by Jamie Tuck
~
Berry walks out to the deck where the bow cuts into the musty air of the concrete canyon.
The very tip, the triangle of deck at the bow is raised about six inches, like a stage. There’s a long thin box up there screwed to the deck, like a coffin. Smithy sits on it.
A pink buoy is lying on the deck – Berry boots it into the void.
‘Kee-gan!’ he screams. ‘Ha heh heh.’
He steps up onto the stage and looks out to where the sun now spills over much of the dock.
Cranes cast Jurassic shadows across the brown canvas of the concrete floor.
‘It must be fuckin lush to go to sea and that,’ Berry says.
‘Hello sailor,’ Wedge says in a disturbingly realistic gay voice.
The wheelhouse is at the back of the deck in front of the winch. It looks like a little whitewashed garden shed, crushed on one side by the flying cable spool. A window had popped out whole and rests on the thin strip of deck between the polished wood safety rail and the wheelhouse door.
But not for long.
Wedge tips it over the rail and into the void.
It hits the bround, bounces.
‘Fuck?’
But doesn’t smash.
He disappears back inside the wheelhouse.
Smithy joins Berry on the stage and looks out across the vast empty grave.
‘Don’t y’think this is a bit dodge, Bez?’
‘What?’
‘This,’ Smithy moves his nose across the open space.
‘Maybes?’
‘This thing must belong to somebody,’ he nods down at the smashed cable spool and the damaged wheelhouse. ‘If we get nicked on here, we’re fucked.’
‘Ah, we’ll be alright man.’
‘I wanna go get me shoes.’
‘I know, I know.’
‘I’m meetin up with a lass later.’
‘Aye?’
‘Aye. She’s fit as.’
There’s a clatter under ground, behind them – like a wardrobe falling over.
Both their heads jerk.
‘Wedge,’ Berry says. ‘WEDGE?’
There’s more disembodied clatter from down below.
Footsteps.
Clatter.
Clatter.
Scrape.
Clatter.
There’s a low moan.
Clatter
Clatter.
Scrape.
Scrape.
‘Fuck me. What’s that?’ Smithy says, he looks like he’s ready to jump from the bow.
‘Dunno.’
‘It sounds like? Go. Go look, Bez man.’
‘Fuck’s sakes man.’
Berry walks to the wheelhouse door, there’s nobody there.
‘Wedge?’ he says, looking tentatively around the door.
A hatch is swung open on the floor. The hole is a deep black.
‘Wedge?’
Silence.
There’s nobody there, just a dragging sound.
Scrape.
Scrape.
Scrape.
Like a wounded ghost.
Scrape.
Scratch.
Scrape.
Then, silence.
Berry gets to his knees and peers into the black hole, it’s like sticking his head in a barrel of oil. There are wooden steps heading down below deck but they disappear as they reach into the darkness.
‘Wedge,’ he whispers, the cold fear there in his voice.
Silence.
He turns to look up to the sunlight, recalibrating his eyes.
‘Fuck’s sakes,’ he says.
He peers again into the black hole and . .
A white face comes fast from the black.
‘RAAAAH!’
‘Fuck!’ Berry jumps back across the wheelhouse’s wooden floor.
‘ME!’
Wedge’s king-sized cranium pops up from the big hatch in the floor.
‘Your fuckin face! Hahaha.’
‘Y’fuckin cunt, I nearly shat mesel.’
The head-in-a-hurry disappears.
A shot of light bursts in the cavern, it goes out then fires again.
Wedge’s Clipper lighter.
‘It’s fuckin lush down here man,’ says disembodied Wedge. ‘Howay man.’
Berry sits with his legs in the trapdoor then heads down, his back to the sinking steps, heels reaching down for the rungs in the dark.
He slips.
‘Fuckinhell!’
Bop.
Bop.
Bang.
Bang.
Bop.
There were only only five rungs left to the floor.
Twang! Bang! Twang!
‘What the fuck?’
He reaches into the dark and feels the neck of a Spanish acoustic guitar.
‘Cool!’ he says.
He strums it, it sounds like six cats being castrated.
He heads to Wedge’s red arm, lit by the flickering Clipper torch.
‘Fuckin stinks,’ Berry says, for some reason, in a whisper.
‘Aye,’ Wedge says, loud. ‘Like nettles? Like a greenhouse. Somethin.’
