Jack tries his new coat on. It is heavy, and lined with sheep’s wool. It certainly is warm – too warm for a summer evening below deck. There are also gloves, scarves, strange hats with only slits for eyes, and thick woollen socks.

  ‘What’s it like, Canada?’ he asks.

  ‘All right if you like the snow.’

  ‘And wolves,’ says one of the men.

  ‘I’d like to see a wolf,’ says Carl.

  ‘You want to see a wolf, do you?’ Mart hisses at him. ‘I’ll tell you about wolves. They’re like the Nazis. They hunt in packs. And when the snow comes down and the wind is screaming and food’s scarce on the ground, then they creep along on silent paws. You can’t see them. But still they come and when they grin their grin is bloody and when they leap you have time only to glimpse the redness of their mouths and the blackness of their eyes and then – snap!’

  He snaps his fingers, and Jack and Carl jerk back with a start.

  Mart begins to laugh. It is a laugh that gathers momentum and becomes a throaty cackle. Some of the other sailors join in.

  ‘Come on, now,’ says Cook. ‘No need to scare them on their maiden voyage.’ And the men laugh again, and Mart spits into his mug.

  ‘Make no mistake, boys,’ he says. ‘The wolves are out there, waiting for us.’

  Jack lies open-eyed in the dark, trying not to think of his mother or father, or of Walt, hoping that Betsy is safe wherever she is, wondering how he will ever find her, and if he does, whether she will blame him for abandoning them all. He falls into an uneasy sleep, and it feels only minutes before Mart is shouting through the door: ‘Show a leg, Peggies!’

  Dawn is breaking, pale streaks of light brightening on the horizon. The dock is alive with noise. The very last of their cargo is being loaded. Mart directs it into the hold. Carl and Jack have removed the guardrail to make it easier to swing the crates on to the ship. They must remember to put it back again.

  ‘What are we carrying?’ Jack asks Burts, the burly man who he recognises as one of Mart’s friends from the steps.

  ‘Supplies. Boots. Coats. Wool. Military vehicles.’

  ‘It’s a bloody floating haberdasher’s,’ Mart says. He spits another brown glob over the side.

  ‘What do the Americans need that for?’

  ‘What’s it to a couple of Peggies? Get on and stow those ropes.’

  They set to work, heaving and coiling, battening down hatches. Burts lowers the derricks. Mart shouts orders. He seems to be in charge of everyone. Soon everything is folded and stowed neatly into its place. Carl hoists the ensign of the merchant marine, the Red Duster – the red flag with the Union Jack in the corner – and the Blue Peter flag, blue with a white square in the middle of it, that indicates they are about to get under sail.

  ‘Stand by fore and aft,’ says Russell.

  The ropes are large and weighty and stiff in their hands. In the water below, the squat tugs beetle around, their pilots craning their necks as they concentrate on manoeuvring the Aurora into open water. They wear dark coats, grimy with coal dust. Their boats are rusty and worn, huge coils of rope lie curled on their decks. The tugs burp black smoke with the effort, but though they are small, they are also strong and have soon pulled Jack’s ship into the less crowded water of the river, where the current runs faster.

  The command comes: ‘Let go tug ropes.’ The deck buzzes with activity. The tugs drift away from the Aurora, their pilots waving and tipping their flat caps as they swing back to the docks. The Aurora releases a plume of black smoke as she slices her own passage across the Mersey, past the other ships coming and going in the shipping lane, as they head towards open water.

  Nothing prepares Jack for his first day at sea. Not O’Brien or The Barker, not Mr Turner or Officer Scott. Not the mucking around in boats or lifeboat drill or any amount of knots. The bile of seasickness sits in his throat. Fred the galley boy is the worst: he vomits so much during the first two days that Cook makes him wear a bucket around his neck.

  The only thing that keeps their minds off it is work, and there is plenty of that. Jack and Carl are given the early-morning watch with First Mate Russell: 4 a.m. until 8 a.m. Then it’s eight hours off, before watch again from four in the afternoon until eight in the evening. Then sleep until the early watch begins again. The clanging of the ship’s bell divides their days into half-hours, just as it did on the Constance.

