Deck Boy, page 32
“Would it be OK if I moved in with you? After what happened down there in the freezer locker and everything.”
“Of course. I’ll just shift – ” Aaron used the spare bunk as a dump.
“I don’t want to be next door by myself.”
“Me neither, if that happened to me.”
“You can keep your extra stuff in there. There’s an empty locker.”
“Don’t worry.” He slotted a Dylan tape into his player. “I’ll enjoy the company.”
I had never bought the cassette player I wanted myself, even though it was top of my list of priorities. That day in Wellington the events at the Ascot Hotel put it right out of my mind. And afterwards, even though I had plenty of money, somehow I’d never got round to it. People told me it would be cheaper in Singapore anyway. In the meantime Aaron let me use his, and in the light of what happened not many days later, it made little difference
I took the bottom bunk again. Aaron slept in the top, where he could see the photos of his girlfriends on the bulkhead. He’d stuck them up for the voyage home. As he told me, it wouldn’t have been a good idea to let them see the competition when we were in port. I counted, there were eleven.
I’d only had one and hadn’t got over it yet.
After six weeks on the coast the ship was filthy. The bosun put us to work sweeping up the debris, hosing down, holystoning the decks, suji-ing the paintwork, polishing the brass, and by the end of our second day at sea all was shipshape again. Trish returned to her sunbathing on the monkey island. The pool was rigged on the port side of the afterdeck. As we sailed north into the tropics the sun climbed higher, the days grew hotter. Except that we were heading home and the cargo space was now a series of giant refrigerators, it was little different from the voyage out.
Ossie, too, settled into his routine. Following the incident with Rat’bone, he had shredded all his white clothes and now, except when he was at work, dressed head to foot in black: black shirt, black trousers, black cassock and a black stole when he went aft for the ceremony of scattering his mother’s ashes – how ever much remained. As Michael observed, there seemed an awful lot of her. With a needle and ink from a squashed ballpoint he tattooed the Devil’s mark, 6-6-6, on his forearm. “It’s always been my number,” he explained in that strange high voice. “My mother was a sixth child, I was born on the sixth of June, I weighed six pounds and we lived at number six Station Terrace. It should be 6-6-6-6-6 really.”
It took no time for Rat’bone to ignore the captain’s warning. Within days he was back to his tricks, new tricks, harder to pin down. It was as if he was determined to exact revenge for the turmoil in his cabin and drive poor Ossie to a breakdown – or worse. Every mealtime, every time they passed in the alleyway, there was something: a wink, a hand on his knife, a blown kiss, fingers on his stubbly throat, a hanging gesture, a swimming movement, a handful of pills into his mouth, the face of a simpering madman. When he collected his food he smiled with exaggerated politeness: “Thank you very much, that looks delicious.” Ossie had no defence. It got beneath his skin as surely as a burrowing worm.
The bosun joined in the game. So, like a parrot, did the senior cadet. Steroid Steve Petersen, who had rescued me from the thermal pool and shown several little kindnesses since, seemed to have cut himself off from them.
Their mockery, although cruelty is a better word, started in New Plymouth and got worse after we sailed. Ossie was trapped. There was no escape. If the doctors he attended in New Zealand had not renewed his supply of medication for the voyage home – that drawer half full of pills, bottles, inhalers and the rest – he might not have lasted as long as he did.
Then one evening, when we were three days out, the unthinkable happened.
A Crash of Water
ACTUALLY TWO things happened that evening. The first might easily have caused the death of three people. The second, which involved Ossie, occurred later, when everyone except the watch was in bed and the ship was quiet.
There was to be a film on deck and the engineers had rigged the screen by number four hatch. Some of us thought it would be good to have a swim then shower off and take a drink and some biscuits to the hatch cover for the show. I pulled on the swimming trunks I’d bought in Wellington and joined Kevin and Aaron in the swashing water. As I arrived they sprayed me with the gushing deck hose. I yelled and jumped on them from the board. Daylight was fading. It was great fun, diving and splashing, floating on my back to look up at the first stars and the towering mainmast with its navigation light cutting slow arcs across the sky.
