Brian Jacques - [Flying Dutchman 01] - Castaways of the Flying Dutchman

Mrs. Winn suddenly felt sorry for her strange visitor. He looked so young, so alone. Concern showed in her voice. “You mean that you haven’t anywhere to stay?”

Ben nodded. “I’ve got money. I could pay for lodgings, and I’d see Ned didn’t bother anybody.”

The old lady sat watching the boy. The flat grandfather clock chimes rang out four-thirty. Ben had finished the last morsel of apple pie when his dog came from the kitchen and lay down contentedly, his head resting on the boy’s scuffed boot. Fidgeting and fussing with her apron corner, Winnie looked up to the ornate molded ceiling, then down to her husband’s portrait, finally settling on Ben.

Something in her eyes told him she had reached a decision. Tapping her worn gold wedding ring against the chair arm, Mrs. Winn pursed her lips. “You aren’t in any kind of trouble, are you, my boy?”

Ben sat up straight. “Certainly not, Miz Winn!”

She touched his hand reassuringly. “I believe you. You said you were thinking of staying in Chapelvale for a while. I suppose that means you’ll be moving on one day. Hmm, you’re a puzzle, Ben. There’s more to you and your dog than meets the eye, a lot more.”

She cleared away the plates and glasses, watching the crestfallen lad out of the corner of her eye. “Shall we say that you can stay here for a few days, then? I don’t think those bullies will bother coming ’round to harass me if they see Ned wandering in the garden.”

Ben brightened up immediately. “Oh, thank you, marm! Ned’ll keep them away and I’ll help you ’round the house and do your shopping for you, and I can pay for lodgings, too. I have money, you know. . . .”

Mrs. Winn held up her hand, cutting Ben off frostily. “Please, I’m not rich, but I have enough to get by on with Captain Winn’s pension. I’m not beholden to anybody, and I don’t need you to pay me—I’m allowing you to stay here as a friend.”

Ned passed a thought to his master. “What a nice old lady Winnie is. This place feels just like home, whatever home’s supposed to feel like. Don’t forget to thank her for me. I’ve been trying to talk with that cat, Horatio, but he’s not got much to say for himself. It must be with his having no other creatures to speak to that he’s lost the art of conversation, poor fellow.”

Ben answered the dog’s thoughts. “Well, when you do finally get chatting together, see what you can find out from him. It might give us a clue as to why we’ve been sent here.”

Mrs. Winn tapped Ben’s shoulder. “Are you listening to what I’m saying, young man?”

“What, oh, er, sorry, Miz Winn. I must have dozed off!”

The old lady chuckled. “Hmm, you looked as if you were ready to drop off there, sitting and staring at the dog. I was just saying that you and Ned could take the rear upstairs bedroom. I sleep down here in the small sitting room nowadays. My left leg’s not too good, I need help getting upstairs. Perhaps you’d best go and take a nap. There’s a nice bathroom up there, too.”

Ben rose gratefully. “Thank you, Miz Winn. Thanks for everything from both of us. I think I will take a bath and a nap.”

The old lady took Ben’s hand. “Help me upstairs and I’ll show you your room. I’ll have dinner ready for you both at seven. Come on, Ned, good boy!”

The Labrador looked questioningly at Ben. “I don’t mind the nap, but a bath’s out of the question. It’s not half an hour since I had a good scratch and lick!”

Ben tugged at the black Lab’s tail as they went upstairs. “Miz Winn means me, not you!”

It was a comfortable room with a soft, old-fashioned bed. Ben picked up a framed sepia photograph from the bedside table. A young man and woman with two small boys stood on a palm-fronded verandah. The boy studied it. “Hmm, looks like India or Ceylon, some sort of plantation.”

Mrs. Winn was mildly surprised at her strange guest’s knowledge, yet looking at his wise blue eyes, it seemed right somehow that he should know about the photograph. “Your second guess was correct, Ben. It’s Ceylon. That’s my son Jim with his family—he manages a tea plantation for a British company out there. I’ve not yet seen his wife Lilian, or the children. That photograph is all I have of them. Maybe someday they’ll come over for a visit. . . .”

Mrs. Winn suddenly looked very sad, and she sighed. “Still, maybe it would be better for me if they stayed in Ceylon.”

Ben became curious. “Why do you say that, Winnie?”

She shuffled slowly out of the room as she replied. “I’ll tell you at dinner. Stay where you are, lad, I can manage going downstairs on my own quite well.”

After a good hot bath, Ben dressed in a clean change of clothing from his canvas bag and lay on the bed, watching a shaft of late day sunlight on the floral wallpaper. Bird-song from the garden and the distant rumble of a train sounded pleasant and comforting. He drifted off into a slumber, happy that Ned and he had found somewhere to stay.

The dream stole unbidden into his sleep. Gale-force winds sweeping over a heaving deck, tattered sails framed against a storm-ripped sky, great grey-green waves rushing across the raging main. He was clinging to the dog as they were washed overboard through the shattered midship rails. Water, water, the earth was awash in wild seawater, pounding in his ears, filling his nostrils, that odd faraway sound of muffled breath escaping beneath the ocean’s surface. Then spray churning white as he and the dog surfaced in the vessel’s wake. He tried to swim with one hand, whilst clinging to the dog’s collar with the other, when he was struck by a spar and his dream became cascades of colored lights, exploding from the darkness. A velvety calm enveloped Ben as he floated off someplace in time and space. A gentle golden radiance filled his spirit when the angel’s voice called, soft as noon breeze in summer meadows.

“Rest here, stay awhile, help those in need of your gifts. Even in a place such as Chapelvale there are petty tyrants and those whose hearts are ruled by greed. You and your dog must come to the aid of the good folk here. But, hearken, at the sound of a single toll from a church bell, you must leave!”

The message of the bell—a church bell this time—remained clear in Ben’s mind, even as his dreams raced on, over centuries, across seas, over mountains, through distant lands, wherever he and Ned had been sent to assist the oppressed in their struggle against villainy. He saw faces from the past, friends and enemies alike, felt the apprehension of arrival, the joy of being part of so many communities and the sorrow of having to depart and leave them behind. Always onward to fresh adventures, with his faithful, unchanging friend Ned. The last thing that trailed through his dream was a vision of the Flying Dutchman, with Vanderdecken wild-eyed at the ship’s wheel. Away, away across the dark waters it fled, until it, too, was lost to sight. Ben’s slumber drifted with him off in the opposite direction, to calm, untroubled sleep.

Mrs. Winn’s cottage pie was as mouthwatering as the dessert of jam roly-poly pudding and custard. She certainly knew how to cook for a hungry lad and his dog.

Ben brought up Mrs. Winn’s remark from the afternoon. “Winnie, I hope you don’t mind me asking, but why did you say that it would be better if your son and his family stayed in Ceylon? Don’t you want them to visit you?” As if she had been waiting for a sympathetic ear, the old lady poured forth her tale of woe.

“A man from up north has come to live just outside of Chapelvale. His name is Obadiah Smithers, and he is in the business of industrial speculation. Do you know what that means? Small villages and hamlets right across Britain are being destroyed by men like Smithers. They build their mills and factories with chimneys belching black smoke, sink mines with slag heaps defacing the countryside, hack out quarries, scarring the fields and destroying the wood-lands—all in the name of progress, which they say nothing can stop! Yet all they bring, the Smitherses of this world, is misery, for money. Temporary hovels for their workers, low wages, and folk working right ’round the clock to make vast profits for their masters.”