At times I imagined myself being attacked by giant birds, but instead of claws raking the top of my head, it was the feet of angels that scuffed me. Angels? I know not what other word to use although I stretch the term beyond breaking. They had the blue white skin of a man who has festered twenty years in a dungeon such that he no longer even remembers the sun and would go blind did he ever behold it. And yes they had the arms and trunk too, although clothed in a filthy rags like the dress of a demon doll on the day of her wedding; a dress that was filthy and torn and shimmering with parasites. The cloth was patched and sewn with the stitching a man might achieve if both his hands were broken and his eyes put out. On their backs were wings of grey mite-eaten feathers. They were called chrorguhs, mongrel beasts spawned by some diabolic miscegenation between the race of man and the race of eagles.
I beheld slime-covered marble palaces, and dim city streets from whose buildings trembling tentacles reached out. Strange streetlamps lined our route and, as my madness deepened, I saw they were not streetlamps but crosses from which hung the rotting skeletons of crucified goats. Spread along the arms of the cross, as upon the telegraph wires that line our blessed railway lines, were crows, grown too fat to fly. Above us rose the ramparts of the Dark Tower protected by great wooden gates, each the size of a ship.
And then on the eighth day, my fever broke. I felt a scented breeze on my face and we emerged into the daylight, on to a rocky terrace high on the mountainside. Eagles circled below us and beyond lay the vast green realm of Havilah. We rejoiced as men once dead whom Providence has restored to life. In the valley below we could see a settlement of small huts within a stockade on the river. We stopped and gazed in wonder, drinking in gulps from the sweet cool air and squinting into the piercing blue light. Above us the mountain towered into snowy crags like broken teeth biting the sky.
‘Nyumba kubwa ya mama!’ the men pointed and cried. ‘Big Mama’s house!’
I gasped in wonder, and gasped again and again, adding a soft harmonic to the shrill keening of the wind. Then I wept. ‘Nyumba kubwa ya mama!’ the men cried again. ‘Big Mama’s house! Big Mama’s house!’
I was so entranced that I stumbled and dropped the box Chief Jhorumpha had given me containing the tribute for Mama !Mkuu. It fell open on the floor and spilled its contents. A hundred human eyes rolled out and bounced down the steps that led to the valley.
Chapter 19
The snow lay as a smooth blanket upon the road, occasionally marked by the lines of car tyres. The train had been delayed by thirteen minutes and so we took a taxi in the yard outside the booking hall. The driver drove carefully and slowly over the icy cobbles and the minutes ticked away. It was 10.29 when we pulled up outside the seaman’s mission adjacent to berth 5. The air was mauve and sparking with ice crystals. The hull of the Star of Kowloon rose up from the dockside as sheer as a white cliff. Railway tracks criss-crossed the oil-dark ground, derricks loomed like shadows in the gloom; a cat’s cradle of hawsers between ship and berth. Two gangways led up to little dark openings in the ship’s side. The air was thick with the reek of tar, brine and smoke. The seaman’s mission was a low hut set amid cranes and piled-up crates. It bore a simple cross at one end and welcomed, so the small sign said, members of all Christian faiths, regardless of denomination. There was an old, 1920s era ambulance, the colour of butterscotch, parked before it and a man sat in a bath chair in front of the wheel arch. He was smothered in tartan blankets, and his face entirely obscured by white gauze that matched the colour of the snow. A nurse stood with her hand cast gently on his shoulder.
This man was Hershey Lindt, and yet I also knew him as Mr Dombey, whose shop had recently burned down. Many years ago in the orphanage I had known him as Cadbury Holt. The nurse was Magdalena. We walked across. The ship gave a long deep moan on the horn and the snowflakes flurried upwards as if similarly agitated. I knew without a word passing, perhaps from the sound of the horn, that Cadbury was not arriving on the Star of Kowloon, as his telegram had implied, but leaving on it.
