“She fell onto her back as I moved towards her, bemused how I was releasing such a deluge. I’ve never forgotten the sight of her sliding about that hill in an increasingly large puddle of mud!” Ken chuckled at the memory. Mrs Argyle glared at him but soon relented and joined in the laughter.
“Not for long though!” Mrs Argyle picked up the baton of their story. “I lunged forward and tried to push the water away and give my dear brother a wallop, but all I managed to do was fire him about ten feet into the air with a sudden gale of my creating.
“Not to be outdone, our bovine friend back there gave out a defiant moo in response to my assault on her master, lowered her head and sent me blasting back with such a force I felt I would never breathe again. Fortunately there was a moderately soft thicket behind me and although it scratched me to billy-oh, no lasting damage was done.”
“What about the other two?” Owen asked. “Could they do special stuff too?”
Ken and Mrs Argyle exchanged brief glances before Mrs Argyle answered. “We never got chance to find out. They ran home and told their family what had happened and we were branded as witches and the like, so they soon left the island.” Ken gave an almost unperceivable nod as if in agreement.
“Our parents never knew of what we were capable of. After the hoo-ha caused by our neighbours leaving so suddenly, and the rumours that we were the reason, Ken and I kept our powers secret from them. We managed to practice now and again when were on the quieter sides of the island, although folks did start to wonder why the wind and rain was so discerning over which bits of land they’d strike.
“Our parents died when Ken was seventeen so he took over as head of the household.”
“How long were you a little girl for?” Owen asked. “I mean, did you age slowly then?”
“I aged like you’d expect me to until I was about eighteen, then it slowed down. Same with Ken here. That made folks even more wary of us. Perpetual youth definitely had a whiff of witchcraft about it as far as our fellow islanders were concerned.
“Spanish Flu was the somewhat tragic saviour of our secret. It wiped out most of our island; the other survivors chose to leave for the mainland. That left the total population at two humans, thirty sheep and a cow.
“And so things endured in a rather unremarkable manner. Unremarkable that is until that wretched U-boat turned up.”
“A U-boat?” Owen asked.
“German submarine,” Ken explained.
“Yes, I know what a U-boat is,” Owen corrected him, “I just didn’t expect one to figure in your tale, that’s all.”
“My apologies, my learned friend.” Ken made a gesture as if to doff his cap at Owen. “Well, at the start of the war the Navy moved more of its fleet to the northern waters, to protect shipping routes and such. We were lucky enough to have a battleship as a new resident off the shore of our island. She wasn’t much to look at, and had seen too much action in the Great War to be of much use in open waters, but I guess the Admiralty thought she’d be enough to keep the Germans away.
“Well, the tatty old girl was anchored in a large bay, which our island formed the border of. Over 1000 men and boys on board….” Ken went quiet for a moment and his features took on a haunted appearance before he continued.
“Just after midnight we heard two explosions and saw the flames. Over eight hundred souls lost in one night, more died later from their injuries. Another boat managed to pull a fair few from the sea. It was October so the water was bitter and cruel, but a handful managed to make it to the shore. The others froze to death or were poisoned by the oil from the sinking ship.
“By the time we reached the island’s edge ourselves one young sailor was just dragging himself onto the shore, coughing, spluttering, shivering, and with an ashen look about him as one does who has seen so much death, so sudden and cruel.” Again Ken went silent. Moments passed, after which his sister took up the sad tale.
“Petty Officer Jimmy Newman he was called. Nineteen years old, joined up just months before. Lived his entire life in Tooting, South London, hadn’t even seen the sea before he signed up. All of his friends had joined the army, but he chose the navy as the girl he was trying to court found the uniform more alluring.” Mrs Argyle rolled her eyes, clearly unimpressed by such trivial preferences.
