Vanessa Haan - The Restless Sea

‘Going to starve us out?’

‘Don’t seem to make a difference what the cargo is. They’ll take a pop at anything. Even passenger ships.’

The men shake their heads and suck their teeth.

‘What if the country runs out of food?’

‘That’s never going to happen.’

‘Government’s talking about rationing butter and bacon in case we get short.’

‘Let’s hope it don’t come to that.’ The sailor shares cigarettes out around the group. They light them, the smoke curling in thin blue lines into the air. The smell reminds Jack of his dad.

‘You heading back out there?’

‘Got to.’

‘Got anything to protect you?’

‘’Course not. But I heard we might get a Navy escort.’

‘I’ll believe that when I see it.’

They stand in silence for a bit, pulling on their cigarettes. The tobacco burns and crumbles and turns to ash that flies away, dissolving into nothing.

Above them, someone starts to rattle the conveyor belt. The sailors are leaning over the edge. One of them whistles, a shrill note that makes the men on the ground look up. ‘That’s us, then.’ The men start to disperse. ‘See you next time.’

‘Let’s hope.’

‘Good luck.’

‘See you.’

The men tip their hats at each other. The cart driver drops his butt on the ground, grinds it out with his boot. At last he is ready to go. He jumps up on to the driver’s bench and the boys clamber up on the back of the cart. They lurch off, past queues of lorries, their goods covered in canvas, waiting to be sent to all the corners of the world. Past a warehouse full of vast tusks sorted into piles of various sizes. Past men in top hats, stroking their glossy moustaches.

Jack leans against a bouncing crate. Carl tips his cap to the back of his head and rubs at his short hair. It looks soft, like the fur of the rabbits that hang in rows outside the butchers’ shops.

Jack swings his legs, enjoying the ride. ‘You ever thought about getting work on a ship?’ he asks.

‘Funny you should say that,’ says Carl. ‘My dad’s been on at me to give it a go. Says the docks are a mug’s game. He’s not fifty yet, but his back’s done in and his shoulder’s all but seized up. Sometimes my mum has to help him get out of bed in the morning …’

‘What about them Nazis?’

‘If the war lasts, then we’ll all have to face them somewhere, I guess.’

The cart bounces and bumps as the city unfolds behind them: streets clogged with men and women and horses and carts and bicycles and buses and trucks. The shops are busy now, chalkboards propped up outside, doors swinging open and shut beneath bright hoardings advertising brown ale and Rowntree’s pastilles.

At Covent Garden, the boys help place the boxes of fruit on to wooden barrows. A man walks past with a dozen wicker baskets stacked on his head, the tower swaying like a huge snake. Broad-bosomed women sit on the kerb, flowers in their hats, deep in conversation. Men pull barrows and crates this way and that. Horses chomp at bags of hay. Vehicles come and go. You’d never believe there was a war on.

The cart driver presses a ha’penny into Jack’s hand. ‘Thanks, lads. See you again,’ he says.

Jack pockets the shiny coin, swallowing his disappointment. Three hours of honest work earns less than the brief second it takes to snatch a wallet.

They drift towards the arched entrance to the market. The air is a pandemonium of people bartering over fruit and vegetables and flowers. Beyond a clump of ragged children, Jack spots a familiar face. Vince.

Carl puts a restraining hand on his shoulder. ‘Leave it,’ he says. ‘You’re doing good without them.’

Jack shakes him off, pulling the ha’penny from his pocket and shoving it into Carl’s hand. ‘We can’t split this,’ he says, ‘it’s not enough.’

‘You got to stick at it.’

‘I’ve just got one more thing to offload.’

‘There’s always just one more thing …’ says Carl, but Jack is already making after Vince, who is sliding down a back alley, hugging the wall as if he wants to sink into the brickwork.

Jack blocks his path. ‘I’ve been looking for you,’ he says.

‘Well now you found me,’ says Vince, his eyes glittering like the sewer rat that he is.

‘I’ve got a bracelet,’ says Jack.

‘I heard you had something.’

‘It’s a proper fine one.’

Vince narrows his eyes. ‘Thing is, jewels is tricky things to get rid of,’ he says.

‘Oh, come on. It’s never stopped you in the past …’

‘Give me something to go on, then.’

Jack describes every pearl and stone in detail. He has taken the bracelet out from beneath his mattress nightly to admire its workmanship.

Vince is quiet for a moment, as if mulling over the sum in his head. ‘I’ll give you ten pound,’ he says eventually.

‘Ten pound?’ says Jack. ‘It’s worth ten times that.’

Vince shrugs. ‘Maybe through the proper channels …’

‘You mean through Stoog?’

‘That’s the way it works, my friend.’

‘I’m not your friend,’ says Jack, grabbing him by the collar.

Vince throws his hands out to the sides, twisting on the end of Jack’s fist. ‘It ain’t my fault,’ he says. Jack yanks the neck of the shirt hard before releasing his grip so that Vince yelps, then backs away, rubbing the pinched pale flesh of his neck. ‘What you do that for? You know I got to keep Stoog sweet …’

‘I’ll find someone else to take it,’ says Jack.

‘You can try. No one else is going to touch it. Stoog’s put the word out.’

‘Who does he think he is? Al fucking Capone?’

Vince shrugs. ‘Someone’s got to be in charge,’ he says, ‘or else the whole system falls apart.’

Jack feels the anger bubble up inside him. ‘I don’t need the money, anyway,’ he says. ‘I’m doing fine going straight.’

‘Looks like it,’ says Vince.

Jack glares at him for a moment and then spits his contempt on to the ground at Vince’s feet. But Vince is already sidling on down the alley, as slippery as a jellied eel.

It takes Jack some time to find a pawnbroker who will accept the bracelet and its tenuous provenance. The shops with their three gold baubles hanging above the door are easy to find, and he makes sure it is far enough north not to impact on his patch. The price is pitiful – worse, even, than what Vince offered – but Jack cannot take the risk of the bracelet hanging around the house any longer – and he does not want to have to crawl back to Stoog, cap in hand.

Carl and Jack take the day off on Sundays, even though Jack could do with the extra work. Betsy and Jack like to meet Carl down by the river at Cherry Garden Pier. It’s become a tradition. The siblings don’t even bother to say goodbye to their mother. She likes to lie in on Sundays. Dead to the world now that she’s toiling all hours. It seems wrong to Jack that his mother is working on site, building a new bridge across the river, of all things. He can’t get used to her leaving in her overalls, walking like a man in those clumpy boots, with that scarf around her head. In the evening her face is smudged with dirt, and she stinks of grease and oil. He wonders what his dad will think when he comes back. He wonders where his dad is. On the Belgium–France border, they’ve been told. But Jack’s not sure exactly where Belgium is.

Carl is waiting for them in the usual spot. The tide is out, and they roam the muddy beach, searching for treasure among the slimy pebbles and bits of smooth, gnarled wood. Sometimes there are old coins, medieval pins, Roman pottery to be found. Stoog says he once saw a severed hand, but no one believes him.

They find a place to sit on the driest bit of the shoreline furthest from the water. In the distance Tower Bridge sticks two fingers up at the sky. The river oozes towards the sea. Ships of all shapes and sizes run with it and against it. The dredgers are at work scraping their clawfuls of silt away from the banks and dumping them into the middle of the river. Jack breathes the smell of the dank shore deep into his nostrils.