Wedge is up close to a table, the lighter goes out. He rolls the barrel over the flint.
‘Ow! Fuck!’
Hot.
Wedge spins the flint wheel again.
There’s a thin camp bed on either side of the small cabin, each with a poster above. Wedge points the lighter to the left. A brown sleeping bag is fully open on the bed and tossed haphazardly against the wall, its orange guts slit open, zip broken.
He raises the lighter to the poster above; Bob Marley’s English features, a big cloud of smoke coming from his mouth, nipping his gifted black man’s eyes closed.
Wedge turns the light to the opposite wall and the second poster; the antithesis of the Rasta - a white man in tight pants with a woman’s oversprayed hair masturbating a Flying V guitar.
‘Look at this fuckin twat,’ Wedge snorts.
‘Wanker,’ Berry agrees.
There’s a pair of leather sandals and a pair of leather boots by the white corner of a fridge.
Berry pulls the door open.
‘Fuck me!’
Rotting bacon, a fair pile of it on a plate. Covered in blue fungus. Milk turned to cheese. Cheese turned to mould.
‘Man that,’ Wedge says, slamming the door, ‘fuckin reeks.’
The lighter goes out.
‘Pass it here,’ Berry says, reaching out for the Clipper.
It burns his hand.
‘Fuck’s sakes!’
He flicks it to life and points it at the table between the two beds, he hovers the flame over an ashtray and some cigarette papers, the cardboard packs torn at their corners. Then an empty pack of Stuyvesant cigarettes and a magazine, wide open at the centre spread.
The writing is indecipherable, all zs and acks – but the glossy pink photo of a pair of tits makes clear the content.
‘Fuckin right man!’
A European wank mag.
Hardcore. Illegal in the UK.
Berry grabs it. His eyes scan down from red pouting lips to the gulley of the girl’s neck, down between her oiled breasts and on down, down, past her pierced bellybutton to her wide open vagina.
It has a cock in it.
No messing around with this magazine.
‘What’s that?’ Wedge says, grabbing his lighter.
‘Mine! Hah!’
Berry pulls it close.
‘Gizza look.’
He tilts it towards the lighter.
‘Don’t fuckin burn it!’ Berry says, pulling it out of harm’s way.
‘Fuck?’
‘Mine,’ Berry says.
He heads for the light coming down the white stairs - drops the guitar - climbs and makes his way to the raised stage at the front of the deck where Smithy sits with his top off - the sun directly over head.
‘Thought y’were scared?’ Berry says.
‘Could hear y’talkin.’
Berry sits beside him, the wank mag on his thighs.
‘Looker,’ Berry says, opening the centre spread as wide as the legs of the glossy lady who lives there.
‘Fuck me!’
‘Ha heh heh.’
‘She’s got black fanny lips,’ Smithy says. ‘How the? That can’t be real?’
‘Seen the size of it?’ Berry says. ‘It’s like an old fuckin boot.’
Berry turns the page, it’s full of adverts.
‘It’s foreign,’ Smithy says. ‘Look. Greek or somethin.’
‘Aye. German? Maybes.’
The magazine has page after page of adverts for condoms and sex aids.
‘Fuck me,’ Berry says. ‘Look at this.’
He shows Smithy a picture.
‘What?’
‘Looks like a peach melba, no?’
It’s a photo of what could be a peach melba cake, icing sugar that ripples around in circles up to a point, cream inside, 14p from Greggs the bakers.
But the brand name of the thing is in English - it’s a Triple Ripple Butt Plug.
‘What’s that for?’ Smithy asks.
‘Work it out.’
‘Up the arse? Fuck? Really?’
Smithy takes another look, then looks at Berry.
Confused.
‘But? Why?’
‘I’ve nay fuckin idea. Ha heh heh. Ask y’mam.’
Berry’s outstretched arms recoil from the sun’s rays.
‘Fuck man, it’s too hot. Y’not burnin?’
‘Nah,’ Smithy closes his eyes and looks to the sky. ‘It’s lush man.’
Berry heads back to the shade of the wheelhouse and sits on the step, he flicks the pages, pausing on a young blonde woman staring right at him. She’s on all fours, naked, gazing back across her own flesh to the lens. Everything God gave her on studio lit display. The pink lips of her pussy slightly parted by the gentle spread of her legs. The next page shows the photographer taking her picture. He’s wearing jeans and is clearly a pro. A porn pro, not a snapper.
