The wait seemed interminable as further supplies were brought aboard and stowed under the benches. Johannes was growing agitated and again resorted to his increasingly habitual mantra of ‘Michel, Michel’.
‘Patience, we’ll find him,’ said Balthasar, rubbing his left leg which had gone into a spasm.
Finally, a score or so of heavily armed men stepped onto the boat and threaded their way over the seated oarsmen to occupy every available inch of space in the centre of the shallow craft.
‘Frenchies,’ said Cornelius, after failing to make any sense of what the men were saying.
‘Two companies of French arquebusiers under the command old Boisot himself,’ explained the Academic to nobody but his fellow Voices and their landlord.
‘Who cares a flying … ?’ asked the Bastard, feeling distinctly marginalised by the unfolding activity.
The sound of cheering from the men in the foremost boats provided the first indication that the sluggish flotilla was starting to move. One by one they peeled away and floated into the tide that moved them slowly downstream. The townhouses gave way to less salubrious dwellings propped up with beams pillaged from the houses that had already succumbed to gravity and neglect. They in turn mutated into rural dwellings and random sheds sheltering both men and beasts.
As there was no need to deploy the oars at this stage the weavers watched the unfolding tableau of open fields. A heron stared at them from a clump of reeds with an inscrutability that reminded Johannes of Blindman, of whom there was now mercifully no sign.
Several women were hanging newly washed clothes on the rushes, while others continued scrubbing garments on the rocks at the water’s edge. When they noticed the activity on the water they stood, stretching and rubbing their backs with one hand while waving with the other at the passing boats. One of the younger women raised her skirts in the direction of the men who roared their appreciation at the unexpected sight of large buttocks. For a fleeting moment Cornelius thought he caught a glimpse of Geertje in their midst. Realising that this was not possible he felt instantly lost. The sky had turned dark. He hoped the heavy-bellied clouds were not a portent, but was distracted from his increasingly sombre thoughts by shouts from somewhere in front. They were nearing the sluices that had been opened to flood the countryside and enable the craft to pass unhindered towards Leyden.
‘Dig those oars deep!’ exhorted the helmsman. ‘Plough the waters, harvest your children’s future.’ The veins stood out on his neck as, facing his crew, he pulled on imaginary oars. Slowly the galleys heaved themselves out of the rocking current and into the shallower, calmer waters that now lay over the fields.
Not appreciating the change in depth the inexperienced weavers continued to raise their shared oar high into the air. It struck the submerged field and the resulting jolt left Balthasar convinced that his shoulder had been wrenched from its socket. ‘Jesus wept!’ he grimaced, holding the burning joint.
The men behind them protested loudly as their own oar became trapped. Eventually after several collisions the ramshackle beggars’ navy spread across the flat plateau of flood that seemed to stretch forever.
‘Raise your oars, rest and drift for a while,’ came the order. The water was no more than two feet deep and the tilled land with the occasional boulder was clearly visible. No one spoke as they stared at the alien landscape. There was no sound at all apart from the water lapping ever more softly like a child recovering from a crying fit. There was no bird song. Johannes looked round him and experienced a calmness he had not known since they began their quest.
After the pause, the beggar admiral moved along the crowded deck space instructing the men how best to row through the shallows. At first the weavers merely skimmed their oars across the surface but soon found a shared rhythm. Cornelius noticed a man was walking alongside the boat carrying a yoke across his shoulders at each end of which was a bucket. Steadfastly ignoring the passing galleys he muttered to himself while laboriously wading through the flood. His destination was a village knee deep in water just visible from the bow. Initially the crew was too dumbfounded to greet
him.
‘What’s he going to do with the buckets?’ asked Cornelius, incredulously.
‘You mad sod!’ shouted someone, in the nasal accent of Friedland. The bucket man started and grunted as if a boat had just strayed into the peripheral vision of a strange dream from which he couldn’t fully wake.
