The day we heard about the dragon, he was in the yard with us, bouncing from foot to foot in the cold. Mr Fledge’s man and Dan Rymer had been in the office all morning, hard in talks about something momentous. They’d sent him out so they could be private.
‘Something’s afoot,’ he kept saying importantly, affecting to know more than he did. There were kiss curls on his forehead, and his eyes were bright. His breath hung on the air. They called him in when Fledge’s man left, and ten minutes later he came running back out.
‘I’m going to sea! With Dan! We’re going to catch a dragon! And we’ll be rich!’
‘There are no dragons,’ Cobbe said.
But Tim babbled on about how Dan knew a man who knew a man, who saw one walking out of a forest on an island east of the Java Sea. How Mr Fledge, who always wanted what no one else had, what no one else had ever had, was now determined to be the first person in the civilised world ever to own a dragon. A ship was leaving in three weeks’ time and Tim would be on it, right-hand man to the big hunter, sailing east and still further east till they’d rounded the globe.
‘He’s gone off his rocker,’ Cobbe said, pointing to the side of his head. ‘That’s what it is.’
I pictured a big flying monster that flaps its wings slowly like a heron, breathes out fire, fights heroes, sits on a hoard of treasure or eats a girl. Very big nostrils, round, the sort you could crawl up like a Bermondsey sewer.
I was the one who was good with animals, everyone knew that. Why wasn’t I going?
‘I don’t think much of your chances,’ I said, ‘not with the fire.’
‘What fire?’
‘They breathe fire.’
‘Don’t be stupid. That’s only in storybooks. Don’t believe me, do you? Come on.’ He was mad, beaming with delight, pulling me along into the office where Dan Rymer and Mr Jamrach were drinking brandy in a thick smog of smoke.
‘It’s true, isn’t it?’ Tim said. ‘Tell him.’
He went behind his desk and leaned back horizontally in his chair with his long legs stretched out across the desk and his fingers knotted behind his head.
‘It’s true,’ Jamrach said. ‘Fortunately Mr Fledge has more money than sense.’ He and Dan burst out laughing.
‘A dragon?’
‘A dragon of sorts.’ Dan doodled on a scrap of paper. ‘If it exists. Certainly the natives believe it does. The Ora. There have always been rumours. I talked to a man on Sumba once who said his grandfather had been eaten by one. And there was a whaleman once, an islander. He had a tale. There are lots of tales.’ He showed me what he’d drawn. It looked like a crocodile with long legs.
‘It’s not a dragon if it hasn’t got wings,’ I said, ‘not a real dragon.’
Dan shrugged.
‘We’ll be gone three years,’ said Tim rapturously.
‘Two or three,’ said Dan. ‘Depends.’
‘On what?’ I asked. He shrugged again.
Mr Fledge owned a whale ship called the Lysander. It had sailed out of Hull and was this moment loading at the old Greenland Dock. They’d join the whaling crew on the voyage and take care of wildlife – should there be any – on the way home. ‘Bring back a dragon,’ Fledge’s man said, ‘and you’ll never have to work again.’
I let Tim crow for a few days then went down to the Greenland Dock. The Lysander was a very old vessel, one of the last of its kind, I should say, and it was looking for crew. I signed. Mr Jamrach knew well he could get another boy for the yard.
‘You need me for the animals,’ I said when I told Dan I was going. ‘I’m better than him.’
He leaned his head back and squinted into the white smoke trickling up his face, and said, ‘Oh well, I suppose you can keep an eye on Tim.’
Poor Ma, though, she was distraught. ‘Oh, I don’t want you to go to sea, Jaffy,’ she said when I told her. ‘I always knew this would happen one day and I always wished it wouldn’t. It’s a horrible life. Much too hard for a lad like you. You can’t turn back when you’re out there, you know.’
She was living in Limehouse those days. She’d taken up with a fish man by the name of Charley Grant, a good enough sort. She was preparing herrings on a board when I told her, slitting their bellies and slapping them down, whacking their spines flat with the blunt of a knife.
‘I know that, Ma. I won’t want to turn back.’ It seemed wrong to show my delight considering the state of her, but it was hard not to. She’d gone red and was fighting to keep in the tears. As for me, my feet were lifting from the ground.
‘Hark at him,’ she said, ‘he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.’
Poor old Ma. You’d never take her for a child now. She’d thickened and grown weatherbeaten, and her hair was going grey at the sides. Still walked like a sailor though.
‘I always knew it would come to this,’ she said, with her sore-looking eyes and me feeling bad. I loved my ma. To me, she would ever and always be a warm armpit in the night.
‘What you want then, Ma?’ I said, trying to jolly her along. ‘Eh? What shall I bring you back?’
‘I don’t want anything, you silly sod.’
‘Don’t worry, Ma! It’ll be the making of me. Can’t hang about here all my life, can I? There’s no money here. How you expect me to look after you in your old age if I hang around here all my life? This is a chance of a lifetime, this is. Think!’
‘That’s the trouble,’ she said, pushing me aside with a fishy hand and taking off her apron, ‘I’m thinking all the time. Oh damn. Have you eaten?’
‘Had plenty. Look, Ma, just pour me some tea, will you?’
‘Well, it all sounds ridiculous to me,’ she said, going over to the fire.
I laughed. ‘And there’s the beauty of it,’ I said. ‘It is! Be proud! You can tell everyone: my son’s gone off to catch a dragon. Like knights of old.’
‘You said you wasn’t going to be involved in any hunting!’ She turned accusingly, the poker in her hand.
‘I’m not, I’m not, I’m not, I’m only saying. Of course I’m not.’ I laughed again. I felt quite hysterical. ‘That’s Tim, not me. But I’m part of the enterprise.’
How very important that sounded. How I milked it with the girls at Spoony’s and the Malt Shovel. The enterprise! The great enterprise!
‘You’re only fifteen,’ she said, ‘and you know you’re not a big boy.’
‘Don’t I just.’
Oh, didn’t I just. It had its rewards. They loved me like a babe, those big whores, all wanted to take me into their soft, lemony, lavender bosoms. Many a time for sure I sank my face in there between the creamy swells and drank deep like a babe of mother’s milk, and never a penny was I charged for what others paid for. I was a big man now, though. Fare thee well, you London girls. Jaf Brown is off around the world, and when next you see him he’ll have a tale to tell.
‘Oh,