Mercury Falling

by Robert Edric

  Sullivan had told him what to say during their drive to the camp. Mention the flood.

  ‘I was trying to set up as a farmer before the drainage work,’ Devlin said. ‘The flooding put paid to that.’

  ‘You were a farm labourer?’ Janet Scott-Dyer said.

  ‘I rented a farm.’

  ‘I see.’ More writing.

  ‘I was trying to make a go of things, but with one thing and another …’

  ‘Sorry. Such as?’

  Hadn’t she been listening? ‘Like I said – the flood.’

  ‘Ah, yes, the flood. I understand it was quite severe hereabouts.’

  And, according to Sullivan, it was another one of those things that was supposed to wipe the slate clean.

  ‘It must have been very difficult for you,’ the Governor said, his eyes flicking from Devlin to the woman.

  ‘Under water for weeks,’ Devlin said. ‘Lost all my crop. All the livestock gone.’

  ‘Killed?’ Janet Scott-Dyer said. ‘How awful.’

  ‘A few. I lost the grazing. Mostly I had to sell them off at a loss.’

  ‘And afterwards?’ the Governor said, dabbing again at his cheeks.

  Devlin started to calculate how thin the lie was already stretched.

  ‘I was going to be married,’ he said. ‘But the flooding was a hard thing. My fiancée had a kind of breakdown, couldn’t cope – very house proud, she was. It made her – I don’t know … Sorry, I don’t suppose this is the kind of thing you want to hear about.’

  Lay the foundations, Sullivan had said. Lay it on a bit thick. Just watch the military stuff – they have a tendency to check up on things like that.

  ‘I tried to hold everything together, but I failed,’ Devlin said. He was starting to like the sound of himself.

  Blame yourself. The old man’s a sucker for that kind of thing.

  ‘And so then you worked on the drainage and reclamation work?’ Janet Scott-Dyer said.

  ‘I did.’

  Drainage and reclamation work. Standing up to your knees in a muddy channel, soaked to the skin and lobbing shovelfuls of muck to some other poor bugger who cursed you and every load he either caught or missed.

  ‘And before that – before your venture into farming – you were in the Army, I believe.’

  ‘I was,’ Devlin said, stiffening slightly.

  ‘As indeed were a great many of our current employees,’ the Governor said.

  ‘It’s a considerable gap,’ Janet Scott-Dyer said. She opened another of the files and read from it.

  ‘What is?’ Devlin said.

  ‘A decade almost. Sorry – between your discharge and your attempts at farming.’

  ‘Times were hard,’ Devlin said, wishing he hadn’t.

  ‘As we keep hearing,’ Janet Scott-Dyer said.

  Outside, along the corridor filled with other waiting men, a door slammed loudly and the noise echoed along the painted brick walls.

  Devlin looked from his lap to the Governor, hoping for more help from him, but knowing the instant the man avoided his eyes that it wasn’t coming. If she had the date of his discharge, then what else did she have? And if she had the word ‘discharge’, did she also have ‘dishonourable’?

  ‘I was Army of Occupation,’ he said. It still sounded good, solid, even if it was a lie. What did the woman want him to say?

  Say you want to start making something of yourself, Sullivan had said. Say you want a better life for your children than you had yourself. A bit of humility never hurt.

  Had Sullivan even known the woman was going to be there? Everything felt unbalanced.

  ‘Very commendable,’ Janet Scott-Dyer said when Devlin finished telling her all this.

  ‘Of course it is,’ the Governor said. ‘Very commendable indeed.’

  Devlin wanted to tell the man to shut up.

  No one spoke for a moment.

  Both Devlin and the Governor watched Janet Scott-Dyer as she continued writing.

  ‘Shall we carry on?’ she said.

  ‘I thought you were only here to observe,’ Devlin said.

  ‘Technically speaking, that’s all I am doing,’ the woman said. She looked hard at Devlin, laying down her precious pen for a few seconds.

  ‘So what are you writing?’ Devlin asked her.

  ‘This? Nothing, really. Call it an aide-memoire. We’re seeing eight or nine others today. After a point, you all begin to merge. Please, carry on.’

