The Collector of Lost Things

by Jeremy Page

  ‘Yes, no wonder at all. Apparently they had stiff feathers that would pierce any material, but these ones, around the neck,’ he tapped the back of his head, ‘they were soft, and in addition more than a pound and a half of oil could be rendered from their flesh. Soft feathers, bodies fat with oil, and no fear of man! In Arctic waters that is an unlucky combination.’

  ‘Unlucky is not really the right word.’

  ‘Cursed, perhaps.’

  The nature book was already several decades old, and time had moved fast for these birds. The accompanying text talked boldly of great auk colonies widespread across the waters of the North Atlantic and Arctic seas, from Norway to the outlying British Isles, Iceland and the Newfoundland coast.

  ‘The last British great auk was killed in St Kilda five years ago,’ I told him. ‘A single bird was discovered on a beach and it was slaughtered because it was thought it might be a sea-witch.’

  ‘A witch!’ the captain exclaimed, looking at the engraving. ‘You must refrain from telling that to the men, Mr Saxby. You understand they are a most superstitious lot. They are already spooked to have a woman on board.’

  I continued, encouraged by the captain’s apparent natural interest, although I wish I had stopped.

  ‘For many years the birds had a small but flourishing colony on a rock called the Geirfuglasker off Iceland. It means “the rock of the great auks”. It was a place that was impenetrable to man, due to the sheerness of the volcanic cliffs that rose on all sides and dangerous currents offshore. It was the last colony of great auks in the world. But these rocks sank, and the birds had to flee.’

  The captain chuckled. ‘Rocks, Mr Saxby, do not sink,’ he said.

  ‘Of course, ordinarily that’s correct. But in Iceland they have been known to, as a result of volcanic activity.’

  ‘Their colony sank into the sea?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It seems the Lord has it in for these birds of yours.’

  ‘It appears so, yes. Ten years ago, the surviving birds—I believe their number was thirty or so—swam to the island of Eldey, a few miles away, where they joined an established colony of gannets and other sea fowl. When the great auk were discovered there in such perilous numbers, most of the museums of Europe and America rushed to procure a specimen.’

  At this, the captain raised his eyebrows.

  I explained: ‘I suppose each museum and private collector felt it might be the last opportunity to own one of these birds, or one of their eggs.’

  ‘A price on their heads, Mr Saxby?’

  ‘Yes. They were hunted, one by one, and bought at a high price to be stuffed. For the sake of owning a specimen, the museums collectively made these birds extinct.’

  With mournful finality, the captain closed my nature book and handed it back to me. He turned to the draught-board. ‘I believe you have been roundly beaten,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Nature has triumphed over the bullet.’ He cleared away the board and turned to me with a thoughtful look, as if assessing all that had been said. ‘Thank you for educating me, Mr Saxby.’

  For most of the day we sailed alongside the Irish coast which, as Mr French informed me, was about ten miles distant. I studied the remote harbours and the way the villages nestled into the cliffs, a smudged suggestion of peat smoke above them. I had never seen Ireland before. It was peculiar to watch it like this, at a distance, as if the view was a secret glimpse of lives I would never touch, but merely pass. This was how much of the world must seem, from the sea. The land must appear like a constantly arriving, constantly vanishing edge, often seen and just as often never reached.

  Flocks of birds sped past, low and curious, waterfowl and ducks, heading along a migration route that we, also, were travelling. Their instinct was taking them north, braving the ocean until they could replenish in Iceland, and then on to the breeding grounds of Greenland, a route they had flown for thousands of years. High above the ship, similar lines of migration were being followed: formations of geese, slowly honking, their wings beating in unison, the leading bird changing position every now and then. I felt privileged to be beneath them, in step with their path, a slower participant in their ancient calling.

