While the Storm Rages, page 16
She was in the clutches of a man. A man in a hat that was too small for him, sat at a jaunty angle on his head, despite the struggle that Clem was putting up.
Noah recognised the attacker instantly. It was the man from the river yesterday, who’d pulled up alongside them in his boat. But this time, he wasn’t alone. He had a friend with him. Hatless, this one, with a huge pair of unruly sideburns that bristled upon his red, ruddy cheeks. He had the look of an idle pig, and a mouth just as dirty. In his hands was a grubby sack, like the one Big Col had carried Delilah in.
‘This the boy?’ he spat, though with a word so blue it threatened to turn the summer to winter.
The hatted man shook his head. ‘No, that’s not him neither, though don’t go running off, boy. Do that and old Jim here will be on you in a flash.’
Noah had no idea what was going on. ‘Leave her alone,’ he shouted, though of course it was an impotent demand. ‘What do you want? Because whatever it is, Clem doesn’t have it, I can tell you that... but maybe I do.’ He was gabbling now, just wanted his friend to be safe, even if it were at his expense.
‘Took a while to find you again, it did,’ said the man, ignoring Noah’s plea. ‘Expected to find you on the river still. In that rust bucket you called a boat.’
Noah wanted to punch him into the middle of next week.
‘Still, we found you in the end. Quite the hunters us two.’ He paused, and looked around. ‘So where is he then, the other boy?’ the man demanded. ‘The big one?’
‘Big Col?’ Noah said, confused. He couldn’t think what use they would have for him. ‘He’s not with us any more.’
‘Don’t give me that, boy. I saw the three of you yesterday. Thick as thieves, all of you.’
‘I’m telling you he’s gone.’
The man was getting angrier, his grasp of Clem stronger. She winced in pain and Noah did too.
‘I promise. We had a fight, me and him. So he left.’
The side-burned thug was livid at this, marching up on Noah without warning and twisting his arm up his back.
‘That big lad has somethin’ we want. Somethin’ valuable. And we want it now, you hear me?’
Noah knew instantly what this was all about. Delilah. The second the man had seen her yesterday, he’d known she was special. That there was money in her.
‘I don’t know where he is, I promise you.’
‘Stop LYING!’ Noah’s arm went further up his back and he shrieked in pain, which started Clem hollering too. She kicked at the man’s shins, which appeared to be made of lead for all the pain he was feeling.
‘Let us go!’ she demanded, again and again. The man just shook her like a rag doll.
But Clem was not for silencing, in fact her protests grew louder and more raucous, each demand spat at the man with increasing venom and fury.
What was she doing? Noah gasped. They weren’t playing around these men. And if they worked out that neither Clem nor Noah were actually of use, they would soon tire of them, and who knew what they would do then?
But Clem didn’t care. She shook and thundered to the heavens, until finally, her plan came to light, as through the bushes behind her burst a brown blur of fur and teeth and growl.
Now old Frank may have been short on legs, but he was big on heart and loyalty, and it was clear that no one, no one, was going to manhandle his mistress and get away with it. So he bit what he could reach, which was the hatted man’s calf, and although the man began a dance which had Frank flying left, right and centre, the little chap refused to let go, which meant of course, that Clem could dart free.
This wasn’t to say that the tide had turned though, far from it. It spurred old Jim into a furious rage, and although he released Noah’s arm, he grabbed him instead by the hair and dragged him over to where Frank clung on grimly. With a single boot to the belly, the poor dog was sent yelping to the floor. Clem dashed to his side.
‘We want that snake – NOW!’ Old Jim roared into Noah’s face, but Noah didn’t answer. There was no time, as from the treeline burst a second animal, this one on four hooves and more powerful than Frank. It was Samson, braying in anger, rearing up on his back legs, and towering over the two men and Noah. Noah saw his opportunity for escape, and with every inch of strength he possessed, he drove his fist into old Jim’s ribs, his knuckles crunching. It was debatable if Jim let go due to the punch or the sight of a sunhat-wearing donkey charging at him, but it was immaterial. Noah scampered free and sprinted for his friend.
What followed resembled a scene from a Saturday morning Western at the Ritzy.
Samson was a donkey possessed, circling the men, hooves stamping at the ground, digging up the earth like it was sand. The men yelped and waved their hands uselessly, Old Jim dropped his sack and instantly tripped over it, but every time they tried to break away, Samson would deftly round them up like a sheepdog. In fact, his actions encouraged Winn to join in, leaving Noah feeling guilty that he hadn’t looked for her earlier. It mattered little now, the men were on the back foot and snakeless.
But just as it seemed they might take flight, Old Jim spotted a brutal opportunity. As Samson drove them to the trunk of a mighty old oak, Jim tripped over a fallen branch. It was a thick wedge of wood that instantly felt club-like in the man’s hands. With Samson’s back turned to keep the other thug in check, and Winn’s jaws just out of reach, Old Jim knew exactly what he needed to do.
Noah and Clem saw it too late to intervene and wished for a long time after that they had never seen it at all. As without hesitation, Old Jim swung the wood like a cricket bat, driving it flush on to the back of poor Samson’s skull again and again.
43
War would bring many horrors, but to Noah and Clem, this was both a defining and disturbing moment of their childhoods.
Samson crumpled to the ground, all light and life extinguished from his eyes. There was no more braying or pawing of the ground, just silence and stillness from everyone present.
Noah hid behind his hands. He didn’t want to risk re-opening his eyes to see the same scene laid out in front of him. Clem though fell on the animal, arms snaking around his neck, face nuzzled into the thick, tangled mane.
‘Samson?’ she cried, as she tried in vain to lift his head. ‘Samson!!’
The only movement came from the hatted man, pulling Clem roughly away with a callous hand. ‘It’s no good expecting the donkey to help you now. That beast’s dead, and you won’t be far behind if you don’t give us what we want.’
The man was right. Samson was still, a trickle of blood from his right ear marking the hard ground.
There had been so much talk of animals dying in the last week, but until this moment, it had been an abstract idea, not one that Noah could truly picture. But now that had changed. He could see nothing but death, and it ate at his insides. He looked at the donkey, not able to comprehend that it was the same creature who had defended them only seconds before. He wanted to stop time, to find a way of catching the life that had left Samson, and force it back inside his body. But he knew it was hopeless. The animal had passed.
Large tears began streaking Noah’s dirty face.
‘Tears won’t ’elp you, boy. Only thing to ’elp you now is the truth. You tell us where the snake is, or we’ll start next on the kittens, and then those mutts.’
It was no idle threat, Noah knew that, but he wanted the men to know that he wasn’t crying for his own safety, but for the barbarous thing they’d done to his friend.
‘How many times do I have to tell you?’ he yelled at them, prompting both Winn and Frank to yelp along in agreement. ‘I don’t KNOW where the snake is, and even if I did, I wouldn’t tell y—’
But the sentence was never finished, as it was no longer the truth. Noah suddenly knew exactly where Delilah was, as if by some divine intervention, the snake was falling from the sky, or rather from the sturdy branches above them. Noah thought at first that he had lost his mind, but no, it was happening! The hatted man followed Noah’s eyeline instinctively, but as soon as he looked up, the snake was upon him, landing flush on his neck and shoulders, forcing him to the floor with a stunned scream.
‘ARGGGGHHHH!’ he yelled. ‘What is it? What is it? Get it off me!!!’
But there was nobody to help. Noah and Clem were clearly not going to oblige, and even old Jim looked powerless to intervene, eyes wider than if the snake were squeezing him.
‘JIIIMMM!’ came a scream. ‘For gawd’s sake, get it off me!!! NOW!!’
Jim made to move forward, as if in a trance, picking up the branch that had done for Samson, but as he came into striking range, he seemed to realise what he was about to do. And the thought process was written large on his face.
Do I really want to take on a python?
It was at that moment, the bully became the coward: as it was clear old Jim wanted no further part in this heist. But as he made that decision, there was another arrival – from the branches above fell Big Col, landing beside them all with a thud that seemed to make the ground shake. He didn’t look at Noah and Clem though, he only had eyes for the assailants, or at least for the one who remained – old Jim had seen enough and was galloping through the undergrowth, falling every few yards, such was his abject fear.
‘I hear you were looking for my Delilah?’ Big Col said, carefully picking up the snake, savouring and exaggerating the weight and power in her.
Noah looked closely at Delilah. As much as Big Col was trying to make her sound and look savage, she seemed anything but. To Noah’s eye, she looked... sleepy. She wasn’t actually moving at all, the only thing moving was Big Col’s arms, manoeuvring her like a puppet.
‘Well,’ he went on, ‘you’ve found her. So... what did you want with her? Because whatever it is, I’m sure she’d love to help.’ And he thrust his hand forward, again and again as if Delilah were wanting to pounce.
‘Get her away from me,’ the hatted man gasped. He seemed to be draining of all colour.
‘Oh I can’t do that for two reasons,’ Big Col replied. ‘Firstly, cos she’s hungry. Really hungry. I worked out this morning it’s been a week since she ate anything, so right now, YOU are the only thing she has eyes for. And the second thing, well, how can I put it?’ He seemed to be revelling in the drama, ‘Delilah here, she’s a wild animal. She won’t come to heel just cos I tell her. It don’t work like that. Sorry.’
The hatted man was beyond talking now.
‘I could try and pull her away though if you give us your word you’ll go and never come back.’
Despite his greed, and despite the evil streak that ran in him a mile wide, this was an easy deal for the man to make, and as he fell to his knees he begged, ‘Anything. I’ll do anything.’
‘Then what are you waiting for?’ Big Col threw himself forward one final time with such force that Noah wondered if Delilah HAD woken up.
The hatted man scampered, crab-like at first in Noah’s direction, which had him pick up the branch and wield it like a batsman awaiting a bouncer. The man grimaced and tumbled away. He didn’t run in the same direction as his partner in crime, but Noah doubted either of them would return from any point of the compass.
It was fair to say though, that he felt no relief, as with the criminals gone, the friends were left with the reality of the situation: that whatever happened from now on, they had, in effect, failed in their mission. One of their animals lay dead. And unless Noah was mistaken, Delilah might not be too far behind.
44
None of them were versed in death. None of them had been anywhere close to it before, so at first it rooted them to the spot. The only thing that made Noah move was when the kittens tried to make Samson play with them, running up and down his back. When that got no response they turned to nibbling his ears or pulling at his hat, and when that elicited nothing either, they too grew worried. Joseph mewed repeatedly, while Mary curled herself between the curve of his belly and foreleg.
‘Come on,’ Noah said softly, as he lifted them up to mournful cries. ‘None of that now. Samson’s gone. Do you hear me? Gone.’
But as soon as Noah dropped them to the ground they returned to Samson, and the same spots they’d occupied before.
‘Leave them be,’ suggested Clem. ‘For a while at least. We need to work out what to do next.’
Big Col was in no doubt about what needed to happen.
‘We have to get Delilah warm,’ he said, worry carved deep in his forehead. ‘Quickly.’
‘What’s the problem?’ asked Noah, before realising it was the stupidest of questions. His hunches had been right. The snake was cold. Dangerously so.
Big Col rubbed her skin, willing life into her. ‘After I left you lot, she went... floppy. It was scary, she seemed to weigh twice as much. Couldn’t lift her head or nothing.’
Noah and Clem looked at each other. That didn’t sound good.
‘So why didn’t you go and get help? Instead of coming back to find us?’
‘I was going to, weren’t I? But then, well, I got a bit lost for starters, and then I heard those two blokes coming and recognised one of them from the river. I hid as they passed but they were talking about finding us, about what they’d do if we put up a fight. I could hardly just walk away, could I? When I knew all that?’
Noah and Clem looked flabbergasted. Was this really Big Col speaking? The boy who had made their lives Hell back in Wapping. The boy who was now looking grief-stricken at his pet.
‘Here, you can wrap her up in this?’ Noah said, removing the leftover food from the makeshift knapsack. ‘It might help a bit.’
