Flying Dutch

FIFTEEN

Inside the helicopter, the party was still going on. It was a bit cramped, and it swayed about rather more (considered objectively) that the hotel in Dounreay, but it was the considered view of the crew of the Verdomde that while there was moonlight and laughter and Scotch and romance, they might as well face the music and get pathetically drunk. It wasn’t every day, after all, that you escape from a four-hundred-odd-year-old curse.

“Here,” Sebastian was saying to a bulkhead, “you remember that time in Nijmegen?”

“That wasn’t Nijmegen,” Pieter replied, “that was Antwerp.”

“No it wasn’t,” Sebastian retorted. “Antwerp was when you and me and Wilhelmus got completely ratted and went round smashing up all the watchmakers’ shops.”

“Exactly,” Pieter said, nodding vigorously, “that was Antwerp, not Nijmegen.”

“That’s what I just said.”

“You said Nijmegen.”

“Hold on,” Wilhelmus interrupted. “Nijmegen——Nijmegen was when we nicked that old girl’s donkey and Jan Van Hoosemyr…”

“I know,” said Sebastian angrily. “That’s what I was trying to say. That was Nijmegen. Antwerp was when we smashed in all the watchmakers’…”

“But you just said…”

The camera crew looked at each other. “Reminds me of that time in Tripoli,” said the cameraman. In fact, the only sober Dutchman on board the helicopter was Vanderdecker, and he was beginning to wonder if sobriety and a clear head were a good idea after all. Danny was trying to interview him, and he was finding it rather wearing.

“So when did you first suspect,” Danny was saying, “that there had been a cover-up?”

Vanderdecker yanked his mind back to what Danny was saying. “Cover-up?” he said. “Oh, sorry, I was miles away. What cover-up?”

“The cover-up,” Danny snapped. “When did you first become aware of it?”

“Just now,” Vanderdecker said, “when you mentioned it. Shows what a good cover-up it was, doesn’t it?”

Danny ground his teeth. “We’ll do that bit again,” he said, and would the tape back. “Look, will you please try and concentrate on what I’m saying?”

“Sorry,” Vanderdecker said, and realised that since Danny was being kind enough to give him a lift to Cirencester, he ought to say something at least. “You mean that cover-up.”

Danny’s hairs bristled. “You mean there was more than one?”

Vanderdecker laughed. “You bet,” he said.

“Such as?”

“Where do I start?” Vanderdecker said. “I mean, we are talking yesterday’s witness here.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “For example,” he whispered. “I bet you still think Columbus discovered America.”

Danny couldn’t believe his ears. “And didn’t he?”

Vanderdecker smiled cynically. “Don’t you believe it,” he said. “The Portuguese landed in what is now Florida seventy years before Columbus left Spain. But there was this…”

“Cover-up?”

“Exactly,” Vanderdecker said. “On the tip of my tongue it was, yes, cover-up.”

“Why?”

“Merchandising,” Vanderdecker said. “I mean, just think for a moment, will you? Think of all the spin-offs from discovering a new continent. America cart bumper stickers, America doublets, the official America cuddly bison; no, as soon as the Portuguese realised what they’d got hold of, they saw that unless they got the franchising side of it sorted out before the story broke, there was going to be absolute chaos, marketing-wise. So they sat on it while the lawyers sorted out the contractual basis. And you know what lawyers are like; by the time they’d got down to a preliminary draft joint venture agreement, Columbus had landed and the whole thing was up the spout.”

Danny’s brain reeled. “How do you know all that?” he said. “That was before your dine, wasn’t it?”

“Or take the Gunpowder Plot,” Vanderdecker said quickly. “I could tell you a thing about that, make no mistake.”

“Go on,” said Danny, changing tapes. “I always thought…”

“I mean,” Vanderdecker went on, “Guido Fawkes was set up. He was the biggest fall guy of all time. You won’t find anything about it down at the Public Records Office, but there was big money involved there all right. Oh yes.”

“So?”

“So it was only a conspiracy by Buckingham and Salisbury to get hold of the biggest monopoly of them all. I mean the big one. None of your fooling about with Rhenish wine this time; I’m talking…” He stopped, and searched for the right word. “…Megagroats.”

“What was it?”

Vanderdecker looked over his shoulder. “Milk,” he hissed. “They were after the milk monopoly. They were going to set up this holding corporation—like the East India Company or something like that—with themselves as the money-men behind it; and this company was going to have the exclusive right to buy all the milk in England and sell it to the ultimate consumer.”

“You mean,” Danny croaked, “like the Milk Marketing Board?”

“Keep your voice down, will you? Yes, just like the Milk Marketing Board. So now do you see why Guido had to take the fall?”

“I see,” Danny whispered. “My God, that explains…But why did they want to blow up King James?”

Vanderdecker sneered. “They didn’t want to blow up the King,” he said. “If they’d wanted rid of Big Jim, do you think they’d have gone about it like that? Gunpowder, treason and plot? Don’t be so naive. Look, just ask yourself this. Why was it that shortly after Guido did the November-the-Fifth bit, the price of clotted cream rose by a factor of seventy-four point six per cent in most of Southern England.”

Danny whistled. “That much?”

“That’s where they went wrong, of course,” Vanderdecker said. “Too much too soon, you see. And when Hampden and Pym found out…”

“You mean the Civil War?”

“Do yourself a favour,” Vanderdecker said. “Take a look at the Putney Debates; you know, towards the end of the War, when all the Parliamentary leaders sat down and tried to make up a new constitution. Is there one mention, one solitary word said about an overall dairy strategy for the 1660s? Nothing. Don’t you find that just a little bit surprising?”

Danny’s mouth hung open like a dislocated letterbox. “So the Restoration…”

“You’ve got it,” Vanderdecker said. “All that stuff with the oak tree was just a blind. And then, when you get on to the Glorious Revolution, and after that the Jacobites, it suddenly starts to fall into place. After all, why do you think they called George III Farmer George? He was as sane as…” Vanderdecker considered for a moment, “…as you are, but…Anyway, there’s the story for you, if you really do want something big.”

