The Hope (7 page)

Gradually the shakes eased off and her thoughts began to flock together. She was starving. She had not eaten since yesterday morning and it was now… She peered at the clock through sleep-crusted eyelids and saw it was 18.25. Nearly twenty-four hours had elapsed since she and Push had come back here. Time lost. She must make a move…

But it was another hour before she managed to crawl into some clothes – jeans and one of Push’s shirts. She felt like shit, like a slosh of organs and jelly, like her skin was the only thing holding her together. Catching sight of herself in the mirror which swung from a hook over the basin she saw dark matted hair and yellowy eyes and pale lips and nothing remotely appealing or perfect or angelic. She tried to smile and her reflection grimaced back at her with uneven teeth. Pushing her feet into a pair of sandals, she left the cabin and made for the Recreation Area.

There was quite a crowd at the Neptune’s Trident. All the people she expected to see hanging out were hanging out. Wild Billy was lounging by the door to the Trident, smoking a cigarette and wearing his joke sailor’s hat. Delia had a little girly on either arm – bewildered things – and had that familiar bollock-removing look on her face. Acid Cas was striking a bargain with someone Angel didn’t know. It was funny, but Cas always seemed to come off worst from these deals. From the doorway came pulses of light and sound, shadows of poses and postures thrown out, frozen in neon relief. As people queued to get in and pretended not to be queuing, Angel saw an aimlessness in everyone’s movements that was matched by the drizzle and indifferent air of the lower decks, as if one bred the other. She nodded to Billy as she went by, then jumped the queue and flirted her way past the doorman. She wasn’t a very good flirt but the doorman was in a good mood. Billy hadn’t been his usual self recently, which he passed off to everyone as the result of taking part in the scrap to end all scraps, but that did not explain the hunted look he had about him occasionally. However, he managed to leer at Angel and she knew he was watching her backside as she went into the Trident, so she swung it around a bit for his benefit.

Inside, the light and sound took shape, becoming the rhythms and patterns of songs from records so old that the scratches often drowned the music with rusty squawks. It had got to the point where the squawks and needle jumps were an accepted part of the songs and the boogiers would scream with pleasure at each one. To Angel the words were nearly incomprehensible, the tunes more so. In her current state of shellshock it all made her head ache. The colours were unnecessarily bright. Faces swam at her from the press of people, some known, some strange, all mouthing things at each other. She pushed through to the bar. Eddy was on tonight. There were rings of sweat beneath his armpits as he handed out glasses full of varying mixtures concocted from the bottles on the table behind him. Few customers actually paid for their drinks. The bar operated on a unique barter system: you drank there, you were likely to be called up by Riot to do some “business” for him, which meant fight if you were a man and keep the fighters happy if you were a woman (except in Delia’s case). Places like the Trident operated all over the
Hope
. Eddy greeted her, “Hey Angel!”, then turned quickly to serve a customer.

She waited until he was finished and then said, “Eddy?”

“Not now, darling,” he replied, fishing below the counter for a cloth. “I’m rushed off my feet.”

“Eddy, have you seen –?”

“Paolo!” yelled Eddy, as if he hadn’t seen Paolo for weeks instead of minutes, and grasped his hand. “How are you, mate?”

“Eddy, have you seen Push?” He was not listening. She hung on for a moment, realised that the ranks had been closed, and pushed herself away from the bar with a cry of disgust. Hunger – for food, for drugs – was becoming imperative. She noticed for the first time how hot it was in the Trident. The girders in the ceiling were dripping with perspiration, the air was rank. She squeezed her way to the dance floor and looked out over the sea of bobbing heads. She saw the porridge-head, Walter, making his way through the boogiers, on the prowl for boys most likely. People thought it was cool to have Walter around and gave him celebrity status because he was a little bit simple and a whole lot creepy, especially when he went on about God and Jesus and all that jazz.

“Angel, you look like death!”

