The Unlikely Voyage of Jack de Crow

by A. J. Mackinnon

  I wrote across the top of the paper ‘Fermat’s Last Theorem … SOLVED!!’ Then I added in big letters ‘PLEASE DO NOT THROW AWAY’ and wrote in the date for posterity: 1/4/1998. There!

  Very important, that date. It made the whole thing official. Finally I flopped back exhausted, but very, very smug indeed – surprisingly smug for someone who was certain that he was not going to survive the impending operation.

  It was only as I was groggily melting under the anaesthetic in the operating theatre and the two young doctors were assuring me that yes, of course they knew which leg to amputate, ha, ha, only kidding, chum, it’s that time of the year again, that I realised what I had failed to take into account. Oh yes, the proof was fine, and yes, I had remembered to add in a translation of all those home-made hieroglyphics and explanations of how to generate Incompatible Numbers. But I knew for a certainty that the proof of Fermat’s The-orem had yet again been whisked away by the tricksy hand of Fate. For, of course, no one finding the paper after my untimely demise would look twice at the document or at least not beyond the carefully dated title. It was, after all, April Fool’s Day.

  I survived, of course. And on the bright morrow, realising with satisfaction that I was still alive, I realised another thing. Not only had I cheated my bottom-based doom, but I had in the meantime found the Holy Grail of mathematics. I’d be in all the journals. English Teacher Cracks Fermat. In fact, wasn’t there a million-pound prize? I reached excitedly for the papers by my bedside. I scanned my proof eagerly … and two minutes later, put the papers down again. Now that my blood was no longer sloshing with septic substances and my brain had cooled from its high fever, it was easy to see just how febrile my racing mind had been. My hieroglyphics, when translated, seemed to be particularly insistent that pi was NOT divisible by the Archangel Gabriel and that the Fifth Euclidian Solid was, in fact, a stoat. Moreover, I seem to have based the entire proof on the starting axiom that I was a small white duck and proceeded from there. Fermat’s Riddle was safe. I laughed at myself, a little wanly it must be admitted, and turned my mind back to the practical matters of life with a sigh. The operation had left a gaping wound which needed daily dressing by a qualified nurse for the next month, a fact that made any thoughts of rowing away to France an impossibility. The first thing to do was to ring Wilf and let him know that the proposed crossing would be delayed. When he answered the phone and heard my voice, he immediately started talking.

  ‘Sandy? Thank goodness you rang, I didn’t know where to contact you. Bad news, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid that yesterday I broke my foot, duffer that I am. I’m out of action for at least a month. Sorry, old boy, but the crossing’s off, or at least as far as my involvement goes. Unless you’d like to leave it till late April, of course. But I expect you’re anxious to be off , aren’t you?’

  A pause.

  ‘Ah, funny you should say that actually. Let me tell you about my bottom …’

  And that long hiatus brings me at last to the dark and early hour when I stowed the last of my belongings, untied Jack’s painter, whispered a quiet farewell to Tim who had got out of his bunk to see me off , and set off down the Thames before dawn to see if I could find my way to Europe and beyond.

  Tide on the Thames

  This City now doth, like a garment, wear

  The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,

  Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie

  Open unto the fields, and to the sky;

  All bright and glittering in the smokeless air …

  The river glideth at his own sweet will:

  Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;

  And all that mighty heart is lying still!

  —WILLIAM WORDSWORTH,

  Composed upon Westminster Bridge

  On the night in London before I resumed my voyage, it poured with rain, lit in dazzling curtains by the camera-shutter flashes of lightning. Over the river from the Thai restaurant where we sat enjoying a farewell meal, the dome of St Paul’s and the wedding-cake steeple of St Mary-le-Bow were momentarily etched against black like an old-fashioned silverpoint engraving of the City. As the rain came down in leaden sheets outside the huge plate-glass windows, my resolve to leave on the morrow waned steadily until it was as limp as the coriander-leaf salad on my side plate. But no, it had to be done. I had lingered long enough, seeking excuses to put off going, and I was feeling fat and discontented after too much idling around. Besides, with every extra day I waited, the hour of high tide became earlier and earlier; another few days and I would be forced to leave at midnight, sailing five hours in darkness. As it was, I would be leaving at half-past four in the morning.

