Book 1 : 662 L.C.

13 January 662 (Unless I’ve lost count somewhere.)

I’m alive. I don’t know whether any of my shipmates are alive or not, but I’m alive. I don’t know where I am, or whether I can survive, but I’m beginning to think I’ve got a chance. Is there anything to eat other than shellfish and seaweed? It would be good to be able to cook some of this stuff, too. Raw shellfish is famously risky, but so far, no trouble.

I’ve been here nine days now, and no sign of a human soul. Does anyone live anywhere around here?

Is anything else going to wash ashore from the ship? Anything useful?

16 January

I think I’ve come about ten miles along the coast by now. This is surely the direction anything floating would have come, and I’ve seen bits of wood that look as though they come from the ship, but nothing else since Captain Senghor’s trunk.

Thank you, Providence, for casting that trunk ashore near me, and for its being almost waterproof. Dry clothes probably saved my life, and the notebooks and pencils are much appreciated. I’d swap them all for Senghor’s survival though, or indeed any of the crew.

Still no sign of human life. How far is it to the nearest port? Is it a distance I can walk? Or, worst of all, is this an uninhabited island?

19 January

I’ve come maybe twenty miles by now. At least it’s been dry for a few days now and I’ve managed to make a fire. Shellfish is so much better cooked! So is seaweed. A pan would be handy though.

I wonder if anyone saw my smoke? I tried to make as much as I could.

20 January

I don’t know whether anyone saw my smoke or not, but I’ve seen theirs! I reckon it must have been about two or three miles away. If the ground’s not too difficult I should be able to get there tomorrow easily.

21 January

I thought that fire might be some of my shipmates, but no. These people are friendly, but they don’t speak any language I know. They don’t seem to know anything about our ship, but I’m not sure. They seem very puzzled about me, and where I’ve appeared from. And what I’m doing, writing in this little book.

But they could see I was cold and hungry, and they’ve wrapped me up in warm clothes like theirs, and fed me. The food is strange, but it fills the hole!

I think they must have made their smoke yesterday in response to mine: their cooking fire isn’t smoking at all today.

1 February 662

I’ve been ill. Thank goodness for these very, very kind people. They’ve not only fed me and clothed me warmly, they’ve carried me all this way to their town, and I’m in a sort of bed, in a sort of hostel, I think.

I’ve just been visited by Carlos, an old man who speaks something that sounds like Spanish as well as the local language, whatever that is. A pity I only know a few words of Spanish! And he doesn’t know any English, but he did recognize that I was speaking English. I wonder if he’s going to find someone who speaks English?

6 February

I think this place is called Kep. Even here in the town no-one speaks any language I know. Carlos is the only person who reads and writes, but he can’t make head nor tail of what I’m writing, and I can’t make head nor tail of what he writes. But we get along fine. He understands that I was shipwrecked, and I think he’s expecting ships to call here, perhaps with someone who knows English (or possibly French or German, which I also understand a little – more than I understand Spanish, anyway!)

12 February

Mari keeps feeding me, and all she seems to expect from me in return is to entertain the children. They are lovely children, but they find me very odd. Who is this man who can’t talk properly?

I’ve picked up a few words, but I think I’m learning child-talk. So be it.

It would be nice to be properly useful, though. Oh, I can do the odd bit of helping lift things or washing crockery, but I do feel useless.

If a ship comes, will anyone speak any language I know? Will I be able to get work on board, and earn my living?

18 February

A ship! But no-one speaks any language I know.

15 March

I have work! And the captain speaks a sort of English. It is his language, he says, and he calls it English. But he’s never heard of England. His English is very different from English English, but at least we can understand each other.

Mari cried when I left, and gave me her baby to hold for a few minutes before we sailed. Truth to tell, I cried too.

20 March

Browth is a hard master. I have jumped ship at the first port. I have no pay, but at least I have earned what I have eaten, and I have eaten well enough.

This place is bigger than Kep. Maybe someone here will speak English – or Browth’s kind of English at least – but I’ve not found them yet. They don’t seem to speak the same language as they do in Kep, either.

Browth spoke Keppish, and I guess he can speak the local language here, too, or some language someone here knows. I didn’t hang around to find out.

How does one pay for food and shelter here? I don’t want to try finding a ship to work on until after Browth has sailed. I don’t know how long he’ll stay.

23 March

Well, that’s one way to get food and shelter, but it’s not my favourite. I am in prison. It’s reasonably comfortable compared with what I’ve heard about English or French prisons, and the food so far is adequate if not exactly appetizing.

