Then Johnson gave Trotter the wheel and ducked forward to where I was crouching. ‘Dr MacRannoch,’ he said.
I said, ‘He can’t . . .’
‘I know he can’t,’ said Johnson mildly. ‘Neither can you, or any of us for very much longer. But listen to Trotter’s suggestion. We haven’t enough speed for skiing. But if we let out a warp, he thinks he can drop back to Haven on it and board her.’
I looked at him, but the dark glasses told nothing. I said, ‘The sharks. He’s tired. What if he loses his grip? We couldn’t stop. We couldn’t pick him up, could we?’
‘Not before Haven reaches us,’ Johnson said. Behind us, Harry was complaining. The main basis for it, so far as I could gather, was that if Trotter drowned, or was carelessly mown down by Haven, we should not only have lost ground, but be short of one man to sail Dolly. Johnson added, ‘Beltanno, if only three of us are left to run Dolly, could you go up that shroud?’
I was glad at least that he knew what was happening to Harry. And there was no avoiding the issue. If only Spry and Johnson were left to tackle Dolly, I should have to be pilot. ‘I don’t see why not,’ I replied.
He nodded, but his attention had left me. Trotter strode by, stripped to his trunks. He spoke, and Johnson put up his hand. Spry had already belayed a long coil of rope near the stern post. There was a light grappling-iron. I saw, at one end.
Johnson brought Dolly half up into the wind to let Trotter drop overboard, and for a moment I think we all believed she had lost way for good. Then Trotter’s head, shaking off spray, appeared in the water. We saw him lean over, exposing one brown, sinewy shoulder and his two powerful forearms, the broad fists clutching the rope. The wind filled Dolly’s sails. She drew away, and Trotter’s body, rising, began to cut through the water. His head in the crook of his right arm was turned left cheek upwards, drawing air from the vortex caused by the shape of his body resisting the drive of the sea.
He was a magnificent swimmer. We all knew that. We had watched him scores of times towed by Dolly’s launch skimming up ramps and leapfrogging barrels on water-skis. Broad and small with a body like muscular teak, he ignored his tiredness. He braced himself, foetus-like in the water, and was drawn through it, his gasping mouth taking the air as Spry, as fast as he dared, paid out the cable.
It disturbed his rhythm, the lengthening cable. The first time, Spry misjudged it and the rope suddenly slackened, slamming Trotter under the water. He rose half-choked, legs threshing to keep him on top and swimming, until Dolly drew off and the rope tautened again. After that, Spry kept the warp tight, releasing it little by little, his eyes on Haven as much as on the swimmer.
We had lost ground. The white boat was far closer: the gap getting shorter. There was only so much time this manoeuvre could cost. But Spry didn’t lose Trotter again; and Trotter, snatching glance after glance over his shoulder, must have seen Haven’s bows getting closer. He was almost upon her.
It was then that I found the wheel in my hands. ‘Good luck,’ said Johnson, and grinned briefly, and walked to the rail. He wasn’t wearing his glasses. I stared alter him, and then my attention was snatched back to Trotter by a shout from Spry and from Harry.
The swimmer was just ahead of the Haven. Trotter lifted a hand, raising himself out of the water, and Spry allowed to spin free all the coils of remaining free cable. We watched the spray settle. Trotter’s head came up, cropped in the sunlight, and his hands flashed as he gathered the rope. For ten seconds maybe, he waited: the small tough sergeant-major, his brown shoulders washed by the blue surging sea, watching the approaching white boat with its sheer sides and its empty wheel and its well filled with explosives.
Lifting himself like a seal from the waves, Rodney Trotter drew back the arm with the cable, and threw. The rope hissed through the air dropping a string of white water: a sparkle of spray left the grapple. We saw the iron hit the coaming of Haven’s white starboard bow, hesitate, and then drop down inside out of sight.
The rope tightened. As the launch swerved unevenly past him, it drew Trotter swinging out of the sea, hands working, one strong foot already finding a purchase. By sheer momentum he got two-thirds up her sides before Haven forced past him, swinging the rope to her stern and unsettling the grip of the grappling-iron. The rope came loose and he snatched instead, with both hands, at Haven’s topside.
