The Ghost Tree. Barbara Erskine

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СКАЧАТЬ partition between them and the seamen’s quarters they could hear the low voices of men talking, the occasional burst of laughter, a shout of anger.

      Tom was growing used to the routine on board; their lives were ordained by the sound of the bell every half an hour, by the division of their day into four-hour watches, by the longing for mealtimes and for sleep. At first he had thought he would never fall asleep in his hammock, but sheer exhaustion soon won and he was unconscious as soon as his head touched the rough brown canvas. Nearby one of the smaller middies was crying quietly, trying to muffle the sound in his arms as he clenched his eyelids against an intolerable world and Tom found himself aching with sympathy and at the same time relief that he himself felt, if not at home, then at least able to bear it.

      As a young gentleman, Tom’s main duties were as one of the captain’s servants, the young men training to be officers; when called to perform these duties he must brush his own blue coat and make sure his hair was tidily tied back beneath his cocked hat and report to the captain, be it in his cabin or on the quarterdeck. As with everything else, he watched and learned and sometimes, with Jamie at his side, he got into mischief. Once or twice he was invited to the captain’s table not as a servant but as a guest, sitting amongst the other officers, permitted with a certain good-humoured tolerance to give his views on subjects of the moment.

      Almost as soon as they had set sail, Thomas and the other young gentlemen had been summoned to the quarterdeck to begin their lessons in navigation and it was then Tom discovered that this was to be no ordinary voyage. Not that he had any idea what an ordinary voyage entailed, but he could sense that this was special. The captain himself was there and with him their two civilian passengers, William Harrison and Thomas Wyatt. Sir John was, he explained to the boys, to oversee the sea trial of a special timepiece which would help navigators work out the position of the ship through an accurate knowledge of longitude. A prize was to be awarded to the first person to invent a chronometer that was sufficiently accurate and much was at stake.

      With the aid of his calculations Mr Harrison predicted that the ship would arrive in Madeira on 19 April and the exact distance the ship would have sailed.

      Tom stared at the watch. It was beautiful. He had only a vague idea of what the men were talking about but one thing swiftly rose uppermost in his mind. How envious his brother David, with his fascination for the stars, would be of this chance to see these trials. He would write to him and tell him all about it, make his brother envious. He was gleeful at the thought, unaware that at that moment the captain happened to glance his way and caught sight of the fierce excitement on the young midshipman’s face. His uncle had told him to keep a special eye on young Tom Erskine and suddenly he understood why. It was more than a benevolent family interest; there was a good brain there and a spark that could be cultivated.

      At dinner that night, with Tom amongst the invited guests and, for once without Jamie, who was rapidly becoming his faithful sidekick, Sir John encouraged the boy to listen and to talk with his two distinguished guests. He was impressed that Tom appeared to know so much about the movement of the stars and had so swiftly grasped the basics of navigation. He did not know that the slowly growing pile of letters addressed to Lord Cardross in the bottom of Tom’s sea chest were the way Tom was assuaging his homesickness and at the same time proving to his eldest brother, secure in his academic haven in Scotland, that life at sea was something to be envied.

       Thomas

       Cross though I was with my parents and my brothers, blaming them for my being press-ganged, as I considered it, into the navy, I wrote to them all. To my father I sent a short, polite note, informing him that I was still alive and moderately well. To my mother I wrote in warmer terms, withholding any news which I believed would be upsetting, though my mother was to my mind far better able to bear bad news than Papa. To David I was formal; I would never let him think I had been upset by my sudden relocation into the middle of the ocean. Only to Harry did I unburden myself at length, describing the worst parts of the experience, maybe, in spite of myself, allowing hints of my fear and homesickness, a sorrow compounded by the fact that I no longer knew where my home was. Certainly not Bath. I had been there but a few months. The house of my parents in Walcot was, I suppose, the nearest thing to home that I had known, but in my own mind I considered that they had cast me out. My brothers still lived and studied in Scotland, and Scotland was the land of my birth. It was there that I had grown up; it was there that I had explored a world of confusing contrasts. I was of noble birth, but poor. I was loved, at least by Mama, but I was also their youngest and least important child. I was in my heart a country boy but lived in a city. I had been privy to the conversations of the greatest minds of the enlightened age, encouraged to listen and watch and study, to express, albeit only occasionally, my own small opinions as I grew. I was allowed to make books my friends and to write and have dreams of academe, then told that all of my expectations and certainties were no more than that: dreams.

      The place I now found myself was, I supposed, at present my home, the only certainty I knew upon the great wastes of the sea, and I put that at the head of my letters as my current address: HMS Tartar.

       I sealed my letters and stowed them away at the bottom of my sea chest. I did not know if they would ever reach their destination. Perhaps it would be better if they did not.

       14

      April looked at her watch. There was no sign of Timothy and it had long ago grown dark. Presumably he had followed the Daimler for miles, then in his usual clueless way he had got himself lost. She felt a disproportionate wave of hatred for Finlay sweep over her. Everything about him, his complacency, his posh car, his celebrity status – which obviously brought money as well as fame – added to her fury at his decision to get involved and try to thwart her plans.

      Sitters they had called themselves. The name had pleased them hugely. Squat. Infiltrate. Take. Hence the acronym. They would look for an empty house to use as a base – surprisingly easy even in this day and age. Then they’d move in, their story of distant relatives ready should anyone ask who they were, and begin to leaflet the area. They offered cleaning services, odd jobs, help with shopping, ‘no job too small’ and targeted elderly people who seemed to be living on their own. They then befriended them. Hence the sitting; not babysitting, but sitting with the elderly. Timothy at least had convinced himself they were doing the old folk a favour. They were lonely, abandoned by the world. It pleased them to have a friend. They entrusted their money, their credit cards, their PIN numbers, in order to get the shopping done, and she and Timothy had done that shopping, keeping meticulous records in case anyone ever asked. Until the money ran out. Which it inevitably did. That was the point. Sometimes they found the pension was enough to make it worthwhile sticking around, but not usually. Someone might notice. Time to move on. This was business. Their last target had been in Leeds. Before that in Birmingham.

      The squats had varied. Some were in empty houses and they had made do with basic second-hand tat to furnish them. Some were already furnished, as this one had been. They knew who had lived here from sorting through the post that still cascaded through the door. Where the old woman had gone they did not know, but she had had good taste. April liked this house. She would be sad when it was time to go. Edinburgh had been trickier than anywhere else had been so far. She had found it harder to make contacts, to know where to go. But this new enterprise was the best so far; a potential gold mine.

      They had tried the inheritance scam once before, in Exeter; it had worked like a dream. No one had questioned them, no one had cared. СКАЧАТЬ