by Julia Jones
He couldn’t remember Skye and Granny having holidays. Not the sort where you met people. They used to go off in the camper van and park by woods and look at stately homes and things. Walk up hills. If they’d gone back ... to wherever it was ... couldn’t there maybe have been a chance that they’d have met the guy again?
Not ‘the guy’. This was – Hermann – his father!
“They tried to take you, Doh. As soon as you were fluttering, the invaders came. They said I couldn’t be your mother. Old Nokomis was your champion. All her fight and all her money. Then there was nothing left but us, still together.”
Skye didn’t do lying. Donny remembered when he’d overheard Rev. Wendy telling Gerald what a pain Granny Edith had been, spending everything she had on lawyers, refusing to let Leeds SS take him as a baby. No wonder there’d been no wild goose chases trying to re-trace the holiday, re-discover Hermann, tell him ...
“We were dancing in long lines. The chain was broken by shields and truncheons. Angry men with boots and helmets. Then Hermann was gone.”
“Where were you?”
“We were in the Northlands. With the people who were free. Hermann was ... Free.”
Her hands were telling their own story. She had loved this unknown bloke. Losing him had been one more tragedy in her unlucky life.
“You’re tired, Mum. So’m I. But thanks for letting me know. About my dad. About ... Hermann.” he kept trying out the name. “I bet he was a really great guy!”
“Hermann was a sailor. Like you, Doh.”
Skye put her arms round him once more and he hugged her back. A sailor. That was good.
Gold Dragon had set out the big brown teapot and a pile of bread and jam. The mud on Donny’s trousers had dried now – which was lucky as he and Skye had both forgotten what it was that they’d gone up on deck to do.
“I had a problem with my homework. I needed to ask Mum.”
This sounded a bit inadequate.
“To do with not having a dad. I needed one for Art.”
His great-aunt laughed like a barking seal. “That must be the reason why I’ve never learned to draw! My father was away for years. You were if you were in the Navy then. And there was boarding school. Did I ever tell you about the only week we were all going to take a holiday together – both parents and all five children? He got recalled by the Admiralty before we’d even begun storing the ship.”
“So what happened?”
“Oh, he and Mother marooned the lot of us and sailed off into the sunset while we stood waving on a desolate shore.”
Donny felt better now.
“Is it still okay if I go to the vicarage tomorrow? Anna gave Luke and Liam a tent for Luke’s birthday but they’re too scared to sleep out in it. I thought I could maybe help them pitch it in the garden and we could have a sleepover.”
“Borrow Vexilla if you’re going adventuring. The forecast’s north-easterly, fresh to moderate. You’ll have a stiff beat most of the way, but if you can bear to stay skulking in your bunk a bit later than usual, you’ll have the tide with you as far as Shotley.”
“You don’t mind if I’m away for a night? How about you, Mum?”
Skye looked uncertain but Great Aunt Ellen was full of jollity. She fetched a chart from the locker and spread it in front of her niece, tapping it significantly. She still couldn’t sign – the fact that her left hand was a hook made this almost impossible – but living and sailing together had brought the two of them onto the same wavelength.
Skye nodded. Donny had the impression that this was something they’d been planning for a while. He felt left out.
“Twenty-four hours shore leave for you, Sinbad – thirty-six if you want it. Nimblefingers and I are going to take this old lady for a turn around the bay. Batteries need recharging.”
Skye’s dark plaits swung forward as she leant over the chart, her look of uncertainty replaced by a gleam of interest. Gold Dragon was enthusiastic.
“There’s a spot of reconnaissance we’ve been waiting to do and if you’re not with us the SS bureau-rats won’t have any reason to complain. I’ll get the dinghy up in davits before we turn in.”
“Where’re you going?”
“The Desolate Shores,” she replied, tucking the chart away. “Now cut along and scrub those ducks of yours and I’ll give you the lat and long after supper.”
She was looking at his trousers again. These were school trousers. They’d got to be clean by Monday morning and no-one wanted to waste this weekend taking trips to the laundrette.
