The Mariner Read online

  THE MARINER

  Ade Grant

  Also by Ade Grant

  POETRY

  Zigglyumph and Other Poems

  SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

  Rotten Philosophy (Out Of Print)

  Copyright © Ade Grant 2011

  Ade Grant asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. No part of this work may be reproduced, copied or otherwise redistributed without the express permission of the copyright holder. If you want to reproduce, pass on, or quote any part of this text, please apply to [email protected]

  All work contained within is fiction and any similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Artwork, used with permission, by Christopher Hayes For more information about this book, other works and live appearances please visit www.adegrant.com

  For she who keeps me sane

  Without you I too would be lost

  Special thanks to the Hayes brothers

  Table of Contents

  Prologue: Port Jackson, 27th June 1790

  PART I: ROTTEN PHILOSOPHY

  The First Night Of Our Tale

  Before, A Day By The Seaside

  The Second Night Of Our Tale

  Before, The Wolf And The Widow

  The Third Night Of Our Tale

  Before, Rotten Philosophy

  Out Of Night And Into Dawn

  The Oracle

  Two Men On The Sea

  PART II: DOCTOR TETRAZZINI & HIS LIFE-AFFIRMING THEORY

  Every Story Has A Beginning

  Sighisoara

  Last Rites

  Hazy Promises

  The Good Doctor's Grace

  Addiction Aplenty

  Rehab Begins

  Neptune

  Confession

  Making Progress

  Bitter/Sweet Medicine

  Not A Wagon In Sight

  Discharged

  The Devil, Grace & God

  PART III: GRACE O’HARA’S ZOO & THE MONKS OF DÉJÀ VU

  The Wasp Whispers

  Fresh Shores

  The Shift Seekers

  Fiddle-de-dee

  Getting To Know You

  Getting To Know All About You

  Exodus

  Anomenemies

  Darwin's Discovery

  All Dressed Up And Nowhere To Go

  Five-feet High And Rising

  The Best Fish And Chips (Guaranteed!)

  The Fellowship's Fucked

  His Holiness

  PART IV: THE WASP

  Christopher McConnell Wakes Up

  Every Man Has A Home

  The Wasp Awakens

  The Nature Of Things

  The Last Supper

  The Last Library

  Tried And Sentenced

  Christopher McConnell Wises Up

  The Wasp

  A Sting In The Tail

  Before, Before It All

  Epilogue: Not Every Story Has A Happy Ending

  About The Author

  Prologue

  PORT JACKSON, 27th JUNE 1790

  GOVERNOR ARTHUR PHILIP CLENCHED A handkerchief tightly against his nose, yet still the stench prevailed. It stormed his nasal cavity as an invading force, routing resistance, exploiting all weaknesses. He’d known pestilence before; the camps of Sydney Cove were rife with the stink of disease, yet here, aboard this ship, the fumes were amplified to an almost spiritual plateau. No earthly cause could create such potency, at least none he’d ever known.

  His right hand man, Wandsworth, was busy retching air; the contents of his stomach, just as revolted as he, were unwilling to leave the safety of his innards. The poor man would right himself, swallow what phlegm he had as if to form a plug in his throat and then, with tremendous vigour and persistence, rub his fleshy face, trying to attain some semblance of the professional administrator he’d been just a half-hour before. The charade never lasted for long; soon he was back convulsing in the corner.

  Philip’s presence had been requested shortly after the grim ship docked. The hapless inspecting officer, a skinny runt of a man named Smith, now waited on-hand, his face as blank as night water.

  The Neptune, one of a small fleet of convict ships, departed Portsmouth on the 19th of January. Five months later little of her cargo remained, that cargo being four hundred men and eighty women, each and every one forced to endure a torment beyond comparison.

  The governor asked after the Neptune’s master, his voice low through shock and muffled by handkerchief.

  “Donald Traill, Sir.”

  “I want him arrested.”

