Sea Lord

by Bernard Cornwell

  “Of course you can.” He lightly punched my upper arm. “Free as a bird, aren’t you? No kids, no wife, no accountant. Just wall-to-wall Joannas wherever you go.”

  “Not always, Charlie.”

  “But enough, eh?” he asked seriously.

  “Enough,” I reassured him.

  “You’re a lucky bastard.”

  “Meaning you’re not?” I gestured at the near-naked Joanna on the foredeck.

  “Responsibilities,” he said darkly. He tossed his empty beer bottle overboard and lit a cigarette. “I don’t know, Johnny. I like making money, but the more you’ve got, the more the bastards try to take it away from you, so the more you have to work to hang on to it. I work bloody hard now, and it’s beginning to interfere with my pleasures. But when you and I sailed together it seemed to be nothing but beer and bare bodies.”

  “That’s because I was doing all the work.”

  He laughed. A mile off Barratry’s port beam a big ketch was close-hauled on a course for France. She looked like a proper boat, one that could take the blue water and Charlie watched her wistfully. “If I could make two million tomorrow, Johnny, I’d jack it all in. I’d follow you.”

  I smiled. “It doesn’t take two million, Charlie.”

  “But it does, Johnny. It does. I have to settle with the banks, you see. And I can’t just abandon Yvonne and the kids. I’ll have to leave them with some money. But if I had two million now I’d pay the debts, sell the company and never work again. In five years’ time I might just be ready to do it, but now? Now I’d need two big ones to be really safe.” He opened another bottle of beer. “Those two blokes, Johnny. They’ve scarpered.”

  The change of subject was so abrupt that for a few seconds I couldn’t think what he was talking about. In the last few days I had become so absorbed in Sunflower’s repairs that I had almost forgotten Garrard and Peel. “How do you know?” I asked.

  “Because I’ve been pulling in favours, Johnny. Asking questions. But no one knows where they are. Mind you, on the principle that most shit ends up in a cesspit, it’s likely that they’ve gone to London, but I’ve put the word around that if they show their scabby faces in Devon again, I’ll bury them.” He punched me lightly on the arm. “Forget ’em, Johnny. Just worry about getting back to sea.”

  Which was all I was worrying about now. The memory of that bad night in Cullen’s yard was fading. At first I’d wanted to find Garrard, and repay him, but I’d been humiliated when I went to ask Jennifer Pallavicini for help, so now they could all get on without me.

  “Charlie?” Joanna sat up On the foredeck. “Put some lotion on my back, will you?”

  He winked at me, offered me the wheel, then went forward. He stayed with Joanna, evidently lotioning more than her back, while I climbed to the lower wheelhouse where I hunched down so that I couldn’t see what was happening. I was suddenly jealous.

  I supposed that my mistake had been to come home. Till that moment when I had plunged through the broken water of Salcombe’s bar I had been a happy man. Now, suddenly, inexplicably, I was frustrated. One part of me did not want to go back to sea. It was not that I would ever abandon sailing, so long as I lived I would need blue seas at my boat’s cutwater, but I wanted something else now. I wanted a place to come home to. I wanted someone.

  But there was no place, and no one. I was unwanted, except by my sister Georgina, and she was mad, so I would go back to nowhere because, for me, there was nothing else.

  * * *

  I sailed a week later. I’d provisioned in Dartmouth but, before leaving England, I sailed round the corner into Salcombe to say goodbye to Charlie. I moored alongside Barratry off Frogmore Creek and Charlie brought Yvonne and the children out to the boats. He also brought two bottles of champagne, one of which we broke over Sunflower’s bow fairlead, and the other we drank. Charlie insisted his children both took a glass, even the two-year-old. Yvonne seemed determined to disguise her dislike of me and to enjoy herself, or perhaps she was just glad that I was sailing out of her life again. She’d brought a picnic of cake and sandwiches and made tea in Barratry’s galley. Charlie filled the hot tub on the bows and let the children splash around as we talked about old times. We laughed at the memories of Charlie’s poaching expeditions, and Yvonne shyly recalled how he’d once stolen my father’s Bentley and parked it outside the house of a notorious local whore. It was a happy afternoon, and I was glad, for I didn’t like to think of Charlie and Yvonne embittered.

