Wildtrack

by Bernard Cornwell

  She bent back her left ear to show me an adhesive patch. "The chemist says they're infallible." She must have bought the patch when she had gone to fetch my pills and potions, which meant she must have been debating this action for hours.

  "It's going to be rough out there," I warned her. I was letting Sycorax drift on the current in case Angela wanted me to take her back to the pontoon.

  "If you give me a choice now," she said, "I might not stay."

  I did not give her the choice. Instead I gave her the tiller and hauled in the sheets. "Hold this course. See the white pole on the headland? Aim for it."

  I fetched her bag from the foredeck and hoisted the staysail. I was so happy I could have walked on water.

  Then Sycorax's bows hit the waves at the river's bar, the first cold spray shot back like shrapnel, and the three of us were going to sea.

  Part Four

  Angela was seasick.

  For hour after miserable hour, day after night, night after day, she lay shivering and helpless. I tried to make her spend time in the cockpit where the fresh air might have helped, but she shrank away from me. She stayed in the cabin's lee bunk, wrapped in blankets, and retching into a zinc bucket.

  The kitten was fine.

  The kitten seemed to think a world permanently tipped away from the wind and battered by a half-gale was a perfect place. It slept in Angela's lap, giving Angela the one small pleasure she could appreciate, while in the daylight it roamed the boat, performing daredevil acrobatics which made me think it was bound to be washed overboard, yet the little beast had an instinct for avoiding the rush of sea. Once I saw her leap up to the mainsail's tack. She clung to the cotton, legs splayed, as a sea thundered over the coachroof to shatter on the tethered dinghy. The kitten seemed to like the mainsail after that and would sometimes scamper up the sail as I bellowed hopelessly that she'd tear the cotton with her claws. She'd get stuck up by the gaff jaws, looking like a small black spider on a vast chalk wall, but somehow she always found her way down. Her other favourite place was the chart table and every time I opened a chart she would leap on to it and curl up by the dividers. Then she'd purr, defying me to throw her off. I navigated from cat hair to cat hair.

  There was little else to steer Sycorax by. The sky stayed clouded, the nights dark, and, once we had left the Irish lights behind, we were blind. I could not make Bannister's fancy radio-direction finder work; all that happened when I pressed its trigger was that a small red light would glow, then nothing. Finally, in a fit of tired temper, I hurled the damn thing into the sea with a curse on all modern gadgets. I told myself, as I had told myself a million times before, that the Mayflower had reached America without a silicon chip, so I could too.

  So, like the Mayflower, we thrashed north-west under a press of sails. Angela had the lee bunk, the bunk tipped away from the wind, which meant she could not fall out, so I used the weather bunk and snatched hours of sleep curled against the canvas straps that held me in place. I made Thermos flasks of soup that Angela pushed irritably away. I had never been seasick, but I knew well enough what it was like. For the first day she feared she was dying, and thereafter she feared she was not. So much for the chemist's adhesive patch.

  Sycorax thrived. She seemed to be telling me that she had endured enough nonsense in the last months, and this was what she was born to do, and she did it well. There were the usual crop of small problems in the first days. The jib clew began to tear and I temporarily replaced it with the storm jib and spent an evening sewing the stiff cotton tight again. The caulking round my chimney lifted, which was my own fault, and I spent a wet two hours tamping it back. The short-wave radio gave up its ghost after just two days and no amount of coaxing, banging or cursing would bring it back to life. The lack of the radio was more serious than the loss of the radio-direction finder, for without the short wave I could not check the accuracy of my key-wound chronometer. We were sailing by God, by guess, and by the Traverse Tables until the sky cleared and I could take a sight in the hope that the chronometer was keeping good time. There was a deal of water in the bilges whenever I pumped her, but I'd expected that. The caulked seams would tighten soon enough.

  My greatest problem was my own tiredness. Angela could not help, so I was having to sail both day and night. I still had not rigged the broken self-steering gear which was stowed under the tender, but Sycorax had always sailed well enough with shortened sail and a pegged tiller while I slept. Such a procedure presupposed a constant wind direction, and entailed frequent wakings to check the compass headings. The worst moment came eight nights after we'd put to sea when a cleat horn snapped clean off and I woke to the hammering panic of the staysail flapping. The boat was rolling like a drunk on the swells as I struggled on to deck.