  Another flash stamped the nearby antennae and radar masts of HMS Belfast onto my retina, and thunder rolled like a tympanum over the river’s ringed flood. I uttered a silent prayer that the elements would settle at least to a damp drizzle for my pre-dawn start, and turned to tackle the green Thai curry with fragrant black rice that had appeared before me. Tomorrow was another day.

  Another day and, as it turned out, another weather pattern altogether. I woke to a sky watery with stars, big and soft and pale from recent washing. The air, too, was cool and fresh, and in the east there was the faintest hint of grey seeping into the sky downriver. My first miles of rowing filled me with joy, strong and fluid as the dark banks sluiced smoothly by: the dismal docks of Limehouse, the Canary Wharf Tower still steaming like a sci-fidiamond volcano, then Greenwich Palace fast asleep, the Royal Observatory, more warehouses and docklands, and somewhere far off but very loud and sweet, the melodious song of a solitary blackbird. It seemed such an incongruous sound for the dark hour and drab urban landscape, but, with my new sense of freedom and adventure beginning, I found myself singing the old Paul McCartney song:

  Blackbird singing in the dead of night,

  Take these broken wings and learn to fly

  And hard on the heels of that, with the grey suff using to a pale primrose beyond the giant tracery of the Millennium Dome, there came to me that older song sung by David at the court of Saul:

  Yea, though I take the wings of the morning

  And fly to the uttermost parts of the sea,

  Even there shall Thy hand guide me,

  Thy right hand shall hold me firm.

  I had my wings again and was off to the east at last, sailing into a new sunrise. I was extraordinarily happy again, and could not think why I had delayed my departure so long.

  There is a thing called the Thames Barrier which everybody had been warning me about. ‘How are you going to get through the Thames Barrier then, eh?’ they’d ask. ‘Didn’t think of that one, did you?’ they’d add, smiling knowingly. When I endeavoured to find out exactly what the Thames Barrier was, people would go all vague and say, ‘Well, it’s a barrier, innit, on the Thames, see. Huge great thing. Major obstacle if you’re in a dinghy, mate, I can tell you!’

  So I was relieved to discover that the mighty Thames Barrier, which I had imagined as something like a titanic version of the Shrewsbury Weir, looked instead like seven miniature Sydney Opera Houses all in tin, their shiny silver nautilus shells set on seven concrete blocks strung out across the river, but with enough room between each block to allow two aircraft carriers to pass abreast.

  Or one Mirror dinghy with slightly wobbly steering.

  I aimed for the centre gap, found myself swept by a mysterious submarine force towards the left bank, decided to compromise by rowing hard towards the second gap to the left, quickly decided that the tugboat currently chugging upstream through that one deserved the right of way, and squeaked through the gap nearest the bank under the very nose of the man in the control tower who was shouting what I like to think were words of lively encouragement. They were indistinct, but certainly energetic in their delivery.

  Below the Barrier I found myself among the industrial docks where huge tankers and freighters were just coming to life,
bossed and fussed into place by the little tugs like huge battle-grey cuckoos chivvied by mother wrens. The river was broad enough, though, and I was able to steer well away from the ponderous monsters as the channel swept on southwards to the flat sewage works of Graves-end. The landscape here should have been dreary with its loam fields and vast waterworks and empty wharves, but there was something clean and fresh about the air that early morning, a watercolour landscape still wet on the page, with pale yellow light and a clear sky and a blue breeze beginning to ripple out across the wide grey waters. This is what I had been waiting for, and as soon as I could I stowed the oars, loosened off the sail tyers and hauled the scarlet sail skywards.