What happened then was not an accident. I think I realised that, even amid the turmoil. Anyway, one second we were laughing in the pool, next second the seaward side of the pool collapsed and we were swept away in a forty-ton tidal wave that crashed through the ship’s rails and down into the ocean.
At that moment, by good luck, I was clinging to the pool’s inboard edge. As the water surged away I tried to hold on but the torrent was too strong and my grip was broken. That split second may have saved my life. My hip and then my head hit something hard, my back wrenched, my shoulder twisted.
Then it was over. Dazed and battered, I lay jammed in a corner between one of the mainmast stays and a side plate where the rails began.
What of the others? I looked along the brimming scupper. Aaron was groaning. Where was Kevin? The ocean sped past beneath.
“Where’s Kevin?” I dragged myself to my knees. “Kevin!”
“Give us a hand.” The voice was muffled.
“Where are you?”
“Under here.” Planks and canvas were jammed against the rail. I hauled them back. Kevin was trapped beneath. One leg and half his body hung in space. The other leg and both arms were clamped around the rails. He struggled inboard. I grabbed the back of his swim shorts and heaved. “Ow! Hey, careful!”
Aaron sat by the rail, nursing his arm. One look was enough. I felt sick. His left forearm had a kink in the middle.
Others were arriving. “Bloody hell! … You two OK? … Oh, man, Aaron! Here, come away from the rail.”
We sat on the hatch cover. I was bruised and bleeding from a small cut in my scalp. Kevin, apart from a bad fright which he seemed determined not to admit, was unhurt. Aaron needed treatment, but when the mate arrived he swore at him: “Don’t you touch me! Charlie could have died! Eff off!”
Since he was in such pain there was nothing the mate could do.
Captain Bell and his wife, Heidi-hi as she was known among the crew, came to see us. “Bit of a knock, son?” he said kindly to Aaron. “Here, let my wife look at it.”
She was thick-waisted, motherly, her teeth worn stumpy. “Hello.” She smiled. “I vas nurse. Long years ago but broken arms I know.”
Aaron allowed her to examine him.
“Oohh!” She drew in her breath. “Poor you. Look sore.”
“It is a bit.”
“Sure.” She thought. “I tell you vhat ve do. My husband give you jab, ja? Then ve go inside, have a cup of tea, rest your arm on a table. Ve see it better there.”
Captain Bell gave Aaron a big shot of morphine and I accompanied them to the messroom. Michael, Barbara and a couple of others were already there. Though the break was nasty it was clean, a single fracture of the two bones in his forearm. As Heidi moved the limb gently and I heard the ends of bone grate, I almost needed treatment myself.
“Ja, I set that no trouble. You hear?”
Aaron was half out of it with the drug. He nodded.
“Ve go the sick bay.”
“I used to work in a hospital.” Barbara wore shorts and a headscarf like a pirate. “Often give a hand with fractures. Mind if I come along?”
“Yeah, I want him to come.” Aaron blinked sleepily. “Barbara’s my mate. Knows what it’s all about.”
“Barbara?” She looked at her husband.
He smiled. “Come along if he wants you, Tanner. You can lend a hand.”
“Ja, need strong man to pull.”
They rose.
“Will he be all right?”
“Don’t vorry.” Heidi patted my shoulder. “Your friend, he vill be fine. Ve make him like new. Better.”
“Will he be back tonight?”
“No, tonight ve keep him in sick bay. Tomorrow he back vith you in cabin. I think so.”
They left. I imagined what lay ahead for Aaron: more injections, Barbara pulling on the broken arm, the ends of bone grinding together, the splints and plaster. What if it wasn’t straight?
“They’ll check him out in Singapore,” Michael said. “Give him an x-ray. If it’s not right they’ll fix it there.”
Not an hour had passed since the crash and again I felt the water carry me off and crush me against the rail. Then I remembered the igloo and my struggle in the freezer locker. Who could hate me so much – and why? What might they do next? With Charlie in hospital and Aaron in the sick bay, I was going to be alone again.
