Blackberry Bill

by Ned Reardon

  The boy had often been told though that it was the local travellers whom had first nicknamed him ‘Blackberry’ on account of the purple scars or birth marks spread about his mouth and eyes which gave the illusion of blackberry juice stains. The gypsy elders, whom often sat around their campfires at night, frightened their offspring with midnight yarns about old Blackberry’s curse. Apparently they’d forbidden their young to go anywhere within sight of this fellow for the stains on his face they claimed were in fact that of dried human blood. They said that he was an awfully hungry man who ate nothing but children and was particularly partial to gypsy kids. These of course tasted much nicer than gorger children, especially when he’d boiled them slowly in a big iron pot! As was their parent’s intention, the terror-stricken gypsy children took heed of the unconditional rule and stayed well away.

  The gypsies, whom also lived out on the windswept marshes at an unofficial campsite down by the saltwater creek, were certainly a God fearing, superstitious lot. Having formed an opinion about somebody it was indubitably set in stone, a stance from which they could never be swayed.

  They had dealt with this lonesome character on one occasion only. This was when they’d indirectly bought his horse through a third party many years ago under a burglar’s moon at an offer they couldn’t refuse. As it turned out they were eventually forced to sell their bargain buy at a considerable loss on to an equestrian sanctuary believing the animal to be jinxed.

  There exists a code of honour amongst all Romany people and although they had deemed the stranger a member of their own race they had also solemnly vowed never to trust him again. Effectively, he was disowned before having even made their acquaintance.

  Chapter 5

  The boy’s orphanage, Greenporch, nestled content and docile within the spiritual shadow cast by an ancient church tower. Save the medieval village of Milton Regis, a cluster of Tudor and Elizabethan dwellings of oak beams with white washed plaster between on the hill close by and a few scattered farm barns, the children’s home and the Norman church side by side stood alone, isolated and engulfed by marshland.

  Greenporch was his home for he’d never known anywhere else. Mr and Mrs Saffron, his legal guardians whom the boy regularly referred to as the wise ones, could be fairly strict at times but on the whole he felt he was treated correctly. In fact, he’d always felt safe and secure, cared for and loved even. Fundamentally though, he’d also continuously felt something wanting in his life, something desperately missing which would have naturally dampened the fire in his belly and eradicated the constant ache of misery lodged like a thorn deep in the invisible membrane of his soul.

  Altogether there were seven girls and six boys residing at the children’s home, and for the majority of the time, got along nicely with one another. Chores were compulsory; each child allotted daily tasks according to their own ability. But there was also always plenty of free time for the children to enjoy fun and games. They went on regular outings, trips to the seaside mostly, where they were spoiled with candy floss and sticks of coloured rock.

  Annual fortnightly holidays to resorts like Broadstairs and Margate had become the norm where the children competed for the finest sandcastles and rode the Big Dipper roller coaster in Dreamland and fell hopelessly under the spells of the Great Zoltar, the fortune-teller resident in a glass kiosk in every penny arcade. The boy was grateful and felt a lot better off than most of his school friends whom had real families, some of which though had never been able to afford such luxuries. For this at least, he was thankful.

  A vestige of light had appeared from beyond the horizon signifying the beginning of a brand new day. The dawn had arrived and soon his quest would begin. The boy waited patiently as the darkness gradually faded revealing before his eyes a vast sea of fog. Thick rolling layers of low lying mist spread out upon the marsh. Like great ocean waves, each desperately clinging to one another and refusing to bow down and die as the all powerful sun began to rise. Staring out of his dormitory window, he felt as though he was incarcerated in the stone tower of a giant’s castle in the midst of a magical kingdom way up above the highest clouds.

  The boy was aching to explore this strange domain ruled solely by wart-skinned toads and fairy-dusted dragonflies. A mysterious land that appeared every morning beyond the glass pane if only to torment his strong sense of adventure. Whereas for the other children, these wetlands were most definitely out of bounds and strictly taboo. Eerie and dangerous it may have been, but the boy was determined to discover the secrets of this forbidden world.

