Deck boy, p.20
Deck Boy, page 20
I crept past the funnel to the for’ard end of the deck. Number three hatch, where we had watched Trish sunbathing, lay below me. I stopped in my tracks. A shadowy figure lurked in the officers’ entrance. I backed behind a ventilator and tiptoed away. The after end of the boat deck seemed clear. I descended a ladder and headed for the steps to the crew deck. Abruptly Rat’bone appeared round a corner. He gave a shout. I fled back the way I had come and dived through the engineers’ entrance, an alleyway that led directly from port to starboard.
The bosun, his back towards me, was descending a staircase. “Hey!” He spun round.
I shot past and out the doorway on the opposite side.
A voice hissed, “Down the steps. The way’s clear.”
“What?”
“Quick!”
I never saw him but did as he told me. In seconds I was on the crew deck and sprinting aft.
The alleyway door stood open again. I sprang over the sill and was just in time to see a back as someone disappeared into my cabin. He moved furtively. The curtain closed. It wasn’t Charlie, I was sure of that. The washroom was right beside me. I darted inside. It was deserted. The washroom was spacious with doors to port and starboard – deck crew our side, greasers and catering crew the other. I headed for the door opposite then skidded to a halt. One of those who were hunting me might be in the alleyway. I stared all round, from the showers to the portholes and a wet towel hanging by the washbasins. Desperate for respite, I ran into a toilet cubicle and shut the door.
Silence, stillness. I sat on the lid and lifted my feet. White bulkheads, hanging paper, a flimsy bolt.
Then the squeak of a footstep on the tiles
The wet towel came flying over the door. “Gimme the boiler suit!”
I froze.
“For God’s sake! Gimme your boiler suit – and the hat. Quick!”
Whoever it was, he was a friend. I tore open the buttons and tried to tug the legs over my trainers. They stuck. I pulled off the trainers too, threw down my hat and kicked everything under the door. They were snatched away. The footsteps receded.
I was alone.
The towel lay on the deck. I hung it on the back of the door.
There were voices in the alleyway:
“… not in his bunk. His mate’s dead to the world.”
“… that poofy greaser he knocks around with?”
“… always wears them white overalls. Smell his body rub anyway.”
“… be that bloody deckboy.”
“Where is he then? Have you tried the messroom?”
“… just looked.”
“… about in here?”
Somebody entered the washroom. “Ah!” He addressed the cubicle door. “Who’s in there?”
I didn’t reply.
“Who is it?” Knuckles rapped sharply. “That you, Bennett?”
“Yes.”
“Come on out.”
“I haven’t finished.”
“Never mind that, come on out. It’s the bosun here.”
I took my time even though I was shaking: pulled some paper, lifted the lid, flushed the toilet. At last, wearing underpants and carrying the towel, I emerged.
Three men stood facing me: Ryland, Steve and Tony. Clearly they were taken aback. Tony pushed past and looked behind the cubicle door.
“What do you want?” I said.
The bosun said, “How long have you been in there?”
“What?”
“You heard. How long?”
“I don’t know – a few minutes. I’ve got constipation. Why?”
“Never you mind.” He looked at the others. A big red bruise was starting on the side of his face. His good eye was bloodshot.
“Not him anyway.” Steve shook his head. “Guy was wearing overalls.”
The bosun glanced in the cubicle. No water tank, no air trunk, no place I could have hidden them. He pressed the flush; the water ran away freely.
Rat’bone came in, holding a bottle of whisky. The club of two-by-two I had seen lying on the deck was thrust through his belt. Whoever had hit him, perhaps aided by my kick, had made a good job of it. His upper lip was split. Blood ran from his nose. “Good, you got the little bastard.” He wiped off the blood and licked it from his hand. Tipping the bottle, he took a good swig. “What now, Jumbo?”
“Not him, looks like we got it wrong this time.”
“What’s he doin’ here then?”
