‘There were no bananas, Robert.’
‘But they were just there. Six bananas, I counted them, and they were mine. Mine.’
My voice woke Hodgkin and Beckett up.
‘What’s up with him?’ asked Beckett.
‘He’s hallucinating.’
Hallucinating. As soon as he’d said the word, I knew it to be true. I put my face into my hands and sobbed.
‘I just want her to come back,’ I said.
‘I know, Robert. I know.’
‘Where did she go? Where did she go, Owen? Why did she leave me? I thought… I thought she loved me. She said she loved me. We should have been married. She was my future. I thought I was hers. Why did she leave me? I just want to see her again – just one more time before… before…’
Chapter 13
The Boat: Day Nine
‘Today’s the day,’ said Hodgkin. ‘My daughter’s been born.’
‘Received a telegram, have you?’ snarled Beckett.
‘No, I feel it. I can feel it in my bones. I have a child – a girl.’ Hodgkin rose shakily to his feet. ‘Alice. She’s called Alice.’
‘Congratulations, Captain.’
‘Thank you, boys. What day is it?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Owen. ‘June tenth, eleventh?’
‘I thought it was the twelfth,’ I said.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Hodgkin. ‘All I know is that she’s been born. I am a father.’
‘Immaculate conception, was it?’ said Beckett.
‘Shut up, Beckett,’ said Owen.
Hodgkin sat back down muttering, ‘I am a father, I am a father.’
‘Just imagine,’ I said, ‘imagine holding her in your arms, your Alice.’
‘Yes, what I’d give to do that now. Sorry you don’t like the name, Searight.’
‘It’s OK, sir. It’s a lovely name.’
‘I want to go home. I want to see my daughter. Oh, for Christ’s sake, when are we going to get out of this? I need to get home, I need to see her, my daughter, my new daughter…’
‘It’s OK, sir, we’ll get you home soon,’ I said.
‘And exactly how you’re going to do that, then, eh, laddie?’ scoffed Beckett.
Hodgkin shook his head. ‘I wish I could believe you, Searight. Beckett’s right, damn him.’
‘Damning me, are you, Captain? I’ll see you dead first.’
‘Hey, Beckett,’ said Owen. ‘Leave him be. You can see the state he’s in.’
‘Yeah, leading by example – as always.’
Hodgkin had gone in on himself. ‘I want to see my daughter,’ he said quietly.
*
Another hour or more passed. Owen and I leant against each other, back to back. Swivelling round, he said quietly, ‘Hodgkin’s in a bad way, mate.’
‘I know.’
‘I’m not… I’m not too good myself.’ His breathing, I noticed, had become laboured. ‘I can’t carry on, Robert. I can’t do this any more. Hodgkin’s right – we’re not getting out of this.’
‘Hang on, Owen. We’ve seen a ship and a plane. Something else will turn up; it’s bound to.’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t care. I’m all done in.
*
I look at the water, all that water, unending, stretching as far as the eye can see. It’s perfectly still and blue, reflecting the sun. As much as I hate it and resent it, it looks quite dazzling in its beauty. I feel increasingly drawn to it. How simple it would be to surrender myself to it; to slip under the waves and feel its coolness embrace me. I want to be as one with the sea in all its infiniteness. I am dying, I know I am, and it’s an ugly, sordid death – burnt, skeletal, puss-ridden, fetid and painful. I want an easy death and the sea beseeches me, promising just that – an escape from all this indignity. My skin feels as if it’s on constant fire, ulcerated sores punctuate my body made worse each day by the sun. My beard is foul to the touch – brittle and filthy; and my fingernails have shrunk and turned black. My arms and legs feel constantly numb, our clothes disintegrating. Indeed, Beckett had jettisoned his clothes in a fit of fury, throwing them into the ocean. How much easier to succumb to the ocean, to allow it to strip away the pain, to take me whole. Oh, to end this misery, this non-life. The thought of descending slowly into those calm, soothing waters and lying forever asleep on the seabed tempts me. How much nicer a watery grave than this living grave on this wretched creaking boat, baked by the sun, watching my body disintegrate before me.
Alice. I think of you. I want my last thoughts to be of you, the great, unfulfilled love of my life. I want to die with your name on my lips, your image embedded on my mind. If only you knew. If only you knew how much I miss you. I can hear your voice with its lilting West Country burr, I can see your eyes, those emerald eyes; I can smell you, that smell of freshness as if the moorland air has blown through you. Alice, if only you knew…
*
I had my eyes half-open when I saw the naked Beckett rise to his feet at the far end of the boat. By the position of the sun, I guessed it to be mid-afternoon. Owen and Hodgkin were asleep, Owen next to me, as was our habit, and Hodgkin in the middle, his back to Beckett. Like a drunkard, Beckett staggered about a bit, causing the boat to sway. I spied the reflection of the sun on a piece of metal in his hand. Something felt wrong. He stepped over the benches coming towards us, grunting. I tried to stir but, too weak, felt unable to move.
