by Julia Jones
They hadn’t said anything to anyone. They’d been too churned up.
And they’d been scared.
Donny’s immediate impulse was to veer away, take Strong Winds over towards the Stour, cross the deep-water channel someplace else.
But he’d had his orders. Besides, changing course now would take him directly across to the Hispaniola. Even at this distance he could see that there was a black two-man speedboat attached to the same dangling rope he’d used for Lively Lady. That must be the owner on board. The owner of the knife?
Wasn’t there some old myth about someone having to take his ship between a whirlpool and some clashing rocks? Donny felt a kinship with that bloke, whoever he was. He couldn’t ask Polly Lee what to do. She was checking charts. The rest of the ship’s company was still asleep.
They’d had a struggle getting Skye back on board. Two and a bit glasses of Rev. Wendy’s raffle wine had knocked her out completely. He guessed it hadn’t mixed so well with the happy pills. He didn’t think she’d ever had wine before.
He was glad she hadn’t seen Toxic and Tony; glad too that she’d missed the grim conversation about the conditions under which he wasn’t going to get sent immediately to an SS Unit. He hadn’t had to tell her – yet – that she’d been judged a ‘risk’ to his emotional well-being and likely to ‘abuse’ him through neglect.
Apparently the people at Tony’s meeting reckoned they could make a better job of helping him grow up sane and happy. Ha ha.
Anyway, there was a new Care Plan that said that Donny would be allowed to live with his mother and great-aunt for as long as he achieved 100 percent school attendance and ‘challenging’ academic targets. Skye had to ‘engage’ with the local health service – which probably meant carry on taking the tablets – and Gold Dragon was bound over to keep the peace. Flint wasn’t.
There was more ... much, much more. Rev. Wendy had been forced to take them through it clause by clause after the crooked tongues had driven away, still smirking.
Donny had shouted at her of course. But eventually he’d had to realise that she hadn’t deliberately let them down; that she had been trying to do her conscientious best. He couldn’t see how Rev. Wendy could bear to allow Toxic into the house. Then he had remembered that she and Gerald were responsible for all the other children. If Wendy fell out with the SS, what would happen to Anna, Luke, Liam and Vicky?
Nevertheless her faith in the System had been badly shaken.
“At first June and I thought that our video contribution had made a difference – until we began to wonder how it was that they had all the Conditions so clearly arranged in advance?”
“You think this might have been their Plan B all along?”
“That was our impression,” she answered sadly.
The worst of the Conditions was the one that said Strong Winds had to become a ‘fixed abode’ – permanently attached to the shore with an address and postcode. This was to enable the SS bureau-rats to swarm aboard as often as they liked in order to check up on Donny’s ‘saifety’. Once the site had been selected any attempt to move Strong Winds would invalidate the Care Plan and Donny would immediately be sent to the Unit. No wonder Tony had seemed surprised to find them still here.
“Mr McMullen tried to make the point that that this was a completely unreasonable request to make of a sailor such as yourself. He and Mrs Ribiero thought that you would head out to sea at once.”
“They’ll have to send a gunboat to stop me.” Gold Dragon growled.
Rev. Wendy looked exhausted. “Then I think you’ll be acting exactly as they wish and they’ll make sure that none of you can ever, legally, return. I believe that this is their preferred option. Their Plan A, if you like.”
The way he had been feeling last night, Donny didn’t much care. He guessed Gold Dragon felt the same.
Except that it seemed so totally unfair that she was being ejected from the land of her childhood when all she’d done was return to try to help him and Skye. And she’d hardly seen anything yet. There might be things she remembered from when she was young. People maybe? She’d come all the way from China. Not even allowed to stay for a holiday. And they’d hardly begun to be a family.
Gradually, rather cleverly, Rev. Wendy had managed to persuade them not to leave at once but to try living under the new conditions for just a few months. “I believe boating people often do come ashore for the winter ...?”
“Not my sort.”
“And Donny’s mother is so very recently out of hospital ...”