The bosun nodded towards the lavatory. “An’ you can thank your lucky stars that’s the only reason you’re out your bunk this time o’ night.” He hitched the knife and marlinspike on his belt. “Never mind about us, that’s none o’ your business. Forget you seen us is my advice. An’ put something on your feet when you come in here, you should know that.”
They turned away.
“Whoever it was, we lost him now,” Tony said. “What if he talks?”
“Better not if he knows what’s good for him,” said Ryland. “Anyway, Lenny says you got rid of …”
“Yeah.”
“Good lad. So where’s the evidence? One man against four. You just make sure that key goes back sharpish.” Ryland saw me listening. “You’ll not be constipated if I have to come over there an’ teach you some manners.” He raised a fist. “Do what you come here for or get back to your cabin.”
Just then Brian, AB on the middle watch with Rat’bone and Steve, appeared in the doorway. “Second mate’s going ballistic! Wants you on the bridge, Lenny. Asking why you’re not up there on the fo’csle, keeping lookout.” He saw the bottle, smelled the whisky. “Man, you are dead!”
“How’s he know?”
“Saw some people up on the funnel deck. Wanted you and me to check it out. Rang the fo’csle – nobody there.”
“Oh, hell! Give us a minute.” Rat’bone produced a filthy handkerchief. “Got any peppermints?”
Brian eyed the blood. “Been fighting?”
Rat’bone sneered. “Fell against the windlass, didn’t I? Had to come aft an’ clean myself up.”
They drifted into the alleyway.
I returned to the cubicle and bolted the door. My stomach churned. Who, I wondered, had been my protector? Not Philip, it wasn’t his voice. Nor Michael or Barbara. Definitely not Ossie. Aaron? – I didn’t think so. Smoky? Charlie? – easy to find out. I flushed the toilet, rinsed my feet in the shower, dried them on the towel and returned to my cabin.
Was Charlie asleep or just pretending? The sheet was pulled to his throat. Perhaps he was dressed underneath. I eased it back and saw bare shoulders. Body heat wafted out at me. He shifted and pulled the sheet back. Charlie was definitely asleep.
So was Aaron, breathing deeply, snoring ever so softly.
“Aaron!” I whispered. “Aaron.”
“Mmm.” He turned on the pillow. “Julie.”
I returned to the cabin and prepared to climb into bed then changed my mind.
“Charlie.” I shook him gently. “Hey, Charlie!”
The Messman’s Dolls
AS I stood in the dinner queue three days later, I saw that Ossie was smiling. When it came to my turn he drew me aside.
“Isn’t it great!”
“What do you mean?”
“The dolls, the juju – it’s working.”
For a moment I didn’t know what he was talking about. “You mean Steve’s foot?”
“And the others.”
I hadn’t thought about it, so much else had been happening. But surely his damaged ankle had been a coincidence. “You’re not telling me – ?”
He nodded eagerly. “All three of them.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Come on, Ossie, mate.” Angry voices intervened. “Stop faffing about!”
“Tell you later.” He hurried back to the chops and vegetarian pie.
It gave me a lot to think about.
What had happened was this:
Following the struggle on the crew deck Rat’bone refused to have his lip stitched, he was frightened of needles, and it turned septic. I wasn’t surprised, considering his habits and the dirty rag he had been mopping it with. Inside and out, the wound turned into an abscess and the poison spread up into his nose and his cheekbone and the hinge of his jaw. His face was a mess and looked very painful. Eating and speaking became next to impossible. It gave many people a savage satisfaction.
Equally satisfactory, the bosun came off worse in an argument with my friend Kevin, the galley boy. I’m not sure what it was about, something to do with potatoes or a piece of fish. What I do know, because Kevin told me himself, is that Ryland flared up one lunchtime and stormed from the petty officers’ messroom into the galley where he had no right to be. The chef at that moment was in the pantry but Kevin stood only a few paces away, his back to the door. The bosun, in a great rage, grabbed him by the back of his white jacket and spun him round. Kevin hadn’t heard his approach and right then was paddling some battered fish in the deep fat fryer. He sprang back, startled by the sudden attack, and in so doing flung a ladle of seething fat over the bosun’s bare arm.
