The Sunken Sailor

by Patricia Moyes

  “He looks inoffensive enough,” said Emmy.

  “So he is,” said Rosemary, “but he’s Herbert’s deadly enemy. The two of them are in a permanent state of feud.”

  “Good heavens,” said Henry. “What about?”

  “Boats,” said Alastair. “You see, they each run a boatyard, and everyone down here employs one or other of them to do repairs, keep the boat baled out in the summer, lay her up in the winter, and so on. Bill only opened up a couple of years ago, and before that Herbert had everything his own way. But Bill’s a young man, and a very efficient boatman. So more and more of Herbert’s clients are going over to the other camp. Of course, Herbert has one enormous advantage.”

  “What’s that?” Henry asked.

  “He’s the Harbour Master,” said Alastair, “and the Harbour Master controls most of the moorings in the river, which are Council property. So if you entrust your boat to Herbert, you’ve a much better chance of getting a decent position. Poor old Herbert—if he ever lost that job, he’d be done for.”

  “I shouldn’t think there’s any fear of that,” said Rosemary. “Old Harbour Masters go on till they drop dead. He’d have to do something really frightful before Trinity House fired him.”

  The bar door swung open, and a tall, lanky man with fair hair and a weather-beaten face came in. Alastair and Rosemary jumped up.

  “David! So you’ve made it! Why are you so late?”

  “Beastly car broke down outside Chelmsford. Petrol pump. Had to mend it.”

  “Have a beer, David,” said Alastair. “Oh, by the way, meet our crew—Henry and Emmy Tibbett. This is David Crowther.”

  “Sorry I can’t shake hands,” said David, with an attractive smile. He held out a pair of grimy paws. “Covered in oil from the car. Thanks, Alastair. I’ll come and help you.”

  The two men pushed their way to the bar, and Rosemary said, “You’ll adore David. He’s one of the Fleet.”

  “What does that mean?” Emmy asked.

  “Oh, it’s just what we call ourselves,” said Rosemary. “There are five boats”—she checked herself, and amended—“there were five, I mean. Only four now. Ariadne, Tideway, Pocahontas—that’s David’s boat—and Mary Jane. We’re all friends, and we tend to sail in company and meet up for drinks in the evening. Then we all get together for a Laying-Up Dinner in London at the end of the season and make speeches and pretend to be a proper club. It all sounds very silly, I suppose,” she ended, lamely, “but we enjoy ourselves.”

  David came back with three brimming pint mugs.

  “Signal from Mary Jane,” he said. “Anne has to work in the morning, so she and Colin won’t be down till the afternoon. They wanted us to go on to Walton without them, but I said we’d just have a day sail tomorrow and meet them here in the evening. Hope that’s O.K. with you.”

  “Fine,” said Rosemary.

  “Actually,” David added, “I probably won’t go out tomorrow. Lots of odd jobs to do on board.”

  “Lazy devil,” remarked Alastair, coming up behind him with the remaining beers. “Oh, well, we’ll just have to stooge around and show Henry and Emmy the finer points of sailing. When’s the tide?”

  David gave him a severe look. “What have you been doing all the week—working?” he asked scornfully. “Too busy to look up your tide tables? High water 6.41 A.M. And I trust you’ll be up to catch it.”

  David stayed for only one drink. “I’m dead tired and filthy,” he remarked, “and the tide’s going out fast. You may enjoy lugging your dinghy half a mile over the mud, but I don’t. See you tomorrow.”

  It was some time and several beers later when the barman broke into one of Herbert’s lengthier reminiscences with his pessimistic chant of “Time, Gentlemen—if you please!” Herbert departed with alacrity, consulting a massive watch on a gold chain, and announcing that he never stayed until closing time because he had some consideration for Mrs. Hole, the poor soul, and her with her feet. Henry and Emmy finished their beer, and walked out into the cold, fresh night, feeling that life as they knew it was a million miles away, and that they were now and for ever involved in the small, slow, beautiful events of Berrybridge Haven. The beer lent a warming, sentimental glow, and the stars were shining in a black velvet sky.

  “Now for getting aboard,” said Alastair briskly. “You drive the car down the hard, Rosemary love, while Henry and I get the dinghy.”

