Tidetown (2 page)

Today the morning is a miser, giving out light as if the land was a beggar. Yet Joshua is never happier than at this moment of the day. No matter the cold. No matter the sleet that lashes his face. He is at his post at the battlements at the top of the second tower of the Mayoral Mansion (the Lesser Tower, as it is known, lest Joshua get ideas above his station). He puffs out his chest and looks for the sign from the window of the uppermost floor of the Greater Tower. His eyes are fixed on the window, as they have been this past half-hour. He knows and relishes his duty, does Joshua Barnum. No caprice of the elements will force him to blow hot or cold. Time ticks on; and on he waits. He is steadfast and true, as reliable as the tide that shifts and scrapes and shuffles the pebbles on Beckett's Beach. The sky above is clogged with clouds. But the westerly wind, at the tail end of last night's gale, is equal to the task, pushing its heavy load towards the heath and hills of the hinterland.

Joshua's sights are set on the window above, ever vigilant, ever patient. And there it is: the hand he knows so well, the one he would kiss if given the chance; that slaps his cheek at its owner's whim. The fingers of the hand, between filigree curtain and glass, flicker the command and Joshua moves to his post. He awaits in keen anticipation for the second sign: the wave from his master. When it comes, with the slightest twist of the wrist, Joshua licks his lips, quietly clears his throat, and brings the bugle to his mouth. Startled, as if they'd never heard the shrill notes before (repeated as they are every morning, come sun or snow), the pigeons from Grundy's Wood hurtle skywards. All across Tidetown and its surrounds its people and animals raise eyebrows and hackles as power and privilege, in time-honoured fashion, make their voice known.

As the curtain is drawn and the mayor's morning face appears, Joshua stands to attention and salutes: proof of his diligence, his commitment to duty, his preparedness. The mayor sighs.

‘Of course it's him, the puppy dog,' he says to Fraulein Rumple, his mistress, who an hour ago was strapped in bridle and rein, who in half an hour from now will disappear down the steep servants' stairwell to the awaiting coach, as if she had never existed.

‘He stands like a tin soldier, the dullard,' mocks the mayor at the window, smiling and waving to his master-at-arms, his second in command, his deputy mayor. Then he turns back into the room. Fraulein Rumple, the very merry widow, lies curled up in the bed, the satin sheets barely covering her acres of flesh. Mindful of Angelica, his daughter, in the West Wing and the need for discretion, the mayor curls his waxed moustache, winks at his mistress, licks his lips and calculates that ten minutes should be more than enough to get the job done.

Puffed up with pride, dripping wet and frozen to the core, Joshua skips down the winding circular stairwell that leads from the roof of the tower. Downward he goes, round and round, his progress echoing on the cold stone steps. Way below, in the bowels of the tower, Mrs M hears him coming, her arms deep in suds and linen, steam and stains. Joshua appears in the doorway, shaking his head like a shaggy dog, his long straggly hair spraying icicles and rainwater.

‘Joshua,' says Mrs M, without turning, ever busy at sink or stove.

‘The very same,' he says, ‘J. B. Barnum, Deputy Mayor, Justice of the Peace, man of considerable means and no shortage of learning. In whose present condition a bowl of oxtail soup would be most welcome. Most welcome indeed.'

‘Well, by a happy constellation of the stars,' says Mrs M, wringing Angelica's undergarment as if it were the horribly spoilt child's own plump neck, ‘and by the good grace of the tailless oxen, the very same is bubbling on yonder stove.'

Joshua bows an exaggerated bow.

‘I can smell it through the carbolic and detergent. I can already taste its deep meaty warmth. Mrs M's acclaimed broth. Medicinal. Nutritious. Just what a deputy mayor needs after a post-dawn bugling.'

As he drifts in and out of consciousness, the cold water of the incoming tide slaps Zakora aware. Up on the cliff he sees an apparition. At first he thinks he spies a ghost, the hazy outline of a man staring down at him. His vision blurs, his mind blackens. When next he opens his eyes the man is standing at the water's edge, in clear view. A tall man in a brown hooded garment, his face in shadow. Zakora looks up again, struggling to see through the sea water that seems to be invading his very being.
Is this becloaked man a magician, a spectre, a spirit from the cliffs?
These thoughts pass through his mind, but soon he is back under, barely breathing, hardly being. The monk, for such is the man, touches the black wet skin of the poor soul lying in the shallows. Pushes the skin against its bones. There is a grunt and a groan.
He is alive, like I am alive
, thinks Brother Paul. Hard to pull and heavy, the dead weight of the body resists his attempts to heave it through the spume and seaweed. The monk feels the coldness grow in his own sandalled feet as the sea laps against his shins. Inch by inch he drags the gasping man to the safety of the sands. An eye opens and looks at him. In wonder. In amazement.
Does he think we are in heaven and I the welcoming spirit?
ponders Brother Paul.

To reassure the poor man, he lifts the hood from his head and smiles a welcoming smile. Then the eyes of the near drowning man close. The mouth gasps and speaks in a thick, lilting accent. ‘Thank you. Thank you.' And then all is quiet. Both are exhausted. The monk sits on the beach with the man's head resting, breathing hard, in his lap. The monk speaks without words to his new friend. Brother Paul introduces himself with a glint from his eye, his tongue long torn from his mouth, his voice silenced since childhood. The
sangoma
looks up at this strange man with the ginger beard and smiling face. Then he drifts off again: somewhere deep, somewhere where the taste on his tongue is of salt and metal, of iron, of chains.

