Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch [123]
Tea spilled on the cloth.
“Oh, Ishbel!” her mother chided.
“It’s only a saucer,” she said.
I leaned forward to help with the mopping up, but she slapped the back of my hand. She was shaking with tears, they came in a feverish rush. “Shame you never even found the dragon,” she said, the words catching in her throat.
Damn that thing. Damn it to hell for calling up demons. Our superstition.
“Let me help,” I said, reaching out once more towards the mess on the table.
“Oh, leave it!” Ishbel tossed herself back into her chair.
“There you are, love, don’t cry like that,” her mother said, but the saying of it set her off too, and I couldn’t stand it anymore. I stood up.
“I have to go,” I said desperately.
“Yes,” said Ishbel, “this is very hard.”
Eyes tight closed, Mrs. Linver sucked her knuckles, clicked her throat.
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Linver,” I said again lamely, but she waved me away.
Ishbel stood. “I’ll see you out.”
In the dark hall she threw her arms round me and squeezed me and kissed my mouth hard. “It’s so good to see you again, Jaffy!” She was laughing and crying at the same time. I couldn’t see her face. I grabbed her again and pulled her close.
“God, Ishbel,” I mumbled. Her soft, warm breast pressed against me.
“I know,” she said. “It must have been hell.”
“God.” I wouldn’t let her go. She was all things good I’d longed towards when I was in the boat. I could have crushed her.
“Poor, poor Jaffy,” she crooned, swaying about with me and stroking the back of my head. It lasted a few long seconds, till we drew clumsily apart and bumped giddily towards the door as if drunk.
“Come and have a proper talk with me, won’t you?” she said as she opened the door for me. “I’m back at work tomorrow and I won’t get a chance to breathe before Friday week at least. Will you go in the Malt Shovel on Saturday?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“Well, I’ll see you soon,” she said, smiled and gave me one last kiss, tears still running from her eyes, and there I was out in the early evening, reeling, down towards the Highway where the sailors and colliers were beginning to whoop it up. I went into a tavern and got very drunk with a sailor from Naples, who swore and scratched his bug bites savagely for the entire duration of my stay, making his arms bleed. Filthy lodgings, he said, spitting. Filthy food and filthy girls.
“I agree,” I said. “Filthy, all filthy,” and spent some more money. I could never go back.
“I killed my friend,” I said to the Italian.
He waved an arm forgivingly as if to say, don’t we all? I opened my mouth to tell more but was dumb. Never go back. She was engaged. No point at all. Just rub salt in the wounds whenever she saw me.
The touts and whores had noted my carelessness and circled round, but I was wise to all that. Around midnight I went home in a cab, and to bed, with spinning head and dry mouth, heart as sick and bloated as a tick.
They tell me I was afloat for sixty-five days.
You don’t easily get back from a thing like that. Dark in the night I’d lie awake and know I’d never really returned, that I was lost still and always would be. I floated in a stream of babbling time. I went to ground. Never went to see Ishbel. She sent a letter, but I ignored it. Said sorry she missed me at the Malt Shovel, she hoped I was well. Well, she was a kind-hearted girl, she would say that. I went back to bed and wouldn’t get up. I stayed upstairs at Ma’s. Slept and slept, sat and sat, drank and drank, scribbled my testament and tore it up, again and again. The sounds outside my window soothed me. My bruise ached, a permanent bruise on my upper right arm, from Tim’s grip on the boat. I should have shown her that. I should have shown Ishbel. Now and then I looked out over the wintry rooftops. Dream and life and thoughts, darks and lights, coalescing, my head no more than a bubble about to burst. My mind walked on cloud tops, soared in trances of killing delight. My head was a chasm. The universe pressed down on me.
Ma kept coming in and nagging. I kept sending her away. One day she said she’d bumped into