JT01 - In The Blood

by Steve Robinson

  Two blurs arrived between them, circling in a figure of eight before dashing off again.

  “Give it back,” Laura yelled, snatching at a bright yellow ribbon that danced tantalisingly out of reach.

  James shook his head, though his expression was as playful as the scene. His eyes lifted towards Katherine then, drawing her into the proceedings that she had previously felt distanced from, like a biographer writing about the lives of others.

  “I think you had better round up your siblings and teach them a little decorum,” he said.

  A stranger approached, though his apparel stated his business. “Captain Grainger’s about ready for you, sir,” he said.

  No one watched them leave, and Katherine Fairborne was in no doubt that few cared they were going as the brig heaved and creaked through the calm of the early morning tide towards the sunrise. Yet she continued to stand with her family on the deck of the Betsy Ross, looking back at Boston Harbour’s quiet quayside, reflecting, as she supposed everyone was, on the lives they were leaving behind. Above her, sheets of sail-cloth calmed momentarily, limp and flapping, then all snapped full, drawing the breeze, ushering them headlong into an uncertain destiny.

  Katherine could barely control her desire to rush off and find her writing box, but she waited, and in doing so she saw a change in little George that disquieted her. He looked close to tears, pale of complexion and rigid as the portside rail he clung to. He was tight lipped as though imprisoning his emotions; she could see that the thrill of the adventure had deserted him. Now it seemed that fear had replaced it, watching like mischief beside him, sharing dark thoughts and painting darker pictures that were perhaps very different to their father’s ideals.

  George snatched at his father’s hand, edging closer until there was no space left between them. “I don’t think I want to go father.”

  James Fairborne tightened the bond between them. “Be strong, lad,” he said. “Be strong.”

  As they cleared the harbour entrance, turning hard to starboard into the Black Rock Channel and the open sea, Katherine at last broke away, climbing the steps to the upper deck and descending through the hatch into the Great Cabin where her writing box and journal waited.

  Journal of Katherine Fairborne.

  Thursday, August 21st 1783.

  The day has finally arrived and we are at sea with several weeks ahead of us and the promise of little else to do but watch the ocean and listen to it break against the boat. Father is being positive, but I sense he is uneasy about the crossing and our new lives in England. I will miss my friends and will write to them all as soon as we land - no doubt with exciting tales of adventure that will make them all pitifully jealous.

  Everyone is being sick apart from Father and I - I do hope poor George will soon acclimatize and recover his usual temperament, not least because the matter affords the crew a degree of merriment that upsets Mother. I am sure, however, that they will all soon settle down to their duties as the demands of the voyage dictate.

  Of the crew, I have noticed one in particular. As he guides our course in the weeks to come, I know he and I shall become good friends. I have already caught his eye and I must confess to enjoying his attentions.

  Chapter Five

  Somewhere over the Atlantic, American Airlines flight AA156 from Boston, Massachusetts to London, Heathrow began to judder. Bong! The seat-belt lights lit up around the cabin, by which time Jefferson Tayte’s strap was already tight. The comfortable innocence afforded him by the state of half-sleep he’d been in for the last couple of hours was over. Another judder shook his seat, reaffirming his now lucid state. He peered down the aisle to see a leggy stewardess buckling up and knew this was going to be bad.

  Julia Kapowski must have seen Tayte startle back to life. “Turbulence!” she said. “It’s just turbulence.” Her eyes lit up, and as though sensing his anxiety, she said, “Here sweetie, let me hold your hand.”

  Tayte reacted just in time, crossing his arms like a sulking schoolboy as she moved in. “Thanks. I’m okay.”

  “Hey! Suit yourself.” Kapowski settled back in her seat and looked out the window.

  Silence descended between them like an uncomfortable two minutes remembrance. When it was up, Tayte offered an apology.

  “Sorry,” he said. “But I’m okay. Really.” He knew she meant well.