  I saw little of Bletchley until late in the afternoon, when he brought his handmade guns on deck with great ceremony. There were three of them, each presented in a long case of walnut with the gunsmith’s insignia embossed upon the lid. French, Talbot and the captain gathered round him, good humoured, while Bletchley laid the cases on the saloon roof. He lifted the guns, expertly preparing each one before handing them to the men, all of whom appraised the manufacture with a general feel of their weight and a practised aim along the barrels. I kept my distance, deciding to sit against the quarterdeck rail with one of my sketchbooks. Guns unnerve me, and in the hands of an enthusiast such as Bletchley—so childishly animated about his weapons—I thought it prudent to keep several yards distant, good shot or not. Instead, I occupied myself by sketching them, observing how each man raised and lowered his weapon. As a group they resembled territorial animals, raising metalled tusks at imaginary foes, similar to the illustration of the walrus in my Compendium. Off the stern, about a dozen gulls followed our progress. They had been there all day, looping and gliding and falling into the wake after any morsels they believed were being thrown overboard. Possibly the sea is churned by a ship as a plough churns the soil, and fish are brought to the surface. But now I looked at those same birds and knew they had become targets.

  The first shots sounded and I watched the birds dividing and falling away from the gusts of hot lead. The gulls swooped low to the water, then swung back, buoyant, mindful of each other but still oblivious to the sights being levelled by the guns. Again, two more shots, and then a single report which tore the wing off one of the gulls. It plunged, immediately, while its wing—several yards behind—fell in a silent curved flight towards the sea. It was Bletchley’s kill. He whooped with pleasure, and I saw deep boyish dimples on each of his cheeks as the other men congratulated him. More shots followed in quick succession, as rapidly as the men could load. A gull’s brilliant white chest turned instantly red, as if a crimson flower had been pinned to it, and still the bird flew, three more beats, until it closed its wings and fell to the sea. Another gull had a leg blown off and as the leg and foot fell a second gull dived after it, curious.

  I turned away, appalled at the carnage. I pretended to sketch in my book, and after I had stared at a few lines of pencil for ten minutes the shots abruptly ceased. When I went back to my cabin, I glanced astern. There were no more birds following the ship.

  The afternoon’s shooting was the major discussion over dinner that evening. I took little part and I suspected the men had already made a companionship that I had been excluded from. The captain was in a particularly jovial mood. He had claimed three birds, and was allowing Bletchley to tease him about whether or not a fourth bird had been his kill. Bletchley had the confidence of a man who had been the best shot, killing or fatally maiming at least eight birds. French, too, had killed. Only Talbot had repeatedly missed, and that was most amusing to the others.

  Again, there was an empty place at the table. As with the night before, Simao cleared away the setting midway through the meal.

  That night we passed the final black promontory of Ireland’s Donegal coast. I had been told that most of the crew were Irish, and several of them had gathered to say their farewells. But it was only when I walked along the main deck towards their huddle that I realised they were in a vulgar mood. There was much laughter and the making of lewd comments about the Donegal girls. The men quietened as I approached, but I managed to hear salacious details of carnal desires acted upon in secret coves. I was quite shocked, but attended to my pipe as a distraction, already too close to back away.

  ‘Good evening,’ I announced. ‘Saying a farewell to your homeland?’

  One of the men stepped forward, still grinning. ‘Aye, sir.
Me and the lads was just speaking of its beauties.’

  He was a tall man with wide shoulders, dark unkempt hair and quick eyes. Something unknown was being chewed in his mouth.

  ‘And all them secret marshy places,’ a voice behind him added. Again, I heard a sniggering.

  ‘Thass right, all them acushlas!’ someone said.

  ‘Yes, gentlemen, I heard,’ I said.

  The tall man gave me a questioning look, before grinning. ‘Apologies, if what you was hearing was a little crude,’ he said, kindly.

  ‘Are you two brothers?’ I asked, seeing a chin and nose that bore a resemblance to the first man’s.

  ‘Aye, sir, we’re the Herlihy brothers. Connor and Martin.’

  ‘We own this ship,’ his brother quipped.

  ‘Aye, we do.’

  ‘So, what is that over there?’ I asked.

  ‘Malin Head,’ the taller one replied. ‘Worst place God ever dragged up from the sea.’

  Across the water, a dark blank featureless shape was cut out from the night’s sky. A terrible void, an unmade part of the world, without definition or light. I shuddered to think it was solid rock that could tear a ship apart with a simple brush of its arm.

