Tidetown (17 page)

‘Caring Mayor Clears Contagion!' he enthuses, an apple pip shooting from his mouth. ‘Mayor Sweeps Street Ruffians off the Streets!'

‘Righteous Mayor Rouses Ruffian Rabble,' quips Joshua, infected by the mayor's joviality and enthusiasm.

The look from the mayor tells him it's not for him to get above his station, with such jollity, such familiarity.

Silence. Pecking order restored.

‘To work, Joshua,' orders the mayor with a nonchalant wave of his hand.

Joshua backs out of the room, nodding and bowing, dutifully chastised.

‘Hmm …' ponders the mayor, cutting another slice of apple. ‘Righteous mayor rouses ruffian rabble.'

Sitting in the alcove by the back door of the library Mrs April can see Brother Paul and Zakora on the lawn by the fountain. Brother Paul acts and mimes: dramatic sweeping gestures, impassioned hand movements. She can see that Zakora is enthralled by what unfolds and that the two have uncovered a unique understanding. Zakora squats on the grass, attentive, totally engaged. Brother Paul dances around him. Though she cannot be sure, Mrs April gets a sense that he is telling a story of his own. Acting it out. Giving it substance.

What more can any of us really do?
she thinks, the book of Alphonso's early years lying open on her lap,
than live a story of our own, to be told and held true by those for whom it has a special meaning?

The arched window in the alcove frames the scene. It is as if Mrs April is seated in an ancient theatre, watching a story being performed before her eyes. As Brother Paul moves across the stained glass, from one coloured fragment to another, his body and movements are refracted and re-formed, the leaded frame holding the shards of glass in place creating a dividing line between one action, one moment, and another. Mrs April is bewitched by the interplay of coloured glass, Brother Paul's dance and the way it is all distorted yet complete.
Just like telling any story
, she thinks with a chuckle.

Without fail, come hell or high water, Joshua ends his day, be that at midnight or beyond, standing in front of his full-size mirror in the room where he sleeps at the top of the Old Customs Hall. The ceiling reaches high above the open rafters, occupied by pigeons and the occasional rat (those with no fear of heights), who are Joshua's roommates. Addressing his reflection, this night as on every other, Joshua poses the same question.

‘So, pray what, fine figure of a man, have you added to the march of humankind today?'

He wears breeches, a chequered silk-backed waistcoat, a full dress coat, a frayed starched collar, and a grubby neck scarf tied in a knot beneath his chin. He has a sharp, elf-like look about him, highlighting his alertness for life and its dealings. He stares hard at the image in the mirror, preparing his answer, as if addressing the highest court in the land.

‘I stand before you humbled as ever,' he says with a sweeping bow that sends a pigeon a-flapping in the void above. ‘This morning my bugle note was clear and true. The mayor, well pleased with me, has assigned to me a task of grave importance. Shhh … say I, as I look from side to side. Only pigeons for my counsel, say I, above and beyond. A task of dangers yet to be revealed. More to be reported in days to come. This day I dined on Mrs M's fare of cream of wild mushroom soup and home-baked bread.'

Joshua steps back, straightens up and waits for the reflection to consider and pass judgement.

With a short delay, the reply comes back, the same as every evening, echoing in his mind.

A fine and worthy day, brave man. Rest well until the morrow
.

So, with a contented sigh, Joshua sits on the edge of his bed, undoes his collar, then pulls off his boots. Lying back he stares up to the ceiling above, watching the progress of a single feather as it spirals and twirls then comes to rest in the palm of his right hand.

‘It is time to spread our message,' says Perch to the Special Ones, who now spend more time in the attic room of the Mayoral Mansion with the twins than they do at the stables of the pony club. They are well and truly under the spell of the Remnantics and eager to do the bidding of their leaders.

‘We must recruit the children of the town. In secret. Unbeknownst to their parents. This is our moment. This is our destiny.'

‘The Archangel has decreed,' says Perch, ‘that it is the children, the young, who will inherit the earth, whose growing wisdom will prevail.'

Carp looks at her sister.
Such commitment
, she thinks.
Such certainty
.

Perch casts a glance in her direction, but Carp can find no words. She lowers her head: a mild submission, a tiny surrender.

Perch is undeterred by the silence of her sister.

‘It is our time. Ours for the taking,' she hollers, sensing excitement and expectation in her audience of three, feeling the power and magic of her words. The murderess turned saviour.

