John McPake and the Sea Beggars

by Stuart Campbell

  John pushed the egg round his plate. If there was a message in the smear of yoke he couldn’t read it.

  Paul joined them, his head in Conrad’s Nostromo, the same dog-eared Penguin that he had been committing to memory for the last year. When he wanted a change he would go back to Rider Haggard’s Nada the Lili. He would only read books that started with the letter N. ‘Someone’s been drinking,’ he said with the righteous authority of a housemaster. ‘I can smell it.’

  ‘What’s it got to do with you, Arsehole?’ asked Richard. The moment passed and they ate in silence. Richard continued to drum Beethoven’s sonata in G with his fingers on the table. According to the gossip he had been a concert pianist who, after his breakdown, worked on the pier at Southend sharing digs with a contortionist and a female impersonator who had eventually robbed and beaten him.

  Back in his room, John sat on the edge of his bed, staring at a day that seemed to stretch forever with absolutely no point or ending in sight. He had tidied his room yesterday and had washed his clothes but had derived little pleasure from either task. He heard Janet’s voice outside his door. ‘Can I come in, John?’

  ‘You OK?’ the young support worker asked, sitting next to him. ‘Is the new medication working?’

  ‘You could give her one,’ said the Bastard. John flinched.

  ‘I’ve been thinking over what you said last time, about your brother. You said he used to get a row at home for not changing his Hearts top. I know it’s a long shot but people don’t just give up on their favourite team. My Hibee boyfriend says he wants to be buried in his green shirt. Even if your brother moved away he may come back to Edinburgh sometimes to watch a game. You could always wander down Gorgie way on match day.’

  Unlike his previous key worker, Janet took his obsession seriously. She had spoken to Social Work who had eventually confirmed the location of the care home where John claimed he had last seen his brother. It was in Ayrshire, now lying derelict. The previous month he had gone back. He had told Beverley that he would be away overnight, he told her he wanted a wee break in Largs and had found a B and B.

  Taking the Citylink to Glasgow and another bus to Auchinleck, the Bastard and the Tempter had been waiting in the queue with him. ‘They’ll take you back,’ said the Bastard, ‘and it will start all over again. You’re a glutton for punishment and you asked for it with your angelic smile and the curls. And you enjoyed it despite what you say now. You led that man on. You’re just rotten to the core.’ The woman with the large message bag changed seats.

  ‘Don’t listen to him,’ said the Tempter. ‘You will find a clue, a sign. Your brother will be looking for you as well. You will see him before he sees you. He will laugh and hug you to death. He’s a rich man, married with two lovely kids. His wife will welcome you and cook for you. You will sleep in a wonderful bed and stay with them.’

  ‘Bollocks! No happy ending for this loser. He’ll be arrested for trespass and loitering and the Mental Health Officer will pronounce him mad and dangerous and put him inside the Hilton again. Ward five, your favourite, John. Remember when you first went there. Lying on your bed, feeling sorry for yourself, curled up like a lost baby sucking your thumb. The medication didn’t work did it, John? And then the joy of electricity. It certainly beat the joy of sex into a cocked hat. Not that you ever had much of that. And what about that time they got the anaesthetic wrong? You howled and begged. Do you remember that scorching smell? It worked though, didn’t it? Lying there like a zombie. Catatonic, isn’t that the term?’

  ‘If I can interject,’ said the Academic, interjecting. ‘Future interventions may not be so barbaric. According to a recent article in the Guardian scientists are examining whether computer-generated avatars can help patients with schizophrenia, not that I am endorsing that particular diagnosis for John, I honestly think the jury is out on that one. Nevertheless the idea that avatars, designed by patients, could give a form to voices they may be hearing which can in turn be controlled by therapists who encourage the patient to oppose the voices …

  ‘Avatars, my hairy arse,’ said the Bastard.

  Noticing his agitation and suspecting drink the bus driver looked at John through his mirror but was soon distracted by an oncoming lorry.

  ‘Can I sit here?’ asked the Tempter. ‘There’s no doubt about it; your brother will take you into his firm. You’ll share an office and gradually learn the ropes. You’ll go out for a drink together.’

