Collector of Lost Things

by Jeremy Page

  ‘It’s done?’ I asked.

  ‘You really know nothing about weaponry, do you?’ he replied, chiding me with a tutting of his tongue. With care, he slid back the percussion mechanism until the spring creaked and the lock clicked into place with a precise snap. Delicately, he placed a small percussion cap upon the nipple of the gun, as if it were a miniature top hat upon a figurine’s head.

  ‘Ah,’ he uttered. ‘Now she’s ready.’

  He passed the rifle, reverently, then sat back amid his blankets, his eyes glinting. ‘So, Saxby, who will you point that damned thing at?’

  I didn’t answer. Expecting to have met more resistance from him, I felt a renewed sense of doubt. A gun, primed for firing. I felt unable to concentrate, overwhelmed with a sense that my actions were not properly of my choosing any more, that I was on an uncertain path that was more dangerous and inevitable than I had anticipated.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  He gave me a single nod and pulled his blanket tight around him. ‘The trigger is stiff. Pull it as if you are snapping a wishbone.’

  I pushed open the cabin door with the barrel of the gun and stepped into the saloon, immediately turning the weapon towards the first of the two sailors.

  ‘Ah Christ!’ he said, raising his hands to his face and stumbling backwards towards the stove. ‘Jesus, don’t shoot that!’

  The second man was not far off, but had pressed himself against the wall, near the companionway door, and seemed to be stuck there, pinned by a force that came from the weapon. He began to slide, his face pushed against the wood panelling, a fevered eye on me and a hand outstretched to the other man.

  ‘Don’t speak,’ I commanded, my voice more level and assertive than I could have imagined myself capable of. The gun had that effect of power, as if it concentrated an energy and made a taut line between myself and what lay in front of me. A target, I thought, randomly. The room has become a series of targets.

  And these men, who just a few minutes before had swaggered with a casual sense of their own brute strength, for them now to be watching me with utter fright and confusion was almost impossible to believe.

  ‘Don’t, sir, please don’t,’ one begged. His mate flashed him a look of contempt, but said nothing. He still had his hands raised in front of his face, and was peeping at me, furtive, between his fingers.

  ‘Now, get out,’ I said. ‘Both of you.’

  The men didn’t need a second command. They went quickly for the door and scrambled up the stairs, shouldering each other out of the way as they went. I listened to the sound of their boots running across the main deck to the fo’c’sle. Men and force would be mustered. Someone would take charge—Talbot was at the helm—he would be called. He would know what to do.

  I went at once to the captain’s cabin and flung the door open. Along the barrel and lined up by its sights I saw Quinlan French, slouching at the end of the red chaise longue. As soon as he saw me, he curled into the corner, like a thin strip of paper being singed by a flame. His arms went up beseechingly and he started to writhe, as if already trying to catch the shot that might fly towards him. It was a revealing sight, to see such an eruption of fear and anguish in a man so commonly upright and determined. But I couldn’t linger, for on my right I saw the captain moving rapidly and I swung the gun towards him, pinning him to the edge of the cabin as I had the sailor in the saloon. Sykes grabbed his desk and froze, eyeing me with a strange mix of excitement and fascination.

  ‘Most surprising,’ he said.

  ‘I think it’s best you don’t talk,’ I replied.

  I pointed the gun towards French again, making sure he didn’t move. He seemed quite incapable of doing anything other than squirming in a childlike manner, grasping at imaginary bullets. I kicked the cabin door shut with the heel of my boot.

  ‘Sit next to the snake,’ I said to the captain, aware that the men were too far apart for me to keep them both under control.

  Sykes obliged, walking nimble-footed across his cabin to sit next to French. On the table I noticed the great auk, lifting its neck to view me with suspicion. I lowered the gun a touch, not wanting a flapping bird to add to the situation.

  ‘May I speak now, Mr Saxby?’ the captain asked, picking up on what he may have felt was a softening of my attitude.

  ‘I haven’t decided yet.’

  ‘As you wish. I shall wait.’

