Lies Sleeping

12 The Old Man’s Regatta

That year the Old Man of the River was holding his summer court at Mill End, where the Thames skirts the eastern edge of the Chilterns before dropping south to Henley and Reading. Nightingale decided that, since he had to stay in London, I’d have to represent the Folly. So I threw two mystery hampers from Molly, Beverley’s overnight party bag, and Abigail into the back of the Hyundai and set off on an unseasonably grey Saturday morning.

Bev was going to travel up the Thames and meet us there.

‘Got to stop off and say hello to a few people on the way,’ she said.

The day was humid and overcast and the Hyundai’s aircon was labouring. I tried to get clever and go up the M40 and then south at High Wycombe, but that just meant me and Abigail were sweaty and irritable on a motorway instead of an A-road.

As we started the drop into the Thames Valley proper, we could see darker clouds piling up beyond the Thames to the south. Now, I don’t have Bev’s intimate acquaintance with the hydrological cycle, but I thought I knew a summer thunderstorm when it’s lowering at me.

‘Cumulonimbus,’ said Abigail, who of course knew the technical name. ‘“Cumulus” means a mass and “nimbus” means cloud.’

I didn’t deign to answer and instead concentrated on my driving.

We whooshed through Marlow, which appeared to be composed of strange mutant detached bungalows with hipped roofs in the Dutch style, and sprawling post-war villas in the no-style-whatsoever style. Then along the course of the Thames on the A4155, which rose and fell amongst woods, villages and boutique hotels ideal for the stressed executive.

Hambleden Marina was a private marina and boat yard that sat downstream of the weir at Hambleden Lock. Beverley says you can’t live on the river without coming to an accommodation with the powers that be – in this case, Father Thames.

‘Not that they necessarily know that’s what they’re doing,’ she said.

Apparently, most people thought the little rituals they performed – the occasional bottle of beer left out in a riverside garden, the champagne broken on the bow of a boat, the odd bit of bank work or rewilding done on an adjacent property – that these were harmless little superstitions. Others entered directly into a pact because the blessing of the Old Man of the River could raise wild flowers out of season and cause HSE inspectors and bank managers to let things slide until the business picks up.

Occasionally, late at night, I wonder whether this is true of Mama Thames and whether, perhaps, her blessing can make an old man kick his heroin habit and take up his trumpet again.

It is at times like that I remember the wisdom of my mother who once told me – ‘As yu mek yu bed, na so yu go lehdum par nam’. But she means it in a good way.

I figured the owner of Hambleden Marina must know what bed they’re climbing into. Because when the Summer Court of Father Thames moves in, it’s a little hard to ignore.

The Showmen had put in a token appearance, setting up a steam-powered merry-go-round with an authentic period automatic organ that some joker had programmed to play a medley of James Brown’s and Tina Turner’s greatest hits, and a couple of mini roundabouts and roller coasters to keep the kids happy. Behind them, on the field closest to the main road, were their caravans, motorhomes and horses. The marina proper was choked with boats, triple and quadruple parked in some places so that they stuck out into the channel like temporary piers. At the far end of the longest of these piers was a large boat that looked like someone had jammed an Edwardian tea pavilion onto a flat-bottomed barge and painted everything white and nautical blue. I didn’t need telling that this was the heart of the Summer Court.

A red-faced white man with mutton chop whiskers, a flat cap, a string vest, braces and cor blimey trousers directed us over to the parking area at the back of the caravans. By the time I’d slotted myself into a minuscule spot between a Toyota Land Cruiser and a Ford Fiesta that I’m pretty sure had once been two separate cars.

But at least by the time we’d squeezed out the car with the luggage, Beverley had turned up to help us carry it. One of the impromptu boat piers actually extended all the way out to a nameless islet that sat midstream and planks had been laid down to form a crude pontoon bridge. The little island was where the kids would pitch their tents and apparently me and Bev were going to guard the bridge, because halfway across she stopped to show off her home from home.

This turned out to be the Pride of Putney, a nine-metre traditional gentleman’s day boat built in the 1920s, with mahogany and brass fittings. Designed to motor rich people up and down the Thames, it had been refitted so that the bench seats in the aft passenger cabin could be rearranged to make a double bed. There was no internet or other electronics, which goes some way to explaining why Bev had been so vexed with me about her erstwhile sabbatical on the upper Thames.

