Antonius felt in the pocket of his shirt and found a five pound note, which he gave to his companion. His companion’s name, for the record, was Johannes, and he and Antonius had been born in the same village south of Antwerp over four hundred and thirty years before. Barring shore leaves like this, they had been out of each other’s company for a period exceeding eight hours exactly once in four hundred and seventeen of those years, when Johannes’ mother had suspected that her son had caught the plague and locked him up in the barn for a few days.
Neither of them would have chosen to have it this way, since they didn’t get on very well and never had. Johannes was a short, noisy man with a hairy face and hairy arms, who liked drinking a lot and falling over. What Antonius liked doing best was standing quite still, unfocussing his eyes, and thinking of nothing at all. Each of them found the other remarkably uncongenial, and the only point on which they were united and could talk for more than three minutes without losing their temper with each other was their dislike of everyone else on board the ship, and in particular Captain Vanderdecker.
“After all,” said Johannes, a few minutes later, as they sat in a corner of the bar under the dartboard and drank their beer, “he was the one got us into this in the first place.”
“That’s right,” replied Antonius. “All his fault.”
A dart bounced out of treble fifteen and point first onto Antonius’ brown, bald head. He extracted it and handed it back to its owner.
“What the hell did he want to go drinking that stuff for in the first place?” Johannes continued, picking a grain of chalk dust out of his beer as he spoke. “He should have known it would end up all wrong.”
“He just didn’t think,” Antonius agreed. “No consideration for others.”
“And then dropping it,” said Johannes bitterly, “into the beer-barrel.”
“Typical,” said Antonius. It was a word he was very fond of and saved for special occasions. He didn’t want to wear it out by overuse.
“This beer,” said Johannes, unconsciously echoing his captain, “grows on you after a bit. You could get used to it.”
“It’s got a taste, though,” Antonius asserted. “You want another?”
“Might as well.”
So they had another, and another, and two or three more after that, and then they went outside to get some air. By now they were feeling quite relaxed, and Antonius remembered the girl who lived round the corner. They decided to go and visit her. They did this every time they came to England, just as, every time, they forgot that she had died in 1606 and that her house was now a car park. They always left a note though, saying that they were sorry to have missed her and would be sure to drop in next time. Since the building of the car park they had taken to sticking these notes behind the windscreen wipers of the parked cars, and once they had left one on the car of an avid and knowledgeable local historian, who had read it and was quite ill for months afterwards.
♦
The plump man, who was also an accountant, although a vastly more important one than the girl, made himself a cup of lemon tea and tried to forget that he had wasted a performance of
∨ Flying Dutch ∧
TWO
The National Lombard Bank is situated in the very heart of downtown Bridport. It is the sort of location any red-blooded bank manager would give his heart and soul for, right in the epicentre of a triangle formed by the town’s most beguiling attractions—the fish and chip shop, the Post Office and the traffic lights. In summer, whole families still make the difficult journey into Bridport from the surrounding countryside to stand and watch the traffic lights performing their dazzling
