Where Old Ghosts Meet - Kate Evans [59]
He began to mimic the boys’ excited voices: “‘I knows where we’re to, sir. It’s called Tahiti, sir. This is an island, sir, in the Pacific Ocean, but it’s not even a small bit like Berry Island because the sun is always shining here and it’s lovely. The people are all the colour of the kelp below on the beach and they go around wearin’ half nothin’. There’s millions of big bright flowers grow all over the place and the trees is full of yellow oranges and the water in the sea is warm as the rock pools on a hot day below to the beach, and so the cod fish couldn’t live in that water at all. Too warm, see.’”
Gerry set his beer on the table and assumed an air of authority. “‘Very good, Pat,’ he’d say. ‘Now one day in the year 1769, as the hot sun disappeared below the crust of the earth, a great ship with white sails reaching high into the heavens sailed over the horizon and anchored off the shore of this island. The ship was called the Endeavour. The captain on board …’ That’s how he’d go on, Nora, encouraging us to be colourful and imaginative in our speech and writing, but at the back of it all was learning, learning about the world beyond our island. ‘Knowledge is power,’ he used to say. Times like that, if he told us we were off to the moon in a dory we’d have believed him. It was something we all looked forward to at the end of the day and nobody wanted to miss the trip. It even became a game that we played in our spare time, down by the water, but then it was all about pirates fightin’ and robbin’ and killin’ each other. I believe that half hour every day kept many youngsters in school. Nobody wanted to miss the Thuras Amac. School wasn’t compulsory then, so normally any excuse and the children were gone.”
Nora tried hard to picture this quiet distant man who was her grandfather surrounded by serious little faces, all still and attentive, burning bright with the fire of imagination: a pirate ship, scarlet blossoms, big ripe golden oranges, outstretched hands, a grey stone building, iron fencing, a lonely little boy standing on his own in a schoolyard. Images slipped in and out, forming a curious montage of past and present, light and dark.
“Was it a nice school?” Her voice was distant.
“Well, it was pretty basic, a wooden frame building, clapboard walls, peaked roof. That was all. It was painted red.” His eyes brightened. “A poor excuse for red, the weather saw to that, but red nonetheless.” He chuckled. “Inside was fresh and clean and white and cold. I used to wish they had done the paint job the other way round, red inside, white outside! It would have made more sense to me anyways.”
Nora kept very still, half afraid that he might tire of reminiscing. “Go on,” she said with just a hint of urging.
“We travelled the world on that ship,” he said. “Up the Yellow River into the interior of China, climbed the Great Wall, beating off hoards of fierce tribesmen.” Gerry was a little boy again laughing heartily. “It was grand,” he said with a certain longing. “We sailed across the Arabian Sea and into the stifling heat and colour of Bombay.” He looked right into her eyes. “He had an uncanny knack of making everything seem very real.”
He got up, went behind the counter and helped himself to two more bottles of beer and continued the conversation, barely breaking stride. “My favourite journey, the one I remember best of all was our trek through the tropical jungles. We had read several of Kipling’s stories. Now, can you imagine being a child living on our little island having The Jungle Book read to you and knowing that at three o’clock we were all headed there on our very own ship?