Elysium. Part One. (12 page)
It was close to three when people started to filter out of the Marisco Tavern. Eryn was weary, and Joan showed her upstairs to a room where Boen had already been dumped spread-eagle on the bed.
‘Charming,’ Eryn sighed, shaking her head. A candle had been placed on a stool made from the trunk of a tree, and shadows danced about the sparse, musty room.
It wasn’t long before the sounds of snoring filtered up from the rooms below. Eryn had learnt that several people from the island lived in the Marisco Tavern: Mickey Dean and his wife lived downstairs, Joan lived alone in a maisonette, and Red Sawbone lived upstairs with his two sons. The latter were away in Iceland, so Joan had given them the younger Sawbone’s room for the night.
Waiting for silence to overcome the house, Eryn opened the door nervously and slipped into the corridor. She didn’t know what to look for, and was downhearted that she only had access to three rooms on the whole island. It was better than nothing, she considered, and she would certainly achieve more than Boen’s slumberous contribution - even if she discovered nothing.
A small amount of light from the candle shone from the bedroom. There was just enough illumination to see the framework of the landing – a cupboard, two wood-framed pictures on the wall, a high shelf harbouring dusty Puffin skulls, and two doors.
Regretting she couldn’t take the candle for fear of being seen, she stepped towards the nearest room and lay her palm on the handle. It opened, its hinges grating softly as she pushed. Inside was crow-black, and she felt along the walls for any sign of cupboard, or book, some fitting piece of information that she knew full well she would not find.
A cough from below, hollow and blunt, arrested her and she waited for more to follow. Murmurs rose through the floorboards, whispered words, a woman’s voice followed by a man’s.
Silence followed, and after long minutes Eryn moved across the floor as quietly as she knew how.
Her eyes had grown accustomed to the dark; she could make out the edges of a bed and a chest of drawers beside it. Gently she sat on the bed, and eased open the top drawer, it squeaked and she cringed. Again the woman below whispered, but there came no reply.
Eryn reached in and retrieved a sheaf of papers. They were papers that dated back several years, old papers full of sketches of birds and page after page of awful handwriting. In the darkness she could hardly make anything of it, apart from: Accounts for renewal… and: RE: Mr. Tanwen…
Looking through all the papers as best she could in the saturating darkness it became clear that Mr. Sawbone looked after Lundy’s financial affairs with an institution in Greenland. She knew that Mortehoe ran by the very same system, there was nothing suspicious there, the Camberwells held an account for the entire community, it was this account that Kelly had used to buy particulars on his runs to Ireland. She stacked the papers neatly, disappointed there was nothing incriminating amongst it, not that she had supposed there would be, it would have been an uncommon achievement in fortuity that the person they were searching for would reside in the room beside their own and have the civility to leave clues in the first drawer she opened. None the less, she was disheartened by the handful of scrawl and drawings.
She was about to return the papers when, in the act of leaning over to do so, her weight on the floorboard affected a sharp creak. The woman’s voice from the floor below exclaimed, ‘Mickey!’ in a manner that refused to be ignored.
Eryn froze, and more words were spoken, though again they were whispered. There came a grumble and the sound of padding footsteps. A door groaned open.
‘Oh shit!’ Eryn hissed, and lightly swept across the room, the papers still in her hand. From downstairs there came sighing, and Mickey Deans sonorous voice grumbled, ‘Bloody woman, can’t go a night without hearing ghosts!’
His footsteps were on the staircase. Eryn eased herself out of the room and pulled the door closed. It squeaked and the latch clicked, but Mickey was still grumbling; she didn’t think he’d heard a thing.
She made to return to her room and saw that the door had closed in her absence. She tiptoed across the landing, just as Mickey appeared at the top of the stairs. It was too late, there was no way she could open the door and get inside without him seeing the candle in the open doorway.
She turned to say something to him as he stepped to the hallway. ‘Don’t see her coming up here when I hear the timbers sighing! No, that’d be too much to ask for. Lazy, guzzlin’ sow…’ He walked passed Eryn and opened the door to Red Sawbone’s room. He peered inside and closed it again. He opened the door next to that and whispered ‘Hello?’ then sniffed and went back downstairs, complaining as he went.
Eryn closed her eyes and released her tight grip on the papers in her hand. She bit her lip and looked at Red Sawbone’s door. She didn’t dare put them back. All she could hope was that they wouldn’t be missed.
*
Boen hung over the side of the boat, heaving the russet coloured contents of his stomach into the frothy waters. Eryn was rowing as vigorously as she could, though the slate-grey morning was already turning pink in the east - and in the west the stars were receding quickly.
A moan accompanied the splashing oar, and Eryn kicked him in the shin. ‘Beerguts! Stop churning and come help!’
He coughed and moaned again, and then slowly dragged himself to the oars. Taking one in his quaking hand he rowed on her count, keeping his eyes closed tightly and breathing deeply - concentrating on quelling his nausea.
