Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch [38]
“A million?” Tim leaned back on his elbows. “God, I hope not.”
Skip lay down on his back and stretched out, closing his eyes. His eyelids were thick and heavy, china white. “This creature,” he said, “this thing. This thing. Think you’ll find it?”
“If we do we’ll be rich.” I lay down too. It was hot.
“No,” Skip said. “You won’t. You won’t be rich.”
“How do you know?”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I do.”
“Huh.” Tim lay down too. There we three lay under a hot sun. When I closed my eyes everything was orange. I don’t have to go home, I thought. I can go anywhere. The world’s endless. I could live here. I could live anywhere. It doesn’t have to be the Highway and the river and Spoony’s and Meng’s. I could live on a mountain. In a jungle. Where it’s all flowers. Miles of distance and nothing sure and nothing the same. I tried to say it, but it came out wrong, so I gave up.
“Just think,” Skip said, and chuckled as if he’d just thought of something very funny, “next second. Now! The mountain explodes.”
Tim laughed. “Boom!”
“Funny, isn’t it?” said Skip. “Any minute we could all be dead.”
“Where you from, Skip?” I asked.
He didn’t answer for so long I’d forgotten I’d asked, then: “Rochester,” he said, “once upon a time.”
All the boats were fully laden and still there was a bit of whale oil left.
“Think that’s sense?” Rainey was barking at Simon Flower. “Giving it away? Hey! Boy! That what you were told?”
“No, sir,” said Simon, a dark-haired, serious boy who gave Tim a run for his money when it came to beauty.
“No more, no more. Tell them no more,” yelled Rainey at John Copper, who was trying to drive away a gaggle of old beggar women as if they were geese.
“How much is left, Mr. Rainey?” Captain Proctor, coming along behind, speaking mildly.
I don’t know about church, but Rainey had certainly had a drink. It came off him in a waft as he turned. “Not much,” he said, tilting a barrel.
“What do you think, Mr. Flower?”
Simon was blushing furiously. “Dregs, sir,” he said.
Proctor thought for a moment then decided. “Drain them off. Let ’em have what’s left. Damn little anyway.”
The old women rushed forward and mobbed the barrels, pushing each other about and shoving their cups under the taps. It was getting dark. Dan Rymer was sitting on the sea wall. Far out in the bay, the Lysander had lit its lanterns, and lights were appearing inland. Dan called me and Tim over. “This is your first real run ashore,” he said. “Stick with me. There is no better guide.”
I don’t know how old Dan was. He was wrinkled, but he acted like a younger man, and from time to time a slow boyish kind of smile would illuminate his ruined face: ruined because there was some handsome ghost still hiding in it, rarely seen and all but completely buried in its dried-up, ageing appearance. He’d always just been Mr. Jamrach’s favourite supplier, a gruff, familiar, now-and-then presence, and since we’d embarked he’d not had that much to do with me because Gabriel seemed to have taken over my training. But that night in Horta was the night I started getting to know him.
The narrow lanes were fragrant with flowers. The walls of the houses were patterned, coloured. To a tavern—or was it a house?—I’ll never know. A golden light spilled through a door. A woman was singing. Her dark voice came out into the night and it sounded like heaven. Blossom billowed down the walls, hung over the narrow street, purple and white. We came to a room full of good will, the walls full of saints, the tables of men who laughed, and women far finer than the whores of Ratcliffe Highway. These women—these dark foreign women. Their black eyebrows, their brown skin, their complicated way of moving. A rich aroma opened the pores beneath my tongue, sweet herbs and meat juices. There was a fire on the ground, a pot cooking on it.
I was at a table, my back against a wall, Tim to one side, Dan across the table in front of me. I drank something strong and dark and red out of a round leather bottle. A handsome, friendly woman, who spoke fast foreign all the time, gave us stew and