The Smell of Telescopes

by Hughes, Rhys

  His portable alarm clock—not an antique—woke him as dawn’s left hand was waiting for the horizon to stamp its visa. The vapour possessed an inner light; a chill glow tumbled in as he drew back the curtains. He thought he spied Mr Grebe moving about in the car-park, or at least the brim of his hat. Exhausted by his adventure, Mr Bloat went down without shaving and greeted the smuggler uncivilly. “Are you certain this can’t wait till a more sociable hour?”

  Mr Grebe pouted. “I’m afraid not, if you want the goods ready for shipping tonight. Take me a whole day to smuggle a mine, it will! What do you take me for, a talking owl?”

  Ignoring this idiosyncratic expression, the collector nodded. “Very well, lead me to the pickings.”

  Before setting off, Mr Grebe cleared his throat. “Got to go inside for a moment, sir. Won’t be long.”

  He entered the lobby and Mr Bloat was much put out to observe him raising a flask to his lips as he did so. Had Mrs Gibbet-Pardoe given it back to him since her assignation with the shaft? When the bootlegger returned, the flask was gone and there was a flicker of movement at her window. What did this signify?

  Keeping his questions to himself, Mr Bloat permitted the fellow to guide him down the exact route he had taken the previous night. They reached the site of disused mines and Mr Grebe showed him a selection of different types, waxing lyrical about their bargain prices. “Choose any one, sir!” he cried. The collector was intrigued to note he gave a wide berth to the mine they had visited with the woman.

  Purposefully, Mr Bloat strode over to it. “I like the look of this one. It has a tasteful bleakness.”

  “No, no, not that mine! ’Tis not for sale, sir!”

  “None are for sale,” the collector reminded him. “But you asked me to choose and so I have. Here it is. I expect it to be packed up and waiting for the Waverley at Portreath by midnight. Come now, Mr Grebe, what’s the matter? You’ve gone pale.”

  “Well, sir, you told me you lived alone in Wales and liked it that way. But if you take this one home, you won’t want for company.”

  “Oh ho, so you suspect it’s haunted?”

  “Nothing is more common, sir!” squealed the smuggler. “Please look for another. It’ll turn me faint and ill if I have to handle it. Yes, it’s an old-fashioned pit, that one, and I’ve always been afeared of it, but now it’s full again, if you take my meaning.”

  “I regret to say I don’t,” confessed Mr Bloat, and then he added, “Nothing more common, eh? I guess that must be so, for ghosts are merely nothing and they grow more numerous by the day.”

  “’Tis not wise to mock the dead. These mines go right down under the sea and a great many men have been lost in their depths. This one’s an unreliable model anyhow, and I reckon you’d rather have one of these later shafts. Easier to clean, sir!”

  But Mr Bloat was firm. He insisted on this particular mine or none at all, and the smuggler’s avarice finally overcame his reluctance, on condition that the fee was doubled. The collector assented and they arranged to meet at Portreath at the designated hour.

  Back at the Hotel, Mr Bloat found his breakfast, though it was not what he had ordered. Instead of coffee and croissants, he was presented with ordinary bread and a pound of mostellaria cheese, a type unknown to him until he called the proprietor over.

  “I wish to complain about the texture of my incorrect meal. Plus I want to know more about the woman upstairs.”

  “The first is local, the second is enigmatic,” came the reply. “But Mrs Gibbet-Pardoe has been here for a whole week and refuses to let the maid make her bed. Provides her own blankets, I suppose, but I can’t be sure because she never comes down to breakfast for a grilling. Lives on flasks of liquor, according to the maid.”

  “Have you no other information?”

  “Well, I know this sounds absurd, but I can’t help remembering a tale my aged grandam told me, about a wise man from Bascombe who visited this town to rid it of a plague of flies. Ate them up, he did, and spat them out in the shape of a black scarf.”

  “Now that is very intriguing,” announced Mr Bloat as he toyed with his gratuitous food. “You think she’s dining on insects and creating her own sheets from the process?”

  “Oh no, sir!” cried the proprietor, blushing hotly. “The flies were phantoms, at least that’s how I understood it from my grandam. She had a cryptic way with anecdotes.”