Vanderdecker’s mouth felt dry with so much talking, and he turned away in search of whisky, but Danny grabbed him by the arm.

“Listen,” he said, “you’ve got to tell me. Was the Milk Marketing Board behind the Kennedy assassination?”

Vanderdecker raised an eyebrow. “You what?” he said.

“The assassination of President Kennedy. Was it them?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Vanderdecker said. “That was Lee Harvey Oswald.” He leaned over, plucked a bottle of Famous Grouse from Pieter’s hand and took a long drink. Danny narrowed his eyes. Was Vanderdecker telling the truth? Or was he in on it too?

Below the helicopter Cirencester flickered dimly, and Vanderdecker wiped the spilt whisky out of his beard. The next hour or so was going to be interesting, and he felt that it was probably just as well that he had stayed relatively sober after all. He glanced across at Danny, who was drawing complicated diagrams on the blank pages at the back of his diary, using one of those pens you get from Smiths which has four different colours in it. He was happy, the poor fool.

The crew were singing again:

We’ve been together now for four hundred and eighty years,

And it don’t seem a day too much.

There ain’t a captain sailing on the sea.

That we’d swap for our dear old dutch…

Vanderdecker winced. He hadn’t thought about that side of it—he hadn’t really thought about any side of it, if he was going to be honest with himself, the implications of getting rid of the smell at last. What was going to happen now? In the end, every community and grouping of human beings (except, of course, the Rolling Stones) drifts apart and goes its separate ways. There was nothing to keep them together now, and God knows, they’d all been getting on each other’s nerves. But actually saying “goodbye—goodbye after so many years…”

“Hey,” Sebastian protested, “give it back.”

“Sorry,” Vanderdecker said, and handed the bottle back.

“Some people,” he said. “That’s how we all got into this mess in the first place, remember, you nicking somebody else’s bottle. You’d have thought you’d have learned your lesson.”

“Still,” Vanderdecker said, “it’s been fun, hasn’t it?”

“No,” Sebastian replied. “It’s been lousy.”

“But we’ve had some laughs, haven’t we?” Vanderdecker said. “A few good times along the way.”

“When?”

“Well…” Vanderdecker shrugged. “Forget it,” he said. “What have you done with the cat, by the way?”

“What cat?”

“Montalban’s cat.”

“Oh,” said Sebastian, “that cat. It’s over there, on the life-jackets, having forty winks. I spilt some whisky, and it lapped it up.”

“Fine,” Vanderdecker said. He rubbed his face with both hands, and tried to think of what he should do next. For over four hundred years he had been doing all the thinking, and he was just starting to get a tiny bit tired of it. Another day, new problems, more of the same old rubbish; and Captain Vanderdecker standing on the quarter-deck trying to cope with it, with his usual flair. Let Julius do it—that was what his mother used to say, all those many, many years ago: “Don’t trouble yourself with that, dear; let Julius do it. Julius, put that away and…”

The helicopter had stopped flying and was just whirring, hovering tentatively above the grass. Then, with a rather talentless lurch, it pitched down. Suddenly, Vanderdecker didn’t want to leave; he wanted to stay right here and let someone else do the coping with things for a change. No chance of that.

“Hey, skip.” Not you again, Antonius; go away, I died en route, somewhere in the clouds over Smethwick, go ask Danny Bennett or someone. “Is this where we get out?”

“That’s right,” Vanderdecker said wearily. “Right, lads, show a leg, we’re here. Sebastian, bring the cat.”

“Why do I always have to…” The rest of the complaint was drowned out with noise as the helicopter door opened, and Vanderdecker (lead-from-the-front Vanderdecker) dropped out onto the grass. Perhaps he was just feeling tired, but he forgot to duck and the rotor-blade hit him just below the ear. Danny, who happened to be watching, started to scream, but there was nothing to scream about; the Dutchman staggered, swore loudly in Dutch, rubbed his neck and went on his way.

“Well,” he said to Sebastian, “that’s one thing proved anyway.”

“What?” said Sebastian. “You never look where you’re going.” Vanderdecker laughed mirthlessly, shrugged and walked towards the house. Then he noticed a smallish human figure racing across the grass towards him. He narrowed his brows and wondered what was going on.

“Julius!” said the small human figure, and crashed into him like a dodgem car, jolting him almost as much as the rotor-blade.

“Sorry,” he said automatically, and helped the small figure to its feet. The small figure was Jane, and Jane had wrapped her arms around him. He remembered.

“Hello, Jane,” he said.

“Julius, you’re safe!” Jane gasped; but there was already a tiny note of doubt, an inflection so slight you would need high-quality scientific apparatus or ears like a bat to register it, but there nevertheless.

“I think we should have a quiet talk,” Vanderdecker said, prising her off gently. “There’s just a few things I’ve got to do first, and then…”

“Julius?” The inflection was rather more obvious now. Vanderdecker closed off certain parts of his mind, which were getting in the way, and nodded.

“Won’t be long,” he said. “I’ve just got a couple of things to see to first, then I’m all yours.” There was something in his voice which belied the words he uttered, and Jane let go of him. She felt all hollow, like an egg with its yolk blown out.

“Such as,” Vanderdecker went on, “booting a certain professor up the backside. Did you get the policy?”

“Yes,” Jane said. “I did. Thank you.”

“What for? Oh, I see, yes, well. Where is it now?”

“I gave it to the pilot who brought the Professor back,” Jane said. “He’s going to post it to my father as soon as he gets to…”

“Very sensible.” Vanderdecker said, nodding. “Perhaps you could just phone your father and ask him to send it to my place in Bridport.”

“Bridport?” Jane gasped.

“Yes,” Vanderdecker said, “the fallen-down old dump where you said you found all the bank statements. It’ll be safe there.”

Jane was about to say something, but she had forgotten what it was. Couldn’t have been important. “Right,” she said. “I’ll just go and do that, then.”

