Deck Boy, page 9
Ossie and Luigi had joined us so we were a group of six. Ossie was there when we arrived, standing outside on the pavement. He was so excited, his big moon face so happy to be with friends, that no one had the heart to tell him about Rat’bone and Ryland.
Luigi arrived late and caused a flutter among the waiters. I think he’d been unsure about coming because he knew nobody and his English was poor. From what I could make out he came from the foot of Italy and this was his first voyage on a British ship. He was a quiet, likable man. With his mouth closed, Luigi might have been one of the Hollywood stars whose photographs adorned the walls of Chez Marilyn. His teeth let him down, they were so strong and crooked that every time he smiled he turned into a werewolf.
But this was Michael and Barbara’s occasion. They were in their element, telling stories, swapping backchat with the waiters and keeping us laughing all the way through. It was a happy and memorable lunch although, to be honest, my stomach kept clamouring for Betty’s sausage, egg and chips, or pie and peas with the dockers.
*
Afterwards we split up. For the first time since I had run into Charlie – only three days ago though it seemed half a lifetime – I found myself alone. I wasn’t sorry because I needed time to sort things out in my mind and I had some shopping to do.
An hour later, poly bag in one hand and a bunch of red and yellow chrysanthemums in the other, I took a bus to the edge of town and walked to my gran’s grave. This, as much as anything, was my reason for coming to Westport. She had been cremated but dad and I had scattered her ashes on the family plot where my grandpa and dad’s baby sister were buried. Since I left the city, gran’s inscription had been added to the gravestone:
Also Edith Mary,
beloved wife, mother and grandmother,
R.I.P.
There were some glass containers by a tap at the graveyard wall. I rinsed one, arranged the flowers and set them in front of the cross. Then I just crouched on my hunkers and remembered her, at home but mostly in the hospital before she died, and thought about my own strength and how I had wished I could give some of it to her. With my eyes shut I said a prayer then found my thoughts wandering.
What would she have made of my present escapade? There wasn’t any doubt: thoughtless, hurtful, headstrong and foolish. “Tell your friend you’re sorry and get yourself back to school this minute, Ben,” she would have said, fixing me with those blue eyes. She was absolutely right. Yet somewhere in my belly I felt a stubborn resistance. I hadn’t come this far to go back now. “Sorry, Gran,” I said guiltily. “I’ll be all right, really I will. Don’t worry.”
For five minutes I lingered but she was slipping away. Sadly I ran my fingers over the sharp new inscription and realised it was time to leave. After twenty paces her grave was merging with the others. After another twenty it was gone. Then I spotted the brave chrysanthemums and knew that whatever I did gran would never have stopped loving me.
*
By the time I returned to the Flying Angel it was five o’clock. It didn’t take long to arrange the things in my room and take a hot shower, hoping no one would come into the bathroom while I was there. Afterwards, wearing a clean T-shirt, my hair gelled and set in the new style, I wandered down to the common room.
Although I was on my own there was no danger of being lonely for other seamen, singly and in groups, drifted into the Mission after their evening meal. Spotting the deck boy sitting by himself, they invited me to games of table tennis, darts and crib for matchsticks.
As the waterfront bars began to liven up, the common room emptied. A crowd invited me to join them and could not have been kinder, but I didn’t want to go. Besides, I had letters to write and fetched a pen and notepaper from my room.
I knew what I wanted to say but it was hard to find the right words, much worse than writing essays for old Spitty Barker who took us for English. Each one took several attempts, sitting alone in that sailors’ common room with half-filled ashtrays and posters on the walls. Screwed-up balls of paper littered the table. In the end this is what I wrote, the first to the headmaster of Frankie’s:
Dear Captain Winchester,
When I left school on Friday I expected to be back by 1600 or 1700 hours on Sunday, in time for tea. But because of unexpected events this weekend I won’t be returning at all. Please will you phone my Auntie Marjorie Thomson at Oxford 680291, or my dad at the Hong Kong Shipping Company, who’s number is London 736 4141. He is mate on the London Pride.
