“Please wait at the back, sir.”
Donald sat on a bench with ultramarines, irritated by the cigarette smoke and dialects mangling English into a gabble.
“Mr Aldingford!”
Surrounding the plump official was brood of yokels, from Grandad with his stick down to a curly-haired kid of about ten gnawing the counter.
“You’re welcome. I’ve stamped your passport. Have a nice day.”
*
The Newmans lived in a three-storey wooden mansion at a prime location on a corner of the basin, with their own mini-basin, cranes and warehouses. They had safety features too, comprised of pump-action shotguns and a brood of enormous Tibetan mastiffs. The Newmans could not get over their astonishment that a “fine upstanding gent of decent society” would come out to the basin, garbed in an old leather raincoat, slouch hat, denims and boots. What was more, he had come out alone. When he showed them his armament, the big Webley and the Colt, they gazed in awed silence.
Well, he must be hungry. They sat him down in the vast kitchen, at a table about the size of a yacht. The other furniture was a cheerful jumble arranged in coves and nooks according to family cliques. A quite decent library of heirloom hardbacks was tucked away off the main room. To start with, clouds of children crowded around him, grinning and yapping questions—have you ever shot anyone? Why is your name so funny? Do you work out?—until one of the women of the house shooed them upstairs.
Hunks of fresh bread and butter landed along with bacon rashers a quarter inch thick. The bacon was the juiciest he had ever tasted. He gathered that the head of the family was Bartram, the thirty-four year old eldest brother of Sarah-Kelly. He was away with two other brothers on a routine trip up the Grand Union canal to Braunston basin south of Birmingham. By good fortune, they were due back that afternoon. Donald was fascinated. His vision of overland travel was the grim experience of the public drains. He knew nothing of the heirloom waterway system of the Public Era. The family were in turn thrilled by his interest. Rosa, who was the wife of Bartram and obviously the matriarch, threw open a great canvas map on the table. It showed how the whole island of Britain almost as far north as Scotland was criss-crossed with blue veins. The veins climbed across the Pennines, spread east into the sodden wilderness of the fens, even cut across the Lands of Krossington to the south coast of Britain.
Donald fielded a torrent of questions about how he made a living, what his house was like, his family, whether he possessed a motor car… Sarah-Kelly had apparently been spitting rage on her return from being called a liar. Their curiosity arose from his being so in contrast to the “priggish squit with a head-up-her-arse wife” Sarah-Kelly had described. He kept his answers vague or evasive, avoiding any hint he worked for sovereign clients or had ever been to sovereign lands.
He had been in an aeroplane? They closed in, wanting every detail. Had he ever been shot at by Naclaski batteries? What was it like flying through a storm? Or at night? Was it true you were weightless all the time? Apparently, Bartram had a great interest in flying. He was deeply envious of his most important supplier, a flamboyant gentleman with his own flying boat, which he landed on the basin. It embittered him the Newmans never made enough to afford a flying boat of their own.
Donald asked some questions too.
Sarah-Kelly? Well, Rosa had a shock for him.
“Our Skay is a party girl; a paid-up and very active member of the National Party.”
Donald feigned complete surprise. The rest of them rolled their eyes and groaned. Evidently, they had borne the rhetoric and exhortations of a true believer with a patience only family will give.
“Well, yesterday our Sarah-Kelly set off for the National Party annual conference in Brent Cross. Or so she said, we think it’s just a bonking bonanza. Still, she’s a big girl. She can definitely look after herself.”
They all laughed at that. Rosa eyed Donald with a certain speculation, notwithstanding his wedding ring. Rosa said Skay ought to be back by dinner time. Privately Donald cussed at this. He was not hanging around North Kensington basin until evening. His plan was to proceed out to Brent Cross to attend the National Party conference and get back inside the Central Enclave before nightfall.
This was of course an illicit ‘extension’ to the trip. Wingfield would blow a fuse if he ever learned about it. He had stated in the most emphatic terms that Donald must not, under any circumstances, explore beyond North Kensington basin. He had far too many Krossington secrets in his head to risk being taken for ransom.
However, there was no easy way for Donald to escape the deep hospitality of the Newman family. Rosa offered to give a tour of the business. It would have been downright rude to refuse, so he accepted. He would scrape her for knowledge to bulk out the report for Wingfield.
She started at the wharf. He became increasingly curious about how the barging business worked. How did these barges move? Who maintained the waterways? What about Naclaski and Frite? How did they agree carriage rates? He pricked up his ears on learning the canal network all over Britain was essentially an ultramarine operation. The ultras occupied and operated the whole network. The barges were towed by the sweat of Night and Fog slaves and the Ultramarine Guild took the gold.
“The more I learn about the ultramarines, the more I see them as a scam of staggering scale,” he said. In saying this, he was intimidated by the sheer massiveness of the system that had swallowed brother Lawrence.
“They’re no worse than the sovereigns: they
