The Penal Colony

by Richard Herley

  Martinson picked up a black pebble and hurled it as far as he could. The shags craned their necks anxiously, and one even made as if to depart, but at the harmless splash of the projectile fifty metres out it changed its mind and, with its companion, remained uneasily watching.

  “Get a move on, Obie,” Martinson muttered.

  He had sent Obie to the lighthouse with a message for Houlihan.

  There were currently four members of the brain gang: Feely, Wilmot, Gomm, and Wayne Pope. Pope was the only one with ambition. Wilmot and Gomm could be relied on to adapt. Feely was another matter.

  This was Christmas morning. Martinson thought of the uplifting celebrations taking place all across Britain. Just about now the kids would have broken their new robots or discovered that batteries weren’t included. Then, this afternoon, when it clouded over, when the whole family had pigged themselves sick on turkey and pudding, the adults’ rows and sulks would begin.

  He had known two Christmases with his mother. The rest he had spent with grandma, except for one, when he had been invited to the house of a rich kid he had met at Crusaders. Not rich, really, but better off than anyone else he had ever met. The parents had called him “James” and tried to make him feel at home. They had given him a plastic Darth Vader and a jigsaw puzzle of Lake Windermere. The Christmas dinner had been pretty good. Afterwards he and the rich kid had gone upstairs. Martinson had looked round his bedroom, at all the stuff he owned, listening to him boasting about his old man. “I’ve had enough of this,” Martinson had said. “Enough of what?” “Enough of you, dunghead.”

  That kid was probably some bigshot now, able in his own right to massage his conscience by patronizing what he would certainly call “disadvantaged” children. Like the shrinks and social workers and the parole board and all the rest of them. The mind-boggling arrogance of these bastards was utterly beyond belief. Martinson, flinging another pebble, told himself he was better off here.

  Before the ripples had died he noticed that the shags had gone. Three figures were picking their way along the beach from the direction of the lighthouse. One was Obie. Another was Wilmot, distinctive in his yellow PVC jacket. But the third, in an island-made sheepskin coat and dreadlocks, could have been either Gomm or Pope. At least Feely wasn’t among them.

  As the figures drew nearer, Martinson identified the third man and again felt that sense of predestination. For it was Pope who had elected, or been ordered, to come. Or, even stranger, perhaps Pope had some ideas of his own: perhaps he was already thinking along the lines that Martinson himself intended, faintly and impressionistically, to adumbrate today.

  “That’s far enough!” Martinson shouted, machete in hand, when they were yet a hundred metres off.

  Both of Houlihan’s men were armed with iron bars.

  “I’ll talk to one or the other! Pope! I’ll talk to you! Wilmot, you stay with Obie!”

  Pope and Wilmot conferred; Pope shrugged and came forward. “What’s up, man?” he said, when he was close enough to talk. “Why didn’t you come to the light?”

  “I got reasons.”

  “Obie wouldn’t tell us nothing about Nackett. What happened? You scragged him yet? That’s what Archie want to know.”

  “Nackett’s still alive.”

  “But you said —”

  “I just said I’d top him. Not when.”

  “You give Archie to understand it would be Christmas. He’ll be disappointed. He been looking forward to it.”

  “And what about you, Wayne? You disappointed too?”

  “Anything upset Archie upset me and all.”

  Martinson smiled: the sketchy beginnings of an understanding had passed between them.

  “So when it going to be?”

  “Soon,” Martinson said. “Can I say something to you? Off the record, like? When I’ve done Nackett I got to be sure Archie keeps his end up. I want that bastard Franks. When we go for him it’s got to be hard, and it’s got to be right.”

  “You know you can count on Archie, Jim.”

  “Sure I can. But a thing like taking the Village needs planning. It needs expert work. For that, Obie’s the only bloke in Old Town I can trust.”

  “We gots blokes you can trust.”

  “Like you?”

  “Like me, for one.” Pope glanced over his shoulder at Wilmot, who was rubbing his hands together, his iron bar tucked under his arm. “Thing is, Archie won’t want to commit no resources till Nackett goes.”

  “I need the binoculars.”

  “No chance.”