Will you send all my belongings to my Auntie.
Please don’t worry about me or search. I am well and have got a job in Yorkshire. Everybody at school has been very kind and I do not want to cause any trouble but I did not feel right there.
Yours faithfully,
Benjamin Thomson
Dear Auntie Marjorie
I have to make a confession to you. I told them at school I was staying the weekend with you in Oxford. Really I came to Yorkshire where I have got a pen pal. I had to show them a letter from you and got somebody to write it for me.
Don’t be angry please. I have got a job and am not going back to Frankie’s. I don’t like it there very much as you know. I think you will be annoyed I am causing you trouble and I am very sorry. But it is a good job and I will write every month so you will know I am alright.
Tell Dad not to worry. I am not a baby any more, I am nearly fifteen and know what I am doing.
Love and thanks,
Ben
Dear Dad,
By the time you get this letter I think you will have heard from Auntie Marjorie and Captain Winchester. It was hard for you after Gran died and I know you are doing your very best. Frankie’s is a great school and some of the boys like it very much. It is not your fault that I was not happy there. I know you will be worried but please don’t !!! I have got this job in Yorkshire with nice people. They think I am sixteen which I will be in a bit over a year. I have given them a different name so they don’t know I am Ben Thomson.
It is great here and I am well. I will write to Auntie Marjorie every month because you might be at sea but you can phone her to know that I am alright. I will write to you as well, of course.
I miss you.
Lots of love,
Ben
It was nearly eleven o’clock by the time I had finished and written the envelopes. The warden was locking up for the night. A few seamen had come back to the Mission, a couple the worse for drink. The rest, I suppose, returned to their ships. Anyway, I stamped the letters and put all three into a bigger envelope addressed to Charlie’s brother Bill, who was a soldier up at Catterick camp in Yorkshire. Charlie had told him what we were doing and sworn him to secrecy. Bill thought it was great and had agreed to post any letters I sent him, now and during the trip, from the nearby town of Richmond. I wanted to get the bundle away so I would not lie awake half the night worrying about it. Just before the warden locked the door I ran down the road and dropped the envelope into a postbox at the corner.
It was done. My last task.
Nothing remained but to report aboard the Pacific Trader in two days’ time.
Pizza and Kisses
THAT WAS Monday.
On Tuesday Charlie couldn’t meet me because the Sunderlands were having a family day, a big get-together before he went back to sea.
I spent the morning in the city library and a coffee shop, studying Charlie’s book of seamanship. In the afternoon I went to the pictures with Joey and Fizz. When we came out it was teatime, the light was fading, so we went to Alfredo’s for a pizza.
I told them all that had happened and described my new shipmates: Michael and Barbara, Ossie and Luigi, Ryland, Rat’bone and Steve.
“Blimey!” Joey said. “All them names. Sounds like you’re halfway across the Atlantic already. Don’t waste no time, do you?”
“I didn’t go looking,” I said and speared a mouthful topped with olives and chorizo. “Just the way it turned out.”
“Well I don’t like the sound of it,” Fizz said. “It sounds dangerous. I wouldn’t want a fourteen-year-old brother of mine going away with people like that.” She had taken off her dazzling PVC jacket and wore a sexy top with a halter neck. “All those men fighting. Two of them actually hitting you. And this Cyclops person probably killed someone. You’re not even on board yet. What’s it going to be like when you get to sea?”
I shrugged.
“Sounds great to me,” Joey said. “Hey, gimme back my Discharge Book, I’ve changed my mind.”
“Joey Bennett!” Fizz slapped his arm. “Don’t you dare!”
But Joey was kidding. In the two days since I’d seen him he had changed. He was talking about giving up smoking and getting fit again. The startling Mohican was gone, his hair trimmed to a soft brown stubble. With his big nose and rubbery lips, his little head perched on that long neck, he looked like a kindly vulture.