Berry gets the message.
It brings a heavenly surge.
Twinge, twinge, twinge.
‘Man oh man.’
He’d seen magazines with tits and even open fannies before, but never anything quite this elemental. He maps out two furious-fisted minutes when he gets home, maybe one-and-a-half. His palm wound might mean he’d have to hammer away left handed.
Not a deal breaker.
‘Hey Bez?’ Wedge says from above deck now, sitting in the captain’s chair, shaking his Ventalin inhaler.
‘Bez?’
He puffs down a blast of magic gas.
‘Bez? Hey Bez man? Bez?’
‘What man! Fuck’s sakes.’
Berry glances up, a damp ache in his shorts.
His cock wanting to turn the pages and finish the scene itself.
Wedge sniffs at the air.
‘This is a fishin boat, right?’
The boat still smells like a greenhouse.
Berry looks back at the girl who’s about to get fucked.
‘Fuck me,’ Berry says, eyes savouring the page. ‘Y’worked that out all by y’self?’
Wedge sticks his tongue down between his front lower teeth and the flesh of his chin – the universal sign of mental disability.
‘N’rrrr,’ he says, flidding his arms away from the wheel, his inhaler in one hand. ‘Spastic.’
Wedge shakes his canister, puts it to his lips and inhales like he’d been jabbed in the solar plexus.
Berry turns the page.
Wedge pulls out a cigarette, lights it. The tip flares as he sucks down the smoke.
‘Ah fuck me, man,’ Berry groans as the girl on the page takes the man into her mouth.
‘Dumb arse,’ Wedge says, exhaling smoke. ‘Think about it. It’s a FISHIN boat.’
‘What y’fuckin witterin on about man?’
‘FISHIN BOAT.’
‘And?’
‘Why doesn’t it smell of fuckin fish?’
Berry looks up.
‘Ehm?’
A mile or so up river, and Billy ‘Hash’ Brown drives with Foggy by his side seeking something herbal to smoke.
They drive parallel with a Lego project called the Byker Wall. A Hadrian’s Wall of social housing designed by a toddler with coloured bricks in the 1970s.
‘What silly cunt built this fuckin thing?’ Hash says.
‘What?’ Foggy says.
Hash is scrunched up close to the wheel, trying to stop his flayed back touching the car seat.
‘This,’ he says. ‘Someone’s takin the piss. Y’never wondered what the fuck they were smokin when they decided to build this fuckin thing?’
Foggy glances out of the window. Shakes his head.
‘What the fuck y’goin on about? You a fuckin builder now like?’
They drive through an archway in the housing estate that leads out into a courtyard with a bizarre favella theme. The back of Byker Wall is a clutter of balconies. Somehow in keeping lately, with the tropical weather.
Hash looks up.
‘Costa del Tyne,’ he says.
He isn’t watching the road.
‘Fuck!’ he shouts.
And jabs hard at the brakes.
‘Aaaaagh!’
He jerks forward then smashes back into the car seat.
‘Aagh! Aaaaagh! Aaaaaaaagh!’
A 10-year-old boy grabs the football that was dropped from a balcony then, of course, sticks up two fingers.
‘Fuck off!’ he squeaks, and runs away. ‘Wankers.’
‘Aaaagh,’ Hash sobs. ‘Aaagh!’
He throbs with agony as each heart beat pushes more blood through his ruined skin.
‘Jesus fuckin Christ Billy man,’ Foggy says.
Hash rests his head on the steering wheel.
Paaaaaarp.
‘Ayaz man,’ he whispers. ‘Ayaz man.’
Paaaaaarp
Heads peer over balconies.
Paaaaaarp.
‘Fuck me,’ Foggy says, pulling hard on Hash’s chocolate Kappa zip-up top. ‘Get y’fuckin head off the horn.’
Hash gently lifts his head and looks up to the faces, a tattooed man spills lager from a can.
Or was it his mouth?
‘We’ll get wi fuckin heads kicked in man.’
‘I need a fuckin spliff man,’ Hash whispers. ‘I’m dyin.’
Foggy sighs and pulls the release to the door, pushes it to its hinge and lifts his left leg from the footwell. He gets out, then looks at him from under the door frame.
‘We’re gonna get fuckin ripped off.’
He slams the door.
Hash looks out over the sunbleached flagstones of a courtyard.