“Aye, aye sir!” he said, saluting smartly.
“Back of the hand, Sinbad, back of the hand. You’re not in the Army here. We don’t want to see your tarry palm.”
The blackness on his hands wasn’t tar, of course. It was more black mud, cracking across his lifeline between fingers and thumb where his hand had been curled round the mug of tea. Donny retreated hastily.
CHAPTER FOUR
Scouting
River Orwell, Suffolk, Saturday 14 April 2007
It wasn’t warm next day when Donny set out to sail Vexilla down the River Stour and up the Orwell to Pin Mill. The sun was out, making the waves jump and glitter, but the wind had the biting freshness that he’d come to associate with a northeasterly. The water would be cold and he’d have to wade a bit if he wanted to leave Vexilla far down the hard for later.
He’d squeezed into an old wetsuit of Xanthe’s so he could get himself and all his stuff ashore without getting totally frozen. Vexilla was an open boat, more than five metres long. She was shallow draught but heavy. You couldn’t push her up and down the mud as easily as Lively Lady. Xanthe and Maggi were away with their parents, racing.
He wondered where the boys would like to go. Anna had bought an outboard motor so they didn’t risk being late for vicarage meals. Gerald and Wendy hadn’t really caught on to the idea of alternative wind-and-tide timetables.
He could hear Strong Winds’ diesel engine beginning its powerful tgg-tgg-tggg behind him. His mum and Gold Dragon would be winching up the first of her two anchors. It wouldn’t be long before they passed him, heading down the river, then out to sea. He guessed they’d motor this first stretch dead into the wind. It wasn’t the junk’s favourite point of sailing and his great-aunt was edgy this morning, eager to press on.
She and Skye were planning to spend the next two complete tides somewhere near the camping place that she remembered from her childhood, the place her parents had marooned them. How much would it have changed? The map looked much the same – a half dozen marshy islands surrounded by saltings, a maze of drying creeks and a handful of disused quays and farm landings only accessible at high water.
She’d probably take a long board out to sea first, get some air into her lungs. He knew that she found their river life stifling, longed for blue water and nights far away from the sight or smell of the land. She was still Polly Lee at heart, single-handed, round-the-world sailor.
All the same, he was glad his mum was with her. Great Aunt Ellen was skilful and intrepid but he had noticed her getting a bit tired in the last couple of months – a bit pale beneath the wrinkles. Strong Winds was getting older too and she hadn’t been built for a North Sea winter. Her woods swelled or contracted as the weather varied: pulleys or hatches stuck and needed a good biff to free them. Skye was quick with her hands and she was strong too.
He realised he’d completely forgotten to tell his great-aunt about Toxic’s threat to send out a fumigation team. They’d have a wasted journey. Good.
Donny waved as Strong Winds came past. For a moment, ridiculously, he wanted to cheer.
The junk looked stately and splendid in the morning sun. Her black silk dragon pennant streamed behind her; touches of colour and ornamental gold leaf glistened against her white upper works and black hull. Even without her sails up, she was an exotic and somehow gallant sight as she drew away into the distance down the slate-blue English river.
Vexilla w
as sailing close-hauled, her high bow slicing keenly through the waves. She’d been a dull white plastic when they’d first discovered her, half hidden in the nettles on the forgotten fringes of a boat-builder’s yard. Luke and Skye had persuaded each other to paint her navy and crimson, with hawk’s eyes staring on either side of her prow.
Time to bear away. There was the red-and-white threemasted schooner moored close to Bloody Point, at the end of the Shotley Peninsula. At first he’d thought she was as exciting as a vessel from a classic story – he imagined her as the Hispaniola from Treasure Island. Now he knew he’d got the wrong book.
His skin between his shoulder-blades prickled with wariness and he felt a bit chilly under his armpits. This Hispaniola wasn’t a sailing ship at all. Gold Dragon had identified her as a former Royal Navy gunboat but she couldn’t remember what she’d been called then. Or she said she couldn’t. He didn’t know whether it mattered.
Sometimes he worried that it might.
