The Restless Sea, page 14
Although they have their favourite and worst lessons, there is one thing they all agree on: that they hate inspection, when The Barker arrives with his white gloves and checks for dirt and dust in the mess deck. If he’s in the wrong sort of mood, he has a go at them for not breathing correctly. He is in that sort of temper tonight, running his finger along the bar, along the chest where Jack keeps his clothes neatly folded. He sticks his cane into the box, lifting out the trousers that Jack should have washed and pressed yesterday. Foolishly, he had hoped to get away with it, but the creases are almost non-existent, the material too soft and crumpled to have been laundered. As The Barker lifts them, dangling on the end of his cane, something drops to the floor.
Jack scrabbles to pick it up, but The Barker gets there first.
‘Give it back,’ says Jack.
The Barker examines it, holding it up to the light. It glints, green like the leaves in the park in spring. ‘A piece of rubbish. I will dispose of it,’ he says.
Jack moves towards the officer. ‘Give it back,’ he says, louder this time. He can sense the other boys holding their breath.
‘Important to you is it, cadet?’ He holds the glass in front of Jack’s face. Jack tries to grab it, but The Barker snatches it away. Jack feels something burn like scalding porridge deep down inside him. He tries again to get it, but The Barker jabs at him, catching him on the temple.
Jack takes a step back, but his blood starts to pump. The watching faces recede and the world narrows. ‘Give it the fuck back, you bastard!’
But still the officer won’t. He leers at Jack, goads him, taunting him with the glass – with Betsy’s piece of glass. And the thought of his little sister and his mother who he’s tried so hard to forget rises up in front of him and the pain is so intense that he launches at The Barker with all his might, taking a swing, but The Barker steps out of the way and lands a blow beneath Jack’s ribs, winding him momentarily. Jack springs back, then throws himself towards the man again, but instead of feeling flesh beneath his fist, he finds himself rammed up against one of the wooden columns by the throat, The Barker’s face right up close to his, the man’s breath warm on Jack’s cheek.
Jack struggles, but the officer has him pinned good and proper. ‘Is that all you’ve got?’ says The Barker, his cheeks flushed brighter than usual, his barrel chest rising and falling. Jack struggles again, but he cannot move. He tries again and again until he is as weak as a baby, but the officer stands firm. Jack gives up, feels his shoulders slump, his own cheeks burning crimson.
But The Barker hasn’t finished: ‘What is it that you’ve got to be so cross about, cadet?’ Jack doesn’t answer. ‘It can’t be because you’ve lost someone? We’ve all lost someone. It can’t be because you’re hungry. We’ve fed and clothed you.’
Silence. Jack avoids his eyes.
‘Come on. Spill the beans. I’ve been desperate to find out ever since you arrived.’
Still Jack cannot look him in the eye. ‘It’s because …’
‘What?’
‘Because you treat me like shit.’
‘I treat you all like shit.’
‘… like I’m from the gutter.’ Finally, he meets The Barker’s gaze.
The officer shakes his head, and his grip relaxes as he releases Jack. ‘I’m not interested in where you’re from,’ he says. ‘As soon as you stepped on board this ship, you had no past. It’s your future I care about.’
Jack stands, confused, looking around him.
‘Now,’ says The Barker, dusting himself down. ‘I think you’d better sign up for next week’s boxing match. You need to learn to control that temper of yours.’ Before he goes, he presses Betsy’s glass into Jack’s palm. ‘Hold tight to your passion, cadet. It’ll make you a leader of men yet.’
Jack excels in the boxing ring. Finally able to focus his energy, he is one of the best boxers they’ve ever had. As he picks up the vocabulary of the sailor outside the ring – port and starboard, aft and fore, hull and keel, bulkhead and ballast – he learns to control himself inside the ring. He gets used to the clanging of the bell and the whistle of the boatswain’s call. His life is divided into watches and meals, inspections and drills. The regime of the training ship breeds camaraderie, the new knowledge breeds respect – for themselves and for their shipmates. They want to help each other succeed. David and Si help Jack work out atmospheric pressure on a barometer, remind him which is longitude, which latitude; in return, Carl and Jack go over and over their knots until the boys can whip a rope’s end in their sleep. He begins to feel a new emotion: pride.