It’s quite chilly. I’m glad I’ve got warm clothes – goodness, I owe the Kep people a lot! I wonder if I’ll ever get back there, in a condition to pay them back?

I wonder how long I’ll be in here?

24 March

I don’t really know why I’m in prison. Did the officer think I was being insolent, not answering his questions? I presume they were questions. The guards here seem sympathetic to me, but I hear them shouting at other prisoners – or is that prisoners shouting? Or both? I can’t tell.

25 March

Another day, another dumpling.

26 March

Another day, another dumpling. And water, of course.

27 March

…

12 April 662

I have been marking the days on the wall. I can see that I am not the first person to do this in here, although it’s been whitewashed over. At least no-one seems to be in here for long. Well, I hope that’s a good thing!

17 April

One can get a little tired of dumplings and water.

22 April

Today I was visited by an interpreter. At least, I think that’s what he is. He seemed to try several languages on me, and I tried English and my poor French and German. I even tried my few words of Spanish on him. No luck.

But he looked at my diary, and tore a page out of the back, and got me to write something on it. I wrote, “English, un peu français, ein bisschen deutsch, muy poco español.” He indicated that I should write more, so I wrote, “I am from England. I do not know why I am in prison,” and he seemed satisfied, and took it away.

Maybe there are other interpreters he might show it to, to see if anyone can speak my language.

At least they don’t mind me having pencils and notebooks.

23 April

Yesterday was such a hopeful day. But no sign of another visit today. The light is beginning to go, and no visitor – apart from the guard with my dumpling and water.

28 April

It’s my birthday. I am 28 years old today. Nobody here knows. I could not tell them even if I wanted to. They do not know how old I am, nor who I am, nor where I come from. I do not know whether they care.

2 May 662

I have decided to write a sort of diary of my life before I began this written-as-it-happens diary. What else is there to do here? I am afraid of losing my mind, perhaps it will keep my wits alive. I will start tomorrow, the light is failing now.

3 May

My mother’s ancestors came from Glasgow originally, but that was a long time ago, before the ice buried it. Not many people even know where it was now.

I was born in North London. My father had been arrested several weeks before my birth, and never re-appeared. Life was already difficult for Mother, with three small children; when I came along it was too much for her. My three sisters went to live with aunt Agni and her partner Eli, who had no children of their own. Everyone says Eli was lovely.

When I was four, Eli was arrested. He also never re-appeared. Mother and I moved in with Agni and my sisters. That was the family at the time of my earliest memories.

Things got complicated when Agni met Herbert. I was eight. Agni had had several boyfriends, who’d moved in and moved out again fairly quickly. I don’t really remember any of them. But Herbert was trouble, and I remember him very well.

At first Mother liked him, but my sisters always hated him. I watched him and he made me feel a bit uneasy, but he ignored me completely. Then something happened, I never knew what but nowadays I can guess, and Mother turned against him too.

Mother and Agni began to argue. Herbert would threaten them both, but I don’t think he ever hit either of them. He sometimes threatened to leave. I think Mother would have been pleased if he had, but the household finances would have suffered badly.

My eldest sister, Belinda, ran away when she was fifteen. Mother really wanted to move out with the rest of us children, but she worried what would happen to Belinda if she came back and found just Herbert and Agni at home. What was she to do?

Clara and Dempsey and I discussed the problem. I was ten. Could I try to find Belinda? We didn’t tell Mother what we were planning. I was to find Belinda and tell her to stay put so I could find her again, then come home and we’d move out. Then I’d go and tell Belinda where we were.

Mother was very upset when I left, and grilled Clara and Dempsey. They eventually spilled the beans. Nobody told Herbert, of course, but he said we were all sneaking out one by one, and got angry. He told Mother to go – immediately. Mother grabbed the two girls and was about to leave with nothing but the clothes they stood up in, but Agni screamed and told Herbert to go. And he hit her.

All hell broke loose. I’ve tried to follow Dempsey’s description of the fight, but I can’t make sense of it. Herbert was big, and strong, but he didn’t have eyes in the back of his head, there were four of them, and the kitchen knife was long and sharp. They were all hurt, but Herbert was dead. Agni says she did it, but I think it was Clara really. Clara was fourteen. I think Agni told her not to say anything.

I didn’t find Belinda, but Clara found me, and Belinda came home of her own accord. She’d been taking a look at the house regularly from a discreet distance and had seen that Herbert wasn’t around any longer.

