by Julia Jones
This left June trying to manage Xanthe and Maggi’s complicated schedule of activities, plus Maggi’s broken collarbone and her own committee work and commitments as a magistrate.
“You would not believe some of the trouble that we’re seeing at the moment,” she sighed, on one of the rare occasions that she found to time to drink a cup of tea on board Strong Winds. “When we came to Suffolk I expected this to be a tranquil place. I had thought I would be bored. I am sorry that I was wrong.”
Gold Dragon laughed. “I could have used a gale warning or two before fetching up here myself.”
“What concerns me most – and my colleagues – is our feeling that the cases we actually see in court represent only the tip of something that is happening deep down. Violence, exploitation, intimidation. Organised crime.”
“When we visited Lowestoft I delivered some messages to the owner of a Chinese restaurant. She would say that you are right. But she would not say that directly to you.”
“I don’t see any great number of Chinese in court.”
“And she offered me no names. But we had a saying in the Three Islands: ‘A hungry pirate never lets the seaweed grow.’ If you have members of a triad here they’ll snap up anyone who’s vulnerable, whatever their nationality.”
“Xanthe’s a hungry pirate,” remarked Maggi who hadn’t really been listening. “It’s why she’s so hard to beat when she’s racing. Seaweed doesn’t stand a chance.”
Gold Dragon stroked her hook. “Shivers a few timbers as well, I hope. But there are pirates ... and pirates. Where I’ve been living the pirates are like tiger-sharks; they sink their teeth in your softest places and keep tugging till they’ve had your lifeblood. We call them snakeheads. You wouldn’t want to find them in these waters.”
June stood up to take her daughters home. She looked thoughtful. “Triads ... snakeheads ... I do hope not. Do you speak Cantonese, Miss Walker?”
“Yes, although I’m more comfortable in Mandarin.”
“And were you once a pirate?” Maggi couldn’t stop herself from asking.
“Only when I lived in the Three Islands. And even then I was more a timber-shiverer than a tiger-shark. Remember Miss Lee?”
“We’ve read about her,” said Maggi. “She was wicked!”
“I considered her my pirate godmother.”
“Where are the Three Islands anyway?” asked Donny. It wasn’t intended as his million pound question. But from their reaction you’d think he’d requested the precise co-ordinates of the Queen’s knicker drawer and was planning to pass the information instantly to Al-Qaeda.
Xanthe rolled her eyes. “What kinda hermit-shell have you crawled out from, Donny-man? Everyone knows that nobody knows the answer to that question. If they do know, they don’t tell you that they know. And if by the remotest chance someone – like our legendary hostess – might actually have lived there, any sailor with any savvy would be sent to sea in a lobster-pot before he’d ask that question.”
“Sorry I spoke.” Donny felt cross and stupid. The others all knew about Miss Lee yet he hadn’t even opened that book they’d bought in Colchester. He was so tired every night that he fell asleep as soon as he climbed into his bunk.
He stomped off on deck to sit with his mum. Skye hadn’t been part of the tea-drinking party. When June and the girls had arrived she’d posted herself inside Strong Winds sturdy bows. He’d assumed that she was keeping out of the Ribieros’ way because she was still ashamed of damaging their boat. Now, looking at her as she sat there, he thought she was possibly on guard.
“What is a sachem?” he asked Great Aunt Ellen later.
“Eh? Oh, you mean Henry? A sachem is a word for chief. He might also have been a mide. That’s more spiritual. It would explain his dreams and the idea of the healing journey. But I’m not sure. We had so little time together. Then they sailed west and I went east – towards the Islands, though I didn’t know that when I left home.”
He’d shove her book in his rucksack tomorrow and try and find some time to read in registration or English lessons. He hoped things would have been more straightforward in those pre-historic, timber-shivering days.
The signaller’s strength was fading now. The equinox had passed; he wouldn’t see another solstice. His last hope of contact, dying.
Perhaps ... the child?