“Can I ask you a favour?” I said to Michael. “Will you sleep in our cabin tonight?”
“I thought you were never going to ask,” he said. “Which cabin is that? Do I get to sleep in the bunk of the divine Charlie? Or hunky Aaron?”
“Whichever you want. It’s just with everything that’s happened – ”
“Oh, come on, Ben,” he said more practically, “this is Michael, you don’t have to explain. Of course I will. I was going to suggest it anyway.”
The tea had gone cold. He made a pot of coffee and raided the galley for some gingerbread.
Afterwards I went to the sick bay but they were still busy so I joined Smoky on deck. The film had been cancelled. He was sitting on number four hatch with a tumbler that looked suspiciously like juice.
“On the wagon,” he explained. “Half vodka, half orange juice, that thick stuff they give to kids.”
I looked down at the ruined swimming pool.
“Dangerous stuff, water.” He sipped his drink, fag in the same hand.
Where had I seen that gesture recently?
“You were lucky. The lot of you, even Aaron.”
“Guess so.” I raised my eyes to the black sea. “Could be out there somewhere.”
“Not an accident, you know.”
“There’s a surprise,” I said.
He looked at me. “You mean after the freezer locker and everything?”
I shrugged.
“Bloody hell! Anyway, I spoke to Chippy. Some of the bolts were missing.” He rested an elbow on his knee. “Mate asked him if they couldn’t have worked loose. Chippy says no, he put it up same as always. Checked it over. No way it could have just collapsed.”
“Nope.”
“Any idea who it might have been?”
“Somebody who didn’t care if three people went over the side.”
“Who’s that then?”
“One or two people spring to mind. You tell me.”
He blew out his cheeks. “Turning into a bit of a hairy trip.”
“You could say.”
A movement at the stern caught my eye. “Who’s that?”
“Who d’you think?”
It was Ossie, all in black, his head a pale blob in the shadows. As I stared, the wind blew his cassock. He stood at the rail and raised his arms like a prophet. He may have been praying, he probably was, but I heard nothing. Nor did I see the swirl of dust as he tossed a measure of his mother’s remains into the Coral Sea.
In a couple of minutes his small act of commitment was over. “Hello there, Ben. Smoky.” He waved as he reached the crew deck but didn’t stop.
“Poor bugger,” Smoky said. “Carrying her ashes round like that.”
“You want to see his cabin.”
“Yeah, I heard.” He watched him go. “Not keen on all that supernatural stuff. Gives me the creeps.”
“Surprised he goes wandering down there in the dark though,” I said. “Lenny Rat’bone hating him the way he does.”
“Never thought of that.”
“Him and the others. The foul foursome, Michael calls them.”
“Who’s that then?”
“You know, Lenny, bosun, Steve Petersen, senior cadet.”
Smoky considered. “Steve’s all right.”
“Yeah, he’s changed.”
“Started out in the wrong company, that’s all. Not too bright upstairs.”
“I gathered that. All brawn and no – ”
“He reads the Dandy, for God’s sake. Asked me the other day if there really was a planet Krypton. Did I think Marilyn Monroe was being kept frozen somewhere and was going to make a comeback?” He picked a shred of tobacco from his tongue. “You’re right about the others though. Bad lot. Got a feeling they’re up to something.”
After a while he went in to feed Dolores a fat cockroach and I made my way to the bar seeking company. For an hour I played draughts and dominoes then returned to the cabin to wait for Michael.
He had promised to come about nine and arrived right on time. Michael liked to make an impression and tonight was too good an opportunity to miss. He arrived looking like a schoolboy fresh from the shower, wearing blue-striped pyjamas, his blond hair parted on the left and brushed across.
“Never fear, Michael’s here,” he cried as he burst through the curtain and set down a tray containing thick wedges of cherry cake and two mugs of cocoa. “What an adventure! It’s like being on holiday. I thought we’d have a dorm feast.”
I pulled up my chair. “Looks good.”
“Kenny’s on the wagon, he made it specially. Only the best for my little brother.”
