Only the Ocean

by Natasha Carthew

  Kel went to check that the baby was breathing after so much quiet and it was. She fed it with her own milk and changed it and returned it to the warm snug hole and she lay down beside it and her mind settled on the girl and Kel thought about her long into the night.

  She wondered about the journey that awaited them, some kind of fate tying them together in the secret knowledge that they both existed somewhere on the ship. Where was the girl, she had to be someplace. Kel had no other plot, no other way of thinking.

  When sleep finally came it was the kind without dreams. The dark night seeped into her pores and settled just below the skin. A thin layer of dark matter, of misery and despair that tried to take her, turn her. Kel pulled her jacket tight to stuff the gaps with body warmth and she blocked out the dreamless night with optimism. Without optimism life wasn’t worth much more than standing in line and sitting out time and lying and waiting to die.

  Soon the girl would be swapped for drugs without her kin knowing what or when and they’d be back out on the ocean soon as. Kel only hoped whatever was happening on the mainland had finished happening by the time they got back. This was the positive drill that bore down in her when she lay to sleep and that was how she remained until morning.

  Chapter Three

  Kel rolled on to her back and she winced with the pain that lying without bounce had inflicted. She saw the dark smack of an anvil cloud hammering above. It meant another storm day coming: she felt a little of the wet curdling and threatening on the wind. She sat up and stretched and checked the baby for life and went to stand at the railings to listen to the rhythm of morning work.

  She stepped into the alley that ran between two containers and crouched to a small puddle that had formed in the ship’s beaten metal floor and she bent to it and sucked a little of last night’s rain for thirst and splashed her face to freshen. To put something of normality into life was to have something of a normal life return.

  Kel knew this was the time to prepare for the days ahead, go over what she had to do; kidnap the girl, launch a lifeboat and leave as quickly as possible.

  She sat away from the baby and leaned close to the alleys and creases of space that framed each of the toppling cargo crates and she thought about what comfort they might contain other than guns, the everyday things used to mask the truth. Perhaps one or two of the crates hid a bundle of domestic delight; soft furnishings and homelies to find and fiddle, a place to sleep and a place to huddle for the next night only night before the strike.

  She stood and counted out the cargo crates and there were many. She tallied them into the sky and they ran five above, five high and a hundred long. The ship was huge. She wondered how big; she only knew miles, guessed it was at least half a mile in length. She tried to guess how long it would take to escape once she had the girl; she planned for hours, hoped for minutes, the quicker the better. She was glad of the orange rubber dinghy that hung at the edge of the ship. She told herself to keep it close and marked it as hers for the next part of her journey.

  Kel took her time to move amongst the crates like a cat.

  She looked for every possible place and rattled as many as she could but found none open nor bust. There was no alternative, she would have to break in and so she returned to the baby and fed it and she tied it to her back and told it to not make a sound because they were going to climb the crates. If she could find a corner of quiet away from the ship’s hub she could wait out the twenty-four hours in relative comfort and with that one good thought she went to the bow where the crates were highest and she climbed the first ladder and then the next and negotiated the ledges until she could go no further. ‘This’ll do just fine,’ she said to the baby and she told it to hold tight whilst she took her knife from the scabbard and picked the lock and slid the door wide.

  Inside the crate Kel rolled the baby to the floor and she looked in every corner of the damp box but there was nothing but dust for kicking. Hours came and went, and Kel did all she could to shape the redundant time into a routine of getting up and lying down and keeping watch between. She knew she had to dig deeper into the ship’s belly in order to find the girl.

  She was careful to keep the baby bundled and hidden in the corner of the crate. and as the hours passed her by she continued to feed it when it asked for milk and change it when it cried discomfort and she washed the towel rags she used for its nappies in the everywhere puddles and she would tell it to shut up when it plain old yelled for nothing but attention. It was a stupid baby, if it wasn’t it would have put its fist to its mouth and left it there for gumming. When it screamed and was fed and returned to screaming, Kel fought the compulsion to heave the crate door open and sling it to the wilds. On those occasions she told herself that would have been time wasted since she’d brought it this far, and she supposed it was wrong in any case. Finally she gave in to petting the baby and she lay it on her stomach and their breathing drifted and pooled complete and this was how they slept and they would have slept the journey through if it wasn’t for the baby waking her up.

  The day had been and gone and a new night heavy with low-lying fog had arrived without warning and it sat poised, ready for command. Kel sat up and pushed the baby from her and she stretched to find her bag in the dark in order to get the candle she had been carrying and she lit it with her lighter and dripped wax to stick it to the floor and she stood and went to look out of the door. The night pushed on with the stop-start stretch of struggling engines and the dissonance kept Kel awake, she was sick of waiting, she knew the time for action was close.

  She stood and pushed the door wide and looked toward the ship’s deck, imagined Rose standing down there. Kel told herself the girl belonged to her, she needed to pinpoint for certain where she was. To have her close was to imagine the thing that had to be done, the grab and snatch that was the beginning of all things turning right. Kel could feel it in the moving marrow of her bones, a small clock ticking, telling her it was almost time.

