John McPake and the Sea Beggars Read online

  The subsequent heavy metallic click of the turnstile was a more profound initiation into adulthood than any subsequent rite of passage, including his first arrest for drunkenness and, indeed, his marriage to Sarah. He snorted at the thought that if his obsession of choice had not been Hunters in the Snow it could have been Lowry’s Going to the Match. He could have spent a long time unpicking the lives of the thin men hurrying to the game. Meanwhile the Tempter moved down the bus and whispered in his ear.

  ‘Getting closer, getting closer, any minute now. What will you say, John, what will your first words be? Shake him by the hand; hold him in a manly embrace as he wipes away the tears. Lead him into the Diggers and buy him that pint you have both dreamed of. He has so much to tell you. How he joined the army. The time in Iraq, the troubles he had settling back into civvy street. The brush with the law. And every waking moment thinking of you.’

  The bus stopped at the junction of Dalry and Gorgie, the pre-season game had just finished and the crowd possessed the streets. They got off the bus and walked into the face of the human tide. Mick paused so that he could stand to mock attention inches in front of a policeman’s face, as if it was a formal inspection. It was a favourite trick, one that he had borrowed from the press coverage of the Orgreave stand-off during the miners’ strike, and one that invariably caused him grief. ‘Piss off!’ hissed the officer touching the riot stick on his belt.

  ‘He’s somewhere, look at every face, every face,’ squealed the Tempter with the enthusiasm of a Pop Idol wannabe.

  ‘This is delusional shite!’ said the Bastard from nowhere. ‘Step aside Tempter, back in your box. What have we here? A pathetic wreck of a man with his pal rushing into the crowd looking for a brother who is definitely not here, and who is probably dead, or even more likely profoundly indifferent to the annoying sibling he was glad to see the back of years ago … ’

  Look, you pair, a little notice next time you want to intrude please. Where was I … ?

  Yes. John, rocked by the Bastard, lacking the foresight to sidestep the punters flushed with victory and drink, animatedly sharing action replays in their heads. They barged into him and looked angrily at the dossers in their path.

  ‘Spot on, Narrator, you let your guard slip there, didn’t you? That’s what you are John, a dosser, plain and simple. Especially the simple bit. And they’re not much better. At least you’ve got an excuse; you’re mad after all and live an empty life in a hostel for the deranged. Second thoughts, perhaps you belong here, every one a loser. Not a working-class hero among them, teachers, accountants, lowly civil servants. Put on a football scarf and you will become a man, my son, an honorary member of the proletariat. Three pints before the game, three after, loads of macho banter and back into their empty lives. In fact you definitely belong here.’

  Starting to panic, John knew he had to concentrate and make the Voices go away; he must, must look for his brother, and not listen to the Bastard.

  ‘Stare all you like, John, I’m not going anywhere … ’

  ‘Keep looking, John, he’ll be in his early forties, medium height, like yourself, heavily built.’

  ‘Heavily built? You’re a bit of a porker, John. In fact look at the pair of you, Tweedledum and his large pal. And don’t blame the medication.’

  ‘Ignore him. Just concentrate, concentrate. Make eye contact. Look at that man with the two boys. He’s listening to them. A good man. Smiling. It could be him; it could be him. What about those three men eating pies, one of them’s laughing, it could be, it could be!’

  ‘I told you, he’s probably dead. Murdered I wouldn’t

  wonder. His body found in someone’s yard partially eaten by foxes.’

  Concentrate John, I’m still here, your favourite Narrator, ignore them, let me tell it the way it is.

  The public address system from the stadium stuttered into life for a final announcement aimed at the departing crowd. DON’T FORGET NEXT SATURDAY … AND I SAW A WOMAN SITTING ON A SCARLET BEAST COVERED IN BLASPHEMOUS NAMES WITH SEVEN HEADS AND HORNS.

  The Academic was suddenly alert. ‘How interesting! I think we are talking the book of the Apocalypse.’

  Academic, no one’s interested.

  John stopped in his tracks. Mick was bent double having retrieved a still-burning cigarette from the ground. The crowd identified John as an unmovable object and reformed behind him. He was being tugged back.

