‘All right,’ I said, ‘get the front end cleaned out.’ There was a long hatch over the bows, with a glass roof; but you couldn’t see inside what must be the saloon; the glass was all misted.
‘Can’t seem to find the catches,’ whined Lenny. ‘Can’t get the top off.’
‘Well, look for them.’ I went back to cleaning my brass.
I was still polishing the last grain-measure when I heard him start screaming.
I’d heard screaming like it, once or twice. Once after a road accident, and once when one of my blokes got a faceful of Nitromors because some other fool was messing about. You don’t hang about when you hear that kind of screaming. You run.
My first feeling was one of relief. Lenny was just standing there, looking down into the boat. He still seemed to have both arms and legs; and eyes. He wasn’t bleeding; he still clutched the hose in one hand, though it was dumping all its water on his already-sodden shoes and jeans.
I went up and grabbed him. I suppose to reassure him, and to make him stop. But he didn’t stop. It was as if he was having some kind of fit. What the . . .
I looked down to where his gaze was immovably fixed. He had the glass hatch on the bows off, and you could look down inside. Again, the inside was beautifully finished. Red upholstered miniature benches, with mahogany locker doors underneath.
The red upholstery was dark and sodden, as you would have expected.
The horror was on the upholstery. Three things, huddled together, as if for mutual protection. Tied down by a glistening membrane of gunge.
Three tiny skeletons, the middle one a bit bigger than the others, still with rags of clothing around them. Skeletons about a foot high, perfect in their tiny, thin detail, like the skeletons of starlings that fall down the chimney when you have the sweep.
Only these skeletons were undoubtedly human.
I heard, far off as in a daze, Lenny stop screaming and take to his heels and run from my yard. I never saw him again. One night, much later, his mother rang up to ask for his cards. I asked how he was; but his mother wouldn’t say anything. She couldn’t get off the phone fast enough.
Now I was aware of heavy breathing on my other side.
‘Great God Almighty,’ said James; and it wasn’t a curse, it was a cry for help. Then he said, shakily, ‘They must be plastic . . . but damned clever. Damned accurate . . .’
‘When this ship went down,’ I said, ‘plastic hadn’t been invented.’
‘Ivory, then. You know what the Chinese can do with ivory.’
‘There’s . . . still . . . bits of muscle . . . attached.’ It reminded me of a stripped Sunday chicken you find the following Friday in the back of the fridge. Or the Friday after that.
And it smelt like it, too. I suddenly turned away, and threw up all over the cobbles of the yard.
I heard James say, dully, to himself, ‘Monkey-skeletons. Baby monkeys . . . what a filthy trick. Drowning baby monkeys like that.’
It sort of made the world all right. Unbearably nasty, yes, but still sane. I turned to look again, with hope. Then I said flatly, ‘They’re not monkeys; I’ve seen plenty of monkey-skulls. These skulls are too small. The hands and feet are too small for monkeys.’
‘What are they then. Human foetuses?’
‘Don’t be stupid. Foetuses have huge heads.’
There was a long silence. Then he said, as if he were defending his beloved faith with his life itself, ‘It’s a trick. A filthy trick. Someone with a mind like a sewer.’ And he turned and stumbled back to the workshop; then I heard him being sick, too.
Footsteps. Light female footsteps. I desperately tried to get the hatch-cover back on, but I was blind and fumbling; it caught the brass rail and fell to the cobbles with a sound of breaking glass.
‘Jeff, careful,’ said Hermione crossly. Bent down to pick up the hatch, and saw.
She didn’t scream. She caught herself in time and didn’t scream.
I’ll always admire her for that.
We sat in my office, and drank whisky. Normally, I wouldn’t touch whisky with a barge-pole. I hate the stuff. But in dreadful moments it’s a help. It’s as bitter as death itself; it burns your throat and masks the other pain.
I drink a lot of whisky at funerals.