‘Though I got used to it,’ she told me later. ‘Plus I quickly figured out which pubs and houses had free Wi-Fi.’

I threw my luggage into the boat and, while Bev and Abigail went to pick a site for the tent, I set off to find Oxley and pay my respects. This is important amongst the Genii Locorum, who like a bit of respect and are not above flooding your back garden to get it. Oxley, despite being Father Thames’s right-hand river deity, usually keeps a modest establishment, a tiny house in Chertsey and an old-fashioned caravan when on the road, but this time he had the second biggest boat.

It was a flat-bottomed, flat-roofed, clapboard sided, green painted shotgun-shack on a raft called the Queen of the Nile. Moored centrally so that Oxley could sit on the roof under an awning and be, if not the master of all he surveyed, then at least responsible for keeping the whole mad enterprise from flying apart. Given that we had that much in common, I probably shouldn’t have been so surprised that he gave me a hug when I joined him on the roof. He was a short wiry man with long arms that I suspect could have easily lifted me above his head.

‘Good timing,’ he said as I sat down next to him in a deckchair with Property of Merton College stamped across the faded stripes of its canvas back. Raindrops started to splat on the awning above us as the leading edge of the storm crossed the river and hit the marina. There were shrieks as adults ran for shelter and children ran in circles – a dog started barking.

From our perch it was easy to spot Beverley and Abigail scurrying along the pontoon bridge to the Pride of Putney. Beverley stopped while Abigail climbed inside, looked over at Oxley’s boat, spotted me, waved and then ducked inside, too.

‘Is that Peter?’ called Oxley’s wife Isis from below.

‘It is, my love,’ called Oxley.

‘Ask him if he wants tea.’

I said I did and then waited as Oxley was summoned down the stern ladder to help fetch it. Isis climbed up with the biscuits, which she placed on a folding table. She had an oval face, pale white skin and extraordinarily dark brown eyes. According to her and Oxley she had once been the notorious Mrs Freeman, aka Anna Maria de Burgh Coppinger, mistress and co-conspirator of the fraudulent Henry Ireland. As far as me and Postmartin could tell from the existing records, this was true. Which meant that she was supposed to have died in 1802. Which meant that it was possible that in some way she’d caught practical immortality from her husband. Something that Lady Ty didn’t think was possible.

The Doctors Vaughan and Walid wanted a tissue sample.

Something I didn’t think was practical.

There were only two deckchairs – Isis took her husband’s and motioned me back down into mine. When Oxley made it up the ladder with the tea tray he saw how things lay and sensibly sat cross-legged at his wife’s feet.

Isis gave ritual reassurance that drinking her tea and scoffing her Lidl custard creams would not bind me into perpetual servitude, and I duly ate and drank and was merry.

It began to bucket down, shrieks of annoyance and joy floating up from the marina around us.

I watched Oxley sitting in his faded blue Oasis T-shirt and frayed khaki chinos. The idea that he was born back in the ninth century seemed a little bit distant. But my biology teacher at school had been adamant that if you plucked an original Homo sapiens sapiens out of the Rift Valley and put him in a suit he could have walked in and taken a substitute RE class no problem.

I have a clear memory of me saying that would be a waste, since think about what he could tell us about being a caveman. But, you know, I’m not sure whether I actually did ask that or just wished I had.

Certainly I don’t remember getting an answer.

Anyone who’s taken statements from multiple witnesses to the same event will know how malleable memory is. And yet Oxley had been around for quite a lot of the period of my Key Stage 3 History Curriculum, and there were other Rivers who were even older.

‘You’re about twelve hundred years old, right?’ I said.

Oxley stared at me a moment before nodding slowly.

‘I should say something of that order,’ he said. ‘Now you come to mention it. But if it’s wisdom you’re after, you’re asking the wrong man.’

‘I was thinking more of your memory,’ I said.

‘Ah, well,’ said Oxley. ‘Memory, now – there’s a tricky thing. What particular memory were you thinking of?’

‘King Arthur,’ I said.

‘Before my time,’ said Oxley.

‘But was he a legend or a real king?’

