by Alex Shearer
And there’s us, and the old boat, and the harpoon gun, and three harpoons. And enough water and provisions to last us a few weeks. And there’s some out-of-date sky-charts. And a fat, useless sky-cat with bad breath and a skin complaint.
And that’s it.
So you’ll understand – if you think about it – why I’m having a bad day and why the headaches and the leg rash have come back. But then – as the soldier tied to the post said, just before they shot him – the sun is shining and the sky is blue; what can possibly go wrong in such perfect conditions?
2
private stash
PEGGY’S STORY (CONTINUED):
Fact is that the worst kind of ignorance is where you don’t know what you don’t know. And that’s the problem with these two here. They don’t know how ignorant they are.
Gemma’s bolshie; Martin’s less so, but he’s moody or he’s days away, and he can sit there not saying anything for hours on end, just dreaming of who knows what. What worries me is that he might not be thinking anything – just staring.
‘What do we have to go for, Peg?’ he wanted to know.
‘To learn things,’ I told him, for the umpteenth.
‘I know enough.’
‘No. You just think you do.’
‘Yes, I do. I can sky-swim, sail a boat, skin a sky-shark, use a harpoon, condense water, grow stuff, eat stuff, cook, make clothes, survive, navigate, sail, repair things –’
‘There’s more to life than that.’
‘Such as?’
‘Plenty. You’ll find out when you get to City Island.’
‘But I don’t want to go and find out. I want to stay here.’
‘Well, you can’t. You can’t go giving up on the world until you’ve had something to do with it. You need to get educated.’
‘I thought you were doing that,’ Gemma butted in. ‘You said.’
‘I’ve taught you all I know,’ I said. ‘Which, admittedly, wasn’t much to start with.’
‘You’ve done all right, Gran.’ (That’s Martin, coming to my defence. Sometimes it’s Peg he calls me, sometimes it’s Gran. Sometimes it’s more like: Who are you, do I know you?)
‘Maybe, but life here is kind of narrow, Martin. You’ve got to go to school, see life, see the city –’
‘What’s a city?’
‘I already told you. And that’s one thing you’d better try getting the hang of.’
‘What?’
‘Paying attention.’
‘And what do they do in schools anyway?’
‘You sit in a room and they teach you things.’
‘Sit in a room? I don’t like sitting in rooms.’
‘You’ll get used to it.’
‘I won’t.’
‘Just go and carry that sack of provisions down to the boat, will you?’
‘OK.’
‘You also need to meet other people your own age. You can socialise.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s getting to know people. You can have friends.’
‘What’s that?’
I just shooed him away to go and load up the boat. Then I said to his sister, ‘And you’ll meet boys.’
‘What would I want to do that for?’ she said. ‘I’ve already met him –’ she nodded towards the disappearing shape of her brother – ‘and I’m not that impressed.’
‘He’s your brother,’ I said. ‘Other boys are different.’
‘Well, I hope so.’
‘You’ll have different feelings about other boys.’
‘Yeah – no doubt,’ Gemma said. But she was a bit sneery about it. And they both used to be such charming little things too.
‘Go and take the dry goods down to the boat, Gemma, please,’ I said, and I handed her a sack of stuff.
We were all but ready to go. I was sitting studying sky-charts, as my navigation – while sound in principle – was rusty in practice. The last thing I wanted was us setting off for City Island and ending up in the Isles of Dissent, getting strung up by our thumbs by bigots for having the wrong kind of socks on – not that any of us had any socks, but you get my meaning.
There wasn’t much to leave behind, to be sure. But just in case anyone happened by and took a fancy to the place, I was also in the process of putting up a big sign saying: This Island Occupied. Prop: Peggy Piercey. Land Registry Ownership No: PP184354005T.
It was all bull, of course. I’d just taken the place over and hadn’t registered it at all. But even if I had, it wouldn’t make any difference to determined squatters. Not that you get so many of them in these parts. We’re too far off the Main Drift and from what passes for civilisation.
