Bernard Cornwell - Wildtrack

“Nick…”

I had gone to the window. “It’s about three thousand nautical miles for Wildtrack ,” I said. That was the distance from Cherbourg to the turning point at St Pierre, then back to the pencil cross.

“And from here. By the fastest route?” I could hear hope in her voice.

“Seventeen hundred?” It was probably fractionally less, but there was no such thing as a ‘fastest route’; not against headwinds and the North Atlantic current. “Say two thousand land miles.”

“How long would it take…?” She did not finish the sentence, but she really did not need to. She wanted to ask me how long it would take Sycorax to reach that cross on the map.

I could see the trees on the far bank heaving in the rising wind. It was odd weather; a quick succession of winds and calm, but tonight would see another stiff blow. “Sixteen days,” I guessed.

“Nick?” Her voice was tentative, even frightened, but she was pleading with me. She wanted me to go into the North Atlantic to save her husband.

“It would be faster,” I said brutally, “if I had someone to crew for me.”

She shook her head, but so abstractedly that I thought she had not heard properly. “But could you…?” she started, then seemed to think of something that drained the hope out of her face. “It’s your leg, isn’t it? You’re frightened that it will collapse.”

“It hasn’t happened for weeks,” I said truthfully, “and even if it had, it wouldn’t stop me.”

“So…” She could not bring herself to ask the favour directly.

“Yes,” I said. Wildtrack had a day’s start, but Wildtrack had much further to go. Yes, I could reach the killing place, and yes, I would try.

I’ve never victualled a boat so quickly, nor so well. Angela used her car and credit card to go to the town, while I raided Bannister’s larder and boathouse.

“I can’t let him die!” she said to me as she pushed a wheelbarrow of food down to the wharf. She said it as if to justify the insanity of what I did.

I didn’t care to discuss the motives; it was enough that I’d agreed to go for her. “What’s in the barrow?”

“Coffee, dried milk, eggs. Tins of everything.”

“The eggs need to be dipped in boiling water for five seconds. It preserves them.”

She took the eggs back to the house while I stored the tins in freezer bags to keep the bilge water from rusting the metal and ob-literating the labels. I stored packet soup, fresh bread, fruit, veget-ables, biscuits, baked beans, more baked beans, Irish whiskey, still more whiskey, margarine, tinned fruitcake, salt, sugar, tinned ham, and corned beef. I’d finished my rough list of perishable stores and hoped I’d forgotten nothing essential. Teabags, washing powder, compass alcohol, rice, oatmeal, disinfectant, multivitamins, cooking oil, lamp oil, soap. I wasn’t victualling only for a North Atlantic run, but thinking of what would follow. My own suspicion, my own certainty, was that I would never find Wildtrack . I went on a quixotic search because I did not know how to say no to a blonde, but once I had failed I would turn Sycorax ’s bows southwards, and so I provisioned for a long dog-leg voyage that would take me from England to the Canadian coast, then southwards to where the palms and slash pines grew. Fruit juice, nuts, stock cubes, more whiskey, spare light bulbs, lamp wicks, loo paper, washing-up liquid that could also serve as salt-water shampoo.

The wind was still rising, and the glass dropping. By nightfall there would be a half gale blowing. Bannister had what he wanted, a fast start, and I would share it.

Angela brought the parboiled eggs and I gave her more errands.

“I want some coal or coke. Firelighters. I want sweaters, socks, warm weather gear. I want the best bloody oilskins in the house. I need a sextant, charts, the best sleeping bag you’ve got. I want an RDF and a self-steering vane.”

“Whatever you want, Nick. Just look for it.” I ransacked the house for things I might need. I borrowed a set of Bannister’s spare oilskins that were so much better than mine. I borrowed a sextant so I would have a spare. I found charts of the North Atlantic and the Canadian coast. I stole the battery from the Peugeot to supplement the two already on board Sycorax . From a drawer in Bannister’s study I took a fancy hand-held radio-direction finder and a pack of spare batteries, then scooped an armful of pa-perbacks from his shelves. More whiskey. I took the fenders off Wildtrack II . I crammed provisions into Sycorax ’s every locker. Angela helped, piling stores higgledy-piggledy on the cabin sole. Half the time I didn’t know what she was stowing below, but I could sort out the whole mess on the voyage. I used the boathouse hose to top up with water, then craned three extra cans of diesel fuel on to the foredeck. I lashed the big cans down, though I doubted if the bloody engine would ever run long enough to need them. There was some broken self-steering gear in the boathouse and I put it all aboard. It could be mended and rigged at sea.

I still needed medical stores. Angela drove her Porsche into town and came back with bandages, butterfly clips, plasters, hypodermics and painkillers. I’d told her to go to the doctor and get a prescription for painkillers, local anaesthetics, tranquillizers, antibiotics and Benzedrine. I scribbled a note to the doctor explaining my need and Angela brought everything back. More whiskey. Potatoes, flour, crispbread, Newcastle Brown Ale, chocolate bars, razor-blades, bacon, fishing-lines, antiseptic cream, sunglasses.

By six o’clock it was almost done. The wind was blowing hard now, coming from the south-west. If the weather pattern held then I’d have a stiff beat out of the river and a wet blow down to the Lizard, and a rough sea to the Mizen Head, but after that, off the shelf waters, I’d be reaching fast into the high latitudes. From there I’d drop down to the rendezvous.

My tender was still in the boathouse. As Angela took the last two boxes down to the cabin I hoisted the dinghy on to Sycorax ’s coachroof where I lashed it upside down. The dinghy was my only liferaft; there were not even lifejackets aboard. As I tied the last lashing to the starboard handrail it began to rain and suddenly there was no more to be done except to say goodbye.

I kissed Angela. We stood in the rain beside the river and I kissed her once more. I held her tight because a part of me did not want to leave. “I can’t promise anything,” I said.

“I know.”

“You just have to wait now,” I said.

“Yes.” She was embarrassed that I was doing this for her, but it was the last desperate throw, and I could not deny it to her. I’d planned to sail away whatever happened, and all I did now was make a northerly detour to where the seas would be cold, grey and bleak.

“Time to go.” I wanted to stay with her, but the falling tide beckoned. There were no bands or cheerleaders, just an overloaded boat on a river pecked by rain and squirled by wind. “I’ll write,” I said. “Some day.”

“Please do.” She spoke stiffly.

“I love you,” I said.

“Don’t say it, Nick.”

It was a miserable parting; a miserable departure. The engine wouldn’t start, but the jib tugged Sycorax ’s bow away from the wharf.

Angela let go my springs and warps as I hoisted the mainsail and mizzen. Water swirled between the hull and the bank as I coiled the ropes.

“There’s a present for you in the cabin!” Angela shouted. Sycorax was moving fast now, snatched by the ebb and the river’s turbid current. Angela thought I had not heard her, so cupped her hands and shouted again, “In the cabin, Nick! A present!” I waved to show that I’d heard, but I couldn’t go below to find the gift until I had Sycorax settled into the main channel. Once there I pegged the tiller, went down the companionway, and found the last two boxes that Angela had loaded. One was filled with catfood, the other contained a small black female kitten that, as soon as I opened the box lid, greeted me with needle-sharp claws.