by Gideon Defoe
‘London?’ the Captain puffed out his cheeks. ‘You realise that sailing from Switzerland to London is more geographically challenging than it sounds? Might add to the expenses.’
‘Expenses be damned!’ roared Byron.
The Captain beamed again. ‘Of all the celebrated historical characters we have ever met, you are easily my favourites.’
Six
Two Tickets To The Corpse Factory
The pirates were glad to find that London hadn’t changed much since their last visit. They didn’t like change – partly because it reminded them of their own inescapable mortality, and partly because it meant having to buy new guidebooks, which were really expensive. The city was still stuffed full of flickering gas lamps and soot-covered fog machines and smiling commuters and little match girls setting fire to Beefeaters.
As Byron led them through the streets of Marylebone, the crew murmured excitedly to each other, because in all their years of creeping towards the lairs of mysterious figures, this was the first time they had ever crept towards the lair of a mathematician. But when they got there, instead of arriving at a mind-bending mathematical plane of reality, they found themselves faced with a perfectly plain terraced house, and, rather than an optical illusion of impossible stairs, there was a regular set of five whitewashed steps leading to the door. There weren’t even any henchmen dressed as numbers, just a grumpy butler who rolled his eyes when he saw Byron.
‘Are you sure he’s a mathematician?’ said the Pirate Captain, sensing his lads’ disappointment. ‘It’s not the kind of place I’d expect to find a man from such a glamorous and thrilling profession.’
‘No, it’s very strange,’ explained Byron, as the grumpy butler ushered them into the hallway. ‘He’s something of a maverick. Some while ago he turned his back on the heady, live-fast-die-young world of the maths establishment, and adopted an entirely different approach to the subject. It’s best if you let me do the talking, because he’s so staid and unadventurous that if he realises you’re a pirate I suspect his head might explode from the shock of it all.’
‘You don’t honestly think he could see through my disguise?’ asked the Pirate Captain, incredulous. In those days piracy was frowned on as a profession, and the beady-eyed London police force lurked on every street corner, so, as always when visiting the Big Smoke, the pirates were in disguise. The crew were all disguised as stern Victorian nannies, while the Pirate Captain was disguised as a sexy fireman. He was adamant that this was because there hadn’t been enough Victorian nanny costumes to go around.
‘He doesn’t get many callers,’ said Byron with a shrug, ‘and I’m fairly sure he never gets visits from sexy firemen. He may be boring, but he’s terribly smart.’
‘What is it this time, Byron?’ An irritable voice floated out from one of the rooms. ‘Do you require help counting your toes again? Dividing up a cake? Telling the time?’
When he stepped out into the hallway the owner of the voice appeared just as irritable as he sounded. He polished his glasses, and blinked at his visitors myopically, looking like a cross owl or, in nautical terms, a poorly tuna fish. He scowled so hard that for a moment the Pirate Captain was worried he would scowl his face into a little brown walnut. He’d seen it happen before. Or at least he thought he had. He didn’t remember everything perfectly.
Byron gave the man a cheerful punch on the shoulder. ‘Hello, Babs! Admit it. My visits are the only colour in your drab little life. Everybody, I’d like you to meet Charles Babbage. Babbage, I’d like you to meet my new friends. You already know Shelley here. And this is his fiancée, Miss Mary Godwin. These are some stern Victorian nannies, and this is my close friend, a sexy fireman. You may recognise him from the best-selling calendar last Christmas.’
The Pirate Captain was relieved to see that Babbage’s calendar featured sexy logarithm tables rather than firemen. The mathematician sighed and waved them into his study.18 It was choc-a-bloc with clutter, but the room’s most striking feature was a huge complicated machine, covered in dials, numbers and brass cogs. Hundreds and hundreds of cogs, all whirring and clicking back and forth like nobody’s business.
‘That’s a lot of cogs,’ said the Pirate Captain politely.
‘Damn straight it’s a lot of cogs,’ said Babbage.
‘Is it some sort of trouser press?’ Mary gave the contraption a bit of a poke.
‘No, it is not some sort of trouser press. It is a difference engine. A mechanical brain, if you will. Not something a poet or a sexy fireman could really be expected to understand. Please don’t touch it.’
