Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch [48]
“You’re a rotten friend, Tim. Did you know that?” I said. “What a rotten friend you are.” With horror I felt tears rising.
He smiled in a strange, bland way. “The old man’s gone,” he said.
“What?”
“The old man. Pa. He’s dead.”
I didn’t know what to say. For all the notice Tim had ever taken of his dad, he might as well have been the coal scuttle.
“Oh,” I said coldly, clamping my teeth with the urge to stick my thumbs in his throat. “What did he die of?”
“Death,” he said lightly, “that’s what he died of, death, Jaffy, old boy.”
“My name was on it,” I said, “at the top. She wrote for both of us.”
“No, Jaf.” He looked at me sadly. “She didn’t. I’m sorry, you really are mistaken. She sends her fond regards. At the end, she sends you her fond regards. I told you.”
I wished Ma could write. I missed Ma. I missed Ishbel. Suddenly I had to turn away because of tears in my eyes. Bastard. I’d kick him overboard.
“No more bloody mermaids,” Tim murmured.
“I saw my name,” I said.
Tim turned his head on one side and raised his shoulders, frowning indulgently. Would I lie to you? the look said. Perplexed that I could doubt him.
I walked away and stood at the rail. My chest hurt. Who cares? And anyway why couldn’t she write me my own letter? I ironed out the pain till nothing existed but the foam-flecked decks and the dim, dappled fo’c’s’le that creaked and groaned through the days and nights. Why was I here in this cramped, mad, moving world? There was no time alone anymore. No time, no space, no dreaming place but sleep. George did the right thing jumping ship at the Cape. I missed the sound of the market and the smell of Meng’s and the ring of the bell on Jamrach’s door, and the smell of straw and dung in the yard and the ring of cobbles beneath my feet. I had a place there. Here I was a dogsbody. Foam flew in my face. The world was too big. I turned and saw Dag standing as still as he could as the world rose and fell around him, his creamy-yellow hair plastered flat to his large head. He was trying not to gally a huge, white bird that had alighted on the rail and clung mad-faced there, opening and closing its curved beak and spreading out its wings. Why so angry?
Foam fell like snow. A wave exploded upon our bow, shattering like glass, soaking us up as far as the cookhouse, and when I could see again the bird had gone.
“What is this thing then?” Skip said.
“What thing?”
“This thing. This dragon thing.”
“No one knows.”
Supper was over and we were having a smoke on deck. Skip was doodling idly in his drawing book. “This thing,” he repeated, “this dragon thing, what is it?”
“The Ora,” I told him, because that’s what Dan Rymer sometimes called it. I called Dan over. “He wants to know about the Ora,” I said.
“I don’t know anything about it,” said Dan, lounging against the mast. “I met a man who met a man who met a man who met a man who … That’s the kind of a thing it is. There are stories. It’s a big, fierce thing, of course. And there are islands the natives stay away from.” He’d been speaking very seriously, but here broke into a grin. His teeth were yellowing at the tops, his forehead scored by three or four very deep lines. “Listen to me, me boys, and I’ll tell ye tales to curdle your blood,” he crowed, rubbing his hands together and licking his lips.
“Can I come with you when you go after it?” Skip asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I said so.”
God knows why he was taking Tim. I would have been better. Any day. “What if it’s really a dragon?” Tim said one night as we lay smoking in our bunks. “A real dragon, you know. Breathing fire. Wings. All that? Jesus!” He said it so everyone could hear.
“What d’you want to come for anyway?” Dan asked Skip. “Eager to die?”
Skip shrugged amiably. “I don’t mind,” he said.
Dan sat down with us and lit his pipe. “Of course you don’t,” he said.
“If I can go after a whale,” Skip said, shading away steadily with his pencil, “I can go after anything.