CHAPTER TWELVE
Planning an Expedition
October, a fortnight later
Even getting to school wasn’t straightforward any more. Donny’s bruises healed, slowly, but every morning seemed to bring some new small problem. Delivery vans were left blocking the single-track road from the Hard or his bike tyres would be flat or the padlock combination mysteriously stuck. He’d had to hacksaw it twice already.
Donny had asked the people at the pub if he could keep the bike in their car park but it kept being moved so he couldn’t find it in the mornings and once it even got chucked onto the community skip. He didn’t think it was the pub’s fault and he didn’t like to say anything because his family was getting pretty unpopular anyway.
He got up earlier and earlier but he kept on being late. Almost the first job Mr McMullen had to do when he finally returned to school was to put Donny in lunchtime detention for a week. “This won’t look good on the SS report,” he warned. “But I haven’t any choice. No-one’s going to accept all these excuses as bad luck.”
“Exactly,” said Anna, sipping her coffee thoughtfully as Donny munched a pasty and grumbled about his tutor. “It makes so much more sense once you see it as persecution. Why not try leaving the bike at ours? There’s a shed and you could get the kids to guard it. They’d like that.”
When Anna got banned from the school ICT network Donny’d tried to squash his disloyal relief that she’d be so much easier to talk to during the day. Now that he was going to be stuck in the sin bin every lunch hour, it’d be break-times only. Just twenty minutes, max. It was so unfair they wouldn’t let him on the bus without charging Great Aunt Ellen all that money. He wasn’t in the mood for good ideas.
“That’s a load of extra walking. It must be a mile from the Hard to the Vicarage. I’m knackered all the time as it is.”
“Suit yourself.” She snapped the lid back on her polystyrene cup and turned away.
“No, no. You’re right. Of course you are.” Quick change of subject needed. “Er, picked up anything from Oboe lately?” The school couldn’t ban her from ICT lessons as they were core curriculum and, supposedly, supervised. No-one had realised that she’d already completed all her coursework for the year and was up-loading it selectively so the teacher didn’t notice what she was actually doing.
“Since you ask, I’m meeting him this weekend. On Saturday.”
“You’re what? You can’t do that – it’s dangerous!”
Anna could get furious faster than a world water-speed champion going nought to sixty. “Fine! If that’s your attitude. Ask no questions and you’ll be told no lies. I said the same to Maggi.” She stood white and glaring. “Though I seem to remember covering for you when you weren’t exactly five star health and safety.”
“Huh?”
“I was worried sick all the time you were down the river in the dark in that silly little boat. But I shut up about it. I even helped.”
“Okay, okay, calm down. Can we go back to the beginning please? Where and when are you meeting this bloke? And just exactly why? Can’t you keep it virtual?”
“When I’ve so much net time to spend chatting? Like in school lessons twice a week? No, I can’t.”
“Ribieros?”
“Not a lot. They’ve signed me on at the local library. Wendy and Gerald think it’s for books. And I’ve learned some neat ways to get round firewalls. But it’s hardly ever open. And it needs money.”
“Thought libraries were supposed to be free?”
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“Not when it’s Internet. And now I need bus fares as well. He wants me to meet him in Ipswich. I think I’m going to have to find a job.”
Depression set in as they both thought about money and how much harder everything was when you didn’t even have enough to catch a bus. At least she’d stopped being cross.
Donny finished his pasty and licked his fingers and wondered what sort of job Anna might get and whether Rev. Wendy would allow her. He sort of wished he could get one too. Were there lots of jobs for fourteen year olds? What could he do that anyone would pay him for?
“Sail!! I can sail! Anna, I can sail you to Ipswich. I mean I’m not exactly sure where we’d land but I know we can do it. It’s free and it’d be fun.”
“Sail?”
“In a silly little boat, yes! You’ve done it before – remember? You even liked it until Flint tried to ram you.”
“Ye-es...”
“Deal!” He rolled the cling-film into a ball and flicked it into the nearest bin. Score! “I’m going to do your suggestion about locking up the bike at the vicarage; you do mine about using Lively Lady to get to Ipswich. Let’s check the tides for Saturday. What time do we have to be there? And where exactly are we going to meet him?”
“What’s with this ‘we’? This is my business, not yours.”
