Firefly Gadroon

by Jonathan Gash

  Drummer was dead. It would be me next. I forced myself to think of shadows. A few years ago I unintentionally went sailing, with a bloke who lived on a cabin cruiser. Still does. He had some nautical gadgets for sale, a sextant, two old ship logbooks and a navigator’s table from sailing days. I wouldn’t even have gone on board but it was one of those fine calm summers when our estuaries are crowded with holidaymakers. It seemed safe as houses. Doug, an old mate of mine, laughed at my fears.

  We had a drink or three while we haggled. It was only early Victorian, none the less desirable. I knew I had plenty of keen customers for his stuff. We were both fairly well pickled when I noticed I couldn’t see the shore any longer through the cabin window. While we’d been fixing the deal a dense fog had fallen. In fact we couldn’t see a damned thing, not even another boat.

  Doug laughed again, but this time less convincingly because it seemed we were drifting. Doug’s bloody carelessness with his anchor had put us in the most dangerous position you can ever be on water – drifting in a fog. Naturally by then Doug was too sloshed to think straight. Terror sobered me, but I know nothing about boats. Naturally the nerk’s engine wouldn’t go, and to cap it all his famous electronic gear failed to bleep. He kept saying, ‘We’re fine, great,’ the lunatic.

  About half an hour later foghorns began booming. The most mournful sound in the world except for a sobbing donkey. The trouble is you can’t really tell which direction they are coming from. Fog does weird things to sounds. I was sure they were trying to tell us something, but of course Doug was singing nautical gibberish and unable to do anything even if he knew what was going on. We had another drink or two. Not much else we could do for the moment.

  Scared as I was, I must have nodded off. I’d been swigging Doug’s filthy homebrew since clambering aboard. Anyhow the next thing I remember of this holiday cruise was coming to, still befuddled and grinning with Doug snoring loudly in the cockpit. I sat in the well area peering blindly around at the grey fog. The sea heaved its unpleasant oily surface against the boat. No need to worry, though. Doug, that experienced sailor, said so – sloshed out of his mind but undoubtedly experienced. He’d told me we’d just float in the estuary till the fog lifted.

  ‘Hey, Doug,’ I remember bawling from my reclining posture. ‘I can see a roof.’

  ‘Eh?’ He came to and yawned extravagantly. ‘Impossible. You’re drunk, Lovejoy.’

  But I could, a tilted dark mass exactly like a pointed roof. And there was a noise, an intermittent sucking and slurping. Doug came staggering up from the cabin, stretching and scratching. I pointed. The mass seemed to be hardening and growing fast.

  Doug froze. Jesus!’ It wasn’t even a shout. It was a moan. ‘The gun fort!’ he screamed.

  At that moment a faint gust thinned the fog. I gaped at the appalling sight, nearly peeing in sheer terror. We were floating fifty yards off the most colossal thing I’d ever seen. An immense looming black concrete rectangle filled the sky hundreds of feet above us. Vast cylindrical pillars plunged from its flat belly into the sea. They were horribly stained by weed and begrimed by rims of discharged oil. The sea sloshed on them with that gruesome sickening slurp I now realized I’d been hearing for some time. With the erratic sloshing of the greeny-black oily sea around its legs the horrible bloody thing seemed to be wading towards us like a huge uncoordinated giant bent on our destruction.

  ‘Get us away from it!’ I screeched. ‘Get the fucking boat—’

  ‘We’re drifting for it!’ Doug yelled. He attacked the stupid engine controls on the dashboard, kicking and blaspheming, while I subsided into an aghast silence as the great malevolent mass seemed to plod its mad way nearer and nearer. To my shame I hid my head between my hands in the cabin, too terrified to do anything, though Doug was screaming for me to come out and help. He called me all the abusive names he knew but I didn’t budge. The one glance I gave nearly made me faint. We’d drifted between the tower’s obese legs, about forty feet off to either side, and above, the grotesque soiled dripping underbelly of the gun fort filled the whole world, a mass of slanting shadow.

