Best of all, I found a fat, heavy, vacuum-sealed bag of coffee beans.
Gene had made himself scarce again, but he came to look at John’s engine when I sent word through Adam.
You won’t outrun the cops, he said, wiping his hands on a rag black with grease and oil, but she’ll get you where you want to go.
Gene’s hair was growing out, becoming downy, softening his death mask face but not by much. Burning eyes like black stars.
Dark clothes were dirty and slept in. Wolfed down the meal of corned beef and rice.
The police still hadn’t put divers in the water as far as I could tell.
Fancy a coffee?
John’s? Gene said. Point me at it.
Looking around. Almost hear him calling me a lucky bastard.
Stop here, I said, you want. Few days. Get it together.
Thanks, Gene said. Got too many bad habits.
I put the whisky bottle on the table. Gene poured some into his coffee. Looked at me. I shook my head.
You want to talk about it? I said.
Talk about what? Gene said. Glaring over his cup.
Gene helped me bag up rubbish. Worked fast or end up throwing nothing away. Kept a carved wooden box with no hinges.
John’s photographs. Keepsakes. Discharge papers from the merchant navy. Nearly thirteen years’ service. Ancient first birthday card, brown paper, Little Bo-Peep. Faded blue bonnet, red ribbon. To dear little John. RHS certificates – first prize, runner beans, marrows. Second prize, onions, sets or autumn sown. Membership of the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes. Black and white photos of unknown people. Kept it all for Nancy.
Sometimes a name on the back. Cyril, Vi, Aunt Phyl. John and Vesna. John and baby Nancy. John Vesna Nancy. The red-brown box was hand carved with bodies, all crammed together, heads at strange angles, long arms and legs sticking into unhappy faces, no space between, packed in. Wasn’t an expert but thought it was sandalwood.
Me and Gene went down to the building site carrying two big sacks of rubbish each. Had a dozen more sacks on the boat.
The contractors and work crew had been on the island for over a week. Building materials ferried upriver. Stacked in contraband shapes. Roped tarpaulin. Boots echoing as the men crossed the iron weir to the island, where a handful of defiant banners still rose and fell on river breezes in the honeyed light of September mornings.
A big blonde kid with stickers on his hard hat pushed a wheelbarrow. Gene used the skip without asking or talking, and walked away, carrying the sack I’d given him half-filled with tins of food, a twist of ground coffee. Nobody noticed him.
Shovels and kangoes breaking up the ground. The island air thick with dust. The voices of happy men rising into the trees.
Making money with the sun on their backs, dreaming of a beach-bar getaway. Tinny background radio. Burst of a jackhammer drowning out the sing-a-long.
The fair kid said: Found all this in the mud, look.
There was a yellow rubber duck. A copper sheet containing what might have been Sanskrit for all I knew, or a different form of English. A rusted spear. Handful of keys. Black coins. Dipped into the wheelbarrow and pulled out a clay pipe with an unbroken stem. Tapped the bowl of the pipe against the flat of his other hand. The stem broke. The kid threw the pipe back into the wheelbarrow.
Came up with a small book with a leather cover stamped with a golden cross. To Dor, the boy read, with love and best wishes for your birthday, November fourth 1963, love Jack.
Give me the prayer book, said a Belfast voice I recognized. Skip the rest of the ackamarackus.
The Belfast man, wearing a high-vis jacket over a pale-blue shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbow, was sat at a picnic table playing cards with a thin, hatchet-faced man. Hard hat upside down on the ground. Big freckled head, white corona of hair, big nose. Massive hands. The strap of his watch looked tight on his wrist. New blue supermarket jeans with a crease. Tan brogues. A big hard man all around.
The hatchet-faced man, a pencil behind his ear, said:
Gave the bloke the price for the scaffolding.
And? the Belfast man said, looking up from his cards.
Didn’t even breathe hard, the hatchet-faced man said.
The Belfast man smiled, carried on playing cards. Kaluki, it looked like.
