15

Letters

When Lyra and Giorgio Brabandt arrived at the gyptians’ township in the Fens, the great gathering of boats and maze of landing places and paths around the Byanzaal, it was mid-morning, and she was nervously aware that other people might not be as tolerant of her dæmonless state as Brabandt had been.

‘No need to be anxious,’ he’d said. ‘There’s witches visit us from time to time these days, after that great fight in the north. We know their ways. You’ll just look like one o’ them.’

‘I suppose I could try,’ she said. ‘Where’s Farder Coram’s boat, do you know?’

‘Along the Ringland branch, down that way. But you better call on young Orlando Faa first, out of politeness.’

‘Young’ Orlando was in his fifties, at least. He was the son of the great John Faa, who had led the expedition to the north all that time ago. He was smaller than his father, but he had something of the old man’s massiveness of nature, and he greeted Lyra solemnly.

‘I heard many tales about you, Lyra,’ said the gyptian leader. ‘My old dad was full of ’em. That voyage and the battle when you rescued the little kids – I wished I’d been there every time I heard it.’

‘It was all thanks to the gyptians,’ Lyra said. ‘Lord Faa was a great leader. And a great fighter.’

His eyes moved around her where she sat at his council table. He couldn’t disguise what he was looking for. ‘You’re in trouble, lady,’ he said gently.

She was moved by his courtesy in using that term, and found her throat too tight to speak for a moment. She nodded and swallowed hard. ‘That’s why I need to see Farder Coram,’ she managed to say.

‘Old Coram’s a bit frail now,’ said Faa. ‘He dun’t go nowhere, but he hears everything and he knows everything.’

‘I didn’t know where else to go.’

‘No. Well, you stop here with us till you’re ready to go on, and welcome. I know Ma Costa’ll be glad to see you.’

She was. Lyra went to her next, and the boat-mother enfolded Lyra in a warm embrace without a moment’s hesitation, and hugged her close in the sunshine-flooded galley, rocking them both back and forth.

‘What you been doing to yourself?’ she said when she finally let go.

‘He … Pan … I don’t know. He was unhappy. We both were. And he just left.’

‘I never heard of such a thing. You poor gal.’

‘I’ll tell you about it, I promise. But I must go and see Farder Coram first.’

‘You seen young Orlando Faa?’

‘He was the first person I called on. I just arrived this morning, with Giorgio Brabandt.’

‘Old Giorgio? Well, he’s a rascal, and no mistake. I want to hear all about it, don’t forget. But what’s been happening to you? I never seen anyone look so lost, gal. Where are you going to stay?’

That silenced Lyra. For the first time, she realised that she hadn’t thought about that for a moment.

Ma Costa saw that, and went on, ‘Well, you’re going to stay here with me, goose. Did you think I’d let you sleep on the bank?’

‘Will I be in the way?’

‘You’re not fat enough to be in the way. Get along with you.’

‘Ma Costa, I don’t know if you remember, but you once said – all that time ago – you said I had witch-oil in my soul. What did that mean?’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea, gal. But it looks as though I was right.’ She looked sombre as she said that. Then she opened a cupboard and took out a small biscuit tin. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘when you see Farder Coram, give him these. I made ’em yesterday. He loves a ginger biscuit.’

‘I will. Thank you.’

Lyra kissed her and left to find the Ringland branch. That was a narrower canal than the rest, with several boats moored permanently on the southern bank. The people she passed looked at her curiously, but without hostility, she thought; she carried herself modestly and kept her eyes down, trying to think like Will, trying to be invisible.

It seemed that Farder Coram had a place of high honour among his people, because the path to his mooring was carefully tended and banked with stone, and the verge planted with marigolds and bordered by poplars. The trees were leafless now, but in the summer they’d cast a welcome shade over this stretch of water.

And there was Coram’s boat, neat and trim and brightly painted, everything about her looking fresh and lively. Lyra knocked on the cabin roof and stepped down into the cockpit, and peered in through the window in the cabin door. Her old friend was dozing in a rocking chair with a rug over his knees, his dæmon keeping his feet warm, the great autumn-coloured cat Sophonax.

Lyra knocked on the glass, and Coram blinked and woke up, and shaded his eyes to look at the door. Then he recognised her and beckoned her inside, with a great smile on his old face.

‘Lyra, child! What am I saying? You en’t no child, you’re a young lady. Welcome, Lyra – but what’s happened to you? Where’s Pantalaimon?

