Bernard Cornwell - Wildtrack

“Nick.”

“I’m crying,” I said.

“So am I,” she said, “for Tony.”

I closed my eyes. “Where are you?” I asked.

“Cherbourg. Melissa telephoned.”

I said a small prayer of thanks for Melissa’s caring and compas-sionate soul. “I told her to.”

“I know. I don’t know what to do, Nick.”

“Stop Tony sailing.”

“He’s already gone. They caught the afternoon’s tide.”

“Oh, Christ.”

“Melissa called just afterwards and then I spoke to that journalist you told me to find and he said you’d been telling the truth. I should have believed you before, Nick, but…”

“It doesn’t matter.” I stared up at a calendar that Rita had hung on the wall. The calendar, which showed three kittens nestling in a pink blanket, was an incongruous advert for a firm that supplied VHF sets. “You must radio him,” I said. “Get a taxi to the Chantereyne Marina. Go to the office there—”

“I’ve tried him on the radio telephone already. It wasn’t any good.

He says I’m being hysterical. He says it’s newly-wed nerves. He says you’re just trying to stop him winning the St Pierre because you work for Kassouli.”

I scrambled to my feet to see if there was a clock on Rita’s desk.

There wasn’t. “What time is it now?”

“Nearly seven o’clock.” I subtracted one hour to get British Summer Time. “Nick?” Angela asked.

“I’m still here.”

“Can you stop him, Nick?”

“Jesus.” I thought for a few seconds. The answer had to be no, but I didn’t want to be so bleak. “What time did he leave?”

“He crossed the start line at twenty past three exactly.”

“Local time?” I asked. She confirmed that and I told her to wait.

I went into George’s office and ripped pin-ups off his wall to reveal an ancient and faded chart of the Channel. I dragged open his desk drawer and, among the pipe reamers, corkscrews and patent medicines found an old pair of dividers. This year’s tide table was in the other drawer. High Water at Dover had been ten minutes after mid-day, British Summer Time, which meant Bannister was sensibly using the fastest tidal current to launch his run.

I went to the window. The wind was southerly, gusting hard enough to slap the rain against the dirty panes. I picked up the phone on George’s desk. “Are you still there?”

“Yes.”

“Wait.” I walked the rusty dividers across George’s wretched chart. I knew that Wildtrack would be going like a bat out of hell to clear the Lizard before she swung up towards the Mizen on Ireland’s south-west coast. After that she would go north-west, hunting for the backwash of the depression-born gales that arced their way eastwards across the North Atlantic, but the only place I could stop her was in my own back alley: the Channel. I added a divider’s pace for the fair current and reckoned that, by three in the morning, and assuming Wildtrack had taken a slightly northerly course to clear the traffic-separation zone, Bannister would be in an area about twenty nautical miles south-south-west of Bolt Head. I drew a circle on the chart to limit the search area.

It’s easy to posit such a search on a chart, but out in the Channel, amidst a squally darkness, it would be like trying to find a dying firefly in the Milky Way. I shortened the dividers to compensate for Sycorax ’s pedestrian pace, then pricked them north from my circle to Plymouth. Eight hours of windward discomfort.

“I might intercept him if I leave now,” I said dubiously.

“Please, Nick?” There was a pleading eagerness in her voice. “Will you stop him?”

The difficulty was not stopping Wildtrack . “Listen, Angela, I can’t even promise to find him.”

“But you’ll try? Please?” The last word was said with all her old seething passion.

“I’ll try. I promise.” I thus volunteered for the madness. “What will you do now?”

“I don’t know.” She sounded helpless and frightened.

“Listen,” I said. “Fly to Exeter. Hire a private plane if you have to. Meet me at Bannister’s house tomorrow. I’ll be there about mid-day.”

“Why?”

Because I want to see you, I thought, but did not say it. Because I’m about to flog myself ragged in a bloody night for your rotten husband, and the least you can do is meet me afterwards and say thank you, but I didn’t say that either. “Just be there, Angela. Please?” She paused, and I thought she was going to refuse. “I’ll try,” she said guardedly.

“I’ll try too.” I put the phone down. The wind rattled George’s window panes and blew damp litter in tumbling disarray across his yard. It was a south wind, and still rising, which meant that tonight’s sail would be a windward slog to nowhere. The chances of finding Bannister were negligible, but that was no excuse to break the promise I’d just made to Angela. I closed the broken doors behind me, ducked my head to the wind, and limped to Sycorax .

I moved George’s half-wrecked fishing-boat, primed my wretched engine, and hurt my back turning the flywheel. I needed a self-starter.

I needed self-steering. I needed my head examining. I supposed that this was the manner in which knight errants had arranged their own disappointments; one bleat from the maiden and the fools galloped off into dragon land. The motor caught eventually and I let it get used to the idea of working while I dragged the foresails through the forehatch and hanked them on their halliards. I felt a moment’s jealousy of the slick sailors who had roller-reefing and self-tailing winches, then forgot the self-pity as I took Sycorax stern first into the river where the waves scudded busily before the cold wind. I hammered the gear lever into forward and Sycorax bluffed her bows against wind and water.

I prayed that the engine would keep running. We were pushing past drab quays where even the gulls, perched to face the southerly wind, looked miserable. Once out of the river I hoisted all the sails, but left the engine running so I would not have to tack my way past the breakwater. The sky on this English summer’s evening was a low, grey and wintry murk through which two Wessex helicopters thumped towards a frigate moored in the sound. A landing craft, black and khaki, thumped evilly towards Mount Edgcumbe, and the brutal, squat lines of the ugly craft brought back memories of the time when I had two good legs and the belief that I was both invincible and immortal. A sudden percussive bang from the Wembury gunnery range brought the memories into sickeningly sharp focus, but then I forgot the past as my engine gave an ominous bang of its own. It stopped dead, but it had taken me safely to the searoom at the breakwater’s western edge.

The open sea was raggedly high. Sycorax jarred at the first wave beyond the breakwater, then she seemed to realize what was expected of her and she tucked her head round and heeled to the wind that was flicking the tops off the waves into tails of white spume. I was sorting out the tangle of sheets in the cockpit. I was soaked through. Once clear of the Draystone I’d go below and find rough-weather clothes, but for now I knew I must stay with the tiller. A big Moody ran past me and the skipper waved and shouted something that got lost in the wind. He was probably calling that I had a nice boat. He was right, I did.

But that was small consolation tonight. I hunched low in the cockpit and knew that I was only making this gesture to impress Angela. I was meddling in her life because it gave me a chance to be close to her, but there had been no sign on the telephone that she reciprocated that wish. She had sounded desperate for her husband, while I had wanted her to be desperate for me. Such is pride.