Ventriloquists (11 page)

Toenail Island

1.

Times without number (or so it seemed) Connors had attempted the clichéd strategies that were supposed to lead you out of sleep and back to the waking world: all to no avail. By pinching himself on the elbow, the best he had achieved was to score some baffled looks and the ire of one of the shiphands, who had told him to stop it immediately; it was getting on their nerves. When he’d shouted for his mother, the ocean had roared back in a different language, and Connors had stopped when his throat was raw, (correctly) assuming that if he didn’t mend his ways he’d be seen as a madman… and only seadogs and Neptune himself were aware of the fate in store for a lunatic, miles from a harbour.

No; it appeared that the sole mission was to wait, to bide his time. Soon enough the curtains would be flung open, in the real world, in his bedroom, and Alannah would tell him that it was time to get up. If Connors concentrated hard, he was certain he could smell her nightscent, her salt and the fadings of her perfume, her ‘Ocean Mist’. Soon soon soon; and if water in dreams had taught him anything over the years (usually after a night on the lager) he would regain consciousness with his erection unenlargeable and his bladder as full as a cow’s udder. He’d be standing in the toilet for a week…

And yet… and yet it was all so
rich
, right down to the faces of the bosun and the crew; to the metal bowls of rice and figs that were tasty and filling but long past any sense of novelty, Connors having been fed nothing else since finding himself shanghaied on board. And the waves themselves: the infinite varieties in the patterns of spray and spume; the bellowing toil of their exertion; their shades, colours: all of this was so much more detailed, surely, than Connors was capable of conjuring up. Were it not for piss-up vacations on the continent, or the occasional dirty weekend in Brighton or Southend, he would never have so much as
seen
the sea, let alone ridden on its violent arching back, confirmed town boy and landlubber that he proudly happened to be.

Furthermore, there was the dog. Connors had not owned a dog since the age of five. His name was Harry, and for little Christopher it was love at first sight. Interdependence too: they had needed one another, and Christopher had taken firm charge of the tin-opener and the cans of Chum that Mum stored on the flat’s balcony. It was Christopher who fed Harry; Christopher who had sung lullabyes to Harry while the dog endured the weekly torment of a shower-nozzle rinse-down in the bathtub; and it was Christopher who had almost died from grief when Harry was knocked down by a van driver making a delivery to the flats.

It was an accident: it was no use blaming the driver. As was the dog’s sporadic wont, Harry had run away from Christopher, tugging the end of the lead from the boy’s hand while they were out for exercise and a dump near the kids’ swings, back in the days when no one cleaned up after their pets. Harry ran into the car park and the driver didn’t see him in time.
It was an accident. An
accident
: but Christopher had been left with no one to blame, in the absence of any accusation of speeding or drunk-driving. It was Harry’s fault, not the driver’s, and not little Christopher’s own.

The boy had sworn never to own another pet. Grief could kill. Grief was a murderer of an uncertain face.

Was Connors reliving the experience, here on the boat in his dreams, after all these years? The dog was certainly different (Harry was a terrier, Chelsea a German Shepherd) and the sex of the animal too. But what else could this enforced pet-ownership be, other than a reminder of his life with Harry when he was still a child? Though why his unconscious would have given her the name
Chelsea
was beyond Connors. Tottenham was his team: Chelsea were pricks.

And come to think of it: what his mind was tying to tell him by allowing him to barge in on a scene of wilful sodomy, two nights earlier – surely this could spell out only disturbing consequences. As it was, Connors had apologised and made a hasty retreat back above deck, with the image of the gaptoothed smile of the boy being buggered like a wasp sting in his brain. He had tried to avoid both parties ever since.

This wasn’t easy, of course; but Connors had learned of one or two corners where, his shift ended and a rest time imposed, he could lay his head for a few hours – try to sleep his path home to waking… Almost without fail Chelsea found him; she joined him. She slept across his lap, while Connors dreamed of Alannah, or the two boys screwing, and laced his fingers through the German Shepherd’s fur or tousled the name-and-address tag dangling from her collar. (It read: 77 Wilberforce Drive, Edlesborough, Bedfordshire.) In his sleep he tasted the sea; he licked spittle over his windchapped lips.