  In the car, Sullivan had said that in the past the Governor had invited him to sit in on the interviews.

  You just get the feel of a bloke, he’d said. You often learn more by what he doesn’t tell you than by what he’s all too keen to tell everybody at every opportunity. You know the sort.

  Devlin had said that he did know the sort, but had remained confused about what this might mean regarding himself.

  ‘I understand you submitted no formal application,’ Janet Scott-Dyer said.

  ‘Possibly my fault, I’m afraid,’ the Governor said. ‘All a bit short notice. We advertised, of course, all the usual places, but when you said you wanted to sit in on the interviews, everything became a little rushed. It’s not necessarily how we’re used to working in this part of the world, if you get my meaning.’

  ‘I see,’ she said.

  Devlin waited for her to close the file, sit back in her seat and look at him. She might even shake her head to make it all the more clear to him where he now stood.

  ‘Still, we have a good batch of men for interview. Four or five of them ex-Army. I daresay we shall fill our vacancies, and that’s the main thing,’ the Governor said.

  Ask her where she lives, Devlin wanted to say to him. And then ask her how quickly she’ll be getting herself back there when all this is over and done with. Ask her where else she’s been to stick her fucking nose in. Ask her how long your job will be safe when all these fucking changes and new regulations she’s only too fucking keen to keep on mentioning are put in place. Ask her that.

  ‘Of course,’ Janet Scott-Dyer said. She screwed the cap back on her pen and then laid this carefully across the closed file.

  Now it was the Governor’s turn to stare out at the trackless terrain ahead of him. ‘Perhaps if, as I say, things hadn’t all been somewhat rushed, then we might all have been better—’

  ‘You,’ Janet Scott-Dyer said sharply, interrupting him.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You might have been better prepared,’ she said. ‘I consider myself to be perfectly well prepared, under the circumstances, for everything taking place today.’

  ‘I see,’ the Governor said, and then repeated this four or five times.

  The wind blew, the wind changed direction, the wind blew again.

  Devlin loosened his tie and then unfastened a button. The jacket still felt tight across his shoulders, the trousers tight at his waist.

  Janet Scott-Dyer looked at her watch.

  They were finished with him.

  She would already be thinking about her journey from the borstal back to the railway station all those long miles away, and from there back to London.

  ‘When will I hear?’ Devlin said to the Governor.

  ‘I’m sorry. Hear what?’

  ‘Whether or not I’ve been successful in my application,’ Devlin said. ‘I’ll need to start thinking about somewhere closer to live. Mister Sullivan said you had accommodation at very reasonable rates. And then there’s my uniform to consider – presumably I’ll need to come in for a fitting.’

  ‘First things first,’ the Governor said.

  ‘Exactly,’ Devlin said. He rose, stretched his arms and yawned. ‘Looks like more snow later,’ he said. ‘No trains for a month this time last year.’ He waited for the sudden worried look to cross Janet Scott-Dyer’s face and then he turned and left the room.

  27

  ‘YOU COMING?’ PATRICK pushed open the door and stood holding the frame. It was early evening, already dark for three
hours, and with a skim of ice and snow still filling the ruts and hollows of the ground.

  ‘Where to?’ Devlin said. He was alone. Maria had spent the day with the few other women sitting out the winter in the compound.

  ‘Fishing,’ Patrick said, grinning.

  ‘I’ll need to let Maria know.’

  ‘Why? Leave her a note. Tell her you’re with us. We won’t let any harm come to you.’ He grinned again.

  ‘What time will we be back?’

  ‘When we get here.’ He was already walking away, drawing Devlin in his wake.

  Colm was waiting for them in the lorry at the field entrance.

  ‘He going to be warm enough?’ Colm said as Devlin climbed in and sat between the brothers. ‘You going to be warm enough?’ Another freezing night was forecast.

  ‘It’s Friday,’ Devlin said. ‘The weekend. You don’t normally—’

  ‘We don’t normally what?’ Patrick said. ‘Besides, it’s the best time of the week for some kinds of work.’

