Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch [58]
“I had a horrible dream.”
“Never mind, Jaf,” he said, “it’s only a dream. Only in your head.”
I thought about this for a moment. It gave me an invaded feeling. “How did something like that get in my head?” I asked, as if it was an earwig that had crawled into my ear.
“Like what?”
We were whispering so as not to wake the others snoring softly around us.
“I don’t think I want to talk about it just now,” I replied after a moment. “In the night and all. Tomorrow maybe.”
“Suit yourself.” He yawned mightily.
“Some dreams …” I said after another moment.
“I know.”
We drifted separately.
“I’m scared, Tim,” I said.
A pause. He knew I didn’t mean just the dream.
“So am I,” he said, and reached out and squeezed my shoulder briefly. “Silly old Jaf.” He gave me a small push.
“Do you ever think of home?” I asked.
He thought. “Of course I do.”
“You don’t seem to. You never mention it.”
“Well, neither do you.”
“S’pose not.”
A longer pause, then, “Everyone thinks of home,” he said, “but it doesn’t do to be rambling on about it all the time.”
“Like Dan.”
It was true. Dan in his cups, sentimental, cloudy eyed, toasting Alice, recalling the first smiles of his last born.
“True. But that’s Dan.”
“If he’s so wild about home and hearth,” I wondered, “why’s he follow a trade like this?”
Tim snorted softly. “She wouldn’t seem as sweet perhaps if he was with her all the time.”
“Remember sarsaparilla?” I said. “From the herb man?”
“Ah! What would I give for a lovely cold cup of sarsaparilla! Remember the smell.”
So clear, a lattice of herbs above the herb man’s stall, rose-many, camomile, milky feverfew.
“Saturday night at Spoony’s,” Tim said.
Push through a swing door into clouds of smoke and laughter, cut some hard and smoke it with a bottle of wine till your head gets tipsy and you jaunt down the narrow passage in the dim gaslight, and duck under the chintz into the dancing place all a-thunder with feet. Girls with ruby lips and bouncing bubs, merchant sailors, caps awry. The piper with his wild elbows, steel heels a-flying. A gold watch hangs askew above the mantel.
“Yeah,” said Tim, “home sweet home. You still scared?”
“Yes.”
“S’all right,” he said. “Here, give us your hand.”
I held mine out and he took it. “You know,” he said, “when I go home I’ll be the man of the family.”
After that there was no more talking. I thought about Ishbel and her mother in that house together, and wondered how they were managing. She’d hate it. Her mother drove her mad. I suppose they wouldn’t miss the old man so much, those mermaids never brought in much, but they’d be glad when Tim was back. I could see her, sitting by the fire gnawing moodily at her terrible nails. What was she doing? Someone would have her, good-looking girl like that. Out she’d be, with some beau, some sailor. I wouldn’t think about it.
Tim’s hand slid out of mine when he fell asleep. As for me, I got not a wink till the seventh bell and by that time it was hardly worth it.
We rowed in through house-high rocks covered in barbarous plants like halted, green explosions. A river ran down from a high, forested ravine, skirting one edge of a sheltered beach, horseshoe shaped, fringed with creamy-blossomed trees and split about the other edge by a long spur of dark pink rock. Beyond, upland and inland, tier on tier, slender, shock-headed palms leaned elegantly one way, as if about to pull themselves up from the earth and set off on some sweeping migration. On either side of the bay, tall crags rose up.
There we were wandering about on the beach like great fools, waiting with sticks against the dragon. The sand was damp and flat and rippled, scattered with rocks here and there, and the sky was grey and cold looking, but I was running with sweat. The heat seemed to come from within as well as without, as if my organs were slowly cooking in the oven of my flesh. Out in the bay were three or four islands, rounded tumps of shaggy green. The cage was placed at the narrowest part of the beach. If ever a place was dragonish, this was. The arms of the bay sprawled out