Mad Dog Moonlight (6 page)

She staggered down the path – and the storm took her. Mad Dog watched it happening from his window. The wind lifted her clean off her feet and, if it hadn't
been for Uncle coming the other way, she'd have ended up over the quay wall, along with the boat.

For a moment the two of them clung to each other. Mad Dog rattled on the window, calling them to come back. But, instead of turning for home, they started inching their way towards the quay. They were going to try and help the sailors, weren't they? Rain lashed against them and blasts of winds buffeted them. Elvis started crying. Mad Dog turned and snapped at him to shut up.

When he turned back, he couldn't see Aunty and Uncle any more. Long minutes passed, during which the rain got heavier and Elvis failed to shut up. Once Mad Dog caught a glimpse of what looked like Aunty lying flat on her belly, hanging over the edge of the wall. Another time he thought he saw Uncle with a massive coil of rope and something attached to the end of it. But then rain and clouds came down like pantomime curtains at the end of a show, and Mad Dog saw nothing until the rescue truck turned up, its yellow lights flashing on and off.

Then other bodies started moving about too, and Mad Dog caught another glimpse of Aunty, and then he saw Uncle and, between them both, he caught sight of a couple of bedraggled bodies wrapped up like turkeys in silver foil. The rescue team gathered round them. To begin with it looked as though they were going to be bundled into the truck and driven off. But then the truck raced off without them as if it had had another call, and Uncle, Aunty and the people they had rescued headed up the path to No. 3.

Mad Dog ran downstairs, flung open the front door and helped them in. Aunty said that the wind almost
blew him away but all he remembered afterwards was the hall full of people all hugging each other with relief.

The boat people were exhausted, and shaking so much that Mad Dog wondered how they'd ever stop. They might look like hardened seafarers with their weather-beaten faces, but the storm had really done for them. Aunty went rushing about for blankets, towels and dry clothes. She made up spare beds as if a couple of new foster children had arrived in need of mothering. She poured tea down the sailors, forced them to eat against their will, then led them up to bed, where they fell asleep immediately.

Next morning, when they all awoke, the storm had gone. Mad Dog pulled back his curtains to find the sun shining down upon a harbour full of broken boats. The roof had come off the end of the harbour office. Windows were broken in the apartments on St David's Quay. Benches were upended, bins thrown about like litter – even a couple of cars had been turned upside down.

But the strangest thing of all was the eerie stillness. Apart from the Rheidol, still swollen to capacity as it rushed past the end of the Gap, nothing moved out there in the harbour. Not a person, car or even seagull, and definitely not a breath of wind. It was as if the harbour was holding its breath, not quite sure if the storm had really gone.

But it
had
gone. By the time that breakfast was over, the sound of hammering could be heard all over Aberystwyth. The sailors went to see what had become of their boat. The tide was out and they found it lying on its side in the mud. Uncle reckoned that it
had had it, but they climbed on board anyway, to see what could be salvaged. The sea had got into every bit of it, but the sailors didn't seem disheartened. They'd be all right, they said. They'd recovered from worse.

They brought a massive metal trunk into the house and emptied out its contents. With it came a smell of sea salt that filled every room. Mad Dog watched as out came everything from cooking pans and sewing kits to balls of string, maps, shells, peacock feathers and an amazing quilt, embroidered with fairy stitches. Carved animals emerged, and wooden boxes inlaid with mother-of-pearl, tins of everything from dried beetles to green tea, leather pouches, silk scarves and a pure white tea-set made of porcelain so fine that Mad Dog could see through it when the woman sailor held it up.

Most of the saucers had been smashed but, for some reason, the cups were fine. In fact, most things in the trunk only needed washing to be put right. The sailors laid them out to dry, then returned to their boat where they spent the rest of the day seeing what could be salvaged. Late in the afternoon, exhausted by their efforts, they went back to bed. But, by suppertime, they were awake again and ready to tell the story of how the storm had hit them and how they'd survived.

