Deck Boy, page 43
The mate shouted but what he said I have no idea. Next moment I was out in the storm, running across the port wing of the bridge. Ryland’s body sprawled in my path. I leaped over it.
The steps were beside me. I grabbed the hand rails and slid down to the boat deck. The wind battered about me, tearing at my clothes. The bandage on my toe was unravelling. As I reached the bottom it snagged on a corner and tore away the dressing. I was too terrified to feel pain, but the rolling of the ship threw me off balance. The side rail was only a stride away. I hit it with my chest and grabbed hold with both hands. As we heeled far over, the leaping black water was right beneath me. I pushed myself back just as the mate, looking like a wild man with his hair and cardigan flying, came leaping down the steps towards me.
It was a split-second choice. To run aft, where friends offered safety, meant dodging past the mate who, as I saw in the gleam from a porthole, definitely was carrying Ka’tang’s murderous knife. I fled down a second flight of steps to the crew deck. The pitching of the ship threw me from rail to bulkhead and by the time I recovered, the mate was slithering down the steps at my back. On the narrow strip of deck there was no way past. I ran for’ard.
Below me lay the foredeck, remnants of the last wave swashing in a corner, streaming out through the rails in a windblown cataract. I hesitated and looked back. The mate came running towards me. I had no choice. The steps were before me. Seizing the rails with both hands, I slid down to the foredeck.
As the ship rolled to thirty degrees, waves slopped through rails normally high above sea level and swilled across the metal deck, splashing round my ankles. Safety lines had been rigged the length of the foredeck, one each side of the hatches. The port line was beside me. I grasped it and started for’ard. The ship dipped her bows. Tremendous spray hit me in the face and chest. She slid sideways into a trough. Black waves, glinting in what little light came from the sky, reared mast-high above me. I struggled on, there was nothing else to do.
Inexorably, ten metres behind, the mate followed.
With a blow that jarred the whole ship, a wave struck the bow. Solid water cascaded over the fo’csle head, burying the capstan, foaming above the rails. I cried aloud and locked my hands on the safety line as it crashed down on number one hatch and surged the length of the foredeck. I had never felt such force of water. I was submerged, buffeted, but somehow maintained my grip. At that moment I think it would have taken a crowbar to loosen my fingers on the rope. The wave subsided.
Coughing salt water, I looked round for the mate. The line was empty. He was nowhere to be seen. Had he gone over the side? My hopes surged. Then I saw him, sprawled against the superstructure at the after end of the foredeck. Whether he was hurt or still had the knife I couldn’t tell, but at once it became clear that he did not intend to let me escape. His eyes found me in the darkness. Rising with difficulty, he grasped the safety line. Hand over hand, determination in every step, he worked his way for’ard.
I reached the fo’csle where the safety line ended. Where could I go now? To go up on the fo’csle head would be suicide. The ship buried her bows again. I pressed against the bulkhead where there was a small overhang. The torrent poured past my head, leaving me in a watery cave like the space behind a waterfall. As it ended, boiling on over the hatches and down the foredeck, I fled to the safety line on the starboard side.
Something had changed. In the aftermath of the wave the ship was wallowing, her rolling had become more sluggish and extreme. With no one at the wheel she was swinging broadside-on to the storm. The next wave hit her exposed flank with a crack like an explosion. A tremendous fan of water leaped high as the crosstrees. Further and further she rolled to starboard. A derrick at number two hatch broke from its lashings, smashed to the deck and skittered to the rail. Paint tins crashed about in Lampie’s locker. Somewhere beneath me the anchor cable shifted. What may have been happening elsewhere in the ship I had no idea for my ears were filled with the roaring of the wind and sea. Luckily I had tight hold of the safety line for I lost my footing on the streaming deck. My legs trailed. The starboard scupper was under water. The Java Sea slopped towards me.
The ship rolled back. I regained my feet and stared all round. Again the mate was nowhere to be seen. What should I do? I hesitated, then hand over hand I began to work my way back down the foredeck.
