An Open Swimmer (6 page)

‘Two pounds if it's an ounce.'

‘Metric now, mate,' he said, happy for a moment.

‘Same in metres.' Sean laughed. ‘How long since we had one o' these?'

‘Dongara.'

‘When you speared that ray.'

‘We all have our moments.'

Jerra propped the bucket in the flames, chuckling at the memory of Sean being towed along the bottom by the startled foot-mat of a ray.

‘Were there any more?'

‘A few.'

‘Should have got them.'

‘Yeah.'

The water stirred, clusters of bubbles at the edges. Sticks and flames bone-cracked. It boiled.

‘Put 'em in.' Jerra got up.

‘Where you going?'

‘The annexe. Gonna tidy up.' The rattle of limbs thrashing. Flesh. Boiling. He closed the flap.

A verse almost came to him in his half-sleep. He held his breath while it fumbled around inside him . . . 
all dressed in clobber white . . . An' as their snowy forms go steppin' by . . . 
Something, something. It escaped him.

Pickets, tickets, wickets. Crickets: the clicking tongues of a drumful of crabs, each their own clock, ticking. The smell of crayfish twitched in the blankets. He opened his eyes.

‘Funny we never saw any of those crays before,' said Sean with his chin on the pillow. He had been shaving. Orange and yellow firelight flickered on the window.

‘They were hidden away.'

‘Odd colour.'

‘They're called golddiggers. A southern cray.'

‘Strange so close in.'

Jerra had a few ideas why they were so close in. Like the boat being loaded with a catch when it went down.

‘How come you're not diving?' he asked Sean.

‘Oh, it gets a bit silly after a while. Swimming in circles.'

‘Thought you liked it. You were crazy on it, once.'

‘Oh, it's the same stuff.'

‘You always see something different. It's never the same.'

‘Who wants to swim in circles the rest of their life?'

The moon was a pale fillet. Jerra saw it in the hairs on his arm. Sean's eyes were pink, blinking.

‘Ever thought about diving to the bottom more often? In the caves. Always different. Another world.'

‘Taking it a bit seriously, aren't you?'

‘What do you take seriously any more?'

‘There's other things in the world.'

‘Yeah?'

‘Fish! It's not the only bloody thing there is.'

‘Oh yeah?'

‘For you, maybe, and your father, and the crazy ol' bastard up the hill, but not me.'

‘We don't appreciate the
better
things, I know.'

‘Arr.' Sean laughed.

‘None of which you could think of for the shares in yer head an' the shit in yer heart. What are you now?'

‘Talking like a loony!'

‘Everyone's a fucken
loony.
A loony. Someone that doesn't suck the crap is a loony. You learned orright. You got taught well, mate.'

‘So? You learnt fish. Ah, yes.'

‘An' you ate 'em. You lived it. It was the only family you had, mate – ours! Where was yours! Flittin' around EU-rope havin' a good time!'

‘Fish! Fish! Shit!'

‘Didn't hear you complain. Ever.'

‘Yer too obsessed to hear.'

‘That what you told yer old lady? Never gave her a bloody moment. Oh, yeah, she was a bloody first-class loony.'

Sean laughed hard. ‘And a bloody idiot, Jerra. Like you.'

Jerra shifted back, pulling even breaths. Then he knew that Sean didn't know about him and her. That would have been the moment of a lifetime, an opportunity Sean would not have missed if he had known and been waiting.

‘You talk in your sleep, you know.'

‘So what.'

‘Oh —'

‘Come on.'

‘You called for your mother.' He waited one second. ‘“Mum”, you said.'

‘Get fucked, Jerra,' said Sean quietly. ‘Just get fucked.'

Jerra pulled the blanket up. It was hot and the blanket itched where he sweated. His face itched with triumph and shame.

‘Sean doesn't love his Mum.'

‘Yes, he does.'

‘Has he ever said it?'

‘Nah, boys don't say it.'

‘I've heard you say it.'

‘Well, I'm a bit strange, 'cause I hang around with you.'

‘Yes, I'll bet,' said Auntie Jewel, sipping her lemonade that smelled funny, looking out over the quay.

In his dream in the half-stern shuddered with all the fish in the ocean, living in the skeleton that had grown a skin again. He swam off the edge, looking for the cutting edge of bow. It was blue for ever; he blacked without reaching bottom.

Walking, next morning.

A glimpse only, but he was sure. The tree grew an arm which disappeared suddenly. A crackle of leaves, the outline at the crest of the dune. Enough to give you the creeps. The ragged shirt was unmistakable.

All morning Jerra walked the same arc of beach, guiltily picking over the weed, uncovering tiny new things, textures, smells. He felt the corrugated skin of a shell, different shades of white and black in the sand, the minuscule air holes left in the wet sand by the sand crabs that came out and tattled around in the dark with their run-stop-run-stop movements, and disappeared in the day, buried in the wet sand of the shore.

He tried his poem again. He'd call it ‘No', just to satisfy the tree.

NO

All the men . . .

All the stuffed men? ‘Stuffed' was no good; not poetical enough. ‘Pushed'? ‘Cut'? He thought of whaling and fishing for a moment, and the old man's song that he couldn't really remember. Bollocks. Bollocks to the rowlocks. That's how he felt: balls to the wall. He tried the poem again.

NO

All the severed men.

As Jerra turned again to walk back, the old man tumbled down the dune at the end of the beach. Jerra could hear the rattly breath.

