Bernard Cornwell - Wildtrack

“You don’t want to go anywhere right now,” Jimmy said sternly.

“I’ve got a letter for you. Boy on a motorbike brought it from London!

Said I was to get it to you, but no one was to notice, like, so that’s why I hid it with the bolts, see?” He pointed to one of the sacks.

“From London, Nick!” Jimmy was just as astonished as I that someone should hire a messenger to ride all the way from London to Devon. “The boy said as how an American maid gave it he. You want to read it before you bugger off?”

I wanted to read it. A moment ago I had been full of certainty as to what I should do, but the sudden and overwhelming memory of a naked girl in my dinghy, of her smile, of her competence, made me carry the heavy sack down into Sycorax ’s cabin. The creamy white envelope was marked ‘Urgent’.

I tore it open. Two things fell out.

One was a first-class ticket for British Airways, London to Boston and back again. The ticket was in my name, and the outbound flight left Heathrow the very next morning. The return had been left open.

The second thing was a letter written in a handwriting that I’d just read in Bannister’s study. ‘If you haven’t got a visa then get one from the Embassy and come Tuesday. I’ll meet you at Logan Airport.’

The signature was a child’s drawing of a smiling face, a sketched heart, and the initials JB.

I did not consider the choices. Not for one heartbeat did I sit and think it through. It never occurred to me that I was being asked to take sides, nor did I think it odd that a girl would send me an expensive air ticket. At that moment, after years in which I had known nothing except fighting, pain, and hospital, I was being offered a great gift. The gift seemed to imply all the things that a soldier dreams of when he’s neck-deep in wet mud with nasty bastards trying to bury him there forever.

In short, with visa and passport ready, I would go.

There would be no time to hide Sycorax , but a stratagem would have to protect her while I was away. I also asked Jimmy to keep an eye on her. “If they tow her off, Jimmy, follow them.”

“I’ll do what I can, boy.” He eyed the air ticket. “Going far, are you?”

“Out of the frying-pan, Jimmy, and straight into bed.” I laughed.

It seemed like a madcap thing to do, an irresponsible thing to do, but a wonderfully spontaneous and exciting thing to do, and there had been precious little spontaneous and enjoyable excitement in my life since the bullet caught me. So I locked the cabin hatch, rode Jimmy’s boat downriver to the town, and caught a bus. For Boston.

The stratagem to protect Sycorax involved telephoning my mother in Dallas.

“Do you know what time it is, Nick?” She sounded horrified. “Are you dying?”

“No, you are.” I fed another fifty-pence piece into the coinbox.

“It’s half-past four in the morning! What do you mean, I’m dying?”

“I apologize about that, Mother, but if anyone calls from England and asks after me, then say you’re not well. Say you asked me to visit your deathbed. It’ll only be for a few days.” There was a pause. “It bloody well is half-past four!”

“I’m sorry, Mother.”

“Where are you, for God’s sake?”

“Heathrow.”

“You’re not really coming to see me, are you?” She sounded appalled at the prospect.

“No, Mother.”

“Your sister came a month ago and I’m still exhausted. Why am I dying?”

“Because I’ve told some people that I’m visiting you. I’m actually going somewhere else and I don’t want them to know.” Another pause. “I really don’t understand a word you’re saying, Nick.”

“Yes, you do, Mother. If anyone telephones you and wants to know if I’m there, then the answer is that I am there, but I can’t reach the telephone straight away, and you’re dying. Will you tell your maid that?”

There was another long pause. “This is uncommonly tedious, even for you. Are you drunk?”

“No, Mother. Now will you help me?”

“Of course I will, I just think it’s terrifying to be telephoned at half-past four in the morning. I thought the Russians must have in-vaded. Did you transfer the charges?”

“No, Mother.”

“Thank God for that.” She yawned down the telephone. “Are you well?”

“Yes. I’m walking again.”

“How’s your father?”

