The Pirates! in an Adventure with the Romantics

by Gideon Defoe

  ‘Ah, now, that might be true enough. But I think you’ll find that the genuine me is the me who would pretend to be really into all this sort of nonsense in order to convince a girl that we had something in common. QED.’

  Jennifer looked stumped, because this certainly did sound like the kind of thing the genuine Pirate Captain would do. Before she had a chance to come up with a counter argument, Byron crashed through the door like a big flouncy labrador.

  ‘My hair is looking astounding today!’ he bellowed. ‘Also, we’ve arrived!’

  They parked the pirate boat next to some punts, and everybody gathered on deck. Tourists and students ambled about in a work-shy sort of way as the afternoon sun glinted off Oxford’s ivory towers. More recently established universities built their towers of brick, but Oxford used ivory, because back in those days people didn’t realise that slaughtering thousands upon thousands of whales and elephants to build student accommodation wasn’t very ethical.

  ‘Oxford!’ said Shelley, looking with disdain at the pointy skyline. ‘My bête noire! My old stony-faced enemy!’

  ‘Do you not like Oxford, Mister Shelley?’ asked the pirate in green. ‘I think it seems very pretty.’

  ‘I was a student here,’ the poet explained, with a sniff. ‘Until they expelled me, unable to cope with my radical ideas.’

  ‘What sort of radical ideas did you have?’

  ‘Oh, all sorts,’ said Shelley, sounding vague. ‘I published numerous shocking pamphlets that threatened to knock the world off its axis.’

  ‘I’ve had radical ideas too,’ nodded the Captain. ‘I once made up an entirely new word for “pancakes”. Can’t remember what it was now, but it didn’t catch on. Still, you’ve got to try these things, haven’t you?’

  ‘My ideas were rather more radical, Captain,’ said Shelley. His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Amongst other things I proposed the use of some quite unexpectedly bohemian fonts in the university newspaper. Though I fear I have already said too much.’

  The Captain suddenly did the face that indicated either a thought or a cannonball had struck him. ‘Expelled, eh? Well now,’ he said, with a sly arch of his beetling brow, ‘I imagine a dangerous individual such as yourself would probably be a wanted man round these parts. Public Enemy Number One? Hounded by the authorities, that kind of thing?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Shelley, looking quite pleased. ‘I suppose I would.’

  ‘And we can’t risk you getting clapped in irons, can we? Or whatever the academic equivalent of getting clapped in irons is. You’re much too valuable to this entire enterprise. So I think it best if you stay onboard the boat for this bit of the adventure.’

  Percy shrugged. ‘Oh, well. I suppose that does make sense.’

  ‘Also, I think it’s important for our expedition to maintain a low profile, lest any shadowy figures should also be after this book.’

  ‘Shadowy figures?’ said Mary, her ears pricking up.

  ‘Oh yes. In my experience there are always shadowy figures involved when you’re on a mission searching for a mysterious thing. So, with that in mind, I think Byron shouldn’t come with us either.’

  ‘Me?’ cried Byron, on the verge of tears. ‘But why?’

  The Captain did an apologetic mouth-shape. ‘It’s just that a fellow of your celebrity is pretty much bound to attract unwanted attention.’

  ‘Confound it!’ Byron thumped the boat’s railing. ‘But you’re right. Why, just last week I was almost smothered to death under a mountain of discarded undergarments, my only crime being to walk a little too close to the open window of a nunnery. Damn my dangerously potent pheromones.’22

  ‘I can’t really think of a reason that Babbage shouldn’t come,’ the Captain continued, ‘except I believe I heard that there’s an exhibition of calculating devices at the University Museum. From what I’ve been told, if you turn some of them upside down you can write the words “BOOBLESS” and “SHOE BILE”. ’

  ‘Ooh,’ said Babbage. ‘I wouldn’t want to miss that.’

  ‘So, I guess it’s down to me and you, Mary,’ said the Captain, pulling on his fireman’s coat and marching down the gangplank. ‘Just the two of us. Same as those sleuthing duos you read about in magazines. I’m like the hard-bitten senior detective, with just his final case to solve, and you’re like my feisty new canine partner, with your shining nose and eager manner. Or possibly I’m like a disorganised slob who never made lieutenant and you’re like the buttoned-down humourless Russian who doesn’t approve of my louche attitude but has been assigned to work with me for diplomatic reasons. One of those.’