Couple of flasks on the table. Phones. Worn-looking Tupperware. The rescued prayer book with its hard maroon cover. Bits and pieces: slice of Bakewell tart, the core of a pear, an open packet of Smokey Bacon Taytos. A paring knife. Tobacco tins brought out. Fags rolled and lit. Blue smoke rising like signals.
McNab. That was his name. Liked to hear himself talk. Skin a foot thick. Looked after his lads. Knew how to squeeze a profit out of the most tightly priced jobs. Recognized the hatchet-faced man too, but couldn’t remember his name.
Hello McNab, I said.
Terry Godden? McNab said. I heard you were dead.
Not yet.
You didn’t go to Tahiti? Live under the banana trees?
Not lately, I said. Borrow your skip?
Not a bother, McNab said, work away.
The hatchet-faced man looked at me as I threw my rubbish bags into the skip. Glossy black hair the most impressive thing about him. Kept it a little too long for his age. Swept back. Stuff in it to make it shine and keep it in place. Eyes the colour of muddy water. Too close together. Brick-red face. Not all from the sun.
The hand was over. The man took the pencil from behind his ear, licked the end and totted up the value of the cards that were left.
McNab said: That’s a good dog. None better.
The hatchet-faced man finished counting. He cut a piece of pear with the knife and held it out to Red.
Here girl, he said.
Stay where you are, I said.
Red looked up at me in disbelief and lay down with her head between her paws, her sunset-orange eyes fixed on the pear. Sighed like a girl in a posh book. The hatchet-faced man ate the piece of fruit and said nothing. Looking at me.
McNab was quiet for a moment. I could hear Red panting.
The lads tell me you’re the fellow made the big paintings, he said.
Had some help, I said.
You’re not working then?
That what you’re doing, I said, looking at the food-littered table. Working?
I’m overseeing operations, McNab said. The whole scheme would come crashing down without me, so it would. You live here Terry, or are you just passing through?
I live here.
And it’s a grand spot, McNab said.
Yes, I said.
I can see you’ve taken to it, McNab said. Like one of those fellows who lives in the trees, he said. Your man Swampy.
I don’t know what you’re talking about, I said.
You always were a sensitive man Terry.
I’ll see you around McNab.
McNab looked at me with clear blue eyes.
You wouldn’t by any chance be a fifth columnist Terry? he said.
A what?
A saboteur?
Not me, I said.
Ah well, McNab said.
The workmen left before dark, replaced by two security men, who had set up in the timber and plasterboard hut the workmen had built for them. Big men. Shoulders up by their earholes. Tougher than a goat’s knee. The workmen had also built a fenced pen. I watched the guards in black uniforms unload two large German shepherd dogs from a van with Kaplan Security written on the side, and march them onto the island.
They crossed the weir above the painted islanders. Big black and tan dogs, wearing harnesses so that they made a soft chinking sound when they walked, with the sloping backs German shepherds have. Straight front legs and hind legs bent almost in a crouch, like they were always ready to leap at your throat.
Red had her back up the whole time the dogs were in sight, making a low, drawn-out growl that did not break, but repeated itself in waves until the dogs passed from view.
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sp; Meaner than a junkyard dog, I said, and praised her until she smiled.
The islanders gathered inside a ring of head-high lanterns, hooked by wire in the trees.
A place neither light nor dark, made changeable by the power of the breeze to redirect each paper lantern’s golden cast.
I stood at the edge of the meeting, just beyond the light.
Red sat still by my feet, Guarding the sack of food.
The leaves, though coloured bronze and gold, had not begun to fall. The air remained full of fragrance from the cooling ground. A flowering edge to the permanent funk of damp. There was the faintest of cold bites against the skin.
People stood talking, or sat on old patterned blankets, on camp chairs with rusted legs. Some wearing warm clothes, hoodies and windbreakers. For others it was still summer in the mind. I wasn’t wearing a jacket, but I’d been collecting firewood for days. Up towards the camp, in the darkening sky above the treeline, I saw the darker line of woodsmoke.
