by John Luxton
“Why the need for warm clothes, it’s summer, where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
It was quite a drive. They took the M62, sweeping over the Pennines and onto the M6. The motorway was no place to have the hood down but even with it up the wind noise was intrusive and as the miles passed Joel sunk back into a part of himself that he had only discovered since his exit from his old world into the new. A place where he was able to relinquish all responsibility for himself and what may or may not happen.
Eventually they came around yet another hillside and he saw a wide estuary laid out, and beyond the sea. Joel had not been here before but he recognised that they were on the edge of the Lake District. They followed a single-track road that brought them out onto an embankment. The estuary was muddy and grassy in parts, bisected by a long pier and criss-crossed with water filled gullies. It was the Irish Sea. Getting out of the car and stretching Joel discovered that it smelt different to the North Sea.
“Is that Scarfell?” asked he looking across the bay at the peaks.
Sue nodded and indicated that he should carry the shopping bags. The tramped along a track that wove between seawater inlets and grass covered dunes until they reached their destination. Sue had been leading the way and she stopped suddenly causing Joel to bump into her.
“Careful,” she said. Then she stepped aside so he could see past her.
“Wow!” was all he said. “Is that yours?”
It looked like a long lean sailing barge, built from timber, painted deep blue and adorned with polished brass fittings, not sitting in the water but high and dry on a grassy plateau.
“It’s an Admiral’s Barge,” she replied with pleasure in her voice.
“My father sailed her here from Falmouth twenty five years ago. Then spent the next twenty-four years fitting her out; what do you think?”
Joel took in the view, “It’s amazing,” he managed to say.
“Yes she is,” said Sue. “Let’s go aboard.”
“She has a v-shaped keel,” Sue explained as they later unpacked the provisions.
“If we dig the sides free of the embankment and prop the boat with sleepers we should be able to float her free on the next high tide. It is a risk though. If the swell comes in too fast or we don’t take the props away correctly she could break her back.”
“Why would you want to do that?” asked Joel.
“I promised my dad before he died; he hated the idea of her being landlocked forever. He was always talking about ‘being ready for the voyage’ but then he got sick. He practically lived here after we lost mum.”
“And where will you sail her?” asked Joel.
“I thought maybe you could help with that.”
“Maybe,” he answered, a novel thought at once gaining traction.
“But first I need you to dig, to dig and prop all around the keel. We have a week before there is a sufficiently high tide.”
“You want me to stay here and do that?” said Joel warming to the idea and nodding. “It sounds like bloody hard work, though.”
“Oh right. One man with a spade and six tons of mud, I don’t think so, ducky. No, in the village here, over beyond the pier,” she pointed vaguely in the direction they had come from. He didn’t recall having seen any habitation at all; too busy looking at the scenery.
“Anyway,” she continued. “A good friend of my dad’s lives there and he will do all the work; with his JCB.”
“Right.”
“So you will be helping Joe.”
“Joe?” said Joel.
* * *
He stayed on the “Second Chance” all week and worked with, in fact with two men from the village, Joe and his cousin. They did most of the work and Joel had watched as every day at low tide they had started in with their digging and propping until the barge was pronounced ‘floatable’. Getting her along the gully and out to sea was obviously going to be another matter; fraught with it’s own set of imperatives.
High tide was due at eight thirty seven that evening, and as he waited for Sue to arrive a thought began to colonise his mind. Although he was supposed to stay with the boat in case the wind changed and a swell came in behind the concrete pier that bisected the bay the idea was winning. He just had to know.
It was a half hour walk to the village; he ran it in eleven minutes. The grocery store was closed but a light was burning so he rang the bell. After a few moments Maurice, the owner, came to the door; he had a napkin tucked into his shirtfront and was obviously half way through his supper, but he smiled when he saw Joel.
“Hey, I thought tonight was the big night?”
“Sorry Maurice, I really need to make a phone call and it can’t wait.”
“Ok, come in.”
Joel’s hand was trembling as he dialled the number and listened to the clicks. Then there was a short burst of static before the voice..
“Vous êtes bien sur le répondeur de Mai Teillard. Laissez un message après le bip.”
He slowly put the phone back in its cradle and quietly left the shop. And then ran as fast as he could back to the bay. Howling occasionally at the sky. It was a strong breeze coming off the sea and it seemed to be pushing him back; rather than fight it he relaxed and leaned into the wind, finding buoyancy by doing so. When he arrived Sue was waiting.
“Is everything OK?”
“Sure is, let’s go float your boat.”
Over the week a simplified plan had emerged; if the flood tide provided sufficient lift under the keel then they would use the engine to reverse gently off the bank. The sand around the propeller had been cut away and loosened in other key areas. Also, as no grand voyage was scheduled for tonight; they would simply sail out into the bay and around to a deep-water mooring on the southern side of the pier. So once the Perkins diesel had been fired up, and found to be running smoothly, there was nothing to do except wait for the moon and the ocean to decide if tonight they would together embrace or reject the hopes of Joel and Sue, who were by now sitting on the deck drinking fine Islay malt.
