The Cabinet Room

Larry sat at the head of a long table that took up much of the cabinet room in Number 10. The gang were seated along its length. Barrymore was pouring out shots of Havana Club at the very cocktail cabinet after which, so it was said, the room had been named. It was all 1950s Formica and mirror glass on spindly legs.

“Rum for the boys,” said Barrymore, “and what will you girls be wanting?”

“A Mah-Jongg cocktail for me, please,” said Flo.

“Ooh, what’s in one of those?” asked Beryl.

“Dry gin, white rum and Curaçao.”

“Oh yeh, I’ll have one of those too.”

“Tiger beer for me please,” said Lady Augusta, “And Zelda will have a dandelion and burdock.”

The young punk sighed, “But…”

“Small sherry please,” said Aunty Stella, “I’ve things to do this afternoon.”

“Now,” said Larry, “let’s get down to business. Situation reports please.”

Boz coughed, “The counter revolution has collapsed. The Yanks are somewhat averse to failure, particularly spectacularly embarrassing and public failure. Following on from the Überkatzen disaster the Multinationals have withdrawn funding from the British Government in Exile. There will be no more trouble from that quarter. Consuella and the Kittens will shortly be returning from Jersey, by air.”

“Les Chats have remained conspicuously inconspicuous since their ticking off,” said Lady Augusta. “I think now would be a good time to take Zelda home and for me to return to Shambhalla.”

“Looks like you can go back to not being in charge, Mr Acting Prime Minister,” said Flo.

Larry gave a satisfied sigh.

As the pals sat back, tucked into their drinks and wondered if biscuits would be arriving any time soon there came an edgy whistle from outside. They crowded the windows in time to see a fireball glowing emerald green and gouging a smoke trail across the sky. As it passed there was the double bang of a sonic boom and the whistle tone dropped an octave. Soon after the object passed beyond the horizon there was a momentary intense white flash that cast deep, sharp shadows even within the cabinet room and, some seconds later, a dull rumble like distant thunder.

“What now?” asked Larry.

*

The good ladies of Maldon clustered at the landward end of Northey Island’s tidal causeway. A sudden shockwave had shattered windowpanes, dislodged roof tiles and chimney pots in their town and a disgruntled deputation had marched to the source of the explosion. Many carried infants within the folds of their shawls, most were knitting ganseys for their men folk as they surged forwards. At the far end of the causeway a menacing assemblage of junkyard scrap metal crafted into the form of a humanoid robot stood sentry, gleaming chrome-like in the watery Essex light, Behind it a freshly ploughed crater still glowed dimly and smoked. The mayor’s wife pushed through the crowd and stepped onto the narrow land bridge. A small creature dressed in a silvery space suit with a bubble helmet approached from the island.

“Now look here. Someone’s going to have to pay for all our broken windows.”

“Madam, we have come to negotiate the retrieval of a long lost artifact, whose power is beyond your comprehension. Take me to your leader.”

The Rotting Hulk Tavern

The local haunt of the Maldon seafaring community was an alehouse called the Rotting Hulk Tavern. It had a faded sign swinging wildly in the wind and was a high, eccentric, weatherboarded building, clinging tenuously to the edge of the salt flats.   Inside, the bar was cramped, dark and warm. Every nook and corner was cluttered with nautical paraphernalia donated by travellers on all the seven seas, fixed to walls and ceiling by drawing pin and Blue Tack were tobacco browned paintings of ships, sharks’ jaws, blocks, fishing floats, dried puffer-fish, half hulls and postcards, many creased and dog eared, from every location with a seaboard. In an obscure alcove there lurked the scrimshaw carved tooth of the very whale that had devoured Westward Ho Smy. Wax encrusted Mateus Rose bottles with worn down candles graced every table. The customers jostled noisily, fierce looking people, some ragged, others flamboyant in feathers and ribbons, some boiler suited or Guernsey smocked, and occasionally an embarrassed yachty in yellow wellies trying to keep a low profile. Many of the rapscallions carried cutlasses or harpoons and exuded an aroma of Stockholm tar and bilge water, scurvy mariners all.

Rick ordered pints of deep headed bitter beer for himself and the crew and a saucer of milk for Potkin. Eben smiled at the cat and poured a tot of Pusser’s Rum into the milk. He felt kindly towards Potkin who was shy and nervous in the press of strangers. As Potkin was lapping his milk a slim torti-shell coloured cat came up to him.

“Hello sailor,” she said, “Would you like to buy me a drink?”

Potkin thought it would be impolite to refuse so he ordered her something mauve and very expensive in a champagne coupe. It came with a cherry on a stick. When they had finished their drinks she said,

“We could pop upstairs for a cuddle if you would like to.”

Potkin replied that he could not as he had to keep an eye on Rick. She smiled gently at him and sighed.

“You’re a sweet cat. Come and see me again sometime.”

When Potkin rejoined Rich he was sitting at a table chatting with the skipper of a local smack, Heartsease Finbow, whose cordate, jade velvet eye patch trimmed with lace complemented perfectly her shock of flame red hair

“I thought you’d scored there.” she said to Potkin with a smile and girlish laugh.

The drinking and talking, some singing and roistering, went on late into the night.

Finally, “That’s enough, now.” shouted Absalom Rowbottom above the din; “We rise at sparrows’ fart.”