Babbage pointed sternly to where he’d taped a cardboard sign onto the wall:
‘It’s very impressive, Mister Babbage,’ said Jennifer, smiling sweetly. Jennifer was good with people.
‘TEACH ME WHAT IT IS TO BE HUMAN,’ said the pirate with gout, doing a difference engine voice. A few of the other pirates giggled, until a glower from Babbage made them stop and stare at the floor.19 The mathematician went back to studying his blackboard. ‘Now, tell me your problem and then shoo.’
‘Well, you know how it is,’ said Byron, looking around hopefully for some gin. ‘A man with my hair and physique mustn’t trouble himself with numbers. They’re literally poison to me. Did I ever tell you how I once caught consumption simply from being in the same room as a times table?’
‘Oooff,’ Babbage sighed again. ‘Do get on with it, man.’
‘Now, Babs, if you’re going to be like that,’ said Byron, ‘then perhaps we’ll take my friend’s mysterious code elsewhere . . .’ He winked at the Pirate Captain.
Babbage straightened up a bit, equations apparently forgotten.
‘Did you just say “mysterious code”?’ For the first time since they arrived, he almost made eye contact. ‘Well why didn’t you say so in the first place?’ He hurried over to shut the door, then turned to face the Pirate Captain. ‘I do apologise, sexy fireman. I get quite wrapped up in my numbers, and Byron’s maths questions are usually so frivolous that I want to tear my hair out and eat it. But I do love puzzles! And codes are the best kind.20 Can my butler get you anything? A cup of tea? What do sexy firemen normally drink? Let me take that hose, it looks rather heavy. Sit! Sit!’
‘Oh, no offence taken,’ said the Captain. ‘We all have our little obsessions. As a sexy fireman, I’m really into sexy fires.’
‘Yes, and numbers are so marvellous!’ said Babbage, not really listening. His cross owl face had become rather animated, and now looked like an owl who had just awoken from a nice dream about mouse heads. ‘You can do anything with numbers. Did you know that at the heart of everything there lies a mathematical formula that explains it?’
Byron flounced into a huge armchair and put his feet up on an abacus. ‘Not this again!’
‘Honestly, Mister Babbage,’ said Shelley, shaking his head. ‘Do you really think you can explain the maelstroms of the human heart with your confounded algebra?! Ridiculous.’
Babbage ignored them. Byron took the hint and decided to occupy himself by pulling stuffing from the chair and using it to make funny eyebrows.
‘Yes. So, this code. Could I see it?’
The Pirate Captain started to unbutton his shirt. Babbage’s face instantly creased back into a scowl. ‘For pity’s sake! Not another strippogram! Will you never tire of this prank, Byron?! Get out, the lot of you!’
‘No, wait, you’ve got it wrong,’ explained the Pirate Captain. ‘I haven’t done a strippogram for well over a year now. It’s simply that the code is a tattoo on my belly, put there by my old pirate mentor when I was at college.’
‘What was a pirate mentor doing at Fireman’s College?’ said Babbage.
The Pirate Captain tried to think fast. Should he say it was a cultural exchange? Pretend he hadn’t heard? Feign rabies? Before he could come up with a clever answer, he realised his mouth was already talking.
‘I’m not really a sexy fireman,’ said the Pirate Captain, ‘I’m
a Pirate Captain.’
The crew all covered their ears and waited for Babbage’s head to explode. To the mathematician’s credit, his head remained intact and his face pretty much unmoved.
‘That explains the skull and crossbones on your fireman’s helmet. And I was wondering when the fire brigade had replaced their traditional axe with a cutlass. Also, you do smell rather of cannons and crow’s nests. But please – go on.’
The Pirate Captain tore off his shirt and pointed a dramatic and nicely manicured finger at the tattoo. Babbage leaned forward and peered through his eyeglasses. For a moment there was no noise except the occasional clunking of cogs emanating from his machine. ‘I think,’ he said eventually, ‘that I have an idea.’
Byron slapped his thigh. ‘See, Pirate Captain! I told you he was good. Dull as ditchwater and plain as a potato, but damned clever.’
