skip to main |
skip to sidebar
We dock at the Canaries under the watchful eyes of gulls. But the prospect of land under my feet has shrunk with the captain's medieval tactics. The terms of our punishment include the following:
- You will remain afloat in the lifeboat throughout the day, towed behind the Frontier, from eight in the morning until four in the afternoon, for the boys, and from two in the afternoon until four pm, for the captain's daughter (I'm not surprised by her lighter sentence, I'm surprised she was sentenced at all! This captain will not be defied.) for a period of one week, no more, and certainly no less.
- You will not be permitted access to the dining cabin and will take your evening meals alone in your sleeping quarters
- At night the stowaway will, once more, be secured in the hold
- You will, under no circumstances, be permitted leave to go ashore
This last point is a relief to the lad. He has no desire whatsoever to go ashore and covers his head under a canvas rain sheet. There is no sign of a black flag fluttering in the harbour and I'm starting to doubt the validity of his tale.
The volcanic Canary archipelago lies off the northwest coast of Africa, miles west of the Western Sahara. The sea currents here carry ships across the Atlantic to the coast of America and the Caribbean. If there are pirates to be found anywhere in this great blue abyss then there they will be. There is no shortage of stories about the pirates of the Caribbean. But our journey takes us south, following cold currents down the west coast of Africa, all the way to the Cape of Good Hope.
Surprisingly (given my current predicament) my spirits are lifted by this thought. The Cape of Good Hope is a pleasant enough sounding place and for once my thoughts drift toward a future that is not filled with savagery and death.
This misguided hope is short-lived.
'Take it!'
'I do not want it.'
'You don't want it, or you won't have it?'
'Is there a difference?'
The difference, it's fair to say, eludes me at this precise moment. He's being clever. 'Well I don't mean to dampen your spirits, but it is yours and I don't want it.'
'It is not mine, it is his, and I do not want it either. It has brought nothing but trouble.' His tone is measured, but I'm certain his heart is filled with quiet rage.
'Well why take it in the first place?'
He doesn't respond, instead he binds his arms across his chest and stares grimly out to sea. His anger is understandable. I watch his straight defiant back, willing him to speak, but I know he'll say nothing further. This conversation contains all the words that have passed between us for hours.
'Look ... I'm sorry. I don't know why I said nothing. I have no idea. It's not like me. It's not the way I was brought up. My father would be ashamed if he knew and my mother ... I dare not think it. You'll be redeemed, you'll see, when we get to the Canaries they'll be there and ...' and I realise then, of course, the last thing he wants is redemption that way, because with it, comes inevitable recapture.
I consider the moment of betrayal. Captain Burroughs points at the lad with an accusatory finger and declares him a thief. I assume he's making reference to the ring, but of course he has no knowledge of the stone heart. No, he's referring to the bread. The rhy loaf I stole for the lad.
'Did you steal the bread, or was it brought for you? It is a simple question, Boy.'
There was nothing simple about the question. The lad stared at the wooden floorboards. And I ... I said nothing. Nothing at all. Not a word. I damned him with my silence.
And here we are now, in his unpleasant predicament. We three in a lifeboat tethered behind the Frontier, bucking unhappily in her wake. All three. I turn about to find Miss Burroughs in precisely the same position. A mirror image of the boy. Not speaking. Quite upright, as though seated at the edge of an abyss, staring at the stern of the Frontier, willing herself back on board.
And here I sit in the middle, with a ruby red stone weighing down my pocket, calling me to the sea.
This time the punishment is severe.
It was Effemery himself who found us ... none other of course. Alerted by the howling wails of a certain Miss aboard the ship, he seized the opportunity (as he seizes each and every day) to come dashing magnificently to the rescue.
She was guided, no doubt with appropriate decorum, up the stairs and we, being the lad and I, were hauled up by the ears. Of course I have no evidence to corroborate this fact, since I was wholly unconscious at the time, but the redness of both lobes stands testament to definite manhandling, and this imagined treatment is in line with the man's character.
I'm half-listening to the drone of the captain's voice. His face is purple with rage. A fine net of capillaries mushroom from his nose and cheeks and his eyes are hot coals. Yet I'm not cowered by the sight. I can't explain this indifference; it's simply a vagueness of feeling, a consuming disinterest. My hands dig into my pockets with notable displeasure for everyone and everything around me. Not even Miss Burroughs, with her pristine nose, holds any degree of affection. I am an empty vessel ... no, I'm not ... I'm filled with loathing ... for the sea, for the ship, for the captain, for Effemery, for my father, for the Stoway ... I pause mid-thought.
Inside my right pocket is a velvet pouch. Inside the pouch, something round and solid. As the captain recites his ten commandments of sailing, I carefully lift a corner of the pouch and explore with a forefinger. The tip of my finger brushes a cool hard surface, and an immediate feeling jangles every nerve in my body. I am swung to the other side of emotion. I am elated in a sudden moment, and yet, without understanding why, I snatch my finger back.
Somehow the stone heart has found a way from the lad's finger to the depths of my dry, crumb-filled pocket. In the swift retraction of my forefinger I am once again overcome with dissatisfaction, and immutable displeasure.
'A THIEF!' The captain declares with an explosion of force and, regrettably, I'm drawn back into the room with his alarming statement. 'We shall find a punishment to fit the crime.' He says glowering like a madman. 'Of this you can be certain.'
'It's beautiful! Look Celes ... uh, miss Burroughs, that is ... it has a marvellous quality, you must touch it!' I am at the lad's side attempting to prize the ring from his finger. The colour of the stone is astonishing close up and, when I touch it, I'm filled with such warmth and overwhelming optimism, I can't help smiling, despite the ring being stuck fast on his finger.