  The tide was very low now, and Rosemary was able to drive the station wagon down the hard almost to the water’s edge, where she and Emmy unloaded it. Henry, his lyrical mood rapidly evaporating, found himself padding about on the damp mud with Alastair, searching for Ariadne’s dinghy by the light of the moon, augmented by a small torch. It was very cold. They found the dinghy eventually—a small, varnished rowing boat lying forlornly on the shore.

  “Right,” said Alastair. “I’ll take the bows if you take the stern.”

  “Where to?” Henry asked.

  “Down to the water, of course,” said Alastair. He nodded towards the ink-black river, a quarter of a mile away across the silvery mud. “I should take your shoes off, if I were you,” he added, “and roll your trousers up. You’ll only get them soaked.”

  Henry found it difficult to believe that a small boat could weigh so much. As he staggered through the chilly, oozing, ankle-deep mud, his alcoholic-sentimental mood suffered an abrupt sea change, and his thoughts turned longingly to hotwater bottles and centrally heated London flats. Soon, however, the satisfaction of manual labour asserted itself, and with it the realization of the true beauty of his surroundings. Panting from exertion, he stood with Alastair on the end of the hard, straining his eyes to follow the fast-vanishing shape of the dinghy on the dark water as Rosemary and Emmy rowed out with the first load of gear, and savouring the salty, nostalgic smell of the river and the quiet glory of the stars. Then Rosemary returned, the two men and the remaining picnic-baskets were loaded into the dinghy.

  Soon a dark hull loomed above them, with lamplight glowing reassuringly from her open hatch. They scrambled on board into the snug warmth of the cabin, where coffee was already brewing on a hissing Primus stove. Tired and content, Henry and Emmy drank coffee and brandy, and were nodding drowsily even before the two green sleeping bags had been stretched out for them on the hard floor of the fo’c’sle. As their heads touched the rolled-up sweaters which served as pillows, they were both engulfed in a dreamless, utterly satisfying sleep.

  CHAPTER TWO

  HENRY WOKE NEXT MORNING to the sound of sausages sizzling in the pan, and a delicious smell of newly fried bacon. Through the dispersing mists of sleep he became aware of a steaming white mug of tea beside his face, and then of Rosemary, grinning at him through the curtains that separated the fo’c’sle from the main cabin.

  “Come on, lazybones,” she said cheerfully, “It’s a gorgeous morning. We’ve been up for hours. Breakfast’s nearly ready.”

  She withdrew into the cabin again, like a retreating snail, and reappeared a moment later with a blue enamel bowl.

  “Hot water for washing,” she said. “You’ll have to share it. Can’t spare any more. No need to shave unless you feel like it. And if you want to spend a penny, use the bucket.”

  With that, she disappeared. Henry struggled stiffly out of his sleeping bag into a sitting position, took a gulp of tea, and looked around him. Last night he had been too exhausted to take in the details of Ariadne’s living accommodation. Now he saw that he and Emmy were ensconced in a narrow, triangular section in the bows of the boat, where there was just room for two sleeping bags to be laid side by side. The frames and timbers of the boat, which formed the walls, were painted gleaming white, and hung with coils of rope: beyond Henry’s feet, in the tapering bows, bulging canvas sailbags were stacked: between Emmy and himself, a stout anchor chain ran down from a hole in the decking to disappear through another opening in the floor boards. Overhead, sunshine slanted in through the square forehatch, which had been prop
ped slightly open for ventilation. There was just enough room to sit up in comfort.

  Henry woke Emmy, and when they had washed and dressed, they pulled back the curtains and crawled through into the main cabin.

  Here it was possible to stand nearly upright, thanks to the fact that the level of the floor was lower, and the roof built up. Sunshine flooded in, through the skylight in the ceiling and through the open hatch which led to the cockpit. The cabin was about ten feet long by eight feet wide, and its layout followed the traditional pattern which contrives to cram an amazing amount of comfort and storage space into such limited dimensions. Two bunks—now made up for the daytime into settees, with bright red covers and blue cushions—ran down the sides, while in the centre a folding table was set up for breakfast. Between the bunks and the cockpit, there were, on one side, a small galley containing a doubleburner Primus stove, with a plate rack above it and a cupboard below, and on the other, a large locker for storing food, saucepans and crockery. On the wall above one bunk was a neat rack for books, in which Henry noticed Reid’s Nautical Almanack, a well-thumbed copy of East Coast Rivers, The Yachtsman’s Weekend Book, The Venturesome Voyages of Captain Voss, Joshua Slocum’s Sailing Alone Round the World, Peter Heaton’s Sailing and Cruising, and a battered and outdated copy of Lloyd’s Register of Shipping. A similar rack above the other bunk held a selection of charts, rolled up neatly and secured with elastic bands. Another rack held a small fire extinguisher, and a fourth, a portable wireless set.