  ‘He’s an alci remember?’ said the Bastard leaning over the seat in front. ‘You’ll never get out, John. Severe and enduring, isn’t that the term? Let’s look in that little locker next to your hospital bed … What have we here? That pathetic picture of your brother, your wallet, your disabled person’s bus pass. Soon, when you leave the ward for another failed therapy session that old man with dementia will rob your locker and wipe his arse with the photo.’

  The Jester joined the bus at Kilmarnock and sat next to John. ‘Did you hear the one about the Irishman and the egg? Did you hear the one about the talking dog in the bar? Did you hear the one about the man who thought the microwave was a telly?’

  Auchinleck had been bleak and windswept. The woman in the cafe wouldn’t serve him. ‘No vagrants here,’ she told him. ‘I’ll call the police if you don’t get out.’

  He had trudged through the scheme on the outskirts of the town where two boys, no older than nine, threw stones and called him ‘paedo’. A postman, after giving him a second glance and deciding he was harmless, had given him directions to where he thought the home had been.

  He saw the boarded-up building across a field, his heart pounding as he waded through the nettles, cutting himself on the barbed wire. ‘Look, there’s the Governor,’ said the Bastard. John stared at the boarded-up window.

  Moments later the Governor was just yards behind him. He heard him panting; he smelled his onion breath.

  SEVEN

  Balthasar kicked at the embers, retrieved his stave and looked at his two companions, now wrapped in each others’ arms sleeping fretfully. They both looked younger in their sleep, and part of him was loath to wake them into another day of endless futile pursuit, dangers unknown and bone-chilling cold. He would leave them for a moment while he checked on the dogs which were foraging a distance away in the trees. They had found a small dead creature which they were tugging apart, a rat, perhaps, or a squirrel. He waited until nothing remained of the animal and whistled quietly. They bounded towards him. Their barking woke Cornelius and Johannes who stretched, grunted at each other and picked up their

  staves.

  Johannes was still frozen to the core, but yesterday’s aching sense of dread had passed. Perhaps, just perhaps, they would find Michel today. Somehow the dawn had managed to fight its way into the forest, its cold talons reaching towards the small knot of men stretching and rubbing their eyes.

  ‘Dongen is an hour’s march away. We can beg bread there and ask.’ Balthasar remembered the village where he had attended a cousin’s wedding.

  As they trudged through the pine needles towards the edge of the forest he tried to repress memories of the feasting and dancing that had lasted for two days and nights. He smelled the hog roasting on the spit, so large it needed two men to turn it. The juices had run down the sides of his mouth as he bit into the sweet crackling. At one point the legs on the trestle table improvised from a door had buckled under the weight of sweetmeats, pickled birds, soused eels, pancakes cleverly tiered like newly nailed tiles on a roof, and marzipan cakes. When he lost his balance during the troika his wife had chided him for his drinking.

  ‘Pluck de dach,’ he told her. In retrospect, this gentle reminder of life’s transience had proved prophetic. His cousin had become unwell within months of the wedding and died soon after. Balthasar felt so hungry he could only assume that his stomach was now consuming itself.

  As the forest petered out they emerged into the snow-covered plain of neglected fields, collapsed ricks and tumbled
wooden shelters that in safer times were temporary homes to itinerant shepherds and herdsmen. The river meandering towards the horizon had been turned to frozen stone by a vengeful alchemist. Overhead, fat-bellied clouds looked as if one poke from a well-aimed stave would bring down the snow. Balthasar pointed towards the tiny spire which would guide them towards the hamlet. The men walked in silence, the panting of the dogs setting the rhythm for their footsteps. Cornelius consciously distracted himself from his hunger and the cold by concentrating on a problem that had arisen in the days before the invaders smashed their looms. Lately the linen had been too dry and was snapping several times a day. There must be a better way of keeping the warp damp.