Before we set sail on the big journey, I went on a short one to visit old Ben Harley over on the next island. He’s younger than I am, but that’s not the point. You can be old Ben at any age. You could even be born being old Ben. And boring old Ben at that.
‘Hi, Ben,’ I said, as the boat drifted in towards his jetty, and he stood there in neighbourly belligerence, welcoming me in with his harpoon gun.
‘It’s you, is it?’ he said. ‘What do you want, Peggy? If it’s money, I don’t have any. If it’s tools, I don’t lend them. If it’s spare parts, I’ve used them all. If it’s water, I don’t have all that much. If it’s anything else, I don’t have any of that either.’
‘I’ve just come to say goodbye, Ben.’
‘Where you going?’
‘And to ask a favour.’
‘I don’t have any.’
‘I just want you to keep an eye on the place for me.’
‘Well, I can do that, I guess.’
‘I’ve put a sign up. But if anyone comes along looking to colonise my island –’
‘I’ll give them a taste of this,’ he said, patting his trusty harpoon gun.
‘Thanks.’
‘So where are you going?’
‘Like I told you, a while back.’
‘When was that?’
‘Last week.’
‘I don’t remember conversations from that far back. Yesterday, maybe … this morning, perhaps –’
‘We were having some of your home-made at the time, remember?’
‘I don’t have none,’ old Ben said, suddenly wary again and worried I might ask for a bottle of his home-brewed sky-weed whisky for the journey. It’s strong stuff and actually tastes better than it sounds. Not, in all honesty, a whole lot better. And if you dab it on your skin, it’s good for keeping the midges off.
‘Well, remember it or not, I told you the two of them were growing up and I’d shown them all I knew and sooner or later I’d have to send them to school.’
‘Ah. Right. So that’s what you’re doing?’
‘That’s it. I’m taking them there now. We’re setting off today.’
Old Ben looked at me. He put down his harpoon gun and took out his pipe. He never smokes it. He just sticks it in his mouth, draws on it, and takes it out again for effect. He’s had no tobacco for thirty years.
‘Where you going? What school?’
‘City Island. The boarding.’
‘Can’t they get the school bus?’
‘Bus? Ben, there is no bus that comes all the way out here.’
‘You sure about that? I thought otherwise.’
‘It’s make your own way or miss out.’
‘So it’s just you and them sailing?’
‘Me and them.’
‘One doddery old biddy and a couple of kids? And nobody with muscles?’
‘Less of the doddery and less of the biddy. I’ll let you have the kids. The muscles don’t matter so much when you’ve got the brains. But you wouldn’t know about that.’
‘Peggy, don’t take this the wrong way, but what do you reckon your chances are of getting there?’
‘Pretty good.’
‘I’d put them at about one in a thousand.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Unless you’re going round t
he Main Drift?’
‘No. I’m staying off it. I’m not going on the Main Drift in my little boat. What if some great water train of the United Fleet comes along, or a sky-whaler, and they don’t see us?’
‘So you’re going through the bad lands?’
‘We are taking the back roads, so to speak, yeah. But the bad lands, they aren’t so bad.’
‘Well, it was nice knowing you, Peggy. Not that nice, but –’
‘Thanks.’
‘How long shall I give it before I work out that you’re not coming back?’
‘Give it a turning. You can have my island if I’m not back by then.’
‘No, thanks. One island’s enough for me. I’m not empire-building. Anyway, you probably will be back. You’re too old and ugly to live anywhere else.’
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘And I clapped eyes on you and thought “here’s someone who makes me look pretty by comparison”. It’s not everyone who’s lucky enough to have a gargoyle for a neighbour.’
Old Ben even got all sentimental then – for him.
‘Well, I shall miss you, Peg,’ he said. ‘No one to wave to of a morning.’