They had all looked at Skye then ... head down, mouth open, one braid sopping up the spilt wine, the other partially unravelled. One of her hands flapped and groped among the crockery like a suffocating flounder. If she was dreaming the dream was not good.
Gerald cleared the table and fetched a j-cloth: Donny took his mother’s hand and stroked it without speaking. She’d been so well earlier. He’d thought she was going to be okay again. Be her real self.
“Well, Sinbad, what do you think we should do?”
“Dunno ... except that, if us staying isn’t what they want us to do ... then I think we probably should. Just to wind them up.”
“And to find out what is going on,” said a quiet voice from an unobtrusive corner.
Anna had put Vicky into her cot upstairs and had come down again to listen to the discussion.
Luke and Liam were still there, sitting either side of the covered cage. Liam was chewing his fingers and Luke was making knots in the corner of the sheet. Donny knew, suddenly, that this wasn’t only about him and Gold Dragon and Skye: the kids needed them to stay as well.
“We all know what it’s like having our lives mucked up by adults,” Anna continued. “But you can usually see a few reasons – even if they’re rubbish ones. What the SS is doing to you lot is completely unreasonable. I don’t even think they’re obeying their own rules. So it’s logical to assume that there must be something else going on in the background. Something crooked and foul.”
Wendy, Gerald and Great Aunt Ellen had stared at her but said nothing. Donny felt his spirits lift with relief. Anna was on his case again.
“It sounds to me,” she carried on, not really looking at any of them, “as if Flint and Toxic had put the squeeze on that Tony before the meeting even started. They obviously badly want to get rid of you,” she said, directly to Gold Dragon. “That’s why they’re making it so hard for you to stay. If it were me they were pushing out, I’d want to know why. Then I’d make up my mind whether I was going. Not before.”
“We could live here at Pin Mill,” Donny said. “With the houseboats. Snow Goose’ll be in the yard so we can maybe help with the repairs. Then I’ve only got to turn up to school each day and do my homework and all that stuff and I don’t see that they can complain. As long as you don’t scare poor Flint-ums with your rigging pouch.”
Gold Dragon had struggled to raise a smile. It was obvious that she longed to be hull down over the horizon waving her last farewell to life on British shores.
“Son of a sea-cook,” she snarled at last. “If I were back in the Islands I’d have him chop-sueyed or sweated down to caulking tar. That’s that then. I’ll run the old lady up the beach for Monday morning and hand ’em my landing card. But I’m going sailing first. All shore leave cancelled for forty-eight hours. Tip a bucket over Nimblefingers. She’ll soon sober up when she gets a sniff of spray.”
“You’re ... going? And we can’t never come?”
Great Aunt Ellen looked at the younger boys. Then turned to Rev. Wendy again. “I could ship an extra hand or two from your crew here if you think they’d enjoy a voyage?” She didn’t seem to hear Gerald’s reflex hufflings about lifejackets and homework, thermal underwear and waterproof shoes. “If I’ve got one or two of yours aboard, then you’ll know I’ll have to bring ’em back.”
Luke’s eyes were wide. “You mean we’d be like ... your hostages?”
At last Gold Dragon grinned. This was her kind of talk. “And work your passage too or I’ll feed you to the fishes.”
Liam had a Saturday morning football match – which was of course un-missable – so he chose to stay behind and be the first in charge of Hawkins.
Anna said that, this weekend, she’d prefer to stay ashore as well. Donny knew why. He’d help her after this weekend, he really would. He could learn to sit there in the library checking websites all through lunchtime.
Gerald refused utterly to let them take Vicky on board Strong Winds. So it had only been Luke who’d climbed aboard in the glistening darkness with a biodegradable plastic bag slung over his shoulder like the dunnage of a jolly Jack Tar.
Thus far all was quiet. It was still early and Strong Winds made very little sound when she was under sail.
No movement on board the shark-boat.
They were close now.