So it was then, while bare-chested and dozing, during one of his off-shifts, that Connors was alerted to a fresh development on the ocean wave. The voice that snapped his sleep was a vibrant shout: ‘
Land ahoy!
’

Opening his eyes, Connors felt Chelsea’s weight, but also the sensation of great velocity. As he pushed the dog off his lap (Chelsea barked), he struggled to his feet and took the full impact of a hard wind, against his face and chest. The ship had achieved a devilish clip. Connors reached for and donned his shirt and jacket (both of which had long since begun to smell). When Chelsea barked again (could she sense his excitement?) Connors leaned down to give her ruff a loving squeeze: he was saved! They all were! For there, off to starboard, a finger-thin strip of land was observable through the mist and bouncing water.

‘Thank you, God,’ Connors whispered.

Chelsea barked again.

‘We’re going home, girl…’

‘Home?’ said a voice behind Connors. The addressed turned; his interlocutor was a boy of no more advanced years than fourteen. He went by the peculiar name of Elvis Leader. Three nights earlier, Connors had helped the kid shave his hair off; the scalp had been ridden with lice. ‘That ain’t no one’s home, Con! But that’s our port. That’s Toenail Island!’

At first Connors was certain that he’d misheard the boy’s words; he tried to make
Toenail Island
into something less bizarre – a corruption of a French word, perhaps, a foreign term. After a few beats, however, Connors simply repeated what he believed he’d heard.

‘That’s right!’ the boy told him. ‘Stick close to the port and you’ll be fine, Con! The cannibals live mostly in the hills.’

‘The what? The
cannibals
did you say?’

‘Aye, cannibals, Con! The don’t like the water.’ Elvis pointed at Chelsea, his fingernail black either with embedded dirt or with bruising to the quick. ‘They like dogs, though. I’d keep her tied up onboard, I were you.’

‘
Elvis
!’ someone shouted.

‘I’m wanted. Nice knowing you, Con!’ The boy span on his heels.

‘Wait!’ said Connors. ‘You mean we don’t get a ride back?’

‘Back where?’ the boy asked.

‘Back to where we started out from!’

The boy’s perplexity grew visibly. ‘We didn’t start out from anywhere, Con,’ he explained. ‘The ship sails as soon as soon as she’s commissioned; she’s been sailing all her life. If you’re lucky, Captain Carousel will need you. If not…’

‘
Elvis, now, boy! Here!
’

‘…if not?’ Connors prompted.

Elvis hefted his shoulders and showed the brown palms of his filthy hands. ‘You volunteer for another captain,’ he said, as if this was the most logical thing under the sun or stars.

As Elvis Leader made his exit, Connors fingered a patch of sunburned skin on the back of his neck. He touched it lovingly, though he relished the pain. Maybe pain would rouse him from his slumber if nothing else would.

Chelsea barked repeatedly as the ship made headway for the shore. Birds that weren’t gulls – or none the like of which Connors had ever seen in life or on screen – circled and wheeled overhead; their caws were monstrous, amplified crow-sounds; their bodies were long and straggly, the plumage an exotic purple; their beaks a bright green in the shape of the sharp end of scissors. It was mainly these vicious-looking creatures that had caught Chelsea’s attention: the bitch was hopping on her hind legs to snap at them, working her way up into a frenzy.

Connors did not try to calm her. He saw no point in the exercise; indeed, her noise, after days and nights of mostly the sounds of weather, came as a most welcome change. Let her bark! He didn’t even care who she annoyed; he’d disembark in a matter of what? – minutes? hours? – and as soon as his feet made contact with
terra firma
he had no intention of climbing aboard another fucking boat for the rest of his days. Despite the conversation that he’d just shared with Elvis, Connors couldn’t imagine that he’d need to see his travelling companions ever again.

To Hell with it. It was
his
dream.

My gaff, my rules, he thought with a smile that looked crazy
and vexed at the same instant.

2.

Connors hadn’t been in the port long before he started to believe that he was being followed. While stopping on the quay, for example, to watch a man with a finger missing on each hand gut an example of one of the ugliest fish Connors had ever seen, Connors would roll his eyes left and catch a glimpse of his subtle pursuer as he ducked down behind a large groyne, or a rowboat bulging with fishing nets. So Connors would wait; maybe next time he’d see his follower’s face. But no; even if Connors turned quickly, despite the fact that he’d been sure that someone was directly behind him, there’d be no sign of the other, only crowds of men and women, many of them in flowing robes and colourful attire that appeared to Connors’s decidedly untravelled eyes as North African… The people he saw in the port were an odd mix. Though their features were vaguely Oriental, their skin was a mixture of olive-European and dark, so maybe Connors’s own white face was a reason that he was feeling self-conscious; maybe no one was following, after all. It was only in his head. Maybe…

