Hy Brasil

by Margaret Elphinstone

  In the daytime he never gave way at all, because now and then eyes would appear at the slit in the door and look at him, and he was determined they would never see anything that it would give the government the slightest pleasure to hear about. During the day he usually sat cross-legged on his bed, either staring at the small barred square of sky, or with his eyes shut. Luckily there were some resources that they couldn’t take away from him.

  He knew a lot of poetry by heart. Up until today his recall had been fairly random, but he decided now that he needed some kind of a system. In fact all sorts of approaches were possible, since he had no idea what he knew until he remembered particular bits of it. Having been denied a Bible, he took a perverse satisfaction in beginning there. Ironically, he had carried off the school Scripture prize for Bible Recitation for six years running, as well as the largest number of undischarged detentions. The sun had still been on the ceiling when he started this morning, and now his stomach told him it must be around dinner time, and he was still no further than the Psalms:

  If I take the wings of the morning,

  And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea

  Even there shall thy hand lead me,

  And thy right hand shall hold me.

  The last lines meant nothing to him, but he repeated the first two twice more, and the four walls of his cell receded just a little. If I take the wings of the morning. Scripture twice a week, Old Testament and New Testament. The classroom at Ogg’s Cove, with the morning sun and the sound of the sea coming in both together through the open window, and the voice of Miss MacIlwraith droning through the Pentateuch. The first day he’d gone to school he’d come home and told his parents that it had been all right, but he didn’t think he’d go again. Even when they’d explained to him over and over again he hadn’t really understood. He went, sure enough, every day, on his new red bike that his Pappa had taught him to ride, but when he got there he forgot that he had to stay inside, and he’d wander off when no one was looking, down to the beach usually, or sometimes up to the green slopes of Mount Prosper. He had no memory of ever being brought back.

  The day he did remember was the time that Miss MacIlwraith stood there with a red face talking very loudly, telling him he was bad, and that she’d make him learn, once and for all. There was a terrible threat in the way she said it, although he didn’t know what the words meant: once and for all. She’d taken one of the girls’ skipping ropes and looped it round his bare leg, and round the leg of the table, round and round and round, and then she’d tied a knot in it, a hard knot that he wasn’t able to undo, even if she’d not been standing guard to make sure he didn’t try. Then she went on teaching the class, without looking at him.

  He’d sat there, not sobbing aloud, but weeping in silent abandonment until the bell for dinner went and she finally untied the rope and let him go. He could remember the feel of the tears coursing down his face and dripping off his chin. He’d cried like that without stopping in front of the whole class, and he hadn’t cared what they’d thought. He could feel the rope, not very tight, but firm around his calf, and the cold shiny feel of the table leg against his skin, and he was utterly devastated. When she untied him at dinner time he shot away out of the door, on to his bike, and straight back home.

  His Pappa had been angry. To begin with Jared thought the anger was with him, and that frightened him, being unprecedented. But it wasn’t that; he could remember his mother saying, ‘No, Jack! Jack, wait, no!’ and his Pappa shaking her off and going out to his van, and just before he slammed the door he’d said, ‘I’ll give that woman a piece of my mind. And that headmaster. That’s no way to run a school. No way to treat a child.’ And he’d driven off. His mother had taken Jared by the hand and led him indoors. He couldn’t remember what had happened after that.

  School had had some good bits: nature study and poetry. The poem for the week had been pinned up on the noticeboard in the corner. They had to copy it out in their best writing and take it home to learn. Learning poetry was easy.

  Four and twenty ponies trotting through the dark

  Brandy for the parson, baccy for the clerk,

  Laces for the lady, letters for the spy,

  Watch the wall, my darling, while the gentlemen go by.

  Every spring at school they grew hyacinths in jars of water on the window sill, and collected tadpoles which slowly turned into frogs. Sometimes the tadpoles ate each other. The first piece of scientific research he’d ever done was after he asked Miss MacIlwraith when frogs had come to Hy Brasil. She didn’t know, but his Pappa took him to the library in St Brandons to find the answer. There wasn’t one, exactly, but they found the first mention of frogs in the Rev. Archibald Fitzroy’s Fauna of Frisland published in 1856. Jared could remember the feel of the heavy leatherbound volume in his hands, and the delicate accuracy of the etchings. It was the beginning of an enchantment.