  Rain was seething in the darkness as I turned Sycorax into the wind, backed the jib, and sheeted the main across. Then, with my lifeline locked on, I went forward to find the lost sheet. It took me ten minutes to bring it back to the cockpit, belay it over the jib cleat, and settle the boat back on her compass heading. My nightlights flickered on the shrouds while, beyond them, ghostly and fretting, the crests were shattering white as they rolled towards us. I pumped the bilges, then, in my rain-soaked oilies, climbed back over the washboards. Angela woke and groaned. "What happened?"

  "Cleat broke, nothing to worry about."

  "Why don't you have proper winches like Tony?"

  I thought the question showed a return of interest; perhaps even the first symptom of resurrection. "Because they're flashy nasty modern things that would look wrong on Sycorax, and because they cost over a hundred pounds apiece." I felt my back aching as I tugged off the stiff, wet oilskins. "Do you want something to eat?"

  "God, no." She groaned again as the boat slammed into a wave. "Where are we?"

  "West of Ireland, east of Canada."

  "Are we sinking?"

  "Not yet. But the wind's piped up a bit."

  I woke an hour later to feel the boat pitching and corkscrewing. I oilied up, then went topsides again to find the weather was brewing trouble. I took down the main and hoisted my loose-footed storm trysail instead. I dropped the jib and reefed the mizzen. The boat was still unbalanced, trying to broach into the hissing seas, so I took down the trysail and re-rigged it as a mizzen staysail. That stiffened Sycorax nicely, and she needed stiffening for the sea was heaving like a landscape gone mad. We were far north now, so the night was light and short and I could see that the wind and heavy rain were creaming the wavetops smooth and covering the valleys with a fine sheet of white foam. Sycorax buried her bowsprit twice, staggered up, and the water came streaming back towards the cockpit to mix with the pelting rain. I had neither dodgers nor sprayhood, though the lashed tender offered some small forward protection from the sea. I pumped the bilges every few minutes.

  For the rest of that night, all the next day, and into the following night, that wind and sea pounded and shivered us. I slept for an hour in the morning, woke to the madness, pumped for a half-hour, and slept again. I took Benzedrine. By the midnight of the gale's second night the wind was slackening and the sea's insistent blows were lessening, so I pegged the tiller, left the sails short, and crawled into my bunk. Angela was weeping in despair, but I had no energy to soothe her. I only wanted oblivion in sleep.

  I slept five hours, mostly in half-wake dreaming, then crawled from the damp bunk to find the gale had passed. I forced myself out of the sleeping bag, pulled on a soaking sweater, and went topsides to see a long, long swell fretted with small and angry waves that were the remnants of the wind's passage. I took down the mizzen staysail, unlashed the boom and gaff, hoisted the main and jib, then unreefed the mizzen. I pumped the bilge till my back could take no more pain. I was hurting in every bone and muscle. This was called sailing, but the wind had dropped to force four and there were rents in the dawn clouds that promised sunshine. The sea glinted silver in the west and I leaned on the coachroof, too tired to move, and thanked Sycorax for al
l she had done. I patted her coachroof and spoke my thanks out loud.

  The cat, hearing my voice, protested that she had not been fed for hours. I slid back the hatch and climbed down into the soaked cabin. The cat rubbed itself against my legs. I no longer called her Angel, for every time I did Angela answered. I opened a tin of cat food and was so hungry I was tempted to wolf it down myself. Instead I cleaned up the cabin sole, including the spilt contents of the zinc bucket, and tried to persuade myself that this was indeed the life that I had dreamed of in those long hospital nights.

  An hour later a Russian Aurora Class missile-cruiser cleared the northern horizon. She was escorted by two destroyers that sniffed suspiciously towards Sycorax. I dutifully lowered and raised my Red Ensign. That courtesy over, and duly answered by the dipping of a destroyer's hammer and sickle, I switched on the VHF. "Yacht Sycorax to Russian naval vessel. Do you read me, over?"