‘Jack,’ said Cadbury simply, but with a tenderness in his voice that almost betokened longing. I looked into the ellipses that were cut into the gauze on his face. He seemed to have shrunk even more, making his hair seem more luxuriant, the way it does on the shrunken heads taken by the savages of Borneo. The blankets enveloped his small frame and it was as if he were shrinking before our gaze. I peered into the depths of his eyes, as if looking into a well, and wondered how I could have missed the imp that his eyes contained and that was such a clear sign of my lost brother. Is it possible that the twinkle in someone’s eye can be recognisable? Distinctive as a voice? I thought it was. I saw the same bright gleam that I did the day all those years ago when we got into trouble with the vicar’s daughter. The reason I had not spotted it in the shop was that I had never expected to find it there.
Magdalena pressed down on the handles of the bath chair and turned to wheel Cadbury inside, out of the cold. Jenny rushed to open the door and once inside we sat at a table near a steamed-up window through which the ship was a vague silhouette. The room was empty apart from three dark-skinned merchant seamen at one table talking in a language I did not recognise. A tea urn shone brighter than a Salvation Army captain’s tuba and a lady stood drowsily behind the counter lost in a reverie. Jenny fetched four teas which Magdalena fortified with a bottle of brandy.
‘I knew you the moment you walked into the bookshop,’ said Cadbury.
‘You had the advantage of me there.’
‘Yes.’
‘Hello, Jack,’ said Magdalena.
‘Magdalena is coming with me,’ said Cadbury. ‘I do not think I could manage the voyage alone.’
I looked at Magdalena, remembering her saying she was going to stay with the brain specialist. She explained, ‘As far as Port Bismarck, that’s where we will part. I am going on to Cape Town.’ She reached across the table and placed her hand on Jenny’s. ‘I’m so glad Jack has met you.’
Jenny nodded and managed a faint smile.
‘You must look after him.’
‘Yes,’ said Jenny, ‘I will.’
We drank our tea and Magdalena poured more brandy into our cups. We raised them and chinked them in a toast.
‘Your health,’ said Cadbury. We reciprocated and he said to Jenny, ‘I’m so pleased Jack has found such a nice girl. That’s more than I ever did.’
Jenny’s face brightened. ‘And I’m so pleased he had such a wonderful brother. He’s told me quite a bit about you.’
Cadbury made a dismissive gesture with his hands.
‘Did he really pay a poor girl three cigarettes to show him her drawers?’ Magdalena giggled, and Cadbury laughed.
‘He got into awful hot water for it. He took a beating from the masters.’
‘You didn’t tell me that,’ said Jenny.
‘To be honest, I’d forgotten all about it. And, really! I think this is hardly the time—’
Magdalena gave me a gentle push. ‘Oh, Jack, we all think it’s funny.’
I looked at the grins on all their faces and suddenly I laughed too. It did seem rather funny, although for some reason it had never really struck me like that before.
‘You never told, though, did you?’ said Cadbury. ‘You never told them I was with you.’
‘So only you got the beating?’ said Jenny. ‘That seems a bit unfair.’
‘To tell you the truth,’ I replied, ‘it was fair enough. I know I told you it was Cadbury’s idea, but actually it was mine.’
Jenny looked at me with a strange gaze as though there was nothing in the world she approved of more than this revelation.
Cadbury raised his glass again. ‘Here’s to Jack, for not telling.’ They toasted me. Then Cadbury said, ‘Have you retrieved the suitcase?’
‘I have put in a requisition, it’s no simple task.’
‘On the contrary, what could be simpler? A suitcase lost at Reading in January 1938, embossed with the words L
aura Bell? Mark my words, it should not be difficult to find. I have absolute faith in Mr Jarley in Lost Property.’
‘If it was so easy to find, why have you not managed it yourself?’
Cadbury looked surprised. ‘Because I have not tried! Don’t you see? It was necessary for me to hide the case, and what better method?’
‘You mean,’ said Jenny, ‘you deliberately abandoned the case, knowing it would be stored in Lost Property?’
‘Yes! If I had chosen a conventional hiding place, why, they would surely have found it. But who would have thought of looking in Lost Property? Even if they had, what chance of finding it? Only one man in the world could find it. Mr Jarley. Mark my words, it will be there still, somewhere, and he will retrieve it for you.’