‘I’ll be back. Don’t get too lonely.’
‘Here,’ he said. ‘Let me give you a few supplies and some extra water.’
‘I thought you didn’t have any to spare.’
‘It turned up of a sudden. And I’ll give you a few bottles of sky-brew from the private stash.’
‘Ben, all your stash is private. There’s only you here.’
‘You can never be too careful as to where you keep your liquor.’
So, not being proud, I took what he gave me. Then I shook old Ben by his hand – as kissing him on the whiskers was not a thing I could contemplate – and he promised to keep an eye on my island. So home I went, to find Gemma and Martin sitting on top of their bundles, down at the jetty.
I threw a rope and they helped me tie up and we loaded the last of the stores and our belongings on board. Then we were ready to sail. Home wasn’t much but I felt a pang to leave it.
‘We got the first aid kit and the medicine chest?’ I asked.
Gemma held the medicine chest up for me to see.
‘OK. Then let’s go.’
So I cast the ropes off. Go, and be quick about it. That’s my way. I can’t stand those farewells that linger – even when it’s only rocks and stone you’re saying goodbye to.
We’d only got a short way from the jetty when the most heart-rending, grief-stricken, pathetic noise rose into the sky. I looked to see who was crying. Gemma wouldn’t – she liked to act tough. All her crying she did on her own, when no one was looking. It would have to be Martin, who didn’t seem to have a boy’s inhibitions about showing his feelings. But then, he’d never been told not to show them.
But it wasn’t him either. It was someone else entirely. It was our sky-puss. Well, they’re sky-riders to be more accurate. Those lazy scroungers do have the knack of inveigling their way into your affections; they curl up on your knee of an evening and start to purr, and you can’t help but like them, even while admitting that they don’t give a damn about you, and they’re only in it for the titbits. They’re the kind of pet whose philosophy is: You feed me, I love you. You stop feeding me, I go and love someone else. You get a few people like that as well.
Anyhow, there he was, on the jetty. We’d gone and forgotten about him and had been about to leave him behind. He wouldn’t have starved. He just needed to get off his lazy backside and go and catch some sky-minnows. But no. That had too many similarities to a thing called hard work.
‘Botcher!’
It was Martin who’d given him the name.
‘Gran – we’re not leaving him behind, are we?’
‘He won’t die, Martin. He is supposed to be a wild, foraging creature.’
‘But he’ll be lonely.’
‘Oh – I guess.’
Gemma didn’t comment, but I could see from her expression that she’d have left him behind easily.
‘Here, Botcher! Here! Come on, boy! Here!’
He took a small run and leapt into the sky and then landed with a thump on the deck.
‘Oooooow!’
He hadn’t really hurt himself. He was just putting it on for sympathy, which Martin immediately gave him, picking him up and petting him and saying, ‘Poor Botcher, did you bash your head? Never mind.’
‘Just keep him from under my feet, Martin,’ I said. ‘You’re looking after him for the duration of the trip, all right?’ I had enough to worry about without a sky-puss on the make.
‘And keep him out of my way too,’ Gemma said sharply. She was having one of her sulky and sullen days. Maybe she was more apprehensive than she was letting on.
‘Come on, Botcher. Let’s go to the back.’
‘It’s called the stern. You should know that by now,’ Gemma said.
‘I know that,’ Martin said. ‘But Botcher doesn’t.’
He took him to the stern of the boat and perched him on the rail. I looked back too, and saw the island behind us. It had started small anyway, and now it was getting smaller. I touched the tiller and opened the covers of the solar panels. I hoped my navigation was right. A compass is useless here. You’ve got magnetic fields coming at you from so many different directions at once that a compass needle would be spinning like a cork in a whirlpool. Charts are the only way to do it. Charts and landmarks and personal experience.
Had I been a religious type, I’d have said a prayer or two, round about then. But at one hundred and twenty years old, I was basically the doubting type. But, just to be on the safe side, I said a prayer anyway.