  Johannes had already surrendered to his own tide of obsessive thoughts. He was to blame for his son’s abduction; he could have insisted that he stay hidden until the sign was given. He hadn’t been the best of fathers to the boy anyway; he rarely agreed to fish with him, or show him how to change the set on the loom. All those questions he had answered with a dismissive, ‘Ask me later.’ He had taken his hand to him too often. Michel had complained of ringing in his ears for days after one angry skelp across the head. The boy was always hungry, always asking for food his father couldn’t afford.

  They had been too old to have a child. The villagers joked and asked if they had heard the rush of angel wings as Gabriel came to deliver the message. ‘We were out that day,’ he would reply.

  The boy’s mother had never really recovered. Years before her death she started to fade into her own world. Small devils took her happiness; they hung from the corners of her mouth, they poked her awake at night. He found her once down at the washing place as if turned to stone, her arms rigid and her head bowed. Michel had been howling but she was deaf to his cries. If he was honest he sometimes resented his son and blamed him for changing his life. He deserved to be punished for not embracing God’s gift of a young life. Repeatedly watching the devil’s dumb show was part of his contrition: Michel dead in a ditch; left to starve in the bottom of a well; his head on a stake to remind a rebellious village about the consequences of dissent. ‘My son, my son,’ he said. Balthasar placed a comforting arm across his shoulders. Overhead a bird soared.

  The signs were not auspicious as they approached the village. Several bundles of clothes had been thrown into the snow-filled ditches. Johannes stooped to pick up a child’s toy lying by a style. It was a bone rattle trailing cloth streamers. The lurchers rushed to inspect the carcass of another dog. After sniffing cautiously they slunk back to join the men.

  ‘This is not good,’ said Cornelius, stroking the whining animals in turn.

  ‘The Black Angel has been,’ said Balthasar.

  There was more smoke rising from the first few houses than would have been expected at this time in the morning. Thrift normally dictated that fires were only lit in the early evening when the men returned from the fields and a meal had to be cooked.

  Balthasar pushed against the door of the first house they came to. It creaked on its hinges and swung open. A

  black pot lay on its side, its stale contents spilled onto the floor and soaked into the straw mattresses that had

  been ripped from the alcoves. In the corner of the room a Bible was covered in excrement. A very thin cat rubbed

  against Cornelius’ leg, scuttling into the darkness when it smelt the dogs.

  The men moved warily from house to house where the same tableau was repeated. Fires had been lit in some of the rooms. All clothing and bedding had been swept into the centre of the floor and set alight.

  From nowhere, a small ancient woman leaped shrieking and enraged at Johannes. She clawed at his face and neck, cursing in an unfamiliar dialect between banshee wails. She wrapped her legs round his waist pinning him in an embrace of hatred and venom. The nearest dog tugged at her black skirt, ripping a large swathe from the garment. Still she clung on, sinking her fingernails into Johannes’ cheek.

  ‘We come in peace!’ he shouted, while Cornelius and Balthasar took an arm each and prised her away. She spat at them both until Cornelius clamped his hand across her mouth. She promptly bit into the soft flesh between his thumb and forefinger before she was flung to the floor where she lay stunned, resigned to a fatal retaliation. Cornelius pointed at her. ‘Stay still, harridan! Or the dogs will rip your arms from your body.’ Visibly cowed she looked from one to the

  other.

  ‘What passed here?’ asked Balthasar. The woman pulled herself into a squatting position and rocked soundlessly back and forward on her haunches. Eventually the words came.

  ‘Jan the simpleton saw them coming. He had been trapping birds but returned without his net and cage. He had swallowed his words and stood choking. There was no need for him to speak, his eyes like mad planets said it all. The elders quickly left to order the pastor to ring the church bell. He was still swinging on the rope when they entered the church and cut his throat, tied him upside down like a pig, and hoisted him towards the belfry. By then all of the villagers apart from the elderly had fled. May God hide them in His arms.’ She crossed herself and resumed her rocking. ‘They chased the old sisters out of their home, beat them with sticks, tore off their clothes and pushed them into the pond.’

  ‘How many were there?’ asked Balthasar, ‘and was there a child with them?’

  ‘Half a dozen men and yes, there was a child tied to a horse. Poor mite.’

