Bonney & Read

The noise comes back first. The noise, the appalling noise, wood splintering, cannon firing, men screaming and the whole world reduced to something blown entirely apart. Yes, that’s it. We were blown completely to pieces. What was it that she said? Dogs…dogs. Something about…weaklings and women. She didn’t have to make it worse for them. It was already bad enough. They were boys, babies, not one of them over twenty and she honestly expected them to be brave? I loved her, I would have gone to the end of the world for her and yet, I could have hated her for the boys. Those poor boys.

That wasn’t how it was supposed to end.

No, no, no. Not there. Back. I can’t start there, I’ll finish too soon. Portsmouth. I like the way that that word tastes. Ports-mouth – round, like something beginning, and kissable like lips. My life, my little land lover’s life, could have been over; I’d had my three times three bad luck, and then I saw The Vanity floating out in the harbour. Easy enough to take a shilling, hers if not the King’s. Easy enough to swear featly to her, in her shiny leather, her stolen gold. There was no shortage of new recruits, and one by one we knelt and, one by one, we swore our loyalty to her, Anne Bonney, kohl-eyed pirate queen, star of many a sea. Calico Jack Rackham was there too, twirling his waxed mustaches, flashing his gold teeth, but it was Annie who held the eye. On second thoughts, forget Portsmouth in the drizzling rain. Start with them. Just picture it; pretty girl, handsome rogue, best ship in the world. Doesn’t it sound like a dream?

Let me start over once more. Once more. I’m new at this.

After Portsmouth, newly in Anne Bonney’s service, it was the Caribbean for us, for me. Not strong enough to heft cannon, not slight enough to walk the tightrope, powder at my hip, I spent a lot of time at Annie’s side. She’d been lonely without me, she said. She took lovers, though. Everybody knew (everybody did). Annie had a taste for pretty Christian boys, fed them rum and rolled them. Never let any of them really touch her, though, not until me. Annie had made herself into a tower; I watched boys scale her and slip, never to be seen again. And it wasn’t that I didn’t want into Annie’s knickers, I did, but that wasn’t the only thing. I was her confidante, see? There were things about her which nobody knew but me. I didn’t want to climb, Annie. I wanted to take her apart brick by brick.

“Come here and sit beside me, handsome boy,” she used to say. Like a dog, I was there when she called.

On the deck, she sat with her head against my shoulder. I knocked my wrist again the keys bunched around her neck to hear them chime dully.

“What are those for?” I said, as she wrapped them in her fist to silence them.

“A key for every room where I ever left something precious,” she said. Over the years, I pieced together what it was that Annie meant when she said ‘precious’ – gold, silver, jewels, paperback novels and baby bones. There is more to life, pretty girl, than riches.

Still, on the deck. We were on the deck, her head was against my shoulder, and I was thinking about the way that she smelt. In the sticky heat of the tropical night, she sweated, sweet and sickly but there was also the perfume in the coils of her hair, copper, gunmetal, gunpowder clinging to the tails of her coat. She smelt like a woman, but more than that. She smelt like the place between decks where the cannon are. Anne Bonney smelt ready to fire.

“Tell me a story, Read.”

“A story, Captain?”

“A star story, if you please.”

“A star story.” She could navigate by them but nobody had ever taken the time to tell her the stories. Vainly, I searched for something I knew; a hunter after a bear, or a faithful mutt, anything. They’re all messed up down there. I did the best that I could, though. I improvised.

“Did I ever tell you the one about the mermaid and the desert?” She shook her head against my arm. “You see those stars there? Her tail, see, and her tangled hair?” I was warming up. “If the Pacific is a woman (and she is) then the desert is a woman too. The sea, she’s a broad hipped, bare footed dancing dancing dancing girl, hands over her head good time girl, all things to all men, bearing no grudges, remembering nothing. The desert, though, she’s older, meaner. The desert fucks and eats the bones for breakfast. You know the kind of girl I’m talking about. Now…you imagine that poor mermaid, ripped out of her Pacific slumber, perfect and dumped in a damp whole in the middle of all that desert. Imagine being taken out of all that vast coolness and waking up one morning too big for your very small pond. Horrible, isn’t it? A pond. No…it wasn’t even a pond. A puddle. A drip. A teacup’s dream of utter fullness.”

