Church Group

by Michael Brightside

  * * *

  Ship was waiting outside for us when we arrived the next morning, sending smoke signals on his pipe. Our first mode of transport for the day would be his Volvo estate, which he’d already hooked up to Jessica’s trailer. Lying in the back of the boat was a twenty-five horsepower outboard motor.

  The three of us and the dog drove the short distance to Island Lane in the village, right up next to the familiar pillbox Al and I spent so much time at after school.

  “You’re not going to be getting sea sick now are you Boy?” Ship ribbed us as we rolled the trailer down the concrete ramp.

  “We’ll be alright,” I replied. I was more worried about him over exerting himself, he was probably at least a hundred years old.

  “Come on then,” he said. “The tide is as good as it’s going to get.”

  He was right. I could tell by the green stain on the concrete floor, the line that marked the highest point the tide ever got to. The water wasn’t quite there yet, the fact that last bit of concrete was dry told me we hadn’t missed it.

  We set off, Al and I sitting at the front of the boat facing the wrong way, Ship and Jasper sitting opposite, all of our feet nearly touching in the middle of the small craft.

  “I was thinking we’d head towards Haywich, there’ll be places there we can moor up,” Ship shouted over the noise of the engine.

  I took a deep smell of the salty wet air that I loved and looked at Al, we were attempting the same thing we’d tried to do so many times before on the canoe. Only this time we had twenty-five horsepower on our side, we’d never even had one horsepower up until now. We had two red plastic petrol tanks, separate from the engine, connected one at a time by a tube. Ship reckoned the first one would easily get us there, we would swap over to the second one in Haywich before heading back.

  We were making good ground. Looking back towards Kirk-Leigh then over at Haywich we seemed to be somewhere in the middle, about halfway there, when suddenly the engine began to splutter, before stalling completely.

  “Bloody engine!” Ship shouted.

  Al and I laughed, not having an engine didn’t bother us. We’d just sit around and float all day.

  “Bloody petrol tank is empty already,” he said as he hooked the second one up. The engine coming back to life on the second pull of the cord.

  “Sorry lads, we’ll have to head back,” Ship apologised, sounding guilty like he’d somehow let us down.

  That didn’t matter now though, not making it to Haywich was the least of our worries.

  Jessica started rocking on the water, big waves lashing up against the left side of the boat. Ship yanked at the handle on the outboard and twisted the throttle to full power, pointing us straight towards home. Then behind us we heard a loud horn.

  We all turned in unison towards the source of the noise. A massive ferry coming straight down the middle of the water. It was nowhere near close enough to hit us, but it wouldn’t need to, the wake it produced would be enough to roll us over. In the distance on the deck of the ferry a man dressed in white waved frantically at us. Ship waved back, an old seafarers wave that said don’t worry we know what we’re doing. Whether the other captain understood it or not is irrelevant. He had already called the coastguard and they were here.

  They pulled their blue and white boat up somewhere between the ferry and Jessica, then one of them who was dressed like a policeman began shouting at us through a loudspeaker, “Take your vessel back to shore! This is a busy shipping lane!”

  Jasper cowered down, hiding between Ship’s feet.

  “We are at full power!” Ship shouted back, pointing out that we were already facing away from the ferry. They replied with language you don’t expect from a coastguard, unsympathetic of the predicament we had ended up in.

  Ship didn’t appreciate being put in his place in front of the two boys and you could see it. He was captain of this boat we were on, I think if it wasn’t for the fact we were already low on fuel, he might have tried to fight his corner and head back towards Haywich. In fact, had he put the suggestion forward I know neither Al nor I would have mutinied.

  In the meantime, the wake from the ferry continued to try desperately to drown us, the three of us having to move our weight around the boat to counteract the rolling motion of the sea.

  When the ferry finally went away, the coastguard also gave up on us, and we continued at full speed back towards Kirk-Leigh, almost making it to land on our remaining tank.

  “Bloody hell,” Al groaned when the engine gave out. He looked at Ship holding Jasper, and took one look at me in my denim jeans, then he pulled his t-shirt and trainers off, and jumped into the choppy water in just his shorts.

  “That’s it Boy!” Ship shouted to Al as he swam us towards the shore, holding the piece of coiled rope at the front of the boat. I’d never seen old Ship in such an excited state. Well, excited for him. He guffawed and gave another wheezy shout as Al pulled the rope taught and dragged us along with all his strength.

