I stare at the mermaid with what must be wonder in my eyes. You are lovely.
You are lovely, Vicki.
I drop my falconer’s glove on the trolley. Lay my clipper carefully next to it. I carry my bucket towards the metal door.
Lovely.
A magic word to smother the volcano in me.
* * *
I make it through the door, run down the corridor sloshing antiseptic. I throw the bucket down, swerve into my living quarters. I hide inside the cubicle of white tiles and sob rich mother’s milk. Thick, it must be white, for I see no blood, no old engine oil streaking the tiles. It must be milk, for this spring of thick wild comfort, it comes from my mother.
I hope, I only hope it is the milk of forgiveness.
* * *
I pull off my party shirt and my lemon-flavoured trousers. Strip naked.
Tamba shouts through the door, ‘Malachi, what happened in there? I need a report!’
I turn on the hot tap, create clouds of steam to say, Sorry. Can’t answer.
The steam bumps me like white clouds. I roam the sky, search for my mother’s warm breast. Is she up there somewhere above the equator? Does she blame me?
I hold my hands up to the hot, gushing stream, feel the sun peel them like the sailor-girl’s skin. I spin the tap off. Turn on the cold, thrust my hands into the ice. This is no soft-breasted cumulonimbus now, just a cruel solution of snow from the North or South Pole, I can only guess. I take the correction just like Josiah did, grateful for the pain.
I dry myself gently, the skin on my fingers purple and stiff. Pull on the party clothes again. I have no choice, these are my cleanest garments. If I am to live another day as the maintenance man, I need to find a way to do my laundry.
* * *
Janeé has made us Christmas dinner. I stare at it. Glistening fatty meat the same consistency as hippo, interspersed with yellow chunks that could be tinned pineapple. This is exactly what my mother made for us on Christmas day! She begged my uncle for hippo, harassed him if necessary to feed us real meat on the day the Holy Spirit was born from his mother’s hips. But the pineapple always gave me a tingly feeling in my mouth. It was too sweet, too acidic. It made my ears ring.
‘I gave them all a shower after you left,’ Tamba says quietly. ‘It was time, anyway. Their hair especially, so they don’t develop nits.’ He whispers like the Holy Spirit, harassing me. ‘I need to know what happened with number forty. What made that guy flip?’
I stonewall Tamba, chew on a yellow chunk. The pineapple stings my palate, blocks and unblocks my ears. I shove my fork into a piece of pork, but it slides into the gravy river.
Tamba bumps me with his shoulder like a schoolboy bully. ‘Tell me.’
I spiral my knife at my ears, mime the sideways horns of a wild goat.
Josiah’s crazy, okay? Don’t give me grief.
Tamba stares at my purple hands, tries to colour-match them with the rest of me. He can’t decide if he is imagining it. ‘Okay, cool, don’t get defensive.’
Defensive! If only he knew the knives, the fires, the bullets I have had to face while traversing the aisles just below his nostrils. This time, I spike my hippo successfully. Chew it with relish. An unreasonable giggle bubbles up in me. My world is blown open by a plastic Samsung, and here I am sitting in my last clean shirt, eating Christmas dinner with the best appetite I have had since I set foot on this rig.
Janeé is a shipwreck today. She is prodding her pork around her plate, flicking her pineapple chunks and listing, if this is the word for teetering ships. She leans to one side, her weight on one hand. The bench she is sitting on seems to tip.
Meirong slips onto the other side and sighs, a whimsical sound for a woman wearing a shattered windscreen. ‘Have you prepared a plate for the girl, Janeé?’
Janeé nods. ‘Yes.’
Meirong spoons the gravy like soup. ‘Romano will take supper for the two of them.’
I wave at Meirong, capture her tired eyes. She looks up, surprised. I point up, towards the deck. Mime imaginary hair falling in blonde streaks.
‘Frances?’
I tap my lips, point at the jug of water on the trolley.
‘Thirsty?’ Meirong guesses.
This is the first time Meirong and I have tried charades. I dig a nail into a vein inside my elbow.
Meirong sits up straight, snaps a shield over her eyes.
‘I know. I know. She needs a drip. We’ll fly her out as soon as the search party has passed. Our satellite shield is fifteen miles, but they could spot us from the air or sea. Until then . . .’ Fear kidnaps her breath for a second. ‘The girl can only see you and Romano.’
Romano appears in the doorway as if Meirong summoned him. She spins guiltily, points at the food trolley. ‘There we are, Romano.’
‘She’s getting worse. She’s very sick.’
‘Malachi was just saying.’
‘It’s dangerous.’
‘What’s dangerous, Romano, is what Mr Carreira thinks.’ Meirong leaps to her feet, drops some plates in Romano’s arms. Romano dances a little, sidesteps.
‘Watch out! Hot.’ Janeé flicks a dish towel from her shoulder and struggles up. She stuffs it beneath the crockery.
‘In two days we operate,’ Meirong says, ignoring the fact that she just burnt his wrists.
Romano sucks in a sudden breath. He nods like an obsequious waiter at the Wimpy.
Meirong sits down before her Christmas dinner, turns her small, bossy back on him. Romano shoots me a look over her head that says, Cruel bitch. Meirong swings to intercept it, but Romano is gone.
She jabs her spoon at me. ‘You and Romano are not here to save lost sailors.’
Too cowardly to confront a war vet, she is taking her shit out on me.
‘What exactly are you here for? What, Malachi?’
How do you expect me to
