Chapter 1
August 10th would be the day, he decided. Yes, it would be in memory of great-great grandpa Ellis’ birthday, and that, he thought, would give him just about enough time to get everything ready. Jake looked across the classroom and caught Ben’s eye. He gave him the Meeting Sign number 3 and Ben raised his eyebrows questioningly, looked at his watch, then nodded.
They had worked out a secret and complicated system of hand and finger signals that fixed an irregular pattern of routes home in order to avoid Bacca’s gang. Bacca was a year older and tall for his age and nothing delighted him more than to lie in wait for any younger or smaller kids to divest them of anything he and his gang felt desirable.
It was Jake’s Mum’s ultimatum that had been the inspiration for their secret hand signals.
‘This is the third tie you’ve let him take from you in as many weeks,’ she had raged. ‘If you don’t stand up to this - what do you call him - Bacca? Then I will!’
He thought he would rather face ten Baccas than the embarrassment of his mother fighting his battles for him. Not that he didn’t think it would be a confrontation worth watching. Bacca was taller than his mother and a lot fatter, but his Mum was, as his Dad used to say, a regular little fireball when she was angry.
In the end, he had stood up to Bacca. He had bumped into him one evening after school on his way to the Late Shop to get some milk for his Mum - Bacca - without his gang!
Bacca had looked greedily at him and reached forward, his large, podgy hand outstretched to get a good grip on his victim’s tie, but somehow, he had lost his balance and stumbled.
It was too good an opportunity to miss. Without thinking too hard about the consequences, Jake launched a hefty punch in the direction of Bacca’s nose and it connected.
He had relished the look of astonishment on Bacca’s face for days after. Bacca’s nose had begun to bleed and then he had started to cry! Jake could hardly believe it, but then he remembered something his Dad had once said, that all bullies were cowards.
He followed up his advantage.
‘You’re wearing my best tie,’ he said coldly, ‘and I want it back - NOW!’
To his surprise, Bacca had immediately tugged it off and meekly handed it over. He then turned tail and ran as if ten thousand devils were after him.
Later, when Jake was recounting all this to Ben, they had decided to lay some contingency plans in case Bacca rallied his gang, and what remained of his courage, and tried to get his revenge. And so the secret hand signals were worked out and memorized.
Surprisingly, they had had no trouble, and it was now more than a week since it had happened. Perhaps, they reasoned, Bacca was afraid of losing face with his gang if it ever got out that Jake Ellis had given him a bloody nose, and had decided to stay clear of him.
With each passing day, the threat of Bacca’s revenge receded, but it seemed such a pity to waste these secret signals after they had spent hours working them out, and that was the plain truth of the matter. No one, least of all the teachers, suspected that the elegant twisting together of hands and fingers, coupled with a glazed look in their eyes and a vacant expression on their faces, signified anything other than boredom with the lesson. Knowing this gave Ben and Jake much pleasure.
Jake sighed contentedly as he anticipated his forthcoming adventure. Nothing else to do now except wait for the bell. He buried his head in the history text book that the class was supposed to be studying and feigned deep concentration, but his mind was elsewhere. He, Jake Ellis would follow in his ancestor’s footsteps and run away to sea.
***
At home time, Ben and Jake raced one another across the railway bridge, then fell into step, side by side, down the towpath beside the canal. It had been raining earlier in the day and Jake’s reason for choosing this way home, even though it was one of the longest routes, was the several muddy puddles invitingly placed for splashing through.
‘Good job y’ Ma can’t see you,’ a woman shouted across at them from a narrow boat moving slowly along the canal in their direction. ‘You’ll ruin y’ shoes!’
But Jake saw that she was grinning as she said it, as if she remembered how good it felt.
‘Hi, Maggie’, the boys waved cheerily in reply. ‘Can we have a lift?’
‘As far as the lock, y’ can,’ she replied. ‘Take care now when y’ jump aboard.’
She steered the boat close to the canal edge and they jumped on board with practiced ease.
Maggie and her husband Amos were regulars along this stretch of canal and the boys had struck up a friendship during the last summer holiday. There was never a predictable time when the boat came past, so Jake was glad that it was today they had met up again, just when he had decided the exact date he would run away to sea. It seemed a good omen for his adventure. He would talk to Amos.
‘Where’s Amos?’ he asked.
‘Down below,’ Maggie replied. ‘We’ve a passenger - name o’ Smiler.’
She grimaced. ‘Not that he does!’
‘Does what?’
‘Smile! He’s got a face as long as a fiddle. Happen that’s why he got his name. Still, it takes all sorts, as they say.’
She chuckled to herself at the absurdity of the human race, then as an afterthought she added, ‘he seems to know your Dad, Jake. I heard him asking about him.’
‘Really?’