The starboard rails had been smashed by the wave: ten metres were buckled, another ten metres were broken off. Hanging from a couple of stanchions, they straggled across the deck. I reached the foremast.
The mate was waiting for me, clinging to a ladder behind the mast house. Like a nightmare, he sprang out and caught me by the T-shirt. I yelled with fright and pulled back but he was too strong. Gripping the safety line with one hand, I beat at him with the other. My fist struck his head, shoulder, chest. It made no difference. The knife was gone. His hands were on my throat. His thumbs dug in, painful, unbearable. In seconds my head began to reel. I let go of the rope and clawed at his face, tore at his hair, scratched, punched, gouged, anything to make those hands release my throat.
They didn’t. Then dimly I realised that we had been joined by a third person. Someone else was tugging at the mate, beating him about the head, screaming, “Let go! Let go!”
It was Michael, who had been talking to Aaron in the bar. I was nowhere to be found. In a panic he had followed me to the bridge and found it deserted, stumbled over the dead bosun and spotted the two figures far beneath him.
The ship listed heavily to port. We fell to the deck, tangled as cats, and fetched up against the hatch coaming. Water washed over us. One of the mate’s hands was dragged away. I pulled at the other. His nails tore my skin, cut like blades. Pacific Trader rolled back to starboard. The deck tilted – thirty, forty degrees.
Abruptly the floodlights came on. The mate’s face was right before me. His eyes were murderous, his teeth bared. Michael’s fingers dug into his cheeks, his eyes, his nose. With a final heave my throat was clear. Blood was restored to my brain. Sweet air rushed into my lungs.
The dazzling lights revealed the wildness of the scene. Someone gave a yell. Through clearing eyes I saw a black wave poised high above us. In the split second before it struck I flung up an arm, struck the safety line and gripped it fast. The next moment we were engulfed in an overwhelming tumult of water. This way and that I was beaten and flung about. Yet luck stayed with me for the mast house offered a degree of protection and somehow, as the wave subsided and left me stranded, I was still there
But where were Michael and the mate? I looked on every side. The leaping ocean reflected the floodlights and bore down upon us at the speed of a train. The remnants of the last wave boiled along the foot of the superstructure. High above me, little faces peered down from the bridge.
Then I saw Michael. Right arm hanging, he rose from behind a winch. His low-neck T-shirt had been ripped to the chest, his ballooning silk trousers clung to his legs like a second skin. Clearly he was in pain. I worked my way down the safety line to give him a hand.
“Help!” A faint cry rose above the storm.
I looked all round.
“Over here!”
But where? Where had the shout come from?
Michael heard it too. Gripping the rope with his left hand, he limped towards me. I stared. Something terrible had happened to his eyes. The sockets were black. Hideous fluids ran down both cheeks. He came closer. With relief I realised it was his mascara.
“There,” he yelled above the gale. “By the rail.”
I looked where he nodded and saw nothing but the trailing derrick and broken tangle of rails. I took a couple of steps and looked again. The mate had been washed through the rails left standing and clung to the bottom bar for his life. Only his arms and head were visible, the rest hung down the ship’s plates. He swung up a leg and scrabbled for a foothold.
Someone had taken the wheel. Slowly the bows swung back to face the storm. The pounding waves were not so damaging. Even so, if I let go of the safety line to offer the mate a hand, I might be swept overboard myself. He might pull me over the rail. I looked at the sea and hesitated.
Michael, with a broken arm, had no such reservations. Already he was picking his way across the tangled deck. He shamed me. Feeling that I was committing suicide, I crossed to help him.
The mate watched with desperate eyes as we came close. “Hurry! Hurry!” The hands that two minutes earlier had been choking out my life were clamped on the rail. I reached through and gripped his elbow Michael, with his good hand, caught him by a wrist. We heaved. The mate’s grip shifted to the second rail. A giant wave came roaring to meet us. I let go and clung to the rails for dear life.
I was submerged and carried away, flung against the broken rails, the derrick, the hatch coaming, the winch. Frantically I cast about for something to hold on to. There was nothing. Head over heels I tumbled along, smashed into the towering superstructure and was tossed sideways.