People pass by in Hawaiian beach clothes, it’s the first time they’ve ever taken to these balconies without a bag of washing.
The kid, the kid with no head wore a loud shirt.
Hash thinks for a flash; a flash like a Coastguard-issue distress flare. Just like the one Talbot had in his hands, pointing it at the Dutch stoner.
The door re-opens, and the car rocks as Foggy sits down.
‘He pulled the chord.’
‘Wha? What chord? Fuck y’talkin about?’
The beating sun. The fizzing, hissing industrial firework smashing the confused kid right in the mouth like a fist on fire.
Smoking it like a comedy cigar.
Bang.
Pink mist.
Hash grabs the memory by the throat and throws it against the back of his skull.
The pink mist.
‘Pink Mist?’ Foggy asks. ‘Is that a horse? What y’talkin about now, man? Fuck’s sake.’
‘Wha?’ Hash says.
‘Billy, fuck me. Y’talkin to y’self man. Y’fuckin brain’s fried. Can we fuckin leave now please? Y’startin to fuckin scare me.’
Hash puts his fingers up to the igniti
on.
Even that hurts.
‘Ayaz, man,’ he whispers. ‘Ayaz.’
They’re not moving.
Foggy turns to him.
‘Hash, for fuck’s sake, let’s . . . ’ Foggy says. ‘Are y’cryin?’
Hash’s body shakes gently at the wheel, hot tears heading down his cheeks.
‘Hash? Billy, howay man,’ Foggy reaches out to touch him. Doesn’t. He knows it’d sting like buggery.
‘Howay Billy man. It’s alright, it’s alright.’
Hash turns his head.
A tear drips from his chin to his favourite top, now filthy and stinking of fish.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be daft Billy man. Y’me best mate. What y’sorry for?’
Hash sniffs.
‘I got some, looker,’ Foggy reassures him, looks up at the balconies.
‘Howay, let’s go and have a smoke. Eh? That’ll sort y’out.’
He rolls what could be a big black snot wrapped in cellophane between his fingers.
‘Y’scored already?’
‘Aye Billy, howay man Billy. Offskies.’
Hash turns the key in the ignition.
And the Chevette hops forward like a frog, still in gear.
‘Ayaaaaaz man!’ whipping them back and forward again. ‘Ayaaaaaaaaz! Ayaaaaaaaaaz!’
Paaaaarp.
Hash’s head’s back on the horn.
Foggy looks up at the car’s stained vinyl ceiling then closes his eyes.
‘Fuck me, man,’ he sighs.
Down between the brown walls, and Skipper Ted Berry sits in the little trawler’s worn leather captain’s chair, each hand locked on one of the eight knobs that stick out from the rim of the ship’s wheel. They feel smooth and firm, fashioned by a lathe and years of pressure from sailors’ hands.
Berry glances around the wheelhouse for a spanner. His mother, for some reason, had always fancied one for the living room wall.
A black earth floats in a bowl of liquid on the dashboard, white notches run off right to the east and left to the west, the settled arrow points due north. He taps at the bowl, the earth moves slightly then insists it was right the first time.
‘Mental,’ Berry says.
There’s a cigarette lighter next to the compass bowl, he picks it up. It has a woman upside down on the side in a bikini, he turns it around and her clothes fall away.
‘Cool!’
He does it again and again, dressing and undressing her. She looks like Betty Boo.
‘Ha heh heh.’
He looks out of the missing window at Smithy, soaking up the last rays of sun to hit the deck as the sun reclines up river, feet resting on his Adidas bag.
He puts the lighter in his pocket.
‘Neeeeeeeeeeeeeaaa,’ Berry squeals like an overtaking Formula One car, ‘yowww.’
He twists the ship’s wheel – suddenly a special forces speedboat.
On a secret mission.
He swerves left, then right. Left again.
‘Ha heh heh.’
Wedge pushes himself into the wheelhouse.
‘Who the fuck y’now then skitzo?’
‘Hold on a sec,’ Berry replies, leaning with the wheel to one side, ‘. . . mines.’
‘Mines?’ Wedge repeats, taking the white ladder down into the boat’s belly. ‘Righto. Mines.’
The rudder stops bumping underneath as Berry lets go of the wheel - distracted by dials, buttons and electronic equipment.
What could be a car stereo juts out from its housing, part of its plastic front has been smashed off and the whole unit is dislodged from the wood panelling.
