Филип Керр - A Five Year Plan

‘I never could tell.’

‘You seem pretty comfortable there yourself,’ said Kate. ‘And I’ll bet your boat’s faster than mine. Looks like it has plenty of range for long-distance fishing expeditions too. Why don’t you come aboard and have a beer and tell me about her?’

She knew cars. She knew boats. And she was friendly. Already Dave was impressed. ‘I sure can’t think of a reason not to,’ he said.

As he climbed onto the Carrera he caught a brief glimpse of two men sitting inside the salon watching TV, then he stepped up onto the bridge. The woman got up from the leather sofa and smiled pleasantly.

She said, ‘Kate Parmenter,’ using her married name for what she hoped would be the very last time.

Dave shook her hand while noting that there was no ring on the other one. That was good. The kind of women who married older, rich guys usually made sure they got a good rock out of it. So maybe she wasn’t married after all. He said, ‘David Dulanotov.’

‘Like in The X Files?

‘No, that’s David Duchovny.’

‘Well, pleased to meet you anyway, David.’ Kate wondered if he was crew. Mostly the guys who owned boats like the Juarista were pink, fat and balding, like her soon-to-be ex-husband Howard. The sportiest thing about Howard had been his Rolex submariner. But this guy, David, with his hard body and easy smile looked too fit to be spending much time behind the kind of desk that made enough money to buy a two, maybe three million dollar sport-fisher.

‘And to meet you, Kate.’

‘Your boat?’

‘Yeah.’

‘She said, ‘The Juarista. An unusual name. What does it mean?’

‘The Juaristas were Mexican revolutionaries,’ explained Dave. ‘They tried to free their country from the French-supported Emperor Maximilian.’

Kate looked sheepish. ‘I didn’t even know the French had been involved in Mexico.’

‘Mexico, Algeria, Vietnam. Every lousy cause.’

She went forward to fetch a couple of cold Coronas from the flybridge refrigerator. ‘I must say, you don’t look like someone who’d be interested in revolution.’

‘Me?’ Dave shrugged. ‘Well, I’ve got a lot of Russian blood. But actually I’m more interested in movies than commies. Most of what I know about the Juaristas comes from a movie called Vera Cruz. Gary Cooper and Burt Lancaster. 1954.’

‘That’s a little before my time.’

‘Mine too. But it’s still a good movie.’ Dave took the bottle she offered and drank some cold beer. ‘Is that your crew watching TV?’

‘I’m the captain, not the owner. He’s one of the guys watching the football game on TV. You’re not a sports fan?’

‘Oh sure, but I can watch a game any time. It’s not every day you set sail on a voyage across the Atlantic Ocean.’ For a moment Dave stared off the port side and then added, ‘I feel I’m about to suffer a sea change, into something rich and strange.’

Kate smiled. ‘Is that poetry?’

Dave, who reckoned becoming something rich was at least a strong possibility, supplied the complete quotation and said, ‘It’s Shakespeare. The Tempest.’

Kate raised her bottle, ‘Here’s to one not finding us.’

‘Is that at all likely?’

‘Not really. Not at this time of year. But sailing in the tropics, you never can tell.’

They fell silent for a minute or two as if immediately comfortable with each other, enough just to sit there and watch the Grand Duke’s crew make ready to leave the mooring. Occasionally, Kate would glance to the stern of the ship where Rocky Envigado’s boat, the Britannia, was now loaded and lashed. She was feeling a little more relaxed. The Britannia had been the very last boat to float into the Duke and, for an hour or so, it had seemed that she and her two colleagues might have found themselves setting sail without the target of their surveillance.

A tugboat tooted to port, lines were thrown off the quayside, a klaxon sounded, and Kate and Dave felt a low rumble on the starboard side as bow and stern thrusters began to turn over. There were now only two lines connecting them to land and seeing these slacken, men on the wharf lifted the eye of each rope clear of the bit and then dropped it into the rainbow streaked water.

‘All gone and all clear,’ someone shouted.

Having checked the whereabouts of Rocky’s boat, Kate watched David out of the corner of her eye as he watched the thrusters push the ship gently away. Maximum points for quoting Shakespeare. And he was right, there was something rich and strange about a voyage like this one. Maximum points too, for not being interested in football. What did a game matter when there was the leaving of America by ship to contemplate? She had begun to believe that men like David Dulanotov simply didn’t exist. Romantic men, who were content to sit in silence instead of trying to talk their way into your pants. Looking at his big brown eyes fixed on the distant horizon, she wondered what other surprises the voyage might have in store for her and how many of them might include this handsome man.

Some of the crew and yacht-owners stayed aboard their own vessels for dinner. But mostly they went to the accommodations block in the forehouse, curious to see more of the ship and to meet the captain, his officers and their crew. Officers and crewmen on the Duke ate separately and in different messrooms. In the British Merchant Navy, it had always been done this way. Now Jellicoe gave orders that owners and their captains would be permitted to dine in the officers’ saloon. Crewmen, however, would have to eat with the crew of the Duke in the crewmen’s mess. So it was that Dave found himself sitting down to dinner with Jellicoe, those of his officers who were not on watch, and a couple of dozen assorted owners and captains, including Al Carnaro, Kate Parmenter and the captain of the Jade, the handsome Rachel Dana.

Rachel said, ‘Captain Jellicoe, I was wondering, what’s the purpose of those two brass cannon on your fo’c’sle?’

‘What the hell’s a fo’c’sle?’ grumbled Kent Bowen.

‘It’s the deck above the forecastle in the bows of the ship,’ explained Jellicoe, and marked Bowen down as a complete idiot in all matters relating to the sea and seafaring. Turning toward Rachel, he smiled bleakly.

‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘there’s a bit of a story attached to those cannon. You see, on our way back from the Balearics...’ He nodded toward Bowen. ‘That’s the small group of islands including Mallorca, that is, of course, our destination. Well, we had to stop for repairs, pretty close to Lanzarote...’ Another nod to Bowen. ‘Which is of course in the Canary Islands. Anyway, we were lying at anchor close to some cliffs for the best part of a day while the chief engineer sorted out the engines and the boys started to get rather bored. Now at the top of these cliffs were two ceremonial cannon. And I thought that it would be a pretty good way of keeping them out of mischief, if we climbed to the top of the cliffs, along the lines of a film I once saw and, instead of blowing up these particular guns, stole them instead.’ Jellicoe was chuckling as he relived this exploit. ‘So that’s exactly what we did. It took most of the day, since, as you can no doubt imagine, they were rather heavy. Anyway, they’re in full working order. We fire them once a year, to commemorate Admiral Lord Nelson’s victory over the French at the Battle of Trafalgar...’ He nodded toward Bowen again. ‘Famous sea battle during the Napoleonic wars — 21 October 1805, in case you should be wondering. Fought not so very far north of the Canaries, as a matter of fact. You see, the cannon were originally British. Came off a ship in Nelson’s squadron that was wrecked in Madeira. For a while the cannon stayed there, until the governor lost them in a card game with the governor of Lanzarote. Something like that, anyway. So you see we were merely reclaiming naval property. England expects, eh Chief?’