“I haven’t seen him.”

“You ought to. You were his favourite. How are Piers and Amanda?”

“They’re very well.”

“So crass of you to have lost Melissa. Do you mind if I go back to sleep now?”

“Thank you, Mother.”

“You’re very welcome.”

I pressed the receiver rest, put in more coins, and dialled Devon.

No one answered in Bannister’s house, or rather the relentlessly cheerful answering machine responded. “This is Sandman,” I said,

“and I’m phoning to say that my mother’s been taken ill in Dallas and her doctors think I should be with her. I’ll discuss our other problems when I get back.”

I was taking precautions. I feared that Angela might interpret my disappearance as a desertion of her wretched film, and that she would then carry out her legal threats. I had no idea how long it took to get a court order, or whether the court could really order Sycorax ’s sequestration, but I reckoned the fiction of a dying mother would confuse the lawyers for long enough. Then, just as soon as I returned to England, I planned to take the boat away. I’d had enough of Bannister, more than enough of Medusa, and I would take Sycorax to another river and there rig and equip her. But first, America.

They looked at me very oddly at the check-in desk. I was wearing a pair of my oldest deck-shoes, duck trousers which were stained with varnish and linseed oil, and a tatty blue jumper over one of the unwashed Army shirts I’d found in the bergen. It was my cleanest shirt. “Any luggage?” the girl asked me.

“None.”

But my ticket was valid, and my visa unexpired, so they had to let me on.

I went with excitement. I forgot Bannister and I forgot his threats because a girl with bright eyes and black hair had summoned me to Boston.

It was raining at Boston’s Logan Airport. There was no Jill-Beth. Instead a chauffeur with a limousine the size of a Scorpion tank waited for me. The chauffeur apologized that Miss Kirov was unable to be personally present. He was civilized enough to overlook my lack of luggage and the state of my clothes. The US Immigration officers had been less courteous, though a phone call to the Military Attaché at the British Embassy in Washington had finally convinced them that I had not come to corrupt the morals of the Republic. I rather hoped that I had.

In which hope I was driven south through a thunderstorm.

We drove to Cape Cod. I remembered, as we crossed the canal, how I had sailed Sycorax down this waterway to the East Boat Basin six years before. I’d had a crew from my regiment on board and we’d all been awed by the glossy boats amongst which Sycorax had seemed like a poor and shabby relation.

Now, taken deep into the Cape, I was wafted to a hotel of unimaginable luxury where I was expected and, despite my appearance, treated as a most honoured guest. I was shown to a door that carried a brass plate inscribed “Admiral’s Quarters”, but few admirals could ever have lived in such sybaritic splendour. It was a suite of rooms which overlooked a harbour. I had a jacuzzi, a bath, a bedroom, a living-room and a private balcony.

I went to the window. My father had always loved America; he loved its freedom, its excesses and its shameless wealth. I found the Republic more frightening, perhaps because I had not inherited my father’s talent for manipulating cash. I stared now at the busy harbour where boats that cost more than an Army officer could earn in a lifetime jostled on their moorings. The rain was clearing, promising a bright and warm evening. A motor-yacht with a flying bridge, raked aerials, fighting chair and a harpoon walkway accelerated towards the sea, while behind me the air-conditioning hissed in the Admiral’s Quarters. It all suddenly seemed very, very unreal; like a splendid dream that will end at any moment and return the sleeper to a commonplace reality. I turned on the television to find that the Red Sox were four runs ahead at the bottom of the eighth with three men on base. A printed card planted on the television set assured me that Room Service could bring me the Bountiful Harvest of the Sea or Land at any hour of the Day or Night. I felt as though I was drowning in casual affluence. There was a shaving kit laid out for me in the bathroom, a towelling robe waiting on the bed, while in one of the walk-in cupboards I found my old brogues which had been re-heeled, then polished to a deep shine. The sight of them, and the memory of the last time I had worn them, made me smile.