Bernard Cornwell

by Wildtrack

  Tony Bannister grasped the nettle, though. "I'm glad you've come, Nick."

  "Somewhat under protest," I said stiffly.

  "I'm sure." We were motoring across the bar, between the rocky headlands where the breakers smashed white. To starboard I could see the waves breaking on the Calfstone Shoal. "I think," Bannister said awkwardly, "that we'd better let bygones be bygones. We behaved badly, but I would have told you about Fanny, and you would have got your medal back."

  "I just don't like dishonesty."

  "I think you've made that very plain. Let's just agree that we'll try harder?"

  For the sake of peace, and because we seemed stuck with each other's company, I agreed.

  We had bucked our way across the bar and Mulder now ordered the sails hoisted. He killed the engine, folded the propellor blades, and instantly Wildtrack became a creature in her element. She was no longer defying the sea with her diesel fuel and churning blades, now she was caught in the balance of wind and water. The sails were vast and white, swooping her gracefully southwards into the face of a brisk south-westerly wind.

  Bannister and I sat in the central cockpit. Mulder must have known I was watching him and he must have guessed how I wanted to despise his seamanship.

  But he was good.

  I wanted him to be a butcher of a helmsman. I wanted him to be as crude as his physical appearance suggested. But instead he displayed a confident and rare skill. I'd expected him to be that most hateful of creatures, the loud and strident skipper, but his orders were given without fuss. His crew of seven men, identically dressed in blue and white kit, were drilled to a quiet efficiency, but the star of the boat was Fanny Mulder. He had an instinctive, almost gentle, touch and I knew, right from the beginning, that he was a natural. He was good.

  And I was suddenly, unexpectedly happy. Not because I'd made a precarious peace with Bannister, but because I was at sea. I was watching my dark Devon coast slip away. Already the small beaches were indistinct, hidden by the heave of grey waves. I could look back into the river's mouth and I saw what I had forgotten; how the inland hills were so green and soft, while the sea-facing slopes were so wind battered and dark that it almost seemed as if the river was a wound cut into a crust of matter to reveal the softer flesh within.

  I looked seaward. A Westerly was beating under full sail towards Dartmouth. A grey misshapen mass on the horizon betrayed a fleet auxiliary heading for Plymouth. A lobsterman coming from Start Point thudded past us in a stained boat heaped with pots and buoys and I thought I detected a derisive expression on the skipper's face as he glanced at Bannister's fancy boat. I would not have chosen a boat like Wildtrack to take me back to the ocean, but suddenly that did not matter. I was back where the hospital had said I would never be, and I could smell the sea and I could feel its lash in the spray and I could have cried for happiness when I saw the first fulmar come arrowing down to flick its careless flight along a wave's shifting face.

  "You look happy." Bannister had taken the wheel from Mulder.

  "It's good to be back." There was an awkward moment when neither of us had anything to say. Mulder had disappeared, sent down to the main cabin while Bannister conned the boat. I suspected, and later confirmed by observation, that Mulder was not to be included in the film. The audience would have to understand that it was the beloved Tony Bannister who was rescuing me. He looked impressive as he stood at the big wheel. His legs were braced, his face tanned, and his hair wind-stirred. On film he would look marvellous, like a Viking in a designer floatcoat.

  "What do you think of the boat?" he asked me.

  "Impressive." The truth was that I preferred my yachts to be old-fashioned. I'd never cared overmuch for speed, but Wildtrack cared so much that her digital log was accurate to one hundredth of a knot.

  Yet, in her way, I suppose Wildtrack was an impressive boat. She was certainly expensive. The main cockpit was in the boat's centre, but there was a rear cockpit, aft of the owner's cabin, which would serve as a sundeck when the boat was in warmer seas. She was a boat built for the world's rich, complete with digital logs offering a ludicrous accuracy and motor-driven winches and weather faxes and satellite receivers and running hot water and air-conditioning and ice-making machinery and power-steering. The old seamen who had sailed from Devon, Raleigh and Drake, Howe and Nelson, would have understood Sycorax immediately, but they would have been flummoxed by the silicon-chip efficiency of this sleek creature.

  They would have been flummoxed, too, by the extraordinary equipment which the film crew had deployed on the coachroof. Bannister saw my nervousness and tried to reassure me. "The idea is to film a background interview today. How you learned to sail, where, who taught you, why. We'll chop it all to ribbons, of course, and cut it in with some old home movies of you as a kid. Does that sound good to you?"

  "It sounds bloody foul."

  "Let's give it a whirl when we're ready."

  The cameraman was filming general views of the boat, but was inexorably working his way aft to where Bannister and I waited in the central cockpit. I noticed how Bannister fidgeted with the boat. He constantly checked the wind-direction indicator on the dashboard, then twitched the helm to keep the small liquid-crystal boat-shape constant on the tactical screen. Mulder had not needed the electronic aids to sail Wildtrack at her highest speed, but Mulder was a natural helmsman and Bannister was not. He suddenly seemed uncomfortably aware of my gaze. "Would you like to take her, Nick?"

  "Sure."

  "We're steering 195," Bannister said as he stepped aside.

  "195." I glanced down at the compass. So long as the wind did not change, and this wind seemed set for eternity, I only had to keep one finger on the big stainless-steel and power-assisted wheel to compensate for Wildtrack 's touch of weatherhelm. The sea was not big enough to jolt the big yacht off her course. A few waves shuddered the hull, but I noted with relief how my balance seemed unaffected by them. I sensed a gust, luffed into it for speed, and then paid off with the extra half knot staying on the fancy speedometer. I did it without thinking and knew in that moment that nothing had changed.

  It isn't hard to sail a boat. The hard bit is the sea's moods and the wind's fretting. The hard bit is surviving shoals and squalls and tidal rips. The hard bit is navigating in a filthy night, or reefing down in a shrieking storm when your body is already so wet and cold and tired that all you want to do is die. But putting a boat into a wind's grip and holding her there is as easy as falling off a cliff. Anyone can do it.

  However, sailing a boat well takes practice that turns into instinct. I had found, at that moment when I added the small pulse of speed to the long hull, that the instincts had not been abraded by the years of hospitals and pain. Nothing had changed, and I was back where I wanted to be.

  The cameraman had appeared close in front of me. The clapperboard snapped, and I gritted my teeth and tried to forget the lens's intrusive presence.

  "Tell me when you first sailed, Nick?" Bannister asked.

  "Long time ago." I was watching the wind-kicked spray shredding from the rocks off Start Point. We were overtaking a big Moody that was idling along while its crew lunched in the cockpit. They waved.

  "Tell me how you started?" Bannister insisted. The sound-recordist crouched at my feet and thrust a long grey phallus of a microphone up towards my face.

  Bannister had to coax me, but suddenly I found it easy to talk. I spoke of Jimmy teaching me in a dipping-lug dinghy, and I talked of stealing my father's boats to explore the Channel coast, and I described a bad night, much later on, when Sycorax had clawed me off the Roches Douvres, and I still swear that it was Sycorax who saved my life in that carnage of rock and rain. I should never have been under the lash of that northerly gale, but I'd promised to pick up a fellow lieutenant in St Malo and somehow Sycorax had kept the promise for me. I must have talked enthusiastically, for Bannister seemed pleased with what he heard.

  "When you were wounded," he asked, "did you ever think you'
d be back in a boat?"

  "I thought of nothing else."

  "But at the very first, in battle, didn't you give up hope?"

  "I wasn't too aware of anything at that moment." Now that he was talking about the Falklands I heard my answers becoming sullen and short.

  "What actually happened," he asked, "when you were wounded?"

  "I got shot."

  He smiled as though to put me at my ease. "What actually happened, Nick, when you won the VC?"

  "Do you want to cross the Skerries?" I nodded ahead to where the shallow bank off Start Point was making the tide turbulent.

  "The VC, Nick?" he prompted me.

  "You want to go inshore of the Skerries?" I asked. "We'll get the help of the tidal current there."

  Bannister, realizing that he was not going to draw me on the medal, smiled. "How does it feel," he asked instead, "to be in a boat again?"