'I won't,' she answers.
I look up at her with a bemused grin. 'Won't? Why ever not?'
'Well he's clearly unstable, anyone can see that ... ' she pauses and raises an extraordinary eyebrow. 'Why are you looking at me like that?'
'Unstable?' I'm feeling sleepy and everything in the room has a blurred edge. Miss Burroughs is a floating white cloud. So soft. Celeste! What a name!
'Yes ... UNSTABLE. That's what I said ... good grief you have a strange expression. What is the matter?'
'Huh?'
'Are you ill?'
'You know you're quite lovely Celes ... that is, I mean to say, Miss B. You're like a fluffy white cloud. You're ... you're like an angel! An angel with wings and a huge fuzzy halo that ... uh, did you feel that?' The walls begin to tilt and the floorboards begin to groan ... 'You know I think I might sit down a while.'
'You're behaving like a lunatic!'
Although, if I'm entirely honest, I don't really like you all that much.’ I slide onto the floorboards beside the lad. 'I think you're a little self-important and you behaave as thouu ...' Clunk! My head hits the floor and the world fades from blue to black.
Her eyes are emerald green, luminous in the blue-tinged murk. Her hair, no doubt from noble descent, fiery red. Her cheekbones curved and taught beneath a smooth aristocratic-ivory skin. Her plucked eyebrows arch in perfect synchronicity as she presses silk to her sensuous lips with delicate manicured hands. It is not possible not to feel, in her company, anything other than utter unworthiness. I am a dung beetle at the foot of an English rose.
'Go on,' she says, unconvinced.
'Well, the poor lad insists we travel through perilous waters. He maintains a ship is set course to intercept us - captained by an unscrupulous pirate and manned by a crew, not a gentleman amongst them (I add this to set myself apart, both from them ... and the lad) of such viciousness they will think nothing of murdering women and children in their sleep!'
'Oh do be serious,' she declares with an emphatic stomp of her tiny foot. 'This is nonsense. Will you do nothing but incite? The boy is a stowaway and a saboteur. That is all. You are a mistaken fool to fall in league with him.'
'He was shanghaied by them. Abducted from his homeland and taken against his will to the seas, where he was made to work the galley and scrub the deck. Until he escaped and fled when they were at port. He's tried to get home ever since, but it is too late, he says ... he saw their black flag not days before and we will soon be set upon!'
'Oh the lies!' I will not listen to another word. I shall inform my father that you intend to collude with the stowaway, and ... and anyway it's an absurd story, why on earth would such a notoriously villainous pirate, as you describe, do battle for a worthless deckhand?'
'Because of this!' I reach forward and hold up the grubby right hand of the lad, who allows me to do so with little resistance. A ruby red garnet stone set in a silver dagger ring, shines like a lit torch from his filthy middle finger.
'The stone heart,' says the lad in his small voice and his heavy accent.
'There's more!'
My hand, entirely of its own volition, reaches out and grasps her tiny wrist. Her bones are bird-like under my skin. She turns, casts her eyes down on my white-knuckled hand, then raises them, slow and deliberate (which frankly makes me wonder if she practices such melodrama in her cabin mirror) and fixes me a gaze of such astonishing green-eyed severity, I am struck dumb.
'Let ... go ... my ... wrist.' The enunciation of each single syllable word is precise and particular and each word lands like an artillery explosion on my eardrum. My hand falls away as though it were butter and her wrist was hot lead.
'Miss Burroughs, I ...' I want to say something apologetic and seemly about the impropriety of this clandestine meeting, something to immediately win back a modicum of favour, and yet I am also encouraged to say something mysterious and bold, something which will excite her emotions and, yes, perhaps even illicit more such reactions. I'm in a quandary. I want her to see me as her equal and, at the same time, I want her to ... I want her to ...
'You what? What is it? What is it you want to say?' Her hair clasp has come undone and a fiery tendril of hair flames about her face.
'Pirates!' the word explodes out of me, with a wild emphasis on the plosive 'P'.
She narrows her eyes, but I have her. She pauses in her haste to reach the staircase. 'Pirates?'
Ah, the desired response. Intrigue.
'
This is why you've brought me down here?' She holds a perfumed silk kerchief to her delicate, upturned nose. The emphasis on the word this is not subtle. This, I assume, is intended to leave the object of our attention, No Name, with no doubt as to the yawning gulf that exists between his station in life and hers. I am appalled by her derision and, at the same time, I am utterly complicit.
We are side by side. Cheek by jowl. Hip to thigh. I stand beside my nemesis and my queen, out of control and breathless. Why is there no air in this fetid place? I'm acutely aware of a tightness in my throat, a rank permeating smell, the awful gloom. We're in the riveted iron guts of a grotesque factory expelling effluent through chimney stacks high above. We are in the bowels of a beast. We're sunk in the stomach of a whale. Jonah squats before us.
I listen for her breathing and, for an exquisite moment, it is the only sound. An intake and an exhale, as sonorous as rolling surf on a sandy shore. I consider the foul air. I imagine it passing into her lungs and out again, into the hold and then, that same air, no longer foul, is drawn into my mouth, into my lungs. I hold my breath as long as I can endure and then expel, producing from my tight lips an unexpected whistle. For no purpose I can reasonably fathom, I'm blushing. Blushing!
I feel her eyes on me, like burning coals, and I bluster and twitch, thankful for the gloom at last. 'Um, well you see, I wanted you to meet him. He's rather an interesting sort, if you come to think of it.'
'Whatever do you mean?'