If Angel could be said to have a friend, it was Gilette. Years ago, although not as long ago as she thought, the two of them had been inseparable. They had been nicknamed the Twins, neither remotely resembling the other but neither seeming complete without the other. As children, one dark, one blonde, they clattered along walkways and gangplanks, they traced the length and breadth of their deck area, they held secret meetings beneath the tarpaulin of the lifeboat on the outer rim (thrilled with the danger of being caught, a delicious flush of terror). The two of them took on the
Hope
– best of all took on the boys – and won. With every confidence they shared they grew wiser but not older and, when Angel watched her mother die, it was Gilette who held her and told her to cry. They ran and ran until they ran into puberty and then they tried to hold themselves together as the taunts came, chipping away at them maliciously. Didn’t they like boys? Were they scared of willies? What was wrong with them?

In the end it was Gilette who took a boy along to one of their rendezvous. He was a spotted, greasy thing who swore a lot and kept cuddling Gilette and pawing her chest. Angel felt sick, not just at Ryan or Ron or whatever his stupid name was but at the casual ease with which Gilette had swept their childhood away. They did continue meeting but Gilette always managed to bring the conversation round to boys this, boys that. The strange things happening to Angel’s body at the time did not help, because it seemed to her that she was being twisted into swollen new shapes by the battle between Ought To and Want To, and that she was no longer her own mistress nor Gilette’s perfect lover.

She still loved Gilette even now and envied the flamboyance with which she ensnared men and the flippancy which she shrugged them off, but she resented her too, blaming her (irrationally) for the loss of innocence. When she felt Gilette put a hand on her arm and saw Gilette’s face splashed with coloured light, she was torn between feeling she ought to cry and wanting to scratch her eyes out.

“Are you OK?” asked Gilette and her concern was so pronounced it might have been genuine. Angel could only examine her feet and nod.

“Bad crash, right?”

Angel nodded again, feeling the tears come and sniffling them back.

“Oh baby…” Gilette tried to hug her but Angel shrank away. “It’s not so bad. You want to eat?”

Angel, weak and hungry, was close to breaking down, dangerously close to trusting Gilette, which was a luxury, like the drugs, she could not afford. She muttered that she was fine, thanks, don’t worry about her, but Gilette was warming to the role of Protector of Angels.

“I’m going to get you something to eat. I don’t want any bullshit, Angel. We’re friends and friends look after themselves.”

Angel wondered if Gilette had noticed the ambiguity of her last sentence but she kept her mouth shut instinctively. Swallowing your pride was one of the best ways to a full stomach. Before Gilette could do anything about food, however, Riot sauntered up, slipped his arms around Gilette’s waist from behind, kissed her soundly on both cheeks and began to make exaggerated humping noises. Angel winced as Gilette squealed in pleasure. Riot was one of the so-called hard men, the leader, so you didn’t tell him to fuck off however badly you wanted him to fuck off.

“Riot, Riot, stop it!” Without much severity. “
Stop
it!” Again, laughing.

“Now this is a bottom that could take a lot of spunk!” Riot growled, before noticing Angel. “Who’s your friend, Gil?”

You know bloody well who I am
, thought Angel
.
Are you doing this on purpose?

“Riot, Angel. Angel…” Gilette squealed again as he nuzzled her neck, not taking his eyes off Angel.

“Pleased,” he said. When Angel did not reply, he murmured in Gilette’s ear (not so quietly that Angel could not catch it): “Come on, Gil. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

To her credit, Gilette said she couldn’t leave Angel, but Riot insisted, so Gilette promised she would be back later. Angel asked her if she’d seen Push.

“You don’t want to bother with him, Angel. Bad news. Find someone else. Riiiiot!” And she was dragged away giggling into the crowd.

The music was depressingly loud. Angel let it roar over her like the sea she had drowned in on her trip the night before, and she was numb, and she was dead outside, so dead that she almost missed Push as he swanned by her (he had seen her but he had better things to spend his precious time on). It was, however, hard for him to ignore someone tugging on his arm. To the untrained eye, the transformation of his expression as he turned round, from innocence to delight, was so marked that it might appear contrived, even unreal.

“Angel! Baby! I’ve been looking for you all over. I didn’t see you there. Hey, you look beautiful. Has anyone ever told you that?” She let him plant his lips on hers. He held her face gently. His irises were screwed tightly around pupils no larger than a full stop.

