Читать книгу Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch - Страница 11

5

When at last I set foot on-board, the terror that churned my guts was all one with a kind of joy. I wanted to look a whale in the eye. The only whale I’d ever seen was on a picture in the seamen’s bethel, the one that swallowed Jonah. It had no face. It was just a great block, a monstrosity with a mouth. But a whale did have eyes, I knew, and I wanted to look into them, as I looked into the eyes of all the animals that came in and out of Jamrach’s yard. Why did I do this? I don’t know. Nothing I ever solved.

We were all of us wild, great thumping fools with thumping hearts running about that first morning, making a pig’s ear of whatever we turned our hands to. We knew nothing, nothing at all, and we didn’t know each other yet either. Eight of us were green, eight out of a score or more of men – men, I say – fourteen our youngest, Felix Duggan, a mouthy kid from Orpington, sixty our oldest, a scrawny black called Sam. Thank God for Dan looking out for us, with us but not with us. Seven years since I met him, but I never knew him till we sailed together. I do now. I know him better than anyone now.

The Lysander was a beauty, ageing, well preserved, small and neat. The captain watched from the quarterdeck as we made fools of ourselves, while the first mate, a florid, thick-featured madman called Mr Rainey, strode about swearing and cursing at us in a deranged manner. Christ Jesus, what have I done? I thought. Am I mad? Oh, Ma. The masts and the yards and the sails, the whole great soaring thing was the web of an insane spider against the sky. Ropes, ropes, a million ropes and every bloody one with its own name, and if you got the wrong one you buggered up the whole thing. How we ever got off I’ve no idea. It was the efforts of those few who knew what they were doing: the old black called Sam, another black by the name of Gabriel, a tall Oriental called Yan, and our Dan. These four got the ship off with the help of a few lads not much older than me and Tim, who’d sailed maybe once or twice before and therefore considered themselves old seadogs. We greenies stumbled and bumbled around getting in everyone’s way. I lost sight of Tim. Lost Dan. At every moment I tried to look as if I was confidently on my way from one important task to the next, wearing a face I hoped gave an impression of eager intelligence. I caught sight of the dockside moving away, the people a blur, heard the sudden sweet hollow chiming of a London clock bidding me a long farewell.

A boy with a round dark head appeared very suddenly in front of me in my confusion. His face was awkward, stoic in its expression, the mouth self-conscious. He looked like I felt, wavering on his feet with no idea of what to do. For a second we locked eyes in dumb mutual understanding. Then he smiled with his mouth still closed and stiff, a peculiarly leisurely smile for the circumstances.

Mr Rainey, a clatter of boots and a horse-like snorting, landed between us from above like a god-thrown thunderbolt. ‘What do you think this is?’ he demanded. ‘A garden party?’ clouted the boy on the head and sent him flying. ‘Cretins,’ he roared, stomping away down the deck, bandy-legged and malevolent. God knows why he didn’t hit me. Too zealous in his progress towards the next target, I suppose, some poor boy above in the rigging: ‘You fucking imbecile!’ he screamed, head back. ‘Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you and all your fucking bastard kin! Get down here!’

I got away quick, looked for Tim, but couldn’t see him. I stood useless. Someone clipped me on the back of the head and told me to look sharp.

‘I don’t know what to do!’ I appealed, suddenly outraged. How could anyone expect me to know what to do?

The man was a lanky, skinny thing with a long sensitive nose like an anteater’s and arched brows that gave him a clownish appearance. ‘Here,’ he said, and hauled me to the windlass. Oh God, the bloody windlass. A great horizontal wheel on the deck up near our fo’c’s’le – oh, to be down there with my sea chest – pushing it round alongside a big hefty blond boy built like an ox. Even he was grunting and straining, swearing doggedly in his own language. I was breaking my fucking back. The long skinny cove jumped in to help us, straight brown hair, thin as everything else about him, dangling in his eyes. Nothing much on his bones, but he was strong. ‘Hup, now,’ he said, ‘push!’

Push. Push. Beyond anything you ever thought you could do, push. I was vaguely aware of the others running about, whistles, shouts, laughter, massive creakings and groanings of the ship as we manhandled her, and of a new weightlessness that gave me a falling sensation even though my feet were fixed firmly on the timbers.

The shipload of Portuguese sailors clapped and cheered us on, and there was no more time to look back to the drifting quay, where Ishbel watched with the dozy lightermen and grieving mothers and the wife of Dan Rymer.

