Ship Ahoy! (A Cliffhanger Novel Book 3)

by T. J. Middleton

  I didn’t argue. There was no point, not if I wanted the Miss Prosser to survive the season. We all knew how it had happened, same as all the other little accidents happen twice a year, regular as clockwork, to all the other boats. Lucky he’s here to repair them really. Salt of the bleeding ocean, Carl. It says so on his fisherman’s jersey.

  Still, battered boat or no, it was good to be down there again. The tide was half out, and I could see my little row of rocks peeking out, all broken and crooked and covered in that slimy sea-weed green, ‘just like your father’s teeth,’ as mum used to say. When we was on holiday, I used to swim out and climb up them, waving to her as she sat on the shore. ‘Look Ma! Top of the world!’ I’d shout, just like James Cagney in that film of his, and she’d laugh and call back, ‘Top of the World, Al!’ And I was too, until the holiday finished and we had to go back home to the bastard what spawned me, top of the world, her waving and smiling in that bright yellow one piece and me hoping it would never end, knowing all the time it would. Pretty as a picture she was in them days, when he wasn’t about. If only I done then what I did later, pushed him off the fucking cliff instead of that poor woman, instead of Robin. I’d have turned out all right then. Maybe we both would.

  I looked out. There was a boat turning in from the open sea, hugging the left hand side, so as to avoid the spur of rock that sneaks out under the water on the other side. Can take you by surprise if you don’t know about it, rip your boat’s guts out. The skipper on this one knew all about it. Once safe in though, it turned smartish, started heading towards us and the little concrete slipway that ran out beside us down into the sea. There was a bloke behind the tiller, all calm and nonchalant, acting like he was the Flying Dutchman’s older brother, like fisherfolk always do, but fixed in the front, standing like one of those big busted figureheads, stood a woman in a dark blue weather-proof, hands on hips, strong, sturdy, this yellow sou’wester pulled down hard over her face, like she didn’t want to be seen. It wasn’t that that started me off though. It was the way she stood, like her feet were planted in tubs of concrete, like nothing would shift her, like nothing had ever shifted her, like she was one of those Russian ice-breakers, crunching through whatever came her way. As they got closer she started scanning the cliff-tops, as if she was watching out for something, on guard almost. I still couldn’t see her face but I didn’t need to. I recognised the body, the horrible obstinate shape of it. Christ, I’d tripped over it enough times. I glanced back, half expecting Rump and three-quarters of the Dorsetshire constabulary to pop out behind the boathouse, handcuffs at the ready. She’d get caught and I’d be done for aiding and abetting.

  I took a step forward and called out. I couldn’t help myself.

  ‘Audrey?’

  She looked down, caught sight of me. Her hand flew to her mouth, like she hadn’t expected to see me.

  ‘You got a fucking nerve,’ I shouted. ‘Do us all a favour. Go and drown yourself.’

  ‘You drown your own customers,’ old man Stokie muttered. He pushed past me and started to drag the boat in. Audrey pulled her hood back. But it wasn’t her at all. It was someone else entirely. Someone the same shape and size as Audrey and who was looking at me like Audrey used to. It was funny. I was relieved and disappointed at the same time.

  ‘Mr Greenwood,’ she said. ‘Well, this is a unpleasant surprise.’

  I didn’t recognise her at first. You don’t really look at older women do you, not properly. Why would you? They’re old. But this one did look a bit familiar. Then I clocked her.

  ‘Mrs Durand-Deacon! What the hell are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m staying at my sister’s residence, not that it’s any of your business. Sheila Coleman. She owns the Bindon Hotel. It’s well known round these parts, for its combination of relaxation and refinement.’

  Well known too to the District Health Authority for cooking the breakfast bacon and eggs the night before, but I didn’t press the point.

  ‘Sheila simply insisted I stay until I have fully recovered. The Doctors have warned me it will take me months before I get over my injuries, that is if I ever do.’ I wasn’t going to let that one go.

  ‘Still, I see you got your sense of balance back, standing up in the boat like that. You should try for a job at Weymouth fairground. You’d be a natural on their Walzter, taking the money, handing out tickets from your satchel.’ I was trying to be rude, but it didn’t seem to bother her at all. Almost serene, that’s what she was.