  Outside I heard a large commotion as men charged down the steps, yelling and shouting. It sounded as though it was the entire ship’s crew, flooding the saloon with their noise as they sought me out. Quickly, I heard them close in on the captain’s door. Faced with it, they fell silent. I had the impression of a wall of men a few feet behind me, irrepressible with energy and prevented from entering by the merest of obstacles. The door was not locked.

  ‘Sir!’ Talbot called. ‘You want us in?’

  Sykes took his time, regarding me and raising his eyebrows. ‘The men want me to say something,’ he said, calmly.

  ‘Go on then.’

  Again, he was in no hurry. ‘Best not come in, lads,’ he called. ‘One of my passengers is currently pointing a gun at me.’

  ‘We’re ready, sir, all of us is,’ came the answer.

  ‘Don’t be smart,’ I said to the captain.

  He sighed. He still regarded me with fascination, quite unlike French, whose face had gone bloodless.

  ‘What is your plan?’ Sykes asked.

  The auk, standing on the table, opened its beak and made the deep-throated growl that was so familiar. I felt the sound reverberate in my stomach and tips of my fingers. Then it shook its head, ruffling the neck feathers and letting them settle before closing its beak with a hollow, dry sound like that of two coconut halves being brought together.

  I raised the gun at the captain again. ‘You will take the bird on deck and release it into the sea.’

  He smiled, then nodded, as if complimenting me on my suggestion. ‘Just drop it over the side?’ he asked, miming the action with a theatrical gesture of his hand.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Would it not drown?’

  ‘Its home is the ocean.’

  He rubbed his chin, considering.

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘I shall lay down this rifle and take the consequence.’

  His eyes brightened at the word. ‘Yes, consequence. We should perhaps talk about that.’

  ‘You do not scare me, Sykes. At this moment I care only about the survival of this bird. What might happen to me is of little concern.’

  His reply came at once. ‘I was thinking, not of you, Mr Saxby, but of a wider consequence. You may have overlooked it, with your rush of blood.’

  ‘Enlighten me.’

  ‘The egg.’ He looked triumphant. ‘Release the bird and the egg will die.’

  French shifted in his position, letting his hands drop to view me properly for the first time. A look of curiosity flickered in his eye. Someone banged on the captain’s door, loudly, and Talbot followed it with a shout: ‘What’s your order, sir?’

  ‘This isn’t one of your damned board games, Sykes.’

  He wasn’t so sure. ‘Between the bullet and the bone?’ he mused. ‘I rather felt it was. So what do we do?’

  ‘You’re forgetting an important thing.’

  ‘Pray, tell?’

  ‘I am still holding a rifle.’

  ‘Oh yes, that.’ He looked directly at the gun. ‘One of Mr Bletchley’s toys, I believe. The short one, for when the prey is close at hand. It really is a ludicrous design.’ He let out a sigh and, light on his feet as always, stood up abruptly. I tensed, feeling the harsh curve of the trigger against the inside of my index finger. The captain was by far the most unruffled person in the room. I felt as though I was an axis of pressure that existed in a line between the captain and the men behind the door, waiting for their order, an axis of pressure centred on the point of my finger upon the trigger.

  Sykes took a step towa
rds me and looked me straight in the eye.

  ‘I must bung that hole,’ he said. He lifted his hand and inserted a finger into the end of the barrel.

  I stared, white with fear, disbelieving, as he took the rifle from my hand.

  Events happened rapidly and at an unnatural speed. I remember only small details. I remember the captain flicking the tiny top hat percussion cap from the firing mechanism, then the way he turned his back on me as he put the rifle against the wall. French, in the same instant, leaping from the settee and flinging the cabin door open. An awareness of men, rushing in, filling the space with shouts, and myself being hurled against the table as if a wave had swept into the room. A glimpse of the great auk as I was physically lifted—one arm tightly held around my neck—and carried out into the saloon.

  Talbot grabbed me by the throat, seething with anger, seeking instruction. ‘What shall we do, sir?’ he shouted.

  Captain Sykes came to his doorway, looking a little breathless.

  ‘Remove Mr Bletchley’s rifles and ammunition from his cabin.’