  ‘Was he a thin boy with a raggedy cloak?’ asked Johannes, oblivious to the blood streaming from his hand.

  The woman said nothing but as she rocked she emitted a long guttural note as if about to keen an ancient psalm. Johannes kicked a pot out of his way as he stepped out of the hovel, his eyes smarting from a flurry of snow running ahead of the gusting wind. There was no horizon, nothing beyond the straggly clump of willow trees huddled together as if supporting themselves through difficult times. If he really concentrated he might, just might, catch sight of his boy, a tiny, distant wisp of life.

  EIGHT

  The Governor’s silhouette morphed into that of the newsreader. The men had been fighting over the TV again. Kevin clenched the remote as if it were all he owned in the world. At one point Richard had tried to unpick his fingers from the black plastic. ‘Fuck off!’ roared Kevin.

  ‘Fuck off yourself.’ They seesawed across the arm of the chair until Kevin poked his finger in Richard’s eye. Richard roared and clutched at his face, ‘You bastard!’

  Paul shouted at the pair of them to be quiet as he couldn’t read above the noise, and it was important that he found what happened to the silver. Even Kevin paused and looked at him. ‘What silver, bampot?’ Paul held Nostromo even closer to his face.

  Derek stopped loading the dishwasher and rushed upstairs. ‘Come on, men,’ he said, ‘what’s going on?’ Kevin let go of the remote and sulked in his chair. Richard rubbed his eye and listened to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata in C Minor playing in his head. ‘We agreed, men,’ said Derek. ’We stick to the rota. It’s Tuesday, John gets to choose.’ He handed the remote to John who pointed and flicked at the screen with no interest whatsoever.

  ‘The latest score from the Hearts Kilmarnock game at Tynecastlelelelelel … ’ The screen froze.

  ‘Shit,’ said Kevin.

  ‘Language,’ said Derek. John looked at the television. The Tempter seized his chance and burst into the comparatively open space of John’s head. ‘It’s a message, John. At last, he’s getting in touch with you. Janet had a point you know. He’s at the game. It makes sense, you told me he loved football and painted his room maroon before he was made to scrub it clean. And the home was in Ayrshire, another reason why he will be there. Don’t lose him again. Go now.’ John rose to obey the command. He muttered something to Derek and collected his coat.

  Mick saw him leaving. ‘Where are you going now? I’m coming with you anyway, can’t stand football, the opium of the masses, but I’ll no let you go on your own, you’re a vulnerable adult.’ There wa
s no need for Mick to collect his overcoat; he was always wearing it, ‘Just in case.’ No one asked any more what particular contingency he was prepared for. The ancient trench coat was his second skin. Incremental layers of grease had turned the original gabardine into a close relative of leather. The belt improvised from a regimental tie – ‘a trophy,’ he once explained enigmatically to Derek – barely enclosed his considerable girth. Now in his mid sixties Mick had long ago turned his back on notions of recovery and rehabilitation. He had established a modus with his own demons. His prejudices sustained him. He looked after John in subtle ways.

  They sat upstairs in the front seat of the bus. The Edinburgh International Festival was in full spate and crowds eddied from the tributaries of Rose and Thistle Streets into the swirling flow of Hanover Street. Most of the revellers were in t-shirts and many wore shorts and, for a rare moment, John’s memories came to the fore.

  Big Andrew, his emergency foster carer, ignored the seething petulance of his new charge and announced they were going to Tynecastle to watch an evening match. It was January. Fourteen-year-old John resisted but, realising that his self-perceived victim status would only be enhanced, acquiesced. Moments after joining the brigade of men hurrying in overcoats and caps along cold, dark, Gorgie Road, his mood changed completely. Part of a collective frisson of nervous anticipation, he had never known anything like it.

  A solitary foot soldier started singing, ‘Hearts, Hearts, Glorious Hearts’. The triumphal hymn was taken up by the marching choir. Andrew thrust his open newspaper of chips at John; you couldn’t sing, clap and eat at the same time. Andrew then steered him into a public house under a railway bridge. The fug of fags and beer and shouted conversations belonged to the adult world and, for the first time, it was a world that John wanted to join.