The Hope Page 11

Money sat down beside me and offered me his bottle. God knows what it was, though I can tell you now that rumour about us drinking distilled engine oil, that’s all crap. We would if we could figure out how to distil it, but as it is, we make do with what we can steal from the stores or beg from passers-by. Like yourself. You sure you’ve nothing to drink on you? Ah well, never mind.

  I pulled on that bottle like it was my mother’s tit and he had to grab it off me, else I’d have drained it.

  “Gimme that!” he said. “Do a man a favour and he’ll take another ten. I’m Money. Pleased to meet you. You’re new to the stopping game, aren’t you?”

  “How’d you tell?”

  “Clean. You don’t smell bad enough. And your clothes are still white. Hey, were you a doctor?”

  “Chef.”

  “Chef? Wild! Not much chefing to do around here, is there?”

  I had to smile. The man was as crazy as a cage full of lobsters.

  “Not a lot. Pleased to meet you too.”

  We sat together for a bit in silence and finished off the bottle. I tell you, that booze was the finest thing I’d ever drunk. Mind you, I threw up half an hour later, but you tend to do that on an empty stomach.

  “Need something to eat?” Money asked, as if he couldn’t tell.

  “Ten steaks would go down fine.”

  “And when was the last time you saw a steak, eh?”

  I forgot that a lot of the recipes in my book you just can’t make on the Hope any more. We ran out of red meat years ago, though the fishery will keep on going for ever. I think.

  “Never mind. Anything. I’d eat anything. I’d eat my own crap if I could do any.”

  “Got you. Can you walk?”

  “If there’s food at the end, I could run all the way.”

  “Good man. Come with me.”

  Money took me up to this place he called Bart’s. It’s a shop, kind of pawnbroker’s, only it was shut so we had to bang on the door for ages until this guy Bart came out. Crabby old sod on crutches, but he’s got a heart of gold somewhere inside, so rumour has it.

  “Money, Money!” he yelled. “Long time. Got anything for me?”

  “Let’s get this straight, legless. You owe me a favour, right? All I want is dinner for me and the Chef here.”

  Bart looked confused, as if it was impossible he could owe anyone a favour, but he signalled for us to come in. He can’t go very fast. You have to shuffle to follow him, otherwise it would look rude.

  The shop’s full of junk, all covered in dust, things I can’t see why people brought on board – dolls with cracked faces, ludicrous teapots like Arabian castles, some books probably lifted from the library, a wind-up tin monkey, an ugly statue of an ugly cat, a bowl of wax fruit. But Bart knows what’s valuable, what sells, what the upper deck people want when they’ve got too much money. He goes up once a month, sets up a stall and cleans up. He hardly ever comes back with anything except a pocketful of profit.

  Anyhow, he took us round the counter, his crutches thumping on the floor, and we went into a back room. He’d laid out dinner for one and asked me if I’d fetch another couple of plates from a cupboard. While I did, he and Money talked. Bart still couldn’t believe he owed anything but Money convinced him. Something about stored-up credit. I think Bart had given way already since I was getting the plates out, wasn’t I? Finally he said to me: “So you’re a chef, right? OK, cook us a meal.”

  And he pointed me to a cupboard full of tins, all kinds of stuff, and I got to work on a two-ring gas stove. You can imagine this was all a bit of a come-down for me, God’s Chef, but I liked Money and Bart wasn’t such a bad sort either and I desperately wanted to be accepted.

  Not boasting, but I did a pretty fine job, all things considered. Frankfurters can be edible if you smother them in enough hot sauce. Bart belched when he had finished, and that was a compliment, although not as fine as a standing ovation from a dining-hall full of gentlepeople, some of whom were clapping while poison “poisson” worked its way into their bloodstreams and their glands.

  Bart said he was a public servant like I’d been, that it was his duty to make a living from the better-off. Money argued there was nothing degrading in begging, it was just another way of taking money from those who had too much.

  “Begging, pfah!” spat Bart. “Let me tell you about begging. It’s laziness, sheer laziness. Man was meant to work for his living, earn his way, share out the money so that we can all eat and enjoy things. You stoppers” – and at the time I was embarrassed to be included in this – “you sit on your arses all day and get drunk and ask for money. Where’s the skill, the thrill, the hard work in that?”

