by Robin Jarvis
A look of panic flashed over Howie’s face. “Bloody hell!” he cried. “You’ve never got guns in them boxes?”
Jezza laughed as if it was the funniest thing he had ever heard.
“What then?” Howie demanded. “Bombs or something? You’re out of your greasy mind and way out of your league! You’re crazy!”
Jezza continued to laugh. It was a horrible, throat-rattling sound. Shiela clutched at the collar of her denim jacket. The voice she heard was not his.
Then he slammed his palm on the side of the crate and the laugh subsided to a dry chuckle.
“Guns and bombs have been tried,” he said in a far-off kind of way. “Tried and failed, tried and failed, time and again. That’s not how to do it. Wars are finite. They blaze for a few years and it’s fantastic and showy and spectacularly loud and operatic. Then suddenly peace breaks out like a rash and you’re back where you started and you have to foment it all over again. War doesn’t work. It unites more than it destroys.”
“What’s the matter with him?” Howie demanded.
Before the others could answer, Jezza flashed his teeth in a wide grin and threw something at him.
Howie ducked and jumped out of the way, half expecting it to be a hand grenade. This was lunacy.
The thing landed at his feet and he peered down at it warily. When he saw what the thing actually was, he thought it even stranger than if it had been an explosive.
“A book?” he exclaimed incredulously.
“It’s time for you all to have one,” Jezza said solemnly, his voice recognisably him once again. “Take them, cherish them… coddle them.”
He passed the copies around. Only Shiela had seen the book already, but she stared at it with the same fascination as the first time.
“Dancing Jacks,” Howie read. “Where did you get a load of second-hand kids’ books from? And what for?”
Jezza was relishing the looks on their faces as they turned the book over in their hands. They had no idea what they were holding.
Shiela flicked through the slightly musty pages, the occasional illustrations skimming before her eyes. There was a faint, almost inaudible sound as the leaves parted after being pressed together so long. It was like a soft, dry kiss between the ink and the paper.
“They’re not second-hand,” Jezza said. “Not one of them has ever been owned, not a single one has ever had eager eyes scan its pages. The moment they were printed and bound, they were packed away. They haven’t seen daylight or felt a human touch for seventy-five years. They’ve never been read. They’re fresh as virgins and just as ripe and anxious to be treasured and explored.”
“First editions then,” Howie said. “How much are they worth?”
“Everything,” came the cryptic answer.
“Who’s this Austerly Fellows?” Howie asked, reading out the author’s name. “Never heard of him.”
“Not many have… yet,” Jezza replied with the hint of a smile. “But they will. His name will ring out at last. We promise.”
“Is this all that’s in them boxes?” Tommo grumbled in disbelief – hugely disappointed. “Is this what I’ve broke my back for all afternoon? The way you was talking, I thought it was the family silver or something. I thought we was going to be minted.”
Jezza took out a book for himself and opened it at the first page. “This is worth far more than silver,” he guaranteed, the cream-coloured paper reflecting up into his eyes and making them unusually bright. “All things will be as dross beside this. We’ve waited a long time, but now our words are ready to be heard, to seep into the mind and smite the heart.”
“Riiiiiiight,” Tommo said. “So aren’t we going back to gut that house?”
“Not to gut it, no. Besides, we don’t need to now.”
“I was never one for reading,” Miller said dismissively. He put the book down and took out his mobile to order a curry.
“Beyond the Silvering Sea,” Jezza began, “within thirteen green, girdling hills, lies the wondrous Kingdom of the Dawn Prince…”
The others exchanged embarrassed glances as he read aloud. What was he doing? They each felt uncomfortable. It was a peculiar situation and Tommo almost giggled. It was so bizarre and silly – and so totally out of character for Jezza.
“And the Dawn Prince went into exile,” he continued, “vowing to return to the Castle of Mooncaster only when he deemed his subjects worthy of his golden majesty.”
