by Julia Jones
“Yes, I’m sorry about that,” said Anna. “It’s ... that you’re also talking about the great-uncle I never met. The man who didn’t show up in Ipswich today. His screen name was Oboe. He must have expected me to guess.” She shook her head at her own stupidity. “You can use a screen to hide things or to see them differently. I thought Oboe was a musician. Like my mother was – is! In fact he was the uncle she’d told me about. The one who made a bomb-aiming system even though he was a pacifist. She was completely horrified by him.”
“But ...”
“Oh I’m not horrified. I love my mother but I don’t agree with everything she thinks. She told me once about the quarrel.” She was quiet a bit longer then she added, “That would have been what was on his tie pin. He must have meant the double meaning. They’d been very close when she was young.” She saw that Great Aunt Ellen still hadn’t quite understood. “I called myself ‘Thea’, you see, in my messages to him, because that’s my mother’s middle name. Her mother was called Theodora. She was his sister.”
“Yes,” agreed Gold Dragon, sounding even more depressed, “She was.”
“You could have been my Great Aunt Ellen as well ...”
“I wish ...” said Gold Dragon, trying to smile but not succeeding.
“Well, it says here,” interrupted Maggi, who’d been reading as well as listening, “‘Professor Reif’s last weeks were brightened by the hope that he’d finally made contact with his estranged niece, the singer Lottie Livesey. She was the only child of his beloved sister, the late Theodora Thorrington. Professor Reif himself never married. He died without issue.’ Maggi looked up from her paper. “You might have got your signals mixed, Anna, but at least you made that old guy happy.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Out of the Nettles
October half-term
Anna and Great Aunt Ellen went to Oboe’s funeral together. It was in the senior common room of a college in Cambridge. It was during half-term week so Anna didn’t even need permission to have the day off school. Rev. Wendy made sure she was working from home in the vicarage all day and Gerald drove them there.
It wasn’t a religious funeral, just a sort of gathering, Anna explained afterwards. There’d be a box of ashes to follow in a few months time. They’d met a lawyer who had explained that Professor Reif had left his body to science. When science had the bits it wanted, everything else would be cremated. She said that the lawyer had been quite bothered about this.
“I’d assumed he’d want the ashes interred near his sister. She’s buried in one of those pretty Cotswold churchyards. But in his final Letter of Instruction the professor said that wouldn’t do. It would be illogical, he said, for him to take space in a churchyard when he’d no belief in God. He was a stickler for logic.”
Anna had nodded approvingly but Great Aunt Ellen had objected. “That makes him sound chilly. Callum had imagination.”
At this point some elderly professor had almost patted Gold Dragon on the head, Anna reported with a giggle.
“Very good indeed, my dear. Of course he did. That’s what made him such an outstanding scientist – demonstrating those astonishing connections between the migration patterns of birds and their perception of frequencies. Then expressing the formations digitally. Now in my own research ...”
He’d looked as if he were about to launch into a lecture.
“Quite so,” the lawyer had interrupted. “No lack of imagination, certainly. Imagination and logic. His Instruction states that, as he’d spent so many years of his life on the edge of the North Sea – that that was where his final ashes should logically be scattered. Out at sea on a windy day. Anywhere between Woodbridge Haven, Orfordness and Lowestoft.”
“I’ll do it,” said Gold Dragon.
The lawyer had looked tremendously relieved, Anna told them. But not all that surprised. “He was such an admirer, Miss Walker. He used to follow your voyages. Often spoke of you to me. He never expected that you would return to England. A tragedy of timing.”
The lawyer pursed his lips and shook his head. This was when Anna had decided that he was quite a decent sort.
“Thank you,” he’d said again. “I’ll be in touch when the ashes are available. It won’t be for a few months. As Professor Reif’s Executor, my main problem is discovering the whereabouts of Ms Lottie Livesey.”
“I’ll help you. Does she get money from his Will?” Anna was so direct that it must have sounded a bit rude.