  By ten o’clock London lay behind me with a thick smudge of soot-dark cloud over it, and the river had widened into a broad estuary, the land receding on either side to melt into blue smears along each horizon. Here for the first time I encountered the intriguing world of marine buoys and navigational markers. Every mile or so, I would skim by a channel marker, regular green bell-shaped buoys on the northern side of the channel and red box-shaped buoys occasionally coming up on the southern bank. These, I knew, marked the starboard and port edges of the deepwater channel, which sounds straightforward enough, but is that going downstream or coming upstream? I guessed the latter, and this proved to be correct. My brand-new chart showed all the buoys and hazards, but I was soon bewildered by the discrepancy between the number of markers printed on the map and the number of markers scattered about the channel. One by one I tried ticking them off as I passed – the Tilbury South Cone, Ovens Bell, Mucking No. 7, Mucking No. 5 and so on – but what was that red box over yonder? Surely not the Lower Hope port buoy already? And if so, where was Mucking No. 3? And what was the West Blyth marker doing over yonder? Having grown familiar with the large scale and meticulous detail of the Ordnance Survey maps through the waterways of England, I was finding the broad scope and blank spaces of nautical charts misleading. The estuary was far wider than it seemed from the chart. A steeple was indicated on the north shore, but instead of a clear needle of stone thrusting up from the low horizon, there was only a tiny speck floating above a distant glimmer, which may or may not have been the Monkswick spire telling me I was off the Holehaven Sands. Strange monstrous towers and chimneys sprouted in the middle of perfectly blank swathes of the chart, and where it indicated the entrance to some great tidal creek carving its way through the Essex flatlands, the blue line of land on the horizon seemed to spread thin and unbroken as far as the eye could see.

  As I ventured down the estuary, clouds came flying up from the east in extraordinary clumps and billows. When a boy, I had spent many a happy hour drawing treasure maps of exotic islands, richly bedecked with volcanoes, waterfalls, palm-fringed beaches and skull-shaped hills, and of course each and every map had sported a beaming golden sun in one top corner and a ferocious, puff-cheeked storm cloud in the other. Here, my childish drawing fantasies became fact. Each cloud that swept up the river to greet me was a perfect Pauline Baynes cloud-god, its lips pursed, its eyebrows curling and snowy, its chins and double chins indigo with shadow. They trailed cloaks of whipping rain and with pudgy fists they struck the water to slaty bruises. Jack would heel sharply beneath those swatting blows, the sails would crack and beat, and the tiller would hum and wrench beneath my tired hand until I could barely hold on another second. And then, suddenly, it would be over. The cloud would pass overhead, a giant cherub boy racing up the river to catch his playmates, and the decks would be steaming in the hot sunshine once more.

  By mid-afternoon I was on the long stretch between Blyth Sand and Yantlet Flats, and the day had settled into fine weather once more. The estuary was so wide that the northern shore had reduced to a faint thread of silver and grey along the horizon, intermittent and sketchy. Along the nearer southern shore, wide empty fields and pastures crept by beyond the mud-flats, where nothing moved but the occasional crazy flight of lapwings rolling above the vacant green. Far, far to the south-east, a huge gradual hill of bright chrome yellow reared, unnaturally bright against the dim blue of distance, and for a long time I could not guess what it was. A vast heap of Kentish swedes covered over with several acres of yellow tarpaulin? An experimental station of some sort, its hectares of tin or glass roofing painted this luminous primrose? Only much later did I realise that it was a distant crop of oilseed rape, its acid-bright blooms surely the most disturbing colour in nature. Meanwhile, I was puzzled about a more pressing problem. All day the heady pace I had been setting had astonished me. Since dawn I had rowed and sailed an extraordinary fifty miles or so, and had been congratulating myself on the swiftness of my oar strokes and the skill and balance of my sail setting. In fact, a few quick calculations at midday had me confidently expecting to pull into Dover Harbour by suppertime. So it was with some frustration that I spent the long hours of the afternoon wondering why I seemed to have slowed to a snail’s pace. The Tower of St Mary’s way over beyond the marshes inched to the stern by slow degrees and the long-awaited Yantlet Creek mouth refused to crawl into view ahead. By four o’clock I had barely made another few miles and realised that at present progress I would be lucky to make it to Sheerness, which had just begun to emerge from the general flat silver as a solid line of houses above a long bar of tan shingle and a seawall. What is more, the afternoon breeze was dropping and I had to take to the oars again.

