Tidetown (4 page)

‘Ever the showman,' says Brother Moses with a smile.

Zakora, still weak and now lying on the bench seat of the cart, looks up at the imposing building. It is nothing like anything he has seen before. So tall, so solid. So majestic. From its walls he senses the chants of ages; from the chapel that he has yet to see, he hears lingering refrains of praise and songs of adoration. Later that night, with his strength restored, in the dark and alone, he will put his hands on the walls, press his cheek to the rough stone. He will feel, he will touch, smell and hear: a kinship, a connection, a deep comfort, even all these hundreds of miles away from home. And when he is ushered to the Great Hall to share an evening meal with the monks he will be as surprised by the uniformity of their brown habits as the monks will be by the colour of his skin. But the Brothers are schooled in compassion and acceptance, and many a strange and bizarre traveller has sat at their table. Zakora will be warmly introduced to one and all and soon the breaking of bread and the sharing of jokes and asides will make him feel welcome and at ease.

It's been five years since Mrs April watched the galleon take Oscar Flowers away to sea. Now, standing on the jetty, the faintly familiar feeling of aloneness wafting over her, she remembers the mast disappearing over the horizon. She shields her eye against the glare and shimmer. There's the line, the empty space, where sky meets sea. She recalls that day as the prow of the boat carved through the waves, set on course to quit these shores. Oscar, the young boy, the son she never had, off to faraway lands.

As she watches the waves part at the jetty she remembers another goodbye from this pier. A lifetime ago, it seems. Kissing her sailor husband, holding him as tight and close as could be. Away to the war he went, never to be seen or kissed again. Deep and smothered at the bottom of a foreign ocean, down with his ship, captain, cook, sailor boys and all. ‘One more last kiss,' she pleads in a whisper at the memory, ‘please before I let you go, but one last kiss nevertheless.'

Two seaward departures. The first a man, the other a boy. Two losses. Lost thoughts. Lost loves.

The wind is cold and unfriendly. The sky is sad and grey.

Looking out from the snug of The Sailor's Arms, Midshipman Hawkins swills his beer and puffs on his pipe. Through the window he sees the woman he recognises as Mrs April walking slowly back along the jetty.

‘The surprise is she's stayed on in this town. What can there be for her now?' he says, nudging his companion in the ribs, pointing to the solitary figure, ‘No work or place in this town for her these days and just the monks for company.'

John Delaney, the harbour master, shifts on his bar stool and grunts.

‘My wife says she would have been burnt at the stake in her mother's time.'

‘For less.'

‘For far less.'

‘She may not have done the deed, but evil enough were her actions.'

‘As good as a murderess herself. An adulteress for sure. The mistress of the murdered man, and not, so my wife tells me, her first time playing that role. Full of guilt, she is.'

‘As if she had lit the fire.'

‘And taken her lover's life with her own hands.'

‘With the knife, you mean?'

‘There was a knife?'

‘Oh, yes, indeed there was a knife. It all came out in the trial. To despatch the poor man. One of the twins took a knife to him. As if the flames were not enough of themselves.'

‘Children slaughtering their own father.'

‘In the name of religion.'

‘A truly crazy one at that.'

‘What is the world coming to, Harbour Master?'

‘Demise, Midshipman Hawkins, demise and dismay.'

‘Evil all around. And the Oscar boy?'

The old sea salt puffs on his pipe, billows of blue smoke shrouding his face.

‘Not the first to be led astray,' he says thoughtfully. ‘Better away, he is. The sea is a great forgiver.'

She sees them watching her through the window of The Sailor's Arms.
Their talk
, she ponders,
like all the tittle-tattle of this town, will be small and narrow and barbed. Hold my head high, despite the sharp wind. This is my town too. My life to be lived too
.

Walking along the familiar laneways, up and away from the harbour with its boats and cranes, fishermen and sea squalls, she feels the cobblestones beneath her feet. What tales could they tell? These stones. Trodden by smugglers and brigands, stained by the tears of the sea widows, clattered by the marbles and sticks of children at play. All with hopes for a life less ordinary, a life less tragic. At the top of the town, the square, with its statue of Billy Bones the cabin boy, opens up before her. She turns and peers over the rooftops to the bay and the sea stretching out to touch the hem of the sky. All is empty, no galleon in sight. The huge expanse of salty water, gently shifting in its bowl, awaiting the wind and tide to coax it back to life.
So many chapters in a life
, is what she thinks.
All chapters: opened and closed
. The thought of whatever may come next brings a gentle smile to her lips and an extra skip to her step. A near middle-aged woman, smiling and skipping her way back to her cosy cottage, a cup of tea and buttered toast in the waiting.

‘Good day to you, sir,' she greets with a smile a slightly flabbergasted Mr Higgins, the town's one and only knife sharpener. He and the mare he is leading down the hill to the farrier look back at Mrs April as they pass, as if to say,
What right has she to be so cheerful and smiling and good-day-to-you-sir and all?

Back in her parlour Mrs April sits down in her favourite armchair by the hearth and wonders whether she'll build a fire tonight. It is surely cold enough, and the thought of the flicker of flames and twists of light encourages her on. She has a pile of kindling and cut wood waiting in the coal scuttle. She kneels down by the fireplace, takes the small brush from its holder and sweeps the ash from the grate. As she places the twigs in readiness for the flame her mind casts back, as so often it does, to the fire in the village hall: to Oscar, to the Fishcutter twins and the sacrifice of their father-her-paramour, and the trial that sent the twins to gaol and Oscar to the care of the monks and then on to the high seas. She crumples up the newspapers and pushes them in the spaces between the kindling. As she strikes the match, lightning flashes to illuminate the room, then thunder claps, yet another warning, yet another storm set to batter and bruise.