Herbert’s body is under the vegetable patch behind the house. The people he worked for came to ask about him, but found it easy to believe that he’d run out on Agni and that nobody knew where he’d gone. Nobody else asked about him at all.

Mother and Agni had to try to earn some money somehow, and things were very difficult for a while.

Belinda found work on the railway – something in the drawing office I think, but I was only young and not taking much interest. Then she got married, left, and started a family.

We were broke again. Clara found work as a seamstress, but it didn’t pay very well.

I fell in with a group of lads who were planning Political Action. I was very much the youngest of the group, but I’d lived all my life in a family who talked politics all the time. I could argue points with the best of them. But we were all very naive, even though several of us had had family members disappear.

Clara was sacked from her job for sticking up for a friend who’d been accused – wrongly, Clara thought – of stealing cloth. Our little group tried to persuade some of the other workers to go on strike to demand that Clara and her friend have their jobs back.

Which brought the police down on us like a ton of bricks. The two oldest lads were arrested, and the rest of us were dragged home by our ears, where we had to listen to the police haranguing our parents. When they’d gone, Mother and Agni told me to pick my friends wisely, and to choose my fights carefully. Lessons I didn’t learn quickly enough!

I didn’t say to Agni that she should pick her boyfriends carefully, but I thought it, and felt a thrill of adulthood that I thought it, and that I thought of not saying it. But she hadn’t had another boyfriend since Herbert anyway.

Writing my life story like this really helps pass the time, but the screaming down the corridor is worrying. Who is screaming, and why? I can’t even tell whether it’s male or female.

More shouting – definitely male.

Dumpling and water. Another notch on the wall.

4 May

Sobbing down the corridor nearly all night. I think it’s a teenage boy by the sound of it. Somebody keeps saying something quietly, but whether it’s addressed to the sobber I can’t tell. It’s getting no response, whoever it’s addressed to.

Dumpling and water. Another notch on the wall.

8 May

I haven’t felt like writing for the last few days.

9 May

Dempsey’s birthday. She’s 29 today. I hope she’s okay.

18 May

Snap out of it, Gordon! Write, goddamn you! Do not become a slug.

Did that interpreter give up trying to find anyone who understood what I wrote for him?

Agni swallowed her pride and went to work in the kitchens at the posh folks’ school. That went well, didn’t it! She’d been there all of three weeks when she had a row with the boss and lost the job. They didn’t pay her the last week she’d worked, and she kicked up a fuss.

Choose your fights, Agni. But I didn’t say anything.

The police came round to the house. Mother saw them coming, and answered the door, saying Agni wasn’t home. Meanwhile Agni was out the back door and over the wall at the bottom of the garden, into the woods.

Luckily the police weren’t much bothered. They told Mother to warn her big sister to show more respect to her betters, and that as long as it didn’t happen again, that would be the end of it.

I seethed, but kept quiet. But I think the police saw me seething.

I think it was about then that I started noticing how the police on the streets seemed to be watching me. Seemed to be – it seemed so to me at the time, but whether they really were I don’t know now. They watch everybody, but I think they watch some people more than they watch others. Was I one of the ones they watched especially? I’m not sure.

Later, I certainly became one, if I hadn’t been all along.

My studies were going well, despite my political leanings, but I was reaching the end of free public schooling – I was nearly twelve. My teacher said that I ought to continue studying, and that he thought I’d make a good teacher myself in time. But “time” meant at least another four or five years in school, with fees to pay.

Although my studies were certainly going well, I wasn’t at all sure I’d really make a good teacher. It was, after all, in the teachers’ interests to get pupils to continue in school when it came to fee-paying age. But Dempsey said I should carry on.

There’s less than a year between Dempsey and me. There’s less than a year between Belinda and Clara, too, and there’s only three between Clara and Dempsey. But Belinda and Clara are the Big Sisters, and Dempsey and I are the Babies. We two were best friends, and each other’s close confidants.

I left school, and went to get a job on the railway. We were digging a tunnel to take a new railway north from a new station right in the middle of London. I was a skinny twelve-year-old, but I was strong for my size and able to pull a spoil cart not much smaller than the ones the men were pulling. It wasn’t great money, but it was the best I thought I could get.

One morning there was a tunnel collapse, and forty-some men were killed. I was just coming out of the tunnel with my loaded cart when it happened. There was such a blast of air out of the tunnel that I was knocked flat, but I wasn’t much hurt. A bit shaken, but okay. Then the walking wounded started to come out of the tunnel, with reports of men trapped and men probably killed.