'Well, if you consider what he's done.'
She looks at me as though I'm a vile prawn-like creature crawling through the slime on the banks of the Thames. 'Oh ... and what is it he has done?'
'Well ...' I feel the sentence slipping on my tongue. 'Well he's managed to run away. He's left it all behind. All for what? For this? This boat, this sea, this prison.' I'm surprised by the fervour in my voice.
She snorts into her silk. 'In my experience, those that run have a reason to run.'
'You mean they are not wanted where they are?'
She gives me an icy stare. 'I mean to say, they are usually, inevitably, villainous ... they have blood on their hands.'
‘Who’s down there?’
I glance at No Name in a wash of panic. My heart races and my stomach churns. He remains unmoved. I suppose it’s wholly unlikely pirates have swarmed the Frontier, held the captain to ransom, and are about to ransack the hold, but then again ...
‘Whoever you are, I shall have to report you to the Captain.’ The voice, fragile and tentative, trails from above.
That's no pirate. It's her. The inimitable Miss Celeste Burroughs, on her brisk morning jaunt no doubt. I curse under my breath. How could I have lost track of time?
I stumble recklessly up the stairs and throw open the hatch. The glare of the morning sun catches me unawares and, for a moment, I'm startled by the intensity of light and the floating diaphanous figure before me. I have to grip the hatch to prevent myself collapsing unconscious back into the hold.
She steps back in alarm. ‘You!’
‘Miss Burroughs, I …’
‘Well, I should have known. What are you doing down there? Who were you talking to just now?’ Her accusing voice is shrill. She peers over my shoulder and I move to obscure the hold from her prying eyes.
‘I don’t mean to be uncharitable Miss Burroughs, but I must ask you to please lower your voice.’
She stiffens and her magnificent nose rears up in disdain. ‘You? Must ask me? I think you forget yourself, young man.’
‘All right, all right, I’m sorry, but I learned something, only moments ago …’ here I glance about with a great show of caution, ‘… a secret, which I’d rather not everyone gets wind of … if you know what I mean.’
She looks away with a straight back and an affected snort. ‘I’m certain I do not.’
I look back down into the hold. Would she? I extend my hand in invitation. ‘If you’ll follow me miss, you can learn it for yourself ... first hand.' She gives me a fierce reproachful look, but I know, in that single glance, that she’ll follow, and my stomach gives a fearful lurch in response.
The engine, inexplicably, splutters to life and, almost at the same second, an exotic breeze tempts the sail. Herr Hanz Oppenheim adopts a jocular manner. Evidently he’s taking credit for our change in fortune. The sailors, however, remain unconvinced. Their pessimism for the journey is as resolute as their fear for the boy who poisons the hold air.
That night I'm back in the dark. No Name sits in the corner with his bread on his knees and his knees tucked right up to his chin. No Name. That’s how I think I’ll refer to him. He’s not offered a name and nor does he appear to intend to do so. Which is fine by me.
There’s something about him I quite like, although I can’t put my finger on it. I suppose we’re similar, in that we both want to get home, but we’re not the same. I watch him tear another hunk of rhy and stuff it into a chock-a-block mouth. We’re really worlds apart.
‘Don’t they feed you anything at all?’ I rake the corners of the dark hold, searching for an empty bowl.
He shrugs and chomps and I feel the weight of the inevitable next question press on my temples. ‘What did you mean before … when you said what you did?’ He looks up and his jaw stops working. He regards me with his bright right eye.
I hesitate. ‘Uh … you know … when you said all that about … well, about Pirates.’ I wave my hand in the air to suggest some sort of casual disregard for the word, a gesture so obviously rehearsed it makes me blush.
His response, though muted and delivered through mouthfuls of food, is clear and utterly without ambiguity.
‘They are coming.’
No sooner does he speak than a loud scrape sounds across the floorboards above our heads. We both look up and freeze. As surely as night follows day, they are coming.
The temperature in the forward hold is cold as ice and I regret leaving my camel hair coat in the cabin. The light is as cool as the temperature, almost blue. Perhaps the room knows it’s underwater.
There’s something quite unsettling about being in a hold suspended in the drink. Doubly so, now it’s the middle of the night and there’s no one about, except me … and, of course, the figure before me.
He blinks twice in the blue dream light and it occurs to me I’ve not yet made his acquaintance. Not formally.
‘I don’t mean to alarm you … please don’t be afraid … I … my name is Harry St John.’ I extend a hand, only to withdraw it after a few painful moments on account of it going unanswered. Not that I blame him. Our paths have crossed twice and both times I did very little to help his cause.
'Do you have a name?'
His eyes stare right back at me. Well, his right eye does. His left eye roams independently.
I slow the pace of my speech and treat each word with a loud and careful enunciation. 'WHERE ... ARE ... YOU ... FROM?'
He answers in such a small voice it's barely audible, but I'm ecstatic when he does.
'Africa.'
I rock forward on my haunches and exclaim with, I'll admit, a certain edge of self-congratulatory satisfaction in my voice. 'Yes, yes Africa! You're from Africa!'
He nods and I nod, more emphatically, and together we nod for what seems like a good minute of mutual nodding.
'You're trying to get home, aren't you? I knew we had something in common.'
'Ja. Home. Africa.'
His heavy clipped accent reminds me of Herr Oppenheim, but he's not German. Dutch perhaps?
'How did you come aboard the Frontier ... this ship? Was it in Portsmouth? What were you doing in England? Where do you live in Africa?' I realise he's incapable of answering this barrage of questioning, but I can't stop asking. His next answer shores me up soon enough. It takes the proverbial wind right out of my sails.