And soon enough, they are the senior boys, helping themselves to the first dollops of rabbit stew, watching the huddles of new recruits with a mixture of amusement and relief. On their last day, O’Brien takes the boys for a farewell row. Wielding the long oars took some getting used to, but now each boy can sense when the person behind or in front dips his oar into the water and pulls. O’Brien sits in the stern, his hand on the tiller. There is purpose in their strokes, and within minutes they are slicing through the canal, their oars splashing in steady rhythm, past barges, dinghies, sailing boats tied up along the canal. They whistle at the women who man the longboats along the canal up to Gloucester and beyond. They are determined-looking women in dungarees, sleeves rolled up, who raise their arms in greeting, cigarettes dangling from broad smiles, bright headscarves nodding. They remind Jack with a wrench of his mother. Beyond the canal, the River Severn is wide like the Thames. Jack thinks of home. Can Betsy read yet? Is Stoog still thieving? Is Vince still fencing? Is Tommy a lookout for them, or for the firewatch? He begins to see where his life could have gone if he’d stayed.
When they return to the Constance, O’Brien accompanies them to the mess deck, where The Barker is waiting to say goodbye. ‘I’m going to miss you lot,’ says O’Brien. ‘Reckon you’re one of the best groups we’ve had yet. You’re going to make fine sailors.’ He turns to the older man. ‘What do you say, Mr Harker?’
The Barker can barely manage a grunt. His red cheeks grow redder, and he tries to say something that might be ‘yes’, but it comes out half-strangled, and Jack can’t help laughing. It starts as a kind of choke in his throat, and then his stomach and his shoulders are heaving. And suddenly all the boys are laughing. And Jack isn’t sure, but he thinks he sees The Barker wipe a tear from his eye as he stomps away.
Someone has managed to secrete some home-brewed beer. The cadets pass it around, swigging from the bottles. The liquid leaves a warm feeling in their bellies and a light feeling in their heads. Si puts his arms around Jack and Carl’s shoulders. ‘A fine pair of sailors,’ he says, mimicking O’Brien’s voice.
‘Can’t be a real sailor until you’ve got a tattoo,’ says David.
‘Says who?’
‘Ask anyone.’
‘How’re we going to get tattoos?’
‘I know how to do one,’ says Carl. ‘My dad taught me.’
‘Do me one,’ says another boy.
‘Me too,’ says David.
Jack nods. ‘And me.’
‘Let’s get them all the same,’ says Si. ‘So we can recognise each other when we’re old and wrinkled.’
‘What’ll we get?’
‘A swallow?’
‘A ship?’
‘A shark?’
‘A mermaid?’
They snort with laughter. ‘I’m not that good. I could try something like a compass,’ says Carl.
‘A star?’ says Jack.
They mull the idea over.
‘I’m up for a star,’ says Si.
‘The Pole Star,’ says David, ‘so we’ll always find our way home.’
They raid the ship for the things they need. Needle and thread from the cupboard with the sailmaker’s kit. Some ink from the classroom. No one bothers them tonight: they will be gone tomorrow. Carl lights a match and burns the end of the needle to sterilise it.
‘Where do you want it?’ he asks.
The boys opt for the inside of their forearms. Jack draws the stars on their skin, and Carl digs the needle into their flesh. The alcohol acts as a painkiller.
Carl stands back and surveys his handiwork. ‘Not bad. Now who’s going to do me?’
It is their last hour. The captain-superintendent is congratulating them. At their feet are their own canvas sea bags that they have cut and stitched with the sailmaker. Jack is sure he has grown by at least two inches since being here. He stands tall, with his chest out, his eyes fixed ahead.
