Calabash

by Christopher Fowler

  But it wasn’t Janine. It was a woman, all right, but someone with a completely different voice. Pauline pushed open the door, and standing there next to her was Julia, in her yellow plastic mackintosh and rain hood.

  ‘I think we’d better go with her,’ Pauline was saying. ‘Kay’s got himself in some kind of trouble. Today of all days.’

  Julia took a tentative step into the hall, nearly banging her head on a set of hanging wrought-iron soldered ducks. ‘I saw him on the esplanade, Mr Goodwin,’ she explained. ‘I tried to get him to come back with me but he said he couldn’t stop.’

  ‘Where was he off to?’

  ‘The pier.’

  ‘What’s he want on the pier in this weather, for God’s sake?’

  ‘He’s gone off in the Skylark, the boat Mr Cottesloe keeps there.’

  ‘What do you mean, he’s gone off? Who’s with him?’

  ‘Nobody. I think he’s sort of stolen it.’

  ‘Bloody hell! He doesn’t know the first thing about boats.’

  ‘Well,’ said Julia defensively, ‘he seemed to be driving it all right.’

  ‘You don’t drive boats, you pilot them,’ explained Bob.

  ‘Well, what are we going to do?’ Pauline asked.

  ‘I suppose we’d better go down there before somebody calls the police.’ He searched around for his raincoat.

  ‘If Janine turns up she’ll find herself locked out. She’ll be stuck on the doorstep. She won’t be pleased.’ Pauline pointed at his feet. ‘Are you planning to wear those out?’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Bob again, hopping about on one foot while he tried to pull off his carpet slippers and hunt for his shoes as Julia looked on, trying to hide her embarrassment.

  Chapter 44

  The Inner Sanctum

  We stood in a curving corridor that passed around an oval stone chamber lined with lurid decorative figures and iron pikestaffs. Smoke was starting to fill the passage. ‘They’re inside,’ whispered Scammer. ‘Can’t get in, not big people like you. Scammer goes in through there.’ He waved a reed-thin arm at a gap in the rafters.

  ‘Where is the entry door?’ I asked. Menavino pointed to a tall iron panel, recessed into the corridor wall.

  ‘Can’t we force it open?’

  ‘Not without destroying the chamber,’ Trebunculus replied. ‘Such inner rooms used to house the secret weapons of the royal armoury. Rather than allow them to fall into enemy hands, the Sultan provided the means with which to destroy them, should the building’s defences be breached.’

  ‘Push the iron from this side, sparks fly, gunpowder ignites. Can’t open the door, not without blowing up,’ Scammer repeated. ‘I told you, through the roof.’

  ‘But that doesn’t help us, does it?’ The little homunculus was beginning to annoy me until I realised what he was saying. ‘You can open it? From the inside? It won’t trigger the chamber’s destruction?’

  ‘I can open it, save everyone. What’s it worth to the Scammer?’

  Trebunculus made to slap him.

  ‘Doctor, no!’ I warned. We needed his help. ‘We’ll decide a reward for you, think of something you’ll like, but you must go through the rafters now, hurry!’ The smoke in the passage was becoming thicker. I knew I would have to remove Scammer’s collar. I released the imp from his lead and he shot up the wall, clambering over the walnut bas-reliefs of dying warriors that covered the corridor. Once more he wriggled up through the hole in the ceiling until only his feet showed, then they, too, were gone.

  We waited and listened, but heard nothing from within. After several minutes had passed, during which time the smoke in the narrow corridor grew so dense and dark that we could barely breathe, a terrible bone-grinding sound rent the air, and the iron door before us began to part. The walls of the oval armoury were inset with extraordinary weapons, their purposes as forgotten as their dates of manufacture. Here were rotating maces with metal pincers, shields that blossomed with razor-sharp porcupine quills at the touch of a switch, and gunpowder-operated shoulder-mounted cannons that no man would be able to discharge. It was no wonder the kingdom had few enemies abroad. They had probably all been decimated centuries earlier.

