The Restless Sea, page 34
Elena does the best she can, making watery soups from cabbage leaves and potato peelings, but Jack knows they need more to survive. ‘I’ll go to Murmansk,’ he says to Dmitri.
The old man shakes his head. ‘Nothing in Murmansk,’ he says.
Elena raises her hands in desperation. ‘No Murmansk,’ she says.
‘I have to try.’
Jack travels to Murmansk with a friend of Dmitri’s on a sledge pulled by two reindeer. The driver looks different to the Russians he has met so far: he has a wide, flat face, ruddy cheeks and is dressed in animal skins. He calls and whistles to the reindeer as they pull the sledge across the ice.
But the trip is pointless. The old couple are right. There is nothing in Murmansk. No buildings are left standing. The ground is snow-covered rubble, the mass of brick chimneys all that is left of the wooden houses. The burnt chimneys poke up towards the sky through the dust and snow like a macabre black forest. Through the mist Jack sees people scavenging among the blackened debris, but there are no pickings to be had. Even the buildings that were once cement have crumbled: the cement gone brittle in the freezing cold. All is dead here. Grim-faced creatures stumble past with their belongings strapped to their backs, their baggy, torn trousers tucked into threadbare boots. Jack walks past an old woman sitting on a suitcase. She weeps silently, the tears freezing to her sagging cheeks.
Jack returns with nothing but a sealskin hat for himself and a small amount of reindeer meat that he exchanges with the sledge driver for the last of his cigarettes. Heavy snow clouds bear down on the tiny hut. The wind has died to a whisper in the pines. A line of Russian soldiers swishes through the wood on skis, their rifles hard and black against their white uniforms. Dmitri and Elena are so pleased with the handful of meat, hugging and nodding at him as though he has brought a feast. But Jack feels the bite of his empty stomach, and he knows that they do too.
His body is mended and strong, but his mind continues to play tricks. Mart leers at him from a corner. Hunger and fear scratch at his soul. The world is frozen; even time has stood still. As he lies in his bed – the only time he is truly warm – he struggles to recall Olivia’s blue eyes, the warmth of her hand in his, and her hair brushing his shoulder … but then he opens his eyes, and Betsy is crouched at the end of his bed, staring at him, her eyes wide, her body trembling.
‘You must know that Dmitri and Elena are starving,’ says Anya. ‘As are you. They say that if one of them dies, you are to keep their body in the attic, so the other can collect their rations. Then bury them when the weather gets warmer.’
‘It won’t come to that,’ he says, shaking his head at the old couple who are scrunched into their chairs, their sunken eyes closed. They spend much of the time asleep now.
‘It might come to worse than that,’ says Anya.
They sit in silence until a piece of wood collapses into the fire, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney.
‘You are a little like my younger brother, Kolya,’ says Anya.
‘Dark?’ Jack rubs his hand over his hair, which has grown back to hide the scar.
‘Not just that,’ says Anya. ‘He is also a little boy who was made to grow up too fast.’
Jack shifts. ‘Where is he now?’
‘With the rest of our young men. On the Eastern Front. I hope. Like my husband, I have not heard from him in many months.’
‘I have a sister somewhere too.’
‘I miss my boys. War is very lonely.’
He nods, and she smiles and reaches out to place her hand on his. The tenderness of her gentle touch makes him want to cry. She moves closer and puts her hand up to his face, leaning in to kiss him. He responds, bathing for a moment in the sensation of intimacy, feeling her heartbeat pulse in her skin, feeling his own begin to race. But then he feels the weight of Olivia’s knife in his pocket, and he pushes her gently away. She rests her head on his shoulder and they play with each other’s hands, enjoying the closeness, the feel of another human being.
‘There is a girl at home?’ she says.
He nods.
‘She must be very special.’
‘She is. She believes in me. Even though she knows some of the bad things I’ve done.’
‘It’s not good enough to have someone else believe in you, Jack. You must believe in yourself.’
‘I do … I did …’
‘Then why have you not returned home?’
‘I can’t face getting back on a ship.’
‘You are not being honest with yourself.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You have been on a ship. With me to Vaenga and to Polyarnoe. There is another truth that you find hard to deal with. Something else that is holding you back.’
He stares at their fingers linked in the glow of the dying fire. ‘I was not a good son. My mother died alone. If I’d lived an honest life, then maybe she’d still be around.’
‘Or maybe you would both be dead.’
‘What if I’m a bad person?’
‘I do not believe in such a thing.’
‘I can’t live up to Olivia’s expectations.’
‘A girl who loves you does not expect more than you can give. It is you who cannot live up to your expectations. Forgive yourself, Jack.’
‘That’s easy to say, but you don’t know what I’m like, or the things I’ve done in the past.’
She smiles sadly. ‘I have lived in hell. There is nothing that can shock me now.’ She stares at him. Her eyes are as deep and fathomless as his own. ‘Believe in yourself, Jack. Do not listen to what the others say. You are the only one who knows the truth. Look at the madness of others. We were your enemies. Now we are your friends. The Germans were our friends. Now they are our enemies. The simple truth is that you are a boy and I am a girl and we do what we can to survive.’
