘How is it? Life ashore?’

And he smiled and said, ‘Precious.’

Half an hour did we sit? I don’t think it was longer. We didn’t talk much. He said from now on he would devote his life to watching his children growing up, and to the study of natural history, and he asked me what
I
would do. I didn’t know.

‘I’d say we have a duty, we two.’ His face was indistinct, but I could see the smoke spuming out of his nostrils.

‘Don’t give me that,’ I said.

He laughed. ‘I know,’ he said, ‘I know what it’s like. But I’m older than you. It makes a difference.’

‘Wisdom? Huh!’ I said. ‘When I look around me, Dan, I don’t see a lot of old wise people.’

He laughed again. ‘Who’s claiming wisdom? I’m only saying being old makes a difference. We came through, we have a duty to make the most of it.’

I was sick of people tel ing me how lucky I was. I didn’t feel lucky. If there was a God, I thought, he must be a twisted sort.

Al of them gone and al that pain and fear, and not a one of them deserved it.

‘Listen,’ I said, ‘there’s no meaning in it. Just chance.

Random, pointless. There’s no other way of seeing it.’ My anger grew. ‘I might not have gone. I nearly didn’t. Some other boy would have got my place. Remember George?

Jumped ship at the Cape? Chance! He’s alive and they’re dead. That’s al it is. Blind chance.’

It was the longest speech I’d made since my return.

Dan’s head was now completely obscured by smoke.

‘You’re right,’ he said.

We sat in silence for a while. The room grew darker and the smel of stew rose up from beneath.

‘So, what are we to do?’ He was invisible. ‘Shal we die?’

A spasm of coughing. ‘Or shal we live?’

A longer silence.

‘A hand is dealt,’ he said. ‘You take it.’

I felt I ought to speak: ‘And
that
is my duty?’

‘It is.’

I was tired, so I lay down and closed my eyes.

‘I’l be going,’ he said.

I didn’t open my eyes. He groaned as he pushed himself up from the floor. ‘These old bones.’ He heaved a sigh.

He stood for a moment as if waiting for me to say something, but I didn’t. Then he said: ‘I know what it’s like. I have it too. The melancholics.’

I stil didn’t speak.

‘You should come to dinner at our house, Jaf,’ he said,

‘when you’re feeling up to it.’

‘Thanks. I wil ,’ I said.

But I couldn’t see it happening soon.

*

It was one morning, the sound of a concertina playing ‘Santy Anno’. Over the rooftops. Towards the river, towards the Highway. Winter and spring had gone, and the summer was ful -blown. I went for a walk, fol owing the sound, but I never found it or it took another direction, I don’t know. I just wandered about, stopping now and then to lol about and watch the river. I could stil hear ‘Santy Anno’ in my head, and it came to me that I must get myself a concertina and learn to play it. It came as something more than an idle thought, more like a kick, so that I almost jumped up there and then and ran for home to get some money and off to Rosemary Lane to pick up an old concertina. But it was so nice by the river watching a big clipper sailing in like a swan that I didn’t move. I could see the sailors moving about their business on the decks and in the rigging, and it seemed to me I could feel the deck beneath my feet, real as ever. There flashed across my eyes then, bright and startling, first a bleeding sunset more beautiful than a heart could bear; then an explosion of pink heart muscle throbbing in a bucket as the boat lurched high; and last: Tim, just as he always was, my daft friend. He was horrible to me sometimes, but I think he loved me. I was dreamy. I drifted home. I don’t know where the day went. The lateness of our yard surprised me. Ma’s shel s were tidy on the windowsil , and David stood ful in the window, smiling snot-faced at me. It was a lovely smile. It brought back that great wave of love I’d felt out there in the boat when I thought I’d never get back. Fil ed me right up.

Terrified me. Oh, my London. Al wasting. I am stil here. I went in and straight upstairs and got into bed with al my clothes on and pul ed the covers over my head and lay down in the dark. My heart was beating loud and scared in my ear that lay against the pil ow. Long as I live I’l never be wise.

Never understand why it happened as it happened, never understand where they’ve gone, al those faces I see clear in the darkness. There’s no way out of this, it’s stark: live or die.

Every given moment a bubble that bursts. Step on, from one to the next, ever onwards, a rainbow of stepping stones, each bursting softly as your foot touches and passes on. Til one step finds only empty air. Til that step, live.

There was a movement in my room, a little mouse creeping. I opened my eyes and stuck my head up from under the covers. It was Ma with a candle, half in and half out the door. ‘You coming down for a bite, Jaf?’ she said.

I was going to say no, but said, ‘Is it ready?’

‘Just about.’

She put the candle down and went away, leaving the door open. I sat up and put my feet down on the floor and yawned til tears forced out from my eyes. I was cold. I went down to the fire and the food.

‘Lovely bit of herring, that is,’ Charley Grant said as I sat down. ‘Here.’ He pushed the bread board towards me.

The herring was crusted with oats, fried brown.

‘We were thinking,’ Ma said, ‘you ought to start going out with Charl on the market some of these mornings. If you’re not doing anything else you might as wel learn the ropes here.’

‘Fine,’ I said, but oh my God, that night lying awake in bed, thinking: got to do something or I’l end up living with Ma and Charley for the rest of my life and die on the fish stal . What’s the choice? Fish. Pot boy. I’d be quite a draw. The cannibal pot boy. Work at Jamrach’s again. Go back to sea.

Back to sea, I suppose.

Next day I went to see Dan Rymer. He must have done wel over the years, one way or another. He had a big house in a fine terrace in a nice part of Bow, with a black railing at the front and steps going down into an area, where a fat black and white cat sat meditating. The door was opened by a girl of about fourteen, aproned and bedraggled. ‘You’re Jaffy Brown,’ she said.

‘How do you know?’

‘I’d know you anywhere,’ she said, ‘never stops talking about you, he don’t. Curly hair, dark skin.’Course it’s you.’

‘Never stops talking about me?’

‘Oh no! Best man he ever sailed with! Here, you’d better come in.’

I stepped into a hal with wal s covered in hangings and clocks and masks from al over the world, and an open door with kids running in and out.

‘In there,’ she said, so I went in. There were tiny tables and big stuffed chairs, a wal ful of books, roses al over the carpet and a large solemn dog not deigning to get up out of its comfortable sprawl in front of the fire. In the window, two caged lovebirds sat breast to breast, eyeing the room. There were children, noisy, I can’t remember how many or who, but they took no notice of me at al til Dan appeared, clasping me to him like a long-lost son, and then they crowded round, curious, and even the dog got up. It was funny seeing Dan at home. Quite the seaman’s beard he was growing for himself these days.

‘Alice!’ he shouted. ‘Jaffy’s come!’ and she came, that tal woman from a far-ago morning at the Greenland Dock (the smel of the morning air, tar, sweat, ale, me and Tim standing together and Ishbel waving, red shoes, black shawl), and stooped, smiling, to kiss my cheek.

‘At last,’ she said warmly. ‘Thank you for bringing him home, Jaffy.’

‘Other way round, ma’am,’ I muttered. ‘It was him brought
me
home.’

She had wide, thin lips, hard angles in her face, lines growing in the corners of her eyes. Very friendly, she was.