“No, my dear, not as such. There are issues of Trust and Conveyance and ... it’s all rather complex for someone your age.”
“I’m fourteen and I’m not stupid,” said Anna. “And I have my sister to think of as well as my mother.”
This had definitely come as a shock. “You have a sister? Oh dear, oh dear. I don’t think the professor knew there had been another child. I may have to revisit the Final Instruction. Er, how old is the second young lady?”
“Eleven months.”
Anna reported that the lawyer had looked oddly relieved at this. She simply felt annoyed that neither Vicky nor Lottie had been left anything in Oboe’s Will.
“But I was,” she told them.
The Allies stopped eating and stared. They were back in school after half-term and having lunch together in the dining-hall. It was crowded and noisy but they didn’t have any other choice. The weather had turned wet and windy so no-one was allowed to take trays of food outside any more.
Donny didn’t like it. People had mainly stopped getting at Anna, now that everything was sorted again in the DT department but the well-hards were back in school. They’d been excluded or out on work experience or something in the weeks before half-term but now they were back and mean and looking for people to bully. He planned to keep out of their way but it wasn’t so easy when everyone was stuck indoors like this.
“Sacks of priceless treasure?” asked Xanthe keenly. They knew Anna never had as much as twenty pence that she could call her own.
“No. It’s a torn diagram and a binary string. The lawyer said that the string’s time-limited and he’d been Instructed to hand it over as soon as he met me. That was apparently okay, legally. Since it isn’t Goods or Chattels. Or money.”
The others said nothing. Money would have been a lot more use.
“I don’t mind,” said Anna. “About the money, I mean. Wendy says she might allow me to do a weekend paper round if I prove my commitment by helping with the parish mag until Christmas. So I’ll be earning after that. Actually I feel quite fond of Oboe for guessing that I might like a challenge. I get his dinghy as well but that’s somewhere in Norfolk and needs a lot of work done. So I can’t afford it yet and anyway it’s a Chattel.”
“Have you got it with you?” asked Donny. “The puzzle, I mean.”
“Mmmm,” said Anna pulling a single transparent punch- pocket from her bag and placing it carefully between the lunch-trays.
Insert symbols 1111111101001100100-. [0]11100011010010. <[0]1100001110111011 to estimate numeric value of crumbs. Repair diagram only if you feel understanding.
Xanthe, Maggi and Donny stared.
“Er ... what are you supposed to do with that lot?”
“I’ve sellotaped his diagram for starters.” She turned the punch-pocket over. Showed them a complicated diagram with intersecting lines. It had been ripped and then repaired.
“This was the invention that upset Mum.” She faltered a minute and carried on. “She’d been on at him to tell her what he did in the war. She was a pacifist and he was too, normally. But not in 1940. So when he had to tell her that he’d developed a bomb- aiming system, she totally freaked. Tore his diagram in half and said she’d never speak to him again. They’d really liked each other before that. That was why he was trying to message her when he knew he was going to die. Wanted to part friends ...”
“Ooh,” sai
d Maggi. “That’s so sad! ”
“It’s all been a mess. One of the younger profs gave me a book that he’d written about telecoms pioneers and it had loads about Oboe. I wish we’d met. Some of his ideas were amazing. I mean, like this diagram – it’s such a simple concept, it’s completely brilliant.”
Donny had another look. The curving lines went out from the East Coast and across the North Sea. To Germany he supposed. He wasn’t sure the concept was that simple.
“It’s a cat-and-mouse principle. Two radar base stations transmitting at pre-determined ranges. They intersect at the spot where the aircraft should drop its load.”
“Of bombs? Eugh!”
“It was a war,” said Anna. “And his system was so amazingly accurate they used it to drop equipment to resistance fighters too.”
He could see trouble coming. The sisters were both strong on World Peace.
“Tell us about the other bit – the puzzle? ”
“A last minute idea, the lawyer said. When he wasn’t getting any response from the person he thought was Mum. That was when Gerald and Wendy had taken my computer and before you got me the laptop access.”