  “Come on Boy, you can do it! Keep it up now, don’t wear yourself out too soon!” Al grimaced as he took the strain and swam us back bit by bit.

  “Ship,” I murmured quietly to him at one point, having seen the unmistakable shimmer of colour floating on the top of the waves. A jellyfish, and Al was about to swim right into it.

  He was concentrating so hard on keeping going that he hadn’t seen it. I opened my mouth to say something when old Ship put his rough calloused hand onto my arm. I looked at him. He shook his head. And we both watched silently as Al’s arm brushed the very edge of the quivering mass, and then the waves created by his swimming strokes pushed it far enough away from his body that we both relaxed. So fortunately Al wasn’t stung and we made it back. We mentioned the incident afterwards. Al understood that we’d only kept it quiet because we couldn’t risk him getting back out of the water. There was no chance I was getting in with the jellyfish and Ship certainly wasn’t.

  I realised something while Al was taking us home. I’d have been lost without him that day, floating aimlessly in the sea, just like Ship would have been lost too. Only without meeting Al when I moved to the village, I was pretty sure the rest of my life would have felt the same. I don’t know what I would have done without him.

  We made best use of the week’s holiday we had left. We never went out with Ship or his boat again, and as for the money? We went back to school in September with a reasonable amount in our pockets and not a clue on how to spend it.

  There Aren’t Any Jellyfish at School

  September 1998.

  A loud ringing in my ears dragged me from my slumber. What the....?! Bollocks, alarm clock, no more holidays, back to school. Up with just enough time to shower, get dressed in my uniform and do my hair, I’d much preferred just chucking a scruffy t-shirt on and running out the door. Why bother brushing your teeth when you’re going to spend the day scrubbing the deck?

  Al arrived just as I finished putting on someone else’s clothes. Trainers on feet and shoes in rucksacks we set off down the road on our BMXs.

  “Sod this mate, I don’t think I can deal with going back yet,” Al said to me as we turned onto the main road, the morning sun lifting the smell of grass into the air. “Do you want to go back to Ship’s and tell him we didn’t realise we’d finished year eleven not year ten, see if he’ll let us work there full-time?”

  “Yeah....not sure he’ll go for that Al,” I replied curtly. “Even if he does believe us, the school probably won’t have it. Anyway I don’t think he had any more for us to do.”

  “I don’t care, I’ll work there for free!”

  “Look on the bright side,” I said. “At least there aren’t any jellyfish at school.”

  “I’d rather eat a jellyfish than have to go to that fucking school again.”

  I laughed and secretly wished I had the authority to get him out of going back to school, I’d pick out the biggest jellyfish I could find.

  We arrived to
find the school had been converted into a funeral home while we were away, a queue of solemn mourners filed in to say their goodbyes to free time.

  “Glad to be back!” Al shouted to a group of lads I barely knew, as they kicked a ball against the wall of the maths class.

  “Yeah right!” they shouted back. I nodded, unable to think of anything to say.

  It didn’t take long to get back into school mode once we were inside, about as long as it took for my eyes to adjust to the shade.

  This wasn’t like the year before at school, there was an air of diminished responsibility to the teachers. They’d done what they could and were now concentrating on the next year’s students, who still had a chance. It was now on us to cram as much of this shit into our heads as we could, to ensure we passed the necessary exams to get the jobs we didn’t really want.

  I was feeling fairly sure about how I was going to get on in the exams. I had split the subjects into two groups; those with binary answers like maths, science and German, which weren’t going to be a problem if I knew the answers, which I thought I did. Then the remaining subjects including English, history and business studies where the question was put to you in a riddle, which you had to decode before you could work out what the answer was supposed to be. And that was if you even knew the answer.

  That was all still some way off though, so I put the exams in the little box in the back of my mind with everything else that wasn’t happening that day, locked the lid down, and forgot about it, keeping myself entertained with watching my classmates have mini-nervous breakdowns every time exams were mentioned.

  When He Woke Up CDs Had Been Invented

  October 1998.

  A couple of weeks into the new term I overheard a short lad from my year, Phil, telling someone that his older brother was selling his motorbike. He had turned seventeen and wanted the money so he could start taking driving lessons and get a car.