Jack shivers in the woodshed. Anya is right. He must return. But he cannot leave Dmitri and Elena to starve. They grow weaker by the day. He cannot bear the thought of dragging either one of them into the attic while the other withers by the fire, alone. His mind switches to automatic. He knows what he must do. It will be easy in the constant dark of polar night. It will be like the old days. He crunches through the snow to Polyarnoe. He watches in the dark, beyond the strange shadows cast by the lights from the buildings. He waits for the Russian sentry to visit the toilet, which is inside a wooden shed on stilts. It is obvious when a visitor is mid-action, as the waste drops down into the river below. Jack watches and waits.
The wind tugs at him, and he shrugs deeper into his coat. Snow is settling on his sealskin hat. As soon as the sentry has disappeared into the hut, he makes his move. He runs as fast as his clothes allow into the nearest building. In the kitchen there is enough food for a week scattered across the counter: salted fish, bread, and some kind of pasta. Jack stuffs as much as he can into his pockets. He can hear the Russians next door fuelled by vodka, singing patriotic songs. He makes for the door, which is wrenched from his hand by the biting wind. He is almost out, when he feels a hand on his shoulder and a voice starts yelling in his ear. It is hard to hear anything above the scream of the wind and his ears are muffled by the hat pulled down over his head. He is yanked back inside. He turns to face a Russian, small eyes glaring at Jack as he shouts in his face, the spit raining in warm flecks on his cheek. Jack raises his hands, and the Russian carries on bellowing, shoving his hands into Jack’s pockets and pulling out the food, the bread dissolving into crumbs as he crushes it in his fist.
Two more men and a woman come running from next door, and then the sentry who had been in the hut blows in from outside. Jack struggles to break away, but it is pointless. They have him firmly caught. The woman is holding a rifle. She jabbers at the men. She looks Jack up and down, says something, and the men remove his hat, flipping it backwards on to the floor. Jack blinks in the bright light. They manhandle him further into the room, the woman pointing with her rifle. Jack is so tired. His hands are still in the air and his arms are aching. He tries to lower them, but the Russians shout louder and he tips forward and falls to the floor in a kneeling position with his hands still raised.
They strip him of his scarf, his coat. They pat down his pockets and find Olivia’s knife. He tries to grab it back, but they roar even louder and push him away. He wants that knife more than anything. Without it, who is he? Without Mart and Andersson and Russell, who is he?
The Russians are calmer now. Arguing between themselves rather than shouting at him. They can see he has no other weapon. One of the men sends the sentry away. A few minutes later, the sentry returns with a man with a dark beard and harassed eyes. Jack’s heart sinks. He recognises the uniform: the man is a British naval officer.
‘Who are you?’ says the man with the beard.
Jack doesn’t answer. Anya is wrong. People will think what they want to think. He looks like a thief. He acts like a thief. He is a thief. ‘Are you British?’
Jack just stays there, kneeling on the floor, his arms aching. He is so tired, he wants to close his eyes.
The Russians start to shout again, pushing at him with their hands. They show the officer the knife. He takes it, looks at the initials. ‘Fancy knife. Probably stolen.’
‘British! British!’ say the Russians.
‘He doesn’t look British,’ says the officer. ‘Look at his clothes.’ He points at the woollen greatcoat and the sealskin hat that are lying on the floor. The Russians poke and point at Jack’s trousers. ‘British!’ they say again.
‘Have you got any papers?’ The officer is talking slowly and loudly at him, as if he’s a child.
Jack stares ahead blankly. The Russians start to yell again. The officer disappears and comes back with another man, also dressed in a naval uniform. The man peers into Jack’s eyes, looks him up and down, lifts his jumper up, rubs the trousers between his fingers. ‘Look like Royal Navy bell bottoms to me, sir,’ he says.
‘Rating, you think?’
‘Most likely. Look at the tattoo.’
The Russians watch them suspiciously. ‘No matter,’ says the man with the beard. ‘We’d better take him. God knows what this lot would do with him.’ They help Jack to his feet. The Russians point at their bread. The British men shrug their shoulders. ‘You can still eat it.’ The Russian woman cackles at him like a hen scolding a fox. ‘Sorry, love, no can do.’ The seaman lifts his hand in a farewell gesture. They help Jack back into his coat. The Russians keep the hat. The Navy men usher him out into the snow and the wind, talking to each other behind his back.
‘They’re sailing at 0400 hours.’
‘You’ll have to get him out there tonight, then,’ says the officer.
‘I’ll sort it.’
Jack wants to speak, but he can’t. He can’t make a sound. His palms are damp. His skin feels as if it’s on fire. He drags his feet, tries to dig them into the ice as the two men pull him along, leaving tracks like a dead animal. Dmitri will be peering anxiously through the door into the darkness by now. Elena will be stoking the fire.
‘Come along, now,’ says the seaman. He is a large, strong man. ‘Don’t be like that.’