Joel raised his glass to the sky. “To la luna,” he said. But it was Venus that flickered above them. The only sound was the lapping of the tide against the bows. After a while they felt a tremor through the timbers. The Second Chance was moving.
The next day his mind was alive with possibilities: Estuaries, coastal waters and inland waterways; all these were navigable for the Second Chance but Joel wanted to sail to London to try and save the Alembic Valise. Sue however was sceptical. They had spent the day checking the boat over for leaks; there were none and now Sue was getting ready to drive back to her house by confluence and leave him here on the newly floated boat.
“Once an old boat goes down that is pretty much it, cost wise it makes no sense,” she had sensibly remarked.
“Sue, for some reason I have to go and look. And also I need to see if the people I left behind are around.”
“Why wouldn’t they be?” said Sue.
“It all depends on what side of the river we decide to cast our anchor,” said Joel cryptically, then immediately felt guilty for not trying to at least trying to explain.
“What I mean, Sue is that I have this project that is, has been occupying me for a while and it’s at critical point. The trouble is that there are people who mean to do me harm; I’ve become a beacon for trouble in fact. So firstly I want you to be aware of that and the risk involved of being around me. That’s why I haven’t contacted anyone; I don’t want to put them in danger. Additionally it means that I cannot just breeze into town and pick up the threads of my life and work. I have to, kind of slide in on a rising tide, the river gives me the advantage of stealth; somehow. It isn’t something I fully understand, but I am operating on instinct at this point and it is all I have.”
Sue said she understood that he felt safe on the water; that she did too, and that together they would take that journey to wherever they needed to sail to.
“Tomorrow is M
onday and I have to work next week, but I’ll be back.” As Sue stood on the pier the sun was setting behind her shoulder. “I have two weeks holiday coming up; I’ll be back next weekend.”
Joel felt enormously moved by her commitment to something that she had taken entirely on trust. He thought for the hundredth time about Buster dying in her arms.
“Will you wait for me, captain?” she asked, making him smile.
But Joel chose to ignore her question; instead he asked one of his own. “When Buster licked your face and you woke up, do you think that perhaps you awoke into a different world? Does it seem that way at all?”
“Perhaps,” was all she said. Then she turned and walked slowly to the car. He watched as her headlights cut tracers through the dusk and then were lost in the rise of the hills.
Chapter 48
Cuthbert knew the way. It was not the only way but he had found over the years that it worked for him, none of that ‘crazy voodoo shit’. Fuck, no. He walked the curve and he stepped lightly between worlds. It was as simple as that: Now here, now there, now someplace else. I must have been born this way, he thought.
He patted the breast pocket of his coat, then reached inside and took out a silver plated cigar tube, extracted a corona, cut the end with his bean cutter, lit up, and with staccato ignition inducing sucking, drew upon the cigar, finally letting out a cloud of white smoke that quickly dispersed in the morning air. Cuthbert then took a drink of coffee and looked across the table at the man sat opposite him.
“Seraphim, my dear man, let me be clear.” He spoke softly but emphatically. “I am retired, and I thought you were too. How’s the pie?”
“Terrific, you should try some. And I’m just giving you the picture of things. And yes I wondered.” He brushed crumbs from his shirtfront. “If you had any, you know, advice.”
Cuthbert was looking around and caught the eye of the waitress. She came over.
“Another espresso and what he had.” He said pointing towards Seraphim’s now empty plate.
Whilst Cuthbert waited neither of them spoke. The outside dining area of the Soho restaurant was busy with media types pretending to be pitching ideas or tweaking their screenplays on their tablets. But they were mainly just checking each other out for kudos gathering or sex. Neither Cuthbert nor Seraphim garnered any points on either count.
“Your Baba is goin nuts,” said Seraphim after Cuthbert’s pie and coffee had arrived. His slice was much larger than the one that had been served to Seraphim.
“He isn’t my Baba,” said Cuthbert
“You know what I mean,” replied Seraphim.
“And anyway it isn’t my area of expertise. It’s expected that things would get a bit War of the Worlds prior to some kind of resolution.”
“This is more like Bodycount.
Cuthbert gave him a blank look.
“It’s a video game, a violent one. Look you know the girl’s father; Detective Z?” said Seraphim
“Yes of course. He came to see me, a couple of times in fact, I told him about the Blake Organisation trying to frame the writer by dumping that body next to his boat. He didn’t seem entirely convinced at first, then I saw him a year later and by then he was obsessively trying to ‘get to the bottom of this conspiracy’. I remember him saying that. He must be having a tough time with his daughter going missing. Seems like a nice guy, for a cop.”
“Whatever,” said Seraphim who was beginning to feel short changed in the pie department.
Cuthbert looked up from working his fork into the crust of the peach pie then pushed his plate away.
“I shouldn’t be eating this shit. Do you know I weigh exactly the same as I did when I was twenty-one.” He glared at the pie.
“You look good Cuthbert, you really do, but our project is under the threat; Baba’s trying to snuff the writer, if he can find him that is.”
“I thought Agim had all that in hand?”