  They drove towards Boston, along the Cowbridge drain, and then turned away from the town where this joined the Witham, following the Haven along a track which passed beside the Toft jetty at the Cut End road. The dim lights of the borstal shone in the flat distance. A week had passed since Devlin’s so-called interview.

  They left the path and turned inland for a hundred yards, then Colm drew up the lorry and parked beside a sluice platform.

  Patrick pulled a mound of empty sacks from the bed of the lorry and gave them to Devlin. The three men stood for a moment listening to the night’s silence all around them. The hot engine cracked in the darkness. The lights of Boston were scarcely visible behind them, only a glow in the sky above the place.

  Without speaking, Patrick and Colm walked back to the river, climbed its embankment and walked along this a further fifty yards towards the sea. Devlin followed them. The ground there was less frozen than further inland and the thinner ice of the puddles shattered beneath his feet.

  Eventually, the brothers stopped and then slid down the levee towards the water. They called for Devlin to do the same.

  Devlin dug his heels into the grass slope to prevent himself from sliding too far.

  Halfway down the levee he reached a line of wooden stakes driven firmly into the ground. The remains of a jetty gave the three men a small platform upon which to stand. Attached to the stakes, Devlin saw, were a number of heavy ropes which trailed down into the channel below.

  It was where the fishermen of Boston secured their sacks of live shellfish before returning to the town. The shellfish sat there for days, sometimes weeks, flushed by the tide, awaiting any small increase in its value in the market. Midwinter always meant scarcity and higher prices.

  Patrick started to haul on one of the ropes, calling for Colm and Devlin to help him. The three men pulled and a hundredweight of mussels or whelks or cockles came slowly up out of the channel, rattling against the slope and growing lighter as the water drained quickly away. The rope was coarse and crusted with salt, and it scoured Devlin’s palms as he pulled. Both brothers were wearing gauntlets, and he cursed Patrick for not warning him about the nature of the work.

  Colm and Devlin alone pulled a second sack from the water and laid it beside the first.

  After that, Colm returned to the lorry and came back with a pair of gauntlets for Devlin.

  ‘I forgot to mention you’d be needing them,’ Patrick said, laughing.

  They continued hauling the sacks from the water until a dozen lay draining across the slope.

  ‘Don’t want to get too greedy,’ Patrick said, as though a dozen missing sacks might go unnoticed by the men who had worked hard to fill them.

  All three men stopped speaking at the sound of a distant whistle.

  ‘Is it a boat?’ Devlin said. There was nowhere for them to hide, and the hauled-out sacks would be clearly visible to anyone passing either above on the embankment or below on the water.

  ‘It’s the borstal,’ Colm said eventually. ‘Whistles, bells, alarms, you name it. They just enjoy letting everyone know how slow the hours and days and weeks are passing.’ The camp was no longer visible from where they stood.

  The dozen drained sacks were then dragged to the rim of the slope and Devlin saw for the first time the numbers and letters crudely stencilled on their sides denoting ownership.

  ‘It’s why we bring the empty, unmarked sacks,’ Colm told him. He took out a knife and slit open one of the sacks. Together he and Patrick transferred the load of whelks it contained. Devlin was told to gather up any spilled shellfish.

  After half an hour all the newly filled sacks were ready and waiting at the top of the embankment.

  ‘Gather up the empty ones,’ Patrick told Devlin. ‘We’ll burn them. No point alerting anyone to what’s happened before they come back on Monday morning and pull on the ropes.’

  Devlin did this.

  After a short rest, during which a succession of further whistles sounded at the distant camp, the three men each took up a sack, balanced them on their backs and shoulders and carried them to the waiting lorry.

  The loads were heavy and all three of them grunted and panted and stopped frequently to drop their sacks to the ground. It took them another hour to carry everything they had stolen to the lorry, where Patrick covered and roped the haul.

  On their return they avoided Boston by turning along the Fishtoft road and then towards Sibsey. Devlin said little as Colm again drove.

  ‘Cat got your tongue?’ Patrick asked him. Cigarette smoke filled the crowded cab.