Jake’s heart was beating faster. He knew Ben was looking at him but didn’t dare meet his eyes in case he gave something away. Ben was the only person he had told about his Dad.
‘Well, you can ask him yourself,’ said Maggie. ‘He’s with Amos now. You know Amos is always glad to see you two bright sparks. He likes a bit of company does Amos and seeing you two will be a welcome relief from that old misery guts he’s got for company at the moment!’
Amos was deep in conversation with the man called Smiler when Jake and Ben poked their heads through the low doorway of the cabin. He looked quite startled at their sudden appearance. He obviously hadn’t heard them up on deck and his face flushed as if annoyed at the interruption. He quickly recovered his composure and smiled a greeting.
‘Hello, lads. I didn’t hear you coming. Have you been here long?’
For a moment Jake had an uncomfortable feeling that Amos thought that they had been eavesdropping on his conversation and hastened to reassure him that they had just come. He looked at Amos’ guest sitting hunched up in a corner of the cabin and smiled politely at him.
‘Mr.Smiler, Maggie says you know my Dad,’ he said conversationally.
There was an uncomfortable silence as the man called Smiler looked sullenly up at him.
‘Nope - why should I?’
‘Now then, Smiler,’ Amos said, with a meaningful look in the direction of his passenger, ‘this ’ere’s young Jake Ellis. You did say something about his Dad, do you remember?’ he prompted. ‘It was something about a mate of yours up north as was asking you to inquire whether he was OK, wasn’t it?’
The sullen look on Smiler’s face didn’t alter, but after a moment’s hesitation and an inquiring look at Amos, he said, ‘Oh, that . . . well, er, yes.’ then added belligerently, ‘But I still don’t know his Dad, do I?’
He glared at them all, picked up a newspaper that lay beside him and buried his head in it.
‘And how is your Dad?’ continued Amos with contrasting amiability. ‘It’s quite a while since I saw him. Is he in good health?’
Jake wanted to scream out, ‘It’s quite a while since I saw him and I don’t know where he is, and far from knowing whether he’s in good health or not, I don’t even know if he’s alive or dead!’
Instead he said, ‘he’s OK, thanks. He’s working away at the moment.’
Then, to change the subject, he said, ‘Amos, did you ever go to sea?’
‘See what, lad?’
‘No, not see - I mean go to sea - oceans - ships - you know!’
‘Me, lad? Not likely! Far too much water and too much space! Canals suit me just fine.’
He stood up and placed a friendly hand on each boy’s shoulder, his big frame blocking Smiler from view, as he continued his reminiscence.
‘All my life I’ve spent on these canals - and my father before me, and his father before him,’ he continued enthusiastically. ‘All sorts of cargo too - coal from Newcastle, cotton from Manchester, crockery from Stoke-on-Trent. You name it - we’ve carried it! I’ve been all over this country. There’s not a piece of this country’s canal system that I don’t know like the back of my hand!’
At that point Amos turned his head and glanced across at Smiler and Jake saw his expression harden.
‘Mind you, it’s not what it used to be,’ he said and a tinge of bitterness crept into his voice. ‘Can’t make much of a living nowadays - though we get by with odds and bits of goods to ferry from here to there - and folks who need a quiet, leisurely trip - like Smiler here. Mostly though, it’s holiday folks that keep the canals going and a damned nuisance they are, sometimes. Still, we shouldn’t grumble.’
Jake had hoped to ask Amos about the most suitable ports for boarding a ship as a cabin boy or, failing that, as a stowaway, and he particularly wanted to borrow some charts to map out his forthcoming voyage. It was disappointing that Amos appeared not to have that sort of expertise and anyway, it was difficult to talk in front of Smiler.
Amos too, seemed uncharacteristically restrained in Smiler’s company and none too keen to prolong their conversation either. He cleared his throat in an embarrassed cough, stretched his large body across the table that took up the centre of the cabin and looked out of the window.
‘Time for you lads to get off - lock’s up ahead,’ he said.
As they drew near to the lock, he threw a rope loosely round a bollard, pulled the boat to the side and helped them jump on to the towpath.
They knew better than to ask to help open the lock gates - that was a job Amos liked to do himself, but they stayed to watch the lock basin fill with water and the lock gates swing open as the water on either side of the canal levelled off. They shouted goodbye to Maggie who responded with a cheery wave, then they ran up the canal embankment on to the road that led to their housing estate.
‘What was all that about going to sea?’ asked Ben. He knew his friend well enough to know that Jake never asked idle questions. ‘Is it anything to do with your Dad?’
Jake didn’t answer directly.
‘Can’t tell you now,’ he said. ‘Can we meet later?’
