Firefly Gadroon

by Jonathan Gash

  ‘Thank God.’ I tried to swallow and be plausible. ‘Inspector. Look, this’ll sound unusual—’

  ‘Who is it, please?’

  ‘Lovejoy. You know, the—’

  ‘Antique dealer.’ His voice went funny. ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘Listen, Maslow. Get help to Drummer. Please. Now. You’ve got radios in your cars, haven’t you? A squad car or something—’

  ‘Take it easy.’

  ‘No, for Christ’s sake!’ I screeched, almost weeping. If he’d been here I’d have strangled the thick bastard. ‘Help Drummer.’ I began to babble. ‘Please, Maslow. Just send one copper. Now.’

  ‘What is this, Lovejoy? Are you pissed?’

  ‘No. Honestly.’ I struggled for control. ‘Please, Inspector. A squad car.’

  ‘Drummer’s that old donkeyman, isn’t he? Where are you?’

  I told him. ‘I’m still three miles off. I’ve only got my bike. Hurry, for God’s—’

  ‘Hold it.’ The terrifying tones of smug incompetence oozed over the wire. ‘On what evidence are you asking me to send a squad car out?’

  ‘Because I’m sure they’re doing Drummer!’ I yelled, dancing with rage.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I don’t know!’

  ‘Has somebody asked you to pass this message on?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then where is Drummer now?’

  ‘Where he always is.’ It was too much. ‘On the sands.’ I said again brokenly, ‘Please, Maslow. I’ll do anything—’

  ‘Let’s get this straight, Lovejoy.’ He was enjoying himself, I realized with horror. Actually enjoying playing with me like a cat with a mouse. ‘You are miles away. Yet suddenly you take it in your head to summon police assistance, alleging that a senile sand pedlar is being assaulted by persons unknown, on no evidence at all?’ The seconds ticked away while the berk gave me all this crap.

  ‘Please, Inspector.’ I even tried to smile. Pathetic. ‘Please. It’ll only take you a couple of seconds—’

  ‘Not for wildgoose chases, Lovejoy—’

  ‘I’ll pay for the fucking petrol!’ I yelled.

  ‘Look, Lovejoy,’ the creep said. I recognized the boot in his tone. ‘Why not pedal over there and have a chat with old Drummer? Then phone in and—’

  I gave up. ‘Maslow,’ I said brokenly. ‘Remember this call, that’s all. Write it down. Time, place, date.’

  I dropped the receiver and hurtled off again. My chest was sore and my legs felt cased in tin but I made fair speed. The trouble was I felt late, late, too late by days.

  Autumn had really come to the estuary. Boats were laid up all along the hard and there was hardly a soul on the staithe, a young couple strolling home and a lounger or two. Joe’s other lad was nowhere to be seen near his oyster beds. Just my luck. The tide was on the turn from low. A couple of boats were already stirring on the mudflats. The sailing club’s light was still not on, so their bar was still shut. Not yet five. And only four cars on the club forecourt, nobody about. No help there.

  ‘Seen Drummer?’ I called out to one old bloke sitting with his dog on a bench.

  ‘Eh?’

  I ignored the gormless old fool and pedalled on, down the gravel as long as I could keep going, then jumped off when it turned to sticky mud and stumbled across the sea-marsh towards Drummer’s hut. It hadn’t seemed so far off the other day. I took no notice of the wet but kept going in a straight line as near as possible, occasionally floundering on my knees and having to push myself up with my hands. Once I glanced over to Joe Poges’s lookout point but the idle sod wasn’t there when he was needed.

  I reached Drummer’s hut like a monster from the deep, breathlessly slithering up the slight bank to Germoline’s shelter. No sign of either of them. The hut inside was the same as the other day except for a pile of green samphire on the rickety table. It’s a sea-marsh plant East Anglians nosh as a vegetable. Maybe Drummer had gone collecting samphire. I knew he sometimes took sacks of the stuff to market.

  ‘Drummer!’ I bawled, like a fool. I could see for miles, much further than I can shout.

  Outside, the marshes looked dead. Wainwright’s smoke was smudging the whole sky to the north, looming out to sea. Looking inland towards the main staithe you could see tracks where I’d chased across. I leaned against the hut, sweating and panting, wondering if Maslow was right but knowing he wasn’t. Tracks. If I’d left tracks maybe Drummer and Germoline did too. A donkey can’t tiptoe, that’s for sure. But the sea was coming in and sea covers footprints in mud.

