Ship Ahoy! (A Cliffhanger Novel Book 3)

by T. J. Middleton

  By the time I got back it was twenty eight minutes to three. Audrey was watching me from the window, wearing something red and shiny, but I didn’t take any real notice. I had my mind on Gerald and the Pimple. I didn’t want to go, but something told me I had to.

  I walked up, sat on the top. I hadn’t been there proper since that afternoon when Em had rescued me. I’d seen some flies on the way up, a couple of dozy bees too, but no butterflies. The grass was like it always was up on the mound, kind of smooth, as if Olaf the Awful popped out of his burial mound every morning and gave it the once over with his Flymo. Somewhere underneath was buried Robin’s pocket Scrabble set. I thought I would know where, like exactly, ‘cause I could still picture it in my mind where I dug it, but sitting there, I hadn’t a clue. Was it that side or was it this? I kid you not, but my hands started to itching, like they wanted to start scrabbling about in the soil, try and dig it out. I fished out a doughnut, just to keep them busy.

  ‘Al! A prompt timekeeper I see.’

  Gerald was stood half way down the other side, looking out to sea. He was togged up in what I took to be his stalking gear, brown baggy jacket, brown baggy shorts, and a pair of green socks that went up to his knees. He had a knapsack on his back the size of Switzerland, and was carrying a net big enough for a North Sea trawler. Not that there are any trawlers in the North Sea thanks to the Common Market Fishing Policy which states that the thing about trawlers is they’re not allowed to catch any fish. And if they do they have to chuck them back on account of them all being dead.

  ‘Gerald!’ I held the bag out. ‘Have a doughnut.’

  ‘Don’t mind if I do.’ He took one out and bit into it. Jam squirted out onto his boots. He might be a clever dick, but he knew fuck all about how to eat doughnuts.

  ‘I think you might have got all dressed up for no reason,’ I said, biting cleanly into another, showing him how. ‘Madame Butterfly seem to have taken an impromptu holiday today. Perhaps she’s gone down to the cove, see what boats are coming in.’

  His eyebrows went up. He didn’t expect an ignorant c. like me to know about opera let alone a word like impromptu. Opera I’d taught myself thanks very much, Kraut Number One in the main, but I didn’t mind them Eye-ties as light relief, like you would an ice-cream after a plate full of rib-eye. I had the Scrabble to thank for the word. Amazing what you can do with two vowels and a consonant.

  ‘Patience Al. We can have that chat, before we start a proper search. What do you say?’

  He sat down and patted the space next to me. His knees were all shiny like some boy scout had just spent the best part of the morning polishing them up. It didn’t bear thinking about.

  ‘What chat would that be?’

  ‘About life! About change! You know the saying. Carp diem. Seize the day. Well this is the day.’

  I didn’t know the saying actually, least I didn’t before he said it. He took off his jacket, laid it out on the grass and pointed to the sea. It looked good that day, the sea, like nothing could disturb it.

  ‘Butterflies know all about change you know, moving from one state of being to another. First the grub, crawling through the undergrowth, chewing cabbage leaves, then the chrysalis, suspended in a cocoon of glue and spit, and then, suddenly, Abracadabra! A butterfly bursts into the air, a miracle of colour and light, filled with grace. That what I want to be. Filled with grace. Don’t you?’

  A double portion of fish jalfrezi and five pints of ice-cold Kingfisher usually did it for me but I didn’t say anything, just took another bite. He didn’t mind. He was in full flow.

  ‘We all need it, the opportunity to move from one state of being to another. Take this trip complimentary cruise of my wife’s. Meeting you like this, has set me thinking. It could not only change her, it could change me.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Tell me, do people ever get lost on these cruises? Left behind without any money or mobile phone, stranded on a desert island for months on end, that sort of thing?’

  ‘It has been known, in some of the livelier venues. Venice at carnival time, for instance. Though that’s not often accidental, more like wishful thinking. Then there are those who fall asleep in the arms of a Brazilian beauty on the Copacabana and wake up to find one of their kidneys missing. Why?’