“Thanks,” Vanderdecker said. “Now, then.” He walked off quickly towards the house.

The Flying Dutchman was, when circumstances permitted, a man of his word; and when he said he was going to boot a professor up the backside, he stood by it.

“Ouch!” said Montalban, startled. “My dear fellow, what…” Vanderdecker kicked him again, harder. One of his better ideas, he said to himself. He tried it again, but missed this time and put his foot through a complex piece of scientific equipment disguised as a glass-fronted cabinet full of netsuke. Although he didn’t know it, lights flickered in Montreal, Jodrell Bank and Geneva.

“Captain,” said the Professor, backing away while still trying to remain dignified, “what has come over you?”

“Getting me into this mess,” said Vanderdecker, “I can put up with. Causing me to sail round the world for nearly five hundred years I can take in my stride. Pissing off and leaving me under a ceiling and coming back here and stuffing yourself with macaroons is a bit too much, don’t you think?” He aimed another kick at the Professor; it glanced off the bunch of keys in his trouser pocket and wasted its force in empty air, making Vanderdecker totter slightly. He regained his balance and his composure at about the same moment.

“Well,” he said, “anyway, there we are. You will be delighted to know that that gimcrack Friday-afternoon job of a power station of yours is now safe again, absolutely no thanks to you. And you owe me and my lads for a complete set of clothes each. All right?”

“Yes, most certainly,” said Montalban. “My dear fellow, I am delighted to see you all in one piece. I…”

“I bet you are,” Vanderdecker said furiously. “Because if I hadn’t been, it’d have cost you plenty. Well, let me tell you that…”

“And even more delighted,” said the Professor, with all the smoothness he could manage, “to note that the treatment worked.”

Vanderdecker started. “Treatment?”

“Indeed,” said the Professor. “Just as I had hoped. The radiation charge has eliminated the smell entirely. My experiments are vindicated. You must be very pleased.”

And grateful, his tone implied. So grateful, in fact, that you really ought to do me a little favour in return. Vanderdecker caught the implication like Rodney Marsh fielding a large, slow football. “If you think,” he said, “I’m going to sign over that bloody policy after what you just did to me…”

“And what was that?”

“Leaving me There,” Vanderdecker roared. “Other things too, but just now, mostly that.”

“My dear fellow,” Montalban said. “I imagined you were—well, dead, to put it bluntly. I could see no sign of you; I feared that you and your companions had been simply atomised by the force of the blast. There was nothing I could do, I came away; my presence was needed here…”

Vanderdecker growled softly, but his indignation was leaking away like oil from a fractured sump. The Professor smiled kindly.

“And so,” he said, “everything has worked out for the best. You have no idea how much pleasure this moment gives me. The unpleasant side-effect of my elixir has successfully been counteracted. My work is over…”

The words froze on his lips, and Vanderdecker stared at him as he quietly repeated the words.

“Montalban?” Vanderdecker asked. “Are you all right?”

The Professor stood there like a dead Christmas tree for a moment and then grabbed Vanderdecker fiercely by the shoulders. “Vanderdecker,” he shouted, “did you hear what I just said? My work is over! I’ve finished! I don’t have to do it any more, it’s finished.”

Vanderdecker stepped back, wondering if the kick had affected the Professor’s brain. “Well,” he said, “that’s wonderful for you, I’m sure. Maybe now you can have a lie-in at weekends, read the paper, that sort of…”

Montalban filled his lungs and let out the loudest, least dignified whoop ever heard outside a Navajo encampment. “It’s over!” he screamed. “Yippee! No more work! No more work!” He danced—literally danced—round the room, kicking things as he went.

“Look, Professor,” Vanderdecker said, “I’m delighted for you, of course, but could we just have a quick chat about my policy? Then you can dance about all you like, but…”

“The policy?” Montalban stopped dead, turned round and stared Vanderdecker in the face. “You can stuff your policy!” he squealed. “That’s it, you can stuff it! I don’t care any more, I’m free.”

Something rather improbable fell into place in Vanderdecker’s mind, like the tumblers of a combination lock. “Professor,” he said, “are you trying to tell me you don’t like being a scientist?”

“My dear fellow,” gibbered the Professor, “I hate it. I hate it, do you hear? It’s horrible. It stinks. I’ve always hated it, even when I was a boy and my mother said I was wasting my time composing madrigals and I should grow up and learn alchemy like my father. I’ve always hated it, and…and I’ve had to do it for five hundred years! My God,” said Montalban savagely, “you think you’re hard done by, do you, sailing round the world with nothing to do all day? You don’t know you’re born. Imagine, just imagine what I’ve had to put up with. I’d have changed places with you like a shot. Day after day after day in a foul, stinking laboratory, fiddling with sulphate of this and nitrate of that, doing equations and square roots and…and now I’m free. I don’t have to do it any more. No more electrons. No more law of the conservation of matter. No more Brownian motion. Dear God, Vanderdecker, you can’t imagine how thoroughly depressing it all was, the endless, endless difficulties, five hundred years of them—having to do it all myself; nobody—absolutely nobody—to help, all up to me, all that bloody, bloody work! I hate…work!”

“Oh good,” Vanderdecker said, calmly, “you won’t have to do that any more.”

“No,” said the Professor, quietly, grinning, “no, I won’t. I need a drink. Will you join me?”

“And the policy?” Vanderdecker said.

“Oh, sod the policy,” Montalban replied. “Now that that’s all done with, I don’t need the bank any more. Just so long as I never have to do another day’s work in my life, the bank can go bust for all I care and jolly good luck to it. Let someone else sort something out, just for once.”

“I know how you feel,” Vanderdecker said gently, “believe me.”

“Thirsty?”

Vanderdecker nodded. “That too. Look, I’ve just got to go and deal with something and then I’ll be right back.”

“You’d better hurry,” said the Professor, pouring whisky into a big glass, “because I’m not going to wait for you. Tea!” he sneered. “The devil with tea! I don’t have to keep a clear head any more, I can get as pissed as a mouse.”