Tommo found the matching page in his copy. Almost without realising, he began to follow the words as they were read out, his lips moving with Jezza’s as he spoke them.
“But who would rule in the Lord’s stead?” Jezza uttered. “Who would keep the knights and nobles, the Jacks and jostling Under Kings in order?”
Howie lowered his eyes to the book in his hands. Jezza’s voice seemed to be spinning slowly around him and the words were beating to the rhythm of his heart. There was reassurance here – a cosiness he had not felt since… he could not remember. It was an inviting, nostalgic sensation: back to when large hands scooped him up and held him close, when sweet lips kissed his grazed knee, when perfect comfort was a favourite blanket with a silken edge and a sucked corner. He felt warm and loved and safe. Within his rusty beard, his own lips began to move like Tommo’s.
“So forward stepped the Holy Enchanter,” Jezza read, his face alive and alight, “the one thereafter named the Ismus. Only he could command the quarrelling Court and bring order to the squabbling subjects whilst the Dawn Prince remained in exile. Yet first he must endure the Great Ordeal to prove himself…”
Shiela stared in mute disbelief at Howie and Tommo. Then she saw that Miller had retrieved his copy and was nodding in time to the tempo of the words.
“Stop it!” she cried suddenly, snapping her book shut.
“Stop it!” Jezza’s reading ceased and he lifted his gaze to her. His eyes narrowed and a gleam went out in them.
“Call Dave,” he instructed Miller, without releasing Shiela from his glance. “Say I want him here by eight tonight, no excuses. And get Tesco Charlie as well – tell him to bring his lorry. Don’t fail me.”
Miller and the others were blinking and rubbing their foreheads as if rousing from sleep. They closed their books reluctantly.
“Er… sure,” Miller said, pulling out his Nokia once more. “How about Manda and Queenie?”
“Why not,” Jezza replied. “Let’s make a party of it. You can do that on the way, Big Man. We’ve got one more thing to collect from that house this evening.”
“I’m not going back there,” Shiela stated. “It’ll be dark.”
Jezza turned back to her, his face impassive. “I don’t need you,” he said. “I’m taking Howie and Miller this time.”
“I’m not doing any heavy work,” Howie refused.
“Don’t worry, Leonardo, your lily-white handies won’t come to any harm.”
“What about me?” Tommo asked.
“You make yourself useful,” Jezza told him. “Get some cans and anything else you can lift. Those girls are too tight to bring anything.”
“But I’m skint!”
“Howie, give him cash.”
“Why me?” the tattooist cried.
Jezza grinned at him. “Cos we’re in your emporium,” he said. “And you’ll have had a busy day, raking in the readies from the witless drones who come in here wanting to copy whatever mass-market pap idol has been hyped to them this week, only to have them regret it once that particular scrap of ephemera has stopped flashing in the pan. Then there’s the tribal squiggles or bands of barbed wire smothering their pimply skin because they think it makes them look hard and macho or mysterious and more interesting than they really are. Why don’t you simply scribe ‘I’m a mindless sheep’ on their foreheads while you’re at it?”
“Pack that in,” Howie warned. He didn’t mind when Jezza pontificated, but not when he slagged off his clientele and, by extension, himself. Although… he suddenly recall
ed the nineteen-year-old upon whose back he had once inked, in the early days of his shop, a group portrait of the members of Hear’Say, only for her to return eight months later to ask if there was any chance he could go over it and make them look like the boys of Blue instead. At the time Howie had somehow managed to control himself and politely told her that, as Blue consisted of one person less than Hear’Say, it would be impossible. As soon as she had left in a dissatisfied strop, however, he had almost made himself sick with laughter.
The tattooist grudgingly opened his well-padded wallet. “Here’s forty,” he said, handing the notes over to Tommo. “But I want change!”
“Give him more,” Jezza told him.
“That’s plenty for beers and a cheap bottle of voddy!” Howie protested.
“It’s not for the booze.”
“Takeaways?” Miller suggested hopefully.
