Bernard Cornwell - Sea Lord

It took me the rest of the day to find a pub that could point me towards a man who might just have a spare mooring that I could possibly rent. In the end I found such a man and he didn’t charge me a penny. He was a fisherman whose boat had stayed ashore since the winter. “It ain’t worth the bother,” he told me, “because there’s nothing left out there, not even scruff. They’ve fished it clean! You can spend a week out there and only get a wet arse for your trouble.” I consoled him with a pint, then told him I had to go to London for two days. “Your yacht’ll be safe, boy, never you mind. But put your oars behind my garden shed, otherwise they’ll be stolen, sure as eggs.” I’d rowed the dinghy ashore, because I didn’t want to risk using the outboard and it being stolen while the dinghy was marooned on the foreshore.

I caught a train next morning and, because there wasn’t a spare seat, stood all the way from Devon to London. By the time the train pulled into Paddington I was in a foul temper.

London didn’t help my mood. I’d just spent six weeks in the Atlantic where the greatest inconvenience had been listening to a yellow-bellied Swede, but London was nothing but inconvenience. It was crowded, stinking and self-important. The people had faces wan as curdled milk. They scurried like rats through their noisy tunnels, they littered, and all about them was noise. Noise, noise, Goddamned bloody noise. Trains clattering, taxis thumping, horns and voices and sirens and jackhammers battered the air. I had not visited London in over four years, and I hoped to God I would never have to visit the place again.

I caught a bus to the Strand, then walked to the solicitors’ office. Sir Oliver Bulstrode was not in the building, but would I like to leave a message? The girl at the reception desk was plainly intimating that scruffy men walking unannounced off the pavement were not welcome as clients at Bulstrode, Finch, Finch and McElroy. “I’ll wait,” I said curtly.

I sat down in an ancient leather chair and picked up a copy of The Field .

“Are you a client, sir?” The receptionist was looking understandably alarmed. I was wearing my cleanest jeans, my least dirty shirt, and a pair of fairly new tennis shoes, but I still didn’t look much like the usual class of gold-plated shit that did business with Bulstrode.

“I’m a client,” I said. “My name’s Rossendale.”

“Rossendale?”

“As in Stowey, Earl of,” I said.

There was a pause of two heartbeats. “Would you like coffee, my lord? Or something stronger, perhaps?”

I smiled back at her. It wasn’t her fault that British Rail couldn’t run a railroad, or that I was pissed off with London, or that I was angry at my twin sister, or that I was dressed like a vagabond. “What I’d really like,” I said, “is to take you out to lunch, but as I have to speak with Sir Oliver I’ll settle for a glass of his best Scotch instead.”

Sir Oliver arrived a half-hour later. He’s a plump man with a kindly face, a real Santa Claus of a face, but the benign look is utterly deceptive for, like all the top lawyers, he has a heart of flint and the morals of a rabid weasel. He raised plump hands in astonishment when he saw me. “My lord! I had no idea you were coming! Have I mislaid our appointment?”

“No, Oliver, you have not. This is by nature of a surprise visit.”

“And a very welcome surprise too! Upon my word, what a distinct pleasure this is. I shall cancel my luncheon engagement immediately.” Which was his way of telling me that he would double his hourly fees for this unannounced visit, which did not bother me because I had no intention of paying. Sir Oliver and his partners had sent their children to the best schools and their wives to the most expensive fat farms on the proceeds of the Stowey Estate, and I considered it was high time he did something for me. “I see you’ve been given some whisky,” he said. “Good! Good! Do come into my sanctum, John!” He always greeted me as ‘my lord’, and thereafter used my Christian name to show that he could assume intimate terms with the nobility. The man’s a creep, but a clever one.

He fussed me into his office which was stiff with leather chairs and ancient hunting prints. At weekends he plays the country squire, plodding round six damp Essex acres with a shotgun and a mangy spaniel. “Sit down, John, do! I shall just rearrange luncheon, if you’ll allow me.”

Ten minutes later we were served plates of salmon salad in his office. He opened a bottle of Entre-Deux-Mers. “I was so sorry not to have attended your mother’s funeral,” he told me as he poured the wine. “I had an unbreakable engagement that day, which was so very sad.” He lied, of course. If the Rossendale family had still had any flesh on their bones he’d have been down to the funeral like a shot, but as he thought he’d squeezed us dry then there had clearly been no profit for him in making the journey. “So sad,” he murmured.

“I missed the funeral too,” I said. “I walked out before it began.”

He must have known that already for he showed no reaction, not even to enquire why I had abandoned the ceremony. Instead he smiled beneficently. “I must say, John, you do look very well. Sun and sea, eh? And still as thin as ever! You do put the rest of us to shame.” He paused for a split second. “I thought you were even now sailing into the unknown? So very brave of you, I always think.” He bestowed me an admiring look. In fact Sir Oliver dislikes me intensely. He’s been our family’s solicitor for almost as long as I can remember and, when I inherited the title, he had thought that I would be naïve enough to do whatever he told me. In the end I told him to get stuffed and went off to sea. He’s never forgiven me and probably never will.

“I sailed back.”

“Evidently.” He smiled, then forked a chunk of salmon and mayonnaise into his mouth. “I assume you’re worried about your mother’s will?”

“I haven’t even seen the will.”

“Ah.” He clearly wished he hadn’t raised the matter, and swiftly moved the conversation on. “So to what, precisely, do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”

“I came to see you, Oliver, because of what that bitch Elizabeth is doing to Georgina.”

He dabbed at his lips with a linen napkin. “Dear Lady Elizabeth.”

“The answer is no.”

“No?” He smiled happily. “No one appreciates the merits of brevity more than I, my dear John, but I must confess that your meaning has momentarily eluded even me.”

“Georgina is not going to live with Elizabeth. That’s clear enough, isn’t it?”

“Eminently.” He sipped his wine. Somewhere beyond the heavily curtained window a piledriver began smacking insistently.

I raised my voice over the din. “If you want me to sign something, I will. As head of my benighted family, Oliver, I’m telling you that Georgina’s future is not up for grabs.”

“I don’t think we’re quite ready for signatures yet,” he said ominously. He poured each of us another glass of wine. “Might I ask why you’re so adamantly opposed?”

“Because Elizabeth is a money-grubbing witch who hates Georgina. She only wants her out of Jersey so she can get her hands on Georgina’s trust fund. You know all that, so why ask me?”

He swivelled his chair to stare at a print of Stowey that hung above a leather sofa. “I suppose,” he said airily, “that at sea you must learn to view the world in very simple terms. There’s no room for doubt in the ocean, is there? Yet on shore, my dear John, things can become so deucedly complicated.”

“Stop wrapping it up, Oliver. Tell me.”

He swivelled his chair to face me. “It’s all a question of options, John. So long as your dear mother was alive she wanted Georgina to stay in Jersey, but now things are changing. The good sisters of the convent are under a great deal of pressure to sell the property; indeed, it seems increasingly likely that the diocese will force the sale, which would mean that the sisters are most likely to retreat to their mother house at Nantes. Will the Lady Georgina be happy in France?” He spread his hands to show that he did not know the answer. “Then we must consider dear Sister Felicity. She’s not well, John, not at all, and all of us fear for dear Lady Georgina when Felicity dies. Imagine it, if you can: Georgina would be alone and bereft, in a strange country, with no solace but the sacraments.”