Lies Sleeping (Peter Grant, #7)(28)

This turned out to be the Pride of Putney, a nine-metre traditional gentleman’s day boat built in the 1920s, with mahogany and brass fittings. Designed to motor rich people up and down the Thames, it had been refitted so that the bench seats in the aft passenger cabin could be rearranged to make a double bed. There was no internet or other electronics, which goes some way to explaining why Bev had been so vexed with me about her erstwhile sabbatical on the upper Thames.

‘Though I got used to it,’ she told me later. ‘Plus I quickly figured out which pubs and houses had free Wi-Fi.’

I threw my luggage into the boat and, while Bev and Abigail went to pick a site for the tent, I set off to find Oxley and pay my respects. This is important amongst the Genii Locorum, who like a bit of respect and are not above flooding your back garden to get it. Oxley, despite being Father Thames’s right-hand river deity, usually keeps a modest establishment, a tiny house in Chertsey and an old-fashioned caravan when on the road, but this time he had the second biggest boat.

It was a flat-bottomed, flat-roofed, clapboard sided, green painted shotgun-shack on a raft called the Queen of the Nile. Moored centrally so that Oxley could sit on the roof under an awning and be, if not the master of all he surveyed, then at least responsible for keeping the whole mad enterprise from flying apart. Given that we had that much in common, I probably shouldn’t have been so surprised that he gave me a hug when I joined him on the roof. He was a short wiry man with long arms that I suspect could have easily lifted me above his head.

‘Good timing,’ he said as I sat down next to him in a deckchair with Property of Merton College stamped across the faded stripes of its canvas back. Raindrops started to splat on the awning above us as the leading edge of the storm crossed the river and hit the marina. There were shrieks as adults ran for shelter and children ran in circles – a dog started barking.

From our perch it was easy to spot Beverley and Abigail scurrying along the pontoon bridge to the Pride of Putney. Beverley stopped while Abigail climbed inside, looked over at Oxley’s boat, spotted me, waved and then ducked inside, too.

‘Is that Peter?’ called Oxley’s wife Isis from below.

‘It is, my love,’ called Oxley.

‘Ask him if he wants tea.’

I said I did and then waited as Oxley was summoned down the stern ladder to help fetch it. Isis climbed up with the biscuits, which she placed on a folding table. She had an oval face, pale white skin and extraordinarily dark brown eyes. According to her and Oxley she had once been the notorious Mrs Freeman, aka Anna Maria de Burgh Coppinger, mistress and co-conspirator of the fraudulent Henry Ireland. As far as me and Postmartin could tell from the existing records, this was true. Which meant that she was supposed to have died in 1802. Which meant that it was possible that in some way she’d caught practical immortality from her husband. Something that Lady Ty didn’t think was possible.

The Doctors Vaughan and Walid wanted a tissue sample.

Something I didn’t think was practical.

There were only two deckchairs – Isis took her husband’s and motioned me back down into mine. When Oxley made it up the ladder with the tea tray he saw how things lay and sensibly sat cross-legged at his wife’s feet.

Isis gave ritual reassurance that drinking her tea and scoffing her Lidl custard creams would not bind me into perpetual servitude, and I duly ate and drank and was merry.

It began to bucket down, shrieks of annoyance and joy floating up from the marina around us.

I watched Oxley sitting in his faded blue Oasis T-shirt and frayed khaki chinos. The idea that he was born back in the ninth century seemed a little bit distant. But my biology teacher at school had been adamant that if you plucked an original Homo sapiens sapiens out of the Rift Valley and put him in a suit he could have walked in and taken a substitute RE class no problem.

I have a clear memory of me saying that would be a waste, since think about what he could tell us about being a caveman. But, you know, I’m not sure whether I actually did ask that or just wished I had.

Certainly I don’t remember getting an answer.

Anyone who’s taken statements from multiple witnesses to the same event will know how malleable memory is. And yet Oxley had been around for quite a lot of the period of my Key Stage 3 History Curriculum, and there were other Rivers who were even older.

‘You’re about twelve hundred years old, right?’ I said.

Oxley stared at me a moment before nodding slowly.

‘I should say something of that order,’ he said. ‘Now you come to mention it. But if it’s wisdom you’re after, you’re asking the wrong man.’

‘I was thinking more of your memory,’ I said.

‘Ah, well,’ said Oxley. ‘Memory, now – there’s a tricky thing. What particular memory were you thinking of?’

‘King Arthur,’ I said.

‘Before my time,’ said Oxley.

‘But was he a legend or a real king?’

‘Kings were legends in those days. Or so they seemed to such poor creatures as myself. I’m not sure I could say who was king in my youth and I was quite a learned man.’

‘Not even his name?’

‘Do you remember who was prime minister when you were so high?’

He nodded at a small child, gender indeterminate, in blue shorts who was dancing about in the rain.