David Mark - The Dark Winter

The old man looks up, and for a moment it feels as though he is staring through the wrong end of a telescope. The reporter is forty years away.

‘Mr Stein?’

A warm, tender hand on his bony knee.

‘Can you share your memories of that moment?’

It takes a physical effort of will to drag himself into the present.

He blinks.

Tells himself, with an old man’s fear of losing his memories, to get it together.

You’re still here , he tells himself. Still living .

‘Mr Stein? Fred?’

You’re alive , he tells himself, again. The supertanker Carla . Seventy miles off the Icelandic coast. One last interview, here in the galley, with its stink of fried food and burned coffee, its diesel and sea-spray; the deep, bass-note hum of unwashed men and wet wool.

So many memories …

He blinks again. It’s becoming a habit. There should be tears , he thinks. Deserves tears, this.

He sees her properly. Sitting forward on the hardbacked chair like a jockey on a horse. Holding the microphone in front of his face like she’s a toddler who wants him to lick her lolly.

Closes his eyes and it hits him like a wave.

For an instant, he is a young man again, starting an eighteen-hour shift, pulling on a jumper stiff with fish guts and slime. He’s warming his hands on a mug of tea when he’s not spooning enough porridge into his gob to fill his belly. He’s hurting. Trying to convince himself his hands are his own. He’s hearing the skipper’s voice. The urgency of his cries. He’s swinging the hook. The hatchet. Chopping at the ice. Hacking it free in lumps that could stove your skull in if you weren’t quick on your feet. He’s feeling the ship begin to go …

‘The sound of the wind,’ he says, and in his coat pocket he feels his fingers make the sign of the cross, genuflecting on the smooth, silky surface of the packet of Benson and Hedges. It’s an old habit, the residue of a Catholic upbringing.

‘Can you describe it for us?’

‘It was like being in a house on a bare moor,’ he says, closing one eye. ‘The wind was coming from all sides. Howling. Roaring. Banging. It was like it was out to get us. I was vibrating with it. Like one of those tuning forks. I could feel the vibrations coming through the deck, and I was stood stock-still, frozen to the bloody spot.’

She nods to her cameraman, and motions to keep going. He’s good value for money, this nice old chap in his charity-shop suit and Hull Kingston Rovers tie. Coping pretty well, considering. Handling the cold better than she is. Got better sea-legs, she’ll give him that. Better constitution, too. She’s barely kept a meal down since they hit this weather front, and it’s not helping that the only room on this supposed supertanker that’s big enough for her, the cameraman and the boom, is the greasy, food-spattered kitchen. Galley, she corrects herself, with a journalist’s particularity.

‘Go on, Mr Stein.’

‘If I’m honest, love, it was the boots,’ says the old man, looking away. ‘My mates’ boots. I could hear them on the deck. They were squeaking. They sounded all rubbery on the wood. I’d never heard it before. Eight years on the trawlers and I’d never heard the sound of footsteps. Not over the engines and the generators. Did that night, though. Wind dropped just long enough for me to hear them running. Kind of it, eh? Malicious bastard. It was like it was getting its breath back for the battering that was to come. And I was stood there, thinking: “I can hear their boots.” And forty years later, that’s what I remember. Their bloody boots. Can’t bear to hear it now. Won’t go out if it’s raining. I hear a boot squeak on a wet surface and I’m on my knees. Don’t even like thinking about them. That’s what I wasn’t sure about on this trip. It’s not the waves. Not the bloody weather. It’s the thought of hearing some welly boots on a wet deck and feeling like it never went away …’

The reporter is nodding now. Caroline. Thirty-odd. Big wooden earrings and hair like a nine-year-old boy. Nothing special to look at, but confident and bright as a button. Newsreader make-up. London accent and an expensive ring or three on fingers that had been manicured at the start of the trip, but which are beginning to look a little chipped and patched-up now.

‘Then it started up again,’ he says. ‘It was like being in a tin shed and somebody beating on it with a cricket bat. Worse than that. Like being on a runway with a hundred planes taking off. Then the waves started rolling in on us. The spray was turning to ice when it hit the air, so it was like being stabbed with a million needles all at once. My face and hands were agony. I thought my ears were being pushed into my head. I was numb. I couldn’t stand up. Couldn’t take a step in the direction I wanted. Was just tumbling around on the deck, bumping and banging around. A bloody pinball, that’s what I were. Rolling about, waiting for it all to stop. I must have broken a few bones during all that but I don’t remember it hurting. It was like my senses couldn’t take it all in. So then it was just noise and cold. And this feeling that the air was tearing itself apart.’

She’s happy , he thinks. Loving this. And he’s quite proud of himself too. It’s been forty years since he told this story without a pint in his hand, and the mug of tea he’s gripping in one plump, pink-marbled fist has been allowed to go cold without once reaching his lips.

‘So, when was the order given to abandon ship?’

‘It’s all very confused. It was so dark. The lights went off the second we hit the rocks. You ever seen snow and spray in the dark? It’s like being inside a busted TV. You can’t stand upright, neither. Don’t know which way’s up …’

He snatches a hand to his cheek. Catches a tear. He looks at it, sitting there accusingly on a broken, cracked knuckle. He hasn’t seen his own tears in years. Not since the wife died. They’d snuck up on him then, too. After the funeral. After the wake. After they’d all gone home and he was clearing away the plates and chucking crusts and crisps in the bin. Tears had come like somebody had opened a sluice. Had fallen for so long that he was laughing by the end of it, amazed at himself, standing over the washing-up bowl and fancying he had a tap either side of his nose: emptying himself of the ocean he had given up for her.

‘Mr Stein …’

‘We’ll leave it there, love. Have a break, eh?’ His voice is still gravelly. Rolled in cigarettes and bitter. But he seems to be shaking, suddenly. Shaking inside his suit with its shiny sleeves and worn knees. Sweating, too.

Caroline seems about to protest. To tell him that this is why they’re here. That any display of emotion will help show the viewers how deeply this has affected him. But she shuts herself up when she realises that it would sound like she was telling a sixty-three-year-old man to cry like a baby for the cameras.

‘Tomorrow, love. After the whatsit.’

‘OK,’ she says, and indicates to her cameraman that he should stop filming. ‘You know what’s happening, yes?’

‘I’m sure you’ll keep me right.’

‘Well, the captain has agreed to give us an hour at the spot where you went down. We’ll be up against it, and the weather isn’t going to be anything special, but we’ll have time for the ceremony. Wrap up warm, eh? Like we said, there will be a simple wreath and a plaque. We’ll film you passing them over the side.’