John McPake and the Sea Beggars

by Stuart Campbell

  Thank you.

  As Balthasar sang, Cornelius transposed the squat black figure of Alba onto the torso of Halewyn and savoured the moment when the maiden, on behalf of the entire subjugated country, swung her axe at the tyrant’s head. As her first blow missed he himself nobly offered to help. He flexed his arm muscle against the restraining bar in the treadmill as he hacked and hacked again at the ogre.

  For his part Balthasar projected his daughter into the song and wished her well, and wondered if she had had her baby yet. He hoped he would see the child but held out no great hope.

  Johannes found the song with its evocation of the killing field too close to his recent experience and, before jerking his attention elsewhere, imagined Michel being asked to choose the method of his death. ‘Make it quick, Mister! Make it quick.’

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  John hummed under his breath as he sweated in the garden. His own physical effort brought various related images to mind including, bizarrely, a chain gang including George Clooney in O Brother where art thou?

  ‘Excellent!’ shouted the Bastard, who had been quiet for too long. John redoubled his efforts and thrust his spade into the clay with as much strength as he could muster, jarring his wrist against the handle.

  ‘Perfect. Criminals chained together. Loads of adventures. Right up your street, John, it would make a change from that Dutch shite. All you need are a few hobos and a passing train. Of course, there is one essential difference. Everett and Delmar find Pete alive and well, whereas your sainted brother is

  dead.

  ‘Anyway let’s talk about pleasanter topics. Yes, the cinema. Do you remember the time when you and Sarah were trying to make a go of things? You were both trying to come to terms with her affair, remember? It was you, magnanimous, broad-minded as ever, who suggested you go the Filmhouse. Yes, that’s right, some explicit art house film. Wild close up bonking from the moment the curtain opened, a couple wildly, physically obsessed with each other, consumed with passion beyond your wildest dreams … ’

  John tore into the earth hurling sods and clods in every direction. A substantial hole opened up as the spade hacked great lumps out of the ground.

  ‘Could be a grave. Could be yours. Could be Andy’s. Give it a try, perhaps Jack’s had the right idea all along.’

  A patina of earth sprayed against the kitchen window alerting Derek who was quickly at John’s side.

  ‘It’s all right, it’s all right. Let go of the spade. Come inside, come on.’

  John stood rigid, obliging Derek to unpick his fingers from the handle before leading him back inside and up to his room. ‘It was starting to rain anyway,’ he said.

  Derek eventually left after saying the same kind, gently encouraging things which, as always, made matters worse. John felt undeserving of any kindness and was impervious to all of Derek’s well-intentioned messages of hope. He had no real belief in his own recovery. He could not see a life outwith the hostel, unless he included intermittent stays in the Hilton.

  John stood at his window and looked out onto the wet street. A few people hurried past holding their collars up to their necks to keep out the cold dribble of rain. He ran his hand over the glass to wipe off the fat viscous drops which were obscuring his view, but succeeded only in clearing the thin veneer of mist made by his own breath.

  The tenements opposite were absorbing the wetness and turning even greyer; a dog with its head down skirted round the puddles forming in the road; a mother grabbed the toddler who was serenely oblivious to the rain and marched towards the communal stair door, a small boy under one arm, his red trike under the other. The boy struggled and wriggled but got nowhere against overwhelming force.

  A man walked past holding his briefcase over his head with one hand which he soon swapped for his other as the water ran down his upturned sleeve. John caught sight of Jack on the pavement gesticulating and shouting something at him as he turned to enter the hostel.

  John saw himself on a similar street some fifteen years back. The same rain, different challenges. Had he stayed arguing any longer it would have ended badly; he had never hit anyone in his life, but the torrent of accusations – many of them

  with a basis in truth – was unsupportable. He remembered wondering if all marriages ended in the same way or if they all had their own imprint of unique awfulness. Didn’t Tolstoy have a view on that?