The identification couldn’t be wrong. Ellen had been the youngest of five children in a naval family and had learned to tell her frigates from her freighters almost before she’d learned to talk. When her older brothers and sisters had been away at boarding school or on long summer holidays with their friends, Ellen and her mother had snatched moments with their father in Shotley and Dartmouth, Malta and Singapore.
Much later she had chosen to become an Australian citizen and later still she’d settled in Shanghai but her true home, if she had one, other than Strong Winds, was somewhere hidden amongst the remote islands of the South China Sea. Somewhere at the top end of the Java Strait.
If Gold Dragon said she’d seen the Hispaniola in those waters it was beyond dispute. Donny had the oddest feeling that there was something more. More than just seeing. But no amount of clever conversational manoeuvring had brought him any closer to finding out. Gold Dragon either couldn’t remember or didn’t want to.
And now the mystery ship was here. Perfectly positioned to keep watch on the comings and goings of two rivers, two major ports and the Harwich Harbour entrance. She looked as lifeless as she always did. That was because all her lights and portholes had been painted over, her doors were padlocked and her deck was daubed with notices warning people to keep away.
Donny hoped that they had. If there was anyone on board today – such as the small and violent man they called the Tiger – they’d have seen Strong Winds, turning south, setting her creamy sails and heading gaily out to sea.
No-one was doing anything they shouldn’t. He was going to his former foster home: his great-aunt was hoping to rediscover some childhood memories. It was even okay with the Care Plan, probably.
There was no visible movement on the schooner. No tender lay alongside. She flew no flags. Donny kept to the far side of the harbour for as long as he could. He hoped that his mother and great-aunt had slipped past unobserved.
As Donny rounded Shotley Spit and set his course up the River Orwell, he found that he and Vexilla had a struggle on their hands. Several times he was tempted to give up, take down his sails and switch on the outboard motor. Each long up-river tack was followed by depressing boards across the current where Vexilla was swept sideways almost faster than she could forge ahead.
They plugged on together, he didn’t quite know why, until at last they rounded Collimer Point and he had to perch himself high on her gunwale as she heeled over and tore along, water foaming against her bows, the sail almost heavier than he could hold. When Donny had finally completed the business of landing his belongings, anchoring off the end of Pin Mill hard and wading ashore to tramp up the lane to the vicarage, he felt breathless, satisfied – and ravenous.
Lunch at the vicarage was long cleared and the kitchen wiped to its usual state of hygienic barrenness. Lottie, Vicky and Anna had gone to Ipswich; Rev. Wendy was in her study and Gerald was hunched uncomfortably on the sofa trying to do the crossword.
Luke and Liam were scowling at one another, shoulders hunched, bottom lips stuck out. Donny’s heart sank. They couldn’t stay safe in the same room when they were like this and they couldn’t leave one another alone. He made Gerald a herbal tea while both of the younger boys tried to tell him what the other had done wrong. Then they both got angry all over again and started shoving each other.
Donny took the boys into the kitchen and made hot Ribena, the kind that’s seriously bad for your teeth. He dished out biscuits and asked again what had happened – though he could have guessed. Luke had been trying to pitch his new tent on his own when Liam had kicked his football into it. The football had been muddy and the tent had collapsed. There’d been swear words and a fight, then Rev. Wendy had lost her temper and banned them from going outside at all until they could be trusted to behave sensibly.
Donny wished he was back on Strong Winds.
“Tell you what,” he said, after all his sailing suggestions had been rejected, “we need a bigger challenge than a night in the garden. I’m going to brave Rev. Wendy in her den and see whether she can’t fix for us to camp somewhere else. Somewhere not in a garden. She’s the vicar of six parishes. She should know.”
Rev. Wendy, taken by surprise in the midst of composing a sermon on the Importance of Faith and Saying Yes to God, suggested somewhere immediately.
At the downstream end of the Pin Mill anchorage was a little beach where Donny had sometimes landed in Lively Lady. Behind it was a long tussocky field that sloped down to the dyke and the seawall and a plain white cottage called Swallow’s End. This was the home of Mrs Everson. She was a small, round lady who wore an olive-green felt beret and had the most extraordinary habit of popping up exactly when you needed her.
