Of a magic place. Because, whatever else, I can’t deny that. This might once have only been a tradesman’s entrance, a means to a supercilious end; it might now be forgotten – only empty, draughty space and stone – but in-between it was something else. Once upon a time, it was rich and full and alive. Gloriously frightening and steadfastly safe. Exciting beyond measure. Hidden. Special. Ours.
I turn back to look at the bricked-up door. The larger part of Mirrorland, stretching along the alleyway from the bottom of the stairs to that door was once Boomtown: a dusty boardwalk of fruit crates and wooden planks six or more feet across, staging a post office and a marshal’s office, furnished with cardboard-box counters and tables, seats of cushions and blankets and pillows. The Three-Fingered-Joe Saloon was in the southwest corner against the boundary wall; in the northwest was a cluster of Lakota Sioux teepees and a training arena delineated by sticks laid end to end in a square.
Later, Boomtown became a prison; the Three-Fingered-Joe Saloon, a rather less exotic Recreational Dayroom; the wooden crates, the doors and walls of Cellblock 5; and us, its prisoners. The Shank. In its heyday, El used to make me sit beside her for hours, fashioning the bloody things out of sharpened toothbrushes and Grandpa’s old razor blades.
I turn east, walk down towards the washhouse, running the palm of my right hand against the rough brick of the boundary wall. On its other side, I know, is another long alleyway and green garden, another cavernous house – a newer Victorian villa with bay windows and painted bricks and bargeboards. The alleyway narrows around a large locked armoire that I remember was once full of games and books. Beside it is a wide blue pram, with three rusted big wheels and a shopping tray, a white faded label in the corner of its mouldy hood: ‘Silver Cross’.
The washhouse door is unlocked; it was always unlocked – hence the padlock and all those rusty chains strung across its other exit into the back garden. The washhouse was the most important part of Mirrorland. Warmer and better built, better felt, once as vital as breathing. And yet less than half an hour ago, I stood outside on the scullery steps and saw only an old stone building with a red-framed window and small slate roof.
I open the door, step up onto floorboards speckled with old paint and dust. They groan and give underfoot, enough to make me want to test each step first. The washhouse smells of mildew and damp, and something sour and green like compost. It has me remembering all sorts of other things I’ve forgotten even before I turn into its biggest space, illuminated by daylight from the window. Boxes and crates are stacked high in every corner; wooden poles are balanced on piles of dirty sheets; there are two free-standing fans, their flexes curled black.
‘My God.’
My voice echoes, hoarse and weak. I fold my arms tightly around myself as I stare at the washhouse walls. Sky blue and ocean green, white puffs of cloud and white frills of wave, the old brushstrokes messy and impatient. I look down at the floorboards, and under all the dust and dirt are the old charcoal lines of the Satisfaction.
Bowsprit. Jib. Forecastle. Foresail. I whisper the words under my breath as I walk over them. Main Deck and Gun Deck, El’s black scrawls of Rum and Water Stores HERE!! Magazine HERE!! I walk from one end of the washhouse to the other: Crew’s Quarters, Cargo Hold, Mainsail, Crow’s Nest, Navigation Room, Captain’s Quarters, Stern. A moss-covered hose is coiled around two taps, its nozzle – still set to spray – lying inside the old butler sink. I look at the Jolly Roger above it, its painted skull and crossbones stretched flat, fixed to the stone with black electrical tape. And then I look across at that little window, a porthole through which we bathed in moonlight and navigated by the stars. Because while Boomtown and the Shank were only for the day, the Satisfaction was mostly for the night.
The stern lantern still hangs on a hook screwed into the eastern stone wall, dusty, smaller than I remember, the candle inside foggy windows of glass long burned to the bottom of its wick. I reach out fingers to touch it, and then stop, pull them back with a sudden shudder that cricks my neck with an audible snap. I look up at the large hulking spectre of Blackbeard’s ship painted on the wall above it. Always in our wake. Always getting that bit closer.
Some things are gone. The big wooden treasure chest, bound with bands of black leather and a padlock gold with rust, where we’d hoard our booty from raids on Puerto Principe or the Spanish Main: silver cutlery sets, candlesticks, and trinket boxes that we borrowed from the kitchen and Throne Room. The water-filled umbrella bases that used to anchor our masts and sails are gone too. But everything else looks like we left only yesterday: giggling and creeping back up the stairs onto dry land, our lights dancing in the dark. Even the ship’s wheel – stolen from the pram – is propped up against our wooden mast poles.
I walk slowly back across the chalk lines of the main deck. Stop and close my eyes. My lips feel tight, and I realise it’s because I’m properly smiling for the first time in days. The Satisfaction was the first thing we made in Mirrorland. A two-hundred-ton, three-masted, fully rigged pirate flagship with powder chests, chase guns, and forty cannons loaded with hailshot. The Satisfaction was Mirrorland. We lived and breathed the magic of her. She was the fire that kept us warm, and then the fuse that set light to everything