  “We don’t ask to be stoppers,” said Money, “but if we are, we make the best of it.”

  “Hah! Birdshit!” exclaimed Bart. “I’ll tell you, if I was running the ship, I’d have the lot of you castrated and put to work in the engine room.” But he was grinning. “Come on, Chef. What brought you so low?”

  I told them my story. By the end, tears of laughter were running down their cheeks. “It’s not that funny,” I complained, trying not to laugh too.

  “Twenty-three!” guffawed Bart.

  “And a waiter!” wheezed Money.

  “You’ve got to laugh!” said Bart. “I mean, I only rip them off. You manage to kill them!” He couldn’t stop laughing and Money couldn’t stop wheezing. They kept going until a deep rumble of thunder made them jump.

  “Heh, the engines have finally blown,” said Bart in a low tone.

  “What?” I said.

  “It’s only thunder, Bart.”

  “One day it won’t be,” growled Bart in his best doom-laden voice. He struggled to his feet, wedging a crutch beneath each arm, and shambled into the shop and up to its window, which was a sheet of clear polythene with the shop’s name stuck on in paper letters. “Looks like rain, eh?”

  Money and I joined him as the first heavy drops thudded against the plastic, gathering speed, more and more, drumming down until it was a continuous sound. I thought about stripping off and taking a shower but the others would laugh at me.

  “Night for the Rain Man,” muttered Bart.

  “Oh, come on,” I said, “that’s just a story to frighten children to sleep.”

  “I know,” he said, looking out through the streaming window at the blurred deck.

  We spent the night on the floor of the shop with the rain hissing down outside. Thanks to a full stomach and the effects of Money’s booze (most of which, as I said, had ended up splashed over the deck), I slept the sleep of the just. When morning came we thanked Bart and left. In theory, the rain had stopped, but it dripped from the upper decks in broken streams almost as much as it had poured down during the night. We were soaked by the time we found some sort of shelter, a narrow alley covered over with a tarpaulin Money said he stole from a lifeboat on the outer rim. I still find the idea funny – somewhere there’s a lifeboat so full of rain water that, if anyone uses it, it’ll sink like a stone. This alley was a regular stopper haunt. There were about ten of them – of us – huddling there. I was glad when the rain stopped for good and we could get out. When nine or ten stoppers are gathered together, believe me, you breathe through your mouth and you don’t stay long.

  Sit down, you must be tired standing there. I won’t keep you. Going somewhere? Right, so what have you got to lose? Time? There’s plenty of that.

  Over the weeks, Money taught me everything he knew about survival, which was a lot. I learned how to catch and kill seagulls, and that’s not easy. If you’ve seen one close up, you’ll know they’re big buggers, wingspan as broad as you are tall, and vicious to boot. What you do is you lay out a trail of rubbish, good stuff, crusts and rinds and what have you. One gull will always follow this trail to the bitter end, which is you, hiding round a corner with a chair-leg or stick of some sort.

  Then, you bash it – Wham! – and you keep bashing it until it stops trying to peck your hand off. Money
says bashing it tenderises the meat, but seagulls still taste like shit and even I can’t improve that.

  I also learned how to steal from the stores, which is dead easy if you’re thin (and show me the stopper who isn’t). There are vents leading round the back of the stores where the air from the refrigerators is pumped out. You crawl along these until you get to a grating the size of an upper-deck porthole and you can lift that grating off and squeeze through. Those stores are big and there are about three hundred of them all over the Hope, but they’re careful about checking the food stocks. So there’s an unwritten rule in stopper law that says take only what you need for that day and don’t go too often. If someone took too much or was caught, they’d find those gratings and close them up faster than you can blink, and we’d be lost then. You won’t tell anyone I told you this, will you? I thought you didn’t look the type.

  Money also taught me how to beg, but he said (and it’s true) that this is an inefficient way to live. You’re not allowed on the upper decks. The crew beat you up if they find you, maybe kill you. So you stick to the lower decks, and there’s precious little spare change around here, is there? Look, are you sure you’ve checked your pockets? Well, there’s no harm in asking.