  The rain on that occasion had seemed particularly invasive and cold as he had left without a coat. He had no idea where he was going but, even then, recognised an element of self-pity as he cast himself in the role of the victim, misunderstood and cast out of his own home. He made his way round to a friend’s house. More of a former colleague than a friend, if he was honest. Either way it was someone would who let him rail and rant and put a spin on events that would absolve him from at least some of the blame.

  The strange continuity of rain moved him to a different wet street. Leven Street, where he had climbed at least four feet up a lamp post to get a better view of the audience pouring out from the King’s Theatre. He knew his wife had gone there with her new man, but all he could see were umbrellas like Roman shields raised to protect the troops from attack from above. There could have been numerous adulterous couples scurrying beneath the shuffling black scarab but he couldn’t see them. It was probably just as well. What would he have done or said?

  John knew that the Bastard was hovering in his head, somewhere in the frontal lobe, waiting to deliver a killer blow with a perspective on his failed marriage that would take his breath away with some appallingly accurate insight. For some reason he was keeping his powder dry, as if the fear of what he might say was in itself sufficient to disconcert John who, in any case, was doing a sufficiently impressive job of making himself miserable. Just now he did not need any additional prompting. The Bastard had made his presence known but felt no need to speak

  The third panel in the rain-soaked triptych showed John and his wife in a small wood next to their rented Catalan cottage. The holiday had been booked for a long while and, absurdly, both parties thought it would be very grown up to go away together and, for a fortnight, park their animosity and bitterness. After all they had been together for a significant period of time, during much of which they had apparently liked each other.

  John had suggested they go to the wood to make love, he had even added, with what he hoped was a hint of poignant irony, ‘Perhaps for the last time.’ Sarah had reluctantly agreed through a combination of residual but diminishing affection, genuine concern for John’s mental health and a degree of guilt. The deed itself had been quick and perfunctory. In the short time they had lain together the rain had percolated through the trees, dampened their spirits and irrevocably extinguished their marriage.

  ‘A guy goes to a psychiatrist, “Doc, I keep having these alternating recurrent dreams. First I’m a tepee; then I’m a wigwam. It’s driving me crazy. What’s wrong with me?“ The doctor replies: “It’s very simple. You’re too tents.”’

  ‘Not really funny is it, John?’ said the Bastard with mock sympathy. ‘In fact, it is about time to end all this pain, all this disappointment. You can’t go on like this, it isn’t sustainable … ’

  ‘Unsustainable,’ echoed the Tempter.

  John was disconcerted at this apparent alliance between the two Voices. In perfect harmony they chanted together, ‘End it now. End it now, end it now!’

  TWENTY-NINE

  After three days spent alternately powering the treadmill or snatching sleep inside the cramped structure, the men set off across the field to find the dyke-reeve and claim their wages.

  ‘I feel I’ve been trampled by horses,’ said Balthasar, bent double against the driving rain.

  ‘Danced on by wild bears,’ contributed Johannes.

  ‘Shredded by Lucifer’s sharpened hooves,’ shouted Cornelius.

  The wind heavy with musket balls of rain pitted the earth and stung their eyes. Their boots let in the melting sludge
that was already mingling with the clay, making each step a challenge. Johannes muttered as the sucking ground refused to let go of his left leg, clinging to him like an aggrieved lover. A sharp pain twisted into his knee and he paused, breathing heavily with his hands on his thighs. ‘You two go on,’ he said, ‘I’ll catch you up.’

  Wet and shivering, Cornelius and Balthasar located the paymaster in a wooden shack, built to protect him from the worst excesses of the weather while his men toiled outside in demonic conditions. They stooped to enter through the flap which provided the only outlet for the smoke from the fire that was crackling and spitting in the centre of the small room.