“What did she do?”

“What did she do? Sang out of tune, of course. The world crime the mermaids have is discord. A siren would have had her eyes for less. And now the sky is the only blue she ever sees, a great dry desert, cold, and there are no tides for her now. She is a gilled creature; she chokes on clouds. Her world is murky and silt laden. She dreams of breaking waves.”

Annie made a soft, content sound and pressed her cheek against my shoulder, sleeping, rising and receding like the tide. She was as much of a puzzle to me as she was to everybody. She liked to bare her teeth and growl. The crew told stories about a husband who turned King’s evidence, a baby who died of lack of love. Anne Bonney was a storm, a lot of noise, but beyond that, what I remember is her when she was quiet. Annie was a roaring, wild girl, but it’s when I think about the quiet times that it all comes rushing back without warning, like opening floodgates. Like blowing charges. At night, I lay awake and imagined Jack touching her; the other ones came and went but Jack stood his ground. In my hammock, I cataloged her; the imagined weight of her breasts, the way that her hair would feel on my face if I closed my eyes, the taste of her if I sucked my fingers after. Was I ashamed? I never was. It never felt wrong to me. Wanting her was like looking at the ocean from the crow’s nest, from the very top of our moving world; it was bigger than all understanding.

Was I jealous of Jack? Oh God, yes. I hated everything about him where she was concerned. She was so difficult to talk to but Jack seemed to have the knack, the sort of thing that only that comes from long practice. I think that she needed the both of us, Jack and me, one for her left hand, one for her right. Annie had the feel of a not whole person; she needed other people to help her keep her shape. Yes. That’s it. There was too much of the sea in Annie. She never knew when to stop. There was a night, that night, not the beginning of the end but the point after which nothing could stay the same. We’d been in the islands for nine months or a year; I’d told her all of the star stories that I knew. That night was a wild party night. A blue heavy moon, Annie’s mouth spiced with fruit and rum, her jewels the spoils of running battles and all of her heat spilling over. Too hot to spend much time below, so we made a circle of warm light on the deck, out in the air and while men aged against each other and sang Annie danced in slow spirals, her linen skirts kilted up above her knees.

“Oh, Annie, oh, Annie,” I called to her, “Come sit here with me.” It was the first time in all of that time that I demanded anything of her. I was almost surprised when she came. She dropped down onto her hands and knees and crawled to me, too drunk to walk steadily. Behind me, Jack was saying something but I didn’t hear him, distracted as I was by the fragrant shadows between Annie’s breasts. She knelt in front of me, her hands resting on my knees, and Jack was still talking and I didn’t catch a word. Annie’s kiss was sharp and sweet, a flicker of her tongue. Oh, God, she caused a flood in me.

I think that that was what did it for Jack, that kiss. It’s that old thing about the Queen’s head, isn’t it; if the Queen stands, you bow, if she sits, you kneel, and, when the Queen is sleeping, you get on your belly and kiss the ground. Jack could take the stupid, gaudy boys, he could take the singing and the dancing and the noise, but he couldn’t quite take that moment when Annie crawled and her head was lower than mine.

When he slammed me back against the wall I let him; I’d seen Jack beat a man into unfamiliar angles for Annie or because of her. He always pleaded headaches or remorse by morning and Annie made a big show of weeping and sponging scrapes and bruises. I didn’t fancy scars, wasn’t sure that I could carry off a heroic limp. I didn’t want to know if Annie would weep for me.

“Did you ride her, Master Read?”

“What would be the difference if I did?”

“I am asking you if you fucked her?”