Now, standing behind him, Beckett’s shadow fell across the sleeping Hodgkin. With deft movements, he yanked up Hodgkin’s head by the hair. Hodgkin’s eyes sprung open. He screamed as Beckett drew the tin lid across his throat. Owen and I sprang to our feet, too shocked, too frightened, to intervene. Hodgkin fell forward, choking, his hands at his neck. Beckett grunted, threatening us with his weapon which, I noticed, he had filed down to resemble a knife. Hodgkin, lying at the bottom of the boat, started convulsing violently, emitting pitiful gurgling noises. His bloodied hand fell against a bench. Beckett attacked again. Pulling Hodgkin up, he straddled him from behind and again, with the sound of sharpened tin against flesh and sinew, cut at his throat. Blood gushed in torrents. Satisfied, Beckett stepped back. Hodgkin, still gurgling, slumped forwards. To our shame, Owen and I, clutching each other like petrified school kids, left Beckett to it. We watched in horror as Beckett twisted Hodgkin over onto his back. Now silent, almost dead, Hodgkin’s throat was a mess of blood and gaping flesh. His body twitched as Beckett, tensing his muscles, drew his blade deeply down Hodgkin’s chest, not once but twice, close together in parallel lines. Beckett yelled like a man from the Stone Age, then plunged his hand into Hodgkin’s bloodied chest between the two slashes. Owen began sobbing as we watched Beckett pull out Hodgkin’s heart, stretching it until the strands of flesh ripped. With it dripping in blood, Beckett sunk his teeth into the still beating, glistening organ, ripping it apart like a frenzied dog. With his mouth and hands and chest coated with Hodgkin’s blood, he held up the heart to us, grunting, offering us a bite. Absurdly, we both politely said no.
Trembling, Owen and I watched Beckett but had to turn our heads as he devoured another of Hodgkin’s organs. Then, seemingly satisfied, he lugged Hodgkin overboard. Hodgkin’s corpse floated on the water when, alerted by the smell of blood, a white shark appeared. I lowered my eyes, unable to watch as the shark, with its huge mouth, pulled Hodgkin down.
Beckett screamed at the gods as if the devil had seized him, beating his chest. He paced up and down at his end of the boat, this naked beast of a man, as frightening and unpredictable as the wildest of animals. Finally, he slumped to the bottom of the boat, leaning against a bench, and closed his eyes. Sleep finally took hold.
Owen and I couldn’t take our eyes off him. For what seemed like hours we stared at this man-cum-devil, too shocked to move or speak, too numb to comprehend what we had just witnessed. It was me who spoke first. ‘You know,’ I said in a whisper, ‘we’re going to have to kill him. He’s done it once, he’ll do it
again. It’s him or us.’
‘I know.’
‘We have to do it now, while he’s asleep.’
‘How?’
‘I don’t know.’ I looked round the boat, hoping to find something we could use. ‘I don’t know.’
‘We could take his knife off him.’
‘Too risky; he might wake up.’
‘He must’ve spent ages sharpening that thing. He must have used another tin lid to get it to such a fine point.’
‘There’s got to be something else. I know, we’ll simply throw him overboard.’
‘There’s no way I could lift him.’
‘No, you’re right.’
Without taking his eyes off Beckett, Owen put his hand on my arm. ‘I know what we can do.’
‘What?’
‘The rowlocks.’
‘Good God, yes.’
‘Do you want to do it?’
‘No.’
‘Nor do I.’
‘Listen, Owen, there’re two of them. We’ll both do it. OK?’
‘Yes, OK.’
‘We have to do it now. If we stop to think about it, we’ll never do it.’
The boat creaked as always. Beckett, his stomach full, was still fast asleep, snoring. I knew full well that even an earthquake wouldn’t wake him now. Nonetheless, Owen and I crept across the boat, like a couple of pantomime baddies, looking ridiculous. I found one rowlock, Owen the other. I weighed it up and down in my hand. It was hefty enough; it would have to do; it was the only thing we had. I felt terrified – this was no less than murder. I had to look upon Beckett as a rabid dog that had to be put down. We had no choice.
Bench by bench, we inched across the boat, closer to the sleeping Beckett, stepping round the pools of Hodgkin’s blood. Inadvertently, I kicked an empty tin. We froze, waiting for Beckett to open his eyes. He didn’t stir. Taking deep breaths, we moved closer. Now, we were upon him. His arms lay limp, his right hand closed over his blade, his legs beneath one bench, his head thrown back over another. The stench was foul. God, he looked more beast than human, his mouth and chin coated with dried blood, human blood congealed in his beard and his chest hair, on his hands up to his wrists. The big-bosomed, winking woman on his tattoo seemed to be mocking us.