‘Is it really made from the skin of Clerihew Gape?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid it is. That man was the bane of my life but I wouldn’t have wished that fate upon him. I obtained the suitcase originally in order to give him a decent burial but things didn’t turn out the way I planned.’
The ship’s horn sounded, three times. Cadbury glanced at a clock on the wall behind the counter. It was ten to eleven.
‘We sail at a quarter past,’ said Cadbury.
‘I understand much, but not all,’ I said. ‘The nuns from Povington Priory wrote to the War Office with a proposal to crew a lightship anchored in the North Atlantic, to pray for the drowning sailors. The proposal was adopted and a ne’er-do-well called Clerihew Gape was released from prison to captain the ship. According to his widow, they set sail on the tenth of May, the day Southend was bombed. But the nuns were reported as having vanished from the train a week later. So I suspect this was a ruse to cover up the true fate of the nuns. But what was it? Subsequently they appeared to have turned up in Africa, after travelling in a German U-boat. How did they get there?’
Cadbury nodded and his eyes sparkled behind his mask, as if he was pleased with my progress.
‘What made you seek Mr Gape in the first place?’ I asked.
‘It was a German count,’ said Cadbury. ‘I caught him travelling with a forged ticket somewhere between Banbury and Leamington Spa in 1927. He sat there cool as you like, every bit the English gentleman in a burgundy frock coat over grey check trousers, a lilac-and-cream-striped woollen waistcoat. His cologne was lavender. His English was entirely without fault or even the slightest hint of the land that gave him birth. He even had a copy of the show catalogue for Gulliver’s Gentleman’s Emporium resting on his knee. But the ticket for Taunton had a slight glitch in the uppercase T that we had been warned about. He knew straightaway the game was up and made a run for it. Jumped from the train and ran down the embankment and hid in a barn where his presence was betrayed by some hens that loved England. There was nowhere for him to go so he drew his swordstick, which considering my reputation was very much the stupidest thing he could do. Seconds later, I had him on the ground –’ Cadbury picked up a fork from the table and held it out as if re-enacting the scene – ‘the point of his own sword pressed into his Adam’s apple . . .’
He put the fork down and continued: ‘He bought his life with the most outrageous story I had ever heard. It was about the missing nuns. He told me about Port Bismarck, a stinking, rat-strewn, fly-infested town of brothels and warehouses at the mouth of the Sulabunga, near the border of Angola and the French Congo. He told me about an Englishman who lived there, passing his days in the seedy drinking dens and bars at the harbour’s mouth, with a tale so crazy that not a single soul believed him. He told me this man, Mr Clerihew Gape, had first arrived there in 1915, travelling in a U-boat along with a party of English nuns. Of course, my initial reaction was to dismiss the wild tale, but there was something in the calm and unperturbed manner in which he told it that gave me pause. That blackguardly count was unafraid to die and his tale, though insane, had the ring of truth. In short, I could not rest until I knew. I set out to find Mr Gape. I spared the count’s life, delivered him into the hands of the police, and spent the next few years scouring the ports of north and west Africa searching for Mr Gape. On my first trip to Port Bismarck he was not to be found, although he was well known. I spent years searching, for a while even enlisting in the ranks of the Foreign Legion. Eventually I found him in a drunken stupor in the wheelhouse of his boat, the Nellie. This was 1929. Gape confirmed the story. He told me how he had arrived there in a German U-boat with the twenty-three nuns, how six of them had been sold into slavery at the market of El Gaberdine. And how the angry sisters mounted a rescue raid and stole the Great Map from the Library of El Gaberdine. The map, as you know, showed the whereabouts of the lost river of Eden, the Pishon. He accompanied the holy sisters as they sailed the U-boat up the Sulabunga in search of this. To negotiate the cascades they hired porters from the town gaol. After that they sailed for a month inland until the river became too shallow and there they dragged the U-boat on rollers fashioned from jungle trees over the mountain and set her down in the Lunga-Lunga. Gape went with them as far as the Mountains of the Green Dawn, after which they let him go. He returned to Port Bismarck.’ Cadbury indicated to Magdalena that his cup was empty and she refilled them all. ‘At first, he was very reluctant to repeat the trip but my offer of gold was enough to persuade him. He agreed to take me as far as the Mountains of the Green Dawn, but would go no further on account of this –’ Cadbury touched the gauze on his face. ‘Leprosy. A most unexpected feature of Eden. I do not know exactly what became of him. I can only assume that after he left me he fell into the hands of Chief Jhorumpha, who had him turned into a suitcase. Later when Chief Jhorumpha presented the baby gorilla to the Port Bismarck Rotary Club, as a gift to the people of England, the suitcase went along. I have to say,’ Cadbury added with perceptible exasperation, ‘Chief Jhorumpha was the most damnably facetious chap I ever met.’
