by Julia Jones
”For me? But they loved me in the pub and, apart from that, I was never here. Who saw me? Except one crazy old man – who you chose to cherish. Make no mistake, oh child of the pure white trainers and the principles to match, the moment you leave this boat or make that call, I’ll be gone and you’ll be the person with the spaced-out mother and the stolen property. Rather a lot of stolen property, isn’t there? I imagine most of these muddy peasants will find something on board that they’ve lost. As well as the large and valuable seventeenth-century artefact.”
How Helen hated her. Would the boy back her up if the old man couldn’t? But he’d seen nothing, really. She’d got to stick it. Not too much longer.
“Perhaps we’d better think how we’re going to ship your precious trophy home for you. Now that you’ve put my mother out of action I don’t see how we’re going to get ourselves away from this creek, let alone across the Noordzee.”
Hendrike had been raving by the time they returned. The thrill of the flames, the mind-bending present from her Kapitein. Once she’d helped them heave the lion on board, she’d been locked in her cabin and told to keep her visions to herself.
Elsevier was pacing backwards and forwards in Drie Vrouwen’s main saloon. She executed one of her dramatic swirling turns and stopped still, flinging out an arm towards Helen.
“Your point being?”
“That this boat is too long to manage the tight bends of the creek easily, even at the top of the tide. We can’t trust the marker buoys to be exact. There was too much bad weather in October. At least two of them dragged. They need repositioning but no-one will do it until next spring, if then. It might be the same with the buoys at the river mouth so we’ll need plenty of water there as well. It’s difficult. If we want a good depth of water at the river mouth we must get out of here as early as we can – unless you want to wait another tide.”
“It’s imperative we leave this country as soon as we can. Or before.”
“The way we got the barge into this creek, if you remember, was having me rowing ahead in the inflatable dinghy, checking the depth on each turn. You were steering and mother was on the foredeck watching me and directing you. You can’t see the pilot when you are at the helm. The barge is too long. You’re too far back.”
“And your solution?”
“Is obvious. We need a third person. Or we could wait until my mother’s better – if she is.”
The older woman brushed this idea aside.
“Too risky. The fire investigator will be back and I assume even the English police will make some sort of search for the carving. The weather’s getting worse and the tides will be falling away after tomorrow’s high. We’ve got a long trip and I’ve scheduled the press conference and the photoshoot for Martinmas. Perfect timing to catch the popular mood.”
“Martinmas? They’ll be arresting you next Tuesday then.”
“Not at all. Next Tuesday 11th – which, as you rightly say, is Martinmas – I’ll be on prime-time TV across Europe asserting our national right to a lost item of our national heritage. Your mother’s research was good. I’ll claim back the carving for the United Provinces and our Golden Age. It’ll become an international incident – like the Elgin marbles which the English stole from the Greeks. Or the treasures they lifted from the Pyramids.”
“Lots of controversy means lots more publicity for you. You don’t care about the rights and wrongs at all.”
“I’ll be in government by the next election.” Elsevier doffed her hat and bowed. Then she raised it high, in response to the cheers of her rapturous populace. She scowled as Helen failed to oblige. “Back to the immediate problem. Who do you have in mind to join us? Can they be bribed?”
“Shouldn’t think so.”
“Good. We resort to tactics of the English press gang. Who is your lucky volunteer?”
***
Angel didn’t know how she should feel when the fair-haired Dutch girl tapped politely on the door of Lowestoft Lass’s wheelhouse. She guessed the girl was at least a couple of years older than her and she looked like the sort of person who was really together. Probably good at everything. She’d seemed friendly last night but then Angel had lost sight of her in all the confusion and the fire. And now she’d probably found that the dinghy had been burned.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m really sorry about your mum’s dinghy. Do you think that it was anything we did wrong – I did wrong, I mean – that fire happening just exactly where I’d moved it? Have you talked to those insurance people? I hid when they came round. I didn’t know what I should say. It looks horrible at the end of the pontoon. I didn’t want to go anywhere near it.”