  ‘I just don’t like the idea of stealing from the fishermen, that’s all,’ Devlin said.

  ‘You never said anything earlier.’ It was another joke to the brothers.

  Devlin had known some of the fishermen in the years since his return from Colchester. He had worked through four winters on the boats, cash in hand, and afterwards on the Boston and Lynn quays. For all he knew, he might have just stolen from the men who had employed and befriended him.

  ‘I knew some of them,’ he said eventually. ‘It’s hard work.’

  ‘Everything’s hard work,’ Patrick said. ‘Unless you got that silver spoon in your mouth. And so what that you knew them, so what?’

  ‘I just don’t like the idea of it,’ Devlin said.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘He’ll get over it,’ Colm said. He dug his elbow into Devlin’s side.

  They arrived at the drain corner at Northlands and Colm pulled into the lay-by there and switched off the engine and lights.

  ‘Now what?’ Devlin said, already guessing.

  ‘You think we’re going to take a load like this back to the compound?’ Patrick said. ‘You know us better than that. Besides, it has to shift fast, this kind of stuff. Buyers know what they’re looking at. Two days – not even that in the summer – and everything starts to get a bit iffy.’

  ‘They’ll find out,’ Devlin said. ‘Shellfish – they’ll find out who’s buying and then find a way back to you.’

  ‘To us,’ Patrick said. ‘Besides, that’s not going to happen. In a few hours this lot’ll be in Yarmouth or Lowestoft, fresh out of the sea on one of the boats there. Now shut it and keep your eyes peeled.’

  Ten minutes later, a pair of headlights showed in the distance, coming towards them from the direction of Hackerley Bridge.

  ‘This is our man,’ Colm said and flashed their lights once.

  Patrick and Colm climbed out to await the arrival of the buyer. Devlin edged along the seat to follow them, but Patrick told him to stay where he was and keep his eyes open for other lights. ‘Less you know, less you’ve got to worry about,’ he said.

  At the far end of the lay-by a small van pulled in off the road and a man came to them.

  It always surprised and reassured Devlin to see how easily all this endless wheeling and dealing worked for the brothers, and how well-timed it was. And he saw too how little he was
actually told about it all.

  The shellfish were inspected, the man brought his van alongside and the sacks were thrown down.

  When Patrick and Colm finally returned to the lorry, Devlin expected Patrick to be waving money about, and to be paid his own lesser share of the night’s profits.

  But there was nothing. ‘All in good time,’ Patrick told him. ‘The shellfish game doesn’t work like that.’

  ‘He thinks we’re out to cheat him,’ Colm said.

  ‘What, us?’ Patrick said. He put his arm around Devlin’s shoulder. ‘What you need, my friend, is to have a bit more faith in your fellow man. Am I right or am I right?’

  ‘You’re right,’ Devlin said.

  ‘’Course I am. Right as rain.’ He withdrew his arm and slapped both hands on the dashboard. ‘Time to get going,’ he said. ‘What we hanging round here for?’

  28

  A WEEK LATER Devlin waited for the brothers in the pub on the Nene Outfall outside Sutton Bridge. Patrick and Colm had gone into Long Sutton to see a contact there with the intention of selling on the first part of Duggan’s haul. They would have preferred to wait longer, but this opportunity had arisen and they’d snatched it.

  Devlin watched out for Ray Duggan whenever they went near his usual haunts. Even the mention of his name still unsettled Devlin. Duggan must surely have discovered his loss by now, put two and two together, and be deciding what to do next. The fact that he hadn’t shown his face yet meant nothing.

  Devlin was alone in the small bar. The wait would be at least two hours. A fire burned in the grate, but did little to heat more than the closest part of the room. He sat with his feet on the fender. Spilled ash and small pieces of coke and charred wood filled the hearth. The room’s only window overlooked the Outfall and Devlin turned to watch each time a small boat went by. There was no lock or jetty between there and the Wash and so none of the few vessels stopped.

  After two hours, with most of his money gone, he went out to the toilet, and when he returned he saw that a bag had been placed on his empty table and that a woman stood at the hatch waiting to be served.