“I went back to see Sam yes’day.” His voice was eager. “You know, Sam Pearson at the tattoo parlour. Not in a dress no more, just jeans an’ a sweatshirt now. Told him we was sorry about the tattoo but I was thinking about giving up the sea an’ taking up football again. He says once I’ve got the fags and booze out my system, he’ll take me along to the Rovers’ training sessions. See how I get on.”
Fizz smiled, nice eyes and pretty white teeth.
But Joey’s mind was on the football. “Great, eh?”
“Yeah, big chance.” I was pleased for him but thinking more about joining the ship next morning.
Fizz read my mind. “You will be OK?” She was anxious. “It’s not too late, you know. You don’t have to go. Just don’t turn up. Go back to that school an’ no one’ll ever know. All they’ve got’s your picture, no name nor nothing. Joey’s the one could get into trouble, but he can easy say he lost his papers, or somebody nicked ’em. They’re not going to lock him up.”
“Not go?” I managed a carefree smile. “What are you talking about? It’s going to be brilliant.”
“D’you mean it, mate?” Joey said. “I’ve been feelin’ a bit like – guilty, you know. Me stayin’ ashore wi’ Fizz, you getting out o’ that school – it were just an idea. Then Charlie takes over an’ suddenly here’s you on the briny an’ me tryin’ to get back into football.”
“Course I mean it,” I said. “Panama, Fiji, New Zealand – and getting paid for it. Who’d turn down a chance like that?”
Fizz put down her knife and fork. Unexpectedly she leaned across and kissed me full on the lips. It was like being KO’d by a velvet hammer.
“You – are – terrific.” She cupped the back of my neck. “Good looking. Style. I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time. If it wasn’t for Joey, I’d run off with you myself.”
Michael used the word ‘gorgeous’ a lot. He didn’t know what he was talking about. This was gorgeous. My face burned.
“Here, take your hands off him. That’s my mate.” Joey pulled the back of her jeans. “But listen, sailing tomorrow, yeah? We were planning on coming to see you off but I reckon we’d better not, OK? I might know some o’ the crew. No point runnin’ risks.”
His voice was clear enough but I never heard a word because right then Fizz began kissing me again.
I Join Pacific Trader
AT HALF past ten, his gear in two holdalls, Charlie picked me up in a taxi. Minutes later it dropped us by the gangway.
Pacific Trader lay starboard side to the quay. She was a beautiful ship, a hundred and sixty metres long, thirteen thousand tons, elegant black hull, white superstructure, tan and black funnel. I had walked the length of her the previous day and loved her at first sight. It was hard to believe that in a few hours’ time this would be my home, and I would be crossing the Atlantic, steaming through Panama and heading west into the vast Pacific as one of the crew. But now here I was, lugging my bags beneath the towering legs of the cranes.
The gangway was almost horizontal, the treads stood upright. Trying to quell the grumble in my guts and look as if joining a ship was no big deal, I followed Charlie on board.
Figures hurried to and fro with paint rollers, clipboards, pots of grease and small pieces of machinery. Pallets of cargo disappeared into the holds. Pallets of supplies stood on deck. Lifeboat covers were thrown back. Oil pipes and water pipes snaked aboard from the quay. Wreaths of smoke from the funnel were torn sideways by the wind. Up on the foremast, the fluttering Blue Peter announced that the ship would be sailing that very day.
The day watchman nodded as we came aboard. Two figures stood by the gangway. I recognised both and was filled with alarm. One was Jumbo Ryland, the bosun, thick arms folded across his chest. The second was a cadet, little older than Charlie, in officer’s uniform with a gold flash on his lapel. He was the boy with whom we had quarrelled at the disco, a fleshy, handsome youth with high colouring and dark glossy curls. He murmured something to the bosun and they laughed.
Ryland’s twisted eye flashed towards us. He jerked his head. “Come here, the pair o’ you.”
We crossed the deck, bags bumping our legs.