  So he’d resorted to lies and dishonesty, having given his solemn oath never to tread these sodden marshes alone. In parts, according to those who knew, they were treacherous. A quagmire, where boys of his own age had dared to venture and never returned. Disregarding their warnings, he yearned to uncover the mysteries cloaked by these dark and devilish marshes which constantly beckoned him through weird and wonderful dreams. Persistent shadows of the night continued to darken the dormitory but he durst not switch on the electric light. The boy’s eyes slowly grew accustomed to the semi darkness and as quiet as a mouse, as not to disturb the other children sleeping, he got himself dressed for the big day ahead.

  When he glanced up furtively at the brass oval framed portrait of Jesus Christ, adorned in a maroon velvet robe and hung high up on the plain white wall, the boy felt His studious eyes to be judgmental and critical. Penitent, he bowed his head in shame for having lied to the people whom cared for him but at the same time he also felt a dire need to be able to roam the marshes with impunity. He glanced up at the picture again and crossed himself praying to his protector, gentle Jesus on the cross, for His divine forgiveness just this once. With his rucksack and boots clasped tight to his chest, he tiptoed out of the room and down the stairs. Down in the kitchen he set his plan in motion, a ploy which he’d rehearsed many times in his mind. He’d lain in bed and fretted about the consequences should his scheme fail and now a pang of guilt jabbed at his conscience. He’d had to lie to his guardians, managing to convince them that he’d been invited to stay at the friend of his, a freckle-faced cheerful lad called Christopher Crispin, for the first few days of the school summer break.

  So it was imperative that Christopher Crispin did not contact him during this period and he hoped and prayed that his pal wouldn’t be seen either by the wise ones or indeed by any of his fellow protégées. He thought it unlikely though, Christopher Crispin being the timid, lonesome boy he was. With sunken eyes which had hardly slept a wink and greasy jet black hair, neatly cropped and combed in the style of a Hollywood vampire, he reminded him of little Eddie Wolfgang Munster out of the American hit TV show. He lived in the village on the hill in a first floor apartment situated above his father’s funeral parlor and rarely played with other children. He hadn’t any siblings for his amusement either but was awfully keen on books, especially those concerning steam locomotives and railways. Once before, he’d invited the boy home to proudly show off his model railway set. The layout was huge and occupied half of the attic space which much impressed the boy especially when he was allowed to operate the control mechanisms. He quite liked Christopher Crispin, even though every other kid at school blatantly shunned the sallow looking undertaker’s boy.

  Personally, the thing that troubled him the most about his friend was the place where he actually lived. The chapel of rest seriously gave him the heebie-jeebies and so did his creepy looking father who also owned an uncanny resemblance to the immortal Count Dracula and furthermore was locally thought of as a sanctimonious old so and so. The door to Mr Crispin’s office was shaped like the lid of a coffin and attached to the coffin door was a shiny brass skull about the size of a ping-pong ball used as a door knocker. Needless to say the boy never went back there again.

  The boy had already loaded his bag with a variety of items which he’d stowed away over the preceding few days, namely an empty lemonade bottle,
which he now took the opportunity of refilling with orange squash, some biscuits, crisps and boiled sweets. In addition he’d packed a pocket compass, a blunt penknife, his magnifying glass and a turtle neck jumper in case the evenings should turn cold.

  The clock on the wall said it was a quarter to six, much later than he realised. He had better hurry up, he thought. He didn’t want to be delayed by the attentions of Mr and Mrs Stickles – the caretaker and the cook who were shortly due to arrive to rustle up everyone’s breakfast. After quickly preparing himself a couple of his favourite cheese and piccalilli sandwiches, he proceeded to steal some of the fruit from the cook’s bowl, rearranging the remainder to make the theft less conspicuous and hurriedly shoved it all into his rucksack. Quite unrepentant, he gently turned open the key shaped like a large F in the backdoor lock and slipped silently out into the dawn of a glorious Saturday morning. The sun had finally escaped the horizon and lit up the sky with bright orange and yellow ochre streaks, illuminating the great expanse.

