The Toymaster's Castle

Chapter Thirty-Three - A Visit to Town

Next morning, I was woken up with a kiss and a cup of coffee. I stretched out for a minute, snuggling back luxuriously into Daniel, but then I noticed a noise from downstairs.

"Jane is busy, cooking up an enormous cauldron of porridge," he told me by way of answer to my unasked question.

"I suppose I should go and give her a hand," I said with a bit of a sigh.

"No need," he replied. "She has everything completely under control. The water should be warm enough for a shower in another few minutes."

So I lay back and relaxed, relishing the unexpected lie in!

There was a sort of knocking at the top of the stairs and one of the Marines appeared through the trap door. "Excuse me, Sir, Ma'am. Change of watch."

He climbed up the fixed metal ladder that led up to the glass room... which was a bit tricky because he was carrying a cup of coffee. Meanwhile, I tried to avoid dying of embarrassment about the fact that I was completely naked under the covers... and, almost certainly, smelt strongly of sex!

A few seconds later, the guy who had just been relieved appeared and then disappeared with a cheerful 'morning!'.

A little over an hour later, Daniel, George and I walked over to the other side of the island to find that the little skiff had already been taken out of the boat shed, put out onto the water and tied up at the jetty.

"It looks like your 'ceremonial bollocking' really worked," Daniel observed.

I didn't say anything... I didn't have to. I just gave him a bit of a look.

"You can try it if you like," he responded with a quietly menacing smile. "The consequences would be... moderately interesting!"

I chose not to say anything else and concentrated on climbing down the slippery stone steps into the boat instead.

It was a beautiful, sunny, summer morning and, on the way over, I got a bit of a lesson in sailing. There was quite a stiff breeze and so we were pretty nippy and, in no time, we were pulling into the little harbour.

The place still had a couple of tourist-type boats bobbing around but otherwise it looked completely deserted... but, as we were tying up at the jetty, the harbour master we had talked to last time came strolling down.

"Good morning," Daniel said, "where should we leave her?"

"Anywhere you like," he answered. "You're the first boat I've seen in a couple of days."

"So things are quiet?"

"Absolutely dead... nobody can get down here with the fuel being so hard to come by... and them as are already down here aren't moving about much."

"So we're not going to be able to pick up a couple of gallons of diesel?" Daniel asked. I knew we had a serious tankful back on the island but I could see we wouldn't want to go shouting about it. More of the information security thing.

"No chance."

Daniel made a big show of putting the jerry can back in the boat. "What about food?" he asked.

"You're not going to find anything at the official prices," he answered, looking around and lowering his voice, "but if you go up to the store and talk to Tony... tell him that Albert sent you... he might be able to do something about the 'special delivery'. You the folks staying out at the Lighthouse?"

"That's right. Our place in London got caught up in the riots and we only just managed to get out."

"Riots? I didn't think there'd been any trouble of that sort since the election. From what we've heard on the news, everywhere apart from here, things are going just fine and dandy."