The Mannequin Makers

by Craig Cliff

  ‘This is no shipyard,’ he said, leaning out over the gunwale to inspect the figurehead. ‘Are you happy for me to belay you over?’

  ‘Aye, I’m used to it.’

  ‘You any good up a ratline?’

  ‘That I’ve never tried.’ I looped a rope below my buttocks and tied an overhand knot.

  ‘Really?’

  I swung down below the bowsprit, placed one foot on the bobstay and the other on the thick chain of a bowsprit shroud, and began to inspect Vengeance. Close up, it was clear that I needed to remove her. I asked Porter for my mallet and a wooden wedge from the barrow and began to work Vengeance away from the wooden pegs my father had used to affix her to the stem.

  When she was nearly free I called for Porter to pass me the end of another rope, which I worked around the elbow of Vengeance’s remaining arm and her other side.

  Once Vengeance and I had been hauled on deck I started sanding back the rough edges, fitting fresh timber shims in the cracks that had opened between the laminates and fashioning a new right shoulder and upper arm. I worked quickly, inspired by the opportunity to resurrect one of my own pieces after so many years improving the work of others, conscious of the limited daylight remaining and the fact the Agathos intended to set sail the following day.

  Porter alternated between watching me work, leaning over the gunwale to survey the docks and standing sentry at the edge of the gangway.

  ‘You’re handy with a chisel,’ he said as I quickly turned a block of yellow pine into Vengeance’s missing arm.

  ‘It’s a gouge, actually. A carver doesnae have much use for chisels.’

  ‘But it’s all woodwork.’

  ‘Aye, I suppose.’

  ‘You know we’re in need of a ship’s carpenter?’

  I laughed and looked up from the arm. ‘What happened to your last carpenter?’

  ‘He’d have been a wealthy man if he’d held his nerve.’

  ‘Och, that’s rich. I’m nae a greedy man, Mr Porter.’

  I returned my eyes to the new arm, but inwardly my mind was racing. Here was the chance I had been waiting for. What did I have tying me to the Clyde? I had no family and virtually no business. But at the same time, the ship scared me. Look at what it had done to Vengeance. Even Porter, who seemed a level-headed sort, acknowledged the suicidal nature of taking the Agathos round the Horn.

  Porter read me as if I were a spirit level. ‘I don’t imagine there’s much call for figurehead carvers these days.’

  ‘I make a living.’

  ‘Oh, I can see from your fine trousers, so fine I can see your knees through the weave.’

  ‘I’m dressed for work.’

  ‘Of course, of course. And I’m sure you’re so bony and pale from always being indoors. You’ll get three hot meals a day aboard the Agathos.’

  ‘Salted gull and scurvy are not to my tastes, unfortunately.’

  ‘Please yourself. But you say you’ve never been to sea, can that be right? Never felt the sting of old briny once you leave the harbour?’ Porter turned away and leaned out over the headrail to face the slow-flowing Clyde. ‘Never seen the water black as tar and clear as glass? Never crossed the line? Never seen the sun so close you’d swear it was a giant peach dangled by the Almighty? Never lived a minute of your life?’ Porter turned back to me. What could I do but shrug? ‘A sailor’s life might be a short life, especially aboard the Agathos, but it is a man’s life.’

  As the sun set I had not yet begun to repaint Vengeance. Porter brought me a lantern but the slight breeze that had picked up meant the light shifted too much to continue working.

  ‘Are you still set on making way in the morning?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s the master’s call. Now there’s a man who has seen this world and a few more besides. He’ll be none too pleased with me if we don’t have a carpenter on board, but he’s eager to set off. The bosun can pick up some of the slack and I’ve spent my time as a carpenter’s shadow. But if we’re to make it through the Southern Ocean we’ll need a full complement of hands.’

  Despite Porter’s strong persuasion, I was still in two minds. My gut seemed equally torn and my heart, well, it was too busy waking from its long slumber to take sides.

  ‘I will come back in the morning,’ I said, ‘and paint her if there’s time. If not, I suppose I’ll just fix her back on.’

  ‘There’ll be plenty of time for painting aboard. A ship’s carpenter near enough sets his own time. You’d have no watches in fine weather and you’d never have to swab the decks or clean the heads.’