  Eight

  Phantoms? Phantoms. PHANTOMS!

  ‘Of course, the really dangerous thing about university libraries is the simmering sexual tension,’ whispered the Pirate Captain, as he and Mary joined the queue for the Bodleian’s information desk.

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked Mary. She looked around the place. In front of them two prematurely balding students quietly discussed what the best type of hole-punch might be. Over in the corner a postgraduate worried about his career prospects. Somewhere, a don snored.

  ‘Yes, it’s the atmosphere of forced restraint combined with young people at their most frisky age. Creates a crackling aura of pent-up hormones.’

  ‘If you say so, Pirate Captain,’ said Mary, doing her pretty eye-rolling trick again.

  ‘Anyhow,’ continued the Captain. ‘This is exciting, isn’t it? Here we are, edging closer to solving my enigmatic belly riddle.’

  ‘Of course, we might have edged a bit faster if you hadn’t insisted on that bucolic punt ride to get here. Or the champagne picnic in Port Meadow. Or the gentle stroll through the Botanic Gardens. Which was all lovely, of course, but did seem like a long detour.’

  ‘Can’t be too careful. I thought it best to blend in with the tourists. Lest those shadowy figures I made up earlier should be spying on us.’ The Captain held up a punnet of strawberries left over from the picnic. ‘Would you like me to feed you some more strawberries?’

  Mary patted her stomach and pulled a face. ‘Actually, I’m quite full of strawberries now. But thanks anyway.’

  ‘I happen to know a sonnet about strawberries. Would you like to hear it?’ The Captain cleared his throat.

  ‘Gosh. Another sonnet already? Maybe you should save it for later,’ Mary said, smiling through slightly gritted teeth. Then, not wanting to be rude, she quickly added, ‘Don’t get me wrong, though. It’s certainly impressive how many sonnets you’ve got more-or-less memorised.’ She stifled a yawn. ‘It’s like a whole other side to you I would never have guessed at.’

  The Captain brightened at this, and decided now might be a good time to use the latest metaphor he had been working on. Obviously this wasn’t the first time the Captain had attempted a metaphor – there was that one about ravening wolves which hadn’t really panned out a few adventures back – but this one was about a jewel, and he knew a lot about jewels, so was more confident that he’d nailed it.

  ‘Another side to me? Yes, I suppose in many ways, you could say I’m like a jewel with myriad facets, each one more unexpected than the next.’

  ‘Do you think? Well, that’s certainly an interesting point of view.’

  ‘But do you know what makes a jewel shine all the more brilliantly? I don’t mean the jewel’s setting, with all the cherubs and the gold leaf, which is, metaphorically speaking, my crew. And I don’t mean “good lighting” either because that’s too obvious.’

  Mary sighed. ‘Enlighten me, Captain. I hope you’re not going to say “a second radiant jewel set alongside it, so they might share in one another’s glow” because that’s the kind of mushy nonsense that Shelley spouts when he’s drunk.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the Pirate Captain, ‘give me a moment.’ The queue shuffled forward.

  ‘It’s good lighting,’ said the Pirate Captain eventually. Mary looked like she was about to say something, but to the Captain’s relief they’d re
ached the front of the queue and the librarian was peering up at them with a quizzical expression.

  ‘Hello there,’ said the Pirate Captain. ‘I’m doing a thesis about firefighting for my fireman’s exams, and I wonder if you could help me out.’ He started to unbutton his shirt.

  ‘Stop! Stop! Have you gone mad?’ cried the librarian in a whisper. ‘Are you trying to ratchet up the sexual tension in here any further? Can’t you feel we’re almost at bursting point?!’ Across the room some dust fell from a professor’s head onto a book about Early Modern French Land Reforms. ‘Good God, man! Put that tempting belly away!’

  ‘Sorry,’ said the Pirate Captain. ‘It’s just that I’ve got a tattoo I’ve recently discovered is actually a catalogue number for a book in this library. So I need to show you at least a sliver of my midriff, but I’ll try to keep it as drab and sexless as possible. See?’

