The Hope Read online

  The Waste Reception Centre had once been a hole the size of a swimming pool, one of many on board, with a collapsible bottom leading down chutes as big as hallways to the recycling plant deep down in the hold, where what was good could be used again and what was bad could be spat out into the unending ocean. At least, that had been the plan. Inevitably, the system had broken down. Reusable material soon became less and less reusable (everything finite, everything finding its limit) and the chutes began to pack up, the piles of rubbish and filth swelling until they burst out of their pores. No one on the Hope could be bothered to pretend that one day the mess would be cleared up, although janitorial divisions came along every so often to rearrange the dirt and take away a couple of sackfuls for dumping overboard.

  There was a joke (like most jokes on the Hope, not an especially funny one) that went: What comes once a year and isn’t a birthday? A janitor.

  There was another joke, this one about the Captain, related to the one about the janitor, but more involved and somewhat disrespectful.

  Mary’s windfall went like this. After a few minutes of investigation, wading ankle-deep in boxes, broken bottles, scraps of peel, books without covers, clouds of forlorn flies, turning over the blank faces of jigsaw pieces to discover the pattern and the picture underneath, she found a small cardboard carton. It was promisingly weighty. The seagulls that strutted over the tip squawked at her in frustration. Mary sat down where she had found the carton, willing herself not to get too excited yet, not yet, but all the same feeling loved and loving and humbled.

  She broke a fingernail as she struggled with the lid of the carton. The staples popped and the flaps of the lid flew up like ugly petals. Inside tin circles gleamed at her. Hunched over, stinking, with the carton in her arms, Mary began to weep and giggle at the same time. There was ham, processed peas, carrots, raspberries… Mary did not dare wonder how anyone could have overlooked all this, because to do so placed a gift from God into a disappointingly human frame of reference. Someone had smiled on her, that was all, on vile, filthy, worthless her.

  She headed back to the cabin struggling to resist the urge to skip like a schoolgirl. The seat of her raincoat was wet and smeared.

  She thought of the children as she ran cradling this true happiness in her arms, and then she thought of the Man and the memory did not seem so crowded with shame and pain any longer. No surprise, then, that she had taken that stranger to be the Man, because the Man had become a distorted memory, an image beneath water, infuriated.

  Mary had a charm against his evil eye – the carton. Yet a small voice whispered privately to her that nothing lasts for ever.

  Certain areas of the Hope, almost inevitably on the lower decks, you simply did not enter unless you belonged there or you were clinically insane or both. Mary’s happiness was a white and blinding thing and it made her take a left when she should have taken a right. She ran a few steps before she realised her error. The walls were filthier here and the turbines louder, although there was no apparent reason why this should be. Gangplanks and walkways colluded overhead to shut out most of the sky, although the rain managed to insinuate itself and dribble down the walls in streams like thin, twitching veins. Long chains hung lazily down, measuring with their swinging the Hope’s massive lumbering through the waves. They clinked against each other. A nearby service light buzzed as if a fly was trapped behind its glass.

  There were footsteps behind her. The carton felt heavy in her arms, the carrier-bag unnecessarily bulky, its plastic handles cutting into her hand. The turbines growled distantly and the chains clinked and the light buzzed.

  “Hey, it’s a scarlet woman!”

  “Ha, ha, that’s a good ’un!”

  “What have we got there, miss? Looks heavy.”

  “Carry it for you?”

  How many of them were there? Two, three?

  “Looks like food, boys. Looks like dinner.”

  “With afters thrown in!”

  The small voice inside her piped up again, suggesting that she deserved this for being too happy. She wished (and hated herself for wishing) that the Man had been here. If the Man had been there, he would have seen these creatures off with a punch to the jaw, a stiff uppercut, a blow to the stomach… “Take that, you ruffians!” And perhaps this was the reason he had abandoned her, to leave her splayed and vulnerable to life.

  A hand grabbed her shoulders.