'We are in big danger. Those pirates ... they are coming. We must not dock in the Canaries.'
We're adrift, not far from the Canaries.
Seagulls loop and turn in the wide white sky. There’s kelp in the water. Even the fish seem different. But onboard the Frontier, expectancy is strangled by the long silence of another windless day. Captain Burroughs communicates with monosyllabic asides to Effemery, who in turn (to no avail) harangues the men. It's another day of idle sails.
‘Do you know where we’re going?’ I attempt to draw information from the RH I. Seedat.
‘Well, let me see, old boy.’ He strokes his chin, extends an arm and points to the featureless horizon. ‘At the minute, I believe we are going in this direction.’
No great insight there.
Later, in the shifting light of a whispering paraffin lamp, I study a folded note. Next door, the repetitive sawing of my father’s snores threatens to collapse the cabin's paper-thin walls. The air inside my pint-sized cove is close and stale. It smells of wood polish and moth balls and sweat.
The note, slipped under my door only a few moments ago, sheds no further light on the conundrum of the ship's present drift, but it's full of mystery all the same. I read it once more. You will find the hatch to the forward hold open tonight. Find out what you can from the stowaway. That's it. No name. No explanation. The handwriting is tight and precise, the curves deliberate. No ink smudges at all. I'm certain it's Herr Oppenheim’s.
An hour later, I stand at the door and listen for feet. Nothing. I open it and peer into the gloom. No movement. There’s a slight chemical odour wafting from the head, down the passage. I arrange the bundle of food (a half-loaf of rhy bread and some green olives) under my free arm and shut the door behind me.
A vicious cold prowls the forward deck. There are stars out, bright holes drilled into the pitch black. I clamber over intricate piles of coiled rope, on lookout for the burly red-bearded captain, or any shadowy movement. The deck is sedate, eerie in the half-moonlight.
At the forward hold hatch, I pause and listen to my thumping heartbeat. Oppenheim shares my view it seems. There's only one way to dispel all this talk of omens and superstition. We have to let the crew know they've nothing to fear ... that he's just a regular lad.
Down the spiral stairs I go, into the black hold, accompanied only by the echo of my steps. 'He's just a regular lad,' I repeat under my breath. A regular lad.
The incident of the stalled engine (an engine which purportedly has never stalled), in conjunction with the incident of the stowaway (the likes of which the Frontier has apparently never hosted) has unsettled the men. These seafaring souls are a superstitious lot. They see omens in everything.
Captain Burroughs is having a hard time commanding order. Jones and a few others have spent many hours in the bridge voicing their concern.
‘We should never ave locked up the lad in the engine room, Cap’n, Sir. Ave you seen his eyes? E’s got the devil in im.’
‘What do you suggest then, man?’ The Captain’s voice is easily heard without the familiar drone of the engine.
‘Overboard, skipper. Throw im to the sharks.’
They’re right about one thing. His eyes aren’t exactly normal. Firstly they’re a searing ice blue. I’ve never seen eyes that startling. But the most peculiar thing is the way his left eye roams with no apparent connection to the right. A lazy eye, that’s what I think it’s called. Very sinister.
There’s something else that’s got the men in a state. The wind. It’s died altogether and the quickly hoisted squaresail is making little, if any, difference. In fact, we’re drifting with the current now, at the mercy of the sea.
The tension aboard ship is palpable. ‘The Captain will contain this situation, son.’ My father appears at my side on the port rail. ‘There is nothing to be concerned about. Nothing at all.’
I shrug. ‘I’m not in the least bit concerned.’
‘No, no of course not.’ He nods and looks relieved when Herr Oppenheim comes by. ‘I say Oppenheim, what do you make of all this?’
Oppenheim is preoccupied. He glances up at the squaresail. ‘She’s a fine vessel. A little heavy in the water, but a good sea vessel all the same. She needs a fair gust to get going, but the gust will come.’
‘And the engine?’ I ask.
He shoots me an irritated look. ‘I am an engineer. There does not exist an engine which I cannot fix.’
Even my father’s eyebrows are raised at the defensiveness of his tone. Clearly there is something very wrong with the engine and Herr Oppenheim is none the wiser. Perhaps the men are right. Perhaps the stowaway has cast a spell on us. It’s a ludicrous thought, and yet …
‘She was launched on the 23rd of July 1879. Her maiden voyage was to the Isle of Man und by the end of the year she had sailed to her first foreign port. She’s been a working ship und a fighting ship in the Great War. She’s travelled to Trinidad und Brazil und Barbados. She’s navigated fog und ice und hurricane. She is three-masted with a deadweight of about 300 tons und her engine is a marvel, that is to say, a thing of beauty.’
Herr Oppenheim, a German engineer, knows his subject by heart and it holds him in thrall. ‘The ship dimensions are 115 ft. in length, breadth 25 ft., depth of hold 12 ft.’
We descend iron stairs into darkness. He begins to raise his voice over the roar. ‘Our speed is approximately six knots thanks to the 32 horse power single cylinder semi-diesel engine. Quite reliable.’
The immediate thing that assails me in the engine room is not the intense heat, nor the stifling gloom, nor the pungent reek of diesel and coal, nor even the terrific thunderous crank of the pump. Instead it’s the bone-jarring throb, which shudders from my toes to my fingers and drowns all other sensation.
He turns to me and shouts. ‘Are you okay? You seem rather, shall we say, distracted.’
I nod, but in truth I’m still seething from a conversation with my father only this morning. ‘It’s nothing.’ I can’t bear to have this all yelled at such a pitch.