‘Fuckin cool.’
He pushes a Nike against it and it clicks back into position - he jabs at its buttons then grabs the CB radio’s handset, hanging limp from the unit on the end of a coiled wire.
Dead.
He puts it to his mouth and presses the red button on the side – just like he’d seen in so many films.
‘Currsucka,’ he says.
His mind unzips to;
. . . . a huge wave rolling down the dry dock, his knuckles whiten as Playfair faces it; the bow rises and the boat crawls up to the crest where she dips before tearing downwards.
She bobbles from side to side like a pissed woman on a Buckin Bronco.
If Berry had been looking, he’d have noticed a dim red light start to burn in the re-inserted radio. But he’s distracted by;
. . . a surfer’s wank fantasy, a massive wave comes curling down from the Roman Empire towards where Samuel Alfonso Smith sunbathes.
‘Ah come on girl,’ he says. ‘Y’can do it.’
Berry spins the wheel from right to left and back again.
‘Woo fuckin hoo!’
He spins to the right.
Left.
The rudder wallops about underneath as the boat rubs between the wall and the half dozen stilts keeping it from falling over into the dry dock.
‘Currsucka,’ Berry says into the handset.‘This is Skipper Ted Berry.
‘Currsucka!
‘This is Ted Berry, Skipper of the Playfair. Do you copy?
‘Currrrsucka.
‘We need air cover!
‘Currrrsucka.
‘NOW!
‘Currrrrsucka.
‘Do you copy?’
He throws the wheel violently to the right, avoiding the grey steel hull of HMS Ark Royal herself.
‘Good girl,’ he pats the boat on the dashboard. He throws the wheel to the right, leaning out of the door to the dry dock as he heaves.
He presses the button.
‘Do you copy?
‘Currrsucka.
‘We’re on the River Tyne.’
‘Currssucka.
‘The docks.
‘Currsucka.
‘Currsucka.
‘Currsucka.
‘Do you read me?
‘Currrrrr-sucka-suck-fuckin-sucka-suck-suck.
‘Ha heh heh.
‘This is Skipper Ted Berry, do you read me? The Argies! The ONION fuckin BARGIES! HELP! Ha heh heh.’
Things are getting out of hand – a squadron of bombers blackens the sky overhead like Dracula’s batforce.
‘Currrrrsucka,’ he screeches.
He jerks the wheel to the right - the boat judders.
‘Fuckinhell!’ Berry says, his finger still pressed hard against the button on the handset.
Another colossal wave appears high down river, bigger than the shipyard itself - it splits around a crane and breaks.
‘Howay! Fuckin. Howay!’
Playfair hits the water wall, her hull bites and she crawls up the sheer face.
‘Aaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiieeee. Ha heh heh. Aiiiiiieee!’
Berry yanks the wheel with his full 15-year-old force. He throws up an arm and leans back as the boat hangs upside down, hundreds of feet above the concrete dock, high over the river just like the Pirate Ship at the Town Moor fairground - she clings to the edge, rights herself and pelts down the other side.
He jerks the wheel to the right
The rear wooden stilt ramming the boat up against the dock wall falls away.
And the rudder bites into the concrete.
‘FUCK!’
The rudder bends, then snaps.
Playfair spasms.
Berry grabs the wheel as the boat throws him towards the wall.
‘Fuck! Fuck!’
A second wooden stabiliser can’t take the extra weight.
It snaps, ricochets around the dock.
The boat’s hull crunches into the concrete floor and she starts to fall away from the wall.
Smithy flies across the deck.
The boat jerks again, the rest of her hull biting into the concrete as a third stabilising stilt breaks in two.
Only three to go.
‘Fuckinhell, fuckinhell, fuckinhell!’
The world shifts on its axis.
Two more stilts simply
fall away.
Berry dives to the floor as the bow lifts to the bright sky then jerks to the brown expanse of open dry dock.
She’s going over.
Berry’s lifted off the floor and thrown out towards the concrete.
‘Ooof!’
Saved by the door frame.
The boat spasms as the only surviving stilt, the fattest and thickest, flexes like the headteacher’s cane - then exerts its will.
Playfair cracks back into the wall, her bow sticking up towards where the men dig in search for the fall of Rome.
The boat’s timbers creak.
‘Fuckinhell!’
Berry is on the floor under the instrument panel, still clutching the radio handset, his hand pressed to the red button.
