by David Carter
The oldest man was the first to go, and he went surprisingly quickly. On the ninth morning he lay down and died in the bottom of the boat, on the damp and odorous timber, like an old dog that knew his day had come. We were mortified.
Two weeks later, living off the last of the biscuits stored in the small cupboards beneath the bench at the stern, plus the occasional fish we managed to catch, the old guy’s pal, I think a Scot, went crackers. In the morning he was as good, or as bad, as we were. By the evening he was a different person, talking nonsense, jabbering continuously through swollen lips about riding the hounds of hell, while pulling horrific faces. Harry and I thought he was fooling around as he spouted crazy talk. At any moment we expected him to say: See! Had you going there! But he never did. An hour later he ambled past us towards the rudder and executed a perfect swan dive off the stern, disappearing into the ink-like water.
‘Shall we go after him?’ wheezed Harry.
We took one look at each other and knew that would be suicidal. The guy had made his death choice and there was nothing we could do about that.
I know it’s a harsh thing to say, and a terrible thought, but at that moment I was glad there was just the two of us, and not because the meagre rations would stretch further, but because I believed if anyone could survive such an ordeal, it was Harry and I. We were similar kids. Not much more than street urchins, brought up in the depression. Iron rations were nothing new to us. In our youth we’d known nothing but iron rations. We were inherently tough, determined, possessing a will to live the kids of today would not recognise.
There were no obese people in the nineteen thirties, not amongst the working classes, and we felt we’d flipped back to those difficult days. You can teach your stomach not to expect much. Once you get over the initial shock, to some extent you get used to it, especially if you have known the feeling of an empty belly before.
We redoubled our fishing efforts and eagerly grabbed the flying fish that jumped into our little boat. We set out every available container to catch the rain whenever a squall looked likely, and it was just about enough to keep us alive. The whaler floated well as it rode up and down those breakers, and I reckoned we could have survived almost indefinitely.
On the dark side we remained on the open ocean with no shelter from the baking sun, and we hadn’t so much as glimpsed a smokestack anywhere. Loneliness was the killer. That, and despair. One balmy evening the sea flattened, and we settled down and fell into a deep sleep, hoping to be revitalised to face the difficult days ahead.
The sun woke me early.
It was shining directly into my face, peering over the rail of that old timber boat. I sat up, scratched my straggly beard, and rubbed my sore eyes. I coughed and tried to remember if there was anything to drink. I stared down the length of the boat. It was empty. Harry had gone, and I was alone.
I have thought about what might have happened to Harry a million times since that morning, and I still haven’t found an adequate answer. The worst thing is, I will never know what occurred, and I’ll never be at peace.
Did he jump from the boat in a moment of temporary insanity? Did he slip accidentally, perhaps as he relieved himself? Did he willingly dive to his doom; having taken more than any man could bear? Or could he have sleepwalked into the oblivion of the vastness of the ocean?
In any event, when he hit the sea, did he call out for me?
Did he shriek my name, as I slumbered selfishly on?
It is my ongoing nightmare that brings me sleepless nights, the thought of my dear friend yelling for help, begging me to wake, screaming, while I dreamt of happier days in happier times.
If only I knew, perhaps in my twilight days I could find peace. But one thing I can promise you, in my struggle to survive, I did not eat one of my colleagues.
The flying fish saved me. After days of blistering sun and little rain and with the rations long gone, all I had to sustain me were the tepid salty bodies of those unfortunate creatures that threw themselves at me. Raw fish is good for you, they say. It was as if someone was looking after me, providing the barest nourishment, and then one dark night the wind blew, and a fearful Caribbean storm careered out of the east and engulfed me.
It whipped the water about the boat to an inferno like lava from a volcano. One mighty surge of power flipped the whaler over like a helpless turtle, and I was floundering towards my death.
I plunged into the warm sea and began sinking. I had little strength and knew I was dying. I kicked as frantically as I dared, though I worried my frenzied legwork might attract sharks. I’d rather drown than be consumed, and in my final moments I did what human beings have done since time began. I muttered prayers, that Our Father thing, though I struggled to remember the words. I had never been religious, but in such circumstances the brain grasps at any straw or wisp of comfort, no matter how outlandish or preposterous.
If you doubt me, wait till your turn comes, and you will see.
I was drowning, crying aloud, and I was thinking of my mother, and of my big brother, Rocky Ridge, and of how disappointed and annoyed he would be, that I had failed to survive the conflict.
He had great plans, even back then. I knew he harboured dreams of building a gigantic business, and I knew he would succeed. I so wanted to be an important cog in his unstoppable machine. He had a spirit about him, within him, a destiny, an aura, something that everyone who knew him followed unquestionably, and yet for me, it would all be lost.
I pushed my head above the water one last time. It was as if I was inside a kettle coming to the boil, warm churning water; bubbles everywhere. I remember wondering how long it would be before the sharks discovered my bloated body, and as I was thinking that, I lifted my head and saw the light.
Several lights there, twinkling away to the west. A ship, I imagined, a cruise ship, so long in length it must have been an ocean liner, all lights blazing, and in wartime too. It had to be a neutral, perhaps a Brazilian, and I imagined it was steaming to save me. Or was it a mirage? A stressed mind is a sick mind, and sick minds play cruel tricks.