  I knew now that the only enemies of Calabash came from within. And within the armoury stood a lone figure: not the Grand Sultan, but Septimus Peason, the Lord Chancellor, resplendent in a black and green peacock-feather turban and a cloak that fell to his knuckly ankles.

  ‘I was beginning to wonder how long it would take you to get here,’ he said, looking down at the tenebrous child that clung to his side and ruffling his hair, the action of which raised a small cloud of soot and blackened Peason’s bony hand. ‘Well done, boy.’ He raised his eyes to me. ‘Why on earth did you come the long way around? You nearly got yourselves killed. Surely it was obvious even to you that the Sultan would have his own passageway into the armoury.’

  ‘I thought you said Scammer was on your side,’ I whispered to the doctor in dismay.

  ‘I knew I should have held back some treats with which to feed him,’ shrugged Trebunculus. ‘He likes bitter chocolate.’

  ‘It’s rather late to think of that now.’

  ‘And oil-fried chicken.’

  ‘What have you done with the royal retinue?’ I demanded to know of Septimus Peason.

  ‘General Bassa has conducted them to the new meeting square at the harbour.’ A number of guards crowded into the rear of the room, bristling with arrow-points. ‘I think we should all adjourn there. You want to witness the execution of the entire royal family before his warriors depart for your shores, don’t you?’

  Trebunculus gasped. ‘You wouldn’t dare. They are the mortal representatives of the celestial heavens. Why, if you harm so much as one hair—’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ snapped the Lord Chancellor, ‘you don’t really believe all that, do you? The kingdom as you know it has gone forever. There’s nothing left. The last of the old order must be removed.’ He stepped aside to reveal Rosamunde, chained on the floor behind him. ‘This one is the most unrepentant of them all.’

  The Princess twisted on her chain and spat at him. She was dressed in the saffron veils of a harem girl, as beautiful as my memories of her. ‘Don’t listen to him, Kay. He has betrayed us all. He murdered my mother.’

  ‘And you, young lady, are not fit to be called Princess. Your royal hymen pierced before your sham of a marriage—’

  ‘Your son is an arrogant bully who hates women, just like his father.’

  ‘We only hate harlots,’ sneered the Lord Chancellor. ‘I had hoped you might change your attitude towards me in order to save your father, but now I can see that you deserve to die alongside him.’ He snapped open Rosamunde’s chain and hauled her to her feet.

  ‘Don’t touch me, you pig. You care nothing for our kingdom, only for yourself.’ She threw out her hand, raking his cheek with her nails. The Lord Chancellor’s men tensed themselves, ready to strike at his command. Rosamunde pulled free of Peason’s grip and ran to my side.

  ‘You came back for me, Kay, just as I knew you would.’

  ‘There’s a longstanding historical precedent set in rescuing princesses,’ I admitted. ‘I couldn’t leave you here.’

  ‘I never loved Maximus. I only thought of you.’

  ‘And I you.’

  She smiled. ‘How does it feel to be a hero?’

  I smiled back. ‘I’ll let you know if I make it through this alive.’

  ‘This reunion is most touching, but we must set off.’ The Lord Chancellor signalled his men from the chamber. ‘I’m sure you don’t want to be late for your own execution.’

  ‘Well, I have to say that I’m very disappointed in this turn of events,’ said Trebunculus as he was goaded towards the Sultan’s passage with the tip of a pike.

  ‘Not half as much as I am,’ I said. ‘What are we going to do now?’

  ‘At a rough guess I imagine we’ll be forced to watch the massacre of the Sultan’s
family before we face our own grisly, lingering deaths, then the General will lay waste to your land, enslave your people and destroy your civilisation.’ The doctor pouted gloomily. ‘I suppose I should be sorry I got you into this.’

  ‘You suppose?’ I shouted as we were shoved into another tunnel. ‘I had it all worked out. I knew what I needed to do when I came back here. Now you’ve gone and mucked it all up.’

  ‘It’s not my fault that nobody does what you want them to. We never had this trouble with the last boy. He used to pop over, build a couple of temples, have a swordfight or two, a couple of court intrigues, a bit of adventure, then go home. Finally he came to stay for months at a time.’