He caught it, and, with the same movement, vaulted on to her deck like a gymnast.
Johnson stayed only to see Trotter board the Haven. Then, just as he was, he dived off Dolly and struck out towards the white boat and the sergeant.
Harry and Spry didn’t see him. Nor did Trotter, working fast by the square engine casing. Haven’s engine droned on, and the white water sheared at her bows. Above me a sail flapped and Spry called sharply. ‘Doctor! Take her about!’
I thought: we ought to stop. I should bring her into the wind. But Haven wasn’t stopping and the gap between us was closing: was shrinking again as it had in those first terrible moments. I brought Dolly round, my gaze half on our sails and half on Johnson’s head, black in the water. He had been swimming, but, as I watched, he leaned back and began to tread water. There was no need to go on. Haven was still advancing towards him.
Then, like a pronouncement from God, Haven’s engine coughed once, and was silent.
I remember that the channel had narrowed, so that we were forced to sail on. Spry took the wheel and I climbed that swaying ladder of ratlines in the shrouds, but my binoculars were as often on Haven behind as conning the sandbanks in front. I saw Trotter rise from stopping the engine, fling over a rope and let himself overboard to do something efficient, I hoped, to the rudder. I saw Johnson arrive and board Haven, using the same rope, as Trotter emerged from the water: we could hear clearly Trotter’s shout of surprise, and then the sound of their conversation, carried over the blessed, still waters. Below me, Spry and Harry had their binoculars on them also.
We saw Johnson edge round the well to the rear of the boat and come back after a brief burst of activity. He took a moment as he did so to have a look under the tarpaulin. Then he leaned out to help Trotter clamber aboard for the second time, spoke with him, and, scrambling round, settled in front of the helm.
We watched, buffeted by the stillness, as if we had been prepared for an operation, and did not realize even now that the operation was not going to take place. I think that was why, when Haven’s engine suddenly started and that deathly roar, the roar we had throttled, came suddenly into rebirth, Harry’s nerves burst into screaming disorder. He heard the noise, and he saw those white bows begin again to move, to quicken, to drive along freely and powerfully and with ease begin to overhaul us. He dropped the mainsheet, and ran for the starboard side deck, as once he had been told. Then he tried to throw himself over.
Spry and I caught him and manhandled him down to the cockpit, while Johnson throttled Haven well down and brought her docilely behind us and then up to and past us as Dolly, unattended, drifted herself into the sandbar. Spry had Harry immobilized by that time, and I got out the syringe and the ampoules and immobilized him further. Then we put him into the saloon.
Haven warped Dolly off that sandbank; then Johnson let her float off behind, seacocks open, while he and Trotter climbed aboard on the cable. She sank very gently in the clear, clear water among the sponges and the sea grasses and the small coloured fish. I don’t think any of us felt anything: we carried our own precipitins, for the moment, against fear and danger and even relief. Besides, there was Dolly still to look after.
I climbed the shrouds again while Johnson took the wheel rather silently, a towel round his shoulders; and Trotter lay still and dripped on the after-deck without doing anything at all. He deserved it.
No one tried to disturb him, and very soon I saw open water and steered Johnson into it, and was allowed to come down. The sea all around us was mid-green and purple and blue. We were in deep water, and could begin to tack our way home.
I took
the wheel in some of the long reaches and Spry and Johnson shared the rest. Once the sails were set on each tack, there was little to do. We took it in turns to go below into the saloon and stretch out on the cushions. Trotter recovered quickly, but Johnson slept for an hour. I left the wheel to go into the owner’s cabin to rouse him. Spry had made tea, on my advice, instead of pouring us alcohol, and I knocked and put the cup down by his side.
He grunted and opened his eyes. His hair was a mess, and he hadn’t put on his glasses since swimming, but his social adjustments as ever were effortlessly bang on the nail. He said, ‘I bet it’s sweet and weak, and God knows how you blackmailed Spry into producing it, but because I am suffering from fluid deprivation, I’ll drink it.’ He got off the bed, his beach shirt crumpled where he had been lying on it; put on his bifocal glasses and said, ‘Sit down, then, and let me look at you.’
