Sea Lord

  “He had to catch a flight to Geneva,” Jennifer explained. She looked very excited, perhaps because she had enjoyed the interview more than she had expected. “It was fun, wasn’t it?”

  “Was it?”

  “Of course it was! Don’t be so boring. I think I’d like to be on telly more often.”

  “You were very good,” I said loyally.

  “Then we shall celebrate my success by having dinner.”

  She was suddenly bouncing with happiness, and my own happiness was increasing because of it. We went to a restaurant where we could eat outside and, in the lantern-light, she told me about her childhood, and about the American university where she’d majored in Fine Arts, then about her apprenticeship at a London auction house and her first proper gallery job in Florence. I tried to put a time-span on various jobs, and decided she must be twenty-seven.

  “And you,” she asked, “what about you?”

  “I thought you’d done all that research on me?”

  “Maybe it was wrong.” She caught my eye, and we said nothing for a moment, and I wondered if all the former hostility between us had been merely a disguise for what we had both been feeling. I think I already knew that this was a girl worth staying ashore for, and if that was an exciting thought, it was also somewhat frightening. Maybe she felt the same fear for she suddenly looked away and posed a brutal question. “Tell me about your brother. Why did he kill himself?”

  “He couldn’t cope.”

  “With what?”

  “The problems of Stowey. Mother. Life. Debts. Disappointment.”

  Jennifer frowned. “Disappointment?”

  I lit a pipe, taking my time over the job. “It was very important to Michael that he was going to be an earl. He thought it would make him important. He couldn’t wait for Father to die. He wanted to see the forelocks twitching when he walked by, and he wanted to wear the ermine, and he fancied hobnobbing in the House of Lords, and when he finally inherited he suddenly discovered that it didn’t make a blind bit of difference. He was still just the same indecisive idiot that he’d always been. Mother kept pushing him to do things to the estate, which he didn’t have the guts to try, and she also wanted him to marry some monstrous creature from the Fens, which he couldn’t face, so in the end he just bunged a double-barrel into his mouth and put his big toe on the trigger.”

  For a few seconds she didn’t speak, then she frowned. “You can be very flippant at times.”

  “Can I?”

  She didn’t reply, instead she just stared at me as though this was the very first time she had really taken notice of me. And I, suddenly, was frightened, because I knew I was being judged, and I wanted that judgment to be favourable.

  “Listen,” I said. “Life can be very shitty, it can be tough, it can be the pits. So there’s only one rule, and that’s never to give in. Bad luck comes to all of us, so what must you do? You fight it, you claw at it, you kick the shit out of it, but you never, ever, ever give in. You only go through this vale of tears once, so for God’s sake make it a good voyage. So if I’m flippant, that’s only because it’s better to make light of a disaster than to cry over it.”

  I had spoken with more vehemence than I had intended. Jennifer had looked away from me to stare down at the table, so I could not see what she had made of my words. “What do you think about when you’re out there?” she asked after a while, “on your own, at sea?”

  “Survival.”

  “Is that all?”

  “It isn’t all,” I started, though I couldn’t explain the rest of it, so shrugged instead. “You have to be there to know.”

  I knew my words had been inadequate. I looked round the small courtyard where diners sat at a dozen tables. They looked content, wealthy, attractive, happy. They also looked plump, self-important, and trapped. “Once,” I said awkwardly, “I watched a meteor fall past the Southern Cross. It was a big one, a great blazon of light across the darkness, and I can’t explain why that’s important, or what I felt, except that to see it even once, in all its glory, is worth an awful lot.”

  “Were you alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you didn’t want to share it with anyone?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  She smiled at that answer, but kept silent.

  “So tomorrow” – I took the plunge for happiness — “why don’t you come to Devon with me and we’ll have a day at sea?”

  “To watch the stars fall?”

  “Maybe.”

  She raised her glass, waited for me to do the same, then touched her rim against mine. “OK,” she said simply.

  And I was in heaven.

  We stayed that night at Sir Leon’s house in Mayfair. I was given a guest room, and didn’t ask for more. We were up long before dawn and, while I made coffee and toast, Jennifer raided the freezers and kitchen cupboards for our lunch. We were much too early for a radio weather forecast, so I phoned the commercial service and listened to their tape recording. “What do they say?” Jennifer asked me when I put the phone down.

  “Sounds good,” I said absent-mindedly, “a real skirt-lifter.”

  “A real what?” She turned on me with mock fierceness.

  “Force six, gusting seven,” I said contritely, then carried the bags down to the garage where she opened the door of a battered Ford Escort. “Yours?” I asked.

  She heard the surprise in my voice. “What did you expect? A Lamborghini?”

  “A Porsche at least.”

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you.” She dangled the keys above the car roof. “Do you want to drive?”

  “No.”

  “That’s good. I like driving.”

  She raced the car through empty dark streets. Neither of us spoke much at first, it was too early in the morning, yet there was a distinct feeling of excitement. Just days before we had been snapping at each other like strange dogs; now, suddenly, we had the comfortable intimacy of friendship. There was also the anticipation of something more than friendship. It was that anticipation which touched our commonplace with excitement. We both felt it and we were both happy.

