The Pirates! In an Adventure with Communists Read online

  ‘Because acting like children plays to your strengths,’ the Captain pointed out. ‘Be sure to wear your outsized backpacks, and bump into as many angry Londoners as possible with them.’

  ‘Aren’t we a little old to be schoolchildren?’ asked the pirate in red.

  The Pirate Captain surveyed his crew and had to admit to himself that the pirate in red had a point. The pirates weren’t quite as fresh-faced and rosy-cheeked as they’d once been. Some of them had even begun growing tufty little beards in a flattering, if hopeless, attempt to emulate their captain.

  ‘Well then. You can pretend to be slightly retarded schoolchildren who have been held back a few years. This has the added advantage of making me look like a caring sort in front of any women we happen to meet on this adventure.’

  ‘Do you actually know any French, Pirate Captain?’ asked the pirate with a nut allergy.

  ‘I’m fluent, thank you. Almost like a native,’ said the Captain, with a scowl. The Pirate Captain knew the French for ‘This is a pretty donkey’ and also ‘This is not a pretty donkey’, and he couldn’t think of anything that wasn’t either a pretty donkey or not a pretty donkey, so that was just about every eventuality covered.4

  ‘Go on then. Say something in French.’

  ‘I’m not a performing monkey,’ said the Captain testily. ‘Though I’d probably be a lot better off if I was. A monkey who could speak French. I’d be touring Europe with a talent like that, not hanging about with swabs like you.’

  The pirates went on looking at him expectantly.

  ‘Oh, all right. C’est un joli donkey.’

  ‘Is that supposed to be a French accent? It sounds more like a sort of Welsh Geordie,’ said the pirate in red.

  ‘How is it you’re even here? Didn’t we leave you inside a whale on our last adventure?’

  The pirate in red shrugged. ‘Oh, you know. I guess I must have gotten out at some unspecified point.’5

  And so the pirates, walking in an orderly crocodile formation, made their way through the grime-covered streets towards the Pirate Captain’s favourite Savile Row tailors. There was so much mud about the place that the albino pirate said he wouldn’t be surprised if a dinosaur came walking over the brow of Holborn Hill, but the rest of the pirates told him off for saying stupid things like that. The Captain was a bit fed up to see that there still weren’t any blue plaques dotted around to mark out important moments in his youth, such as the butcher’s where he used to press his nose against the glass and gaze adoringly at the hams when he was a little boy, or the alleyway round the back of Covent Garden where he had first kissed a girl with tongues. He resolved to step up his letter-writing campaign to the mayor.

  The pirates hadn’t got very far before it became obvious something was amiss. Even though the Pirate Captain was doing his best to exude a friendly Gallic charm, everywhere they walked, people seemed to be pointing at him. The pirates had always been told it was rude to point, so they were a bit shocked by this. A few of the more grimy onlookers grinned and waved, but most of the people shook their fists and cursed, or grabbed their children and drew back inside their houses in fright.

  ‘You’re getting a lot of funny looks, Captain,’ said the pirate with a scarf. ‘I mean, more so than usual.’

  ‘From well-to-do types? Yes, I’ve been noticing that. I suspect they’re probably jealous of my free and easy lifestyle.’

  ‘It looks like our brilliant disguises aren’t working so well.’

  ‘Aaarrr. Which is odd, because normally, as you well know, I come up with disguises that are frankly foolproof. Perhaps I’m losing my touch.’

  The Pirate Captain found himself experiencing mixed moods, which didn’t really agree with him. On the one hand he was a little annoyed that people seemed to be seeing through his disguise so easily, but on the other hand he was pleased that his diabolical reputation had obviously spread so far so quickly. He was just about to tell the pirate with a scarf that with this sort of notoriety perhaps they should have held out for a little more from the Perkins’ Gentlemen’s Pomade people, when he turned a corner and found himself smacked upside the head by a handbag.

  ‘You’re a terrible, terrible man!’ said the old lady whose handbag it was. She glowered, gave him another smack for good measure and then hobbled off down the street.

  ‘I’m not sure that was entirely called for,’ said the Pirate Captain, a little dazed, gingerly rubbing his face.