  “Before we hit the Village I want to know everything about it. Patrol schedules, guard details, work rotas, where Franks craps. I don’t want him getting away. To find out all that I need observers. If Archie says I can’t have observers, then I need binoculars. With binoculars me and Obie can do it between us.”

  “You didn’t say nothing about this before,” Pope said, peevishly.

  “I didn’t think of it before.”

  “You ain’t the sort of bloke what don’t think of things.”

  “Maybe so.”

  “Archie’ll never stand for it.”

  “Does he have to know?”

  Pope’s eyes narrowed. He was cunning: Martinson would have to be deadly careful. “How long you want them for?”

  “Couple of months.”

  “He’d create if they went missing.”

  “All I’m after is Franks. I don’t care about nothing else.”

  “What is it with you and Franks? Archie reckon you got the hots for him.”

  Martinson gave a sneering laugh. “Yeah, sure. Tell Archie it’s the real thing.” He looked directly into Pope’s eyes. “And tell him this is the best way he can get the whole island for himself. The ’copter. The governor. The lot.”

  “You make it sound tempting, put like that.”

  “I’ll be here at noon every day for the next three days. If you get them binocs to me, Archie’ll have cause to thank you later.”

  “Yes,” Pope said, weighing his iron bar. “I can see that, Jim.”

  Martinson delivered his next words with cool deliberation. “Tell him what you like about Nackett. Tell him I lost my bottle, if you want.”

  “I’ll tell him you’ll do it later. That’s right, ain’t it?”

  “That’s right. Nackett goes. Make no mistake there. But he goes when the time is right and not before.”

  Pope gave an emphatic nod. “Right. Leave it with me.” He nodded once more, turned, and started back towards Wilmot.

  “Merry Christmas to you, Wayne.”

  “And to you, Jim. And to you.”

  2

  Picking up his watch from the bedside shelf, Routledge saw that he had slept almost unimaginably late. It was past ten o’clock. He had wasted well over two hours of daylight.

  His tongue felt thick and furry. His head was throbbing.

  He slowly put the watch back and coaxed himself into rising.

  Standing shivering by the washbowl, he shut his eyes and frowned. He remembered now. The evening was coming back to him. How much had he drunk? Two months’ allocation, at least. He would be in debt to Venables till the end of January.

  This was Thursday, Christmas morning, a holiday. He had volunteered to work this afternoon with Thaine in the carpentry shop; before then, he and King and several others had been invited to Mitchell’s house for lunch. Appleton was organizing another lunch in his house, Stamper another in his, Blackshaw another in the recreation hut, and the Father would be presiding over the biggest of all, in two sittings, at the bungalow.

  Routledge steeled himself to wash. Luckily there was water in the jug, though he could not recollect having put it there. Nor, now, could he recollect undressing or falling asleep. His clothes had been neatly laid out on the chair, but that was not the way he usually arranged them himself. King. King had put him to bed.

  Routledge frowned again. It pained his skull to bend down, and the water in the jug was thin
ly covered by ice, but he leaned over the bowl anyway and poured the whole jugful on his head.

  He put on yesterday’s clothes: long underwear, plaid shirt, thin sweater, thick sweater, corduroy jeans, thin woollen socks, thick woollen socks, lace-up work boots, woollen mittens, a woollen scarf, and the woollen noddy which, having taken lessons and been given some of the yarn spun under Stamper’s supervision, he had knitted for himself. After making his bed he rejected the idea of breakfast and put on his waxed cotton coat. From the mantelshelf he took a parcel he had prepared the previous morning, and slipped it into one of his capacious outer pockets.

  King was at home. He had been sitting alone with his volume of Spenser, the southern shutter laid open to admit the sunshine, a peat fire burning in the grate.

  “I brought you this,” Routledge said, once he had been invited inside, and handed King the half-bottle of whisky, which was tied at the neck with a bit of red ribbon. “Season’s greetings.”

  King seemed to be moved by the gesture, but not entirely surprised. “Well, that’s very nice,” he said. “To use the hallowed phrase, you really shouldn’t have. Whisky’s far too extravagant.” He went to his shelves and took down a medium-sized package done up in brown paper; a sprig of berried holly had been tucked beneath the string. “I thought you might do something like this,” he said, “so I took the necessary precaution. Happy Christmas.”

  Carefully untying the string and removing the paper, Routledge saw that he had been given exactly what he needed: a new belt, made of supple pigskin and with a steel buckle fashioned apparently from driftwood fittings. About five centimetres wide, the leather was unstained but had been most expertly tooled with an artistic pattern of oblique bars.

  “It’s superb,” Routledge said. “Did you make it yourself?”

  “I wish I had. It’s one of Mr Caldecote’s.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Say you’ll have a drink. Take a seat.”

  Despite the open shutter, the peat fire was so efficient that Routledge decided to remove his coat first. “Reading your friend Edmund again?” he said, picking up the book.

  “It’s a drug.” He handed Routledge a glass of whisky, taken from the full-sized bottle he had won on Gunter’s victory in the darts championship. “So. How are you feeling now?”

  “Much better for a sip of this. I want to thank you for putting me to bed. If it was you.”

  “Yes, it was me, and Mr Fitzmaurice.”

  “I’m afraid I was pretty far gone last night.”

  “That was the whole idea.” King paused and raised his glass. “If you don’t mind me saying so, I would now like to propose a toast. To the metamorphosis of Anthony John Routledge.”

  “Metamorphosis?”

  “Sert makes or breaks everyone in the first few months. It’s an ordeal. You’ve come through intact. At one time I didn’t think you would, but then one can never be sure who will and who won’t. To be honest, when you first arrived I was sure you wouldn’t. Still, you survived outside, and that’s ninety per cent of it. If you can do that, there’s a good chance you’ll eventually be OK.”

  Routledge, overwhelmed by this unexpected praise, looked down at his glass. But King was right: he had come through the worst part of his punishment and been made stronger. He was stronger physically, and he was much stronger mentally, than the man who had awoken in this room last July. He had begun to learn something quite alien and new: he had begun to learn how to tolerate discomfort and pain, disappointment, bitterness, his fellow men.

  “I didn’t murder that nurse,” he said, after a moment.

  “I believe you.”

  “When the jury brought in their verdict I just couldn’t grasp it. My legs felt like water. I had to hold on to the dock or I’d have gone down. I shouldn’t be sitting here on Christmas Day. I should be at home. But I don’t mind any more. Can you understand that, King? I don’t mind the injustice of it any more. It’s happened. I can’t change it now. Maybe there is such a thing as fate. Maybe I was supposed to be sent to Sert.” He thought of all the coincidences, the flimsy scraps of circumstantial evidence, one suggesting and confirming another, which together had convinced the police of his guilt. If only he hadn’t taken Louise’s newspaper that day; if only the nurse had got into another carriage or even another seat; if only he hadn’t slipped and fallen, unseen, on his garden step; if only, if only … the list was almost endless, and he had been through it a hundred thousand times. “I can’t pretend I’m pleased to be spending the rest of my days in a penal colony. I’d give anything for a place on the ketch. But I have to admit there are compensations, of a sort. I’ve learned things here I’d never have known on the mainland. Mostly about myself.”

  “There’s no need to say any more,” King said. “Don’t forget I’ve been through it too. Although in my case, of course, I was guilty.” He smiled ruefully and raised his glass once more. “I drink to yapping terriers.”

  “To yapping terriers. None of which are here to plague us on Sert.” Now it was Routledge who smiled.

  “True.” King emptied his glass. “There are, as you say, compensations. What about a refill?”

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  The new cutting-lists had come last night from Appleton and were lying on the plan-table. “This is right up your street again, Mr Routledge,” Thaine said, opening the master portfolio and untying the tapes. “I want you to check these revised quantities against the plans. Include the bits we’ve already done. Then check that the working cutting-list tallies with the numerical cutting-list. Be especially careful that the timbers match.”

  “OK. Will do.”

  During lunch, cloud had slowly spread from the north-west and now the afternoon was dull, with a freshening breeze which had just begun plucking at a loose shutter on the windward side of the carpentry shop. Dusk was not far off. Two Tilleys had been lit, one spreading its light on this broad, sloping plan-table by the storeroom door.

