Sea Lord

by Bernard Cornwell

  He had backed away. Jennifer Pallavicini’s face showed utter horror. She made a small noise of protest, but I ignored her. Ulf waved a placatory hand. “I was only trying to help you, Johnny. Maybe it was important to you, yes?”

  “Maybe it wasn’t your business, you Swedish bastard.” His reward money, in Portuguese escudos, was strewn across the cockpit grating.

  “It was just business, Johnny, just business.” He sounded miserable, while I was mildly astonished to discover that he had a streak of jelly instead of a backbone. I’d expected one hell of a fight from him, but he was plainly scared. Nor was there any point in hitting him again, because he wasn’t going to fight back. “You’re a creep, Ulf. You’re a real pain in the arse.”

  He nodded eager agreement with my judgment. “But you are a real English earl, Johnny, yes?” He had backed to stand beside the mizzen mast at the far end of his cockpit, from where he nodded towards Jennifer Pallavicini to prove the source of his information.

  “And you’re queen of the bloody fairies, Ulf. Piss off.”

  I had hardly acknowledged Jennifer Pallavicini’s presence though, if I was honest with myself, I knew I’d been showing off to her. These days women might claim that they prefer enlightened men who can change nappies, do the ironing, and whip up tasty little soufflés, but in truth I suspect they prefer men who can beat the shit out of loathsome Swedes.

  I motored back to Sunflower. The confrontation had made me feel much better, which was some consolation. Two hours later I cast off, hoisted my sails, and did what I had promised to Jennifer Pallavicini.

  I sailed away.

  Part Three

  I sailed away, but I didn’t go south. I went north. It was a bastard of a voyage into the teeth of a nasty wind, and a voyage made worse by a persistent equinoctial gale that tried to drive Sunflower into Biscay. Luckily we had enough westing to weather the two days and nights of wind, but it made the approach to the Channel a long fight against the northwesterlies that followed the storm. Once again I saw Sunflower’s reluctance to go to England: she blew out the clew of the storm jib, the topping lift broke, and a pin came out of a sheave in the self-steering gear. They were all simple enough repairs, but were best done in calmer weather. That weather came as we passed the Lizard. The wind died and there was only a long, long greasy swell from the west over which we crept on Sunflower’s motor.

  I passed Salcombe by. I couldn’t face Charlie. He had repaired my boat, provisioned me, and I knew all that generosity had been a vicarious adventure for Charlie. He could not be a sea-gypsy any more, so he had made it possible for me to go back to the deep waters in his place; but now I was crawling back with my tail between my legs. The time would come when I’d explain everything to him, but for now I could not bear to see the disappointment on his face, so I sailed up the Devon coast to the anonymity of the River Exe where I moored Sunflower at a vacant buoy. The sky clouded over at dusk and, by nightfall, it was raining. Welcome to England.

  I was woken at three in the morning by an irate man who had just motored from Guernsey and wanted his mooring buoy back. I obliged him, anchoring Sunflower in what seemed like a vacant patch of the river instead. At five in the morning I was woken again as the falling tide grounded me. By seven Sunflower was lying canted on her starboard chine in the middle of a drying sandbank. It was still raining.

  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.”

  The weight of it crushed down on me. I could see what was in Sir Oliver Bulstrode’s evil mind. The last vestiges of my family’s cash were in Georgina’s trust fund. If Elizabeth took control of that money, then Oliver would get his fee. The trustees of the fund would need to be persuaded, but there were few men better at buttering parsnips than Sir Oliver Bloody Bulstrode. In short the pigs had found a honey trough and were ready to snuffle, and none of them cared a monkey’s toss for Georgina.

  “She can be found a good institution in England, can’t she?” I tried.

  “Oh, undoubtedly!” he said with fake enthusiasm. “There must be scores of institutions which would gladly care for your sister! Yet would any court of law, I ask you, prefer such an institution to the love and care of a family member? Not, I hope, that this matter will ever reach any court,” he added hastily. “I’m sure we can work it out most amicably.”

  “You’d call Elizabeth loving and caring?” I asked incredulously.

  “The Lady Elizabeth Tredgarth,” he said huffily, “has undertaken to provide the most proper care and attention for her sister. I note, with the deepest regrets, your reservations about the Lady Elizabeth’s suitability, yet I must tell you frankly, my lord, that I cannot see any court refusing her a supervision order. Not when you consider the alternatives.”

  I had noted that he had called me ‘my lord’. That was a danger signal which told me Sir Oliver was on Elizabeth’s side. He was on her side because she had a prospect of scooping the cash. Sir Oliver is a venal bastard, but so are most top lawyers. That’s why so many of them become politicians.

  “Supposing I offered Georgina a home?” I asked.