When I say I was drinking whisky, that sounds a bit too elegant. I was holding a full glass with both hands and both hands were shaking, and the whisky was slopping over them. And my lips felt huge and rubbery, and full of subtle little movements out of my control. It was just like when I heard my father had been killed. Only worse.
‘It’s a trick,’ said James for the hundredth time. ‘A vile trick.’ I felt like hitting him. Why couldn’t he think of something else to say?
‘Jeff,’ said Hermione, in a very small voice, ‘it could be a trick, you know. The Victorians were always pulling tricks. Think about Piltdown Man – what a hoax he was. Human skull, ape’s jaw.’
Some detached part of my mind insisted she’d got it the wrong way round. That Victorian gent had used an ape’s skull and a human jaw . . . but that little part of myself would never connect with my mouth, would never be heard out loud. It was just a little voice inside my head . . .
‘We need experts,’ said Hermione.
‘You mean, dial 999?’ I asked, with a burst of black savagery. ‘Get Crittenden round? He’d take one look and sniff, and send the Social Services round for us – to take us to the nearest bin. Crittenden only likes life-size skeletons, and he doesn’t do an awful lot about those.’
‘I think you underestimate Crittenden,’ she said quietly.
So why did I feel like murdering her?
‘Pygmies,’ said James to himself. ‘Young pygmies. Skeletons of young pygmies.’
‘Pygmies,’ I snarled, ‘are nearly five feet tall. I’ve seen them on the telly.’
‘Them head-hunters in Borneo. They shrink human heads . . .’
‘They take the skull out before they shrink them.’
‘Bits of all sorts of animals, put together . . . a rabbit’s thighbone looks like a little human thigh-bone . . .’
‘He’s right, you know, Jeff,’ said Hermione. ‘We could be having hysterics over nothing. We’ve got to get some experts.’
‘You want a taxidermist,’ said James. ‘They know bones. Or some doctor as can keep his mouth shut.’
Somehow, that made me think of Mossy Hughes. I somehow knew he would know a doctor who would keep his mouth shut. Maybe he would know a taxidermist who would keep his mouth shut, too.
I rang the Duke of Portland and they fetched Mossy straight away. I supposed that now they served pub grub, he must never go home at all.
‘What can I do for you, squire? A taxidermist who can keep his mouth shut? You wanna get stuffed, on the quiet?’
Somehow I could not rise to the occasion.
‘An’ a doctor who can keep his mouth shut? That’ll cost ya. What you done, got wounded burgling the Natural History Museum?’ But his voice was worried now. ‘You’re in real trouble, squire, ain’t ya? Can I help? I can come round straight away . . .’
I thought that, from him, was a very generous offer. And somehow, God knew how, I thought he would be a help. There was an air about Mossy of having done everything and having seen everything. Just the man for a committee discussing the Impossible, the Unbelievable.
‘You get them and bring them along, Mossy. We’ll be waiting.’
After that, there was nothing to do but look out of the window at the steadily falling rain. We had done all we could do. With loathing, the three of us had carried the boat into a separate side-shed I seldom used. And locked the big padlock on the door. I had rung the house at Hampstead, where Sam was, and sent him on a long round of the clock repairers of the East End, looking for a second-hand part for a very rare clock. And he could go straight home afterwards.
It was a sort of dull relief, just to sit and wait.
We went back to my of
fice, when they’d finished looking. We gave them whisky, too. Only Mossy, stony-faced, drank his with any sign of pleasure.
The taxidermist raised a pale elderly face. ‘They’re not the bones of any animal I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen the lot, I think. They’re certainly not monkey-bones.’
I put a cheque into his trembling hand, and he went with great relief. I hoped he didn’t have a weak heart. At that age, shocks can be deadly. On the other hand, the elderly, the successful elderly, have a way of defending themselves against shocks.
When his footsteps had faded, the doctor cleared his throat. I could tell that he, too, was anxious to be gone. It didn’t make me feel any better.
‘I think he’s right. They have the feel of human bones.’
‘But how can they be human bones?’ I felt my last chance of sanity was slipping away with him.