  Once, I went up to the kitchens to see how the boys there were getting on without me. One of the juniors, a snotty-faced little twerp who couldn’t manage bacon and eggs, they’d made him head chef, and he came out the back and saw me hanging around and told me in no uncertain terms to depart. He didn’t recognise me! Isn’t that great? I didn’t mind. I was quite growing to like my life, sitting around the deck with my back against a wall, feeling like part of the ship, get it? Well, it’s a life, isn’t it? I sit and watch the world go by. There are some pretty interesting sorts on the ship. You must have seen that woman in the red plastic raincoat. Actually, man I used to know, called Foster, said he’d screwed her, but I don’t believe him. She used to pass us by quite a lot and I always thought she had a kind of … nobility about her and that getting screwed by anyone was the last thing on her mind. Money used to say to me how she hadn’t a hope. Three kids to feed and no cash and she combs the tips every day and isn’t very good at it. She won’t last.

  All right, all right, I’ll tell you about the Rain Man. It’s not as if my life story’s not interesting by itself but the Rain Man has something to do with it. It was pissing down again one night, like when we were at Bart’s, only this time we were under that tarpaulin with a couple of others, all snuggling up to one another, not because we were keen on each other or anything, but because it’s the only way to survive the night. Shared bodily warmth. Money repeated Bart’s remark about it being a night for the you-know-who. One of the others, Foster, the one I mentioned earlier who said he’d screwed the woman in the red raincoat, he had a glass eye, different colour from his real one, and I think only pretended to be a stopper because he thought it was cool, and he’d spent most of the night telling us about the women he’d laid, he said: “Story has it what the Rain Man is looking for is his soul.”

  Well, I mean, it’s for kids, isn’t it? I asked Foster if he’d ever seen the Rain Man.

  “Um, no… not exactly. But I know a man who has, and he said when it’s pouring the Rain Man wanders along every deck on the ship trying to find his soul, which was taken from him by the Captain.”

  “Well,” I said, proud to get on to my own area of expertise, “I’ve met the Captain and I don’t think he could take anyone’s soul. Or their sole!” And I laughed, only none of them got it because none of them knew like I did that the Captain doesn’t eat fish.

  “I don’t mean it literally,” said Foster impatiently, probably thinking I was the biggest peckerhead he’d ever met.

  “Shut up and go to sleep,” growled Money, and we tried.

  I was actually in the process of nodding off, my ears ringing with the din of the rain, when I felt Money get up and saw him kneel beneath the end of the tarpaulin to take a leak. As I watched, he stopped fumbling with his fly and his body went all sort of rigid, as if he’d found something alive in his underwear, but he wasn’t looking down any more, he was looking out along the deck into the rain. Then he shuffled back and shook me.

  “Chef! Chef! Come and look!”

  I crawled over on all fours wishing I could be allowed just one minute’s good dreaming, and Foster came too, and the other man, and we looked.

  “It’s him!” hissed Money.

  I couldn’t see a thing at first, only sheets of rain falling, dripping, spattering, then the rain took shape, a man’s shape, a man in a long coat walking slowly towards us, taking each step carefully like he didn’t want to slip and fall. His head was turning all round, like this, you know, left and right and up and down, as he walked.

  “Looking for his soul,” whispered Foster.

  “Shut up!” said Money.

  The Rain Man got nearer and nearer, and I tried to make out his face under the brim of his wide hat. It was mostly in shadow but he had a big nose, that I could tell. It was strange, I tell you, but the rain didn’t seem to bounce off him. It sort of went through him, but that’s not right… He wasn’t a shape in the rain, he was the rain. He carved his outline from raindrops, it swept into his body and became him, and he was fluid, no more, a walking waterfall shaped like a man.

  Yes, go on, laugh. I would.

  The Rain Man walked right by us, but still I didn’t get to see his face. I swear as he went by each step went sploosh, sploosh, the sound you make when you walk through a deep puddle, and water cascaded away from his feet and left miniature tidal waves instead of footprints.

  “Christ! Let’s see where he goes,” said Money.