SEVEN

‘Dark clouds bring waters, when the bright bring none.'
– John Bunyan

Enrico was right. Comrade Cortez had come to prepare us for battle. Aimu has been deployed with an elite group to provide a surprise counter-attack. The cannons, with Enrico and me at the helm of one them, are in the front line. There is thick fog. Reaching out, hands cupped, I feel as if I should be able to gather it from the air, hold it like a small cushion of moss. But the fog is out of reach, unobtainable. Valence stands in front of me, his musket to his shoulder, taking aim at sounds, footsteps coming towards us in the mist. Are they aiming too? Or will they have lances and double-edged swords, clubs and machetes to bludgeon and slice through flesh and sinew? I can hear the steps, sometimes louder, then soft, muffled in the swirl of the wind and the foggy blanket shrouding the line of trees: woody outlines strangely visible, then engulfed. Are they close or are they far, these men who wish us dead?

On Enrico's instructions I load the first shot into the cannon, just as I was taught on the ship. I push the ramrod into the barrel of the cannon until the ball is firmly in place and then stand back, taking up my allotted position. Enrico, eagerly awaiting the signal to light the fuse and gunpowder to strike the first blow, nods his approval and I feel peculiarly satisfied. Then, out of the fog, as if passing from another world, the advancing figures of the enemy appear. There is a muffled command and they stop. A clatter of steel as they fix bayonets to their rifles. Then silence. Valence whistles to Enrico and the smell of the flint and the fizzle of the taper tell me the cannon is lit. Suddenly, shockingly, there is a huge flash and a deafening sound as I feel myself lifted into the air, debris, mud, metal and chunks of flesh swirling around me, bouncing off me. With a sickening, life-shattering thud, my body hits the ground.

A blackness descends, enticing me to the deepest of sleeps.

Is this what death is like? I am being sucked down a tunnel, twisting and twirling through a vortex. On and on it goes. Then gradually I slow down. There at the tunnel's end is an entrance, or is it an exit? It is a cliff face opening up to a bright blue sky. In the furthest corner is a golden glittering light and I hear music that invites me on. There is something so very attractive in this invitation, something being offered that I know is mine. But then another force takes over and I pull myself away from the edge, away from the blue and the music and back up the tunnel, as fast as I came.

I sit bolt upright. What was momentarily blue and at peace is now grey and at war. I hear shouting and fighting and screaming and crying away on the fringes of the woodlands. All around me is carnage and bodies and a tortured landscape of burning trees and churned-up soil. In the near distance I can see the remains of the cannon, its metal barrel ripped open and twisted. And there beside it is Enrico, a mess of blood and tangled limbs, his war over before it began. Something pains me deep within my head, urging me to lie down. I slump backwards then close my eyes and groan, feeling a throb way inside my skull. Turning onto my side to try to relieve the pain I open my eyes to the mist and the devastation. Then all goes blank and black once more. But no tunnel this time, no enticing invitation to a land beyond any dream. Just blank and black. Blank and black. And total silence.

Time must have passed. It seems like both an aeon and an instant. I know I am somehow alive. I know I am delirious, my head is thick and heavy on the ground, the earth is cold against my cheek, but some part of me is hovering above the battle scene, looking down on my stricken body. It is like a strange tableau, eerie, peaceful, composed: many things at once. There am I, down below. My body lies on its side, some part alive, some other dead. Close by is Enrico, a huge wound from hip to shoulder, blood soaked into his clothes. Tears well inside me. Deep sadness of loss and then anger at him being dead and gone and ended. I lie close to my big brother and hold tight his blood-sticky hand. How cold it is, how sad and endless are the tears that come from me now. The sobs from way, way inside me. A place I am yet to understand. I cry until I am exhausted by the crying. I almost collapse again, but grasping his hand gives me strength. How strange to think I will no longer hear his voice. One that I have just begun to know, but knew nonetheless I could love forever. That he will no longer rise from where he rests to take his place in the world. I stare into his face, into his eyes which now seem so distant, so turned away. His body is strangely unfamiliar, though I know it is he. It's as if something vital of him has departed, never to return, leaving behind a husk, a trace, an imprint of the man.

Hours later. Standing up I am so totally alone. All around are the smells and sights and destruction of war. Fragments and bodies broken, smoke and dust on the air, and in the distance the sporadic sounds of combat on the wane. I think of all the dead men that have been a part of my young life. My father, Mr Fishcutter, Mr April and now Enrico, my erstwhile brother.

I see my hand twitch, my eyes roll in my head and once more I sink back on the ground, a throbbing in my head, but a clear sense and recognition that I live on.