‘You said you got this tattoo when you were at college? I presume that was some time ago?’
‘Ages,’ the Captain clicked his tongue thoughtfully. ‘Back when I used to wear those trousers with penguins all over them. Height of fashion at the time. I think they were supposed to glow in the dark when you were hot, but I never saw it work. Perhaps I washed them on the wrong temperature and all the glow-in-the-dark juice came out. Hard to say.’
Babbage gave the Pirate Captain the faint smile that very clever people do when they’re trying desperately not to patronise you. ‘Would I be right in thinking that you’ve indulged yourself with a few feasts since college? Mixed grills? Hams fried in butter? That sort of thing?’
‘Once in a while.’
Babbage leaned forward and grabbed the Captain’s belly with both hands.
‘Steady on!’
‘If you’ll observe,’ said Babbage, stretching out the Captain’s belly skin with a sharp yank, ‘half the mysterious symbols were simply obscured by this roll of fat. It’s actually some numbers!’
Sure enough, when everybody peered at his midriff the code was transformed:
‘Good grief!’ exclaimed Shelley. ‘He’s right!’
‘Not quite correct, Babbage,’ said the Pirate Captain. ‘Technically I think that’s a washboard ab rather than a roll of fat, but you’re spot on about the numbers. Mystery solved! Who’s for cocktails?’
‘Actually, Captain, that’s only a quarter of the mystery solved,’ said Mary. ‘It’s still just some numbers.’
‘Bother,’ said the Pirate Captain.
‘So what can the numbers mean?’ puzzled Byron. ‘Combination to a safety deposit box? Co-ordinates for a hidden Bacchanalian isle where the lakes are made of whisky and the girls don’t know about inhibitions? The measurements of some improbable beauty?’
‘No, Byron, none of those,’ said Babbage, crossing to a bookcase and pulling out a volume at random. ‘Rather more prosaic than that. You see?’ He pointed to the book, which had a similar row of numbers to the ones scrawled across the Captain’s belly printed on the spine. ‘It is a library catalogue number. More precisely, these numbers are the code used by the greatest library in the world – the Bodleian, in Oxford!’
A few of the pirate crew did ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ noises, because it seemed appropriate, and they didn’t know what a library was.
‘Well that makes no sense at all,’ said the Captain, buttoning his shirt back up. ‘I don’t see how the key to every heart’s desire can be a book. Neptune’s pants, I hope this isn’t going to be like the time Calico Jack’s ultimate treasure turned out to be some nonsense about a child’s smile. I’m sorry, I should have warned you that he was prone to that sort of thing. Though it’s too late for a refund, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘A book!’ Byron clapped his hands, delighted. ‘A search for a mysterious book! This adventure gets better and better!’
The Captain suddenly remembered that the Romantics thought books were the bee’s knees, and so he tried to look a bit happier about the revelation. ‘Yes, don’t get me wrong,’ he said, waggling his fireman’s hose at Mary. ‘Books are great. And not just for propping up wonky table legs. I was assuming the key to every heart’s desire would probably be a sapphire the size of a baby, but thinking about it this is even better. And possibly it’s one of those books with a fancy binding that has gigantic sapphires stuck to the cover, which of course would be the best of both worlds.’
‘So!’ cried Byron happily. ‘The next chapter of our journey! Come on, Babs, pack your suitcase – we must hasten to Oxford!’
‘We?’ Babbage raised his eyebrows. ‘Why on earth do I have to come along?’
‘Who knows what further mysterious codes there might be to decipher along the way? Think of yourself as a portable calculator,’ said Byron with a shrug. ‘Also, having a visually uninspiring type like you along on our adventure should really help throw my swashbuckling countenance into sharp relief. You know, like a pig next to a swan.’
‘Oh, fair enough,’ said Babbage.
