by Miles Gibson
‘She’ll rock you to sleep in her arms and drown you while you’re dreaming. If she doesn’t break your heart she’ll break your bones.’
‘You must miss your home, sometimes, when you’re out there on the water.’
The sailor closed his eyes and sighed.
‘We were a simple people. We ate the fruit of the forest and feasted on the fish of the sea. The spirits of the dead lived inside a great volcano and if we were wicked they filled the sky with smoke,’ he said. He invented everything. He had been born in Victoria, an English seaside town on the coast of Cameroon in West Africa. The town was surrounded by a monotony of rubber and palm plantations. The volcano was a cold, grey cone perpetually wrapped in rain. His mother had been a Crusader for Jesus. His father sold Toyota spare parts. As a child Matthew Mark Luke Saint John had dreamt of the city and, at the first opportunity, he ran away to live in Douala. He fried hamburgers all day and slept, at night, with a girl from the dance hall. He worked hard to make his fortune. But the restaurant burned down and the girl ran away with a French shoe salesman. The big city had disappointed him. He moved south through Gabon and into the Congo where he found work on the short-sea traders that sail from Pointe-Noire.
It wasn’t much of a story and he knew Mrs Reynolds expected tales of a lost jungle paradise. She saw Africa as a prehistoric forest of steaming undergrowth crawling with panthers, pygmies and spiders. There were no cities, no highways and no hamburgers in her Africa. And so he contrived to speak of the world she saw in her imagination.
Sometimes he claimed Bantu ancestors and, at other times, he boasted he could trace his family back five hundred years to the royal family of the Kongo kingdom. The pleasure in Mrs Reynolds’ eyes encouraged him to concoct a fantasy of alarming proportions. He spoke of the snakes that swallowed babies, the giant apes that kidnapped women and, although he had never seen an elephant, he described how a rogue bull had entered the village one night and killed his grandmother.
When he grew tired of this game he talked of his years at sea. Mrs Reynolds asked questions and he was happy to answer them, flattered by her curiosity. He had been to the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. He had sailed the Indian Ocean as far as the Bay of Bengal. Why he had come to Rams Horn, however, remained a mystery. He claimed to want nothing more than solitude and rest from his travels. Mrs Reynolds preferred to think of him as a fugitive from some ghastly crime, the mysterious and violent stranger that Mrs Clancy had seen in the crystal. She loved to sit and make the sailor talk.
But one afternoon, when lunch was finished, Matthew Mark Luke Saint John could not be persuaded to sit and provide her entertainment. He scratched and yawned and complained of the heat. She tried to keep him talking but at last he excused himself and went to his room. Mrs Reynolds sat alone. Polly had cycled to Drizzle. The house was silent. She tried to read but could not concentrate. Sunlight flared against the windows, the room smelt of carpets, the air was heavy with the boredom of heat. She picked up her sewing but quickly abandoned it – the fine stitching hurt her eyes. She thought she might visit poor Mrs Clancy but, once she had found her sandals, could not find the energy to confront the scorching, narrow streets. She felt restless and uncomfortable.
Finally she ran a bath, lowered the blinds and let herself float in the cool water. Were there really giant apes who kidnapped women? Her skin looked very white in the twilight. She stared at her legs, her belly and breasts. She looked so pale she fancied she would shine in the dark. She thought of Matthew Mark Luke Saint John alone in his room. She imagined him asleep in the little bed, the curtains drawn, his body black as a shadow against the sheets. What wild and tropical shore did he reach in his dreams? Did he visit tattooed women with oiled hair and skin the colour of ink? And what if he should suddenly wake, anxious to pass water, stupid with sleep, forgetting his surroundings and stumble naked to the bathroom? The door was unlocked and they were alone in the house. If she lay very quiet, would he notice her there in the bath? She thought of him standing, head bent, legs braced against the porcelain bowl. And she smiled as she rolled the soap between her hands.
She dried herself carefully, brushed the copper curls away from her ears and then, dressed in a fresh cotton wrapper, went barefoot to the kitchen to make lemonade. He would need lemonade if he’d fallen asleep in the afternoon heat. It was no trouble. She would not disturb him. She could slip into his room, leave the jug and be gone before he woke. It was nothing. And, anyway, he probably slept in his shirt.