  Now I’m not stupid. I know about tides. I’ve read the cautionary tales about rips and treacherous currents, small vessels being swept out to sea and the deceptive nature of coastal tides. But of all the writers who have dealt with the subject of tides and small boats, no one has seen fit to point out a crucial aspect of the phenomenon: its undetectable nature. You see, implied in the very phrase ‘swept out to sea’ or ‘in the grip of a fierce current’ is a sort of inbuilt image of swirling waters, racing buoys, receding jetties, helplessly spinning cock-leboats and frantically waving pocket handkerchiefs. Given any one of these cues or clichés, I will be the first to nod and say, ‘Ah, yes, tides, old boy’ and ‘Got to expect ’em in these waters, of course,’ and ‘Remember the Swallows, eh?’ and ‘You should read Erskine Childers, old chap!’ But the fact is that these telltale hints and clues simply don’t exist in the real world.

  Imagine that you are sitting on a lawn one warm May day in the middle of … oh, I don’t know … Worcestershire. It is the lawn belonging to a gracious old manor, and is sprinkled with summer daisies. About you, but a little way off, are the borders and the flower beds and old, established trees that mark the boundaries of this thoroughly delightful garden. The sky is above, the grass is cool beneath your shoulderblades, and very soon someone will come out of the house with a tray of afternoon tea and a bowl of strawberries and cream.

  Are you going anywhere? Certainly not. It is far too comfortable here beneath the chestnut tree, and besides, a certain pleasant drowsiness is stealing softly upon our senses.

  Are you going anywhere? No, we’ve already been through this, please leave us in peace. Somewhere a couple of wood pigeons are cooing high in an elm.

  Are you going anywhere? Look, just what is your point, you irritating little man? Have a strawberry or go away.

  The point is … the point IS … that yes, you are going somewhere actually, you and your strawberries and your daisies and your wood pigeons with you. You are drifting out into a new region of space with every second that passes – imperceptibly, inconceivably, but – and this is the frightening bit – horribly, horribly fast.

  That is what it is like in a dinghy, a mile off Sheerness on a golden late afternoon, rowing placidly through the glassy water to the welcoming row of whitewashed houses built atop the old sea wall. It is a beautiful afternoon, and twenty more minutes – surely no more – of rowing will bring us to the beach of orange shingle where the figures of two small boys are playing and an older gentleman is walking a cocker spaniel. It is pleasing to see the way that with every oar stroke, the gentle waters furl
cleanly away from the prow, and a row of bubbles streams out in a tidy wake behind. I stop and rest on my oars for a minute, the dinghy gliding to a halt and hanging motionless on the broad mirror of the waters. The sun is warm on my shoulders, and the faintest of breezes cools the damp fringe of hair on my brow. Ten more minutes and I will be sitting down to order a well-deserved pint in the Sheerness Arms. Better start rowing again, I suppose, and bring this long and lovely day to an end.

  There is a swirling, chuckling noise off to one side. A boat approaching quickly but quietly? No, not a boat chugging past, just an old upright beacon post, black with barnacles, steaming along up the estuary like the periscope on an antique wooden submarine. Its movement through the water is creating quite a bow wave – a good thing it didn’t hit me on its way to wherever it’s heading. I wonder where it is going, by the way? I turn back to my oars and continue rowing in to the shore.

  Ellesmere to Dover

  Wait a minute?

  I pause … think …

  What do I mean ‘Where is it going?’? It’s not going anywhere, you fool, despite the fact that it has just steamed past me at a good four knots. It’s attached to the seabed, as are the three large blackened posts with the red signboards on them that even now are hurrying up behind to overtake me at a similar rate. So if they are not going anywhere, then that means … then that means that I am!

  Good grief, I’m drifting out to sea and I’m caught in a tide and I’m going to make the headlines because I’m going to get run down by a liner and what is the point in reading Swallows and Amazons if you’re going to make the same classic idiotic mistakes yourself and I really do not believe this is happening and my! isn’t it getting late all of a sudden?