by Louise Beech
I touched the book. I’d read more the previous evening. Childhood memories had returned. I’d let them wash over me, fill my pores, hydrate me.
Eventually she said, ‘You could just tell me about him now.’
‘It’s way too long to explain in minutes,’ I said.
‘If we start right now we might be done by tomorrow night.’
I was throwing her a lifeline and then pulling it away. But I had to make it more appealing. Hide my pain and pretend I didn’t mind if she wanted to grab hold of it or not.
So I said, ‘Rose, I’m going back to sleep, and so are you. And when we get up in the morning, I’m going to tell you the greatest story you can imagine. About the man in the brown suit. It could take weeks, even months. But only if you let me do your finger pricks and injections. Let me do them and I’ll give you a story way better than War Horse or Harry Potter.’ I paused. ‘Because it’s true.’ She didn’t say a word so I continued. ‘We can get up a bit earlier and you can do your blood in the book nook. It’s entirely up to you. You have a big think about it. Go on – go back to bed now.’
Breath held, I waited. Then I heard the soft swish as she opened my door again and the sound of her bare feet going across the landing and then the closing of her bedroom door. I had no idea if she’d departed with plans to meet me in the book nook or if she still intended to lie down in her bed forever.
I could not get her words out of my head – Will you say bye to Dad for me? I’d never tell Jake she’d said that. Never. It would kill him deader than any landmine or gun could.
I tried desperately to sleep. I wanted to escape Rose’s death wish, wanted to drift on the sea again. How could an abandoned lifeboat hold more appeal than my own home?
I did dream of the boat and this time I wasn’t alone. Other shadows crowded into its limited space. The lack of moonlight equalised them; they shuffled for the best spot in a craft designed for half their number and they sang softly until sleep washed whispers away, a mixture of accents and tones and depth.
One sang the loudest.
Grandad Colin.
He sang a song I felt I’d heard before. Then the other shadows added their notes. They told stories. Mouths I knew must be cracked and bleeding didn’t talk of that place beyond the makeshift lifeboat; they didn’t say ‘home’. Home was too painful. They told made-up stories to escape. Lies bounce best on ocean waves; pretence gives more comfort than truth. And in the dark we’re all the same; no one is more hungry or happy or needy or worthy or injured than the next person.
Then I was alone. Just the sea and me. I knew as I bobbed about on the boat that I’d wake soon, and I desperately clung to its edge. I wanted to hold onto Grandad Colin. Wanted to shout him to come back.
I woke the next morning and remembered my grandmother taking me for fish at this fancy restaurant and telling me Grandad Colin hadn’t talked much about what had happened to him. That he’d taken his thoughts to the grave, leaving only physical mementoes, medals and photos, official letters and locks of hair. Had she even known there was a diary? Had the leathery book been overlooked by everyone until now? Had it been waiting for us?
Today I had to tell a story.
I wasn’t sure I could.
When the clock digits changed to 7:00 – the perfect blood sugar reading – I got up and went on to the landing. The distance to Rose’s door seemed longer, like the horizon moving away the closer you get.
Would she want to start our trade? Could the story I’d promised shrink her bruises? Could it ease the constant cycle of changing injection sites to cause least damage, cushion the cut of finger end?
I opened her bedroom door, inhaled sleep and glue and wax crayon. The bed was empty but neatly made, each pillow symmetrical with the duvet. What did it mean? She was never tidy.
Where was she?
Downstairs I went, afraid of what I’d find, dreading an empty house and open back door. I sneaked into the kitchen, the hallway, the dining room. There in the book nook, cross-legged on a cinnamon cushion with the diabetes box on her knee and a scowl on her face, sat Rose.
‘If this story is rubbish,’ she said. ‘I’m going back to bed.’
I nodded – the joy and relief at her being there suffocated all words.
‘It’d better be more good than…’ Rose stopped to think. ‘Than Charlotte’s Web and all the Harry Potter books. Something I can look forward to. Not boring and with really proper chapters.’