  I clambered up the side of Germoline’s lean-to shelter and, shuddering in every shagged muscle, pulled myself on the shed roof. Like an idiot, I grasped the iron chimney for steadiness and burnt my hand on the hot metal. It made me squawk. Wobbling, I rose flat-footed and gazed over the sea marshes. The roof creaked. If I so much as moved I would go through into the hut below.

  It’s surprising the difference a few feet in height makes to what you can see. Facing me was the staithe, several small inlets now running with the rising tide and the boats foresting the main estuary. The whole of the foreshore was now empty of people, only a couple of birds shovelling in the mud. The most seaward of the oyster beds was now almost under water. Breathlessly I wobbled flat-footed through ninety degrees and balanced feebly, arms out, while I took in that quarter. I was now looking south along the coast. A trio of distant sails showed where the last of the yachts raced on the incoming tide for the Blackwater’s swollen inlet a few miles off. A tanker’s flat line lay on the sea horizon. And that was all, apart from two small lads digging for sand worms a mile away where some bungalow gardens came down to the shallows.

  Another dithering shuffle round on the frail roof in a quarter turn to face directly out to sea. A spready wobble and I straightened up slowly – and saw Drummer on the dunes maybe a quarter of a mile away.

  ‘Drummer,’ I bawled.

  He was huddled in a mound. If I hadn’t caught sight of Germoline standing forlornly with her painted cart I might have missed him even then. From the hut, the bare muddy promontory, laced by scores of small tidal rivulets, extends into the elbow of one of the sea’s curved reaches beyond which is this muddy dune. It stands quite offshore, and is only slightly domed. Most tides cover it. Germoline was over the low hump. Somebody had left her on the seaward side, sure that Drummer wouldn’t get up and come home. An ugly thought. I yelled again.

  ‘Help! Joe Poges!’ I almost bawled my lungs up. What the hell was that panicky message they always shout on the pictures? ‘Mayday! Mayday!’ I howled. A seagull rose and hung, swirling gently in the air above me. It didn’t even glance my way, the rotten pig. Surely to God, I prayed desperately, those drunken slobs in the yacht club would have their bloody bar open by now. It must be already gone five o’clock. Who the hell ever heard of a sailors’ bar opening late?

  I slid down the sloping roof and tumbled on the flat bit of ground. Now I was practically at sea level I could no longer see Drummer or Germoline. The clever bastards, I thought as I started running towards the water’s edge. Cleverer than me, because I’d forgotten to take some mark to guide me exactly towards Drummer. I glanced despairingly round, then waded into the cold sea now flooding into the creek, and hoping I was going to land up reasonably near where Drummer lay. I waded with arms out like a scarecrow’s for balance and going a bit sideways on against the force of the running sea.

  It was probably only a few minutes but I seemed to be wading for hours. I kept shouting, ‘Drummer, Drummer! It’s Lovejoy. I’m coming,’ but in the finish I gave up and concentrated on making landfall – well, dunefall. Eventually I managed to pull myself on to a dune heaped with thin spiky grass and gasped a bit before compelling my legs to move again. There wasn’t much time. At high tide there would be only a tuft or two of grass above the water. All the rest would be horribly immersed, deep below the North frigging Sea, with me and Drummer and Germoline swirling deep underneath if I didn’t watch it
. Moaning with terror, I scrabbled to the central mound and almost tumbled over Drummer, right on him. Germoline gave a brief bray, maybe of alarm at the sight of this dishevelled hulk looming from the sea. I’m never very presentable at the best of times. At the moment I could have put the fear of God into anyone.

  ‘Drummer.’ I flopped down and tried to turn him over. ‘It’s me. Lovejoy.’

  Somebody had knocked him about, rough and dirty. There was dirty blood, brownish, on the sand. His tatty garb was covered in blotches of blood to which sand clung. He still clutched a handful of samphire. Germoline’s cart was half full of the stuff. I heard him exhale.

  ‘Lovejoy? It were Dev . . .’

  ‘Oh Christ, Drummer.’

  I rose and yelled for help again towards the shore. Nobody stirred. The yacht club’s bar was lit now – it bloody well would be now it was out of reach. And Joe’s beacon lamp was blinking, but I couldn’t recall if it always did that anyway. ‘Mayday,’ I bawled, incoherent with impotent rage.

