Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch [27]
Poor Ma, though, she was distraught. “Oh, I don’t want you to go to sea, Jaffy,” she said when I told her. “I always knew this would happen one day and I always wished it wouldn’t. It’s a horrible life. Much too hard for a lad like you. You can’t turn back when you’re out there, you know.”
She was living in Limehouse those days. She’d taken up with a fish man by the name of Charley Grant, a good enough sort. She was preparing herrings on a board when I told her, slitting their bellies and slapping them down, whacking their spines flat with the blunt of a knife.
“I know that, Ma. I won’t want to turn back.” It seemed wrong to show my delight considering the state of her, but it was hard not to. She’d gone red and was fighting to keep in the tears. As for me, my feet were lifting from the ground.
“Hark at him,” she said, “he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
Poor old Ma. You’d never take her for a child now. She’d thickened and grown weatherbeaten, and her hair was going grey at the sides. Still walked like a sailor though.
“I always knew it would come to this,” she said, with her sore-looking eyes and me feeling bad. I loved my ma. To me, she would ever and always be a warm armpit in the night.
“What you want then, Ma?” I said, trying to jolly her along. “Eh? What shall I bring you back?”
“I don’t want anything, you silly sod.”
“Don’t worry, Ma! It’ll be the making of me. Can’t hang about here all my life, can I? There’s no money here. How you expect me to look after you in your old age if I hang around here all my life? This is a chance of a lifetime, this is. Think!”
“That’s the trouble,” she said, pushing me aside with a fishy hand and taking off her apron, “I’m thinking all the time. Oh damn. Have you eaten?”
“Had plenty. Look, Ma, just pour me some tea, will you?”
“Well, it all sounds ridiculous to me,” she said, going over to the fire.
I laughed. “And there’s the beauty of it,” I said. “It is! Be proud! You can tell everyone: My son’s gone off to catch a dragon. Like knights of old.”
“You said you wasn’t going to be involved in any hunting!” She turned accusingly, the poker in her hand.
“I’m not, I’m not, I’m not, I’m only saying. Of course I’m not.” I laughed again. I felt quite hysterical. “That’s Tim, not me. But I’m part of the enterprise.”
How very important that sounded. How I milked it with the girls at Spoony’s and the Malt Shovel. The enterprise! The great enterprise!
“You’re only fifteen,” she said, “and you know you’re not a big boy.”
“Don’t I just.”
Oh, didn’t I just. It had its rewards. They loved me like a babe, those big whores, all wanted to take me into their soft, lemony, lavender bosoms. Many a time for sure I sank my face in there between the creamy swells and drank deep like a babe of mother’s milk, and never a penny was I charged for what others paid for. I was a big man now, though. Fare thee well, you London girls. Jaf Brown is off around the world, and when next you see him he’ll have a tale to tell.
“Oh, Jaffy, I don’t want you to go!” Ma palmed an eye angrily. “I wish you’d—”
“Please, Ma,” I said, embarrassed and irritated.
Please don’t spoil it for me, I wanted to say. I don’t want to have to worry about you while I’m out there, do I? Please please, Ma, don’t make it hard.
“There’s money in it, Ma,” I said. “A lot of money in it. He’s a very rich man.”
“Oh, sit down,” she said, “have your tea.” She knew there was nothing she could do.
“That’s nothing,” Tim said when I saw him. “You should have heard my ma. Funny!” And his long, fluttery fingers flew up around his face. “ ‘Oh, not you! Not you too, Tim! No-o-o! No-o-o-o! Oh, Lord God in Heaven! N-o-o-o-o!’ ”
We laughed. What’s a boy for if not to break his ma’s heart?
“Let’s go to Meng’s,” he said.
Ishbel was in Meng’s with Jane from Spoony’s. That’s what she did. Work all night bringing in the money at Quashies, at the Rose and Crown, at Paddy’s Goose, and in the afternoon go to Meng’s. Drago was long gone, broken up bit by bit over one sweltering June week when the sloppy