Otto groaned, moved his head, wished he hadn’t, decided he was better off dead.
Anything was better than this Father, Mother and Holy Ghost of a headache that he had. It was as if red-hot skewers were boring slowly through the back of his head in the general direction of his eyeballs. His mind played repeats of Pastor Mueller's fiery speeches at a volume that wobbled his earlobes: ‘We are but Mortal Men... Strayed from the Straight and Narrow Path... I hope my, er, girth will fit... Girth will fit... Girth will fit...’
But even through the blinding pain, he was becoming aware of a strange swaying motion and a kind of rusty, creaking sound. Was it the effect of all that English beer – ‘ale’ they called it? Perhaps it had rusted up his joints and every time he moved, he squeaked?
With an effort of naked willpower, he opened his left eyelid, moving it up over his red eyeball like an ancient, slow elevator. Now he could see! What could he see? Nothing. Just an expanse of dirty white wall. He decided he had passed out in the Ye Olde Black Boy urinal he had visited. He let the eyelid slip closed once more.
Time passed. Otto ached and ached.
The strange motion and squeaking sound continued. Slowly it began to dawn on him that he couldn’t be in a urinal. Piss comers didn’t squeak, though they could appear to move to a drunk. Where in three devils’ name could he be?
He considered the answer to that question at great length. For a dying man, he told himself, he seemed to be taking everything very calmly. Perhaps when one was about to die, one achieved a certain calmness of the soul. Yet –
Again he opened one eye. Now, in spite of what appeared to be a red-hot vice pressing together what was left of his drink-sodden brain with relentless inexorability, a room began to take shape in front of him.
The wall was not blank as he had thought at first. It was dotted at regular intervals with lines of rusty bolts, which seemed a little strange. Bricklayers did not normally put rivets in their walls. His blurred gaze moved carefully along the rivets. A faded portrait hung there, a cheaply coloured flyblown thing of a skinny-faced man in uniform. Vaguely it reminded him of the octogenarian King of Sweden.
He took his eye off it. Whoever it was, the man obviously didn’t approve of him; he could see that from the look on the ancient wizened face. His search stopped abruptly. On a rack, there was a lumpy life jacket looking like a pair of stranded female bosoms. Just beyond it was a funny round window, splashed regularly with dirty green water, obviously by someone armed with a bucket outside.
Suddenly, horrified, Otto realised what the creaking and swaying was. He instantly knew where he was. ‘Great bucket of shit, I’m in a tank!’
The door crashed open at that moment.
The ‘Svenska’ stood there, grinning drunkenly, a Royal Navy cap perched on the back of his shaven head, a tray balanced precariously in his big bony hand. Behind him, Otto caught a glimpse of a swaying green seascape.
‘De whole gang is here!’ he chortled in pidgin English and put the tray down at Otto’s side. His twitching nostrils were assailed by the smell of fried fish. His stomach did a sudden back-flop. Now his headache was forgotten, but his guts were beginning to rebel violently. He forced himself to reply to the Swede.
‘What gang?’
Svenska pulled out a half-bottle of whisky from his back pocket and took a tremendous swig.
‘Ja! Everybody. De Navy boys… De Irishman… De hoors… de very busy now in de crew’s quarters… oh, yes and de policemen from de docks.’ He smiled, as if in fond recollection. ‘Wat a party! Even de Kapitan got drunk and de first-mate had hard job finding the end of the estuary. Damn fine party, yessir. Dutchie!’
‘You mean I’m on board a ship!?’
‘Ja, ja, damn fine ship – Svenska ship!’
‘But where are we going?’ Otto blurted out.
‘Where we go, Dutchie?’ Svenska repeated a little stupidly and just caught himself from overbalancing as the ship swayed violently. ‘We go Sweden… if we don’t sink, ha, ha!’
‘Sweden!’
‘Ja, ja, Sweden. Funny ting. Dem dock boobies de was surprised as well when I told ’em. Want go over side. Over side in middle of North Sea! Ha ha!’ He took another tremendous swig of the whisky. ‘Now you eat fish.’ He opened the cover and Otto turned pale. What looked like a small whale lay there in a sea of thick, burnt, rancid oil. ‘Svenska fish. Good. Eat. Now I go and get Kapitan out of lav… Got stuck after party.’ Then he was going, still drinking, of course.
Otto hastily clapped the cover down on the monstrous fish, as if it might be tempted to swim away, feeling his stomach heave and sway frighteningly.
‘Ooooh,’ he moaned in a contorted mixture of torture and rapture. His insides were ready to erupt at any moment. But even as he fought back that horrible feeling of nausea, his heart leapt with joy. He had done it. He had got away.
Then he was sick.