“Precise as that?”
“Yeah. Apparently Oboe really wanted there to be someone who’d remember him personally. Except for other scientists, where he’s famous. He didn’t think it would be quite right for him to try to contact me directly. ’Cos of my age and he didn’t think Mum would want him to – ironic when you think it was me in the chatrooms all the time – so he thought he’d leave me a puzzle. The lawyer explained that Oboe had known my dad ages ago and thought that if I was anything like him ... I’d enjoy it. ”
“Are you anything like your dad?” asked Xanthe.
“I ... hope so.” She turned the punch-pocket puzzle-side up. “It’s binary, which makes sense. Oboe liked digitalising things. And there was something about crumbs in one of his messages. I think it was a quote but I didn’t get it. I’ll put the binary back into decimal. Take out those redundant zeros first. I could find a converter but I thought I’d work it out by hand. While I’m still officially off-line.”
The Allies looked at one another and shook their heads.
“You can have my new notepad,” said Maggi. “It’s a Moleskine, It’s well classy.”
Money. What a pain.
Polly Lee was earning theirs but it came at a cost. Maybe they should have guessed that the film-makers would be more interested in her than in Strong Winds. Every day they asked her to haul up one or other of the junk’s wide-battened sails. Then they made her sit in her cockpit, good hand on the helm, reminiscing about the hundreds of solitary miles she’d travelled under the wide skies of two hemispheres. They kept pleading for a trip down the Orwell, which she had to keep refusing. She used the tides as her excuse: didn’t tell them the real reason – that she had been grounded by the SS as a potential child abductor.
Great Aunt Ellen had been brought up never to complain. She’d taken the film-makers’ doubloons, now she was earning them.
The money had made it possible for them to eat better, for Skye to begin attending swimming lessons, and for the camper-van finally to be released from the car pound and towed to the vicarage driveway. Donny and Skye could get access to all their old possessions.
Donny couldn’t think of anything he wanted. Not at this price.
Every day, after the film-makers had gone home, Great Aunt Ellen linked her hook into the 360 degree swivel joint she’d attached to Lively Lady’s tiller, hauled in the dinghy’s mainsheet with her good hand and bashed off into the failing light. She went sailing in all weathers with only the briefest words to Skye and Donny. Her soft mood had vanished. When she came back they’d hear her pacing Strong Winds’ deck until late at night, or see her sitting on the cabin roof, puffing her pipe into an angry red glow instead of its usual thin blue trail of falling smoke.
Donny dreaded her bad temper but he sort of understood. He wondered whether he could get up a petition to try to convince Tony that it was cruel and inhuman to insist that his great-aunt had to keep Strong Winds stuck on the Pin Mill mud. They hadn’t heard anything about another meeting and, apart from Toxic’s visit, no-one had come to check on them. Not a single assessment.
When Flint had snarled at him in Ipswich Donny had been sure that the fat policeman knew that Skye had been drunk the night before. But no-one had come round. Not even Sandra. He’d almost forgotten what a clip-board looked like.
Which was actually quite spooky.
He asked Rev. Wendy whether she’d received any SS letters or been to any meetings that he didn’t know about. She said she hadn’t and he believed her. She wasn’t his official foster-carer any more so they probably wouldn’t invite her anyway – especially after the last time. So, if the SS weren’t that bothered about checking up on them, why did they have to stay grounded? Even Strong Winds being out on a mooring would be so much better.
He went with his mum to the doctor’s every couple of weeks but he’d given up hoping that would do her any good. The doctor didn’t want to hear about Skye’s dreams or her feelings. Just kept on dishing out the pills.
The swimming lessons were okay but the rest of the time his mum drifted around keeping out of sight, except when the younger children were allowed to visit. She had tried making friends with the half-grown dog but its owner jerked its chain and hit it so it snarled when she came near.