  ‘You’re going to have a shiner there,’ said the pirate with a scarf. He sighed, and resigned himself to being up all night rubbing the Captain’s belly for him. Most people don’t get stomach ache from being smacked in the face, but whenever the Pirate Captain ended up with a black eye – something that happened a surprising amount on his adventures – the pirate with a scarf would insist on putting an uncooked steak on it to bring down the swelling. And every single time, the Captain would solemnly promise that he wouldn’t eat the raw steak, and usually not more than an hour later the pirate with a scarf would notice that the steak had vanished, and he would ask the Captain what had happened to the steak and the Captain would say that a coyote had made off with it but that the coyote had been moving so fast he wasn’t surprised the pirate with a scarf hadn’t seen it. And about an hour after that the Pirate Captain would start complaining of belly pains.

  This time, before the Pirate Captain could make any meat-related promises, there was a tug on his sleeve, and he looked down to see a sooty street urchin.

  ‘My dad thinks you’re a great man,’ said the urchin. ‘He says it’s fantastic what you’re trying to do for us chimney sweeps.’

  The Pirate Captain couldn’t really remember ever trying to do anything in regard to chimney sweeps, except dislodge them from the boat’s chimney when they died and got stuck up there. But he grinned anyway.6

  ‘Well, you know, one does one’s best. I don’t do autographs, I’m afraid, in case you turn out to be Black Bellamy disguised as a fan, getting me to unwittingly sign a cheque for a thousand pounds. Not going to get caught with that one again. But I do have these badges.’ The Pirate Captain rummaged in his pocket and brought out a three-colour badge that said ‘I like the Pirate Captain and his adventures!’

  The sooty urchin took the badge, looked a bit confused and bounded off.

  ‘Little scamp. Probably off to steal pies from a window sill, or snort glue out of a paper bag. Makes me nostalgic for my youth,’ said the Pirate Captain.

  ‘This is all getting very strange,’ said the pirate with a scarf, pulling a thoughtful face.

  The Pirate Captain sighed. ‘You realise the problem of course? No disguise can hide my natural nautical charm.’

  ‘Possibly that’s it,’ said the pirate with a scarf, sounding a bit uncertain.

  ‘The only really strange thing is that I’ve been in the pirating business as long as I have and it’s only now I’m being afforded the recognition I deserve. But don’t worry, I’m not going to let fame change me. I’ll still be the humble, modest figure you’ve all grown to love. Except maybe with a nice silver-topped cane. And I might start demanding that from now on you wash my beard only in the tears of a newborn lamb. Actually, make a note of that one, number two.’

  The pirate with a scarf dutifully wrote down ‘Lamb’s tears’ in his notebook.

  ‘Right, here we are,’ said the Pirate Captain, coming to a halt in front of a small shop with an understated skull-and-crossbones sign hanging above the entrance. ‘I shouldn’t be too long. You lot can go and sit about in coffee shops winking at waitresses or whatever it is you do during shore leave. I’ll see you in about an hour.’

  The shop bell jingled a rough approximation of a popular shanty as the Pirate Captain opened the door. ‘Willoughby and Sons’ had been the pirate gentlemen’s outfitter of choice for over three centuries. The Pirate Captain had heard that before Willoughby’s opened, pirates would wear anything that came to hand, such as big leaves, old bits of sacking or
even dungarees. But thankfully, the modern pirate captain’s reputation relied as much on the cut of his clothes as his ability to get treasure, romance governors’ daughters or practise some sort of reign of terror over the oceans.7 He closed the door behind him and happily inhaled the rich scent of mothballs and starfish.

  The tailor was dealing with another customer, so the Captain decided to browse. He ran his finger along rows of brightly striped britches and blousy shirts, before examining a display of immaculately folded eye patches. He was particularly keen on one with a big pretend eye stitched over where your real eye would be. The Pirate Captain had always thought he’d look good with one eye bigger than the other. As he tried, in vain, to fold the eye patch back up, he felt a light touch on his arm and heard a discreet cough.

  ‘Could I help you, sir?’ asked the tailor. He was a neat little man, with a bright-pink face and every single grey hair plastered precisely into place. The Pirate Captain suspected he used varnish to make it so shiny. Realising who his customer was, the tailor beamed. ‘Pirate Captain! So good to see you! And such a disguise! Let me guess now . . . You are meant to be some sort of squid, yes?’

