It wasn’t the first empty house they had seen on the banks. These houses were disused public houses that had once served the bargemen when the river was a thriving source of transport, but were now too far off the beaten track and too lacking in amenities to be habitable.
The sun had been shining all that day and had helped to lighten their somewhat depressed spirits, and when Malcolm suggested that they should have a swim before their evening meal Jonathan voted it a good idea. But Joe declined, saying he didn’t feel like a swim; he felt a bit shivery.
Jonathan’s sympathy seemed mixed when he advised him to take a couple of aspirins and make a start on preparing the meal, and a few minutes later he and Malcolm dropped over the side into the water to the accompaniment of Bill’s barking. Their destination was the reed cutter, which they had passed earlier in the day at work further up the river. It was now lying downriver, together with a long iron barge, and when they came abreast of it they couldn’t get near it because of the cut reeds floating on the surface of the water. So, instead of resting by hanging on to the side of the barge, they turned and swam back to the boat.
It had been a longish swim and they were very tired when they climbed aboard, and Jonathan grumbled a bit at the slow progress Joe had made towards providing them with something to eat.
When eventually they had eaten and reluctantly washed up they did not have a game of cards as they had done on the previous night, but they all turned in, and when the light was out they lay quiet, each taken up with his own thoughts, Jonathan and Malcolm wondering what was to be Bill’s fate in seven days’ time, and Joe, his face buried in his pillow, thinking about his mother.
Bill had been asleep for some time; he, too, was very tired. Having been stung on his hindquarters by a wasp as he sat on the bank early that morning, following which he had broken all his previous records as he raced in a series of wide circles, he had spent most of the day licking his extremity and longing in his doggy mind for the peace and security of home, until at last he had found forgetfulness in sleep. So, for once he wasn’t alert to the approaching footsteps, but when he heard the thumping on the roof and a voice yelling ‘Hi! You in there!’ he sprang off the bunk, barking furiously while dashing the short distance from one door to the other.
‘Stop it! Hold on!’
‘Who’s that?’
‘What is it?’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘What’s happened?’
They were all talking at once when the voice from outside called again, ‘It’s the police. Come out here a minute.’
‘Police!’ Jonathan switched on the light and the boys squinted at each other; then, scrambling out of their bunks, they pulled open the door and tumbled into the cockpit, and after Jonathan had unloosened the awning by the side of the hatch they all stood blinking furiously as they turned their sleep-filled eyes from the light of the torch.
‘Well now, what have you been up to?’
‘I don’t know what you mean. What’s the matter?’ said Jonathan.
‘Haven’t you got ears, or have you got used to the sound?’
‘Ears?’ Malcolm and Joe looked at each other.
‘Well, listen a minute.’
So they all listened. And then they heard it, a deep chunk! chunk! chunk! of a machine at work.
‘Somebody’s set the reed cutter going.’
‘Well, I can assure you it wasn’t us,’ said Jonathan indignantly.
‘No?’ said the police officer. ‘Well, that’s for you to prove. But you swam up to it a short while ago, didn’t you?’
‘Yes. Yes, we did.’
‘And you didn’t get on board?’
‘No; we couldn’t because of the reeds in the river.’
‘That’s a thin excuse. Get your clothes on.’
‘What!’
‘I said you’d better get your clothes on, the lot of you.’
They squinted up into the light again; then, turning in a bemused fashion, they went into the cabin and struggled into their clothes.
‘Stay there,’ said Jonathan, pushing Bill’s muzzle away as he shut him in the cabin, and, taking no notice of his howling and barking, he stepped onto the bank and joined Malcolm, Joe and the policeman.
‘Now we’ll go along the bank and across the river in the chain ferry and you’ll get in there and stop that machine. But that won’t be the end of it…Come on.’
‘Look here.’ Jonathan stood his ground. ‘We can’t do that, for the simple reason we never set her going. I know nothing about the reed cutter, none of us do. You’re barking up the wrong tree.’
‘Never mind about barking up wrong trees, you come along.’
‘Who said it was us?’ asked Joe now.