  Kapowski’s smile returned. “Don’t like to fly eh? My first husband didn’t like planes either. Said they scared the shit outta him!” She put a hand to her mouth. “Excuse me. That was just his way.”

  The captain’s familiar voice gave the usual greeting, then proceeded to confirm that they were indeed experiencing turbulence. By the time the announcement had finished, Tayte had heard the word more times than he cared to, and if he didn’t already know that turbulence was a state of flow in which the instantaneous velocities exhibit irregular and apparently random fluctuations - he did now.

  Who is this guy?

  He figured the idea was that if you knew what you were experiencing and knew what caused it, then it wouldn’t scare you. But the logic was flawed to Tayte’s mind. He knew exactly how Dirty Harry Callahan’s .44 Magnum worked, but he still knew he’d need a change of underwear if it was pointed at his head. When the lesson finished, the captain signed off with that well oiled phrase, “There’s really nothing to worry about…” Yeah right. Tayte could picture the cheesy grin on his face as he said it.

  Another violent jolt saw Tayte’s fingernails stabbing back into his armrests, preceding the sweat beads that broke across his brow as the plane suddenly dropped. He felt lighter, then heavy again as it levelled out. His stomach churned. He still couldn’t believe he’d passed on lunch, however dire the offerings in front of Kapowski had looked, but he was glad now that he had.

  It was all going so well.

  At one point he’d even come close to real sleep, drifting to the rhythm of the riddles he had no answers to, convincing himself over and over that he had the right James Fairborne despite the obvious incongruities. His research had been meticulous. He was confident of his findings no matter what further issues they raised, and now, of all those concerns, the dominating question that stood on the shoulders of the rest and kept waving at him was: who is Susan Fairborne?

  He knew as much as records allowed, but he expected them to show James Fairborne and his wife, Eleanor. Their children: Katherine, Laura and George. Instead, he’d found James and his wife, Susan, and two completely different children: Allun and Lowenna. The copy of the transcript in his briefcase was very clear. James’s marriage to Susan Forbes on Saturday, March 12th 1785 was unquestionable. So what happened to the rest of the family? Why are there no records? Why only James?

  Tayte knew well enough that records are sometimes lost or filed incorrectly. Names were frequently misspelled, either because they were written in some difficult to read, idiosyncratic style, or simply because the scribe recorded the information badly. Any combination of such things made records harder to find - sometimes impossible to find. But so many? Only one person out of seven with records intact? It was too much for Tayte to write off as coincidence.

  Something else had started to puzzle him too, but he could no longer think straight. The plane was audibly banging now and moving in all dimensions. Tayte couldn’t remember the last time he’d had any religious inclinations, but he suddenly found himself thinking, dear God, get me through this! He pictured his Ford Thunderbird, all alone in some strange parking lot, and wondered whether he would ever see it again.

  It was some time later when Tayte became aware that something else was annoying him. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. It felt like an injection stabbing into his right arm, just below the shoulder, only the injection kept coming and the applied force grew until he felt himself rocking from side to side under the weight of the heavy needle that just kept jabbing and jabbing into his arm.

  No records… The injections became painful. What happened to them? He b
egan to feel desolate. Eleanor? The children? A cloudburst of despair washed over him and he sensed the answer was not good. The injection came again, but he no longer cared. He began to sob at the sheer hopelessness. Then over the sobbing he heard another voice. The nurse?

  “Hey!” The voice was familiar.

  The needle jabbed into his arm again only now it felt more like a knife. His arm went numb, squeezing and pumping, like the nurse was checking his blood pressure.

  “JT… Hey!”

  The despair left him as suddenly as it arrived. He shocked back into his seat to a rush of air vents and the muddled chaos of people standing all around him, struggling over each other to get their bags from the overhead compartments.

  “I thought we’d lost you.” Kapowski was perky in her seat, a sharp fingernail still poised to give him another jab. “You slept like a baby for the last two hours. “We’re there already!”

