Bernard Cornwell - Wildtrack

Jimmy Nicholls and I mended her. They were weeks of hard work, and therefore of pleasure. We scarfed new timbers into Sycorax ’s hull and caulked them home. We shaped new deck planks and joggled them into place. We raised the cockpit’s sole and put gutters out to the transom so that, for the first time, Sycorax had a self-draining cockpit.

Jimmy selected trunks of Norway spruce from the timber yard and fetched them upriver on his boat. He made me listen at one end of the trunks while he tapped the other with a wrench and I heard how the note came clear and sharp to prove the timber’s worth. We put the spruce on the wharf and adzed the trunks down; first we turned them into square sections, then we peeled away each corner, and each new corner, until they were rounded and we had our masts, gaff and booms. We used a hefty piece of pitch-pine for the bowsprit.

Each evening, when the work was done and before I went to the pub, I would treadle a grindstone to put an edge back on tools blunted by good wood.

They were good days. Sometimes a spring rain thundered on the tarpaulin that we’d rigged overhead, but mostly the sun shone in promise of summer. We made a new coachroof, but strengthened it with oak beams so that the cabin could resist a knock-down in heavy seas. A smith from the town put lead into Sycorax ’s keel and forged me new hounds to take the rigging on her mast. As spring turned into summer Jimmy and I began to lay bright new copper sheets over the finished hull, bedding them on layers of tar and paper and fixing them with flat-headed nails of bronze. The copper was expensive, but superior to any anti-fouling paint, and I wanted its protection before I sailed my wooden boat to where the tropical worms could turn iron-hard mahogany into a porous sponge. Jimmy and I did a good, old-fashioned job. On our rare days off we went to boat auctions on the river and bought good second-hand gear—an outboard for the dinghy, warps, blocks, cleats, flares and smoke floats, fire-extinguishers—and all the receipts were sent to the television company who repaid the money without demur. They were even paying Jimmy a cash wage that the taxman would never hear about. Life in those days was good.

Wildtrack had moved to the Hamble where a larger marina offered uniformed guards and large dogs as security. There were no more incidents of sabotage. Anthony Bannister, when he returned from his holiday, stayed in Richmond and sailed out of the new marina, so I did not see him. Angela sometimes came to the house to oversee her film, but rarely. When she did come she was businesslike and brusque. She pretended no great interest in Sycorax ’s progress, except to insist that the boat was moved off Bannister’s lawn before the party. I assured Angela the boat would be ready in time.

She frowned at the cradled hull that was still only half-coppered.

“How can it be ready? You haven’t finished the masts yet!” I ignored her sharp critical tone. “We don’t step the masts till she’s in the water. So all I have to do before we launch is finish the coppering and put in the engine.”

She snatched at a chance to hurry the process. “Can’t the engine wait till she’s afloat?”

“Not unless you want the river coming in where the propellor ought to be.”

“You know best, I suppose.” She sounded very grudging. I waited for her to mention Bannister’s invitation that I should sail on the St Pierre, but she said nothing and I assumed the invitation was forgotten. I was relieved when she stalked away; a cold girl with a clip-board. She went to the terrace of the house where she chivvied Matthew Cooper into making faster progress.

It seemed to me that it was Matthew who did the real work for the television company. He and his camera crew came down every other week to film Sycorax ’s rebuilding. When Angela was absent they were relaxed, except about their expense sheets on which they spent hours of devoted work. Their union rules insisted that they travelled in a monstrous herd, which meant that most of them had no work to do, but one of the drivers and the assistant cameraman proved to be enthusiastic carpenters and happily helped with whatever work was on hand. Yet the film crew’s presence inevitably meant frustration and delay. A piece of work that Jimmy and I might have finished in an hour could take a whole day with Matthew fussing about camera angles and eyelines. Sometimes he’d arrive to find a job finished and would insist that we dismantle the careful joinery and recreate it for the camera. Then he would shoot it from every conceivable angle. “Nick? Your right arm’s in the camera’s way. Can you drop your elbow?”

“I can’t tighten a bolt if I’m screwed up like Quasimodo.”

“It won’t show on film.” He waited patiently till I’d finished my grotesque impression of the hunchback of Notre-Dame. “Thank you, Nick. Dropping the elbow will be enough. That’s better.” Then the sound-recordist would stop everything because a light aircraft was ruining his tape, and when the plane’s sound faded a cloud would arrive and the cameraman would insist on remeasuring the light. I perceived that film-making was very like soldiering in that it consisted of hours of idle waiting punctuated by moments of half-understood panic.

I was frustrated by the delays, but in turn inflicted frustration on Matthew. Often, while the camera rolled, he would spring questions on me. In the finished film, he told me, his own voice would be replaced by Bannister’s so that the viewers would think that the great man had been constantly present during the filming. The frustration occurred every time Matthew asked the one question that lay behind the film’s purpose. “Can you tell us how you won the medal, Nick?”

“Not right now. Anyone seen the tenon saw?”

“Nick?” Chidingly.

“I can’t remember what happened, Matthew, sorry.”

“Don’t call me Matthew. Remember I’m supposed to be Tony. So what happened, Nick?” Long pause. “Nick, please?” Another long pause. “What was the question, Matthew?”

“Nick!”

“Nothing to say, Matthew, sorry, Tony.”

“Oh, fuck it. Cut!”

Jimmy would chuckle, the film crew would grin, and Matthew would glare at me. I liked him, though. He had a shaggy black moustache, unruly hair, and a face which looked tough but which on closer inspection proved rather sad and dogged. He was hag-ridden with self-doubt and smoked more than a fouled engine, but, like his cameraman, Matthew cared desperately about the quality of his work. He did what Angela ordered him to do, but he invested those orders with a concern for the very best pictures. He would spend hours waiting for the light to touch the river in just the right way before he started shooting. He was an artist, but he was also the conduit for Angela Westmacott’s instructions and worries; the chief of which still remained that Sycorax would not disfigure Anthony Bannister’s lawn on the day of his big party.

Angela need not have worried, for Jimmy and I finished the hull ten days ahead of our schedule. The engine was still in pieces, the boat was unrigged, and the sails were still being repaired, but it was a great day when we could walk round the gleaming hull and see all the hard work come to a satisfying wholeness. I phoned Matthew and told him we could launch in a week’s time, just as soon as the engine was back in the boat’s belly, and he promised to bring the crew down for the event. Thus we would be in the water the day before the party.

I spent the next two days repairing the diesel and replacing the propellor. The new strength that the swimming had put into my back helped during the tedious hours of installing the engine. I rigged a jury crane with chains and blocks and spent frustrating hours settling the shims under the engine-block so that the propellor shaft ran true. It was probably the most difficult job of the whole repair, but eventually it was done. The self-starter would not work, but there was a handle and a flywheel, so I threw the damn thing away.