“I want some … you know, shit.” There you go, be honest with him. Honesty’s the best policy. Push made the drugs himself, using whatever was available, mainly salt and seagull droppings. He was a devout advocate of the hallucinatory properties of guano.

“You want some you know shit, do you?” he mimicked in falsetto as he led her to one corner where the music was fractionally less deafening and the shadows would hide a man’s face. He sat her down beside him.

“Why did you go this morning?” she asked.

“Business. You know the sort of thing. I’m a busy man. Busy, busy. And besides, you were sleeping like a baby. That was good shit I gave you, hey? I don’t jerk you around, do I now? I respect you too much.”

“It’s just... Well, I don’t know. I think… No.”

“What is it, baby? You can tell me. We should be able to tell each other everything.”

“Do you like me?”

“Of course I do.”

“Really like me?” She took his hand. This startled him as much as it would if she had put her hand down the front of his trousers in public. Things, he decided, were getting way out of control. His expression transformed again as if made from mercury. His lips curled and his eyelids narrowed.

“Listen, bitch, stop bothering me, all right? I’m fed up with you. I’m sick of you. You bore me. Leave me alone. It’s over. OK? Over.”

The music thundered in Angel’s ears and beneath it she thought she could hear the angry rumble of the
Hope
’s engines, growing louder, and it seemed that the day everyone prophesied, the day when the engines would burn out and explode, had at last arrived.

“OK,” she said.

She brushed her hand across his face. She thought she brushed her hand across his face. She couldn’t really tell because she was in the eye of a howling storm. She realised she had in fact raked her nails into Push’s eyes and he was bent double in agony and screaming, “I’m blind! The slut’s blinded me!”, and although there was a lot of blood she could not tell if this was true or not, because Push was a bit of a liar, wasn’t he? Her hands had only really brushed his face, hadn’t they?

At that moment a record came to its end and the conversation, which would normally rush in to fill the gap like the Red Sea on the heads of the Egyptians, petered out as people sensed something was happening and looked unerringly towards where it was happening.

Push kept up an uncomprehending wailing and Angel stood with watery streaks of blood on her fingers.

“Christ, Angel, what the fuck’ve you done?” Gilette’s voice, its revulsion undisguised. A drumbeat burst open a song over the silence and Angel was aware how people were watching her, how their dumbstruck curiosity was as insulting as the way Push had spoken to her.

Words came from her mouth to be flung at the wall of eyes and faces, some known, some strange: “Screw you! Screw you all!”

She found herself outside and running along the deck through the dismal rain and there was no sense of direction other than a need to go upward, upward and out of there, to climb staircases and scale ladders until the
Hope
dropped away beneath her and she would reach heaven. She climbed stairs past signs which read “N DECK” and “K DECK” and “E DECK”, and she had a vague idea that when she reached the top she would fling herself off into space, end her life in a final ecstatic free-fall, better than any bird-turd drug. She would dive into the ocean as she’d often dreamed of doing and kiss the safety of its cold-comforting hands.

When she finally came to rest, exhausted, she was gasping in sweeter air and the rain was less persistent on her face. She took stock of her surroundings and was surprised to see no stoppers, no people at all. One of the funnels loomed over her, blocking out a large portion of starlit sky, and she thought the smoke pouring out of it must be the night’s breath. She was not really allowed up here. That was an unwritten rule. You should be content with your own level. That was the way of the
Hope
.

And the sense of space was overwhelming, the sky vast, a monochrome dome cupped over the ocean, confining it and at the same time emphasising its unendingness, as if their edges never quite met.

Perhaps, thought Angel, we’re sailing round and round in a circle inside the sky. Who would know, who could tell if we were?

She was giddy beneath the stars. She wished she could be above the
Hope
and riding her like she’d seen horsemen riding in picture books, her legs like pylons astride the funnels and the ship’s cables grasped in her giant fists. She was quite alone.

Music, faint and unlike any music she had heard before, broke in on her reverie. Without hesitation she headed towards it. She passed a row of potted palms looking sorry for themselves and then she came to a huge room of lights. She looked in through a porthole. She knew this place.