Shamanka (23 page)

The barge is sold and Kitty and Sam have enough money to go to Egypt. They hire a camper van and drive across Italy and down through Calabria. Kitty has brought her favourite cat, Khensu, along. She couldn't bear to part with him, even though he sprays everywhere. When we love someone, it's amazing what disgusting habits we're willing to tolerate.

The journey takes several days and it's all very jolly, if a little cramped; the camper has a chemical toilet and tiny beds. They sing, sleep, stretch their legs now and again, and everyone eats lots of pasta, but nothing happens that concerns us, so let's leap forward to the exciting bit.

Kitty and Sam have left the van behind, hired a yacht and set sail from the coast of Capo Spartivento. Everything goes swimmingly until the third day when they hit a storm – and a very large rock – in the middle of the Ionian Sea.

The storm and the rock appeared from nowhere. There was no mention of the freak weather on the shipping forecast, no blip on the radar to alert them to the mountainous obstacle they have just smashed into; it's as if both phenomena have been deliberately put in place to test them.

The yacht has snapped in half like a biscuit and is about to sink. Sam, Kitty and Lola are up to their waists in the water, clinging to a rock; it's too slippery to climb. Khensu is perched on Lola's head like a Russian hat. Luckily, the witch doctor's notebook is safe in a plastic bag inside Sam's rucksack. Kitty feels her fingers slipping and starts to panic.

“Aghhhh! We're all going to drone!”

Sam puts her hand over Kitty's to stop her sliding off the rock. “Don't give up! Mr Fraye says if we believe in the Grand Plan, it'll work.”

“What's the Grand Plan?”

“I'm … working on it.”

Kitty starts praying in Ancient Egyptian. Sam struggles to think of an ingenious way to save them all, but hope is fading. An hour passes. Lola's teeth are chattering and Sam's lips are blue. Just as they are all about to lose their grip, an enormous ship appears through the mist.

“We're halluminating,” groans Kitty.

But this is no hallucination; this is
The Trinity
, cutting through the waves towards them.

“You see, Kitty,” says Sam, “it's part of the Grand Plan!”

Or was it all part of the
Grandpa
plan? A lifeboat has been launched. The shipwrecked four are pulled out of the sea and wrapped in fleecy blankets. Once aboard the ocean liner, the ship's doctor wants to examine them, but they protest so loudly it's clear that none of them is at death's door. After a reviving cup of tea, Sam asks to speak to the captain, hoping that he'll be kind enough to give them a lift. In no time at all, she's hustled through to his cabin.

“We need to get to Egypt,” she explains.

The captain looks them up and down suspiciously.

“What are you – a circus troop?”

“Y–es, Captain.”

It's not true, but it's the easiest thing to say.

“The monkey … does it bite?”

“The orang-utan? No, Captain, she's friendly. Could you give us a lift to Egypt, please? We could pay our way by entertaining your passengers, with magic tricks, if you like.”

Upon hearing the word “magic” the livid scars on the captain's chin begin to throb. He thrusts his hands in his pockets, but they're shaking so hard, his loose change rattles. He paces up and down, staring at the ceiling. Then, in a voice that rises to a squeak, he says, “Magic is banned on this ship.”

“But wh—”

He waves his hands frantically. “No, don't ask. Don't look at me! I will take you to Egypt on sufferance as long as you perform no … magic … of any kind. You will stay in your cabin at all times except for those times when you will be employed under the ship's cook, and you will not mix with the passengers nor talk to the passengers nor produce animals from under your hat. Is that understood?”

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

“Or I'll throw you overboard.”

He doesn't really mean it, Sam can tell.

“Oh, we shouldn't like that, Captain. We'll be ever so good, won't we, Lola?”

The captain summons a spotty cabin boy who scuttles in at a ridiculous speed.

“Take them to cabin number 333.”

The cabin boy blanches visibly and his shoes squeak as he screeches to a halt.

“C-c-cabin 333?? Are you s-s-sure, Captain? Do I have to, C-c-captain?”

The captain stares at the boy through the wrong end of his telescope and growls like a dog.

“I take it that's a y-y-yes, Captain?” stammers the boy. “Oh, well, You know b-b-best.”

He backs off towards the door and makes one last attempt to change the Captain's mind. “I b-b-believe room 332 is vacant and the v-v-view is so pleas—”

For his pains, he's attacked by the captain's paperweight which is hurled with such force it embeds itself in the door, narrowly missing his head.

“Agh! S-sorry, Captain! 333 it is.”

Off he goes down the corridor and we must follow this feeble, agitated boy to that cabin.

330 … 331 … 332 … 333.

Here we are. The cabin boy drops the keys on purpose and stands on them. Sam pulls them out from under his shoe and opens the lock. The boy's eyes widen in terror.

“I really w-wouldn't go in, if I were you.”

Sam takes no notice. “Why not? Are the mattresses hard or something?”

“M-m-mattresses? It's not
that
, miss. The mattress was replaced after the m-m-murder.” He claps his hands over his mouth. “Did I say murder? I meant
Monday
. The mattress was replaced after the Monday.”

He is lying.

You need: an actor, a bright spotlight, a dim light, a sheet of glass larger than the actor
.

1. Position the actor below stage or in the orchestra pit.

2. By adjusting the lights and/or angle of the glass, the actor's “ghostly” reflection appears on stage.

3. The “ghost” is produced due to light bouncing off the actor and hitting the glass at 45 degrees. At this angle the light doesn't pass through the glass but bounces off into the eyes of the audience. The image appears to be on the other side of the glass at the same distance away as the actor – just like a mirror.