  ‘And look what happened to him,’ I hissed. ‘He took his own life.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the doctor awkwardly, ‘now that I didn’t know.’

  Pushed forwards by our common enemy, we emerged blinking into the light.

  Chapter 45

  Heads

  ‘Excuse me,’ called Danny. He had been trying to check the side profile of the attractive girl walking in front of him by watching her in the shop windows they passed, but had fallen over a revolving Wall’s ice-cream sign. Hearing the clatter behind her, the girl turned and squinted at him, tipping the brim of her rain-hat up to keep the water from her eyes.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked. ‘They’re lethal, those things. Last week one of them blew over and killed a Yorkshire terrier.’

  Danny wiped the mud-splashes from his trousers and made a tentative pointing gesture. ‘Are you who I think you are?’

  ‘That depends.’ Julia stood back. ‘Who do you think I am?’

  ‘You’re Kay Goodwin’s friend. You run that hairdresser’s up by the station.’

  ‘It’s a therapy centre,’ corrected Julia. ‘What’s brought you back to Cole Bay? I thought you lived in London now.’

  ‘I do. I still come down to visit my mum, though. She’s hanging on, poor love. There’s no other reason for me coming back here, I’ll tell you that. How’s our boy doing?’

  ‘Our boy.’ She considered the phrase. ‘Not so well. I think he’s been having a tough time of it lately. And then today.’ She explained about Kay stealing the pier’s motor launch. ‘I’ve just come back from seeing his parents. Mr Cottesloe thinks he’s off his head on drugs. He’s threatening to call in the police unless they do something about him.’

  ‘Are you sure it was Kay?’ asked Danny. ‘It’s not the sort of thing he would do.’

  ‘How do you know what he would do?’ asked Julia defensively.

  ‘I know because he never does anything. He never gets around to doing anything at all. He waits for things to happen, but they never do. He just sits there in his arcade, rotting away in this dismal, awful town.’

  Julia bristled. ‘Some of us still live here. This town is all right if you know how to make the most of it. It’s a state of mind, all that moping about, put into his head by other people who should know better.’

  ‘Do you mean people like me?’ Danny bridled. ‘Is that what you’re saying? Are you getting at me because I had the nerve to get out of here?’

  ‘Oh, is that what they’re calling it nowadays? I just thought there weren’t enough boys around here for you. I know what you were like, up in the dunes, looking for sex. I used to see you. You had to move on because you’d been rumbled around here. London’s a bigger playground for you, that’s all.’

  ‘I was lonely,’ said Danny, stung. ‘Don’t tell me you were never lonely.’ He thought for a moment, then remembered something. ‘You used to be as fat as a pig. Really greasy. All the kids in school used to make fun of you. Don’t tell me you never wanted to get out because I don’t believe you.’

  ‘All right, I suppose I did.’ Her good humour returned. Like Continental sunshine, it never stayed away for long.

  ‘And I suppose you were in love with him as well.’

  ‘A little bit, perhaps,’ Danny admitted. ‘But not in the way you think.’

  ‘You don’t know how I think.’ She smiled. ‘We’ve all got our fantasies, haven’t we? Tell you what, I’m going back to the pier. It might not be too late to stop Kay from doing something he might regret. Do you want to come with me?’

  ‘Yes,’ Danny admitted, as he fell into step beside her. ‘So, about this “therapy centre” of yours. What do you do if you don’t do hair?’

  ‘There’s other ways of straightening out people’s heads,’ she replied, linking her arm in his.

  Chapter 46

  The Attack of the Belligeratron

  As we reached the hill above the harbour, the smoke from the burning villages became thinner and I saw the crowd, a ragged spiritless band, herded up to witness something they clearly had no desire to see. A dense semicircle had formed around the wooden platform that had been hastily constructed and hung with scarlet cloth near the former fish-weighing station. Upon it stood six chopping blocks and six tall-handled axes. Before the platform, their backs turned to the dull green water, stood the massed ranks of General Bassa’s army, their polished finery absurd and vulgar in a land whose people now fought over scraps of stale bread.