Oppenheim is not so easily dissuaded. ‘Your father wants only what is best for you.’ As I've said, he’s an astute man.
I recall my father’s recent words of encouragement when, at last, I confront him about being working passengers. ‘My intention isn't to make your life a misery, Harry. I’m trying to make you a man. Work is good for you, Harry. The devil finds mischief for idle hands to do.’
As I consider his notion of a Christian work ethic I notice a movement in the recesses of the room. Two shining orbs bore through the gloom. Lights? I feel the hair on the back of my neck rise and a cold chill run down my spine.
They’re not lights … they’re eyes.
No sooner do I make this discovery than an extraordinary thing happens. That great thing of beauty, the ship’s 32 horse power engine heart, stutters, splutters and dies. Yet, still the vibrations run through me.
At dinner, in the Captain's mahogany and brass private dining cabin, the atmosphere is as formal as the dress code. Bouts of silence are punctuated by the lone voice of the RH I. Seedat, who draws on enthusiastic anecdotes to buoy the conversation. But even he can’t lift the sombre mood.
To my immediate left sits Herr Hanz Oppenheim, which affords me a perfect opportunity to carry out the first step of my plan. To my right is the dour Captain’s wife. My father, with whom I've not yet had an opportunity to air my grievances, is seated to the Captain’s left. The Captain is at the head of the table and to his right, Effemery. Most annoyingly, Miss Burroughs is seated beside the first officer and they are at the minute engaged in deep conversation, which, though inaudible to me, I'm convinced is not as interesting as her bobbing head of brown curls and serious expression suggests. My knife clatters to the plate, but she takes no notice. Alongside her the RH I. Seedat catches my eye and winks.
I turn to Herr Oppenheim, but he is expressing another opinion on Bach to the RH I. Seedat, so I shift my attention to the Captain’s wife who is engrossed in observing her daughter across the table. 
She is perhaps in her mid forties and was plainly once beautiful, but life has exacted a heavy toll and it shows in every line on her face, in particular the disapproving furrows which gather at her painted lips. I notice not once does the Captain even glance in her direction.
‘It is not polite to stare, young man.’
I swivel in the chair to find Herr Oppenheim regarding me over the rim of his spectacles.
‘Oh … I uh … I was …’
He smiles and changes tack. ‘I have seen you rather busy about the place of late, yes?’
I see my opening and take it. ‘Yes, though I’d rather be …’
He cuts me off with a swish of his napkin and a dab at his lips. ‘Assisting me in the engine room, perhaps, ja?’
Oppenheim is clearly an astute man.
‘To be perfectly honest, Herr Oppenheim, I’m not sure I know anything about engines.’ I can hear Miss Burroughs' laughter floating above the rest of the conversation.
‘This is not a problem. It is people who know very little und think they know a lot who pose, I should say, the most significant problem.’
He dissects his roast beef (or something resembling roast beef) into precise rectangles, and I know this is exactly the man to help me find the stowaway.
‘Meet me outside my cabin on Thursday after breakfast und we shall begin your tutelage.’
The sea is ponderous and grey. Early morning dew clings to the rigging and it's brittle cold. The sun is a weird crystal ball dissipating an emerald mist. Black-backed gulls dive-bomb a silver current - a shoal of mackerel.
I'm lugging a full pail of soapy water aft (that's to the stern, the rear of the vessel, for the uninitiated). The bucket is heavy and the water warm. It sloshes and spills and splashes my shoes. My toes squelch inside the sopping canvas. Deck-scrubbing duty is not exactly what I had in mind when my father suggested a leisurely sail down the west coast of Africa. I slam the bucket floor to the decking and blow into my hands. This business is for the birds. As though attune my thoughts, a gull screeches overhead and, with an obnoxious plop, a white-grey glob of crap splatters the deck at my feet. I pull the collars of my duffel coat closed and breathe plumes of smoky breath into the chilled air. What wouldn't I give to be home?
It's spring 1934, two years prior, and there's a pleasant breeze. I'm leaning at the fence leading to the woodland. Beside me, Raffles, raucous and excited, is leaping at butterflies and burrowing his nose into the damp soil. I gaze back towards Arbor Hall. It's a sensible, elegant sight. Nothing dramatic or savage about it. Rolling hills, stately poplars, a discreet curve of gravel. It’s been in the St John family for centuries. Mother’s haven from the world. I wonder what she’d make of all this.
On the far side of the schooner I see my father. He's in discussion with able seaman Jones, whom I recognise for his thatch of thick curly black hair and twitchy hand movements. My father’s expression is both empathy and concern. He’s not yet seen me.
Now is as good a time as any to approach. There’s nothing to be gained in running away. His words, not mine.
A familiar waft of floral perfume stops me in my tracks. Before I can hide, an exaggerated cough brings me about and I’m face-to-face with number two on my list, twirling a damned parasol, Miss Celeste Burroughs. I step backward and feel my foot plunge into the pail of water. Perfect.
‘Miss Burroughs.’ I tip my hat and ignore the bucket.
She’s all cool disdain and exquisite indifference. I step to the side and drag the bucketed foot with me. Without a word of acknowledgment, she brushes past; though I’m convinced she strays longer than necessary.
A mistress and a temptress. She’s just like the sea.
I’m in the galley peeling potatoes alongside the perspiring cook. Peeling potatoes. Honestly. Is this what my young life has amounted to? Apprentice missionary and potato peeler?
Note, I say cook and not chef. This is no oversight on my part. I believe I’ve made it clear on several occasions that the product of this galley is under par. These potatoes, for instance, will be transformed into a thick gloop, which will arrive tableside cold, hard and unpalatable.