We took the watery road out of town. The wharves and taverns drifted by, the sun grew brighter, throwing gold over the warehouses and the tops of the ripples. Sails flapped in the breeze. The captain, a solid, square-chested, square-faced man with a pale freckled face and thin ginger eyebrows, came and walked among us with a shaggy brown dog at his heels, half smiling at no one and speaking only to his first mate. I was glad there was a dog on-board. I hadn’t expected that.

Me and Tim stuck with Dan. We had a lot to learn, he said, and set about teaching us the naming of things right away. All we ever knew fell away behind us like arms letting go. The land became green and rose up on both sides, and the marshes swallowed us up. The mournful calling of long-legged birds swooped above the reeds. Seagulls with savage eyes sailed vigorously on the air alongside, keeping us company all the way to North Foreland, where Mr Rainey sent me up to the masthead.

I’m a good climber and I have no fear of heights; it was the best of all times to go aloft, with the full sea swelling before us and the topgallant sails up to take the wind. First time I’d seen the real sea. Too big when you first see it, of course. A shining you could never have imagined, even though you’ve imagined so much. Up there, full sail on the Lysander, I was riding a living thing. Her bowsprit rose and fell like the motion of a horse’s neck at full canter. The spray roared, and the whaleboats shuddered in their holdings. I looked down and saw Dan Rymer at his ease, speaking with the captain on the quarterdeck. Scrawny Sam, his face a mass of wrinkles, ran along a spar with the ease of a waterfront cat, smiling as he went. The captain’s shaggy brown dog came trotting along the deck and lifted its leg against the mainmast, and I had no notion of time or the future or anything else at all, and was completely and quite terrifyingly happy and knew that I’d done the right thing.

Later, just before the captain gave his speech, me and Tim had a single minute’s peace standing at the rail together looking down at the sea. He put his arm round my shoulders. ‘This is the life, Jaf,’ he said. He’d been like a dog let off the leash all day. It was being outside he’d missed, not the animals. He was trembling faintly, whether it was because he was cold or nervous, I don’t know. It’s a strange thing when you first go off into the unknown. You want it and you’re scared. Tim would never admit he was scared. Never. He was, though, any fool could see that.

‘This is the life,’ I said.

That was the whole of our conversation, then the captain called us up on the quarterdeck for the choosing of the watches and the whaleboat crews.

We had three whaleboats, not counting the spares. I didn’t want to be on Rainey’s. We had Captain Proctor’s and Rainey’s and Comeragh’s – the second mate that is – who turned out to be the tall thin one with the big nose who’d clipped me on the back of the head and told me to look sharp. He and Rainey both had a good six inches on Captain Proctor, who, though stout and strong, was not tall. They stood respectfully, two tall, dark vases flanking a pale round pot, Rainey with his hands clasping some papers behind his back and his feet apart, Comeragh seeming to be smiling all the time. But it was just the way his face was.

‘I applaud you, gentlemen, on a magnificent performance,’ the captain said, his eyes travelling over all of us, his face revealing nothing. We, who didn’t know, took our cues from those more experienced hands who laughed, instinctively knowing somehow that this was a good-natured jibe and not rank sarcasm. A hint of a smile appeared upon the captain’s face. ‘We shall get along,’ he said, with his eyes never lighting anywhere, ‘if we all remember one thing.’ Long pause, roaming eyes. ‘A ship is a dangerous place, a whale ship especially so.’ Long pause. ‘You will obey orders from myself and any of the mates instantly. There will be no exceptions. It’s as simple as that.’

He had a clear ringing voice, well spoken, stronger and far more impressive than his face, which was too boyish for a captain’s. The dog, lolling with a stupid expression against his leg, did nothing to lessen the impression. He talked enthusiastically for ten minutes about duty and obedience and pulling together, and said that those of us who’d not sailed before would be given minders, and were to do what we were told. ‘Some of you will know that this voyage has a secondary purpose,’ he said. ‘We have on-board Mr Rymer’ – a nod towards Dan – ‘whose commission is to hunt wildlife. When we reach the Dutch East Indies we will be briefly diverted somewhat from our primary concern, which is, of course, to take as many barrels of oil as we can. But that need not concern any of you now. You are whale catchers and that is a great and dangerous profession. Your job now is to learn everything you possibly can as fast as you can.’

There was a law on ship as tight as any, he said, with clear rules and clear punishments for the breaking of them. It was very simple. These rules could be consulted at any time as a copy of them was permanently on display in both steerage and fo’c’s’le. Anyone who could not read could avail himself of the help of a reader.