  Mr Bloat snorted and waved him away. He lounged about in his room after breakfast, hugely irritated by the whistling which had resumed next door. The day passed slowly, but he resisted the temptation to spy on the smuggler; Mr Longhorn had warned him that such types guarded their trade secrets jealously and would refuse to work for anyone who pried. If the collector ever needed Mr Grebe’s services again, it was important he did not antagonise him.

  Finally the evening came, and Mr Bloat made ready to leave. As he was brushing his teeth, the whistling stopped and he heard his neighbour depart. He was still curious as to her business, but his own plans took up most of his thoughts, so he continued with his ablutions. When he had finished, he descended and reversed his Bentley out of the car-park. He checked his watch and saw he had an hour before Captain Nothing was due to dock—enough time to make a detour to satiate the most nagging parts of his bewilderment. He headed for the outskirts of St Agnes, turning off his lights to avoid being seen.

  His chosen mine had vanished. Where there had once been a shaft, the ground was smooth and level. The smuggler had evidently kept his side of the bargain. But what most astonished Mr Bloat was the sight of Mrs Gibbet-Pardoe standing forlornly nearby. She held a folded bedsheet and seemed to be cursing.

  The collector continued past and, though he was generally a hard man, he was quite overcome and mumbled a hypocritical prayer as he steered his car. As he proceeded, turning his lights back on, he was aware that the fog had thinned again, shedding another layer of its clammy skin, like a snake made of semi-precious droplets. All the way to Portreath he shivered, where he had a monumental task bringing the car to a halt, for the brake-cables were severed. He turned onto the beach and the soft sand arrested his motion.

  He waited in the Bentley, pulling up his collar to warm his face and gazing intently out to sea. He thought he discerned a light and heard the pounding of a wheel—the Waverley was approaching. He got out and paced to the shoreline, blowing on his hands. Where was Mr Grebe? Captain Nothing would not brook delay.

  How the smuggler intended to transport the mine to the harbour was something Mr Bloat had not paid much thought to. He assumed Mr Grebe had a number of trucks at his disposal. One can therefore picture his alarm when the rascal appeared out of the gloom mounted on a bicycle, ringing his bell and coming to a rest near the Bentley.

  “What’s this?” spluttered the collector. “Have you failed? Well, you won’t get a penny out of me.”

  “Hush! hush! ’Tis all in order. Look here!” The rogue lifted a box from the rear of the bicycle, secured to the frame with string. Mr Bloat eyed it with a mixture of fear and hope.

  “The mine is in there? The idea of such a thing!”

  “Yes, sir, the idea! This box contains the essence of the pit. You don’t need the ground around it; the space inside is enough. I shovelled out the gaps in the mine, sir, then I compressed them. As I removed the empty space, the shaft filled up and became solid again. ’Tis compressed inside there, waiting to spring out, so be careful how you open it. Wait till you reach Porthcawl. Reassembling a tin-mine on board ship might very well result in an accident.”

  “How can emptiness spring out?” wondered Mr Bloat, but before the smuggler could answer, a figure lurched out of the mist, catching him by the scruff. It was Mrs Gibbet-Pardoe, dishevelled and furious. She shook Mr Grebe until he burst into tears.

  “You cursed scrapbook! You lost heart! You churchyard dweller!” she screamed, and the barrage of unconventional insults made Mr Bloat draw away. “You mezzotint! You wailing well! You mazy inheritance!” S
he ended with a more coherent oath: “Rats!”

  “’Tweren’t my fault. He insisted, he did! Blame him, not me, that gentleman there. He’s Welsh, a nasty man.”

  “You’re the one responsible for digging it up!” she countered. “And you must take the blame. I told you not to touch that mine till it was filled up. What shall I do with the leftover ghosts now?” She held out the bedsheet for him to scrutinise. “Take that box to St Agnes and put back the gaps, do you hear me? And while you’re at it, fetch me another flask of fog. We can’t afford to dawdle!”

  Mr Bloat, perceiving his prize was about to be lost, said, “Watch him, madam, he’s been taking sips on the sly.”

  Her eyebrows shot up and she rounded on the smuggler. “Drinking the ghosts as well? Why, you thief, I ought to stretch your guts out as far as Barchester. But here’s a better punishment!” She cast the sheet over him, blowing her nose at the same time.

