The Lion of Sole Bay (Strong Winds)

by Julia Jones

  They had ropes, a mattress and the tarpaulins. All stolen. Reparations, Elsevier called them. Helen didn’t know for what, exactly.

  Hendrike made her own particular nightcaps and slept soundly but, after yesterday’s dawn welcome, Elsevier had said that if she were ever disturbed again by Leo’s outrageous noise, she would throttle him herself. Helen believed that Elsevier was capable of this but not that she’d know how to kill neatly, almost painlessly, as Hendrike did. Leo was the only creature Helen cared about and she wasn’t going to let this happen to him.

  She’d run past Merlesham Hill Farm often enough in the early mornings. She’d heard the cows and seen white doves along the red roof tiles. The farm felt like a good place and it was Leo’s only chance. If the farmer didn’t want him then the end would presumably be efficient.

  It was her one act of resistance.

  Until yesterday, when the boy from the fishing boat had confirmed that his father’s accident was just that – an accident – nothing connected with her mother’s crushing of the poppet, Helen had been ready to sabotage the entire operation.

  Elsevier had been unbearable, strutting around the cabin with her trousers tucked into the tops of her boots, striking the poses that Helen knew she’d copied from museum paintings of the Golden Age. Her arrival had to be kept secret but Elsevier was always in need of an audience. Helen and her mother hardly counted yet still she’d alternately postured, harangued and sulked. What had driven Helen close to treachery was the fact that she’d brought Hendrike a ‘present’ of magic mushrooms from her supplier in Amsterdam.

  “She can’t take them. Her visions are out of control as it is. What are you trying to do to her?”

  Helen often wondered what would happen if she told someone about the drugs. Would it separate her mother from Elsevier?

  The two women had met when Hendrike was still an assistant curator at the Rijksmuseum. Elsevier had entered their lives with a swirl of her cloak and a flourish of her broad-brimmed hat. Had begun inviting Hendrike to Amsterdam’s brown cafes where they sat late at night in a haze of smoke and conspiracy.

  Then her mother had sold their small flat and bought Drie Vrouwen. She began experimenting with various seeds and moulds and fungi which she’d discovered in her seventeenth-century research. She experienced hallucinations and called them visions. Took up drumming and chanting. Said she was a wicca, a woman of power, a new age seer.

  She lost her job.

  Elsevier stole Hendrike’s research and used her visions to impress new followers. She was building a cult. Wreken de Dame – Avenge the Lady. The two of them had twisted some stupid folk-tale about a woman who was accused of blocking a harbour and used it to legitimise stealing back an old ship’s figurehead. Wreken de Dame was supposed to be about making the Netherlands great again. Really it was just to make a bigger stage for Elsevier and give her an excuse for getting rid of anyone she didn’t like.

  Helen couldn’t believe that anyone could take Elsevier seriously but apparently they did. She was interviewed in newspapers and local radio, then invited to join discussions on late night TV. It seemed the more outspoken Elsevier became – including rude and insulting – the more people flocked to Wreken de Dame. It was charisma, apparently.

  The Kapitein suspected that Helen might not be loyal. She had rattled her cabin door late that night and found it locked. Had growled a throaty message for Helen’s ears alone.

  “It is possible that my relationship with your mother may have run its course. If this mission is successful, there may be a parting of the ways.”

  Helen would do anything for that.

  “First the mission must succeed. That is essential. Do you understand?”

  She’d do anything – except let Elsevier get her grasping hands round Leo’s feathery ruff.

  The farm was his best chance. And then she’d be back on board Drie Vrouwen, ready and willing to conspire. And if Elsevier and her mother didn’t split when they got home to Holland…Helen didn’t know what she’d do.

  Luke and Ben were walking up to the farm as Helen was coming away. Miss Grace hadn’t been keen to take the cockerel.

  “There’s a reason I don’t have one already. My hens lay better if they’re not being bothered all the time.”