  I took my leave of them, and walked back towards the quarterdeck. The captain was standing with a man at the wheel, and had clearly been observing me.

  ‘Mixing with the men, Mr Saxby?’

  ‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘They were saying their farewell to Donegal.’

  ‘They do that. They’ll be singing later. We won’t be seeing land for a while now. Take your fill of it.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘And I wouldn’t spend too much time with the men, Mr Saxby. They’re just Irish bastards after all.’ He turned to the man at the helm. ‘Aren’t you—you’re just one of my Irish bastards?’

  The man stared forward, his mouth set inscrutably. ‘That’s right, sir,’ he replied.

  Later, wearing a sea coat, I walked uphill somewhat, to the very front of the ship. I leant against the capstan, listening to the swishing of the water parting below the bow. It was quite different in sound and aspect to any other part of the deck. Here, the curved bulk of the ship’s sides were brought to a fine point, pinched, the timber planking woven to an unusual slenderness. It ended in a fine bowsprit that held a straight arm above the water, pointing towards an endlessness that was difficult to comprehend. In front of the ship was all the emptiness of the world, a world made of water, dark and without feature, without horizon or sky. The Atlantic void.

  Three thousand miles away would be the coast of America. I thought of its seaports, its wooden clapboard houses on the edge of a country which, in turn, promised a new endlessness, of thousand-mile prairie, vast mountain ranges and impenetrable deserts and canyons. Beyond that, another ocean, even greater in size, with its own endlessly disappearing horizon. It was a dizzying thought. It felt, at the point of that ship, that the world was a series of frontiers, where man clung to the edges in huddled communities, a back turned on an endless nature.

  The air was full of salt and a dampness that wasn’t elsewhere on deck. I held the rail carefully and dared to look over the side, and could just see the very tip of the bow, far beneath, covered in iron plates, cutting smoothly through the sea, turning ink-black water into curling white foam.

  A shanty had started inside the crew’s quarters in the fo’c’sle. I jotted the words in my notebook.

  He drank all the night till the night was no more

  Found his bed on the Donegal shore

  The tide rose for our Daragh, boy

  The tide rose for our Daragh.

  I went to the fo’c’sle and listened against the wood. The sound of the men’s voices was great. I imagined it must be a confined space in there, full of hammocks swinging from hooks, and a stove in the corner surrounded by their boots.

  Waves were the thing what woke him

  From the dreams of the gal what broke him

  Float for the grave is deep, boy

  Float for the grave will keep, boy.

  Won’t drown me yet old Daragh goes,

  Till you give me the stitch of twine in the nose

  But the tide bore our Daragh out, boy.

  The tide bore our Daragh out.

  It sounded as if one of the men might have fallen over. The others stopped singing and began to laugh. A few words were said, although I couldn’t distinguish them. Eventually they started singing again, first a single voice, then the others joining in.

  Dead Donegal Daragh crossed the oceans vast

  Saw coasts and reefs with his smile set fast

  Till the stream brought our Daragh home, boy

  The stream brought our Daragh home.

  Finally, the one man finished the song:

  I seen his ghost curse the rocks, boy

  The drink and the gal and the life, boy,

  But never a word ’gainst the tide, boy,

  Never a word ’gainst the tide.

  The captain’s Irish bastards sang well. But their small pocket-sized room of noise and light felt perilous and brief, like a candle being cupped in the hand as you walk across a large and draughty field. Your eyes watch the flame as it flickers against your skin, nursing its light constantly, but you are aware, also, of the impenetrable woods and hedgerows at the edge of your vision.

  Fearing I might be caught listening, I returned to the main deck, passing beneath the two whaleboats that were hung from the davits on the fo’c’sle roof, and the open galley door where Simao was cleaning the cooking pots, towards the huge upright shape of the mainmast.