  See he comes, the human child

  To the waters and the wild

  With a fairy hand in hand

  From a world more full of weeping than he can understand.

  Each year he’d made his way further up Mount Prosper. By the time he was nine he’d climbed right up as far as the precipices just below the summit. By the time he was nine other things had happened too.

  The heart’s echoes render

  No song when the spirit is mute:—

  No song but sad dirges,

  Like the wind through a ruined cell,

  Or the mournful surges

  That ring the dead seaman’s knell.

  But he was getting out of order. Shelley had come into his life much later. The approach now was to think of the very first poems he could remember. ‘I remember, I remember …, Away down the river A hundred miles or more …, His helm was silver And pale was he …, And naebody kens that he lies there …’ Back, and back, and back. And away back beyond all of that, an image of a coal fire burning in the grate of a cast-iron stove. The sounds of the wind in the chimney and a low voice singing. The red light flickering through the darkening room, over the white nappies hanging on the drying rack over the fire, over the shiny surface of the black kettle on the stove, over the hands that held him close, and shining on the plain gold ring that he sometimes tried vainly to prise off her finger:

  I love my little laddie

  You’re just like your daddy,

  I love my little laddie

  I love you ’cos you’re mine.

  There was a sudden grating noise. Jared opened his eyes. The steel door swung open. He felt cold all over, and his skin inside the loose shirt prickled. Then he saw who it was, and he jumped to his feet and hugged him.

  ‘Ishmael!’

  It was all he could say, for a moment. Ishmael took him by the shoulders and looked him searchingly in the face. ‘Jed? Are you sick? You’ve been sick?’

  ‘No, not now. I’m sorry I can’t open the window.’

  ‘Look at your eye!’ Ishmael turned him to the light. ‘Who did that? Look at you. Where you’re not purple you’re white as a sheet. They beat you?’

  ‘Beat me?’ Jared touched his bruised face. ‘That was when they took me. That’s all.’

  Ishmael, still holding Jared by the shoulder, turned to the warder at the door. ‘All right. Lock us in, then, and go away.’ The door closed. ‘Half an hour, Jed. Sit down. There’s a lot I need you to tell me.’

  Jared was looking puzzled. ‘You can’t have got my letter? They only let me write it last night.’

  ‘No, I haven’t had a letter. Your girl – Sidony – came straight over to Ferdy’s Landing after they’d taken you. It’s taken me this long to get someone to let me see you. But I haven’t wasted my time. Jed, we don’t have long. Tell me everything, as straight as you can. You’ve had time to think. What have you done that anyone wants you in here for?’

  ‘I haven’t been smuggling drugs, for a start.’

  ‘You don’t need to tell me that. So what have you been doing that I
don’t know about?’

  ‘Ishmael, about Sidony … Was she all right?’

  ‘Oh yes, she’s all right. Upset about you, of course, but then she’s in love with you, so it’s only what you’d expect.’

  ‘Really? Did she say so? Do you really think she is?’

  ‘Yes. No she didn’t. Yes I do. But we can’t waste time on that now. Listen, Jed, I got you a lawyer.’

  ‘Gunn and Selkirk?’

  ‘No. They have other interests. I got you my own. Utterson. But it’s best if this doesn’t come to court. We don’t want you up on a drugs charge when we know you’ll be framed anyway. What I need you to do now is to tell me everything you did at the Pele Centre. Yes, Sidony told me about that. Go over it carefully, Jed. It’s important.’

  He listened intently, and only interrupted Jared once. ‘You don’t need to lie about that. I’ve talked to Peterkin. He’s sore – oh, not at you, the fool – but Olly sacked him. So would I have done. Couldn’t you have found a better weapon for armed robbery than a forty-year-old shotgun?’

  ‘Just how many weapons do you think I’ve got?’

  ‘All right. Go on.’

  When Jared had finished Ishmael said, ‘So you only searched the shelves? You didn’t look in his desk?’

  ‘No. Why should I? I’d found what I was looking for.’