“Rat.”

“Precisely, my dear fellow, as a rat. Hurry back!”

“I might just do that,” Vanderdecker said, and he ran off into the gardens again.

Some time later a car—more than a car; the biggest Mercedes you ever saw—pulled up outside the front door. It was full of accountants.

Mr Gleeson got out. He rang the doorbell. After a long, long time a drunken man in a kilt answered it. In the background, someone was playing “My Very Good Friend The Milkman Says” on the harpsichord.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“Miss Doland,” said Mr Gleeson.

The man in the kilt sniggered. “You’re not the only one,” he said. He was slurring his words slightly.

“Just get her,” said Mr Gleeson. As befits a high-rolling accountant, Mr Gleeson had authority and presence. He was used to being obeyed.

“Piss off,” said the man in the kilt, and slammed the door. Mr Gleeson was surprised. According to the latest charging-rate guidelines, it costs at least fifteen pounds plus VAT to slam a door in the face of an accountant of partner status. He rang the bell again.

“I said piss off,” said a voice through the letter-box.

Mr Gleeson muttered something in a low voice, and two other accountants rang the doorbell for him. This is known as the art of delegation.

Eventually the door opened again.

“Sorry about that. Can I help you?”

This time it was a man in a kilt with a beard. He seemed rational enough, and Mr Gleeson stepped forward. Far away in the distance, a nightingale sang.

“My name’s Gleeson,” he said. “Moss Berwick, accountants. Where’s Miss Doland?”

“She’s inside,” said the man with the beard, “but you don’t want to see her. You want to see me. My name’s Vanderdecker.”

For a moment, Mr Gleeson simply stood and stared. Then he pulled himself together. “We have to talk,” he said.

Vanderdecker shook his head. “Perhaps you may have to talk, I don’t know,” he said. “If it’s some sort of obsession you have, maybe a psychiatrist could help. I knew a man once…”

“Please,” said Mr Gleeson. “This is no time for flippancy. Have you any idea what is happening on the markets?”

“Heavy falls in jute futures?”

“We must talk,” said Mr Gleeson.

“We are talking,” Vanderdecker replied. Gleeson drew in a deep breath and started to walk past Vanderdecker into the house. But the Flying Dutchman put the palm of his hand on Mr Gleeson’s shirt front and shoved. There was a ripple of amazement among the other accountants. Vanderdecker smiled. “So what’s happening on the markets?” he said.

“Massive rises,” said Gleeson. “The situation has got completely out of hand. It is imperative that we…”

“Hold on a minute,” Vanderdecker said, and he stepped back into the hallway, called out, “Sebastian! Make him stop that bloody row, will you?” and turned to face Mr Gleeson again. Muted grumbling in the background, and the harpsichord music ceased.

“Sorry about that,” said the Flying Dutchman, “but I think you’ll find everything will be back to normal on your beloved markets in a few minutes. The Professor’s got completely ratted and he’s started playing things on the harpsichord, forgetting that it’s a computer too. You don’t understand a word of that, but what the hell, you’re only a glorified book-keeper. Clerks, we called them in my day. Used to shave the tops of their heads and talk Latin at you. I see you shave your head too, or is that just premature hair loss?”

“All right,” said Mr Gleeson, “that’s enough from you. Where is Miss…”

But before he could say any more, Vanderdecker had grabbed him by various parts of his clothing, lifted him off the ground and tossed him into a flower-bed.

“Now listen,” Vanderdecker said, “the lot of you. The phrase “under new management” springs immediately to mind; also, “the King is dead; long live the King.” If in future you wish to see Miss Doland, you will have to make an appointment. Miss Doland has left the accountancy profession and has gone into banking. She is now the proprietor of the First Lombard Bank.”

There was a very long silence—if the accountants had had their stopwatches running, about twelve hundred pounds worth, plus VAT—and then Mr Gleeson said, “You what?”

“Miss Doland,” Vanderdecker said, “has exchanged entitlements as sole beneficiary by assignment of what I believe you meatheads call the Vanderdecker Policy for a fifty-one per cent shareholding in Quicksilver Limited, which is—I hope I’m getting all this right, it’s not exactly my field, you know—which I believe is the holding company which owns the First Lombard Bank, Lombard Assurance, Lombard Unit Trusts plc, and all sorts of other money sort of things with the word Lombard in them. The remaining forty-nine per cent goes to me. We’ve just had a very pleasant half-hour with the previous owner signing stock transfer forms while drinking apple brandy and singing “Lilliburlero” in Dutch. If any of you people fancy dropping by at about eleven-thirty tomorrow morning, you can help out with the Capital Gains Tax. For now, though, you will kindly shove off before I set the cat on you. Goodnight.”

The door slammed again, and there was the sound of a chain going on. Mr Gleeson picked himself up, brushed leaf-mould off his trousers and lifted the flap of the letterbox.

“Doland,” he shouted, “you’re fired!” Then he got into the car and drove off.

As the receding-Mercedes noises faded away, the door opened again, just a crack.

“Has he gone?” said a small female voice.

“Yes,” Vanderdecker said.

“Really?”

“Really and truly.”

Vanderdecker closed the door. “But it beats me,” he said, “why you’re afraid of him. Them, come to that. Glorified, over-fed book-keepers.”

“I don’t know,” Jane replied. “Habit, probably. You know, I used to have these daydreams. The letter would come saying that my long-lost aunt in Australia had died leaving me a million pounds, and then I’d go into Mr Peters” office and say, “Peters, you’re a jerk, you can stick your job…” But even if she had…

“Who?”

“My aunt in Australia.”

“You have an aunt in Australia?”

“No.”

“Sorry,” Vanderdecker said, “forget it, carry on with what you were saying.”

“Even,” Jane said, “if I’d had one and she had, I still wouldn’t have.”

“Because of habit?”