‘Won’t be enough. She needs a fire.’ He stopped and re-thought this. ‘Needs the stove at home.’
‘Well we can’t give her that,’ offered Noah, moving quickly, ‘but a fire, we can manage in no time. Let’s do it. We’ll have her scaring the daylights out of us again in an hour at the most.’
They set to it. The fear of more grief fuelling their movements. There were sticks and dried moss in abundance, and they soon had flames aplenty. Big Col gently laid Delilah close to the fire.
‘Right,’ said Noah. ‘We need to bury Samson.’
‘How are we going to do that? It’d take a whole day to dig a hole that big. And we don’t even have a spade.’
‘I know, but we can’t just leave him, can we? Not like this. Where’s the dignity in it?’
No one disagreed. Noah looked around, tears close to the surface. ‘If we can’t bury him then we have to give him a proper funeral.’
‘What are you suggesting?’ asked Clem.
‘The next best thing we could do is build him a tomb. Somewhere proper he can rest.’
‘A tomb?’
‘Yeah, think about it,’ he replied, bending to pick up a large fallen branch. ‘We’ve everything we need around us. We just need to gather it up.’
They worked silently. It was tiring work after all, and at the same time, all of them were trying to process what had happened to Samson in their own way. They hit a rhythm, each of them adopting a role. Big Col was the muscle, while Noah started trying to weave foliage together into something resembling a roof. Clem was the architect though, seeing immediately the shape that the tomb would need to take.
They toiled, ignoring the growing hunger that sat alongside the sadness in their bellies, topping up Delilah’s fire regularly, and helping Big Col when the branches were too big even for him.
‘Thanks,’ he said to Noah, as they dragged a bough laden in leaves.
‘’S’all right,’ he replied.
‘I should say... well, you know... sorry, as well.’ He went on, quietly.
Noah stopped dead, with Big Col almost crashing into him as a result. ‘Sorry? You?’
‘Yeah, you know. For hitting you and for what I said when... you know.’
‘What, when I saved your beloved pet from either burning or drowning to death?’
‘Yeah,’ Big Col almost looked ashamed. ‘It was... brave of you.’
‘Am sure you would’ve done it if I hadn’t dashed in first.’
‘That’s just it. I wouldn’t. I’m not brave. Everyone knows it.’ His voice was almost a whisper now. It sounded odd, like a meow slipping from a tiger’s mouth.
‘Are you kidding me?’ Big Col might have been apologising, but Noah wasn’t going to let him get away with it easily. ‘You go after anybody who dares to even look at you.’
‘Don’t make me brave though. Ask my—’ and he stopped.
‘Who?’
There was a beat. Then another deep, deep breath. ‘My old man. And my ma for that matter too. Both of them.’
‘Why? What do they say?’
‘Can’t tell you. But it’s not just what they say.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s what they do.’
Noah was really confused now. And looked at him in a way that told him so.
Big Col flushed, and a twitch seemed to pass through his entire body. It looked like he wanted to speak, but couldn’t find the words. Instead, he unbuttoned his shirt sleeve, rolling it up to the elbow to reveal a bruise that hugged the entirety of his forearm. It was quite unlike anything Noah had ever seen, a hellish rainbow of purples, reds and yellows, yet the anger in the colour was not the most shocking thing about it: even at first glance Noah could clearly make out the shape of four fingers and a thumb.
‘Your dad did that?’ he said. He couldn’t take his eyes off it, as much as he wanted to.
Col shook his head shamefully. ‘Mum. You can see where her ring was when she squeezed.’ He was right, a vivid purple welt stretched the width of the fourth finger. ‘Dad... well, he uses his belt. When he’s sober enough to be able to take it off anyway.’
I don’t...’ now Noah was struggling to find the words. ‘I don’t understand why they would do that.’
‘They goad me,’ he replied. ‘Tell me I’m a coward. That I need to be a man. They want me to fight back, don’t know why, because if I do then they only hit me again. It’s confusing. I don’t know whether to fight or hide.’