  Three mounted policeman. Lothian and Borders embroidered on the horse blankets. One of the beasts was pawing restlessly at the ground. A small, sharp tug of the reins and it desisted.

  NINE

  Three soldiers in armour, the Spanish fleur de lys embroidered on the horse blankets, one of the beasts pawing restlessly at the ground.

  The three men were warming their hands by the fire in the middle of the square. The soldiers glanced at them with disinterest.

  ‘Who do they think they are?’ said Cornelius. ’Foreign leeches, Hapsburg whores.’

  ‘Don’t start on the whores again, you’ll just get yourself excited,’ said Johannes.

  ‘Did I ever tell you about that one-legged woman who ravaged me in a pig sty?’ asked Balthasar.

  ‘Yes,’ said both of his companions.

  The dogs sniffed warily at the fire, their coats giving off a pungent smell of wet burning hair. The heat made the travellers gasp. The fiercest flames were consuming the black wooden pews which had been dragged from the church once there was nothing else to loot. Charred pages from a hymn-book flicked themselves over in the draught from the fire, as if Satan was desperate to find a tune that would celebrate his recent success. Black embers swirled in the up draught. A single illuminated letter E came to rest on Johannes’ shoulder, an ironic epaulette which he brushed it off with his hand.

  Two lumpen gray villagers linked arms and danced in slow motion round the fire, their eyes apparently sightless, their sensibilities blunted by the recent atrocities and endless flagons of sweet mead.

  A boy rolled a barrel down over the cobbles. If he beat the end out it would make a house for the night. He would roll it as far as the river where he could lie undisturbed in the freezing night and the stillness, put his thumb in his mouth and pretend it had all been a bad dream from which he would wake in the morning to find himself in his own bed, and hear his mother singing in the kitchen.

  A woman was hunched over the black wall of the well as if staring into its depths for something she had dropped. The empty bucket swung gently above her head, a censor. It occurred to Johannes that she might be dead, speared for sport by one of the helmeted soldiers on the far side of the square.

  ‘Fair play but these images are lifted directly from Bruegel. Very reminiscent of The Fight between Carnival and Lent. There’s a well in the centre of the picture although if I remember the woman appears to be drinking. And there are barrels everywhere.’

  Shut up, Academic.

  With their hoods obscuring their faces the travellers looked like the itinerant dispossessed peasants that they were. They certainly didn’t merit a second glance from the bored Spanish mercenaries. There were thousands of their scavenging ilk roaming aimlessly, ripping the flesh from sheep newly dead in the ditch, begging and threatening when they had to.

  ‘I could kill the two of them,’ said Cornelius, ‘pull them quickly from their horses and cut their throats.’

  ‘Don’t think of it,’ said Johannes, ‘they might lead us to Michel.’ Cornelius nodded.

  Having finished looting and pillaging for the day the nearest soldier dug in his spurs and pointed his horse towards the twilight beyond the market town. His companions followed. As the sound of the hooves retreated Balthasar made a sign and the three men and their dogs followed at a discreet distance. There was at least a chance that they might lead them to the camp where Michel’s kidnappers were resting for the night.

  They trudged in silence past the merchant dwellings with their high arched doorways and steep tiled roofs, snow piled a
s high as the windows. Visible through the open shutters of a corner house and illuminated by high flaming candles was a ceiling braided in blue plaster ringlets. Inside, a young woman was playing inexpertly on the family spinet and singing of love and loss with an unconvincing vibrato. Cornelius paused to listen and shook his head.

  Excited by the strong smell of men and horses the dogs ran ahead with an urgency that obliged Balthasar to whistle them back. Obediently they returned to fret and forage nearer to their masters, their hot breath turning the snow on the leather breeches into droplets of water.

  Eventually the houses gave way to open country where a reluctant sun squatted on the horizon, lacking both the energy and motivation to sink any further. The hunters too had no relish for a pursuit through the night. They must rest soon.