  I asked stupidly, ‘Drummer. Can you walk?’ He lay motionless, unconscious. What first aid do you do for a going-over? I’d learned the drowning bit at school, but what’s the use? The sea reach was spreading. When I’d started out the biggest dune had been all of a couple of hundred yards long, and maybe half that wide. Now it had shrunk ominously to about thirty wide and eighty long. ‘Oh Jesus,’ I moaned. ‘We’re goners.’ I’d have to swim for it. The channel between us and the promontory looked too deep to wade now. Germoline would drown before we’d got halfway. For a second I stood helplessly watching the spreading black-green rising water. Its speed was incredible. From a quiet calm reach it had swelled into a fast-flowing mass pouring inland. Within minutes the whole chain of sandbanks lying along the coast would be engulfed. If only I had a torch to signal. Maybe the old geezer with the dog was alerting helicopters and frogmen. I glared wildly out to sea. Maybe the Royal Navy was already proudly mobilizing its one remaining coracle . . .

  It would have to be on my own. Even the yachts from the Blackwater were gone now and the sky was fading swiftly into dusk. Great. Why hadn’t one yacht at least kept a proper lookout . . . ?

  A yacht. A boat. A boat! That’s how you cross an estuary full of grotty sea! And the place was heaving with the bloody things. I rushed to the top of my dune and looked across the estuary. The nearest craft was one of those sea-going power boats with a plasticky roof and silver knobs. It was facing the open sea but rocking sideways on to me. A hundred and fifty yards, maybe more. Certainly not less. It had a chain thing and kept tugging almost as if it were alive and raring to go.

  ‘Look, Germoline,’ I said, hauling off my shoes and starting to chuck my clothes into a heap near Drummer. ‘Hold the fort, eh? I’ll be back. Somehow I’ll be back. Promise.’

  I went over and patted her head. I’m not much good at it but maybe she got the idea. Down to my underpants, I waded in, gasping and jumping at the water’s chill. It was frigging freezing. Panting in small spurts, I flailed into the water, as much to stop perishing as to get anywhere. The sea race pulled me to the left. I floundered right, doing an uncoordinated mixture of crawl and sidestroke. At last I steadied and began to take markers on the darkening shore. The trouble was I kept losing them. I would belt along like a drunk for as long as I could, then tread water, checking if I’d made any progress. It was more trial and error, and a lot of the latter. Proper swimmers count their strokes but I was so panic-stricken that I finally swam slap into the hull with a sickening thump that dazed me before I even saw it. A minute or two clinging on the anchor chain for breath and I edged up it towards the deck.

  They are always bigger when you are on board. No time to go exploring. I clambered on to the transparent roof and checked Germoline and Drummer were still there. The sandbank had shrunk, a bare forty yards long now. How daft – I’d not thought to shift Drummer and Germoline to the highest bit. Cursing and blinding, I blundered to the pointed end. The chain looked thin and promised no trouble, but I had a hell of a time pulling it up. Some kind of a small winch stood on the deck for whoever knew how to work it. The anchor came free and the boat began to move. I staggered back into the cockpit carrying the anchor and, bracing a leg against the driver’s seat, smashed the slimy anchor against the glossy wood panel of the dashboard. While the boat drifted in the tide race I chewed the wires through, twined the exposed flex and thankfully heard the roar of an engine.

  Now it was dusk all along the estuary. I’d zoom aground if I wasn’t careful. Lights were showing, greens, reds and yellows. What the hell did they all mean? Red for going forwards, something like that. I flicked switches experimentally. No light, nothing except the engine beating comfortably under my feet. Well, what the hell. I moved the steering-wheel and fiddled with the controls. It seemed simple enough. A throttle but no brakes. How do you stop a boat? Still, you can’t look a gift horse in the mouth. I got her front end pointed seawards and took her forwards motion off gradually so she gradually drifted backwards towards the dune.

  Looking over my shoulder I spotted Germoline, now braying anxiously trying to encourage the motionless Drummer to get them to safety. I shouted I was coming but stopped that when Germoline took a few eager paces towards me. If she wandered off or panicked now it was hopeless. Handling the boat was difficult. The best way I found after several false goes was to keep the engine slow ahead and put the wheel over inch by inch so the square end moved closer to the dune. I lodged aground with a horrible grinding noise and fell over. I had the wit to shove the gear into neutral as soon as I got vertical again. No good drifting with the propellers broken into smithereens.