I sat down. I was no picture. My turban had stayed somehow in place, but my sunsuit was filthy with oil and salt water and sweat, and I had larded cream all over the sunburn on my arms and my shoulders and nose. I stared back at Johnson as he stood leaning there drinking his tea; and to my disgnst a pricking sensation made itself felt behind my puncta lacrimalia. I controlled myself and said, stiffly, ‘We’ve missed the barbecue, I’m afraid.’
‘We rather did down the National Morbidity Survey as well,’ Johnson said. ’Didn’t we?’
He put down his cup, and twitching a tissue out of its holder leaned forward and wiped the surplus cream off my nose. Then he sat down beside me in the same suave and damnable silence, and putting up his two hands like a milliner, straightened the turban over my naked crop of tufted black hair. And like a child, a schoolgirl, a nurse under reprimand, I burst into tears. Into, I discerned distantly some moments later, the creased bosom of Johnson’s beach shirt.
He made no remarks, but merely patted me on the back with one hand and produced a concatenation of tissues with the other until the worst of the outburst was over; and it took a long time. I can’t remember ever crying like that. I suppose I had, some time, when I was a child. Eventually I wiped my eyes for the last time and blew my nose for the last time and lifted my head and sat soggily up. ‘Post-operative reactions,’ I said in bleary apology.
‘Partly. But some post-MacRannoch reaction, I fancy, as well,’ Johnson said. He got up and, unlatching a locker, produced and began to pour two glasses of whisky. He held one out to me. ‘To Beltanno Douglas MacRannoch, human being. Don’t marry Mr Tiko.’ he said.
I took what he gave me and drank it. ‘Why not?’ I said. It was all very surprising, I suppose. Except that I had no emotions left to be surprised with.
‘I’ve done an Eysenck personality inventory on you both,’ Johnson said, and put his glass on a locker and held it. We were sailing hard, on the port track. Someone was sober, and working. ‘You wouldn’t suit.’
‘Whom would I suit?’ I said impatiently.
Johnson took a long drink and then leaned back and took off his glasses. ‘In a long life, I’ve heard that said in many ways, but never grimly,’ he said. ‘The answer, of course, is most people, however poorly supported by data to date. Most people, provided you let go of James Ulric MacRannoch.’
‘Let go of my father?’ I exclaimed.
‘That’s what I said. You know you’re the cause of his asthma?’
Nonsense. I was rather stiff, I recall, in my answer. My father has been hypersensitized against pollen, house dust, Aspergillus fumi-gatus, the wheat weevil, dandruff and budgerigars. Without me, he has quite enough to be going along with.
Johnson ignored me. ‘And he is the cause of your belligerent bachelor doctorhood. He said he wanted a line of baby MacRannochs. But you gave him what you thought he really wanted, didn’t you? You turned yourself into a son.’
It was a lie. It was none of his business. I would consider it later. I said, ‘Amateur psychiatry, Mr Johnson?’
‘And avoidance behaviour, Dr MacRannoch.’ said Johnson.
We stared at one another. My whisky, somehow, had almost got finished. ‘He’s going to marry the Begum,’ I said.
‘He would have married her years ago,’ said Johnson uncompromisingly, ‘if he’d got you off his hands.’
‘If I don’t marry Mr Tiko . . I don’t want to marry.’ I said.
‘You don’t need to marry. All you want are a few nice, meaningful, human relationships, like Krishtof Bey. Let me recommend a well-tried and traditional therapy. People.’
‘People are Harry,’ I said.
‘Well, Christ! You turned him off and disposed of the carcass,’ said Johnson. ‘And anyway, what’s the matter with him? He had his post-operative shock before the operation, that’s all. What do you expect? A world peopled with B. Douglas MacRannochs?’ He paused. ‘I suppose you can get it, if you opt out and go for research. We’re all the same in ash weight of bones.’
I had a splitting headache, but I wasn’t going to stand for that kind of nonsense. ‘Some people,’ I said, ‘prefer pure thought to the painful vacuity of ill-considered social exchanges.’
I was rather pleased with that. Johnson sat down on the bed.
‘Now you mention it,’ he said, ‘that’s why I took off my glasses.’
And putting his two hands hard on my shoulders, he kissed me.