‘Fuck,’ he says, letting go.
‘Me!’
He pulls himself vertical.
Currsucka.
A sound, for real, comes from the radio
Currsucka.
Then a faint, female voice. Sad. Stressed. Frightened.
Hopeful.
‘Playfair? Leest u? Waar bent u?’
Berry turns to his shoulder, shaking away the dim sound.
Wedge’s head pops up from the hatch.
‘What the fuck?’
‘Ehm?’
‘Is dat onze het missen boot? Playfair?’
Berry grabs the handset and looks up to where it connects, red LCD screen now brightly lit at 808 - the last broadcast frequency before someone had smashed it from its housing.
‘Err hullo?’ Berry says, like a child answering a phone. ‘Hullo?’
‘What the fuck y’doin?’ Wedge says, pulling himself out from the floor.
‘Having fun, Mr Berry,’ says the woman, loud and clear. She sounds upset, tearful. Yet harsh.
‘Where is my boy, Mr Berry? Where is Fredrik?’
Wedge boots the radio silent.
Less than a minute’s drive away, and Billy ‘Hash’ Brown sits with Foggy by the river’s edge.
A wooden cable spool that once fed fat wire into ships floats slowly downstream.
Foggy sticks two Rizla papers end to end and one across the middle. He puts his lighter under the black snot they’d just bought.
‘Doesn’t look like an eighth to me, like,’ Foggy mutters. ‘Not even a tenner fuckin deal. Ah, here we fuckin go.’
He crumbles in the resin, then mixes in some of his Golden Virginia tobacco.
‘Man, this stuff smells wrong. Plastic.’
The spliff is at Foggy’s lips.
He lights it.
‘Fuck me,’ he says, through caustic black smoke. ‘Here.’
He passes it quickly – a very bad sign. Foggy’s lungs are normally like two Jack Russells with a cat, once locked on a spliff they can’t let go.
He coughs.
Another first.
‘Fuckin mingin.’
It crackles in Hash’s hand, three Rizla skins filled with something chemical, Middlesbrough’s finest.
Hash pulls on it, deep into his lungs; there is a remnant of cannabis resin in there somewhere, but it tastes like a plastic bin liner, on fire in his throat.
He splutters out the chemical discharge.
He yacks and coughs.
‘Ayaz, ayaz, ayaz man!’
The car smells like Bonfire Night.
‘Fuckin told ya. Didn’t ah?’
‘Stop fuckin whingein man will ya,’ Hash barks. ‘Jesus fuckin!’
Silence, between the two car seats.
‘Christ,’ Foggy mutters.
There’s the gentle sploosh of the heavy moving body of water.
‘Aaaagh!’
Life has taken just too many shits in Hash’s soup.
Time, now, to wrestle back control.
And the thoughts return, crawling up the back of his neck.
Talbot grabbing at the second sailor with the pole and throwing him overboard. ‘Billy! Help man! For fuck’s sake! Put some fuckin weight on the pole. Hold him under!’
‘Cunt! Leave me alone!’
‘Eh?’ Foggy says. ‘Fuck you! It was your fuckin idea to come here, I told ya they’d fuckin ripped . . . ‘
‘Fuck this,’ Hash spits.
He turns the key and throws the chemical experiment out the open window.
‘We’re gettin stoned. I know where there’s shitloads. Fuck you! Y’murderin bastard! FUCK YOU!’
He screeches away.
‘Fuck you! CUNT!’
Down in the dry dock, and the dirty concrete walls are closing in on three teenaged boys like fat trees in an enchanted forest. The sun has fallen from the sky, but it’s still not yet dark.
‘Man,’ Wedge says. ‘Y’really gone and fucked it now like.’
The boat is riding an invisible wave leaning to the side, her bow tipped up to the sky. Long thin cracks run back to the stern. One ship-saving stilt pushes her entire weight to the wall, it throbs out into the dock like a headteacher’s cane.
Under a shitload of pressure.
Play Fair complains in wooden creaks and ticks.
Smithy’s not happy either.
‘You two are fuckin mental,’ he says. ‘MENTAL! You’ll kill somebody oneday.’
Berry shivers.
‘Fuck it, howay,’ he says, wrapping his spanked arms around his belly. ‘Let’s go. It’s freezin now anyway.’
‘Mental cases,’ Smithy continues as they turn and walk across the dock floor. ‘I’m not knockin round with you two nay more.’