  The Lord Chancellor strode forwards, his guards prodding us each time we started to lag behind. As we stumbled on over the hard ridges of earth, following the line of the forest, I wondered if we were being invited to witness the royal executions, or to participate in them. In a military exercise of this kind, it usually became hard to tell where the killing would stop.

  I possessed the essence of a plan; indeed, I had arrived with one forming in my head, but now that I had seen the site of our battleground, and remembered the rickety wooden stands that had been built for the royal production of The Pirates of Penzance, its implementation became clearer. As we marched across the furrows, I fell back to ‘speak’ with Menavino, who, ever alert for opportunities of escape, watched my gestures carefully. Side by side, we moved up until we were level with Scammer. The horrible child fell and bounced at the doctor’s heels like a rag doll on a string, and Trebunculus in turn walked just behind Septimus Peason, who was seeking admiration for his own ingenuity.

  ‘It was no accident, sir, none at all, that brought my son into the eligible sphere of the Princess. As she grew to be of marriageable age, it was I, who had done so much to estrange the Sultan from his army, who suggested a way to heal the rift, by betrothal to Maximus, General Bassa’s most trusted aide. Naturally, the Sultan saw the wisdom in my words and arranged the nuptials with such undue haste that I thought for a while Rosamunde must be with child. You see, sir, the manipulative ability of an active mind in a dormant kingdom. Why, it takes but a single action in a place as gone-to-sleep as ours to effect a permanent change.’

  ‘But I simply don’t understand why you should want to change it,’ said Trebunculus, struggling to keep up.

  ‘Power, sir, power, an underrated commodity here but a necessity if we are to go forth after centuries of lethargy, I assure you. You think this tiny island all there is of the world, when we know the boy comes from another?’

  ‘But they are different planes, different spheres entirely,’ argued Trebunculus. ‘One has as little to do with the other as the sea has to do with the sky.’

  ‘And yet they cannot exist apart. I thought this was the gist of the argument that you first presented to the Sultan and myself when we sought to discover a new benefactor.’

  ‘Yes, indeed it was, but now I know so much more, and surely you can see for yourself how we can no longer survive in the old ways.’

  ‘Exactly, sir, exactly, and that is why the General has taken steps to ensure that the dawn of a bright red future is upon us. Once the might of his great war machine is felt, worlds will fall.’

  Meanwhile, Menavino and I had bullied Scammer into dropping back with us. The filthy little creature hopped about in his rags, rolling his great blue eyes in a pathetic bid for sympathy. ‘I shall follow you, for I’ve not my wits, and so I rely on k
indnesses,’ he hissed and sighed. ‘The Scammer is blown by the winds, this way and that. Whoever is the stronger, why, that’s who I go with.’

  ‘Well, if you want to get through this with your head still attached to your shoulders,’ I suggested, ‘you’d better stay with us this time.’

  I carefully instructed Menavino, who waited until our party was closest to the woods before grabbing our grubby little spy and dropping aside with him in such a simple single motion that their disappearance was as if a breeze had lightly murmured in the branches of the trees. Menavino was invisible at the best of times, and now his camouflage skills came to the fore.

  ‘And so with the passing of the old order comes a brave new reign, where lassitude no longer passes for government of the people,’ said Septimus Peason, strutting on across the peaks of the ruts. ‘These are new times, ripe for grand change, and harsh measures are called for.’ Still no-one had noticed the absence of Menavino and Scammer. I felt sure that they would be able to reach the harbour unseen, but wondered whether they would be able to accomplish the remainder of the task I had just outlined.

  Trebunculus was engaging the Lord Chancellor in an increasingly academic-sounding argument about the future of the kingdom. There came a point with the doctor when he usually started to lose his audience. I hoped it would not be before we reached the dock.

  The crowd before us had swelled now, herded in by the General’s men, the whole area steaming and smoking with a crimson-tinged mist that imbued the harbour with the air of a medieval witch-hunt. Even if the doctor could not see it, I knew that our necks would surely follow the Sultan’s onto the row of blocks arranged on the platform. As we reached the back of the crowd, we saw the Sultan, his long-suffering mother, the Royal Concubine, and several officials, being pushed above the heads of the gathering by the pikes of Bassa’s militia.