The wave spent its force, poured out through the rails and freeing ports, was caught by the wind and whirled mast-high. I came to rest. For half a minute I could not move. Then I tested an arm, a leg, my back. They hurt. I hurt all over, but nothing, it seemed, was broken. Watery blood ran into my eyes, blurring my vision.
I crawled to my knees. Where was Michael? I didn’t see him. He couldn’t have gone – not Michael!
There were voices above me. I looked. Smoky, Barbara, Samuel and a couple of others came tumbling down the steps to the foredeck. I made an effort and stumbled towards them.
A movement caught my eye. I blinked the blood away. It was Michael. The wave had carried him back behind the winch. He leaned on it to recover. His broken arm was giving him pain. Samuel crossed to support him, strong arm around his back.
“Hello, big boy.” Michael managed a smile. “I didn’t think you cared.”
Barbara joined us.
I said, “The mate’s gone.”
“No.” Smoky nodded up the foredeck. “He’s right there.”
The mate lay on the deck, close to the coaming of number two hatch. The storm-driven wave that carried Michael and me away had flung him back inboard. He had always been immaculate. Now he lay awkwardly, his cardigan gone, shirt torn open. Unblinking eyes gazed up at the floodlights. Brian and Scudder worked their way towards him. But even from where I was standing it was obvious, by his unnatural stillness and the angle of his neck, the mate was dead.
Sunset and Sunrise
AND THAT was it really. The four who had spread their poison throughout the ship – Jumbo Ryland, Lenny Rathbone, Tony Fanshott-Williams and Duncan Rose – were gone. Captain Bell was back on the bridge. The watch was summoned to take the helm and keep lookout. Tim Nettles went through the ship with working parties to see what could be done to limit the damage. Those of us who had been hurt were attended to.
By four in the morning the wind was easing as Typhoon Caroline turned north-east, lashing the coast of Borneo and moving on towards the Philippines and western Pacific. Forty-eight hours later our battered ship sailed into Keppel Harbour in Singapore.
Dad was standing on the quay when we docked.
He was very nice about everything. In fact, everyone was very nice about it, I mean me being Ben Thomson, a fifteen-year-old runaway, and not Joey Bennett as it said on my papers. By everyone I mean my friends on board, the Singapore police, and Captain Bell who said, “Good God! Fifteen years old! Bloody hell! Come on, sit down here and tell us about it. Heidi, any chance of a cup of tea?”
So I told him everything, just as I had told dad: the weekend away from Frankie’s, meeting Charlie, the disco, Joey’s papers – but leaving Smoky out of it – meeting Ryland at the Eight Bells, how he had killed Curly aboard the Star of Bengal, Tony stealing from the cargo, poor Ossie, the hot springs, the Ascot Hotel, the freezer locker, the collapsing pool, Ryland on the radio, the pirates, Ka’tang’s knife, the hypodermic, the mate’s cabin, what I had witnessed on the bridge and my pursuit around the stormy foredeck. “Good God!” he said again when I had finished. “Bloody hell!”
When dad told him that if it were possible I’d very much like to complete the trip as deck boy, he said it was highly irregular but he’d had good reports of me, which pleased my dad no end, and in the circumstances he’d pull a few strings – no promises, mind – to see if something might be arranged.
Two days later I was summoned to his cabin and told, to my delight, that I was still a member of the crew. “Which means, Bennett, Thomson, whatever your bloody name is,” he concluded gruffly, “you’ve got a job to do. So what are you standing there for, grinning like a bloody schoolgirl just got her first kiss? Get on with it.”
We were in dock for ten days, longer than anticipated. The Singapore cargo was discharged and, in that equatorial heat, the frozen bodies of the mate, the bosun and Lenny Rathbone were taken ashore. The storm damage, which was extensive, was repaired and a replacement lifeboat was hoisted into the davits.