‘He left me. Just one morning, only a few days ago. I woke up and he was gone.’

Her voice trembled, and then her heart overflowed, and she sobbed and wept as never before. She fell to her knees next to his chair, and he leaned out to embrace her. He stroked her hair and held her gently as she clung to him and sobbed against his chest. It was like a dam breaking; it was like a flood.

He murmured soft words, and Sophonax jumped up on to his lap to be close to her, purring in sympathy.

Finally the storm subsided. There were no tears left to weep, and Lyra drew away as the old man loosened his embrace. She mopped her eyes, and stood up unsteadily.

‘Now you sit down here and tell me all about everything,’ he said.

Lyra bent down to kiss him. He smelled of honey. ‘Ma Costa gave me these ginger biscuits for you,’ she said. ‘Farder Coram, I wish I’d thought ahead and brought you a proper present – it seems rude to call on you empty-handed … I did find some smokeleaf, though. That’s all they had in the post office where we last stopped, me and Master Brabandt. I think I remembered it right, the kind you smoked.’

‘That’s it, Old Ludgate, that’s the sort I like. Thank’ee! So you come here on the Maid of Portugal, did you?’

‘That’s right. Oh, Farder Coram, it’s been far too long! It seems like a lifetime ago …’

‘Seems like yesterday. Seems like the blink of an eye. But before you start, put the kettle on, gal,’ he said. ‘I’d do it meself but I know me limitations.’

She made some coffee, and when it was ready she put his mug on the little table at his right side and sat down on the settle opposite his rocking chair.

She told him much of what had happened since they had last seen each other. She told him about the murder by the river, and about Malcolm, and how she’d learned about her own past, and about how she now felt lost and almost helpless.

Coram listened to Lyra’s story without speaking till she’d come to the present moment and her arrival among the gyptians.

‘Young Orlando Faa,’ he said. ‘He never come to the north with us, because he had to stay in case John never come back. He always regretted that. Well, he’s a fine lad. Fine enough. His father John – well, he was a great man. Simple and true and strong as a beam of oak. A great man. I don’t think they make ’em like him any more, but Orlando’s a fine lad, no doubt about it. But times have changed, Lyra. Things as used to be safe en’t safe no longer.’

‘It does feel like that.’

‘But young Malcolm, now. Did he tell you how he lent Lord Asriel his canoe?’

‘He said something about it, but I … I was so shaken up by other things that I didn’t really take it in.’

‘Staunch, Malcolm is. When he was a boy he was just the same. Generous – didn’t hesitate to give Lord Asriel his canoe, never knowing if he’d ever see her again. So when Asriel charged me with taking her back, he gave me some money to see her made over – did Malcolm tell you that?’

‘No. There’s a lot we just haven’t had time to talk about.’

‘Yes, she was a trim little vessel, the Bell Savage. She needed to be. I remember that flood well enough, and how it brung things to light that’d been hid for centuries. Maybe longer.’

Coram was talking as if he’d known Malcolm more recently than the flood, and Lyra wanted to ask him about that; but she shrank from it, as if it would give too much away. She felt uncertain about so much.

So she said, ‘D’you know the phrase “the secret commonwealth”?’

‘Where’d you hear that from?’

‘From Master Brabandt. He was telling me about the will o’ the wykeses, things like that.’

‘Yes, the secret commonwealth … You don’t hear much talk about that these days. When I was young there wasn’t a single bush, not a single flower nor a stone, that didn’t have its own proper spirit. You had to have a mind to your manners around them, to ask for pardon, or for permission, or give thanks … Just to acknowledge that they were there, them spirits, and they had their proper rights to recognition and courtesy.’

‘Malcolm told me that a fairy caught me and nearly kept me, except that he tricked her into giving me back.’

‘That’s just the sort of thing they do. They en’t bad nor wicked, not really, nor partic’ly good neither. They’re just there, and they deserve good manners.’

‘Farder Coram, did you ever hear of a city that’s called the Blue Hotel that’s empty and ruined except that dæmons live there?’

‘What, people’s dæmons? Without their folk?’

‘Yes.’

‘No. I never heard of that. Is that where you think Pan’s gone to?’

‘I don’t know what to think, but it could be. Did you ever know anyone who could separate from their dæmon? Except for witches, of course.’

‘Yes, the witches could do it all right. Like my Serafina.’

‘But anyone else? Did you know any gyptians who could separate?’