  The Pirate Captain held up his exercise book and piece of chalk. ‘French schoolteacher. Not one of my best, to be honest.’

  ‘No, no, I see it now. A French schoolteacher. Very good. Don’t forget that we now carry a small range of disguises for the gentleman pirate. Our “pensioners’ day out” is particularly popular at the moment.’

  He started to bustle about with his tape measure, sizing up the Pirate Captain.

  ‘Now, I think for a man of your fearsome reputation, you’ll be wanting a pair of imposing boots. Am I right? No offence intended to your current footwear, sir, but many of my customers have adopted this season’s hand-stitched pirate boots, designed specifically for stomping about and creating an ungodly racket that terrifies the lubbers.’

  ‘Actually, I’m after a new coat. Owing to the pressures of fame, I’m in a bit of a hurry, so it will have to be off the peg rather than bespoke.’

  The tailor suppressed a shudder. ‘Off the peg,’ he said. ‘Of course. Have I ever told you what an uncommonly broad neck you have, Pirate Captain?’

  ‘You have, but feel free to mention it again.’

  ‘Like a bull. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the like before.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said the Captain, looking approvingly at himself in a full-length mirror. ‘I should try to come up with a way of dropping that into conversation more often.’

  ‘What sort of coat would sir be wanting?’

  ‘Something tasteful. Lots of epaulettes. Complicated frogging all down the front. And gold braid. Yards and yards of gold braid. It’s like my Aunt Joan used to say – can’t ever have too much gold braid. Do you have anything like that in stock?’

  The tailor riffled through a rack of pirate coats.

  ‘This is a popular design, Pirate Captain. It depicts action scenes from the Norse myths, picked out in red and green stitching, so that if viewed using special spectacles the whole design appears to be three-dimensional.’

  ‘That must scare the wits out of everybody. Sounds like just the thing.’ The Captain pulled on the coat and tried out a few nautical poses. ‘Though how do you get your victims to wear the spectacles?’

  ‘We’ve found that it helps if you tell them that they will be able to see through women’s clothes.’

  ‘Well, I’m sold. Chuck in a couple of pairs of the glasses, will you?’

  ‘A great choice, Pirate Captain, if I can be so bold. Thanks to Mr Wagner’s operas, this style is all the rage at the moment. The West End is abuzz with Viking mania, I’m told.’

  ‘Hum. Not really my kind of thing, operas,’ said the Pirate Captain thoughtfully. ‘All that singing-for-nine- hours-without-a-break nonsense. I might have the neck of a bull, but between you and me, I have the bladder of a tiny child.’

  ‘Nothing to be ashamed of, sir. Regular urination is vital for healthy digestion.’

  ‘Exactly what I always say. It so happens I killed a whale on our previous adventure by blocking its blowhole and thus preventing it from expelling whale wee. And they say that we’re only one step up from fishes, in evolutionary terms. So no opera for me – I don’t fancy exploding.’

  ‘You’re right, of course, Captain. But I must say I have a certain yen for those big-boned, statuesque blonde operatic ladies.’

  ‘Really? I’m more of a “gazelle-like legs and delicate shoulders” kind of man. Meaning sleek like a gazelle, not with a backward-facing knee. That would be horrible.’

  ‘It’s just my opinion,’ said the tailor, looking a bit wistful, ‘but you can’t beat the powerful Nordic frame. I like a lady who looks like she spends most of her time knocking about fjords, having competitions to see how far she can throw a penguin.’

  ‘Well, each to their own.’

  The shop bell tinkled again, and two mutton-chopped Victorian gentlemen walked in furtively. One of them pointed at the Pirate Captain. The Pirate Captain rolled his eyes.

  ‘This is the trouble with celebrity: never a moment to yourself. Sorry about this. Can’t disappoint my public.’ He turned to face the two men.

  ‘Hello there. Yes. You’re right, it is me. I suppose you want a photograph? Don’t bother with the “it’s for my wife” rigmarole when really it’s for you but you’re ashamed to admit that you hero-worship another man. It’s quite all right in this day and age.’

