Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch [30]
Dan Rymer’s wife was standing on the quay, a tall, straight-backed, fair woman with children in her skirts and a baby on her arm. A shipload of Portuguese sailors disembarking for a spree cast eyes on Ishbel, come straight from Paddy’s Goose and in her red shoes.
She didn’t cry or make a fuss. Each of us got a peck on the mouth. She hugged Tim for a long time and me for a little less.
“You’ll bring him back safe, Jaf,” she said.
I still see her standing there, waving, shielding her eyes from the sun.
hen at last I set foot on-board, the terror that churned my guts was all one with a kind of joy. I wanted to look a whale in the eye. The only whale I’d ever seen was on a picture in the seamen’s bethel, the one that swallowed Jonah. It had no face. It was just a great block, a monstrosity with a mouth. But a whale did have eyes, I knew, and I wanted to look into them, like I looked into the eyes of all the animals that came in and out of Jamrach’s yard. Why did I do this? I don’t know. Nothing I ever solved.
We were all of us wild, great thumping fools with thumping hearts running about that first morning, making a pig’s ear of whatever we turned our hands to. We knew nothing, nothing at all, and we didn’t know each other yet either. Eight of us were green, eight out of a score or more of men—men, I say—fourteen our youngest, Felix Duggan, a mouthy kid from Orpington, sixty our oldest, a scrawny black called Sam. Thank God for Dan looking out for us, with us but not with us. Seven years since I met him, but I never knew him till we sailed together. I do now. I know him better than anyone now.
The Lysander was a beauty, ageing, well preserved, small and neat. The captain watched from the quarterdeck as we made fools of ourselves, while the first mate, a florid, thick-featured madman called Mr. Rainey, strode about swearing and cursing at us in a deranged manner. Christ Jesus, what have I done? I thought. Am I mad? Oh, Ma. The masts and the yards and the sails, the whole great soaring thing was the web of an insane spider against the sky. Ropes, ropes, a million ropes and every bloody one with its own name, and if you got the wrong one you buggered up the whole thing. How we ever got off I’ve no idea. It was the efforts of those few who knew what they were doing: the old black called Sam, another black by the name of Gabriel, a tall Oriental called Yan, and our Dan. These four got the ship off with the help of a few lads not much older than me and Tim, who’d sailed maybe once or twice before and therefore considered themselves old seadogs. We greenies stumbled and bumbled around getting in everyone’s way. I lost sight of Tim. Lost Dan. At every moment I tried to look as if I was confidently on my way from one important task to the next, wearing a face I hoped gave an impression of eager intelligence. I caught sight of the dockside moving away, the people a blur, heard the sudden sweet, hollow chiming of a London clock bidding me a long farewell.
A boy with a round, dark head appeared very suddenly in front of me in my confusion. His face was awkward, stoic in its expression, the mouth self-conscious. He looked like I felt, wavering on his feet with no idea of what to do. For a second we locked eyes in dumb mutual understanding. Then he smiled with his mouth still closed and stiff, a peculiarly leisurely smile for the circumstances.
Mr. Rainey, a clatter of boots and a horse-like snorting, landed between us from above like a god-thrown thunderbolt. “What do you think this is?” he demanded. “A garden party?” He