Anyhow, that’s it from me. You don’t want to hear the creak of old bones and the croak of old vocal cords any more, I’m sure. So someone else can take over the story. It’s younger voices and fresher perspectives you want to hear. Those two there can divide it between them. Besides, I’m tired. I’ve told too many stories in my time. That’s how it gets you in the end. You just want to sit back a spell, and let someone else do the talking.
So I’ll pass you over to the younger generation, to the ones who can still get the greenstick fractures, and embarrass themselves without even trying. You’ve got to pass the baton over at some point; we all have; it’s a relay, you see, that’s the kind of race the human one is. Maybe somebody might even make it to the finishing post one day. But it sure won’t be me. Though I’ve done my stretch of distance, and I ran it as best I could.
3
first encounter
MARTIN SPEAKING:
That’s my sister there by the mast, looking soulful, and that’s my gran at the tiller – or, more strictly speaking, my great-great-grand-aunt (apparently). Her name’s Peggy. Sometimes I call her Gran, sometimes I call her Peggy, sometimes I pretend I can’t hear her, and sometimes I pretend she’s not there. Sometimes I pretend I’m not there. Sometimes I pretend nothing’s there. I just close my eyes and make it all go away, just like that.
Peggy says she’s a hundred and twenty years old. But then she says a lot of things, and I don’t believe half of them either. She might be a hundred and twenty years old. She might be a hundred and fifty years old. She looks it some days. And she sure isn’t twenty-five any more. But I don’t know. And that’s the trouble – so Peggy says. Peggy says we don’t know much at all, and that’s why we need an education.
She says some people say that whoever increases knowledge increases sorrow and that ignorance is bliss – but it isn’t. She says ignorance is a pain in the butt. But I don’t know if that’s right either. Because I don’t have any pains in my butt, and I’m supposed to be about as ignorant as you can get. According to Peggy. But my butt is an ache-free zone – except when Gemma kicked it once, but that’s sisters for you. (And I waited my time and kicked hers right back too, as retali-ation is best when it’s unexpected.)
The problem, as I see it, is this: just say ignorance really is bliss … We
ll, the only way to find out if it is or not, is to get educated, and then you can make what Peggy calls ‘an informed decision’. But if you then decide that ignorance is bliss after all, well, it’s too late. Because by then you’re already half educated. And you can’t un-educate yourself or de-educate yourself, can you? So as far as being blissfully ignorant goes, you’ve had it. You’re just going to be educated and miserable and longing for that far-off happy land, back when you didn’t even realise that two and two made four. (I do know that much; we’ve covered basic arithmetic.)
So I just hope Peggy’s not putting us wrong here. I just hope she knows what she’s talking about this time. Because that’s why we’re sailing off into the blue and leaving everything familiar behind – to get an education. So it had better be a good one. As I was quite happy where I was. And if it turns out there’s nothing in this education business, I’m going to be mighty peeved. Because I could be back there right now, on Peggy’s island, fishing and mooching and doing what I always do, just being in the sun and letting the time go by, and no worries at all. No dramas.
‘You’re dreaming your life away, Martin, my boy,’ Peggy would say to me, regular as meals coming round. But what if I was? Was there something wrong with that? Is there something wrong with dreaming? Can’t a boy have a hobby and an interest? There’s nothing wrong with dreaming. It keeps you out of trouble; it costs nothing; you can do it anywhere, and you don’t need any special equipment: just your head and somewhere soft to rest it, and then your dreams.
‘Dreamers are in for rude awakenings, Martin. Those are my words and you mark them.’
Yeah. Well, anyhow. So there we are and there we were. I’m not much on tenses. Peggy says I can get past, present and future all mixed up. But what’s the difference? Yesterday, today, tomorrow – they’re all much the same to me. Things happened or things are happening or things are going to happen. What does the when matter? It’s the happening part that counts.