‘Without men – yes men – like you, this country would be in trouble. The Merchant Navy and the Royal Navy make Britain the mightiest force on the sea. Between us we keep the planes flying and the tanks rolling. We bring the fuel for the vehicles. Why, we bring the vehicles themselves. Who is crossing the Atlantic every second of the day? Who is bringing the food? The ammunition? The troops? Us, that’s who. And now you will too, cadets. They’re crying out for men like you to crew the ships that keep the country going, and Hitler and his Nazis at bay. I know you won’t let us down. Make no mistake: your training has been tough because it’s tough out there. But each of you is a credit to Training Ship Constance. I have faith that you are Britain’s lifeline. Our own king, George VI, has spoken of it. Without you Britain will not win this war.’
After passing out, Jack is at last ready to face the past. He knows that his life was on a downward spiral, dragging his sister into its vortex. He heads for London to make his peace with his mother, Carl by his side. The city of his childhood is still smoking, still torn. His neighbourhood looks different through his seaman’s eyes. It is more damaged than he remembers. So many vacant buildings, scorch marks around the shattered windows, so many piles of rubble and debris, it is difficult to see how things will ever be right again. Children climb among the ruins, still looking for shrapnel, no doubt, still living on the edge of existence. Jack feels years older, although in reality it has only been months. He is not the boy who left here all those weeks ago. He feels his clothes pressing against his skin, thick and warm. He sees the ragged clothes and blackened feet of the children around him, and flexes his toes in his boots.
Carl leaves him on Southwark Street, so he can visit his own family. Jack heads for Drummond Road. He knows his mother will be pleased when she opens the door and sees him standing there in his new uniform. He can picture the wide look of surprise on her tired face. He can’t wait to tell her what he has learnt – how one day he could become an officer. He wonders whether time away will have had the same result for Betsy – shown her how life can be. He smiles to himself as he imagines visiting her with his mother, maybe even tomorrow. How the three of them will be reunited.
He passes many gaps between the once-terraced houses that his neighbours used to live in. As he reaches his own house, he blinks and swallows. There is another empty space. His home is gone. He can see through to the backyard, where the hump of the Anderson shelter is still visible. But the house is not there. He walks between the inner walls of what used to be the living room and kitchen, stumbling on the uneven ground as he looks up and around in bewilderment. The fireplace, where his mother used to warm his clothes, is now just an exposed, blackened chimney. There is nothing left among the debris to say who once lived here, not even a shoe. Whatever was not destroyed has already been taken by the wanderers and pilferers, behaving as he would have behaved only months ago.
The shelter is dented and the door has gone, but someone has been tending some thin and sickly-looking vegetable plants. Jack hears a noise. For a moment, his heart leaps: a grubby girl is clambering over the rubble beyond the backyard. Betsy? But as he approaches, he sees that she is only a toddler. She looks up at him, her eyes empty and expressionless.
‘Do you know what happened to the woman who lived here?’ he asks. She shakes her head and steps back, stumbling a little on the uneven broken bricks. Still watching him, she sniffs, wiping her hand across her nose. The snot leaves pale streaks in the grime on her cheeks. Another child calls her name and she runs to him, tottering across the crumbled bricks. Jack calls out: ‘Wait! Do you know what happened?’
The boy shrugs, holding out his hand for the girl to grasp. ‘Bosch, in’t it. Killin’ everyone.’
‘Do you know if anyone survived?’
The boy shakes his head. ‘No, mister. We’re not from round ’ere.’
‘Where are you from?’
The boy grips his sister tighter and backs away. ‘We’re from where we’re from, mister.’
‘Do you know the Stoogleys?’
The boy shakes his head.
‘The Taylors? Or the Browns?’
The boy shakes his head again and bends down to tug at a piece of timber he has spotted that might be useful. It is stuck fast and he gives up, turning back to eye Jack, who has started to knock on neighbours’ doors.
Most of the houses are empty, their inhabitants away at work or volunteering or fighting, but Jack notices a curtain twitch at one window. He raises his fist and hammers on the door, watched at a safe distance by the boy and his sister.
‘Sorry to bother you,’ he says to the woman who answers. ‘I’m trying to find Elizabeth Sullivan? Alfred Sullivan’s wife?’