  Doug did well from then on, all on his own. I stayed in the cabin mute with terror even when the engine mercifully roared into action. I couldn’t bear to look out until Doug yelled that we were clear. Doug became quite chirpy as we puttered home through the lessening fog. I recognized the anecdote syndrome. This would be the basis of one of his famous nautical tales in the pubs along the coast. How I Escaped The Sea Drift In The Worst Fog . . . He could have the glory any time, I thought fervently. All I wanted was to stand on solid ground and never get off.

  Doug assumed I’d been too seasick to help him near the sea fort. I didn’t disillusion him. I said, what the hell could you expect from that homebrewed plonk he kept offering me, which gave him a good laugh. I joined in – once we stepped ashore.

  That was my shadow. Until now I’d made myself forget. Now I made myself remember.

  And I’d done something even more stupid. I’d forgotten to look at a map. I went in and got out my one-inch-scale Ordnance Survey.

  Immediately I found another missing link. Mrs Hepplestone’s fields ran down to the sea marshes at the estuary’s northern shore. Exactly opposite, a small crossed square was printed on the map’s blue ocean. ‘Platform (dis)’, it said.

  It fitted into an unpleasant scheme. Old Hepplestone had copied a firefly cage, carving it beautifully in coal. But he had made the legs and base exactly like those of the gun platform – no harm in that, surely? After all, he’d seen it often enough from his wife’s lovely estate. Yet there was this irksome little secret hollow leg with the shiny bottom. Empty, but undoubtedly a hell of a lot of time and trouble to make. How odd, to work so cleverly merely to draw attention to an empty hole. Unless he was drawing attention to something on the sea fort itself?

  A steady stream of nicked antiques had vanished and never been recovered. Now the point is, that the gun platforms aren’t just planks on a trestle. Each was a compact fortress garrisoned by a whole artillery company, and capable of resisting assault and blockade. Plenty of room out there for stolen antiques to wait in solitude for eventual collection by night boats.

  Dolly came back as I folded the map away. I was glad to see her. The beautiful woman had brought a portable battery television set and a bottle of wine. I gave her a real heroine’s welcome. She might not know it, I swore fervently, but she’s going to stay here tonight if I have to rope her to the sink. She seemed delighted at her reception.

  Chapter 12

  I needed a boat.

  For a whole thirty-six hours I worked like, well, a donkey. My old Bible box got the full treatment.

  If money was needed – seeing wealthy Mrs Hepplestone had scotched my phoney advert – I had to sacrifice a life-time of principles and make it look the best-preserved antique in the kingdom.

  Oak fades with age to a displeasing dry pallor, so it’s a unique problem. Normally I hate tricks with antiques. I’ve had more fights and spilled more pints over this evil than any other kind of sin, but it’s so common nowadays that antique dealers – and even real people – think it’s perfectly proper. And ‘restoring’ the surface patina invariably ups the value – to the unknowing. Some berks in our trade have so little sense they’ll sandblast and varnish anything that stops still long enough.

  A Bible box is anything up to three feet long, usually oak, with a simple plain desk-type lid. If it had been teak the wood’s own natural oils would have preserved it. So a gentle rub with a little trichlorethylene (open the windows or your liver rots), then a little teak oil and it comes up lovely. ‘Cheap and easy,’ we dealers say of teak. I’m really fond of anything that looks after itself like that. Oak can’t. In fact it evolves different acids which spoil bronzes, medallions and even some pewter so you have to be careful what you use oak furniture for.

  While Dolly went home to win her badges back, I set to. Germoline came to listen while I explained. Some Victor
ian swinger eager for a bit more gloom had painted it a filthy brown. I began scraping the paint off with broken glass. Some French restorers even use corrosive chemicals and a hose-pipe. I once saw a bloke in a filthy Rouen garage, hosing down a long-suffering bureau as if it was modern gunge. Scraping with a piece of broken glass sounds worse but it’s the kindest method. I never use gloves. If my fingers start bleeding it serves me right for pressing too hard. After all, doctors still use plate glass fragments for cutting the thinnest possible sections for electron microscopes, which only goes to show something or other.

  The trouble is that ‘restoring’ isn’t restoring at all. It’s pretence, a sort of underhand trick. That’s why I hate it. You remove all traces of that lovely human warmth, that precious care lavished on a piece of furniture for centuries, that priceless chance of contact with your ancestors. Then you replace it with a splash from a tin. It’s a disgusting process.

