John McPake and the Sea Beggars Read online

  ‘We have reason to believe you are associating with known terrorists, we have the evidence, your fingerprints are everywhere … ’

  Who are you?

  ‘I can’t tell you that, I might have to kill you,’ said a Voice, with the patrician tones of the establishment.

  ‘My colleague is right, Official Secrets Act and all that. Very hush hush.’

  But you don’t live in John’s head; you can’t speak.

  ‘Of course not, we are assigned to Mick, covert surveillance.’

  If you live in Mick’s head, go away. You have no connection with John; he belongs to us.

  ‘Not as simple as that I’m afraid. Territorial rights and all that, love and war, know what I mean?’

  ‘Can I say a few words here?’ asked the Academic. ‘This is fascinating, and very little researched. The accumulation of new Voices for those with the diagnosis is well established, if not understood, but from my reading of the literature Voices do not normally transfer from one hearer to another. The nearest precedent is the Koranic understanding of Djin possession. Muslims believe in both good and bad Djins who can move from one person to another on a whim, but the phenomenon is little understood in Christian-Judaic concepts of schizophrenia.’

  All very well, Academic. But they are not welcome. John’s head is ours exclusively. After conferring, the alien Voices returned to their rightful home as Mick, holding a small tray of drinks, sat down between John and the older of the two women.

  ‘Come here often, ladies?’ he asked. ‘It’s not safe ken, eyes everywhere. Do you belong to the collective?’ The two women nodded to each other, finished their drinks and left. ‘Not very friendly like,’ said Mick.

  John was feeling tired and increasingly depressed. He didn’t want to spend more time with Mick; he had sufficient problems of his own without being recruited as a passive witness in an endless struggle with unseen governmental powers and the forces of reaction generally. Yet for all his challenges Mick was rarely aggressive and made few demands.

  At least the hair of the dog seemed to be working. The pounding had stopped and for the time being the Voices were quiet.

  Mick was happy enough muttering to himself, engaging with his own demons, too preoccupied to be making any demands on anyone else.

  In that moment John wrongly assumed that I had forsaken the narration and that he was at liberty to pursue his own thoughts. It seemed unfair to disabuse him as he tentatively savoured the silence in his own head. He genuinely thought he was taking stock. Or, put another way, judging himself harshly. Not realising that I was recording all the while, John reflected on how listening to the unrelenting parliament of Voices in his own head had robbed him of the capacity to think uninterrupted. He basically agreed with the Bastard’s assessment. By any criteria he was a total failure. The debit side of his life was overwhelming: a failed marriage, a failed career. In addition he had a drink habit brought on by the need to drown out the people who had decided to squat in his head; the travellers who had set up camp in defiance of byelaws and indeed natural justice; cognitive parasites living off his brain, consuming the grey matter.

  On the credit side? Well, he was still alive but, as the Bastard never tired of telling him, this was more attributable to his cowardice than any life-embracing decision. With the medication he could lead a comparatively independent life albeit in the hostel. He had sufficient money between his living allowance and disability benefit. So far he had avoided having to surrender all financial responsibility to Beverley under the terms of a Community Order.

  He had found professional staff who genuinely seemed to care for him but, then again, they were paid to care, rewarded for empathy. They gained SVQs for demonstrating the right values towards him and adherence to procedures compatible with best practice as defined by the National Care Standards. He had a reputation for gentleness and he knew he was

  still the unwitting beneficiary of those years spent learning middle-class politeness. He preferred to interpret this as manipulative behaviour that ensured better treatment from those professionals who thought they recognised one of their own. Perhaps Mick was right.

  ‘It’s a plot against the working classes,’ said Mick, drowning his half pint.

  Ignoring this unwanted evidence that Mick was telepathic John resumed his brooding. The bottom line was his unremitting loneliness. Yes, he knew this thought only served to reinforce the Bastard’s perception of him as a self-pitying loser. Even when the Voices were quiet or distracted for some reason, they might as well have still been there. He anticipated what they would say if they had been active.