“Habit of mind,” Jane replied. “Subservience, innate atavistic feudal mentality. You don’t go telling your liege-lord he can stick his job even if you’re leaving to join the Second Crusade. Purely theoretical, anyway.”

“Not now,” Vanderdecker said. “You are in exactly that position, thanks to my foresight in taking out life insurance all those years ago—my mother wouldn’t half be surprised, by the way, she always said I was a fool when it came to money—and yet you denied yourself a moment’s extreme pleasure because of habit of mind. Strange behaviour.”

“Oh, I’m just chicken,” Jane said. “Anyway, thanks for dealing with it for me. You did it very well.”

“Did I?” Vanderdecker said. “Call it beginner’s luck.”

They were standing in the hall. From the drawing-room came drinking noises. “Well, then…” Jane said.

“Well what?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Julius…”

“Do you know,” Vanderdecker said. “I can’t get used to people calling me that again. That Bennett bloke keeps calling me Julius, and I don’t know what to make of it. Only person ever called me Julius was my mother. Dad called me son, my master when I was a prentice used to refer to me as “hey, you”, and then I was captain or skipper for the next four hundred odd years. Being Julius again is a bit unsettling, really. I never liked the name, anyway.”

“Didn’t you?”

“No.”

“Do you have another name? A second name, or something?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“Albert.”

That seemed to kill the conversation for a moment. Then Vanderdecker said, “You don’t like the name Albert, do you?”

“Well,” Jane said, “not really.”

“Nor me. Good old Dutch name, of course, been in my family for generations. I think it means Elf-beard, which is quite incredibly helpful. Well, too late to do anything about it now, I suppose.”

“Yes.”

There was nothing in particular keeping them in the hall, but neither of them moved. Eventually Jane asked: “So what are you going to do next?”

Vanderdecker raised an eyebrow. “Next?”

“Well, yes, I mean, you aren’t going to stay here drinking with Professor Montalban for the rest of time, now are you?”

Vanderdecker considered. “Probably not,” he said. “On the other hand, I feel like a bit of a holiday.”

“A holiday from what?”

“From whatever I’ve got to do next, I suppose.”

“Look,” Jane said sharply, “you haven’t got to do anything next. Or ever.” But Vanderdecker shook his head.

“It’s not as easy as that,” he said. “I really wish it was, but it isn’t. It’s them.” He nodded his head towards the drawing-room door. Jane stared at him for a moment.

“What, them?” she said. “Johannes and Antonius and Sebastian and…”

“I’m afraid so, yes.”

“But what have they got to do with it?”

Vanderdecker smiled, but not for the reasons that usually make people smile. “I’m their captain,” he said. “I’m responsible for them.”

Jane stared. “You’re joking,” she said. “I thought you couldn’t stand the sight of each other. I thought that after all those years cooped up on that little ship…”

“Yes,” Vanderdecker replied, “and no. Yes, we get on each other’s nerves to a quite extraordinary extent, and we can’t even relieve the tension with murder or other forms of violence. On the other hand, I’m their captain. I do all the thinking for them. I’ve had to, for the last four centuries. They’ve completely forgotten how to do it for themselves. So, okay, maybe we don’t have to go back on that boring bloody ship ever again; but I can’t leave them. It’d be impossible.”

“Why?”

Vanderdecker was silent for what seemed like an immensely long time, then turned to Jane, looked her in the eye and said, “Habit.”

“I see.”

“Set in our ways,” Vanderdecker amplified. “Old dogs and new tricks.”

“Fine,” Jane replied. “Well, it was very nice meeting you.”

“Likewise.”

“Perhaps we’ll bump into each other again one day.”

“Bound to,” Vanderdecker said. “Board meetings, that sort of thing. So what are you going to do now?”

Jane shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “I think I’ll have a holiday too. Only…” Only it won’t be the same, not now. You see, Mr Vanderdecker, this freedom you’ve given me is a fraud. Maybe now I’m free of Mr Gleeson and accountancy and all that horrible nonsense, but I can’t be free of you, not ever. Every man I see in the street, I’ll look twice at him to see if it’s you. But she smiled instead, and left the sentence unfinished.

“Actually,” Vanderdecker said, “I’d had this idea of getting a new ship.”

“What?”

“A new ship,” Vanderdecker repeated. “Only not called the Verdomde this time. Something a bit more cheerful. And big. Huge. One of those oil tankers, maybe, or a second-hand aircraft carrier. Only we’d have the whole thing gutted and we’d fit it out like an enormous floating country-club. A separate floor for each of us, with automated and computerised everything. Complete luxury. We could just sail around, landing where we like and when we like, just generally having a good time. I mean,” Vanderdecker’s voice sounded a trifle strained, “I think we’re all a bit too old to settle down now. Don’t you think?”

“You know best,” Jane said. “Well, I think that’s a splendid idea. I really do. Have you put it to them yet?”

“No, not yet. I thought I’d like your opinion first.”

“Yes, you do that,” Jane said. “And now let’s have a drink, shall we?”

They went into the drawing room. The first thing they saw was Professor Montalban, lying on the sofa fast asleep. Snoring.

“Had a drop too much,” Sebastian explained unnecessarily. “Not used to it.”

“Fair enough,” Vanderdecker said. “Now listen, you lot. I’ve been thinking…”

And he explained the idea of the oil-tanker. It was well-received, particularly by Antonius, who had been wondering what was going to happen next. They all had a drink to celebrate. They drank the whisky, the wine, the gin, the brandy, the cherry brandy, the rest of the apple brandy and the sherry. At this point, Danny and the camera crew passed out, leaving Jane, the Flying Dutchman and the crew to drink the vermouth, the Tia Maria, the ouzo, the port, the bourbon, the vodka, the bacardi, the schnapps and the ginger-beer shandy.

“That seems to be the lot,” Vanderdecker said, disappointed. “And not a drop of beer in the whole place.”

“What’s this, Skip?” Antonius asked, holding up a cut-glass decanter. There was no label on it, but it was a pleasant dark golden colour.