  ‘Okay, Germoline,’ I said, shivering with cold yet delighted at one success. Now I only had to work out how you get a donkey to climb aboard a boat from a sand dune. And the dune was now low down. The donkey cart was wheel deep and Germoline was stamping in alarm as the waves climbed her legs. Drummer was still dry.

  The trouble is, everything on a boat takes time. I clambered to the front with the anchor and slung it over, then rushed about searching. No planks or boardwalks. Nothing for it. I found this harpoon thing under the side of the cockpit and used it to stove in the cabin door. As long as it was insured. More vandalism, and two planks from the bunks. I slung the rear anchor over the side, hurling it as far as my knackered condition allowed. It was the best I could do.

  I flopped the planks between the gunwale and the dune’s top. It would be a steep climb, and my improvised bridge wobbled like hell. Germoline would just have to be a good balancer.

  Drummer was easier than I expected though I had to drag him all the way. Then there was nowhere to lay him down except the cabin floor, so I dragged him in there with Germoline braying and screaming like a demented thing. I scrabbled back to her, just undid the straps under her belly and left the bloody cart there. By then the sea was over the wheels and the cart was tilting with every wave. The samphire was floating off, and most of my clothes were gone. I got my jacket which had lodged on a dune tuft.

  Getting Germoline on the boat was a real shambles. Twice the planks tipped us off. I only got her to trust me by lugging Drummer up and showing her he was already aboard. Then she streaked up the planks on her own and stood, drenched and shivering, half in and half out of the cockpit and coughing like an old sweat.

  Drummer seemed to be breathing but I couldn’t be sure. The cabin interior was dark. Dusk had practically fallen. I found a length of rope and tied Germoline up to the struts of the cockpit. The trouble was I kept retching, probably reaction from fright, practically getting myself drowned and having to exert my atheromatous frame in an unwonted manner. And I’d swallowed half the bloody North Sea.

  I covered Drummer with one of the blankets just as he was because I was scared of trying to straighten him, and bundled a pillow under his head. Then I ripped a hole in another blanket and stuck my head through like a poncho. That left a sheet for Germoline. She didn’t like it very much but I wasn’t havi
ng any backchat from a temperamental donkey at this bloody stage and bullied her into being draped with it. Then I cast off, if that’s the phrase, moving us cautiously into the main estuary with the throttle a bit forwards. I still couldn’t find any light switches. Maybe I’d stoved them in.

  The boat must have moved about half a mile when Joe’s tower started flashing us. He drove me out of my mind, beaming a light right into my eyes so I could hardly see where I was going. ‘You’re too sodding late, you useless berk!’ I bawled at the light. I cut the throttle so there was hardly any movement, which was just as well because Joe’s barmy light made me run into a sandbank. Putting the engine into neutral – I couldn’t get reverse – and trusting to the sea’s velocity rocked us off and we recovered the mid-channel after some time. At least there was a red and a green light up ahead and the yacht club bar’s glowing windows. Everywhere else was in gloom now except for the lone red lights topping the old gun platforms miles out to sea.

  I made the middle of the staithe by a miracle of brilliant navigation, though to be honest the tide was slower there and only one channel heads that way. The reflections from Joe’s daft searchlight even helped me a bit. If I knew how to semaphore I would have signalled what I thought of him, stupid sod.

  I don’t know how long it took us to get anywhere near the stone wharf but it put years on me. Rocking boats moored in the main reach kept looming out of the darkness and they all seemed to be pointed angrily at us, but by now I didn’t care if I sank a few here and there. I was past worrying about details. If the flaming owners couldn’t be bothered to get up off their fat arses when I’m shouting that Mayday thing and floundering stark bollock naked in the briny they didn’t deserve to own bloody boats in the first place. It was the yacht club lights that saved me from driving straight at the stone wharf. When I saw them nearly in line I put the engine into neutral, left the cockpit controls and dashed forwards to chuck the anchor over. Then I did the same at the back end and cut the engine. As I did my elbow caught on a protruding button. A klaxon horn blared for an instant from the front of the cockpit. Now I find it, I thought bitterly. No lights, but a horn at last. Enough to wake the dead, or so I told myself then. I leaned my head wearily on the control panel.