‘Bit late, Cessie. Beggar wouldn’t start,’ he said.
The nearside door opened and the side doors slid back. I counted them as they got out. I could not believe what I was seeing. Twelve. I recognised Harry as one of them. He wasn’t in his wheelchair. He was walking, bent between two sticks. There was an old lady beside him, helping him along. ‘You know Harry, don’t you?’ said Popsicle, ‘and this is Mary. Used to be a nurse, did Mary. She’s seeing to all the medicines for us, aren’t you, Mary?’ He clapped his hands. ‘Everyone, everyone. This is my granddaughter, this is the Cessie I’ve been telling you all about.’
They were all coming on board and they all seemed to know exactly where to go as well.
Popsicle was beside me, his arm round my shoulder. He was showing me off. Some of them ruffled my hair as they passed; one of the old ladies – later I found out that everyone called her ‘Big Bethany’ – touched my cheek with her cold hand and said, ‘Just like you said, Popsicle, a princess. That’s what we’ll call her then, Princessie.’ And they all laughed at that.
‘Ancient mariners we may be,’ Popsicle told me proudly. ‘But we’ll do fine. We’ve got blankets, food, water, all we need.’
I watched Harry’s wheelchair being carried on board and the gangplank hauled in. ‘Don’t worry, Cessie. We did a dummy run, two nights ago. “Borrowed” the minibus for a couple of hours,’ Popsicle went on. ‘I showed them what was what. Everyone’s got a job to do. They all know what they’re doing.’
I could only stand and watch and admire as they bustled purposefully about the boat.
‘Do they know everything? About Lucie Alice?’ I asked.
‘Everything,’ Popsicle replied. ‘The whole thing, beginning to end. I reckoned we were going to need all the help we could get. They volunteered, Cessie, to a man, to a woman. Of course there’s some that couldn’t make it; not well enough. But those we’ve got are raring to go. Isn’t that right, Harry?’
‘Only one thing I’m going to miss,’ said Harry, ‘and that’s the Dragonwoman’s face in the morning when she finds out that half her inmates have done a bunk!’ Harry had settled himself down in his wheelchair and Mary was wrapping his legs in a blanket. ‘Some ship, eh Cessie?’ he said.
Some ship, some crew, I was thinking. All about me the ancient mariners went about making the lifeboat ready for sea. The lights came on down below, tarpaulins were rolled and stowed away. Popsicle was everywhere it seemed, helping, reminding, cajoling. There was no doubt who the skipper was. Everyone had a part to play – except me, it seemed. I was beginning to feel a bit redundant, until Popsicle took me to one side.
‘Soon as I start up the engines, Cessie,’ he said, ‘I want you to go and tell Sam up at the lock-keeper’s house that we’re ready. You know him already, don’t you? He told me all about your little meeting. He’ll be expecting you. Give him a hand with the lock gates, will you? Then, once we’re through, I want you back on board and for’ard, keeping your eyes peeled for buoys and ropes and what have you. We won’t get to Dunkirk with a rope wrapped round our propellers, will we?’
As the engines roared to life, I dashed along the towpath, over the canal bridge and hammered on Sam’s door. He must have been ready and waiting, because the door opened almost at once, and he was standing there in his wellies and his dressing-gown, a torch in his hand. He looked at the Lucie Alice, all lit up like a Christmas cake from bow to stern, her ancient crew hauling in the lines, Popsicle at the wheel, with Harry beside him in his wheelchair.
‘I need pinching,’ said Sam. He never stopped chortling the whole time as we opened the lock gate and let in the Lucie Alice. The wheel was heavy and stiff, and there was a lot of huffing and puffing before the gate was fully open. She inched into the lock, engines chuntering sonorously. It was a very tight fit. We closed the gates behind her. As the lock flooded, she rose majestically up towards us. Only now that she was away from the barges and on her own, did I see just how magnificent she really was. Sam spoke my thoughts. ‘Never seen anything like it,’ he said. ‘I just hope Popsicle knows what he’s doing, that’s all. It’s an awful long way over to Dunkirk. Still, you’ve got the weather. Should be like a millpond out there tonight.’
