“Okay, Captain,” yawned Marie.
There was a little girl sitting on the pavement, drawing chalk pictures. She tilted her head at me as I approached, blonde curls bouncing delightfully.
“Do you like my picture, mister?” she asked, with just a hint of a lisp.
I looked down at her. She was a pretty little thing; I didn’t recall seeing her around her before.
“It’s very nice,” I replied. She wore a pink silk dress that must have cost her parents quite a few dollars. Her pale arms were pudgy beneath the puffed sleeves.
“Would you give me a penny for it?”
“I shouldn’t stay here, little miss,” I said. “This is not a place for children.”
That’s when my mind finally registered what she had drawn. It looked like something Hieronymous Bosch might have drawn, if had he decided to turn his hand to hardcore pornography.
“What the...” I began.
“The Daddio sends his regards,” said the little girl. She stared up at me, open mouthed. I felt a shiver of horror as I saw two eyes set in her tongue, looking back at me.
She stood up. I guessed she would be about six years old.
“Did you draw this yourself?” I said, looking down at the picture.
“The Daddio wants to know where you were last night. You didn’t return to your flat.”
“I... I was with a friend.”
“Ah! You were fucking a whore.” The little girl nodded wisely. “The Daddio said it would be something like that.”
Now, as you can imagine, Captain Jim Wedderburn has heard much worse language in his time. But hearing it from the voice of such a sweet little thing made it seem all the more obscene. I almost blushed.
“I bet your mother wouldn’t be pleased to hear you talking like that,” I said, weakly.
“My mother can go frig herself.” The girl reached up and patted my stomach. “Listen, the Daddio wants you to do something for him.”
“Does he now?” I said, rather weakly.
“You’re to go to the docks. The Daddio has a shipment coming in. Some new friends for you. You’re to bring them back here and set them up in rooms of their own. He’ll send further instructions on how you’re to pay the Daddio his cut of their earnings later on.”
“I don’t have time to go right now, sweetheart,” I said. “Maybe tomorrow.”
The little girl smiled at me.
“You go now, or the Daddio will send someone to cut open your stomach and shit in it.”
She stuck her tongue out, and the two malevolent eyes there stared at me.
“That’s a pretty turn of phrase,” I said, carefully. “What’s your name, poppet?”
The little girl spread her pink skirt and performed a curtsey.
“My name is Honey Peppers and I am six and three-quarters years old.”
“Well, Honey, you can tell the Daddio that I am going to the docks right away.”
And at that I spun on my heel and set off at a great pace. I heard the flip of little footsteps behind me as Honey Peppers ran to keep up.
“Hey! Wait for me! I’m to come with you!”
“Hurry up then,” I called over my shoulder. “We can’t keep the Daddio waiting!”
“Hey! Slow down!”
“What was that? Go faster, you say?”
I strode as fast I could, pumping my arms like a speed walker. I had left the perfumed shade of Belltower End behind and was already walking down the gentle slope of Crapper Road. The gutters here were filled with the translucent shells of Dream London prawns. Many of the residents of the street earned their money doing piece work for the seafood processors down at the dock.
Honey Peppers squealed at me.
“If you don’t wait I’ll have your dick sewn inside your ball sack then I’ll watch you try and piss!”
This final threat was so extreme it broke my concentration and made me stumble, but I strode on nonetheless.
“I can’t hear you!” I called.
I was jogging now, half skipping through the streets. I turned down a street at random and broke into a run. The houses to my right were derelict. Golden trees sprouted through their windows, arching over the road. I heard the chatter of blue monkeys coming from the houses and I stepped up the pace again.
I ducked to the left and the right, plunging down alleys where the rubbish slicked the floor, walking over spongy green moss where I swayed as if drunk, then into a street where three blue monkeys sat torturing a cat. One of them looked at me, considering. I held its gaze as I walked on.
All the time I was heading downwards, heading, whatever my intentions might have been to the contrary, towards the docks. Somewhere up above me, high up in the towers of Dream London, someone was pulling at my strings, and I danced through the streets like a marionette.
