The Voyage of the Dolphin (10 page)

BOOK: The Voyage of the Dolphin
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‘Up you get, you rascal.'

‘Please, Uncle, I don't want to. I don't feel well.'

‘Don't give me that. Let's show them how it's done.'

Fitzmaurice looked to Crozier and Rafferty in desperation but they merely grinned and nodded encouragement. With great reluctance he rose from the table, turning just as his uncle rushed at him, and the next moment the two men were grappling in the manner of a couple of orangutans trying to pass each other in the galley of a pitching ship.

Despite the age difference, and Fitzmaurice's height advantage, they were surprisingly well matched and much grunting and swearing followed as they crashed from side to side. Waiters leapt out of the way. A trolley laden with crockery was knocked over. The under-secretary started to protest but unsure of the protocol, lapsed into baffled silence. Then, just as Fitzmaurice appeared to have gained the upper hand, catching his uncle in a head-lock, his neckwear finally got the better of him and he collapsed on the floor, gasping for air like a dying moose. As the diners debated whether or not to applaud, the chief physician, setting his cigar down, knelt beside the apoplectic wrestler and cut the string of his bowtie with a cheese knife.

‘Who's next?' Sir Crispin bellowed, as Fitzmaurice was helped back to his chair. ‘What about you, Bishop?'

The churchman demurred.

‘…Perhaps not. Hey, you two young fellows,' Crozier and Rafferty started in alarm, ‘let's be having you.'

Steingrimur attempted to intervene.

‘Just a suggestion, Sir Crispin, but this may not be the time nor…'

‘Nonsense,' the gladiator shouted, snatching a drink from the hand of the nearest guest. ‘It's our custom, Steinie. Don't try to stop us.'

He downed the beverage and tossed the glass over his shoulder (narrowly missing the old storyteller). In the next instant, his shirt was off and the first verse of
Rule, Britannia!
was reverberating through the glassware.

As he slid from his chair, some time later, Crozier's final perception, from the vantage point of the floor, was of a full moon glimpsed through the window, high and bright, and ringed by a halo the colour of a bruise.

11
Fate Catches Up With Sir Crispin Pimm

Early the following morning the revellers assembled, as arranged, at the stables near the hotel, where their ponies were saddled up and waiting in the paddock. Only Phoebe had failed to show. (The first knock on her door had elicited a faint groan of anguish, the second an outburst of swearing so savage Fitzmaurice had to catch his breath. ‘I think we'll leave her,' he told the others. ‘She's going to have a bit of a lie-in.')

Sir Crispin, who was engaged in discussions with the stable-master, had arrived at breakfast with a brisk and cheery demeanour starkly at odds with his appearance. His face was cadaver-white, his mouth a crimson gash, while behind the electric blue of his crackle-glazed eyeballs an erratic pulse thudded visibly. He was dressed as though for a day's grouse shooting, in a tight tweed jacket and yellowing jodhpurs, his feet shod in creaky walking boots.

‘Righty-ho,' he announced, rubbing his hands together. ‘We're all set. This is Bjarni, our guide.' A short, bearded Icelander in a bowler hat appraised the party with a sceptical eye. ‘His sons will follow behind with the equipment and the lunch hamper.'

The previous day Fitzmaurice and Crozier had ferried the Magiflex and a trunkful of Savage Newells from the
Dolphin
. The camera, the apparel they were not already wearing, and provisions for the trek were strapped to two of the sturdier ponies. After a brief tutorial on equestrian etiquette and a couple of minor mounting errors the party trotted out onto the lava plain. It was a clear spring day and the light was not sympathetic to their condition. Fitzmaurice was feeling particularly ill. Somehow he had been allocated one of the smaller ponies and, his long legs hanging low, every so often his toes would scuff on a rock, sending sparks along his spine and setting another firework off in his skull.

‘My God, I can't believe they made us drink so much,' he moaned.

‘They were just being hospitable,' Crozier said. ‘It was really very nice of them.'

‘That wasn't hospitality. It was attempted murder.'

‘No one forced you.'

‘Oh, I think they did.'

‘Please,' Rafferty called over his shoulder. ‘Please, you're making it worse. Why don't you just relax and enjoy the scenery? Look over there. Is that a volcano?'