He’s Portuguese, the cook. Did I mention that? Señor Batata Maudieto. Doesn’t speak a word of English. So I take great pleasure in telling him, or rather his tall off-white hat (he's a stout, vertically challenged fellow), exactly what I think of his culinary masterpieces. A list of his most recent achievements include:
1. Gruel
2. Grey paste-like matter (egg, my father informs me - with little conviction)
3. A colourless plant-like substance (cabbage, says my father - with less conviction)
4. Yellow sponge-like matter (an egg variant, I assume - with no conviction)
5. More gruel (you get the picture)
I make lists, like this one, to pass the time. I focus on everyday things: wind direction, names of fish that break the surface, birds that circle overhead, places I intend never to visit (the Kalahari for example), and people who annoy me. That sort of thing.
I can hear the unmistakable clip of boots strutting the dining hall. He’s out there – top of my list – first officer, Elliot F. Emery, or Efemmery, as I’ve taken to call him. It’s his doing I’m down here in the bowels of the schooner with the humourless cook at my side. Efemmery controls the work roster and I’ve a feeling I’m in for a rough couple of months. I'll be scrubbing the deck next. Which is a subject I intend to take up with my father at the earliest opportunity. The captain's remark about us not being paying passengers has thrown me. Am I to assume I've been duped into a working trip?
‘One cannot expect something for nothing,' declared father at the bridge (in reference to the stowaway). 'He’s just a lad, certainly, but lessons need to be learned. There’s nothing to be gained in running away.'
The stowaway's incarceration continues to stir debate. RH I. Seedat agrees with my more lenient sentiment. ‘By golly old chap, that young fellow has some gumption, no?’
I haven’t seen the kid for three days. The RH I. Seedat believes they’ve secured him in the engine room with a plan to offload him when we dock at the Canary Islands. I must find a way to see him. Seedat assures me the Canary Islands are some distance away. I glance at the harassed cook, throw an under-peeled potato into the bowl (my rebellion against forced labour) and begin to formulate a plan.
I’ve spent the better part of two weeks avoiding the schooner’s bridge. It’s easy to see why now. Captain Burroughs occupies the cramped space the way a grizzly might a cave. I find myself staring at him – at the individual hairs in his red beard, the line of a white scar running his cheek – wondering how it’s possible this colossus was ever a child.
What’s it to be? I’m tempted to ask. Lashed at the mast with a bullwhip, Sir? Beaten to a pulp with a barnacled plank?
I draw up to my full 5 foot 11, thankful for last year’s growth spurt. But I’m no match for Emery. His uniform gleams brilliant white, the gold buttons burn perfect circles in my eyes and his black boots are slick and shiny. He’s standing to attention beside me. I’ll admit, he’s not half impressive … confound the man.
Burroughs digs his hands into his pockets and stares out to sea. ‘Unless you’re partial to custody in the hold for insubordination, I suggest you answer!’
The stowaway is silent. I nudge him in the ribs with an elbow, but the fellow doesn’t budge. I’ll be damned if I’m locked up for his impertinence.
‘He’s, um … a little shy, if you know what I mean, Sir.’
Burroughs turns a dark eye on me. ‘I was addressing you?’
There is a moment of excruciating silence, followed by a garbled simultaneous confession:
‘Captain, Sir, I found this stowaway in the coal roo …’
‘Captain, I only felt that if anyone should be giving …
We stop, and Emery glares at me. ‘What right does this … this civilian have, Sir?’ He spits the word civilian as though it’s a disease. ‘What right?’
We are spared the captain’s response by a knock at the door. My father pokes his head through. Salvation at last. Tell them, Father. Tell them God’s on our side. My father’s expression is inscrutable. ‘You called for me, Captain?’
The Captain nods. ‘With due respect, Father St John, it won’t do to undermine an officer’s authority aboard my ship, you understand.’
This is not going well. My father shoots me a speculative glance. ‘I see.’
‘Indeed. I shall have to...’
‘But, we’re paying passengers!’ I blurt, indignation evident in the pitch of my voice.
‘Ah, yes ... there is the nub of it, Boy. Are you paying passengers? Are you indeed?’ He stares at me with his steel-grey eyes and I throw my father a look of wild accusation. Am I really alone here? Alone, and under siege?
I’m at the stern, plotting my escape. My latest plan is to attach a lifebuoy to my waist and simply leap off the edge, yelling Geronimo. I watched a film recently where the Apache leader yells his name as he leaps from a high cliff into a river. It seems appropriate. Perhaps I could yell Harry, but I'm not convinced it would have the same effect.
I wonder about the height of the fall. I’m concerned that if Celeste should happen by (she promenades the deck at this time of the morning and the likelihood is high), I shall have to put on a display ... execute a swallow dive, or something. The thought fills me with anxiety. I peer over the edge at the unfathomable depths and fixate on the froth churned by the blades of the engine. Perhaps not this end.Of course, one has to take several other conditions into account: the direction of the prevailing wind, possible currents, the distance to land and, not least of all, the presence of man-eating sharks. I finger the newly-formed scab at my throat. Exactly how much blood does it take to send a shark into a man-eating frenzy? It goes without saying I've no answer to these questions.
Above me, the groan of mast and the idle flap of sail suggest a mild breeze. A north-westerly. So, there’s one thing I know, after all. I suppose you learn things from watching these sea-types.
I’m standing like this, lost in thought, when a great ruckus comes from the forward deck. Unable to reach consensus with myself on whether to pursue my latest plan, I succumb to curiosity and venture forward on the port side.