Then again, it could be the dog that had so fascinated the islanders. Despite what Elvis Leader had advised, Connors had felt guilty at the thought of leaving her alone on the ship; as the ship approached port she had shaken and whined as though beaten. In fact, her actions had made Connors believe – if only briefly – that Chelsea could read his mind and was thus well aware of his plans. So he’d brought her with him. For a leash he had used three tea towels from the ship’s kitchen, tied together and then lashed to Chelsea’s collar. It would have to do; but if she saw something that made her run from him, as Harry had done, then God help him. She’d vanish as fast as a breeze. At least there weren’t any cars.

No cars. The only transportation on the quayside was the rickshaw, several hundred examples of which weaved their way through the throngs, their bicyclists, young and of either gender, pedalling madly and swearing (it seemed to Connors) in a language that he could not comprehend. For all the good the raised voices did, perhaps the waterfront strollers failed to recognise the dialect as well: there was certainly no hurry among them to move out of the rickshaws’ way. These vehicles were mostly transporting catches of the ugly fish; Connors assumed that they were
en route
to market or straight to a restaurant’s baking tray.

That’s a point, thought Connors. Food… Apart from rice and figs, he hadn’t eaten anything since… Jesus… since his last supper with Dorman, and even then Dorman had done most of the eating. Connors pictured the older man slurping on chicken wings. At the time he had thought Dorman’s table manners disgraceful; now (he realised) he would do anything to watch the man violate a plat of greasy poultry one more time… A nauseous sadness rode up Connors’s body, using his organs as a ladder. Grief belted through his brain; in order to stop himself before he started crying, Connors hiccoughed. The memory of Dorman’s decapitation returned with force.

Food.

Where and what could he eat? As they’d filed onto the gangplank, Captain Carousel had handed them all five coins – three that looked like silver, two that looked like bronze, but Connors doubted that either metal was in these coins’ constitution – and Connors had thanked him and let Chelsea lead him down to dry land. These five coins were in Connors’s jeans pocket, jangling stiffly as he walked against the other coins therein. The
English
coins. The four pound coins, the three fifty pees, the seven twenty pees, the six tens, the five fives and grip’s worth of shrapnel – twos and pennies. This was in addition to the notes in the same pocket, the notes in his wallet: all he needed was a
bureau de change
. He was minted. Maybe it was this money that the follower wanted; if so, could Connors surmise that it was someone from the ship? Foolhardy it might have been (in retrospect) to have counted it so brazenly, so openly, in front of the other men, but if it hurried him back to his dreambed – to his sickbed if need be – then Connors felt prepared for any attack on his person. He would fight till he woke.

No assault was forthcoming, however; just that nagging intuition that he was being tailed. As Connors moved inland, into a labyrinth of narrow alleyways, the protective shadowy cool of which was pleasant after so much sun, he sought somewhere to dine. Did no one
eat
on Toenail Island? This was no nightmare seafront of candyfloss sellers, of stands selling mussels and whelks; in the alleys’ storefronts, on the contrary, the displays were of jewellery, fashioned from what looked like bone, and of ornaments, and of wristwatches with blank faces and no hands.

Eventually, after what seemed like twenty-or-so minutes of walking, Connors found himself trailing the aroma of meat cooking. Chelsea’s bark suggested that the dog was identically ravenous, and Connors allowed her to lead him down passage after passage, the light above dimming with every corner they rounded, moving deeper into the maze. Then they were up on it. And if it had been in England it would have had the Devil’s own job of attracting customers. For a start, it was filthy; flies the size and colour of sugar cubes – they hummed and buzzed on both ceiling and walls: a lively confetti. For another thing, the establishment was plainly more than a simple eatery: blood was splashed up on the walls; red-brown footprints crossed the mucky packed-dirt floor, as if more than one pair of feet had walked blood in on their shoes. The heads of animals that Connors didn’t recognise hung from fireplace-wide joists in the roof; in fact, some of these hunts were so fresh that they still dripped blood – drip! – and unable to hold herself back, Chelsea began lapping hungrily at a pool of gore. It was a butcher’s shop. But with three sets of tables and chairs. And a tantalising smell of roasting meat in the air, but neither customers nor any sign of a proprietor. So Connors called: