by Miles Gibson
‘Ahoy!’ he roared, tilting his head and staring up at old Charlie.
‘Ahoy!’ shouted Charlie from the safety of the boat and stared at the stranger in amazement. He had read about men from the Caribbean but he had never seen one alive and walking on the Upton Gabriel Road. He had heard that some of them were cannibals.
‘I’m looking for a place to stay,’ said the stranger, grinning and showing Charlie his teeth.
‘Good luck,’ shouted Charlie and waved goodbye.
‘Can you direct me?’
Charlie clambered down from the boat and stood, reluctantly, on the warm earth. ‘Where have you come from?’ he asked, staring at the intruder with a frightened grin.
‘Southampton,’ said the stranger. ‘I came ashore last week. Cape Town. Libreville. Tangier. Southampton.’
‘That’s a long way,’ said Charlie, who had never been to Southampton, and he scratched his head with the stem of his pipe.
‘Now I’m looking around‚’ said the sailor and laid his suitcase gently among the cabbages. He was a giant of a man. He strained the seams of his threadbare jacket and stretched the leather of his boots. When he turned to glance at the empty road his shadow covered Charlie in darkness.
‘You’ll be going to Rams Horn,’ said Charlie nervously, as he watched the sailor stroll away through the cabbages to get a better view of the boat.
‘Does it have a hotel?’
‘The hotel is closed,’ confessed Charlie, following in the giant’s footsteps. In one corner of the field he had planted radishes for Mrs Halibut. She took as many bunches as he could grow and paid him in bottles of thick and potent vegetable wine which he drank to soothe his arthritis.
‘She’s a fine boat,’ said the sailor, trampling through the radish bed.
‘Small berth,’ said Charlie, shaking his head.
‘Broad beam,’ argued the sailor and stretched out his arms as if measuring himself for the cabin.
Charlie stared mournfully at the broken radish leaves clinging to the sailor’s boots. ‘There’s a woman who keeps rooms,’ he said at last.
‘Are the rooms clean?’ asked the sailor suspiciously.
‘Spotless,’ said Charlie, clicking his teeth.
‘And the woman?’
‘A Christian.’
The sailor rolled his eyes and stared at the sky. ‘Where can I find this woman?’ he said, peering thoughtfully at Charlie.
‘Walk down to the sea at Rams Horn. She keeps a house on the esplanade. A blue house with a red door,’ said Charlie, nodding towards the town. He had heard Mrs Reynolds rented rooms. He didn’t know much about it but he thought she served breakfast and a hot supper for those with an appetite.
‘Will there be any trouble?’ said the sailor.
‘No trouble,’ said Charlie, looking perplexed.
‘I don’t want trouble. There was trouble in Tangier,’ growled the sailor and spat neatly against the side of the boat.
‘It’s a respectable house,’ retorted Charlie, who suspected that Mrs Reynolds’ good name was in doubt.
The sailor laughed and made a final inspection of the cabbage patch before returning to his suitcase.
‘Can you sell me a yam?’
‘No rain,’ said Charlie. ‘Nothing fit to eat.’
‘I could murder a yam,’ sighed the sailor and returned to the road.
His name was Matthew Mark Luke Saint John and he entered Rams Horn at sunset. He walked slowly, the black boots bleached by dust and the suitcase perched on his broad shoulders. The streets were empty. A smell of seaweed and drains drifted up from Whelk Pier. The dying sun leaked a trail of blood and sizzled softly into the sea.
Two small boys followed the sailor through the town, whistling, hooting and running for their lives whenever he turned to threaten them with his fist. They followed him onto the esplanade and were thrilled to see him stand and spit at the sea. Mrs Clancy, pressed against her bedroom window, watched him walk down Regent Terrace and quickly wrapped herself in the curtains. She looked as if she had seen a ghost.
But Mrs Reynolds, sensing no danger, invited him into her house and boiled him a lobster.
Chapter Nine
‘He was a darkie,’ said Smudger with relish.
‘They walk around nude in tropical countries. I seen ’em on television,’ said Vernie.
‘Why?’ said Sickly.
‘Because of the heat. It does something to ’em and they walk around in the stark staring nude,’ Vernie explained.
