Bernard Cornwell - Wildtrack

“But do think about it,” he urged me. “In a couple of months I’ll be giving a big party to formally announce my bid for the trophy.

I’d like to say you’ll be a part of the effort, Nick. Will you think about it?”

“You need a specialist navigator,” I said. “Some guy who’s a race tactician as well. I’m really not going to be of any use to you.”

“Not in the race, maybe”—Angela forced the words out—“but you’ll help the ratings.”

“Ratings?” I somehow took the word to refer to the members of Mulder’s crew; as if they were naval ratings.

“The viewing figures,” Angela said with an acidity which implied that my misunderstanding betrayed an astonishing stupidity. “The VC makes you interesting, Mr Sandman, interesting enough to guarantee us more than twenty million viewers. Anticipating that kind of audience rating will mean we can increase the price of the advertising slots, and that’s how you’ll be useful to us.” At least she had been honest, though that did not soften the offence I felt. So my Victoria Cross was to become an advertiser’s weapon?

A means of selling more dogfood and baked beans? I was framing an outright and offended refusal when a violent lurch of Wildtrack ’s hull ended the conversation. Angela jerked upright, vomiting, and I saw the mainsail’s shadow whip over us. There was a noise like a bass-string thumping the sky, and the boat was suddenly gybing, broaching and falling on her beam. I grabbed the small wheel for support. The tall mast was bending, breaking, then falling to leeward.

Broken water boiled up the scuppers and spilt cold into the self-draining cockpits. A shroud whipped skywards, flicking a broken spreader with it. The unleashed spinnaker billowed ahead as the mast fell. The slick hull rolled, recovered and slowed. The seas were low, no more than two or three feet, but even so Wildtrack ’s bows were buried and the boat staggered as if she’d sailed into a sandbank.

Rigging was tangling and the mainsail was shredding with a noise like the fire of an automatic weapon.

Bannister stood, half fell, and shouted incoherently. A crew-member was overboard, tangled in the fallen shrouds. Angela was curled on the thwart, sobbing. Mulder’s voice bellowed above the din and chaos, inflicting order on the panic.

A port shroud had parted. The stainless-steel wire, made to carry all the weight of great winds on a towering mast, must have snapped.

The mast and sails had ripped overboard. It had taken no more than two or three seconds, and now Wildtrack lay wallowing and draining in the gentle seas. No one was hurt. The boat had pulled up short and it was a simple matter to pull the crewman who had gone overboard back to safety. The film crew, who had been staying out of the way in the main cabin, poured in panic up to the centre cockpit and were curtly told to get the hell out of the way.

“Fuck.” Bannister was staring helplessly at the shambles.

“Wire-cutters!” Mulder shouted.

I stayed out of the way. The crew knew what to do. The broken and fallen rigging was secured, then the remaining stays and shrouds were cut so that the wreckage could be dragged inboard. The engine was started. All in all it had been a mild accident, impressive to watch, but harmless except to Bannister’s purse.

And to his anger. He took me forward and showed me the turnbuckle that had taken up the tension of the broken shroud. It had not been the wire which snapped, but rather the turnbuckle that had simply let the shroud go. It was threaded inside, and someone had taken a circular file to the threads and worn them almost smooth.

The sabotage was clumsily obvious; there were even shards of filed metal still sticking to the grease which had been put on to the abraded threads. Just enough purchase had been left to grip the shroud but as soon as Mulder put the spinnaker’s extra weight on the mast the threads had given way. Once that shroud had gone, the others on the port side had snapped like cheesewire under strain.

“Fanny!” Bannister was livid with anger. “From now on you live in the boatyard. All of you!”

“Does that mean I get my wharf back?” I asked tactlessly.

For a second I thought Bannister was going to hit me, but then he nodded. “You get your damned wharf back.” His anger was showing as petulance, like a child losing a treat. He pushed past me, going back to the stern where his girlfriend was still slumped in the stomach-churning misery of the sea. For the moment Bannister appeared to have forgotten his offer that I should sail to St Pierre triumph as part of this boat’s crew.

But I hadn’t forgotten.

And I wouldn’t do it. There are lucky boats and unlucky boats.

That isn’t a fancy, nor a superstition, but a fact. Sycorax was a lucky boat, but I smelt the stench of disaster about Wildtrack . She had already killed Bannister’s first wife, and now someone had dismasted her. She was crewed by a surly pack and skippered by a kleptomani-ac. I did not care what fame or fortune might come to the crew of this boat if she won the St Pierre, but I would not share it, for I would not sail in a boat that so reeked of ill-luck.

Bannister could sail the Atlantic without me. I knew he’d repeat the offer again, but so far I’d given him too much for too little. This time the answer would be no. When I sailed my next ocean it would be in Sycorax and in no other boat, just Sycorax .

Mulder scowled at me, pushed the throttle hard open, and we motored ignominiously home.

PART TWO

Inspector Abbott came to the village pub three weeks after Wildtrack had been dismasted. He was wearing trousers made of a wide blue and pink check that looked like dismantled curtains.

“You’re looking better,” he said to me in a rather grudging voice.

“I’m fine, Harry.” I said it confidently, but it was not really true.

I was swimming two miles every morning in Bannister’s indoor pool and the exercise was laying new muscle beneath the scar tissue, but my leg could still betray me with a sudden and numbing weakness.

Only the day before, while walking down from the village post-office, I’d sprawled helplessly on the pavement. One minute my right leg had been doggedly reliable, the next, and for no apparent reason, it had just gone limp. But I would not admit to the weakness, lest I persuaded myself that I was not fit enough to sail across the world.

“I assume from the fancy dress that you’re not on duty?” Abbott plucked at the trousers. “Don’t you like them, Nick?”

“They’re bloody horrible.”

“They’re American golfer’s trousers,” he said with hurt dignity.

“They’re meant to improve the swing. Plenty of room in the crotch, you see? You want a lemonade, Nick? A bottle of cherry pop, perhaps?”

“A pint of best, Harry.”

He carefully carried the two full pints of beer to my table. It was early evening and the pub was still empty, though in a few weeks the crush of tourists would make the riverside bar uninhabitable.

Abbott sipped the top off his beer and sighed with pleasure. “Got your medal back, did you?”

“I did, and thank you.”

He acknowledged the thanks with a gracious wave of his cigarette lighter. “What do you think of the Boer now?”

“He’s a good sailor,” I said neutrally.

“So was Bluebeard.” Abbott lit a cigarette. “I haven’t seen Mr Bannister lately.”

“He’s on Capri with his girlfriend. They’re on holiday.”

“I wonder why he’s stopped going to America for his holidays,” Abbott said with an air of puzzled innocence, then shook his head.

“Me? I get a week with the wife’s sister in bloody Frinton. Who’s the girlfriend?”