Ryland screamed, he roared, he waved his arm in the air, he rushed to the sink and plunged it under a tap – the boiling hot tap! Too late the cold tap. The fat cooled to a white crust. But beneath it the bosun’s arm was burned raw. He was taken to the sick bay and made to sit for half the afternoon with his arm in a basin of iced water.
Michael, who was constantly in and out of the galley, ran to tell me and gloat, so I was one of the first to know. That evening I saw the bosun, his arm swathed in bandages, reeling drunk from a cocktail of painkillers and alcohol.
Two of my tormentors laid low and Steve hobbling painfully as he went about his work. Only Tony to go. Time to celebrate – and later that evening with Charlie, Aaron and a few others, I drank a beer too many.
It was a merry occasion but my mind was in a whirl. Apart from myself Ossie had told no one – not Barbara, not Michael – about the voodoo dolls. He had only confided in me because he needed someone to keep a lookout in Panama, and had sworn me to secrecy. But now, it appeared, all the injuries he was conjuring upon people had come to pass. I had sat watching as he broke open the crude doll that represented Steve Petersen, pressed a scrap of his writing and some long hairs into the wax and wrapped his sweatband around its neck. I had heard him mutter some incantation and seen him thrust a hot needle through its foot. Just hours afterwards, Steve had returned to the ship with his ankle twisted so badly that a week later he still wore a tight bandage and walked with a limp. True, it was the wrong ankle, but all the same it was a coincidence. Now Ossie was claiming that the accidents involving Rat’bone and the bosun were also the result of his experiments. That night in Panama, before he added the scraps he had found in their cabins, I had seen the needles wedged in Rat’bone’s mouth and Ryland’s bulbous forearm. And now, spreading from his split lip, Rat’bone had this terrible abscess all over his face and the bosun’s forearm was badly burned. But how could Ossie be responsible? Voodoo like that was all superstition, I told myself, it had to be. I had seen photographs of witch doctors in Haiti and Africa, and their terrified victims with rolling eyes. The dolls and needles were scary. But there was no way that sort of magic could work, not in the world I knew or among western people like the crew of the ship. Not with somebody like Ossie.
I had promised to tell no one but it was a promise I felt I could not keep. Huddled in a corner of the bar with Michael, I broke my word and told him everything. It was to have terrible consequences. All I can say in my defence is that I was fifteen years old, half drunk, and Michael was a much older friend of Ossie than I was.
“And now he’s claiming to have supernatural powers?” Michael said.
“Sort of, I suppose.”
And all this happened back in Panama?” He adjusted his colourful wrap-around to cover a bare leg. “What a secretive thing you are, Ben. Who’d guess it to look into that innocent face? I wonder what other surprises you’ve got tucked away up your sleeve.”
“But now he’s saying it’s all three of them.”
“Yes, I know, you just told me.”
“You’ll not tell anyone.”
“Of course not. Well, Barbara, I’ll have to tell Barbara.”
“ ’Cause he made me promise.”
“It’s all right.” Michael patted my arm. “All this occult stuff, we’ve seen it before.”
“Raking through cabins for bits of hair? Sticking needles in dolls?”
“No, not the voodoo, that’s new.” He rose, taking his drink with him. “Come on, let’s go and see what he’s up to.”
I wished my head did not feel so muzzy.
“You off then?” Charlie’s shout rang across the bar. “If you meet the bosun give his arm a good thump from me.”
Curtains drifted in every doorway but one. Ossie’s door was locked. I smelled incense. Michael knocked.
“Who is it?”
“Me and Ben.”
“Go away.”
“That’s not very nice.”
“I can’t see you right now.”
“Yes you can. Open up.”
“I’m busy. Come back in half an hour.”
“Ossie!”
“Well you’ll have to wait.” There was a sound of bustle and drawers closing. Something fell. Ossie gave a little cry.