TWO

‘To go back is nothing but death; to go forward is fear of death, and life everlasting beyond it. I will yet go forward.'
– John Bunyan

My name is Oscar Flowers. I was once a cabin boy, now I am a sailor on the ocean waves. I live on a ship with men I can trust. The sun is as hot as I had hoped for. The sky is the blue that makes the deep sea look so cheerful. The galleon creaks and sighs as it shifts slowly with the swell, its sails trimmed, its anchor dropped. Step by step, I walk tentatively to the very edge of the plank as it bends and springs against my weight. I think of the many who have walked before me, hands bound, prodded forward at the tip of a cutlass. Looking down, the frothy waters bubbling beneath my feet. Up above, the huge white sails flutter in the breeze.

‘Look out for the sharks, young Oscar,' shouts Toothless from the poop deck, ‘they love the taste of a birthday boy.'

‘Just a morsel,' shouts one. ‘A titbit,' jibes another. ‘And if the sharks don't get you, then the giant squid will,' adds a third.

I look over my shoulder and wave to my shipmates who hang over the handrails, eager to witness my watery fate. These men whose lives at sea I have shared for nigh on five years now. The adventures we've had. Repelling pirate ships in the Caribbean, carrying rare spices and silks (and once, even camels) from the merchant ports of the East across vast and dangerous oceans to continents in the West.

‘Jump when I give the signal,' calls out Aimu, the mountainous Moor, his eyes fixed somewhere between memory, his old brass compass, and the sun in the sky. This man with a name that means ‘mighty' and a heart and richness of spirit that reached out to me from the first time I walked onto the deck of the ship. (On that very first day Aimu lifted me above his head as if I were a sprat discarded from the nets. ‘What have we here?' he laughed playfully, ‘is it a shrimp or a prawn?' Stigir, my dog, barked enthusiastically, sensing this huge man meant no harm, far from it. Settling me back down on deck, he tousled my hair, thumped me on the shoulder and declared, ‘You'll do well enough, for I see no fear in you, my lad. And I like the colour of your dog.' Stigir woofed and I smiled and all seemed well as the boat set sail on that, my first voyage away from home. ‘I'm Aimu,' he boomed, standing foursquare and true, ‘follow me and you won't go far wrong.' Over those early weeks and months he taught me to tie ropes and set sails, how to shimmy up to the crow's nest and to read the stars and winds, the way to load a cannon ball and how to cock a blunderbuss. Most of the days I would skivvy along in the galley with the Old Cook, happy in my chores, but then Aimu would call for me from the trapdoor on the deck. ‘Time to make a seaman out of you,' he'd say, his huge head blocking out the sun and the sky. The cook would check the progress of my pan shining or potato peeling, muttering into his long beard, which was itself sometimes the most secret ingredient of soups and stews. Then the Old Cook would nod his approval by gesturing with a strange wrist action, as if he wanted to be free of his hand. I would throw aside my apron, scale the steep ladder three rungs at a time, and emerge onto deck and to the wide open skies like a mole from the ground. Aimu would always have a new task for me, a new skill to impart. I would take to whatever it might be with gusto and the will to grow like Aimu, to know like Aimu, and to be a young man of the sea.)

Now, balancing on the edge of the plank, some five years later, on my seventeenth birthday, it is Aimu's voice I hear behind me.

‘Now!' he yells, ‘Jump now, Oscar!'

So I do as he commands. There's the slightest spring from the plank, a gentle nudge to send a condemned man, a mutineer or pirate, to his death. The sea is inviting, warmer than I expect it to be, as my weight carries me under. When I kick back upwards and break the surface of the water I can see the sailors lined along the portside clapping and cheering. It's then I notice the fin heading straight for me. In the moment I'm beguiled and mesmerised by its streamlined beauty as it cuts through the water with sublime efficiency. Then the fin disappears. I tread water, looking from side to side. I feel the waves swoosh around me, as, in a perfect arc, the dolphin propels itself into the air, flicks its tail and then dives back into the sea, barely disturbing the surface.

‘Over here,' comes a shout from the lifeboat rowing towards me. The voice I recognise is that of the first mate. ‘The equator is crossed and you've been baptised, pipsqueak. And on your birthday, too! Grab onto this.'

A rope is thrown to me and I'm hauled onto the small boat. I lie in its bow, the sun and salty water on my face. Listening to the pull of the oars and the yielding of the sea I feel complete and included as we row back to the big ship with its ally-allyoh and promise of voyage and adventure.

‘The mayor,' says Joshua, poking his head around the huge sail of a sheet that Mrs M is hanging from the washing line, ‘has me on a mission.'

She gasps, nearly swallowing the peg she holds between her teeth.

‘You take me mightily by surprise, Mr Barnum, appearing in the garden like that while I'm hanging out the day's washing, taking advantage of a break in the weather.'

‘And the finest day for it,' says Joshua, sucking his finger and holding it to the wind. ‘A veritable north-westerly. Well known for its strong currents and drying qualities.'

She carries on pegging as Joshua hops along in front of her on the opposite side of the washing line, appearing between the gaps of freshly hung garments and bedding.