All the goodbyes had been said. He had kissed his mother and dangled his little brother upside down. All that was left was to leave.
Conor strolled down to the port on a sunny morning, keeping one eye on the barrow boy bobbing down the hill with his luggage. The sea was calm and a small passenger steamship chugged on its ropes in the outside dock.
A small crowd had gathered on the deck and Conor smiled when he saw the attraction. Linus Wynter was treating the passengers to an impromptu rendition of an aria from The Soldier’s Return.
He stopped singing when he heard Conor’s footsteps on the planks.
‘It’s about time you showed up, boy. I had to sing just to stop the captain casting off.’
‘Any excuse, Linus,’ said Conor, flipping the barrow boy a shilling. ‘You have secured the laboratory?’
‘Our tower is in good hands. Uncle has moved in with a couple of his dullards as he calls them.’
‘How does Uncle smell?’
‘Not so good. All we can hope for is that he will fall into the ocean with a bar of soap in his pocket.’
Conor leaped across a yard of sea on to the steamship.
‘Do you think Scotland is ready for your genius?’
Linus smiled broadly, adjusting his tinted eyeglasses, which Conor had fashioned for him. ‘The Scots are famous for their appreciation of music. Robert Burns was a poet of the people, like myself. Glasgow will take me to its bosom, I feel sure of it. In six months we will be the toast of the city.’
‘You can see into the future now, old friend?’
Linus searched the air until his hand found Conor’s shoulder. ‘Other men look up and down, left and right,’ he said. ‘But men like us are different. We are visionaries.’
Eoin Colfer