  "Good morning, little one. Over." The operator must have been expecting my call for he answered instantly. He sounded horribly cheerful, as though he had a bellyful of coffee and fried egg, or whatever else constituted a hearty Russian breakfast.

  "Can you give me a position and time check?" We stayed on the emergency channel which was hardly likely to disturb anyone this far out to sea. "Over."

  "I don't know if our American satellite equipment is working," he chuckled. "Wait. Over."

  I smiled at his answer and felt the salt crack on my face. A minute later he gave me a position and a countdown to an exact second. He wished me luck, then the three grey warships slithered southwards through the fretting sea.

  We'd done well. We'd cleared the tail of the Rockall Plateau, though I was further north than I'd wanted. If Bannister was doing half as well in his faster boat, then he'd take the St Pierre, so long as he lived to do it. My chronometer had stayed accurate to within a second, which was comforting.

  "Who were you talking to?" Angela rolled over in her bunk.

  "A Russian destroyer. He gave us our position."

  "The Russians help you?" she sounded incredulous.

  "Why on earth shouldn't they?" I gently pushed the cat off the Rockall Plateau and made a pencil cross on the chart. "Would you like some coffee?"

  "Please."

  Resurrection had definitely started. I made the coffee, then scrambled some eggs. Angela said she could not possibly eat any eggs, but five minutes later she tentatively tried a spoonful of mine, then stole the mug from me and wolfed the whole lot down.

  "More?"

  "Please." I made more. Resurrection was on course. She found her cigarettes and lit one. In the afternoon that we'd spent provisioning Sycorax, Angela had hidden twenty cartons of cigarettes in the forepeak, just as she'd stowed a second sleeping bag and a set of foul-weather gear on board. "Just in case I decided to come," she'd explained. Now she smoked her cigarette in the cockpit where she blinked at the misty grey light. She reached behind her ear and tore off the small patch. "So much for modern science." She tossed it overboard. She looked dreadful; pale as ash, stringy haired and red-eyed.

  "Good morning, beautiful," I said.

  "I hope you haven't got a mirror on this damned boat." She stared disconsolately around the horizon, seeing nothing but the long grey swells. Behind us the clouds were dark as sin, while ahead the sky was a sodden grey. She frowned at me. "Do you really like this life, Nick?"

  "I love it."

  The cat did its business on the windward scuppers where it had somehow learned that the sea cleaned up after it, then it stepped delicately down on to Angela's lap where it began its morning session of self-satisfied preening. "You can't call her Angel," Angela said.

  "Why not?"

  "Because I don't like it. Call her Pixie."

  "I am not going to have a bloody cat called Pixie."

  "All right." She scratched the cat's chin. "Vicky."

  "Why Vicky?"

  "After the Victoria Cross, of course."

  "That's immodest."

  "Who's to know if you don't tell them?"

  "I'll know."

  Angela growled at my intransigence. "She's called Vicky, and that's the end of it. Do I look really awful?"

  "Absolutely hideous. Loathsome, in fact."

  "Thank you, Nick."

  "What you do now," I said, "is go below, undress, wash all over, dry all over, put on clean clothes, comb your hair, then come out singing."

  "Aye, aye, sir."

  "Then open the forehatch to air the boat. Then sit here and steer 289 while I sleep."

  "On my own?" She sounded alarmed.

  "You can have Cat for company."

  "Vicky."

  "You can have Vicky for company," I said.

  She's been Vicky ever since.

  That night the sky clouded again and I was woken in the short darkness to hear the water seething past the hull and I knew we were getting the spinning backlash of yet another gale.

  Angela was sick again, but not so badly. She was becoming accustomed to the boat, even to its chemical loo. I'd assured her that constipation could not last clean across the Atlantic, and had been rewarded with a sour look.

  But the next couple of days brought colour to her cheeks. She began to eat properly. I did all the cooking, for there is something about cooking on a boat that prompts seasickness.