‘Well, there was a man—’

Before he could say more the boat rocked as if someone had come aboard, and then came a knock. Lyra looked up to see a girl of about fourteen balancing a tray on one arm and opening the door with the other, and hastened to help her step down.

‘All right, Farder Coram?’ the girl said. She was looking at Lyra warily.

‘This is my great-niece Rosella,’ said Coram. ‘Rosella, this is Lyra Silvertongue. You heard me speak about her many a time.’

Rosella put the tray on Farder Coram’s lap, and shook hands timidly. Her manner was both shy and curious. She was very pretty. Her dæmon was a hare, and he was hiding behind her legs.

‘This is Farder Coram’s dinner,’ she said. ‘But I brung some for you an’ all, miss. Ma Costa said you’d be hungry.’

On the tray was some fresh bread and butter and pickled herring, and a bottle of beer and two glasses.

‘Thank you,’ said Lyra, and Rosella smiled and left. When she’d gone, Lyra said, ‘You were going to tell me about a man who could separate …’

‘So I was. That was in Muscovy. He’d been to Siberia, to the place the witches go, and done what they did. It nearly killed him, he said. He was the lover of a witch, and he thought that if he could separate like them, he’d live as long as they did. Only it didn’t work. His witch didn’t think no more of him for doing it, and he died soon after in any case. He was the only man I knew who could do that, or wanted to. Why d’you ask about that, Lyra?’

She told him about the diary in the rucksack of the man who’d been killed by the river. Coram listened without moving, his fork still holding a piece of pickled herring.

‘Does Malcolm know about that?’ he said when she’d finished.

‘Yes.’

‘Did he say anything to you about Oakley Street?’

‘Oakley Street? Where’s that?’

‘It en’t a place, it’s a thing. He never mentioned it? Neither him nor Hannah Relf?’

‘No. Maybe they would have done if I hadn’t left so suddenly … I don’t know. I know so little, Farder Coram. What is Oakley Street?’

The old man put his fork down and took a sip of beer. ‘Twenty years ago,’ he said, ‘I took a bit of a risk, and I told young Malcolm to say the words “Oakley Street” to Hannah Relf, so as to reassure her that any connection he had with me was safe. I hoped she’d tell him what it was, and she did, and if he never spoke about it, that’s because you can trust him. Oakley Street’s the name of a department of the secret service, you might say. That’s not its real name, it’s just a sort of code for it, because the headquarters en’t nowhere near Oakley Street itself, which is in Chelsea. It was set up, the department I mean, in King Richard’s time, the king being staunch agin the Magisterium, which was threatening on all sides. It was always an independent body, Oakley Street, under the Cabinet Office, not the War Ministry. It had the full backing of the King and the Private Council, and funds from the Gold Reserves, and it answered to a proper committee of Parliament. But when King Edward come in, the tone of politics, you might say, begun to change a bit, to swing around with the wind. There was ambassadors and what do they call ’em, high commissioners, legates, exchanged between London and Geneva.

‘That’s when the CCD got their foothold in this country. It all changed then to what we got now – a government what dun’t trust the people, and a people that’s afraid of the government, each side spying on the other. The CCD faction can’t arrest as many people as hate it, and the people en’t got the organisation to move agin the CCD. Sort of a stalemate. But it’s worse’n that. The other side’s got an energy that our side en’t got. Comes from their certainty about being right. If you got that certainty, you’ll be willing to do anything to bring about the end you want. It’s the oldest human problem, Lyra, an’ it’s the difference between good and evil. Evil can be unscrupulous, and good can’t. Evil has nothing to stop it doing what it wants, while good has one hand tied behind its back. To do the things it needs to do to win, it’d have to become evil to do ’em.’

‘But …’ Lyra wanted to object to that, but didn’t know where to start. ‘But what about when the gyptians and the witches and Mr Scoresby and Iorek Byrnison destroyed Bolvangar? Wasn’t that an example of good beating evil?’

‘Yes, it was. A small victory – all right, a big victory, thinking of all them kids we rescued and took back home. That was a big victory. But not a final one. The CCD is stronger than ever; the Magisterium is full of vigour; and little agencies like Oakley Street are starved of funds and run by old people whose best days are long behind ’em.’

He sipped the last of his beer.

‘But what d’you want to do, Lyra?’ he went on. ‘What’ve you got in mind?’