As the deck of the Lucie Alice reached ground level, Popsicle was there to help me jump back on board. ‘You see anything for’ard, Cessie, you let me know – loud,’ he said. I made my way to the bow, stood on tiptoe, hooked my elbows over and looked down into the black of the water.
Minutes later we were out of the lock. The engines throttled up and we moved slowly into the harbour itself. The sea was bright with the moon and clear ahead as far as I could see. Below me the bow of the Lucie Alice was cutting her way through the water, and I felt the first salt spray on my face. I licked the salt off my lips, and breathed in deep.
As we steamed out across the harbour. I could see the silhouettes of fishing boats by the quay, and the cranes standing guard over them like skeletal sentinels. The lighthouse at the end of the harbour wall was closer now and flashing brighter all the time. Then we were underneath it and the swell of the open sea took us and rocked us. Sam had been wrong. It was no millpond out there. I heard laughter behind me as we crashed into our first significant wave – nervous laughter it was. The old lifeboat groaned and shuddered and ploughed on.
The cold of the spray took my breath away. Above me the moon rode the clouds, at just the same speed as the Lucie Alice rode the sea. She would be keeping up with us all the way, I thought. Out ahead of me, the sea glistened and glowed, and I knew that beyond the dark horizon lay Dunkirk and France. I thought of the last time she had made this trip all those years ago to pick up the soldiers off the beaches. I just hoped and prayed (and I really did pray) that Lucie Alice would be there in Dunkirk, just as she had been then.
Once we were well out to sea, I made my way back to Popsicle at the wheel. Harry’s chair was being lashed down and Mary was wrapping him in another blanket, all the time urging him to come below with the others. But Harry would have none of it. ‘I’m not going to miss this, Mary, not in a million years. So you can stop your fussing, I’m staying put.’
Popsicle enveloped me in his coat and let me take the wheel with him. ‘We’re on our way then,’ he said. ‘You did leave a note for your mum and dad, like I told you?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s good. Keep her steady now. Can you feel her, Cessie? Can you feel the heart of her?’ I could too. ‘Excited, isn’t she? I reckon she knows exactly where she’s going. Back to Dunkirk. And, please God, let it be back to Lucie Alice too.’
12 EARLIE IN THE MORNING
IT WAS AS IF I WAS SETTING OFF ON SOME GREAT and grand adventure, some wonderful quest, with a bunch of silverhaired Argonauts, and with Popsicle at the helm as our Jason. But these Argonauts around me were not strapping, muscle-bound Greek heroes. They were a dozen very old-age pensioners whose combined age, I worked out, must have totalled nearly a thousand years.
From their incessant jovial banter and the warmth of their camaraderie it would have been easy to believe that they were all on some Sunday outing; but Popsicle only had to say the word and they at once became a crew, slow about the boat maybe, but serious and purposeful. There were always four up on deck on watch, two for’ard, two aft, and Popsicle himself never left the wheel. We did hour-long shifts, and when we went below there was always a mug of hot sweet tea waiting, jam sandwiches for some, baked beans on toast for others.
I never did get to know all of them – there were too many for that – and besides no one really introduced me. They all treated me as if they knew me already, and I liked that. I got to know Benny though because he told me all about himself. The galley was Benny’s domain – he made that quite clear. Benny liked talking, he liked talking loudly and repeated himself often. Everyone shouted at him, and at first I wondered why. It wasn’t long before I discovered that he was almost completely deaf. He’d been a chef in a hotel in Bournemouth for mo
st of his working life, he said, and he’d never allowed hangers-on in his kitchen. So I could come into his galley only if I lent a hand. I found myself doing everything from washing up, to stirring beans, to spreading butter, to cutting crusts off bread.
‘You got to give the customers what they want,’ he explained, waving a wooden spoon at me for emphasis. ‘I said, you got to give the customers what they want. Most of us can’t be doing with crusts, not any more. Not any more. You know something, Princessie? You might not believe this, but I had ’em all out for my twenty-first birthday, the whole lot of them.’ He wasn’t always easy to understand. ‘I said, the whole lot of them. Present from my mum, bless her heart. Have your teeth out, she says, and you won’t have no trouble with them later on. And she was right too. I said, she was right too. Not many of us up at Shangri-La still got our teeth left. You take Chalky, he’s like me. Not a tooth of his own left in his head, not one.’