Jack struggles again, trying to throw them off. ‘You’re not doing yourself any favours,’ says the officer. Jack gives up. He knows when he is beaten.
They stand on the docks, their breath feathery plumes in the dark, talking to the man in the picket boat. ‘It’s a strange one. Our men picked him up stealing from the Russians. Hasn’t said a word, but then, they often don’t, deserters.’
They push him down into the boat. The water stretches in icy blackness in every direction, waiting to swallow him up.
‘Don’t let him mix with the other men. Mutiny has a habit of spreading.’
‘Punishment cells?’
‘Certainly.’
The picket boat chugs out across the water. The sway of the deck sets Jack’s heart racing. The men drag him on to the ship still struggling. The familiar clank and clang of metal and water fill his ears. They push him in front of them, holding his elbow pressed up into his back. As they descend into the ship, every hair on Jack’s body screams to get back outside, but he has been struggling and fighting for weeks on an empty stomach. He is almost all out. He clangs and clanks along the corridor. Past the steaming cauldrons in the galley and the neat beds of the sickbay. Past men in their uniforms, who stop and stare at the struggling man before turning back to getting the ship ready. Past the stores and the purser’s office. Everyone is busy. Everything glistens and shines. Everything is shipshape. The ship’s Tannoy calls for the men to be at cruising stations. Jack’s breath comes short and fast. He feels as if someone is clasping him around the neck. On they march into the bows of the ship, past hammocks slung between every spare inch of pipe. Finally, they stop by a door. The man shoves Jack in the back, and he trips over the metal rung into the room. Behind him, the door shuts with a bang, and everything goes dark.
Jack fumbles in the blackness. It isn’t like any other kind of dark he’s experienced. It is like the bottom of a coal chute, with the walls pressing in on him. He reaches out with his hands and feels cool metal beneath his palms, with a layer of condensation on what must be the ship’s side. The room is just long enough for him to lie down on what feels like a narrow wooden bench. He tries to stand, and trips on a bucket, curses, turns around. From outside he hears the muffled sounds of a ship about to set sail: the men calling to each other, the whirr of the screws, the banging of pipes. He sits down. He was better off in the lifeboat. The thought of his shipmates stabs like a hook in his chest. Faces swim in the darkness: Mart, Andersson, Burts, Dmitri, Stoog, Elena, Carl, Betsy … He has let them all down. And what about Olivia? Will she still love him when she discovers he has gone back to his old ways? He’s had his chance. He has reverted to type. He curses. His voice sounds tinny and loud and strange as it echoes in the tiny cell. He needs air. He pushes against the cold metal. His chest compresses. His breath comes fast. Someone else is in here with him. He can hear them breathing. He is panting like a dog. He can’t get enough air into his lungs. His chest feels as if it is imploding. This is what it must be like to drown. Drowning. He’s drowning. In the water again, gasping for breath but can’t breathe because the water is filling his lungs and his head is going to explode. But Carl’s face swims into view and he has no body and then Burts is frozen stiff and Fred who drank the whisky is smiling and there is Betsy. That’s who is sitting in here with him. He reaches out for her in the dark, but his hands find nothing, and then he sees Olivia, shaking her head in despair as she turns away. He digs his nails into his arm, feels the burning sensation as the skin rips. He is breathing easier now. Get a hold of yourself. Outside the great ship starts to grumble and clang to life. They are under way.
CHAPTER 23
Charlie
Mid-December in the Arctic is so dark and cold that even the birds and sea creatures have moved to warmer climes. There is a terrible battle in the Barents Sea, as another convoy from Britain struggles towards Russia. In the darkness, confusion reigns, and neither side is sure of where their own ships are or who is firing at whom. Although all the merchant ships get through, both the British and German navies have casualties in the hundreds and each a destroyer sunk, as well as the loss of a British minesweeper with all hands – a severe blow.
Charlie’s world has been drained of colour for so long – in the constant night, the ship and the sky and the sea change only from dark to light grey; there is a grey pallor to everyone’s skin. When the opportunity to go ashore at Polyarnoe again presents itself, he jumps at it – even that desolate place is a change of scenery.
Charlie pulls his coat tighter as he is transferred from ship to ship. The wind screeches around him, trying to find its way into every nook and cranny, trying to steal the last of the warmth it can find, even forcing its icy breath down into his lungs. The port is busy – more ships forming up to move out. Charlie watches the shadowy shapes manoeuvre in the darkness. On the ill-lit jetty, a guard checks his papers again, squinting down at the print, his actions slow and heavy, hampered by the cold and the layers of clothing he is wrapped in. Behind him, the snow has been scraped and piled into ever-increasing mounds. Apart from the occasional sentry hunched into a greatcoat, only his hat showing, there is no one to be seen.
Charlie heads for the officers’ mess and is pleased to be greeted by Jarvis and his genial grin. The mess is packed – no one wants to be outside in a Russian winter. Somehow the officers have got hold of a billiard table, and the men are crouched around it, ready to catch the balls as they clack out of the pocketless holes.