I joined in the rescue efforts. We pulled some men out alive, but there were lots of men already dead, and we could hear others we couldn’t reach. Most of the men we got out alive were badly injured.

One of the big problems was that there was a lot of very rusty old ironwork amongst the debris. Our tunnel had run into something the ancients had done – before the Great Floods, if the old stories are true, and I reckon they probably are. Why else all the ancient stuff in ruins up to a certain level, and then plenty of ancient stuff in fair condition above that? Then again, why nothing but new stuff down near sea level? Maybe after centuries of rising sea level and then centuries of falling sea level, it’s actually lower than it was before it started to rise? It fits the obvious evidence, but can it really be the truth?

It was a long day, followed by a long night. Late the next morning it was decided that there was no hope of finding anyone else alive, and we all withdrew.

Mother and Dempsey were there waiting for me. Dempsey had seen me coming in and out of the tunnel during the rescue efforts, so they knew I was all right, but they’d been very worried at first.

Dempsey put her foot down. “No more railway work for you, Gordon,” she said. “You are going back to school, and I’m going to get work as a nurse.”

At first, we all believed that she’d got her nursing job. Mother was the first to suspect. There was just too much money coming in for a nurse. Mother didn’t say anything to the rest of us, and I remained blissfully unaware for ages. I’d never even heard of prostitution.

Then Dempsey got pregnant, and I didn’t notice that, either. She had an abortion as soon as she was sure her periods had stopped. It was only when she was “very ill” as Mother put it that I realized something was very wrong, and went to find Dempsey in hospital and got the whole story out of her. I was very hurt that Dempsey hadn’t confided in me from the beginning, but she’d been determined that I should return to school. She still was.

And I was determined that my bosom buddy would never be a prostitute again.

She was sixteen then.

Happily, she made a full recovery. It was only later I discovered how risky a backstreet abortion was.

With Mother’s help I persuaded Dempsey to study to be a midwife. I would work in the workshops for a year while she studied. It wasn’t as well paid as labouring, but it was much safer, and I would go back to school once she started earning. Dempsey got her place studying at the same hospital where she’d recovered after her abortion – they said she was a very good candidate, “with a lot of relevant experience.”

I wondered what they meant by that, but Dempsey just laughed and wouldn’t explain. I still don’t really understand; it makes me wonder what sort of things went on in London brothels. Did the ladies perform abortions for each other? Or did they act as unofficial midwives for each other, even? Maybe either or both. Or whatever else, I have no idea.

My sailor acquaintances – even in a few cases, friends – often visit prostitutes when we’re in port for a few days. I cannot. I see my beloved sister whenever I see prostitutes.

Well – I say they visit prostitutes, and I don’t. What I really mean is that they use prostitutes. I have sometimes visited them. We talk, language permitting. Some of them don’t like to talk, so we just sit, or they don’t like me to just sit, and I go away again. But some of them are very happy to talk, and some of them are really interesting to talk with. Most of them would like other work, but you can’t change the world.

Or can you? I don’t know. I don’t think I can, but that’s not to say that no-one can. Goodness knows, I have tried, but maybe I’m not very good at it. All I get for my trouble is trouble.

A dumpling and a can of water, as usual. At least there’s been no screaming today. A bit of the usual shouting. I wish I could understand. I think I know the various voices now, and I think I can tell which are prisoners and which are guards. But I’m not sure.

24 May

Sometimes writing comes to me, sometimes it doesn’t.

Dumplings and water are all very well, they keep body and soul together. They are good dumplings, with some meat and some veg in them, but I am losing weight. I try to get a bit of exercise. I don’t want to be so unfit that I cannot work when – if – I get out of here.

I’ve been here almost as long as most of the previous inmates, assuming they kept up their notch making until the end. I don’t think I’m about to die of wasting away, and I don’t want to think about what else could happen to me. I hope that what I’m waiting for is a ship to arrive where someone speaks English.

25 May

Agni’s birthday. I think she’s sixty today, but maybe it’s sixty-one. She’s three years older than Mother, but is that two years and nine months, or three years and nine months? I can never remember.

How are they all? I hope they’re okay. It’s awful to think I’ll never see any of them again, but there really is no possibility of that. Even if I could return to England, it would be suicide. They probably think I’m long dead.

I wonder what the meat in the these dumplings is? Only ever tiny bits, impossible to tell.