  But when Helen, without looking up, had asked her in that case whether she wouldn’t mind killing the bird speedily, Miss Grace had relented. She appeared to accept Helen’s explanation that they were planning to go home soon and her mother didn’t want the cockerel on the Noordzee crossing as it was likely to be rougher in November than it had been when they’d arrived. Also she didn’t ask any awkward questions about what had happened to the hens.

  “Is he pinioned?” she asked instead.

  “I’m sorry,” said Helen, “What is pinioned?”

  “Have you cut his main wing-feathers? Can he fly?”

  Helen shook her head. None of the poultry could fly. Her mother had seen to that.

  “No matter. We’ll put him in a coop for now and I’ll take a look later. I’ve known them grow back if the bird’s still young. The dog, the old man, the boy and now a cockerel. Should I be opening a refuge?”

  Fortunately she didn’t seem to want an answer.

  “Remind your mother to tell me when she’s ready to vacate the mooring.”

  “Hi,” said Luke. “Have you been running?”

  The girl’s cheeks were blotchy red.

  “No.”

  She couldn’t face going back to Drie Vrouwen. She’d thought she could. But she couldn’t.

  “I will go and look for ceps.”

  “Ceps?”

  “Boletus edulis, fungus you can eat. They will pay for them in the town or at the pub. Or my mother makes soup.”

  “They might be toadstools.”

  “Not if you understand correctly. We also pick berries, nuts and seaweed. Either we eat them or we sell them to the pub. You English are too lazy to look.”

  He ignored the insult. He’d nothing else to do this morning now he couldn’t go kayaking. Thanks to Ants.

  “Okay. You show me. We’ll take Ben. This is Ben, by the way, the dog. He doesn’t like your cockerel.”

  Helen looked at the terrier. Didn’t smile. Didn’t speak.

  “He’s probably only scared – real softy is our Ben.”

  “Ben is your dog?”

  “I wish. Belongs to Miss Grace. She’s letting him keep me company – you know, cos of Dad. My friend Xanthe rescued him – Ben, not Dad – but then she couldn’t manage to look after him full-time. That’s why he’s on the farm. If I find any mushrooms maybe I could give them to Miss Grace. She’s been good to me.”

  “I think she is good also.”

  Luke didn’t notice that Helen had come mushroom-hunting with no basket. He took his fleece off and offered it as a carrier when they found a colony of oyster mushrooms on the trunk of a dying beech tree.

  “It’s okay. Lottie’s coming home tomorrow. She won’t mind doing some washing.”

  “Lottie?”

  “My step-mum. And my step-sister and my brother and my half-sister, Vicky.”

  “You have so much family.”

  That made him feel bad again about last night. When the old man had hurried him away, believing that he had a mother waiting for him.

  “Maybe I ought to give some to Peter as well. He lives in a hut near here.”

  “The mad man?”

  “He’s just old. And a bit forgetful.”

  She shrugged. “You’d better not. You have to be careful with mushrooms. Some can make you sick. That’s not good for old people.”

  “Wow, look at those! They are totally Super Mario.”

  Almost a complete circle of red mushrooms with white warty bits. They had to be the most classic toadstools Luke had ever seen. W
as it Alice in Wonderland where you ate bits and grew bigger? The girl was on her knees, pulling them out from their roots.

  “What are you doing? – I’m really sorry, I’ve forgotten your name – You can’t pick those. They have to be poisonous.”

  “My name is Helen. Helen who wants to go home and yes, you are right, these fungi are poisonous. They are Amanita muscaria. I pick them and then I crush them and I bury them under leaves so no-one else is fooled.”

  Only part of that was true. She was removing the fly agaric from her mother’s sight. Normal people would be scared off by the vivid colour and the spots and the remains of the white veil round the base. Hendrike went looking for them wherever there were birch trees. She had read too much.

  “So, what are you doing?”

  Luke had spotted a big white mushroom, perfectly round – twice as big as a tennis ball. He ran up to it, ready to chip it neatly into goal, exactly as Liam would have done, but instead he stopped and picked it up and threw it for Ben and then he and the dog raced together to retrieve it. It was well fun.