The shark-boat’s aft end looked different. Donny stared as the ebb tide hurried them past. Then he understood. The aft end was open because it included some sort of docking station. There’d been another small boat concealed between the powerful twin engines.
And you didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to guess where it was now. Even the young James Bond could have worked that one out. Flint did have a connection to the Hispaniola. His speedboat was tied alongside her now.
Donny supposed that meant that it must have been Flint who wrote the signs and sliced up the dragon flag. Though he would have thought that, if the fat policeman could spell anything at all, he’d have been a hot-shot at PRIVATE and TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED. Also, the Hispaniola hadn’t felt like Flint’s sort of boat.
Well, he’d obviously got that wrong.
The hulls of the container ships towered high above Strong Winds as Donny held his course.
“Pufferfish’s out visiting early,” said Polly Lee, coming back on deck and staring across at the Hispaniola through her binoculars. “Ah, I think he’s spotted us. Now we might have some fun.” She sounded as if that was exactly what she wanted. Once she was on the water, no-one intimidated Gold Dragon and survived.
“No, he’s going back into the wheelhouse. Doesn’t want to play. Learned his lesson last time, maybe.” She took another look and frowned. “You know, Sinbad, there’s something not quite A1 at Lloyds about that Hispaniola of yours. For one thing her stern’s all wrong. That boat was never designed to sail.”
Flint had seen them and had turned away. That was spooky. Lively Lady was up in davits with her mast down and sails stowed. They were obviously heading out to sea. So why wasn’t he hurtling after them bellowing threats and orders? He had his speedboat.
Anna and Rev. Wendy must have guessed right. Flint and Toxic wanted them off their muddy patch ... evicted, banished. History.
They’d be in for a surprise on Monday morning, then. When he turned up scrubbed and shiny ready for a new week at school. He was almost looking forward to it.
“Where’re we going? Why didn’t you tell me we was gone?” Luke’s tousled head appeared from down below. He was wearing his pyjamas and trailing a sleeping bag behind him.
“Thought you might need your watch below. Midnight was pretty late for shrimps.”
“I ain’t a shrimp, I’m a hostage.” Luke sounded offended. “Where’re we going?” he asked again.
“As far as Donny’s policeman friend is concerned we’re setting off across the pond – that means crossing the North Sea – maybe back to Rotterdam. He thinks we’re runaways you see, not raiders.”
“We could be,” said Luke. “I wouldn’t mind being runaways. Not if it meant crossing a sea.”
“One day,” she sighed. “But this time we’re bluffing. Partly because I’ve promised to deliver you back by Sunday: mostly because we want to make him sick as a parrot when he finds out he was wrong. We’ll have to settle for raiders, this voyage.”
“Explorers,” said Donny. He could add stuff to the map he’d been drawing.
“So where’re we going to raid? I mean, explore.” Luke looked quickly towards Donny, wanting to fit in, say the right thing.
“The most easterly port in Britain,” said Gold Dragon.
“Great!” said Donny “Where’s that?”
“That’s just Low’stoft,” said Luke. “We even lived there. In a sort of caravan place ’cos we didn’t have no money. My dad were born Low’stoft. And his dad were born way out on the Dogger Bank. He said my great-nan got caught there, unexpected. I wasn’t sure ... They was fishermen.”
“Then we’ll hire you as our native guide and you won’t have to work your passage swabbing out the bilges after all.”
Luke hugged his sleeping bag a bit tighter. “I told you. I ain’t never been to sea. We was always waiting for my dad to come home. Bilges is okay.”
“Born on the Dogger Bank, eh?”
“That was them. I ain’t never been there.”
“Well we’ll have to see how you shape up. One day, if you sign ship’s articles, I’ll take you there – and your brother too, if he’s got salt water in his veins. But before I let these wreckers beach me I’ve a piece to business to attend to. Now skip off below and put some clothes on. I can’t have my hostage catching his death; it’d be bad for trade.”