Chalky, as everyone called him, scarcely ever left the engines. He’d grin toothlessly at me and wave an oily rag whenever he saw me. ‘Loves engines, does Chalky – knows ’em inside out. Train driver in his time. Easygoing sort, wouldn’t hurt a fly,’ Benny told me, and then in a more confidential tone: ‘But you watch out for Mac. Different kettle of fish altogether. Used to be a Sergeant Major in the Guards. Stickler for everything. I said, he’s a stickler for everything. Everything got to be just so or he’s not happy, not happy at all. And when he’s not happy . . . You’ve got to watch out for Mac. I’m saying, you’ve got to watch out for Mac.’
I knew Mac already – Harry had pointed him out. He was the dapper one with the natty moustache, the only one of them who never seemed to smile at me. He patrolled the deck constantly, making sure we were all properly secured on our lifelines whenever we were up on deck. He kept checking Harry’s chair was properly lashed down. He was there too whenever the watch changed, making sure no one slipped or stumbled as they came out on deck. Benny told me he had a glass eye, but I never did find out which it was.
Then there were the twin brothers, still identical at eighty-four, and known to everyone as Tweedledum and Tweedledee – both of them unsteady on their legs, and both of them always insisting on taking their turn on watch together. Benny told me all about them: ‘Tweedledum and Tweedledee, they’ve been up at Shangri-La near enough fifteen years now – oldest inmates. Hardly been out of the place in all that time. Never been in a boat before, neither of them. Never been nowhere much. Kept an ironmongers shop all their lives up in Bradford. Never done nothing like this. Well, nor have any of us, come to that, except Popsicle of course. Those beans’ll be sticking if you don’t stir them, Princessie. I said, those beans’ll be sticking if you don’t stir them.’
It was hot and stifling down below. I don’t know if it was the oily smell of the engines, or the bubbling beans in the galley, or just the roll of the boat, but whatever it was I began to feel queasy. I went up on deck to breathe in the fresh air and felt better at once. Popsicle called me over to him. He patted the wheel. ‘Isn’t she the best? Isn’t she something? More than fifty years old and she still purrs like a kitten.’ It sounded more like a roaring lion to me, but I didn’t argue.
Harry handed me his empty tea mug to take back down to the galley. ‘I’ll tell you something, girl,’ he said, ‘I’ve never been so cold in all my life, and I’ve never had so much fun either. A real live adventure, isn’t it? Even if your grandad has got us all here under false pretences, even if that whole story of his about Dunkirk and Lucie Alice is just a load of old cobblers, if it’s one great big porky pie, I won’t mind. None of us would. We’re having the time of our lives, all of us. Being out here, like this, it makes a fellow feel alive again.’
‘But it’s not a story,’ I protested. ‘It’s true . . .’
‘Of course it is,’ Harry said. ‘I know that. And d’you know how I know? Because it’s too fantastical, that’s why. He couldn’t make up a story like that even if he wanted to. Mind you, I had my doubts to start with – we all of us did. But once he’d brought us down to see the Lucie Alice a couple of nights back, we were well and truly hooked. And now here we are, out in the middle of the ocean with nothing but water all around us. Like a dream it is, like the best dream I ever had.’
‘Never mind about the dreaming, Harry,’ said Popsicle. ‘Just you keep your watch. We’ll be getting out to mid-Channel soon and there’s bigger ships than us out here, a lot bigger; and I want to see ’em coming in plenty of time. So you keep your eyes skinned, Harry, you hear me?’
‘Aye, aye, skip,’ said Harry, and he dragged his hand out from under his blanket and gave a mock salute.
It wasn’t long after that that Mary and Harry had a real set-to. It all began when she said he’d catch his death if he stayed up on deck much longer. He told her it was his death and he’d catch it if he wanted to. Popsicle had to intervene and send him down below to the warmth of the cabin. ‘You can always come up again later, Harry,’ he said. Harry muttered something unrepeatable, and gave in gracelessly. Between them, Mac and Mary got him down the gangway, Harry grumbling all the way.
‘You fetch that fiddle of yours, Cessie,’ said Popsicle. ‘It’ll cheer him up, cheer us all up.’
