Deck Boy, page 35
“And he puts it on the tray,” Michael said, “and he goes to take it back to his cabin. Then he looks down and sees Rat’bone lying on the tiles. Means nothing to him at first, might have been a sack of turnips. Then in a rush it comes to him what he’s done and he goes all to pieces.”
“Doesn’t know what to do.”
“All he does know is that he can’t let anyone see. So he switches off the light and locks up the galley and goes wandering out on deck.”
“Thought about jumping,” Barbara said. “Then he realises maybe he can get rid of the body. He’d like to do it himself but there’s all this blood. So he wakes me up in the middle of the night.”
“And Barbara comes to me.” Michael refreshed his drink. “Eyes like the Bride of Frankenstein. So I get dressed and we all go along to the galley. There he is, great knife handle sticking up from his chest. Blood everywhere, run all over the deck.”
“Cut a long story short,” Barbara said, “we took the sheets off his bed to wrap the body, stop it dripping, and carried him aft. I thought just dump him but Ossie wouldn’t have it.”
“Me neither,” Michael said. “Deserved everything he got, bastard! Excuse the language, Ben, I just hated him. But everyone’s got to have a funeral.”
“Give him to the sharks, far as I’m concerned,” Barbara said. “But Michael’s a Catholic. Used to be an altar boy, swinging the incense and all that, everybody watching him. I reckon that’s what gave him the taste for dressing up.”
“Hark who’s talking!” Michael said. “At least when I was eight I didn’t ask Santa for a dress like the fairy on the Christmas tree. Anyway, it’s not a joke, we’re talking about immortal souls here.”
I was surprised. “I didn’t know you were a Catholic.”
“Why should you? Lots of things you don’t know about me.”
“Never mind all that,” Barbara said. “If he wasn’t going over the side, the only place we could think of – ”
“Where he wouldn’t start to rot – ”
“Was down the hold, in with the cargo. So we took a chance no one would catch us, shut the alleyway door like that cadet you saw thieving, and stashed him in with the mutton.”
“Threw the bloody sheets over the side then went back and mopped out the galley.”
“Cleaned the knife, dumped his snack in the bin.”
“Slipped the keys back to the chef – and that was it.”
“Then we all came along here to Michael’s for a much-needed drop of mother’s ruin.”
“A drop? Couple of bottles more like. I was shaking like a leaf.”
“And everything would have been fine,” Barbara said, “nobody would have known a thing, if it hadn’t been for you. I tried to warn you but no, you wouldn’t listen.”
“You can’t blame Ben just because he’s got sharp eyes,” Michael said.
“And too much imagination.”
“If you like, but he didn’t kill Rat’bone. He didn’t know anything about it. Why didn’t you just tell him?”
“I couldn’t.”
Michael nodded. “Anyway, who could have guessed Ossie was going to break up like that?”
What he said was true but I felt terrible, as if I personally was responsible for Ossie’s situation, locked up in the sick bay with a guard on the door.
Some others joined us. Voices grew louder. At one point Michael went off for half an hour to Hoover the feathers from the sick bay. Barbara entertained us with outrageous tales about his life as a hospital orderly. The lager flowed. It was after eleven when I came away.
The next morning Barbara was summoned to see the captain.
The Bucket and the Oil Drum
HE TOLD us what happened:
An engineer brought the message, shouting above the noise of the engines. “Captain wants to see you. Up in his cabin, right now.”
Barbara was mopping up an oil spill in the starboard bilge. His heart stopped. “What for?”
“Didn’t say.”
He climbed out, scrubbing black hands on a wad of cotton waste. “I’d better go and change.”
“Just go as you are, they said.”
He looked down at his filthy boiler suit, his engine room boots. A smudged mirror above the control table showed streaks down his face. Barbara detested being dirty, it made him ill. Reluctantly he mounted the long engine-room ladders and made his way to the captain’s quarters behind the bridge.