She hadn’t woken her dad or Luke. Hadn’t phoned her mum either. She still had her dad’s phone but the reception down here was bad and she hadn’t gone up the hill to use it because she knew her mum would know that there was something wrong as soon as she heard her voice. And then she’d start worrying and they’d probably have a row and her mum would get on her bike and come peddling round to help, even though her dad had the car and would be fine to get both of them home later – now that he’d stopped sweating and being sick and saying weird things.
“Hi,” said Helen, stepping inside. “Yes, that was quite a night! And it is about the dinghy that I must talk to you. How are you feeling this morning?”
Her hair was swept up into her pony-tail with none of those stray, wispy bits that would have happened if Angel had ever tried a style like that. She wore a white polo neck and a sporty-looking dark blue windcheater with some sort of club logo.
Angel hadn’t eaten anything at all last night. It had all been too exciting. And then scary when it was the fire. So she’d tried to cook herself some breakfast and she seemed to have left cutlery and dirty pans everywhere. She’d burned the toast as well – though that was nothing. You could smell burned plastic boats in the air outside. It was a bitter, chemical smell not at all nice like a garden bonfire.
Bonfires! Her mum had had the right idea for once. Angel didn’t think she’d ever want to go to any more Guy Fawkes parties. This had been her first and would be her last.
“Hi,” she said again, trying to clear a space at the small wooden table so the other girl could sit down. “Um, would you like…?”
She wasn’t sure what she should offer and she couldn’t remember if she should know the other girl’s name. The girl made herself a space at the table with what seemed like two effortless movements. She shifted a pile of plates and mugs over to the sink, set them to rinse in fresh water and sat down, smiling at Angel but looking serious too.
“No, I’m very well, thank you. My name is Helen by the way. You must forgive my English. I’m not sure what name you like to be called?”
Angel sat down with a bump, not noticing that she’d put her elbow in a cereal bowl that was still half full. No-one ever asked her that.
“Well, my parents call me Angela and that is my proper name. And the teachers do of course and those sort of people. But the other children in school, they call me Ants and I hate it – though I have to pretend that I don’t. It’s happened at every school I’ve been to and I can’t remember how many schools that is. You might not understand as I don’t think you’re English, though you speak it very well. There’s a saying about people who fidget having ants in their pants and I do fidget. I can’t seem to help it. It would be all right if Ants was just, like, a nickname but the trouble is then some kids get on to the pants bit and then they say they want to see what’s inside my…”
Why did she always say too much? There was no need for her to tell this cool, clean, Dutch girl about the number of times she’d been held down in the playground, kicking and biting, so that some clever-clever group of chanting children could check that she hadn’t got insects in her underwear.
“That’s not at all nice,” said Helen who found the red-head’s
hurried way of speaking quite hard to follow but understood that she had been bullied at school. Too bad for her.
She smiled at the younger girl. “So what name do you call yourself – in your head, privately?”
No-one had asked her that question. Not even when she’d been taken to the psychologist and they’d made her do all those things such as drawing herself as an animal. She’d been a wildcat of course. A wildcat making out she were a noble lion.
She didn’t like the psychologist or any of those people with the fake-nice voices who asked all those questions and never told you any answers. But this tall girl with her beautiful fair hair and her blue eyes and her careful way of speaking had asked politely, as if she wanted to know.
“Well you’re not allowed to laugh. I call myself Angel, see. Because it’s Angela without the feminine bit – that’s what an ‘a’ does to words in English – and I don’t much like being a girl. I hate pink for starters and I don’t never feel like I fit in. That’s at home as well as at school, with my mum and dad. So I thought if I’d come from somewhere else it would explain it.” She tried to lighten up. Didn’t want to sound as if she was pitying herself. “I know I haven’t, of course. But if I had come from somewhere where everyone was good – like angels would be good – then if I were living there, I’d likely be good too. Because I can’t seem to manage it down here.”