‘I didn’t know until I had a dream. Not long ago. I dreamed I was playing with a dæmon, and she wasn’t mine, but we loved each other so much … Sorry.’ She had to swallow hard and brush her eyes. ‘I knew what I had to do when I woke up. I had to go to the desert of Karamakan and go into a building there because I might find that dæmon again and … I don’t know why. But I have to find Pan first, because you can’t go in without a dæmon and …’

She was losing the thread of her own story, not least because she had hardly expressed it to herself before she began to explain it to Farder Coram. And now she could see he was getting tired.

‘I’d better go,’ she said.

‘Yes, I can’t stay awake all day like I used to. Come back this evening and I’ll be refreshed, and I’ll have a couple of ideas for you.’

She kissed him again and carried the tray back to Ma Costa’s boat.

Ma Costa didn’t travel much these days; the family had a mooring near the Byanzaal and, as she said to Lyra, it was likely to be her last. She was happy cultivating vegetables and a few flowers on the patch of ground next to the mooring, and happy, she said, to give Lyra a bunk for as long as she needed to stay. She could cook, if she liked.

‘Old Giorgio told me you en’t a bad cook,’ Ma had said. ‘Except for stewed eels, that is.’

‘What was wrong with my stewed eels?’ said Lyra, a little indignant. ‘He never told me there was anything wrong with them.’

‘Well, you watch me next time I cook ’em, and learn. Mind you, it takes a lifetime to know how to do ’em proper.’

‘What’s the secret?’

‘You gotta cut them on the diagonal. You wun’t think it made any difference, but it does.’

She went out with her basket. Lyra went to sit on the cabin roof and watched the boat-mother make her way along the bank towards the great Byanzaal with its thatched roof and the marketplace beside it. The canopies of the market stalls were of many colours, the brightest things by far in the grey landscape where the horizon had to be guessed at in the fading wintry light.

But even if I passed a lifetime here and learned to stew eels properly, this isn’t my home and it never will be, she thought. I found that out long ago.

It was deeply tiring, not knowing how long she’d be here, or how she’d know it was safe to leave, and knowing only that she didn’t belong. She stood up wearily, thinking that she might go below and close her eyes; but before she could move, a small boat came along the canal, punted by a boy of about fourteen whose duck-dæmon paddled busily beside it. He was moving the boat with skill and power, and as soon as he saw Lyra he let the punt-pole drag in the water to slow down, and swung it left to bring himself in next to the Costas’ boat. The duck-dæmon flapped her wings and hopped aboard.

‘You Miss Silvertongue?’ the boy called up.

‘Yes,’ she said.

He fumbled in the breast of his water-green jacket. ‘Got a letter for you,’ he said, and handed it up.

‘Thanks.’

She took it and turned it over to read the address: ‘Miss L. Silvertongue, c/o Coram van Texel’ and Coram or someone had crossed out his name and written in ‘Mme Costa, Persian Queen’. The envelope was made of heavy, expensive paper, and the address was typed.

She realised that the boy was waiting. Then she realised what he was waiting for, and gave him a small coin.

‘Toss you for double or quits,’ he said.

‘Too late now,’ she said. ‘I’ve got the letter.’

‘Worth a try,’ he said, and dropped it in his pocket before speeding away, moving his punt so fast it actually had a bow wave.

The envelope was too beautiful to tear, so she went below and slit it open with a kitchen knife. She sat at the galley table to read the letter.

The paper was headed Durham College, Oxford, but the printed address was crossed out. She didn’t know what that could mean, but the letter was signed Malcolm P. She was curious to see his handwriting, and glad to find that it was graceful, strong, and legible. He’d written with a fountain pen in blue-black ink.

Dear Lyra,

I heard from Dick Orchard about your predicament, and where you’ve gone. You couldn’t do better than take refuge in the Fens, and Coram van Texel is the best person to advise you about what to do next. Ask him about Oakley Street. Hannah and I were going to tell you about it, but circumstances have overtaken us.

Bill the porter at Jordan tells me that the gossip in the college is that you were arrested by the CCD, and that you’ve vanished into the prison system. The servants are furious about this, and blame the Master. There’s talk of a strike, which would be a Jordan College first, though since that wouldn’t bring you back I don’t think it will happen; but the Master will find his relations with the staff more than a little strained.

In the meantime, the best thing you can do is learn as much as you can about every aspect of Oakley Street matters that old Coram van Texel can teach you. We’ve only just begun to talk about important things, you and I, but I sense that you know through the alethiometer perhaps, and maybe from other experiences as well, that there are more ways than one, more than two, of seeing things and perceiving their meanings.