  Before his adventure to explore the forbidden and forbidding marshes could begin in earnest, he wanted first to visit his parent’s grave. Dodging through a gap in the broken church gates, he navigated a path towards the grave through patches of thick mist that still clung low about the tombstones. This was the first time that he’d experienced the graveyard like this, so eerily silent and still that even the spiders sat upon their dewy cobwebs dare not flinch or the birds perched up in the wet trees to utter the slightest sound. But the boy held no fear and upon his arrival noticed with interest that there had been another posie of fresh flowers respectfully placed before their headstone.

  After paying his own respects, he was suddenly filled with a powerful motivation to seek out the whereabouts of the strange hermit known as Blackberry Bill. He was determined to find out if indeed it was this man who’d placed the flowers here and of course the reason why. Perhaps this rascal had been a friend of his parent’s, he reasoned. Or maybe they’d employed him to undertake some kind of marine work aboard their sailing barge. If either of these conjectures turned out to be true, then his chances of gaining some significant knowledge about his parents from this man would be greatly enhanced.

  Trembling with anticipation, he dared to ponder further on a glimmer of hope flickering across his mind. The remote possibility of a photograph of his mother and father. He then asked himself, could this so called rogue possess such a thing? A beautiful print which would be more precious to him than his own life. Bursting with this new resolve and with the utmost zeal, he hurdled the churchyard wall like a racing greyhound, running the length of the farmer’s dirt track through the apple and pear orchards and beyond into the beauty of the wilderness that was the Milton marshes.

  Chapter 6

  Nearing the end of a long trek across the marsh, he heard the screeching cries of hundreds of seagulls. He saw them soaring high above the council landfill dump down alongside the saltwater creek appearing almost like the burnt ashes of paper floating weightlessly above an enormous bonfire.

  After scrambling up the grassy bank of the sea wall, he could smell salt in the air and was somewhat surprised as he turned around noticing the amount of ground he’d covered already. From this vantage point, he spied the entire length of the creek’s meandering course from its head at Flushing Street at the edge of the town down to its mouth at Kemsley where it joins the Swale.

  Here he also felt comforted by the sight of his church, prominent on the horizon whence he had come. The great tower of the Holy Trinity Church stood noble and sentinel as it has done since ancient times, overlooking and guarding the splendour of the wilderness which now surrounded him.

  It was beginning to get very warm and he was annoyed with himself for forgetting to bring his straw hat. After a brief glance up at the rising sun, he understood with much dismay that he would soon need to find some shade somewhere if he wanted to avoid being burnt to a crisp. Nevertheless, for the time being he was content to rest here a while, stripping down to his breeches and quenching his thirst by eating one of the stolen apples.

  The tide had receded to its lowest point exposing the creek’s slippery innards glistening like wet liver. Mounds of dove grey mud which smelled obnoxious, as they did more often than not, of a sulphurous odour rather like rotten eggs. It was a smell he and his fellow Miltonians had long grown accustomed to and in truth hardly ever noticed anymore.

  Moored at Murston Dock across the creek the boy saw a rusty old paddle steamer that seemed to have fallen into disrepair. Affixed near the bow of the boat there was a nameplate that said, ‘PS Medway Queen’. He watched idly as the shipwrights, a band of proud and nostalgic enthusiast’s intent on restoring her to her former glory, applied their trades.

  This must be the ship that Mr Stickles had spoken of, he thought. The one that had saved his life during the war. Sometime ago the caretaker had relayed to him what he’d learnt of the vessel’s plight and in addition given him a brief summary of its valiant history. He’d told him that this much loved steamer was part of Winston Churchill’s ‘little ships flotilla’ used at the beginning of WWII, rescuing around 7,000 soldiers of the British Army stranded on the bombarded beaches of northern France. In 1939 she was also requisitioned to evacuate hundreds of children from Gravesend to East Anglia.

  The boy took another long look at her and felt glad that this lovely old lady of the sea was soon to be given a new lease of life, which he also felt only fitting for a heroine of Dunkirk.

