John McPake and the Sea Beggars

by Stuart Campbell

  ‘Spanish bastards,’ muttered Johannes, aiming blows at a snow-heavy branch as if it was the compliant skull of his enemy, each strike a small revenge for whatever wrong had been visited on Michel.

  The realisation that the distant specks were indeed men and not cattle provided the travellers with renewed strength.

  Johannes glanced up. The bird was still hovering; it was either a strange mutated angel sent to guide them or a malevolent spirit leading them to inevitable torture on the rack. He heard the crack of bone and sinew. The specks merged into the forest. There were perhaps six of them but it was impossible to tell if one might have been the child roped to his masters, his hands tied as they dragged him for a purpose known only to themselves.

  Cornelius took the lead; his movements mimicked those of the dogs, his head rocking from side to side as if trying to detect the merest scent of sweat from their enemies. The wind conspired to sweep away what could have been footprints. The leading hound bounded a few yards to its left, its paws sending up a miasma of snow as it padded and scratched at something lying on the surface.

  Johannes patted the dog with one hand and picked up the item with the other. ‘It’s Michel’s lace!’ he shouted. ‘It’s from his boot. His mother always told him to tighten them but he never did. It’s his.’

  Balthasar and Cornelius inspected the tiny trophy. Balthasar was less certain but understood his friend’s need to believe. Breathing fast he nodded at the others and strode towards the forest.

  The wind-felled trees lay collapsed on each other in caked nets of branch, foliage and snow. Johannes clambered over a bough which had the girth of a fatted sow and sank to his waist into the pit gouged by the roots when they had burst from the ground. ‘Jesus wept!’ he shouted as he floundered in the icy water. For the briefest of moments he disappeared beneath the surface. Despite the cold spearing his heart and freezing his brain, one flailing hand was still holding the lace. Balthasar and Cornelius sank to their knees and offered him their staves. They pulled him spluttering from the pit. He lay shocked and choking on the ground. The dogs circled anxiously. Eventually he spoke: ‘Caspar!’ he spluttered.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘The third wise man.’

  Cornelius uncorked the flagon of genever and pushed it to Johannes’ blue lips. ‘Get this down you.’ Balthasar was briefly minded of the guttering wheezing sound a boar makes when its throat is cut. Johannes spat out the bitter spirit, and beat his fist on the ground in exasperation, all energy sapped by his heavy sodden clothes. They had lost vital minutes. Their quarry must have gained ground and melted further into the forest.

  Balthasar glanced back as the last of the cold sun bled into the snow. There was no point rushing headlong into the forest.

  Despite the failing light they made their way into the shelter of the trees whose branches had linked arms far above them to hold up the roof of snow. It was a relief to feel the pine needles beneath their feet after the constant battle with the drift. Balthasar could see that Johannes was still shaking and that his teeth were chattering.

  ‘You sound like a devil sent to frighten children.’ Seeing that Johannes was in no mood for mirth he changed tack. ‘Men, we must rest,’ he said. ‘May God visit sleep on us and misfortune on our enemy.’

  A scream pierced the night. The men jerked into vigilance.

  THREE

  John wandered into the sitting room and sat down on the stained settee carefully avoiding the vengeful spring that could inflict injury on the buttocks of the unaware. Anxious about Jack he looked round the room. He hoped he was all right but doubted it somehow. John had himself spent the preceding hour in consultation with his psychiatric nurse about his medication. The Voices who had been surprisingly restrained during the meeting now burst noisily back into his head like adolescents tumbling into a room, each determined to seize the remote control first. They were all there, the Academic, the Bastard, the Tempter and, bringing up the rear, the Jester. They ignored me completely. The first to speak was the Academic.

  ‘Let me see,’ he said as if working his way down a checklist. John instinctively lowered his head towards his shoulder as if to hear more clearly the conversation about to be conducted inside his brain. ‘I know what he said in there but I’m decidedly anxious about the side effects. We can’t afford to get things wrong again. Akinesia, akathisia, you had that before, John. Remember? You spent days crossing and uncrossing your legs … ’

  John slapped the palm of his hand against his ear as if to empty it of water.