  Preoccupied, the men crunched through the snow in silence. Balthasar would never admit it but he had been initially reluctant to join the hunt. Wilhelmein had berated him with venom, ‘You’re an old man of sixty with weak knees. Who is going to look after the looms if all three of you go? You’re a fool! The Spanish took Michel, yes, it’s hard but hard things happen in this dark country every day. What do you think you will achieve? Will you conquer the Spanish army on your own? The order from Deventer isn’t finished. Loom three is broken. You promised to retrieve the dead goat from the well. Your only daughter is about to give birth, and where will the child’s grandfather be? Away chasing phantoms.’

  His wife slapped him about the face until he held her wrists and told her he had to go, they were all in it together, and he would be back. In his heart of hearts he knew she was right. The mission was hopeless and the chances of their racked bodies swinging from the Inquisitioner’s gallows were considerable, but he had had no choice. He knew he had to act when he found Johannes howling at the moon, shouting at the God who had let his only son be taken into slavery.

  Apart from anything else he could not have let Johannes and Cornelius set off without him. They knew nothing of dogs and little of their own country. At least he had fought in a war and survived. That said, the thought of snuggling up against the snuffling body of his increasingly truculent and shrewish wife was not completely unattractive.

  Having resigned itself to the inevitable, the sun had finally surrendered and sunk into the earth, granting territorial rights to the full moon. Because of the pale light reflecting off the snow much of the landscape was still visible. A bird shrieked from the eaves of a black-silhouetted barn, the skeleton of an abandoned plough lay with its nose in an adjacent field. Above the field a tall square windmill, its blades stilled, squatted on a trellis of legs that seemed too spindly to support its weight.

  Cornelius concentrated on the sensation of his feet pushing into the snow; each step sounding as if he was trampling on the bones of small rodents. With each footfall he was cranking up the tension of the warp on the loom. He was squeezing the last drop of rennin from the taut muslin. Anything to block out the intrusive, insistent, repetitive image of Geertje being discovered by the crusaders. His anger made him stamp deeper, and the veins stand out on his neck. He was marching now at the front of a vast army that was gaining fast on the fleeing enemy; retribution would be swift and brutal. No lives would be spared. No prisoners taken. The carrion crows would gorge until they burst. His country would be free. No man would ever again question his religious beliefs. Every last Catholic bible would be torn apart. Every Spanish flag would burn until the embers scorched the sky … three smirking soldiers held her down … every flag would burn … three smirking soldiers … every flag …

  One of the dogs pressed against his thigh. Cornelius ruffled its head with a gloved hand.

  A shrew scuttled across the crust of snow in front of Johannes who was staring with trepidation at the tapestry being once more unfolded in his head by unseen malevolent spirits. Michel featured in every neatly hand-stitched panel. Here playing boules with his father in the track outside the weaving shed, there playing huckle bones with Lodewyk from the adjacent cottage, then begging his father to re-attach the blade to the end of his stick so that he could rejoin his friends by the pond. Now staggering on stilts, now whirling the whirligig, now swimming with the bladder in the summer river, now beating the holed cooking pot with a wooden ladle. And all the time his father was too busy, too distracted to pay his own son the attention he craved and deserved.

  Cornelius reconnected with the weaving problem that sometimes served to distract him from his anger. ‘The solution lies with the thickness of the dauble,’ he explained to his bemused companions.

  ‘What?’ asked Johannes.

  ‘The free spindle rubs all the time. If it were thinner the thread would ease without the constant adjustments that slow everything down.’

  ‘Have you been at the mead again?’ asked Balthasar.

  ‘I wish.’

  Johannes was now in front of the other two; the path above the frozen river was narrow and, if they walked abreast, their tall staves tangled with the overhanging bushes and released booby traps of snow. The dogs too louped in single file, their snouts inches from the ground as they swept up every vestige of scent from the troops that had recently passed. Sweat and leather, oil from the armour, dung from the horses, meat from the saddle-bags, Spanish wine from leaking holsters.

  I’m getting tired, John. Narrating your fantasy is hard. Sometimes the words won’t come.

