Jamrach's Menagerie (40 page)

Her dark brown eyes were steady and intel igent. ‘Say what you like,’ she said, ‘you brought him home.’

One of the girls brought in tea, and I felt myself the centre of attention. I was getting used to that, me being the cannibal boy. Al of Dan’s eight children were there, the biggest a slow straw-haired boy of fifteen, the youngest a slobbery tot that chomped on its fist on a big sister’s knee. They gathered, standing and sitting, just staring. I winked at one of them, a smal boy, who turned coy and looked away. Dan shooed people about, made me sit in the biggest chair by the fire and sat himself down opposite me. He leaned forward, grinning madly, to strike a match on the side of the fireplace. The dog nosed his knee thoughtful y and was rewarded with a rough scratch on its sable loose-skinned neck. His wife poured the tea.

‘Sugar?’ She stood poised with the spoon.

‘Three please.’

‘Sweets for the sweet.’ She smiled. When she sat, the way she drew her skirts about her, straightened her back and lifted her cup to her lips in one long elegant movement reminded me of dancers I’d seen, girls at Paddy’s Goose and the Empire.

I wanted to say to her: he never stopped talking about you.

It was a bit of a joke, him and his Alice. But it was al strange.

I couldn’t. Something was awkward. She asked very kindly after my ma and the family and if I’d had time yet to think about what I was going to do next, and I laughed and said I was spoilt for choice. We sat for a while talking of this and that and nothing much, til she got up and herded al the others out before her, saying she was sure we two had things to talk about.

‘Shal I send in more tea?’ she asked from the door.

‘Brandy,’ said Dan.

‘Brandy it is.’

The brandy was good. We sat by the fire, smoking and sipping, serene. I remember little of the conversation.

‘She’s very nice,’ I said, ‘your Alice. She’s lovely.’

He nodded. ‘Fel on my feet, there. God knows how.’

‘You’ve got a lot of books.’

He turned his head and looked at them. ‘Natural history,’

he said.

I got up and had a look. There were the works of Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wal ace, Charles Lyel and Thomas Huxley, although at that time I wouldn’t have known the names of any of those people apart from Darwin, a great tome of whose had had a permanent place on the bookcase in Mr Jamrach’s office for years. One whole shelf was stuffed with Dan’s own scrapbooks and memos from his travels, and for the rest it was al animals and birds and fish and plants, and books about the sea. I picked out this and that one. Audubon’s
The Birds of America
. Beautiful pictures.

‘Take it,’ Dan said. ‘Go on.’

It was a wonderful book, the smel , the very feel of it. It rested on my lap for the rest of the visit, my hands smoothing its cover. When I stood on the doorstep taking my leave, the sun, appearing suddenly, shone on the cover.

‘I’m going back to sea,’ I told him.

He nodded. ‘Probably the best thing for now. The sea gives a man time to think.’

I held up the book. ‘I’l treasure this.’

‘Go on with you,’ he said, and gave me a shove.

I went down to the Victoria Dock and looked around and found a ship bound for Spain, and signed. Ma slapped my face when I told her.

‘How dare you!’ she cried. ‘How dare you do this to me!’

‘Ma,’ I said, tears springing to my eyes, ‘lightning don’t strike twice.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Look, Ma,’ I said, ‘I could get run down by a cab tomorrow. Think about it sensibly.’

‘Don’t you talk to me about sense,’ she said, and for a moment I felt sorry, but it was too late. I had two days.

‘Ma,’ I said, putting my hands on her shoulders, ‘I have to do something. It’s only Spain. The sea gives a man time to think.’

‘Oh,’ she said bitterly, ‘you didn’t get any of that done up there al these months then?’ motioning with her eyes to the ceiling.

But she calmed down as she always did, and I let her bustle around me bringing soup and bread. She didn’t say anything any more about not wanting me to go.

Our Captain calls all hands

We sail tomorrow

Leaving these fair pretty maids

In grief and sorrow.

It’s in vain to weep for me

For I am going

To everlasting joys

And fountains flowing.

Funny how sad that sounds.