“Ken took off his coat and wrapped it about his shoulders, and I did the same. Myrtle had trotted down after us, as was her way. Ken hauled the young man over the cow and led them back to our cottage. We sat him down on a stool in front of the fire and made him drink hot tea. If in doubt, a cup of tea cures most ills.” Mrs Argyle nodded in agreement with her own advice.
“Ken went back to the shore to see if there were any other survivors; taking a torch with him to try and signal the other boats. I stayed with the lad, plying him with tea and inane conversation. He stunk to high heaven of oil from the ship’s boilers and I was desperate for him to have a bath, but any suggestion of it was ignored. So I remained by his side and kept the kettle hot.
“By morning Ken returned with an officer. Commander Sutherland, Lord knows how he achieved that rank. He came in and tried to debrief the poor lad there and then, but he was in shock and could only mumble. Getting frustrated, Sutherland ordered him to leave with him, but Newman just stayed sitting there, affixed to the seat as if they had both been carved from the same block of wood.
“Eventually Sutherland lost his patience and yanked him to his feet. The boy wasn’t ready to stand, so he flopped back down, slipping feet first towards our fire. I managed to grab his hand to stop him landing in the hearth, but all it took was the briefest contact between flame and oil soaked trouser leg and he went up in flames.”
“How awful,” Owen said horrified, fire and flame having a terrifying hold upon him since he was a child, after their next door neighbour’s house (on the opposite side to Mrs Argyle) had burned to a hollow shell.
“Oh he was fine,” Mrs Argyle assured him. “Thankfully he was in the company of a walking and talking fire extinguisher.” Mrs Argyle gestured towards her brother, who once again doffed his imaginary cap at Owen, though this time far more solemnly than before. “Ken had that fire out with the merest gesture of his hands, and the lad escaped with only slight burns that would heal quickly; although we did have a soggy living room for a few days. Unfortunately the effect it had on us both was far more lasting.
“Sutherland stared at Ken, and then thinking he was attacking the boy lunged at him. I instinctively came to his rescue and blew the Commander across the room. Sutherland scrambled to his feet and stumbled out of the cottage, forgetting entirely about the young lad whom he was supposed to have been collecting. Poor Newman just lay on the floor staring at Ken in bewilderment. We managed to get him to take a warm bath after that and he became a bit chattier, for whatever reason choosing to ignore his hosing down from the hands of my quick witted brother.
“Anyway, we entertained our new houseguest well into the morning, letting him sleep in Ken’s bed for a few hours whilst I went to have a snoop around to see whether our little…incident….had caused a hoo-hah or not. Well at first it seemed not, as the island was bereft of military personnel, save for young Newman of course, with all of the activity out in the bay.
“So I went back to the cottage to report the good news to Ken. No sooner than I had walked into the kitchen where Ken was cooking up a rather hearty late breakfast, if I recall,” (an affirmatory nod from Ken), “then there was the sound of a motorbike outside.”
“Quite a rare thing on the island back then, anything with pistons that is,” added Ken.
“Indeed,” Mrs Argyle agreed. “Well, a quick peak outside revealed that sure enough there was a motorbike coming up the lane, with a sidecar I might add. The rider was in army uniform, but sitting beside him was a thin, balding man in a very sharp suit and a rather mismatched pair of goggles.
“Both Ken and I went to greet him, expecting to be carted off to the asylum or locked up for witchcra
ft or what not. We had an escape plan for such eventualities of course, ever since the early days. But that involved either crossing the water or going over the hill at the back of the house, both of which would be quickly seen by our new visitors.”
“Why would people still come after you when it had been so long since the comet and stuff?” Owen asked.
“Well, there was a war on and every young man – and woman - was being called up to do his duty,” Ken explained. “For all intents and purposes I looked like a chap in his early twenties, despite my birth certificate stating that I was in fact in my fifties by then. So even though it was just the two of us running the farm, officials would have expected Cee to run it on her lonesome. Well, that I was our fear, anyway.