I came to a sudden halt at the realisation. Someone was playing games with me. I looked back again. No sign of Honey Peppers. I dodged sideways down an alley and rounded a corner. A pile of broken glass panes lay outside a door, right next to what looked like a brand new gold plush armchair.
Why was there a chair there? I didn’t consider this at the time, I simply dropped into the armchair, gasping, and sat there a while, getting my breath back. It was true, I realised: someone was playing with me.
I was sitting on something. Something in my pocket. I shifted a little and remembered Christine’s scroll. Someone else trying to control me, I thought.
I pulled out the scroll, unrolled it, and began to read.
You will meet a Stranger
You will be offered a job
You will be offered a second job
Go to the inn to meet a friend, one who will betray you
Go to the docks and meet your greatest friend, the one you will betray...
Go to the docks. Did Honey Peppers know about the piece of paper in my pocket?
I didn’t believe in fortunes any more than I did in Christine’s list of possible husbands, but...
I lived in a city where the buildings changed every night, where people had eyes in their tongues, where women turned into whores over three weeks. Was a scroll that told my fortune so fantastic?
Everything on the scroll had come true so far, hadn’t it? I shook my head. Not necessarily. Meet a friend in an inn? What was so unusual about that? One who will betray you...
Okay. I’d met Bill in the inn. Would she betray me? I had no hesitation in answering that question. Like a shot! She was in the military. My own country would have no hesitation in betraying me, why should another country be any more concerned about my wellbeing?
But it was the next line that gave me pause...
Go to the docks and meet your greatest friend, the one you will betray...
Daddio Clarke had sent me to the docks. Honey Peppers had something about new friends waiting for me there...
Why was everyone taking an interest in Captain Jim Wedderburn all of a sudden? I read the prediction again:
Go to the docks and meet your greatest friend, the one you will betray...
That struck a chord. That sounded like me. Meet my greatest friend and betray him. That was the sort of thing Jim Wedderburn would do. And frankly, I was sick of it. I had had enough of that in my life by now. I wanted to be better than I was. With Christine I thought I was beginning to improve, but she had dropped me and my old life had resumed in earnest. And now I was following the instructions of her prophecy scroll, things were taking another downwards turn.
What was I to do?
Certainly not head for the docks. Maybe it was time to return to the Poison Yews.
Curiosity gripped me and I began to unroll the rest of the scroll, to see the remainder of the predictions, but at that moment I heard a child’s voice.
“Captain Wedderburn?”
I looked up and there, beside me, stood Honey Peppers, golden curls tilted.
“I think you were running away from me, Captain Wedderburn.”
“Not at all, Honey.”
“And yet here I find you in one of the Daddio’s traps.”
She meant the chair.
“I was just eager to do the Daddio’s work,” I said.
Her pink and white dress remained spotless, I noticed.
“I hope so,” said Honey. “If not, I would have to push ground glass into your prick, and that might mean I get my dress dirty. Now, we have to hurry.”
“Of course,” I said. I stood up from the armchair, pushing the scroll back in my pocket as I did so. “Lead the way!”
She took me by the hand and led me down to the docks.
T
HE DOCKS HAVE
grown and twisted since the changes began. The waterways have crept deep into the city streets, so that you might look out of your window and see a ship sailing by, following a canal that used to be a road.
The cranes have grown taller, like so much else here; their booms are now wide enough that they can lift cargo from the deck of a ship and deposit it half a mile inland. I’ve stood in the yards of an inn, enjoying a drink in the sunshine, when there’s been a flicker of shadow and I’ve looked up to see the boom of a crane high above, lowering a bundle of crates or barrels down towards an impatient landlord.
The Dockland warehouses bulge like fat sacks, their windows and doors overflowing with the goods that travel here from the strange lands that have plugged themselves into Dream London via the Roding. The streets hop with the oddly coloured rats and toads and lice that have hitched a ride on the boats and barges and now head determinedly up slope, searching for new ecosystems to make their own.
As for the ships themselves: they line the banks in all the colours of the rainbow. Gold and silver, checks, stripes and paisleys. The ships and boats are built to alien designs, their unfamiliar crews lean on the rails and look down at you with dark eyes and half-amused smiles. Sometimes they call out obscene-sounding phrases in exotic languages.
