Bernard Cornwell - Crackdown

McIllvanney shrugged acceptance of my refusal, then held up a hand to stop me leaving. “Talking of Ellen,” he said casually, “is the silly bint still refusing to fock?”

“Jesus wept!” I was wondering if the world had gone mad. “You’re as bad as Billingsley!”

McIllvanney was quite unmoved by my anger. “Because if she can’t make money from the senator’s charter,” he went on, “I was thinking of offering her a job or two on my own behalf. I mean, she’s an attractive girl, so she is, despite her ideas, and she could make a pretty penny out of her looks. Know what I mean?”

I knew exactly what he meant, and I felt a seething of anger at his suggestion. “Ask her yourself. I won’t bloody pimp for you.” I snatched his sliding door open and went back into the arctic cold where I punched the button to summon the lift. Donna was on the telephone. She smiled at me as the lift doors opened, then mouthed a silent farewell and fluttered her fingers at me till the lift doors closed.

I rode the bicycle back to the darkened and empty boatyard. Ellen had gone to her one-room apartment in town while Thessy was reading his Bible in the main-cabin, so I heated myself some baked beans in Wavebreaker’ s microwave, spread them on buttered toast, soaked them in brown sauce, then ate a morose supper on deck until the bugs drove me to the screened sanctuary of the staterooms below. Thessy asked me what McIllvanney had wanted, but I said it had been nothing very much for I was too disgusted with the man to tell Thessy the truth. I felt dirtied by the corruption of pimps, yet I would soon be free of them for I had just one more job to do, and then I would be loosed to the consolations of Masquerade and to the joys of the South Pacific’s winds. Just one more job; then home to the sea.

Next morning the sky was clear, the wind steady, and the barometer high. The customers’ beds were made, the galley was stocked, and the black scorch marks of Deacon Billingsley’s matches had been scrubbed out of Wavebreaker’ s pale decks. Her fuel tanks were filled with diesel, the last fresh water was aboard, there was sun-tan lotion and lip-salve in every cabin, and the rotted chicken heads were safe in the freezer. We were ready.

McIllvanney made his usual inspection. Wavebreaker was the flagship of Cutwater’s fleet and McIllvanney liked to see her sparkling before each charter. That morning, as usual, he found nothing to complain of, so instead he wheeled on me to demand whether the boat’s electronic instruments were functioning properly.

“Ask Ellen,” I replied laconically, for Ellen was the only person who truly understood all the fancy gadgets though, perversely, she had still not mastered a sextant. She confirmed to McIllvanney that the weather-fax machine and the Loran and the Satnav and the radar and all the other things that hummed and winked and glowed in the night were working properly.

McIllvanney flicked a non-existent scrap of dust from the varnished rail, then gave Thessy a sly glance. “I suppose His Holiness Pope Breakspear told you about the senator’s offer, eh, Thessalonians? And I dare say you’re disappointed about it, because it’s not every day that an out-island lad gets offered that sort of money, is it now? It’s even better money than you could earn in high season, so it is, but of course your father isn’t Sir Thomas Bloody Breakspear and as rich as a pig in shit, so you need the money, while his Holiness here doesn’t. And the senator was most particular in wanting Pope Breakspear. No one else, the senator said, just his Holiness.” McIllvanney favoured me with a jackal-like smile.

Thessy hesitated, torn between curiosity and his loyalty to me, but he finally shook his head. “I don’t know about the senator’s offer, sir.”

McIllvanney pretended astonishment. “Did I speak out of turn? That’s terrible, if I did. Forget I even spoke.” He shot a glance at Ellen, making sure that she had understood him as well as Thessy, then he looked at his watch and shouted for Bellybutton to start up one of the workboats. “I’ll see you in a week’s time, so I will.” He gave me an evil grin, knowing just what dissension he had sown in Wavebreaker’ s crew, then he was gone.

“What offer?” Ellen asked icily when McIllvanney was out of earshot. “And what senator?”

So, just as McIllvanney had intended, I was forced to tell Ellen and Thessy about George Crowninshield’s offer, and how the senator was willing to pay above the odds if we would all abandon our summer plans and take his precious kids to sea for three months. I tried to make the prospect unattractive, but McIllvanney’s vision of money had dazzled both Ellen and Thessy.

“Why the hell did you say no?” Ellen demanded angrily.

“I didn’t say no. I just said I couldn’t go myself! But I told McIllvanney that Sammy Meredith could go instead of me.”

Ellen did not like that suggestion. Sammy was a competent skipper, but he could not keep his hands to himself when Ellen was close. Sammy was presently delivering one of our Nautor Swans to its Massachusetts owner; many of the charter yachts were privately owned and only leased into Cutwater’s care on condition that we delivered them back to their owners for the northern summer. I assumed McIllvanney had sent a message to Massachusetts asking Sammy to telephone as soon as he reached port, and I was certain that Sammy would jump at the chance of three months’ extra salary, and if he did then Ellen and Thessy would similarly earn their small fortunes.

“But Mr McIllvanney said the senator vants you, Nick,” Thessy said unhappily.

“He just wants someone to give his two spoilt brats a holiday. He doesn’t care who skippers the boat!”

“But maybe he does,” Thessy insisted sadly, and both he and Ellen stared reproachfully at me as though I was risking all their future prosperity.

“For God’s sake,” I said angrily, “you’ll both get your money. Sammy Meredith will jump at the chance of three months’ work. I can’t do it, OK? I’ve got a boat to mend.” The two of them still gazed at me with resentful misunderstanding. Damn McIllvanney, I thought, and damn his blackmail. I turned away from my crew to demonstrate that I would not discuss the Crowninshield charter any further. “Thessy? Put up the flags.”

The flags were our final welcoming touch. Wavebreaker was registered in the Channel Islands, and thus sailed under a defaced British red ensign with the Bahamian flag flying as a courtesy ensign from the main spreaders, but I always greeted arriving charter guests with their own country’s flag—though such a gesture was considered bad flag etiquette by nautical purists, it was good for our final tip—and so Thessy now hoisted the Stars and Stripes to the mainmast’s spreaders and a smaller Stars and Bars just beneath. The Confederate flag had been Ellen’s idea, to be unfurled whenever we had charterers from the deep South, and this week’s guests were three married couples from Georgia. I watched the two handsome flags uncurl to the warm wind, then went on my own tour of inspection. Wavebreaker looked good, and we, her crew, looked just as good in our matching blue and white clothes.

We were ready, even to the pitcher of orange juice, bucket of champagne and iced flask of vodka that waited on a table Ellen had carried up to the cockpit. The wind lifted the snow-white tablecloth and stirred the handsome red ensign at Wavebreaker’ s stern. “She looks good,” I told my crew, “well done.”

“But suppose Crowninshield won’t accept anyone but you as Wavebreaker’ s captain?” Ellen, refusing to be sidetracked from her lost dollars, asked in a sulky and defiant voice.