How to Stop Time(69)

Hendrich answers.

‘All right, Hendrich. I’ll do it.’





PART FIVE

The Return





Plymouth, England, 1768



The story of how I met Omai began on a rainy Tuesday in March on the cobbles of Plymouth harbour. I was hungover. I was always hungover in Plymouth. Well, either hungover or drunk. It was a wet place. Rain, sea, ale. It felt like everyone was slowly drowning.

When I found Captain Samuel Wallis, I recognised him from the portrait I had seen hanging in the Guildhall. He was wearing his fine royal blue coat and walking along the jetty, deep in conversation with another man.

I had arrived in Plymouth only a month before. At this time my hope seemed to ebb ever further out to sea. I had stopped believing in ever finding my daughter and instead I found myself trying to solve the riddle that plagued me: what is the point of living when you have no one to live for? I still had no answer to that. I think, looking back, I was suffering from a kind of depression.

I ran over to him, to Wallis, and stood in front of his path, walking backwards as he walked forwards.

‘I heard you were a man short,’ I said. ‘For the voyage. On the Dolphin.’

The men carried on walking. Captain Wallis looked at me. He was, like so many of the men made large by history, rather mediocre in the flesh, the fine tailoring highlighting rather than hiding his physical shortcomings. Short, pudgy, purple-cheeked. A man made more for grand dinners than seafaring. And yet he was only two years away from having an island named after him. In the meantime, his small green eyes viewed me with disdain.

‘Who are you?’ he asked, in a deep snorting kind of voice.

‘John Frears.’ It was the first time I had ever said that name.

Captain Wallis’ companion lightly touched his arm. A quiet gesture but one which did its purpose. This man seemed very different to Mr Wallis. Sharp-eyed but with a kind mouth, his lips curling at their edges with interest. He was wearing a coal-black coat despite the weather. This was Tobias Furneaux, a man I would get to know quite well over the years. Both men now stopped still amid the busy harbour, near crates of speckled grey freshly killed fish, shining in the June sunlight. ‘And why should we have you on our vessel?’

‘I have skills, good sirs, that might be wanting elsewhere.’

‘Like what?’ asked Mr Furneaux.

I dug deep into my bag and took out my black wooden three-holed galoubet and put it to my lips. I began to play a few notes of a folk tune, ‘The Bay of Biscay’.

‘You play the pipe well,’ said Mr Furneaux, suppressing a smile.

‘I can also play the mandolin.’ I didn’t mention the lute, obviously. It would have been like, these days, saying you could use a fax machine in a job interview. It simply wasn’t something people did any more.

Mr Furneaux was impressed, and said something along those lines.

‘Hmm,’ said Mr Wallis, humming a more doubtful tune and turning to his companion. ‘We are not arranging a concert, Mr Furneaux.’

Mr Furneaux inhaled the damp air sharply. ‘If I may be so bold, Mr Wallis, I would like to proffer that musical ability is an invaluable skill on long voyages such as ours.’

‘I have other skills too, sir,’ I said, addressing Mr Wallis.

He gave me a quizzical look.

‘I can hook a sail and oil the masts and repair the rigging. I can read both words and maps. I can load a gun with powder, and fire it with reasonable aim. I can speak in the French tongue, sir. And the Dutch, though with less proficiency. I am sound on a night watch. I could go on, sir.’

Mr Furneaux was suppressing a laugh by now. Captain Wallis looked no happier than he had a minute before. In fact, he looked like he seriously didn’t like me now. He began walking away, his velvet coat flapping in the breeze like the sail of a retreating ship.

‘We sail early. Six of the clock, tomorrow morning. We’ll see you harbourside.’

‘Aye, sir, six of the clock. I’ll be there. Thank you. Thank you very much.’





London, now



I am teaching more social history to the class of year nines when Camille walks past the window, like a tormenting dream.

‘In Elizabethan England, no one carried bank notes in their pocket. It was all coins until the establishment of the Bank of England . . .’

I raise my hand instinctively, but Camille doesn’t respond, even though she sees me. Anton watches as my hand falls.

It stays that way the whole week. I am invisible to Camille. Her eyes never meet mine in the staff room. She never says hello when we pass each other outside. I have hurt her. I know that. So I make no attempt to make it worse by talking to her. My plan is simply to see the week out, go to Australia, and then ask to go somewhere far away from here.

Once, though, crossing diagonal paths across the school hall, seeing her looking sad, I can’t help but say, ‘Camille, I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry.’ And she gives a nod so small it might not have been there at all, and carries on walking.

That evening, as Abraham tries to shake off a Maltese terrier a quarter of his size, I stare over at the empty bench and remember putting my arm around Camille. The bench exudes a sadness, almost as if it remembers too.

The following Saturday is the start of the half-term break. I am due to fly to Australia and drop Abraham off at the dog sitter’s the following day but right now I am in the supermarket. I am chucking a travel-size tube of toothpaste in my basket when I notice Daphne, bright-bloused and wide-eyed, behind her trolley.