Bernard Cornwell - Wildtrack

But I’m too old now.”

“Twenty-six is not old.”

“It’s too old to become a hippy.”

“I’m not a hippy.”

“What the hell else are you?” She shook a cigarette from its packet and lit it. “You think you’re going to drift around the world like a gypsy. Who’s going to pay you? What will you do when your leg collapses? What about your old age? It’s all right for you, Nick, you don’t seem to care. You think that it really will be all right, but I’m not like you.”

“You want to be safe.”

“Is that so bad?” she said belligerently.

“No. It’s just that I’m in love with you, and I don’t want to lose you.”

She stared at me. “Get a job, live in Devon. Can’t you parlay that medal into a job?”

“Maybe.”

She grimaced and stubbed out the cigarette she’d only just lit. She stood, walked round the bed, and dropped her bathrobe on to the floor. She stood naked, looking down on me. “Let’s make the film first, Nick, then worry about life?”

I threw back the bedclothes for her. “OK, boss.” She climbed in beside me. “You’ll stay tomorrow?” Tomorrow was Friday. “How about the whole weekend?”

“You know I can’t.” Bannister wanted her to go to France for the weekend. After Wildtrack ’s successful series of races he had moved to the Riviera where he had been a judge at a television festival. That work was now completed and he wanted Angela to fly down for the festival’s closing celebrations. The plan was that she would fly to Nice on Friday evening, then return with Bannister on Monday morning and drive down to Devon that same afternoon.

We thus both sensed that this might be our last night of stolen freedom, for the old constraints would come back with Bannister’s return.

Angela left early next morning, going to the studios where she was rough-cutting the film that had been shot so far. I made myself coffee in her tiny kitchen, bathed in her tiny bathroom, then sat and made a list of the charts I wanted to buy. The list was very long, but the money was typically short so I cut the list down to the Azores and the Caribbean. Every fare to London denied Sycorax another clutch of charts, but I didn’t think Sycorax would deny me these visits. I looked at Angela’s few belongings; the untidy papers left over from the research of past programmes, a pretty watercolour on her wall, the old and decrepit teddy-bear that was the one thing she had brought from her childhood home.

The phone rang. I did not move. The telephone was connected to an answering machine and, when I was in the flat, I left the machine’s speaker turned up. If it was Angela calling me then I would hear her voice and know to pick up the telephone and switch off the machine. I hated the process, which struck me as a typical shift of adultery, but it was necessary. Sometimes Bannister called and I would listen to his peremptory voice delivering a curt message and the jealousy would spark in me.

This time I heard the usual tape of Angela’s voice apologizing that she could not answer the phone in person. Please speak after the tone, she said, and the tone dutifully blipped. There was a pause, and I thought the caller must have hung up, but then another familiar voice sounded. “Hi. You don’t know me. My name’s Jill-Beth Kirov. We met at Anthony Bannister’s house, remember? I’m kind of looking for Nick Sandman and I gathered you were filming him, and I wonder if you’d pass on a message to him? My number is—”

She broke off because I had switched off the answering machine and lifted the telephone. “Jill-Beth?”

“Nick! Hi!”

I was angry. “How the hell did you know I was here?”

“What’s the drama, Nick?” She sounded pained. “I was just trying to reach you. I didn’t know where you were. I was just going to leave messages everywhere. I need to talk with you, OK?” For a second I forgot my careful arrangements with Micky Harding. “I don’t think we’ve got anything to say to each other.” She paused. “You want to play hardball or softball, Nick?”

“I’m sorry?” I said, not understanding.

She sighed. “I once had to investigate a guy who had a boat pretty much like yours, Nick. His was a yawl, but it was really cute. He even had a figurehead, a mermaid with his wife’s face. He was real proud of that boat. It burned. It was a real tragedy. I mean the guy had put his life into that yawl, and one careless cigarette end and suddenly it’s the Fourth of July fireworks show.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“Nick!” She sounded very hurt. “I just want to talk with you, OK?

What’s the harm in that?”

I remembered Micky Harding and his promise that the newspaper could ease me off Kassouli’s hook. “All right.” I spoke guardedly.

She suggested this very lunchtime and named a pub in Soho, but I didn’t know if I could find Micky that quickly. I didn’t even know if I could find him at all during the weekend. “I can’t meet till Monday,” I said, “and that’s the earliest, and I’ll be back in Devon by then.”

She paused, then sounded warily accepting. “OK, Nick.” She named a pub that I knew and a time.

I put the phone down. It seemed that Yassir Kassouli had not given up his pursuit of Bannister. The hounds of revenge were slipped and running, and I now had to head them into the light where they would be dazzled and confused by publicity. I telephoned Micky’s paper and tracked him down to the newsroom. I told him where and when I was supposed to meet Jill-Beth. “Can you make it?” I asked.

“I’ll make it.” I heard anticipation in his voice. He was already relishing the headlines: “Tycoon Plots Piracy!”, “Yank Billionaire Threatens UK Jobs,” or, more likely from Micky’s newspaper, “Piss Off Kassouli!”

Angela came home irritated because a film editor had taken off sick and she had needed him to cut a particular sequence and the replacement film editor was, she said, a butcher. She played the message tape on the phone. I’d rewound the spool after Jill-Beth’s call and the American girl’s voice had been overlaid with an invitation for lunch, a message about flights to Nice, and a call from an old acquaintance of Angela’s who just wanted to say hello.

“What she wants is a job,” Angela said scathingly. “What kind of a day did you have?”

“I bought two charts,” I said, “and discovered a million things I can’t afford.”

“Poor Nick.” She reached out a long thin hand and touched my cheek. “A friend has said I could borrow a cottage in Norfolk this weekend. There’s no phone there, and he’s got a dinghy in the creek.

A Heron dinghy? Does that makes sense?”

“A Heron makes much sense.” My joy at having Angela to myself all the weekend must have shown, but I still wanted to make certain of it. “And Nice?”

“Bugger Nice. I’ll tell Tony I’m too busy.” So we buggered Nice, and I did not tell Angela about Jill-Beth’s call. I wanted to, but I didn’t know how to explain why I was meeting the American, nor did I care to say that I was only doing it because Micky would be there. Angela would have bridled at the thought of the bad publicity that would be flung at Bannister, and anyway I told myself I was only meeting Jill-Beth to end Kassouli’s interfer-ence. I thought I was taking care of the matter and I did not need Angela’s help, so I felt rather noble about it, and not in the least guilty, because, all things considered, and come Monday evening, Yassir Kassouli, just like Nice, would be buggered.

Micky Harding and I drove down to Devon on the Monday afternoon. I was nervous. “We’re taking on one of the richest men in the world, Micky. They threatened my bloody boat!”