  We ran fast in those days. We saw no other sails, only a trawler steaming west and another warship heading north. The contrails of aircraft laced the sky; jumbo jets carrying their huddled masses between the world's great cities. The passengers, if they looked down at all, would have seen the wrinkles of a featureless sea, while we, leaning to the wind, watched a whale blow its vents. Angela stared like a child. "I never thought I'd see that," she said in wonder.

  But most of the time she talked of her husband and I detected how desperately she needed to justify her presence on Sycorax. "He's more likely to believe the warning if he hears my voice on the radio," she would say. "He'll know it's serious if I go to these lengths to reach him, won't he?"

  "Sure," I would say. I was treating her like porcelain. My own belief was that Bannister would be mad as hell when he discovered his new wife had sailed the Atlantic with another man, but Angela did not need that kind of truth.

  "I can't believe he's really in danger," she said that evening.

  "Danger's like that," I said. "It didn't seem real in the Falklands, either. War didn't seem real. We'd trained for it, but I don't think any of us really thought we'd end up fighting. I remember thinking how bloody daft it was. I shouldn't have been thinking at all. I was supposed to be counting the rounds I'd fired, but I clean forgot to do it. That's what we were trained to do. Count the bloody rounds so you knew when to change magazines, you see, but I was just laughing! It wasn't real. I kept pulling the trigger and suddenly there were no more bullets up my spout and this bloody great bloke with a submachine-gun appeared in a bunker to my left and all I had." I shrugged. "Sorry. Talking too much."

  Angela was sitting next to me in the cockpit. "And all you had was what?"

  "Did we bring any pickled onions?"

  "Was that when you were wounded?" she insisted.

  "Yes."

  "So what happened?"

  I mimed a bayonet stroke. "Mucky."

  She frowned. "You were shot then?"

  "Not for another minute. I was like a wet hen. I couldn't go back, because it would have looked as if I'd bottled out, so I kept on going. I remember shouting like a bloody maniac, though for the life of me I can't remember what I was shouting. It's stupid, really, but I'd like to remember that."

  Angela frowned at me. "Why wouldn't you talk like that on the film?"

  "I don't know." I paused. "Because I'd made a balls of everything, if you really want the truth. I'd gone to the wrong place, I was frightened as hell, and I thought we were about to be worked over by a bunch of bloody Argies. I just panicked, nothing more."

  "That's not what the citation says."

  "It was
dark. No one could see what was happening."

  She mistook my tone, which was dismissive. "Do you regret the fighting now?"

  "Christ, no!"

  "No?"

  "Queen and Country, my love."

  She stared incredulously at me. "You really do mean that, don't you?"

  Of course I meant it, but there wasn't time to say any more, for the sun had dropped and conditions were perfect for taking a sight. I fetched Bannister's expensive sextant with its built-in electronic stopwatch and brought a star sweetly down to the twilit horizon.

  The wind dropped the next day. There was still a modicum of warmth in the mid-day sun, but by early afternoon we were both swathed in sweaters, scarves and oilskins. That night, after I'd plotted our position, I called Angela on deck to see the aurora borealis that was filling the northern sky with its great scrims of curving and shifting colours. She stared in enchantment. "I thought the Northern Lights only showed in winter?"

  "All year round. You can see them from London sometimes."

  "No!"

  "Two or three nights a year," I said. "But you city-dwellers never look. Or else you've got so many neon lights on that you drown it out."

  A great coral-coloured lightfall shimmered and faded in the twilight as Sycorax's booms slatted across in an involuntary but slow gybe. If I had been racing in the St Pierre I would have been fretting because of this calm. The sea was flattening to a sheen of gun metal while Angela and I sat in the cockpit and watched the magic lights drape the northern sky.

  "Do you know what I forgot?" Angela broke our silence.

  "Tell me."

  "A passport."

  I smiled. "I shall tell the Canadians that I kidnapped you."

  She turned on the thwart so that she could lean against me. It was the first intimate gesture that either of us had made since she had first stepped aboard. She gazed at a vast ripple of star-dusted blue light. "Do you know why I came, Nick?"

  "Tell me."

  "I wanted to be with you. It wasn't because of your leg, and I'm not really sure that Tony's in danger. I know I should believe it, but I don't." She lit herself a cigarette. "I was angry."