“Wouldn’t be the first, would I, Jack?”

When he hauled back and punched me, still holding my shirt, I heard linen tear. Much mending leaves weak points. Blood trickling, my nose hot and tight in a cold face, I looked up at him. He’d torn the front of my shirt. If I’d been a girl like Annie it would never have worked, not in a million years, but I was all angles, see, and there’s a lot that you can do with linen bandages pulled tight, and hope. When he yanked me to my feet, he pushed his hand inside my shirt. There wasn’t much to feel.

“You lied to us, Master Read.”

“Mary,” I said.

“Like the virgin,” said Jack, smiling.

“Nothing like that at all,” I said.

Of all the things that I ever expected of Jack, Jack, Jack the Cad Calico, I never expected that he’d turn locksmith on me. He’d tried it on with me before; boys, girls, it was all a warm body to Jack, but he’d made so much noise, caused such a caper that giving him the slip had been easy. I never expected him to sit down on the deck, make me sit down beside him, one arm around my shoulders, one hand still tucked inside my shirt. He fished a flask from somewhere.

“I’m in love with her.” It was the first time that I’d ever said it. Saying it made it real.

“You too?”

“But she’s so cold.”

“It isn’t cold,” he said, “so much as that she doesn’t love. Not anymore. Not anybody.”

“Why not?”

“Has to do with rotten husbands and dead babies and other lives.” He raised a toast to nobody in particular, to the sea, maybe, or to Annie. “There was a time when I wanted her to wear my ring. Now…now I realize that that isn’t our Annie, not at all. You make a wife out of a woman like that, you put out all of her light.” Yes. That’s exactly what he said. You put out all of her light.

“Why do you stay then? If she’ll never…if there’ll always be others?” I was just beginning to realize that what Anne did best of all was break people, by burning and cooling too quickly, leaving people cracked and useless after. She ruined Jack’s life. She ruined mine as well. She kept us there too long.

“Why?” said Jack, finally. “Because sometimes it’s just bliss to bask in borrowed light.”

When Annie found out, found me in Jack’s arms, she smiled.

“I always knew that there was something peculiar about you, Master Read,” she said. “Soft hands and stories indeed.” A normal woman might have screamed and thrown things, not shrugged her shirt from her shoulders and lifted her breasts in her hands. Annie was not a normal woman. Neither of us were.

“Come to bed, love,” said Jack, lifting the blanket, and Annie slid between our bodies, her skin cool like the spray from waves. And that was how it was then. Not for a long time, but for a while…It was…Yes. It was. It was two years, which didn’t feel like long time at all and probably wasn’t. In the autumn, not that there are seasons at sea or that far south, but in the autumn, Annie’s belly grew round and tight, firm around Jack’s child. We should have known that the end was coming, with Annie read to bear fruit and the sky always very blue. Bad things always happen on beautiful days. Fruit turns rotten.

The sun shone brightly on those handsome navy boys.

“I think that I’ll give it a miss, girls,” said Jack, stumbling on his trousers. Not a bad bloke, Jack, handsome and funny but not quite brave, which made him predictable, not bad.

“We’ll all go down the same way, Jack,” said Annie, lovely and angry and loading her guns. “You can do it shitting yourself and begging or you can do it properly, but you’ll still go down.”

Jack grinned, all bravado.

“Have a good afternoon, Ladies,” he said, and doffed his hat.

Outside the door, the world was very bright. Annie kissed me on the mouth in the light from the doorway and I mistook the first shots for the shudder of my heart. And I lost her, as she stepped out.

It was a losing fight from the very beginning, when Annie shot three of our boys for hiding and kept them in the hold forever. The things which Annie did are legend, now, shot the boys when they wouldn’t fight, called frantically for women like we were ordinary in any way. We were extraordinary. There was never anything like us. We were beautiful and terrible and Annie was bloody terrifying. I wish that I had died there, instead of the slow drowning which followed. I was never going to die there. That isn’t how stories like this one end.