  A fly buzzed towards Philip. He instinctively ducked, not wanting to be touched by something that had existed in this hell, something that had grown fat by profiting from the misery of those ensnared within.

  “I’m afraid that won’t be – huuurrgh - possible, sir. The company was paid to bring each passenger here. The – urrrmmmph - contract didn’t stipulate they needed to survive... There’s no... I mean...” Wandsworth dabbed his lips despite the lack of spittle upon them. “They haven’t broken any rules, sir!”

  As if revelling in their legal loop-hole, the Neptune’s crew had slaughtered those in their charge. Smith’s first estimation was that at least a third had died from disease, malnutrition and abuse. The rest, the ‘survivors’, held onto life like drying sand.

  The governor turned to the inspecting officer, too horrified to be angry. “What happened here?”

  Smith’s moon eyes swivelled with unease, yet his businesslike tone remained stoic. “Scurvy, dysentery, typhoid fever, even a breakout of smallpox. Malnutrition also appears to have been quite rife. Before their diseases could finish the task, many seem to have simply starved to death.”

  As he spoke his eyes were drawn to the nearest corpse. It was chained to the floor, flesh yellow and brittle. Whoever the man had been, death was the only release he’d enjoyed from his shackles; dried excrement caked his waist and pooled beneath.

  “Are you telling me they ran out of food?”

  Smith ran his tongue over his lips and his left hand trembled, yet still his voice remained steady. “No sir, it seems they just didn’t distribute it. There’s plenty still in storage.”

  Wandsworth muttered a silent prayer, shaking his head at the rampant barbarism.

  “I’ve never seen a convict ship built so.. cruelly efficient,” Philip said. “No space spared.”

  “No sir, they’re not normally like this. The Neptune was a slave ship initially, transported Negroes to the Americas. Hence the need to pack ‘em in, sir.” Smith spoke with pride at knowing such trivia.

  A thought penetrated the governor’s shocked state. “Didn’t you say women were aboard?”

  “Yes sir, around eighty.”

  “Have you interviewed any?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “What was their account?”

  Smith hesitated. “Well... they are whores after all.”

  Philip gritted his teeth. “I didn’t ask you their crime. What did they tell you?”

  “Widespread reports of rape. Accusations against the crew and captain. Also... humiliating punishments, being stripped naked and the like. One woman threw herself overboard in an attempt to take her own life, rather than suffer any further.”

  “Did she succeed?”

  “Oh yes of course, sir.”

  The governor looked about the room, a testament to the truth in the inspecting officer’s words. This particular cabin was horribly cramped, and yet forty men had been kept here for five months, unable to move, barely able to breathe through t
he muggy air. Five months of hell. He shook his head in disbelief. “Starvation, rapes, humiliation-”

  “Whippings too, sir. Lots of floggings took place on the top deck. The captain’s daughter was well known to this lot. I would guess the punishment was dished out with relish.”

  The ‘captain’s daughter’ was the cat ‘o’ nine tails, a cotton whip of nine strands that inflicted parallel wounds, the scourge of disobedient sailors throughout the British navy. As if to prove his accusations, Smith pulled up the shirts of several nearby corpses. The first attempt proved nothing, as he pulled the garment back a rotten layer of skin came apart from the friction, sliding across the corpse like greased paper. Beneath, foetid flesh turned liquid began to flow onto the floor. Smith quickly pulled the shirt back down to mop up the mess, whilst the governor looked away.

  Lifted shirts on fresher corpses revealed scars so complex they appeared like weaved parchment.

  “Tell me, Smith. Have you ever seen anything like this?” Philip gestured to the scene before them.

  “Yes sir.”

  “Really? When was that?”

  “When I was a boy, sir. In church... someone showed me a picture of Hell.”

  The survivors of the Neptune were quickly taken to the camp’s makeshift hospital. All were horribly wasted, their flesh tight about their bones. Most were too ill to move, whilst all were completely infested with lice, which crawled sluggishly about their scalp and groin. Convicts told tales of ritual torture, sadistic in tone, the guards taking great pleasure in the cruelties they bestowed.