‘Kings were legends in those days. Or so they seemed to such poor creatures as myself. I’m not sure I could say who was king in my youth and I was quite a learned man.’

‘Not even his name?’

‘Do you remember who was prime minister when you were so high?’

He nodded at a small child, gender indeterminate, in blue shorts who was dancing about in the rain.

‘Margaret Thatcher,’ I said, and then had to think again. ‘John Major.’

‘Ah,’ said Oxley. ‘But do you truly remember that, or is that something you learnt later from a book or off the radio?’

‘I remember John Major from when I was in primary school,’ I said. ‘But I get your point.’

‘Well, that is how the past is for us,’ said Oxley. ‘All the historical things, the kings and other mighty bastards, the battles and coronations sort of fade. Mind you, the strangest things stick. I remember vividly being sick after being woken for matins and standing before the abbot and wishing he would shout with less force. I remember the first time I saw Isis at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, and all I need do is close my eyes to see her again.’

‘Or open them and see me in front of you,’ said Isis.

‘My point being that I could not for the life of me tell you the name of the king at either juncture without consulting a book,’ said Oxley.

‘It was Farmer George,’ said Isis. ‘Not long after somebody tried to shoot him in his box.’

‘Painful,’ I said.

‘It undoubtedly would have been,’ she said, and winked.

‘You’re not helping me here, my love,’ Oxley told Isis, who laughed. ‘As I was saying, my point . . .’ He stopped to make sure Isis wasn’t about to interrupt. ‘My point being that I can’t be sure whether what I know of the grand events of the past are my true memories or the same histories that you know.’

‘He looks so disappointed,’ said Isis.

‘You’re not the first gentleman wizard who came asking,’ said Oxley. ‘I remember one who was desperate to answer some question or other about Cromwell. Charlie Somebody, taught at Pembroke College, right keen on original sources. Couldn’t help him either.’

I wondered if perhaps there was an upper limit to the capacity of the brain to retain memory. Perhaps their surplus memories manifested externally; perhaps that was the function of those strange god-ghosts like Sir William of Tyburn. It would also suggest that the Genii Locorum retained the same organic brain that the rest of us made do with.

I wondered if we could persuade one of them to donate their brain to science.

‘There’s such a thing as social history these days,’ I said, and Oxley snorted.

‘Ah well, but that’s a difficult matter, isn’t it now?’ he said. ‘I could tell them all about the daily life of a terrible monk, but then I’d have to reveal myself, wouldn’t I? That might cause a bit of an uproar, might it not? Think of the questions!’

‘Somebody should remember this stuff,’ I said.

‘Oh, the Old Man remembers everything,’ said Oxley. ‘You might say that’s what makes him the Old Man.’

‘So our hypothetical historian might ask him?’ I asked.

‘Hypothetical?’ said Isis, and sipped her tea.

‘Do you have a burning need to know about the past?’ asked Oxley.

I said it was hypothetically possible, but Oxley shook his head slowly.

‘You don’t want to be asking questions of the Old Man. He asks a price, and the price is always more than what you want to pay.’

‘Or I could ask him for you,’ said Isis, and sipped her tea.

Oxley gave her a frown.

‘Isis, my love,’ he said. ‘Let’s not meddle too far in the affairs of wizards.’

‘This isn’t a wizard,’ said Isis. ‘This is Peter and besides, my love, it will do no harm to ask. The Old Man will either answer or he will not.’

‘Or as like as not pitch you a riddle,’ said Oxley. ‘One that we will untangle to our cost.’

‘Peter’s good at riddles,’ Isis told her husband, then favoured me with a bright smile. ‘That, after all, is the nature of his profession.’

Oxley shrugged – conceding.

‘Now, Peter, what is it you wish to know?’

‘King Arthur,’ I said. ‘Camelot, Merlin, Excalibur – is any of it real?’

‘Define real,’ said Oxley.

‘Real as all this is real. As you and me are real, as the Old Man is real, as Nightingale is real.’

Oxley opened his mouth – no doubt to split another hair – but his wife cut him off.

‘Peter, love,’ said Isis. ‘Your goddess is trying to get your attention.’

The rain had slackened off and Beverley had appeared on the deck of the Pride of Putney and was beckoning me over.