  I hesitated, searching for the right words. I wanted to say I'd let him know just as soon as I was in a proper boat, and not in some hyper-electronic Tupperware speed-machine, but that was unfair to the pleasure I was having, and the thought of that pleasure made me smile.

  "Cut!" Matthew Cooper called to his cameraman.

  "I didn't answer!" I protested.

  "The smile said everything, Nick." Cooper looked back towards Angela in the aft cockpit and I saw him nod. The performing dog, it seemed, had done well.

  Bannister, off camera now, crouched to light a cigarette with a gold-plated storm lighter. "You're going to have to answer those unwelcome questions, Nick."

  "I am?" I let Wildtrack's bows fall off the wind to take us east of the broken water.

  "You can't be coy about the medal, you know. The reason we're making the film is because you're a hero."

  "I thought we were making it because it was your thug who damaged my boat?"

  He smiled. "Touché. But you will have to tell us. Not today, maybe, but one day."

  I shrugged. It seemed that this day's filming was over because the camera crew began to pack up their equipment as Mulder took the wheel from me. To escape from the South African's sullen company I explored Wildtrack. I'd been worried before I came aboard that my injuries might have made my balance treacherous, but I found no difficulty in keeping my footing as I went to the foredeck. There was pain in my back, though I fancied that the regular morning swimming in Bannister's pool had done wonders to strengthen the muscles and dull the discomfort. I was more worried about my right leg which still shook uncontrollably and threatened to spill me like a drunk. That weakness was at its worst when I was tired, which was hardly an encouragement for single-handed sailing across the world, but at least my mobility on Wildtrack 's deck gave me optimism. I used the handrails and shrouds for support, but I would have done that even if I had never been wounded.

  I dropped down a hatch and saw how the forepeak had been stripped empty to make the bows light. The main cabin showed the same dedication for speed. I'd expected a lavish comfort pit, but luxury had been sacrificed for lightness. What money had been spent had gone on navigational equipment; there was Loran, Decca, Satnav, even an Omega to trap very low frequency radio waves transmitted around the globe. The only thing I could not see was a sextant.

  The rear cabin, approached through a narrow tunnel that ran abaft the centre cockpit, was more lavishly furnished and it was clear that these were Bannister's quarters. There was an air-conditioner, a heater, even a television and a VCR built into the bulkhead at the foot of the bunk.

  Above the double bunk, framed and screwed to the bulkhead, was a photograph of Nadeznha. There was a line of print on the photograph's vignette and I knelt on the bunk to read it: 'Nadeznha Bannister, 1956-1983, 49° 18' N, 41° 36' W'.

  I stared into the dead girl's dark eyes that were now so familiar to me from all the other pictures I'd seen. She had been no attenuated blonde like Melissa or Angela, but a robust girl with dark skin and strong bones. It seemed a terrible waste that her bones were in the ocean's deep darkness.

  The cabin's rear hatch slid forward and Bannister swung himself down. He seemed surprised to find me in his quarters, but made no protest. He nodded towards the photograph. "My wife."

  "She was very beautiful," I said.

  He pulled open the sliding door to the head and took something from a locker there. I saw it was a phial of seasickness capsules. He turned and stared at the photograph. "Greek, Arab, French, Persian and American blood. A wonderful mix. Mind you, it also gave her a fearful temper." He somehow made the temper sound like one of his wife's more endearing characteristics. "She could be very determined," he went on, "especially about sailing. She was so damned sure she could win the St Pierre, which is why she was pushing the boat so hard."

  "Is that what killed her?" I asked brutally.

  "We don't know, not really." He offered a theatrical pause as though speaking of his wife's death was painful. "It was a dirty night," he said at last, "a following sea, and Wildtrack was pooped. That's usually caused because you're travelling too fast, isn't it? And I think Nadeznha must have unclipped her safety harness for a few seconds."

  He'd told me nothing that I had not read in the inquest's transcript. "She was alone?" I prompted him.

  "She was alone at the aft wheel." He nodded towards the small rear cockpit. "The other person on watch had gone forward to tighten the vang." He'd used the American term for the kicking strap. "The rest of us were sleeping. But she was a marvellous sailor. Grew up in Massachusetts, you see, near the sea. She was sailing a boat when most of us are still learning to ride a tricycle. I used to tease her that she had Phoenician blood, and perhaps she did."