‘OK?’ I mouthed.
Despite the uncertainty in his eyes, Owen nodded.
It was now or never. I gazed heavenwards. Please, God, forgive me for what I am about to do. I raised the rowlock high above my head. I thought of Hodgkin’s baby girl, the daughter he would never see, the little girl denied her father. Do this for them. He deserves to die. Kill the bastard; kill the murderer, death to the cannibal in our midst.
Tightening my grip on the rowlock, the small but solid lump of metal, I held my breath. Then, tensing every wasted muscle in my body, I screeched as I brought down my arm. The rowlock smashed into Beckett’s forehead. Beckett screamed, cut short by another blow as Owen brought down his rowlock, smashing Beckett’s nose, causing an eruption of blood. Screaming again, Beckett covered his face with his hands as alternately Owen and I pummelled him again and again. Beckett twisted to his side, involuntarily kicking his legs frantically. My mind empty, we smashed him in the side then the back of his head, grunting as we rained our lumps of metal on him. One after the after, in perfect rhythm, we hit him and hit him and hit him until finally… finally, he lay dead, his face and head a mess of blood, matted hair and broken bone.
Feeling faint, I tried to catch my breath. The bloodied rowlock slipped out of my hand, landing on the bottom of the boat with a thud. I stepped away from Beckett’s body, over one bench and another before falling to my knees. I looked again at the heavens. White clouds moved slowly across the sky, too thin to block out the sun. Murder is a noisy business. Now that it was finished, the sound of silence seemed louder than ever, only the sound of my rapid breaths and that damn creak-creaking of the boat.
I closed my eyes, and felt the world spin ever faster around me. I felt myself fall into somewhere deep and black and blacker still. I couldn’t stop, the momentum carried me further and further down, as if falling into Hell itself.
Chapter 14
The Boat: Final Days
Another morning dawned. The sun had yet to make its appearance. The silvery sky loomed above us, the stars slowly fading away one by one as if God was creeping around turning them off one at a time. A gentle rain fell. Owen was already awake, lying on the bottom of the boat. ‘We have to eat him,’ he said.
‘No.’
‘It’s our only chance.’
I shook my head. ‘I can’t allow it.’
He glared at me. ‘You can’t allow it. Since when… We eat him or we die.’
‘I’d rather die.’
‘You can’t mean that.’
I tried to pull myself up to a more comfortable position but the effort was too much. ‘I do. I’m sorry.’
He began whimpering.
‘You eat him if you want,’ I said.
‘You make it sound so easy. I can’t if you can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘I just can’t.’
After an hour or more, we’d gathered enough rainwater in our tins to have a few sips of fresh water. We managed to stagger across the boat and with great effort, dumped Beckett’s naked body overboard. With Beckett gone, we stumbled back to the bow, away from all the blood and mess in the stern, and lay down. We’d used up the last drops of rainwater, and had not had anything to eat for days. We spoke not another word for hours to come.
Night came and with it the brightest of moons, illuminating the sky and bringing out the stars in all their glory. Such beauty and how I hated it. Owen muttered something.
‘What did you say,’ I croaked.
‘I want to be as far away from here as possible. I want to be up there – on the moon.’
We fell asleep again. Another day came and went and then another night. We never moved. On that second night, a brisk wind blew up. A few more drops of rain fell but not in enough quantity to make any difference. I drifted in and out of consciousness. Each time I opened my eyes it was with the hope I’d find myself dead. Each time I was to be disappointed. In the few moments I was capable of coherent thought, it astonished me how much punishment the human body can take.
*
The following morning, I felt my arm being gently shaken. I opened my eyes. On seeing me awake, Owen pulled his wedding ring off his thumb. He passed it to me. I shook my head. I didn’t want to take it; if I took the ring it meant he was accepting defeat. He nudged me on the arm and proffered it again. Still I refused. He opened his mouth and tried to speak. Eventually he managed to force out the word ‘Joanna’. His breath came heavily. The effort of saying his wife’s name had cost him. So, I took the ring, placed it also on my thumb, scraping the brittle skin as I eased it on. Even there I feared it would slip off. Owen blinked at me, a thank you. I shook my head at him, telling him he couldn’t give up. But he’d already closed his eyes.
Owen never opened his eyes again. He died some point that morning, quietly slipping into eternity while lying next to me.
I lay there in a state of shock. Owen’s death had been the most predictable but his departure left me feeling dazed and vulnerable. I realised then that he’d been right – we should have eaten Beckett. Owen would still be alive.