  I smiled politely and began to load my barrow.

  Porter picked up the lantern and led me down from the fo’c’sle deck once more and across the gangway. I hadn’t noticed the slight movement of the ship while on board but the cobblestones of the pier felt hard and unforgiving.

  ‘The crew will appreciate the work you’ve done,’ Porter said and shook my hand. ‘Till the morrow.’

  ‘Aye, till the morrow.’ I set off for Doig & Son. When I arrived I lit the lamps inside the workshop and surveyed my stock of unwanted figureheads: the commissioned figure of homely Mrs Abigail Havanagh, which Mr Havanagh reneged on purchasing after he discovered, to everyone’s surprise, his wife in bed with the wax chandler; an effort to copy my father’s valkyrie, just as the fad for Norse figures went on the wane; the figure of Courage, the third piece I carved from beginning to end, which had sat unwanted all those years. At least Vengeance has a story to tell, I thought, running my thumbs over Courage’s eyes as if to close her lids.

  I left the lamps burning and used money I could scarcely afford to part with to purchase a hot meal of roast beef, potatoes and carrots from the Anchor Inn. I sat alone at my table, which rocked slightly as I carved my meat. I removed one of the unneeded wedges of wood I’d fashioned for Vengeance from my trouser pocket and placed it beneath the offending table leg. The tavern rang with the sound of sailors, shipwrights and customs inspectors telling stories in the private languages of their trades, of young men with shining pocket watches and brightly coloured handkerchiefs seeking to impress plump-cheeked young ladies whose thick skirts bunched halfway up the backs of their seats, of the men playing cribbage in the adjoining room, their shouts of ‘Losh!’, ‘Ya bandit!’ and ‘Muggins!’

  Back in my workshop I began to sort the pieces of scrap timber into piles according to their size. I took the biggest pieces and laid them out in a rectangle, large enough that a young boy might fit inside. I took up my hammer and a handful of copper nails and began constructing a box. When it came for the lid, I did not have any hinges to hand, so removed those from the door that led to what I still thought of as my mother’s office. For a latch, I went upstairs and unscrewed the gilt locker from the heavy oak chest that used to store the Doig family valuables but had long since been emptied. When my chest was complete I lifted it onto my trusty barrow and began to fill it with my favourite tools, my leather-bound sketchbook, a few novels, my clothes, boots, oilskin hat and cutlery.

  I arrived at the dock at sunrise the next morning, conscious that I looked like a timorous boy but unable to take better control of my quaking knees. Sailors nudged past to get up the gangway or disembark, reeking of rum, tobacco and human excrement. I was on the verge of lifting the handles of my barrow once more and retreating to the safety of my workshop when I heard a familiar voice call from the deck, ‘Is this a carpenter I see before me?’ Porter slapped his large hands on the gunwale. ‘Why, I think it is.’

  He leapt over the edge of the ship, his boots making no sound as they hit the cobblestones after a fall of five feet. ‘Make way, make way, you dogs,’ he cried, picking up my sea chest. ‘We’ve a carpenter after all. We might make it round the Horn in one piece.’

  The sailors offered their imperfect, conniving smiles as I followed Porter aboard the Agathos and forward to the petty officers’ deckhouse. ‘Carpenter sleeps here,’ he said, placing my chest down and sliding it beneath the bunk n
earest the door. I couldn’t see beyond the third bunk in the dimly lit space and wondered how many men slept there. ‘You’ll catch the first spray whenever the door opens, unfortunately. You might do well to intimidate one of the apprentices, once you’ve found your feet. Best stay on Slushy’s good side, though.’ He indicated the bunk adjacent to mine. ‘And Meiklejohn too, while you’re at it. And not just because he’s bosun and you’ll need his help, if you catch my meaning?’

  I nodded, though I wasn’t sure I did.

  ‘Come, I’ll show you the storeroom.’

  We made our way down a steep flight of stairs that was almost a ladder and along a narrow passage. I had been below decks only a handful of times and always in new vessels that had yet to take their maiden voyage. The air inside the bowels of the Agathos was damp and smoky and I wondered how it would be after the men had been crammed below deck for a month at sea. I ran my fingers along the blackened teak of a bulkhead. It gave slightly under my touch, like the skin on your heel. No oak, I thought to myself, a pity. But it was pleasant to be surrounded by so much wood, fashioned for new and different purposes and aged in mysterious ways.