  “Look at us, woman,” was hissed in her ear, a parody of intimacy. As she obeyed the instruction, a corkscrew seemed to twist and tighten in her belly.

  “Ugly bitch, in’t she?”

  “Smells too.”

  The combined ages of all three could not have totalled over fifty. They had fashionably severe crewcuts and fashionably bulky epaulettes. One wore a sailor’s hat. Another, the eldest by about a year and probably the leader, had an earring shaped like an anchor and his earlobe was puffy and red around it. He took his hand off her shoulder.

  “You’re so young,” she murmured.

  “Young! Ha!” scorned the one with the hat.

  “Old enough for you, dear,” said the eldest, grinning and nuzzling up to Mary. “Are you going to let me fuck you?”

  “Go on, Popeye!”

  “Shall I, lads?” said Popeye, playing up to his fan club.

  “Fuck her brains out, mate.”

  Something like poison welled up inside Mary from the part of her that was Shitshoes, rubbish-tip scavenger (or Waste Retrieval Expert, if you like), she who had been abandoned by the Man, and it spat itself out of her mouth: “You couldn’t fuck a porthole.”

  She could hardly believe she had said it. Nor could they. Popeye’s face registered astonishment and when his mates started to jeer the astonishment turned to livid rage. He leaned forward and struck the side of her face with a half-clenched fist. She should have told him she was used to humiliation. Because his fist had not been fully clenched, it hurt him more that it hurt her. The force, however, sent her crashing against the wall. Droplets of rainwater pattered on her raincoat.

  “Hit her again!”

  “Shall I?”

  “Yeah, hit her again! Go on!”

  Mary had dropped neither carton nor bag. She was proud of herself for that. She mumbled, “You couldn’t fuck a porthole,” again. She was not too proud about that.

  It had the desired effect. Popeye hit her once more, a couple of grunting punches to her hips which her raincoat managed to baffle. As there was no way out of this, no obvious salvation, Mary felt calm and resigned.

  Hit me, she thought, but don’t steal my prize, my magic charm.

  Popeye aimed blows at her arms and back, kicked her calf a few times, but she clung to the tins of food and they were reassuringly solid.

  “Kill the bitch!”

  Mary loved the children.

  “Fuck the bitch!”

  She loved the children.

  “Kill the bitch!”

  Popeye came away panting and pressed himself against the opposite wall.

  “Just catching my breath, lads,” he gasped, “then I’ll fuck her. We’ll all fuck her.”

  “She doesn’t make a sound, does she?” said the one with the hat.

  “She will, Billy. She’ll scream when I’m shafting her.”

  They all laughed, even Mary, because she found something quite amusing in Popeye’s grotesque imagination. He pushed himself off the wall and cocked his head to one side and stuck out his ribcage.

  “Want some more?”

  Mary raised her face.

  Someone asked, “Do you know?”, and she was aware of a thin figure somewhere in the corner of her vision. Someone else, one of the boys, breathed out a “Jesus Christ…” and the other voice asked, “Do you know?” again, the thin man’s voice, pitched somewhere between an ache and a shriek.

  “Look at those fucking scars,” hissed Billy with the hat.

  “Do you know?”

  Mary, not understanding what was happening b
ut sensing a shift in fear, seized the opportunity and ran. She heard Popeye behind her saying, “No, we don’t know,” most but not all of his cockiness gone, and this was followed by a swift and abrupt crack (head meets steel – guess which wins). She found Billy running with her but they were like animals before a forest fire, caring nothing about anything except the heat at their heels. From further away now came a yelp and another crack. Billy disappeared up a staircase connecting to the above deck, and Mary ran on alone.

  Sophie’s eyes nearly popped out of their sockets when she saw Mary closing the cabin door behind her carrying an armful of box that looked as if, could it be, could it be … food. Mary herself could barely speak with the confusion of ecstasy and terror she felt. At last she managed to say: “Adam, Sophie, put your coats on and go out and play.” Mark was too ill to do anything but sit and stare and rock on his haunches. “We’re going to have a banquet.”