  The decision to look for her now was vital. Despite Kel knowing there was danger in being spotted, she had to place the girl in order to have her set right for the snatch and grab. She wasted no time in pushing the baby into hiding along with her miserly belongings and she checked her knife for the sharp ping-ping and it was good for doing and good for threatening if that was where things were heading.

  Beneath the dull weight of darkness Kel shut the metal two-door on her secret life and climbed from the crate and she wound her way through the narrow tin-alley streets until she found the ladder that led to the upper deck. There was something in the air that stuffed up the night wind and was wet-backed like rain, but the rain had long gone since. This was a creep and a crawl type thing that smelt of decomposition.

  She climbed down the ladder and slid on to the deck with her eyes scooting every which way. She could smell the stench of unwashed men and the clog and dribble of a billion cigarette butts and beer cans thrown and they were everywhere. She toed the deck with her big boots shuffling for the quiet and looked out for clues to the girl’s whereabouts, whilst the splash of wet that had her feet sticking nothing more to her than hindrance until she bent to it. She put one finger to the stick and held it up to the swing of light that came and went with the swim of ship and she saw the red and knew there had been another fight. The men had had a night of it and had tasted blood and maybe they were out for more. This was how things went in their world and Kel knew this because it was the same in hers. Maybe a fight had got out of hand, a fight with two halves to it or a fight between many. It didn’t matter, the girl was still missing. Kel stood steady as a moment of quick-flash fear crept over her. What if the girl was not onboard ship at all. What then?

  Maybe she was making too much of it. She had to find the girl, had to find her to know that she and the plan existed. Life sucked and double sucked for the sake of living. She stuffed her hands into her pockets and ran to the hatch that led below board and she put an ear and nothing came back and she stepped fo
rward and turned both ears to listening.

  Deep down within the body of the vessel she could hear some style of serious talk and she went forward and crouched in the odd green light and waited. Some words travelled toward her like a gift but most were mere mumbling lines of not much. Kel closed her eyes and tried to connect the dots. When she heard the girl’s name she jumped. It felt funny hearing it out loud for some reason; the name Rose belonged to her. Down there somewhere buried in the bowels of the ship the name Rose was being passed around and it reminded Kel of home, of the way the men talked about her. Kel’s heart beat faster thinking about it, the girl’s potential danger felt like her own.

  She stood back, the fighter in her falling and she wanted to flee, escape all over again. The voices were getting louder now, and Kel realised suddenly that two men were standing at the bottom of the ladder. Her instinct was to run, put this night to bed, but what if the girl really was in danger? She took a deep breath and crouched at the side of the hatch to listen.

  ‘Good lookin maid,’ said a voice. ‘If I was younger and all that.’

  ‘Surprised that would stop you, if this Rose girl is up for it and all. Seems like a right party girl.’

  They both laughed and Kel gripped the top rung of the ladder in anger.

  ‘Bit posh for a stowaway though, int she?’ the second man continued.

  ‘Who cares? All girls are the same with a bit of drink in em.’

  Kel heard the clink of bottles being pulled from storage and the voices fade toward the music and she stood. Rose was a name that would keep spiking the stoic night, it was a source of laughter both fierce and threatening.

  Kel took her knife from the scabbard and she held it close pressed to the salt-dry denim of her jacket. There was nothing for it but to descend into the hot hell searing beneath, a hell that stank of beef-fat frying and toilets that had long lost the flush. Kel sensed a secret lived down there amongst the men, a secret that had them merry and bashful and hardly able to keep fingered to their lips. Something exciting and something wrong and like idiots they laughed it all the way from bad to quite funny after all. This was how Kel read it. She descended further into the heat and stench and she thought things through best she could and the facts gleaned she laid out before her like tiny rip-clipped pieces of paper and everything spelt wrong. In her mind something had happened and by the cloying air filled with whispers Kel reckoned it was something bad. Something bad but to the men it was also something funny, something they couldn’t help for the fact that it happened and by the nature of the thing it wasn’t their fault.

  Kel leaned into a shadow that came to her like a cool wash cloud between two lights and the thoughts that splintered inside her came together and stuck bone to nerve in the making of it. She moved between the dark places and her head reeled with the sound of monotony music and the notion of what might be happening.

  In that moment something strengthened and broke inside, the recollection of the shack in the woods and of fear with all the tearing and biting still in it. Suddenly Kel ran wild with anger, the plan that she had taken so long to construct gone complete. She ran into open cabins with her knife flashing red-light warning and when she reached the room of voices and bad music she slowed, stopped to look through the crack in the door.

  Kel returned her knife to the scabbard and stood with her back against the wall and put her hand to her chest and pleaded with her heart to please god be good. She waited for her breathing to slow and then she turned her head to the party.

  At first it was hard to see much more than the men. They were all kinds of drunk: some laughing, some lurching, others were arguing toward a fight. She wondered if she had imagined the girl, was about to turn back when she heard it. Singing. Kel closed her eyes to let the moment wash over her, how could so much beauty exist in a place like that?

  Kel looked up suddenly and that was when she saw her. ‘Rose,’ she whispered.

