The Pirate. Christopher Wallace
even though I always felt as if on the outside of the people and activity that gathered around them; at home it had been almost by choice, here I wanted in, I wanted to belong to the crowd who had it all.
The Aussie girls had told me of the enlightened policy regarding campsite rents at Les Acacias, in that very few people actually paid them. You were meant to of course, the total due was added to on a daily basis, but most of the patrons tended to prefer a midnight exit through a hole in the hedge when their time was up. Strictly speaking then, it was those particular customers who were the enlightened ones, and with budgets being tight I intended to join them. Knowing this in advance, I had Paul give his passport number when we checked in. I wonder if he has ever had any comeback from our eventual abrupt departure? Perhaps, maybe many years later, he was arrested on arrival at EuroDisney with wife, in-laws and screaming kids because of this shameless plant. I hope he can forgive me for setting him up. The shit he found himself in.
Anyway, at the height of the season there would be over a hundred tents rigged up on the hissing summer lawns, one giant lattice weave of wires and ropes, zips and poles, all intolerable sweat-holes under the morning and afternoon sun, damp with cold condensation at night. I remember queuing for the toilet every morning behind some farting Belgian, and the smell of gas and cooking bacon bringing out a curious sensation of nausea and hunger at the same time. Everyone would congregate at the wash-houses to shower and shave, then you would wait in line for fresh rolls and croissant at the site shop, the same place you would buy your cheap white wine at the end of the day. All of this was achieved with a degree of harmony the United Nations would have been proud of; there was a huge cast of nationalities managing to get by, despite their different languages, colour of skin, and reasons for being there. I remember it as almost like being in a Benetton ad. After a day or so of witnessing the clear-out that would occur after breakfast, when an assortment of beat-up cars, creaking trucks and rusty buses would arrive to pick up the same people we had been behind in one queue or another, I realized that whilst there were some holidaymakers on site, they were in the minority, everyone else was working.
One of the pick-ups was a yellow Volkswagen dormobile, showing up every day, audible before it was visible, its bleating, rasping engine shivering and shuddering as it coughed its phlegm of exhaust into the fresh morning air. The driver was a stringy guy in a vest, cut-off jeans and sandals. Usually the same vest, cut-off jeans and sandals, but that’s the French way I suppose. He had dark eyes and heavy eyebrows, again the French way, like Charles Aznavour. I guessed he might have been in his late thirties, although he seemed cool about this, in fact, cool about everything. It came to pass that one fateful day he caught me looking at him; I would have been getting up to meet the guys for breakfast some way into our second week. When he saw me he motioned for me to hop in and join his crew in whatever it was they were leaving to do. A simple gesture was all he needed to convey what he needed to convey; a shrug and a dropping of the chin, cheeks puckered, a stabbing sweep of his arm towards the back of the van. Blink and you would have missed it, blink and the door to a new way of life remains shut. I didn’t miss it, nor what was meant by it, and in an instant we understood each other in a way that would have been impossible to communicate by him in his fractured English or me in the ‘plume de ma tante’ French that had recently been drilled into me at school but had proved – surprisingly – to be less than fucking useless when tried out on natives who didn’t behave in the beret-and-onions way the textbooks would have had us expect.
So what did the rapid fire mime mean? Well, firstly that there was some kind of scam going on, one that I was invited to join, probably at a low or lightweight level, and that this venture wasn’t likely to be one currently under investigation by Interpol – I wouldn’t be joining in an armed robbery or sophisticated international fraud. In fact, it would be simple enough to pick it up as I went along, as indeed the others who were packing into his Tardis-like vehicle had done before. Most importantly though, the gesture indicated he was reaching out to me, trusting me to come and try, and not to squeal or rip him off if I didn’t like it; I’m cool with you, the motion said, can you be cool with me? I took a look at the state of those clambering in – there didn’t seem to be much room left amongst the German chicks in bikinis, Parisian hipsters with their stubble and crew-cut hair, half-caste reggae-boys in Bermuda shorts. I turned to seek out Ian and Maurice who had been behind me at the check-out in the camp shop; they were outside juggling rolls, fruit and wallets as they counted out their change. I knew where I belonged and where I wanted to be. The rattling door was closing over as the rusty machine revved up. I smiled through the window and they held it long enough for me to squeeze in. The tin rocket took off. I was a passenger looking out on its convulsive spurt of fumes, wondering where it would take me.
It was dark when the Anne finally cast off, Captain Henry quarrelling with the customs men to the last over a set of barrels which he insisted were to be loaded empty. The tariff-keepers seemed dubious and threatened to stay and observe the procedure until it was completed. Martin would hear later that the captain had told them this would happen at daybreak and had thus persuaded them to depart from the scene. Sure enough, no sooner had they done so than another set of traders appeared, men who made quick work of filling the casks with French brandy. The anchor was raised the very moment they were done and the booty on board. Below deck in his quarters Martin listened to the grumblings over the captain’s apparent greed and his willingness to employ such deceit and subterfuge simply to avoid the ten per cent duty which should rightfully have been due on the outgoing goods. There were other complaints too; that the late loading had left the stacked cargo now out of balance, heaviest highest in the hold and not properly bound in the evening darkness below deck. What might this do to affect the ship’s stability in the open sea? These arguments would be aired over and over as the voyage progressed, and initially Martin would remain indifferent to them. In fact, he was almost reassured. Captain Henry had proved that he was an experienced mariner; his actions, although dishonest, were hardly those of a novice.
They did mean however that by the time the vessel began to move it was loaded to the full, every possible inch carrying provisions of one type or another. Martin found no space where the captain had directed him to lodge his books and duly stacked the volumes in the cabin, disobeying the earlier instruction. Here they would be safe from the water that would wash through the decks when the waves were high, here they would be close to hand if needed. Martin was not dissatisfied with this outcome, his only concern being whether the colleagues who would share this space would be offended by his presumption. In time he would learn that they, like himself, had their attentions focused on other matters.
Forty-four hands in total, that was the roll call when the Anne made off for the Guinea coast. Martin was surprised at the number, having witnessed earlier in his youth the ships leaving Greenock with a fraction of such a crew. He surmised that this quantity of men was indeed required and would have been taken only if strictly necessary, given the efforts of Captain Henry to cut the costs of the voyage on every other front. In the full light of day it was the state of the sails which had shocked the most; a patchwork of discarded rags, hastily sewed seams struggling to cope with the scarcely bracing winds of the Channel. Still, the almost admirable philosophy of the trip seemed to be to mend and make anew in these early, gentle days, rather than have the ship tied at anchor whilst the same work was carried out in presumably more expensive surroundings. Consequently Martin was to spend his initial weeks observing the industry of the crew on the decks as the carpenters, coopers and even blacksmiths went about their business. Sailing men on sailors’ wages, earning less than their fellow craftsmen back on land – this had to be another ruse of the parsimonious captain. All the while Martin would try to ignore the creaking sound of the hull under strain as the Anne sat deep in the water and the sight of a hundred rusty nails growing ever more prominent by the day, like green shoots appearing through the earth in spring. Perhaps it is as well that there are so many of us, he thought, there is ample enough work to do.
Yet he knew that the fact that there were over forty hands manning a three-hundred-ton vessel owed more to the demands of the cargo that they planned to load off the African shore than it did to prudent maintenance. High numbers of men would be required to guard and subdue the holds filled with savages once they were on board, and perhaps to ensure that there were enough of them left once the malarial and yellow fevers had taken their toll on the outgoing crew. Back on shore the bars and taverns of the