interested in soap and went on shouting for his watch. I could make his watch reappear but not by dismantling the trick and showing how it worked – no proper conjurer would ever do that. I consented to bring it back, but only by going through the whole trick again in reverse.
So then everybody had to sit down again and be still and quiet while I poured the soap and coffee carefully back into the goblet, placed over it the various covers and false tops, intoned the necessary incantations and finally, with a proud gesture, revealed the watch, still ticking, on its bed of cotton wool. It had been a good trick, and I, personally, thought it had gone rather well.
II. Time Out.
You might think that settling down in a large comfortable house might have reduced Ray and Daisy’s love of travel. Not a chance. We had hardly been there a year when the time came for us to pack our rucksacks and set off into the unknown.
Our journey started at dead of night. We took a taxi all the way from Finchley to Millwall Docks on the River Thames. There in the darkness we stepped down on to the glistening cobbles of the quay and, clutching our bags, gingerly made our way up the gangplank towards a square of yellow light in the middle of a black shape that was the SS Margharita, a small cargo ship bound for Denmark on the morning tide.
I was put to bed in a bunk in a cabin made of painted iron. When I touched the metal walls they were warm and felt as if they were alive with the faint vibrations of the ship. Nothing special seemed to be happening and I may have slept. Then, much later I think, the judder of the engines starting up nearly shook me out of the bunk, and later still, after I had got used to the gentle thudding, the ship gave one blast on its hooter, a blast which sounded in my ear as if it had been blown through the pipe beside my pillow. That woke me with a jolt.
I was too excited to try and sleep any more, so, as grey light had begun to be visible through the porthole, I put on some clothes and, climbing down past my sleeping brother, stepped out of the cabin. I made my way along the iron passage which served the eight or so passenger cabins, climbed a companionway, pushed open a small mahogany door and felt the sharp cold air on my face. The world outside was dark grey – uniform, uninterrupted grey. I shivered. The air didn’t seem to be foggy because I could see blurred lights not far away, but it could have been misty. It was too dark to be sure.
Hanging on to the dewy rail I inched my way along the deck. Above me a door opened and a benign face with a peaked cap over it looked down. It was the Captain. He was on the bridge.
‘Yerwll ber cerld,’ he said, ‘erts werm erp her. Cmern erp.’
I must explain that although, like most Danes, Captain Jørgensen spoke good English, he also followed their habit of using only one vowel.
I accepted his invitation and joined him on the bridge. This was a pleasantly warm small summer house with large windows. The only occupants at that early hour were Captain Jørgensen and his Queagh-like cat, who was sitting on the window sill looking out at the greyness.
Keeping one hand on the wheel the Captain reached out with the other and pulled a high stool to the window. ‘Yerurly,’ he said, ‘sert dern.’ I sat on the stool, put my elbows on the window sill beside the cat and we sat there, watching the morning arrive.
For no reason that I can identify, this was to be one of the happiest mornings in my short life, and the memory of it has stayed with me ever since. Perhaps this was a special time because at that moment there was nothing else I had to do and no other place where I should be. Of course I could have stayed in my bunk in the oily-smelling cabin, but if I had done so I would have missed the very gradual painting in of form and light that was the coming of the day.
First, very slowly, the slate-grey flatness which was the water took shape. Then I began to notice that a sort of glowing was filling the air, as if it were being lit from the inside, and against it ripples and reflections began to take light and shade and become discernible as moving water. Soon, like slow magic, a dark cut-out shape with silver lines beyond it began to materialize in the distance. It seemed remote and mythical, like a fairy-tale fortress creating itself from nothing at the very edge of time. It was, I believe, a gasworks near Gravesend. As we glided slowly on other shapes began to form on the bank of the river, ethereal factories, groups of silent cranes, long flat walls with bollards and, between them, shining arms of mud and reeds swept away into emptiness as the ship passed a side river.
More scenes materialized. One by one still groups of grey houses, immobile clumps of colourless trees, flat grey fields, broken fences, and complex rusty machines as high as churches, some surrounded by pyramids of gravel, appeared from the mist. These softly offered themselves to our view and slipped away past. They were just suggestions, none of them was real. What was real was the warm rumbling of the ship’s engines.
Sometimes we passed tall thin poles sticking up out of the water, each faithfully reflected by another pole, pointing downwards. I suddenly saw a large fruit-like object clear its way through the mist and float quite swiftly towards us. Well, no, I realized it was anchored; we were approaching it. The thing was about the size of an elephant but fat, ugly and very rusty. It seemed infinitely forlorn, alone in the dirty water.
‘S’berl-burj,’ said the Captain. ‘It’ll clurng.’
He was right. After we had passed the poor thing and were leaving it behind, the ship’s wash caught it and the bell-buoy did indeed go clurng … and then clurng … again; a rusty reproachful sound which did nothing but cause a handful of roosting gulls to lift off and swoop around a few times before settling again on the now-silent buoy.
A small man wearing plimsolls brought me a mug of sweet tea. The cat turned up its nose at this and moved to another window but I stayed watching as a single line of gold was pencilled across the grey sea and, like a curtain, the mist slowly and graciously moved itself aside to reveal that it was a vertical wall of cloud sitting on the water under a wide, cold, very slightly blue sky.
In the sudden clear light our little ship sailed along below this tall, incongruous cliff. The estuary was now so wide that only the far horizon was edged with dark knobbly land and streaks of heavy cloud. I looked up at the cliff of cloud beside us and noticed that the very top of it was shining with pale gold light. I wondered at this for a moment and then, from straight in front of us, the sun, hoisting itself up from behind the streaky clouds, unleashed a shaft of light, a shaft which lit the whole ship and the sea and all the world around us with glorious sunshine, even reflecting it up into the ceiling of the wheelhouse, where it lit, with dappled moving light, the high cobwebby shelf where dusty bottles and packets were stored.
‘Smerning,’ observed the Captain. ‘Brerkfirst?’
‘Oh, yes, please!’ I said. Then, realising that I hadn’t been very polite, I added: ‘And, er, thank you very much, sir, I hope you didn’t mind me …’
‘Nerw,’ said the Captain. ‘Gerw.’
Nobody had told me that Copenhagen, or Kjøbenhavn as I was expected to call it, was full of canals. Well, no, not full, but there were several, with little motor boats that were buses. Nor did they tell me that it was full of bicycles, very full.
In my memory I can see a wide park with railings. It is sunny and I am standing on the pavement beside a crossroads. The traffic policeman turns and puts out an arm. At once the traffic moves forward, but silently, because it consists almost entirely of persons on bicycles, respectable middle-aged persons as well as young ones. A well set-up matron, with her broad hat pinned securely on, pedals sedately past. The back wheel of her old-fashioned