Donny stared. “You can’t seriously think that I’m going to let you go to meet this pervy guy in Ipswich all by yourself, do you? If you try, I’ll ... I’ll dob you in – as you’d say yourself!”
Anna froze. Then she laughed. “That’s quite funny. It’s almost exactly word for word what Maggi said!”
“What did you expect? We’re your Allies – remember? But Maggi can’t sail at the moment. Not until her collarbone’s mended.”
“Which is why she’s not going racing this Saturday and Xanthe is. So we’ve asked her parents if we can spend the day together. They were quite pleased. They think she’s coming round to the vicarage. Which she will – to start with.”
“Wendy and Gerald?”
“Are sorted. Gerald because it’s prison-visiting day so he’s going to Highpoint with Luke and Liam. And Wendy because – oh, because she’s always got something amazingly important to do. She’ll be relieved that she doesn’t have to worry about me. She won’t even have to worry that she ought to be worrying about me.”
“Vicky?”
Anna gasped as if she’d spotted a scorpion in her coffee dregs. “I am such a lead-head. No-one’s said anything about Vicky. Which must mean they’re assuming that me and Maggi’ll automatically look after her. Er ... Donny?”
“Would I have her? Course I would, normally. But I’m sailing you up the river. So you don’t have to do bus fares.”
“Maggi’ll lend me some. Until I get a job and pay her back.”
“Well, couldn’t we ... ?” Donny was racking his brains. He didn’t dare say to Anna that she and Maggi had to have a male to go with them, for protection. Or that the more he’d been thinking about sailing her to Ipswich, the more desperately he wanted to do it. He was land-sick. He knew that.
“Couldn’t we ask my mum? She loves Vicky. And she’s really good with her.”
Anna looked awkward. “Mmmm, not entirely sure. Vicky’s my sister and, I mean, what if ... ?”
“You mean what if Mum got drunk? Even if she did, she’d never hurt Vicky.”
“Of course she wouldn’t hurt her! But she might doze off or forget to look out for her and ... you know what Vicky’s like. She could pull herself up and topple over the side and ... ”
“And there’d be no-one there to scoop her out of the briny like we scooped Hawkins. Er, is he okay, by the way?” Donny didn’t want to talk about his mum’s alcohol problem. Not even to Anna.
Skye hadn’t got drunk since the night that he’d been late home. But then he hadn’t been late home since that night. He hadn’t been anywhere – except to school. That was why he hadn’t even been sailing.
He and Great Aunt Ellen were watching Skye almost all the time. Not to stop her untying things – she’d been fine about that ever since their voyage to Lowestoft – but to try to make sure she couldn’t get any alcohol. She’d stopped asking people for the brave sleep drink but neither of them could believe that she didn’t want it. When Donny’d tried to explain that it wasn’t good for her, her eyes had sort of glazed.
Skye wasn’t her proper self. Not the mum he’d always known. Her hands were slow and clumsy when she was signing and she slept at all the wrong times. There was a faint smell about her clothes that Donny wasn’t used to and which didn’t fit with the river smells of salt and mud – or even the diesel that fuelled the generator Gold Dragon was using to provide Strong Winds’ electricity.
These days Skye looked ... empty. She didn’t tell him much but he knew her dreams were bad.
“Is he okay? You are such a sexist! I keep telling you, you don’t know he’s not a she. Answering your question, however. Sings a lot. Does a few somersaults off the perch. Kids love it and the Rev. still lets it have a fly around the main landing when she gets chirpy in the evenings.”
“Who gets chirpy in the evenings – Rev. Wendy?”
“Hawkins, of course! But you’ve made your point. It does seem worse to call her it – even if she might be a him.”
“Your apology accepted. So, if you don’t have to look after Vicky on Saturday, would you let me sail you and Maggi up the river? We’d go under the Orwell Bridge. It’d be well fun!”
“Don’t you usually look after Skye when you’re not at school? To give your great-aunt a break?”
You couldn’t keep anything private round here.
He needed to go sailing this weekend.