  The librarian leaned over his desk and scrutinised the Pirate Captain’s belly skin.

  ‘Underneath the tired-looking caterpillar tattoo?’

  The Pirate Captain was about to ask what was so wrong with everybody that they couldn’t tell the difference between ‘a caterpillar who was tired’ and ‘a sea serpent who was furious because tiny sailors were firing a cannon at her eggs’. But he didn’t want to do a whining voice in front of Mary, so he just did a pouty nod instead.

  ‘Well, that’ll be somewhere on the second floor,’ said the librarian. ‘Straight up those stairs.’

  ‘Can we just go up there? We don’t have to join the library or anything? I brought two forms of ID.’

  ‘You just have to swear a solemn oath that you’re not planning to set any books on fire or draw genitals in the margins.’

  ‘Are breasts genitals?’ asked the Pirate Captain.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Mary.

  ‘In that case, I’m happy to swear as much as you like.’

  ‘Up you go!’ said the librarian cheerfully.23

  The Bodleian Library had a copy of every book ever published on every subject you could think of: interesting subjects like creatures, dull subjects like cowboys, worthwhile subjects like medicine, pointless subjects like innovation strategy and joke subjects like anthropology.

  ‘Particles, pavements, periscopes, pharmacies – oh look, they’ve even got a pirates section!’ exclaimed Mary, as they wandered along the vast canyon of shelves. The Pirate Captain froze mid-stride, and turned a bit ashen, which means that the colour drained from his face, not that he dissolved into a powder. ‘Good grief! They’ve got an entire shelf of your work!’ Mary gasped. ‘I think I owe you an apology, Pirate Captain. When you said that you’d written several books, I have to admit that I assumed you were . . . well . . . embellishing.’

  The Captain had done a fair bit of embellishing in his time: claiming to be a former bullfighter; his invention of ice-cream; his love of opera; drinking the Thames dry; having three extra nipples; being able to run faster than a cheetah; never having worn make-up; liking purple better than blue; the coastline of Sardinia being based on his profile; eating sheet metal; owning the world’s largest collection of saucy postcards; his refusal to be taken for a fool – none of these things were entirely true. So he didn’t think any less of Mary for doubting him, because you should try to see the best in people.

  ‘I hope you can forgive me, Pirate Captain.’

  ‘Yes, forgive and forget, water under the boat, no time to dwell on all that now anyway,’ said the Captain, suddenly businesslike. ‘Let’s not hang about. We don’t want to let those shadowy figures steal a march on us. Chop chop!’

  ‘Hang on a second,’ Mary frowned and reached up for one of the Captain’s books. He did his best to get in the way, but she was a bit too quick.

  ‘I thought,’ said Mary, looking at the cover, ‘that you said your books were about emotions? Lyrical landscapes? Waves crashing on a rocky shore?’

  She held up the copy of Barnacles Never Sleep (Despite Appearances), and pointed at the lurid cover illustration, which showed a fulsome lady in a bikini being ravished by some fascist barnacles. The Captain hefted his biggest sigh of the adventure so far.

  ‘Oh, look, there’s not much point pretending any more – Mary, I’ve got a confession to make.’ He stared unhappily at his shiny boots. ‘The fact is, my published output isn’t particularly literary at all. Apart from the biography that I wrote to spite Napoleon, the philosophical masterwork that I wrote after a bet with Karl Marx, and the steamy potboiler that I wrote to attract a great white whale, all the rest are pretty much lowest common denominator penny-dreadful schlock. I only really took it up as a hobby because I’d been incorrectly informed that authors are the best-paid people in the world. One reviewer described my work as “both borderline incomprehensible and unceasingly vacuous”.’ He pointed at the quote on the back of Barnacles Never Sleep. ‘Also, whilst I’m confessing things, I might as well admit that I don’t actually understand a single word of those sonnets I’ve been regaling you with.’

  Mary bit her lip. ‘It did sort of seem like you were reading them out phonetically.’

  They both fell silent. For a while the only sound they could hear was the noise of books resting on shelves, which wasn’t really enough of a sound to distract them from the awkwardness of the moment.

  ‘Captain,’ said Mary, gravely. ‘I’ve got a secret too.’