4. The dim light coming through the glass helps the illusion that the ghost is on the stage.

T
he mattresses in cabin 333 are perfectly clean and bouncy. So why was the cabin boy so jittery? What happened that made the captain quail?

The answer lies with the pastry chef. Kitty is in the cabin drying Lola's fur, but Sam is in the ship's galley helping to prepare apple pies. The chef stands beside her, laying pastry over the chopped apples, tucking them in as gently as if he were putting his children to bed.

“I never had any children,” he says, unprompted “Not that I know of, anyway.”

“My father doesn't know I exist either,” adds Sam.

The pastry chef blows his nose loudly on the tea towel. “Was he a sailor, by any chance?”

“A magician.”

What is it about the word “magician”? As soon as Sam says it, the pastry chef drops the fork he's using to perforate the pastry lids and whispers behind his hand, “The captain has banned the M word on this ship.” He looks over his shoulder to make sure the vegetable chef isn't listening, but he's busy chopping carrots.

“I hear you've got a big monkey,” he mouths. “I've worked here as man and boy and when the gravy chef told me the sailors had rescued a monkey along with yourself, I thought,
Aye, aye, that's history repeating itself
.”

Sam is tempted to say, “She's an
orang-utan
!” But now is not the time to be pedantic. Now is the time to listen to the pastry chef's tale. It could just be a sailor's yarn, but stranger things have happened at sea.

“We were in the Pacific Ocean,” begins the chef, “coming back from Australia. It was a Tuesday, because that's the day the captain likes a hearty pudding and I was stirring sultanas into the spotted dick when I heard that the lifeboat had gone out—”

Sam begins to feel a little light-headed. She can smell the familiar green smell that she smelt when she first opened the witch doctor's pouch and she can hear the
plop, plop, plop
of the mwa sawah paddles plunging into the Sepik. Perhaps it's just the scent of the steam rising from the huge vat of peas and the sound of potatoes being dropped into a pan. The call of the Torresian crow? The whistle on the kettle, surely?

The pastry chef is telling Sam that he can still remember the day
The Trinity
came to the rescue of a youth and his monkey who'd capsized in a dugout canoe. As the youth was penniless, the captain said he could work his passage by assisting the ship's magician – the original assistant having been left at the last port suffering from scurvy.

The magician's name was Abu Yarfhet. He was a good illusionist but a bad person. He was seedy, greedy, vile and vicious. It's never easy working for a boss like that, but John Tabuh did his best – in fact, he did better than that. He learnt the tricks with ease; within months, he was his master's equal. Abu Yarfhet wasn't bothered about that – nobody wants a butterfingers assisting them – but what he couldn't tolerate was John's popularity with the ladies.

John didn't deliberately encourage the adoration of his fans, but he only had to push his elegant fingers through his glossy hair and they would swoon. Women would shamelessly move their chairs to get a closer look at him. They'd crane their necks and wave the old magician out of the way in order to get a better view of this ravishing boy.

Abu Yarfhet grew to hate John to the point of psychosis. He made him feel ugly. After the show, Yarfhet would stare in the mirror and blame his lack of popularity on his nose, which was bulbous and pitted like a strawberry. He told himself that if he'd been born with a handsome nose, like John Tabuh, women would love him too.

He was deluding himself; women would still have recoiled. Woman are blind to ugly noses but they can always spot an ugly heart. Abu Yarfhet's heart was as ugly as they come.

“He was a cruel man. Nobody mourned his passing,” whispered the pastry chef.

Abu Yarfhet is dead? Yes, indeed! Did John Tabuh have anything to do with it? The pastry chef shakes sugar over the pies and sucks his teeth noisily.

“An illusion went horribly wrong.”

Yarfhet and young Tabuh had been performing a trick involving matches and a banana at the captain's table when, suddenly, Yarfhet lurched and knocked John's hand, causing the match to set fire to the captain's beard. Happily, John Tabuh had the good sense to dowse the flames by dunking the captain chin-first into his trifle – much to the amusement of the audience.

The captain's beard never grew back and his chin was charred, but that wasn't the full extent of the damage. Yarfhet was banished to his cabin, but the ladies begged the captain to let John stay, insisting he was blameless and that they wanted to have him for pudding.

Having spent a delightful evening being petted by the richest women in the world, John returned to cabin 333, which he shared with his master. By now Yarfhet was extremely drunk and when he was drunk, he got punchy. He hid behind the door and as John Tabuh entered, he cracked him on the back of the head with a whisky bottle.

The blow wasn't enough to knock the lad out, so as he fell, he pulled the witch doctor's pouch off the table and it spilled its contents, including the shard of human thigh bone. As Yarfhet blundered towards him, John grabbed the bone automatically and cursed him in Motu.

The effect was immediate; Abu Yarfhet was dead before he hit the floor, his face fixed in a pop-eyed grimace. Did the curse kill him? John thought so, but a heart attack can be caused by many other things; bad luck and bad living to name but two.

John tried the resurrection chant, terrified that he'd be under suspicion of murder if he failed to revive Yarfhet. Unfortunately, it didn't work. Perhaps he'd chanted it too quickly. Or too slowly. Or maybe the chant was useless – he couldn't know. All he knew was that he had to get off the ship before the body was found.