NaNoWriMo sjjh 2007

Banter unknown chapter number seven

[This goes just after uc06. Need to fix the stuff where it’s still a parcel.]

“Emily just bit through the corner of this,” Chris held up the parcel. “We were pulling away at it and suddenly she made this animal growling noise and tore it off in her teeth.”

He ripped a flap from the package, revealing an embroidered cushion.

“There’s a number six on it,” Chris said, looking at the design. “I thought we had number six already? Maybe it’s a nine. Or maybe we’ve got nine already.”

“I just threw Bob over the wall,” Linda said to Chris. “He was trying to stop me throwing myself under a bus and I reacted reflexively.”

“Okay, you win. Was that reflexively like in Cadiz? And more importantly where is he?”

“He went over.” Linda pointed. “I’m so confused.”

“Is he alright?”

“I – I’m scared to look. It all happened so fast. I really was going to kill myself but I couldn’t bring myself to throw myself over.”

Chris was already looking over the side of the bridge.

“There’s a barge,” he said. “There’s people on board. Maybe they’ll pull him out.”

He waved the package over his head with broad motions, scattering the filling from the bitten corner.

“Hey,” he shouted.

“Ye’re s’posed t’say ahoy, matey.”

Chris turned to see what appeared to be a pirate. From bottom to top he took in large floppy boots, filthy trews, a broad belt with a buckle the size of a square dinner plate, a baggy white shirt, a cackling face with a patch on the cheek, and a red headscarf dotted with smiley-faces and crossed-bones.

“B-” said Chris.

“Ha-hah.” The pirate shouldered into Chris who was forced to step back.

“Watch it,” he said.

“No use watchin’ this if ye doesn’t watch that, eh matey?”

Chris felt strong arms wrapping around him from behind. The scent of salt and vintage rum filled his nostrils.

“I’ve got ye, slippery fish,” rasped a voice in his ear. “Don’t be strugglin’ or I’ll gut ye.”

Chris noticed that one of the arms wrapped around him ended not in a hand but in a Swiss arm knife. A pointed implement was extended. Chris tried to move his arms but they were held tight. The man’s strong, he thought, too strong. Maybe if I can distract him?

“No, matey, you won’t. You’ve got the wrong attachment out. Now if I was a bottle of beer trying to keep its lid on I’d be shaking in my boots.”

“Ye be awrong, matey, that be the landlubber-guttin’ blade there. Ha-hah.”

“Don’t be wastin’ time wi’ banter, shipmate.” The first pirate advanced and grabbed the opened jiffy bag.

“Banter a waste o’ time, me hearty?” said the second pirate. “Why, I never heard such rot. ‘Tis the reason for time, ‘tis the very lifeblood of a pirate’s life.”

“Linda,” shouted Chris, looking for his colleague.

He spotted her kneeling down next to Emily. She looked up when Chris shouted.

“Help me.”

“Aye aye,” said the second pirate. “Time we was off.”

“Don’t want to banter with the landlubber no more then, shipmate?” The first pirate settled his grip on the parcel in Chris’s hand and pulled.

I just need to hang on till Linda helps me, thought Chris.

“He’s a strong ‘un, for a dry-bones.”

“No, me hearty, ‘tis you that’s weak for a sea-farer.”

“Maybe you’re right,” said the first pirate. “Let’s see how he likes his fingers.”

The pirate released the parcel and took one of Chris’s fingers. The man’s finger were dry and rough.

“What’s it t’be, matey? Ship-shape or shivered like the wormy timbers of a prison hulk?”

The man started bending back Chris’s finger. Strong as he was he could not resist the leverage.

“Linda,” he shouted again.

Linda looked at him, then down at Emily.

“Emily’s unconscious,” she called. “I’d better call an ambulance.”

Linda started patting herself.

“Never mind finding your phone,” said Chris. “These pirates are going to take the embroidered cushion that Emily went animal and knocked herself out to get. Agh.”

The pirate had prised back his finger.

“I’d let go now, if I was you, matey,” said the pirate. “That’s if ye ever wants to hold anything in this hand again.”

Chris kicked the pirate in the shins. There was a hollow clunk.

“Integral shin guards, landlubber. Now what’s it to be? Does ye want to end up like Swiss-hand Pete here? Or would ye rather be a whole man.”

“No makin’ fun o’ the disabled if ye don’t mind. Or I’ll be getting’ out the scurvy dog skinning implement.”

“Linda, I can’t ….”