  ‘It’s all a conspiracy,’ muttered Mick again, with a prescience that was starting to become unnerving.

  Ignoring the possibility that Mick, beneath his preoccupations, was subtly attuned to his own thought processes, John continued with his own increasingly painful introspection. Perhaps he needed to punish himself periodically with this intense scrutiny of his negligible worth.

  There was still the issue with his brother. One of his many therapists had encouraged him to let go of the obsession suggesting it was a displacement activity subconsciously calculated to distract him from his present challenges, a sort of vicarious search for his own self.

  Then there was the Bruegel thing. He understood that what had started as an obsession had escalated into a delusion that sucked him in, yet, if he was honest, he had no wish to forsake that part of himself. In a peculiar way he felt kinship with the people in his delusionary world.

  ‘It’s loyalty,’ said Mick.

  Momentarily startled, John realised that I had in fact never been away. All the while I had been sitting quietly on the sidelines of his brain painstakingly chronicling his thoughts.

  I must give you some more background. I mentioned earlier how that psychologist from Dundee had encouraged John to differentiate between the Voices in his head and make a choice. That was the moment when he chose me. Since then he has on occasions admitted that his life seems more manageable when I shape it. From his point of view I am an unknown, essentially non-malevolent persona. Certainly in the past the Jester too was generally welcome although nowadays John rarely finds solace in his inappropriate and often surreal humour. Talk of the devil … Hi Jester.

  ‘A young man in a black hoodie sidled up to the pair of them, “Hi boys, can I interest you in some bacon? Finest smoked back. A bit like that stuff you can buy in Tesco’s.”

  “Aye, very like,” said his pal.

  Sensing a possible sale the boy with the bacon chanced his luck, “I’ve wifey’s knickers as well, not to mention dog food for your pet … Pal for your pal if you ken what I mean. And some of they scratch cards. A new life beckons. Beckons with bacon,” he continued.

  “Scratch yourselves a new future. A coin will do, just rub it along the card and all your wishes will come true. Like Christmas or a breakin at Poundies.”

  “Free enterprise in the black market,“ said Mick, running an appreciative finger along the packet of bacon. “The inevitable consequence of exploitation.”

  “Aye whatever. Are you wanting the bacon? And don’t forget the knickers, wear them yourselves; we’re an equal opps employer ken, no prejudice against trannies and all they perverted folk. After all my dad’s a mason, and he lives in Leith mind. Just slip them on under your togs, feel that silk against your legs, and dream, boys, dream.’’’

  Enough, Jester. Small doses remember?

  ‘You dirty wee shites,’ said Mick, suddenly roused. Then fearing that he might miss out on a genuine bargain with the bacon tried a different approach. ‘Is bartering out of the question? How about a few tabs that’ll take you to places you’ve never been. Here, John, give the lads that pack of fluoxetine you got from Boots yesterday.’

  Because John had been distracted by the snail traces from his own reflections and had not heard a word of the recent exchange he put his hand in his pocket and pulled out the antipsychotics in their blue blister packag
ing. The nearest lad snatched it from him …

  … At a sudden sound the drinkers stopped drinking, the dancers were still and the barely conscious opened their eyes. Balthasar’s first thought was that the thick snow had avalanched off the roof now warmed by the heat of celebration inside. The double door of the inn had been splintered apart, the planks lurched into the room like falling drunks, the bagpipe tune resolved into a single note, a consumptive wheeze. A horse and helmeted rider stood in the doorway, the animal reared onto its hind legs, its fore hooves pummelling the air, a pugilist spoiling for a fight.

  The bigger of the two plain clothes policemen put a hand on John’s shoulder, ‘You are not obliged to say anything but anything you do say will be noted down and may be used in evidence.’ John was bundled into the patrol car outside.

  He felt claustrophobic. He asked the driver to stop. Ignored, he shouted. This time the car slowed and pulled over. One of the officers climbed into the back, grabbed him by the lapels and told him, ‘Shut the fuck up!’

