Goodbye Again

by Joseph Hone

I wanted him to tell me the truth, about how I looked just like Katie – but just then the float dipped violently in the water and the reel spun out viciously with a great whine. He had some big fish hooked.

  ‘God! This could be it.’ He stood up, playing the fish back and forth back for the next five minutes, the rod bent – reeling the line in to breaking point, it seemed – before he released some mechanism and the line spun away. Then reeled it in slowly again. To and fro, arms braced, muscles bulging. A great battle. ‘Christ!’ He was shouting now. ‘It must be a big one!’ He was beside himself. ‘That net behind me,’ he shouted. ‘Get the net, be ready with it, over the stern here. I need both hands.’

  It took another five minutes. Then we saw the fish, the shadow of it first, then the mottled green and yellow skin, twisting viciously about just beneath the water, when it ran deep again, and was pulled back. Finally he had it, bringing it towards the net, which I held over the stern, as he pulled the fish over the wire lip.

  It was a pike. It must have been nearly three feet long, its great flat head and wide gaping jaws staring up malevolently at me, chomping at the wire lead, with a disgusting, sagging white belly. It was nasty, ferocious, its huge mouth snapping. I could see its sharp run of teeth – as if famished, biting on nothing except your fingers. I was thankful when Ben took the net from me and lifted it up onto the stern boards, where it flashed and flew about, struggling in the net, its body arched in a semi-circle.

  ‘God, it must be nearly twenty pounds. Just look at the brute!’

  He hit it on the back of the neck with an iron mooring stake. ‘Hook’s too deep to get it out, swallowed it right down. I’ll have to kill it.’ It lay inert, just the odd twitch now.

  ‘It’s far too big to cook with what there is in the galley,’ I said.

  ‘Fillet it. Or cut it into steaks.’

  Then something distracted him. He looked up. I turned round. The sun was rising, and there, illuminated on the high deck of the derelict barge to our left, were two men, in caps and uniforms.

  ‘If only you hadn’t gone bloody fishing and shouting!’ I said, shouting myself, ‘we could have been out of here long ago!’

  ‘Yes, but we wouldn’t have had the fish – and what a fish!’ We ran to the wheelhouse.

  They were only private security guards. Alerted by our ridiculous shouting and splashing they’d come running from somewhere behind the old warehouses. They shouted at us in French, from the prow of the big barge above us. ‘Can’t you read? “Private Property – Keep Out – No Mooring”.’

  Ben placated them, and we headed upriver. ‘Trouble is,’ he said, as we chugged east into the morning sun, ‘they may remember us if they get to hear the police are looking for a man and a woman out on the river. They’ll know the direction we’re taking as well.’

  ‘What direction are we taking?’ We were in the wheelhouse drinking coffee. A vast commercial barge, the deck loaded with cars, was bearing down on us, producing a great wave to either side of its prow. I was worried. We seemed to be headed straight for it.’ ‘What side of the road do we drive on here?’

  ‘The right, and every big commercial barge has the right of way.’ He slewed the wheel round and we made for the shoreline, just in time, I thought. The great barge hooted at us. ‘That’s only to thank us,’ he said. ‘The “camaraderie des chaloniers”, comradeship of the bargees.’

  ‘Thanks. I do speak French. And it’s “mariners”. You can’t turn the barge, “la chalande”, into the “bargees”.’

  ‘Yes. Well, where are we?’ He got the map and showed me. ‘We turn off the Seine about four kilometres ahead, left onto the Marne. Then along for about fifteen kilometres to Vitry-le-François, where we turn left again onto the Canaux de la Marne au Rhin, and that leads us to Bar-le-Duc, about another forty kilometres. Okay?’

  ‘What’s that? About a day’s run?’

  ‘We’re not driving a car, you know. We’re on the water. Four miles an hour, and there are locks, about fifteen or so of them. Bar-le-Duc? Three or four days.’

  ‘Wait a moment! We’re supposed to be on the run, not swanning along at four miles an hour on a holiday. We should get off this boat as soon as possible. Dump it and make for one of the channel ports, like you said.’