“So we chose to see what the two chaps wanted. After all they might have been sent to collect the young seaman in a more efficient manner then the good Commander.
“We greeted the man on the doorstep. He introduced himself as Colonel Robert Blake, and made some idle chit chat about the weather and so forth, making no mention of the half drowned serviceman lying on my bed, or the catastrophic events of the night before.
“He just stood there bouncing on the balls of his feet and smiling as he surveyed our cottage and the land surrounding it.
“Well as you can imagine, Cee cracked first and let him in.”
“Poppycock! You cracked after about five seconds of silence!” Mrs Argyle corrected her brother, with a blow to the arm for good measure.
“If you say so,” Ken conceded, with a twinkle in his eye. “Well the man came in and sat down, whilst the soldier riding the bike remained outside. After yet more silence Cee once again crumbled and offered him a tea.” Clearly disagreeing with this version of events, Mrs Argyle rolled her eyes and shook her head, but remained silent.
“How can I help you? I asked. To which he smiled and after accepting the tea and having a very controlled sip he leant forward in his seat and said: You can help us to win the war. Cee and I looked at each other with raised eyebrows but said nothing else. The man continued saying that he was responsible for a rather specialised branch of the military, who actively sought out the greatest and brightest young minds in the land to help in the war effort. This usually meant frequenting universities and private laboratories, and you couldn’t find somewhere more dissimilar to these than our living room.
“But through the most fortunate stroke of serendipity, his words I must add, he said that he happened to be across the water, with a young engineer that he had taken under his wing, looking at the possibility of building some barriers or such to protect His Majesty’s fleet from such diabolical attacks such as the one on the previous night. He was present when the good Commander, to whom we made such a lasting impression upon, gave his garbled report to the C.O. He had already recruited a couple of our kind, one of whom had been caught red-handed trying to break into a bank.
“After that he went on about confidentiality and such for some time and said he’d be back the following morning to take us to the mainland. I argued, saying that I couldn’t leave the farm unattended, but he merely said that would be taken care of. Further protestations were batted away with an avuncular chuckle or two, until he silenced us with a raised hand and simply said: It is in your interests to join us tomorrow. We will be working together. It would be preferable to do so as friends.
“And with that he bid us good day, complemented Cee on the front garden and walked out of the front door.”
“So did you go with him?” Owen asked.
“We had little choice but to do so,” explained Mrs Argyle. “The next morning an official from the Ministry of Food arrived to take an inventory of the farm. Ken was worried about Myrtle as she could have a temper around strangers. As it happened the man wasn’t interested in the cow, as that particular livestock would be accompanying us. Most irregular, the official called it, saying that the rules stated that all animals should remain on the farm, but it had come from up high that the cow was being taken by eminent domain. Less than an hour later we were on a boat for the mainland and the three of us made our way to our new home for the next six years”.
“Where was that?” Owen enquired.
“Oh that’s a story for another day. You’ve had fifty years of our lives, where relatively little happened.”
“Relatively little? You were hit by a comet and a ship was sunk?!”
“Yes, yes. However things didn’t get interesting until we left the island. But-” (Mrs Argyle help up a finger to halt Owen’s imminent protestations) “-that will have to wait. We have dallied for far too long. Best get some rest; I feel we have a busy day ahead.”
“What happened to the U-Boat,” Owen asked.
Mrs Argyle smiled. “That will also have to wait. Stories such as that should be told somewhere more befitting their magnificence, and not in a lay-by at the side of a road.”
With that Mrs Argyle and Ken put their seatbelts back on and they resumed their journey.
“Shall we have a little music?” Ken asked.
“If we must,” Mrs Argyle begrudgingly agreed.
“Marvellous. A bit more Nina I think, especially for the sinful man that you two are going to see.” Ken laughed at his comment and popped a cassette into the car’s player, Owen and Mrs Argyle both shaking their heads but for different reasons (Owen, as usual, had no idea what Ken was talking about).