“Where did you find that, Antonius?” Vanderdecker asked.

“In this little cabinet thing.”

Vanderdecker sniffed it. “Smells like rum,” he said. “Anyone fancy a drop of rum?”

Everyone, it transpired, fancied a drop of rum. It must have been good rum, because it made them all feel very sleepy.

When they woke up, everyone had headaches, Jane included. From the kitchen came the smell of frying bacon, which made them all feel sick. Slowly, Vanderdecker lifted himself to his feet, looked around to see if he could see where he’d left his head the previous evening, and went into the kitchen to kill whoever was making that horrible smell.

It was Montalban, wearing a striped pinny, frying bacon. He had also made a big pot of coffee, of which Vanderdecker consumed a large quantity straight from the spout.

“Why aren’t you as ill as the rest of us?” he asked the Professor.

“I never get hangovers,” said the Professor.

Vanderdecker scowled. “Clean living, huh?”

“No,” the Professor replied. “I have a little recipe.”

“Gimme.”

The Professor grinned and pointed to a half-full jug on the worktop. “There’s tomato juice and raw egg,” he said, “and mercury and nitric acid and white lead and heavy water. And Worcester sauce,” he added, “to taste.”

Vanderdecker had some and felt much better. “Thanks,” he said. “It was the rum that did it.”

“Rum?”

“Vicious stuff, rum,” Vanderdecker said. “Does horrible things to you.”

“I haven’t got any rum,” Montalban said.

“Not now you haven’t.”

Montalban was looking at him. “No, I never keep any in the house,” he said. “Are you sure it was rum?”

“Well,” Vanderdecker said, “there wasn’t a label on the decanter but it tasted like rum. I think.”

“Which decanter?”

“In a little glass-fronted cabinet thing, by the telephone table,” Vanderdecker said. “Maybe it was calvados, come to think of it, except calvados always gives me heartburn and heartburn was about the only thing I wasn’t suffering from when I woke up just now.”

Montalban was staring now, but not at the bacon, which was burning. “Large cut-glass decanter in a small glass-fronted cabinet,” he said.

“That’s right. Sorry, was it special or something? We just weren’t noticing…”

“That wasn’t rum, I’m afraid,” Montalban said. “That was elixir.”

Vanderdecker’s eyes grew very round and his hands fell to his sides. “You what?” he said.

“Elixir,” Montalban said.

“Oh SHIT,” Vanderdecker replied. “Not again.”

“I’m afraid so,” said the Professor, “yes.”

Vanderdecker’s spine seemed to melt, and he slithered against the worktop, knocking over a glass jar of pearl barley. “You stupid…”

“It’s not my fault,” Montalban protested nervously. “For Heaven’s sake, I’d have thought you and your friends would have learned your lesson by now, really…”

Vanderdecker straightened up, turned his head to the wall and started to bang it furiously on the corner of some shelf units. “Not you,” he said, “me. Antonius. No, me. Oh hell!”

“It’s not,” Montalban said, “exactly the same elixir as well, as last time.”

Vanderdecker stopped pounding his head against the shelves and looked at him. “It isn’t?”

“Well,” said the Professor, “it’s basically the same, but I did make certain changes to the molecular…”

He stopped short, because Vanderdecker’s hands round his windpipe made talking difficult. “Does it make you smell?” Vanderdecker snarled. Montalban said nothing in reply—not for want of trying—but his lips made the necessary movements to shape “No”.

“You sure?” Montalban nodded vigorously, and Vanderdecker let him go.

“But,” he added, as soon as he had breath enough to do so, “it does have side-effects.”

“It does?”

“I fear so.”

Vanderdecker groaned. “Go on,” he said, “tell me.”

“You understand,” Montalban said, first making sure that he had the bulk of a chest freezer between himself and his interlocutor, “that my data is based on necessarily perfunctory and in-complete tests, confined entirely to non-human animal subjects, and that what I say is on a completely without prejudice basis?”

“Tell me.”

“You really must understand that none of this has been proved to the high standards…”

“Tell me,” Vanderdecker said.

“It makes you go bright green.”

“Green?”

Montalban nodded again. “Green,” he confirmed, “and you shine in the dark. There is also an eerie humming noise. Additional limbs are sometimes (although not invariably) acquired, depending on the individual subject’s metabolism and whether or not he is a vertebrate to begin with. Also,” Montalban added quickly as Vanderdecker picked up a biscuit-barrel and drew back his arm, “the effects are strictly temporary.”

“You what?”

“The phenomena I have just described,” Montalban said, “are exhibited in the short term only, for no more than a few weeks at a time. They do, however, recur; like malaria, I suppose, although on a fascinatingly regular basis.”

“How often?”

Montalban shrugged non-committally, and Vanderdecker threw the biscuit-barrel at him. While he was reeling and picking smashed pottery and Bath Olivers out of his hair, Vanderdecker had time to find a spaghetti-jar and flourish it threateningly.

“My best estimate,” Montalban said, “at the present time is that the symptoms manifest themselves on average for two one-month periods in each calendar year. But I should stress,” he said, ignoring the spaghetti jar, “that this is based on observation of a small nest of field-voles, two of which escaped, and the tests only cover a three-year period, which is by any standards…”

“Why?”

“My housekeeper,” Montalban admitted, “is terrified of mice. Green luminous mice especially. So I had to get rid of them. Since they were immortal and invulnerable…”

“That bit still works, does it?”

“Most certainly, yes,” said the Professor. “Since they were immortal and invulnerable and I couldn’t keep them around the house, they are now manning a small space-station in orbit three hundred thousand kilometres above the surface of Mars, providing invaluable data on…”

“I see,” Vanderdecker said. “Green luminous and noisy, and perhaps an extra arm or two. What happens with the arms, by the way?”

“The additional limbs,” said the Professor, “are also temporary.”

“You mean they fall off?”

“Yes.”

“Moult? Pine needles off a Christmas tree job? That sort of thing?”

“Roughly, yes.”