  The Aurora slips quietly, efficiently into routine; Jack and Carl already a part of it. On Sundays they have inspection by Andersson, who appears in his dark peaked cap, which is usually a little skewwhiff. He checks the dust and polish, and examines their hands and feet. ‘Someone’s got to look after you,’ he says in his clipped accent. His eyes are crinkled at the edges from where he squints into the sun as he sucks on his pipe.

  Since no one is allowed to smoke on deck in blackout, the mess room becomes a smog of cigarette smoke. The men play cards amid the blue vapour, which drifts around them like wraiths, shovelling their winnings into secret places. It is August, and the sunshine feels relentless. It burns the moisture from the air, leaves salt stuck to everything, and makes their skin dry.

  The men strip off their tops when they are down below and sit around the table scratching at their bare chests and their sticky hair.

  ‘Like what you see, my pretty one?’ Mart says when he notices Jack staring at the tattoos that are inked across most of his wiry body, briefly reminding him of another time, a gold-toothed sailor. Jack turns away. But Mart is in a chatty mood. ‘Look here,’ he says. ‘You can read me like a book. This one’s to show I’ve crossed the line.’ He points at a green and black turtle swimming on his left shoulder blade. ‘That’s the Equator to those from the good ship Constance,’ he adds. He lifts his right forearm to point at a blue anchor. ‘This here’s the Atlantic.’ Most of the men have this. ‘And this,’ he says, pointing at a dragon curling its tail over his right shoulder, ‘this is Ernie. He’s a Chinaman.’

  There are other marks too. A compass on his left bicep. The words ‘hold’ and ‘fast’ across his knuckles. On one ankle he’s got a pig, and on the other a rooster.

  Jack touches the star on his forearm, aware of how minute it is compared to the bosun’s. ‘How long have you been in the Merchant Navy?’ he asks.

  Mart snorts. He looks around the men at the table. ‘Merchant bloody Navy!’

  The men all laugh. Jack turns red from the neck up.

  ‘Only a navy when it suits ’em.’

  ‘You youngsters don’t know how lucky you are.’

  ‘You lot with your new register and new clothes.’

  ‘Mollycoddled, that’s what I call it.’

  ‘We’re no more mollycoddled than anyone else,’ says Jack.

  Mart doesn’t look at him, just carries on. ‘Spoon-fed and spineless,’ he says.

  The heat is getting to Jack, and, combined with Mart’s taunting, he feels the tension begin to rise. ‘Say that to my face,’ he says, pushing himself up on to his feet, the chair scraping across the floor, stopping all conversation.

  In the silence, Jack hears Mart’s bones crack as he too stands slowly up from the table. The bosun pulls himself upright so that he is almost as tall as Jack. Although he is skinny, he is as sinewy as a stray dog, his body as tight as a drum. His hard blue eyes glitter as they search deep into Jack’s dark and furious ones. ‘Are you really going to fight me, boy?’ he says.

  ‘You don’t know nothing about me,’ says Jack. ‘I’m not spineless or spoon-fed.’ He tightens his hands into fists as his heart thumps in his throat.

  Mart leans forward. ‘You are if I say you are,’ he says, jabbing his finger against Jack’s chest with each word. ‘And if you raise a fist to anyone on my ship, you’ll be off it before you can say “pretty”.’

  ‘Jack,’ says Carl, a warning in his voice.

  The bell clangs. A thousand images flash through Jack’s head: of a bracelet, of his mother’s disappointment, of his sister’s wide eyes, of Stoog’s raised fist, of The Barker’s hand against his windpipe, of the people who have clothed and trained him, of a gold-toothed sailor who told him to change his life. He lets his fist drop. Mart snorts and turns to spit. ‘Your watch, Peggy,’ he says.

  The Aurora steams up the west coast, through the Irish channel, between Ireland and England. This is the safest part of her journey – in home waters. Once they clear the north of Ireland, they will head out into open sea. Jack’s red, raw hands begin to harden, as do his muscles, and he sleeps like the dead. His family have stopped visiting him in his dreams. It is as if he has let them go. The nausea has passed. He watches the world turn rainbow colours as the sun rises, and mythical creatures appear through the sea mist: dolphins break the water in silence, twisting and turning across their bow; stumpy puffins with their wide, colourful beaks fly past; gannets plummet into the sea, pale streaks beneath the water. Jack has only ever known buildings and brick and rubble, yet here pale yellow beaches are strung between shining black cliffs. The water slides past, now grey, now green, now blue. And in the distance, the peaks of Scotland are purple in the haze.