  ‘Like a tart waiting in a queue,’ suggested the Bastard. ‘All tights and stilettos. Don’t forget, what was it? Yes, the “oculogyric crisis” when your eyes started turning of their own accord. You frightened a few folk then didn’t you, John? And then they started to pop out; you looked like a frog in a vice. Do you remember how that young girl ran screaming down the street? Happy days … ’

  The Academic grunted in agreement. ‘And then all that pacing and shuffling. Not to mention the dysphonia that played havoc with your larynx and temporarily robbed you of the power of speech.’

  ‘He had nothing of interest to say anyway,’ continued the Bastard. ‘And by the time the symptoms had worn off you had decided you quite liked not speaking. You’re a big fat hairy fraud, John. Not worth bothering with. You know what? I miss the old days when you suffered from TD. What’s it stand for, Academic?’

  ‘Tardive Dyskinesia. A disorder of the central nervous system that causes abnormal, uncontrollable, disfiguring, and embarrassing movements … ’

  John tightened his grip on the arm of the settee and shook his head from side to side as if this simple motion might dislodge the Voices. Sometimes he pictured them asleep hanging from his neurotransmitters like malevolent bats in a

  cave.

  The Bastard continued, ‘Great times! Your tongue lolling about like some idiot child, a lustful lizard, grimacing like Quasimodo in a silent movie. Do you remember when that bus driver refused to open his doors? He just drove off as you pawed the glass, a windae licker. And that barman in the Canny Man who took one look at you and barred you for life! Social inclusion at its best. It was probably the dribbling that clinched it. “I’m sorry sir, we don’t serve grotesque salivating salamanders”.’

  ‘And of course there are the sexual side effects,’ continued the Academic oblivious to the interruption.

  ‘Yes! You had lovely breasts for a time, didn’t you? Bigger than that wife of yours if I recall.’

  John groaned as the Jester seized his chance. ‘Not as funny though as that time Kevin got a hard on and frightened the cook! If I remember she ran out of the kitchen. Mick suggested they put his hat over it so as not to cause an affront to public decency. Kevin loved it though. He wandered into the pub convinced he would score. The barman phoned the police who charged him with concealing a dangerous weapon.’

  ‘Although rare, priapism is distinctly unpleasant,’ intoned the Academic. ‘If left untreated it can cause serious harm to the penis.’

  ‘You don’t need yours anyway do you, John?’ asked the Bastard in a tone of mock innocence.

  In a doomed attempt to distract himself from the chatter in his head John turned his attention to the newly installed table-tennis table. He vaguely remembered playing once for money in his previous life. He was totally drunk in Jenny’s Pool Emporium. Sarah had just left him. He had evidently vomited over the table, and watched helplessly as the chicken vindaloo morphed into the green baize, before he was thrown out onto the street. ‘It was chicken jalfrezi,’ said the Bastard.

  John had no appetite for lunch and made his way upstairs to his room again. As he turned onto the last landing he saw that Janet, the volunteer support worker, was trying her utmost to coax Dennis out of his room. ‘Come on Dennis, there’s nothing to worry about. The men are not cross with you. No one is out to get you. Trust me.’ The door opened the merest slither and John saw a single frightened eye fill the small gap. ‘It’s minc
e and tatties, your favourite.’ Dennis may have caught sight of John standing at a distance but it was enough. The door slammed shut.

  Janet continued her cajoling for a while longer before shaking her head and making her way down to the kitchen. Part of John had always wanted to befriend Dennis and tell him things would get better but he knew he would be lying.

  John closed the door on his own room and slowly put his arms round himself as if they belonged to someone else who was delighted to see him. He rocked his brother in his arms.

  As you may have gathered, I’m John’s preferred Voice, the one John chooses when he’s well. Isn’t that right, John? I’m neutral, allegedly. I call things the way they are which qualifies me for the main chronicler and Narrator of all that follows. You trust me, don’t you, John? It’s been a hard battle. But for much of the time I rule the roost and call the shots. It helped of course when the psychologist from the Hearing Voices clinic urged John to concentrate on the Voice that approximated most closely to his own inner voice. And of course he chose me. Which is why I don’t need italics.