  She drove like Charlie; fast, competently, and with a blithe confidence that the police would ignore her. They did.

  We sped past Heathrow and Windsor, and only then did she break our silence. She talked about the books she was reading, and scorned me with laughter when I told her I thought four books sufficient for life. She described the Buzzacott Museum Gallery, calling it her stepfather’s fantasy and obsession. “That’s why he pursued money so ruthlessly,” she went on, “just so he could build his fantasy.”

  “And he’s very rich,” I commented sourly.

  “Very.” She ignored the jealousy in my voice. “It was the property world that started him off. It still pays well, I think, but he keeps Mummy and me a long way away from the seamier side of his activities.”

  “Seamy?” I asked.

  “A bit, I think.” She didn’t elaborate. The sun rose behind us, casting long shadows and promising a fine day, though I doubted, looking at the bare sky, whether the forecast of a skirt-lifting force six would prove correct. Not that it mattered, for this day was not really about sailing, but about exploring a friendship.

  And we had plenty of time for that exploration, for we were in Dartmouth long before breakfast time. I hadn’t told Harry that I was returning, which meant my guardian angels were home in their own beds. Their absence made me feel oddly nervous, so I didn’t waste any time getting ready for sea. I cast off Sunflower’s springs, led the bow warp back to the cockpit, hanked on the big genoa and took off the mainsail cover.

  “Aren’t you going to motor her out?” Jennifer asked me.

  “I’m going to show off and sail us out.”

  It was a happier experiment than my arrival on the pontoon. The breeze was from the east, an errant morning wind caused by the hills about the river. The tide was ebbing. I hoisted the jib, let it flap, released the bow warp, then hauled the j
ib flat to starboard. The wind swung our bows fast off the pontoon, just clearing the transom of the boat ahead. I slipped the stern warp, let the jib sheet run so that the sail was reaching, then hauled in all my loose warps. Sunflower ghosted out of the narrow space like magic.

  Jennifer applauded. “I’m impressed.”

  “Did you see my arrival?”

  She shook her head. “Don’t tell me I missed another of the master mariner’s impressive displays?”

  “Technically,” I said, “my arrival here was what we master mariners call a cock-up. I thought you might be watching, tried to impress you by doing it the hard way, and very nearly wrapped the mast round the bridge.”

  She laughed. “Serves you right.”

  I gave her the helm while I stowed the fenders, then hauled up the big main. The wind was fitful, backing north, but at least blowing us to sea. It was obvious the weathermen had got it wrong again. The wind was force two, sometimes three, but I sensed even that gentle breeze wouldn’t last. The sun was climbing to shimmer the sea and already there was a haze above the slowly receding coast. I watched the river entrance as we drew away. A gaff-rigged cutter had followed us out, but had now turned eastwards towards Torbay. A whale-decked Brixham trawler was plugging in the opposite direction, but, apart from a handful of dinghy sails in the river mouth, there was nothing else in sight. “Safe at last,” I said facetiously.

  Jennifer looked back towards the coast. “I’d rather forgotten about those two men.”

  “I hadn’t.”

  She grimaced. “My stepfather thinks you’re being very foolish. He’d prefer to pay the ransom, but I suppose he can’t really argue with Inspector Abbott. He’s meant to be the expert.”

  “Harry’s no fool,” I said. “I might be though, making myself a target. Still, we’re safe now.”

  She frowned. “Suppose they saw us leaving? Suppose they’re following us?”

  I shook my head. “They’re too late.” Already the river mouth was indistinct, and the land fading like a mirage. In a few minutes we would be alone in the empty sea. “Besides,” I went on to reassure her, “I’ve got a radio, so if we see anything suspicious I’ll scream blue murder to the coastguards.” It occurred to me that Harry would be the one screaming blue murder when he discovered that I’d returned without informing him, so I punctiliously called the Brixham Coastguard and gave them a routine passage report: yacht Sunflower day-sailing off Dartmouth, expecting to return to port sometime that evening. I asked them to relay that information to the Dartmouth police station. They must have been mildly surprised at the request, but promised to make the call.

  Jennifer had installed herself in the navigator’s chair and was admiring the electronic display which Charlie had insisted on building over the chart table. “What’s this?” she asked.

  “A Decca set.”

  “What’s a Decca set?”

  I explained the chain of coast radio transmitters which pulsed their signals to sea, and how the little black box translated the signals into a position. This was the first time I’d used Charlie’s gift, so I had to tell the machine roughly where we were, it paused, then the aerial found the signals and the display updated itself with our exact position. Jennifer was enthralled. I entered the latitude and longitude of St Helier in the Channel Islands and Jennifer read the course and distance off the display. “So all you have to do is follow that course and you’ll get there?”

  “Not exactly.” I found a chart and showed her how the Decca course would take us straight across the islands of Guernsey and Jersey. “So what we’d have to do,” I said, “is put in another waypoint here,” I pointed to a patch of sea north of the Roches Douvres, “then make St Helier the second waypoint.”

  “Waypoint?” she asked.

  “Posh name for destination. You pick the waypoint and the machine tells you how to get there.”