“I see,” Vanderdecker said. “So I’ll need a pair of trousers with a detachable third leg, will I? As opposed to spending the rest of history going around like a human Manx emblem. Well, let me tell you…”

Suddenly Vanderdecker fell silent and he lowered the spaghetti jar, spilling its contents. He furrowed his brows and then started to grin.

“Montalban,” he said at last, “that’s marvellous.”

“Is it?” Montalban raised an eyebrow. “Well, I’m delighted that…”

“Don’t you see?” Vanderdecker said, “Jane drank some too. A stiff double, approximately. Don’t you see, she’s going to live for ever too. She’s going to be one of us! Montalban—oh, look, just stay there, will you?”

He dumped the spaghetti jar in the sink and rushed through into the drawing room. There, Jane was sitting crouched on the edge of a settee, moaning slightly. With one movement Vanderdecker lifted her up in the air, kissed her noisily on the lips and said, “Guess what?”

“Ouch,” Jane replied.

“You’re going to go bright green and luminous, hum slightly, and grow an extra arm,” he said cheerfully. “What do you think of that?”

“I think I already did,” Jane replied. “Will you please put me down before my head falls off?”

“Sorry,” Vanderdecker said. “Now, listen to this. No, better still, have some of the Professor’s mercury soup and then listen.”

So Jane went, had some mercury soup, and listened. While Vanderdecker was explaining to her, and inducing Montalban with occasional prods from a rolling-pin to corroborate his narrative, he began to wonder whether Jane would in fact be pleased. He had no idea; all he knew was that he was pleased, very pleased indeed.

“So there you are,” he finished up. “What do you think?”

Oddly enough, the only thing that passed through Jane’s mind for several minutes was the phrase “Death is a tax holiday”, which she remembered from her tax-planning lectures.

“Jane? What do you think?”

“Death is a tax holiday,” she said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“For the year of death,” Jane said, “personal allowances against income tax are granted for the full year, regardless of the point in the tax year at which death occurs. There is no requirement to apportion unused allowances. Thus death can be said to be a tax holiday.”

“What?”

“Sorry,” Jane said. “I was miles away. So I’m going to live for ever, am I?”

“Yes.”

“Ah. Yes, I thought that was what you said. I…”

“Jane.” Vanderdecker grabbed her by the shoulders. “Would you like some advice?”

“Yes please.”

“Don’t think about it,” Vanderdecker said. “It’s not a good idea to think about it, believe you me.”

“Oh,” Jane said. “Right, okay then.”

“Secondly,” Vanderdecker said, and then he turned to the Professor. “Go away.”

“I’m sorry?” the Professor asked.

“I said go away. Vamos.”

“Certainly, my dear fellow, certainly.”

“Now then.” Vanderdecker put on a serious expression and looked Jane squarely in the eye. “Miss Doland,” he said, “since we are…”

“All in the same boat?” Jane suggested.

“Precisely,” Vanderdecker said. “Since we’ve both been accidentally lumbered with a common misfortune…Look, do you see what I’m getting at, because this is rather tricky to put into words.”

“Yes,” Jane said.

“Yes, you see what I’m getting at, or yes, you…?”

“Both,” Jane replied.

“And,” Jane continued, “some sort of through dining-room in a sort of light Wedgwood blue, with…”

“Jane.”

“Sorry.”

“That’s fine. Now…”

“And a dressing room,” Jane added quickly. “I’ve always wanted a separate dressing-room. In a sort of pinky…”

“Absolutely,” Vanderdecker said. “Can you play the harpsichord?”

“No.”

“Pity,” Vanderdecker said, “because it’s years since I learnt, and they’ve put extra pedals and things on now.”

“Couldn’t we have a stereo instead?”

“A harpsichord linked to the computer,” Vanderdecker explained. “To control the markets, whatever the hell they are.”

“Oh yes,” Jane said. “God, you’re efficient, aren’t you? I’d forgotten all about…”

“Habit,” Vanderdecker said. “I’ve got into the habit of looking after people, remember, making sure they don’t get into messes or start fighting each other. While I’m at it, I might as well use the Professor’s computer, since he’s obviously washed his hands of the whole affair.”

Just then the kitchen door opened, and there was Sebastian. He was looking pleased with himself.

“Hey, skip,” he said, “it’s all fixed.”

“I know,” Vanderdecker said.

“What?”

“Oh, sorry,” Vanderdecker said. “What’s fixed, Sebastian?”

“The ship.”

“What ship?”

“The supertanker,” Sebastian said. “We’ve booked one.”

Vanderdecker stared. “You’ve booked one?”

“That’s right, yes,” Sebastian said. “We tried Harland and Wolf first, but they thought we were playing silly buggers and put the phone down. So then we tried this Korean firm, Kamamoto-something, Pieter wrote the name down, and they said they had an ex-demo tanker going cheap, low mileage, taxed till April, metallic grey with headrests, and when would we like to take delivery? So we said, can you run it over to Bristol, and they said would Thursday be all right, so we said fine…”

Vanderdecker smiled. “Sebastian,” he said.

“Yes?”

“Ten out of ten for initiative,” said the Flying Dutchman, “but let’s say four out of ten for judgement. They were having you on.”

“You what?”

“Pulling your leg,” Vanderdecker said. “Playing games. Being funny. Laughing up their sleeves.”

“How do you know?”

Vanderdecker widened the smile slightly. “Trust me,” he said. “I know. Why don’t you just let me…”

Sebastian shrugged his shoulders. “Be like that,” he said, offended. “We were only trying…”

“Yes,” Vanderdecker said. “You always are. Very. Go away and count something, there’s a good lad.”

Sebastian drifted off, and Vanderdecker turned to Jane. “You see?” he said. Jane nodded.

“And you still want to come?”

“Yes please.”

Fourteen months later, at half-past four in the morning, the biggest supertanker ever built slithered into the cold grey water of the North Sea and set off on its maiden voyage.