  At first the others were furious but, sadly, from both our points of view, they’ve made a comeback. Did you notice how the Bastard upstaged the Academic earlier? But fair play, I was exhausted. The Bastard is powerful and intrudes whenever he can to harvest the seeds of doubt long planted in John, destroying whatever equanimity is permitted to a man in his forties who hears Voices. If I’m honest I quite admire the Bastard’s creativity. Some of the things he comes out with are quite astonishing. That reference to John’s impotence was nothing. You should hear him when he gets into his

  stride.

  ‘Don’t patronise me, “I quite admire the bastard’s creativity”. A pathetic attempt to ingratiate yourself. Piss off.’

  Bastard, just remember I have the power. I’m the main custodian of John’s story.

  ‘Whatever.’

  Exactly. Anyway the reason for John’s reconvened meeting with the psychiatric nurse had its origins in a half-hearted suicide attempt the previous day.

  When he opened his window I knew it wasn’t to welcome fresh air into his life. I tried to point out that he was only two flights up and would just end up injured, but I was outdone by the Bastard who suggested that if he stood on the ledge and then fell head first onto the path he would find peace. All would be still.

  Beverley, who had seen him from the street, opened his door, took him in her arms and held him hard, an action probably in contravention of the Home’s policy on physical contact with vulnerable adults. All credit to her, she distracted the Bastard long enough for the Tempter to get a word in edgeways. He chipped in, promising the tantalising possibility of better times, although I do wish he wouldn’t mention The Book. The Jester too did his best by pointing out that if John caught his foot on the television aerial on his descent he would dangle upside down, clearly visible from the TV lounge. He would give Kevin one hell of a fright. A salivating, inverted Cheshire cat with mad staring eyes would certainly distract him from Cash in the Attic.

  Eventually his key worker arrived and I know John likes her. She just spoke calmly and offered him choices. Did he want to increase his medication? Would he welcome the respite of the Royal Edinburgh for a few days? The Bastard insisted that The Village of the Mad, aka the Royal Edinburgh Hospital, was indeed John’s true spiritual home. The Tempter reminded John of the hospital gardens, making them sound like Fontainebleau or Versailles. The bit about asses’ milk was difficult to reconcile with my memory of the hospital bath. Eventually John chose the medication route though I wish he hadn’t as it makes me lose my voice and gives the others an unfair advantage.

  John made a slight adjustment to the picture that was hanging off-centre on the wall nearest the door. It had always been his favourite image in The Book. He had found the framed print in a charity shop in Great Junction Street and I knew at the time it was an ominous choice. I told him it was a bit clichéd. I told him that every student flat in the seventies had Bruegel’s Hunters in the Snow on its walls but he wouldn’t listen. I told him he should move on from that phase of his life. The Bastard elbowed his way in saying it was a pathetic purchase by a sad loser who had once thought of himself as Renaissance man on the strength of having attended two optional lectures on the History of Art at university.

  Three black figures out of breath stare down into the village where tiny skaters frolic on the frozen pond, pulling each other along or dancing together. Children play with spinning tops. Panting dogs sniff at the roots of a tree. In the foreground, villagers are roasting a pig that attracts the attention of the men, but they have a mission. Overhead a strange bird soars towards the distant snow-covered hills …

  John found the Big Book of Bruegel at a jumble sale

  some fifteen years ago. At that time he and Sarah were

  sleeping in separate rooms. Saturday was the worst day of the week. Without the discipline of the early morning

  commute he would just lie there trying to work out when

  it was safe to make coffee without resuming unspoken

  hostilities.

  Queuing at jumble sales was an answer of sorts. At the time he was trying to convince himself that a career in the second-hand book trade would be a viable alternative to teaching history. Apart from anything else, queues were sociable. He enjoyed the banter with the various dealers determined to hoover up the bric-a-brac, records or, in his case, books, before the loyal parishioners and the seriously poor got within a yard of the stalls.

