I’ll start by telling you about Harvey Jenkins. After all, he’s the one with whom it all started. And finished. We first met Jenkins in Lisbon. It was an evening in April last year and the Chief and I had spent the whole day lugging boxes of ice around the fishing harbour. As part of our pay we had been given a pound of anchovies to have for dinner. The Chief was up on deck peeling potatoes and I was lighting the wood stove in the galley. We may have been short of money but we didn’t have to skimp on firewood. The firewood bin beside the stove was always full of scrap wood. That particular evening I was lighting the fire with planks from our old cabin.
While the potatoes were boiling we each took some soap and a towel and went ashore. We only treated ourselves to visits to the bathhouse a couple of times a month, otherwise we washed in the River Tagus. A little way upstream the water 44was reasonably clean and there was both a landing stage and a changing hut on the shore.
After bathing we walked slowly back along the quay. The sun was low in the sky and made the river gleam red and gold. The Chief was whistling to himself. He was in a good mood, as he had been every day for almost a fortnight, ever since hearing he’d got a job as second engineer on a passenger liner called Funchal. He’d be signing on in just a week’s time and he’d be away for a month.
We were still about fifty yards from our quay when I saw there was someone on board the Hudson Queen.
“Who can that be?” the Chief said, shading his eyes with his hand to see better. “Let’s hope it’s not someone wanting money from us. Have we paid the harbour master for our drinking water this month?”
I nodded. As far as I knew we had paid all our bills.
When we got closer we could clearly see that it wasn’t one of the harbour officials waiting for us. The man was dressed in a long shabby overcoat and wearing a narrow-brimmed hat that looked a couple of sizes too small. And on his shoulder sat a big greyish bird of some variety.
The man was inspecting the Hudson Queen’s ship’s bell, which hangs forward of the mast. On hearing us come aboard, he turned round in no hurry, let go of the worn old bronze bell and came to meet us. 45
“Now then,” the Chief said. “And who might you be?”
I guessed the man was in his sixties. He smiled and held out a hand covered in fading seafarers’ tattoos. His thin, weather-bitten face was marked with a mosaic of wrinkles. I saw now that the bird on his shoulder was a cockerel, and it must have been ancient. Its plumage was sparse and there were glimpses of pale skin showing through here, there and everywhere. Its eyes were staring, watery grey-white and blind.
“The name’s Jenkins,” the man said in a gruff voice and an accent that was unmistakeably Scottish. “Harvey Jenkins. I apologize for coming aboard without permission. Are you the skipper?”
“I am,” said the Chief.
“I just happened to be walking past along the quay,” Jenkins said. “And I saw your ship. She’s a Clyde Puffer, isn’t she? There are a lot of them up and down the west coast of Scotland and I used to work on one myself. As engineer. We carried the mail and all kinds of cargo between the mainland and the Hebridean islands. That was a long time ago, though.”
The Chief beamed. It’s not often we meet someone who knows what kind of ship the Hudson Queen is.
“I couldn’t take a look below deck, could I?” Jenkins asked. “Old memories… well, you know…”
“There’s not a lot to see,” the Chief said with a sigh. “She lay on the bottom of a river for four years.” 46
“I’d like to look round anyway,” Jenkins said. “It’s nice to be on board a Puffer again.”
That’s how the Chief ended up showing this Harvey Jenkins around the Hudson Queen. And it took some time as Jenkins wanted to look into every nook and cranny. Meanwhile, I was frying the anchovies. The Chief asked Jenkins whether he’d like to eat with us and he said yes.
We found ourselves sitting round the galley table for a couple of hours. Jenkins was very curious about how a Clyde Puffer had ended up in Lisbon. The Chief told him how we’d found the Hudson Queen in New York ten years or more before and about all the voyages we’d sailed in her since.
Then Harvey Jenkins told us the story of his life.
“I was at sea for heaven knows how many years,” he said. “But suddenly one day I’d had enough. I went ashore for good and bought a small farm in Oklahoma. In the middle of America, as far from the sea as I could get. I kept chickens and pigs and a couple of cows. And I had six acres of land under the plough. One day I took my horse and cart and drove to South Bend to buy seed. On my return a couple of days later, my farm was gone. Pigs and cows gone too. And the barn I’d built with my own hands. Everything had disappeared. A tornado had passed through—it’s the kind of thing that happens in Oklahoma. Among the wreckage I found this cockerel, more 47dead than alive. He was the only thing the tornado had left me, so I took him with me when I moved on. He and I have roamed here and there around the world ever since.”
The bird opened its beak and Jenkins gave it a piece of potato.
“At present we’re working for a travelling funfair,” Jenkins continued. “Not so bad. You get to see places. We arrived in Lisbon a week ago. We’ve put up our tents and parked our wagons on vacant ground by the Cais do Sodré. My job is to look after the steam engine for the merry-go-round and Cock—I’ve never come up with another name for him—he terrifies children with his white eyes.”
The cockerel leant forward, put his head to one side and opened one of his blind eyes wide. He was given another piece of potato as a reward.
“You’re welcome to come and visit one evening,” Jenkins continued. “Entry is free and you can have as many rides on the merry-go-round as you want!”
“Thanks,” the Chief said, “but in a couple of days I’m signing on with a liner sailing to Brazil. And there’s a lot to organize before that. We’ll have to put off riding on your merry-go-round until the next time your circus comes to Lisbon.”
Jenkins looked from the Chief to me and then back to the Chief. 48
“Aha…” he said hesitantly. “So Sally Jones will be alone on the Hudson Queen while you’re away at sea? I see!”
The Chief nodded. “Sally Jones will manage fine on her own, I can tell you. And anyway, she has friends here in the city.”
Jenkins looked thoughtfully at me. I had the feeling that he’d just come up with an idea of some sort.
There was a bit more small talk about this and that before he thanked us and prepared to leave. He wished the Chief a successful voyage to Brazil.
When he reached the gangplank, Jenkins turned to me and said, “It strikes me you would make a good merry-go-round operator. Being both engineer and gorilla… you’re actually made for fairground work!”
The Chief and I exchanged a quick look. Then the Chief said, “We’ll take any work we can get. We’re saving money for our ship.”
I nodded. I wouldn’t say no to a job as fairground engineer.
“That’s good then,” Jenkins said. “I can’t promise anything. We don’t have any work for you just now. But fairground workers are footloose types, who come and go at whim, and a job could just turn up out of the blue. I’ll see what I can do, I promise!”
And with that we said goodbye to Harvey Jenkins. The Chief and I helped each other tighten the ship’s moorings for 49the night, while Jenkins walked off along the quay with the cockerel on his shoulder.
I watched them go, and wondered. Jenkins had seemed nice enough, I thought. But there was something about him that wasn’t right. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
It was half an hour later, after I’d slipped into my hammock and blown out the night light, that I twigged what it was that had felt strange about our guest:
He hadn’t seemed in the least surprised when he first saw me.
People meeting me for the first time are always inquisitive. They ask questions. Not to me, of course, but to the Chief. He then has to explain that, yes, I’m a gorilla, but that I can understand what people say and I am as skilled at my job as any ship’s engineer you care to name.
But Harvey Jenkins hadn’t asked the Chief a single question of that sort. Why was that?
The answer was quite simple, I thought. Jenkins had no doubt seen so much of the world that nothing could surprise him.