A Smuggler’s Tale

by Louisa Adjoa Parker (Weymouth)

He’s only 15 when he meets the fella who gets him banged up. His parents are dead. He’s been moved all over the place, living with other people’s parents while his are in the ground. He stopped crying himself to sleep at nights a long time ago.

He’s having a can down the seafront, when his employer-to-be starts talking to him. Once Jon realises the guy’s not chatting crap, he tells him he’s up for it, innit? He hasn’t exactly got anything better lined up.

Next week he finds himself on a little dinghy, middle of the night, with a couple of sketchy looking blokes. They row across the dark water in silence to a huge ship. They jump on board, start loading packages onto the dinghy.

Suddenly it all kicks off. A speedboat, torch-lights flashing, rushes at them. They throw the boxes into the water, but it’s too late. Weeks later, a blond-haired boy will find a box with smashed-up vials in on the beach, and wonder what they are.

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What Louisa Adjoa Parker says about A Smuggler’s Tale:

This was inspired by talking to Peter, who spent many summers working on the beach in Weymouth and lived nearby. He mentioned Moonfleet, a novel about smuggling by J. Meade Falkner which was set in a village close to Weymouth. He wondered what a modern-day tale would involve, and remembered walking along the beach as a child and finding something strange on the rocks.