  He laid his doughnut to one side, like he had something important to say.

  ‘In your capacity as one of the crew members. I was wondering if you could lose Hilary for me.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Leave her stranded somewhere. Somewhere permanent. North Korea for instance.’ Doughnut got stuck in my throat. I swallowed hard.

  ‘I’m not the captain,’ I said, ‘ but I’m pretty sure North Korea isn’t one of the Lady Di’s regular ports of call.’

  ‘No, but surely she could get on the wrong boat after a day’s sightseeing, ingested something untoward in the local market, a slice of hashish cake perhaps or some mind-bending hallucinogenic hooch, arriving back at the dock confused, disorientated, stumbling aboard a rat-infested cargo boat destined for Jakarta or somewhere equally foul, instead of the Lady Di. Usually these things can be arranged.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’ He tapped my knee, smiling.

  ‘A resourceful man like you? It wouldn’t take you long to find a way. Or something more permanent if you prefer.’

  ‘I’d prefer it if we stopped this right now. God, you two.’ He was onto me like a flash.

  ‘What do you mean, you two?’

  ‘You and your misses. I thought Audrey and me were bad but…’ I stopped. I shouldn’t have said that. He smiled.

  ‘Ah yes, your former wife, the escaped convict. Wouldn’t it be fun if their fates could be swapped. My Hilary locked up in prison for twenty years and your Audrey on a boat out of here to South America or somewhere.’

  It was a thought.

  ‘Still, I’d rather Hilary was not here at all. People get released from prison. Even murderers.’ He was staring at me uncommon keen.

  ‘I still don’t see what it has to do with me.’

  ‘Because unless you agree to rid me of my wife Mr Greenwood, I will go to the police authorities and inform them that Audrey Cutlass is hiding in your bungalow, right under their very noses. Don’t look so shocked. I told you. I have a very good memory for faces. I took a photograph of her, did you know?’

  I did not know.

  ‘Yes. While she was showing Charity your stuffed… ’ He leant forward sudden, his face all flushed.

  ‘There! Did you see it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The Blue Bindon you idiot. Where did it go?’

  He started rummaging around in his rucksack, pulling out this dirty great screw- top jar. Here he was, dressed up all professional, acting like a bleeding kid.

  ‘I thought a man like you would have passed the jam-jar stage of butterfly collecting by now, Gerald,’ I said. ‘You’ve forgotten to punch holes in. It won’t be able to breathe.’

  He fiddled about with it, dropping in some sort of powder.

  ‘It’s not meant to breathe,’ he said, his voice all squeaky and strangled, like you do when you get over excited. ‘It’s a killing jar not a jam-jar.’

  I didn’t like the sound of that. Not content with knocking off the local talent, here he was exterminating our wild life.

  ‘You’re going to kill it?’

  ‘What do you expect me to be doing with it? Course I’m going to kill it. Like you’re going to kill my ….There it is!’

  Something pale skittered past my legs. He made a grab for his net and whacked the air hard, fetching me one on the ankles like my form teacher used to.

  ‘Fuck! Missed it! Where’d it go? Did you see?’ I shook my head. I hadn’t but even if I had I wasn’t going to tell him. He ran down to the foot of the Pimple, looking up and down like a policeman.

  ‘Keep your eyes peeled,’ he barked. ‘It can’t have gone far. Where the fuck is it? I need it my for my collection.
’

  His head began swivelling from one side to the other, like one of those Triffids, eyes sweeping the grass like searchlights. Heartless like a Triffid he looked too, like the blood in his veins was stone cold, if blood at all. Then he saw her again, sitting on a thistle peeking out of the grass that ran down the edge of the cliff, opening and closing her wings, delicate and strong, like she was a ballerina practising at the bar. She had four wings not two like I’d always thought, four and little feet like a ballerina’s too, dainty and pointed and just right. That was the thing really, she was just right, like Torvill and Dean had been just right, brilliant and perfect in her own perfect world. I’d never thought of it before, but seeing her opening and closing her wings like that, it struck me that all the years I’d been here, I’d had another sort of Torvill and Dean near me all the time, right on my doorstep, only dipping and diving in the air rather than the water. And it had taken this sorry Herbert to make me see it.