28 May

A hard boiled egg and something rather like cake. A special occasion of some sort?

It must be. Someone is singing.

29 May

Well I don’t know what the special occasion was yesterday, but I think some of the guards got drunk last night. If that unusual surliness isn’t a hangover, I don’t know what is.

Herbert used to drink. At least he wasn’t violent when he drank, like some men. He just went to sleep, and woke up with a headache. Maybe he felt violent when he had a headache, but he couldn’t move fast without his head hurting even more, so he just sat and grumped.

Some sailors drink when we go ashore, but it’s not a chance I’ve ever taken. It’s unwise unless you really know the port – and not always wise even if you do. But I’ve always had my own reasons for not wanting any brushes with the police.

At least I think I’m beyond the reach of English agents here. I think we were beyond their reach really even before the shipwreck – do English agents reach as far as Kobo’a? I doubt it – but I think I’m completely past the end of the known world now. Browth had never heard of England, nor even Kobo’a. I’d never heard of Kep. And I still don’t even know the name of this place.

That storm blew us right off the map, I’m sure. No-one ever goes beyond Kobo’a, or if they do, they never come back.

Never go back.

I should ask my next captain – if I ever have a next captain – whether anyone ever goes past Kep in the other direction. Although it’s pretty obvious that they don’t. Is the weather always like that there? Probably worse in winter. Much worse. What a hell of a place if so.

30 May

I have been moved into a different cell. I think I’m a Special Prisoner for some reason: I have a table and a chair, as well as a bed, and much more space. Perhaps it’s because they see me writing? And I have a window I can see out of, not like the other one, so high up the wall that all I could see was the sky. It does make it a bit draughty – there’s no glass, it’s just bars again – but the weather’s warmer now anyway.

And now I’ve got a plate of good food, and a drink that isn’t cold water. I don’t know what it is. It’s not alcoholic. It’s some kind of herbal infusion, but it’s not a herb I recognize.

Outside is a dingy street, maybe twelve feet wide. It’s cobbled right up to the wall opposite, and probably my side too, but of course I can’t see that. There’s a gutter down the middle of the street, full of disgusting looking filth – maybe sewage, I can’t tell from here. Thankfully I’m three or four storeys above it.

The wall opposite has no windows at my level. There are some lower down, but they’re glazed, and so filthy that I can’t seen in through them.

So far I haven’t seen anyone in the street at all.

The sky is blue, and there are crows. I can hear gulls, but I haven’t seen one yet.

It’s really good to have enough room to exercise properly. I can even step up and down on and off my chair – which also gives me a better angle on the street, but the thickness of the wall outside the bars prevents me seeing more than just over half the width of the street. If that gutter is down the middle, which I guess it is.

1 June 662

Having a table to sit at to write is such a blessing.

Last night I could see oil lamps in some of the windows the other side of the street, but just illuminating the dirt on the windows, nothing else.

My job in the railway workshop was riveting locomotive chassis. Those are the biggest rivets in a locomotive. You have to wield a damn great hammer, but at least you don’t need great precision, like the chaps doing some of the finer parts. I developed enormous forearms.

But inevitably there was a dispute between the workers and the owners, and of course I was closely associated with the ringleaders. We were in the right, but that counts for nothing with the police. Some of my friends were arrested, and I went into hiding quickly.

Dempsey knew where I was, and kept bringing me news, but it was risky for her and for me, and I told her to stop. For a while I was completely isolated. Then one day she came again, and told me very bluntly that I had to leave London. One of my friends had been killed, and his body dumped where the police knew people would find it. He had very visibly been tortured. The police denied that they had murdered him, but everyone knew they had, and really of course the police wanted everyone to know they had, and they wanted everyone to know he’d been tortured, too.

Dempsey kissed me on the forehead, and said, “I’ll never forget you, Gom, and don’t you ever forget me. Now go, and don’t come back. Ever. Good luck!”

Those words will stick with me all my life. “Gom” was what she called me when I was tiny and she wasn’t much bigger, and couldn’t say “Gordon.”

She’s 29 now. She’ll always be seventeen in my head. And I’ll always be sixteen in hers. I hope she’s okay.

2 June

I had to stop writing yesterday. I couldn’t stop crying.

There have been people in the street outside. Shouting. And dogs barking. I didn’t want to show my face at the window. I don’t know whether people look up at these windows, but I don’t want to risk it.

Risk what? I don’t know. But whatever it is, I don’t want to risk it.