‘Are you ok?’ Eryn asked.
There was a short silence, and then a gasp for air: ‘I think so.’
She slapped him hard across the back of the head, and he wrapped his fingers around the blow, shielding himself from another.
‘What the hell was that for?’
‘What use were you last night? You were drunk as an orchard-wasp! I needed your help and you were asleep!’
‘It wasn’t my fault! They were basically water-boarding me!’
‘You could have stopped them; you could have said you were ill.’
‘Ill, right!’ He rubbed the back of his head and clenched his teeth tightly. He didn’t feel up to having an argument with her.
He sighed deeply a few times, and then couldn’t help but ask, sourly: ‘So what did you need help with anyway?’
‘I found something. In one of the bedrooms.’
‘You went sneaking around the rooms? What if you’d been caught?’
‘I almost was.’
‘Bloody hell... what did you find?’
‘I’ll show you when we get back.’
‘Well at least tell me. I can’t spend the trip wondering what it is.’
‘It’s a statement. From a bank in Iceland.’
‘So?’
‘So you know who else has access to the account?’
Boen didn’t, he knew the list of people was short, but it wasn’t common knowledge who could access the community account.
‘Pa, John Camberwell, and Kelly,’ she said.
‘So what does that mean?’ He closed his eyes again; another wave of nausea was sweeping through him. ‘Everyone knows the Camberwell’s have access, and Kelly… it wouldn’t have made much sense for him to go for provisions without being able to pay for it. And, well, I suppose it’s obvious your pa has access too, he’s the overseer after all.’
‘It means that my pa and Kelly knew this Red Sawbone, and had accounts with the same bank.’
‘Does it? Well, so what if it does?’
‘I don’t know, it might not mean anything, but doesn't it seem strange that no-one has ever mentioned Red? Or that we all use the same account? I mean, everyone knows about the Greenland institution, but why’s this Icelandic account a secret?'
‘Eryn, are you trying to wreck your pa? I don’t know what these papers have got to do with Kelly but what if you found out your pa killed him? Would you let on?’
She was quiet for a long time, and in the silence Boen wondered if he would point his finger at his own father. He didn’t think he could, not even for the scars across his back.
‘I had a dream once,’ he said to break the silence, ‘that my pa was a terrorist - like the ones we used to read about from the millennium - he had a plan to put bombs in the collars of dogs and send them amongst people in the community. He got me to mix the powder for the bombs, and I remember crying, thinking: I don’t want to kill people, and I knew that if I did go along with it, I would have to kill myself. I had to decide whether to kill people or tell the authorities about him.’
‘And?’ Eryn said.
‘And I turned my back on him. It was the only thing to do.’
She was silent again, a lone wave rocked the boat, and Boen turned to navigate toward the hole in the quarantine wire. It was little over quarter of a mile away. Once through the gap they would try and use the sail, though there was no draught at all.
‘Did you really have that dream?’ Eryn asked. ‘I mean, was that little story intended for me?’
‘I really had it - what you just said reminded me is all.’
They negotiated their way back through the wire, and Boen released the sail. A breeze fluttered the dark cloth, but didn’t catch it - there wasn’t enough wind to make them move.
‘May as well take it down.’ Eryn suggested.
‘We’ll row with it - hopefully it’ll pick up.’ He sat back down and steadied his trembling fingers, trying to will his palpitations to stop. He just wanted to sleep.
Another quarter-hour passed, and the light was strong in the east now - all the stars had been replaced by a misty grey glow. They had roughly two hours before people started to wake and start their daily chores. Guliven, however, would already be awake and readying himself. Boen’s head reeled.
A gust of wind pulled the cloth tight and made them jolt forward. Eryn smiled, and Boen collapsed over the side once more, heaving.
They arrived back at the boathouse as the sun crested the horizon.
The crying gull masked the sound of their return to the Waeshenbach’s shelter. The boat with provisions was untouched from the night before, and continued to bob gracefully.
Eryn was sweating with exertion and Boen lay comatose in a pool of seawater on the floor of the dinghy, rasping for breath.
As the boat came in to moor, Eryn nudged him awake. He groaned, and she hushed him. ‘Quiet!’ she whispered. ‘We don’t want to your pa to hear us!’
Boen, with a head filled with cast-iron bells, clambered shakily to the pier and tied the dinghy to a heavy, rusted ring.
He helped Eryn out of the boat – and without exchanging words they slipped away from one another, both disappointed their forbidden excursion had been an ultimate, and dangerous, waste of time. Boen would have watched her go, always taking the opportunity to catch a glimpse of her lithe behind, but his lids were heavy and it took all his effort to stop from collapsing in the grass.
The garden seemed a mile long as Boen meandered towards the house, and as he got to the front door, he fell forward – hitting his head hard on the kitchen floor. He blinked, not sure what had happened, and then felt a hand on his shoulder, grasping tightly.