What’s so important about the Central Asian connection that came with the death of poor Roderick Hassall is that it seems to turn on this very point.

Give my greetings to Coram, and tell him what you need to about Hassall, and about Karamakan. That’s where I shall be going next.

Finally, please forgive the slightly pompous tone of this letter. I know I give that impression, and I wish I didn’t.

Hannah is writing to you too, and she’d love to hear how you are. A letter in gyptian hands will make its way safely and quickly to its destination, but I have no idea how.

With warm friendship,

Malcolm P.

She read it quickly, and then again slowly. She blushed at his remark about pomposity, because she had thought that – in the time before, that is to say, not since the murder by the river. The Malcolm she was getting to know now wasn’t pompous in the least.

Ma Costa was out at the market, so Lyra had the Persian Queen to herself. She tore a page from her notebook and started to write.

Dear Malcolm,

Thank you for your letter. I’m safe here for the moment, but

She stopped. She had no idea what to say next, or how to talk to him at all, in fact. She stood up, went out to the stern, looked around, ran her hands along the tiller, breathed the chilly air deeply into her lungs, and went in again.

She continued:

I know I’ll have to move on soon. I must find Pan. I’m going to follow every clue, no matter how absurd or unlikely. Like Dr Strauss’s diary when he heard about the place called the Blue Hotel. A sort of refuge, I suppose. I’ve decided to head for that and see what happens. I must find him because unless

She stopped, having crossed that out, and rested her head on her clenched fist. This was like talking into a void. After a minute she picked up the pen again.

If I find him there, we’ll go on to Karamakan and try and cross the desert and find that red building. The thing is that when I first read about it in Dr Strauss’s account I thought about it a lot and it affected me like one of those dreams that stay with you for hours after you wake up. It was familiar, but I had no idea why. I think I know something about it, but it’s lost and I can’t reach it. I probably need to dream about it again.

Maybe I’ll see you there.

If I don’t come back, I just want to say thank you for taking care of me in the flood when I was a baby. I wish memories went further back in our lives than they do so that I could recall all of it, because the only thing I remember is little trees with lights in them and being very happy. But of course that might have been a dream too. I wish I hope one day we’ll be able to talk and I can explain all the things that led up to me coming here. I don’t understand it all myself. But Pan thought something had stolen my imagination. That’s why he left, to go and look for it. Maybe you could understand what he meant by that and why it was almost too hard to bear.

Malcolm, please give my love to Hannah and to Alice. And remember me to Dick Orchard. Oh, and to your parents. I’ve known them for such a little time but I liked them so much. It would be

She crossed out those three words and wrote instead:

I wish

before crossing that out too. Finally she wrote:

I’m very glad we made friends.

Yours,

Lyra

Before she could regret writing it, she sealed it in an envelope she found in a galley drawer and addressed it to Dr Malcolm Polstead, Durham College, Oxford. She left it propped against the salt-pot, and went out again.

She was restless. There was nothing to settle to, nothing purposeful to do; she was tired, and yet she couldn’t keep still. She wandered along the canal banks, aware of the curious stares of the boat-people and the particular way the young men were looking at her. The canals and the Byanplaats were as busy as ever, and soon she became uncomfortable with the sense that so many eyes were on her. Those young men: if Pan had been with her, she’d have been able to stare them back just as boldly, as she’d done a hundred times in the past, or, even better, ignore them completely. She knew that they were less self-assured than they looked, and that she could disconcert them in several ways, but knowing that she could do it wasn’t the same as being able to do it just then. She was nervous of everything, and it was horrible. She wanted to hide.

Defeated, she turned back to the Persian Queen and lay down on her bunk. Quite soon she was asleep.

Pantalaimon, meanwhile, was sleeping too, but intermittently; he would wake up suddenly and remember where he was, and then lie listening to the thudding of the engine and the groaning and creaking of the old schooner’s timbers, and the splash of the waves only inches away through the hull, before sinking again into a shallow slumber.

He woke up out of a dream to hear a scratchy kind of whisper close by, and knew at once that it was the voice of a ghost. He closed his eyes tighter and pulled himself even further into the darkness of the hold, but the whispers went on. It wasn’t one, it was several, and they wanted something from him, but they couldn’t say it clearly.

‘I’m just dreaming,’ he whispered. ‘Go away, go away.’

The ghosts pressed around him closely, their voices hissing and scratching under the restless dash of the waves.