  She looked at the electronic display which was showing a small bent arrow and some apparently meaningless figures. “What’s it telling us now?”

  “It’s assuming we’re trying to sail the direct line to St Helier, so it’s telling us that we’re a tenth of a nautical mile off course to port, travelling at 3.2 knots, on a heading of 162 true, and that we should be heading 137 true.”

  She stared admiringly at the display. “I thought you master mariners did it all with sextants?”

  “Most of the time we do,” I said, “because you run out of Decca range as soon as you leave Europe.”

  So then she wanted to see the sextant. I took her up to the cockpit and showed her how to bring the sun down to the horizon. She wanted to try for herself, so I settled back and watched as she braced herself against the companionway. She was worth watching. She was wearing a shirt and jeans, and had her short black hair tied back with a band. “It’s green!” she exclaimed when she first saw the sun in the mirror, then frowned as a quiver of her right hand jarred the sun loose. A moment later she managed to hold the sun steady on the mirror, then bit her lower lip in fierce concentration as she moved the index arm. The trick of it was to move the index arm to bring the sun down, while holding the rest of the instrument absolutely steady so that the horizon stayed fixed in the sight glass. “Done it!” she said triumphantly.

  “Read me the scale.”

  She had done it, too. I checked by taking my own sight. “Is that all there is to it?” she asked mockingly.

  “That and a lot of very tedious mathematics. It’s also a bit trickier to do when the boat’s heaving up and down in a rough sea, or if you’re trying to find one star among a million, but on the whole that’s all there is to it.”

  The genoa slapped a protest at the fading wind. I switched off the Decca and put the sextant away. I let Jennifer steer, though there was little to do for the wind was dying on us. “Whistle,” I said to her.

  “Whistle?”

  “It’s supposed to bring the wind.”

  She laughed, but didn’t try the old magic. I stretched myself lazily on the leeward thwart. “Shouldn’t you be working?” I teased her.

  “Of course I should be working.”

  “Why aren’t you?”

  “Because I’m rich and spoilt, and can take days off when I like. Isn’t that what you expected me to say?”

  “Is it true?”

  She made a face. “Partly. Which is why I usually work very hard.” She hauled in the mainsheet, but it didn’t make the boat go any faster. “I also wanted to be with you,” she added in a shy and surprising explanation. She had not looked at me as she spoke.

  I said nothing, waiting till she caught my eye. “Mutual,” I said then. Happiness sometimes comes in cloudbursts.

  There was a pause as we shared that happiness, then, in friendly warning, she deliberately broke the mood. “But don’t be too hopeful, John Rossendale. Hans has my heart, such as it is.”

  “Lucky Hans.”

  “Except this is work really,” she said hastily, perhaps wondering whether she had said too much and was now trying to draw a little of it back. “If we’re going to get the painting back, then I have to co-operate with you, don’t I?”

  “Absolutely.”

  We sailed on in companionable silence. The coast was nothing but a dark blur in the shimmering haze. A small workboat sped past a half-mile to starboard. I’d watched it approach from astern, but it had made no effort to come near us. I stared at it through the binoculars and saw that it carried a half-dozen hopeful men with sea-angling gear. I could not see Garrard on the boat, so I relaxed. It was getting warmer, so I stripped off my shirt, then lay back again and pillowed my head on the coiled genoa sheet.

  “Sleepy?” Jennifer asked.

  “Just lazy. I’m not used to being chauffeured.”

  “Don’t you get bored with sailing alone?”

  “I don’t always sail alone.”

  She thought about that for a while. “Girls?”

  “Thank God, yes.” I told her about the hitch-hikers who wandered t
he trade-wind routes; how they lived from island to island, boat to boat, and one summer’s day to the next.

  “They make me feel very dull,” she said.

  “I can’t think why. You seem very exotic to me.”

  “Exotic?”

  “Rich, beautiful and engaged to the King of Swiss processed cheese.”

  She laughed. “I can’t think why you’re so nasty about Hans! You only met him twice, and he was perfectly pleasant to you.”

  It was my turn to betray an intimacy; to offer her some vulnerability of my own. “I dislike him because he’s engaged to you. I’m jealous.”

  She smiled acceptance. “How nice.”

  It was that kind of morning. Flirtatious and happy, and the flirting sometimes veered very close to something deeper, but we both avoided it. I wasn’t going to hurry her. One learns patience at sea, and I would be patient.

  By late morning we had entirely lost sight of land. The wind had died to nothing and the sea was slapping petulantly at Sunflower’s hull. We simply wallowed in a long, lazy swell. The small fishing boat was drifting a mile away. I guessed the men had abandoned hunting inshore for bass and had come out to the deeper water to find mackerel.

  Jennifer stood up and, rather decisively, peeled off her jeans and shirt. The abruptness of the gesture somehow invested it with importance, as though she had taken another deliberate step on the road to intimacy. She was wearing a yellow bikini. I had been right: she did look good in a bikini. In fact she looked wonderful, and I said as much.

  “I didn’t think you’d be able to resist a comment,” she said tartly.

  “And I very much hoped I wouldn’t be able to resist one.”