  “Are you mad?” said Foster.

  “Well, what harm can he do us? He’s all water.”

  “About time you took a bath, Money,” I said.

  The other guy thought it wasn’t such a good idea and said he’d stay behind to guard the shelter, like someone was going to attack it, I ask you! Actually, I didn’t think staying behind was that bad an idea because although I took Money’s point about the Rain Man not being able to do any harm I didn’t really believe it, not in my bones. Don’t think Money did either, but that’s the kind of guy he was.

  We came out and the rain drenched our hair and was pouring down into our eyes before we’d gone two steps, so much you had to squint, and I thought we’d lost the Rain Man but Money yelled, “This way!”, and me and Foster took off after him. It was hard to stand up, let alone walk straight, with the walkways slippery beneath you and the stairs treacherous. We were headed downwards, see? Water trickles downwards and so did the Rain Man, going down staircase after staircase to the lowest of the lower decks. And I don’t think I’d ever seen so much rain and it seemed like all the rich bastards upstairs were emptying buckets from half a mile up and laughing as the water picked up speed to come splashing down on our miserable heads. We nearly lost sight of Money but suddenly he stopped and just beyond him I could see the Rain Man had stopped too. We were right at the bottom of the Hope, up to our ankles in water, which was collecting too quickly for the bilges to pump it out straight away.

  Now, as Foster and me got close, we saw Money go up to the Rain Man and something in me wanted to scream, “Don’t touch him! Don’t touch him!”, but I didn’t know why and I don’t think Money would have heard me anyway. It was like he was hypnotised, like he just had to tap that Rain Man on the shoulder and ask him who he was and what he was looking for if it was the last thing he did.

  Which it was. Money put out his hand and the tips of his fingers sank into the Rain Man’s back and water splashed out, as it does when you stick your hand under a tap. This spray of water came out into Money’s face and he jerked back, squinching his eyes shut. When he opened them again, tears came flooding out but the eyeballs were gone and his eyes were only sockets.

  Money opened his mouth and water flooded out of that too, a great gush, his head emptying, and it was coming out o
f his shirtcuffs and over his waistband and from the bottoms of his trouser-legs. His clothes were shrinking inwards and his shape just kind of … deflated, see? His head wrinkled in. All this water coming out, it was him.

  In about a minute, his clothes sagged to the floor. They were dark wet, a heap of six layers of clothes, empty, floating apart. That’s all that was left of Money.

  I know he doesn’t count for much in the big picture, but Money was my friend, perhaps my only friend, and I know he was only a scummy parasite stopper to most people but that didn’t matter to me. And I stood there in shock and felt tears coming down my face, hot in the cold rain.

  Excuse me.

  The Rain Man walked his slippery walk around a corner and I was too shocked to follow but Foster went after him. I think he wanted to see the Rain Man’s face almost as much as I did.

  Eventually I got my act together and gathered up some of Money’s clothes for myself (I think that’s what he would have wanted). Of course, only his outer clothes. I didn’t really trust his shirt or vest. I stuck these under my arm and tried not to think about the water squeezing out of them. I followed after Foster. Round the corner, and I couldn’t see anything, except something small bumped against my boot and then I spotted another bunch of clothing and then I looked down at my feet, and there bobbing in the water was Foster’s glass eye.

  I picked it up and pocketed it, expecting Bart might give me a good rate for it.

  The Rain Man was waiting for me at the end of the walkway, not looking at me but standing there with his back towards me in this hunched position that said, “Come on, come and get me.” I went up close but not enough to touch him because I wasn’t stupid. The water was up to my shins.

  “Face me,” I shouted over the rattle of the rain. “Let me see your face.”

  He didn’t say a thing, but he began to turn round nice and slowly to stop himself from falling over. When I saw his face, a giant key clicked into place inside my head.

  The Rain Man was the man who’d given me the fish all those months before. I didn’t know what to say or do. I didn’t have the right to scream vengeance at him, because I hadn’t exactly treated him like royalty when he came to the kitchens for scraps, and I certainly wasn’t about to beat him up. So I stood there with the rain falling into my eyes and mouth.