  ‘The sea is in my blood Mr Greenwood. The land is quite a different matter. If you please?’

  She took Carl’s arm and stepped up, raising their hands in the air like they were doing some poncy dance number out of one of them Jane Austen books. I’d seen hundreds of Jane Austens on the DVD by then, thanks to Em. She was potty about them, all them stories of young women with no money falling in love with the rich toff next door. Em said was all about the human condition and minute observation, though it seemed to me that Jane Austen was really just Mills and Boon in a bonnet. I mean every one of them getting off with the local Viscount Money Bags, and that he’s young and handsome, and without a trace of the clap? I mean is that likely, in that day and age? I don’t think so. Mr Darcy doesn’t have the clap, Mr Elliot isn’t drinking mercury like it’s soda-pop—there’s a whole army of them, book after book, clap-free bachelors with all their own teeth. And well behaved? I should cocoa. None of them blips the villagers on the head, or puts the chambermaid in the family way or gets tanked up and throws up over the family Gainsborough. They’re all decent and honourable and the only thing they get their leg over on a regular basis is a fourteen-hand horse. And those dances? Every bloody half hour, here we go again, up down, up down, chit-chat, chit-chat. Nice work for the BBC costume department but the rest of us? Trouble is, with Jane Austen, once you’ve stripped out the dancing and the frocks and fourteen-foot horses, there’s nothing left apart from a load of hysterical biddies running up and down the stairs and blubbing into their handkerchiefs. No, if you want to see the human condition in a realistic light, switch over to Neighbours. OK it’s Australian and they’re all as pleasing as pigshit, but at least they fuck and fight like the rest of us.

  Mrs Durand-Deacon landed on the shingle. She leant heavily on Carl, trying to make out she was all weak and wobbly, but I could tell, there was nothing wrong with her. She took a deep breath, banged her chest. Not quite hard enough in my opinion.

  ‘Peace and quiet is what I need. If I’d known you’d be waiting here Mr Greenwood, I might have chosen differently. Are you engaged in what is known in common parlance as stalking?’

  ‘Excuse me! I live here. Have done so for years. Look I’m sorry if I was a bit previous just now. I thought you were someone else.’ She straightened up, her face strangely excited.

  ‘Of course you did. Why would you be so offensive to someone who could lose you your job and ruin you financially in the process? Doesn’t make any sense does it? Have you started on my shark yet?’

  ‘I’m waiting for the wood to be flown in Mrs Durand-Deacon. I’m hoping to start as soon as it’s cleared through customs.’ She gave a little cough into her hand.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that. Under the circumstances I don’t think one shark is quite adequate. We need to discuss this further. Come round tomorrow at eleven. We’ll talk about it then.’

  She was talking tough but there was this funny smile on her face, like she was enjoying a joke that only she could understand. I didn’t like it. Time to talk turkey.

  ‘I’m not sure there’s anything to discuss Mrs Durand-Deacon. It’s what we agreed. One shark, no bigger than three metres no shorter than two, and one husband, Gerald, caught between his molars. We shook hands on it.’

  ‘I’m a woman, Mr Greenwood. I’ve changed my mind. I’ll see you at eleven. Not before. I have to lie perfectly still for two hours after I wake, to restore my equilibrium. Doctor thinks I might have lost one of my senses.’

&
nbsp; ‘Oh? Which one would that be?’

  ‘My sense of humour.’

  She smiled that smile again and marched off, the bloke who brought her in scuttling after her carrying her bags. I haggled with Carl for about fifteen minutes but my heart wasn’t in it. I handed over fifty quid on account and began the walk back. Nothing felt right. It was like the sea had suddenly drained away and I was stranded there, amidst all the flotsam. Five minutes later I was passing the Bindon. It’s an ugly looking sort of place set into the hillside, dark and sprawling, like a Swiss chalet with the tires let down, with balconies running all the way round on the first floor, clumps of rhododendron bushes underneath. As I walked past Mrs Durand-Deacon came out holding a gin and tonic the size of a small vase. She saw me and raised it in the air, waving to me like I was her long lost brother. She was going to be trouble, Mrs Durand-Deacon.

