Bernard Cornwell - Sea Lord

It was a version of the truth, spoken passionately to carry conviction, and perhaps, at the beginning, he alone of the three had not wanted my death. And I thought how scared Elizabeth and Garrard must have been when I returned, when they found Jennifer on Sunflower , and how they must have believed that Charlie was betraying them, and how Charlie must have argued for my life, agreeing only that I should be scared away from England. And perhaps, I thought, he had only wanted the ransom, reckoning that I would share my good fortune with him if the painting was recovered and I sold it. But then I had given the painting away, and Charlie’s friendship for me had been corroded by the acid of lust and greed, and so he had gone aboard Sunflower and filled her bilges with gas. I looked into his eyes, trying to understand. “Tell me about the gas, Charlie.”

He found nothing to say. What was there to say? That he regretted it? I was sure he did, but he regretted the loss of all the money more. I looked past Charlie, far beyond Barratry’s bows, and saw two launches heading towards us. I looked back to my best friend, still trying to understand how he could try to kill me one day and smother me with his generosity the next. I’d slept in his house, but of course I had been safe there for he would never have wanted my death to seem like murder, but rather to have looked like an accident. That way he would have been safe. “My God, Charlie,” I said sadly, “but you are a bastard.” I remembered Jennifer and aimed the barrels at his eyes.

But I couldn’t kill him. He’d saved my life once, singing his way through a ship-killing storm in the Tasman Sea. I stared at him over the gun’s crude sights. “So where’s the painting, Charlie?”

He didn’t answer till I twitched the gun, then he shrugged. “In the cellar, Johnny. Wrapped up and safe.”

“And it’s mine!” Elizabeth almost screamed at me. “Mother left it to me! It’s mine!”

“Damn you,” I said, “damn you both.” Then the first launch bumped alongside, and big efficient men climbed aboard Barratry . I dropped gun and money on the deck, then turned away to face the rising sun.

Friendship. Was anything worth the betrayal of friendship? Except lovers take precedence over friendship, and Charlie had found his Lady and he would kill his friend to make her rich, and himself rich with her. I closed my eyes. Not because I was staring at the sun, but because I had come home, and was crying.

Epilogue

Lazy water lapped at Sunflower ’s hull. The sun was brilliant, remorseless, high, but the white awning which was stretched from Sunflower ’s mizzen to her mainmast sheltered me. The ketch was properly called Sunflower II , but I’d left off the Roman numerals when I’d painted her name on the stern. I had wanted to call the boat Jennifer , but Jennifer Pallavicini wouldn’t let me. She had dictated a letter from her hospital in Switzerland saying she didn’t want the boat named after her. I hadn’t understood her reasoning, but she had been adamant, and so I had called the boat Sunflower II instead. The new Sunflower was a good yacht; steel-hulled, eight feet longer than the original Sunflower and with two gas alarms in her bilges.

She had been launched five months ago, and now she was berthed in the Leeward Islands. It was midday, hot as hell, but I was shadowed by the awning and had a cold beer I’d taken from the galley fridge. I’d never had a fridge on a boat before, but nor had I ever been given a millionaire’s cheque book to build a boat before. And, given that cheque book, I’d made a good sea boat. She’d rolled incessantly on the long crossing from Madeira to the West Indies, but every boat rolls in the trade route. She’d proved fast, despite her long keel and heavy hull. None of her gear had gone disastrously wrong; nothing but the usual small crop of problems: a chafing halliard, a lifting sail seam, a leaking deck fitting; nothing I couldn’t mend with my own two hands, and nothing that would stop this long lovely boat from going around the world. She was, in truth, a proper job. The odious Ulf would probably find something wrong with her, but the odious Ulf wasn’t here.

There was just me, Sunflower II and, at the landward end of the rickety wharf that jutted out into this impossibly blue water, a girl.

I’d watched the girl step down from the island bus. Once the bus had growled away she had looked towards Sunflower , but then hesitated. She had been carrying four string shopping bags and perhaps they had been too heavy for her, because she had left two of the bags under a palm tree, adjusted the handles of the others, then walked slowly down the wharf towards my berth. Good legs, I thought appreciatively, very good legs. I could tell, for she was wearing shorts. A lovely body, really. I thought how wonderful that body would look in a bikini. The girl had short black hair and a suntanned skin and, as she came closer, a very nice smile.

“You might have helped me, you bastard,” she said in greeting.

I nonchalantly waved the beer can. “I was watching you, and thinking what a very satisfactory crewperson you are.”

“And one day you’ll make a satisfactory galley slave.” She tossed the string bags into my lap. “They actually had American lettuce at that nice little shop. It was horribly expensive, but I couldn’t resist it, so that means we can have a proper salad at last. And I bought a very weird vegetable, I haven’t a clue what it is, but that lovely lady who laughs every time she sees you says that you cut it in half, scoop out the pulp, and eat it raw. Oh, and you peel it as well.” Jennifer, Countess of Stowey, stepped down into the cockpit and gratefully collapsed into the shade under the awning. “I left the two heavy bags at the end of the wharf,” she added, “and you can go and fetch them.”

“Did you buy my tobacco?”

“Of course I bought your tobacco, you horrible man. Oh, and there was a letter at the General Delivery. Mummy and Daddy are going to Antigua and would love to see us. They’ve taken a house there and we can have a proper bath.” She closed her eyes in pretended ecstasy. “A proper bath!”

“Unfortunately,” I said, “the winds are entirely wrong for going to Antigua.”

“The winds,” Jennifer said firmly, “could not be better. And Mummy’s bringing Georgina.” Sister Felicity had died, but somehow Helen, Lady Buzzacott, had gained Georgina’s confidence. Georgina was hugely improved. She had her own horse at Lovelace House and that therapy, together with Helen’s friendship, had given her great happiness.

The cause of my own immediate happiness took the beer can from my hand and drank what was left of it. “Now go and get the groceries,” she ordered me.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Jenny still has some scars, but, except for those on her hands, you have to know her very well to find them, and I don’t have any intention of anyone but me knowing my wife that well. Sir Leon would like her to go back to Switzerland for more cosmetic surgery on her hands, but I’ve said no, not till our year’s cruise is over, and Sir Leon is learning that an earl outranks a mere knight. Not that he minds, because he has his picture. The Stowey Sunflowers hang in his gallery and one day I’ll go and see them again, but not yet. I have a wife, and a boat, and a great happiness, though sometimes, when I look up to find a star among the million points of light, I remember a friend and his laughter, and I wonder just how it all went so wrong.

But things go right, too. It’s called love, and even if it does mean eating salad sometimes, it works. And Sunflower ’s a proper boat, and Jennifer’s happy again, and the oceans are huge, and love seems to touch even the mundane with gladness; in short, it’s a proper job.