I’d been hiding in the old ruins in the bluffs above the Thames. There were a lot of odd people living there, mostly misfits of one sort or another, common criminals or just folks who’d fallen on hard times and had nowhere else to go. Mostly men, but a few women too. It was a good place to hide from the police. They generally didn’t dare show their faces there. People who didn’t know it said it was a very dangerous place, but as long as you didn’t look as though you had money it was pretty safe really. But if the police had been following Dempsey looking for me, they’d have sent someone in plain clothes. So I was always on my guard.

I didn’t know anyone I could trust. There were people I talked to friendlily, but I didn’t tell them anything about myself, and no-one told me anything about themselves either. That’s just self-preservation in a place like that. I couldn’t sound anyone out about good methods of getting away without taking risks I wasn’t prepared to take.

I decided that I simply had to walk south out of London, and keep walking south until I came to the Thames again, where it was wide, and the big ships came – where I knew the other side was in France, and that the French called the Thames the Seine.

I wasn’t sure whether I should try to hide on a ship, or try to get work on one. There were obvious risks either way, and I couldn’t work out which risk was bigger. But it was obvious to me that leaving England, and trying to get as far away as possible, was my best course.

The most worrying bit was getting across the middle of London, especially down into the Thames gorge and up the other side, where there were a lot of police. Luckily none of them recognized me, and they didn’t stop me at random.

It took me six days to reach the Thames again. I had blisters on both feet and I felt like death. I’d fought my way through thick forest when none of the paths seemed to be going the right way. I’d eaten raw vegetables that I’d stolen from fields, and drunk water that could have had dead animals or shit in it for all I knew.

And now the Thames – it obviously was the Thames – was a wide, lazy river running between endless miles of mud flats and grassy meadows that sank into impossible muddy hollows as soon as you put your foot on them. There were a few ships going up and down out there in the middle of the river, but you couldn’t get within a mile of them.

There had to be a port somewhere. Should I head upstream, or downstream?

Most of the ships I could see looked too big for the tidal basin at Undercliffe-on-Thames, so I thought there must be a port somewhere between there and where I was. But I didn’t know how far it might be, and I didn’t want to go back towards London, so I set off downstream, hoping that there was another port in that direction. Maybe with even bigger ships.

I stayed well back from the river, to avoid the mud and the soft meadows. That really was a long way from the river, but it was obvious that there would be a road leading to any port, so I wasn’t worried about possibly missing it.

More dogs barking outside. I have to look. Maybe there aren’t any people, and even if there are, maybe they won’t look up as long as I don’t make a noise. And if they do look up and see me, what difference does it make?

3 June

There were no people outside, unless they were out of my sight on my side of the street. How very scruffy those dogs were. Mangy, scabby and dirty.

I have seen gulls as well as crows now.

It has started to rain. It rained a few times while I was in the other cell, too, but it wasn’t so noticeable there. Here, it splashes on my windowsill. I have moved my table further away, back to where it was. The light is not so good here, but at least my diary will stay dry.

I owe Minnie my life. She found me collapsed by the side of the road, somehow managed to haul me about half a mile back to her house, and nursed me back to health. Having guessed that I was on the run, she had told no-one about me.

Like all police stations, the one in Frenchport had a list of people – names and descriptions – of people the police are looking for. But Minnie said she hadn’t gone to look at it, because if she had the police would know she’d seen a stranger, and she guessed that that was the last thing I needed.

From where I first reached the Thames, I think I must have walked about another two days to get to where Minnie found me, but I don’t remember them at all. I was really very lucky that I didn’t walk into Frenchport in that state. Frenchport is only another two hour’s walk from Minnie’s house.

Minnie was a widow, probably in her seventies but I don’t know. I would have stayed with her for a while, and repaid her kindness by catching up with some overdue maintenance around the house and farm, but she insisted I should be on my way as soon as I was well enough. She was a regular around the docks in Frenchport, selling fresh produce to the ships’ cooks. She thought she’d be able to find me a ship with a sympathetic captain. And she did. Triple luck!

She dressed me in her husband’s old clothes. I’m a bit taller than he had been, and a lot thinner, but Minnie managed to alter them enough to fit reasonably well. I shaved my meagre beard off, rubbed dirt into my face to hide my youthfulness, and wore one of her husband’s old hats to cover my black hair. Minnie said I looked at least sixty.