‘Everybody?’ said Smudger.
‘Yes,’ said Vernie confidently. ‘That’s why they’re darkies.’
‘I wish I’d seen ’em on television,’ muttered Smudger miserably.
It was a blinding summer’s day. Larks fluttered in a burning sky and the ditches were filled with nettles. The heat had drawn the perfume from the honeysuckle and, through the breaks in the hedgerows, the fields glittered with poppy and thistle. They had walked into the hills, high above Rams Horn and the smell of the Sheep, to seek shelter in their favourite camp.
‘We could take off our clothes,’ suggested Sickly.
‘It’s not the same,’ said Smudger.
‘It would be different,’ said Vernie, staring hard at Sickly, ‘if she was here.’
Sickly had already explained the failure of his hypnotic power. He was small. He didn’t have the strength to knock down fully-grown women and keep them sedated. It was obvious. Anyway, they should have known something was wrong when they had read Your Secret Power to Command. If it was so easy to hypnotize women why didn’t everybody do it? If it was that easy, Sickly argued, most of the women in Rams Horn would be strolling the streets like sleep-walkers. He had done everything according to the instructions. He wasn’t to blame that the plan had failed. Vernie and Smudger accepted his explanation but they couldn’t hide their disappointment.
‘We almost did it,’ Vernie reflected bitterly. ‘And then she woke up and spoiled everything.’
They reached an old beech tree, glanced furtively around them and quickly went to earth among the roots where a family of badgers had excavated a tunnel in the soft chalk. The boys had turned the tunnel into a cave, the walls supported with chicken wire and the floor lined with fertilizer sacks but, even through the heat of high summer, it smelt of mildew and damp. They shivered as they huddled together in the gloom.
‘I don’t understand why it didn’t work‚’ said Smudger.
‘It worked on Old George,’ Sickly reminded them. They had seen it for themselves.
‘You said she wouldn’t know anything about it. You said we could do anything,’ complained Smudger, watching a wood louse crawl over his shoes.
‘Jesus, she nearly killed me,’ Vernie complained.
‘She must have recognized us,’ said Smudger, shaking his head and wondering if he would be arrested.
‘She was too frightened. She came out of the trance and she didn’t know what was happening. That’s why she ran out into the garden,’ said Sickly.
Vernie and Smudger were sceptical but they accepted his diagnosis. They had grave doubts about placing their faith again with Sickly but he was, after all, the only agent who could deliver his mother into their hot and inquisitive hands.
‘What are we going to do now?’ said Vernie. Above them, in the beech wood, a cuckoo stuttered as it chimed the hour.
‘We could kidnap her and take her to the shed,’ said Smudger hopefully. He wanted Sickly’s mother held captive in the shed so that he would have the opportunity to mount a secret, midnight rescue and win her gratitude. His reward involved various romantic adventures in which she begged him to sit guard and watch as she played in the bath or pleaded with him to sleep nude in her arms since she was frightened to be left alone.
‘We already agreed the police would find her in the shed,’ said Sickly, and Smudger blushed and pretended to search for the wood louse inside his shoes.
‘My old woman’s got bad legs. The
doctor gave her some sleeping pills,’ said Vernie, pulling the tobacco tin from his pocket and attempting to roll a cigarette with a little strip of newspaper.
‘Do they work?’ said Smudger.
‘Yes. It’s terrible. You can’t wake her up again. She falls out of bed sometimes and just goes on sleeping,’ he said, sticking the cigarette into his mouth and searching for a box of matches. He struck a match and the cigarette fell apart.
‘I’ve heard about ’em,’ said Smudger. ‘You swallow ’em and then you start to feel heavy and you can’t keep your eyes open and so you just fall asleep.’
Vernie nodded and pointed his finger at Sickly. ‘We want you to give her the sleeping pills. And then, when she’s asleep we’ll come and have a look,’ he said, spitting strands of tobacco through his teeth.
Sickly said nothing.
‘She’ll go to bed and when she’s unconscious we can switch on the light,’ said Smudger, who was beginning to get the idea.
‘And take off the bedclothes,’ said Vernie.
