The Hope Read Online Free PDF Page A

out of it). What I’m trying to say is that, if you pushed me hard, I’d have to admit my only real friend was Charlie, if by friend you mean someone who’ll tell you you’re being a dickhead when you’re being a dickhead but who’s not scared to congratulate you when you do something worth congratulation.
    But that’s my business. As I was saying, I signed to Aaron that I was off to see Charlie (point up at the playroom) but I’d meet him later in the mess (energetic filling of mouth with imaginary food). Aaron grinned wider and gave another thumbs-up. He has hands like soup dishes.
    Charlie’s playroom hangs from the roof of the engine room, about a hundred feet up, and you can reach it only by a rusted ladder, not safe. He likes it that way. I climbed up, banged on the hatch and waited. Sometimes he doesn’t hear but today he was quick off the mark and the hatch flew open. He signed for me to come in.
    It was a relief to take the ear-defenders off. They begin to cut off the circulation to your ears after a while and it feels as if you’ve got two hot pancakes stuck either side of your head. The scream of the turbines is still there in the playroom but it’s bearable and you only have to talk a little above a shout. Ha! Just a little joke there.
    “Payday early?” laughed Charlie.
    “You know it, boss. I’ve come for my cut of that whisky you keep in that cupboard over there.”
    “You mean this cupboard over here?” said Charlie, crossing behind his desk, which had nothing on top of it except for a Newton’s cradle. Its five tarnished balls (Charlie never cleans anything) were vibrating against each other to make a sound Charlie calls “steel cicadas”. Whatever a cicada is.
    “That cupboard. Bottom shelf.”
    Charlie produced two tumblers and a bottle, seal unbroken and covered in dust. I’d forgotten we’d finished one the day before. I don’t know where Charlie gets the new ones from and I don’t ask. Something about a gift horse, kiddies.
    Charlie does the whole thing like a magician: empty bottle one day, full bottle the next. Out of nowhere, two tumblers. “Watch closely, ladies and gentleman. Flourish. Nothing up my sleeves. Two full tumblers. Ta-daa!”
    The booze kicked in warm on my tongue and hot on my throat. I go through whole shifts looking forward to this moment and I don’t know why Charlie favours me above the others in this way, but I don’t ask either. The others don’t seem to resent it. They even hint that I’m being groomed to take over from Charlie when he retires, but I’ve never heard him mention anything about it. He’s older than me by about thirty years. I was born and bred on the Hope and I expect to die on the Hope , but Charlie, he embarked like all the old people, drawn (he says) by the promise of something better on the other side of the unending ocean, and he knows things and shares them with me, like he thinks I can’t live properly without knowing them too. He’s not stupid. Some people think we’re all stupid in the engine room. They think we have to be stupid to work here and they might be right, but it doesn’t make us subhuman. Just because we work with our hands doesn’t mean we think with our hands.
    So I sat back in the squeaky foam padding of the chair and stared at my swilling whisky and waited for Charlie to speak first, because he always does. He swung his boots up on to the desktop and pretended to examine his laces, letting me unwind and letting us both appreciate the booze. His fingernails were squared and dirt-free.
    Finally he spoke. “Do you know what horror is?”
    “Being scared.”
    “More than that.” It was a question.
    “Being very scared.”
    “Do you know what a pedant is?”
    And we both laughed. Charlie begins like this every time, like a teacher who’s been preparing his lesson the night before. I managed to avoid school when I was younger, went straight down to the engine room aged twelve because nobody knew who my