  ‘You wait a moment – swanning along slowly is the best game we can play. Let the trail go cold, before we make for one of the channel ports. And furthermore, I’m not going to dump Geoff’s boat, his livelihood, until we get to Bar-le-Duc, where we said we’d leave it. And I’m captain of this boat – so there!’ Taking his hands off the wheel, he started to roll a cigarette. Another great barge was bearing down on us.

  ‘For God’s sake … watch out!’ I shouted.

  ‘Calm down.’

  ‘Look, you can have yourself run over, but not me!’

  ‘Christ, I wouldn’t like to drive a car with you in it.’

  ‘You won’t ever have to, I can assure you. Just let me out!’

  ‘Let you out? We’re not in a car you know – I keep telling you. That’s water out there. You’d drown.’

  ‘I can swim.’

  ‘Wouldn’t if I were you. That big barge, or the next would certainly get you then. First it’d suck you under, then you’d be mincemeat when you got to the propeller.’ I could hear the throb of big engines now. Ben finally turned out of its way.

  I was panting with annoyance. ‘You’re playing your bloody games again. First in Paris with Geoff, then with that damn great fish, getting us into trouble, now dicing with death with these huge barges. What is it with you? You really think this is the way to go on? Risking our lives with every damn great barge that comes along. You got a death wish or something?’

  ‘No.’ He turned. ‘Just the opposite, and it’s always been my reading of things to do what the crooks and the cops won’t expect. And they won’t be expecting us to swan along at four miles an hour in this barge enjoying ourselves.’

  ‘Okay, well I’m not enjoying myself, so you can let me off at the next stop and I’ll make my own way home.’

  ‘Right.’ He didn’t look at me. ‘Let you off at Vitry-le-François. Should get there this afternoon. You can get a train there back to Paris in half an hour, then fly straight out, back to New York. You could be eating that damn cheesecake in your local deli this time tomorrow.’ He turned and looked at me, downcast, so that for several seconds I was tempted to stay on board with him. But no, that’d be crazy. He was crazy.

  ‘Okay, let me off at Vitry-le-François.’

  ‘Right, another four or five hours. Maybe you could cut a few steaks off that pike and cook it for lunch?’

  ‘That fish has caused us trouble enough.’

  ‘Well, you could cut it up for the cats.’

  ‘Cats?’

  ‘Yes, there are two cats that Geoff forgot to tell us about, in his cabin. I heard them this morning, mewing, went in and gave them some anchovies. They didn’t like them.’

  ‘Cats – well that’s just great.’

  ‘We’ll need to get cat food at Vitry.’

  ‘You didn’t find anything else in there – a couple of mad dogs?’

  ‘Yes, almost. Cabin’s stuffed full of bits and pieces, like an antiques shop, props for his theatricals, I suppose. All sorts of strange things.’

  ‘I knew that guy was nuts.’

  ‘So why don’t you give the cats some of the pike? They’re starving – and take a look at the things in there.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll feed the cats, but I’m getting off at Vitry.’

  I left the wheelhouse, cut some flesh off the disgusting pike, diced it up on a plate, went below, opened the cabin door and saw the two tabbies, mewing, tails in air now. They started to eat hungrily. I looked round the cabin. It was extraordinary, packed out with things on shelves and on the floor. An old horn gramophone, a Red Indian headdress and a tomahawk, other things I couldn’t identify. Over his bunk a full frontal photograph of a naked African girl. Anothe
r lecher.

  Then I saw it and sprang back: hanging by a cord at the end of a shelf was a pitch-black, shrunken human head, bulbous nose with a ring in it, elongated lobes with strings of beads hanging down, long shanks of matted dark hair trailing round the back, the eyelids and lips roughly sewn together. A nightmare. My God, I wanted off this boat.

  I told Ben about the shrunken head when I got up to the wheelhouse again.

  ‘Yes, I saw it.’

  ‘He’s really nuts. That’s a human head.’

  ‘Sure it’s a human head. It probably comes from some South American Indian tribe. Spoils of victory over another tribe.’

  ‘Maybe, but it was a real person.’

  ‘What did you think it was, something from EuroDisney?’

  ‘How would you like your head smoked and shrunk and hung from a shelf?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know much about it, would I, but I do see their point: it’s a way of keeping power over your enemies, and much less harm than cruise missiles or cyanide showers.’