  They all went ashore at tea-time. I held Charlie back before he joined Yvonne and the children in his dinghy. “I want to say thank you, Charlie.”

  “For nothing.” He was embarrassed. He glanced round to make sure Yvonne was well out of earshot. “I’ll see you in the Caribbean, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Maybe I’ll bring Joanna. Unless you tell me there’s a surplus of crumpet over there?”

  I smiled. “There always is, Charlie.”

  He punched me on the arm. “See you, Johnny.”

  “Be good, Charlie.”

  He paused, then roughly embraced me. “You’re a lucky bugger,” he said, then he climbed over the guardrails and dropped into his dinghy’s stern. His outboard coughed into life as I untied the painter. Charlie waved, then steered away. The tide was on the turn, about to ebb, and I was alone again.

  I was provisioned, I had filled in the Customs’ form, I was ready. I had one port to visit, then I would be free. There didn’t seem any purpose to be served by waiting so I pulled my new rigid tender aboard and stowed it aft of the liferaft on the coachroof. I opened the motor’s seacock, gave the stern-gland a turn of grease, then started the engine. The wind was coming dead from the harbour entrance, so I’d need to motor out to sea. Once at sea there would be no hurry, ever again, so I’d let the sails do the work. I cast off the lines which held me to Barratry, pulled in the fenders, then turned Sunflower’s bows to the wind and let the motor idle as I hoisted the big main. I let her drift on the slack water as I hoisted the foresails. The red ensign, battered from a hundred foreign gales, lifted at the stern. I turned to stare ashore, but Charlie’s dinghy was already lost among a host of other little craft. There was no one to bid me farewell.

  I put the throttle forward.

  I’d been home just over a month. My mother had died, my sister had spurned me, two men had tried to kill me, and now I was leaving. I should have felt some regret, but I didn’t. Neither regret, nor sadness, just the excitement of another voyage beginning, and when I felt that small familiar excitement I knew that the self-pitying disease that had made me want to stay ashore was gone. I was cured. My spirits rose as the boat gathered speed. The engine thudded happily. The sails, sheeted in tight, flapped desultorily and the compass shivered on its lubber line.

  I turned due south at the fairway and let the wind belly the sails. I throttled back, allowing the wind to share the engine’s load. There was a shudder in the sea as we crossed the bar, then the bows dipped to the first real wave and a shred of white foam spattered back on to Sunflower’s gunwales. The tide was beginning to help me so I leaned down and cut the motor, silencing my world to everything except the noises of water and sails and ropes. Sunflower heeled to the wind, and the tiller stiffened in my hand.

  It was a good wind, a skirt-lifting force five or six; just enough to break some water across our bows. I could feel the raw and lovely power in Sunflower’s big sails now. She was hissing in the water, smashing the waves, creaming them back, driving through a five-foot swell like a thoroughbred. The wind was more westerly than south, a perfect wind to cross the Channel. I had to keep an appointment in Jersey before I left home waters, then I would be gone to the wild seas. Just one more duty, then I’d be running alone and the bastards couldn’t touch me ever again because, once more, I would be alone and lost and free.

  They called it a Convent Hospital, but in truth it was just a big Victorian house that stood on the heights near La Corbiere Point. T
he sisters and their patients enjoyed six acres of land that fell steeply towards the sea. I left Sunflower in the St Helier Marina and rented a bike that I pedalled along the island’s southern shore.

  “She’ll be glad to see you, so she will.” Sister Felicity limped beside me down a path which twisted between laurels and rose bushes. I had tried to persuade her not to walk with me, for she looked desperately tired and old, but she had insisted on coming. “I’m not so old that I can’t lean on an old friend’s arm,” she told me. “And when I heard you were coming, Johnny, I promised myself I’d have a day out of bed. And how are you?”

  “I still seem to be getting into trouble, Nanny. I don’t try, but it comes all the same.”

  “It’s your Irish blood, Johnny. But I have faith in you, so I do. One day you’ll take responsibility for someone, and that’s the day you’ll settle down.” Sister Felicity was pure Irish. She had once been our family’s nanny at Stowey, but after we had all left the nursery she had gone to take the veil. Her fondness for and familiarity with Georgina had made this pleasant house an obvious refuge for my younger sister. “Mind you,” Sister Felicity went on, “it’s past time you did settle down. You can’t gallivant for ever.”

