Unseemly Science (3 page)

Nothing
sooth
e
s the troubled brow of a patriot quite
as
so
readily as
a colourful uniform
and
a prominent flag
.

From Revolution

The morning after Julia departed for Derby, two constables arrived on the wharf. The younger one was a spindly lad with a shaving rash. The older one carried a clip board. Both wore custodian helmets and jackets of midnight blue.

“You live on this boat?” the older one asked.

“It’s my brother you’ll want to speak to,” I said.

“And he is?”

“Away on business.”

“What’s his name then, this brother?” His set smile did not match the sharpness of his voice.

“Edwin Barnabus,” I said, feeling a shiver of fear brush my shoulders.

“You’re alone then?”

My interrogator turned to the lad. “Have a scout round. See what you can find.”

The boy was off like a dog after a rat – up the towpath, bending to look in through each of
Bessie
’s portholes. Then he jumped onto the crutch and before I could complain he’d ducked through the forward hatch and disappeared inside.

I would have leapt down into the galley to head him off. But the other one grabbed my wrist, wrenching me to a stop.

“The boy won’t take nothing,” he said. “We just got to make sure, that’s all. And while we’re about it, I’ll have your name too. Miss?”

“Elizabeth Barnabus,” I said, pulling my arm free of his grip. “What’s this about?”

I could hear the lad inside, opening doors and closing them. Moving things.

“It’s a list, is all,” said the constable, as he printed my name. “If you haven’t done nothing, it won’t disturb you.”

“I haven’t. We haven’t.”

“There you go then. And you’ll have to sign the register at Police House in Syston. It’s not just you. It’s all the immigrants.”

There was a crash inside the boat – the chair in my cabin falling, I thought. I shifted my weight, ready to rush back into the boat. The constable shook his head. His eyes tracked down to my waist. “It’s just signing a bit of paper,” he said. “Once a week. You and your brother will both have to do it.”

“Why?”

His only answer was a flicker of distaste. Then he was wearing his professional smile once more. The young constable clambered up the aft steps into the sunlight. “All clear,” he said. Then he hopped down to the towpath. There were muddy boot prints on the deck where he had been standing.

“Here you go then,” said the older one, peeling two carbon copies from the clip board.

I looked from sheet to sheet. The name Elizabeth Barnabus had been printed on one and Edwin Barnabus on the other. Reading the details of the appointments, I tried to swallow but found I could not.

“Can’t this be changed?”

“It’s the law, miss.” He pushed back his helmet and scratched at his hairline with the blunt end of the pencil.

“But we can’t... come at the same time.”

“Everyone thinks they’re special,” he said.

The young constable sniggered. They turned to go. My mind whirled with a chaos of possibilities.

“It’s in our contract,” I blurted, stopping them. “Our contract with the wharf keeper. Someone must look after the boat. At all times.”

“Contract,” he said, as if the word had gone off.

I found myself holding my breath.

“Law is law, I suppose,” he said at last, pulling the papers from my hand. “Can’t force you to break a contract. What time would suit?”

From the day that I bought her as a derelict hulk,
Bessie
had been a passive thing. Her only movement, a tilt as I stepped from one side of the cabin to the other or when the wind made her pull at the mooring ropes. I loved her that way. The limitation was part of her charm.

But in her working life men and women had stood by the canal side just to see her churning past. Julia’s father and Mr Simmonds, the wharf keeper, being enthusiasts for mechanical things, had expressed an interest. They came to inspect her one day and leaned their shoulders against a paddle wheel, turning it to expose the corroded portion from below the waterline. It wasn’t too bad, they said. And the engine must have been left well greased, for it all felt smooth. She might be mended. To me it had felt like an insult.

On my knees, working from the galley towards the cabins, wiping away the young constable’s muddy footprints, I found myself wishing for the first time that the engine was not frozen with rust. If only I could fire up the boiler, let steam to the pistons and hear the paddle wheels slapping the water on either side of the boat.

I righted the stool in my cabin. Refolded my linen. Found grubby fingerprints on a pair of cotton bloomers.

If the extradition treaty was signed, they would know exactly where to find me. I did not believe that Yan Romero could help, even if I had the money to pay him.

As for Mrs Raike – I had to find a way to tell Julia that the woman was not what she seemed. If indeed she was a woman at all. There had been a disguise, sure enough, plastered so thick that no sweat showed through. As for her covering the neck – that is what any performer must do who wishes to pass for the opposite sex.