She poured the lemonade and crept upstairs. When she reached the sailor’s bedroom she opened the door slowly, without a sound, afraid she might wake him before she had reached the bed.
Matthew Mark Luke Saint John was sitting on the floor reading a bible. He glanced up and smiled at Mrs Reynolds as she came, dancing on tiptoe, into the room.
‘I’ve brought you a cold drink‚’ she whispered. She felt rather foolish, as if she had been caught trying to steal something from him.
‘Thank you,’ he said. He was wearing a pale blue shirt and a pair of threadbare trousers. The sleeves of the shirt were rolled to his elbows.
She sat carefully down on the edge of the bed and looked around the room. Everything was clean, polished and just as she had arranged it for him. There was a cheap alarm clock on the bedside cabinet. The wardrobe had been locked. The bookshelf was empty. He had disturbed nothing.
‘Do you read the good book?’ he said, smiling and closing the bible with a slap.
Mrs Reynolds shook her head. She had never taken to the church. She found the whole business of saints and sinners rather tedious and suspected that God might have invented the idea of sin for the pleasure of being the only power in Heaven or Hell with the authority to wash it away. The local faithful, most of whom had never been near a good, red-blooded sin in their lives, seemed to find a thrill in being found guilty of unholy crimes and attending the church at Drizzle for a weekly wash and brush-up. Oh yes, it was obviously very good for the soul but no matter how patiently she tried to marinate her own soul in the acid of guilt, it never quite worked. They must have taken out her guilt along with her tonsils when she was a girl. If they had left it alone it might have grown to be a great, wobbly cyst burning away beneath her ribs. Something to make a woman proud to be a sinner. Something to flaunt at the priest. How could you be a good Christian without it?
But that wasn’t the reason she had abandoned the church. She had stopped attending services because of the singing. It might have been different if the flock was expected to dance. She enjoyed dancing. But the prospect of spending Sundays droning through a torn copy of Ancient and Modern with a hundred wheezing old ladies smelling of moth balls and eucalyptus was enough to make her surrender her ticket to Heaven. She didn’t regret it for a moment. It was rumoured they even sang in Heaven.
‘I thought you might have a different god,’ she said, dreaming of little yellow idols with ivory fangs and amethyst eyes.
Matthew Mark Luke Saint John sat on the floor and laughed. It was a huge shout of laughter that made him throw back his head and bare his teeth like a yawning tiger. Mrs Reynolds blushed.
‘There are gods and devils enough for everyone,’ he said, wiping his eyes with the palm of his hand. His mother had been a Crusader for Jesus but as a boy he had met men from the North who could cast spells, tread hot coals and swallow live scorpions.
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Reynolds. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘My mother gave me this bible.’
‘It’s beautiful.’
‘Crocodile skin.’
‘Lovely.’
‘You don’t hold the faith?’
‘No,’ said Mrs Reynolds. ‘But my husband enjoyed the odd sermon, God rest him.’
‘Your husband?’
‘A tragedy.’
‘Yes?’
‘He fell off the roof and damaged his brains.’
‘When did this happen?’ he said.
‘Oh, years ago. Polly was a b
aby. But I’ll never forget it. He hit the pavement with such a bang that I thought he was dead.’
‘He survived?’ inquired the sailor. As he spoke he picked up her foot and held it lightly in his hand. The touch was warm, dry, innocent. He smiled and gazed at the foot as if he were admiring an expensive shoe.
‘He came to the kitchen, sat down and ate a tongue sandwich.’
‘A miracle,’ he said. He ran his thumb along her toes. She trembled but she did not resist. Her foot glowed in his smooth, dark hand.
‘There wasn’t a scratch on him. He went to bed and I thought, well, he’d had a lucky escape. You read about these things sometimes.’
‘And then?’ whispered the sailor. His hand embraced the heel of her foot, his fingers coiling on the ankle.
‘He woke up in the morning and he was a vegetable.’
‘No!’ breathed the sailor. His hand held her calf, the fingers caressing the heavy, white curve.