  On the varnished bulkhead, a shining brass oil lamp swung in gimbals, and this was flanked on one side by a white-faced, brassbound clock, and on the other by a matching barometer. As in the fo’c’sle, white paint alternated with bronzed varnish: the effect was spruce, comfortable and exceedingly attractive.

  Rosemary was sitting on the step that led up to the cockpit, breaking eggs into a frying pan.

  “Won’t be a moment,” she said. “The coffee’s just percolating. Why don’t you go out and have a look at the morning?”

  “What time is it?” Emmy asked.

  “Late,” said Rosemary. “Eight o’clock. We woke early to catch the tide, and then thought better of it. After all, we’re not trying to get anywhere special today, so we thought we’d have another couple of hours in bed.”

  She moved aside to let them pass, and they clambered into the open cockpit.

  Berrybridge Haven was putting on a fine show for its weekend visitors. The sun blazed from a sky the colour of a robin’s egg, and danced merrily over the deeper blue water, which—since it was little more than an hour after high tide—stretched dazzlingly from the whitewashed walls of The Berry Bush on one bank to the distant greensward of the other. The dinghies, which had been mud-stranded the night before, now bobbed and curtsied like coloured shells on either side of the grey concrete hard. The main channel in the centre of the river was marked not only by two rows of buoys (pillar-box red and cylindrical on one side, black and conical on the other), but also by two parallel lines of moored boats. The sun, glancing off the rippling water, threw up shifting gleams of light on to their gaudy hulls—white, red, green, blue, black or gold-shimmering varnish. In the channel, several boats were already under sail.

  On shore and on the boats, things were stirring. Henry could see besweatered figures in yachting caps carrying cans of water and sailbags down the hard: canvas began to flutter whitely from moored boats, as their crews hoisted sail and prepared to put to sea. Alastair, who was sitting cross-legged on the foredeck of Ariadne splicing a rope, waved cheerfully as a decrepit grey motor launch hiccoughed past—and Henry recognized its occupant as Herbert Hole, going about his official business of collecting mooring fees and cups of tea from visiting boats.

  On the next mooring to Ariadne, slightly upriver, there was a small, black-hulled boat with a short mast and an excessively long bowsprit.

  Emmy said, “Look, that’s Pocahontas. David’s boat. I can see her name on the back.”

  “On the stern, if you please,” said Alastair. “Good-morning. Sleep well?”

  “Like logs,” said Henry. “What a wonderful morning.”

  “Not bad,” said Alastair. “Not enough wind, really. Still, can’t have everything.” Suddenly he opened the forehatch and bellowed down it, “Rosemary! Where’s the whipping?”

  Rosemary’s head emerged into the cockpit. “In the after locker, of course,” she said. “At least, it should be. I’ll look.” She scrambled into the cockpit and pulled open a locker door under the tiller. “Oh, blast,” she added, “I remember now. We used the last bit on the main halyard. I meant to buy more.”

  “Have I time to row over and borrow some from David?”

  “No,” said Rosemary firmly. “For one thing, breakfast’s ready. For another, David won’t be up yet, if I know him. And for a third, he won’t have any. He never does. He’ll be over to borrow some from us soon—he told me he wanted to renew his jib sheets and topping lift today.”

  “This,” said Henry, “is exactly like talking a foreign language. Are you going to translate for us?”

  “You’ll learn,” said Rosemary. “It’s not as difficult as it sounds. Come and eat.”

  They did—hugely. Even Emmy, whose usual idea of breakfast was a cup of coffee and a roll, worked her way through cornflakes, eggs, sausages, bacon, fried bread and tomatoes, and then accepted toast and marmalade. Henry began to see the reason for the two massive picnic-baskets.

  Afterwards, when everything had been carefully washed up and stowed away, Alastair said, “Right. Now for the first sailing lesson. And let’s hope we don’t make a mess of it. One generally does, trying to impress people.”