Three officers – Captain Bell, the chief engineer and the chief steward – wearing immaculate whites with lots of gold braid, sat waiting to interview him. Barbara, bedraggled as a seabird plucked from an oil spill, stood on sheets of newspaper in the middle of the carpet and prepared to hear the worst.
“Thank you for coming up so promptly,” said the captain. “Let’s get straight down to it. We want to speak to you about Oswald Bagot.”
Barbara’s knees turned to water.
“The messman who killed that AB a couple of days ago,” explained the chief engineer in case Barbara needed reminding.
“He’s a friend of yours,” said the captain.
Barbara swallowed.
“That’s right, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, we’ve been looking at your discharge book, Tanner,” said Captain Bell. “For some years you sailed as a steward.”
Barbara was puzzled. “That’s right, sir.”
“Until some unfortunate occurrence involving a bucket of water.”
“Yes, sir, I’m sorry, sir. But it was one of the engineers, he provoked me to it.”
I knew the story, Michael had told me long ago. Following his years as a hospital orderly, Barbara had undergone a period of training and joined the Merchant Navy as a sea-going steward. He loved it, it enabled him to live the life he wanted, and all went well until three years earlier when he had signed on as engineers’ steward. The third engineer, a bully and a brute, took delight in tormenting the gay and sprightly Barbara, much in the same way as Rat’bone had enjoyed tormenting Ossie. But Barbara, only half the size of Ossie, was a very different character. He wasn’t going to put up with it and decided to teach the man a lesson. So one evening when he had drunk rather too much, he filled a two-gallon bucket with ice and water. It was his intention to fling it over the third engineer as he lay sleeping in his bunk, and run away before he had a chance to recover. Unfortunately, as he approached the third engineer’s cabin, there were voices in the alleyway and he had to dodge into a cupboard until the road was clear. When he emerged, his brain befuddled by gin, he mistook the cabin for the one next door where the second engineer, recently married, was sleeping with his pretty wife. In the darkness he failed to see his error and somehow, as he flung the iced water, the bucket slipped from his hand and hit the young couple where they lay on the pillow. The second engineer received a nasty cut on the forehead and his wife lost two of her front teeth. In the ensuing screams and confusion, Barbara stumbled and was seized before he could make his escape. The injured couple were very nice about it and he was not charged by the police, but it marked the end of Barbara’s life as a sea-going steward. Some months later, after further training, he was allowed to return to sea as a greaser. And it was as a greaser and an accessory to murder that he stood now before Captain Bell and tried to calm his shaking.
“It says here,” the captain referred to the document before him, “that for a time you served as a messman.”
“Messman?”
“That’s right, isn’t it? Got a good report.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And the chief steward here tells me that some years ago you sailed together when he was a chef. You know each other from the past.”
“That’s right, sir. On the old North Star.” Barbara’s heart surged. Was that what this was all about?
“He speaks well of you,” the captain said, “and the thing is, we were wondering, in the present unfortunate circumstances, if you might be persuaded to – ”
“Oh, yes, sir. I can, easily. Right away. I’ll start tonight. Thank you, sir.” He bobbed. “Thank you.”
“You seem to have got there before me. I was going to say take over for the rest of this trip.”
“Rest of the trip? Oh, yes, sir, yes. If I make a good job of it, will you recommend I’m reinstated as a steward? Put in a good word like?”
Captain Bell glanced at the others. “I don’t see why not – on condition you don’t kill too many of us with buckets while we’re asleep.”
“Let’s get this straight,” the chief engineer said. “Your past experience isn’t the only reason you’re being offered the job. You’re such a bloody awful greaser.”
“Oh, yes, sir. I know. You’re quite right.”
“Tell me,” said the chief engineer, “what is it about being a greaser that you dislike so much?”