As the dusk settled the galleys floated in single file along what would have been the main track separating the sparse dwellings on either side. The inn sign, showing an angel blowing a trumpet, swung in the breeze. A cat mewed forlornly from a flat roof and a line of ducks, disrupted by the disruptive proximity of the oars, took ungainly flight. Balthasar thought he caught sight of an old woman’s face at an upper window but he could not be sure.
Simultaneously the three weavers thought of the village they had abandoned many months previously. Balthasar glimpsed his wife shaking her head as she gossiped with their neighbours, nursing her wrath, keeping it warm for his return.
‘What do you think Wilhelmien’s up to?’ asked Cornelius, reading his friend’s mind.
‘Moaning about me, “Stupid old sod” or something similar. “My husband is as useless as a teat on a sow, as useless as a blind man picking coloured shells off a beach … ”’
‘Don’t remind me of him,’ said Johannes.
‘As useless as … ’ said Cornelius, sensing a game, ‘as a dead rat for travelling companion … ’
Johannes thought of Michel starving behind the Leyden walls.
‘Well,’ continued Balthasar, suspecting that the game was not a good idea. ‘Perhaps she got over me. She always had an eye for Theo, the pedlar, perhaps she’s run off with him. He’s on the donkey, she’s in the cart squashed under a mountain of pots and pans … l never did buy her that pot she wanted … And Geertje?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Cornelius.
They rowed through the night, their path lit by the red moon and the lanterns that were slung on either side of the barge. Their light reached no further than the tips of the oars that continued to dip and pull through the black and silver water. Each stroke mixed eddies of dark liquid into slivers of moonlight, a witch’s restorative potion. Johannes sang under his breath the song that previously helped them to work in rhythm at the loom.
Despite their fatigue his companions joined in. Although the tune was unfamiliar to the rest of the crew, they tentatively sang the chorus, twenty homesick men joined at the heart by a refrain that promised succour in the arms of wives and lovers.
‘How’s your shoulder?’ asked Johannes.
‘Fine,’ said Balthasar.
As the first rays of dawn bled across the water the militiamen roused themselves from their improvised beds in the stern, brushed down their uniforms and inspected their muskets. They exuded a sense of agitated expectation as they peered forward looking for their first destination, the Landscheiling.
‘Well done, Narrator, you’ve done your homework. As I recall the Landscheiding was the first dyke that needed to be breached if they were to progress to Leyden. The original intention had been to attack under cover of darkness and take the Spanish by storm but the journey took longer than expected.’
Thank you, Academic.
‘Why are you thanking him? It’s all wordy bollocks.’
You’re attention seeking again, Bastard, back off!
FIFTY-THREE
Another day, another postcard, this time with an Edinburgh postmark.
‘I’VE GONE OFF THE RAILS.’
Kevin smirked at John’s discomfort. ‘Is it you sending they cards?’ asked Mick. Kevin scowled and went back to shovelling in his porridge.
‘Today’s magical mystery destination brought to you by Psychotic Travel Incorporated is Waverley Station,’ Mick announced. Paul raised Nostromo until it hid his eyes.
‘If you two are off gadding again, look after your pal, Mi
ck,’ urged Beverley.
‘Take Dennis with you,’ suggested Kevin, malevolently. ‘He could do with an outing.’
‘And you could do with my fist in your throat!’
‘Thank you, Mick, that’s enough.’
Two British Rail transport police glanced at John and Mick but decided against having a word. They were off shift in half an hour and now wasn’t the time to start hassling dossers. Mick muttered something about the forces of repression and pulled his beanie further down. He dropped ten pence into the open violin case on the ground. Its owner, a Japanese student, looked bemused as he bent over the case to check that his instrument had survived the journey from York on the luggage rack. It must be another custom he didn’t understand.
John stood in the middle of the concourse and looked at the faces of each male commuter as they raised their heads towards the electronic timetable. Where was he?