  The governor oversaw the unloading, giving Wandsworth time to search for any legal means to bring retribution against Donald Traill and his crew, each of whom Philip refused to meet until his assistant reported. When the summary was finally submitted, it made disappointing reading.

  With the law failing to aid the dignity of the convicts, Philip instead saw to their physical condition, personally donating what little fruit he had in his personal stock to bring relief to a handful of scurvy-ridden. He grimly watched as one bit into a lemon with vigour, only to have his fragile teeth snap off on impact. The poor creature sucked deeply on a mix of his own blood and citric juice, grimacing from both relief and exquisite pain.

  As the last living convict stepped foot on soil, Philip turned to Wandsworth, more composed now he was out of the suffocating dark of the Neptune’s belly. “I want that ship put to sea. Not tomorrow, not later today, but now.”

  “We’ll need to bring the corpses off first, sir, and we should probably quarantine them on board until we can dig enough graves. It could take time. Days.”

  “This land is already blighted with disease. We teeter on the brink of disaster. Can we afford to send able-bodied men into harm’s way any more than we have done already? Would that not be inviting the Devil himself into our midst?”

  “It would certainly put the encampment under increased risk, sir,” Wandsworth agreed.

  Philip shook his head, not just in sadness, but incomprehension. “They even shot at whales, did Smith tell you that?”

  “No sir.” Wandsworth thought about reminding the governor that his afternoon had comprised of hastily constructing the complex legal report now forgotten in the governor’s hands, but decided against. Under the circumstances it would seem trite.

  “They did. They even took pleasure in torturing whales.” The setting sun cast a red glow across the governor’s face, giving the impression he was gazing into the very Hell he was imagining. “I don’t think I trust myself to meet the master of the ship. I don’t know what I might do.”

  “The Neptune has a contractual right to empty her cargo, sir.”

  “I don’t care. Send her away, with Traill and his men, or without them – damn the legal ramifications! We’ll be lucky to live long enough for that. This land is rejecting us, and once the men hear about this, they’ll despair even more.”

  He turned and walked towards the encampment, rejecting the sight of the Neptune. “That ship’s not fit for the living, Wandsworth, and I hope no-one in Her Majesty’s Empire ever sets eyes on her again.”

  PART I

  ROTTEN PHILOSOPHY

  “The greatest good for the greatest number is the measure of right and left.”

  Jeremy Benthals

  “Philosophy is like trying to open a safe with a combination lock; each little adjustment of the dials seems to achieve nothing, whilst dynamite is more effective.”

  Mudwigg Fittenshine

  “I sink, therefore I am.”

  Denny Daycart

  1

  THE FIRST NIGHT OF OUR TALE

  THE MARINER AWOKE WITH THE screeching of the devils. He vomited onto the deck, the contents of his stomach spread before him, a dark pool, as dark as the wine he’d drunk the previous night. Was it black from the grape alone? Or had his blood contributed to the mix? He watched it flow away, in keeping with the boat’s gentle rocking, and then he watched its inevitable return. It lapped at his face like a polluted shoreline, sour bile matting his beard. The Mariner didn’t move. It was enough that he’d opened his eyes.

  He did not get sea-sick. The sea was no problem; sea was life and land was death. Each step upon soil left him worse off. What little attractions the land had to offer - tin cans stuffed with food, battery powered torches, lighter fuel in plastic cartons - each were rendered insignificant next to the awesome drawbacks of human company. Any contact beyond his ship and his devils decimated the isolation in which the Mariner lived. It was a familiar loneliness; it helped focus his mind.

  What didn’t focus it was red wine. But that distraction was almost all gone now, filtered through his liver in a constant stream. The stockpile had lasted many weeks, but all good things must come to an end. The Mariner knew this well. A lot of good things had ended. And a lot more would end soon.