  “Where?” He was still dazed from the heavy sleep that had finally caught up with him.

  “Heathrow dummy! You missed the best bit.”

  “Best bit?”

  “The landing!”

  Tayte let out a sigh and rubbed his eyes. “Sorry. I was dreaming.”

  “Oh… Anyone special?”

  “No. No one special.” He stumbled over the words. “Well, maybe,” he added, feeling the need to correct himself. “It’s - well it’s something I’m working on.” He stood up, eager now to get off the plane. “It’s a little complicated.”

  “Oh, don’t mind me. I’m not the prying kind.”

  The passengers were clearing. Tayte reached into the compartment above their seats and pulled out a familiar briefcase that he hoped had enjoyed the trip more than he had. “Can I get your bag?” he asked.

  “I’d like that, I really would. But I travel light.” She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a card. “Look me up if you need anything,” she said, winking as she handed it to him. “I’m in town the rest of the week.”

  Tayte knew he wouldn’t use it, but he took the card anyway. “Thanks,” he said, slipping it beneath the flap of his jacket pocket without giving it a glance.

  The aisle had cleared. They were the last few on the plane. “Well, nice meeting you,” Tayte offered. Then he went for the exit, still half asleep and scarcely able to believe the flight was over and he was still alive.

  Outside, the taxi rank droned with the chatter of diesel engines. It was raining and cool, and the air under the canopy shelter was heavy with the smell of diesel fumes. Tayte made his way towards the black cab at the front of the queue, opened the passenger door and followed his bags in.

  “Paddington station,” he said, forcing a neutral accent that sounded a little too phonetically correct.

  The cabby looked mildly confused. “Paddington?”

  “That’s right - Paddington.”

  “You do know there’s a rail link that’ll get you there in half the time for about a third of the price?”

  “No, I didn’t. Good of you to say, but I’m here now.”

  “Okay mate - it’s your money.”

  The cabby turned back to the wheel and pressed a few buttons on the meter.

  Tayte checked his watch. “I have a connection to make at ten to midnight.”

  “No problem pal. It’ll be quiet once we clear the airport.

  Tayte settled back and stretched out his legs, still tense from the flight. Beyond his own reflection in the glass window, which now told him he was in need of a shave as well as a hair cut, it was too dark to see anything much: other cars, grey buildings, an outline of trees that were no more than damp shadows beyond the street lights. As he sat listening to the clickety-hum of the engine and the rush of tire rubber against the road surface, he reflected again on what else had started to puzzle him.

  He considered the facts. James Fairborne had remarried. The question was why? And just over a year after arriving in England? Divorce seemed unlikely, though not impossible. But why would Eleanor have gone in the first place if things were already rocky between them? Then there was the question of the lack of records for Eleanor and the children, and for James’s sister, Clara and her husband, Jacob Daniels. No death records, no further marriage record and nothing at all in the IGI - the International Genealogical Index, otherwise now known as Family Search. According to recorded history they just vanished.

  He felt certain the Betsy Ross had made it to England - James Fairborne’s arrival was proof enough of that and there was nothing in the Lloyds Register of Shipping to suggest the Betsy Ross hadn’t completed the voyage. But it concerned him that there was no information on the brig at Falmouth; nothing in the Ship Index to register her arrival. All he knew for sure was that she sailed from Boston in the August of 1783 and that James Fairborne was buried in the parish of Mawnan in Cornwall, England in 1829, having lived there for forty-six years and to an above-average age of eighty-one.

  Tayte even considered death at sea, against the odds that everyone in the family apart from James had died due to some illness or accident, and knowing that only half such deaths were ever reported in the first place. But that route came to a quick end when he discovered that records of births, marriages and deaths at sea only existed for a few British ports before 1800 and Falmouth was not one of them.