I push through a throng of startled shipmates, to find first officer Elliot F. Emery interrogating a small bundle of dirty laundry. On closer inspection I see the laundry is, in fact, a small lad. His face is blackened by soot and he stands, cap in hand, unafraid eyes fixed on his tormentor. There is something of the artful dodger about this lad.
Emery is all strident bluster. ‘Answer the infernal question!’
No response from the lad.
‘Perhaps a keel-hauling will refresh your memory.’ It’s clear Emery’s bluffing, but his arrogant manner annoys me. Before I know it, I’ve stepped forward.
‘Is this not a matter for the captain?’ I can hear the waver in my voice.
There is silence as all eyes swivel to me. It occurs to me, while I watch the colour rise up Emery’s neck, that the kid and I are not dissimilar. We’re both trying to escape. Here I am, formulating a plan to desert the ship and here’s this stowaway, risking life and limb to make it aboard. … what a little fool he is.
What a fool I am. I watch Emery’s lips move ... but before he has the chance to respond, a familiar shadow falls across the deck.
‘What's all the commotion?’ the distinctive voice of the captain booms and Emery seethes. I know I’ve not heard the end of this.
I stand with blade in hand at the mottled mirror. It's not what you think. I'm not about to do anything drastic.
I give my chin an ample lather with the soft badger hairs of my father's tortoise-shell shaving brush. The white foam is stark against my skin. It strikes me that, even though it's late February, I have something of a tan. I tap the blade in the bowl of warm water and hold it to my jaw. The boy in the mirror gives me a nervous grin. I'm no novice with a straight razor. I've been shaving a full six months ... on land. But at sea ... anything could happen.
I glance at the porthole, but the glass is steamed. I widen my stance and settle into the rhythm of the rise and fall.
Easy does it. Steady now. No need to rush.
I realise I haven't been clear on certain facts. I'm fifteen, you know that. I'm aboard a merchant schooner with my father, bound for Africa. You know that too. But there are things you might not know.
My name is Harry St John. The church is sending my father (and therefore me) to the farthest corner of the world. A vast desert in Bechuanaland, Southern Africa. My father, Charles Spencer St John, calls it the Kalahari. He points it out on the globe almost daily. If a more remote place on the planet exists, then I'd like to know where. Actually, scratch that, right now I couldn't care less.
He says it will be a grand adventure. He's so convinced he's taken me out of school a full year. He thinks I'll learn more than any year at school. I think he's mad. Mother's the real reason. We both know that.
Why Africa? Why not Africa? he likes to ask. We go to those who need us most (not a thought for what I need most).
The schooner, captained by the phlegmatic Henry J. Burroughs, is loaded with cargo and crewed by nine shipmates, one cook and two officers, including the captain and the first officer, Elliot F. Emery, three or four years my senior. There are six passengers aboard too. You are familiar with the flamboyant RH I. Seedat, the enigmatic German, Herr Hanz Oppenheim, and there is, in addition, the captain's wife, who seldom emerges from her cabin, their daughter, Celeste, spoiled rotten and full of airs and graces, and, of course, my father and I.
Why this ship? Well it could have been a luxury liner, but my father, true to form, elected the most economical route.
As though to confirm this fact, the floor gives a sudden lurch and I slam my forehead into the mirror with an almighty crack. The mirror shatters with the blow and it's only when I massage my scalp and frown at my splintered face, that I notice the dark drops that fall from the blade and colour the water crimson.
I press a white towel into the cut at my throat.
What have I done to deserve this?
The Right Honourable Ibrahim Seedat taps his jade-handled cane against the railing to emphasise a point he has been making consistently, and unreservedly.
‘It is jolly well not right, old boy.’ He tap, tap, taps at the rail. ‘This is highly confounding. You say she does not respond to your most seemly advances?’
I blush. What do I care about the captain’s daughter? Except … ‘Well, it’s just that she seems to take care not to take notice of me.’
‘A great puzzlement indeed!’
It’s no puzzle to me. I'm fifteen and I've met my fair share of her type at school dances. She’s a senseless girl with very little to offer the world, bar, admittedly, a decent, if not handsome, complexion and, I suppose, if I must be honest, a certain grace ... but no more.
‘What you need, dear boy, is something that sets you apart. A jade-handled cane for example. A potent symbol of … well, potency … and elegance. It is an established fact that a gentleman must always carry a cane.'
A dandy he means. I have no interest in subjecting myself to the mockery of the shipmates. I can hear their jeers now. No thank you. My policy will be to ignore the silly, impertinent girl even more than she ignores me. But I play the innocent with him.
‘A cane you say?’
He swishes it with a dramatic flourish. Errol Flynn of the high seas. ‘On guard I say, what!’ Up he jumps, enacting an imagined duel. He strikes, he cuts, and he lashes out.
I laugh, despite myself, but am struck dumb when he staggers back, as if walloped by an invisible sword, into the ample shadow of a giant. Captain Henry J. Burroughs by name, sea dog by appearance, stone-silent Narwhal by nature. He looms. He stares. He frowns. Call me coward, but the man is terrifying. Both RH I Seedat and I retreat in mortified haste.
'A cane,’ the RH I Seedat repeats with a whisper. ‘A jade-handled cane.
In the gathering cabin gloom, I wait. The dinner bell is struck sharply at six and it brings with it instant salivation. Who would have thought such muck could entice even my taste buds?
Father has retired for an aperitif (vermouth no doubt) on the starboard deck with the German. I can hear their muted conversation through the half-open porthole. (Incidentally, it is one thing to know it's the starboard deck, but the fact I insist on being precise about it, annoys me. Why can't I just call it the right side of the ship? Have the captain's silent stares somehow fashioned a nautical bent in me? Am I to be a sailor? Better than missionary, I suppose. Although, frankly, I'd rather walk the plank than fall into either profession.)