With my head pulled back by my hair, I watched the Commodore strike Annie, watched her go down on her knees. At least if the Commodore was there, Annie would be safe, from rape and that kind of woman’s death. I was still wearing my boy’s coat. They bought Jack out in heavy chains, his eyes swelling shut, black ugly bruises. It was the last time that I saw Jack alive.

The trial was a face, a joke, a play on words. Annie pleaded pregnancy, and I followed suit. I couldn’t remember the last time that I’d bled by then, not in that way that didn’t leave a scar. I have a feel that a woman’s body can be all scar and where she’s sensitive are the places where she isn’t quite healed. Annie and I saved ourselves by showing ourselves up as whores; better a whore than a quick drop and a slow dance. Not that being a whore saved Jack. I didn’t see what happened to Jack, but I can imagine it; there’s no worse death for a handsome man than hanging. Hanging ruins a face. I heard what Annie said to him; “if you’d fought like a man, ye needn’t now be hang’d like a dog.” Sounds like her, doesn’t it? Always did know how to make things worse, our Annie.

What became of Anne Bonney…She never hanged, that’s for sure. Too clever for that, Annie. Liar. Bitch. Escape artiste extraordinaire. Anne Bonney, stuff of legend and banner headlines. There are a lot of ways that Anne Bonney’s story can end. Just think; Annie on her Irish daddy’s plantation, her bastard fostered, dwindling into an old maid’s life. No? What about the husband; the one who gave the game away, the one who gifted Annie with nothing but dead babies. John Bonney. What about him? Imagine what a trophy wife Annie would have made by then, sun-edged, scarred, grown tight and lithe and well-oiled, shrunk by salt to be her most useful size in her stolen gowns. Still no? No, no. Too, too sad. Okay. I’ll have one last try.

Listen:

Annie is nowhere where I’ve been before and she’s very happy. She is walking with bare feet and her hair is shining in the sun. She’s…she’s hand in hand with a little girl and the sea is as clear as a true heart and the exact blue of loss and there she is, Annie Bonney, pirate queen. There are other girls there, but she’s too old for that kind of life. She has another role now; my heart is buried in the soft warm sand and Annie is the keeper of our secret history. Annie takes her little girl swimming and it occurs to me that the sand that clogs my heart’s pathways is a bit like Annie’s memory, warm and soft but somehow coarse and it’s good. It’s very good.

“Is that it? That can’t honestly be it.” I thought that you were sleeping, thought I’d detected that sodden slowness in your breathing but no.

“That’s it.” Since you’re awake, I shift my body up against and under yours, lifting weight off of my numb shoulder. Your hair smells faintly of cigarettes smoke and beer; even after they sent the smokers out into the cold, the scent clings to their clothes.

“That can’t be it…There’s no happy ending. It doesn’t even end.”

“Nobody knows what happens to Annie. I told you what happened to Jack.” Stories, always stories with you. Pirates are exhausting. Next time, something easier…children, railways, a summer of slow days.

“Yes. Yeah, okay…but what about Mary? Don’t tell me she’s a…a…” Somehow the burns on your hands make them more graceful instead of ugly. “A literary device. Don’t tell me that she’s just a way of proving that you’re cleverer than I am.” I’m not cleverer than you. I just know different things.

“Mary, Mary.” I’m too tired for this; yeah, my story was imperfect, but I had thought that it was over and I’m sleep now and that ship…sailed. “Died of pneumonia. Very sad.”

“She drowned.” And that’s where you’re cleverer than me, lovely; the ways in which you care.

“It was a long time ago,” I say, and I’m sorry that the story which I told you was a sad one. You roll against me, your breasts pressed flat against mine and if you can’t see than you’re Anne Bonney and I’m Mary Read you’re blind and never leave me never leave me never.

“Tell me a star story,” you say.

“Alright,” I say.

Okay.