‘Yes,’ whispered Mrs Reynolds. ‘He just sat there and stared at me. I used to sit him in Polly’s pram and push him around the house. It was horrible with his arms and legs dangling out and everything. I had to feed him with a spoon.’ She was breathless with fright, tantalized by the surreptitious journey of the sailor’s fingers.
‘What happened to him?’
‘We had to put him away.’
‘You’re not to blame yourself,’ said Matthew Mark Luke Saint John. His fingers tightened their grip, making her gasp. He pulled at her leg until the cotton wrapper fell away from her belly and thighs, his eyes feverish with desire. She blushed beneath the gluttony of his stare and tried to shield herself with her hands.
‘They don’t know what it’s like to live with a vegetable,’ she croaked.
‘It’s no company,’ he said. He jerked her legs open so that she fell back upon the bed, suffocated with excitement and terror. She struggled to rise again, squirming and kicking with her feet, but he caught her by the ankles and held her down.
Mrs Reynolds closed her grey eyes and surrendered herself to the sailor’s curiosity. She sensed him hesitate for a moment, felt the heat of his breath against her skin, and then he forced his face between her thighs and attacked her with a loose and greedy mouth, like a man sucking at a torn fruit. She cried out. She screamed. But when he pulled back his head in alarm she clawed at his scalp and forced his head down again, holding him prisoner with her knees. She lay back among the pillows, battered, bruised, and triumphant.
It was late when Polly came home. Matthew Mark Luke Saint John was soaking in a cool bath. Mrs Reynolds was sitting in the safety of her bed, sipping at a jug of warm lemonade.
Chapter Fourteen
The sea sucked at the crumbling cliffs. The moon smouldered. Poisonous cats with yellow eyes crawled from the safety of drains and Rams Horn creaked in the darkness. At midnight, Tanner Atkins sat with the butcher in the parlour of the Dolphin and shared a dozen bottles of Badger with the weary landlord.
‘Monica Monkhouse takes a tumble with Bernie the playful paratrooper,’ cackled Tanner. He was reading a copy of Skirt. His face shone with delight.
‘You’ll go blind reading this rubbish,’ snorted the landlord, snatching at the magazine and scornfully thumbing the pages.
‘Is that right?’ said Tanner.
‘It overheats the blood,’ said Oswald Murdoch. ‘Women won’t be safe in their beds tonight.’
‘I’ve never been very good with women,’ grieved Tanner.
‘You’re too old to worry about it,’ said Oswald.
‘I have dreams sometimes,’ confessed Tanner. ‘Nothing nasty. I have dreams I’m sitting with some woman and she’s wearing a white dress and white gloves and eating a box of Black Magic.’
‘What happens?’ asked Big Lily White.
‘She always chooses the soft centres,’ said Tanner, shaking his head.
‘And then what happens?’ demanded Oswald Murdoch.
‘I don’t know. It gets me so excited I wake up. I’m not very good with women. I talk to them but you can see they’re not interested. They stare clean through me. I’m not deformed or anything like that. I mean, I look all right. I’m just not very good with them.’
‘You’ve got to know how to handle them – that’s the secret,’ said Big Lily White.
‘Is that right?’ said Tanner.
‘Give me two hours with a woman – any woman – and I can teach her to faint at the sight of me,’ boasted Big Lily White. ‘Women will give you anything if you know how to handle them.’
‘It’s easy for someone like you,’ argued Oswald.
The landlord shrugged. ‘You need practice, of course, it’s like anything else.’ A moth whirled through one of the windows and fluttered blindly against the wall.
‘It’s different when you’re married,’ moaned Oswald Murdoch, wagging his head.
Big Lily White thought of the butcher in bed on a Sunday, surrounded by newspapers, toast crumbs and sunlight, with the comforting warmth of his wife beside him. ‘I hate sleeping with the same woman twice,’ he said defiantly. ‘It’s funny but once I’ve done ’em I don’t like ’em.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Tanner. ‘A man needs a wife.’
‘A wife isn’t a woman,’ said Big Lily White. He tried to imagine the violation of Oswald Murdoch’s wife, tied to a chair by her apron strings, shouting with pain and screaming with pleasure, Lily you’ve made me feel like a woman, a frying pan full of eggs on the floor.
