Bernard Cornwell - Sea Lord

Sunflower and I fell into our old routine. I slept mostly by day when other boats might be expected to keep a better watch than at night. I had a new radar reflector at the mast-tip, but I doubted whether any night-time crew on a merchant vessel would be watching their radar; more likely they’d be watching dirty videos and they wouldn’t even feel the bump as they drove Sunflower under. More yachtsmen die crushed under the bows of careless steamers than from their own mistakes, so at night, when the heavens were dazzling with stars, I stayed awake close to the self-steering gear. I’d doze at times. Sunflower was behaving beautifully, her newly cleaned hull making her sweet in the water. We were on a long windward beat, but the weather was good; lulling me to sleep and to reflection.

England already seemed like a bad and unreal dream. Had two men really tried to kill me? I knew they had, but now, where the memory had once made me wake sweating in the night, it seemed merely ridiculous. It had surely all been a mistake. The police had taken no interest in my return, and why should they? The only resentment had been from my family, and from Sir Leon’s staff who felt cheated of their glorious picture. Had they sent the two men? The possibility intrigued me, but a few moments of thought convinced me that the notion of Jennifer Pallavicini ordering my death was a nonsense. She had no motive that I could see. Elizabeth was a more likely candidate, but none of it seemed to matter any more. The whole episode was scoured clean by a northwest wind and the ocean’s long swell.

Charlie was right, I thought. The picture was long gone. It was in some Texan vault, or Japanese mansion, or Swiss strongroom. Whoever had bought it would take care to keep it safe, silent and hidden for generations. Perhaps, hundreds of years in the future, the picture would surface again and the art historians would recall that it had once been stolen from an obscure British family, but for now, for Elizabeth and me, the Van Gogh might just as well be on the dark side of the moon.

Not that I cared any more; I was back at sea, chopping my bows into the long ocean waves. I slept in the mornings. At noon, after the ritual sight, I made myself a meal. In the afternoons I found work to do. The new joinery in the cabin needed varnishing, and, day by day, coat by coat, the gleam deepened. I catnapped in the early evening, ate again, then read until the sun dropped. I had an old battered Shakespeare, Proust, The Oxford Book of English Verse , and Joshua Slocum’s account of his solo voyage round the world. There was meat enough in those four volumes to last a lifetime. All had been soaked when Garrard had dropped Sunflower off the grid, but the pages had dried out and, though crinkled, were still readable. When the light made the pages indistinguishable I would prepare the sextant for the first star sight of the evening, then just sit and let the time drift past.

At night the phosphorescence glittered in our wake. Sometimes a large fish would come close to the hull and I’d see its rising track like a trailing coat of stars deep in the water. In seven years I’d never tired of that sight, nor thought I ever would. It became warmer as we travelled south. By day I rarely wore any clothes: why wear out things that cost money to replace? At night I pulled on jeans and a sweater and, in the early hours when sleep threatened most, I would go to the foredeck and exercise till I was sweating. There isn’t much exercise to be had on a yacht; the toughest task is hoisting the mainsail, but, in a good year, it stayed up most of the time.

I took the sails down once. I was fourteen nights from Ushant and the weather turned. The dawn revealed a sullen oily swell above which my sails hung limp beneath a brassy sky. The glass dropped all morning, while heavy greasy clouds piled from the west to shroud the sky in an ominous darkness. At noon a heavy rain flayed the sea, then stopped as abruptly as it had begun. The rudder banged in its pintles.

I sensed a squall. There was none in sight, but the instinct is enough. At sea it’s best to act on the first impulse, for there might not be time for second thoughts. I dropped the foresails and lashed them to the pulpit rails, then let down the main. I tied the heavy sail to its boom, then disconnected the self-steering gear. I slid the washboards into their grooves, bolted them home, and locked the companionway shut.

A minute later the squall struck. It came out of the west like an express train. The squall was an onslaught of wind and rain, stirred to fury, but so confined and travelling so fast that it had neither the time nor space to stir the sea’s venom into threatening waves. The rain seemed to be flying parallel to the sea which was being whip-skimmed into a fine spray that struck Sunflower with the force of a sand-blaster. I crouched down from its fury and felt my naked back being stung red by the rain’s lash. I could hear nothing but a maniacal hiss. I looked up once and saw the mast straining. The forestays were bar taut while the twin backstays were bellying out like bows. I dared not look again. The pressure of the wind on the bare pole was driving Sunflower backwards and I could feel the sea’s pressure trying to slew the tiller. I had never known such fury in an Atlantic squall. I’d experienced them in the Pacific, but this was a timely reminder never to take the sea lightly. Then, as suddenly as it had come, the squall went.

The wind dropped to nothing. A gentle heavy rain pattered down. Behind me I could see the sea being scourged white, but ahead and around Sunflower the water was just a dappled black. The hull seemed to shiver as the cockpit drains gurgled.

Two other squalls struck, neither as fierce as the first, and an hour after the second the black clouds rent to show sunlight. By nightfall we were under full sail again, beating west and south as though there had been no interruption. I played myself tunes on my penny-whistle and opened a rare bottle of wine. Two dolphins investigated me, and stayed with the boat halfway through the night.

Next morning the first dawn rays of sun reflected pink on the undersides of the wings of two gulls. It was a sign that I was nearing the Azores and by dusk I could see the white clouds heaping above the mountains of Graciosa. Twelve hours later, after a sweet night’s sail, Sunflower was safe alongside the painted wall in Horta. I recognised two yachts in the busy harbour. One, a graceful double-ender, belonged to an hospitable American couple whom I had last met in Tasmania, while the other, an immaculately maintained wooden yawl, was sailed by an obnoxious Swede who was the bane of every sailor on the seven seas. I asked in the Café Sport where the Americans were. “They had family trouble, Johnny, so they flew home.”

“That’s a mistake,” I said fervently.

My own mistake was to go to the Café Sport. I was just addressing a dirty postcard to Charlie when Ulf, the loathsome Swede, slapped my back. “I saw Sunflower here. That’s Johnny, I said to myself. How are you?”

Because I was back where I belonged and therefore feeling well-disposed to all mankind, even to the gruesome Ulf, I said I was in wonderful health, which rather disappointed him. I asked how he was.

“A redundant question, Johnny, as you well know. I do not get the illness, ever. Physical sickness is an aberration of the subconscious mind.” He was off, unstoppable and unbearable. I’d once heard an Australian threaten to break Ulf’s bloody legs to test his theories that all ailments were in the mind, but the trouble is that the repugnant Ulf stands nearly six feet eight inches tall and is built like an advert for steroids.

He drank lemonade while I drank beer. Once he had expounded his theory of human sickness he launched himself on Sunflower ’s ills. “You have a new mast, yes?”