I hid my panic with a calm nod.
‘So who’s the man that whispers to me all the time?’
The weight of responsibility stopped me midway across the dining room. What if I couldn’t tell the story? What if I didn’t do it justice? Paint it well? Find the right words or put them together in a way that Rose loved? I’d written stories on notepads until I was perhaps fifteen, and still often woke with ideas in my head and lovely lines on my tongue, but I was no writer.
And I’d have to speak this story, put together the collectanea of things I’d read in newspaper cuttings and Colin’s diary recollections and my own imaginings. And all on the spot.
‘Well,’ said Rose. ‘Who is he?’
‘Let me get your cereal and some milk first,’ I said. ‘Then we won’t have to stop. We’ll do your blood reading in the book nook and you can eat your breakfast here too and have an injection without interrupting the story.’
‘What about school?’ demanded Rose, still scowly.
‘What do you mean?’
‘When you do my injection at dinnertime – what then?’
‘Oh.’ I thought about it. ‘Maybe I could read a few lines from the diary then?’
‘What diary?’
‘The brown book by my bed. The book you found in the shed,’ I said. ‘It’s his – the man in the brown suit.’
Rose stared up and to her right. I’d once read somewhere that when we remember we look to the right as we try and recall. If we’re asked to imagine something, to invent or create, we look left. Left to lie, right to recall.
‘He got a diary to match his jacket,’ she said, more to herself than to me.
‘I suppose he did,’ I said.
I went quickly to the kitchen and got the packet of Bran Flakes and a bowl and spoon and some milk before Rose changed her mind and crept back off to bed. I sat on the cushion opposite her with everything we needed, and put the strip in the blood machine with nervous fingers.
Hands behind her back, Rose said, ‘So who is he?’
She wanted this story – I could tell – but the price for hearing it was high. I held my hand out to take hers and she looked at it but not at me.
‘I promise I’ll tell you if you let me do your blood,’ I said.
It seemed an age until she held her arm out straight in front, like children did in the days when schoolteachers rapped their fingers with a ruler for bad behaviour. I was going to hurt her too. I had no choice. But I could take us somewhere else; we could escape to the ocean.
‘He’s your great grandfather,’ I said, selecting a finger that didn’t look too sore. ‘My grandad, my dad’s dad. And his name was Colin.’
I decided to try and start gently. Wasn’t that how great stories began? I pricked Rose’s finger end and she scratched me.
Quickly I tried to find words that would soothe. I said, ‘Colin’s story started about a thousand miles off the coast of Africa, near a place called Ascension Island, on 19th March 1943. This small volcanic island was a safe haven for mariners and named so because it was discovered on Ascension Day. That was when the resurrected Jesus was taken up to heaven and everyone…’
‘No bible stuff,’ snapped Rose. ‘We do enough at school! Tell me the adventurey stuff or I’m going upstairs.’
‘It kind of fits in with the story,’ I said.
Her blood read nine-point-four and I was pleased. I poured milk on the cereal and handed it to her.
‘I’m supposed to try and make it as good as a proper book reme
mber,’ I said. ‘With the descriptions and interesting stuff. If I’m going to be as a good as JK Rowling I’ve got to do the build-up and all that haven’t I? That’s the part you loved when you were little and we read together. You’d bounce about and get excited at the start.’
‘Bet I didn’t.’ She noisily ate her Bran Flakes.
‘So it all began in the middle of the night when an Italian navy submarine torpedoed the ship carrying Colin – he was a merchant seaman and had been for a while. There have been arguments about whether the submarine even was Italian; one seaman said that Germans surfaced after the sinking and they machine-gunned some of the men in the water. Of course, there must have been a great deal of panic so I imagine…’
‘This isn’t a build-up,’ said Rose, spitting milk. ‘This is an info dump.’
‘A what?’
‘Info dump. At school Miss said you should scatter your information through the story like bits of bread. You know like in “Hansel and Gretel”. Otherwise readers get really bored. You’re supposed to hook your reader with action first, not lots of crappy tell-y bits.’