Jezza took Howie’s wallet off him and handed it to Tommo. “I want about thirty big bags of charcoal,” he said.
“Barbecue stuff?” Tommo asked.
“That’s right, we’re having a great big luau.”
“On the beach? Cool.”
“No, not on the beach, and it’ll be anything but cool.”
Howie grabbed the wallet back and removed all his plastic, except the Clubcard, then returned it. “Make sure you use that,” he informed Tommo. “I want the points.”
“Points?” Jezza scoffed. “You really think they’re doing you some sort of favour and actually rewarding you for being loyal? Were you born half an hour ago? Wake up, brother. What they’re doing is building up a detailed profile of everything you buy, every time you use that and every other card you’ve got. They know what you eat, what you wear, what you read, where you travel to every day and where you’re likely to be at any given time. They know what music you listen to, what TV you watch, what websites you visit and what you download, what turns you on and what makes you laugh on YouTube. They know what your politics are – it’s all on your file now and who’s merrily filled it in for them? You have, like the good little lemming consumer you are.”
Howie shrugged, “I still get money off,” he said.
“Peanuts,” Jezza snorted. “They’re conning you into building up a comprehensive database about yourself and paying you in half-price spaghetti hoops to do it. There’s a computer somewhere that can calculate how often you take a dump because it knows precisely how much aloe vera impregnated bog roll you buy and when you buy it. They know everything about you, my son. But you, and millions like you, aren’t even slightly disturbed by that. You’re just happy to get your reduced Hovis and bargain garibaldis.”
“Jammie Dodgers,” Howie corrected.
“Are we going or what?” Miller interrupted.
Tommo laughed. “Don’t talk about food when the gasworks here hasn’t eaten for a whole four hours.”
Jezza inclined his head – the sermon was over for now – and he herded them through the door.
“So where we having this barbie?” Tommo asked.
Jezza beckoned them round the side of the building and gathered everyone in the yard at the rear. Then he gestured to the alien landscape of the immense container port.
“In there,” he announced.
No one said anything. They each gazed at the wide prospect of stacked metal containers in the distance.
“You really have lost it this time,” Howie eventually said. “You’re out of it! Totally out of it. Why in there?”
Jezza’s eyes remained on the mountainous gantry cranes on the horizon. “Because the reception will be best,” he said enigmatically. “And you’ll be safer.”
“It’s a mad idea!” Tommo crowed. “And I love it! Let’s go rock that place!”
Howie tore at his beard in exasperation. “You’re both loonies!” he cried. “For one thing, you’d never get inside in a million years – the security is tight as an airport nowadays.”
“Then isn’t it lucky we know Tesco Charlie and his big shiny lorry?” Jezza answered. “He’s in and out of there all the time.”
The tattooist spluttered. “You’re not serious!” he shouted. “Do you know the heavy crap you’ll get into when you’re caught? And you will be caught! They’ve got their own police unit in there. Those guys are all ex-military, there’s no one under six foot five. They don’t play nicey-nicey and accountable like the town regulars. They’ll rough you up, crack your head open – and then throw you in the nick.”
Jezza put a calming hand on his shoulder. “The port’s pigs will be otherwise engaged tonight,” he informed him. “A lovely diversion has been arranged and they, and the fire crews, are going to be so very busy to even notice li’l ol’ us.”
“What?” Howie cried. “Even if you could arrange to get rid of them for a while, which I don’t believe, they’ve got top-of-the-range CCTV in there. Those cameras can zoom into bedroom windows across the water in Harwich!”
Jezza continued to stare at him. “Let this fear go, man,” he said. “Come on, don’t be so uptight. Live a little – or are you really going to miss out on this and stay trapped in your pinball boundaries with your loyalty cards and gas bills? It’s a once in a lifetime offer, Jimmy Boy – come join me. Leave all that just for tonight and follow me… Beyond the Silvering Sea, within thirteen green, girdling hills, come – be a part of something amazing. I promise, tonight will blow your mind.”