It was an extremely nice kiss. It didn’t go on quite as long as Krishtof Bey’s, nor was it unpleasant or torrid. Half-way through he shifted his grip so that the leverage was better; and since he had wiped off my cream, I didn’t have to worry what he did with my nose. At the end, he drew off and said, ‘You’ve been practising. Can I have afters?’
If I hadn’t been scarlet with sunburn I suppose I would have been flushed up to the eyes. He kissed me again, briefly, and then sat grinning maliciously at me and holding my hands.
Believe it or not, I had forgotten that tape-recorder on Crab. I even returned the smile, gasping a little. ‘I thought I should remind you,’ said Johnson frankly. ‘Anyway, everyone else seems to have had a ball, barring perhaps Mr Tiko. What was all that stuff again about painful vacuity?’
‘And pure thought,’ I said.
‘And pure thought. For some people, yes, Beltanno.’
‘But not for me?’
‘You haven’t had a pure thought since you were born,’ said Johnson cheerfully. ‘You’re a mixture of horrible complexes, and you know it. But underneath that freeze-dried exterior lies a splendid unprogrammed community known as Beltanno B. Loving.’
Outside the door, Trotter’s voice called from the cockpit, and we heard him go forward, and the rush of Spry’s feet. ‘We’re back,’ said Johnson. ‘Back from danger: back from isolation: back into the great big world. Are you sorry?’
‘Are you?’ I said. Until that moment, I had forgotten.
He said, ‘It’s my chosen profession. I’m sorry that this time it seems to have co-opted yourself, but don’t let it fret you. One more day will see the whole business finished, provided we can keep Harry quiet. Can we keep Harry quiet?’
‘Why?’ I said. ‘How? Will you bring the police over? Will they tell you who did all these things?’
Johnson got up. He collected my glass and his own, and putting them both in their slots, relatched the locker and put on his bifocal glasses. They flashed at me under the skylight: familiar, anonymous, unreadable. He said, ‘No need. I know who did all these things. I’ve known, actually, for a fairly long time.’
FOURTEEN
Johnson may have thought he had spotted the culprit, but he refused blandly to drop even a hint. It was beneath me to argue. But I wanted to.
The green Daimler convertible was waiting for us when we landed on Crab Island, and we laid Harry in it and made for the barbecue, which was half over, as it had taken us all afternoon to tack south against that misguided wind. Spry had given us something to eat and we had all had more whisky. Trotter and Johnson quarrelled all the way to the house over whether to call the police forthwith or gi
ve Edgecombe twenty-four hours to try and deal with it.
I didn’t blame Trotter for wanting to broadcast his recent perils to the horrified ears of officialdom. Someone had tried to blow up a boatload of people, including me, and I thought it was time he was found and led away firmly in handcuffs. I can’t imagine therefore why I argued on Johnson’s side.
Not that it made a great deal of difference, since we couldn’t say who Johnson was. We arrived, and all we had got Trotter to promise was to give Edgecombe a hearing before informing the London Times, the British Minister for Defence and the University of Miami’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences. The assumption, of course, was that Sir Bartholomew Edgecombe was still alive; but we couldn’t appear to question that either.
All the same, when we drew up at the steps of the castle and Johnson made his way up to the doors with Harry folded over his shoulder, I found it hard to disguise my uneasiness. Behind us, strains of stereo music and laughter came from the beach and the gardens and there were a lot of flushed-out flamingoes snaking moodily over the pathways and lawns. Then we followed Johnson inside, and the Begum’s butler came into the hall, and Johnson said, ‘Another casualty, I’m afraid, but not a serious one: just a bump on the head. Do you have a bed he could rest on?’ And as houseboys appeared and removed Harry, dangling limply from his second injection, Johnson added, ‘Tell me, how is Sir Bartholomew?’
The Begum’s permanent staff were white, discreet, and formidably efficient. ‘Sir Bartholomew is remarkably well, sir, considering,” said the Begum’s butler. ‘He’s still in his room resting, but the nurse was quite pleased with him, so she said. I believe he is to come down for dinner.’ He paused. ‘I’m quite sure he’s awake, sir, if you wish to visit him. Miss Violet has been with him for most of the afternoon.’
Miss Violet, I thought, has-probably saved his life. But I didn’t say so.
Operation Nassau Page 23