  “Tell us about Ariadne first,” said Emmy, “so that we don’t look too foolish when people ask us. What sort of a boat is she, for a start? I mean, what’s the technical term?”

  “She’s a six-ton Bermudian sloop,” said Alastair. “That means that she carries two sails. One little one—the jib—forward of the mast, and the mainsail. That’s the big one,” he added kindly.

  “What does Bermudian mean?” Henry asked. “Was she built there or something?”

  “No. It simply means that the mainsail is triangular.”

  “I thought they all were,” said Emmy.

  “Goodness, no. It’s quite a recent innovation. All the old boats were gaff-rigged—like that fishing smack over there. Ariadne used to be gaff before she was converted. She’s pretty ancient, poor old lady.”

  Henry and Emmy followed Alastair’s pointing finger, to see a large, dignified old boat ploughing her way slowly downriver. “You see? Her mainsail’s almost rectangular—wider at the bottom, of course, but with four distinct corners, and a second boom running along the top of it.”

  “So she’s a gaff sloop,” said Emmy proudly.

  “No,” said Alastair, “a gaff cutter.”

  “Oh, heavens. Why?”

  “Because she carried two foresails—a jib and a staysail.”

  “This is much too complicated,” said Henry. “Let’s get back to Ariadne. A Bermudian sloop. Six tons, you said. You mean, that’s what she weighs?”

  “No,” said Alastair. “Sorry to be difficult. That’s a measurement called Thames Tonnage, and it hasn’t anything to do with weight. You work it out from a formula involving length and beam—width, to you. So the exact dimensions of six-tonners can vary, but they’re all about the same size of boat. We’re thirty-two feet long over-all, with an eight-foot beam and a five-foot draught, which is about average. Pocahontas is smaller—a three-tonner. You soon get to judge the tonnage of a boat fairly accurately by just looking at her.”

  “I don’t,” said Emmy firmly.

  Alastair grinned. “It doesn’t matter a hoot anyway,” he said. “The only thing you need remember is that there’s five solid feet of Ariadne under the water, so if you sail her into water that’s less than five foot deep—wham. You’re on the putty.”

  “That at least sounds logical,�
�� remarked Henry, with some relief.

  “Now,” said Alastair, “we’ll set the sails. It’s very simple. Each sail has two ropes attached to it. The halyard and the sheet. The halyard, as you might guess, is the one you haul it up with. The sheet is the one that pulls the sail in or lets it out, according to the direction of the wind. O.K.?”

  “O.K.,” said Emmy, a little dubiously.

  “Right, then we’ll set the jib.” Alastair reached down through the forehatch into Henry and Emmy’s erstwhile bedroom, and fished up a canvas sailbag. “Now,” he went on. “See this—this is the jib halyard.” He unwound two ropes from the mass of rigging secured to the mast. “It’s a single rope running through a pulley up aloft—except that a pulley is always called a block. You see? Very simple.” He demonstrated. The rope jammed in the block.

  “I see it is,” said Henry.

  Swearing softly, Alastair proceeded to get involved in a sort of cat’s cradle of rigging, from which the jib halyard eventually emerged, running freely. He shackled it to the peak of the jib.

  “Now,” said Alastair, “we attach the jib to the forestay.” Tucking the sail under his arm, he crawled out to the end of the bowsprit, missed his footing, and very nearly fell into the river.

  “Very simple,” said Emmy.

  “I want no back answers from the crew,” replied Alastair with dignity, hauling himself back to safety with one arm, while the other held the precious bundle of canvas out of the water. When he had fastened one corner of the sail to the end of the bowsprit, and strung the curtain-ring clips on the length of its forward edge to the forestay, he scrambled inboard again.

  “Can we hoist the jib now?” Henry asked.

  “Not yet. Not till the sheets are attached.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Henry. “I thought you said there was only one sheet per sail.”

  Alastair looked at him pityingly. “If the jib didn’t have a port and a starboard sheet, how could you come about?” he asked. Henry said he had no idea, and watched humbly as Alastair picked up another rope from the deck. This was, in fact, two ropes, one of which ran down either side of the deck and back into the cockpit. The forward ends were shackled together, and these Alastair proceeded to attach to the third corner of the jib.