The tension in Howie’s shoulders eased and he nodded slowly. “OK,” he agreed. “But I must be even madder than you.”
Tommo whooped and grabbed Miller’s hands and the pair of them danced back to the camper van.
Howie and Jezza followed, leaving Shiela standing alone in the yard, silhouetted against the distant lights that were already coming on over the container terminal. To her, the giant cranes looked like titanic sculptures of giraffes.
“And me?” she called out. “What’ll I do?”
Jezza glanced over his shoulder and gave her an empty smile. “You got the most important job of all, doll,” he declared. “You’ve got to guard the books till we get back.”
“Here, on my own?”
“But you’re not on your own,” he answered in earnest. “The Dancing Jacks are with you.”
It was growing dark when the camper van pulled up the overgrown drive for the third time that day.
“Creepy as hell!” Howie exclaimed, staring up at the louring building. “Who lived here then, the Munsters or the Addams Family?”
“You raaaaang?” Miller droned in his ear.
“If I see a hand running along the floor,” Howie informed them, “I’m stamping on the bugger and breaking its bloody fingers.”
He studied the large house critically. It must have been expensive even back in the day, but it could never have been a handsome building. From a design perspective, it was simply hideous. Still, he knew several goths who would happily spend their holidays here and read gloomy poetry by candlelight.
“Inside,” Jezza said.
Slabs of shadow covered the large hall. Miller’s skin prickled as he entered.
“Don’t tell me,” Howie said, “designed by Tim Burton.”
“You’ve seen nothing yet,” Miller whispered. “You should go out back. It’d turn Alan Titchmarsh’s hair white.”
Jezza crossed to the stairs. Howie moved to follow him, but Miller hesitated.
“Stay there, both of you,” Jezza commanded. “Wait for me and don’t go wandering. This old place can be … dangerous in the dark.”
Miller shivered. He knew Jezza wasn’t talking about rotten floorboards. He suddenly wished he had stayed behind with Shiela. Besides, he’d like to read more of that book…
Jezza’s wiry figure disappeared up the stairs, into the impenetrable shadow of the first-floor landing.
In the spacious hall the two men waited.
Minutes ticked by.
“Who’s up there with him?” Howie asked.
Miller did not answer. He t
oo had heard a muffled voice speaking in one of the rooms above, but he preferred not to mention it. Neither of them could make out what was being said up there, the voice (or was it voices?) was too remote and the creeping darkness seemed to soak up the sound like a sponge.
“I thought this place was empty,” Howie said.
Miller looked uneasy. “No one lives here,” he muttered.
“So is he talking to himself up there?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“What’s up with our fearless leader today? He’s been acting weird since you turned up with them first three boxes.”
“I think it’s going to get a lot weirder,” Miller predicted. He had never been more right in his life.
Suddenly there was a deafening crash. A tremendous, clanging weight had toppled to the floor over their heads.
Miller almost jumped out his skin and grabbed hold of Howie.
“What the hell?” the tattooist cried as plaster flaked from the ceiling and rained on top of them. “Did someone drop twenty pianos?”
“I’m gone!” Miller declared, heading for the front door.
Then a different sound commenced: a slow, scraping noise. Something unbelievably heavy was being dragged across the floor. Miller paused and lifted his face upwards. They could hear Jezza’s grunts and shouts as he strained and pulled whatever it was on to the landing.
“OK,” Howie murmured. “I’m officially freaked now – and this close to soiling myself.”
“I think I already have,” Miller breathed.
The scraping continued – down the length of the landing, to the top of the stairs. They heard Jezza struggling and swearing with exertion. Then there was a calamitous din that echoed through the house and shook the banisters.
Something large came smashing down the staircase, thudding and banging with a dull metal clash, like the chiming of a huge leaden bell. It slid like an avalanche of old bedsteads down to the small landing where Miller had experienced terror earlier that afternoon and thundered into the wall beneath the partially boarded window.