‘Do you fancy Paignton for a nice wee break? A few beers, What the Butler Saw, donkey shite on the beach. But I’m telling you, I’m not going to King’s Cross. Enemies, ken. Unfinished business. Bad folk. We could always get off at Newcastle. A working-class city. In your face, no pretensions. Perhaps not. You had a bad time in Newcastle a while back didn’t you, John? I forgot. Mind that was before I was looking after you.’ Mick was drowned out by the Voices arguing loudly with each other.
‘You never know, this time he might find him,’ said the Tempter, without conviction.
‘Statistically unlikely,’ said the Academic. ‘The last train journey saw him back in hospital. A significant setback if I remember … I’ve got his notes somewhere … ’
‘Who cares a monkey’s fart anyway? I’m seriously thinking of finding a new head to live in. I’m bored with all of you.’
‘How about a joke?’ suggested the Jester. ‘Did you hear the one … ?’
‘YES!’ shouted the other Voices, surprised that they had made common cause.
‘I think it’s all a trial, a quest, a sort of game show. If John perseveres then he will find his brother, I’m sure of that. A few false starts are to be expected.’
‘And bloody Anneka Rice will drop by in her helicopter to point him out.’
‘Trust me, a railway station is just the sort of place he might come to.’
‘Bugger it!’ said the Bastard. ‘Let’s have some sport. Come on, John, don’t stand like a spare prick at a wedding. Get yourself up that escalator.’
John did as he was told. It was a moment before Mick realised that he had gone on ahead.
‘Where are you going, you daftie?’ he shouted, before realising that he had stepped onto the down escalator and was treading water and proving an irritant to the descending commuters whose path he was blocking.
‘OK, John, you’re completely in my power.’
‘I don’t think that’s fair … ’
‘Back to your books and theories, Academic. My man’s on a mission. Turn right at the top. Well done, now take the stairs, no ticket check, excellent. Platform 9C. No one about. Off you go.’
The Bastard was right; apart from a couple slumped into each other on a bench the platform was empty. John hated this. While the Voices were at best an irritant and at worst a curse with which he had to live, for most of the time he could still make his own choices, albeit limited. But not now. The Bastard was exercising total control, reducing him to an automaton compelled to follow orders. He was experiencing the strange combination of utter panic and the tiniest frisson of gratitude that he had been relieved of all responsibility.
Mick failed to negotiate the stairs, having slipped and twisted his ankle. He now writhed on the ground, from which vantage point he was hurling abuse at innocent passers-by and, more foolishly, at the transport police who had decided on reflection to keep an eye on him. ‘Go on without me!’ he shouted in the general direction of platform 9C as he was pulled to his feet by his new minders.
‘That’s it, John, keep going. Don’t stand too close to the edge of the platform. That’s right, stay inside the white line. We don’t want anything untoward to happen to you. A bit faster though. Just in case the police remember there were two of you. Good, down the slope, mind that pile of sleepers. Best follow the wall. Safer that way.’
John again did as he was told, walked off the end of the platform and onto the pink gravel. He kept close to the high hedge-lined gray wall that marked the boundary with Princes Street Gardens, walking beneath the sign announcing Waverley Station, well to the side of the gantries supporting the overhead cables. Because he hugged the wall he remained invisible to whoever might have been looking out from the overhanging windows of the signal box. A train passed on the furthest track, its brakes biting as it slowed to enter the station.
‘You were a train spotter in your youth, isn’t that right, John. Bet you never thought you’d get a chance to walk through a tunnel like the one ahead, did you?’
‘From a sociological perspective the much maligned train spotter was an interesting phenomenon of the late fifties, early sixties. There were very few leisure activities available to young boys … ’
‘Apart from wanking,’ said the Jester, trying to rescue a situation that could get out of control.
‘You can’t even manage that now, can you, John? If you can’t even fancy yourself, who else would?’ The Bastard chuckled in admiration of his own gratuitously malignant cleverness.
John faced the black-rounded arch of the first tunnel that led to Haymarket Station. Its darkness was sucking him in.
‘In you go John, quite exciting, isn’t it?’
John stumbled against the near rail and fell heavily across the track.