  ‘Will do, sir, and what of this one?’

  Sykes looked at me, but not with any sense of triumph or jubilation.

  ‘Oh, leave him,’ he ordered. ‘He’s harmless.’

  Bletchley’s cabin was quickly searched and his rifles removed. The men stayed in the saloon for a while, excited and prepared for further trouble, but gradually they realised that it was over and they should return to their duties. Within half an hour I was the only person left there. I sat, defeated and lonely, haunted by glimpses of things I had done, all I had nearly done, the feel of the gun that had been in my hands, the smell of its steel that still clung to my skin. That unnatural quiet that had returned, as if nothing had happened.

  On instinct, I went to Clara’s door and leant my head against it. I heard her move on the other side. I tried not to remember. My forehead, placed against the chilled wood—Celeste, come to the door—a cool head but a mind that must have been feverish with desire and imaginings. Please, just a glimpse of you. How I had pictured Celeste, trapped in there, wan and thoughtful, how I had wished to save her from a torment that I could neither appreciate nor understand. Those memories and the turbulence of the present seemed to merge. I struggled to understand the entire picture, the sum of all this yearning and obsession. But I felt clear-headed and sure of my actions. So when Clara opened the cabin door, and stood in front of me, I took her in my arms and kissed her, I kissed her, and would not let her go. I felt total peace. This was a world within a world, away from the greed and betrayals of the ship and the cruelties of an ocean which stretched immeasurably around us. Clara and I were in the centre, a spark and warmth surrounded by incalculable coldness, but that coldness could not reach us.

  After some time we sat, perhaps a little shocked, but unashamed. The room felt honest and pure and I felt stronger than I had done for days. We sat on the bunk, with her cabin door still open, looking at a plain view of the saloon. I noticed the polish on the bare wood of the dining table, the glint of silver mounts on the lanterns that hung above it. I looked at the grains of wood that ran along the planks, imagining as a child would do the intricacies of worlds that exist alongside our own, all of them necessary and vital but none as essential as the one you truly felt was yours.

  ‘I heard the commotion,’ she said. ‘I was afraid.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I tried to resolve things. I was a fool.’

  ‘But are you all right?’ She touched my brow, sadly. ‘Is the bird still alive?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But it’s distressed? Tell me.’

  ‘The bird is fine.’

  ‘Was it Mr French?’

  I felt so thoroughly exhausted. ‘It was. He has been informing the captain from the start.’

  She accepted the information without surprise. Without reaction. At length, she spoke again: ‘He has presented me with a letter. It’s a love letter. A billet-doux. We have fewer and fewer options,’ she said.

  ‘Do you wish me to confront French?’ I asked, appalled at the thought that I might have to.

  Clara spoke with a defiant calm that I hadn’t expected: ‘I think you should go back to your cabin, or on deck if you prefer. You’ve tried hard, and for so long. It’s my turn now. I shall resolve this.’

  It is difficult to recollect the exact sequence of events of that day. I think I remember being on deck, in a dreary wind of drizzle and greyness. I certainly remember the sight of the ocean, a bleak horizon on all sides, with clouds that seemed as wet and as thick as the water below them, the entire world made of a single element that bled its pigment between sky and sea. A simple longing to see land. I needed a reminder that there was a solid world at the edge of all this. Just the sight of it—the merest glimmer of lights around a familiar harbour—would be enough to believe in. To believe that there was warmth and comfort and an old age waiting for me in a thousand different possibilities that were not there, right then, on the bare ocean. The ship had seemed different, too, made of the repairs and fixes that kept it afloat, the grandeur I had once seen in it now a mere attempt to put off the inevitable progress of decay. I remember the crew attended their duties with practised, unhurried motions across the deck, and the way they avoided me. All that day, I had the sensation that beneath me, in the captain’s cabin, a negotiation was under way—from which I was excluded. Overwhelmingly, I remember a distinct feeling. I felt lost.

  Several hours later, Simao brought me a note to say the captain requested my attendance in the chart room. I stared at the paper, the captain’s signature written in a flourish of dark ink, then looked at the steward for guidance.