  Published in 1936 by Anton Schroll & Co. Vienna, it was bigger than a tabloid newspaper and almost four inches thick, a ridiculously underpriced gem. On taking the book home he made the mistake of trying to share his enthusiasm with Sarah who reacted with a look of withering disdain. Having ascertained from Book Auction Records that a copy in similar condition had sold at Dominic Winters for £110 in 1988 he set it aside with a degree of satisfaction.

  Shortly afterwards the obsession started. Unable to sleep he would creep downstairs to the dining room and turn the pages with reverential slowness and immerse himself in the cold medieval worlds depicted therein. On one occasion Sarah had caught him staring intently at The Massacre of the Innocents. ‘Why can’t you read pornography like ordinary men?’ she asked him.

  He tried to explain how the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II had fundamentally altered the picture from a tableau of unremitting horror to a harmless pastoral idyll. He pointed out the woman on the left preoccupied with loaves of bread in the snow. Those loaves were originally dead babies. Likewise the calf by the barrel in the foreground, having its throat slit, and the wild boar being lanced below the group of mounted soldiers. That too was a baby. She shook her head and left the room.

  In the early years of their marriage Sarah had made allowances for her husband on account of his apparently dysfunctional childhood. He had been in care apparently. In the past she would compliment him on his resilience and determination in surmounting all the odds and becoming a respectable member of the middle classes. But those days were long gone; she could only see his weakness and oddness.

  When Sarah was out he would immerse himself in whichever picture best reflected his mood. The comparatively rare moments of pleasure in his life found expression in The Corn Harvest. He would place a forefinger on the hungry peasant emerging from the pathways cut through the corn as if guiding him towards his fellow villagers. Soon this stranger too would be lounging among the ricks spooning gruel into his mouth, oblivious of the heat haze creeping in from the coast.

  The Dance of Death would give shape to his darker moods and somehow make them more manageable. He knew there was a hint of schadenfreude in his enjoyment of the details, the oddly shaped skeleton with its skinny arms round the hysterical woman in red, more throat slitting, the dead man doubled over with his naked buttocks in the air, the grinning horse with flared nostrils. The influence of Bosch was obvious.

  For more innocent escape he would watch intr
igued at the urchins relaxing in Children’s Games; children playing pat a cake, children on piggy back, children riding imaginary steeds, and over by the river three tiny girls who had stretched their skirts into crimson lily pads.

  ‘That’s my jotter you’ve drawn on, weirdo!” John looked up from the pile of marking and saw one of his gum-chewing charges looming over him. The late Friday afternoon classroom felt heavy with a languid heat, adolescent hormones and Brut. ‘You’re no right in the head, sir. You should have a word with that fat wifey in charge of guidance.’ Snorts and sniggers from her wakening peers. John looked down at the open jotter and the three black figures from The Hunters in the Snow that, unbeknown to himself, he had drawn on the lined page. He was about to sketch the first of the dogs.

  Part of him knew that he was losing his grip. Things were worsening at home. He would retreat early to bed in the spare room leaving Sarah to talk endlessly on the phone to friends, perhaps to her lover, about his latest oddness. All he wanted to do was hide under the bedclothes like a child and summon his recurrent dream. Letting the imagined coldness of the winter scene wash over him, his hand would move down the bed looking for the cold snout of his favourite dog. Sometimes he slept with the window wide open to let in the frozen air.

  John became a familiar figure in the university library. Although a graduate of St Andrews he had taken out a general council membership of Edinburgh University. He was having moderate success in convincing himself that his odd obsession with Breugel was a legitimate area of academic interest and one about which he might write in the future. Having taken notes from the History of Art section he moved among the European History shelves.

  He was increasingly convinced that the conventional interpretations of the picture were misleading. Clearly the men in the foreground were hunters but what was their quarry? The emaciated fox which one of them dangled served to reinforce the view that they had no motivation beyond putting food into the mouths of their children, and were pausing exhausted to gaze at the frozen lake before returning home, but he was far from convinced.