‘Oh.’ I wasn’t sure how to go on. ‘Do you want to know about Colin’s ship?’
‘Suppose.’
‘Okay, she was called the SS Lulworth Hill, a cargo ship travelling from Cape Town back to England. She was carrying rum and sugar from the West Indies, and probably explosive material too, which might be why they sailed separately from a convoy. She was attacked in the middle of the night and sank in just one and a half minutes while most of the crew were asleep. She split right in two when she sank. Each part landed in the seabed miles from the other.’
‘You sound like one of those newsreaders,’ said Rose.
I knew I was saying all the things I’d memorised from the newspaper articles, afraid to let go and wander off the factual path in case I lost my way. How did actors in the theatre find the character? I’d watched rehearsals at work; I should be able to do this.
I took the insulin pen from the box and measured the correct dose. Rose got up and my heart sank. But she put her empty bowl on the table and came back; her face was still unreadable, a blank page waiting for paragraphs.
‘What did Colin do when the ship sank?’ she asked.
What had he done? How must he have felt? What must it have been like?
I closed my eyes. Let it in, I thought. Let him in. You know this story. Rose tugged my arm roughly. She pulled up her nightie, revealed a small area of skinny thigh so I could inject her. Now she closed her eyes.
‘I’ll tell you,’ I said.
As I began to tell her the story of Colin, we no longer sat in the book nook. The early sun no longer landed gently like an appeasing mother’s hand on our heads; orange cushions no longer supported our bodies; Rose no longer argued and scowled and frowned.
And I no longer struggled to find the right words, to find the character. When I spoke I was Colin and the verses came easily, like the lyrics to a song I’d never forgotten. I spoke for him, and I could smell salt and oil and fire, and the ship rocked and tipped and rolled, and we were there.
7
ABANDON SHIP
Proceed independently for homeport at all speed.
K.C.
Once upon a time there was a ship called the SS Lulworth Hill. She was a very smart ship and she was on her way back to England, across the South Atlantic Sea. World War II had started four years earlier, on Colin’s seventeenth birthday, and many men had been lost fighting all over the world. Now though, as the Lulworth Hill made her way steadily across the sea, the allies were beginning to defeat the Germans.
One sunny afternoon in March all the men were hard at work, painting and cleaning the decks. This is the tradition on a ship that’s on its way home. Colin polished the rails until they looked like silver, and he whistled happily. The men had always called him the Merry Whistler. ‘Give us a tune,’ they would say on quiet days. And if he was in a jolly mood Colin would reward them with a bright melody. But if they caught him on a grumpy day, they would regret asking, and the air would be filled with an angry tune.
Today’s song was Whistle While You Work.
Whistle, whistle, whistle.
When the crew finished cleaning the ship that afternoon they were worn out. They sat on the deck with cigarettes and mugs of tea. Colin mended his shirt, and enjoyed the cool of the evening and the crew’s chatter. Being only nine degrees from the equator meant it was very hot all day, so they counted the minutes until the sun sank. Spirits were high tonight because they were heading back to Hull and travelling at twelve knots meant it would only take a week.
Proceed independently for homeport at all speed, the Captain had ordered.
In the glow of the setting sun, the men began to talk about loved ones waiting at home. They poked fun at a young lad who said there would be a letters from film star Lana Turner awaiting him.
Then they all sang a song about the white cliffs of Dover.
Colin’s parents were anxious for his return. He felt he travelled too much to find a girl. He had been all over the world, seen New York and much of Africa. He knew really that blaming travel was an excuse since so many of the other men had managed to find love.
Colin liked single life. He was happy as he was. The Merry Whistler.
He looked towards the horizon and wondered what his parents were doing. His mum had probably made tea hours ago and washed the pots by now. What day was it? Friday. Maybe they’d had fish. Or maybe strict war rationing meant just bread and jam. Food stamps were needed in England to buy meats, canned milk, cheese, butter and all tinned foods.
