The Undertow by Jo Baker Read Free Book Online Page B

notice, sir?” William calls.
    The officer halts, and looks back. “What’s that?”
    “Will we be shifting soon?”
    “We’re staying put.”
    “Sir, we’re sitting ducks.”
    “Those are the orders.”
    “But does Command know about the fog?”
    The officer just gives him a look. “Those are the orders.”
    Then William’s eye is caught by a movement: down by his side, the officer’s hand is twitching. His thumbnail presses into the cuticle of his index finger. It scrapes at the skin. The flesh is raw and oozes blood.
    There is nothing to be done, William realises. There is no getting out of this.
    But he can’t die here, not yet. He wants more. He wants spindrift off the Atlantic swell; he wants to know what ice is like when it stretches for thousands of miles. He wants to step off the ship and be in South America, Japan, Russia, Nova Scotia. He wants a lifetime of this.
    “On your way now, Hastings. Get below.” And the officer walks off into the fog. And William has no choice. He heads back down below.
    Down in the mess, Sully’s hammock is swinging slightly, though the others all hang still. His eyes are closed and he’s breathing heavily. William looks at him with a mixture of guilt and sympathy: maybe he’s asleep at last, maybe he’s just braced against the pain. He doesn’t think of disturbing him, warning him: what good would there be in that? And sleep is so hard to come by nowadays, you don’t want to waste a drop.
    William strips off his jerkin, getting ready for his stint in the boiler room’s swelter. He ducks down to stow it in his sea-chest. But something’s wrong. He peers closer at the lock. It’s broken.
    “What the hell—” William heaves the lid up and back. The sudden noise makes Sully stir.
    “Sorry,” William says.
    “What’s up?”
    “Someone’s been at this …”
    Sully leans up on an elbow, peering sleepily down over the edge of his hammock. “Oh balls.”
    William leafs through the contents: spare rig, underwear, shaving gear, cigarette box, matches, playing cards. The postcard’s not there. The last, unsent postcard. He peers into the chest; it’s too dark to see properly. He shoves a hand down between the folded clothes and the side, and runs it up and down. The bell starts to chime. He feels hot. He glances round the crowded, fuggy room. No-one’s even stirring.
    “What happened? Who was it?”
    Sully shrugs. “I was asleep.”
    The bell chimes. William straightens up. “That right?”
    “Yeah.” He rubs at his eyes. “I was sleeping like the dead. What did they get?”
    “Not much.” William’s jaw tightens. “Nothing.” Just that last postcard, with his wife’s address.
    “I’ll sort it for you, if you want. Fix the lock.”
    The bell chimes. Six bells.
    William looks him over. The wiry muscle of him, the thin flicker of his eyes. We can’t all have your luck, he’d said. Would he take the card?
    “Thanks.”
    “It’s not like I’m good for much else at the moment.”
    “I suppose not.”
    “You go on,” Sully says. “If it can be fixed, I’ll fix it.”
    Eight bells.
    William has to go. There’s no choice. “Right,” he says. “Thanks.”
    He has to descend into the belly of the ship, to where the boilers gape and the air is thick with heat and the dark water swells just inches away. The shovel will be damp from the last man’s hands. The coal dust hanging in the air, sticking to sweating skin, working into the pores, blackening the nostrils and making that catch in his breath that makes him see the dust glittering like crystals in the hollows of his lungs. Just keeping the boilers fed, keeping the engines turning over. He’ll swallow water from a shared tin cup, and if he’s lucky, if they’re all lucky, he’ll do his shift and lean his shovel up with the others, and climb back up towards the mess, and wash, and eat, and sleep again, and then wake to do it all again, the day after, and the day after that. And that is