Arm in arm they reeled back to the ship and turned, gratefully, into their hammocks.

 

The Sailing Barge Centaur

Arriving on the scuffed pine deck of the sailing barge Centaur Rick and Potkin were met, close to the head of the gangway, by a rotund figure somewhat wider than he was tall, wearing a grease stained, woollen tea-cosy on his head and a leather apron with assorted boning, filleting and skinning knives stuffed into the waist. He had a black, cardboard eye-patch and a peg leg made from the curved and richly French polished limb of a Queen Anne chair, more ornately rococo than practical considerations required, but it did have a beautifully carved ball and claw foot. He explained that he had lost his own leg at the battle of Jutland. Potkin thought that he must have been very careless to mislay an entire leg, but perhaps in the heat of battle it was possible to do that sort of thing. This fellow it turned out was cook aboard Centaur and revealed his name to be Ebenhaezer Coleye, plain Eben to his shipmates. Carefully steering them around the clutter of rigging scattered about the deck he led the pair below. He showed them where to sling their hammocks and then introduced them to the saloon, a large, low deckheaded*, heavy timbered space inconveniently divided in two by the vessel’s sturdy keelson, dimly lit by hissing Tilly lamps and with a black-leaded pot-belly stove at its heart. Here they met some of the crew, huddled close to the stove.

First was the skipper, name of Absalom Rowbottom, unnaturally tall with stooped shoulders; a man brooding and lonely, weighed down by the responsibility of command. A jagged white scar ran across his brow, behind the patent leather eye patch and over one cheek to disappear into one of his bushy, greying sideburns. He wore a towering tarred, black stovepipe hat tied under his chin by beeswaxed string and a black oilskin long coat over a pair of similarly coloured rubber thigh-boots. The mate was a muscular, shaven headed, heavily tattooed native of the distant island of Mersea. His scant clothing implied a disregard for our east coast chill, and his one good, black hole of an eye sucked in the world around with all its suffering and woe and let not a glimmer escape from within.

“Moses Smith’s my name,” he said to Potkin, proffering a calloused hand. He and Rick seemed to be old shipmates and they instantly began chatting of previous voyages and adventures. There were, it transpired, to be no further introductions as the skipper announced it was half past opening time and the entire ship’s company rushed ashore to the pub.

*(I’m going to insert a note here for my unnautical readers. The ‘deckhead’, or underside of the deck is like the ceiling in a room ashore. The ‘ceiling’ in a ship is the floor. Try not to get confused.)

Potkin and the Barge Match

I shall recount, in serial form, the tale of a former comrade of my Dad’s.

POTKIN

and the

BARGE MATCH

Being an account of

Potkin the cat

And how he saved the sailing barge

CENTAUR

from certain destruction.

Rick was packing, slowly filling a capacious black sail-bag with his sailing gear of waders, guernsey knit-frock, oilskins, sou’wester and other nautical sundries.

Potkin was sulking. (Potkin was a black and white cat – not as big or colourful as me, of course, but with quite long shaggy fur and a magnificent bushy tail.) He was sulking because he hated it when Rick went away. He hated being left behind.

“Can I come with you?” he asked, trying to appear hopeful.

Rick looked somewhat dubious, but Potkin explained that he was sure to make a good sailor because his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather had been Tufty Morgan the infamous pirate and scourge of the Spanish Maine. Although scourging maines was now quite out of fashion Potkin was convinced he had inherited salt water in his blood. Rick was still a little doubtful, but after giving the matter some thought, said OK he could come along.

A very excited Potkin quickly packed his best kitbag with wellies, hammock and an emergency tin of smoked salmon. The pair feasted on a fish and chip supper before setting out (Potkin preferred codfish to coleyfish, but there is no accounting for taste) and were soon on the road towards the sailortown of Maldon in the dour, dangerous and ancient county of Essex.

It was a dark and stormy night in Maldon. The cobblestones of the steep narrow lanes shone damply from a fine drizzle that was visible only where it sparkled around the Edwardian street-lamps. Windows in tiny terraced fishermen’s cottages glowed warmly against the weather and in the church-yard, gravestones without graves remembered lost seafarers; Zachariah Gypps, lost at sea; Vigilance Thurogood, lost at sea; Reuben Saych, drowned; Bartimeus Godsave, lost at sea; Westward Ho Smy, consumed by a whale, “His body ingested, his spirit flying free.”

At the quayside Potkin stopped in his tracks, gob smacked, as some would say. Untidy groups of sailors jostled purposefully beneath a forest of tall masts. Huge black hulls were made fast along the length of the quay, and stacked four or five deep. This weekend there was to be a barge match, which is sailor-speak for a boat race. Rick and Potkin had berths on one of these mighty craft, if only they could identify her, and squeezed amongst the crowding fishermen and bargemen attempting to make out the names carved and gilded upon the vessels’ transoms. At length they found themselves standing beneath the looming and garishly painted figure of a full-bodied, if incautiously underdressed harridan whose ornately carved torso terminated in the forelegs of a galloping horse. Potkin had never seen anyone quite like her around his home territory in the East End of London. The figurehead projected from the high bow of the sailing barge Centaur of Harwich. Their search was over and diligence rewarded, this sturdy craft was to be their home for the duration of the coming voyage.

With barely a pause and hefting their luggage onto their shoulders the pair marched boldly up the rickety gangplank.