Tidetown (20 page)

‘Always. One of us always trails way behind. To check if anyone is following,' says Spider.

‘Ah … my young ruffian. There's more than one way to find the centre of the web,' says Joshua, pleased with his conceit. He rolls his eyes to offer alternatives; twiddles his fingers to allow for time.

Spider stares straight ahead. His throat is painfully dry. He swallows hard.

‘Think Jesus,' says Joshua, excited, unable to hold back. ‘Who would have guessed the Garden of Gethsemane?'

Spider remains silent, remembering back to his fleeting days in Sunday school.

‘Everywhere there's a Judas. For everything, for every single thing, there's a price,' quips Joshua triumphantly.

The previous morning Joshua had presented his master plan, his brainwave, to the mayor. He'd done with his bugling and Mrs M awaited him in the kitchen. But Joshua's brain ached. He so wanted to share his big idea with the mayor. The skies overhead were pushing down, but the clouds, black and blue as they were, held the rain in their bellies. Joshua stood in the driveway, one eye on the mayor's bedroom, awaiting some sign of movement. Above, a sudden rush of wind rustled the treetops and rain began to fall, but Joshua was unmoved in his vigil. He knew his duty, and this good idea would be one for the mayor to savour.

‘Mr B,' shouted Mrs M, appearing from the scullery door, twining a tea towel between her hands. ‘Your soup. Cream of broccoli.'

‘On a mission, Mrs M. On a mission,' said he without casting a glance kitchenwards.

So there he stood: a solitary figure in front of the huge house. Upstairs, languidly, luxuriously, the mayor completed his morning sport with Fraulein Rumple, swapped a heavily studded collar for his mayoral chain, pecked his paramour a kiss on the cheek and headed down the grand staircase to greet the duties of this brand-new day. Flinging open the heavy front doors he was surprised to see his deputy mayor standing to attention at the bottom of the steps, now completely soaked through, rain running off his hat and down his cheeks. Joshua's face lit up, his eyes opened wide, he pointed a finger to the sky.

‘I have a great idea. It came to me as a feather fell from the rafters,' said Joshua, as if this in itself was explanation enough.

‘So,' says Joshua to Spider, who has yet to ask the identity of the Judas in question, ‘I have a proposition for you, which I believe that you, so much reminding me of my younger self, will be more than inclined to accept.'

Spider looks up. He no longer feels the need to ask the question on his mind. He looks Joshua in the eyes, and indeed, sees something of himself.

‘We're each of us on our own, aren't we?' he replies. ‘Judas or not.'

Joshua sighs and scratches his ear. ‘Welcome to our world, Master Spider. It's a sad and sorry fact, but not so far from the muddy truth. At the beginning and the end of the day we are, one and all, all on our lonesome.'

Next day Joshua's great idea, as whispered to the mayor in the dripping rain in the driveway, is put into operation. The ruffians, spruced and polished, sit on a wooden bench by the pagoda. Nathaniel Mars from the
Tidetown Chronicle
is setting up his large box camera. Gathered around, nibbling on cucumber sandwiches and drinking tea from bone china cups, are carefully selected members of the community. Later on they will recount the afternoon's events, spreading far and wide the news of the mayor's noble deeds. The next day's edition of the newspaper will extol the mayor's great service to the community and will recommend that the townsfolk vote him in for another term. The photo on the page will show the soon-to-be-reformed and smiling ruffians with the mayor in their midst, flanked by Headmaster Rodwell and Jack Haynes from the Farmers' Union (the wealthiest cattleman of his day). A smaller photo, on the inside page, will show the assembled dignitaries, those deemed of most importance towards the centre, others fanned and cramped at the margins. Chests are puffed out, heights extended, hats and ties adjusted.

‘Big smiles and as still as can be,' says Nathaniel from under his photographer's cloak.

Once the photos have been taken the mayor climbs to the podium to address the crowd. He starts by listing some of the major achievements of his time in office: the new sewerage pipe, the returfed school playing field. He proceeds to outline his stunning new pledge: the revised bylaw to improve cargo clearance from the wharves (which will, as a by-product of the bylaw, fortuitously enhance his commissions as well as appease and enrich the Captain's Table and all who sup at it).