Mrs Everson owned the field as well as the cottage. It would be perfect.
Rev. Wendy began to worry. What if it rained? What would they eat? A fire would be dangerous. Who would look after them?
“We wanted to look after ourselves,” said Donny. “That was sort of the point.”
Wendy went through to the living room to consult Gerald.
“What is it now?” he grumbled. “I did hope I’d be allowed a little peace this afternoon. It’s the Guardian Prize Crossword.”
“Yes, dear. And I have three sermons to write – well, three versions of the same sermon. What suits Erwarton will never quite do for Harkstead and will certainly cause offence in Shotleygate. Then there’s a churchwardens’ meeting at Collimer and not enough foliage for the flower arrangers at Freston. The boys want to camp for the night in Mrs Everson’s field.”
“They’ll have to wait until their stepmother comes home, won’t they. They’re not our responsibility anymore.”
Luke gave a gasp and went running upstairs. Wendy hurried back to her sermon but, if Gerald thought that had ended the discussion, he was wrong.
Luke was back, holding out a mobile phone.
“Let’s get on and ring ’em. Lottie’s got her phone with her so Anna said we could borrow hers. And she showed me how to text.”
“Oh really ... you’d better use the land-line. If you must. I don’t like those things – too many micro-waves.”
“Lottie’ll be cool. I know she will.”
Gerald looked back at his newspaper. Sighed. Then he stood up.
“When you’ve spoken to your stepmother,” he said, walking over to the telephone, “perhaps you could pass me to young Anna. There’s a clue here that I can’t quite get ...”
“Maybe you oughter try texting. Them micro-waves won’t hurt you.”
“ ’Cos you’re too old!” put in Liam. It was rude but sort of friendly.
“I can’t text. I don’t know how. I only want to speak to her.”
The brothers grinned at each other.
“As long as we get to talk to Lottie first.”
Lottie said yes at once. Then she asked if she could speak to Rev. Wendy, to thank her for arranging the expedition.
Lottie was clever.
They fetched Wendy from her study ag
ain. Watched her change from annoyed to surprised and then rather pleased. After all, it had been her idea.
If Mrs Everson agreed, said Lottie, the boys should collect their gear and set out immediately. There was no need for them to put Gerald and Wendy to any trouble at all – if perhaps they could borrow the wheelbarrow? She’d already bought a single use barbecue which she would take down to the field for their supper and she’d call at the farm shop on her way home from Ipswich and buy enough burgers, sausages and baps for everyone.
“I’ll make everyone’s supper out of doors – we’ll invite Mrs Everson as well. What an inspiration, Wendy! Oh, and Anna and I noticed some spectacular pollinated catkins at the top of the lane so we picked two armfuls and delivered them directly to Freston. They said to thank you very much.”
Then Anna came to the phone and Gerald read out the clue.
“OLD SCOUTMASTER’S ILL THEN HEALTHY AFTER OPEN SURGERY (5,6) Second letter’s A, last letter’s L. Frightfully hard. I don’t suppose you’ve got any ideas? Just thought I’d ask.”
“Even you can get this one, Gerald,” he heard her say. He could tell she was trying not to laugh. “Think about it ... It’s so obvious. ‘old Scoutmaster’ – that’s the definition. Then try some other words for ‘ill’ – BAD, maybe? And you could have WELL instead of ‘healthy’ – ?”
Gerald was looking down at the newspaper.
“Then all you’ve got to do is perform surgery on ‘open’ – you know, swap the letters about – and then the word ‘after’ tells you what order the clue goes in. Simple isn’t it?”
He was fumbling for his dictionary.
“Hello, Gerald? Come on! You can get it – even you ... THINK ... whose centenary is it?”
“Pick me, pick me!!” yelled Liam.
“It’s SCOUTS!” Luke couldn’t wait. “We had an assembly. They’ve been a hundred years. Sounds wicked.”
Slowly Gerald fitted the letters into their squares.