  FIFTEEN

  Johannes vomited the wedding sweetmeats down the horse’s flank. His head bounced off the animal’s flesh as it gathered speed and left the village.

  After the first few miles his head felt as if it had been pummelled by a bully with fists the size of hams. His cowl slipped down affording him a blurred upside down view of the snow-covered ground between the horse’s legs. He vaguely heard intermittent Spanish voices as if they were checking their whereabouts.

  After an hour’s relentless pounding, during which his eyes clouded over and he longed for death’s release, the party slowed and the horse was led down a steep slope or embankment. The stiff ice-covered rushes suggested they were attempting to cross a frozen river. After picking its way over boulder-sized lumps of ice the horse stopped and the sound of rushing water drowned out all else. The beast was reluctant to wade through the thawed channel in the middle. Johannes heard angry shouts, and felt the impact of a stave smacked hard against the animal’s flank. It brayed its shock and pain before tentatively entering. The water rose as high as Johannes’s face, burning burned his skin and, for a moment, stopping his heart. He retched and choked on the cold air in between the periods of immersion. Time itself become sluggish and half frozen before the horse picked its way up the opposite bank. Gasping, shaking, and cold to the marrow, Johannes felt a blind panic. He could not endure more of this. He wanted to die.

  On the other side, the party rested. Johannes’ body started to shake in rhythm with the frozen horse. For sport, one of the men pretended to wipe his dripping nose with his ’kerchief then, laughing, slapped him hard across the cheek. The pain barely registered. He could tell that the men were eating and drinking. He heard the loud bragging voices, one of their number started speaking in a high pathetic voice, perhaps a cruel imitation of a female victim pleading for her life. The others guffawed.

  The journey resumed and gradually Johannes lost consciousness.

  When he was eventually hauled off the horse Johannes’ legs crumpled under him. Two soldiers hauled him upright by the armpits.

  The building in front of him stood alone in a bleak landscape. Three stories high at the front and two at the back, it sloped towards a field from which smoke was rising. Johannes thought he could hear a woman wailing, but perhaps not. It may have been the wind. All of the windows were barred apart from the one at the top of the building that was open to the weather: two square dark holes from which bodies could easily be encouraged to fall. A thick rope swung in the aperture. A merchant’s home hastily converted, thought Johannes once his world stopped spinning. The trees in the immediate vicinity had been cut down, presumably to prevent curious onlookers from approaching undetected. From the one remaining tree hung a faded red inn sign, depicting a boar and a crudely drawn angel. The two soldiers guarding the entrance made an effort to straighten themselves as the party swept into the building.

  Johannes’ feet dragged on the ground as his captors rushed him inside, uniforms dripping on the black and white chequered floor. A thin stream of wax flowed uninterrupted from the chandelier. The oak furniture had a solidity that suggested it had been liberated from a church, a suspicion confirmed by the presence of the framed pictures of saints in various states of gloomy martyrdom: pieced by thorns, flailed by scourges. A fireplace bigger than a horse dominated the room, with a single skull positioned on crimson cloth at the centre of a functionary’s desk. A dark figure watched the play unfold from the vantage point of a minstrel’s gallery.

  The custody sergeant barely looked up, ‘Name?’ he

  asked.

  ‘Johannes Pakesoon.’

  ‘Speak up’

  ‘Johannes Pakesoon.’

  ‘By the grace of God, the holy apostolic church and our king Philip II you are required to submit yourself to examination upon the charge that in defiance of natural justice, and in contradiction of the teachings of Jesus Christ Our Saviour you, Johannes Pakesoon, have embraced heretical views which, if proven, will require that you be taken from this place and broken on the wheel. Do you understand?

  Johannes could only concentrate on the large black wart that protruded from the interrogator’s cheek, that could at any moment burst out of his face and spit bile over all present. Instinctively the official quickly touched the carbuncle before proceeding. The small man, whose frock coat was adorned with a ruff of such size that it threatened to devour his entire head, waited patiently, pen poised.

  ‘Do you accept that infant baptism is a false baptism. One has to be saved in order to be baptised?’