After supper, Uncle built up the fire in the sitting room, and everybody crowded round. Mad Dog sat opposite the sailors and watched them intently. He was fascinated by them. Fascinated by the lines on their faces and their tough, calloused hands, which seemed to tell a story of their own.

The woman sailor was as tiny as a sunburnt elf and the man sailor looked like a proper swarthy seaman
with his mop of hair tied back in a pigtail. His eyes were blue, but there was nothing soft about them. Like the woman's, they were flinty and determined and told of a hard life.

Aunty brought in mugs of hot chocolate all round. The sailors knocked theirs back in one go. They had a light way of inhabiting the room, sitting on the edge of their chairs as if ready to set off at a moment's notice. It was obvious that they weren't weekend sailors, and Mad Dog hung on to their every word. Perhaps the storm had gone, but something else had blown his way, something just as wild and strange.

Aunty asked where the sailors came from, and they shrugged and laughed and said nowhere in particular. Both talked at once, as tight together as a pair of barnacles on a hull. Their tales were tall but, they insisted, had all really happened. Whales, coral reefs, pirates, treasure islands, even mermaids – they'd seen them all.

‘You mean you've really seen a mermaid?' Mad Dog said.

‘Of course we have,' the man sailor said. ‘And lots of other things as well. You wouldn't believe what's out there in the world.'

It was a long evening, but no one wanted it to end. For a few hours round the fire, they all knew what it was to be torn apart by hunger, beaten by the sun and bound by frost. They were all hung about with icicles, longing for a homeland and a journey's end.

‘But there
is
no journey's end,' the woman sailor said. ‘That's what we've discovered. All horizons lead to new ones, all discovery to even more.'

Mad Dog shivered. The woman sailor's words had a
magic about them that set him drifting off. When he returned to himself, he found Aunty clearing away cocoa mugs and talking about mundane things like going to bed. The evening was over. Mad Dog wanted more, but the sailors said there was always another day.

Everybody slept late next morning but, as soon as Mad Dog got up, he was on at the sailors to tell more stories. They promised they would later but, in the meantime, they had a boat to repair and Mad Dog and his family had a service to attend in the big town church.

This was a solemn occasion to commemorate the damage done by the storm and those who'd fought so valiantly to save lives. The entire town, it seemed, turned out and the church was full. The harbour master sat at the front, along with his team of volunteers, and the men and women from the rescue services and the mayor and mayoress. The vicar preached a sermon about surviving nature with the help of God, but Mad Dog wriggled all the way through it, his mind fixed on the sailors, wanting more of their stories, not this worthy sermon.

When they returned home, however, the sailors had gone. Mad Dog knew it the minute he stepped through the door. The smell of sea salt had gone too, and so had the metal trunk and all the things that had been drying out. All that remained were the porcelain cups, with a fifty-pound note tucked inside one of them, along with a letter written in fairy handwriting.

Aunty tried to read it, but the writing was so small that she even had a struggle wearing glasses.

‘
You've been brilliant,
' she read at last. ‘
Thanks for
everything. Boat repaired – at least as good as we can get it for now. Tide right. The sea calls. Sorry we don't have the time to say goodbye. We'll never forget your kindness to us. Please keep the cups. A little something to remember us by. And the money's just a gesture really, to cover costs. What you did for us can never be repaid.
'

The sailors hadn't even signed the note, or left a forwarding address. Aunty screwed it up. You could see how offended she was that they'd gone off like that. She even screwed up the money and went to chuck it in the bin.

But Uncle wouldn't let her. ‘That's life,' he said. ‘They'll have meant no harm. They just weren't thinking. Besides, when could we afford to throw good money away?'

He flattened out the money and stuck it in one of the cups for when they needed a bit of spare cash. Aunty put them on the top shelf of the kitchen cabinet, where she kept things she never used. In the days and weeks that followed, she never talked about the sailors again or the strange way they'd come bursting into their lives. You'd have thought she had forgotten them, and Uncle had as well.

But Mad Dog thought about them all the time, and wondered who they were.