Chris felt the embroidered cushion being drawn from his weakened grasp.

“We gots what we came for.” The pirate waved the number six or nine in Chris’s face.

Chris twisted against the second pirate but could not loosen the bear hug. He kicked out at the pirate.

The man vaulted onto the bridge’s wall with a “Ha-hah”.

He looked down, then back at Chris.

“Yo ho ho,” the pirate said, flourishing the cushion, and jumped off. There was a splash.

“I’d loved t’ stay and banter wi’ ye but duty calls. ‘t’isn’t easy bein’ a pirate sometimes,” Swiss-hand Pete said.

The pirate loosened his grip and began to unwrap his arms, but his Swiss army knife implement caught in the buttonhole of Chris’s suit jacket.

“Curses,” said Pete.

The moment’s delay was all Chris needed.

“Iyé!” Chris’s elbow pistoned back, connecting with something, he didn’t care what.

The buttonhole was torn open as the impact sent the pirate reeling.

Chris turned and dropped into his stance.

The pirate was standing but wobbly. His non-Swiss hand was on his face, presumably where Chris’s elbow had struck. The other hand waved as the pirate tried to regain his balance.

Chris checked forwards and punched right then left to the man’s chest. “Yiah! yiah!”

Then he pulled back and kicked the man in the head. “Wu-ahh!”

Swiss-hand Pete fell to the deck.

“The other one got hooked onto a barge,” said Linda. “No sign of Robert.”

“What were you doing?” Chris shouted at her. “Why didn’t you help me?”

“Sorry, Chris,” she said. “Please don’t shout at me. I’m going through a lot of stuff right now.”

“We’ve lost the package thanks to you. And who knows where Bob is? He might be drowned.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Linda’s head was bowed, her hands shivered across her scalp, tousling her hair. “You think I don’t know that?”

“Anyway, lucky for us, I am able to function under pressure. All those years in operations, see? When the chips are down, we deliver. I have got us a prisoner.”

“A prisoner?” Linda’s hands stopped moving, each held a bunch of hair. “How can we take a prisoner? We’re not the army?”

“Shut up and let’s get him over to where Emily is.”

Linda’s hands started to rotate, turning ropes in her hair.

“What are you doing taking prisoners. We’ve got to get out of this, not take prisoners. Maybe Robert’s dead, drowned. Maybe Emily’s dead over there. We can’t go forwards, don’t you see? We have to go back, back to work, back to -”

For a moment Chris felt the pressure. Emily gone dog-mad and then collapsed. Robert gone into the Thames. Linda coming apart in front of him. Don’t go under, he told himself. Go up.

He slapped Linda across the face.

“Get his feet,” he said.

Linda complied, shaking. Chris took the pirate’s broad shoulders.

“Hoy,” a man shouted.

It was a policeman, one of two now trotting along the bridge towards Chris.

“Dammit.” He looked the other way, towards Emily. A few people had gathered around. Still down, he thought.

There was a squeal of tires next to Chris. Not more cops, he thought.

“Get him in.” An oriental-looking woman called from the driver’s seat of a four-door. “And bring her.”

There was a clunk as the car’s central locking unlocked. Chris could just reach and open the rear door.

“Let’s go Linda,” he said.

He backed into the car, pulling Pete’s shoulders. Linda moved, her head down, her whole body quaking, led by Chris pulling the body between them.

“Close the door,” Chris said as soon as all three of them were in. “It’s the police.”

“What?” said Linda, seeming only just to notice that she was in a car.

“No time,” said the oriental woman.

The car pulled away. One policeman made a dive for the flapping door. He got a hand to it.

“Close my door,” the driver said.

“Don’t tell me what to do, Junko,” said Linda.

“You know her?” said Chris.

“She’s the bitch who stole my husband,” said Linda. “Why are we in a car with her? What are we doing? I’ve got to get out.”

The car entered a tunnel. Chris saw lights flashing past, saw Linda looking at them.

“No, Linda.” He snatched her upper arm. “Just close the door.”

“You’re hurting my arm,” said Linda. “I don’t like that.”

She sounds so distant, thought Chris. As if in a dream.

“Close the door and I’ll let go,” said Chris.

Linda closed the door. The car became quiet. Chris released Linda’s arm only when she had taken her hand off the door handle.

“Don’t suppose you’ve got child locks in the back have you, bitch who stole her husband?”

“No, I don’t have children.”

“That’s right,” said Linda. “You lost the children. They were mine, you took them from me, then you lost them.”