  “’Twas force of habit!” cried the smuggler, but it was too late for explanations. At the first note of the whistle, the bedsheet seemed to wrap itself around him, like a cotton octopus, and adopted an appearance of its own, rather different from the physical characteristics of the man beneath. Then, flapping and undulating, though there was no breath of wind, it glided off into the mist, making a wailing as rich as a male voice choir.

  Mr Bloat did not linger at the scene. The Waverley had docked and he was pleased to have a chance of getting away without paying the fee. He hoisted the box onto his shoulders, marvelling at its lightness, and ran to the harbour, where he was helped on board by Captain Nothing. So engrossed in her revenge was the woman that she failed to notice him depart. As they paddled away into the Channel, the incoming tide washed over the stranded Bentley. The collector resisted the temptation to open the box until they passed the island of Lundy.

  Whatever happened to Mr Hugo Bloat is beyond my conjecture. I heard the tale when I visited the Trevaunance Point Hotel on business last summer. Charles, the proprietor, knew the story up to that point but no further. Whether Mrs Gibbet-Pardoe had told it to him, I thought rude to enquire, but I believe it not unlikely. He came up to me after breakfast and gave me the benefit of his speculations.

  “Listen, Mr Longhorn, I know it’s a long shot but this whole affair reminds me of something my aged grandam once said. She claimed phantoms can often solidify into other forms, such as flies or dolls’ houses. I’m wondering if all the fog we had that time was the condensed souls of the miners who perished in the pits? I mean, the tunnels extend out under the sea. Suppose the dead spirits somehow leaked through the rocks into the Channel and turned into mist? Mrs Gibbet-Pardoe might have been a sort of witch or wise woman, like the man who came from Bascombe to eat the flies. Maybe she was here to transform the fog into bedsheets and return the ghosts to the mines? If so, I reckon she employed Mr Grebe to collect and compress the mist and bring it to her in a thermos. That blighter could smuggle anything!”

  I have long since learned to maintain an open mind on such topics. The Waverley never reached Porthcawl; it was last sighted off the coast of Lundy. The police doubt the collector ever boarded the ship—his car was found washed up in Hell’s Mouth with its brake-cables cut and they assume he had plummeted over the cliffs to his death. They are searching for a Mr Grebe to assist them with their enquiries.

  Since then, there have been rumours of a ship with billowing sails approaching the coast of Portreath on foggy nights, but this cannot be the paddlesteamer—it had no mast. Perhaps one day I will run into Mrs Gibbet-Pardoe and learn the entire truth. Until then I shall keep an eye out for Mr Bloat. It should not be too difficult to detect his presence in the air. For as I have been told, nothing is more common, and now the collector is all but nothing.

  Muscovado Lashes

  Because parrots know how to tell happy stories, he wore an onion on his shoulder. On deck, while the other men joked with guitars, he preferred to weep. He sabotaged every song with spices. His right ear was deaf to the howls of soup; his left to the moans of stew. He refused to flavour beans, claiming salt cracked them like knuckles. His stove was directly beneath Morgan’s cabin, and the pounding of the captain’s boots walking ideas into a cutlass stirred the pot for him. In rough weather, he fell asleep with a spoon; in calm, with a fork. Only when the waves were too indecisive for comment was he lonely.

  He resigned from piracy after Panama, as they all did. The doom of the Cup of Gold had left him taller, so often had he jumped with terror at the blast of cannon. The streets were full of burst sacks of coffee, steaming in the sun, forming breastworks behind which the Spanish aimed bombards and pedereros. His forehead was peppered with grapeshot, enough to keep him permanently drunk on mulled whine. But others suffered more than he. The sailmaker’s leg kicked him in the teeth as it flew without the rest of the fellow into the least salubrious quarter of the city. A kneejerk reaction, equal and opposed.

  Pairs of knives and hours: that is how he best recalled the throes of the Cup. His galley utensils cut through armour more neatly than any military blade. So frantic was the fighting that the traditional habits of battle were reversed: he was soon cleaning his apron by wiping it on his wounds. At noontide, Morgan ordered the burning of the cedar houses and the Genoese slave market, with the auctioneers still inside. Plates of flaming rum truffles were slung through windows; his recipe. The few defenders who held out detonated barrels of powder in their attics to prevent the overrich conflagration spreading.