Mayor Bruin is the richest man in Tidetown, by a very long way. His rotund belly and collection of solid-gold pocket watches, one of which he holds in his hand this wild and blustery morning, testify to his wealth and good living. Fraulein Rumple has been dispatched elsewhere, so he stands alone on the turreted tower of the Mayoral Mansion waiting for the town hall clock to chime the hour. He checks the second hand and is satisfied that all is in order and that the church bells and the tick of his watch resonate in harmony. Deeply he breathes in the air of this, his domain. He, the one and only mayor and owner of land as far as the eye can see. From his lofty belvedere he surveys the terrain, looking far out to sea and the prospect of flotsam and jetsam from last night's storm. Any dead bodies (he crosses himself at the thought) he will leave to the fishes and the birds, but a sizeable proportion of any booty, washed ashore or otherwise, will find its way in his direction.

He stretches, refreshed by a good night's rest. He sleeps sound and solid, does the mayor; no lashing of rain or far-distant cries of the drowning have disturbed his slumber. He walks along the turret, viewing with pleasure the woodlands and copses, ploughed furrows and orchards. He notices the workers in the fields, his tenants, busying themselves in the business of swelling his coffers and filling his ample belly. He takes in the panorama, his early morning routine, sweeping the horizon for any signs of incongruity. For anything out of place. His hawk eye traverses the scene, the rise and fall of the hills, the country lanes and byways, the smallholdings and crofts. Way in the distance he spies the abbot's horse and cart as it trundles over the hill to the monks' island sanctuary. If he were in one of his more inquisitive moods, with his antique silver telescope to his eye, the mayor would have honed in on the strange spectacle of the big drayhorse pulling the cart with Brother Paul at the reins, with a wild and exhausted black man atop the cargo of sacks of maize and dried snapper. But the mayor has business on his mind. At Spencer's Wharf is a consignment of mahogany that awaits Horatio Newton, the timber merchant, and the deal the mayor has brokered with the Provincial Ombudsman. There's a lunch to be had at the harbour master's house and a handsome commission to be tallied. The thought of fresh quail eggs and fat gold sovereigns puts a smile on his face and a lick on his lips.

One by one Angelica lights the candles she has set in a ring in the middle of her bedroom in the West Wing. The thick blood-red drapes are drawn tight across the solitary window keeping any natural light at bay, even though it is still midmorning. Mayor Bruin has long given up on trying to entice his only child from her room until she is good and ready. Angelica picks up her least favourite doll, Harmony, and drips hot candle wax onto the doll's hair and forehead, anointing her as the Chief Prosecutor.

‘Queen's Counsel,' she whispers into Harmony's sizzling ear, ‘a rare honour, but fully deserved.'

Then she picks up Cruela, her favourite: a raggedly-taggedly doll, all wild matted black hair and broken skin. She spits into her face and rubs the moisture around Cruela's eyes.

‘To bring you wisdom and fine words, Chief Defendant and Order of the Viper.'

She places the two dolls at their allotted places on the rug in the fiery ring. They sit in silence opposite each other. The wax from the candle runs onto Angelica's chubby dimpled fingers. She feels the heat, then watches the liquid solidify and whiten.

‘Time to bring the court to order,' she declares, putting a curly ginger clown's wig on her head. ‘Be upstanding for Judge Angelica.'

She grabs the other dolls and assorted toys (tortoise, one-legged dinosaur, gorilla, carthorse, pig-suckling-piglets, headless cowgirl, armless cowboy – both recently tortured by Redskins) and selects a motley crew to sit as the jury. The remaining figurines and odds and ends of toys are the audience, plopped unceremoniously in a heap to the side, precariously close to the candle flames.

‘Now bring on the defendants,' demands Judge Angelica.

Carefully, reverently, she opens the clasp of a large wooden box sitting in place of honour on the table beside her diamond-shaped bed. One by one, she lifts the two identical handmade dolls, designed and crafted for her sixteenth birthday. Each is beautifully dressed in a tartan smock, black patent-leather shoes, with a bright yellow beret (almost a halo). Each has long silky black hair, a beguiling smile and coal-black eyes.

Angelica places the twins in the ring opposite the two lawyer dolls.

‘Court in session!' she shouts.

The case of the Fishcutter twins, the most lauded of all Tidetown's scandals, has fascinated Angelica from the moment she first heard of it. At fourteen years old the twins were the same age as she, and were accused of committing an act she'd held only as a wild fantasy: the murder of a father. Her nighttime reading of Gothic novels, horror and true crime stories was replaced by scouring her father's newspapers for updates on the trial. She slavered over all the little details. She kept every cutting, every photo, every artist's impression of the courtroom. On the day when Judge Omega, the highest lawman in the land, decreed sentence would be passed, Angelica left home before dawn, rode her beloved horse to town, settled him in livery and waited at the gates of the courtroom. When the Fishcutter twins were brought up from the cells she almost fainted at the sight of them in the flesh. Then the light bulb of a camera flashed in her eyes. Next day, the photo that took up half the front page of the
Tidetown Chronicle
showed a mesmerised Angelica beautifully positioned between the twins. Her father, putty as always in her hands, used his standing and influence in the community to obtain the original and had the picture gilt framed and hung above her bed (carefully out of sight of adult visitors).