  The further back in time you went the less information there was. But no records for any of them? It was all too much coincidence for Tayte, who was beginning to suspect that someone had been playing with the past and had done a very good job of hiding these people. But why? The sense of despair from his earlier dream on the plane told him that no good had come to Eleanor and her children. For now, it was the only thing he could think of to account for James remarrying.

  “Never been to America myself,” the cabby said, breaking into Tayte’s thoughts. “Where ‘bouts you from?”

  “Washington DC, home of the Redskins.”

  “Oh, I know.” There was a pause. “What’s the DC bit stand for?”

  “District of Columbia. It’s between Richmond and Baltimore.”

  The cabby’s head was shaking before the sentence was out. “Nah, sorry.”

  “Two hundred miles south-west of New York?” Tayte offered, figuring everyone knew where that was.

  “Oh, New York. Yeah ‘course. Heard of that … so good they named it twice!”

  “That’s the one.” Tayte was stupefied.

  They stopped at a roundabout and Tayte thought he heard a chuckle over the clicking indicator relay. Then they were off again, cutting out in front of a white van. The cab’s rear window immediately began to glow with the flash of headlights as distant obscenities split the night.

  The cabby shook his head as the van sped past. “Can’t remember who sang it though,” he said, dismissing the near accident. He caught Tayte’s eyes in the rear-view mirror. “The New York song?”

  Tayte nodded back. “Right.” His tone was one of agreement, feigning distraction. He wasn’t going any further down that road. Then what started as a low, semi-tuneful hum beyond the screen in front of him, quickly built into the worst rendition of Gerard Kenny’s ’78 disco hit, New York, New York Tayte had ever heard. He couldn’t believe the cabby was actually singing.

  Nice to see a man happy at his work, he thought as he settled back. He smiled to himself and hoped the service wasn’t extra.

  Chapter Six

  On the A389 in Cornwall, heading south-west away from Bodmin on the western edge of Bodmin Moor, a beat-up, electric-blue Mazda 323 hatchback sped through the darkness, main beam pumping light out into the void. It was late. There was no other traffic around and the last road sign the driver had passed told him that Truro was twenty miles away. Another thirty miles and he’d be back in Helford - safe.

  The driver slapped the steering wheel to the bassline of a punchy tune that was playing too loud on the cheap car-stereo. He sat forward in his seat, still high - energized. A sizeable grin split his face.

  “I
can’t believe it!” he shouted, hard against the music. I can’t believe I fucking did it!”

  He looked down at the Tesco bag in the passenger seat footwell, knowing what was inside. He wanted to touch his ill-gotten prizes again, to prove they were real and that he really had pulled it off. Bodmin was behind him now, but he was still back there in the moment, savouring the buzz of the snatch. It had been far easier than he’d expected. Now, at last, it felt like things were finally coming together.

  By the time the driver arrived at his intended destination, the night had deepened to its darkest reaches. A small row-boat had been necessary for the last leg of his clandestine journey, and now, as he sat grinning at his star prize, he was still buzzing from the thrill of his night’s work. His eyes narrowed and sharpened on a silver crucifix that dangled from his left hand, swinging gently in harsh torchlight, suspended from a thick leather cord that was almost brittle with age. The light from the torch bounced off the crucifix, casting bright crosses against dark and angular walls. In his right hand was a tan leather-bound notebook, cracked and faded.

  He knew the museum would miss them in the morning - of course they would. But what did that matter to him? No one would be able to connect him to the theft. No one yet knew what he knew.

  “Not like it’s stealing really,” he said to himself.

  It had taken time to gather the truth, piece by piece. It had taken a long time. His elation soured. It was a sudden change, like a resting alligator snapping without warning at a meal that had strayed too close.

  “It’s taking too much time!” he shouted. His words echoed around him then just as suddenly he was calm again.

  A gratifying thought occurred to him, twisting his mouth. His gaze dropped to the ground as he tried to focus on a sandy spot just beyond his sprawled out legs. “How can you steal something that’s rightfully yours?” he asked. It wasn’t everything he felt belonged to him, but it was a start.