  And then the land slips away until it is just a dot of clouds, until that too disappears, and there is only silvery water as far as the eye can see. Mart growls at them: ‘Keep a sharp lookout for tin fish.’ The threat of torpedoes increases minute by minute. The men mutter around the mess table. They are confused because ships heading to America or Canada usually head out westwards across the Atlantic, but the Aurora’s course seems to be taking them further north.

  The waves become choppier. Routine becomes rhythm. They wake for the dawn. They keep watch. Jack feels a flutter of panic. They are alone on a wide, wide ocean. Staring so hard at the sea makes him cross-eyed. Occasionally they pass other ships returning the way they have come. Jack’s stomach lurches every time before they confirm it is an Allied ship. He is ready to sound the alarm bell at any second.

  When they are not on watch, Mart never lets up. He tests Jack on his meteorology, makes Carl go over his hitches. In the mess they fill themselves with steaming porridge and bread and marmalade. They scrub and polish the deck. They run any repairs, and if there’s time, they play games on deck in the summer sunshine. As they draw further north, the hours of night shorten until there is barely any darkness. They are glad that the porthole is painted black. They shut themselves in and try to sleep, even though it is still bright outside. Their bodies soon adjust.

  They don’t come across the men from the stokehold much, apart from when they appear on deck with buckets of cold seawater to try to wash the coal from their faces. Their bodies are pasty in the daylight. Carl and Jack chip and scrape, wash and paint, sew and splice, as the men talk in their own language and cough the dust from their lungs. Sometimes Russell calls Jack to the wheelhouse and lets him steer the ship. But most of the time Jack is on deck, keeping lookout in the sun and wind and rain, following Mart’s orders.

  On the third day without seeing land, Andersson calls everyone to the mess. ‘You will have noticed we are too far north to be making for Canada.’ The men murmur. ‘But we are going to make up a convoy. Just a convoy of a different sort.’ Andersson sucks on his pipe. The smell of tobacco mingles with the smell of sweat and the stew that’s cooking in the stove.

  ‘Some of you will have guessed it already,’ he says. ‘We go to Russia, men. We assemble in Hvalfjordur tomorrow.’

  A hush descends. The only sound is the creak and hum of the ship.

  The west coast of Iceland rises bleakly from the water. In the background the mountains are sprinkled with snow. The Aurora steams into a fjord packed with ships: converted whalers, armoured Royal Navy ships, and merchant vessels from Canada, Belgium, Panama, America.

  ‘I thought the Russians were the enemy?’ Jack says to Russell as they stand on the deck and watch the land slide past.

  ‘Not any more, my friend. Not any more.’

  The morning after they arrive, the old man allows them to go ashore. There are plenty of boats ferrying crew from ship to shore and to other ships, where friends wait to play cards or dice. There is a rowing race going on: the coxes yelling and coaxing their men on, a crowd on shore and on the ships calling and cheering. Seals bob in the water between them, their inquisitive eyes appearing and disappearing.

  The boys revel in the chance to stretch their legs and walk on land again. It takes a while for the ground to stop swaying like a ship. The locals avoid the incomers’ eyes: Iceland has been occupied by the British, and there is an awkward tension in the air. Sailors from across the world roam around the Nissen huts: Africa, India, the West Indies, Eastern Europe, America, Canada, and China. The whiff of opium cuts through the smell of oil.

  Andersson instructs his men to avoid the large beer hall, where fights are always breaking out. Instead, the crew from the Aurora climb up into the hills, which are green and open, with sweeping views. They follow a track along a steep canyon above a river. Warm pools steam into the cool air. They reach a waterfall that crashes down slippery rocks. Above them, white-chested birds squawk and fight. Small shaggy ponies trot past, foals in tow. Sometimes the ground is bare and rocky like another planet, a moonscape.

  The engineers and some of the stokers are with them. They perch on the rocks. The Norwegians are pleased to be out in the open. Two of them don’t speak much English, but the Chief breathes the air deep into his lungs and says, ‘Fresh and clean. Like my homeland.’

  ‘You miss it?’ says Jack.