  “Stop it! That’s food. People can eat that!”

  Oh. It had looked…extra-terrestrial.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You are very ignorant. Now follow me and I will show you chicken-of-the-woods.”

  Luke shortened Ben’s lead and made him walk to heel and neither of them said anything at all when they discovered that chicken-of-the-woods was a golden fungus that grew on the trunks of sweet chestnut trees.

  “I wish,” said Helen, “that people would remember it is good to eat natural food and then they don’t have to kill so many animals.”

  Luke nodded seriously and held out his fleece. Anna had tried to make him eat tofu once. It was like chewing bathroom sponge or expanded polystyrene. This looked a bit similar except for its smell. He knew he ought to want to be a veggie but…

  They picked a whole pile of delicate-looking purple fungi and then Ben was pushing leaves about with his nose and Luke noticed a scattering of mushrooms which looked like overcooked buns. Helen was delighted.

  “These we give to the farmer as our gift,” she said. “These are ceps.”

  They put the ceps for Miss Grace on the kitchen table and Luke said goodbye to Ben.

  “Thanks for letting me come,” he said to Helen as they walked down the track. “Are you going to be around for the bonfire?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not if we have to pay. I don’t know why it is?”

  “It’s because it’s the fifth of November. Guy Fawkes tried to blow up the King and the Houses of Parliament. He had barrels of gunpowder and he hid in the cellars all night. But he got found.”

  “Why?”

  “Someone grassed him up – told on him.”

  “No. Why did he wish to blow up the King?”

  “To do with religion, I think. Most things were in them days.”

  “Which religion was this Guy Fawkes?”

  “Not sure.” Luke felt embarrassed. He liked history. He ought to know. “Maybe Catholic. Or Protestant?”

  “We are Protestants,” said Helen, firmly. “The French and Spanish, they were Catholics. The French plotted against us with you English.”

  “Oh. Er…sorry.”

  “Sorry is not always enough,” said Helen and ran away from him, back to Drie Vrouwen.

  It was going to be lonely without Ben. Maybe he’d accept Miss Grace’s invitation and stay the night up at the farm.

  He met Peter and said Hi but Peter didn’t answer. Luke tried walking along beside him chatting. Peter didn’t recognise him so Luke gave up when they reached the moorings. He said goodbye and watched the old man as he plodded through the double row of boats that were standing out of the water for the winter.

  He did look like an old and mangy wolf. Luke’s first impression hadn’t been so far wrong. He could track Peter. Discover his day-time lair. That’s what he’d do if Liam was here.

  The old man went back into the wood and shambled along a section of path that they hadn’t yet explored. It was muddy and there were boards crossing three or four small streams that must be draining back into the creek. There was a length of rope tied to a tree. It led out into a band of reeds. A plank jetty also led into the reeds. It was narrow and a bit uneven but it seemed you could hold the rope and follow it along. That’s what Peter did. Then he disappeared.

  Luke waited for a while, then went back the way he’d come. He would watch out for Peter’s return then explore the jetty when the old wolf was at the farm or in his hut.

  Ants Vandervelde and her parents were standing beside Lowestoft Lass. There was no way he could avoid them. Mr Vandervelde was writing something. He stopped when he saw Luke.

  “Hullo. Good morning. Glad to see you.”

  “Er, hi.”

  “We were going to leave a message.”

  He wished they had. He wished he’d stayed in the wood or gone down Peter’s jetty. Anywhere.

  Ants and her mother were hanging back, leaving the father to do the talking. He kept pushing his glasses back on his nose. Ants was fidgeting and looking from side to side at all the boats. She was holding her mother’s hand. Or her mother was holding her, which seemed more likely.

  “This is your father’s boat?” Mr Vandervelde stopped pushing at his glasses and pulled his wispy beard instead.

  “Yeah.”

  “Is there somewhere we can talk? We’ve been to the Phoenix Yard. We have told them the whole story. And to the police. We’ve been to the pool and explained the provocation. You can return to the course or we will offer your parents a refund for the fees they paid. We are here because Angela is desperate for news of your father. As we all are,” he added.