“I’m just not cut out, sir. You know what they say, oil and water? Well, oil and cup cakes, it’s the same thing. I mean, just look at the state of me!” He held his arms out. “I can’t make head nor tail of it. You know them big things down the engine room with all them bolts, you have to take them apart. And them little jiggly ones. It’s all a mystery to me. And I keep jamming my fingers. Look at these hands – and that nail. That’s going to come off, you know.”
He never returned to the engine room and that lunchtime, to my relief, Barbara replaced me at the serving counter. He was on top form, swapping backchat, giving cheek, and somehow the whole messroom began to sparkle in a way it had not done since I joined the ship.
*
Not once did I think ‘poor Lenny’ but many times I thought ‘poor Ossie’, and when work was finished for the day I called to see him again.
“He’s got a visitor,” said Brian who sat outside with a paperback.
I knew who it was before I went in because her perfume filtered round the door. Trish came regularly to sit with Ossie. The fact that she was a woman and very pretty seemed to comfort him. Sick of being told what to do by her self-righteous husband, Trish saw no reason why, if the captain’s wife could set the arm of an ordinary seaman, the mate’s wife couldn’t comfort a crazed messman. Everyone liked her for it, though she was still Trish the Dish in skimpy tops and tight shorts, and followed by many lustful eyes as she walked about the ship. “Cor, I wish she’d come an’ sit with me,” Kevin said more than once. “I need comforting an’ all.”
“Is that right?” I said, mimicking his Birmingham accent. “Well we could all do with a bit o’ that.”
“Here, watch yourself,” he said good-naturedly. “Good Brummie, that is. But what about the mate though? She’s really nice an’ he’s horrible to her.”
Ossie was calmer than the last time I had called. “Hello, Ben.” He wrapped me in a bear-like hug. “You’re my friend, I like it when you come to see me.”
“I like it too, Ossie,” I said.
“This is Patricia.” Ossie introduced us. “Everybody calls her Trish but I call her Patricia. Have you met her?”
“Yes,” I said.
“She’s nice. She comes and sits with me. When she’s here, the others stay away.”
“The others?”
“The ones who come and sit on the bed and won’t stop talking. Sometimes there’s hardly room for me.”
“But you like it when your mum comes,” Trish said.
“Yes, I like that,” he said. “I tell her my stories. Michael brings me tea and sometimes I share it with her.”
“Did you know Barbara’s messman now?” I said. “Just for a while until you get better.”
“Yes, he came and told me. He’d better look out for that bad one.” He looked towards the porthole. “I can’t remember what he’s called but I think something happened to him.”
“He doesn’t come and see you in here does he?” I asked.
“Sometimes,” he said. “But not when Patricia’s here. Or my friends.”
That evening there was an impromptu party on the afterdeck. An empty oil drum, punched full of holes, was set on chocks and a fire was lit in the bottom. Barbara appeared, wearing his dirtiest engine-room boiler suit. In one hand he carried a bulging bin bag, in the other a can of paraffin. He set them aside and chose a spot near the leaping flames. A small crowd had gathered. Barbara struck a pose. Then, to the thumping notes of The Stripper from Michael’s tape-deck, he performed the striptease of a lifetime. The boiler suit went first, slipped from one shoulder, then an arm, peeled to his waist, past his bottom, off altogether and whirled round his head while he danced and wriggled and stamped his work boots to the rhythm. He doused it in paraffin and set fire to it, whirled the roaring flames until they reached his fingers and dropped the blazing boiler suit into the oil drum. By this time the rest of us were shouting and clapping and stamping in time to the music. Barbara had put on several layers of underwear. He pulled off one dirty shirt, then another, three T-shirts, his boots and socks, three pairs of underpants. A single, oily, saggy pair of Y-fronts remained.
“Get ‘em off!” Aaron shouted.
“All in good time. Control yourself.” He opened the bin bag, filled with his remaining boiler suits, engine-room shirts and underwear. All went into the inferno.
