For a town filled with history, you would expect Whitby’s library to be a building with criss-cross windows and crumbling steps. Instead, it’s made of concrete and glass, and there are little turnstiles to prevent you running away with all the books.
I got a bit confused in the turnstiles, and Elsie had to come back and help me, and she got confused as well, and in the end we both had to be set free by a member of staff. Jack wandered over to the encyclopaedias, because I think he wanted to keep a distance between himself and all the commotion. When we finally got ourselves inside, I couldn’t believe how big it was. Who knew there were so many stories that needed telling? The shelves stretched as far as you could peer, and above our heads was a whole second floor of adventures.
‘Where do we even start?’ I said.
‘Local history,’ said Jack, and he disappeared through a gap between the Iron Age and Elizabethan England.
If you were in the mood for a slice of Captain Cook, you’d found the right place. He was everywhere. He covered all of the tables and waited for you inside glass cabinets, and he was even hung on the wall, looking down on everyone to make sure they didn’t forget about him.
‘Pleasant-looking chap, isn’t he?’ Elsie stood in front of the portrait. ‘Kind eyes.’
‘I thought Gabriel Price had kind eyes,’ I said. ‘It just shows how deceitful eyes can be.’
‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘We shouldn’t judge a person based entirely upon one aspect of their anatomy, though, should we?’
‘I’m not ready to judge him at all yet,’ I said. ‘Not until we’ve spoken to someone who really knew what kind of man he was.’
Jack turned to us. ‘Captain Cook?’
‘No.’ I might have tutted a bit too loudly, because a couple of people looked up from their microfiches. ‘Gabriel Price.’
‘Cook was a pioneer.’ Jack walked up to the painting. ‘A man of courage. Can you imagine how it must have felt to sail from England’s coastline and not know what was ahead of you, to not know if there was anyone else out there?’
‘I wonder if he was afraid,’ Elsie said, and we both looked into the eyes of the painting, to see if there might be a clue. ‘Because to be courageous, you must have fear, surely?’
‘No one experiences that now,’ said Jack. ‘We all know too much. Even astronauts are told where they’re going.’
‘Except death,’ I said.
They both stared at me.
‘It’s the last voyage into the unknown, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘Like Captain Cook setting sail from a harbour. No idea where we’re off to, no idea whether there’s anyone else out there.’
‘And it takes courage, I suppose. To die,’ Jack said.
‘Every journey takes courage.’ Elsie turned away from the painting. ‘Even the ones in which we have no choice.’
Captain Cook was all over the shelves as well. It was difficult to find anyone else, to be honest, although we did come up with an Anglo-Saxon poet, an abbess called Hilda, and an odd mention here and there of Harry Potter.
‘I’m going to watch that film,’ said Jack.
‘If you’ve still not got around to it, I doubt you ever will,’ I said.
‘I will watch Harry Potter before I die,’ Jack put the book back on its shelf. ‘It’s a promise.’
Gabriel Price was nowhere to be found. I checked each shelf and ran my finger along the smooth, polished wood. From time to time, I was held up by an interesting spine, and Elsie had to jolly me along.
‘Is there something I can help you with?’
A young man stood in front of us. Tall. Beautiful smile, and his white shirt looked so flawless, it could have just slid out of a cellophane packet and straight on to his body.
‘We’re looking for someone.’ The tip of my finger still rested on one of the shelves.
‘He was a musician, called Gabriel Price,’ said Jack. ‘Disappeared after the Second World War.’
Jack explained. I felt the need to add bits in from time to time and the man’s smile seemed a bit more of a challenge for his face, but eventually, I think we managed to get the point across.
‘Oh, that’s vintage,’ said the man, and he pointed to an iPad.
We sat with the man at a polished wooden table, and I took in a bit of the library. I did it without moving, because I was worried an inch or two either way might bring me in contact with his left thigh. History stretched itself out on the shelves. I tried to find the seams, the places where one piece of time had been stitched to the next, but they were invisible.
‘Any luck?’ said Jack.
The man laced his hands on the top of his head. ‘Nothing.’
‘So there isn’t anything on your machine about a musician from Whitby called Gabriel Price?’ said Jack. ‘Or Gabriel Honeyman?’
The man shrugged. ‘I can offer you an Anglo-Saxon poet?’
Jack shook his head and we stood to leave.
‘How about St Hilda?’ the man said.
I pushed the chairs back under the table, because I’d never quite recovered from school, and we made our way to the turnstiles.
‘The man who invented the crow’s nest,’ the man shouted, but Jack just waved with the back of his hand.
We were about to have another go at the turnstiles, and Jack was looking back and being encouraging with his free arm, when I realised there was a man standing there. He was a bit younger than us, I think, but not by much. His clothes had seen better days, and his shoes were all tired and scuffed. He stood very still. I wondered if we were expected to speak first, because sometimes I’m not sure, but then he said, ‘I couldn’t help but overhear.’ He pointed back to where he’d done his overhearing. ‘You were asking about Gabriel Price?’
I nodded.
‘Do you know him?’ I said.
‘My mother will have done. My mother knows everything about Whitby history.’
‘Your mother?’ I said.
‘She’s in her nineties now. But she’s still the full ticket, and she loves any excuse to talk about the past.’ He gave us an address. ‘Just tell her Francis sent you.’
I watched as he shuffled back to his seat. ‘He had very blue eyes, didn’t he?’
‘He did,’ Elsie said.
She looked down at my scarf, and she smiled.
We left all the concrete and the glass, and as we walked back towards the town, herringbone clouds rolled across the sky and the seagulls caught a river of air, plunging and swooping across the harbour. I looked up at the seagulls. I could never make up my mind if they were servants of the air, or the masters of it.
As we walked, I looked down every side street. I checked doorways and alleyways, and stared into shops.
‘Whatever are you looking for?’ Elsie said.
‘Ronnie.’ I peered into another side street. ‘He’s here somewhere, isn’t he? He’s up to something, and none of us are going to know what it is until it’s too late.’
HANDY SIMON
When Gypsy Rosa finally returned to her tent, she was balancing a brown paper bag on top of a cardboard coffee and chatting to someone on her mobile telephone. It wasn’t an image that sat comfortably alongside a fringed headscarf, but Simon supposed he shouldn’t be passing judgement.
When she saw him stand up from his seat on the little wall, she said, ‘Got to go,’ into the mobile telephone, and she looked at him. It was the same expression as the one in all the black-and-white photographs, and Simon wondered in the absence of Costa Coffee, perhaps he would have been treated to the hand poses as well.
‘Are you looking for your fortune?’ she asked, over the top of the paper bag.
Simon coughed and shuffled his feet, and checked the coast was clear. He said he supposed he was.
‘Ten pounds for fifteen minutes, fifteen for the full half-hour,’ said Rosa.
Seeing into the future was definitely more profitable than clearing U-bends.
Rosa asked him his name and arched an over-plucked brow. ‘Well, it depends on how interested you are in your destiny, Simon, doesn’t it?’ she said.