  A part of her knew this was a bad idea, of course it was. The plan was to kidnap the girl without being seen, steal her away without anyone ever knowing she had come and gone again. She leaned against the wall so she could see clearer, watched the men group into a circle and caught glimpses of the flash of pink amongst them – the girl was singing, laughing, she danced amongst the men like a puppet. She didn’t care what happened to her she was that flying drunk.

  Kel didn’t know what to do. She looked back down the corridor from where she had come, turned to leave, her heart in her mouth and her head telling her to calm down, but there was something about the girl, that voice, and before she knew it the knife had returned to her hand and Kel to the door.

  The men saw her like a rapturous apparition as they spun drunk and falling, and she pushed and kicked and called out that she was here for the girl.

  Kel looked about the room and called out to Rose, it was as if it were she herself who needed rescuing, like she was returning herself to the scene of a crime two years too late.

  She looked around at the shocked faces, saw the girl hiding drunk in the corner of a nothing-much cabin and she pulled at her and dragged her from the room. Men came at Kel drunk and wary and some had a go at pinning her to the wall but each time she flashed her knife and managed to pull free.

  Some of the men still laughed as they gave chase.

  ‘Two girls! All the more for sharin!’ she heard somebody shout.

  Kel hated that. The knife twitched against the palm of her hand as she stopped and turned. ‘What makes you think you can treat girls this way?’ she shouted. ‘Who gave you the goddamn right?’ She held out the knife and realised she was shaking. ‘Get behind me!’ she told the girl.

  The men stopped in their tracks.

  ‘Well?’ she asked them.

  One of the older men stepped forward. ‘Give us back the girl.’

  Kel shook her head. ‘She int yours.’

  ‘Int yours either,’ he said.

  ‘Hello?’ Rose put up her hand. ‘Do I get a say?’

  ‘We’ll find you,’ the man continued. ‘This is a ship, if you int noticed.’

  ‘Oh I noticed,’ said Kel, ‘I notice everythin. Now stay back.’

  Kel stabbed the knife toward them and she ran fast with the girl clutched to her and she didn’t stop until the men were tangled in confusion amongst the tower-high crates, their anger turning to laughter because what did they care?

  Under cover of the black nothing night she put the knife to the girl so they might climb toward the room of nothing but dirt and rattling space. She was hers now, safely so.

  ‘Who are you?’ shouted the girl. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Keep goin,’ Kel shouted. ‘All the way inside.’

  She made the girl go to the corner of the room and she bent to light the candle and she pulled the door shut. She stood and watched her take her bearings a moment.

  ‘They was hurtin you,’ said Kel, finally.

  ‘They were?’ asked the girl.

  ‘They was gunna. I heard em talk.’

  ‘About what, what are you talking about?’

  ‘You, what they’d done, what they was bout to do.’ Kel rubbed her head, it was heavy with thought. Things changed, she knew this, but the shipmates knowing about her existence, she could have done without that. She wasn’t meant to capture the girl until the morning.

  She looked out across the ocean, were they far enough out? Kel didn’t think so, they would have to wait out the night.

  ‘Damn.’ She looked over at the girl and noticed she was laughing, mocking her, and Kel’s hands filled with punch.

  ‘So you’re a stowaway?’ the girl asked.

  Kel watched Rose pull a half-drunk bottle of whisky from her jacket pocket. ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Of course you are, why, do you think you’re the first? There’s no use in pretending. Jesus, I’m one too.’ Rose smiled, she seemed to be enjoying the attention. ‘Even my dad doesn’t know I’m here, this ship is no pla
ce for a girl.’ She looked Kel up and down. ‘No matter what you look like.’

  ‘So your dad doesn’t know you’re onboard ship?’ Kel asked.

  ‘It’d kind of take the fun out of being a stowaway if he did.’

  Kel thought about this, it all made sense, why the girl had been so hard to find.

  ‘I guess em blokes wouldn’t have tried it on with you if they knew whose kid you was.’

  ‘Hey, who are you calling a kid?’

  Kel ignored the girl, she told herself things were still on track, better even; nobody knew the captain’s daughter was on the ship and as far as the men were concerned she was just some stowaway same as Kel, just posher and prettier. Tomorrow they would be busy nursing their hangovers and when thought returned to the two girls, Kel and Rose would be long gone.

  She looked at the girl and realised she was still talking.

  ‘I’m talking to you.’

  ‘What?’ asked Kel.

  ‘I asked who you were calling a kid?’

  Kel didn’t know what to say so she didn’t say anything, she hadn’t reckoned on the girl being a big mouth, that wasn’t part of the plan. She moved from the door to check the baby and she pushed it aside so she could sit on the blanket.

  ‘Don’t move,’ she whispered to Rose. ‘Don’t move and sit down.’

  ‘Why?’ She grinned. ‘Are you planning to slit my throat otherwise?’

  ‘Yes.’ Kel looked at the girl to see if she understood the things she herself knew as fact, but her smugness indicated she was far from understanding, ‘And you better keep your voice down, better shut it or …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Else.’ Kel looked at the bottle in the girl’s hand and told her to roll it over and the girl did and Kel took a long swig.