Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch [93]
Dan gently woke Mr. Rainey. The captain’s boat came nigh, the faces of Yan and John and Simon and Wilson and Dag. Dag’s broad face was the colour of teak, his hair white as Lancashire cheese, his whiskers wild and wiry. The captain and Mr. Rainey gave out our portions.
“Yum yum,” Tim said.
“Reached for a chicken, got me a goose,” sang Gabriel. The sores on his lips had cracked and were running into one another. His forehead shone.
“Here, get this in.” Dan trickled water from his fingers through my lips. My tongue unstuck.
“I’m going in,” said Skip.
“I wouldn’t,” Dan said. “You get salt in them sores you’ll be screaming.”
“Can’t make a difference,” Skip replied. “I’m salt all over anyway. Long as it’s cold I don’t care.”
“Me too,” Tim said. “I’ll come too.”
“Don’t let go the side,” said Dan.
So they went over, softly sinking in the cool sea, their heads bobbing alongside. It was funny. They didn’t know whether to groan for the salt sting or sigh in ecstasy as the water cooled their blood. So they laughed instead, looking at one another and giggling like children.
“What’s it like?” I asked.
I would have gone, but I had a feeling that if I left the boat, I’d never get back, so I just hung over and dangled my hands. Then Gabriel too slid over the side. Had to, he said, he was burning up. Not me, said Dan. The sun would soon sink, then we’d feel cold enough.
The boats came together. Soon after, up goes the cry from Skip that there’s shells under the boat, hundreds of them, and they start pulling them off and cracking them and stuffing their mouths with the flesh from inside. It went dark, sudden like it does, and all you could hear as the lanterns were lit were the splashes in the water and the shouts of excitement. Both boats were covered. We passed over the buckets, and when they were filled and not a single shell left under the boats, the boys were too weak to climb back over the side, struggling to raise a knee or haul themselves up with an arm, like kittens going upstairs, pathetic and funny, laughing at themselves. All of us laughing as we pulled them in like heavy nets, eating the barnacles or winkles or whatever they were. Beautiful, soft and succulent, plucked living by the white neck from the brown shell. We said we’d save some, but we ate the lot in one. All except Mr. Rainey, who said he couldn’t fancy them. Couldn’t fancy them! Offer me a worm, I’d have given it a go.
“Come on, man,” Dan urged, “they’ll do you good. Just one, here, try.”
“Let me sleep,” the poor man said, laying his head against the gunwale, folding his arms and closing his eyes.
It’s funny, the things you say when words are strictly limited. A word was a sacred, precious, much-laden thing.
“That was lovely fresh water,” Rainey croaked.
He looked peculiar, all puffed up around the face and neck. I saw Dan get his mouth ready for speech, working his tongue and lips several times before he could get a word out.
“Mad,” he said. “Glory Lord.”
We’d had a norther for a while and got along at a merry old jog, but then it turned. We’d hardly moved since God knows when, crawling on like a snail on a pavement over the sea, which seemed mysteriously to have emptied itself of all life but ourselves. The birds had gone. I missed their squawking company. Fish too, scarcely one broke the surface.
“How long?” asked John Copper. Water.
The captain swallowed audibly. “Hour,” he said.
“Can’t be!
A nod.
Yan leaned over the gunwale and trailed his hand in the sea. He murmured something and scooped up a little in his palm and dashed it against his lips.
Proctor shook his head. “Don’t swallow.”
“Wait,” Dan said. “Only an hour.”
“Can’t.” John followed Yan.
“But if we don’t swallow …” Tim said.
“No.”
Yan and John licked their lips. The gleam of moisture all too much.
“Drink piss,” Dan said thickly. “Better.”
I’d been thinking about that. Saving it for when I felt bad enough. We’d even had a laugh about it, me and Tim and Skip. But a boat would come before that, or an island with streams. An island, a boat,