  On arrival just now Routledge had found Thaine already at work, supervising Ojukwu, Chapman, and Betteridge as they cut and finished the marked timbers whose measurements he and Appleton had already approved. These three men were the finest carpenters in the Village. Thaine excepted, only Betteridge had any experience of boatbuilding, and then only of making a dinghy from a kit. Most of the techniques of boatbuilding were new to them.

  Leaving the plan-table, Thaine fastened the offending shutter before returning to Chapman, who was using a spar gauge and smoothing plane to round the bars of the two transom handgrips.

  Routledge sat down and began.

  During his professional life he had seen and handled many plans, but could remember none as thorough or as beautifully drawn as those Thaine had prepared for the ketch. The paper had been supplied by those villagers who received artists’ materials among their luxury goods. The earliest drafts had been preserved in order to retain any useful ideas that might otherwise have been lost. They were executed in pencil. For later work Thaine had turned to felt tip, and then to Chinese ink and draughtsman’s pens. Lacking a proper drawing board, templates, flexible curves; lacking all aids, in fact, except compasses and a straight-edge, he had produced drawings, in plan and sectional and three-dimensional view, of such comprehensive accuracy that any competent boatyard anywhere in the world would be able to build the craft without further reference to its designer.

  From what little Routledge knew about the subject, the vessel seemed to be something quite revolutionary. It was to be a fraction under eight metres in length and two and a half in the beam, chine built of larch, oak, arbor-vitae, and marine plywood, with a shallow draft and a double keel. Space inside would be extremely limited, for the boat’s most striking feature was the fact that it could be all but totally submerged and still retain buoyancy. The submersion and subsequent emergence were to be achieved so simply that Routledge, when first he had seen the plans, had shaken his head in disbelief.

  It was obvious that Thain
e had already assembled the ketch, in his mind, a dozen times over; had sailed it, knew the way it would handle in calm water or rough. He had incorporated each of Godwin’s requirements, however demanding. To reduce the chances of detection by radar, no exposed metal was to be used anywhere on the exterior. The blocks and cleats and cringles and shackles were to be made of wood, and all screw-heads sunk and plugged. For the same reason the design avoided sharp edges, angles, and protrusions. The two masts, the spars, the rangefinder and all the rigging would be stored in special compartments flush with the deck. To evade the infrared detectors, a wooden sprinkle-bar running the length of the boat, fed from below by a hand pump, would keep the decking at the same temperature as the surrounding sea.

  To go with the drawings, Thaine had prepared a complete production schedule, with cutting-lists, tables of quantities, schedules for making and fixing the various fittings and fastenings, plans for the steam-box which now occupied one corner of the carpentry shop, and a list of the special tools, cramps, and gauges required, with designs for those which had had to be made on the island.

  He had also played a part in helping Godwin with the electrics. Power for the sonar, radio direction finder, and the helmsman’s address system would be supplied by four twelve-volt accumulators. For fear of detection by the Magic Circle, there could be no electric motors on board, so the pump had to be worked by hand. The sonar system-box would go in the bows; the transducers were to be mounted amidships, externally, angled vertically downwards inside fairing blocks to reduce turbulence. Twin eighty-ohm co-axial cables – taken from the aerial for Appleton’s flatscreen – ran upwards and aft to the helmsman’s display unit, a backlit dial registering depths to a maximum of thirty metres. The length and resistance of the co-axial cables were of crucial importance, for the cables formed an integral part of the sonar circuit.

  All the specifications for the sonar had now been settled and most of the wiring completed. Compared with even the most basic model available commercially, it would be, as Godwin freely admitted, primitive and clumsy. The transmitted signal was of medium-to-high frequency with a rapid clock speed, giving reasonable resolution at the sacrifice of range. The choice of frequency and beamwidth had been forced on Godwin by the size and limitations of his botched-up transducers. With Godwin’s approval Fitzmaurice had felt-tipped the words M. Mouse Electronics Co. and drawn Mickey’s smiling face under the plastic lid of the system-box. But in theory the sonar was capable not only of detecting approaching reefs but also of suggesting likely channels between them, and that was all that mattered.