Ten men had at some point been on this boat. Now I was the only one. John Clair had been the first to die. It seemed a lifetime ago. I wouldn’t survive for much longer; I knew that. I just hoped death, if it was to come, would come for me sooner rather than later. But whereas in the previous day or so I would have welcomed death, now I wanted to live. The reason for my new desire for life was that simple band of gold on my thumb. I had to live in order to deliver it to Joanna, as Owen wanted, and to tell her his story, to tell her his last word was her name.
I knew I should heave Owen overboard, to allow him the dignity of a watery grave but I couldn’t do it, I had not the
strength even to stand up, let alone lift a dead weight. And so we continued to lay together – Owen Gardner and me, both as still as the other. My mind at least had become more active. Owen’s ring had re-galvanized my brain. I stared at the ring and willed a ship, a plane, anything, to appear. Something had to appear. For the sake of this ring I had to be saved.
*
I lay in the bottom of my boat in my silent world, silent save for the constant creaking. One day, I thought, someone would find us, and what a gruesome find it would be – two skeletons in a boat. At one point, during the night, a thunderstorm brewed up. Rain lashed down, piercing me. I opened my mouth and drank the rainwater. Streaks of lightning shot across the sky as the waves swelled. My empty stomach lurched as the boat rose and fell with the waves. If this continued to build up, I thought, then I was done for; there’d be no way I could cling on as I did the last time. But the storm proved relatively benign. The intensity of the rain refreshed me, both inside and out, and gave me a degree of renewed strength. I held up a tin and each time it filled up, I poured the water into a bottle. By the time, the rain finally eased off, I reckoned I had enough water for a number of days. All I needed now was for a flying fish to land at my feet. The storm had worked itself out by the time dawn broke and I drifted back to sleep.
*
What made me open my eyes at that precise moment, I will never know. It was still a mere dot in the distance, too far away to hear its engine, but I could see the sun reflecting off its metallic body. Although I could see it with my eyes it took a while before it registered in my brain. And when, finally it did, my heart pounded into life.
Staggering to my feet, I felt thankful to have had my fill of water. Without it, I don’t think I could have moved. Now I could hear the deep groan of its engine, it was getting closer. I found Hodgkin’s flare gun in the hold at the bow and the last remaining flare. Slotting in the flare, my hands began shaking uncontrollably. I had but the one flare and it had to count. My life depended on it. If they didn’t see it, I was finished. It was certainly heading in my direction but perhaps slightly to the side. I could see it clearly now – it was an RAF Liberator presumably patrolling the ocean looking for U-boats. Surely, it would see the flare. But I had to fire now, it seemed to be rapidly veering away. I lifted my arm, pleaded to God, and pulled the trigger. The flare whooshed into the sky with its red light burning. And that was it – my last flare, my last throw of the dice. I waited, praying that I had done enough. The seconds ticked by – it hadn’t seen me, it was flying on; it had gone past me. But then… wait, I think it was turning. Yes, it was turning, turning back towards me. The plane swooped down to less than two hundred feet, so low I could see the men in the cockpit. I waved at them, positively jumping up and down. The plane roared over me, dipping its wing. Praise be – I was saved. I was saved! The pilots circled round and this time, as it flew straight above me, they dropped a bag into the sea where it landed with a mighty splash with remarkable precision – within an arm’s length of the boat. My whole body trembled with anticipation as I reached out, stretching for all my worth, and managed to pinch the canvas bag enough to pull it towards me. I heaved it into the boat crying with gratitude. I watched the plane disappear. It was a heart-wrenching sight but I knew I was safe now. They’d report back my position and something else would be along shortly to pick me up. I waved it goodbye. All I had to do was wait – and eat my provisions. I sat in the middle of the boat – away from the bloodied end and away from Owen at the other. With trembling fingers, I untied the knot on the bag and removed the flotation collar. Like a child on Christmas morning, I pulled everything out one by one. There were five 3½ ounce tins of beef pemmican, each with its own ring pull, bars of chocolate, biscuits, boiled sweets and bottles of water. They’d also included a pack of cigarettes but no matches, a new flare gun and a number of flares, and a basic first aid kit. No Christmas had ever been as joyful as this moment as I surveyed what was in front of me. Having had no food for so long, I now felt strangely anxious at having this bounty land at my feet. I couldn’t open the tin of pemmican – I wasn’t strong enough; perhaps I would be after a bit of chocolate and a few biscuits. With difficulty, I tried instead to coordinate my fingers to unwrap the first bar of chocolate. The smell! My insides jumped a somersault at the rich intensity of it. Lifting the chocolate to my mouth, I nibbled the smallest corner, allowing it to melt on my swollen tongue. My whole body sagged with relief. And then I swallowed, feeling the chocolate cascade down my throat like liquid gold in a furnace. I had never tasted anything like it in all my life.
The Unforgiving Sea (The Searight Saga Book 2) Page 9