Ben’s question about whether it had anything do with his Dad had disturbed him. Running away to sea was something that he had thought about for a long time - even before his Dad left. It was something exciting and different - an adventure to prove something to himself - nothing to do with his Dad running out on them. Or was it? He needed to think things through a bit more.
‘We’ll meet at 6. 30 - then we’ll go to the den - OK?’
Ben nodded his agreement but added that he would call for Jake at his house so he wouldn’t be late. This was because of Jake’s Mum. Recently, when he’d made arrangements to meet with Ben after tea as usual, she had, ‘put her foot down’ and demanded that Jake did his homework before she would let him set foot outside the house. Had this got out among his school-mates it would have been an embarrassment to Jake who prided himself on a cool, laid-back image.
But Jake trusted Ben’s discretion. Ben was the only one he had told about the tensions at home and it was Ben’s suggestion to call for him so that it was harder for his Mum to keep on nagging him.
They had now come to where their two roads joined and the houses began, and here they parted company. Ben lived in Park Mews, a cluster of modern houses and bungalows set at right angles to Blenheim Street, the row of Edwardian terrace houses where Jake lived.
Once, the backs of the Blenheim Street houses all had long walled gardens with high gates that opened on to the narrow lane skirting the Brick Quarry. The walls of the gardens were long gone, pulled down to give space for garages and car ports and hen coops and pigeon lofts; only the trees and the thick hawthorn hedge that had been planted to screen the original quarry workings remained as a reminder of a bygone era.
The quarry covered a vast area, and they were still digging out clay for the brickyard that perched on the edge of the quarry on its extreme northern edge. But the Blenheim Street end of the quarry had long since been worked out and now grass and a variety of flowers covered over the mounds of rock and spoil from the quarrying. Trees had grown in thick clusters around the edges of some of the ponds that had formed and it was among the trees that surrounded the Roach Pond that Jake and Ben had their den.
It was a secluded spot and only rarely did they meet anyone else in their secret place.
Occasionally, a fisherman might choose to try his luck with the roach that gave the pond its name but then the boys would drop silently to the ground and use this as an excellent opportunity to practise their Red Indian stealth tactics, crawling within a few feet of the intruder and disappearing silently among the willows that overhung the pool.
There were other places in the quarry that they sometimes frequented, but this was their favourite spot, not least because it was out of bounds.
‘I don’t want you going anywhere near that Roach pond, do you hear me?’ his mother had said. ‘It’s a dangerous spot and lots of kids have been drowned down there.’
‘If I fell in I wouldn’t drown,’ he had protested. ‘I can swim!’
‘That’s as may be,’ she had retorted, ‘but there’s a lot of dangerous weed - and pike! They’re vicious things.’
She said this with emphasis as if she might have been talking of dragons or dinosaurs. ‘So mind you remember what I’ve said.’
He thought it a strange thing, that every time he defied this parental edict and went to the Roach Pond he felt a terrible twinge of guilt.
If he looked into the deep, still water he would hear his Mum’s voice ringing in his ears, and then a shiver would go through him as he imagined the ghosts of all the drowned children reaching up to drag him through the tangle of green weeds to his death.
There was a certain dark atmosphere to this place that both fascinated and repelled him, but as soon as he left the water’s edge to make for their den, the feelings of foreboding would lift. If Ben felt the same he never spoke of it, though Jake had noticed how carefully Ben stayed away from the edge of the pond. Probably he was just as afraid as Jake was of falling in.
Their den was a deep fissure in a large outcrop of rock which they had enlarged into a sort of cave with some of the boulders that were strewn around. The cave was well hidden from any but the most observant passer-by. Thick brambles, hawthorn and wild roses grew abundantly all over the rocky outcrop. Even in winter when most of the leaves had died off, there was always enough dead grass among the tangle of undergrowth to mask the entrance.
They had only discovered the cave by accident themselves when chasing a rabbit which had conveniently run to ground there.
It was now three years since they had first laid claim to this cave and they had sworn a secret oath never to divulge its existence to anyone. They had made it as comfortable as its space permitted and had fashioned a table and a bench to sit on out of an old orange box and two packing cases they had scrounged from Mavis at the fruit shop.
In the early days, they had furnished the den with an old mattress and a piece of carpet and for a little while treasured the thought of moving there permanently, living off the fish they would catch in the ponds and the rabbits that they would snare and roast over a fire. This seemed a particularly attractive idea in the hot summer months when school exams were imminent and the summer holidays too far into the future to wait for.
They had been still at the planning stage of this venture when the hot weather had broken and there were two days of torrential thunderstorms which turned the mattress and carpet into a squelching, muddy haven for wood lice, sundry black beetles and spiders, and the idea of living permanently in the cave lost its appeal. But it remained their special, secret place where they could pool their ideas for interesting adventures - some to be played out only in their imaginations and some to await a more opportune time to become reality.