Stella across the clearing. Gaunt with her hair tied back. Work, the kid, the cause. No money and soon no home. Heavy uncertainty. Pressing down. Red red eyes. Mouth a straight slash across her face.
Danny was standing in front of his mother, wearing a wheat-coloured cord jacket, hard-eyed and pissed off. Stella had her arms crossed over the boy’s chest. She’d aged ten years since I’d arrived on the island, and Danny was now up to her shoulder. The boy’s hair had grown long, and was the brightest point in the uncertain light.
Stella waved one-handed. Signed at me, two fingers pointed at my eyes, then pointed at Danny behind his back, then pointing at herself. Making the talking sign.
Gave her the thumbs up. Stella said something to the boy and kissed him. Danny came over rubbing his cheek. Red stood up and wagged her tail. The boy ruffled the dog’s ears.
Danny nodded at the sack of tins of food at my feet.
You taking those up there? he said.
Now that the guards and dogs had arrived, rumours were strong that the bailiffs and cops were coming to clear the camp.
Sometimes rumours are all you have. If I thought McNab would tell me anything I’d have asked him.
Said he won’t come down, I said to Danny. Said he needs to be there.
I’ll go, the boy said.
I put my hand on the boy’s chest. Heart beating fast.
I need you to do something else, I said.
Between the high tree tops, stars showed in a new denim sky. Water sparkled at the edge of the forest.
Put this on, I said, and pulled out John’s old beanie and gave it to the boy.
It smells, he said.
Tuck your hair in, that’s it. Circle round. Don’t let anybody see you. Make sure the people at this meeting are all supposed to be here. No strangers. Come back when you’re done and tell me what you saw.
What do I do if I see someone I don’t know?
Nothing, I said. You don’t go near them, understand? Try and remember something about them. The most important thing is that nobody sees you. Got it?
Got it.
Good man, I said.
The boy took off into the trees, and with John’s dark hat on, disappeared.
Red, I said, and the dog ran after him.
Safe enough.
Stella moved to the centre of the crowd.
Faces set and waxy in the unreliable lantern light. Voices rumbling and getting louder. Atmosphere thick. Headaches, teeth crumbling. Taste of blood and acid in the mouth. Fear humming on a shared frequency, moving thickly in an endless loop I could almost see. Food or rent, rent or food. These were our choices. Even if you had been born and lived with this danger, when the sharp point came it was new every time.
Dogs slept humped on the ground, not caring. Standing figures shouted. Arms windmilling. Casting outsized shadows. Groups of figures sat together.
Like one of those big historical paintings. National Gallery. A tribe gathered in the traditional meeting place. The camp by the river. The water painted in lines of navy and silver between the trees. A returned scout is telling the news. Standing while the others sit. Arms spread. A look of dread on his face. An army of strange soldiers is coming. The scout points as he speaks. White topsails in the distance.
You look at the painting and read the little card and you think, I’ve never heard of the such and such tribe. I wonder what happened to them? Near the museum and the shopping centre and the towers built on the land where the tribe once lived there will be places named after their defeated war chiefs and politicians. Crossroads and government buildings. Dark people sleep on hard benches in a park named after their great leader, waiting for the cops to move them on.
We need to protect the most vulnerable among us, Stella said. That means none of us pay the increase, even if you’re able. Just give it a few more days. There are people out there on our side.
Kaplan’s not going to back down, a man standing in the half-light, Tuppy Lawrence, said. Even John Rose knew that, rest his soul.
John did know that, Stella said over the shouts. Why he said to stand together.
The life had gone out of the protest with John’s death.
I’m going to pay, Goldie’s dad said, and I know for a fact others will too. The new shower block is worth the money. Frankly I’m glad to pay if it means getting rid of the spongers and troublemakers. There’s people who don’t belong here. Those people in the camp. They’re nothing but squatters.
We need to oppose the increase for all our neighbours who can’t afford it, Stella shouted over the noise. Kaplan can’t throw us all off!
Face it Stella, Tuppy said. The fees have gone up, and they’re not coming back down. The men have started work. The law’s on his side. We’re getting notices to pay or get out. The courts ruled in his favour. It’s over. There’s nothing we can do about it. It’ll be winter soon. You want to think about what’s best for your boy. Not go around stirring people up for a fight they can’t win.
There was a kind of snarling at Tuppy’s words, that may have come from Stella, or another of the women in the crowd.
Terry! somebody shouted.
Red loped towards me out of the dark, mouth open. Danny running close behind. Almost didn’t recognize the boy. Danny stopped and doubled over, breathing hard.
What are you going to do when the fees go up again, Tuppy? Stella asked. Which they will. And everybody you know who might have helped you has already been kicked out?
Terry, somebody called out again. What do you think?
Danny, still bent over, spat and then raised his head.
Pointed downstream, where the lights of a low flying helicopter flashed above the river. The helicopter banked left and high at the island. Coming for us. Then we were underneath it, the machine roaring. I covered Red’s ears. The air became almost solid with bronze and golden leaves that still did not fall, but swirled in loose and fast-moving gigantic wreaths. The leaves stung when they hit. People ran for shelter. Unlighted lanterns whole and broken were flying through the air.
The helicopter thumped towards the camp.
Danny raced ahead into the trees.
Danny! I shouted, but the boy couldn’t hear me.
Pulled up fenceposts littered the path through the forest. Cut fencing. There were broken signs saying No Trespassing. Private Property. The dry tracks of machines.
Red ran to her family and the dogs milled around, going nowhere.
Adam was sitting bare-chested on a camp chair. The helicopter thumped above us, bending the tops of the trees and making the dogs’ hair swirl and stand on end.
Nina stood behind Adam, braiding his hair. The girl’s mouth full of the green plastic bands that she was using to tie off each completed braid. Somebody had used a marker pen to embroider the huge livid scar on Adam’s chest with a green geometric pattern, abstract ferns and leaves. Adam’s fingernails were painted a brilliant shade of green, the varnish bottle sticking out the back pocket of Nina’s jeans. Between Adam�
�s feet were coils of wire that he was systematically cutting into sections.
Had to shout to be heard.
Hell of a time to be sitting around, I said.
Adam, trance-like, didn’t answer.
All right Paul? Jason shouted.
The gnomic man was surrounded by a pile of torn-apart cardboard boxes. Consignments to the contractors. Pipes. Toilet bowls. Jason was using a length of cut wire to strap a thick piece of cardboard to his left shin, knee to ankle. Working fast. Jason’s right leg was already protected. There were arm guards on his forearms, wrist to elbow, and a large cardboard breastplate that he’d padded with what looked like plastic packing.
The hollowed-out tree Gloster Vince slept in was abandoned and there was no sign of him. The sharpened punji fence around his camp had been taken out of the ground and the sticks scattered all around.
Vince has upped sticks Paul! Jason shouted.
Why don’t you clear out? I shouted to Adam.
Adam’s green eyes suddenly focused and lasered into me.
Where to? he shouted back.
Paul! Jason shouted. Whoever heard of anybody owning a forest? Where’d he get it from? And where did the bloke he got it from get it from? You ever ask yourself that Paul? Paul! Listen! Some rich fucker got a bunch of poor fuckers to kill another lot of poor fuckers, for a richer fucker, and the richer fucker gave the rich fucker some more land, and made the rich fucker fucking richer. Stole the fucking country. Talk about a piss-take! It’s all in the fucking Domesday book Paul. Paul!
I looked at Danny among the frightened dogs. I grabbed him, cupped my hand to his ear.
Stay out of sight, I shouted.
The dogs went crazy.
A ragged line of torches burst from the trees, criss-crossing beams moving crazily.
Shouting black figures charged into the clearing. Police and security guards and two others with hi-vis jackets, carrying long poles with nooses on the end. Gloved, masked, the fucking visors, flak jackets. Figure in a white helmet, the bailiff, directing. Giving orders. Masked figures dragged a big cage into the clearing, the metal wire chinking. Flashes travelled up and down the meshing as the cage caught the starlight. Inside the cage was dark as absence.
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