  One of the mutton-chopped men reached forward, the Pirate Captain assumed to shake his hand. Since learning of his notoriety, he had been practising a new handshake. It started firm and confident before shifting to a kind of pumping movement that he felt conveyed both ‘steely resolve’ and ‘compassionate man of the people’. The Captain grasped the gent’s hand and got going, but was rather surprised when the fellow pulled out a set of handcuffs and snapped them shut on his hairy wrist.

  ‘You’re under arrest!’ said the mutton-chopped man.

  And then for the second time that afternoon the Pirate Captain found himself getting smacked about the head, though this time it was with a truncheon, which was a lot more effective than a handbag. He was just wondering whether pork chops would be as good as steaks for bringing down swelling or whether it was something particular about beef that did the trick, when a second blow knocked him out cold.8

  3 During the ‘Great Stink’ of 1858 pollution in the Thames became so bad that the Houses of Parliament had to be abandoned.

  4 One of the most fundamental principles of logic is:

  If p = true then p = false

  In other words, if I have eaten your side of beef, I can’t not have eaten your side of beef. It may sound obvious, but a lot of people cleverer than us have spent years sorting this sort of thing out.

  5 Many of the best novels have glaring plot inconsistencies. In Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders, Moll marries her older brother, who was somehow born several years later than she was.

  6 To make chimney sweeps work faster, people in Victorian times used to start a fire whilst they were still inside the chimney, hence the expression ‘lighting a fire under you’. Also, it is considered lucky for a woman to be kissed by a chimney sweep on her wedding day, though chimney sweeps may have made this up as an excuse to get off with girls.

  7 If a pirate were to walk down the street nowadays, he’d probably be wearing tight drainpipe jeans and a form-fitting T-shirt. Baggy clothing was not practical on a ship, where it could get in the way when climbing the rigging.

  8 As the steak deteriorates it releases ‘protease’, which helps break down clots and speeds up the healing process.

  Three

  I Saw Sea Cucumbers Eat Jenkins!

  The Pirate Captain sat on a bare wooden bunk in a police cell. Through the single small window, he watched a tired-looking monkey pull a rotating triangular sign that said ‘Scotland Yard’ around and around outside. Annoyingly, no tiny bird land
ed on the window sill, because if one had, the Captain had a great speech worked out about how the bird should fly away and be free, whilst he languished there for ever. How long, he wondered, had he already been held like this? Days? Weeks? Months? He looked at his fingernails to see if their length gave him any clue.9 Then he remembered that his pocket watch was probably a bit more accurate than fingernails, so he looked at that instead. He was a little disappointed to see that so far it had only been fifteen minutes. Just as he was about to make a start on some sort of sad ballad, the gaol door swung open and in walked a policeman.

  ‘About time!’ exclaimed the Pirate Captain, leaping to his feet and pulling an indignant face. ‘Honestly, I’m appalled. Treating a harmless French schoolteacher like this. It could cause a diplomatic incident between our two countries. We might cut off your supply of fancy French sauces. Then where will you be?’

  The policeman sat down opposite him and fixed him with a serious stare.

  ‘Les jeux sont faits,’ he said.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Translation: the game is up!’

  ‘Oh, right, yes. I knew that, because I’m French.’ The Pirate Captain pointed at the table. ‘C’est n’est pas un joli donkey.’

  ‘It’s no use, you villain. We know exactly who you are,’ said the policeman, waggling a thick pile of papers at the Captain. ‘Whilst your perfect French is obviously impressive, it’s no more than we’d expect from a criminal mastermind.’

  ‘Oh, really? Bother.’ The Captain slumped back in his chair, shook his head sadly and not for the first time wondered what on earth had made him choose piracy over architecture. ‘I suppose I knew this day was coming. In some ways it’s even a relief. But in other, much more fundamental, ways it’s very annoying.’ He sighed and ran his fingers through his beard. ‘Well, it goes without saying that I’d be especially willing to turn king’s witness and testify against Black Bellamy. And I’d like to point out that all my crimes were in self-defence anyway. Even that time we attacked all those women and children. Or the lepers. They can be surprisingly vicious, you know.’