  How the crew snorted and nodded as the city ruptured itself! Fuses hissed everywhere, like grilled eggs, and rubble and antiques were spat high, to knock on the eaves of the cathedral. As the houses burst open, the opportunity for a new game also arose. Two objects had been lost in the siege, names and gambling cards, and now there was a substitute for the latter. The residences of the richest traders were furnished in one of four contemporary styles—Moorish, French, Venetian, Basque—and thirteen expensive colours. Suits of shades. And certainly other ghosts shuffled in the murk, like croupiers.

  So each player was allotted a street in turn, and the abrupt bloom of form and hue down its length constituted a hand in cribbage. As cook to rascals, he had often concealed mistakes and hid trumps, or turnips, up his sleeve. But abodes were too awkward to fit. He was no cheat when dealt a Panama. It was the barber who kept winning. His whisks, skewers and spoons were gone within the span of an alley. Spermaceti Whiskers pocketed the lot. Suddenly, Morgan himself cut the pack, racing into the muddle with a nude sword. With his sickly Welsh eyes he had seen a prize to be sheared but not shared.

  A woman on a balcony, her tongue long and pale as a plume of smoke. But this was only a type of scream, wrapped in rags by the sulphurous air; her beauty would have been legendary had these not been the days before legends. Wine curls, so much deeper than vintage that Morgan vowed to forsake biting corks. Green eyes, never to be compared with emeralds in his presence, for his career had been long in the handling of gems, but the feeling her gaze inspired in him was a facet of a life wholly new. Climbing the orange tree in the garden to join her, he loaded his lips with kisses.

  The carpenter set up a spyglass on a tripod to study developments. Morgan’s mouth eclipsed hers; then they both moved back into the lavish bedroom. There were Spaniards in the rafters. An eruption; the building came apart, according to the sailmaker, like a typhoon’d jib. Omophagia Ankles insisted the pair had survived, propelled toward the stars, hand in hand. Nobody else noted this, but the navigator could not be doubted in matters of degree, whether of burns or trajectories. And Morgan, the canniest pirate alive, would not die so easily; the devil often claimed to have his luck. So the crew waited.

  He was away for a week and when he finally returned the fires were out and the men had drunk themselves into a nervous stupor on the spilt coffee. Unable to sleep, they listened to him relate the details of his most remarkable conquest, though he was much given to frowning while he spoke, as if his heart wanted to keep the adventur
e private. Buccaneers must confide secrets to each other, the Custom of the Coast demands it. Even Morgan would not flout these laws, drawn up in northern Hispaniola while he was a babe in a Llanrumney cot. So who was she? La Santa Roja, the wife of a noble merchant from Tobago.

  His charms had not worked on her below the waist. When they landed safely on the far side of the city, she accepted his mouth down only to her shoulders and his hands down only to her hips. Her coyness inflamed his lusts the more. He grew insistent; she challenged him to a duel for her virtue, the winner keeping also the weapons employed. He selected a cutlass; she chose a mirror and firearm. She was a traveller with exotic guns holstered in her garter. Ten paces they walked before turning to discharge. She blinded him with his image, and he lost. But then she offered him the tools of her victory.

  “Gather round, men. Look now, the blunderbuss from her collec- tion. And the glass. What irks you, ’Vado?”

  “Smells of hemlock. Glints like a pterosaur bone.”

  “From Pennsylvania, she said. A new country in the north. A flying galleon jettisoned both at her feet.”

  At once, Morgan discarded his traditional buckler and carbine, and adopted these quintessentially feminine pieces. The cook did not accept the existence of aerial ships, and declared so aloud, to the monumental rage of the captain, who had recently flown himself and could vouch for this method of transport. So he was expelled for a night from the camp, and banned from hearing the conclusion of the tale. But before he went, Morgan gave him a kiss to demonstrate La Santa Roja’s technique. With a chuckle, he disengaged. Then all the men wanted one: barber, sail- maker, carpenter, navigator. And he obliged.

  “Off with you, chef! Watch the sky for schooners.”

  “Terrible barque in the Gemini Bight.”