  I got off near Vitry-le-François. We’d moored half a mile out of town, to avoid anyone on the lookout for us at the quay in the town. It was nearly three in the afternoon, and very hot.

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘Don’t think badly of me.’

  ‘No, I don’t think badly of you. That’s your privilege, running away from things. I’m just sorry I didn’t get to paint you.’

  ‘Maybe some other time. I’ll come back to Dublin, or your place in England. Paint me when all this has blown over.’

  ‘Yes, but the trouble is we’re involved in something that can’t ever really blow over.’

  ‘We’re not involved in all this looting. They were – if they were, which I very much doubt.’

  I left him.

  I walked along the riverbank into the town. The main square was surrounded by heavily ornate, turn-of-the-century buildings: the town hall, library, a museum; a sign pointing to the Gare SNCF. I was near the station. The light was blinding. I badly needed a pair of sunglasses. I’d lost mine sometime yesterday. There was a touristy shop next to the museum entrance and a circular rack of sunglasses outside. There was a selection of mirrored sunglasses and in the mirror of one of these I saw a man and a woman crossing the square behind me, coming towards me. The woman with a headscarf, dark glasses, rather dowdy, in a flower-print dress. The older man, overweight in a linen suit and a Panama hat. An owlish face. Just a couple.

  But somehow I was on alert. They were such an incongruous pair. I had no reason to think they were interested in me but I felt there was something wrong about them and I wasn’t taking any chances.

  Without turning around I walked up the steps into the museum, paid three francs, and was pointed to another flight of wide stairs up to the first floor. The high-ceilinged rooms were cool and quite full of visitors: exhausted tourists sitting on benches, a few old men escaping the hot weather, a group of noisy schoolchildren with a teacher. An interesting provincial museum full of Celtic, Roman and Frankish things and display cases, filled with old coins, porcelain, silver goblets, swords and gilded daggers. Portraits of grandees in suits of medieval armour.

  I moved round, keeping an eye on the door I’d come in by. The couple I’d seen were almost certainly nothing. Just nerves. Nobody could know we’d be stopping in Vitry-le-François, or that I’d be leaving the boat alone. The couple didn’t appear at the doorway, but I’d give them time, just in case. I wandered round.

  There was a marble bust of François Premier, the founder of the town, with a garland of laurel on a plinth, looking very military and proud and satisfied. Just behind him was a doorway. ‘Dames.’ I wanted a pee. The place was clean and modern and no old woman waiting to take pennies off me inside. It was empty.

  When I came out of my cubicle the woman in the headscarf and dark glasses was staring straight at me, a gun in her hand. She must have been in her forties, a thin, rather raddled face. I finally said, ‘What do you want?’ I was shaking.

  ‘Out of here,’ she said in English in a coarse, north-country accent. ‘And when we’re out of here, and you meet my friend, you will walk between us, carefully, and tell us where you and your friend have put the stuff you were supposed to deliver to us in Paris. Which we paid for, half the agreed price. And if you shout or do any other stupid business when we get out of here I’ll shoot. The gun is silenced.’

  She gestured with the gun, then covered it with another silk scarf she had in her hand. We moved out into the museum. The middle-aged man in the Panama hat met us. His face was round, the skin very white and smooth and frozen, like marble. Only the eyes moved, but he was affable. He raised his hat a fraction to me. ‘How good to meet you.’ A real gent. He gestured towards the doorway. ‘Let us go and have coffee, shall we?’ His English was perfect, but the very slight accent was German, I thought.

  We moved down the first of the two flights of the wide marble staircase. I saw the big mahogany door on the half-landing marked ‘Privé’. It was ajar.

  I was on the inside by the wall as we went down. We were alone on the staircase. As we passed the door I threw myself at it. It flew open, and I ran. It was dark inside after the glare. A storeroom, a big room full of broken statuary, pillars, bits of old masonry on the floor, suits of armour, swords and halberds.

  I turned and ducked left into one of the dark corners. Then right, behind a group of statues. I could hear footsteps and peered out. It was the woman in the headscarf. I’d no idea what to do. I’d assumed there’d be someone, one of the museum staff, in the room, which was why the door was ajar, but there wasn’t.