The plain stretched away from them in all directions under a huge azure sky, the horizons bounded by oddly-shaped mountains gleaming with snow. The scrubby earth, rippled by aeons of subterranean turmoil, was punctuated by humps and spikes of malformed stone. Apart from the occasional bird whistle – Crozier quickly identified a whimbrel (
Numenius phaeopus
) and a snow bunting (
Plectrophenax nivalis
) — the landscape seemed empty of life, silent beyond the thump and skitter of the ponies' hooves (and the odd tormented appeal by Fitzmaurice to a higher power). The track they were on was primitive, little more than an expanded rabbit trail that kept them in single file for much of the way, but eventually they came to the foot of a high volcanic ridge and began, after some expressions of alarm, on a meandering path towards the summit.

Despite the increasingly sharp air, Crozier was perspiring freely beneath his Savage Newell ‘Frontiersman' cape, the droplets tickling as they rolled down his back. His head was pounding, his guts bubbled and griped, and his limbs were burning, partly from dehydration, partly from the exertions of the night before, but the malfunction preoccupying him most was visual. Over several miles he had become convinced of the impression that creatures of some sort were moving among the rocks. His immediate thought, at the first inky flicker, had been of a reptile, of the whiplash tail of a lizard scuttling for cover, but then he remembered where he was. When it happened again, he assumed rabbits, even though the character of the movement was not quite right. Perhaps some order of shy, flightless bird?

On the lower slopes of the ridge, the frequency increased but, as before, when he looked directly there was nothing; all was still. And yet, the margins teemed… Once, when he turned his head particularly quickly – the result of an involuntary muscle twitch – he was sure he'd caught the after-trace of a pair of eyes, intent and watchful among the boulders. A short time later he had the sensation of something trying to claw a purchase on his trouser leg and almost fell off his steed in a flailing panic.

He glanced back. Following up the rear, the sons, Bjorn and Bjenny, were oblivious. He maneouvred the water-flask from his pack, took a drink, and wondered whether it was possible that he had sustained permanent brain damage. Up ahead, Fitzmaurice seemed absorbed in the landscape, while Rafferty, further along, was singing, snatches of a plaintive melody floating back down the line. Sustenance and a little rest and the hallucinations would cease, Crozier told himself.

At last the gradient eased and they found themselves on the top of the ridge. The Icelandic interior lay before them: ice-floes, crevasses, miniature deserts, nunataks; the darkness of the lava fields as though a vast shadow was being cast from above. Mountains ranged into the distance on either side, their upper crags encased in dazzling ice. Below them, at the centre of a raised plateau, was a small lagoon that glowed an unearthly blue. Around it were several smaller pools from which spurted gouts of steam that drifted like the aftermath of cannon-fire. The travellers rested in their saddles for a while in silent wonderment until a faint rumbling from the plateau drew their attention. Sir Crispin consulted with Bjarni. ‘Down there,' he cried, pointing. ‘Something marvellous.'

As they watched, one of the pools began to fizz and bubble and the next moment a thick plume of seething water erupted some ninety feet into the air before collapsing to earth in an explosion of vapour. Tiny rainbows shone in the dispersing mist. A few seconds later it happened again.

Sir Crispin showed malacca-coloured teeth. ‘Well chaps? That's not something you see every day.'

Rafferty sighed. ‘I wish Phoebe could have been here.'

‘Yes,' Crozier agreed, ‘she would have liked that.'

‘Come on,' Sir Crispin said. ‘A nice hot dip before lunch.'

The descent was steep, the path slippery with scree and tortuously diverted here and there by huge boulders, some of which overhung precariously. At the bottom they made their way across a lunar landscape of sticky grey mud to the lagoon where they dismounted and the guide and his sons began to unload the packhorses.

‘Devil of a thing,' Fitzmaurice remarked to Crozier. ‘Had the strangest sensation along the way that something was trying to climb up my leg.'

Before Crozier could respond, a naked Sir Crispin, shockingly slabby and veinous, lumbered past them and plunged into the water, rolling around with great howls and yelps of pleasure. The Trinity men rummaged in the Savage Newell hamper for bathing costumes – heavy wool and shaped like short dungarees – and entered more cautiously, sniffing at the sulphurous fumes.

‘My God, it's hotter than the College baths,' Rafferty exclaimed. ‘You could poach a chicken in here.'

‘I think I just poached
something
,' Fitzmaurice said.

‘Oh, that's so good,' Crozier eased back and gazed at the sky. ‘I thought I was going to die earlier.'

‘Speaking of College, I wonder what's on the dining hall menu today,' Rafferty mused. ‘Is it lamb chops? I think it is. God, I could just eat one now. With mint sauce.'

‘It's Saturday. Dining hall's closed.'

‘No it's Friday, isn't it?'