‘I’m not complaining,’ said Oswald Murdoch. He picked up his glass, drained it and poked among the empty bottles on the table.
‘I don’t regret anything,’ said Big Lily White, dreaming of buttocks behind a clean apron, the smell of soap flakes, fruit cakes and floor wax, making love in his carpet slippers, wet afternoons in a friendly kitchen.
For some minutes they were silent, staring mournfully down at their glasses, stunned by the sadness of the world.
‘There are times when I wonder – you know – if things had been different,’ whispered Oswald Murdoch.
‘I’ve seen women do things that would poison your liver,’ muttered Big Lily White.
‘What sort of things?’ said Oswald Murdoch.
But Big Lily White was far away in a warm cottage, a woman to call his wife beside him, the smell of cut flowers in a china bowl, the cat asleep beneath the bed.
‘What sort of things?’ insisted Oswald.
‘Women!’ roared Big Lily White. ‘Fat women, nude women, wrestling in mud, kicking like shire horses. Thin women, rubber women, tied in knots with their tongues hanging out.’
‘Women,’ sobbed Oswald Murdoch, banging the table and knocking the bottles to the floor.
‘Women!’ wailed Big Lily White.
‘I don’t understand,’ bleated Tanner Atkins, his sleeves slopping in a puddle of beer. ‘I don’t understand.’
Big Lily White stood up and, leaning forward, clasped Oswald’s head in his great, gnarled hands. ‘I love you,’ he managed to mumble. He closed his eyes, smiled, slid under the table and fell asleep.
Tanner sniffed and wiped his nose. His face was white. His hair was hanging in strings. ‘Sometimes you need to talk to a man,’ he sobbed.
‘That’s right,’ said Oswald.
And they cradled each other for comfort as they staggered from the Dolphin into the empty town.
Chapter Fifteen
The sailor was late for breakfast the next morning. Mrs Reynolds scratched at a slice of toast with her knife and tried to conceal her excitement. She felt intoxicated by the sound of the toast, the smell of coffee, the touch of sunlight on the white linen tablecloth, the colour of the marmalade as it glowed in the bowl. Her skin burned and her breasts felt swollen. It seemed to Mrs Reynolds that her daughter could not fail to notice the transformation. But Polly sat sulking and appeared to sense nothing.
Mrs Reynolds was relieved. She knew she couldn’t protect the child forever and she didn’t want them
separated by secrets. But she would certainly prefer her daughter to grow into a woman without the memory of her mother’s legs thrown around the shoulders of a giant African sailor.
The thought that Polly might have discovered them together made her drop the marmalade spoon. How could she have taken the risk? It was shocking. She had been overwhelmed by the full, primitive force of the man. She had not encouraged or teased him. It had been one of those abrupt and hungry encounters that happen without warning and, under the circumstances it was best to forgive and forget. The poor man had been hot and confused. It would never happen again. She heard footsteps on the stairs and composed her face in a look of absolute innocence. When Matthew Mark Luke Saint John appeared she stared at him as if he were a stranger and, when he sat down, ignored him. It was Polly, blushing, who had to pour him coffee.
He was polite, smiling and hungry for toast and Rams Horn sausage, which he ate in slices spread with lime pickle. He did not gloat at Mrs Reynolds but stared at his plate and tried talking to Polly.
‘Are you going to school, today?’ he said, spooning sugar into the coffee.
‘Holidays,’ said Polly. Every day he asked the same question and received the same answer but it never failed to amuse him. She hated it.
‘What will you do with yourself?’ he chuckled.
Polly shrugged, glanced towards the door and Mrs Reynolds knew she was already thinking of escape.
‘When I came down the road into the town I met a man who lives on a boat in a cabbage patch,’ said Matthew Mark Luke Saint John.
‘That’s Mr Bloater.’
‘Bloater,’ said the sailor thoughtfully. He glanced at Polly, opened his mouth and sucked down a slice of sausage.
‘He smells of cabbages,’ she whispered and wrinkled her nose in disgust.
Matthew Mark Luke Saint John grinned. He hooked a shred of meat from his teeth with a fingernail. ‘I want you to go out there and give him something,’ he said.