  Then, in the gloom beside me, I saw the exhibit. It was a mock-up of a room in a Roman villa, wooden-framed, with figures: a tableau vivant. Figures in togas, men, women, children, in lifelike poses: two women going about various domestic tasks, one combing her hair, a second baking bread, two children beside her; two men in togas in the darkened background, conversing, with wine goblets in hand; a third man, behind them, sharpening a short sword on a grindstone, and sheets littered about.

  I stepped into the tableau vivant, picked up a sheet and draped it around me, and went back to the shadows, beside the guy sharpening his sword. To hide my face I bent down by his shoulder, as if I was helping him, and stood stock-still.

  I heard nothing for a minute. Then I saw the woman, gun in hand. She came towards the exhibit, stopped, looked at it, seemed to stare straight at me for a moment, then moved on. I thought I had escaped, but she reappeared, and now she stopped for longer, looking at the motionless figures. Then she stepped into the room. But no, she hadn’t seen me. She stopped at the woman baking bread, gazed at the one combing her hair. Then she came towards the two frozen men holding their wine goblets. She looked at them carefully, and then turned past them, towards me.

  I knew if she came close, she’d know I was real. I gripped the wooden broad sword. I saw her out of the corner of my eye coming up to the grindstone, behind the stooped soldier. She stopped, looking at him, then up at me. And in the second she saw I was real I let her have it with the sword, catching her on the cheek, then again on the shoulder, and again somewhere else as she fell. I felt like decapitating her, but there wasn’t time.

  I ran for the door and then I was out on the stairway with the schoolchildren, and an attendant in a tight blue skirt was shouting at them not to run. I mixed in with them all, down in the lobby now, then out into the blinding sun and across the square. I was halfway across before I realized I was making for the river, not the train station. I kept going in the same direction, back to the boat. Better the devil you know.

  When I reached the spot where we’d moored the barge, it was gone.

  I sat down on the bank and nearly cried – but at least I knew that at Vitry Ben was going to turn left, up the Marne and Rhine canal and towards Bar-le-Duc. At four miles an hour and with all the locks I could surely catch him up. But I was on the Marne now. Where did the canal start? I would have to find out back in t
he town, and risk another meeting with the tarty woman and the man in the Panama hat. There was nothing else for it.

  When I reached the main square I saw the sign. ‘Canaux de la Marne au Rhin. Port de Plaisance’. The arrow pointed right across the square to the town hall. And across the square, outside the town hall and museum I saw the police and a police van, and a crowd of people. I had to risk crossing the square, passing through the crowd, and possibly being seen by the police, or wait. But I couldn’t afford to wait. I’d miss Ben and the barge.

  I crossed the square, head down, and stepped onto the other sidewalk, near the town hall, pushing through the crowd. I hadn’t gone five yards before I heard the voice, loud, excited. ‘Yes, there she is! That woman, she’s the one in the storeroom.’

  I turned. It was the museum attendant. She was standing on the steps on the museum with a cop. Pointing at me. I ran.

  Round the corner, and another corner. There was a big supermarket and a parking lot ahead of me busy with crowds of people, children eating ice creams in the forecourt and playing with red balloons. I rushed through the doors, took a basket, moved away, right to the back, moving among the high shelves. The cheeses. Then the wines.

  Then I saw Ben. He was holding a basket full of cat food and cheeses and inspecting the wines. He had a bottle in his hand, looking at it carefully.

  I came up behind him. He didn’t even jump. ‘Thought you might come back,’ he said. He held up the bottle. ‘What do you think of this? A Barton et Guestier claret, a good ’89. The Bartons are an Irish family from Kildare. They still run the firm now in Bordeaux. Go well with the Pont-L’Evêque I’ve got, and I’ve bought some quite good-looking steak as well, for two…’

  ‘Christ, will you stop babbling and listen!’ I said, infuriated by his blather. But I don’t think I was ever so pleased to see anybody.

  ‘Well,’ he said, when I’d told him what had happened and about the couple. ‘The barge is up in the basin leading into the canal. The police won’t look for you there. Just walk out of here. I’ll tell you what, all those balloons they’re giving away out in the front here … get some. Hold them down about your face. There are tourist families from the boats buying provisions here, all going back to the basin. We’ll get in among a group and walk back with them.’