  As we came to the door of the storeroom I was reminded of my father’s declaration about the Agathos that day we installed Vengeance: ‘I suspect even the captain’s doorknob is without a flourish.’ The storeroom door, which Porter was working to unlock, was certainly plain. It would be a few days before I had cause to pass the captain’s door, but my father was right: not a flourish.

  ‘We’re below the deckhouse now.’ He opened the door. ‘Stores are all in here. You’re the master of the ship’s chest. I expect you’ve brought some of your fancy gouges? You can keep them here, it’s safe. There’s much more for me to explain, but as we’re about to set sail, I reckon you should get to work fixing your lass to the bow. Can’t have the Agathos running blind.’

  I gathered the necessary implements and emerged above decks once more to be met with the light of a thousand lamps. One of the sailors must have noticed the way my face contorted in the daylight and announced, ‘Seems we have a pollywog in our midst.’

  ‘And it’s this tadpole,’ Porter said from somewhere close behind me, ‘that’ll keep your foremast from snapping. You’ll be glad of the work he’s done on your missus with the missing arm, too.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  We proceeded to the fo’c’sle deck where Vengeance lay on her back, covered with dark green canvas. Porter removed the cover and I set to work sanding back the small ridges of resin that had issued from the crevices I’d sealed the day before and priming her for painting. A crowd of sailors gathered to observe and provide a running commentary of proceedings.

  ‘She looks twenty years younger,’ one announced.

  ‘Like her own daughter,’ another added.

  ‘Aye, just as stuck up but half as knowing,’ said a third.

  ‘If that’s the daughter, has anyone told the father? Mr Swenson,’ the second voice called, ‘Mr Swenson, your love child is aboard and the men are eyeing her already.’

  ‘Well, I trust you’re the expert in children, Boag, seeing as how you leave a new bastard in every port.’

  I couldn’t help but grin at this exchange.

  ‘Look here,’ one of the men said, ‘you’ve gone and made Slimy smile.’

  ‘Aye, ’tis a sorry reflection on our capability as sailors. He should be in tears by now.’

  ‘There’s just no sport in it, ever since poor Tim came aboard. The lad’s never stopped spouting.’

  ‘I’ll show you,’ said an adolescent voice.

  ‘Are you sure young Tim here’s not another son of yours, Boag?’

  ‘Now don’t go and make me cry,’ Boag replied.

  I was fanning the white undercoat dry when Porter came to check on my progress.

  ‘There won’t be time to colour her today, Carpenter. The passengers are all aboard and the captain’s ordered us to set sail in half an hour.’

  ‘But that’s barely time for me to get her fixed out front.’

  ‘You heard the carpenter,’ Porter said to the gathered men. ‘He needs a hand fitting the lass out front.’

  Two men lifted the figure that instant, two more wrapped ropes around their wrists and jumped over the bow, while young Tim walked up the slight incline of the bowsprit before pirouetting, kicking out his feet and catching himself with his hands before any serious damage was done to his groin. I remained on deck, directing the men as they placed Vengeance against the trenails. I handed Boag my mallet and a cloth to dampen the blows.

  ‘That’s a queer-looking mallet,’ he said. ‘All rounded like that.’

  ‘It’s a carver’s mallet. It’s rounded so you strike your tool in the chosen spot.’

  ‘Whatever you say, Mr Carpenter.’

  ‘My, my,’ a voice sounded from behind us, ‘what a lot of commotion.’

  Tim, still straddling the bowsprit, saluted. I turned to meet the eyes of a compact man about my height wearing a thick felt coat with gold buttons and gold fringing at the shoulders. Atop his head sat a black bowler hat more suited to the driver of a hansom cab than the captain of a sailing ship.

  ‘Captain Bock, sir. We was just helping out the new carpenter,’ explained Tim.

  Bock let out an unimpressed grunt. ‘Can someone explain to me the worth of a carpenter who requires the assistance of half a dozen men for decorations?’