  The dyke-reeve was bent over a ledger, but as he didn’t look up from his calculations, they could only see the top of his leather skullcap. ‘You agreed three days, you have only worked two.’ He stared at a black spot that had appeared on the page of his ledger, tutted and reached for the blotter. ‘Three days, not a minute less.’ A spiral of smoke uncoiled itself from the fire like a malicious genie spoiling for a fight and sought out Cornelius’ eyes. Rubbing them he walked closer to the reeve and brought his fist down on the ledger, smudging the latest entry.

  ‘We have slept for two nights in your wooden wheel; we have worked three days. Our bones ache and our stomachs are empty.’

  ‘You owe me one more day and if you defile my records with your peasant hands I will pay you nothing.’

  Cornelius lurched forward, picked up the open book and made to hurl it into the fire. Balthasar put himself between his friend and the flames while two henchmen holding picks entered through the flap. They were the same age as Cornelius but built like executioners who had feasted on the fat of others. One held the shaft of his pick across Balthasar’s throat while the other struck Cornelius in the stomach.

  Feeling distinctly sorry for himself Johannes had only managed to limp slowly towards the hut. As he paused to catch his breath he saw the henchmen enter and heard the commotion. Turning his back to the wind and looking towards the treadmill he put two fingers to his mouth and whistled for the dogs.

  For the smallest moment the first hound, its eyes red from hunger, stood trembling in the entrance, tossing out silver tapeworms of saliva. It then leaped, clamping its jaws round the thigh of the nearest assailant, growling as it worked away at the flesh until it tore loose. The second dog hurled itself at his companion who tumbled, terrified, into the fire under the beast’s weight. Cornelius punched the dyke-reeve repeatedly until he spat teeth and blood. Balthasar sought out the silk purse from around the reeve’s waist and emptied it of money.

  Holding the injured Johannes between them, the trio and the panting dogs hobbled as quickly as they could towards the edge of the sodden field. Glancing back they could see the black flames from the shed and hear the confusion.

  The gale redoubled its ferocity. The wind tasted of the salt it had skimmed from the sea and black gulls were funnelled inland faster than they had ever flown, utterly powerless before the tempest, their wings swept back against their bodies like missiles in a siege. They instinctively ducked as scraps of tinder wood, berries and tangles of vegetation, passed overhead. Conversation was impossible. The slouching dogs looked skinnier with their wet matted coats flattened against their flanks, smaller and less powerful somehow, diminished and intimidated by a stronger power.

  The numbing cold masked the pain in Johannes’ knee. He was only aware that it would not work as it had done before. Cornelius too could no longer distinguish the pain in his knuckles from the overwhelming discomfort of the storm.

  Johannes felt panic as he strove to picture Michel in his mind’s eye. Fearful that his son’s image would fade he had, for days, obsessively tested his memory to see if it would still deliver intact the image of his son, enacting this ritual at every crossroad on their journey, every night before he slept and, more recently, after every dozen rotations of the wheel. Horrified he felt that the rain was distorting his son’s features leaving him to snatch at the remaining details of Michel’s face before they too were washed away. Then the wind would take over and scour Michel’s features, progressively rubbing out his eyes, his smile; drowning out the sound of his voice and his laughter.

  THIRTY

  ‘End it now, end it now!’

  John woke in a sweat from a nightmare in which his brother was staggering, clearly unwell, towards the edge of Platform 4 at Haymarket Station. The tannoy had warned passengers to stand clear as the next train was not stopping. He lay in the darkness and, outside, heard a wheelie bin being blown down the street. Downstairs he heard two of the men talking angrily in the lounge, their voices menacing and querulous. Next door, Jack was shouting in his sleep something about his mother.

  As he lay there John listened impotently to the conversation raging in his head. The Voices were all speaking at once and he could only distinguish the occasional phrase:

  ‘The time has come, a good man really, no hope, no respite, it needs serious consideration, needs must, what about breakfast, body and soul together, a statement really, stands to reason, we’ve tried, inevitable, quality of life, free will, end game, respite care, only eternity, over in a millisecond, paramedics of course … ’

  The Voices were again conducting their own case conference about him. He felt excluded from the process, waiting outside for a decision, for a verdict to be handed down. When they sensed he was listening the Voices became quieter but no less urgent. The whisperings became a sibilant crescendo flooding his consciousness, dragging him helpless in its wake. He let himself be forced out of bed, into his clothes and onto the street.