Seven
A Monstrous Clacking
And so the pirate boat sailed up the Thames towards Oxford. Because they were bang in the middle of an electrifying quest for a mysterious book, they didn’t stop to admire the cultural highlights of either Slough or Didcot. But to pass the time between feasts – which now featured the sort of food the pirates supposed a mathematician might like, such as pies that tessellated and toast cut up into the shape of graphs – Byron gave the crew tips on how best to walk with a continental swagger, Percy and Babbage engaged in heated arguments about whether a really long word was better than a really big number, and Mary sat quietly in a deckchair, apparently scribbling away in a journal. Everybody seemed to be enjoying themselves, except for the Pirate Captain, who had shut himself away in his cabin and hadn’t been seen for most of the day.
Jennifer – who, being a former Victorian lady was a bit sharper than the others at picking up on emotional goings-on aboard the boat – gingerly knocked at the Captain’s door and poked her head inside, worried that something might be amiss. She was surprised to find him stretched out in his hammock, poring over a big leather-bound book of poetry.
‘Are you feeling okay, Captain?’ asked Jennifer. She had never seen the Pirate Captain reading a book without prominent anthropomorphic animals on the cover before. ‘Byron’s about to run through his best brooding faces, if you’d like to come and watch?’
The Captain peered up at her. ‘Oh, that’s nice. But I think I’ll give it a miss. I’m feeling a touch off colour.’ He gave his belly a rueful pat. ‘Seems that last feast disagreed with me.’
Jennifer gasped. ‘You never disagree with feasts, Pirate Captain! You always get on with feasts incredibly well.’
‘Well, my stomach is feeling very odd indeed.’
‘Odd? What sort of “odd”?’
The Captain flared a nostril miserably. ‘You remember our adventure in that meadow? When I was skipping along with my mouth open and accidentally swallowed all those butterflies? It feels a lot like that.’
Jennifer’s frown grew deeper, though she still looked pretty. She put a hand on his forehead to see if he was running a temperature. ‘What’s that you’re reading, Captain?’
‘It’s a book of sonnets. Heavy going, if you must know. Thirty sonnets in and not a single character has pulled out a pistol or got bitten by a poisonous spider. In fact there aren’t even any characters to speak of. And half the descriptions of things are actually descriptions of other things entirely. It’s baffling.’
‘So why are you reading it?’
The Captain sighed, slammed the book shut and pouted wistfully out of the porthole. ‘I thought it might help me come across as a literary type. Oh! I suppose there’s no use trying to hide it any longer. It’s Mary! The fact is . . . I think I’m in love.’
Jennifer breathed a sigh of relief, because she’d seen this sort of stuff before, back in her old, much more boring life of dinner parties and lace doilies and emotional misunderstandings. ‘Oh, is that
all? I was scared it might be cholera or something.’ Love was certainly better than cholera, though maybe a little worse than whooping cough. ‘I wouldn’t worry, Captain. You know how you tend to get over these things surprisingly quickly. You fell in love three times last month, and one of those was just Black Bellamy in a wig.’
‘To be fair to me, he really suited being a redhead. And yes, it’s true that in the past I’ve proved reassuringly resilient when it comes to matters of the heart,’ agreed the Captain. ‘But this feels . . . different.’
‘Different?’
‘Well, you know how it usually goes. Meet a girl. Rattle my buckles. Up a staircase backwards, spot of the dashing cutlass business, bosoms heave, I swear eternal commitment and then a week later I get bored and maroon them on a desert island.21 But, I don’t really feel like doing any of that with Mary.’
‘What do you feel like doing?’
‘Sighing, mostly. Taking long sorrowful walks. Writing her name on my desk. That sort of thing.’
The Captain pointed to his desk, where he’d scratched the words ‘Mrs Mary Captain’ a couple of dozen times into the weathered oak.
‘I think the problem,’ said Jennifer, knowledgeably, ‘is that you’ve got the unrequited type of love, which is easily the most annoying kind. But it’s probably just all this talk about romance that’s to blame. You’ve got swept away by the atmosphere.’
‘Do you think so?’ The Captain perked up a bit. ‘Yes, maybe that’s it. I hope you’re right, for all our sakes. You know what happens when I get tangled up in a maelstrom of emotions. It plays havoc with the beard.’
‘Anyway, Captain, I don’t think you should try to change who you are,’ said Jennifer, indicating the book of sonnets. ‘You should be true to yourself. Us girls like it when boys are genuine.’