If Mrs Raike wanted Julia and the siblings Barnabus to help the ice farmers of Derbyshire, she would be waiting a long time.

My brother’s appointment was for six o’clock. But having heard that the Police House remained open into the evening and not wishing to expose my disguise to full daylight, I waited until half past the hour before pulling the curtains across my cabin porthole and exchanging corset for binding cloth.

By the time I stepped out of the boat, the sky above the horizon had paled to duck-egg blue. Mrs Simmonds waved from the top of the embankment, trying to attract my attention. A conversation with the wharf keeper’s wife being never less than an inquisition, I pretended not to notice and launched myself away from the quayside, planting my heels in the towpath and mud.

“Oh, Mr Barnabus…”

Her call was distant enough to ignore.

As I walked, I hummed. A continuous mid-pitch note, lowering it by stages until I could feel that familiar tickle at the base of my throat. There is an art to speaking like a man. And also a discipline. The tissue that vibrates to achieve it lies a fraction below the voice box. When I was a child, my father had told me that nature did not intend it for this use. Thus, I must hone the skill. The first time I achieved it, I coughed until I retched. It had felt as if a bee was buzzing inside me. But each time after that, I could do it for longer. At the age of
twenty,
I merely needed to go through the warm- up routine. The voice was never perfect. But it could pass.

The land was dark by the time I reached the bridge, but the canal still reflected the last light from the sky. I climbed the first step then froze. It seemed there had been a footstep behind me. I had found myself imagining the sounds of someone following several times of late but I had put it down to a growing paranoia. But this time it seemed real. I turned slowly but could see no one behind me. A loud splash made me start, but it was only a bird landing in the water. Ripples spread from the deep shadow under the far bank.

Without the blue lamp on the wall, Syston’s Police House would have looked the same as any other building in the row. I let the knocker drop three times and stood back to wait. Presently there was a scuffing sound and the report of the bolt being drawn. The door opened, splashing the yellow light of a gas lamp onto the road.

“We’re closed,” said a man silhouetted in the hallway. Regulation police braces dangled on either side of him.

“I was told to come and register,” I said, satisfied that the pitch of my voice sounded true.

He pulled spectacles from his trouser pocket and held them up to peer through. “Are you one of them?”

“Edwin Barnabus,” I said, taken aback by his corrosive tone. It seemed my place of birth was pushing me beyond the pale of Republican civility.

He gave a cursory glance at my proffered hand, then turned on a heel. “You’re late,” he said, as I followed him inside.

We entered the room, which should have been a front parlour had it been an ordinary house. But instead of domestic furniture it had been fitted out as a waiting room. Wooden benches ran along two walls. A high counter occupied the opposite corner, seeming like a pulpit. It was behind this that the constable stationed himself. He snapped his braces over his shoulders, opened a ledger and started to write. I made to step forwards but he waved me away. Feeling a growing disquiet, I stared at the scuff marks on the wooden board that fronted the counter.

“Right,” he said. “Reason for the lateness?”

“My watch stopped.”

I saw him transcribe the lie into his ledger.

“Papers?”

This time he did not object when I stepped forwards. I placed Edwin Barnabus’ forged identification documents on the counter, together with the carbon copy I had been given earlier. The constable read each sheet, taking his time, occasionally writing.

Then, without a word of explanation, he came out from behind the counter and disappeared through the door. I could hear the opening and closing of drawers. When he returned he was carrying a folded paper.

“You’re to come back in two weeks and sign the register. And every two weeks after.”

“What if I’m sick?”

He was behind the counter again, leafing through the ledger for no apparent reason, avoiding eye contact. “A note from your physician. Don’t leave it more than a week or you’ll be arrested. And you’ll need to put this in a window of your house. Facing the street.”

He pushed the folded paper across the counter top.

“I live in a boat,” I said.

“You have windows on your boat?”

“Portholes.”

“There you go, then. But make sure it can be seen.”

I opened out the paper. It was a roughly printed black crown on a red background – a crude representation of the flag of the Kingdom of England and Southern Wales.

“It’s so we know who’s a Royalist,” he said. “In case there’s trouble.”

Each
takes meaning from what he sees. But
no two will be found to have seen the same
.

The Bullet Catcher’s Handbook

I awoke already sitting up, my fists bunching the cotton of my nightgown above my breasts. There was a vague sense of something loud snagging in the last moments of my dream. Then I heard running feet and an urgent whisper outside the boat.