“Come on!” Michael rapped. “Just open the door.”
More noises from within then a key turned. Ossie stood in the entrance looking flushed and guilty.
“What have you been up to now?”
“That’s my business.” Exotic smoke drifted into the alleyway.
We followed him into his cabin. He had opened the porthole but it would take some time for the air to clear. Joss sticks, one still smouldering, stood in a holder. A last candle flame guttered in the draught. The crimson cloth I had seen folded in his drawer turned out to be covered with gold and silver astrological signs and now hung above his bunk.
“Oh, Ossie!” Michael sat on the day bed. “We’ve been here before, haven’t we?”
Ossie looked at his feet.
“You’re not going to get ill again are you?”
“I’m all right.” Surreptitiously he removed an ornate ring from his finger.
“Because your friends are worried.”
Ossie glanced at me.
“Yes, Ben’s told me,” Michael said. “Don’t look at him like that. You keep locking yourself away.”
The fumes on top of the beer were making me dizzy. I sat in the chair. A glint of silver on the deck caught my eye. I picked it up, a triangular canvas needle.
“So what’s it all about?” Michael said. “These dolls, you’ve been making, where are they?”
Ossie twisted his arms.
“Come on, love, this is Michael here. You can tell me anything, you know that. Where are they?”
Ossie mumbled, “In there.”
“This drawer here?” Michael pulled it open. A variety of objects had been tumbled out of sight: tarot cards, candles, a black silk scarf, a freezer bag with a tight elastic band around the top. Michael picked it up and discovered the head, entrails and a few scattered feathers from a chicken. “Oh, Ossie!” He hesitated, holding it in the tips of his fingers, and threw it out the porthole. “You can’t keep things like that in your drawer, it’s disgusting.”
“It’s only been there a day. They use chicken blood and stuff in Jamaica – all over really.”
“Not in the Merchant Navy, love. They’ll have you off to the funny farm again if the old man finds out.” He rinsed his fingers and returned to the drawer. Each of the dolls was now wrapped separately. Michael picked up the nearest and unfolded the bulky paper. “Oh, my goodness!”
It was Ryland. Ossie had worked on it since that night in Panama. Now the bosun doll had a straggle of real hair pushed into its head. Black specks, which I took to be the whiskers scraped from his washbasin, were stuck round its chin. A fragment of red underpants was knotted round its middle. And two needles, thick canvas needles like the one I’d found on the deck, were thrust into its body, one through the right arm, the other into its back.
It was a frightening object.
Michael gave the needles a little tug and push. They were rigid and must have been inserted hot. “Are you telling us you did this before the accident?”
“The one into his arm I did,” Ossie said. “Honest! Ben seen it.”
“Not that needle,” I said.
“No, but the same place.”
I nodded.
“What about the one in his back?”
“I done that after.”
Michael turned the doll this way and that, set it back in the drawer and picked up another – Rat’bone. In a strange way the deformed lump of wax actually looked like the scruffy AB. Since I last saw it, Ossie had added the broken specs, a few straggly ginger hairs and a greasy comb. “I put all the other stuff inside the body,” he told me.
“Where’d you get the comb?”
“He dropped it in the bar.”
A thick needle had been pushed deep into its heart. A second needle, a darning needle, just as I had seen it in Panama, was thrust through the doll’s mouth.
Ossie explained: “He was always saying filthy things.”
“And you did it before Lenny got hurt?”
“The one in his mouth.”
“But not this one?” With the tip of his finger Michael tested the needle fixed immovably into the doll’s chest.
“No, I done that this afternoon.”
It was the first time I’d seen Michael lost for words. “I don’t know what to say, Ossie, love. I just don’t believe in black magic. If what you’re telling us is true, it’s the most fantastic coincidence since – well, ever. Tell us again, on your word of honour, did you stick those needles in before the accidents – the ones where they’ve all been hurt?”
“Not much point doing it afterwards.”
“Except I suppose it might feel like revenge. And make the rest of us believe in it a bit more.”