  Porter appeared at the captain’s shoulder, short of breath. ‘This,’ he began, ‘is the new carpenter, Captain.’

  ‘Thank you, Porter, we have already established that.’ He continued glaring at me as he addressed the mate. ‘I was just registering my doubts about the crew you have assembled. A carpenter who won’t work and seamen who prefer to dangle from the rails rather than dwell amongst the yards.’

  ‘Yes, Captain, sir,’ Porter said. ‘I expect it will take a few days for the carpenter to become familiar with his duties, after which I am sure he will be a credit to this ship.’

  ‘This ship?’ Bock said, arching his top lip and turning to Porter. ‘This ship is not worth a damn and has been crewed by madmen and incompetents on a fool’s errand. But I’ll be damned if this will be my last commission. We are due in Melbourne in eighty-two days and I shall see that we return to Great Britain in a further ninety as richer men deserving of great encomia.’

  The tassels on the captain’s shoulders flew out as he swung around and descended to the main deck, where a dozen men in stiff collars and two women in heavy dresses—one the colour of ivory, the other a faint blue—had gathered, presumably the passengers Porter had mentioned.

  ‘Is she fast?’ Porter asked the men still slung over the side of the bow.

  ‘Aye, she’ll hold,’ said Boag.

  ‘Then scale the yards, men, we’re setting sail.’

  ‘What should I do?’ I asked.

  ‘There’s no time. Besides, Meiklejohn has inspected the masts and yards already. We’ll ease you in, Carpenter.’

  I was left standing on the fo’c’sle deck as the last hurried preparations were made for the departure of the Agathos. Considering how close I had come to turning my barrow homeward on the dock, I had very few misgivings as the moorings were loosed from the bollards. The sailors were as bawdy as the best pirate ballad, the captain as mysterious as Nemo and ahead of us waited an adventure that Homer would be proud to set to verse.

  I was no longer a landlubbing figurehead carver, a copy of my father who was a copy of his father. My footsteps from now on would be my own.

  Such were my thoughts as a steam-powered tug cruised into position and the tow-line was fastened. Soon I felt the bow ease away from the dock, heard the rumble as the foremast’s topsail was spread, saw the gap emerge between the starboard side of the ship and my home town, between me and terra firma. The Agathos made her way out into the channel under tow, towards the firth, the waters brown and reflective as bottle glass beneath a soft, measured sky.

/>   I am feeling much better of late. Thank you.

  You understand why you must stay here a wee bit longer, don’t you?

  Yes. I can’t leave without reading the end of your story.

  That is not what I mean.

  I know what you mean, Gabriel.

  Good.

  23 November 1890

  I walked up through the squawking, reeking yellow-brows once more. I was not there to fill my larder. This time I was heading for the ridge. Exploring at last. If a chick stumbled across my path, of course, I might snatch it up, twist its neck and toss it in the sailcloth sack slung over my shoulder. I didn’t know how far I would walk this day and having a snack for later couldn’t hurt. Maybe the penguins were right to squawk. It was hardly fair. Me five feet tall, feeling massive for the first time in my life, able to cover a yard in a single stride. Them with their pot bellies and inquisitive red eyes.

  ‘Just passing through,’ I told them, already short of breath.

  I had no compass but had learnt where the sun rose and set, knew my east from west and north from south, or so I hoped.

  It was surprising how swiftly my first fortnight as a castaway had passed. Day upon day was devoured by the search for the necessities of life—food, water, shelter, warmth—and the struggle to maintain them. An overhanging bluff at the northern end of the rocky bight had provided some shelter from the sleet and rain on my first night. Every day since had been spent improving this imperfect space: rigging a portion of the sailcloth so that it might impede the prevailing wind that burrowed into the shallow cave, collecting tussock from the fringes of the penguin colony to weave into mats for the floor, rerigging the sailcloth after a westerly gale, collecting peat to soften the ground beneath the tussock, rinsing the tussock in the breakers in an effort to rid the cave of its flea explosion, learning to sleep with lice in my beard and hailstones charging through the latest tear in the canvas, learning to survive with the constants of the subantarctic castaway’s life: chattering teeth, growling belly, stinging fingers, numb toes, wet clothes and tired, watering eyes.