The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(54)
The stars were bright but we were too far away to be seen by our pursuers; we scrambled up the bank – how I blessed my new-found physical fitness – and made off northwestwards, heading towards the lights of Grange-Over-Sands, six miles away across the glistening mud flats.
It was quite unlike anything that has ever happened to me, it was the strangest journey I have ever made. The darkness, the unheard, nearby sea, the whistle and bleat of the wings of flocks of bewildered birds, the slap of our feet on the wet sand and the fear that drove us on towards the wriggling lights so far across the bay.
But I had this much going for me: I was on familiar ground. My plan was to strike Quicksand Pool – a two-mile treacherous lagoon – at its most dangerous point, then turn northeastwards and follow it to its narrowest part and cross there. At that point, the friendly shore of Silverdale would bear due north at two miles’ distance. This depended on our having crossed the Keer at the right spot, and on the tide being where I believed it to be – I had no choice but to assume that I was right about both.
That was where the nightmare began.
Jock was loping a few yards to my left when we both found ourselves on quaking ground. I did what you should do in such a case – keep moving fast but circle back sharply to your starting point. Jock didn’t. He stopped, grunted, tried to pull back, splashed about, stuck fast. I dropped the suitcase and hunted for him in the dark while he called to me, his voice high with panic as I had never heard it before. I got hold of his hand and started to sink also; I threw myself down, only my elbows now on the quagmire. It was like pulling at an oak tree. I knelt to get better purchase but my knees sank straight in, terrifyingly.
‘Lie forward,’ I snarled at him.
‘Can’t, Mr Charlie – I’m up to me belly.’
‘Wait, I’ll get the suitcase.’
I had to strike a match to find the suitcase, then another to find Jock again in the tantalizing shimmer of wet sand and starshine. I thrust the suitcase forward and he laid his arms on it, hugging it to his chest, driving it into the mud as he bore down on it.
‘No good, Mr Charlie,’ he said at last. ‘I’m up to me armpits and I can’t breathe much any more.’ His voice was a horrid travesty.
Behind us – not nearly far enough behind us – I heard the rhythmic patter of feet on wet sand.
‘Go on, Mr Charlie, scarper!’
‘Christ, Jock, what do you think I am?’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ he gasped. ‘Piss off. But do me a favour first. You know. I don’t want it like this. Might take half an hour. Go on, do it.’
‘Christ, Jock,’ I said again, appalled.
‘Go on, me old mate. Quick. Put the leather in.’
I scrambled to my feet, aghast. Then I couldn’t bear the noises he was making any more and I stepped on to the suitcase with my left foot and trod on his head with my right foot, grinding at it. He made dreadful noises but his head wouldn’t go under. I kicked at it frantically again and again, until the noises stopped, then I clawed up the suitcase and ran blindly, weeping with horror and terror and love.
When I heard the water chuckling below me I guessed my position and threw myself at the channel, not caring whether it was the crossing place or not. I got over, leaving my right shoe in the mud – that shoe, thank God – and ran north, each breath tearing at my windpipe. Once I fell and couldn’t get up; behind me and to the left I saw torches flickering: perhaps one of them had gone to join Jock – I don’t know, it’s not important. I kicked the other shoe off and got up and ran again, cursing and weeping, falling into gullies, tearing my feet on stones and shells, the suitcase battering at my knees, until at last I crashed into the remains of the breakwater at Jenny Brown’s Point.
There I pulled myself together a little, sitting on the suitcase, trying to think calmly, starting to learn to live with what had happened. No, with what I had done. With what I have done. A soft rain began to fall and I turned my face up to it, letting it rinse away some of the heat and the evil.
The knapsack was back at Quicksand Pool; all the necessities of life were in it. The suitcase was almost empty except for some packets of currency. I needed a weapon, shoes, dry clothes, food, a drink, shelter and – above all – a friendly word from someone, anyone.
Keeping the low limestone cliffs on my right hand I stumbled along the shore for almost a mile to Know End Point, where the saltmarsh proper begins – that strange landscape of sea-washed turf and gutters and flashes where the finest lambs in England graze.
Above me and to my right shone the lights of the honest bungalow dwellers of Silverdale: I found myself envying them bitterly. It is chaps like them who have the secret of happiness, they know the art of it, they always knew it. Happiness is an annuity, or it’s shares in a Building Society; it’s a pension and blue hydrangeas, and wonderfully clever grandchildren, and being on the Committee, and just-a-few-earlies in the vegetable garden, and being alive and wonderful-for-his-age when old so-and-so is under the sod, and it’s double-glazing and sitting by the electric fire remembering that time when you told the Area Manager where he got off and that other time when that Doris …
Happiness is easy: I don’t know why more people don’t go in for it.
I stole along the road leading up from the shore. My watch said 11.40. It was Friday, so licensing hours would have ended at eleven, plus ten minutes drinking-up time plus, say, another ten minutes getting rid of the nuisances. My soaked and ragged socks made wet whispers on the pavement. There were no cars outside the hotel, no lights on in front. I was starting to shake with cold and reaction and the hope of succour as I hobbled through the darkened car park and round to the kitchen window.