  I looked back to the photograph.

  "We searched, of course. Quartered the sea for the best part of a day." Bannister's voice was toneless now, as though the events had been numbed by repetition. "But in those waters?

  She'd have been dead in minutes." He clutched at a handrail as the boat lurched from the starboard on to the port tack. Mulder was putting the crew through their racing paces and Wildtrack 's motion was becoming rough. Bannister plucked a blanket from the foot of the bunk. "Will you forgive me? Angela's not exactly a born sailor."

  I followed him up the companionway to the aft cockpit where Angela, now with a heavy sweater over her shorts and shirt, lay sprawled in abject misery. She grimaced to see me, then heaved, twisted, and thrust her head through the guardrails. I looked at her tall body draped over the scuppers and I saw in her long bare legs part of the reason why Bannister kept company with this prickly and angry girl. She was truly beautiful. He saw me looking, and I felt his pride of possession like a small sting.

  Angela came back inboard and curled herself into the crook of Bannister's arm. He wrapped her in the blanket, then fed her two of the pills which, I knew, would do no good now. "There's only one cure for seasickness," I said heartlessly.

  "Which is?" Bannister asked.

  "Stand under a tree."

  "Very funny." He held her tight. "What do you think of Fanny now?" he asked me.

  "I think he's a Boer brute."

  Bannister offered me an assured and tolerant smile. "I mean, what do you think of him as a helmsman?"

  "He's good." I tried to sound ungrudging. Mulder was gybing the boat now, swinging her stern across the wind so that the boom slammed across the hull. It could be a dangerous manoeuvre, but his control was so certain that there was never a single jarring thud. At the same time he had his foredeckmen changing jibs. As soon as one was made fast Mulder ordered it changed. "He's very good," I added truthfully.

  "Nadeznha found him. He was running a charter service in the Seychelles. She nicknamed him Caliban. Don't you find that a good omen?"

  Caliban was the monstrous son of the witch, Sycorax. "No." I looked at the prostrate Angela. "Is she your Ariel?"

  Bannister did not want to pursue the fancy. "Fanny's good," he said, "and very few people know just how good he is. Think of him as my secret weapon to win the S
t Pierre. That's why I need him, Nick."

  I grunted. The hour and a half I'd spent on Wildtrack was not enough to tell me whether this boat and crew could lift the St Pierre off the French, but I allowed it was possible. The boat was fast, Fanny was clearly brilliant, and Bannister had the ambition.

  And he would need it, for the St Pierre is the greatest prize of racing-cruisers.

  The French organize it. There's no big prize money, and it isn't really a race at all because an entrant can choose his or her own starting time. The only rules are that a boat must be a production monohull and not some skinny one-off built for the event, that it must begin at Cherbourg, sail round the islands of St Pierre and Miquelon off the coast of Newfoundland, then, without touching land, run home to Cherbourg again. The course is around four and a half thousand nautical miles: a windward flog all the way out against currents and gales; a lottery with fog and ice at the turn; and a fast run back in heavy seas. At the end of the season, whoever has made the fastest voyage holds the prize.

  Odd rules, but there's wily method in the Gallic madness. For a start, there's a political method. European rule of North America ended long ago, except in two tiny and forgotten islands, St Pierre and Miquelon. They're French possessions, ruled from Paris, unconsidered island trifles that were never swept up by the British and were overlooked by the Canadians. The race is thus a constant reminder to the French that the Tricolour still flies on North American soil.

  Then there's a more hard-headed purpose to the rules. French boats are good. The Jeanneaus, Centurions and Beneteaus have dominated the St Pierre and each successive win has been an advertising triumph to sell more French boats around the globe. To win the St Pierre a boat has to be good, hardy and fast. Each year a score of factory-prepared boats from Britain, America, Holland, Germany and Finland try to crack the race, and each autumn, when the fog and ice sweep southwards to finally close the St Pierre season, the French are still the holders and a thousand more orders go to keep French boatyards busy. As a marketing tool, the St Pierre is a miracle, and if a foreigner could take the prize, even for a year, it would be seen in France as a disaster.