  Adam and Sophie had never moved so quickly in their lives. It occurred to them that the sooner they started playing, the sooner they might finish and come back for the food.

  Mary called after the two fast-disappearing children: “Be back in about an hour, but be careful. Don’t go too far and don’t talk to strangers!” She was delighted they were happy enough to pay no attention to her warnings. The thin man seemed just too distant to be a threat.

  In fact, Adam and Sophie did not go far at all, only round the corner, where they sat in the rain and boasted who could eat the most food. Adam said he should have the lion’s share as he was the biggest and a boy but Sophie objected, saying that Mark deserved most because he was so ill. Adam thought girls were silly, always being nice to weak people, but eventually he agreed that Mark should have a tiny, incy-wincy bit more than everyone else. Under normal circumstances, this argument would have been an excuse for total war, but today, with food so close like a peace-keeping force, it was merely a brief territorial skirmish.

  Mary went to Mark’s bunk and took his thin hand in her thin hand, and looking at him she had a brief, vague, chilling recollection of the thin man and of Billy saying, “Look at those fucking scars,” and she let the memory drop.

  “See that box, Marky? We’ll eat tonight and you’ll be all better soon.”

  Saliva dribbled from the corner of Mark’s mouth. Mary looked into his eyes for a moment (nobody home), squeezed his hand, smiled, kissed his knee, reached up, touched his hot cheeks and dabbed at the spittle with a fingertip.

  She clambered into her raincoat and went round to Lil’s, two cabins down the walkway.

  She knocked. After some time, Lil opened the door and her expression slid from pleasant to indifferent.

  “Oh, Mary, it’s you. What can I do for you?”

  Lil had a smear of blue under each eye and a smear of red over her lips. A man’s voice came from within: “Who is it, pussywillow?”

  Pussywillow?

  “I’ve got company,” she told Mary out of one side of her mouth so that the company would not know he was being referred to as company. “Can’t you come back later?”

  “I want to borrow some things.”

  “You’re always borrowing things, Mary. I never see them again.”

  “Yes, you do,” said Mary, as reasonably as possible. “I gave you back your dish last month.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  There was no point in arguing.

  But hands slipping round that fat neck and crushing the life out, oh God don’t let it come to that.

  “Who is it?” asked Company. Mary could smell incense escaping out through the doorway around Lil.

  Lil answered over her shoulder: “Nobody. I won’t be a minute, darling.” She fixed her eyes upon Mary, all pretensions to civility gone. “Will you go away if I lend you what you want?”

  “Of course. Can I borrow a knife and a pestle and mortar … please?”

  Lil tutted and disappeared into the cabin. Everyone knew how Lil got hold of nice curtains and things for the kitchen, and Mary decided she would rather become a stopper than stoop that low. Company loomed up half-dressed in the doorway and glanced at Mary, took her in with a sleepy nod, and returned into the darkness giving no other sign that he marked her existence. Lil came out with the utensils and plopped them into Mary’s hands.

  “Bring them back tomorrow. Clean.”

  The door clunked shut. Mary heard Lil say, “Useless bitch,” probably louder than she intended and heard Company laugh a lewd answer. She tried to forget it.

  Back in her cabin, she ranged the tins out in precise positions on the table, laying the knife and pestle and mortar beside them. Her tin-opener no longer worked properly. She had to make a series of holes around the lid and cut herself twice in the process.

  She put the circle of each lid in a neat pile to one side. Mouthwatering smells rose up to enchant her and her stomach grumbled, not unpleasantly. She solemnly slurped the contents of the ham tin out on to a dish. It was moulded in a foetus shape, plugged with aspic. Thin sauce seeped around it. The peas were the colour of seaweed, the carrots of a uniform size and orangeness.

  She took the ham and sliced it into pinky-grey wafers, perfectly round. She placed four equal numbers of slices and tidy piles of peas and carrots on four plates (all but one cracked, a set the Man had given her years ago). The smell was unbearably tempting, heady.