Colin could picture his dad smoking a pipe and reading the paper. Maybe he was seeing things too prettily. Life would be different there now. The war had changed even small things.
At seven-thirty a ship gunner cried, ‘Torpedo on the starboard beam!’ The shout broke into Colin’s happy thoughts.
A torpedo is a bomb that swims under water. All seamen are terrified of them. Never had the men finished a tea break so fast. Cups and biscuits scattered all over the deck. Men cursed and screamed and crashed into one another. Colin remained calm. He watched the torpedo speed past and gulped relief.
But they were not safe yet.
An enemy submarine surfaced two hundred yards away. The Lulworth Hill gunners took their positions and fired three shots, but missed. The sub disappeared in a fizz of bubble and foam. The Captain ordered more speed. Colin dressed more warmly and waited for orders by his lifeboat station.
He looked in the boat and tried to imagine living on it for a few days. What would it be like?
At ten o’clock the submarine surfaced four miles away. It was much faster than the ship so there was nothing they could do but wait to see what happened. The Captain told them to get some rest. Sleep in your life jackets, he ordered. Six men went on lookout, and the rest retired to their cabins.
In his room Colin wrote a letter to his mother. Writing always comforted him. He liked seeing the neat sentences after a hard day. And most days at sea were hard.
Colin was responsible for maintaining and repairing equipment. He kept deck areas right, and also did his fair share of lookout duty. He managed the cargo gear and the machinery, and he took care of lifesaving equipment. He loved being at sea. He took pride in everything he did.
In his letter Colin told his mother about the torpedo and how the men had irritated him with their silly behaviour. He knew he’d be home before she received the note, but still he wrote and wrote and wrote.
The last word was his name.
Then – surprisingly – he slept. Until he was thrown from his bunk when an explosion rocked the ship. He staggered to his feet. Then a second blast threw him against the wall. There was no time to waste. He had to get out, now.
On deck it was chaos.
‘We’re going to die!’ someone screamed.
‘Need to get out! Need to get out!’ yelled another.
There was g
rey smoke from the explosion and the sound of screeching metal as the ship strained.
‘God, help me!’ came another cry.
Men Colin had treated like family, who had enjoyed cups of tea last night, had changed in an instant. Through boiling steam, they yelled and attacked one another. Some had put on their best suits while others were dressed in warm layers with a life jacket on top. Some curled up on the deck floor and didn’t move.
Colin’s cabin mate was a Birmingham boy who often drank rather too much rum. He now ran about in just a vest and underpants. Then he climbed over the railings and leapt into the sea. Colin didn’t know if he’d never see him again.
But he knew he must abandon ship.
Get out, get out, get out, he thought.
Seeing angry torrents of water just thirty feet below, he knew a second’s delay could be fatal. He ran desperately to his lifeboat station, but the boat-deck there was under water.
Through smoky mists came shrill cries for help. Shouts of ‘Jump, for God’s sake jump!’ guided Colin along the railing. He didn’t call out. He just looked for escape.
Get out, get out, get out, he thought.
Colin reached the front of the ship, the bow. Opposite, the stern had disappeared into the sea. He heard another boom of fire and knew the ship would not last much longer. Smoke and oil smells filled the air. Waves rolled and roared. Men ran about the now sloping deck.
So little time had passed since the first torpedo that the propellers were still spinning, half in and half out of the water.
‘Don’t stand there gawping – jump!’
Colin didn’t know where the voice came from. Someone was crying nearby, but he couldn’t see them. Probably one of the very young lads. Some were only seventeen and away from home for the first time.
Get out, get out, get out, he thought.
So Colin stopped gawping and he jumped.
He wrapped his arms around his chest, shut his eyes tightly and straightened his legs so he’d hit the water easily. As he plummeted through darkness he realised he might not survive. No one would go on after him. He’d be forgotten. One of many men lost at sea. He always gave solid advice and a shove in the arm when his friends felt down. Now he wished someone might do that to him.