  “NO.” Luke nearly shouted.

  Ants began to cry. Her mother tried to put her arms right round her but Ants pushed her away. Her mother still hung onto the hand while Ants stood and sobbed. It was so embarrassing. That girl, Helen, and her mother would hear her. They’d assume these were his friends.

  “Stop doing that. Okay, come on board – if that’s what it takes. I don’t know what my dad would think.”

  He did know what his dad would think. His dad was helpful and kind. That was his dad’s big mistake.

  “It was you lying on the ground wasn’t it?” he asked Ants, when they were all in the wheelhouse with the door closed. “You went under the boat first but you didn’t knock it down. Then the others pushed you off the bike and legged it. My dad thought you were going to get crushed so that’s why he ran towards the boat. So he nearly died and it was ALL YOUR FAULT.”

  She nodded without speaking. Her gold-brown eyes were huge, her small face white and her dyed red hair even more startling than usual.

  “Angela has made a full statement to the police and also to the boatyard manager. She has admitted trespassing but not with intent to cause damage or endanger property – or life, of course. She claims she does not know the names of any of the boys who were with her and she refuses to attempt identification. We don’t yet know what further proceedings the yard or their insurance company intend to take against us.” Mr Vandervelde looked down at his hands which seemed ready to begin their uncontrollable twisting. He put them out of sight behind his back. “All that truly concerns Angela is your father’s condition. She wants to see him but we’ve told her that it couldn’t be allowed.”

  “When he were on the ground and I thought that he were dying I promised him that he were going to be okay.”

  She was leaning towards Luke, sort of quivering. He wondered whether she was going to attack him again. Her mum must’ve thought the same cos she was still hanging on

  “Gold star promise, I told him. He was so cold and his breathing was going funny and I tried to keep him warm and stop him from like slipping away. I tried my best.”

  Luke l
ooked hard at her wide face with its short straight distinctive nose and that mane of hair. He remembered what his dad had felt and what the doctor had said.

  He’d got it so wrong.

  “You did! It was you who was Dad’s angel!”

  “Hardly, in the circumstances …”

  Angel ignored her father. She needed to tell Luke exactly how it had been. “I ain’t good at focussing. I ain’t good at sitting still. There’s something wrong with me but I don’t know what it is. They try putting me on programmes but I’m always getting chucked off. But this time I did it. I sat with your dad and I stayed stone-still and I sort of poured my promise into him. Then the ambulance came…and I ran away.”

  Luke stared at her almost as hard as she was staring at him.

  “I want to tell him that I was sorry. It was the light, see? I know I should have said something to my mum and dad but I didn’t. I want to know if my promise worked. I totally need your dad to be okay – for me and him.”

  She stood without moving.

  “I think,” said Mrs Vandervelde, after a while, “that we should all have a nice cup of tea.”

  “Hate tea,” said Angel, jerking back to her normal self.

  “And I’ve drunk so much that I might be turning brown,” said Luke. “But I’m sure my dad would want me to offer you something and anyway I haven’t had breakfast yet. Ants…I mean Angela, can come to the hospital with me later when it’s visiting. The nurses can be a bit funny about kids but I know Dad would like to see her. He’s been asking.”

  He made them tea and ate beans on toast himself. Offered some to Ants but her mother said she shouldn’t because they were orange so she just had the toast.

  Then he showed them round Lowestoft Lass. The tide was up and she was floating. Everyone seemed more cheerful and when Ants spotted the kayak and went nearly dippy with excitement, Luke managed to persuade her parents that it would be okay to launch it in the shallow water and have a quick paddle round. Conditions were ideal. The tide was slack and there was very little wind.

  It was a good thing Lottie had made him bring the buoyancy aid and waterproofs. There was a sort of skirt thing folded inside the kayak which he managed to fit on and, without exactly saying anything untrue, he allowed Ants’s parents to think that he was doing this all the time. You could see that they were fussers.