  I stopped, as if a hand was pressed into my chest. Standing against the ship’s rail, about thirty feet away, was the tall figure of the female passenger, wrapped in a shawl and holding her hair, to prevent it from blowing in the breeze. As if sensing my presence, she turned towards me. At that moment I saw her thin face and haunted expression, the paleness of her skin and the beseeching look of her eyes, and she was so incredibly familiar to me, so recognisable, it was as if I was seeing a ghost.

  ‘Oh dear Christ,’ I whispered, knowing her. ‘Take me off this ship.’

  4

  HOW WAS IT POSSIBLE? How could she be on board? After all these years, never once seeing her since that fateful day. One moment was all it had taken, one misjudgement by me, leading to a decade of doubt and failure; failure to establish my career, and failure, too, in matters of the heart. In all that time I had never been remotely close to anyone, and it was all because of Celeste. For the second night I lay in my bunk and wondered whether sleep would come. Repeatedly I was confronted with images of the past, in that country house in Norfolk ten years earlier in the gloomy autumnal weather, while the wet leaves collected on the lawn and I sat in the conservatory, listening to the sounds of pheasants in the shadowy hedges beyond the grass and watching as the light faded. The light fades in Norfolk like nowhere else on earth. It recedes like a tide, leaving you stranded. I thought of the cool damp corridors of the house, its empty grand staircases, and of the times when I’d glimpse her, being led along the brick path outside, three circuits of the lawn, never once looking up, her hand limp in her mother’s grasp.

  By morning, I had finally collapsed into a deep and dreamless sleep. I dressed for breakfast as thoughtful as a condemned man, then studied my reflection in the mirror above the washstand while I shaved. Sleeplessness, below my eyes, gave me a solemnity I don’t usually possess. I wondered how much I would be able to conceal, if asked a direct question. I have a tendency to freeze my expression when I am trying to avoid the truth. At that moment, my face was entirely readable—with every aspect of the previous years written on it. My eyes, ordinarily light and quick, stared back with a dull shine. You thought you could escape, but you cannot.

  Beyond my cabin door I heard the sounds of people gathering for breakfast. Bletchley’s piping tone, too loud and spirited for this hour, as he took his coffee, paced the room and asked ques
tions with childlike persistence. I heard snatches of the topics he wished to discuss: the sciences of navigation, the azimuth compass, dead reckoning, the wisdoms of helmsmanship and the arrangement of sails. I sat on the edge of my bunk and whispered a prayer. Please, Lord, allow me peace, let me face what is out there. Let me face the past with an unflinching eye.

  ‘Ah, Mr Saxby!’ Bletchley exclaimed, as I entered the saloon, as if my appearance were a great surprise. ‘At midday you and I shall be taking a sighting of the sun with the nautical sextant.’

  ‘Good,’ I managed, looking around anxiously for signs of her. ‘I shall look forward to it.’ But the only other person waiting for breakfast was Mr French, who was leaning against the sideboard, playing with the half-molten wax of a candle. He was in a world of his own, staring at the flame.

  ‘We shall use Mr French’s sextant,’ Bletchley continued, like a dog with a bone, ‘and the nearest recording to agree with his own reading shall receive a shilling.’

  He grinned at me, open mouthed, expecting an answer. ‘A whole shilling?’ I asked.

  ‘Penny, then.’

  ‘Well, now you don’t sound so confident, Mr Bletchley,’ I said.

  ‘Then it will be two shillings,’ he replied, clapping his hands together in boyish delight.

  As Simao brought the breakfast in from the pantry, I relaxed, with the certainty that Celeste would not be joining us. While Bletchley tucked lustily into his eggs, I took the opportunity to ask him where he was from.

  ‘Ely,’ he replied.

  ‘Oh. I had the assumption that you were from Norfolk.’

  ‘Why ever should you think that?’

  ‘I am not sure.’

  ‘My cousin used to live in Norfolk. Perhaps I mentioned that last night?’ He carried on eating his eggs, as if it was his last meal on earth. He dabbed his mouth after every forkful, with annoying affectation. Choosing his moment, he leant forward and whispered: ‘Her side of the family has all the money.’ He sat back in his chair, satisfied.

  ‘It seems peculiar for a lady to be travelling on a vessel bound for the Arctic.’