  He had no idea where he was going, he just had to walk fast and distract himself from not only the Voices but a mounting sense of dread. At the end of his last stay at the Hilton his therapist had reminded him about the importance of mindfulness approaches. He tried to bring awareness to the process of walking. Left leg, right leg, calves tightening then relaxing, each arm a slow piston, aware too of a small nagging ache in his right thigh. He was also suddenly aware of a completely alien Voice.

  ‘Watch out for snipers!’

  What are you doing here?

  ‘We met before, in the pub, I belong to Mick, but I’m getting fed up with him, I want a new head. They have you in your sights on the high rises, Special Forces.’

  ‘Mindfulness is a way of being grounded, of living in the moment, borrowed from Eastern cultures and increasingly embedded in mainstream approaches,’ explained the Academic. John stared intently through the window of a shoe repairer and key cutter. If he concentrated completely on what he saw then the Voices would lose control.

  Hundreds, perhaps thousands of golden freshly minted template keys hung on hooks along the back wall, symmetrical and neat.

  ‘A key to a new life,’ said the Tempter not wanting to be silenced by a therapeutic practice in which he had little faith. ‘One door opens … ’

  ‘But all your doors close,’ said the Bastard. ‘Slammed in your face then boarded up. Or locked behind you. Prison cell, forensic ward. Happy days.’

  John quickly moved to the window of the travel agents next door hoping to sidestep the Voices, give them the slip. He must concentrate, focus on the now.

  MARCO POLO CRUISE FROM LEITH NORTH CAPE & LAND OF THE MIDNIGHT SUN 10 NIGHTS WAS £1069 N0W £855.

  ‘You need a break John, could be the making of you. Meet a nice widow, a bit older but you know … ’

  ‘Cruises for losers … step up the gangplank, be piped aboard by Satan, and rearrange the deck chairs on your own disaster.’

  ‘Trading Standards and the ombudsman are relentlessly pursuing travel agents who mislead the public … ’

  John left the windows and concentrated instead on the pavement in front of him. Within moments he was hit by a blind man’s stick sweeping a path ahead of him. John muttered an apology and stepped aside. Two more blind men followed in his wake, all were listening to headphones and mouthing along to unheard tunes.

 
‘Ah, the blind leading … they might of course be blind bakers.’

  ‘Join them, John, join the cripples, ally yourself with the deformed, team up with the mad, do the disability conga down Great Junction Street, hold their waists.’

  ‘It is reminiscent of Bruegel’s painting The Parable of the Blind in the National Museum of Naples. The parable can be found in the gospels … from memory, “let them alone: they are blind guides. And if the blind guide the blind, both shall fall into a pit’’ St Matthew, 15, 14.’

  ‘Come on, John! Your very own shitty pit is waiting … pity shit … ’

  He broke into a run. He was surrendering, capitulating, giving up. The Voices had broken him. He was lost. It was all simply intolerable, beyond bearing.

  The Academic grew anxious and stuttered, ‘They say that people who think of suicide don’t want to kill themselves, they just want the pain to end … ’

  ‘FASTER, FASTER JOHN, FASTER, ALMOST THERE!’

  He reached the bridge that spanned the Water of Leith, climbed onto the parapet and stood with his arms outstretched. A young woman with a baby in a pushchair on the towpath put her hand to her mouth. The last thing he noticed, in an extended moment of luscious and serene calm, was the sight of a child’s silver scooter nesting in the branches of a tree where it had been thrown from the bridge.

  ‘GO JOHN! GO JOHN GO! DO IT NOW! DO IT FOR YOUR BROTHER!’