Sky Run (12 page)

‘This is my daughter, Angelica. Angelica, say hello to the folks.'

She looked at us, a little shy.

‘Hello …'

‘We don't see much by way of folks, especially not her age.'

She stared at us with open and even affectionate curiosity, as if children were a strange novelty that it would take her a while to get used to. I noticed too that Martin was staring back at her, as if he even preferred her to the one hundred International Currency Units that he was holding in his hand.

‘You like books, young lady?' Peggy asked her.

‘Yes,' she said. ‘I do.'

‘But we don't have but two or three and she's read them over and over. So I was wondering,' the Ratter said, ‘if you might do me a favour. That is, seeing as you're going there anyway. And I'm happy to pay, happy to pay, whatever you ask, whatever it needs …'

Peggy sighed. I think she could see it coming. She knew what it was going to be long before he said it.

‘Would you take her with you, to City Island? She's starved for learning, poor thing, isn't that right, Angelica? And you wouldn't believe the brains on her, and me just a rat-skinner and all. It must be her mother she got them from, certainly wasn't me. But would you? I'll give you all I have. Would you take her? Please, ma'am, would you take her? She'll be safe with you, I know it. Take her with you, please.'

Peggy looked at her and said, ‘Is that what you want, Angelica? You want to leave your dad?'

The girl shook her head.

‘But you want to go to school too?'

And she nodded.

‘Then that's a hard one, isn't it now?'

‘I'll come and see you, Angelica. Next turning. I'll fix the boat and save up money and you can show me City Island and tell me all you've learned. You can't stay here rat-skinning – it'll do for me, but you've got the brains –'

She went over to her slightly smelly rat-skinning dad and put her arms around him.

‘I know, darling,' he said. ‘I know. And I'll miss you terrible. But it's what your mother would have wanted too. It's for the best.'

And I knew we'd have to budge up and make a little more room on the deck. Because we now had another passenger to take with us.

One thing did puzzle me though – why didn't the rat-skinner use his own daughter as rat bait? She was the same age as Martin. There were two explanations for that, as far as I could reason. The first was that she didn't smell right for the sky-rats; the second was that he loved her too much and didn't want to risk losing her. But he was quite happy for us to risk losing Martin. And even I thought Martin was worth a little more than one hundred International Currency Units. In some ways, he was quite irreplaceable.

Well, Gemma can go and do whatever she likes, whenever she chooses, as far as I care. It makes no difference to me. But I have to say that all this mooning about she started doing got quite nauseating.

I hadn't noticed straight away. But after a while I realised that she was always telling me about what Alain thought, and what his opinions were, and what the Cloud Hunting views were on this, that and the other. And when it came to her turn to do the cooking, it was all, ‘Oh, Alain, would you like to help me down in the galley?' – like he couldn't just have taken a turn cooking on his own. And when it was her turn for the washing-up, it was, ‘Oh, Alain, shall we do the washing-up together? It'll be so much quicker with two of us.'

But it never was quicker, not with the two of them gassing away down there – though I guessed it was Gemma who did most of the gassing while Alain got saddled with the listening.

It was quite obvious to me what was going on and pretty pathetic as far as I was concerned. But Peggy just sat there grinning to herself, like she'd not had her funny bone so tickled in a long time, but she never said a word. But I thought, well, there you go: Gemma sees the first boy she's come across in eight years (except me, of course, but as anyone will tell you, brothers don't count) and she thinks he's something special just because he's got a couple of scars on his face and a crossbow. But, anyway, if she wanted to go round acting stupid that was her business and not my problem.

But that's not the point. It's Angelica I want to tell you about. I mean, the only girl I'd ever seen since I was four was Gemma, so my idea of girls was bossy, moody, grumpy, argumentative, prone to cheating at card games, bossy again and occasionally given to kicking you when you weren't looking.

Angelica, though – she was nothing like that. She was really quite an eye-opener. She never told you what to do at all, not a gram of bossiness in her, and she never kicked you up the backside on the sly, not once. And as for pretty, well, I mean, she was pretty enough with the glasses on, but when she took them off and blinked at you with those big blue eyes of hers, well, I'd never even imagined anyone could be that pretty. Not that I'm saying Gemma's ugly or anything. She's presentable enough and scrubs up nice and clean, as Peggy would put it, but that's not the same as film star looks. Not that I'd ever seen a film back then, but I'd heard about them. And Angelica definitely had those film star looks with her glasses off.

