Sea Lord

by Bernard Cornwell

  I had an ebbing spring tide in the passage so that we shot through at close to fifteen knots. The wind was brisk enough to shatter the waves on the rocks about the Kereon light. Seabirds screamed above the islands that were bright with gorse in the sunlight. Another British boat was shooting the passage with me, but, once he had cleared the Pierres Vertes cardinal buoy, he turned due south towards the Raz de Sein while I held west towards the open ocean. At dusk, looking back, I could see the brilliant sweep of Le Cre’ach Lighthouse marking my last sight of land. Lisbon next, I thought, and then I wondered why, and supposed it was because the first time I’d sailed away from Devon I’d made the Tagus my first port of call. I had no need to go there now. Instead, I decided, I would go straight for the Azores. I would sail into Horta and there, at those hospitable quays, meet the first sea-gypsies again. Such gypsies rarely ventured further north than the Azores, and few even went that far towards the cold latitudes, but I knew there would be a handful of weather-beaten boats and I’d hear the first tenuous strands of gossip from the world I’d temporarily deserted. Perhaps I’d find a crew who wanted to cross the Atlantic. Or perhaps I’d change my mind and go south, round Africa, to head up into the paradises of the Indian Ocean. Nothing mattered any more so, at a whim, I decided to skip Lisbon.

  Sunflower and I fell into our old routine. I slept mostly by day when other boats might be expected to keep a better watch than at night. I had a new radar reflector at the mast-tip, but I doubted whether any night-time crew on a merchant vessel would be watching their radar; more likely they’d be watching dirty videos and they wouldn’t even feel the bump as they drove Sunflower under. More yachtsmen die crushed under the bows of careless steamers than from their own mistakes, so at night, when the heavens were dazzling with stars, I stayed awake close to the self-steering gear. I’d doze at times. Sunflower was behaving beautifully, her newly cleaned hull making her sweet in the water. We were on a long windward beat, but the weather was good; lulling me to sleep and to reflection.

  England already seemed like a bad and unreal dream. Had two men really tried to kill me? I knew they had, but now, where the memory had once made me wake sweating in the night, it seemed merely ridiculous. It had surely all been a mistake. The police had taken no interest in my return, and why should they? The only resentment had been from my family, and from Sir Leon’s staff who felt cheated of their glorious picture. Had they sent the two men? The possibility intrigued me, but a few moments of thought convinced me that the notion of Jennifer Pallavicini ordering my death was a nonsense. She had no motive that I could see. Elizabeth was a more likely candidate, but none of it seemed to matter any more. The whole episode was scoured clean by a northwest wind and the ocean’s long swell.

  Charlie was right, I thought. The picture was long gone. It was in some Texan vault, or Japanese mansion, or Swiss strongroom. Whoever had bought it would take care to keep it safe, silent and hidden for generations. Perhaps, hundreds of years in the future, the picture would surface again and the art historians would recall that it had once been stolen from an obscure British family, but for now, for Elizabeth and me, the Van Gogh might just as well be on the dark side of the moon.

  Not that I cared any more; I was back at sea, chopping my bows into the long ocean waves. I slept in the mornings. At noon, after the ritual sight, I made myself a meal. In the afternoons I found work to do. The new joinery in the cabin needed varnishing, and, day by day, coat by coat, the gleam deepened. I catnapped in the early evening, ate again, then read until the sun dropped. I had an old battered Shakespeare, Proust, The Oxford Book of English Verse, and Joshua Slocum’s account of his solo voyage round the world. There was meat enough in those four volumes to last a lifetime. All had been soaked when Garrard had dropped Sunflower off the grid, but the pages had dried out and, though crinkled, were still readable. When the light made the pages indistinguishable I would prepare the sextant for the first star sight of the evening, then just sit and let the time drift past.

  At night the phosphorescence glittered in our wake. Sometimes a large fish would come close to the hull and I’d see its rising track like a trailing coat of stars deep in the water. In seven years I’d never tired of that sight, nor thought I ever would. It became warmer as we travelled south. By day I rarely wore any clothes: why wear out things that cost money to replace? At night I pulled on jeans and a sweater and, in the early hours when sleep threatened most, I would go to the foredeck and exercise till I was sweating. There isn’t much exercise to be had on a yacht; the toughest task is hoisting the mainsail, but, in a good year, it stayed up most of the time.