  Back at the bungalow I brushed the grate free of Audrey’s remains, stuck Em’s picture back on the bedroom wall, did the week’s supermarket run. We take it in turns, Miss Prosser and me, though, of the two, I am the more adventurous shopper. There was a lot to get, steaks, crinkle cut chips, ice cream, all the essentials. Takes its time though, shopping. I mean you have to go up and down the aisles two or three times, before you can even start, just so you know where everything is. Besides, in this one there were a couple of corkers behind the cold-meat counter worth any number of detours. Third time round I bought a veal and ham pie from the redhead with the squint, and ten minutes later a Belgian saveloy from the brunette with the three inch fake eyelashes. I love fake in a young woman, what they want to be, what they aren’t quite. Often makes them try that little harder.

  I had most of the pie and all the little Belgian for lunch, then went round to Mrs B with her statutory bottle of duty-free Belvedere stuck in my pocket. She answered the door in baggy flannel pants, a collarless white shirt, with Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore written on the front. She looked great, all loose and supple, like she could do a back flip down the hallway without even drawing breath. That was the funny thing about Alice. The older she got, the younger she looked, the younger she acted. We got on great, her and me, ever since I pushed her down the stairs (not that she knew about that). It kind of broke the ice in our relationship. She saw the bottle sticking out my pocket, clapped her hands.

  ‘Al, you shouldn’t have.’

  ‘You say that every time, Mrs B.’

  ‘And every time I don’t mean it.’ She grabbed the bottle, tossed it in the air like it was a juggling club. ‘You’ve heard the news about Audrey I suppose?’

  ‘Hard to credit, what she’s done,’ I said. ‘I mean, she confessed didn’t she. What else did she think was going to happen to her?’

  ‘Perhaps she just couldn’t take it.’

  ‘Or thought better of it.’ I tried to change the subject. ‘Fish been behaving themselves?’

  She nodded. She liked them almost more than I did now. What a difference eh, from when I first knew her. Worse than Bluebeard I’d been according to her in them days. Change the subject? Pull the other one.

  ‘How did Audrey do it then, do you know?’ I asked.

  ‘Stole a bicycle. Guard’s uniform too.’

  ‘And there’s been no sign of her?’ She shook her head.

  ‘You mustn’t be too hard on her Al. She wasn’t all bad. She just lost control. It can happen to anyone, any time. I’m not sure prison is the answer to people like Audrey. Was it for you?’ I shook my head. ‘Try not to dwell on it. It’s different for you now, the bungalow, this place. The things you and Em have done recently. Why, you’ve made our village a proper little St Ives these days.’

  Thanks to Em I knew about St Ives, all them artists and sculpturers that took the place over, made it into this artists’ colony, Barbara Hepworth and others I can’t be arsed to remember. I wasn’t surprised really, that artists chose Cornwall, what with the history and the ice cream and the rocks with holes in. I had a lot of time for Cornwall myself. It was where mum came from. She was always talking about how she wanted to go back there, show me places, but we never did. She had the bungalow and my fuck of a dad and me misbehaving myself. And then she got ill and died. But when I was a kiddie, she’d sit me down in by the window looking over to the Pimple and tell me tales of King Arthur and his Round Table and how that tart Guinevere knocked off half the knights while Arthur was away busy looking for the Holy Grail. Poor old Arthur. Saw a lot of extra activity that Round Table I reckon, though you don’t read about that sort of carry-on in the history books. But it stands to reason, old Lancelot laying out Guinevere on top of it and getting his lance away there whenever the opportunity arose. It happens in all them important places; the White House, the House of Commons, even the gardens in Buckingham Palace, they’ve all been venues for high powered how’s-your-father. Why would it have been any different in King Arthur’s time? Though in those days it must have been a bit tricky for the men, with all that armour to poke it through. Mum always tried to make Arthur out to be some sort of saint and maybe he was, but that Round Table bollocks? I mean he was asking for trouble. Get a grip man, put a proper table in, with a top end at the top and a bottom end at the bottom, and all the knights ranged down the sides in pecking order, ready to do as they’re bleeding well told. But mum didn’t see it that way. She had a soft spot for anything Cornish, King Arthur, clotted cream, Cornish Pasties.

