carried him around the lake, with his feet trailing in the water. What made it worse was that the real ship it was copied from couldn’t have been more than sixty foot long, the smallest kind of steam-yacht. I lost interest, beyond thinking that Hermione was going to make a lot of money. And once I thought of Hermione, those rotten rape-dreams came back like a dull toothache.
‘All right,’ I said, ‘get the front end cleaned out.’ There was a long hatch over the bows, with a glass roof; but you couldn’t see inside what must be the saloon; the glass was all misted.
‘Can’t seem to find the catches,’ whined Lenny. ‘Can’t get the top off.’
‘Well, look for them.’ I went back to cleaning my brass.
I was still polishing the last grain-measure when I heard him start screaming.
I’d heard screaming like it, once or twice. Once after a road accident, and once when one of my blokes got a faceful of Nitromors because some other fool was messing about. You don’t hang about when you hear that kind of screaming. You run.
My first feeling was one of relief. Lenny was just standing there, looking down into the boat. He still seemed to have both arms and legs; and eyes. He wasn’t bleeding; he still clutched the hose in one hand, though it was dumping all its water on his already-sodden shoes and jeans.
I went up and grabbed him. I suppose to reassure him, and to make him stop. But he didn’t stop. It was as if he was having some kind of fit. What the . . .
I looked down to where his gaze was immovably fixed. He had the glass hatch on the bows off, and you could look down inside. Again, the inside was beautifully finished. Red upholstered miniature benches, with mahogany locker doors underneath.
The red upholstery was dark and sodden, as you would have expected.
The horror was on the upholstery. Three things, huddled together, as if for mutual protection. Tied down by a glistening membrane of gunge.
Three tiny skeletons, the middle one a bit bigger than the others, still with rags of clothing around them. Skeletons about a foot high, perfect in their tiny, thin detail, like the skeletons of starlings that fall down the chimney when you have the sweep.
Only these skeletons were undoubtedly human.
I heard, far off as in a daze, Lenny stop screaming and take to his heels and run from my yard. I never saw him again. One night, much later, his mother rang up to ask for his cards. I asked how he was; but his mother wouldn’t say anything. She couldn’t get off the phone fast enough.
Now I was aware of heavy breathing on my other side.
‘Great God Almighty,’ said James; and it wasn’t a curse, it was a cry for help. Then he said, shakily, ‘They must be plastic . . . but damned clever. Damned accurate . . .’
‘When this ship went down,’ I said, ‘plastic hadn’t been invented.’
‘Ivory, then. You know what the Chinese can do with ivory.’
‘There’s . . . still . . . bits of muscle . . . attached.’ It reminded me of a stripped Sunday chicken you find the following Friday in the back of the fridge. Or the Friday after that.
And it smelt like it, too. I suddenly turned away, and threw up all over the cobbles of the yard.
I heard James say, dully, to himself, ‘Monkey-skeletons. Baby monkeys . . . what a filthy trick. Drowning baby monkeys like that.’
It sort of made the world all right. Unbearably nasty, yes, but still sane. I turned to look again, with hope. Then I said flatly, ‘They’re not monkeys; I’ve seen plenty of monkey-skulls. These skulls are too small. The hands and feet are too small for monkeys.’
‘What are they then. Human foetuses?’
‘Don’t be stupid. Foetuses have huge heads.’
There was a long silence. Then he said, as if he were defending his beloved faith with his life itself, ‘It’s a trick. A filthy trick. Someone with a mind like a sewer.’ And he turned and stumbled back to the workshop; then I heard him being sick, too.
Footsteps. Light female footsteps. I desperately tried to get the hatch-cover back on, but I was blind and fumbling; it caught the brass rail and fell to the cobbles with a sound of breaking glass.
‘Jeff, careful,’ said Hermione crossly. Bent down to pick up the hatch, and saw.
She didn’t scream. She caught herself in time and didn’t scream.
I’ll