‘I have just one thought – and that’s from reading, not from experience. In the War – the Hamburg bombing – the fire typhoon. Some of the people who died in the shelters, under the intense heat . . . the rescue squads thought that the bodies of adults were the bodies of very young children, they had shrunk so much . . . but I would think in that case the bones would be very brittle – hard to handle and arrange. They would break very easily.’ He got up to go. I reached for my cheque-book again, but he waved his hand, with a look on his face that I think was pity. ‘No – no payment. It’s not really a criminal matter, though I can see you have a problem. My advice to you is to hand the whole thing – the whole shooting-match – over to the police. Let them deal with it. Let them worry about it. They’ve got the experts; who will no doubt be utterly fascinated. Good night to you. Thanks, I can find my own way out.’
We listened to his footsteps retreating up to the side entrance. Then James said, ‘I’ll have to go. The missis will be frantic.’
We listened, through the drawn curtains, to him get into his car and drive away. A cold loneliness seemed to seep into the room, from the locked-up shed where the dead awaited our verdict.
‘Not going to stay here on your own tonight, squire?’ asked Mossy. I could have hugged him, for his concern.
‘No,’ said Hermione. ‘He’s coming home with me.’
Chapter 9
All my later admiration of Hermione stemmed from that night. How could she be so brisk, so efficient? It was only thanks to her that we left my house in good order. It was she who went upstairs to dig out my toothbrush and pyjamas, dressing-gown and razor. It was she who got me into my overcoat and made sure my doors were locked and the burglar-alarms on.
She drove calmly and efficiently. I thought things would be better, once we left my gate. As that old poem says, from my school-days, ‘out of sight, out of mind, we’ll think of cleaner things’. But you don’t, you know. The contents of the saloon of that model ship kept flashing on the screen of my mind over and over, like an obscene slide-show when the projector is stuck.
I tried to draw comfort, a little still comfort from the things we passed; a wet wall glistening in the lamplight, with a spray of bright leaves drooping over it; a man lighting a cigarette on a street-corner, waiting for the lights to change; even the good old London buses, the 82 VICTORIA and the 10 HAMMERSMITH beaming their glowing signs before them.
None of it worked. Everything belonged to a world that had fractured, that had torn like stage scenery to reveal a darkness behind. It was as if Christopher Columbus had reached that edge of the world his crew always feared, and seen the water streaming over the edge in some colossal Niagara, to fall for ever as spray among the stars . . . But was it the world that was fractured, or me? I still had the same two arms and the same two legs, and lungs that breathed and a heart that pounded and a mind that could think, but what use were they, scattered across the wasteland of that discovery?
It was good to be in her lighted room, to watch her hold a match to the coal-effect gas fire, and draw the curtains. But what was she drawing the curtains on? What horror was kept out only by thin glass and thinner cloth?
She knelt on the hearthrug, holding her slim hands to the as yet heatless blaze. How elegant she seemed, now that it no longer mattered, now that nothing mattered. I tried out the doctor’s wise words about the Hamburg fire-victims, and found they didn’t convince me at all. They would undoubtedly comfort the good doctor, while he forgot the reality, cut it down till eventually it would be no more than an odd experience, a traveller’s tale, to be told to a circle of admiring grandchildren, round some fire on a winter’s night. How their little eyes would shine with wonder and excitement; removed from the reality by space and time.
I had to live with it. It was locked in my shed.
Finally, Hermione said, not taking her eyes off the flames, ‘We have to talk. If we want any sleep tonight.’
And I just said, ‘Yes.’
‘You don’t believe that stuff the doctor said? About Hamburg?’
‘No. There was no sign of charring. And I don’t believe even fire-victims would shrink that small. Besides . . .’
‘Don’t go on. I don’t believe it either.’ She gave a delicate shudder. ‘And yet . . . we can’t deny it has happened. In a real model ship, made by a real firm. We’ve got to accept that. If we don’t . . . I think it will make us ill. We’ll never trust anything again.’