  He feigned astonished pleasure. “My dear John! What a very splendid idea! And so typical of your generosity! Can you do it? Naturally, you would have to provide constant nursing care. The premises would have to be suitable, or were you thinking of making her a shipmate?” He chuckled at his own jest. “Seriously, John, such a responsibility will involve a great deal of money!”

  “There’s Georgina’s trust fund.”

  “Which would hardly be made available to someone with a police record.” The steel was in his voice now. “You would be asking the trustees to grant you authority over a great deal of money. Before they would even consider doing that, they would need to be satisfied that you have demonstrated some fiscal responsibility and domestic stability. I believe, unless I am entirely out of touch with your personal affairs, that you possess neither a house nor a wife?”

  I stood up. I had not touched any of the salmon salad. “Georgina can stay where she is so long as Felicity is alive and the hospital remains unsold.”

  I had not inflected it as a question, but Sir Oliver chose to treat it as such. “She can certainly remain where she is for a time, yes. The Lady Elizabeth has not, I understand, finished preparing her domestic arrangements.” He paused to shake his head sadly, as though I was disappointing him by my wilfulness. “I really do think you may be misjudging your sister. I grant you that Elizabeth can be tiresome, but I do assure you that she is making the most thorough preparations for Georgina’s welfare. Why don’t you inspect those arrangements? I’m quite sure the Lady Elizabeth would welcome such an inspection.”

  “Have you inspected them?” I asked.

  “Of course. I lunched at Perilly last week, where I found the Lady Elizabeth’s proposed arrangements entirely satisfactory.”

  They had me boxed in. I’d just sailed twelve hundred horrid miles to find that I had been utterly outmanoeuvred. I left Sir Oliver’s office, ran down the stairs, and, once on the pavement, took a deep breath to rid my lungs of the leathery stench of his hypocrisy. The street air stank of fumes and filth. And Georgina, like me, was trapped.

  I walked beside the embankment. I went there because there are boats moored to the wall, but they’re boats which are never again going to feel ocean waves on their cutwaters, or heel to a cold cold wind as clean as a rigging knife. The boats are trapped. They’re there to serve as pubs or museum pieces. London has taken their guts and their pride away from them, and reduced them to gewgaws.

  And I was trapped. But, God help me, I had some guts and pride left; enough, I hoped, to fillet a twin sister and her fat lawyer.

  I paced the river. It began to rain, but I was oblivious to both the rain and the passing time. Up and down I went, between Blackfriars and Westminster, thinking.

  I was head of the Rossendale
family, but my titular authority counted for nothing because I was poor, had a police record, and a reputation for being irresponsible.

  Yet, truly, neither the police record nor the irresponsibility mattered because, when dealing with lawyers, only one thing carries real weight. It isn’t justice, or probity, or any other of their fine words; it’s cash. Lots of cash. Lawyers love cash. They grovel for it, swill in it, lie in it, cheat for it, flatter for it and dream of it.

  So I needed cash. The trustees of Georgina’s fund might never entrust the money to me, but Georgina wasn’t tied to the trust. If I could replace the trust fund, then I could arrange her future, so the first question to be thrashed out along the embankment was where I could find a lot of money. There was an obvious answer, of course, but my pride wouldn’t let me grovel to Jennifer Pallavicini. So I had to find another way.

  I could sell the few shares left in Uncle Thomas’s legacy and I could sell Sunflower. I’d probably raise about one hundred thousand pounds which would be enough to buy a small house in Devon. I could find a job. If no one needed a welder or carpenter, then I could sell my title to some idiot who wanted an aristocrat’s name on his firm’s letterhead. I could join the other clowns in the House of Lords and claim my attendance money. Perhaps I could write a book: Belting Round the World, an Earl’s Story. Perhaps the heavens would open and rain golden sovereigns on me. Perhaps pigs would fly.

  It was hopeless. A small house in Devon and a job would not solve my problem because Elizabeth would still hold all the cards; she had a large house, a husband, and no record of being drunk and disorderly. What I needed was a lot of money, very fast; enough to buy a sharper lawyer than Sir Oliver.

  Charlie.

  That thought stopped my walking. The lights were coming on across the river and reflecting in shaking streaks on the darkening water.

  Charlie would help. Charlie would throw himself into this battle with all his huge heart and soul and strength, but Charlie would be no match for a cunning bastard like Sir Oliver Bulstrode. Charlie would give me money, but the lawyers would soon drain that away and Charlie, despite his success and despite his flashy toys, was deeply in debt. Besides, this was family. This was my responsibility, and I had already taken too much money from Charlie. What I needed now was my own money; gobs of money, a lawyer’s wet dream of money. What I needed was a patch of canvas, two feet three inches wide by a shade over three feet long, on which some poor half-mad genius had once painted a vase of sunflowers.