After the rain, the day turned hot so suddenly that the grass practically steamed and some terrifyingly pale skin was suddenly exposed to direct sunlight. Although I did notice that a great deal of factor 30 and above was being slathered on children by parents and randomly concerned adults. Beverley and Abigail got straight into their swimming gear while I kept my nice lightweight summer suit on just long enough to pay my respects to Father Thames.

This involved me nodding politely and extending the respects of myself, the Folly and Nightingale to the rumpled old white man who was holding court with his cronies on the covered stern deck of his boat. Despite the old suit and the tarnished watch fob, there was no mistaking the intensity of the eyes, or the quick promise of hard work and open skies, or the smell of clean water and breath of the wind on your face.

‘Ave, Petre Grande, incantator. Di sint tecum et cum tuis,’ he said and there was a stir amongst the cronies, and a muttering – he’d never spoken to me in Latin before.

‘Tibi gratias ago, Tiberi Claudi Verica,’ I said, which is like from Chapter One of My First Latin Primer. Still, it got the job done and I backed out without engendering a major diplomatic incident or, worse, a major flood.

After that I stripped off, had Beverley slap the sunscreen on my back, and we headed off to do some community outreach. This involves meeting people, listening to their stories and memorising their names and faces in case you had to come back and arrest them at a later date.

Occasionally we’d catch a glimpse of Abigail in her pink, blue and red Nakimuli one-piece.

‘Did you get her that?’ I asked Beverley.

‘Nah,’ she said. ‘I think Fleet did.’

‘I didn’t even know she knew Fleet.’

‘Well, obviously she does,’ said Beverley.

I watched Abigail talking to a pair of kids her own age, a boy and girl, with the sort of patchwork tans that white people get when they spend summer outdoors in a variety of different tops.

She caught us looking and waved, and her two friends turned to stare briefly before returning their complete attention to whatever Abigail was saying.

‘If you’re like this with your cousin,’ said Beverley, ‘what are you going to be like with your own children?’

‘Oh, I’m going to be a tyrant,’ I said.

‘You’re so not,’ said Beverley, and took my hand. ‘Their poor mother’s going to have to do all the work.’

Later that evening we trooped over to an adjacent field where a circle of trestle tables had been arranged into a circle around a bonfire. I was seated next to Isis, three seats around from the Old Man himself. Beverley was on his other side, as befitted a guest of honour. As we ate I counted the sons of the Old Man and came up four short. Ash, I knew, was celebrating with Mama Thames in Wapping, but three of the heaviest hitters, Ken, Cher and Wey were notably absent.

‘We sent Ken to see Sabrina and Avon,’ said Oxley. ‘Cher is in Herefordshire seeing the three sisters, and Wey’s all the way up in Scotland making merry with the Tay.’ His grin was full of mischief. ‘We thought it was time to renew old friendships.’

‘What brought all this on?’ I asked.

‘Oh, that would have been you and your good example,’ said Oxley.

‘Cross-community partnerships,’ said Isis.

I resolved to keep my mouth shut for the rest of my life, or at the very least around Oxley and Isis.

At some point close to midnight, when we’d all drunk way too much, the Old Man of the River stood and silence rolled out across the company, so that even the children fell quiet.

He held up a straight half pint glass filled with something amber that was definitely not beer. We all climbed to our feet and raised our own glasses. He said something in a language that I suspect hadn’t been spoken widely since the Romans left Britain, and we all cheered and drained our glasses.

Once we’d sat down Oxley translated.

‘Roughly,’ he said, ‘eat loads, drink to excess, screw your partner’s brains out and be thankful the bard isn’t singing.’

‘You’re lying about the last bit,’ I said.

‘How dare you,’ said Oxley, and grinned.

After that, the toasts started in earnest and I couldn’t leave until I’d delivered mine. I’d been warned in advance, so I’d given it some thought. When it was my turn and I stood up and called for life, liberty and peace and managed to sit down before I added a hard-boiled egg to the list.

Shortly afterwards Beverley came and rescued me by dragging me off to her boat.

‘Before you’re too pissed to be useful,’ she said.

