David Mark - The Dark Winter

‘All right, love,’ he says, and his voice doesn’t sound like his own. It’s a squeak. Like a rubber-soled boot on wet wood.

There’s a sudden tightness in his chest. He gives her the best grandfatherly smile he can muster, and says goodnight, ignoring the protests from his knees as he pushes himself out of the hardbacked chair and takes three lurching steps to the open door. He pulls himself into the narrow corridor and walks, quicker than he has in years, towards the deck. One of the crew is coming the other way. He nods a smile and starfishes himself against the wall to allow the older man to pass. He mutters something in Icelandic, and gives him a grin, but Fred can’t summon up the strength to remember a language he’s hardly spoken in decades, and the noise he makes as he passes the orange-overalled man is little more than a gargled cough.

He can’t breathe. There’s a pain in his arm and across his shoulders.

Coughing, gasping, he clatters out onto the deck like a fish spilling from a trawl, and with his eyes screwed up shut, takes great lungfuls of the icy, blustering air.

The deck is deserted. To his rear stands the man-made mountain of cargo containers that this super-container vessel will be dropping off in three days’ time. Towards the bow, he can see the little squares of yellow light emanating from the bridge. Halogen lamps cast circles of pale illumination on the rubbery green surface of the deck.

He stares at the waters. Wonders what his mates look like now. Whether their skeletons remain intact, or whether the motion of the sea has torn them apart and mixed them up. He wonders whether Georgie Blanchard’s legs are tangled in with Archie Cartwright’s. The pair never got on.

He wonders what his own corpse should look like.

Drops his head as he considers how he has wasted forty stolen years.

He reaches into his pocket and takes out his cigarettes. It’s been years since he last had to strike a match in the face of a force 5, but he remembers the art of cupping the flame inside his palm and quickly drawing in a deep gulp of cigarette smoke. He leans with his back to the gunwale and looks around, trying to steady his thoughts. Looks at the ragged thumbnail of moon, scything down into a cushion of cloud. Looks at the white ripples on the black water as the cargo ship cuts through the deep waters.

Why you, Fred? Why did you make it back when they didn’t? Why-

Fred never finishes the thought. Never finishes the cigarette. Never gets to lay the wreath and drop the plaque, and say goodbye to eighteen crewmates who never made it back alive.

It feels for a moment as though the ship has run aground. He is thrown forward. Smashes into the gunwale with an impact that drives the air from his lungs and a single, splintered rib through the skin of his chest. Blood sprays from his lips as the strength leaves his legs. He slithers to his knees and then his belly as his hands slip on the wet deck. The shard of rib breaks off on impact with the ground and crimson agony explodes inside him, cutting through the dullness of his wits just long enough for him to open his eyes.

He tries to push himself up. To shout for help.

And then he is being scraped up in strong arms, like a flaking fillet of cod on a hot fish slice. For a moment, a solitary second, he is looking into his attacker’s eyes.

Then there is the feeling of flight. Of quick, graceless descent. Of rushing, cold air. Of wind in his ears, spray at his back.

Thud.

A bone-smashing, lung-crushing impact on the deck of a small, wooden boat, bobbing on water the colour of ale.

His eyes, opening in painful stages, allow his dulled senses a glimpse of the disappearing ship. To feel the rolling, rocking motion of a too-small lifeboat in a giant ocean.

He is too tired to turn his memories into pictures, but as the cold envelops him and the moon seems to wink out, he has a vague memory of familiarity.

Of having done this before.

2.14 p.m., Holy Trinity Square. A fortnight until Christmas.

The air smells of snow. Tastes of it. That metallic tang; a sensation at the back of the throat. Cold and menthol. Coppery, perhaps.

McAvoy breathes deeply. Fills himself up with it. This chilly, complicated Yorkshire air, laced with the salt and spray of the coast; the smoke of the oil refineries; the burned cocoa of the chocolate factory; the pungency of the animal feed unloaded from the super-container at the docks this morning; the cigarettes and fried food of a people in decline, and a city on its arse.

Here.

Hull.

Home.

McAvoy glances at the sky, ribboned with ragged strips of cloud.

Cold as the grave.

He searches for the sun. Whips his head this way and that, trying to find the source of the bright, watery light that fills up this market square and darkens the glass of the coffee shops and pubs which ring this bustling piazza. Smiles as he finds it, safe at the rear of the church, nailed to the sky like a brass plaque: obscured by the towering spire and its shroud of tarpaulin and scaffold.

‘Again, Daddy. Again.’

McAvoy glances down. Pulls a face at his son. ‘Sorry. Miles away.’ He raises the fork and deposits another portion of chocolate cake into the boy’s wide-open, grinning mouth. Watches him chew and swallow, then open his mouth again, like a baby chick awaiting a worm.

‘That’s what you are,’ laughs McAvoy, when it occurs to him that Finlay will find this description funny. ‘A baby bird asking for worms.’

‘Tweet tweet,’ laughs Finlay, flapping his arms like wings. ‘More worms.’

McAvoy laughs, and as he scrapes the last of the cake from the plate, he leans forward and kisses the boy’s head. Fin is wrapped up warm in bobble hat and fleece coat, so McAvoy is denied the delicious scent of his son’s shampooed hair. He’s tempted to whip off the hat and take a deep breath of the mown grass and honeycomb he associates with the boy’s shaggy red head, but it is bitterly cold here, outside the trendy coffee shop, with its silver tables and metal chairs, so he contents himself with tickling the lad under the chin and enjoying his smile.

‘When’s Mammy coming back?’ asks the boy, wiping his own face with the corner of a paper towel and licking his lips with a delightfully chocolate-smeared tongue.

‘Not long,’ replies McAvoy, instinctively glancing at his watch. ‘She’s getting prizes for Daddy.’

‘Prizes. What for?’

‘For being a good boy.’

‘Like me?’

‘Just like you.’

McAvoy leans in.

‘I’ve been really good. Father Christmas is bringing me loads of presents. Loads and loads and loads.’

McAvoy grins. His son is right. When Christmas comes, two weeks from now, Fin will find the equivalent of a month’s salary, wrapped and packaged, beneath the red tinsel and silver branches of the imitation tree. Half the living room of their nondescript new-build semi to the north of the city will be swamped with footballs, clothes and wrestling figures. They started shopping in June, just before Roisin discovered she was expecting again. They can’t afford what they’ve spent. Can’t afford the half of it, considering the expense the New Year will bring. But he knows what Christmas means to Roisin, and has given the credit card the hammering she deserves. She will find a garnet-and-platinum necklace in her own stocking on Christmas morning. A red leather jacket, sized for when she sheds the baby weight. Sex and the City DVDs. Tickets for the UB40 concert at Delamere Forest in March. She’ll squeal and make the noises he loves. Run to the mirror and try on the coat over her baggy T-shirt and swollen, pregnant belly. Fold her pretty, delicate face into smiles, then plaster him with kisses as she forgets that it is a day for children, and that their son has yet to open any of his presents.