Read by Tim Aldrich
Caleb and James met on a whaler out of Hull. Caleb was the younger at the time, but now, after two voyages to the Greenland waters and one to Nova Scotia, and stranded in London, he feels he is the elder. The clatter and roar of multiple voices is too much for James. The slap of wave and rope at sea, even the harsh cry of the storm are a lullaby to him; and it is not land legs he must develop, but a land ear, and he cannot do it.
James was born on that coast, not Hull, but somewhere nearby, Caleb never quite got the sense of it. Caleb does not know where he was born, doesn’t know family. He make friends where he can, scrapes a life – and then James, and a feeling, something he can’t put a name to, but he might call belonging; which sinks into him as sudden and as deep as a harpoon, takes his breath, leaves him feeling wounded and uncertain and alive, in a way that nothing has ever made him feel before.
And here, now, with the stench of the Isle of Dogs in his nostrils and his fingernails unnaturally clean, he doesn’t know how to get them that ship. James has always been the talker, Caleb a safe step behind, ducking his head with a muttered: yessir, aye bo’sun, yes cap’n.
Hunger is starting to make itself known. Caleb hoards their meagre purse, finds them beds in cheap lodging houses, takes James with him to the port every day except this day – this day he can’t rouse him, so he is alone – searching for a ship.
Down on the dock, a muddy white horse – Caleb doesn’t know horses, cannot guess at the breed – a huge, huge beast; the horse is straining to bring up a load from the water’s edge. It must have fallen to have got down there – or perhaps washed ashore. The group of men around them are thickly dressed, multiple layers against the cold, caps pulled down tight against the wind. Caleb knows that they stand out on this dock, He and James, they are men of the sea; these are men of land, their clothes muted browns and greys, against James’ Guernsey of darkest blue, and Caleb’s black great coat – navy once, but soaked so often in grease and blood and salt that it has lost any sense of colour and really will stand up on its own.
And then there is his skin. Black as Newgate’s knocker he overheard one lodging keeper say, as the door swung shut in his face; but he is not exactly a rarity here, the Thames washes up all sorts, every creed and colour sets foot on the dock, not usually for long, but some stay, a rich tidewash all along the banks of the river, Limehouse, Silvertown, Rotherhithe… So it is not that which makes the landsmen stare out from under their grey caps, and makes Caleb long to disappear.
The ship is huge, a passenger ship, but not a smart one, not here; and not the least use to him, and he is about to turn away from the stares when he realises that the horse is pulling a body from the water.
He cannot drag his eyes away, the man – boy? looks so familiar, could almost be James, and his breathing gets so he can barely control it at that thought.
Canada bound, the old fella in the darkest cap says, rifling the pockets for identity and finding a tightly wrapped oilskin parcel. Slipped and fell on the way up. He tips his head at the boat.
Canada – Caleb’s eyes widen at the thought – why not Canada?
Boat’ll have to stay now, the old fella says, til the crowner’s done.
Nah, says the one in charge, bowlered and whiskered, taking the papers. They’ll not keep them for this’un. Not if they cast off sharpish. This ain’t no one to be missed, one of the mission lads, I ’spect and if his papers ain’t on the body, no reason to tie the boat up, is there?
He rolls the package tight. Caleb imagines them on that boat, James tucked up safe, as a passenger maybe, him working his passage in the engine room; and his clean-nailed fingers itch to have that rolled package in his grip.
Bowler pulls his arm back and launches the papers in an arc that ends with barely a splash.
Caleb stifles a groan: in his heart his feet race back to the small eating house where he left James staring into a cold coffee.
He turns away, hunching against the cold, his mind latching onto words half heard. Mission. He had seen a building, with that word over the door, not three streets away, had turned his shoulder to the well-meaning man with the leaflets on the corner by the public house, used to doing for himself, doing for him and Jamie. He stops walking and looks about him, hating London, and his heart burning for the salt of the sea. He notes the street he is on, and turns again, looking down the narrow vista to the river, and the great shadow of the passenger ship. And he does run back to the eating house, His feet beat against the cobbles, although they want to dance to the rhythm of a thrumming deck. His mind is aglow with possibilities, and impossibilities.
James, Jamie – Canada?!
James looks up – and vistas of tall trees light in his eyes, and he is up on his feet – grabbing the hand Caleb does not even realise he has held out.
Canada! James laughs, Yes! He has been told tales of men walking across rivers on the trunks of trees, just as his grandfather once told him it was possible to walk on the backs of herring in the northern bay where he was born.
If they can get to Canada there is a life to be made out in the cold dark forest, made, not scraped, not squandered – so now there is a plan – not much of a plan, but an end point, and better than staring at bitter coffee with his hands over his ears, trying to hold out against the discordant anguish of London’s sour uncertainties. With something to hold on to, no matter how uncertain; he can, at last, tune London out.
(c) Cherry Potts, 2016
Cherry Potts has published two short story collections, Mosaic of Air and Tales Told Before Cockcrow, and the novel The Dowry Blade. She runs Arachne Press and has edited three Liars’ League anthologies including the award-winning Weird Lies. She runs South London live lit event, The Story Sessions.
Tim Aldrich is a founding Liar and now occasional host. Following a hiatus marooned in the cultural wasteland that is Oxford, he can be a Liar more often now he’s back living in London’s Isle of Dogs. He first performed as a student alongside Jim Cogan in Calderon’s The Mayor of Zalamea.
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