  Mary placed a setting on each side of the square table, a knife and a fork either side of each plate. Mark watched her without interest. His belly button, pushed out by his swollen abdomen, was as large as the tip of a thumb.

  Mary began to prepare the raspberries. Their syrup was dark red.

  She had just finished by the time Adam and Sophie charged in, out of breath and wet-haired. They stopped and stared at the table, then at Mary. She had washed herself and, following Lil’s example, had put on some make-up, the little she still had. Sophie said, “Mummy, you look pretty,” and it was so matter-of-fact and yet the most beautiful thing Mary had heard in her life. She leaned down and kissed Sophie and then Adam, who squirmed away and shrugged off his coat.

  “Wash yourselves, you two. There’s still some of this week’s water left.” They ran to the basin.

  Mary lifted Mark lightly off the top bunk and sat him at the table. He was weak and the feast in front of him seemed to dwarf him. Mary knew he would hardly eat a scrap. No matter.

  Mary, Adam and Sophie sat down. Mary mumbled through a grace, then they set to.

  Surely this was heaven. There were no words for their full mouths, no language for their tongues. The meal was a protracted moment outside time. Even the Hope’s turbines no longer turned for them. Perhaps the Hope was drifting on momentum alone, floating powerless on the waves and tides and currents of the unending ocean. Each cold-chewed mouthful sent her further along.

  Mary slipped a few forkfuls past Mark’s lips and he swallowed dumbly. Was she imagining it or did his eyes look less glazed? Deep inside them, was there a flicker of life?

  Too soon, all the plates were empty and licked clean.

  Such bad manners! thought Mary.

  The service light outside the cabin came on, announcing nightfall, and Mary got up to draw the curtains across the portholes. She found a candle in a drawer, lit it and put out the electric lights. In its flickering she thought the children resembled angels with their hair tinged gold and the glow of a kind of bliss on their faces.

  “What’s next? asked Adam.

  “Raspberries. Special raspberries. Clear up the plates, Adam.” He did so, hoping it might earn him a portion larger than his sister’s, while Mary produced four bowls of raspberries swimming in syrup.

  “Wait,” she said, “before you eat, I’m going to feed Mark.” Sophie gave a small “Hmph!” but obeyed, because waiting for food always made it taste better.

  Mary pushed spoonfuls into Mark’s mouth until the syrup trickled thickly down his chin.

  “All right, you can eat now, you two.”

  For Adam and Soph
ie, there were seconds of mouth-cramming sweetness. Mary picked up her spoon and ate.

  Later, when the children were tucked up and Mary had told them a story about a princess and a pea which she vaguely remembered the Man telling once, she said, “Goodnight. And mind you get to sleep straight away, or the Rain Man will get you,” at which Sophie squealed in delighted horror and Adam expressed his contempt for such childish nonsense. Mary sat in a chair and watched them and watched them, until tears of love sprang to her eyes.

  After a couple of hours, Sophie woke complaining of a stomach ache and Mary hugged her on her lap, saying with a laugh: “You’ve eaten too much, little piggy.”

  Sophie began to cry and this woke Adam. He too had a stomach ache. Mark slept so still his breathing was inaudible. Mary felt a twinge in her own stomach. The candle, burning low into a mesa of wax, guttered and made the shadows dance.

  A few minutes later, Sophie was sick down the front of Mary’s dress, leaving a bitter red stain.

  “It’s just the raspberries,” said Mary. She felt weak and warm and sick and loving. Mark was no longer breathing.

  Sophie shat blood down Mary’s leg and died a few minutes later in her arms. Adam was whimpering.

  It had come to this.

  On the shelf was the mortar and in it there was a layer of dust like a pale green sand.

  Mary’s guts contracted with the wrongness inside them. The candle went out and sudden darkness hid them all. Mary thought of the Man, how she had met him, how he had won her, how he had come to her one night, how she had loved the children he brought with him as if they were her own, how she had promised to be a mother to them, how he had promised to come back one evening and never did.