Police investigations continued the whole time we were in port. Among other things, they wanted to know who had been responsible for sabotaging the engines. Some of us guessed it was Luigi, who had had plenty of opportunity and been so angry when we asked him about it. We were wrong, it was a friend of his down the engine room, another Italian, an older man whose wife was sick and needed an expensive operation. I barely knew him, although of course I had seen him about the ship, a gentle man named Stefano with a shock of white hair. Ryland had bribed him. The chance to earn some extra money simply by turning off a couple of oil valves had been too tempting. The poor man had no idea what the outcome was likely to be – and now the ship was looted and a young engineer lay dead. Beside himself with distress, he had confessed to Luigi and in Singapore he confessed to the police.
When we sailed, Stefano did not come with us, and some months later I heard he had been given a three-year jail sentence. But there was a happier outcome: when the story of his part in the raid reached the Italian media, an appeal was launched by Corriere della Sera, the national newspaper, to enable his wife to have the lifesaving operation she needed. Many times the needed sum was raised and the operation was a success. Afterwards she made several visits to Westport to visit her loving husband in prison.
Captain Bell suggested dad might like to take over as mate but I didn’t want him to and anyway, his contract in the UK made it impossible. So a new mate and three deck crew were flown out to join us, and with Samuel upgraded to bosun, the atmosphere on the ship was transformed.
For the days he was in Singapore, dad slept in the pilot’s cabin. He met my friends. We went out for meals, explored the city and talked a long time. Despite the fact that I had driven him mad with worry, he said he was proud of me. Charlie’s mum, true to her word, had written to him. Dad had visited them and was very happy, if that’s what I wanted, for me to stay with the Sunderlands and complete my education at Westport High School. I went to the airport to see him off.
Some of the crew needed medical attention. A small cut above my eye, which had been stitched in the storm, was reopened and stitched again. Michael’s arm was re-set in plaster. Aaron’s arm was x-rayed and pronounced to be healing nicely. A few others, who had been injured by the pirates, were examined by doctors. Steve Petersen, who had saved my life, was admitted to Singapore General Hospital which had a specialist unit dealing with injuries such as his and when we sailed he did not come with us. Charlie, to my disappointment, was not yet strong enough to rejoin us in Singapore but he did so in Colombo with a sharp new haircut, lots of stories and a pretty Indian girl clinging to his arm. At once we moved back into the old cabin.
The days passed quickly and all too soon, for me at least, we were sailing up the cold grey Mersey to Liverpool. Sadly, as we signed off and collected our wages, I said goodbye to my many friends – Aaron, Smoky, Michael, Barbara, Luigi, Samuel, Kevin, Philip, Tim Nettles and Attila. But that’s the way of the Merchant Navy: once the voyage is over, friends who have been inseparable for six months or a year shake hands, embrace, step into a taxi and disappear from each other’s lives. Unless, of course, they’ve arranged to sail together the next trip.
But for me there would be no next trip. It had been arranged, and I had agreed, that at the start of the summer term I would return to school to complete my education.
Mrs Sunderland, Auntie Meg, as I came to call her, was the best mum a boy ever had – after my gran, of course, who had been a mum to me. Uncle Joe, her little husband, was kindness itself. And Charlie, my best friend in the world, became the brother I had never had. Every evening I took Doctor Death, the big soft Rottweiler, his lolloping run through the parks and along the overgrown lanes on the outskirts of Westport.
It was strange being a schoolboy again, wearing Charlie’s old green blazer with a badge on the pocket, after the events aboard Pacific Trader.
I had changed over the past five months. Was this Ben Thomson, burned brown by the tropical sun, his hands callused by hard work, the same boy who had paid prefects to forge a letter for him, been hypnotised by Betty’s stupendous breasts, and fled through a guesthouse window to avoid the shrieks of Mrs Stringbaum?
For a while I wrote to some of the people I had sailed with, and Michael, the only one to maintain a correspondence, kept me up to date with news of others:
Steve, after a long period of skin grafts and convalescence, left the sea. Always supremely fit, he went to college to train as a PE teacher.
Luigi returned to Naples and got his teeth fixed. Soon, despite being as gay as a maypole, he was being photographed with some of Italy’s most glamorous women and became a popular TV star.