Helen took the single word. “Angel – okay, that’s a nice name. In Dutch it’s ‘engel’ which is both English and an angel. I can use that because I am hoping that you will be for us an angel. My mother is sick and we want to go home. Today the tide is high at twelve and we can get the barge out of this creek. I have one friend who will steer but we need a pilot to go ahead and find the deep water. And now we don’t have a dinghy. Would you go first for us, in your kayak. Or your friend perhaps?”
Would she! Getting back into the kayak was the one thing she’d been thinking about all morning. One of her reasons for burning the toast and forgetting that she’d already got cereal. Not that it was any different than usual. She was always rubbish when she tried to make her own food.
“It’s not mine. And he’s not well either, though he might be better by now. He and my dad ate something that didn’t agree with them. Luke’s worried that it might have been his sausages. I don’t know because I didn’t eat anything. There was so much going on. Did your mother eat sausages?”
“I’m not sure. I would really like to take her home to Holland.”
Angel jumped up.
“I’ll ring my mum. I can run up the hill. Then she could come and help. We’ve got the car here but she could use her bike. And my dad could as well. Help, I mean. They do make a fuss but, if your mum’s that ill, she maybe wouldn’t mind. My mum could ring our doctor for you.”
This was certainly more than Helen wanted. The prize was lashed on Drie Vrouwen’s cabin roof. It had been hosed clean and re-wrapped in the stolen tarpaulins but she couldn’t risk unknown adults looking around and asking questions. She had a lot to do if they were getting to sea in the next few hours. She needed this girl but she didn’t need any extra mothers. And definitely no doctors – not until they were in Holland.
“Don’t worry then. I’m quite busy. I thought you would like to assist in the kayak. It doesn’t matter.”
“I so do! You don’t know how much. I don’t have to tell my mum.” Luke, she mustn’t upset Luke. “…but I really do have to ask my friend. The kayak’s his and I messed up so badly last time I was using something that wasn’t mine. My dad’ll be okay. You could talk to him. You did last night. I expect he went on about history.”
Okay, thought Helen. She’d take all three. They could maybe do with extra crew – if only to irritate Elsevier. The Kapitein hated males.
Also she probably needed to stop the boy talking. There’d been no time last night (or early this morning) to discuss what they should say if anyone asked awkward questions. It wasn’t only the fire. The boy had come mushroom-picking with her. She might have said something about the fly agaric. Then he’d been very sick. She didn’t want him or the girl’s father deciding to go and get the source of their illness analysed.
Plus he’d seen her last night when she’d left a furious Elsevier to manage the last section of the journey herself. He’d showed up when Helen had been struggling to get the old madman safely back across the gap in the wall. He said he’d been searching for him and had heard voices.
He was still sick and unsteady on his feet but he’d got the phone number of the farmer, which was a help. He’d rung her and they’d got the old man across the breach and walked him slowly to the end of the track where the farmer had met them with her Land Rover.
“I think he has had a fall. He seems confused,” was all that Helen said as explanation.
She didn’t want to stay. She couldn’t think why the madman wasn’t kept safely in some hospital. She had been completely unprepared when he put his bony hand on hers as she was settling him into the farmer’s vehicle.
“Thank you. You are the young Maroosia. I think that you have saved me.”
He had such a lovely smile. For a moment she wished he was her dear old grandfather. If she’d had one. Which she didn’t.
Then she’d hurried away to Drie Vrouwen and helped to haul the prize on board while the sky was still dark. She’d watched Elsevier turn the key on her mother and had finally locked herself into her own cabin for a few hours’ sleep. She didn’t know where the boy had gone after that or what he might have seen.
She’d get all these people on board. Take them out of the way for a while.
