Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch [124]
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 on-board.
“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 bashfully, 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 called 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 all 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 all 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. “Hello, mister!”
“Hello,” 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 well-packed meerschaum carved in the likeness of a lush, naked woman, which he put solicitously to my lips and carefully lit. It drew beautifully and filled 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?