  You need to wash furniture that has ‘slid’, as we say. I use a little gentle detergent in warm water and a soft shoe-brush, with a painter’s Rowney S240 nylon brush for the crannies. A careful wipe with some old underpants, then air it on a towel in the open.

  I had something to tell Germoline and this was the right moment. ‘Coffee break, Germoline.’ She plodded round the back after me.

  I got her a bucket of water and brewed up for myself. Donkeys drinking are really quite interesting. Germoline’s nostrils seemed to go under the surface but not so she spluttered. We rested on the grass beside the Bible box.

  ‘Look, pal,’ I said after a few hesitations. ‘Devlin did Drummer over, and left you both on the dunes, right? It’s something to do with that old gun fort, the one you can see from your dune but not from Joe’s lookout. You and Drummer saw Devlin’s boat up to something.’

  Nobody in their right mind would bury anything on the dunes, because our dunes shift and erode. So it had to be the old sea fort.

  ‘But whereabouts in it?’ I asked Germoline softly, giving her a handful of grass. ‘It’d take a month to search a place that huge. It’d be like searching a whole ship. Useless . . .’

  Germoline stopped noshing and looked at me. I looked back.

  ‘Unless that cage told us exactly where and how.’

  We went back to work, thinking of all those break-ins at Mrs Hepplestone’s.

  The next bit’s unpleasant. You use potassium hydroxide – caustic potash – and all the care in the world because it’s dangerous to eyes, skin and everything else you’ve got. It is necessary to wash the caustic solution off, and this has to be done fast. You need the caustic to alter the oak’s colour. Don’t wait to see it darken – the oak knows what to do. A swift (five to ten seconds) application and then wash it all off, or crystals of the horrible stuff will ‘flower’ out in ugly little encrustations just when you think you’ve finished a marvellous job and you’ll have to start all over again. Remember all woods are different. Spanish chestnut, for example, goes a rich red under this treatment.

  Germoline gave me a nudge just as I’d ended this phase. Eight or nine children were carrying books up the lane to meet the library van. Germoline was doubtless wanting to get down to some hard slog carrying them about like she normally did on the sands.

  ‘Bloody pest,’ I reprimanded angrily, but downed tools.

  ‘We aren’t to fetch you any more books, Lovejoy.’ That was Ginny, a prim seven-year-old, getting her spanner in first as I came out. ‘Miss Smith says you don’t return them on time.’

  ‘Miss Smith can get knotted,’ I said. I wasn’t going to be lectured to by a bossy infant. ‘Come and see my donkey.’

  They were disbelieving at first but crowded excitedly in. Germoline was a fantastic success.

  ‘A saddle!’

  ‘And a cart!’

  I took the opportunity of exercising authority, my first and only time, and said sternly, ‘Germoline is a specially trained sand-donkey. She’s an expert, so do exactly as she lets you. Proper turns.’

  ‘Please, Lovejoy. How do we strap her in?’ Trust Ginny.

  ‘Er—’

  ‘You don’t know, Lovejoy.’ That was Dobber, her scornful little cousin, a two-catapult psychopath of considerable local fame.

  I rammed my fist under his nose and threatened to knock his emerging teeth back into his gums. ‘I’m not telling you how. It’s a test, see? The one who fastens the straps right gets first go.’

  They fell about laughing, to my annoyance, while I skulked back to my restoration and let them get on with it.

  If you wax antique oak furniture immediately after stripping, something grotty happens. The oak becomes utterly dull, finishing up a miserable grey colour that will never polish up for the rest of its gloomy life. You have to ‘lift’ it, as we say. Hydrogen peroxide lifts quickly, but the necessary strength (120 volumes is about right) will bleach you as well as every stitch you wear, so watch out. Oxalates are fast too, but need a ghastly pantomime with kettles of hot water. I advise dilute hydrochloric acid and copious washing. It’s moderately safe as long as you mind your eyes. My rule is to know where every drop goes, and to wash a million times afterwards.

  I locked the workshop door. Actually the oak looked little different even after its acid and water washes when I took it out for its second dry.