  He was crouching down, his back arched, like a cat about to nobble some poor defenceless robin, moving forward dead careful, one foot after the other like he was playing that game me and mum used to play, Grandmother’s Footsteps. I used to love that game, me staring at the wall, listening out for mum getting nearer and nearer, hoping to catch her with out with her foot in the air, trying not to wobble. The laughs we had then. Not now though. No laughs up here. The Killing Cliff, that’s what this place had become.

  He got closer, his net raised high behind him, his other hand stretched out to his side, like he was telling the rest of the world to hold still and piss off out of it.

  ‘Here I come,’ he said, kind of sing-song horrible, ‘ready or not.’

  He swooped, all legs and arms, slamming the net down hard, but the Blue Bindon bless her, she was up in the air, dancing round his head free, sticking her antlers out or whatever they’re called, like it was her tongue. He wasn’t going to catch her that easy.

  ‘Atta girl,’ I said, up on my feet, ready to cheer her on.

  ‘You keep out of this, Greenwood,’ he said.

  She swirled round him once more and then zoomed back up the Pimple, flying right past me. Christ she couldn’t half step on the gas for such a little thing, Gerald charging up after her, his arms going like pistons and his face all blotchy and his seven league boots creaking as he ran. Once up top, he stood, legs apart on top of Olaf the Awful and started swinging his net this way, like one of those figures you get on them continental musical boxes, stretch-wallop-turn, stretch-wallop-turn, round and round he went, not that it did him any good, ‘cause she was skipping around him, up and down, just out of reach. Float like a butterfly, wasn’t that what Ali had said, and by Christ was she floating. I was thinking that perhaps that’s what I should sculpt next, butterflies and not pasties, bring the poet out in me – cause Emily says there’s a poet in everyone if only they’d listen to themselves - when she zoomed back down the Pimple again, Gerald charging down after, hair flaming out his nostrils like it was about to catch light.

  ‘Having trouble Gerald?’ I said.

  He stopped, rolled up his shirt sleeve, and started to move forward again,

  ‘I’ll get her, Greenwood, don’t you worry.’

  And I have to admit it, he was good. Even after shagging Charity for God knows how long, he had the energy, knew what he was doing, just like my old chain-saw knew what it was doing with his misses, moving forward all methodical, swishing the air right left, cutting off her retreat like she had less and less space to choose from, working her like a boxer does in a ring, left right, left right, moving in for the kill. You could see it coming as he lunged left, lunged right, the little Blue Bindon weaving and ducking her little heart out, but there was no way out of it. She was running out of luck, poor mite, running out of fuel too. He was so big and she was so little. What chance did she have? Left right, left right, on he went, paying attention to nothing and no one, ‘cept that little darling in front of him and the spirit he wanted to crush. Then he reached that point when they both had nowhere to go, him up near the cliff edge, and she boxed in, out of options, even though she had the whole sky to run to. She’d had it, knew there was nothing she could do. They do that animals when their time is up. Humans too sometimes. Gerald knew it too. He leant back into the swing and let her have it, brought the net down hard on her, the knock-out punch.

  ‘Got you, you little cunt,’ he said, and started to draw the net back in, twisting it careful all the time so she couldn’t escape.

  ‘That no way to talk to our Blue Bindon,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  The butterfly was doing what they do when they get agitated, fluttering about trying to find a way out. It didn’t seem fair. One moment she was shooting the breeze, looking forward to a spot of nectar off of her favourite flower, the next she was being menaced by some long-socked stalker intent on sticking her in his scrapbook entitled Butterflies I Have Killed Single-handed, or some such bollocks. I was standing at the bottom of the Pimple now, just a few feet away. I don’t know why but I had the bag of doughnuts with me too.