‘Promise?’ Wedge says.
Smithy is first to the yellow slash of stairs that lead up from the dock to the quayside.
‘Fuck off.’
Berry sucks at the flesh of his palm where the spelk had stabbed him what seems like days ago. They rise up the stairs from the dock.
‘Howay man Smithy,’ he says, softly. ‘I didn’t do it on purpose. I was only, y’know, playin.’
‘Aye, whatever. I’m meetin a lass man.’
‘Aye, right. Right.’
Halfway up, Smithy stops.
‘Shit?’ he says. ‘Where’s me bag?’
They all turn and look through the failing light to the broken boat.
‘Fuckin,’ he says. ‘Shit.’
He nudges passed them, heads back down the steps and out across the concrete to the big broken cable spool where his red bag sits.
They watch him go.
‘Sport fuckin Billy,’ Wedge says. ‘He’s always got that fuckin bag with him.’
The boat’s creaking and ticking is louder now, echoing across the empty concrete hole in the ground like an old lift.
Faster.
And faster.
Faster.
‘Fuck?’ Berry says. ‘Is it?’
And faster.
‘It’s gonna fuckin snap!’ Wedge agrees.
The final supporting stilt spoon bends further then.
‘FUCK!’
It snaps and ricochets around the dry dock like a fired arrow.
‘Smithy!’
He turns.
As the front of the boat crunches into the dock floor.
He dives for the cable spool.
‘Smithy!’
They run down the steps and out across the dock floor to where Smithy’s motionless legs stick out from the other side of the busted spool.
‘Fuck, Smithy!’
Berry rolls him over.
‘Smithy?’
He looks back at him, clutching his red Adidas bag to his chest.
‘I wanna go home.’
Half a dozen fat spelks have pierced the bag’s thick vinyl coating like little nails. But they all missed Smithy.
‘Fuck me! Smithy? Y’alright?’
He lifts him to his feet.
‘Hey,’ Wedge says.
‘Fuck’s sakes,’ Berry says, the tone is familiar. ‘What now?’
‘That door thing’s open. Looker, on the bottom.’
Berry ignore
s him.
‘Howay Smithy, let’s fuck off.’
They walk five steps then turn.
The boat has crunched fully into the concrete but remains upright, listing against the dock wall. But Wedge seems to be trying to pull it over onto his head, he’s pulling at a gap in the horizontal door Berry had spotted screwed to the ship’s keel.
‘Fuck’s sakes,’ Berry says.
The door resists, still locked at one side.
‘Fuckin thing,’ Wedge grunts, fingers seeking a better grip.
Wedge pulls harder, one foot pressed up against the planks.
‘It’ll fall on y’fuckin fat head, y’silly cunt!’
‘There’s a catch, looker, inside,’ he says, reaching through a gap between split planks.
‘What?’
‘Help man. Push the fuckin catch thing while I pull.’
‘Fuck’s sakes, man,’ Berry walks over. ‘What?’
‘There, looker. Inside. There’s a catch.’
And there is.
Berry does as he’s told and pulls on the metal latch.
Wedge yanks.
And the door opens easily.
‘Fuckinhell!’
There’s an avalanche.
Berry gets clattered by brick sized brown blocks falling against him like a toppled wall. A slot machine paying out, but instead of coins the jackpot is blocks of cannabis wrapped in cellophane.
They fall and scatter across the concrete floor.
‘What the fuck?’
Still they come, a cannabis coal spill.
Berry catches one.
Wedge is ahead of the game.
His block is already open.
‘Smell that,’ Wedge says, pushing it under Berry’s nose like a sticky finger.
‘Fuckinhell?’ he sniffs.
‘Is it?’
‘I think so?’
Berry licks the damp, pot pourri smell from his palette. It sticks sweetly to the flesh between the back of his nose and his throat.
And his fingers.
Smithy picks up a block like a child holding a broken bird.
‘Man, oh man,’ Berry whispers.
Berry pulls a thin strip from Wedge’s block. It’s soft, damp almost. It comes off like plasticine - it’s black on the outside, khaki inside.
‘That’ll be the fuckin greenhouse smell.’
‘It’s like rabbit shit,’ Berry says.
Berry moves his feet through the blocks.
‘What the fuck wi gonna do now?’
Wedge and Berry’s glances meet then turn to Smithy’s bag.