  Germoline was happily trundling her cartload of children round the garden. Ginny had decided a rider in addition was too much, so a queue had formed. Two at a time rode inside, or one on the saddle.

  ‘We’re careful about your pram, Lovejoy,’ Gwen called. She meant my ancient little Ruby, overgrown in the long grass. ‘Ginny stopped Dobber from lighting its candles.’

  ‘Great.’ I wrung a promise out of the mob not to chop my box into firewood while I went in the kitchen for a spirit burner.

  With the children’s excited racket as background I put a small pan of water over the burner and stood a pot in it. Five ounces of beeswax to a pint of turpentine and stir every three minutes. When I did this first, everything caught fire. Now I have an old dustbin lid and some sacks on hand in case. Make sure the oak is absolutely dry, then brush the wax on with a one-inch decorator’s brush, missing no part out, and dry it again. The next bit is really murder unless you know how. I keep a fantail burner blowlamp to get a good spread of flame on the solid beeswax. A local beekeeper gives me that. One pass of the waxblock through the flame, and then you rub it hard on the oak. Every so often you whisk the flame over where you’ve rubbed. Don’t for heaven’s sake plonk a block on and just melt it or it’ll take ages to clean the great molten mass of crud off. Patiently ease the beeswax in, using the flame as a gentle nudge, remembering that a hell of a lot of bees have a vested interest in your progress. Once done, a stiff carpenter’s flatbrush removes the excess wax. The edges are shined up by a small mahogany burnisher. (Just cut the edge of a piece of mahogany at a 50-degree angle, then give the edge two or three soft rubs using grade 100 glass paper. The world’s best burnisher. It will last you years and gives a shine nothing else can impart.) Then out into fresh air.

  Done.

  I sat back on my heels looking at the box. ‘Sorry, mate,’ I said apologetically. ‘But it had to be. I need some money to murder someone.’

  ‘What did you say, Lovejoy?’

  Oho. Hepzibah Smith, sexy blonde choirmistress and volunteer librarian for the travelling van which brings culture to our midst. I cursed myself for carelessness, rising sheepishly to say hello. ‘Hello, you flaxen Saxon.’ I grinned with false heartiness.

  ‘Please, miss. Lovejoy was only talking to his box,’ Dobber explained.

  ‘I hurt it,’ I said, feeling the embarrassment of having restored it.

  ‘Aw,’ the children chorused sympathetically.

  ‘It’s beautiful, Lovejoy,’ little Ginny said.

  And it was. We were in a circle, the box on its towel in the centre. It emitted a lustrous honey-gold iridescence. With the natural brilliance any antique acquires from its centuries of lov
e and life, it dazzled us all. I swear even the flinty Miss Smith caught her breath in the momentary silence. Hepzibah broke the spell.

  ‘Yes, well,’ she said critically. ‘Anybody who talks to a box is silly.’

  ‘Lovejoy has a donkey,’ little Dobber pointed out, eyes narrowed for argument.

  ‘And you haven’t,’ I told Hepzibah maddeningly.

  She broke through the rising chorus of explanations. ‘That doesn’t explain why you children failed to bring your books to the library van. You’ve made us late for Dragonsdale. Come along, all of you, this instant.’

  ‘Dragonsdale?’ We all trooped down to the lane. I had a brainwave. ‘If you see Mrs Hepplestone there, tell her I’ll drive for her in the ploughing match.’

  She laughed, giving me an odd look. ‘Are you serious, Lovejoy? I didn’t know you could.’

  ‘Saturday, isn’t it?’ I said airily, blowing on my fingernails to show I moved in high society. ‘Been driving for years.’

  I was waving them off as Dolly’s car swung in.

  She climbed out with a bag of shopping. ‘What on earth’s been happening here, Lovejoy?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. Giving some children donkey rides.’

  She fell about at that. ‘How very pastoral, Lovejoy.’

  I let her go on laughing as we went in. Well, I couldn’t tell her I’d spent the peaceful hours working out how to kill Devlin, could I?

  He now stood accused, tried and convicted. Being a law-abiding sort of bloke, I would first let Maslow know the result of my mental trial.

  Then the execution.