Owen settled back in his seat and tried to imagine how a flying, wind conjuring woman and the walking geyser beside her could have helped the war effort. He also mused on how his own powers could have been used to good effect.
Captain Owen Johnson: war hero. To Owen it had a fanciful and pleasing ring to it. He was unaware as to how prophetic this description would be.
10
Jubilee
Despite his best efforts, Owen fell asleep and had episodic dreams that alternated between him saving stranded soldiers in some far-off battle field, to him sweeping Katie in a one-armed lifting embrace into the sky, as he effortlessly manoeuvred amongst the clouds. It was during one particularly pleasing moment that he was abruptly awoken by Ken slamming the car door.
Owen opened his eyes to a bright day, the sun shining through the grubby windows of Ken’s Land Rover. “Where are we?” Owen asked.
“Stanmore Tube station,” Mrs Argyle explained, opening the back door. “Ken has to run a few errands out here and we have a visit to make in the city. So shake a leg and hop to it, you’ve rested for long enough.”
Owen noticed that his improvised seatbelt had been untied for him so he eased himself out the car, expecting to be stiff and bruised from his adventures the day before. To his surprise his joints felt supple despite the cramped and twisted position that he had slept in, and his energy levels were such that he felt that he could reach central London with leaps and bounds, rather than by using the Underground.
“Chop-chop, do keep up,” Mrs Argyle called from up ahead.
Ken rolled his eyes at his sister. “Good luck Owen,” he said.
“What do we need luck for?” Owen asked, suddenly concerned regarding whom his neighbour was dragging him to see.
“Oh, probably nothing,” Ken said dismissively. “It’s just London and my sister don’t have the best history with one another.” He placed his hand on Owen’s shoulder. “Best to do just as she says; Cee gets rather tetchy when she has to deal with certain individuals.”
“Who?” Owen attempted to ask but Ken swiftly interrupted him, a skill that both siblings had an uncanny knack of pulling off.
“Right, must dash. I’ll see you later today. Best run if you don’t want to be at the end of Captain Argyle’s legendary dressing downs.” With that he spun Owen around and pushed him towards his departing sister, before climbing back into his Land Rover.
Owen caught up with Mrs Argyle at the ticket office as today she was evidently intending to be a paying customer. They both used the bathroom facilities at the station and settled into a
waiting train. “Just gone seven a.m.,” Mrs Argyle announced, looking at her watch. “We should have time to get to him before he goes a-wandering.”
“Who are we going to see?” Owen asked.
Mrs Argyle seemed to be choosing her words carefully. “An old colleague.”
“From the war?” Owen asked, hoping to have some more light shed on his former babysitter’s military escapades.
“Yes. We haven’t been in touch for some time, so don’t expect the friendliest of welcomes.”
“Did you have a falling out? What over?”
“A difference of opinion. I’ll let him explain it to you, lest he accuses me of clouding your opinion of him. And he will be very interested to know what you think of him believe me.” Mrs Argyle settled back in her seat and turned to look out of the window behind her. Owen recognised that this was her way of telling him not to pursue any further questions. But he tried a few nevertheless.
“What’s his name?” he started with. It was met with a few moments silence so Owen did not expect an answer, but for once Mrs Argyle released a snippet of information.
“Clive. Clive Merryfield. The most inappropriate name, if you ask me, the grumpy old sod,” she said, repeating her description of her brother from the day before.
“Does he have powers like we do?” Owen asked.
“Quiet!” she said harshly. “No talk of that sort of thing in public.”
“Sorry.” Owen studied the graphic opposite him displaying the route of the Jubilee line, which they were travelling on. “Where’s our stop?”
“Green Park.”
Owen counted the stations that lay ahead. Fifteen stations to go. “What about Dad? Will this Clive bloke be able to help us get Dad back?”
The Remarkables (The Remarkable Owen Johnson, part 1) Page 9