‘Yes.’ It was good to talk; it was good to know that one other person in the world felt the same.
‘We’ve . . . got to move on. If we just sit still, we’re finished. We’ve got to find out more about it.’
‘How?’ My mind swam hopelessly; I couldn’t get a grip on anything.
‘Well, obviously, basic research. Starting with Mr Makepeace, in the morning.’
I was aghast. ‘He’s too old. He wouldn’t believe us, but he’d still be terribly shocked. He’d think we were mad. It might give him a heart attack. His beloved ships . . .’
‘Oh yes,’ she said, quite coolly. ‘We can’t tell him anything. It’s what he’ll be able to tell us. About his beloved ships. And the Neptune Yacht Club. Steam section.’
It all seemed so . . . trivial. ‘I don’t see how that’s going to help us. Nothing we might learn will make this right . . . make sense.’
She looked at me very solemnly, and then I noticed the little tic that made her eyelid flutter, and knew how much her calm was costing her. ‘Can you suggest anything better?’
I shook my head hopelessly; and yet I did feel better for having some plan, something useful to do, however trivial.
‘I shall ring Sven, and call a halt on the dig. I don’t want them around, till this is sorted. I feel responsible for them. Too many things have gone wrong already. Rory; those firemen. You know, I’ve really hated this dig. Right from the beginning. We’ve found all those marvellous things, and yet I’ve felt . . . we’re getting deeper and deeper into trouble. You know what I mean?’
I thought of Lenny. Then I began to worry aloud about James and Sam.
‘What’ll you do with them?’ she asked.
‘Send them up to Birmingham with the big van, I think. For two or three days. Going round the antique hypermarkets, and house-to-house, on the knocker. James has done it before for me, when stuff’s been short. He knows what to look for. And how much to pay. I trust him. It’ll get some fresh air into his lungs. I’ll give him some bearer cheques on my bank for five thousand, that’ll see them through.’
It says a lot for my state of mind that I said five thousand without a thought. Normally five thousand’s a lot for me. But at that moment, I couldn’t have cared less about it.
I think we relaxed a little, then. We’d made our plans. It does help, to make plans.
‘Like something to eat or drink? Before bed?’
‘Couldn’t face it.’ I shook my head, then glanced across to check her sofa, where I’d probably be spending the night. It looked lush and cosy enough, to lie awake and toss about on.
She caught my thought; there wer
e never any flies on Hermione. She said, hesitantly, ‘You can share my bed, if you like. Providing you don’t get the wrong idea. It’s just that . . . I don’t think I want to lie alone in the dark, thinking . . .’
It was the most wonderful offer a woman ever made me. Drunk with relief, I said, ‘We can always leave the bedside light on . . .’
‘I can’t sleep with the light on . . .’
‘I doubt I’m going to sleep anyway.’
She nodded. Then said, ‘Have another whisky. I’ll try not to be too long . . .’
‘Nice warm relaxing bath?’ I asked, feeling a bit more human.
‘No.’ She got up. ‘Prayers, actually.’
‘D’you pray?’ I was shattered. I hadn’t ever known anybody who’d prayed. Except James, of course, and my grandmother, and that was a very long time ago.
She lifted her head and made an embarrassed little speech to the corner of the ceiling. ‘I pray very seldom, and very badly. But I have known prayers answered. And when you’ve got something very big and very nasty and very mysterious against you, it’s a comfort to have something very big and very nice and very mysterious on your side. Now go and pour yourself another whisky. And, as I said, don’t get the wrong idea.’
‘Lady, tonight, even a teenage nymphomaniac would be safe from me.’
She managed a very small smile.
‘Y’know, Jeff, you’re not a bad guy to be in a nasty spot with.’
It was a crazy night. I heard most of ‘Nightride’ on Radio Two. Three times in the dark she reached out and gripped my hand, hard enough to squeeze it off. In the end, sleep came, and I had nightmares, and wakened up sweating and yelling.
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