  ‘He is not angry,’ Simao said.

  ‘And the bird?’

  He reassured me the auk was still alive.

  ‘Did you know we had it on board?’ I asked him.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Well—thank you,’ I said, grateful for his honesty.

  The chart room was small, not much larger than its table. Not the ideal place to meet once again a man I had so recently levelled a rifle at, but Sykes, as always, was determined to assert his own mood. I found him in an unbelievably jovial frame of mind.

  ‘Mr Saxby!’ he exclaimed, quite unnecessarily. ‘Just the man. I wonder if you could help me with this.’

  In his hand he had a half-unrolled maritime chart. ‘Please take the opposite corner to mine and place some weights upon it.’

  He began to unravel the paper across the table; obediently I held it, to keep it flat. He was keen to make our meeting brief. It suited me also.

  ‘You will see that this chart refers to the outer isles off the west coast of Scotland,’ he said, running a dry hand across its surface and gazing with some excitement at the contours and depths. I listened, but only to learn his intention.

  ‘We have St Kilda, the Hebrides, Skye, do you see their shapes and outlines? The Hebrides are rather like the vertebrae of a whale, poking out through the sea, do you not think? Imagine—the Vikings navigated through this labyrinth with just a few bare scratchings carved upon bone and the like. It is quite humbling, as is every day upon the sea—it is a constant reminder of the bravery and vision of the men who have gone before.’

  ‘What is your purpose?’ I asked.

  ‘Aha, yes, thought you might ask. You will know of it presently,’ he said, enjoying, as always, the sound of his own voice and his roundabout way of coming to the point. ‘We have had a strange voyage, would you not say? I must admit, I had no reckoning of it when I first saw you on deck. I thought you to be a most meek and obedient fellow—a flash of humour here and there, of course, but nothing like you turned out to be. I have been most educated by you.’

  ‘I think we can safely say that goes both ways.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know you are infinitely disappointed by me, but I have little regard for what you may or may not think. We had a pretty little s
cene this morning and I have no intention of getting into that kind of situation again. I have seen many men like you, Mr Saxby. They all slow down and fatten up in the end, it is the way of the world. Men are born with sparks in their eyes and fires in their veins. But fires become embers, and finally ashes—there is no other way.’

  ‘Am I in this room for a lecture?’

  He put his hands up, in mock surrender. ‘No. Absolutely not.’ Then he regarded me with a sly smirk. ‘But we have learnt about each other, nonetheless. You have also surprised me with your intimacy with another of our passengers. That has had me quite amused.’

  ‘I’m glad you have had your fun.’

  ‘Let us not spar, Mr Saxby, do you not see I’m here to offer a solution?’

  I waited.

  ‘There is room for manoeuvre in the smallest of spaces, would you not agree? And also in the thorniest of situations and negotiations. It is my role as a captain to spot these changes in tack—and I must admit that this morning I was quite at a loss as to where I might steer my craft with you. Or, indeed, why I should even bother.’

  ‘You are talking in riddles, sir, as usual.’

  Sykes clapped his hands with delight. ‘I have the tendency, for sure I have,’ he said. ‘I will come to the point. It has been suggested to me that various choices might be made at this juncture. Miss Gould really is quite a remarkable person, isn’t she? Well—what am I saying—you know that full well, from what I gather. Yes, a most intelligent and clear-thinking individual—she is able to see through situations with the utmost clarity. In fact, she would make a fine ship’s captain—her skills are wasted being a woman.’

  I glared back at him, unimpressed.

  ‘So, to the point,’ he continued. ‘Are you interested to hear? Yes, good.’ He placed his finger on the chart, keen to make the meeting brief. ‘Here are the isles of Lewis, Harris, North Uist, Benbecula, South Uist and Barra. Together they form the Hebrides. The chart is precise in the surveys of ports and anchorages, but less specific with general coastline. At the southern tip—here—is the hamlet of Castlebay. The word is written there, you see? In a couple of days you shall be put on shore at that spot, with your precious bird and its egg, and this ship shall continue to Liverpool, as before.’