‘Don’t come so near,’ he said. ‘Get back.’

Then he realised that they weren’t threatening: they were desperate for the little warmth they could feel from his body. He felt an oceanic pity for these poor chilly phantoms, and tried to peer through his closed eyelids to see their faces clearly; but there was nothing clear about them. The sea had worn them smooth and vague. He still didn’t know if he was awake or asleep.

Then he heard the sound of a bolt being slid open. Every pale blank ghost-face looked up at once, and then, as a beam of anbaric light stabbed down into the murk, they all vanished as if they’d never been. Pan crouched deeper into the shadows and held his breath. Now he was awake; there was no doubt about that; he had to open his eyes.

There was a ladder, and a man was clambering down it – two men. Rain came pelting in with them, splashing and streaming off their oilskins and sou’westers. The first man held a torch, and the second man reached up and swung the hatch cover closed above them. One of the men was the sailor he’d seen the night before watching from the rail while the captain and the mate stole the propeller.

The first man hung the torch on a nail. The battery was running low, so the light was dim and inconstant, but Pan could see the two of them turning over the boxes and sacks that had been tossed carelessly down into the hold. Most of the boxes seemed to be empty, but then they came across one that clinked with the sound of bottles.

‘Ah,’ said the first man, and tore off the cardboard lid. ‘Oh shit, look at this. Typical.’ He held up a bottle of tomato ketchup.

‘Here’s some spuds,’ said the other man, opening a sack. ‘He can make us some chips, at least. I don’t know, though …’ The potatoes he was taking out had all grown lengthy pallid shoots, and some of them were rotten.

‘They’ll do,’ said the first man. ‘Fry ’em in diesel and you’ll never taste the difference. And here’s some sauerkraut, look. And some tinned wurst. A feast, mate.’

‘Don’t go back up yet, though,’ said the other. ‘Let ’em wait. Stay out the rain and have a smoke.’

‘Good idea,’ said the first man, and they piled a couple of flour sacks against the bulkhead, settled down on them and dragged out their pipes and smokeleaf. Their dæmons, a rat and a sparrow, came out of the necks of their oilskins and grubbed around by their feet looking for scraps of anything tasty.

‘What’s the old man going to do with that bloody propeller?’ said one of the men when he’d got his pipe alight. ‘As soon as the harbour master spots it he’ll call the cops.’

‘Who is the harbour master at Cuxhaven?’

‘Old Hessenmüller. Nosy swine.’

‘Flint’ll probably try and offload it on Borkum first. That breaker’s yard across from the lighthouse.’

‘What kind of cargo does he think we’ll pick up in Cuxhaven anyway?’

‘Not cargo. Passengers.’

‘Piss off! Who’d pay to sail on this filthy old wreck?’

‘I heard him talking, him and Herman. These are a special sort of passengers.’

‘What’s special about them?’

‘They en’t got no passports, no papers, nothing like that.’

‘Money? They got any money?’

‘No, they en’t got that either.’

‘Then what’s in it for the old man?’

‘He’s got a deal with some big farmer in Essex. There’s more and more people coming up the rivers from the south, I don’t know, Turkey or somewhere. There’s no work for ’em in Germany, but this farmer reckons he likes the idea of a bunch of workers he doesn’t have to pay. Well, I suppose he has to feed ’em and give ’em somewhere to sleep, but no wages, sod that for a lark. Slaves, basically. They won’t be able to get away because if they en’t got papers …’

‘We’re running slaves now?’

‘I don’t like it either. But whatever happens he’ll do all right, Hans Flint. He always does.’

‘Mad bow-legged bastard.’

They smoked in silence for a few minutes more, and then the first man knocked out his pipe and stamped the ashes deep into the bilge-water slopping to and fro.

‘Come on,’ he said, ‘get some spuds and I’ll see if I can find some beer. If there’s any left.’

‘Tell you what,’ said the other, ‘I’m sick of this. Soon as I get me pay I’m going to scarper.’

‘Don’t blame yer. Course, Flint’ll hold out till he’s sold the propeller, and then till he’s got his fee from the farmer, and he’ll go on holding out time and time again. Remember old Gustav? He scarpered in the end without the pay he was owed. Just gave up and buggered off.’

He shoved the hatch cover up, and the two of them climbed out into the rain, leaving Pan in the dark and the cold and the solitude. Even the ghosts left him alone; perhaps they were dreams after all.