  TEN

  ‘Your friendly Bastard here, John, now pull yourself together, get a grip, you’re being pathetic again. Your indulgent delusion can’t block me out for ever you know. I’m always waiting for you. I’m a very patient Voice. What on earth are you doing wandering through Sighthill with Mick? I’ll tell you something, Narrator, your continuity is crap. Is that a little dribble I see on your coat, John? A small slaver? Go on, blame the medication you loser rather than admit you’re a mad, slavering lost sod whose life is a train crash. On second thoughts I don’t think I can be arsed telling your story. It’s boring. What do you think Tempter? You take over.’

  ‘OK, thanks. People turn up in the most unexpected places. Don’t they, John? You read about it in the Express all the time, long-lost cousins meet up after being separated by continents and twenty years, beneath a photo of old folk smiling fondly at the camera, one of them saying, “We won’t let it happen again, now we’ve found each other, we won’t leave each other’s side.” That’ll be you, John, with Andy. You’re bound to meet up; he’s waiting for you somewhere. Keep right on ’til the end of the road … ’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Tempter, you talk as much shite as him. You’re useless. Back in your box. Let me trawl the archives a while … John do you remember that time you stole from your brother? Now, don’t deny it. You must have been twelve and so Andy was eight. He was in the dormitory next to yours wasn’t he? Stop blubbering; you’re pathetic. Face up to the past. Get over it. You stole from him, pure and simple. You convinced yourself he had a letter from your equally sad, dysfunctional mother. He told you that she had written to him and not you. So you opened the door quietly and crept into his room at night, put your hand under his pillow and took away the note he had written to himself in big spidery writing, all that mawkish stuff clearly not written by your alcoholic mother. Have you considered the possibility that, like you, your brother was delusional from an early age? He’s probably in a locked ward somewhere; it runs in families you know.’

  ‘That’s not necessarily true. It’s nature versus nurture. Environment versus genetic predisposition … ’

  ‘Academic, you’ve been warned! Don’t you dare interrupt me again. Where was I? Yes, in the morning your brother cried and said someone had stolen his precious note, and what did you do? Nothing, you just shrugged. Did you put your arm round him? Did you buggery! A shit then, and a shit now. I really can’t be bothered with any of this.’

  ‘OK another chance for me. John, I’ve had a thought. He may be living rough. After all, you did. Perhaps he’s closer than you th
ink; perhaps he’s one of those dossers over there in that building? Can you see them, by the fire on the other side of the pillar?’

  Enough. Leave the man alone. He’s upset. I’ll take over again; I’ve got my words back.

  Mick slouched behind John muttering something about Capitalism and the plight of the homeless. John looked up at the high-rise flats still obstructing the view of the new Napier University building. Their eyes had been gouged out and additional wounds inflicted in their sides. Black plastic sheeting wreathed every other floor. The sign said that the road would be closed in a fortnight for the demolition. Hazard signs and pictures of yellow hard hats were tied to every section of the perimeter wire. All interior fittings, sinks, boilers, window frames, had been stripped out and laid in separate piles, as if by a meticulous serial killer. Admit it, John, I have a gift for description. You are well served by your Narrator … All right, Academic, what do you want to say? Be quick.

  ‘I am still preoccupied with the whole question of where we, his Voices, come from. If we were merely repressed aspects of John’s psyche it is unlikely that we would so consistently display insight and skills denied to his conscious mind. So where do we come from? Even the Bastard knows things about him that go well beyond repressed or false memory syndrome. So why have we taken up residence in his head? So many questions, so few answers … ’

  Fair point, Academic, but I have a story to tell.

  John was still considering the possibility that the Tempter might have been right. There were three figures in the shadows. His brother might be there; it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility. He only wanted to get close enough to see their faces. By following the fence they found the gap the men had used. Checking that the coast was clear Mick prised the wire further apart so that John could climb through. Two small children came up to them, one of them leaning against a bike too big for him. ‘Don’t go in there, the Council is going to bomb the place soon, all they buildings will come down, clouds of smoke and that. There’s bad men in there. I hope they get bombed and all. By the Council.’