  ‘You didn’t touch the safe?’

  ‘What safe?’

  ‘There’s a safe in the far corner behind his desk.’

  ‘Is there? Maybe I noticed it. I didn’t really look. Why should I? How do you suppose I’d break into a safe?’

  ‘With difficulty. So these are the facts: you broke into the Pele Centre and took an antique goblet and some worthless bits and pieces that once belonged to Nicky Hawkins. You did this because you’re obsessed by Spanish treasure and you thought you owed it to a dead friend. No, don’t interrupt. For some reason this has put the wind up quite a lot of people in high places. So much so that they arrest you on a trumped-up charge and won’t let you speak to anybody. Did you read all the papers you took away?’

  ‘Of course not! I told you, they were Lucy’s letters to Nick. Who do you think I am?’

  ‘Never mind. I’ve read them all. Don’t look like that. It’s quite simple. As soon as Sidony told me what had happened I took her back to Despair, and I collected that box of Nicky’s things. I thought someone else might get there all too soon if I didn’t. I also searched your house, while Sidony was tidying up, in case there was anything else. Nothing. I read the letters you’d taken as soon as I got home. They confirm a few things about Nick Hawkins that I’d guessed already, but nothing new. There must be something else. The only person who’s in a position to know just what you took or didn’t take is Olly West. But Colombo says he didn’t even know he’d been robbed until Baskerville told him.’

  ‘Baskerville told Olly? The fucking viper.’ Jared stared at Ishmael. ‘But how did he find out about the Pele Centre?’

  ‘Well, Jed, I wouldn’t say stealth was your strong point. Now listen. I’m beginning to see my way. I’ll have you out of here as soon as I can. But it won’t be tomorrow.’

  Jared’s eyes dropped. ‘Do you really think you will?’

  ‘Sooner than if you’re tried for possession of hard drugs.’

  ‘Ishmael, I’ve thought and thought about it. I can’t prove it. They could send me down for years if it comes to that.’ Jared’s voice cracked.

  Ishmael regarded Jared’s downbent head. ‘That’s why I won’t let it come to that.’ He touched Jared’s arm. ‘I’ll get you out, I promise. Don’t worry.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Ten minutes. Right, tell me this: when you used to hang around with Nick at Ferdy’s Landing, how much did you know about his drug smuggling?’

  Jared went very still.

  ‘Tell me, Jed. There isn’t much time.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said Jared hoarsely. ‘I promised not.’

  ‘Look at me!’ commanded Ishmael. Reluctantly Jared raised his eyes. Ishmael gripped his shoulder. ‘Jared, the man you promised is dead. Nothing you say or do touches him now. If you don’t speak you’ll probably die too, in here, and quite soon, and I won’t be able to save you. What matters most?’

  Jared stared at the concrete wall. Ishmael glanced at his watch, and waited. He was about to speak again when Jared suddenly began to talk in an expressionless monotone, apparently addressing the wall in front of him.‘It was only every few weeks or so. Nicky didn’t have money for anything regular. And hardly ever in winter, because the weather had to be right. The tip-off was easy: just a phone call. The rendezvous was west of Brentness. You line up the Despair light and the tip of the Ness. Two degrees north of west. It had to be there; it’s the only place on the north coast that’s not visible from Despair. The light was still manned then, remember. Now it’s automatic it must be a lot easier. We used Nick’s dory. No lights, of course, until we were round the Ness. Then we’d signal. I never went aboard. I had to stay with the boat. They’d lower a ladder for Nick, and he’d go up with the money, and then he’d come back after quite a long while – I used to get pretty cold – and they’d lower the stuff down after him. It was mostly dope to start with; the bricks came in big square bales. Then it got to be more cocaine each time, until it was hardly worth bothering with the dope at all. The coke came in a couple of fifty pound sacks, heavy duty plastic. We’d get it back to the Landing and take it up to the house on the wheelbarrow. Mamma never knew I was out; I used to wait till the sitting room clock struck eleven – I could hear it through the ceiling – and climb out my window and down the pear tree. I used to keep myself awake reading with my torch under the bedclothes. Mamma was always in bed by half past ten. The scariest part was cycling over the mountain without lights. Once I was with Nick I was never scared, though I damn well should have been. We went out on some bad nights, and it wasn’t much of a boat. I didn’t think anything of it then; I trusted him, you see. Though sometimes on the way back it was me that had to steer. In summer it would be dawn, and that made it easier.’