  “Why ever not?”

  She paused to take breath. I was worried for her health, but she was more worried about me. “You should have children, Johnny. What will happen to the Earldom if you don’t make an heir?”

  “The Earldom’s gone, Nanny,” I said bleakly. “It disappeared with the house. We’re nothing now. We’re just a tired old family that has squabbled its life away. In a few years we’ll all be gone and no one will even remember us.”

  “You’re so full of it, your eyes are brown!” She smiled at her own coarseness. As a child, as now as a man, I loved this woman far more than my real mother. Felicity had no guile, just a heart of pure affection. Now, unwell, she held my arm tightly as we began to walk again. “I’m sorry I couldn’t cross to England for your mother’s funeral,” she told me, “it wasn’t one of my well days.”

  I wondered if she ever had well days any more. “You should rest, Nanny.”

  “Ah, the Lord will give me rest in due time. But I wept for your mother, poor thing.”

  “I didn’t,” I confessed brutally. “I haven’t even requested a Mass for her.”

  “You should, Johnny. She was never good to you, but she gave you life for all that.”

  “And she accused me of stealing her painting.”

  “Who cares about a painting?” She stopped where the steps turned towards the sea and we could see a small sun terrace where three patients and a nun sat on wrought-iron chairs. “And there the dear thing is!” Felicity said. “You go on alone, Johnny, I’m not sure I can manage the last steps.”

  The ‘dear thing’ was the Lady Georgina Rossendale, but I did not go straight down to her, preferring to stay a few more seconds with Sister Felicity. “Is everything all right here, Nanny?”

  “With God’s blessing it will be. The diocese is always talking about selling the house, and I could see why they’d want to because it must be worth a wee fortune, but so far, thank God, they haven’t done it. But if they do, Johnny, we’ll just pick up our skirts and find somewhere else. Don’t you worry yourself.”

  “And Georgina?”

  “On her good days she misses Stowey.” Felicity made a small gesture of resignation. “Not that she has many good days, but when she does I sometimes think her understanding is just beneath the surface, like a bubble that only needs a little nudge if it’s going to burst, but then she falls away again. Poor thing. But she’s never any trouble, never at all. She’ll be glad to see you.”

  I went down to the terrace, but it was not one of Georgina’s good days. At first I was not even sure that she recognised me. She was placid, smiling softly, and gentle. I told her about Sunflower, and perhaps she understood some of what I said, for she pointed out to sea where a slew of yachts were catching the tide before turning north towards Guernsey. Lunch was brought to the terrace on trays and I gently fed Georgina and mopped up her spills.

  I left her in mid-afternoon. I climbed the steps, and only then did I learn that Georgina had remembered me, for, just before I would have disappeared behind the screen of bushes, she called my name. “Johnny? Johnny?”

  I went back to her. “My love?”

  She was crying. She was crying very softly, but the tears were flowing in copious and silent misery. She reached desperately for my hand. “I want to go home.”

  “Are you unhappy?”

  “I miss you.”

  “Nanny’s here,” I said, then, in case Georgina had forgotten the nursery at Stowey, “Sister Felicity’s here.”

  “She’ll die! She’s going to die, Johnny, and I’ll be alone.”

  “No, no, no.” I held her tight, and I cried because there was sweet sod all I could do. I held her for a long time. Dear God, I thought, but what misery lay in this girl’s madness? I remembered that the last time I had been with Georgina in this garden had been after our brother’s death. Did she, somewhere in her tangled mind, connect me with death? John, Earl of Stowey, death’s messenger? I held her tight.

  When I relaxed my embrace to look into her face, I saw that she had gone back into her mysterious world of gentle nothingness. I kissed her cheeks and she smiled at me, remembering nothing of her desperate fears. She seemed happy again, but I was still crying.

  I climbed the garden steps and let myself into the main house to seek out Sister Felicity, but a young nun told me Felicity had been ordered back to her bed. I thanked the girl, then pulled out all my small change which I put into the box beside the door. I wouldn’t need British coins again for a long while, maybe never.