“You’ve met Mr Fanshott-Williams.” He cocked a thumb. “Senior cadet on this ship. You’ll treat him with respect, right? You’ve met me, an’ all. I don’t like you an’ I don’t like the company you keep, poofs and troublemakers. So I know what you are, a couple of toerags, but not who you are.” He consulted a grubby list.
“Sunderland,” Charlie said.
“Bennett.”
Laboriously he crossed off our names with a stub of pencil. “J.O.S. an’ Deck Boy. Right,” he looked up. “My name’s Ryland. I’m the bosun on this ship an’ don’t you forget it. Give me any hassle, any grief, any jokes about this,” he touched his face, “an’ I’ll squash you like a couple o’ bilge rats. Understood?”
Not two minutes on board. I was transfixed by his malevolence.
“I said do you understand?”
“Yes, Bosun,” Charlie muttered.
“You?”
I nodded.
“You tryin’ me on with dumb insolence?”
“No.”
“No, Bosun.”
“No, Bosun,” I said.
“Better not, neither.” He hitched his thick belt. “Right then, leave your gear in the crew mess and report to the mate.”
“Where is he?” Charlie said.
“Find him, Cocoa, find him.”
Charlie stared at him. “You call me that again, Bosun, ever, I’ll report you.”
“Ooooo!” Ryland laughed dismissively. “On your way.” The cadet laughed with him: red lips, dark eyes, arrogant. Side by side they watched us go.
We found the mate in the officers’ saloon. He was younger than my dad, slim, neat, dark hair brushed across, three rings on an immaculate sleeve. Company reps lolled nearby. The table was strewn with papers: bills of lading, schedules, cargo plans. Cigarette smoke and whisky fumes, acrid after the breeze on deck, made my eyes prick.
The mate finished a story before he paid us any attention. “And you are?”
“Sunderland, J.O.S.”
“Bennett, sir. Deck Boy.”
He glanced at his watch, a gold Oyster, and annotated the list at his side. “Right.” He half rose and held out a hand. “My name’s Rose, Mr Rose. Good to have you aboard.”
After the rough welcome by the bosun I was relieved.
He subsided and drew on a cigarette, squinting through the smoke. He had those eyebrows that almost meet in the middle. “Hard work and a happy ship, that’s the name of the game. Think you can manage that?”
“I think so, sir,” Charlie said.
“You think so?”
“Well, we can.”
The mate’s gaze sharpened. “And somebody else can’t?”
Charlie shrugged.
The mate didn’t like it. “You keep your noses clean, that’s good enough for me. Any problems, report them to the bosun.”
My eyes met Charlie’s. He raised his brows. “Very good,” he said. “Sir.”
The mate looked at me. “You don’t say much.”
“No, sir.”
“First trip?”
“Second, sir.”
“You look very young.”
I didn’t reply.
“Everything all right?”
“Yes, thank you.”
He looked at me narrowly. “You speak very well for a deck boy.”
My cheeks burned. “Thank you, sir.”
“Nothing I should know is there,” he consulted the list, “Bennett?”
“I don’t think so, sir.”
He sat back. “All right, find your cabins and settle in. Lunch at twelve. Turn-to after. Any questions?”
“One, if you don’t mind, sir,” Charlie said. “Can you tell us how many deck boys there’s going to be?”
The mate consulted his list. “Meant to be two but Sanderson’s in hospital. Motorbike smash apparently. So just the one this trip, Bennett here.”
“Well, could Ben and me share the deck boys’ cabin, me being ordinary seaman now? We’re pals see.”
The mate considered. “Don’t see why not. You’ll probably have to muck in as peggy anyway. Can’t see the other J.O.S. objecting.”
“Thanks very much.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said.
Again the mate turned curious eyes upon me. He flipped through a jumble of Discharge Books in a wire tray and pulled one out. As he glanced through the details I saw my photograph. I held my breath but all seemed to be in order.
“Right, on you go.” Still holding the cigarette, he reached for his whisky glass. A signet ring on his little finger winked in the light.
Charlie and I went back on deck and cleared our lungs in the wind that blew from the river.