‘So did you find the nuns?’ said Jenny.
‘Yes. I spent four years living among them. Or rather four years elapsed in the outside world. In Havilah time passes differently, or, to be more precise, it doesn’t seem to pass at all. The only gauge by which you can measure its passing is through the advance of the leprosy carbuncles that all eventually fall victim to.’
‘What happened to the guard on the train the nuns had supposedly been travelling on?’ I asked.
‘My understanding is he was a stooge working for Room 42.’
‘And the nuns sold into slavery?’ said Jenny.
Cadbury whistled softly and fluttered his fingers as if to indicate the flight of migrating birds. ‘From Khartoum, they appeared to have been sold on to all corners of the earth. The other Goslings went in search and met untimely ends.’ He turned to me and said with more intensity, ‘Now it is time for another Gosling, the last one, to go and bring them back. I knew one day you would find me. I laid the trail to me as well as I could. But of course not too well – it was devised as a test to see if you were worthy.’
‘You told me you were born in the shop, and had never left even when your mother died.’
‘I was acting a part.’
‘Even so, that was rather a tall tale to tell, wasn’t it?’
Behind the gauze, Cadbury’s eyes glittered with mischief. ‘Extremely tall.’
I was about to remonstrate but then it occurred to me that, knowing now that it had been Cadbury all along, it did seem rather funny.
‘I’m sorry I had to mislead you,’ he said. ‘I needed to be sure.’
I laughed. ‘I should have guessed it was you. Who else would come up with a cock-and-bull story like that?’
‘But I don’t understand,’ said Jenny. ‘How is it that a party of nuns travelling on a train from Swindon to Bristol Temple Meads in 1915 could vanish into thin air and turn up on a beach in Algeria, aboard a German U-boat?’
‘Ah that was the most dastardly part of the plan.’
THE BOY’S OWN RAILWAY GOSLING ANNUAL
Vol.VII 1931 Price: 1/-
Replies to our readers
’ letters
T. ATKINS, YORK—Judging from the quality of your handwriting, you have no chance whatsoever. Consider a manual trade.
F. G. PRENDERGAST, CROMER—There are many reports of decapitated heads winking at the crowd gathered for their execution but we suspect the best explanation is the same nervous spasm that causes the headless chicken to run. As for speaking after the guillotine blade has fallen, these reports are far less reliable.
ANONYMOUS, BERWICK-UPON-TWEED—Keep pure, and pray for strength.
THE CONTINUING ADVENTURES OF RAILWAY GOSLING CADBURY HOLT – ON THE TRAIL OF THE MISSING NUNS!
In the Court of Mama !Mkuu
Slowly I dragged my eyes up to behold the human scarecrow sitting behind the desk. She was dressed in black rags that might once have been a nun’s habit, but which time had turned into a spider’s web of dark threads in which scraps of the original cloth were caught like giant flies. Underneath this outer garb she wore a girdle woven from bones. Each of her bosoms, which otherwise swung free of the black cloth, was encased in the skull of an anteater. Her hair was wild and tangled, descending to the desk in an overflowing cascade, like jungle creepers at the margin of a river.
The Case of the 'Hail Mary' Celeste Page 25