  I took the sails down once. I was fourteen nights from Ushant and the weather turned. The dawn revealed a sullen oily swell above which my sails hung limp beneath a brassy sky. The glass dropped all morning, while heavy greasy clouds piled from the west to shroud the sky in an ominous darkness. At noon a heavy rain flayed the sea, then stopped as abruptly as it had begun. The rudder banged in its pintles.

  I sensed a squall. There was none in sight, but the instinct is enough. At sea it’s best to act on the first impulse, for there might not be time for second thoughts. I dropped the foresails and lashed them to the pulpit rails, then let down the main. I tied the heavy sail to its boom, then disconnected the self-steering gear. I slid the washboards into their grooves, bolted them home, and locked the companionway shut.

  A minute later the squall struck. It came out of the west like an express train. The squall was an onslaught of wind and rain, stirred to fury, but so confined and travelling so fast that it had neither the time nor space to stir the sea’s venom into threatening waves. The rain seemed to be flying parallel to the sea which was being whip-skimmed into a fine spray that struck Sunflower with the force of a sand-blaster. I crouched down from its fury and felt my naked back being stung red by the rain’s lash. I could hear nothing but a maniacal hiss. I looked up once and saw the mast straining. The forestays were bar taut while the twin backstays were bellying out like bows. I dared not look again. The pressure of the wind on the bare pole was driving Sunflower backwards and I could feel the sea’s pressure trying to slew the tiller. I had never known such fury in an Atlantic squall. I’d experienced them in the Pacific, but this was a timely reminder never to take the sea lightly. Then, as suddenly as it had come, the squall went.

  The wind dropped to nothing. A gentle heavy rain pattered down. Behind me I could see the sea being scourged white, but ahead and around Sunflower the water was just a dappled black. The hull seemed to shiver as the cockpit drains gurgled.

  Two other squalls struck, neither as fierce as the first, and an hour after the second the black clouds rent to show sunlight. By nightfall we were under full sail again, beating west and south as though there had been no interruption. I played myself tunes on my penny-whistle and opened a rare bottle of wine. Two dolphins investigated me, and stayed with the boat halfway through the night.

  Next morning the first dawn rays of sun reflected pink on the undersides of the wings of two gulls. It was a sign that I was nearing the Azores and by dusk I could see the white clouds heaping above the mountains of Graciosa. Twelve hours later, after a sweet night’s sail, Sunflower was safe alongside the painted wall in Horta. I recognised two yachts in the busy harbour. One, a graceful double-ender, belonged to an hospitable American couple whom I had last met in Tasmania, while the other, an immaculately maintained wooden yawl, was sailed by an obnoxious Swede who was the bane of every sailor on the seven seas. I asked in the Café Sport where the Americans were. “They had family trouble, Johnny, so they flew home.”

  “That’s a mistake,” I said fervently.

  My own mistake was to go to the Café Sport. I was just addressing a dirty postcard to Charlie when Ulf, the loathsome Swede, slapped my back. “I saw Sunflower here. That’s Johnny, I said to myself. How are you?”

  Because I was back where I belonged and therefore feeling well-disposed to all mankind, even to the gruesome Ul
f, I said I was in wonderful health, which rather disappointed him. I asked how he was.

  “A redundant question, Johnny, as you well know. I do not get the illness, ever. Physical sickness is an aberration of the subconscious mind.” He was off, unstoppable and unbearable. I’d once heard an Australian threaten to break Ulf’s bloody legs to test his theories that all ailments were in the mind, but the trouble is that the repugnant Ulf stands nearly six feet eight inches tall and is built like an advert for steroids.

  He drank lemonade while I drank beer. Once he had expounded his theory of human sickness he launched himself on Sunflower’s ills. “You have a new mast, yes?”

  “Is that what it is, Ulf? I was trying to work out what that big stick was.”

  “I remember telling you to get a new mast. You were wise to take my advice, Johnny. But it should have been a wooden mast. Wooden masts are more easily repaired. Your shrouds are still too far forward.”