None of this bothered Honey Peppers as she led me by the hand through a maze of tethering ropes.
“Down here,” she said.
We were heading parallel to the wide band of the river Thames, walking through the maze of smaller docks that led to larger docks. We threaded a path through the garbage-filled basins of oily water, the backwaters where the less impressive ships gathered.
The ships here were smaller than usual, and a lot less colourful. Most of them were little more than rotting wood and patched black tar. Their decks were dirty and cluttered, the tackle worn. The crews weren’t visible, preferring to stay hidden below deck with their mysterious cargoes.
“This is the one,” said Honey, looking up at the hull of a ship. A name was written there in fading paint.
“
The Courtesan
,” I read with some difficulty.
“What does that mean?” asked Honey.
“Prostitute,” I said.
“You mean whore?”
“Yes.”
Honey Peppers nodded. I sighed. The ship loomed above us, dark and gloomy, and I had a sense of being far from home.
“Call them!” said Honey. “Let them know you’re here!”
“Call who?”
“The crew! Go on, call them!”
I looked down at her for a moment, pink and pretty amidst the gloom and the smell of old fish, then I raised my hands to my mouth.
“Ahoy!” I called. “This is Captain Jim Wedderburn, awaiting the cargo.”
“Ahoy?” giggled Honey.
“I’m a soldier, not a sailor. I thought
Ahoy
seemed right.”
“Try again,” said Honey. “They haven’t heard.”
“Hello!” I called.
There was no reply. Nothing but the sound of Honey laughing to herself.
“Ahoy,” she giggled. “Go on! Grow some balls. Shout loudly!”
I did, and this time a woman appeared on the deck. She was old, dressed in filthy clothes. She looked down at me with utter contempt.
“They sent a
man
?” she said.
“They sent Captain Wedderburn!” I shouted back.
The old woman seemed to notice Honey Peppers.
“Is that your Daddy, little girl?” she called. “Tell him to get back! A
man
won’t be able to withstand my girls.”
“I’m not her...” I began, but Honey was already calling back.
“He’s to take them to their rooms over at Belltower End!”
“No he’s not,” shouted back the old woman. “These are Moston girls. They’ll drain him dry. Send him away. You’ll have to do it.”
“But...”
“Do you want them to escape? Send him away now! I’m about to lower the gangplank!”
“You heard what she said, Honey.” I smiled down at the little girl. “ I don’t think the Daddio would like it if I’m sucked dry by the Moston girls. You take the girls, I’ll meet you back at Belltower End.”
“But...”
Somewhere above a dirty plank of wood was slid forward. I heard the sound of young women singing.
“I’d better go,” I said, and I patted her on the head. “See you later.”
“You needledicked fucker.”
“I know. But what can you do?”
I spun on my heel and quickly marched away.
But not too far.
Just around the edge of a warehouse, just, hopefully, out of range... I leant back around and spied on the Moston girls as they walked down the gangplank.
They didn’t seem anything special at this distance. Just sixteen skinny teenagers with lots of bushy blonde hair. Their clothes were ragged, and I got a good view of their pale boyish bodies through the holes. Not my sort at all, I like my women to look like women, with curves. The Moston girls giggled and held hands and pushed each other and took it in turns to pat Honey Peppers on the head and tell her how adorable she was. I couldn’t see what the fuss was about. And then – it was as if they sensed me, smelt my male scent – one of them glanced in my direction. She giggled and pointed at me. Then the others were looking at me too, big blue eyes gazing beseechingly in my direction, and I suddenly saw just how attractive they were. Was attractive the right word? No, less than that. It wasn’t attraction, but something far more basic: they oozed sex appeal. I found myself moving towards them, and it was with some effort that I pushed myself backwards, back around the warehouse and out of their sight. If I stepped into their full view, I don’t know what power they would have over me.
I realised then that the old woman was right. I couldn’t handle the Moston girls. Let Honey Peppers take them back to Belltower End. I would deal with them later. For the moment, it was time for a drink.