‘Oh dear,’ says the woman, nervously primping her hair, taking in the smart young man in front of her. ‘Oh dear, oh dear.’
Jack’s mouth is dry. ‘I saw the house …’ he says.
The woman leans out and glances up the street, as if hoping the house might have reappeared there. ‘I’m afraid it was a direct hit, dearie,’ she says. ‘There weren’t nothing left. We have to take comfort in the fact that it was so quick. Lizzie wouldn’t have felt a thing.’
‘How long ago?’
‘Two or three weeks back. We’ve had a proper hammering, mind, so it’s hard to remember exact.’ She stretches out a comforting hand. ‘Family, were you?’
Jack looks down at the ground as he nods. He cannot squeeze the words out.
‘Glad she’s got some family left. Poor Lizzie. Husband and oldest son missing doing their duty in France. Daughter sent to safety in the country, and the one son she had left, who should have been a help to her in her darkest hour, was a good-for-nothing little hooligan. Ran away. Upped and left her all alone.’ She is warming to her theme, glad to speak of something other than the death of a neighbour. ‘Mind you, he was always a bad one that. Not an honest bone in his body. We all told her he was a troublemaker, but she always stuck up for him. Him and his friends brought the neighbourhood right down. Wasn’t safe to leave anything lying around … I suppose you can’t choose your family – no offence meant, dearie – but if he’d stuck around and pulled his weight, maybe she wouldn’t have been so tired that night and she might have got out of the house in time …’
He wants to say he’s not that person any more, but the words won’t come out. He never meant for his mother to die like that. Alone. He feels the bile rise in his throat, and he holds his hand over his mouth before turning to throw up.
The woman is shocked and hurries inside, slamming the door behind her.
Jack stands, wiping his mouth. The boy and girl stare vacantly at him from the other side of the street.
‘What are you looking at?’ he says. ‘Scram. Go on!’
And they run through the ruins of his home, skittering away across the wasteland beyond like feral cats.
CHAPTER 9
The boys from Training Ship Constance disperse across the United Kingdom to seek work on board the merchant ships. It is not hard to find: enemy U-boats claim more victims in the Atlantic every day, but the supply chain needs to be kept going. Carl, Jack, David, and Si head for Liverpool. There is nowhere else for Jack to go now: the Merchant Navy is all he has.
The train stops and starts, pulling slowly away from the nameless stations, their signs removed to confuse the enemy. Jack does not tell Carl what the neighbour said, just that his mother is gone. ‘At least Betsy will be safe,’ says Carl, trying to cheer his friend up.
Jack nods. His shame is deep and painful, made more so by the fact that his orphaned sister must feel so alone wherever she is. He cannot help thinking that the woman was right, and that if he had stayed, his mother might still be alive. He wonders whether Betsy will think the same. ‘Do you reckon anyone will have told her? Visited or written to her?’ he says.
‘Who knows. There’s that many people scattered across the country …’
‘How will I find her?’
‘I’ll help you …’ He feels Carl’s solid hand on his shoulder. ‘Listen, don’t blame yourself,’ he says. ‘There’s nothing you could have done.’
But Jack stares into the distance, lost in thought. ‘Maybe you can never drag yourself out of the shit-heap,’ he says.
At Lime Street station, they ask directions to the Sailors’ Home, where the Merchant Navy pool is. The porter points along the road. ‘Look for the Pearly Gates,’ he says. ‘Can’t miss ’em.’
It is not a long walk, although it feels it, with the weight of their sea bags on their shoulders. The city is another London: craters and rubble, twisted metal and broken glass. The sounds are of brushes sweeping and the coughing of hollow-eyed people living among dust. Jack is not alone in his loneliness.
The Home is an imposing building, with turrets above its four corners, and hundreds of windows reflecting the shattered city. It is so close to the docks that they can see the Mersey – a slippery eel, its skin glinting in the sun – and the masts of the ships coming and going. The sound of the cranes creaking as they unload cargo transports Jack back to happier days on the Thames docks.