‘Well, since you ask, we had a phone call. You were seen swimming down the river and boarding her.’
‘It’s a downright lie.’
‘Come on,’ said the policeman tersely, ignoring Jonathan’s denial. And such was his manner that they came on, stumbling in the wavering torchlight along the rough bank until they came to an old black punt.
Bewildered, they boarded her, and the policeman, pulling on the chain, drew them slowly to the other side. Then after stumbling on again they came to the reed cutter, with its knives thrashing at the water, and, standing looking down at it, was another policeman. Turning, he said, ‘Well, you got them.’
‘They say they know nothing about it.’
‘Oh, no?’ The second policeman looked at Jonathan. ‘You still at school?’
‘Yes,’ said Jonathan.
‘Well, tell me by way of interest what you intend to be when you leave.’
Jonathan, looking from one man to the other through the beam of light, said after a moment, ‘An engineer, I hope.’
‘Well, that’s better than a burglar, and it explains your knowledge of machinery. But still I’d like to know how you picked the lock.’
‘Me! Pick a lock…? You’re mad.’
‘Now, now!’ The other policeman’s voice was sharp.
‘Well, you are, both of you. I tell you flatly we don’t know a thing about it.’
‘You’ve admitted swimming down to here.’
‘Yes. Yes. But I told you we couldn’t get near because of the reeds. Look, switch your light on to the river. Go on.’
When the policeman’s powerful torch flashed over the water, it revealed a wide expanse of floating reed, except around the immediate cutters where the water was clear.
The policemen looked at each other; then the first one said, ‘I see what he means, but—’ turning to Jonathan he ended, ‘that doesn’t say you couldn’t have come up the bank and got into her.’
‘How would I have picked the lock without some tool or other? I was swimming, remember.’
‘There’s plenty of bits of wire and odd things lying round on her,’ said the second policeman.
Jonathan ignored this statement and his silence told Malcolm that he was very angry, so in a quiet voice Malcolm made a suggestion to the policeman. ‘You could break the glass in the cabin window and get in her that way,’ he said.
‘We’re not breaking any glass, young man, if we can help it.’
The two policemen now moved away along the bank and their whispering was inaudible to the boys. Then the first man, coming back, said, ‘Well, if you can’t help us you can’t. But I’d better have your names and know where you’re off to tomorrow as I may want to talk to you again. This is a serious offence, you know.’
‘Well, we didn’t commit the offence,’ said Jonathan bitterly. ‘And whoever phoned you had more knowledge of it than any of us…Who was it phoned you, anyway?’
‘We don’t know that, we just got word from the station that some boys from a boat up the river had been tampering with the reed cutter and set it going.’
‘Well, if you got the person who phoned you’d likely get the one who did the job,’ put in Joe; and to this neither of the policemen made any comment,
but the second man said, ‘I’d better go into Ely and see if I can contact Bert Wilson and bring him out, while you get them across the river again.’
A short time later, when the policeman was about to leave them at the boat, he said, ‘You didn’t say where you’re off to tomorrow.’
‘We don’t rightly know yet. Perhaps to Denver Sluice, and then up the River Wissey.’
‘Ah well, there’s plenty of roads round that quarter, not like here. We’ll be able to pick you up if we want you. I’d advise you to stay around there. Now you’d better get back into bed, the lot of you.’
‘Thank you for nothing,’ muttered Joe as he entered the cabin. ‘Pick you up!’ he mimicked. ‘Makes you feel like a criminal. Stop it, man! Stop it!’ he pushed at Bill as he bounded from one to the other.
‘Lie down!’ said Jonathan as he hauled Bill up onto the bunk. Then sitting down beside him he looked at the other two, now sitting opposite, and said simply, ‘Well?’
‘It’s fishy,’ said Joe. ‘That’s what it is, fishy. Somebody’s trying to pin something on us. First sending us adrift, and now this. They want to make things so hot that we’ll give up the trip. That’s how I see it.’