“Get ’em off!” The shout was universal and at last Barbara obliged, soaked them in paraffin and whirled the blazing Y-fronts around his head. Like a torch, they sailed over the rail and were extinguished by the waves.
Then he ran to the pool and leaped in. Cheered by the occasion the rest of us followed, fully-dressed, and for ten minutes we splashed and clowned in the cold water, lit on one side by the dusky flames of the oil drum, and on the other by the rising moon which cast an orange track across the sea.
Coral Island
OUR COURSE, as the second mate had shown me on the chart when I took the wheel on Sunday afternoon, lay roughly west through the sparkling seas of Indonesia, then north-west between Sumatra and Borneo to Singapore. Captain Bell and Tim Nettles, the navigating officer, wanted to keep as far from land as possible to avoid the local fishing boats – small, unlit and careless of the rules of the sea – which swarmed in the coastal waters. It was difficult, for the seas of Indonesia are thronged with islands and in places we had to thread a passage between them. For those of us not engaged in navigation and keeping a lookout these were good times, waving to the cheerful fishermen and exploring their jewelled islands through binoculars.
We passed the southern tip of Sulawesi and all seemed to be going well as we altered course from the Flores Sea into the Java Sea heading towards Borneo. It was another perfect morning and I was leaning on the rail looking down at the water when I realised that our speed had dropped.
Philip was passing. “What’s up?” I asked him.
“Some problem with the engines,” he said. “Bearing running hot. Might have to stop for repairs.”
“Before Singapore?”
”They say it’s quite serious. Two – three days yet to Singapore, maybe more, even at sixteen knots.”
I was following our progress: every day the noon position was plotted on a chart in the crew alleyway. “Where will we put in?”
“You mean what port?” he said. “Don’t need to, just drop anchor off some little atoll. The engineers can do the repairs themselves.”
“How long for?”
“Maybe a day.”
“Sounds good. Think we’ll get ashore?”
“I hope so.” Philip was eating a Mars Bar from the fridge. He offered it and I bit off an end.
“I haven’t seen Tony for days,” I said. “How’s he doing?”
“Miss Fanshott-Williams?” Michael’s manner was catching. “Oh, charming as ever. Spends most of his time with the bosun. Smells of drink. I reckon they’re up to something again – don’t know what. Goes about with a little smile on his face. Can’t be the cargo, who’s going to nick carcasses of lamb in this heat? Or boxes of butter?”
The mate appeared on the deck above.
“See you.” I shot back inside.
Philip was right; an hour later we altered course to starboard and the engine note dropped still further. Crew gathered along the rails to see a coral atoll which lay dead ahead. While we were eating lunch the engines went astern and brought us to a halt. With a loud rattle, the starboard anchor was dropped. An eerie quiet fell over the ship. For weeks, months, we had grown so used to the roar and vibration of the engines that we never noticed them. Even when we berthed in New Zealand there was the buzz of the harbour and clatter of winches. Now there was no sound but the soft slap of waves against the ship’s plates. Men talked, some loudly, to fill the silence.
I hurried to finish my pudding and went out on deck. Without the benefit of a breeze the ship baked in the midday heat. Beneath our keel the water was emerald green. The atoll lay a mile distant, maybe a little more, with dazzling white beaches, rich green vegetation, and the water above the coral so clear it had no colour at all. Like many of the tiny islands in the archipelago, it was uninhabited.
To avoid speculation, Captain Bell called the crew on deck and explained what had happened. A bearing on one of the main propeller shafts had overheated. The engine had to be stopped to prevent further damage. It was not a difficult repair, just time-consuming. We expected to be anchored off the atoll, which was unnamed on the chart, for approximately thirty-six hours.
“Why not continue on one engine?” someone called out. “Fix it when we get to Singapore.”
“Yes, indeed we could,” he answered. “But it would mean less power and these aren’t the safest seas in the world, all the islands and little native boats and what not. If bad weather blew up as it might any time, I’d prefer to have the use of both engines.”