  “They’re not.”

  “I know about these things. If you don’t want to move the chain-plates I should take three feet off the mast. That will cure the weather-helm.”

  “Balls. She doesn’t have weather-helm.” Well, a touch, I confessed to myself, but nothing to worry about. “Balls,” I said again.

  He smiled. Ulf always smiles when he’s insulted, and he’s insulted often because he always knows what is wrong with everyone’s boat and, quite unasked, offers his tedious advice. “I shall come and look her over for you, Johnny.”

  “I don’t want you to.”

  “I will make no charge. My only concern is your safety.”

  I ordered another beer. I was trying to think of some outrageous fault which I could assign to Ulf’s yawl, but my imagination wasn’t up to the task. The big bastard kept an exemplary boat.

  “Someone was asking about you last week,” Ulf said suddenly.

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. I just mentioned it.”

  “A man? A woman? A Swede?”

  Ulf missed the feeble joke. He has no sense of humour, just a skin as thick as a shark’s hide. “Just a man,” he said airily. “A Portuguese man, I think. He wore a suit. He wasn’t local, or at least I haven’t seen him since last week.”

  I didn’t like that the man wore a suit. To my mind that made him a suspicious character, but at least it hadn’t been an Englishman which meant that it could not have been Garrard. “Did this man say why he wanted me?”

  “No.”

  “You’re a fat lot of help, Ulf.”

  “I try to be.” He offered me his benevolent smile. “That is my purpose in life. To help people. But the man did say one thing that I found most notable.”

  “What?”

  “That you are an earl of England. A real aristocrat.”

  I spluttered laughter into my beer. “Oh, come off it, Ulf! For Christ’s sake! How long have you known me?”

  “We first met, I remember, in the Marquesas, so it has been just over three years.”

  “Do you really think an earl would be a bare-arsed sailor?”

  “It surprised me, I confess.”

  “It isn’t true. So don’t tell people it is. My father bred laboratory rats and my mother was a marriage guidance counsellor before she did a bunk with one of her clients.”

  He was sceptical. “If you say so, Johnny.”

  “I do say so.”

  “Then I must believe you.” He sipped his lemonade. “And if this mistaken man returns, what do I tell him?”

  “To take a flying fuck at the moon, of course.”

  “It has often occurred to me,” he said blandly, “that in Sweden we do not have such an offensive language as in England.”

  Poor bloody Sweden, I thought. “You haven’t seen me, Ulf.” I laid it on the line for him. “You understand that? I don’t exist. I’ve vanished.”

  “I understand, Johnny. Trust me.”

  I didn’t care who searched for me. I just wanted to be left alone.

  Or almost alone. I lingered a few days in Horta, trying to sense a pattern in the Atlantic weather and hoping that some girl would offer herself as Sunflower’s crew. The delay also gave Ulf a chance to inflict himself on Sunflower. He told me that her cockpit drains were inadequate, her bow fairleads misplaced, and that her self-steering lacked robustness. He told me to replace the aluminium whisker-poles with carbon fibre rods and when I asked him how the hell I was supposed to find carbon fibre rods on some remote islands in the middle of the bloody Atlantic he told me to buy sailboard masts. It was actually a good idea. That’s the trouble with Ulf; he’s usually right, but contrariness makes most people do the very opposite of whatever he advises. He advised me to give up smoking, so I puffed pipe smoke at him till he left.

  That evening I met a Dutch girl who was almost persuaded to jump her friends’ yacht to cross the Atlantic with me, but next morning she thought twice about it before disappearing northwards to mother and safety. I began to think about leaving myself. It wasn’t really the season for a southern run across the Atlantic, and the weather charts were not helpful, so I decided I should sail south, far south. I remembered how Joshua Slocum had set out to sail round the world from west to east, but, chased by pirates off the African shore, had abruptly decided to go east to west instead. If such whimsical decisions were good enough for Joshua and Spray then they were good enough for Johnny and Sunflower, so I dragged out the charts of the southern oceans. There was a river on the coast of Africa where I’d once made some friends and where I knew I could find provisions. Sunflower, despite Ulf’s gloomy prognostications, was in fine fettle and ready to go.