Then began my ramblings again, and there were adventures and girls and good friends and I got myself a concertina and learned to play ‘Santy Anno’. The whaling was al washed up and I was through with it anyway. It was traders and clippers for me from now on, no more of these long voyages. I shipped to Spain and Hol and and the Baltic shores, and once to Alexandria, and was home fairly regular.

Once or twice I saw Ish and we were civil but strange with one another. Once I saw her with the fiancé, a good-looking sort, tal er than me. I hated seeing her. Sent me home and back to bed with my head under the pil ow and an aching mind. And I was wel on the way to being one of those salty types who can’t abide the land for more than it takes for him to spend his cash, only I discovered a liking for learning.

16

There are turnings and twistings, a tangle of wool that needs sorting out and winding into a bal , but I ain’t doing it. It’s broth, al sorts thrown in and floating, the things that don’t fit, lost things, offshoots. In and out we rol , waves of time and impression, rol ing forever on the shore, waves and waves becoming ripples and ripples, smal er and fainter til sleep comes.

Sometimes we walk along by the old places. It’s changed, the Highway, like a face changes, til you see the face beneath the face beneath the face.

There’s a song, you probably know it:

Oh, I am a cook and a captain bold,

And the mate of the
Nancy
brig, And a bosun tight, and a midshipmite,

And the crew of the captain’s gig.

God knows how many verses it’s got. I once heard a man sing the whole thing on stage at the Empire and you should have seen the audience fal ing about. Funny, isn’t it? You’d bring the house down if you got up onstage and made an act of that, someone once told me. Probably true.

’T’was on the shores that round our coast From Deal to Ramsgate span,

That I found alone on a piece of stone

An elderly naval man.

Of course, you know his story. You find a naval man with a story on just about every other stone around here. They’ve seen a lot, these people of Ratcliffe Highway. They don’t mind me.

One of my shore runs I met Mrs Linver coming out of the stale bread shop, practical y knocked her over in fact. A funny old woman she’d become with those wild staring eyes and her frizzy hair gone thin and tarnished.

‘Oh, Jaffy,’ she said, ‘you never come and see me!’

So much time had passed. Her greeting surprised me.

‘I’m not home much,’ I said, shifting awkwardly. Actual y I was very glad to see her. God knows why. She was just like the old days, that’s why.

‘Wel , you could make the effort now and then,’ she said,

‘it’s not hard.’

‘I don’t know, Mrs Linver,’ I said, ‘I thought you might not want to see me.’

‘Don’t be stupid.’ She shifted her basket to the other arm grumpily. ‘You’ve got to get over that,’ and stomped off.

My God, that brought a tear to me. I ran after her. ‘How are you, Mrs Linver?’ I said. ‘Can I carry that for you?’

‘Too late now,’ she grumbled, but I persisted and walked her home to Fournier Street, and went in and built up the fire for her and made tea, and sat and drank it with her for a while. I felt curiously fond of her, painful y grateful that she could bear to be with me.

‘
She
never comes to see me either,’ she said. ‘Always the same, ain’t it?’

‘I don’t suppose she gets much time,’ I said.

‘She does, she just don’t come. Too busy getting her beauty sleep. She’s gone back to the singing.’

‘Has she? Where at?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. The Goose, I think.’

‘Stil engaged, is she?’

‘Oh yes,’ she said, preening as if it was her own beau she was talking about. ‘He’s a lighterman, he is. Very steady.’

I didn’t mean to but I went to Paddy’s Goose. My feet just took me, and there she was sitting at a crowded table, soft and tipsy, in tears, giggling. I hadn’t seen her since that time, so stiff and awkward, when she kissed me in the hal . I walked straight over and pushed in next to her.

‘Saw your ma,’ I said.

She turned to me smiling, her face shiny, sleepy eyed. ‘It’s Jaffy,’ she said, leaning on my shoulder and putting a knuckle in her mouth, ‘my dear old Jaffy.’ The way she slumped, the peculiar fixed stare. Drunk off her sil y head.

Now I was here I didn’t know what to do.

‘I’m away tomorrow, early,’ I said.

‘Lord,’ she said, her head rol ing back, ‘isn’t that always the way?’

I put my arm round her. ‘Where’s your Frank?’ I asked her.

A crowd jostled our shoulders, making the curls on the back of her head bob.

