Hurst - Robin Crumby (bookreader TXT) 📗

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Jack knew the way with his eyes closed. He’d passed Osborne House a hundred times, the former residence of Queen Victoria. He’d visited the National Trust property with his teenage son many years ago. Back then, Osborne House had been maintained in all its Victorian splendour and open to the public. It was a bygone relic of the opulence and prosperity of the British Empire preserved in aspic for future generations. Jack remembered the place well from his previous visit. The stately home encapsulated all the glory and decadence of the British Empire at its height in the nineteenth century. Back then the Empire had covered a quarter of the entire globe. He remembered the tour guide telling them proudly that in Victorian times “the sun never set on the British Empire”. The whole place spoke volumes about the unbridled patriotism that prevailed at the time. Right now, he snorted, the British could barely manage a cup of tea, let alone rule the world.

Until the breakdown, Osborne House had been a popular visitor attraction with beautiful landscaped gardens, manicured lawns and ornamental ponds. Planted orchards ran down to a beach that looked back across the Solent towards the mainland. Sam and Jack had moored off that beach for a swim so many times, sunbathing on the foredeck of the Nipper on their way back from fishing trips or visits to No Man’s Land Fort.

Jack had no idea what had become of Osborne House itself. He imagined it was likely home to a group of some description. The Isle of Wight and its islanders had suffered terrible hardship and total collapse of law and order, same as everywhere else. They had been hit hard by the virus, but their isolation had somewhat insulated them from the resulting chaos and violence that followed. The sense of unity and community afforded by its island status, together with its physical separation from the mainland, meant that rival groups were a little more willing to work together. There were fewer raids and less pressure from a starving population, less competition for resources.

On his travels, Jack had met several different groups on the island. There were dozens of them, scattered along the coastline and inland. The Isle of Wight was rich in farmland, with hundreds of greenhouses growing tomatoes, cucumbers, and other vegetables and fruit. It had its own vineyards, breweries and dairy farms, meaning there was an abundance of food in the early days, with groups gathered around farm buildings and smaller villages. Yet, over time the crop yield had collapsed. Most of those greenhouses had fallen into disrepair, growing wild and untended, with hundreds of hectares of vegetables rotting in the ground. Ripened tomatoes died on the vine, with no one left to harvest them.

Jack had heard whispers of a rising power, a man they called Briggs. Like so many on the mainland, opportunists with a thirst for power, Briggs had formed a colony of former inmates from Parkhurst Prison, near Newport at the centre of the island. He had begun to expand his sphere of influence, forming alliances where possible. He gave short shrift to those who stood against him. Would Briggs be present at this gathering of leaders? It seemed plausible. Jack wondered which of his friends would make the trip to Osborne and which would stay away, suspicious of change, of outsiders, of the Americans, preferring to keep things as they were.

Terra joined him in the wheelhouse and put an arm around his waist. She put her head on his shoulder and gave him a little peck on the cheek. Terra loved their infrequent trips away from Hurst where they could be relaxed in each other’s company, free from the prying eyes and expectations of others. At the stern, Sam stood coiling the mooring lines and stowing the food and supplies they had loaded in the lockers. He watched them with some small degree of affection. He had once confided in Jack that Terra reminded him of his mother. A proud, fiercely Catholic woman, resettled on the south coast of England from Wexford in southern Ireland. Jack knew Sam’s father had died when he was very young, yet his mother was stoic in her grief. She simply got on with it, holding down three cleaning jobs and looking after four children under the age of fifteen without complaint. Terra had that same indefatigability and quiet resilience he knew Sam admired.

Sam poked his head round the doorway to the wheelhouse and tapped Jack on the shoulder. “I've been wondering about those Americans. Why do you think they’re really here?”

Jack shrugged his shoulders, trying to bat away the question. He wasn't in the mood for a long drawn-out discussion. Sam tapped him on the shoulder again. “What was so special about the Isle of Wight that they would organise a meeting at Osborne House?”

Jack shook his head, claiming ignorance, but he had been thinking the same thing himself. He looked over his shoulder at Sam. “Best thing we can do is not get our hopes up and get on with it.”

Sam nodded and stooped to pick up a long thread of seaweed, throwing it over the side, before wiping the slime on his trousers. Behind them Hurst grew smaller by the minute until, when he looked back again, it was just a black line on the horizon. A castle surrounded by the tidal waters of the Solent, and the tide was just beginning to turn.

Sam engaged the windlass, and the anchor chain rattled out of the forward locker, splashing into the sheltered waters of Osborne Bay. At the stern, Jack was breathing heavily as he used a foot pump to inflate a six-person grey inflatable Avon dinghy. He squeezed the sides, gave another few pumps and secured the nozzle with a twist as he detached the mouth of the pump hose.

Between them they manhandled the inflatable over the side. Holding the painter loosely, the dinghy flopped on to the surface of the water, skating a few metres before jerking back. Jack lowered the stainless steel ladder and supported Terra as she clambered down, handing her the rucksack and holdall.

Sam passed Jack the wooden oars which he inserted one at a time into the hard rubber rowlocks. Jack anchored his feet against the sides of the inflatable, took a quick look over his shoulder to get his bearings and started pulling for shore.

“Keep your eyes peeled, Sam. We’ll signal if we need you. First sign of trouble, cast off and head for deeper water. Wish us luck.”

“You’ll be fine. Terra will keep you on the straight and narrow. See you tomorrow.”

The blades of the oars dived gently beneath the surface and drove them forward. It was no more than fifty metres to row and, sheltered from the south-westerly, they surfed the shallow waves, gliding gracefully inwards. When they were three metres out, he stowed the oars and they coasted the rest of the way in, bumping gently on to the sandy beach. Jack stepped ashore in his dark blue, leather-lined boots, standing ankle-deep to help Terra before reaching to grab their bags.

They dragged the dinghy above the tide line, littered with seaweed, flotsam and jetsam, frayed rope and plastic bottles. He tied the painter to a large iron ring secured to a concrete post. The lower branches of an ancient oak caressed the surface of the water as each wave came to a gentle end, swirling amongst its foliage.

They started the climb up to the main building, passing an old-fashioned bathing carriage where Queen Victoria and her ladies were said to have changed to enter the water, their modesty preserved, unseen by other bathers. A “Punch and Judy” booth was overturned by the winter storms, paint peeling from its red and yellow stripes. Its bright red wooden roof was holed in several places, revealing where an entertainer would have operated multiple hand puppets for the delight of small children and grown-ups alike. They climbed the dusty path past thickly wooded slopes, arboretums and meadows filled with wild flowers, fields of poppies and daisies.

They caught their first glimpse of the grand Italian-style palazzo house with its twin towers and sweeping steps leading up to the terraces, courtyard and entrance above them. The Victorian gardens were once the pride of the island, boasting flowers from all over Europe, surrounded by shrubs beautifully clipped and shaped. Today the flower beds were overgrown with weeds, the shrubs yellow and bushy. The ornamental ponds and fountains were dry or clogged with algae and weed. A koi carp lay belly up, twitching on the surface, bloated and rigid. Jack wondered why no bird had helped itself to a ready meal and then noticed how silent it was here. There were no birds.

They walked past magnificent statues, many of which were bullet-ridden; handy targets for bored guards with nothing better to do. Some statues were missing arms or legs, others were more or less destroyed. Terra looked nervously at Jack but he