‘Son! Son! Aren't you gonna come back home an' see yer Mum? She'll be pleased, orright. Geez, you've grown. “Born of . . . fire”, eh.'

‘What?'

He really stank this time. His hands were filthy, covered in heavy black flies.

‘She'll take me back, she'll forgive me, no one will laugh, she'll love —' 

Jerra stood back. The old man was peering into his face, but the eyes weren't there. Focused elsewhere. He stomped, moving around and back, slapping his thighs.

‘You orright?'

‘They'llcomesoonif yerdon't comeandseeer she'llbe surprised we'llbe altogetherbutwegottahurry!' The eyes were gone. There were pieces of bark in his beard.

‘Who's coming?' Jerra laughed. ‘Must be a gala thing every time somebody turns up.'

‘Nnono! Yerdoanunnerstan! Sheelbringitallback, floatitagain!'

‘Who? Float it? Who?'

‘Quick, quick.'

Jerra kicked at the shells and the little air holes. The old man was hobbling up the dune after somebody else. Jerra had his own problems.

‘Alistair MacLean?' Sean asked, smiling dryly.

‘So?'

‘Shit.'

‘Thought you'd like him.'

‘Alistair Mac-bloody-cLean?'

‘Makes millions.'

In a tree this time. Sleeping in a tree, wedged in the fork beneath the umbrella of twigs and leaves. He decided not to go close. The old sod might fall, he thought.

‘I just can't understand it.'

They argued about Alistair MacLean again.

‘Am not again.'

‘Same plots shuffled differently each time.'

‘. . .'

‘Same faces.'

Jerra drew joining triangles in the dust on the roof. A diamond. Grains settled on the blanket.

‘Nothing changes. It doesn't get any better – or worse.'

‘Just talked yourself up yer own arsehole!'

‘Bullshit. How?'

‘What's history? You read
that
,
and stay awake a lot of the time. Don't talk to me about repetition!'

Sean fell back on the pillow. Jerra switched the yellow light out. Probably was crap, he thought, but you had to say something. Anyway, he'd seen repetition,
and
the bastards had gotten away with it, like father like son.

. . . 
A tart I knoo a 'undred years ago
 . . 
.

He knew that line.

Next day, he dived in the bowels of the wreck.

He came up with a writhing cray in each hand, heavy tails punching water. Near the surface he let them go. They spidered down, straight for the slit, disappearing into the black, feelers last. It was too much like grave-robbing.

Late in the afternoon, he went in search of the old man; he needed to talk, and probably to listen. The humpy was empty, showing no sign of being slept in for a while. The coals were old. Jerra saw the magazine pictures – 
National Geographic – 
stuck on the walls, yellow, ragged things with touched-up teeth and gums.

The bunk had blankets. A tin full of whale oil stood on a box in the corner, and bent hooks, knots and twists of nylon and gut hung from nails in the beams which held back the ply walls, which, in turn, were clawed by weeds from the outside and grizzled with the skeletons of mussels and barnacular flakes like so many scales. A sliver of mirror stood against the windowsill, half obscuring a brown curlicue of lace; it cast a blade of light onto the Perspex window. The window, distorted only slightly, was caked with fat and fingerprints.

Out on the little beach, gulls huddled white in the sand. Jerra sat on the mouldy bunk and picked up the empty spine of a Bible, the cover of which was soft and green with mildew, with the blue vein of a marker still intact. Inside, catching on the seam of the binding, were a few tiny slips of paper, fragments cut crookedly which Jerra smoothed with a thumb.

Jerra turned them over. Only half-words on the back. He closed the empty spine, thoughtful, and put it back on the floor. What floor there was to the place was deckboards, he knew. A shattered, watermarked compass, big as a head, stood on a crate by the bed. The fireplace was a cairn of limestone poking through the roof where splinters of light pierced the warped, black tin.

He waited. The old man did not come.

‘I came over yesterday,' said Jerra, unbending the wire.

‘I know.'

‘Where were you?'

‘Around. What's that?'

‘Wire. I found it on the beach. Thought you might want it.'

‘What for?'

‘The loose tin.'

‘Yeah.'

‘It'll leak, this winter.'

‘Yeah. I'll caulk it up, somehow.'

Jerra tossed it next to the old man. It coiled again, how he found it.

‘Why didn't you want your ringbolt?'

‘How would you like livin' with a corpse?'

‘Eh?'

‘Look, son, you know what I've done. They'll come out an' get me sooner or later. You can't do somethin' like that an' expect to get away with it.'

‘Your wife?'

‘Confessed a million bloody times, but no one's ever heard it. Heard nothin'. The screams, the boards crumblin' and the roof groanin' . . . but I'm not gonna just let 'em take me. Orready done me time, I 'ave. I got burnt, too, you know. Standin' there all night. Pouring diesel on. Just white an' black when the sun come up, again. Smell of diesel, clothes . . . can't give 'em what they want most . . . they ruin what yer have . . . that boat was our marriage. Only thing bindin' us. Then you ruin what's left once yer alone with yer conscience. So. I've said it.' He laughed and bit the heel of his thumb.

Jerra would have spat.

‘Well, I'm not going to tell anyone. I promise.'

‘Arr.'

‘Bloody beans,' muttered Sean. He tore the label off and put the can in the flames.

‘Eatin' like the poorer classes, eh?' Jerra said pointlessly.