  The Chief nods. ‘One day I’ll go back,’ he says.

  They watch the small boats ferrying men miles below around the fjord. In the distance the open sea glistens. The engineers yawn and lie back, let the sun warm their pallid faces.

  ‘You like our ship?’ asks the Chief.

  ‘Sometimes I think I’d like to be down with you lot in the warmth instead of on lookout.’

  ‘Ha!’ The Chief translates for the others. When they have stopped laughing, he says, ‘You are so naïve. Just little boys. You come work with us for a day and see if you don’t like lookout.’ The other men nod and mutter in agreement.

  ‘We cross the Atlantic safe for now. But we hear them waiting. All the time we hear them. We hear them explode out there under the water. It is luck. When it do come, we have no chance. We go up.’ He raises his hand in the air. ‘Boom! Like a magic vanishing trick. You will not find us. No one will ever find us.’

  One of the stokers says, ‘You think they survive longer in that water? That water is so cold. It turns blood to ice in a moment. Only difference between our death and yours is that we won’t know about it.’

  ‘You’ll get a minute before your arms and legs freeze and turn black and your heart turns to ice and crumbles.’

  ‘Ha! So poetic you Estonians,’ says the Chief.

  It’s the first time Jack has really thought about what it might be like to go down on a ship. Mart has kept them so busy.

  ‘What’s Mart’s story?’ he says.

  ‘Mart is good man. He keep us safe. He knows the sea better than any I’ve sailed with. He respect it.’

  ‘Why else you think we stay on this ship? The Old Man and Bose, you couldn’t get better.’

  ‘You do what Mart says and you survive.’

  ‘And the Old Man?’ says Carl.

  The Chief says something in his own language to the other men. They murmur their agreement. ‘You’ll all be glad of a Norwegian master when the cold sets in. If there’s one thing we Norwegians know about, it is ice.’

  The order finally comes to set sail. One of the merchant ships is Dutch, but the rest are British. They are surrounded by ships of the Royal Navy, prickly with guns: destroyers, minesweepers, anti-submarine trawlers – even an oiler.

  Birds circle the convoy as it leaves the harbour. The sky is a mixture of deep blue turning to aquamarine as the sun grows stronger. The ships slide above their reflections on the glassy water. Birds fly up when disturbed, turning the air dark. Jack hears the beat of their wings against the air. He is glad to be moving on, with the throb of the ship beneath him and the groaning and creaking, and even Mart’s barked instructions.

  The Aurora has to stay in convoy with the other merchant ships, moving together in formation. This means that the entire crew from the stokehold up has to concentrate much harder. The bridge is a studious place of charts and checks. They watch the commodore’s ship for its signals via flags run up its halliards, or flashes of its Aldis lamp. In the distance, the grey Royal Navy escorts slip in and out of sight.

  They steam through the Denmark Strait, fierce and ragged Greenland to port, Iceland to starboard. Lumps of blue-white iceberg start to appear, snowy islands that are drifting all the time, covered in clusters of seabirds. The convoy alters direction to avoid them. Russell lets Jack steer, showing him how to compensate for the wind, how the side of the ship is like a sail, how the engine and speed affect their passage.

  Towards the end of their watch, the mist has cleared and visibility is good. They glide on, over the silver water. Jack’s eyes are sore from staring. He doesn’t know what to expect, just knows that if he misses something important it could be the difference between life and death. He scans the water. Something catches his eye: a huge shape looming beneath the surface. It disappears for a moment, but then it is back, near the surface, grey and sinister. His heart starts to thump. He reaches for the bell and starts to ring it wildly. Mart and Russell come running. Jack points at the shape, and as he does so, it rises slowly out of the waves and he hears a shooshing sound and a fine jet of water sprays into the air, the drops shimmering in the haze. Its black back glitters in the light, its tail flips up in a salute and then it dives.

  ‘Worried it’s going to shower us to death?’ says Burts, and Jack’s cheeks burn. He’s never seen a whale before. Some of the other seamen start to laugh, but Mart silences them with a raised hand. Jack’s heart sinks. He prepares to be torn apart by the bosun. But Mart says, ‘You’d do better to thank the boy instead of laughing like a bunch of old women. You might be grateful for those sharp eyes one day.’

 

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