  ‘I said,’ I said, swinging the bag about, ‘that’s no way to talk to our little Blue Bindon. She’s special.’

  ‘Not half as special as when I stick a pin through her thorax.’ He waved his free hand about. ‘Fetch me the jar quickly. I don’t want her to damage her wings.’

  She was still fluttering inside trying to get out. I remembered the time that Alice Blackstock and me had saved that grand old lobster from the cooking pot, driven down to the cove with him, set him down on the beach and watched him tiptoe back into the water, how good it felt. Perhaps he was waltzing the ocean floor still, the old boy. Why not? Live for ever, them lobsters. But butterflies? They hardly last an afternoon. And this one? How long did she have to enjoy the world?’

  ‘Let her go,’ I said.

  ‘What!’

  He turned to face me, the net held down at an angle.

  ‘You heard. Let her go.’

  He laughed.

  ‘Are you out of your mind? Do you know how rare a Blue Bindon is, how few people have one.’ He looked down at my hand. ‘The jar. Is that it? Give it to me quick. Come on. Give it to me.’

  So I gave it to him. I put my hand in my bag, and sure enough there it was, the last Cornish Pasty that wasn’t Cornish and wasn’t a pasty, but it was the right shape for what I wanted, the right size too. I was in the right mood an all, like I was a boy again, standing front my no- good b. of a father, feeling small and big, like I wanted to cry and smash his face in at the same time, like there was only one thing to do, and I took it out of the bag, the Cornish pasty that wasn’t Cornish and wasn’t a pasty and I threw it at him, sent it spinning through the air real hard, square at his face, and you know what, that’s where it hit him, real hard, square in his face, right in the gob, which was half-open as a matter of fact yelling at me what the hell did I think I was doing, and then he knew because it was stuck tight in his mush and he’d thrown his hands in the air, like you would with three quarters of a fake Cornish pasty half way down your throat, and he took a step backwards naturally to steady himself. Recoil I think it’s called in the army. Only there wasn’t much of a step backwards to be had, only a whiff of grass and a little hint of cliff sticking out a centimetre or two, not big enough for his boot anyway, and you could hear it, the boot scraping, trying to find what wasn’t there, his eyes all wide anxious and the Cornish pasty that wasn’t Cornish poking out like a pointed turd deciding whether to come out or stay in. And then he was gone, just like that.

  I walked over, peered over the edge. He was lying on his back two hundred feet below, his body sprawled across two rocks, like he was in a hammock, the net still in his right hand, the mesh caught on his face. Then I saw something out the corner of my eye, like it was leaving him, and you know what, for a moment, for a stupid moment, I thought it was his soul floating up out his eyes, not that I ever thought about souls or stuff like that ever before,
even when mum took me to church, which wasn’t very often, Christmas Eve and Harvest Festival that was all really, which I didn’t mind ‘cause I’d hear her sing and she had a lovely voice my mum, pop songs, music hall numbers, hymns whatever, knew how to hold a tune together, but there it was, this funny something all light and wispy coming up out of him, floating up like it was rising up to heaven, like it was the only place it could go, and then I saw what it was, the little Blue Bindon. Up she came, riding up the white chalk cliff on the crest of an airwave, her wings hardly moving, like she was an angel herself. Right up past my face she went. Made me giddy just to look at her.

  He’d fallen off. Right in front of me he’d fallen off. It was an accident, anyone could see that, but Jesus Christ, who was going to believe that, with my record?

  NINE

  I walked back up to the Pimple, trying to think straight. The Blue Bindon was sitting on Gerald’s doughnut, finishing off the sugar. I gave her a wide berth. She could eat the whole bloody bag’s worth as far as I was concerned. She wasn’t a butterfly to mess with.