  Now this on its own wasn’t that exciting, plenty of people sell motorbikes all the time. What made this one special though was that not only was it a Yamaha DT motocross bike, and 50cc meaning I was nearly old enough to ride it, it was also only a hundred quid. And I had a hundred quid! Images of doing jumps and sliding sideways like the riders in the videos I’d watched filled my head.

  I quickly interrupted them and armed myself with all the information I would need to persuade my parents to let me have it, approaching my mum as soon as I got through the door.

  “I’m getting a motorbike Mum,” I informed her.

  She gave me a stern look. “You’re fifteen, you’re not even old enough to ride one yet,” she replied. “Anyway I don’t want you having one, they’re too dangerous.”

  “Dad had one.”

  “That was before I met him,” my mum said. “He’s never had one while we’ve been together.”

  “That’s not the point I’m making,” I said. “They can’t be that dangerous, Dad’s still alive.”

  “Your dad was one of the lucky ones. Look at what happened to his friend Mike Stacey when he was younger.”

  Bollocks, I’d forgotten she had that story, the one where my dad’s friend had slid off his bike while navigating a roundabout and had his head run over by a bus.

  “He’s not dead either Mum!” I retorted.

  “No but he was in a coma for two years. When he woke up CDs had been invented, and he didn’t even know what they were.” To this day I don’t know why that bit of information was always included when she told the story, maybe it added credibility to it somehow, it wasn’t something you’d think to just make up.

  “There aren’t ever any buses round here Mum, that’s why I need a motorbike.”

  “You’re not having one and that’s the end of it,” she looked me square in the eyes. “You might as well give up on the idea.”

  I stormed upstairs and found my brother Dean in our bedroom. I stormed back downstairs and round to Al’s, maybe I’d have more luck when my dad got back from work.

  Al was in agreement with me that my mum was taking the piss, so with that in mind I set off home again at six to get my dad on my side too.

  “I’ve found this motorbike I want Dad, it’s only a fifty cc. I was thinking if I get it now I can keep it in the garage until I’m sixteen,” I told him.

  “Oh yeah, how much is that then?” he replied, smoking his roll-up in the doorway of the wooden lean-to at the back of the house.

  “A hundred quid Dad, I’ve got more than that still from working at Ship’s”

  “A hundred quid!” he spluttered. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with it Dad, it’s got Tax and MOT and it runs alright. I’ve seen the bloke who owns it riding it to sixth form. It needs tidying up a bit and it’s pretty old but that’s all.”

  My dad smiled just a little, I might have one parent on board now.

  “You know you’ll have to look after it Lu but I could show you how to keep it running right, I’ve got all the tools we’d need. We could get it all looking good over the winter then you could do your test on it.” He was beginning to get excited now, my dad kept all the cars we ever had running, and worked with tools in his job. I knew he’d loved working on bikes when he was younger but had had to give that up when I was born not long after he and my mum got together.

  “Have you spoken to your mum about it?”

  “For some reason she thinks they’re dangerous,” I replied cautiously, my mum was still the one flaw in the plan.

  “She will say that Lu, she’s a woman. Let me speak to her.” And with that he threw his roll-up in the hedge and went back in the house.

  I waited a minute while he went and sat in the lounge with my mum, before going upstairs where I found Dean and Jack in the room Dean and I shared. I sat out of view on the landing, where the stairs turned one hundred and eighty degrees, and listened in.

  “I’ve already told him he’s not having one!” my mum’s voice rang up the stairs.

  “He’s nearly sixteen Jan, he’ll need to be able to get about soon, you can’t keep having to drive him everywhere.”

  “Well if he’s nearly sixteen he can wait until he’s seventeen then and take driving lessons. I’m not letting him have one of those death-traps.”

  “It’s not all up to you Jan, you’re not the only one in this house with a say!” my dad shouted.

  I’d sat through enough full scale arguments at home to know that was the kind of sentence to kick one off. There was no way I was staying in to listen to that, especially after I’d started it all. I climbed out of the dormer window of Jack’s bedroom and slid down onto the lean-to roof, before jumping onto the garage roof and using the oil heating tank at the back to get onto the ground. I stayed round Al’s until I knew everyone at home would be in bed.