Donny went up into the Pin Mill woods and collected her a whole pile of stuff to make into dream-catchers. She thanked him with her usual sweetness then sat there stripping everything to its veins and dropping it despondently. She didn’t get drunk but never quite lost that faint sour-sweet smell he’d come to associate with ‘grog’.
One Monday, when Donny returned his bike to the vicarage woodshed to be guarded by the young confederates, Luke met him round the back, his finger dramatically to his lips. “There’s a Viking ship in the nettles behind Duke’s yard!” he whispered, almost bursting with excitement.
“A Viking ship?” It was getting dark much earlier now and it had been raining all afternoon. His tormentors had been giving him a hard time at school – they did a great line in deaf-mute impressions – and he was cold and wet from where a white van had driven dangerously close and soaked him with muddy water on his way home.
“Yeah! Me and Liam found it yesterday afternoon when we snuck off. It’s right far behind those sheds. Must have been there ages!”
“Um, great,” said Donny. “You must show me sometime.”
“Reckon we could go right now! You could tell Gerald after. We could say we’d been having a jog. That’s fitness, see, and I’m meant to be writing it down for a project.”
Donny tried to say he was tired and wet and that he’d got homework to do but the expression on the younger boy’s face got to him almost as effectively as one of Anna’s tense pale shrugs would have done.
They met Gold Dragon on their way to the yard. She’d spent the afternoon in the cabin with a media publicist. Things couldn’t get much worse for her.
“Luke reckons he’s found a Viking ship. It’s in the nettles behind the boat yard. If you come, we could walk straight in.”
“What does the expedition leader think? Have you a berth for an old, beached pirate?”
Luke considered her seriously. “Li an’ I sometimes thinks it’s a pity it was only your hand that got cut off, not your leg. It’d be better still if you had a patch over one eye and your parrot hadn’t died.”
The end-of-the-day look vanished. “Sure you don’t want me slashed to the bone with a cutlass blade’s cold steel? That settles it, I’m signing on!”
Reaching Luke and Liam’s Viking ship was rather like scrambling towards the Sutton Hoo burial mounds when even the grave robbers had abandoned them. As they stepped over rusty anchors, abandoned trailers and half-hidden hea
ps of mooring chain, Donny wondered what Gerald would say if he’d known that Luke and Liam had ‘snuck off’ here. Health and Safety hadn’t checked this place out for a millennium or two.
The boys had beaten down the tallest of the nettles surrounding their find but the light was fading too fast for Donny to make out much more than the broad gracefulness of the boat’s shape. She was maybe four or five metres long, tapered at both ends and reassuringly beamy in the middle. Donny guessed that the feature that had excited Luke and Liam was the broad strake of wood that ran along either side. It curved upwards to a beaky prow at the front and a high rudder-fitting astern.
“Made for hanging shields, you reckon?”
“Yeah! An’ look, me and Liam think this here’s her mast.”
Sure enough, close under the forgotten boat, they could make out spars, long oars and a rudder. Everything had been left carefully chocked up away from the damp earth and a hand- daubed notice proclaimed that the boat had at some time been FOR SALE. Looking at the height of the surviving nettles, that had to have been a while ago.
“You know I think your Vikings must already have discovered fibreglass,” Great Aunt Ellen had worked herself round, and underneath, and was tapping the boat’s hull.
“Oh,” said Donny. He felt a bit disappointed.
“Count your blessings, Sinbad. You’ll be begging me to trade in Strong Winds when I get you slaving on her spring refit. Cut along home now, young Luke. Your tea’ll be waiting and I’m not at all sure that you’ve been showing your navigation lights correctly. Donny, pass my respects to the Reverend. I’ll see whether I can’t find someone in the office to tell me the history of this raider.”
“Don’t let on we was here though,” said Luke, suddenly alarmed. “One of them blokes shouted at us.”
“They can hoist me bones in Execution Dock before I’ll say a word.” She looked at Donny. “Don’t get your hopes up, Sinbad, but this might be the saving of your mother and myself. Anyway, time spent on reconnaissance ...”