‘And when we’ve finished we cover her up again. So she won’t know anything about it,’ hooted Smudger. It was wonderful. Clean, efficient and irresistible. Science would conquer where magic had failed.
‘They sound dangerous,’ said Sickly, doubtfully.
‘No,’ said Vernie. ‘They come from the doctor. My old lady swears by them. They don’t do you any harm. They just make you sleep.’
Sickly was silent for a long time. He was sitting at the back of the cave where the pale roots curled around his head. A trickle of earth fell from the crumbling ceiling and he raised a hand to brush his ear. His face was dark but his eyes were shining.
‘It’s impossible,’ he said.
‘Why?’ hissed Vernie.
‘Well, I can’t just walk into her bedroom, grab her nose and push sleeping pills down her throat.’
‘You could pretend they were for headaches,’ said Smudger brightly.
‘We can’t wait for her to have a headache,’ Sickly protested. ‘It could take years.’
‘You crush ’em and mix ’em into the milk. The milk hides the taste,’ said Vernie, who had seen it on television.
‘Does she drink milk?’ asked Smudger.
‘Yes, she has Bournvita before she goes to bed,’ said Sickly thoughtfully.
‘It’s perfect. She won’t suspect nothing if she feels tired at night and she’s going to bed. It’s natural,’ said Vernie grinning.
‘What time does she have her Bournvita?’ said Smudger.
‘About midnight.’
‘So it should be safe around two o’clock in the morning,’ said Vernie. ‘I can get out of my bedroom down the drain-pipe …’
‘And I can climb through the kitchen window‚’ said Smudger.
‘But how will you steal the pills?’ asked Sickly.
‘I don’t know. She keeps them locked away. But it shouldn’t be difficult.’
‘She won’t miss a few of ’em,’ said Smudger.
‘Do you know what will happen if anything goes wrong?’ said Vernie. He had stopped grinning and was staring morbidly at his plimsolls.
‘No,’ said Sickly.
‘We’ll bury you alive,’ said Smudger.
‘We’ll bring you up here and break your arms and legs and leave you to starve to death,’ said Vernie, slapping the walls of the cave with his hand.
Sickly glanced nervously around the earth dungeon and shivered. He thought of himself with his bones broken, alone in the darkness and the beech roots dripping through the rusty chicken wire.
‘It will be days, weeks, before they find you,’ said Smudger.
‘And it will be too late and they’ll think it was an accident,’ said Vernie.
‘That’s right,’ said Smudger. ‘And we’ll wait for the winter until we do it. We’ll wait until you’ve almost forgotten and we’ll catch you by surprise.’
‘One night, when it’s cold and raining, we’ll creep out of the darkness and murder you.’
‘You don’t trust me,’ said Sickly, rubbing at his long freckled nose.
‘We trusted you last time.’
‘But I took all the risks,’ said Sickly indignantly.
‘He did bring us her pants,’ said Smudger, whose thoughts had again returned to the shed.
‘What else does she wear?’ said Vernie.
‘I don’t know. It’s difficult. She counts everything when she takes it out of the laundry basket,’ explained Sickly.
‘Does she wear pyjamas?’ inquired Vernie casually.
‘No.’
‘Does she go to bed in the nude?’ screeched Smudger, who seemed to think it was a scandal.
‘No, she wears a sort of long nightdress, pink, with big sleeves,’ said Sickly.
‘Can you see her legs or anything?’
‘No, it goes down to the ground,’ he confessed.
‘Oh,’ said Smudger, disappointed.
‘But you can see through it,’ added Sickly.
‘I don’t believe him,’ sneered Vernie. His own mother wore pyjamas buttoned to the neck and gloves, too, in bad weather.
‘It’s true. You can see clean through it. That’s why she wears a dressing-gown to cover it up when she’s not actually in bed.’
‘But why does she wear it?’ demanded Vernie. This new knowledge worried and perplexed him. It didn’t make sense.
‘I don’t know,’ shrugged Sickly.
‘I mean, if you can see through it and she covers it up so that you can’t see through it, well, why does she wear it?’ continued Vernie.
‘Perhaps it makes her feel special,’ said Smudger, but he doubted it. He remembered wearing his mother’s brassiere around the bathroom and it hadn’t done anything for him.