  The ship was ancient yet sturdy, far too big for its solitary crewman. Enormous sails billowed in the wind, casting the ship onwards, towards the distant yet familiar horizon. They creaked as they adjusted themselves, one of only three sounds he could hear. That, the sound of the waves breaking against the hull, and, of course, the devils.

  One was nosing itself above deck. He could see its small snout edging open the door, black nose about a foot from the ground. They must be hungry, normally the devils were content to prowl below, hunting for rats. Quite how the rats sustained themselves, the Mariner did not know, food had become as scarce as the wine.

  The devil finally poked its head through the door. The creature looked a lot like the rats it hunted, although body, black fur with a white stripe, was the size of a small dog. It looked at him, nose twitching and big pink ears alert. It was Grace, the mother of the brood. They’d pushed her out their den to harass the human for feeding.

  She ran across the deck in a strange skipping, ambling way familiar to all devils. Stopping just shy of where he lay, she waited to be presented with a meal.

  “I’m s’ry g’l,” he mumbled. “Th’s no food.”

  Unimpressed, and with the tiniest ounce of hope she sniffed the pool of vomit. He thought she might lap it up, but instead she wrinkled her nose and backed away. The Mariner took this as a very bad sign. There must be something dreadfully wrong with his gut; he’d seen her eat from corpses left in the sun for weeks.

  Sitting on her haunches, Grace had still not given up hope of rousing the drunk monkey, a fleshy vending machine that often dispensed meat when there were no rats to find. “Arf!” she barked, warning him to get a move on.

  He cursed, knowing that he’d be in trouble if he didn’t rise soon. Grace had bitten him many times before. Several fingers on his left hand had almost been lost to the beast, yet still he allowed her pack to stay. A folly, as Grace now licked her chops as she stared at his nose. “I’m going to try to get up. Give me a second.” The devil didn’t respond, but watched with interest as the Mariner’s limbs twitched and tensed.

  After a minute or so, the devil lost all
patience, and Grace let loose a screech. It was a horrible sound, guttural and vicious, like a terrified animal being slaughtered. Her hot and pungent breath hit his face, and finally, out of a desire to keep his eyes and nose from her small but sharp teeth, he pushed himself onto his feet.

  “Arf!” she said again, satisfied things were finally moving in the right direction.

  The Mariner swayed giddily, and not from the sea. Clasped in his right hand was one of the bottles from last night. He looked at the faded label. ‘Merlot’. From somewhere called ‘California’. He didn’t recognise either name. Perhaps California was the small island he’d found the bottles upon, all piled up within a derelict house, but he doubted it. That island couldn’t have supported whatever fruit or beast had given such wonderful nectar. Just another dead island. One among many.

  Upon the bottle was a picture of a ship. It was clearly not his own, it was smaller, cleaner and not as laboured, but he liked to think that icon depicted in essence his ‘Neptune’.

  “Bluuuugghhheeeeeek!” Grace, frustrated with his slothful pace, shrieked and proceeded to savage his foot. Her teeth tore at his thick boots, already peppered with bite marks from previous altercations. Despite her fury, the Mariner felt flattered. If she’d wanted to hurt him she could have bitten into his jeans and taken a chunk out of his thigh. She would have enjoyed the taste too. He knew from experience devils enjoyed human flesh.

  Chuckling to himself as she flung her small body about his boot, the Mariner staggered across deck. It was dusk and already stars were beginning to define themselves against the darkening sky. How many days and nights had he been at sea? The Mariner could not say. He remembered nothing else but the endless ocean and the ceaseless searching.

  Below deck the air was thick and stale. The Mariner didn’t like to descend beneath the Neptune’s boards. It was the devils’ territory and the close wooden hallways felt oppresive. Given the choice he woke, slept, ate and crapped on the deck above. He found that if he trusted the weather, more times than not it would look after him. Days were hot and the rain was hard, but it never scorched his flesh beyond repair, nor blow him into the surf. The weather served his purpose. Hadn’t it guided him this far?