The Blessed Shore (fourth excerpt) The eyes in portraits also stare back
A few more hundred unedited words from the psychedelic pirate novel that I am working on throughout November, and probably December as well.
“Stinks of shit down here,” moans Keith Buckle.
“That's just you,” says William Keedwell, ahead of him. “Think of the poor men who are backed-up behind your rancid arse.”
From the boards overhead, a prolonged groan rises and falls like whale song from the tight choral creak of the ship's timbers.
“Poor sods,” murmurs Buckle.
“You want to talk about a poor sod, then you should see the mess of Roger's hand where the rope bit,” says David Herron. “You can see the bones all dragged off-course where the palm was torn open.”
“Reckon he'll lose that then,” says Buckle.
Keedwell's foot jars unexpectedly against an arbitrary point in the gloom, where the steep incline of the stairs joins with solid wood. His hands fumble the candle, forcing it against the lamp wick, the flame rearing back as if reluctant to seed a more enduring copy of itself. The roosting shadows of ornate tables and chairs suddenly elongate as they lurch against the arcing walls of the hold, then immediately shrink back again. He catches a glimpse of his hunched reflection peering at him from the glass of a worn mirror, like a lone, uncertain figure who has invaded the sanctity of a tomb. Atop the gilded frame of the looking glass, a heap of carved pine cones, buttressing an upstanding cornucopia, trail in singular procession partway down the sides. Deep within the thicket of furnishings, pairs of eyes stare back at him from the bespoke darkness of their dismal canvases, like the hidden faces of a lost tribe. To his left, a gigantic portrait of a long-faced man, in a gilded frame, has been propped-up on its side. In the dim light, it reassembles the kind of predatory creature that an abyss net might trawl from the bottommost reaches of the open ocean.
“I'd rather your sealed right eye than lose a hand,” says Herbert Stone, grimly, from somewhere up above.
The hesitant flame of Keedwell's candle graces a canvas depicting a small band of different-coloured horses, mingling in profile underneath the spread boughs of an ancient oak, the transitioning light measuring out the span of a day, from sunrise to sunset, over the course of a few seconds.
“What would you know about it,” says Herron.
“So you'd rather you lost a hand?”
Buckle turns his gaze upward, towards the muffled clatter of a heavy object striking the upper deck.
“Get on with it,” he says, pressing his knuckles against Keedwell's left shoulder.
“Wick won't take,” says Keedwell, coaxing the flame clear of the draughts as it continues to drip wax onto his shoes. Cupping his hand to the small fierce heat he finally makes good on his earlier attempts, transferring the bright grains of a pair of embers into the cord. A new blue flame unwinds from the braiding in the short rope, like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon, filling the air around the men with the smell of burning oil.
The confined, low-pitched space before them is over-crowded by an impassable tangle of ostentatious furnishings, loosely pushed and slotted together in a manner that resembles the contents of a stately home washed in on an encroaching tide. A pair of chairs and a small table have been separated from the fringes, as if some memory of their former pairing, stirred into life by the movement of the ship, has caused them to reunite.
“This has all got to belong to that laced mutton and her husband,” opines Buckle.
“You'd think that they'd take more care to pack it up properly,” says Herbert Stone, placing a hand on each of young John Roxby's shoulders and moving him to one side. “Expensive stuff like this doesn't grow on trees.”
“It's mostly made out of trees,” says Keedwell.
He moves the glow of the lantern slowly back and forth across the restricted panorama, the gravity of the flame stretching the branchlike shadows of the fancy wooden scroll-work into graceless kinks, that move like a forest of clock hands with the passage of the light.
Stone draws forward the bugbear that he commonly wears strapped across his chest on a hemp cord. The lacquered face of the carved coconut stares up at him; the small, dark pupils adrift in the ivory-inlaid whites of the eyes conveying an expression that combines surprise, horror, and protest, as if the metal spout that protrudes below the nose is an unwanted penis that has been gracelessly shoved into its mouth. Taking a seat at the table, he pulls out the chiselled wooden stopper and pours a measure of golden liquid into one of the dainty teacups.
“This is the life I was meant for,” he says, stretching out his legs. As he pushes his fingers into the hair on the back of his head, the crook of his elbow drapes its alien shadow across the supporting beams of the hold.
“Three fathoms deep in the dark, under a tide of shit and dying men?” counters Buckle.
Herron takes the chair opposite Stone.
“Pour us one,” he says “I'll pay it back at you.”
Stone reaches over with the bugbear, cradling it with both hands as if he is presenting it as an offering.
“She winked at you, John,” says Keedwell, nudging the young man gently in the side.
“What!?” says Roxby, his voice pitching up.
“The lady over there in the picture, she winked at you. See, the one next to the mirror.”
“No she didn't.”
“I think I saw it too,” says Herron, with his blind eye turned unconvincingly against the wall of canvases. Across from him, Stone grins into his rum.
“You know how there are some portraits whose eyes seem to follow you round a room?” says Keedwell.
Roxby, callow-eyed, nods dumbly.
“Well there are these some artists who can paint a subject so that, when viewed from a certain angle, it looks, for all the world, as if they are winking at you.”
“You should be grateful,” says Herron. “It's a sign that Venus, the Goddess of Love, is smiling down on you.”
“But I'm a Christian,” protests Roxby.
Stone begins to laugh quietly into the bone china of his tea cup.
From the strata of wood and stricken men that is layered above them, a pistol shot rings out.
Then another.
Then another.
The face in the portrait, lying on its side in the semi-darkness, trembles stiffly from the vibrations, but disperses no ripples.
“I venture that the oceans of the world would lie flat and still were it not for the perpetual warring of civilisations...”
Three men, whose days have been clouded by failure, are herded by the waves towards a life of piracy: Robert Meade seeks forgiveness from one who is indifferent to his guilt. Derrick Shapley fights on the sea for the rights of those who labour on the land. Charles Spry – 'the pink pirate' – sails into battle out of rose-coloured clouds of powdered coral smoke.
They are united under the flag of John Day, who has been delivered from the priesthood to run his family's trading empire, following the deaths of his older brothers, and who now seeks a back door to political power by captivating the souls of common men.
As whale song is carried on tidal winds from the Arctic Circle to the pinnacle of Scotland, and the islands of the Southern Atlantic collapse and burn to rubble, these four men, bound to a common cause, will find their union tested as they are pulled by the tides of fate towards divergent compass points.