But I wouldn't want you to go thinking that I'm a soft touch for a pretty face, as I'm not – that kind of thing doesn't count with me at all. No, it was all the things she'd read about and done that interested me. Angelica could remember whole chapters from books by heart, and she had so many rat-skinning stories that you could never have enough of them. She hadn't just sat at home turning pages and looking out of the window, she'd gone with her dad on no end of rat-skinning trips, and what Angelica couldn't tell you about rat-skinning wasn't worth knowing.

I just used to sprawl there on the deck and listen to her, as we tried to pass those long, weary travelling hours. She told me about the time her dad had his two fingers bitten off by a sky-rat, but how they had killed the sky-rat anyway and then gone and cut it open to get the fingers out and see if they couldn't be reattached.

But get this. When they cut the sky-rat open, they didn't just find two fingers in there, they found four – and still in good condition. Which meant the other two had to have been bitten off recently, or they'd have been digested.

So, anyway, then, Angelica said, they set off for the nearest hospital ship to try to see if her dad could get his fingers stitched back on. He knew which ones were his as the other two were a very dark brown, and he was more on the pale-skinned side, so that part wasn't a problem – not identifying the fingers anyway. Her dad could put the finger on his fingers and no trouble. But they never did find the guy who belonged to the other fingers anywhere, which was a pity, as maybe he was looking for them and hoping to be reunited.

But by the time they got to the hospital ship though, it was no good. The fingers were drying out and the skin was shrivelling up like parchment, Angelica said. And the surgeons couldn't do anything, though they offered him a couple of plastic ones. But her dad said it was real fingers or no fingers at all; he wasn't having plastic, as what use were plastic fingers to a rat-skinner? So he'd been two fingers short ever since. And she had plenty of stories like that, lots of them.

So this is why I thought she was someone special and still do. As I have met other girls since, but they never have any rat-skinning stories or have been on any rat-skinning adventures like Angelica had. She really was someone special. And as we sailed along, filling those long empty hours just talking and imagining about things, I used to think how great it would be if me and Angelica could go rat-skinning together one day. In fact, I even asked her.

‘Would you take me rat-skinning with you one day, Angelica?'

‘I'd love to, Martin,' she said. ‘I think that would be great.'

And I'd picture us sailing off rat-skinning together and hunting us down some big ones and maybe even getting our photos taken, with the two of us standing side by side, and some big felled sky-rat lying on the deck. I even thought that one day we could get married and get our own island and set up our own rat-skinning business. But when I hinted at it, she said she was sorry but no, as she was hoping to become a doctor one day. And when she said that I did wonder if it was so as to stitch people's fingers back on when they got them bitten off and other bad experiences.

She said her dad didn't want her going in for rat-skinning, as although it was a good living, it was looked down on, and was on a level with collecting the garbage. Though I don't see what is wrong with either of those things. Rubbish has to be collected and rats have to be skinned and people ought to be grateful that somebody's doing it. She said her dad wanted her to do better for herself, like surgery and being a doctor and so on. But while I could see that being a medical woman was certainly different from rat-skinning, I didn't see how it was necessarily better. But what did I know? And maybe once you got to City Island they taught you why rat-skinning was inferior, and I was looking forward to hearing the arguments and being persuaded against my views.

I asked Angelica what had happened to her mother – if it wasn't a sensitive spot – and whether rats had got her too, not just the fingers but the whole deal. But she said no, it was nothing like that. She said it was the loneliness that got to her, and being on that small island with nothing but two other human beings and a whole lot of dead rats for company, pegged up to dry out in the sun. So one day she had flagged down a passing cruiser and asked for a job on it and hugged them both and said she'd be back. But that was turnings ago and she hadn't been back at all, not even for a visit. So I guess that rat-skinning isn't to everyone's taste, for which, apparently, there is no accounting.

I got Peggy over to listen to some of Angelica's rat-skinning stories, but I don't think she enjoyed them as much as I did, and Angelica didn't tell them so well in Peggy's presence either, like it was cramping her style a touch.

Later on Peggy came over to me, when Angelica was down below doing whatever it is that girls do to keep themselves so pretty, like polishing their glasses and so on, and she said, ‘She's a smart little thing, that Angelica, isn't she, Martin?'

‘Brain like a factory,' I said, feeling – yet not really knowing why – that I should emphasise her brains rather than her looks.

‘You like her, do you, Martin?'

I just shrugged.

‘She's got some fine rat-skinning stories,' I said.

‘Yeah,' Peggy said. And then added, ‘Hasn't she though?' Whatever that was supposed to mean. ‘Yeah, she's smart all right,' Peggy repeated. ‘And plenty of imagination.'

‘Isn't it good to have imagination, Peggy?'