  ‘Oh hellfire, you’re not Black Bellamy in a wig, are you?’

  ‘No, Pirate Captain, I’m not. But the truth is . . . I don’t really care for all that poetic stuff either.’

  ‘You don’t?’

  ‘No. I mean, I try. And Percy is a genius, he really is. But I just can’t help myself. I long for books where things happen. You know . . . thrilling chases. Gothic mansions, and above all . . .’ Her eyes lit up like candles – that being one of the only things that eyes could light up like before Edison – and she almost whispered the word, ‘Monsters!’

  ‘Monsters?’

  ‘Oh! I know! It’s ridiculous! I’m so ashamed.’ Mary buried her face in her hands, suddenly dejected. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me. The worst thing is, I’ve even taken to writing one myself. A novel, I mean. Please don’t tell the others. Percy would think I’d lost my mind.’

  The Captain looked confused, and then his pleasantly weathered face broke into a big grin. ‘But – I feel exactly the same way! Almost all my books have monsters in them. Look . . .’ He pulled a second book from the shelf. ‘This one is about a diabolical space cactus.’ He pulled another down. ‘This one is about a nameless blob that eats children.’ And another. ‘And this one has a terrible fungus in it. The good thing about a terrible fungus is that you don’t really have to worry about its motivation.’

  ‘These look fantastic!’ exclaimed Mary.

  ‘Most of the time I tend to go for either the fungus or a giant sentient clam. What sort of monsters do you like?’

  ‘Well,’ said Mary, ‘I was thinking a hideous half-man, half-seaweed mutant might be the way to go.’

  ‘Good choice. Can’t go wrong with mutants. Saves you the bother of an origin story if you just say “it’s a mutant”. ’

  Mary’s whole face shone. ‘Oh, Captain, you don’t know what a relief it is to be able to talk to somebody about all this!’

  Soon they’d both forgotten the entire point of being in the library in the first place. As Mary pored over the colour illustrations in The Sponge that Stood Still and My First Mate was a Zombuloid, a strand of loose hair fell across her cheek. The Pirate Captain reached out to brush it back. Suddenly he felt his hand turn to jelly. Normally when he used that expression he was mucking about with the lads, pretending to be a ‘werejelly’ when the moon was full. But this time it was because of an emotion, which in many ways was more terrifying than any werejelly could ever be.

  ‘Let me get that strand of hair for you,’ he said.

  There was a creaking noise. The Captain hadn’t had as much experience
brushing pretty girls’ strands of loose hair back into place as he liked to pretend, so at first he thought maybe Mary’s face was creaking. But then the towering bookshelf wobbled alarmingly. It pitched backwards, forwards . . . and suddenly an avalanche of books came crashing down right on top of them. The last thing the Pirate Captain saw before he pushed Mary out of harm’s way was a copy of Black Bellamy’s autobiography – Swashbuckled! – smacking him right in the eye.

  Nine

  The Cannibal Hammock

  ‘Kraken’s ears!’ roared the Pirate Captain, flouting library etiquette. He rubbed the rapidly swelling bump on his head and looked about for his hat as Mary finished digging him out from the pile of books.

  ‘Isn’t this thrilling!’ said Mary, with a grin. ‘Almost killed by your own prose! Byron will go mad with jealousy. And look!’

  She led the Captain behind the toppled bookcase and pointed to an incriminating ladder.

  ‘I don’t think it was an accident! I think it was foul play! Somebody pushed that bookcase! It seems you were right about those shadowy figures all along!’

  ‘Good grief,’ said the Captain. ‘I mean to say, obviously I’m no stranger to attempts on my life: jealous husbands, cowboy assassins, exotic femmes fatales. But even so – you don’t expect this sort of thing in a place of learning. It’s what my old Aunt Joan would have described as “a bit much”. She would have probably gone on to blame gypsies, because she was slightly racist. Different generation.’

  ‘Well, obviously somebody doesn’t want us to get our hands on this mysterious book!’

  ‘The mysterious book!’ The Captain slapped his forehead. Without the pirate with a scarf around to write him useful little reminders he did kind of have a tendency to lose track of his adventures.

  They dusted themselves down and hurried on through the maze of shelving.