So I sat in Harry’s wheelchair and began to play. ‘Yesterday’, ‘Michelle’, ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ – I played all the tunes I could remember. Popsicle sang along, and after each one they clapped, from all around me on the deck, from down below in the cabin. Even Chalky left his engines for a while and came up to listen. After ‘Nowhere Man’ – we’d done it really well, the best we’d ever done it – they even called for an encore. Big Bethany then suggested I should play something on my own. I did the Largo because I knew I wouldn’t make any mistakes. The sound of the violin seemed thin and reedy to me. Much of it was smothered by the pulsating throb of the engine, any resonance whipped away and lost at once over the vastness of the sea; but they seemed to like it.
‘Lovely,’ said Big Bethany quietly. ‘Lovely that was.’ She was big too, big smile, big everything. I liked her the best of all of them, I think. My fingers were aching with the cold now. I put the violin down on my knees and blew into my hands. I thought I’d finished.
‘Princessie?’ It was Harry’s voice from down below. ‘How about “Sailing”? Do you know “Sailing”?’ So we did ‘Sailing’ again and again and again. Everyone seemed to know it – better than I did. Then, over the pounding of the engine, Benny shouted up that he wanted ‘What shall we do with the drunken sailor?’ I couldn’t feel my fingers by now, I was playing so far out of tune that it was almost unrecognisable, but they didn’t seem to mind. We ended the very last chorus with a thunderous ‘Earlie in the morning’, and then, to my great relief, Popsicle brought the sing-song to an end. He called up the new watch and sent the rest of us below to get some sleep. No one argued, least of all me. I was exhausted by now, frozen through and longing for the warmth of the cabin, however smelly, however stifling. I went down and lay on Popsicle’s bed. Big Bethany came and covered me with an eiderdown. She said she’d never in her life heard a violin played so sweetly. Until then I never knew that words could really warm you physically, but hers did. I curled myself into myself and fell asleep almost at once.
A bell was ringing in my ears as I woke. Then I discovered it wasn’t in my ears at all. It was ringing somewhere above my head. I looked around me. There was no one with me in the cabin, no one at all. The engines were turning over gently and I could feel that the boat was barely moving through the water. I swung my legs off the bed and ran out of the cabin. I saw Chalky bending over his engines.
‘Anything wrong?’ I asked.
‘Fog,’ he said, without looking up. ‘Lousy fog.’
Moments later I was up on deck and it was swirling all around me. The bell was sounding again somewhere forward. I couldn’t see the bow of the boat at all. Popsicle was at the wheel. Everyone else, including Harry, was on watch all around the boat, like dark
statues, each of them wrapped in a cocoon of their own fog. None of them moved. None of them spoke. Popsicle saw me.
‘We’re listening,’ he whispered.
‘For what?’
‘For anything. An engine perhaps, foghorn, ship’s bell. All we’ve got’s our ears and a compass. Thank God for the compass.’
‘How long’s it been like this?’
‘A couple of hours maybe. We’ve had one near miss already, and one’s enough. Get listening, Cessie, there’s a girl.’
So I found myself a place at the gunwales. I scanned the impenetrable greyness around me, and listened, listened as hard as I could. But my ears, I discovered, were almost as useless as my eyes. All I could hear was the throb of our own engine and the sea running against the side of the boat.
The shape beside me moved and became Big Bethany. ‘Can’t be far now, Princessie,’ she said, putting her arm round me. ‘Can’t be far.’ Big Bethany mothered me, and everyone else, through the terrors of that night, a little word here, a little hug there.
It seemed as if we were entombed out there in the fog for hours. All the while the world was becoming lighter around us as the dawn filtered through the fog, but I could neither see any better nor hear any better. The harder I looked into it, the more fearsome were the shapes I began to imagine: a charging bull, a rearing dragon, a lion crouched and ready to pounce. Our shroud was a whiter shade of grey now, but it still felt like a shroud.
There was a shout from behind me. I turned. Harry was pointing out into the fog over the starboard side. ‘There! There!’ he cried. And even as he spoke there was a deafening blast of a foghorn, so thunderous, so close that we all looked now for the looming prow of a ship that must come out of the fog and run us down at any moment.