  So, next morning, I bought wine, cheese, fresh fruit and vegetables. I had decided to leave at nightfall. I finished provisioning at midday, sent Georgina and Sister Felicity a postcard, then went down to the cabin to sleep. It was hot and the smell of varnish still lingered in the close air. It was made worse by the odour of powdered boric acid which I’d scattered in the bilges as a lethal present to the Azorean cockroaches. I wore nothing but a faded pair of denim shorts, but I was still sweating. I’d closed the companionway to make a sleep-inducing darkness, but instead of sleeping I lay fretfully awake. I listened to the lap of water on the steel hull and tried to let it lull me into drowsing.

  I had just succeeded in dropping into a half-doze when someone stepped from the quay ladder on to Sunflower’s deck. I swore at the interruption. With any luck it was only someone mooring their boat alongside, but then I heard the footsteps climb down into the cockpit followed by a tentative knock on the closed washboards. “If that’s you, Ulf,” I shouted, “get lost.”

  “Mr Rossendale?” It was a woman’s voice.

  I slid off the bunk and shot back the companionway. The sudden brightness of the afternoon sun made me blink at my visitor. I was so astonished that at first I thought I was sleeping and this was some dream apparition. “Good God in his merciful heaven,” I said in greeting.

  “Good afternoon,” said Jennifer Pallavicini.

  “Hello.” I didn’t know what else to say. Nor, evidently, did she because her customary certitude had deserted her. She was desperately ill at ease, perhaps because, instead of being in an air-conditioned art gallery, she was on a tiny island in a scruffy yacht with a man she had recently accused of being a thief. She looked cool enough, despite the wretched heat, in a loose white blouse and a pair of bleached designer jeans, but there was a timidity in her eyes that seemed unnatural to this chillingly capable girl. I rested my forearms on the washboards. “I’ve been wondering,” I said irrelevantly, “how come an English girl has a name like Pallavicini?”

  “My father was Italian, of course. My mother’s English.”

  “ ‘Was’?” I asked.

  “My father died ten years ago.”

  She said it almost defiantly, as if challenging me to find the right response. I grunted some dutiful regret, then slid the washboards out of place and dumped them on the chart table’s chair. “I can off
er you tea,” I said hospitably, “rotgut Azorean wine, Irish whiskey, beer, orange juice, or instant coffee.”

  “I haven’t come to be sociable, Mr Rossendale.” That was said with a touch of her old asperity.

  “Then stay thirsty, damn you.” I poured myself a mug of the rotgut wine, took it and the bottle to the cockpit and sat down. Jennifer Pallavicini remained standing. “Sir Leon sent me,” she said, as though it entirely explained her presence.

  “I thought you’d come because you found me irresistible. Or was it to apologise?” I saw the flash of angered pride on her face. “Oh, for God’s sake, girl, sit down and have a drink. I won’t poison you.”

  “Tea,” she said as she sat. “Please.”

  Neither of us spoke as I made the tea. This was evidently not to be a very jolly meeting. I remembered she drank her tea without either sugar or milk, so I served it black with a slice of lemon. She thanked me. I asked her how she had known where I was.

  “Sir Leon alerted all the ports where you might be found. We had a man here some days ago, and he arranged with a Swedish yachtsman to tell us if you arrived.”

  Ulf, I thought, the smug, treacherous, bloody bastard. I hoped his precious yawl sank. I didn’t say as much. Instead, because of the searing heat, I rigged the awning over the boom to shade the cockpit. If Jennifer Pallavicini was grateful for my solicitousness, she didn’t thank me.

  I sat down and sipped my warm wine. “Presumably Sir Leon is making one last desperate appeal to me?” She did not reply and I shook my head. “I didn’t steal the bloody thing. I had nothing whatever to do with it.”

  She ignored my denial. Instead, and in a very fervent voice, she asked whether I had liked the Van Gogh.

  Her question, and the sincere tone in which it was asked, took me by surprise. “Yes, I did like it. Very much.” I smiled. “It was like a splinter of sunlight hanging on the wall.”