“Oh, why can’t everybody look after themselves for once!” he said grumpily and stomped off to his class music lesson five minutes early.
The teacher looked up. Looked puzzled. “Hi,” he said to Donny. Year Nine students weren’t usually early. Even the ones who really liked music trailed in chatting to their mates and pretending to treat the subject as a waste of time.
“Hmmmm.” Donny had dumped himself and his bag at a table at the back of the room. There must be a way that he could sort out looking after Skye, and looking after Vicky, and seeing that Anna and Maggi were safe with this strange Oboe bloke. Plus doing what he wanted to do this Saturday, which was to take Lively Lady into the unknown waters of Ipswich docks. He definitely didn’t have time to talk to music teachers.
“Hi,” said the teacher again. “You’re in 9MM aren’t you? You wouldn’t happen to know,” he looked down at the folder he’d just been marking, “Anna Livesey in 9FT, would you?”
“Might do ... Except she’s a girl. So probably not. What’s she done wrong?”
“Nothing wrong! Consistently excellent work. Outstanding, in fact. But I can’t at this moment put a face to her. Still, if you don’t know her either, I’ll have to wait until their next lesson.” And he returned to the clean, white, well-filled folder in front of him, leaving Donny to tussle with his own version of the ‘how to get a fox, a chicken, and a sack of corn across the river in one small boat’ brain-teaser.
“Got it!” he told her, when he called at the vicarage that evening to put his bike in their shed. “We’ll all go to Ipswich on Saturday! Maggi, Skye and Vicky can go on the bus ’cos Maggi’s got money, Sandra gave Skye a pass so she can get to the doctor’s and Vicky doesn’t have to pay anyway. You and I haven’t got any money and nobody’s given us a pass. So we can sail. Then we’ll all meet up somewhere and you can have your dodgy assignation while the rest of us’ll lurk about. Good or what?”
Anna began to giggle. “You’re saying that I’ve spent sleepless nights psyching myself up to do what everyone knows you shouldn’t – ie meet a chatroom stranger and drag my best girlfriend along while deceiving our parents and guardi
ans – and you want to turn it into a Family Outing that even Gerald would approve?”
“Well,” said Donny, “since you put it that way, I did think that it was a pity we don’t have a bigger boat so we could pack some grub and all go up the river together.”
This made Anna laugh even more.
Luke and Liam were already back from school and keen to be instructed in their new duties as bike security guards. Luke insisted that they had to bury the key.
“Maybe bury it at weekends,” said Donny. “The whole point is I mustn’t be late on school days.”
Then they showed him the improvements they’d made to Hawkins’s cage. They’d added extra perches all the way round which Luke said were gunwales. He’d got keen on nautical words even when he wasn’t quite sure what they meant. Now he was planning ratlines and halliards and a crow’s nest. “Except it’ll be a canary nest. Crows are sometimes bullies.”
“There’s a football team called the Canaries. One of the boys in my class supports them. He’s a loser,” said Liam.
Luke turned on him. “When we lived in Low’stoft lots of people supported the Canaries. They’re only Norwich. It’s not the end of the world.”
“How would I know?” said Liam, looking uncharacteristically upset. “I don’t never go nowhere. Except to five-a-side and in the car to see Dad.”
Donny’d been so hung up on his own problems that he’d almost forgotten about the younger boys. Gerald and Wendy were much easier than they used to be but life at the vicarage was still mega-dull. Okay he was tired, he’d had a long day, but he could surely get over it for once.
“Do you two want to come down to the Hard with me? See Mum and Great Aunt Ellen and like muck about for a while?”
The late autumn afternoon was warm and sunny so they took Vicky with them in her pushchair and went scrumping near the boatyards for canary-friendly pieces of wood. There was no sign of the Year Tens and the day was suddenly fun. Gold Dragon found them some twine and Skye sat with Luke, knotting together a length of bird-sized rope ladder. Mrs Everson, the old lady with the green leprechaun hat, stopped to ask about work on Hawkins’s cage. Then Vicky and Donny floated sticks under the bridge while Liam and Gold Dragon rigged Lively Lady and went for a sail.