  “Behold a miracle! The Earl of Stowey is giving money to charity!” I turned, astonished, to see my twin sister Elizabeth coming from the convent office. Her husband, Lord Tredgarth, was two paces behind her. He nodded at me with heavy disapproval, while Elizabeth just looked scornful. “I heard you had come to visit this morning,” she said, “but I hardly expected to find you still here.”

  “I came to say goodbye.”

  “You’re going somewhere?”

  I shrugged. “Wherever.”

  “Don’t let me stop you, brother.”

  I didn’t move. The meeting, was unexpected and sudden, yet, despite Elizabeth’s rudeness, it seemed churlish just to walk away. I was also very curious about what had brought Elizabeth here. She looked very chic in a black summer dress and with her bright blonde hair cut expensively short. She wore a single row of pearls and had an expensive-looking handbag. Peter Tredgarth was certainly not paying for such baubles, and I wondered who was. She glared at me, expecting me to leave, but I stayed put as the silence stretched in the big cool hallway which smelt of wax polish and disinfectant. Lord Tredgarth was the first of the three of us to be embarrassed by the silence. “You found Georgina well, John?”

  “No,” I said, “she’s frightened of the future.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, John,” Elizabeth snapped. “She’s half-witted, so how does she even know what the future is?”

  “She’s frightened that Nanny will die and leave her alone.”

  “There’s certainly no point in her looking to you for any security if that happens, is there? What have you ever done for her?”

  “Loved her?”

  “Don’t be impertinent. We’ve all loved Georgie. But some of us have to be practical as well.” She looked at her watch, then grimaced at my dirty jeans and unironed shirt. “Are you flying back to the mainland now?”

  “No.”

  “Then I needn’t offer you a lift to the airport.” She sounded relieved. “Come along, Peter.”

  I frowned. “You mean you didn’t come here to visit Georgina?”

  “I came here, brother, to make sure that her funds are still adequate. As I said, some of us try to be practical. There really isn’t any point in wasting our time by se
eing her; she doesn’t know me from Catherine the Great, but that doesn’t prevent me from worrying about her welfare. Now come along, Peter, we have a taxi waiting.”

  Her high heels cracked and snapped over the parquet floor. I moved into her path, making her stop and provoking a look of utter disdain.

  An alarm bell had rung faintly in my head. I did not trust Elizabeth when she spoke of Georgina’s funds. Elizabeth is constantly short of money, made so by her husband’s ineptitude as a farmer and his failures as an investor. “Are Georgina’s funds adequate?” I asked her now.

  “Entirely. You don’t have to worry. Not that you ever did. Now stand aside, please.”

  “Tell me something,” I said on a pure impulse. “Did you send two men to kill me?”

  Anger blazed in Elizabeth’s eyes. “Peter. If John doesn’t move out of my way, then kindly remove him for me.”

  Her husband loomed closer. He’s a big and burly man, but everything he touches turns to disaster. “Piss off, Tredgarth,” I said nastily, and he fell back, as I’d known he would. “Did you send them?” I asked Elizabeth again.

  She paused, summoning her artillery. “You are a fool, John,” she said eventually. “You behaved disgracefully at Mother’s funeral, and now you’re accusing me of planning your murder. Try not to be so utterly pathetic and ridiculous. I’m quite seriously worried about you. Clearly there’s a strain of lunacy in our family. Georgina has it, and now it seems quite likely you do too. No, I did not send any men to murder you. I sometimes wish I had. Is there any other crime of which you wish to accuse me? No? Good. So kindly get the hell out of my way.”

  I got the hell out of her way. And I still didn’t understand what had happened in England, or why, or who had set it all in motion. I only knew that I had a boat waiting at St Helier and an ocean to cross. So, with the questions still unanswered, I found my rented bike and pedalled off to find the world.

  At noon the next day a good west wind whipped me through the Passage du Fromveur between Ushant and the French mainland. I should have stood much further out to sea, passing Ushant well beyond the horizon and thus avoiding the heavy merchant traffic that thrashes round Finisterre, but I had a fancy to run the headland’s tides and, as my life was now once more governed by fancy, I stood inshore and let Sunflower have her head.