“Good,” she said to the girl. “We leave as soon as the water’s up. In an hour, maybe two. I’ll show you how you will test the depth for us. And your father and your friend can come with you on the ship and see that you are safe. A little river trip, what fun! If you speak to your mother, tell her you are all helping your neighbour and you will return later. Goodbye for now. I must make preparations.”
***
Luke was jealous of Ants as she paddled away from Drie Vrouwen in his kayak. Helen had asked him so sweetly that he couldn’t refuse. He and Mr Vandervelde – Mike – were going to help with the warps and the fending-off as she left her mooring but then they would be passengers while Helen watched Ants and shouted back instructions in Dutch to her friend with the big hat who would be steering.
“Her name’s Elsevier, but she’s perfectly happy for friends like you to call her Elsie,” said Helen.
Luke didn’t think Els…waddever…was happy about that at all. He saw the way she scowled at Helen while pretending to smile at them with her big white teeth. He’d sometimes wondered what a ‘wolfish’ smile looked like. Now he thought he knew.
Mike looked as if he wanted to ask Elsie more about her name but Helen was hustling them both into their positions and explaining what they needed them to do to get Drie Vrouwen out from her tight spot alongside Lowestoft Lass. She was worried about her mother and desperate to begin their voyage home as soon as they could escape the shallow waters of the Deben.
Luke had a bad feeling that all this illness could have been caused by him forgetting to keep Lottie’s sausages in the fridge. He and Mike were wobbly but okay this morning, except they were both very tired and he couldn’t imagine himself wanting to eat another sausage EVER. Or even accept another helping of that brilliant soup. Made with the mushrooms that he had helped to pick! His single achievement of the holiday – if you didn’t count learning to spread straw for cows.
He hoped Helen’s mum would soon be up and about. It seemed a long journey for them to be starting with just Helen and Elsie to manage everything on the boat. Helen had said all she needed was help out of the creek; otherwise he’d have volunteered to go with them and be their crew.
His holiday was over. When he got to the hospital everyone else would be there. Reunions two a
t a time to keep things calm in Bill’s ward. Not that he’d have much to tell and Liam wouldn’t listen anyway. He’d want to go on about the Inter/Man U match and the amazing San Siro stadium. He’d probably been texting already. Then it would be all of them back home to Bawdsey.
Luke imagined himself down there in the kayak, piloting the barge out of Fynn Creek. He wondered what Drie Vrouwen’s broad metal prow would look like if it was going to be the last thing that you saw – shaped like the top of a wrestler’s torso, two massive shoulders in a black cloak without a head. Plus the black anchor and its black chain hanging there like a madman’s mace ready to finish you off.
Good thing Ants was focussing on her job. She had to paddle from buoy to buoy, keeping exactly to the centre of the narrow channel and letting the kayak glide every few strokes while she probed to the bottom of the creek. Drie Vrouwen needed nearly two metres depth. That was almost all the water that there was up here at the top end of the creek, hardly enough such a long boat trying to manoeuvre round the sharp twists of the narrow channel.
Helen was watching the kayak, calling out to Elsie and using her arms to indicate the direction of each new twist. More than once the older woman didn’t appear to follow what Helen said. Then Drie Vrouwen’s bow ran into the invisible shallows and stuck as her stern struggled to come round after it. Elsie muttered harshly accented swearwords and crashed the powerful engine into reverse. Once she did this so hard that they ran aground backwards on the opposite side and Luke had to struggle not to laugh.
Everywhere – river, riverbanks, sky – was grey, grey-brown or charcoal. Heavy rain was forecast later. Sooner seemed more likely.
Ants’s paddle went deep. She tried again, pushing it down so hard that her arm went right in and the kayak threatened to roll. She couldn’t touch bottom. They were safely out of the creek and into the main river.
Luke noticed something else as well. Two somethings – something that wasn’t there; something that was.
First he noticed that the barge didn’t have a dinghy. Helen had said that she would put them ashore once they were out of the creek. But how could she do that if she didn’t have a dinghy?