It was not a ship.
But it was not a mirage, and it was not steaming anywhere, for it was land I saw, and the line of twinkles stretched southward as far as I could see. I flipped on my back and half floating, half swimming; I kicked myself backwards, westwards, desperately, toward the lights. I passed out, perhaps I died; I know not, it wouldn’t have been surprising if I had, and all was black. I had gone. I was spent. Forgive me, Rocky Ridge. I gave my best.
THE NEXT THING I REMEMBER I was lying on my back on a sandy beach beneath warm sunshine. Someone was gently slapping my wild and hairy face, speaking a language I did not understand.
I had landed in a remote part of Mexico, and the person slapping my face was a young woman. I opened my eyes and gazed up. She possessed black eyes and hair, and smiled down at me the smile of an angel. I fell into unconsciousness, and the next thing I remember I woke up in a small timber house.
It was their home, little more than a beach hut, set just above the shoreline. From there, I could hear the breakers pounding the beach, as the girl offered fruit juice towards my swollen lips.
I had met Conchita Gomez, and her mother.
I was the crazy bearded man who came from the sea, living in the Gomez household, and I would remain there for three years.
Maybe you can guess what happened next.
I fell in love with Conchita Gomez, with her perfect coffee coloured skin, her long dark hair, soothing voice, and happy, excited eyes. How could I not? She gave me life. She had saved me from the gulls. She’d become my second mother.
When I regained some degree of fitness, and she was ready, we married, and lived happily together in that little house with her mother, and as I grew stronger, I improved their little home, and helped with the groceries from the distant store. It was there I saw an American newspaper splashing a cruel story of other men from a different ship cast adrift on the Pacific Ocean.
It was a nightmarish tale of how after the rations had gone, they killed and ate the cabin boy. That set me thinking, and though I know it may sound crazy, I imagined if I turned up as the sole survivor, I too might be placed on trial for killing and consuming my comrades, just as those unfortunate souls faced trial in California. There was no one left to say I had not committed such heinous crimes. And besides, why would I wish to return to the rainy and war-torn streets of Liverpool when I was basking on the beach in a remote part of the Yucatan, with the beautiful Conchita Gomez at my side, and in my bed. I stayed in my perfect paradise, as she taught me her language, and other things too. Would any man have hastened home to a bombed out and starving Bootle?
The longer I remained, the harder it was to leave, and Conchita was pregnant. I had made my choice. I took the Gomez name, the name I have retained to this day, and reconciled myself to spending my days with my new family beneath the Mexican sun.
Make plans at your peril.
Conchita endured a fearful pregnancy, and suffered an agonising death in the act of childbirth, as did the poor child, a tiny girl who breathed the balmy Mexican air just three desperate times. To say that I was distraught is an affront to the English language. There are no words to describe such horrific events.
Afterwards, Conchita’s mother asked me to remain, but I saw in her eyes she could never forgive me for crawling from the sea and bringing catastrophe upon her, and her small family. Early one morning, I rolled up my few possessions and walked away down that dusty road.
THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO were friendly and generous. Wherever I went they would share their last meal. But they were hopelessly poor and paid work was hard to find. I bummed around from town to town; each larger and busier and dustier than the last, yet those towns offered little to the scouse gringo who could barely speak the language. I guess it was inevitable I would slither across the border into the United States, and this I did on a dark and wet moonlit night.
I found myself walking to New Orleans.
Chapter Sixty-One
I TOOK WORK IN THE black economy, literally so. I may have been the first white man ever to work for a black business in that strange city, as I toiled as a painter and decorator for a man named Charlie Williams. He was fat and sweated round the clock as if he’d stumbled from a sauna.
Charlie and his friends treated me as something of an oddity. I guess they couldn’t quite figure me out. He paid me cash on Friday night and I would go drinking with them, to their swaying sleazy bars and jazz clubs, and blow all the money I had earned. It tied me to working for them again the following week, and I guess that was what they wanted. Truth was, I was drinking too much and had become a drunk.
My hair fell out; my eyes were wrecked from the ordeal I’d suffered on that whaler. I wore spectacles that looked as if they had been hewn from the base of a rum bottle. My belly grew until it was bigger than Charlie’s, and I could no longer see the vital designs that lay beneath the waistline.
One morning I woke in a haze and realised I was killing myself. I had to leave and soon, because I was a fixture in the last chance saloon. I went back on the road, bumming across America, hitching rides and jumping on and off moving freight cars, just as you see hobos do in old American movies.
I saw a lot, and learned a lot, but never found peace, or a friend. I bought newspapers wherever I travelled and followed that drawn out trial to the bitter end. The castaways were pronounced guilty and sentenced to sixteen years hard labour for consuming that ill-fated boy, and no matter how ridiculous the idea might seem, I was terrified that same fate would befall me.
Eventually, I became reconciled to the idea of returning to England, and after several pathetic attempts, I donned Harry Blackett’s identity, and secured a working passage on the Queen Mary. In 1960 I set sail from New York, bound for Southampton.