‘Saturday. Definitely.'

‘
Feels
like a Friday.'

‘I miss College,' Rafferty said. ‘I miss the routine, I miss…'

Sir Crispin wallowed close by.

‘This water cures all ills apparently. Full of magic minerals,' he burbled. ‘If only I could find a way to extract them.'

The lagoon was alive with gentle, swarming currents that caressed and buffeted; its surface shimmered with yellowish vapour. Underfoot the floor was uneven and textured like fine sandpaper. Crozier had the impression, looking down through the ripples, that his legs were outlandishly long and thin. Bones without flesh.

‘I've been thinking about our giant,' he said.

‘What about him?' Rafferty was floating on his back with his eyes closed.

Refracted through the wavering water, Crozier's feet were a fathom down. He wiggled his toes and to his mild surprise they responded.

‘Well?'

‘What? Oh, yes. I was wondering, and of course this depends on if we can actually find the spot, whether we should be…'

‘Yes?'

‘Well, taking a dead man's bones, you know, without his permission.'

Rafferty laughed. Fitzmaurice smoothed his wet locks back with both hands.

‘First of all, we
will
find him. Secondly … a dead man's
permission?
'

‘You know what I mean. Isn't it tantamount to grave robbing?'

‘Not in the least. That only applies to… to hollowed ground. Doesn't it, Rafferty?'

‘Hallowed. Yes, I believe that's correct.'

Crozier said nothing.

‘More importantly,' Rafferty continued. ‘What are we going to do about Phoebe? We can't leave her here.'

‘I'm afraid we've no choice,' Fitzmaurice said, ‘McGregor won't let her back on the
Dolphin
.'

‘Rafferty's right, she must come with us.' Crozier kicked his feet, splashing water into the air. ‘She's part of the team now. Anyway, who's in charge of this expedition, you or McGregor?'

Fitzmaurice squinted up at the sky.

‘…Fitz?'

‘We'll see.'

The earth growled again and another column of scalding water blasted from the nearby geyser with a deafening hiss, showering them with hot rain. Sir Crispin surfaced beside them.

‘I don't know about you fellows, but I could eat a burnt monkey on a stick. Spot of lunch?'

On some lichen-coated rocks a safe distance from the spring, Bjarni and the boys had laid out beer and a brace of cold birds. Gradually, they felt their spirits revive. Even Sir Crispin regained some colour and began to look a little less insane around the eyes. When they had eaten and rested, Fitzmaurice fetched the Magiflex.

‘Right chaps, coats off and over to the pond,' he said, grappling with the tripod. ‘With any luck we'll have a geyser in the background as well. And remember to show off those muscles.'

As he began working his way through
figs. 1-7
, his companions discarded their outer layers and stood shivering and grumbling at the edge of the lagoon, the waterlogged gussets of their Savage Newells swinging low. Sir Crispin, having declared himself ‘a new man', was already bobbing around in the spring, his face blurring pinkly in the steam. Fitzmaurice inserted a plate and, pulling a picnic blanket over his head, twiddled the viewfinder until the scene came into nebulous definition.

‘Positions, gentlemen, please,' he called.

Crozier remained upright, pointing at the sky while Rafferty hunkered down, peering at the ground like a master tracker examining the spoor of some nameless quarry. From beneath his focusing cloth, Fitzmaurice became aware of a muffled rumbling and his pulse quickened. The geyser! He cocked the shutter
(fig.
193)
. In the viewfinder he noticed that both his subjects had turned and were staring at the mountainside.

‘No,' he shouted, ‘back the way you were. Wait for the geyser.'

He adjusted the depth of field
(fig. 196)
. He could hear raised voices and several sets of footsteps behind him. Now what? Damn. They were going to miss it. He leant forward, groping for the aperture dial
(fig
.197)
and knocked the lens off-centre. It was hot under the blanket and his face was moist. With effort he twisted the device back into position and began to refocus. There was a sound like a thunder-crack and a moment later he was brought to his knees by the weight of a deluge from above. The plain seethed all around and the camera was snatched away like driftwood.

He emerged, gasping, into the air and stared in bewilderment: Crozier and Rafferty lay on their backs on the mudflats; Bjarni and his boys were standing at the edge of the hot spring – or rather, where it had once been, for now it was more or less empty of water. In its place, and he noted in passing the changed profile of the mountainside, was an enormous boulder, ice-bound and monumental, under which, for evermore, lay the obliterated remains of Sir Crispin Pimm.

BOOK: The Voyage of the Dolphin
8.85Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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