Curiously enough, there were no celebrations to mark the launching of this magnificent vessel (named, for sound fiscal reasons, Lombard Venturer ID); no crowd, no band playing, not even a small Babycham cracked against her awe-inspiring bows. Only one camera-crew filmed her departure, and that was because the owners hadn’t the heart to refuse Danny Bennett a scoop to make up for the damage that the failure of his latest documentary “Close The Creamery Door, Lads, There’s Blood Inside”, had done to his career.

This desire for privacy was understandable, because the owners weren’t looking their best.

“I still say it suits you,” Vanderdecker said.

“People will think I’m seasick,” Jane replied.

“Let them,” Vanderdecker said. He glanced down at the instrument console before him; a cross between a huge computer keyboard, the flight deck of an airliner and a Yamaha organ. “I wonder how you drive this thing.”

“I lent Antonius the manual,” Jane said. “He asked me what gyroscopic means.”

“Oh well,” Vanderdecker said, and shrugged, “never mind. It beats hauling in all those ropes, at any rate. Where shall we go first?”

“Reykjavik.”

“Why Reykjavik?”

“Because we have all the time in the world,” Jane answered, “and I want to save the good bits till later.”

“Good thinking,” Vanderdecker said. “I can see you’re getting the hang of this.”

Through the tinted, double-glazed window they watched the coast receding into the distance. Just briefly, Jane felt her old life slipping away from her, and wondered if she ought to regret it. She was entering into a new timescale entirely now, and the next time she came back to England, perhaps everyone she knew there would be dead. But that was a very big thought, and there wasn’t enough room in her head for it; all the available space was taken up with a calm, deliberate pleasure.

“Another nice thing about this ship,” Vanderdecker said, “is not having to take it to Bridport to be fixed every time something goes wrong with it. God, I hate Bridport.”

“I gathered,” Jane said. “It can’t have been nice having to spend so many of your shore-leaves there.”

“True,” said the Flying Dutchman. “Mind you, if you go somewhere often enough, you’re bound to get sort of attached to it after a time. Even,” he added, “Bridport.”

“Is that true?”

“No.” Vanderdecker admitted. “Every time I went there, it had changed, ever so slightly, for the worse. A new car park here, a fish shop turned into an estate agent there. I really thought it had bottomed out in 1837, but they hadn’t built the bus station then.”

“So is it fun,” Jane queried, “watching history unfold itself? Being a witness to the long march of Everyman? I suppose it’s like being a God, really, except that usually you’re powerless to intervene.”

“What long words Miss Doland is using,” Vanderdecker replied. “It’s not a bit like that. Hell, you don’t notice, it’s too gradual; it would be like claiming that the turning of the earth made you dizzy. I don’t even feel particularly different, to be honest with you. I think I stopped feeling different when I turned nineteen and stopped growing, and since then I’ve always been the same. It’d be another matter if I’d gone to sleep and then woken up hundreds of years later, but…I guess going on a hovercraft must be like that.”

“Haven’t you ever?”

“What, been on a hovercraft? No fear. Those things are dangerous.”

Jane giggled. “But Julius,” she said, “you’re invulnerable and immortal, nothing’s dangerous to you. You can’t be afraid of hovercraft.”

“Want to bet?”

Jane smiled, and shook her head. Would she be like him in four hundred years or so, or would he always keep this start on her?

“Nice of the Professor to come and see us off, wasn’t it?” she said.

“I suppose so.”

“Do you think he ever will get round to finding an antidote?” Vanderdecker grinned. “Eventually,” he said, “maybe. Where’s the hurry?”

“There isn’t one.”

In the distance, the environmentalist action ship Erdkrieger changed course sharply. The ship’s Geiger counter had suddenly started bleeping furiously and playing “Jerusalem” and someone had suggested that the huge ship on the skyline might have something to do with it.

They launched a dinghy and set out to investigate. Business had been slack lately, what with the new initiative (nobody knew where it had started) to phase out nuclear power worldwide, and for once there was no shortage of volunteers.

“Ahoy!” shouted the captain of the Erdkrieger. “You there on the tanker!”

He raised his binoculars and recognised a familiar face.

“Fancy meeting you again,” Vanderdecker replied through the loud-hailer. “How’s saving the world going?”

“Sehr gut,” the German replied. “Is your ship making the radiation?”

“That’s not radiation,” Vanderdecker replied, “not as such. Completely harmless.”

“If that’s so,” said the German, “why are you bright green and glowing slightly?”

“Too much Limberger cheese,” Vanderdecker shouted back. “Come on, you know me. I’m a Friend of the Earth too, you know. Me and the Earth are like that.”

“Okay,” said the German. “Sorry to have troubled you. Auf wiedersehen!”

“Auf wiedersehen!” Vanderdecker called back, and added “idiot” under his breath. He left the bridge and went below to the library. Jane was in the drawing-room, comparing carpet samples. At the moment, she was dead set on a sort of beigy-pink with a faint texture in the pile. As he thought of it, Vanderdecker shuddered, ever so slightly, until he remembered that carpets wear out, eventually, even the best of them. He’d just have to outlive the bugger.

As he walked down the ladder, Vanderdecker paused and looked out over the sea. Very big, the sea, an awful lot of it, like history, or life. The hell with it.

“Skip,” said a voice from above his head. “You got a moment?”

Vanderdecker sighed. “Of course I have, Antonius.” He climbed the ladder again.

“Skip,” Antonius said. “I can’t find the mainmast.”

“There isn’t one.”

“No mainmast?”

“No mainmast. Propellers instead.”

Antonius reflected for a moment. “Skip,” he said.

“Yes?”

“How do you get the sail to stay up on a propeller?”

“You don’t,” Vanderdecker said. “It sits in the water and goes round and round.”

Antonius frowned. “And they call that progress,” he sneered. Vanderdecker smiled at him, nodded, and went below again, banging his head on a low girder as he did so. I’ll get used to it, he thought, in time.

And so he did. And they all lived happily. Ever after.