‘Careful now, we don’t want you to hurt yourself … See there is a light at the end of the tunnel. See it as a game of chance, a sort of Russian roulette. Relax. The odds must be against you meeting an oncoming train. Be strong, give it a go. Feel the adrenaline.’
Whose side was the Tempter on?
‘If you see a train approaching take off your red knickers and wave them at the driver. It always works in films,’ said the Jester.
‘Ho, ho, ho,’ laughed the Bastard.
John ran through the puddles that marked the start of the tunnel. He was hoping to outrun the panic attack that already had its hands on his chest. He fell again and lay breathless with his face against the cold rail. Everything smelt of oil.
‘You could always put your ear against the line and listen for the hum of an oncoming train. It’s possible to pick up trains that are over a mile away,’ suggested the Academic.
He stood up. Mercifully the aperture towards which he stumbled did appear to be growing with every step.
‘Almost there John, almost there.’ The Tempter adopted the tone of someone concerned for a much-loved pain-racked relative on his deathbed.
John rejoined the sunlight moments before the blast from the horn of the approaching train made him scramble off the tracks. He tried to breathe as the carriages did their utmost to drag him in. Surely whoever was controlling him would release him soon.
‘Would that be the Fat Controller?’ asked the nearly hysterical Jester.
‘It’s just a three car from Helensburgh. Journey time of two hours three minutes. It alternates with the stopping train to Milngavie,’ clarified the Academic. ‘Mind you it depends if Scot Rail are implementing their winter timetable yet.’
‘Come on, John, left, right, left, right. Not very fit are we? Yes, good plan, keep to the wall, keep safe.’
As he passed under the first of the two footbridges that crossed from Princes Street Gardens a youth pulled himself up onto the parapet and spat expertly at the weirdo lumbering along the track beneath him. He then crossed to the other side of the bridge to gloat at his victim and wave his middle finger. John let the saliva trickle down his face.
The young Asian couple kissing on the second footbridge were completely oblivious as he passed beneath them.
‘Keep running, don’t stop!’
>
John ran into the second tunnel on the Castle side which carried incoming traffic from Haymarket. Total blackness, he could see nothing.
‘No light at the end of this one, John’ said the Bastard, as if it had been John’s own decision to plunge into the dark. He banged his head against the tunnel wall and reeled back to stumble again against the railway sleepers beneath the track.
‘Of course, the Black Hole of Calcutta was not actually black. The term was common military slang for any prison. Having said that, the 1911 Encyclopaedia describes how 69 men were incarcerated in the Nawab’s dungeon which measured 24 x 18 feet. Most died.’
‘Thank you, Academic. Don’t fancy that do you, John? Count your blessings, at least you’re the only one here … apart from us that is.’
‘Still on a sub-continental theme it reminds me more than anything of the Marabar caves in A Passage to India. What happened to Adela? That’s the question … ’
The train was heard before it was seen. An explosion of noise and then light from the driver’s cab. The air was syringed from John’s lungs, a brass plunger pulled to the hilt, his bones shaken by a dysfunctional mother at the end of her tether. He was back in a concertinaed version of a recurrent childhood nightmare in which a carefully assembled jigsaw depicting a fairground was mangled by an angry fist. The severed rails of the roller coaster hung in the air as the screaming, candy-flossed carriages plummeted. Disembodied raucous faces burst from the black walls in the House of Horrors and the malevolent stallholders beckoned with ugly fingers.
He tried to lean against the tunnel wall, but it wasn’t where he thought. He fell backwards as the train thundered past. John was braced, fists clenched, against the far wall of the navvy’s alcove into which he had fallen. Once the echo of the train’s two-tone horn had stopped bouncing in the confined space he could hear nothing apart from the blood in his ears. Even the Voices had stopped. Having led John into a situation of extreme danger the Bastard was happy to let things unfold, the Academic had retreated meekly, the Jester had put away his motley while the Tempter knew the time wasn’t right.
John McPake and the Sea Beggars Page 25