My father’s pistol was too well hidden to lay hands on in a rush. Leaping from the bunk, I snatched a shawl and slipped down the gangway to grab the sharpest knife from the galley.

Holding my breath, I listened. The only sound was blood rushing in my ears. Pulling the curtain an inch I peered through the porthole. Two figures stood a few yards away, leaning together. One whispered with a cupped hand to the other’s ear. Then they stood straight and I recognised them as my neighbours, the coal boatman and his eldest son.

Sliding the bolt on the hatch, I climbed a step and peered out.

“Miss Barnabus?” whispered the coal boatman.

Gathering the shawl closer around me, I stepped up onto the aft deck. “What’s happening?”

“Thieves, Miss.”

“Almost had them,” said his son.

“How many?”

They looked at each other. “Could have been two,” said the coal boatman. “Three maybe?”

“We heard them though,” said his son.

“Knocked a painted jug from off the roof.”

I felt the muscles of my arms loosening. My heart began to slow. “What did they take?”

“We scared them off before they had a chance.”

“You don’t think it could have been an animal?” I asked.

The men looked at each other. In the gloom I couldn’t make out their expressions. But there was uncertainty in the way they stood. I relaxed some more. The thought of the two of them blundering around in the dark might have been comic. But the misadventures of vigilante groups often caused tragedy. I silently thanked providence the coal boatman didn’t own a gun.

“They’ve taken stuff before,” said the son. “The thieves I mean.”

“What sort of stuff?”

“There was a quarter loaf of bread on Sunday.”

“And two good rashers of bacon gone last week,” added the father, though with less certainty. Perhaps he had needed to hear himself say it to realise how it would sound. The bacon thief who knocked over a jug then doubtless found a warm spot to lie in, licking the grease from its paws.

The silence became awkward.

“I could ask my brother to look into it,” I suggested, trying to help them save face.

“That would be grand.” The coal boatman seemed genuinely relieved. “He could come now. A fresh trail better than a cold one.”

“He’s out. I’m sorry.”

“Ah yes. His work, I suppose.”

The two men looked at each other.

“In any case,” I said, “the thieves’ll be long gone now. They’ll not trouble you again tonight, for sure.”

“Right you are.” The coal boatman lifted a hand, as if to touch his cap, though he must have rushed from his bed, for he had forgotten to put one on. “I’ll say goodnight, then.”

They started walking back towards their boat, but the son broke step and turned. “The bacon was locked in the pie-safe,” he said. “Tell your brother that.”

To be lonely is a sorrow. And worse when the world believes you have a brother for company. Such was the necessity of my double life. But until recently, I had Julia to confide in. Now we had been separated by distance and by the argument that had tainted our parting.

I opened the stove door, still warm from the evening. With a spill of twisted paper in one hand I blew on the coals brightening them from grey to orange. First there was a thread of smoke, then flame on the tip of the spill. From that I lit the candle lantern.

Soon fresh sticks were crackling. Though it was a luxury I couldn’t afford, I put two shining lumps of anthracite among the flames. There was no milk or sugar on the boat. But even a cup of black tea can warm the hands.

I had not been sleeping well. The visitation of the constables and the hanging of Florence May had somehow become tangled in my mind. Bad dreams woke me more often than sunshine.

The crude Kingdom flag was now gummed in place in
Bessie
’s porthole window. No one on the wharf had mentioned it. But I’d detected a coolness from some of my neighbours. And weekend tourists whispered to each other as they passed. One family even shifted to the other side of the towpath.

In the daytime I could banish such thoughts and turn my mind to matters that needed attention. But at night it was not so easy. Seeking distraction, I fetched pen, ink and paper from my cabin and placed them on the galley table next to the lantern.

Dear Julia. By now you will have arrived in Derby and I do hope sincerely that you are settling. I am imagining you meeting a string of eligible lawyers in the days to come. It is only a fancy, but the thought of you crossing them off a list one by one is making me smile. For I do not think you will find any to compare to your friend in London.

Here, things continue as always. The coal boatman believes all manner of brigands abroad on the wharf at night and has begged for my brother’s help in detecting them. But I think a saucer of milk
i
s more likely to catch this burglar than any
search for clues
!

I am longing to hear of your adventures. Please write when you have time.

Your friend, Elizabeth