We pondered whether she should tell me where to go and which ship to approach, but we – well, mostly Minnie – decided that walking together into town and down to the docks would pass unnoticed, even though she was a regular and always alone. Whereas I, alone and unsure of myself, might attract attention.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, thank you, Minnie, my guardian angel.

Captain McGuire understood my situation perfectly, I’m sure, but he never mentioned it directly. As soon as I was aboard, he said, “you need to get some sleep, old man,” and got a man to take me to my bunk. Where I remained hidden until after we’d set sail.

With my face washed and my hat gone, I looked my own age again – more or less, perhaps a little haggard from the stress of the previous few weeks – but McGuire continued to call me Old Man, so the whole crew did.

There were ten of us on the good ship Farther Shore. (Or was it Father Shaw? I never saw it written.) I was the youngest.

Apart from McGuire, I think I was the only one who could read and write. Not that there was anything wrong with any of the crew’s brains – they just hadn’t had any education, apart from that provided by life itself. They all knew their jobs well, and had a pretty good idea of everyone else’s too, vital in case of sickness. The only person who was indispensable was McGuire.

I sailed with him as far as Cadiz in Spain. I was happy on his ship, gained my sea legs, and learned the work. But he said that I shouldn’t head back towards England with him, and I’m sure he was right. He introduced me to Captain Raphael, who was heading further south, to Dakar in West Africa.

I don’t think he told Raphael that I was on the run, just that I wanted to head further south, to see the world. Raphael was a good captain too, but from Dakar he was going to head back north, so I took my pay and said my goodbyes.

I spent a couple of weeks in Dakar. My pay from my two ships was not generous, but it was worth much more in Dakar than it would have been in London. At first I felt quite safe from the English police, but I found that a lot of people knew English, and some were rather inquisitive about an English sailor who hadn’t returned to his ship. I began to feel a little nervous, and decided to go down to the docks again and find a ship heading further south rather than trying to find work in Dakar.

Captain Senghor’s Mnonkor was the first ship I came to, and he said he needed an extra hand. He generally plied between Las Palmas in the Canaries, Kobo’a¹ in southern Africa, and any or all ports between, which suited me perfectly.

Apart from a couple of voyages on other ships while Mnonkor was laid up being repaired, I was with Senghor for eleven years. He was like an elder brother to me. He taught me how to fight – which saved my life a few times, fighting to the death with pirates.

Now all I have to remember him by are what I salvaged from his trunk: these notebooks and pencils and some of his clothes, which luckily fit me well. And a few eksyus² that have no value this side of Kobo’a, except as keepsakes. And his mizma, which is a burden, and essentially useless, but with which I cannot bear to part. It survived tossing on storm waves in his trunk. I cannot be the instrument of its destruction.

I have a visitor!

17 June

So. That was Faguri. I was an Illegal Alien, whatever that means, and a privileged one, apparently, although why I haven’t yet discovered.

For two weeks now I’ve been on board the strangest ship. It’s huge, many times bigger than any I’ve seen before. It doesn’t have masts, but flying sails that are like enormous kites. I am still trying to understand how it works, but for now my work is in a workshop below decks, repairing “keels” that are more like tiny, rigid versions of those flying sails. I am a riveter again, but with a smaller hammer, and working more accurately.

19 June

We heaved to for just a couple of hours off what I think must have been a small town. Several small boats came out to us, and we loaded boxes from them, and unloaded other boxes onto them. I don’t know what was in any of the boxes.

21 June

I have been learning to fly a sail. My arms and back feel as though I’ve been pulling the ship along, although the windlass holds the main tension and I’ve only been pulling the control ropes.

Of the eighty-odd crew, there are a few who speak Browth’s kind of English, but they have no more heard of England than he had. The crew come from many different places, and have many different mother tongues, but nobody speaks any other language I’ve ever heard of. I’m learning Manafai, which nearly everyone talks most of the time, even though only a few of them are actually from Manafa.

And no, no-one has ever been beyond Kep, the weather is far too bad. I suspect Carlos, whom I met in Kep, may be the only other person alive who’s come the other way, too, very likely the same way I did: running before a storm for days on end, then half drowned, frozen, and clinging for dear life to a bit of driftwood.

Apart from English, all the other languages this side of The Weather seem to be completely different from any of the languages the other side. Why is there a version of English this side? Something way back in prehistory, I suppose. Maybe a long, long time ago the weather didn’t used to be so bad down south there between Kobo’a and Kep, and people used to come and go that way. Maybe. After all, in only a century or so Glasgow’s gone from being a busy city, to buried in ice and almost forgotten. And sea level gets lower every year.