Some people burned bright, it seemed, then simply disappeared. They came into your life and then went again, and there was nothing you could do but stand by and watch. Mad Dog's parents, for example, and now the sailors.

Ever afterwards, there was something about those sailors that wouldn't let Mad Dog go. He mightn't know their names or anything else about them, but they'd come bursting into his life bringing stories of other places far away – of other worlds, and other ways of looking at the world. And even years after they'd gone, Mad Dog dreamt about their wide horizons and journeys without ending, and imagined himself a sailor just like them, travelling across seas that might be cruel but could never subdue him, meeting mermaids, discovering lost continents, chasing dolphins and cruising across silver seas. The rest of his life was dominated by mundane things like school and lessons and routine. But at least, as he grew up, he had other things to dream about.

He was growing bigger all the time, and so was Elvis, who'd turned into a tough but friendly little lad, coming home from playing with his friends with scraped knees and glorious tales of fights. Mad Dog was proud of him. Aunty wasn't so impressed, but he reckoned he could see his brother's Trojan blood coming out in him. Nothing more was said about
adoption, not since the day they'd sworn on the Bible, but neither was there any mention of leaving the Gap.

No. 3 was their home, and Aunty and Uncle were their parents in all but name. The past was set aside as if it had never been. The
ffon
languished in the wardrobe, its secret message forgotten. Mad Dog was embarrassed about those old days when he'd talked to his walking cane as if it was a person. Only five-year-olds did things like that. And besides, he didn't need secrets to feel like a person who mattered. He didn't even need parents. Life was fine the way it was.

And it remained fine too, until one February morning, the beginning of half-term week, when Mad Dog came downstairs to find Aunty on the phone and everything about to change. In total ignorance of what was happening, he went out to play on the barge den, only to come back later and find Aunty and her sisters huddled in the kitchen. Their heads were knit together and their voices were raised as one in indignation – which meant there could be only one person they were talking about.

The Aged Relative.

Mad Dog didn't know exactly who the Aged Relative was, and he didn't care if he never found out. He'd only spoken to her once, and that had been enough, picking up the phone when no one was about, only for a cold voice to bark at him, ‘I don't want
you
. God, what's wrong with the world? Why are children allowed to answer phones? I want to talk to your aunt.'

Sometimes Aunty or one of her sisters would visit the Aged Relative, going with long faces and coming back with even longer ones. At times like Christmas
there'd be discussions about having her to stay but, despite their best-laid plans, she'd either refuse to come or pull out at the last minute. Now some sort of crisis seemed to be taking place, because Luke's mum was saying, ‘It's always the same,' and Hippie's mum was saying, ‘When
we
need help, she's never there for
us
,' and Rhys's mum was telling Aunty, wagging her finger as she did so, ‘You leave well alone. If she's got into a mess, it'll be of her own making. However much you do for her, it'll never be enough. But she tries it on with you because she thinks you're a soft touch.'

Unfortunately for Mad Dog, the advice wasn't taken. Aunty flared up at the suggestion that she was a soft touch and said that her sisters weren't being fair, either to her or the Aged Relative who – just this once – appeared to have a genuine grievance. Her sisters snorted and said, ‘Since when?'

Aunty didn't answer, but when Uncle came in for lunch, he found her packing the car. ‘Where are you going?' he asked, and didn't look very pleased about it when Aunty told him.

‘You can't take children to a place like that,' he said.

‘What else am I to do?' said Aunty. ‘Are you going to take time off work and look after them? I don't think so. And my beloved sisters certainly aren't going to.'

She was in a foul mood, and it didn't get any better when they'd set off. All the way through Aberystwyth she banged the steering wheel and cursed as if no one else had a right on the road. Usually she was such a careful driver, but today she kept beeping her horn
and changing lanes without indicating.

They left the town behind and started down the coast road. The sun was shining and Mad Dog's hopes began to rise. Perhaps the Aged Relative would turn out to live in a bungalow by the sea with a beach nearby where he and Elvis could go and play, which meant that, however horrible she was, they could always get out of her way.