  Sitting down in the long, sun bleached grass amongst the wild poppies and grasshoppers, he was able to breathe in the fresh air of the North Sea yonder for here was the perfect place he’d sought many times through his vivid imagination. He loved the ocean and often dreamt of pirates and scallywags and of Sinbad’s wonderous adventures sailing the seven seas. His love of all things nautical was a trait he had inherited from his seafaring father, the sea already firmly established within his young blood. One day he mused, when he was rich and successful, he would buy his own boat and sail her all the way round the world.

  Lying back beneath the heat of the relentless sun, he became totally immersed in a summery world of butterflies and bumble bees, buttercups and daisies and wearily fell into a comforting slumber.

  He hears imaginary sea birds and smells salt and seaweed and even the fishes beneath the briny water. He feels as though he is really there, fearlessly sailing alone upon the crest of a gigantic ocean wave aboard nothing more substantial than a ramshackle raft using his patchwork eiderdown tied to a pole for a sail and an estate agent’s FOR SALE signpost board, turned on its head as a rudder. Behind him, he feels the power of an inordinate wind driving him and the fragile craft towards the horizon. Relentlessly rolling onward to the sun rising in a vast, hollow sky that reaches to infinity.

  Only a short while later he was suddenly woken up. Now firmly back in this world he felt bereft. Something troubling had disturbed his innocent daydream and dragged him back into the realm of reality. Fear pinpricked his senses as a dark shape began to emerge through the haze of his sleepy eyes. He saw a slovenly man standing along the hillock that it seemed was urinating into the creek. When he’d finished the man picked up what looked to the boy like an ordinary garden digging fork before trudging out on to the salt marshes.

  Using the back of his hand to shield his eyes from the glare of the sun, he decided to take a stint at watching the stranger. The man had halted midway across the salt marsh where he’d begun to dig the ground. The boy couldn’t fathom out what the man was actually up to but gradually began to realize that he was possibly burying something… Or someone? he quickly reconsidered, with a quiver of shivers traversing the length of his spine. He dared to prop himself up a little further in order to gain a clearer view.

  The man was wearing a plain white shirt with a crimson neckerchief, dark brown breeches held up by a pair of braces and a pair of tan coloured leather boo
ts. A tinker perhaps? pondered the boy. He had an idea that it was also the same person who he’d noticed only the other day, loitering suspiciously in the churchyard.

  A little while later the man was stood knee deep in the trench he had just dug. Who was he? he fretted. And was he up to no good? Maybe this guy was indeed the stranger he sought but he couldn’t be certain at this distance. If it is Blackberry Bill, he considered, how does a ten year old boy acquaint himself with such an odd ball character? He could be dangerous. He could be mad even. The boy erred on the side of caution deciding that it was probably wiser to bide his time. First he needed to be sure that it was the right fellow and to work out a safer way of making contact. Perspiring heavily, he stood up in readiness to leave and after studying the man further, was relieved to learn that there weren’t any signs of dead bodies at least. Reluctantly, he crept away in the opposite direction.

  Chapter 7

  A quarter of a mile downstream he came alongside some sunken barges that had clearly been abandoned long ago and left to the mercy of the tide. Creeping closer, the shipwrecks began to appear like the bony skeletons of some gigantic sea creatures beached on a graveyard of mud. The rotting wooden keels and bulkhead frames, like the spines and rib cages of whales, were all that remained. Sad carcasses strewn all over the salt marshes. In the midst of all this decay however, lay the sunken wreck of an iron tugboat, its huge funnel half rusted away and leaning lopsided.

  The boy had a fancy the vessel could afford him some temporary respite from the blistering heat. It had become far too hot and sticky for comfort, the air close and clammy and a struggle to breathe. He decided to tempt providence and give it a go, having already deduced it feasible to attain this objective by using the barge’s rib frames as stepping stones and to this effect eventually boarded the craft with the help of incorporating a length of rickety driftwood used as a makeshift gangplank.