1 July 662

Anwar and Mkembi are my friends. Mkembi is one of very few women on board – she calls herself the grandmother of the ship. She’s older than almost everyone, and I think she speaks to almost everyone in their native language. I don’t even know what her own native language is. It’s not English.

She’s as strong as any man on board, and bigger than most of us. In all directions.

Anwar’s native language is Manafai, but he speaks English fairly well. And one or two other languages, but I don’t know what they are. It’s mainly Anwar who’s been teaching me Manafai, and Mkembi who taught me to fly a sail. She teaches all the new recruits, but she seems to have taken a special interest in me, perhaps because my English is different from everyone else’s, and I came from somewhere she’d never heard of.

I’ve graduated to flying a full sail solo now, and that’s probably as far as I’ll go. There are plenty of folks who can fly the pilot sails, so there’s no need for me to learn that, and I learnt on a second sail – everybody does – although of course only after the full sails were already up and pulling.

Mkembi says I’m one of her best pupils. I only ditched a second sail twice, and I’ve never ditched a full sail at all. But that’s really to Mkembi’s credit; I’ve lost count of how many times she’s rescued my sail just in time.

There are a few native English speakers, but none of them are friendly with me, perhaps because they see me as Mkembi’s favourite. Such is life.

5 July

There has been a fight on board. I don’t know either of the fighters, but one of them is badly injured and the other one is now locked up. I don’t know what it was about. I haven’t asked Anwar or Mkembi, and they haven’t volunteered the information.

7 July

We hit some driftwood today, and two keels were damaged. I’ve been back in the workshop, riveting. Makes a change, although of course I’d rather the keels didn’t get damaged!

In the last few days we heaved to at several places – I’ve not even caught their names – for just a few hours while small boats plied back and forth with cargo. I don’t know how long the passages we’re making are. Mkembi doesn’t know the distances, just the times, and of course the times vary a lot with the wind.

I don’t know how fast these things go. They seem to go a lot faster than Browth’s tub, or the ships I was used to the other side of the The Weather, but it’s hard to tell. They’re much bigger, and they don’t heel over at all even in a good wind. They’re just altogether different.

They say the injured man may have to lose an arm. I don’t know whether the doctoring on board is as good as it could be. The doctoring in London is better, I think – if you can afford it, or you’re lucky, like Dempsey was.

12 July

We arrived at Vamura today. Vamura is big – the first big town since Faguri. We’ll be here for three days, and Anwar says he’ll take me ashore tomorrow, just for the day. He says plenty of people here speak Manafai.

Some sailors might stay ashore overnight, but Anwar says he doesn’t. Not here. He didn’t say why.

The fighters have already been taken ashore, one to hospital, the other to jail. Ponshe, the third-watch captain, has also gone ashore, to find a couple of new recruits. The injured man is in a bad way, but I don’t know any details.

We’re anchored about a mile offshore. The anchors, three of them, are enormous. The winches are connected to the sail tensioning system, so the sails pull in as the anchors go down. When we leave, we have to get sails up and pulling to raise the anchors.

The weather here is much warmer than it was at Faguri, never mind Kep.

16 July

Another ship just like ours arrived during the night of the thirteenth. The other ship is Manafafura, and ours is Manafariiba.³ In the whole world there are just nine ships like these two. All out of Manafa.

A few sailors swapped ships. They don’t often get the chance. It seems it’s quite a party when big ships meet at a port. We had to recruit a few new sailors, because some chaps got into trouble ashore. Most of them will get another ship soon, Anwar says, but not on another of these big ones. Unless they’re very lucky.

He says I was lucky to get a job so quickly on a big ship – but they needed another riveter, and there I was. He says the big ones pay better, are more comfortable, and socially better as well. I can easily believe it, after my time with Browth.

I suspect the smaller ships may be more likely to have trouble with pirates, too, but Anwar didn’t say anything about that.

19 July

Every time I hear Mkembi’s name, I hear “Dempsey.” Sometimes even when I see Mkembi I hear “Dempsey” in my head. Mkembi is very, very different from Dempsey, but the sound is so similar.

Oh, Dempsey! How is life for you? And for Mother and Belinda and Clara and Agni?

Sometime I must write about my days ashore with Anwar, but the light is failing now. I’m not ready to even try to learn to fly a sail in the dark, so I’m working all day.

2 August 662

Yambai! What an incredible place!

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