And for a moment Jonathan, too, saw it that way, but his cautious nature made him say, ‘Don’t go off on that tack again. It’s likely one of the village fellows, as that Mr Leech said; perhaps he saw us swimming and thought it would be a lark.’
‘Yes, that could be,’ said Malcolm, looking at Joe. ‘I remember Uncle Tom saying a lot of the boys had their own territories for swimming and that they didn’t like anybody else butting in. And after all, we are butting in, I mean we people on the boats.’
There was another short silence; then Joe said suddenly, ‘About tomorrow. You said we were going up to Denver Sluice and that way…What about my letter? I thought we were going back to The Royal Oak where I could pick it up.’
‘I’d forgotten about that,’ said Jonathan softly now. ‘But he told us to stay up this end, and we’ll have to unless we want more trouble. But I tell you what. You could get off at The Ship Inn and walk up to the main road where there’s a bus that will take you near there. How about that?’
‘Yes…Yes, I could do that.’ Joe nodded.
‘Well, then,’ said Jonathan, yawning, ‘that’s settled. So, come on, let’s try again. We’ve had one night’s rest in three, and I for one am beginning to feel it. It seems that there’s a jinx on us or something.’
He was sorry the moment he had said it. It was enough to have one of that turn of mind aboard. He glanced at Joe and said, on a laugh now, ‘Bring us back some of those Cornish pasties Mrs Burgess does. Run all the way back with them so they’ll still be hot.’
‘I’ll charter a plane,’ said Joe.
The following morning Joe left The Mary Ann Shaughnessy to go to The Royal Oak to pick up his letter, and he never returned.
Five
Jonathan had dropped Joe off at the bottom of the Brandon and had made arrangements with him to pick him up again at some point opposite the entrance to the River Wissey. He reckoned that Joe should be back around dinner time, depending on the buses and how they ran. They would then explore the Wissey up past Hilgay and the sugar beet factory where, he understood, there were some wide lakes which originally had been quarries and, what was more to the point with a view to curtailing Bill’s antics, not often frequented.
At one o’clock The Mary Ann Shaughnessy was tied up in the main river opposite where the Wissey branched off. Jonathan had berthed her here because there was a roadway just over the bank and they could keep a lookout for the bus because, unless Joe was sitting on the upper deck, he would be unable to see the boat in the river.
When two o’clock came Malcolm said for the third time, ‘Well, I tell you, Jonathan, it wasn’t clear how you explained it. You said something about we might go up to Denver Sluice, and you know he was so taken up with getting his letter I bet he didn’t take in half of what you were saying…Look, let’s go up to Denver.’
At half past two Jonathan had made for Denver. Since they had first set out from Cambridge he had looked forward to seeing this great engineering feat. He had read all about Labely, the Swiss, who had constructed the miracle of engineering after the previous dam had collapsed in 1713, but all his reading hadn’t conveyed the awesome sight of the sluice, compared with which The Mary Ann Shaughnessy was like a floating leaf on the water. He would have liked nothing better than to have spent the rest of the day just looking at the dam, but after standing gazing down into the great well for some minutes in blank silence, Malcolm had urged, ‘Come on, Bill’s getting nervous. Look at him, he’s all bristles; he thinks we’re going through.’
‘Well, we wouldn’t be much use without the boat, would we?’ Jonathan gave a weak smile, then added, ‘Oh, I’d like to spend a day here.’
‘Well, we can always come back when we’ve picked up Joe. Come on.’
Jonathan turned and walked away, knowing that it wasn’t only Bill who was nervous of this great towering pile of iron and stone, but that Malcolm, too, didn’t like it.
After again going up river and berthing opposite the Wissey, they stood for a time in the roadway, watching and waiting; then they went along to a house and asked if anyone had seen a boy waiting about. But no; no-one had seen a boy of any sort.
On board again, they headed up the Wissey, oblivious now of the colourful banks where grew tall reeds, purple loosestrife and willowherb in profusion. And so they came to Hilgay, where a crowd of boys and girls were swimming in the river, some of them seeming to be standing up almost in the middle of it.
