Chase the Morning

I hoped the name didn’t reflect the local habits, and that the car would be all right; but I couldn’t face being shut in it any longer. I wanted to explore on foot, smelling the sea in the wind. I felt a few drops of rain in it instead, turned back a moment, then looked up at the sky and caught my breath. Over the warehouse rooftop opposite blazed the last streaks of the glorious sunset; and against them, stark and black as trees in winter, loomed a network of mastheads. Not the simple mastheads of modern yachts, nor the glorified radar rigs of the larger ships; these were the mastheads of a square-rigged sailing ship, and a huge one at that, the sort of things you would expect on the Victory or the Cutty Sark. The last time I’d seen anything like them was when a Tall Ships rally had put in, and that only on local TV. Had the tourist bods moored one here, or something really old? This I had to see. I pulled my light anorak closer about me and walked on into the deep shadows between the wide-set streetlights. The hell with the weather, the hell with everything! I was a bit surprised at myself. No doubt about it, rebellion had me in its grip.

An hour and a half later, of course, I was regretting it bitterly. My hair was plastered flat to my wind-chilled scalp, my soaking collar was sawing at my neck, and I was desperate for my dinner. All those odd little places I remembered were just boarded holes in the high walls now, or seedy little cafés with fading pop posters and plastic tables barely visible through the grimy glass; and every one of them was closed, and might have been for years. The sea was within earshot, but never in sight; and there was no trace of masts, or of the signs you’d expect to a tourist attraction either. I would have been happy enough now with something microwaved at home, if I could only get back to my car; but just to cap everything, I’d lost my way, taken a wrong turn somewhere around those featureless warehouse walls, and now everywhere was strange. Or simply invisible; either some of the streets had no lighting, or it had failed. And there wasn’t a soul about, nor even a sound except my own footsteps on the cobbles and the distant breath of the ocean. I felt like a lost child.

Then I heard voices. They seemed to be echoing out around the corner of the street ahead, and so desperate was I that I’d gone rushing round before I’d realized that they didn’t sound at all friendly; more like a brawl. And that, in fact, was what was going on. At the street’s end was the sea, with only a dim glimmer to distinguish it from the sky above; but I hardly noticed it. There was a single light in the street, over the arched doorway of a large warehouse, now half-open; and before it, on a weedgrown forecourt, a tight knot of men were struggling this way and that. One tore himself loose and staggered free, and I saw that the remaining three – all huge – were after him. One swung at him, he ducked back, stumbling among the weeds and litter, and with a twinge of horror I saw metal gleam in the fist as it swung, and in the others as they feinted at him. They had knives, long ones; and that slash, if it had connected, would have opened his throat from ear to ear. They were out to kill.

I stood horrified, hesitant, unable to link up what I was seeing with reality, with the need to act. I had a mad urge to run away, to shout for the police; it was their business, after all, not my fight. If I hadn’t baulked at that stop light, perhaps, I might have done just that, and probably suffered for it. But something inside me – that spirit of rebellion I’d raised – knew better; it wasn’t seeking help I was after, it was an excuse to run away, to avoid getting involved, to pass by on the other side. And this was a life at stake, far more important than a stupid trick like running a light – far more important even than any question of courage or cowardice. I had to help … but how?

I took a hesitant step forward. Maybe just running at them, shouting, would scare them enough; but what if it didn’t? I hadn’t hit anybody since I had left school, and there were three of them. Then in the faint gleam my eyes lit on a pile of metal tubes lying at the roadside, beside a builder’s sign, remnants of dismantled scaffolding. They were slippery with filth and rain, but with a heave that made my shoulders crack I got one about seven feet long loose, heaved it over my head and ran down the slippery cobbles.