“He does, but he is a little…” Seraphim paused. Cuthbert was unsure if for effect or just to find the right word; one beat, two beats, three beats. “Under resourced,” said Seraphim, completing his sentence finally.
“And?” said Cuthbert following the bait.
“I remember when I was a child my mother telling me about Saint Seraphim of Sarvo. ‘Serpent - we trample on your head’ was his catchphrase apparently. Do you like that?” Cuthbert smiled and nodded. “But to get back to the Detective Z, he’s now just plain Mr Z because he got fired and now he’s been stumbling around trying to find the daughter.”
“So what?” said Cuthbert.
“We have someone close to Baba who has made contact with Mr Z; together I believe they could deliver some firepower to Agim. Because I truly believe that it’s the only thing this sonofabitch understands.”
“You may have a point,” said Cuthbert, standing up and throwing a twenty-pound note on the table. “Let’s walk a while.”
Nobody watched them leave. The young urbanites on the surrounding tables were still too engrossed in their trending, tweeting or face-time to even notice. Seraphim had parked on the top level of a multi-story; they took the lift and then emerged into bright sunlight. They stood by the parapet wall and took in the cityscape.
“Hey I never asked you,” said Seraphim suddenly. Cuthbert looked at him calmly and then nodded imperceptibly. “The suitcase and the ‘mystery benefactor’ thing, what was all that about?”
“It was for Electra,” Cuthbert answered without hesitation.
“How’s that?” asked Seraphim.
“Well, sometimes a loved one can send messages to those still living, I call it angelic intervention; I suppose another way of putting it is that there are voices that must be heard. Very often…” Cuthbert trailed off, then sighed and shook his head. “…Sometimes,” he continued. “Sometimes things are there to be clearly seen but it takes another person’s eye to reveal the truth.”
“Oh,” said Seraphim. “I see.”
“No you don’t. But I will tell you about it one day; I know how you loved her.”
Cuthbert then did an unexpected thing; he reached out and put an arm around Seraphim’s shoulder in a kind of half hug. They stood on the roof of the car park looking out across the rooftops for a while, neither man speaking.
Chapter 49
Baba was alone, reading his emails in bed, propped up on a dozen pillows, the light from the computer screen turning his face into a scary mask in the unlit room. One particular item had got his complete and undivided attention; he read the transcript for a second time.
Jada: It’s going to be a launch party, no ifs or buts. This has to be a media event.
Other: Well where’s it happening?
Jada: Flash crowd deal. No one knows until the last minute, then they get summoned via mobile device.
Other: Yes, but we need to know because otherwise how can we organise it?
Jada: Well of course. Duh!
Other: And?
Jada: A flotilla of boats will travel upstream along the Thames, picking up people at various piers along the way.
Other: Well OK.
Baba read the text yet again; one of his guys had been hacking into Jada’s mobile phone. There was virtually nothing of interest, but they had somehow intercepted both sides of a SMS conversation and now he felt his suspicions had been confirmed; she was up to something and it almost certainly had not been part of her duties for Hammerfall Productions, and even though she had now resigned Baba had a nose for betrayal. He picked up his phone to instruct his assistant to stay on it; all he needed was a date and time then he and a few friends would be gate crashing this exclusive ‘media event’.
Chapter 50
Joel had set sail a month past; for the first week Sue and he had navigated the admirals barge through the inland waterways of England. At first awkwardly and with great care through the many locks and tunnels of the industrial north, and then on into the midlands where Sue had left to get back to her work and Joel had
continued. Slowly, because he could only operate as a single man crew in this way; having to wait for assistance very often at the more tricky locks; but serenely as he and the blue barge glided ever closer to the Thames.
As the days had passed Joel had the feeling that he was truly navigating between worlds; to the extent that when he did speak or wave to a fellow traveller on the watery byways, he felt was greeting perhaps another pilgrim travelling from one distant world to another. Lost in a great beyond but each contributing to a purposeful movement of mind and vessel between the towns and fields of the ancient landscape.
But then the thought of arriving in London itself took over his mind; and not as before when such thoughts were weighed down by anxiety and dread. This time he saw ahead in his minds eye a city of hope. Where the layered history of its inhabitants over the centuries past, had woven an ever-morphing construct. A whispered voice was saying to him – ahead there are a million stories, a million outcomes, a million pathways, a million turns of the tide.
The tide; Joel had begun to miss the tide as he had travelled through the heart of the country. It seemed to him that the landlocked towns he passed were disadvantaged by not being connected to the sea and this increased his wish to be once again in the tidal Thames where twice daily the detritus of those million stories was washed away and twice daily the healing waters of the oceans reached deep into the centre of the alembic.
The breeze was non-existent as Joel approached the final lock of his journey; lock 101 where the Grand Union Canal joins the Thames. He had had to book a slot because the exit was only navigable for two hours on either side of high tide and as he approached he saw there was a queue of at least twenty boats waiting up ahead. He slid into a mooring slot and went below, made a sandwich, then sat quietly on the on deck eating it and trying to recall a dream from the previous night; but could not summon forth anything. Drizzle was in the air as the boats ahead began to line up to enter the lock.