  Ishmael glanced at his watch. ‘The name of the trawler?’

  Silence.

  ‘Jed, it’s life or death. I mean it. The name of the trawler?’

  Jared hid his face with his hand. ‘Santa Perpetua.’

  ‘Registration?’

  ‘Panama.’

  ‘Captain?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Jared turned towards him suddenly. ‘I truly don’t! Nicky never told me anything. If I asked him anything he’d say I was just a kid and curiosity killed the cat. I only know what I saw. And now I’ve told you all of it.’

  ‘Just a kid,’ repeated Ishmael grimly. ‘So. Who bought the stuff from Nick?’

  ‘I don’t know! He never told me anything like that!’

  ‘You never saw anyone at Ferdy’s Landing? No visitors? From St Brandons, maybe?’

  ‘No! No! I don’t know! I’ve told you everything I remember!’

  ‘OK, OK. The warder’ll be here any minute.’ Ishmael looked at his watch, and then searchingly at Jared’s face. ‘You’re all right, Jed? They’ve not hurt you any more than what I can see? No? Well, Anna gave me a basket of food for you, but they took it off me. I hope you see some of it. And I couldn’t bring in any papers of any kind. But Sidony told me to send you her love, and she’s sorry she wasn’t more use to you.’

  ‘But she was! She did all that anyone could! Tell her please. Tell her … Oh, never mind. Send her my love. Tell her I wrote her a letter.’

  The key turned in the lock, and the door swung open.

  When Ishmael had gone they came in and searched Jared thoroughly and ungently. Afterwards he lay curled up on his bed, shocked and shaken. It was a long time before he could begin to think himself away, and when at last he was able to form the images inside his head, it was under the sea that he conjured up, a dim, free-floating world with no boundaries, no malice, no words. Gradually he stopped shivering, and began t
o be sleepy. He was almost gone when a sudden jerk recalled him, and he sat up suddenly.

  The plastic jug and half-filled cup slid off the shelf and fell to the floor with a clunk. He stared down at the widening puddle on the concrete. There was a sudden huge booming from underneath, a roaring like the wind, and from deep inside the building came a long grinding groan, as if the place itself were being stretched in agony. The floor dropped. He was still in the shock of it when huge cracking noises started exploding all round him. ‘Oh, Jesus, no.’ His whisper was lost in the din. He jumped up, reeling on the uneven floor, looking for somewhere to shelter, but knowing there was nowhere at all. He hammered desperately on the door, but the noise of his fists was drowned in an avalanche of falling sound. He fell back, knuckles bleeding, and curled up tight on the bed, pulling the blankets over him, and covering his head as much as he could with his arms.

  TWENTY

  Sidony Redruth. Ravnscar Castle. July 28th.

  Notes for Undiscovered Islands (working title).

  I SAT OPPOSITE Lucy at the round table in the window, just as I had the first morning I was at Ravnscar. So many things were unchanged: the pile of magazines, Ginger curled up purring next to me, the Cluedo set next to the toaster on the shelf behind me, the trolley with its tray of spreads and home-made jams. Some things were different: a chess set in a wooden box now lay on top of the Cluedo, the date on the two-day-old copy of The Hesperides Times said July 26th, 1997, and the yellow file had gone from underneath the magazines. It wasn’t grey outside; it was a wild mix of wind and light, and there were white horses right across the sound. On another day I’d have wanted to be out there, down on the shore with the sun and the flying wind and the breaking waves. But the other thing that had changed was me. When something is terribly wrong, when you’re hurt or bereaved or afraid for a friend, then a dead weight sits at the back of your head, and though you might not be thinking of it all the time your body knows that life isn’t right. You feel like an alien looking out on a world that used to be normal. I’d been feeling like that for a week now. It was bad, but it would be worse to be locked in and not knowing what they were going to do to you, especially if you were more frightened of that than of anything else in the world.