I dismiss the thought as irrelevant and roll onto my stomach so as to gain a clearer ear to their discussion. The German, Herr Hanz Oppenheim, who cuts a mysterious, elegant figure under a sloping fedora, is in full swing. 'I dream of Bach,' he says, in his heavily accented way. 'That is to say, I hear him in my sleep und indeed as soon as I wake. He is as constant, I should say, as the moon. It is the robust muscularity of the tone, you see. Ah, the way the music transports you ... no schooner can take you there.'
Try as I might, I cannot hear my father's response, his voice is snatched up by the wind and scattered at sea. But I am certain I can guess his tone and manner. Congenial. Pleasant to a fault. That's my father. Mild-mannered on the surface and yet, underneath, certain of himself. Of his cause. Of his beliefs. His ... not mine. Let me make that clear. We are not in this together. I am shanghaied by my father. He has dragged me here unwillingly and unwilling I intend to remain.
'Oh the bombast!' the German declares. 'The sheer outrageous pomp of the man. One can only marvel.' I assume he speaks of Bach, but the timing is quite perfect.
From the dipping musty corridor, comes the resonating donnnnng of a struck bell, and I salivate.
Sea legs. I'm not entirely sure what they are, nor how to attain them, but I'm certain of one thing: I don't have them.
The Captain has sea legs. And then some. Apparently, he was born at sea, carried to his mother's arms by a long-winged albatross, swooping right out of the sky. That's what the shipmates say. I, of course, don't believe a word of it. He was born like anyone else. On dry land. He came to sea, probably in his teens, and worked up the rope ladder, rotting rung by rotting rung, until he stood at the helm of the Frontier with his weathered sea dog face and his faraway eyes that could pierce a London fog right through.
He stands above me and his gargantuan shadow looms over the deck. He adorns the bridge with his long beard and fixes his glittering grey-green eye on the undulating grey-green sea. He's nothing but a pirate to me. 'Yar, me hearties, ye scurvy dogs, to work with ye.' Of course, he doesn't really speak this way, but he might as well. His face might as well be made of sand it's so weathered and moulded by the wind. The truth is, he scares me. I have never met anyone like him. Someone made by the sea. Captain Henry J. Burroughs by name, sea dog by appearance, stone-silent Narwhal by nature.
We are two days at sea and, so far, the trip has been nothing short of disastrous. We set sail under inauspicious circumstances. No fanfare, no ticker tape parade, no waving army of fair maidens. Nothing but the shrill cry of gulls and the ripe stench of fish guts and the sting of salt on the air. Two days at the rail, lurching under the rise and tilt of this tin can boat leaves me white-knuckled and bilious.
Everything shifts on the schooner. The mast, the ship's furniture, even the windows. Plates on the table scuttle from one side to the other as I attempt to stab my gristle-ribbed slice of beef (at least I assume it's beef) with a blunt fork. And the thing is ... it doesn't seem to bother anyone but me. Even the Right Honourable Ibrahim Seedat seems at ease in these seas.
I know this because he turns to me today and says: 'I feel indeed at ease in these seas. Jolly good and all. What ho.'
'Jolly good,' I repeat, hurling, green-faced, over the pitching side.
'This is no storm, young rascal, save your sickness and incredulity for the whipping Atlantic wind and the walls of water. She is not upon us yet.'
The merchant schooner, Frontier, lies at anchor in the harbour bay. There is no wind and the dawn sea is a listless opalescent. She doesn't look a temptress to me, but then I suppose that's the point.
My father has a notion that the sea is a kind of desert. 'Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink.' He recites a line from the Rime of the Ancient Mariner and screws up his eyes to look at the brooding sun rise from the desert sea. 'It will bring you closer to God, this journey. You will see. Look ... it seems endless, does it not? Endless,' he repeats with a stress. 'Nothing for miles and miles. Featureless. But dismiss the sea as benign at your peril, Son.'
'The sea is a mistress and a temptress,' the Captain agrees. 'She must never be taken lightly nor ignored. She will call forth the Gods at will. She will shapeshift the wind and tear sail from mast. She is silent one moment and a she-devil Valkyrie the next. She must be obeyed.'
If you're anything like me, you don't like to be told what to do and what to believe. You like to find out for yourself. As far as I'm concerned the Captain can keep the sea and the caterwauling gulls. He can keep the fish guts and the sloping cabin. He can keep his bucket and scrubbing brush and all hands on deck and port and starboard and stern and whatever else. He can keep his sea, and so can my father. Take me home, I beg the sky, and the sky turns its back in return.
Today feels like a dream.
Today feels like ... like I'm floating. Well, I suppose I am floating.
The breathless Right Honourable Ibrahim Seedat appears at my side, fresh from his step-out from starboard to port. 'Ah there you are, young rapscallion, bidding adieu to the land, eh? Tallyho what.'
Originally from Calcutta, the Right Honourable Ibrahim Seedat (he refers to himself in this way all the time, though there is no indication why he's a right honourable anything) has been studying law in both Paris and London for many years and has acquired a peculiar turn of phrase. He informs me that he has an opportunity to visit an uncle in Africa who has made the acquaintance of a young woman who will make a most appropriate bride for the Right Honourable Ibrahim Seedat.
I nod and shrug and he sighs and shakes his head and beneath us the chained head of an anchor hauls upward, the engine coughs and splutters, a pall of black smoke rises into the pale blue and the opalescent sea ripples and churns.
The voyage has begun.
Posts