‘It looks like the local swimming pool,’ remarked Malcolm, and Jonathan answered tersely, ‘Well, local or otherwise, we won’t use it…look over there.’ He nodded to the side, to where three dogs were gambolling playfully together. ‘His nibs would soon break that up,’ he ended flatly.
Five minutes later Jonathan walked along the bank to where the children were swimming, and he called to them, ‘Have you noticed a boy round here’—he lifted his hand to simulate Joe’s height—‘black hair, thin, waiting about?’
The children called to each other now; ‘Anyone seen a boy waitin’ around, on the bridge or anywhere?’
No; no-one had seen a stranger …
It was five o’clock when Jonathan went to the phone, leaving Malcolm on board with Bill. When he got through to The Royal Oak Mrs Burgess answered him brightly. Oh, yes, the young lad had called just after ten this morning. And yes, there had been a letter for him. Was there anything wrong?
Jonathan explained to her that Joe hadn’t returned and she answered, ‘Oh well now, I would see to that because he’s had time to get to London and back, hasn’t he? Come to think of it, he looked a little depressed after he read his letter, and I gave him a bag of crisps and a pasty. But he didn’t eat them I noticed, just stuffed them in his pocket…It’s very worrying this. Now listen, if he doesn’t turn up within the next hour or so you’ll have to do something.’
‘Yes, yes, I will,’ Jonathan answered. ‘Thank you.’
When he returned to the boat he gazed at Malcolm for a moment before saying, ‘He got there, and got his letter. Mrs Burgess said he was depressed after he read it…What do you think?’
‘I know.’ Malcolm nodded slowly now. ‘I’d like to bet he’s gone home. I bet you a shilling, Jonathan, he’s gone home. Don’t you think you’d better phone and ask?…Is the phone very far away?’
‘The other end of the village, but that doesn’t matter. I’ll do that. Yes, I’ll do that.’
Again Jonathan was hurrying through the village, and when he got in touch with his home it was his father who answered the phone.
‘Oh, hello there, boy,’ he called, in his breezy fashion. ‘Nice to hear you. How’s things going?’
‘Father,’ said Jonathan immediately, ‘has Joe come home?’
‘Joe? Come home? Why should he?’
‘W
ell. Well, he went to The Royal Oak this morning and picked up a letter from his mother. This was around ten, and he hasn’t come back. Mrs Burgess said he seemed depressed so we thought he might have made for home.’
‘Good gracious! Look, hang on a minute; I’ll slip next door and make sure. Yet if he had come home he would surely have been in here.’
In the meantime, Jonathan had to keep supplying the phone with coins. Then Mr Crawford’s voice came again: it was grave-sounding now as he said, ‘No, he’s not there.’
‘What do you think I should do, Father?’
‘How long do you say he’s been away?’
‘He got off the boat at nine o’clock this morning.’
‘Are you sure you got your meeting places right?’
‘Yes, yes, I’m positive. But Malcolm thought that he might have got mixed up, so we’ve been to the places I mentioned to him before he left, Denver Sluice and Hilgay. We’re at Hilgay now.’
‘Well now, listen to me. What you must do right away is to go to the village police and explain the situation to them.’
‘But what if he turns up, we’ll look silly.’
‘It doesn’t matter about looking silly, boy.’ Mr Crawford was shouting. ‘You’ll look sillier if you wait until tomorrow and he doesn’t turn up.’
‘Yes. All right.’
‘And look; phone me later if you have any news. I won’t say anything to Joe’s granny as yet. His father is due back tomorrow; I hope Joe puts in an appearance before then as there’s enough trouble next door without any more being added to it.’
‘Yes, Father, I’ll go to the police now. By the way, how’s Mother and the girls?’
‘Oh, Mother’s all right. She’s in the garden at the moment and the girls are doing fine…You got her letter about Bill, I suppose?’
‘Yes, Father.’
‘Nice business that, I must say, appearing in court. Well, he’d better make the best of what time he has left. I’ll be sorry in a way…But more of that later. Now do as I’ve told you and do it quickly…Goodbye.’
Bill and The Mary Ann Shaughnessy Page 6