As ever, Michael rose to the occasion and did his best to cheer me up, but the collapse of the pool had affected me more than I realised. My eyes were closing and after we’d played a couple of tapes and chatted for a while I was ready for bed. Michael took Aaron’s bunk.
“Ben?” His voice drifted down.
“Yeah?”
“It’s nice up here.” Then a minute later, “Got a lot of girlfriends, hasn’t he?”
“Lucky devil.” I guessed he was looking at the photos. “Ten more than me.”
“Pooh, what’s ten between friends. Once you get into your stride you’re going to leave him standing.”
“I hope so.”
“I’m telling you, trust Michael.” He switched off his reading light and I heard him settling down. “I wonder how Charlie and Aaron are getting on.” There was silence. “You don’t think we’re going to be visited by some mad, axe-wielding AB do you?”
I smiled. “I hope not.”
“Me too.” He thought for a moment. “Do you think I should have fetched along one of the galley knives?”
Michael in his schoolboy pyjamas brandishing a bloody butcher’s knife! “I guess we’ll just have to take a chance.”
We fell silent again. No sounds but the creaks of the ship and soothing throb of the engines.
I turned on my side and was on the verge of sleep when a high-pitched cry rang through the accommodation and startled me wide awake again. I sat up. Michael, unused to double bunks, cracked his head on the ceiling.
“What’s that?”
“No!” The cry came again. “No-o-o-o!”
“It’s Ossie.” We sprang to the deck and ran up the alleyway.
The Missing Pills
HIS CABIN was a blaze of light. Candles everywhere. The reek of incense.
Ossie himself, limp as a puppet and ugly with sobs, slumped against his locker. Barbara was there before us. Luigi and one or two others hurried up the alleyway.
“What’s happened?” Michael said.
Ossie turned swollen, frightened eyes towards him. “My pills have gone,” he said.
For a second I almost laughed. All this drama over a few pills.
But Michael wasn’t laughing. “Are you sure?”
Ossie gestured to an open drawer. One end was empty. “Must have been when I was down with mum’s ashes.”
An astringent dispensary smell clung to the wood. I remembered the array of boxes and bottles I had seen. And Ossie’s sickness: his black clothes, the panic attacks, the river in Fiji, his acts of desperation.
“You didn’t move them somewhere else?” Michael said.
“No.”
“Have you searched?”
“Yes.”
Barbara slipped a comforting arm around his waist.
Ossie whispered, “What if we don’t get them back?”
“We will, love. We will.”
“But if we don’t? What’s going to happen to me? You can’t just stop taking them, the doctors said. There’s withdrawal symptoms.”
“Yes, I know, Ossie. But you’re going to be all right, will you listen to me. Don’t get yourself upset. You’ve got Michael and me.”
“And’a Luigi.”
“That’s right, and Luigi. And Ben, and oh, lots of people.”
“Maybe they’ll have something in the sick bay,” I said. “Just till we get to Singapore. It’s only a week.”
“I shouldn’t think so.” Ossie wiped his eyes: pale eyes, pumpkin head, little mouth, curls shorn to a stubble. “Ships don’t cater for nutcases. Athlete’s foot but not nutcases.”
“Stop it, Ossie!” Michael spoke sharply. “We’re all doing our best, you’ve got to try. So for a start tell us exactly – ”
A face caught my eye. Rat’bone and the senior cadet were among the crowd that had gathered in the alleyway. Both were grinning. When they saw they had been observed they came forward.
“You bastards!” Luigi said.
The grins broadened. “That’s not very nice,” Tony said.
“Heard the voices, come to see what’s up.”
“As if you didn’t know,” Michael said. “Where are they?”
“Oh, dear!” Tony had been drinking. “Somebody lost something?”
“Mebbe we can help you look.”
“What is it, dear, your new lipstick?”
“Don’t tell me.” Rat’bone raised his skinny hand. “It’s the Maggot, he’s lost his marbles.”
Tony laughed too loudly.
“Look at them,” Rat’bone said. “What a load of rubbish. Makes you ashamed to be a British seaman.”