I was in the early stages of proving my worth when the first of the youths thundered past on the pontoon bridge. Five minutes later the next group sneaked past with exaggerated care and the giggling and clink of what sounded to me like underage drinking.

‘You think it’s an accident they’ve got their one fed moored alongside the kids’ field?’ said Beverley. ‘They’ll be sneaking and giggling past us all night.’

Later, at a fairly crucial moment, Beverley stopped moving and shushed me. I stifled a frustrated yelp with great willpower and lay perfectly still and listened.

It was more giggling and furtive movement, only this time one of the voices was far too low to be one of the teens. I was trying to work out who it might be when a woman laughed nearby – low, throaty, distinctively dirty.

‘Isis?’ I whispered.

I felt Beverley’s suppressed laughter as a ripple along her stomach and thighs.

‘Quiet,’ said the man, who I was reasonably sure was Oxley. ‘Or the Isaacs will get thee.’

This from a man who’d been around at the coronation of Æthelred the Unready, for all that he claimed he couldn’t remember the details.

Isis said something that was probably rude and there was a slow splash, which I recognised as a water deity falling into the river. I’ve watched Beverley do that, the water sort of rises up to cushion the blow and she goes in with just a ripple.

‘Bumptious fool,’ said Isis.

I was about to shout out something, just to startle them, when Beverley kissed me and I decided that I had better things to do.

Later, as we lay there with the cabin door open to catch the breeze, we heard Abigail talking to someone, although whoever it was pitched their voice too low for us to identify. I reckoned they were outside her tent. Occasionally there was a laugh and, horrifically, the ting sound of beer cans.

After a while the conversation died down and we heard the distinctive sound of a tent door being zipped closed. What we didn’t hear were any footsteps moving away.

I went to get up and check but Bev put her arm across my chest to stop me.

‘Don’t you dare,’ she said quietly.

‘Just a quick look,’ I said.

‘No.’

‘But—’

‘What do you think the Summer Court is for?’

‘But I’m responsible,’ I said.

‘Yeah,’ said Beverley. ‘And so is she.’

‘People say that, you know,’ I said. ‘But if something goes tits up suddenly everybody wants to know why the police weren’t intervening at an earlier stage.’

‘Relax,’ said Beverley, ‘She’s Nightingale’s apprentice and my friend. People round here would gnaw their own foot off before doing anything with Abigail that Abigail didn’t want them to.’

It still took me a while to drift off.

One other thing the Summer Court was definitely for was creating a tremendous mess. But fortunately Father Thames, or more precisely Oxley, had organised a clean-up crew almost entirely composed of pale young men with hangovers. Soon the drifts of bottles, pink and blue plastic wrappers, and happily unidentifiable organic leftovers were scooped up into bin bags and dumped in an open-topped river barge that had arrived first thing that morning.

‘The Old Man took the Keep Britain Tidy campaign very seriously,’ said Oxley, as we supervised the hard work from deckchairs and drank coffee.

‘Where’s Isis?’

‘Upstream with the rest of the women,’ he said. ‘It’s customary.’

The women and girls got the morning off during the clean-up and traditionally bathed in the symbolically clean waters upstream.

‘And have a picnic and gossip and all the other important mysteries of the better half. It’s all to do with the female principle and that style of thing.’ He caught my expression. ‘This is what Isis tells me. I just keep my eye on the boys and mind my own business.’

Which was obviously the theme for the weekend.

Oxley’s current mental state, caught in that transition between alcohol and caffeine, would have made it a good time to get some social history questions answered – including what the hell they did before coffee was invented – but my phone started ringing. It was Stephanopoulos.

‘City of London need you to do a Falcon Assessment at a crime scene,’ she said.

I asked whether it was urgent.

‘As soon as pos,’ said Stephanopoulos.

Nightingale was obviously busy and neither Guleed or Carey were qualified.

‘I’m on my way,’ I said.

I called both Bev and Abigail, but their phones went straight to voicemail

I asked Oxley to ask Beverley to bring Abigail home. Then I showered, changed and drove back to London.

And if you’re the woman who, driving along the A4155 that afternoon, found herself inexplicably picking up a pair of hitchhikers and driving them all the way into London, I’m really, really sorry – I assumed Beverley would organise a lift from one of her relatives.