  Johannes stared. ‘Write the witness in agreement,’ instructed the official.

  ‘Do you believe that God does not unconditionally reprobate people to Hell. Rather, God’s Manifested Wrath is conditional, and the condition is of not being in Christ. God elects only people who are in Christ? Witness in agreement.’

  ‘Look, son, one of our officers saw you handing over the drugs. I don’t care if it is prescribed medication. They should close that hostel down, burn it, fumigate it and stop the vermin from returning. Mental illness, psychosis, it’s all bollocks. It’s all words to disguise the fact that you are a load of filthy drunken wasters who spend all their benefits on drink and drugs.’ The veins stood out on his neck. John cowered, frightened lest he would be hit again.

  ‘And there’s no point you remaining silent, what do you think this is, the IR fucking A?’

  ‘This is wonderful!’ declared the Bastard. ‘I couldn’t have put it better myself! You’ve had it coming to you, John, haven’t you? This is my territory, stand aside, Narrator.’

  Bastard, back off, he’s struggling enough as it is. Where is your compassion?

  ‘So, where shall we begin? Whatever happened to your mother, John? Remember her? You know she tried to give you away don’t you? No? You didn’t hear? It is bizarre really, a gipsy woman came to the door selling clothes pegs and your mum said she could have you. You couldn’t make it up could you? No? You don’t believe me? Suit yourself …

  ‘Ah, the joy of flicking through the family album. Memory lane! No, it’s not a lane. It’s an alley next to the pub; it’s where she left you both. Poor mites frozen and cold in the pram. I almost feel sorry for you myself. She woke up the following morning, probably not on her own, what do you think, John? A new man next to her? Smoking together in bed, him with a string vest and a smirk and then she says, “My God, where are my boys?” She leaps up, and runs out of the flat wearing a towel. Lady Godiva with manky hair. Good news though, you were still there, no one had noticed. And what’s more, you had a new guardian angel; a big bastard crow was staring at the pair of you. Perhaps it was a black dove, cooing away. That sounds better, not any old bird waiting to peck your brother’s eyes out. A happy ending then wasn’t it, all things considered?

  ‘And what about the time when you blamed your brother for raking through the kitchen bin for food and it was you all the time. She leathered him and you just watch
ed. And now you want to find him again, touching really. It would break your heart. Yes, it all comes back to me now, do you mind the week before, he got a row for eating the dog’s food, and you had encouraged him. Winalot wasn’t it? Pretty ironic don’t you think?’

  ‘Look pal,’ said the policeman, ‘I don’t care if you just sit there and say nothing. No skin off my nose.’ He stopped turning his roller ball pen over on the desk and glanced at John. Clearly the man was not well. For a moment looking into his eyes the sergeant felt something like compassion, a distinctly unfamiliar emotion. Six hours to go and then home to the new house in Bonnyrigg. He really must get the patio sorted before the weekend.

  SIXTEEN

  Inquisitor Goya glanced at the high window, through which shone a symmetrical shaft of light suffused with dust motes. Sometimes he really couldn’t be bothered. Being a circuit administrator wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. He dipped the quill into the monogrammed well and pretended to write. Instead, he sketched a rough outline of his wife’s face on the blotter, capturing her high cheekbones and enigmatic eyes. She had been cold to him the night before, accused him of being a fanatic, telling him he had changed. She was probably right. Remembering what he should be doing, he resumed from memory. ‘Do you believe that Faith in Christ should be a living faith, faith which is confirmed in the fruits of Spirit. People who are living a sinful life, without true repentance, will end in Hell. Living in sin and occasionally falling in sin are not the same thing. All children of God can fall in sin because of our weaknesses, but they do not live in sin?’ He realised he was declaiming ever louder, and to increasing effect, as he settled back into the role of righteous and passionate Inquisitor. Pausing for effect he could see the court official looking at him with an expression, part admiration, part terror. By way of a climax to his party piece he pointed his pen at Johannes and roared, ‘Witness in agreement!’