Philip Gooden - Sleep of Death

‘No flattery, sir.’ The head bobbed again.

‘I am sure you would like to help your poor robbed fellow here. .’

‘No charity neither.’ The head bobbed once more.

‘Or are you like one of these fresh-water mariners, whose ships were drowned in the plain of Salisbury?’

I was still trying to work out this jibe and wondering how Master WS got away with it whereas I was handed a throttling for trying to be clever, when old Adam’s face bobbed up for the last time.

‘Hop aboard.’

‘And me,’ said the other boatman. ‘Let me get my hands on the fucking cunt.’

‘No room, Ben,’ said Adam. ‘Only these two gentlemen here.’

He obviously hadn’t recognised me. I would willingly have surrendered my place on the rocking, pitching boat to Ben — or to the archangel Gabriel for that matter — but Master WS seemed determined that I should accompany him. He stepped in first and I followed in an awkward movement that was something between a step, a scrabble and a jump. To move from the relative solidity and safety of the stairs to this narrow, swaying craft, to know that only a thin skin of wood separated me from the green slopping waters of the Thames, was to experience, and for the second time in little more than twelve hours, a powerful fear for my life. As I got down almost on a level with the tide, the river seemed to expand and fill the horizon, and I entered a watery universe.

I am no fish, I cannot swim.

On the bank, Ben the boatman was shouting obscenities into the teeth of the wind and waving his fist at his own distant boat, or rather at its occupant. Adam pulled out into the bouncing waters. Master WS and I huddled on the seats in the stern. I pulled my — Adrian’s — hat lower on my brows. WS was bare-headed and the rain beat at his large balding brows, but he did not seem to care.

‘Good, Adam, good, master boatman,’ he muttered by way of encouragement to the grizzled greybeard wielding the oars. WS’s face still showed traces of a ghostly painted whiteness and his sodden night-gown clung to his undergarments. I realised that he must have sped out of the theatre after us as soon as he had completed his final appearance as the Ghost. The play would continue whatever the weather. The players were partly protected by the stage-roof, while the better class of spectators sat snug in their boxes and galleries. The groundlings in the pit endured the rain as stoically as an army on campaign, appearing to enjoy the vicissitudes of the elements.

As far as I was able to see through the rain and spray the river was almost empty of smaller boats. This made it easier to keep sight of Master Mink in his stolen craft. I had crossed the river often enough by ferryboat but always when the water was, by comparison, like a millpond. Now I recognised for the first time the force and fury of which this great broad slippery fellow was capable. The jumping and bucking of the little ferryboat was like being on a mischievous horse, and reminded me of my fear the first time my father had put me astride one.

‘We are gaining,’ said Master WS. ‘This is excellently done, master boatman.’

It was true that Mink’s boat seemed a little nearer. The figure of the rower was furiously plying the blades. Sometimes one of the oars flailed helplessly in the air, at others it was buried deep in the frothing current and Mink had to twist his body to retain hold of it. Like us, he was bobbing violently up and down, and either his motion or his diminished size against the river and sky — or perhaps the frantic futility of the to-and-fro action — made me think of a small child on a hobby-horse. It was plain that he didn’t know what he was doing and that matters were slipping out of his control as we approached the middle of the river where the current was strongest. At this difficult pass Adam’s skill showed through. He was strong in the chest and arms — as I knew to my cost — from years of pulling people from shore to shore. More important, he knew the river and its moods inside out, backwards and forwards, top to bottom, and although he mightn’t have ventured out in this weather from choice, now he was here he knew how to ride the waves. He knew when and where to thrust his blade deep into the swirling flow, when and where to withdraw it so that it just skimmed the spume.

I found that my own alarm had blown away, as if in the wind. It was partly the horrid fascination of watching an individual in much greater difficulty than ourselves on the water and partly the sense that we, Master WS and Master NR, were in the hands of a man who knew his trade and acquitted himself skilfully. I began to think that WS’s compliments to the boatman had not been so extravagant after all, and that, were we to survive this enterprise, I would treat this class of men more respectfully in future.

Adam glanced round over his shoulder to check our progress. He turned back and bared his teeth at Master WS in triumph. Suddenly the distance had narrowed sharply. Caught by some miniature whirlpool or species of eddy, Master Mink’s boat was moving in slow circles while we continued to plough through the waves as slow but remorseless as fate. If Mink had noticed us he didn’t give any sign. He was more concerned to regain control over his craft. But his oars hardly connected with the water. Like a pair of giant wooden scissors, they cut the turbulent air.

Master WS stood up in the stern beside me.

‘Careful, sir,’ cried Adam, but Master WS, he paid no attention to the boatman’s caution.

Cupping his hands around his mouth he called out Mink’s name. Once, then again.

Despite the usual gentleness and evenness of his speech he could, as occasion required, throw his voice so that it landed like a dart at the back of the gallery. This he did now. Mink must have heard because he stopped agitating his oars and looked across at us. Distracted, his grip on one of the oars slackened and it slipped itself from the rowlock and floated away out of reach. His small chance of escape vanished with it. All the time the gap between the two boats was closing. It might have been an illusion, but it seemed to me that out here at the midpoint of the river the water was less broken and choppy than it was inshore.

‘Robert,’ called WS again when he had got the other’s attention. ‘We must talk, you and I.’

This was such a ridiculous thing to say, in the middle of a rainstorm, in the middle of rough water, that I almost burst out laughing.

‘Bring us closer, boatman Adam.’

Adam swung and twisted and turned his blades with the dexterity of a swordsman until our boat approached nearer to Mink’s. Master Mink, like the two of us, was still wearing his costume. He was a very bedraggled and woebegone Player King, just as Master WS was a damp Ghost and I, I was a sorry poisoner.

‘Can we attach ourselves to him?’ WS asked Adam. ‘A rope or a hook?’

We too began to circle slowly, caught up in the same fluvial eddy. A strange calm had settled over the scene. I glanced up. The clouds had torn themselves apart in their brief fury and now, in their exhaustion, patches of impossible blue showed among the dirty white. Adam reached beneath his seat and grabbed a coil of rope from some nether compartment.

‘Fasten this to the sternpost, sir, and then let him catch a-holt of it.’

To the mariner’s manner born, Master WS slipped the looped and knotted end of the cable over our sternpost and, alerting Robert Mink with a shout, tossed the coils to the other boat. Mink might have chosen to ignore the shout and the rope spinning through the air but instead he chose to be helped. Seizing the other end of the cable he swiftly secured it to one of the thwarts before passing it round the sternpost in his, or rather Ben’s, boat. Now, joined by a cord, the four of us began a stately rotation, the two ferryboats dancing on water that sparkled and gleamed in the newly emergent sun. The skill and mastery of Adam Gibbons kept both craft in the same position relative to each other. A half dozen yards separated us. The far banks were a slowly shifting backdrop.