‘And how do you know you can see through it?’ demanded Vernie suspiciously.
‘Sometimes when she comes into my room and she thinks I’m asleep she doesn’t bother with the dressing-gown and I can see everything,’ said Sickly smugly. He pulled a wrinkled ball of Bazooka from his pocket and pushed it into his mouth.
‘Well, it doesn’t make any difference,’ said Vernie. ‘If we give her the sleeping pills we can roll her around and take it off without any trouble.’
‘We can take it in turns to get into bed,’ said Smudger.
‘And squeeze her snapper,’ wheezed Vernie.
‘She won’t wake up?’ asked Sickly, blowing bubbles.
‘No, you can’t wake up my old lady. We tried all sorts. It’s like she’s dead but snoring.’
‘How many pills does she take at night?’ asked Smudger, very impressed.
‘Two.’
‘Is that enough?’
‘Yes,’ said Vernie.
‘I want four,’ said Sickly. ‘I don’t want nothing to go wrong.’ He stretched the gum into a soft, pink bootlace and offered a length of it to Smudger.
‘No thanks!’ grunted Smudger in disgust.
‘That’s dangerous,’ warned Vernie.
‘Why?’ frowned Sickly, sucking the bootlace back into his mouth.
‘You die if you swallow it,’ explained Smudger.
‘That’s stupid‚’ snorted Sickly and blew another bubble.
‘It’s rubber and they discovered that when you swallow it, the rubber melts and goes sticky and covers your pipes and everything,’ said Vernie.
‘It’s like drinking glue,’ explained Smudger enthusiastically. ‘Your stomach sticks together.’
‘And sometimes it blows itself into an enormous bubble so that you can’t breathe no more and you die of suffocation,’ added Vernie.
‘They wouldn’t let you have the stuff if it was dangerous,’ said Sickly, chewing thoughtfully.
‘They let you have sleeping pills – and they’re dangerous,’ argued Vernie.
Sickly swallowed the gum and bared his teeth in a ghastly grin.
Chapter Ten
At dusk Tom Crow walks down from Rams Horn and sits on the
rocks to wait for the moon. He had once been a lighthouse keeper. A wild old man who lived on a pillar far out in the wastes of the empty sea. The people who live in the town shiver when they see him at sunset. They think his years of loneliness must have driven him mad. But Tom Crow ignores them. At dusk he sits on the rocks until the moon floats over the sea and then he stands, knee-deep in shadow, and shouts and laughs as the moon lights the water.
The lighthouse held him for thirty years. When the motor launch brought him ashore he carried nothing but a bundle of clothes and a small metal box. Inside the box was a map of the heavens and a necklace made from fishbones.
No one wanted him. On that first night he walked from house to house asking for a room with a smell of the sea, but each time he was turned away and directed a little further down the road that led from the town. At last he arrived at a cottage built from the ribs of an old tramp steamer. It was raining and past midnight, the wind like a razor at his fingers. He banged on the door and shouted for food and shelter.
An enormous woman answered him. She was ugly and fat as a maggot. Her hair had been woven into a pigtail and she wore a blanket tied by a cord to her throat. She was so big that Tom Crow thought he’d disturbed a phantom.
Yet a thick, sweet perfume surrounded the woman, the memory of fish soup, crab meat and peppers. The woman smiled. She led him into the warmth of the cottage and locked the door behind them.
There were candles burning and a great fire smouldered in the darkness. He stood in the centre of the room, his eyes raw with salt and his shoulders steaming. The woman asked no questions. She sat him down at the table and prepared him a bowl of pepper soup. He placed his parcel of clothes beneath his chair and held the battered tin box on his knees. Through the gloom of the smoking fire he could see long bundles of dried fish hanging from the ceiling beams. The timber walls held dark alcoves and hiding places for bags of potatoes, turnips and walnuts. A shabby carpet on the floor at his feet. Against one wall a mound of pillows and blankets.
When he had finished the soup Tom Crow sucked on his pipe and sat, comfortable in the silence, watching the woman move around in the twilight. It was an hour or more before he noticed the idiot girl squatting in a distant alcove, watching him.