Then he gestures to the boys on the benches.

‘Now I turn my attention, and indeed my heart, to these poor waifs displayed before you. These children, these ruffians as they are called, lost and abandoned, having long since drifted into mischief and misdemeanour, will have a second chance at life. Recognising their needs, as well as the needs and safety of our community, we have taken them from the streets. They have spent some days in our care, but now Mr Rodwell is here. They will be placed under his guidance at his acclaimed school for the poor. There they will learn obedience and industry.'

The gathered dignitaries applaud and nod their heads in approval. Joshua, standing to one side, leaning against a silver birch tree, waits eagerly for the next announcement.

‘And,' says the mayor, raising his hand to acknowledge the support of his audience, ‘I have one further announcement to make. The leader of the group, known to his fellows as Spider, being somewhat older, and shall I say more needy than the others, will be taken into my own home. He will join my staff and I, personally, will undertake to oversee his moral education, to shape him into a model of a hard-working citizen of our town.'

Spider looks over to Joshua, who nods in his direction. Nathaniel Mars writes in his notepad, then takes another photo for the newspaper. The mayor smiles happily, confident that he has taken a long stride towards another term at the helm of power.

As the crowd mingles to finish off the cupcakes and homemade lemonade, Joshua sidles up to Nathaniel. The old-time newsman, as much a fixture of Tidetown as the lighthouse on the reef, is busy reviewing his notes.

‘A fine and noble man, the mayor.'

‘Indeed, indeed,' says Nathaniel, rubbing out a comma, adding an exclamation mark.

‘Front page, banner headline,' suggests Joshua. ‘Along the lines of “Mayor's Noble Act: For the Good of All, as Ever.”'

That night Spider is led to a tiny room under the main stairwell of the Mayoral Mansion, once the home for a second footman. He lies on clean cotton sheets, but sleep is hard to come by. On the far side of the heathland, in the hamlet of Thetford, the three brothers are herded into a damp and dark dormitory where twenty or so other unfortunates hack and cough and groan with hunger. Downstairs, Headmaster Rodwell dines on pork cutlets and apple sauce, licking his lips at the prospect of three more bodies to add to his workforce. The maths lesson tomorrow will be to calculate how many barrow loads of rocks twenty-six boys can shift in two and a half hours.

Perch sits up in bed. Her face is pale; there are shadows under her eyes. The nights have not been kind to her, have not offered her rest. Carp sits on the end of the bed, peeling an orange.

‘Here sister, eat.'

‘I'm not hungry,' says Perch, pulling the blanket up to her chin, detesting her own vulnerability, even in front of her only sister. She licks the dried ridges of her lips.

‘Has the blood flowed from you?' she asks without looking at Carp.

‘Yes it has … I was to tell you. When we were in the cells. Just before we were released. But you were unwell,' replies Carp, realising that this is one of the very few things she has ever kept from her sister. That, and the doubting.

‘Something else to share,' says Perch, reaching out her hand, sensing something is shifting between them, hoping to hold on to her sister.

‘Yes … to share,' murmurs Carp as she grasps her twin's fingers, wondering how she will ever be able to speak the unspeakable: the real crisis of her faith, of all they seemingly hold to be true.

‘Is that your real name?' asks Mrs M, looking the boy up and down, assessing the strength in his hands and the intent in his eyes.

‘It's the only one I know,' says Spider.

‘Well, Spider it will be then. But there'll be no webs to spin here, young man. You are here to work like the rest of us.'

The boy has a proud look upon his face, one that Mrs M both admires and suspects.

‘So what can you do?' she asks.

‘Anything,' he says with a shrug of the shoulder.

‘Well, anything it will be. The first anything is out there,' she says pointing to the garden. ‘There's a pile of anything, I call it manure, to be turned.' Spider rolls up his sleeves, whistles a tune and begins his first day as the dogsbody and doer-of-anything.

The morning moves on and Spider goes about his: forking through compost, sharpening knives, gutting chickens. Mrs M, observing his every move, is quietly impressed by his composed and contained single-mindedness.