  Mum made great Cornish Pasties herself, and we’d take them down to the beach and eat them cold for our lunch. Nothing better, biting into it, all the onions and swede, all the beef and potato, everything wrapped up tight in this thick pastry, hard on the outside, soft in. She was very particular about Cornish Pasties, very particular about their shape, what went into them. Very particular. Me too. A lot of people shove things into Cornish Pasties that shouldn’t be there. Carrots are the main culprit. A Cornish Pasty shouldn’t have a carrot within half a mile of it. Show it a carrot and your true Cornish Pasty will curl up at the edges and die. If they have carrots in they’re not a Cornish Pasty, they pasties made by tossers who deserve to have their hands chopped off. Don’t get me wrong. I’m as liberal as the next man. If you want to put carrots in something with meat and onions and potato and cover it in pastry, go right ahead. I got no problem with that. Only don’t go calling it a Cornish Pasty, because it isn’t. It’s a Tosser’s Pasty, made by tossers to be eaten by tossers. It really got her goat if she bought a couple of so-called ‘Cornish Pasties’ at some shop or other only to find a load of carrots floating around inside, like it was a personal insult to who she was and where she come from. I’ve seen her storm back to the bakers in question and lob them back over the counter, like they were hand grenades. Mums eh? Ain’t they brilliant?

  Alice and me went upstairs to her lounge. She stuck the Belvedere in the fridge, poured us both a stiff gin—ice, tonic, a twist of lime—and pointed to the tray. A nice fat Blackstock special sat on the table in front of us, like a freshly laid turd.

  ‘I thought you might drop round. There’s something I prepared a little earlier.’

  I stuck it in my mouth. She lit it with this silver lighter the shape and size of Aladdin’s slipper. We sat back, looking out over to the you-know-what. I could almost see the genie rising out of it into the air. The things that Pimple could tell.

  ‘I’d like to be buried up there,’ she said suddenly. ‘Do you think they’d allow it?’

  A tricky one. A couple of feet under the top lay Robin’s pocket Scrabble set, that and the little message I’d glued to the board. Though part of me knew I should have, I’d never got rid of it. It was like a feeling I had, that if I did, I’d break the spell, like it had something over me that little set, to make sure I did good, make sure I stayed good. If I dug it up, it would wake it all up again, like one of those Egyptian mummies that used to pop up in horror films. It didn’t spell it out in black and white, the Scrabble board, like the letter Em had torn up did, but anybody getting hold of it migh
t start making inquiries. They might start asking me questions. Might even start asking Em. God knows how she’d hold up. We’d never mentioned it, after that first time, never once, not the letter, not what was in it, nothing. I’d done what I did, and that was the end of it. We’d never been up there either since that day, not once. It was like King’s Arthur’s seat, or that island where he was last taken, somewhere far away, surrounded by strange mists and incantations. It was voodoo now, that Pimple. The last thing I needed was Alice Blackstock poking about its innards.

  ‘Course they wouldn’t,’ I told her, passing over the hand-made.

  ‘No ‘course they wouldn’t.’ She dragged it down deep, held it there, let it out slow. ‘Why the hell not. I pay my rates.’

  ‘Well, there might not be enough room. You might disturb Olaf the Awful, or whoever they got stashed away in there.’ She thought about it for a moment.

  ‘Olaf might be glad of the company. He probably hasn’t seen a woman for about two thousand years.’ I poured us both another gin.

  ‘On the other hand, his better-half might be already there with him. And his horse, if he had one. You might end up in one of those menages. It’s not what you want, a woman of your position.’ She snorted.

  ‘I could show both of them a thing or two. I wasn’t on the cover of Electric Lady Land for nothing, you know.’ Gin spilled out my mouth.

  ‘Beg pardon Mrs B, did I hear right? I’m quite familiar with that album. I don’t remember seeing you there. Whereabouts in the firmament are you situated? Back cover, front cover, first row, second?’ I could have asked other questions but modesty prevented me.

  ‘Al, as if I’d tell you. He didn’t like it you know, us naked on the front like that. Thought our presence denigrated his music.’

  ‘Don’t see how your presence could denigrate anything Mrs B.’

  ‘Except on that Pimple. Why shouldn’t I be buried there. It’s a burial mound isn’t it?’ She was back on that again.