‘Somewhere around.’ She glanced vaguely about. ‘My lovely, lovely Jaffy,’ she said. The kiss she gave me was hot and heavy, blunt and heedless as a child’s. ‘Don’t worry, Jaf, he won’t mind if I kiss you,’ she said, crying al the time, pul ing away and wiping her cheeks with her palms.

‘Why are you crying?’

‘Me?’ She laughed.
‘I’m
not crying. I’m doing very nicely, darling. Packed my job in,’ she said, ‘Couldn’t stand it.

Fool’s game, I can make more down here. Look, sweetheart, watch me,’ and she grabbed and drained her drink straight down, a practised passage, then jumped up and joined the dancers. The fiddler, a less skilful man than Simon Flower, played a waltz. What a show that girl was, smiling her way throught the bright smoky room. I wasn’t sober. How much I remember is true I don’t know, but it seemed to me she never actual y took her eyes off me while she danced, even when the fiancé came and put his arm round her waist. But I waited and she never came back to our table. In the end I lost her in the crowd, and went home half hating her.

I steered clear of her after that. She was too unsettling. I went back to sea, and at night in the fo’c’s’le by candlelight I’d look at my Audubon birds. Somewhere I picked up a drawing book like the one Skip used to have, and whenever she came creeping in my head I set to copying the pictures as careful y as I could. It cleared my head, dropped a curtain between me and my ceaseless bloody mind. I didn’t know if my drawings were any good.
I
liked them. I went mad raiding Dan Rymer’s bookcases when I was home, grabbing any book with pictures of birds in it. Mr Jamrach gave me
Cage
and Chamber Birds
by J.M. Bechstein. My drawings multiplied: lark, linnet, lovebird, woodcock. I loved the detail.

Siskin, nightingale, goldfinch, waxbil . Stil she wouldn’t go away. I’d draw every known bird in the world. Avadavat, turtle dove, chaffinch, bul finch. It would be something to do and it would take care of time and give me some pleasure. I’d do al the different varieties of al the different birds. I’d have to learn to paint. It could take the rest of my days.

In the silent bird room at Jamrach’s I sat and drew. The birds on my pages were free. I gave them backgrounds: lakes reflecting castles, cauliflower forests, mountains like volcanoes. I’d seen the bamboo houses of songbirds on Flores and the Sumban coast, a cage like a dol ’s house in Patagonia and one like a diamond in Alexandria. I’d seen a cage of ivory, one of glass. Temples and palaces, barrels and bel s, hexagons, octagons, domes.

Jamrach’s cages were prisons. I imagined those poor feathery scraps inside, flying wild in my pencil’s dove-grey depths, and remembered the man with the milky eye crafting his bamboo palaces, patiently tapping in the little wooden pegs. Poor things, I thought, you’re here now and there’s no going back. I’l make you some nice houses. And I drew cages with tops you could lift off, and ones you could open by a door in the side. Space. Lofts for roosting. You could have a ladder between, they’d like ladders.

Then I thought: why can’t you have a shop where al the birds fly about? Like an aviary? An inside garden, with a pergola, and plants that grow indoors, and a glass roof. Like rich people have, only it would be a shop and people could come in and buy a bird. You could make a wild. You could have rocks and streams and rivers and fish and birds and even a few smal animals, voles and dormice and such, al living free. Waterfal s and pools.
Trees
.

People would pay to come in and wander in Eden for half an hour. Everlasting joys and fountains flowing. Bowers for sitting. A treetop walk. Green and yel ow parrakeets flitting here and there.

‘You’d never make money like that,’ Jamrach said when I showed him my sketches of the wild.

A cartload of canaries had just come in from Norwich, spangles and lizards. The boys were stowing them, stacking up the waxbil s a level or two higher to make room.

‘Nice cages though,’ he said, turning the pages. ‘You could sel those.’

A little laudanum suits me. Now and then. A little absinthe with sugar. It brings a little dream sense now and then.

Dreams are not real, but have a very weighty seeming, and spawn feelings, and change the way things look the next day.

So, for instance, as I was rapt in the soft shading on a siskin’s throat, suddenly I saw Skip’s face, and knew I’d dreamt him last night and this was why I woke so strange and frail this morning.