“Right, Sinbad,” she said briskly. “Time you learned to steer a compass course. We’ll be standing out to sea for the next few hours in case they’re tracking us on radar. And we’ll keep a listening watch on channel 16. Though they’ll probably keep their scuttlebutt to themselves or use a harbour frequency.”
“You think there’s more then one person there?” Somehow Donny couldn’t imagine Toxic being out on the water at this time of the morning.
“If he’s the Moloch our vicar seems to think, he’ll have an enforcer or two in the shadows. Someone anonymous and unscrupulous who puts the frighteners on in private while the big men pace the bridge-deck in their official caps.”
The blue bird? Was that some private scare?
“Your friend Anna was a little too quick spotting the lie of their land. Knows too much for a girl her age. Made me wonder how she’d fetched up here?”
He couldn’t answer. Anyway, what did he know? her secrets as securely as if they were chained into caskets and sunk in the deepest sea-rifts.
He shrugged. Gold Dragon nodded.
“No need to tell your mother or the hostage but reasons we’re setting our course for Lowestoft is so I can see a man about a knife. A rigging knife, you understand.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Night in a Foreign Port
30 September-1 October
He almost told her about the slashed flag then. But there was so much else to think about: crossing the deep-water shipping lanes, then holding Strong Winds steady for the North West Shipwash and on towards the Inner Gabbard. Once Luke and then Skye were back in the cockpit it wasn’t something he wanted to talk about anyway.
When they were about sixteen miles off shore they altered course – northwards. He could feel the strong tide and freshening wind picking up Strong Winds and sweeping her along with them.
His great-aunt was in a hurry and so, it seemed, were the elements. Donny and Luke got used to a seascape furrowed with tumbling waves, their crests curling over into foam in their apparent haste to overtake the junk and race her to the horizon. They got used to the motion too. As each roller passed beneath her, Strong Winds lifted and surged, twisting slightly as if she was frustrated by her inability to keep up with the rushing water. The waves sluiced out from underneath her hull, temporarily flattened by her weight, then hissing and bubbling as they hurried on.
When Skye appeared on deck, she wedged herself into one corner of the cockpit. She seemed isolated and even more silent than usual a
s she watched the weather building up and passing over them, and the occasional sea birds dropping by hopefully to check their wake. When Great Aunt Ellen offered everyone toast and Marmite and mugs of tea she shook her head and looked away.
By mid-morning they all needed wet-weather gear. There was nothing big enough for Skye so she had to have an old tarpaulin. Great Aunt Ellen found her an ancient sou’wester and her dark brown eyes stared fixedly from underneath as if she were seeing for miles. Only her fingers were busy picking and pulling at a complex knot on the end of a piece of hemp. It wasn’t long before she had completely deconstructed it and was reducing the rope to fibres.
“I wish Sandra’d got more out of the van instead of just clothes. Mum has sets of worry beads when she’s feeling like this. And she’s got a rain poncho. It was summer when they captured us: it’s about to be October now.”
“Another reason not to cut our cables too soon. Why let those scoundrelly swabs scoop the rest of your possessions? That’s a Turk’s Head Nimblefingers has undone. If I could teach her how to knot it up again she’d be invaluable.”
“Like in the book,” said Donny. “Your brother Gregory’s book. I gave it to you that first night.”
The salt-stained handbook that should have brought good luck: the book which had slipped out of his great-uncle’s duffel-coat pocket before he plunged to his death in the Barents Sea. Gold Dragon had taken it without a word. And then Donny had fallen asleep.
She must surely have been pleased? She’d said that she’d had nothing to remember him by. And her other brother, as well, Great Uncle Ned. He’d died the same day. His ship torpedoed. They thought Greg might have been trying to save him.
Knots and splices. The book was big on them.
Great Aunt Ellen nodded. “You’re right. I didn’t really thank you. It was a shock but ... I’m glad.”
Donny grabbed his chance. “Sometime ... will you tell me about your other sister ... Eirene? The one who went away? And I’ll sign it to Skye. Eirene was her mother. She ought to know.”