LOOKING BACK ON IT, I should have returned home after Conchita’s death, but I didn’t. You can never undo things once done. Back in Britain I couldn’t bring myself to return to Liverpool. How do you turn up after being missing for seventeen years and say: Hi, I couldn’t make it until now!
I was a wreck.
I was ashamed of myself; of the way I looked, and the way I had acted. I rented a tiny council flat in a run down area of Southampton close to the docks, and reverted to being Jackie Gomez, and it wasn’t long before I was picking up work as a painter and decorator. It’s an easy way to the feeding trough, and once the money started flowing in, the rum began flowing down, and I bummed around like that for thirty years, living alone, drinking alone; dying alone. It is hard to believe, but those years flew by in the proverbial blink of an eye, and then for some reason I began thinking of returning to Liverpool, hankering after it, for I had this crazy notion the next Christmas would be my last. If I had continued drinking, it would have been.
One snowy December morning I rode the train from Southampton Central to Liverpool Lime Street, 240 miles of clattering, creaking track. In my pocket was a hundred and sixty quid, in my small case, a change of dirty clothes, the total possessions of a wasted life, and a ruined man.
I took lodgings in an old falling down three-story house in Bootle, confident no one would identify me for I had changed beyond recognition. The house was dirty and stank of damp, but it served the purpose of providing a safe roof over my head. It was less than ten minutes walk from the slums of my childhood, slums that had been cleared away, and yet the red brick and prefabricated concrete monsters replacing them were little improvement. To many, they were worse.
Like an aging cock salmon I had come home to die.
Yet my life took one final astonishing turn.
I landed a job as a painter and decorator, window cleaner and general handyman, at the Albert Dock apartments.
Soon afterwards, I was introduced to Diane Shearston and began doing foreigners for her after hours for a few quid, cash in hand. I built her a breakfast bar. I built her bedroom wall units. I painted that apartment every year in the spring. I cleaned her windows until they gleamed like mirrors, and sorted out anything that needed doing. We became friends, close enough for her to leave me a key to enter her home to carry out work, while she was away at Downing House looking after hers.
When she was there, I would listen to her chattering intently, while straining not to appear too interested, as she told me amazing tales of her boss, the late Vimy Ridge, my nephew. Of his never-ending dispute with his father, my brother.
She could never have guessed the tired, old, and scruffy Jackie Gomez could somehow be related to those fine guys. I boasted an impressive moustache and still spoke with a Mexican accent, and perhaps I put it on a little when she was there. As far as she knew, I was the old half Mexican dude who helped improve her apartment.
When he was alive, some mornings I could smell Vimy had been there, and he was there a great deal, far more than he should have been, and though I was tempted to hang around outside to catch a glimpse of him, my own flesh and blood, I never once did, for fear of discovery. I reconciled myself to reality; there was no turning back, and I was happier than I had been since Conchita’s death.
But one thing I did do.
I went and took a peep at the family grave in the dead centre of north Liverpool at Orrell Park, where I was astonished to find my own marble memorial plaque, and not many men can say that. It was a curious thing gazing at my name, Jack Ridge 1924-1943, Much Loved – Much Missed, and while I stood there I had a crazy notion that Norman and Mary might appear behind me, clutching a bunch of roses in my memory. What a surprise they would have had! What a nightmare. I hunched my back and hurried away into the Liverpool rain.
Diane Shearston is an amazing administration manager.
She maintained neat and tidy records you wouldn’t believe, and I do not mean solely in the office. She kept a new filing cabinet in the spare bedroom she had kitted out as an at-home office, and though she kept that cabinet locked, she was trusting enough to leave a spare key d
angling on a little bunch that hung on a hook beside the cooker. I doubt the thought ever entered her mind I might one day borrow that key. I am not an inquisitive man, but when I discovered her involvement with my family, I admit, when alone in that apartment, I couldn’t resist taking a look.
It wasn’t long before I discovered a treasure trove of information. All the secrets that lay dormant there. I couldn’t believe anyone could keep such detailed accounts of so many people’s lives. She kept records and evidence that would have done the Gestapo proud, and it was as well she had, for those records provided the backbone of this chronicle of events. Where else could I have obtained so much detailed information?
It is true we spent many happy mornings gossiping together over coffee, as she told me of her successes and failures within the Ridge organisation, as I gently dabbed white emulsion here and there. But never could she have told me anything like the detailed and secret intelligence that slept in that tin tomb.
It was as if she had recorded every snippet of dirt on everyone she came into contact with, perhaps to be brought out and used against them when the occasion merited, should they ever dare threaten her. Preparedness, deviousness, cleverness, watchfulness, vigilance, call it what you will, but I admired it, and I admired her. She was and is a wonderful woman.
There was even a section on that black detective, Walter Darriteau. She seemed fascinated by the man, and I have an idea why. I think she was worried he would put the love of her life behind bars, but Vimy’s death ended such thoughts. She misses Vimy terribly, they all do, for he was an amazing man, just like his father before him, my brother, Norman Rocky Ridge.
But she never mentioned the greatest secret of all.
A secret that few people know, and one I discovered through my snooping, and I am not proud of that.