‘Sure it is.'

‘Didn't you always say?'

‘I did, Martin.'

‘“Just imagine,” you used to say. If I ever said I was bored, you'd say, “Use your imagination.”'

‘I'm not denying it.' Then she looked at me and smiled – which I was pleased to see, as she hadn't smiled much lately and had been looking old and tired, which she maybe was, but hadn't shown it. ‘I never thought I'd be taking four of you on the school run,' she said. ‘Never imagined we'd be picking up waifs and strays and stragglers along the route.'

‘Are we waifs and strays, Peggy?'

She reached out and ruffled my hair, like she hadn't done so much recently, though she did it a lot when I was small.

‘We're all waifs and strays, darlin',' she said. ‘One how or another.'

‘You're not though, Peggy, are you? I mean, you'll always be there.'

‘I'll try to, Martin,' she said. ‘But listen … you know … one day –'

‘One day what?'

‘Oh, nothing. I'll tell you another time.'

‘Peggy, what are you going to do when we get to City Island?'

‘Well, I won't be joining you at school.'

‘Will you be going home again?'

She looked away from me and didn't answer straight away. Then she smiled again – the smile of a thousand wrinkles, as she called it. Her. Not me.

‘That's right. I'll be going home. Back to my island and old Ben Harley – or, should I say, even older Ben Harley – and my smallholding and … yup, that's what I'll do.'

‘Peggy,' I said, ‘you won't be lonely, will you?'

‘Of course not, darlin'. I'll be too busy for that.'

‘If I thought you were going to be lonely I wouldn't go to City Island.'

‘No, I'll be fine. You don't worry about that.'

‘And there'll be the holidays.'

‘That's right. You can come and see me.'

‘How'll we get there?'

‘I'll come and get you. Or buy you a couple of tickets on a tramper. Take a while, but you'll get there.'

‘Then that's OK, then,' I said, feeling greatly reassured that she was going to be all right without us, for after all, she saved us from being orphans when she didn't have to.

‘Here comes the love interest,' she said. Well, I think that was what she said. I didn't quite catch it. And I didn't know what she meant. ‘I'm going to check the autopilot, make sure it's doing its job.'

‘OK.'

Angelica came back over and joined me under the canopy on deck. Her glasses really gleamed and I could tell that she'd been polishing them, and she smelled nice, like soap.

‘Where's Gemma?' I said.

‘With Alain, gutting fish for dinner.'

‘Huh,' I said. ‘No surprises there then.'

‘You OK, darlin'?' Peggy called over.

‘I'm fine, thank you, Peggy,' Angelica said.

‘Good.' Peggy smiled. ‘You keep him in order.' Then she went back to looking at the charts.

‘She's nice, your grandma,' Angelica said. ‘She must be the oldest person I've ever seen.'

‘Clean living and whisky,' I said.

‘What?'

‘That's what she tells people when they ask how she lived so long. Clean living and whisky.'

‘What's whisky?'

‘Old Ben Harley makes it and puts it in a bottle. He says it's whisky but I think it's more likely drain cleaner. And it's good for deterring midges.'

‘You want to play draughts again, Martin? Maybe you'll win?'

‘Nah … not right now, Angelica. I don't suppose you'd have any more rat-skinning stories, would you? I guess you'll have run out and told me them all by now.'

‘No … no … I don't think so. Just give me a moment to remember some of them now … yes, right. So did I tell you about the time my dad and I had this huge great sky-rat cornered, but then the harpoon gun misfired, and Dad had to strangle it with his bare hands?'

‘No, you never mentioned that one. I'd like to hear about it, I really would. And all the details. Including the gory ones.'

‘Then I'll see if I can remember them all, Martin.'

‘Like, did he have to poke it in the eye? Don't leave anything out. Make sure to include the eye-poking if there was any.'

‘I'm just recollecting and bringing it back to mind to have it ready for the telling.'

‘Great,' I said. ‘Great. And was there any eye-poking? Or anyone getting any bits chewed off?'

‘You know, I think there was that day. In fact, I'm sure of it.'

‘Perfect. And you'd better tell me how you gutted it after you caught it too, and whether there were any fingers inside, or maybe a leg or something.'

And I really did think it was special that someone could be so pretty, like Angelica. But not just that – that she could have so many good rat-skinning stories right there at her fingertips and up her sleeves too. I reckon a girl like that could have been an honorary boy quite easy and no trouble. I reckon if I'd found a few more boys and we'd had a vote on it, we'd have let her in straight off, and no arguments. And she'd have had a seat at the top of the table, and the big comfortable chair, with the arms.