Ghosting Home (Strong Winds Trilogy)

by Julia Jones

  Then Toxic had arrived, immaculate in one of her designer outfits and gushing with superficial sympathy. The Mal-fairy. Somehow, during that visit, she had convinced Lottie that the best thing she could do for her children was to abandon them.

  Then Lottie had walked straight into the clutches of the Tiger. He ran a cleaning company that was like slave-labour.

  “I discovered that I wasn’t the only one. Most of the other women had been visited by Toxic before they decided to join Pura-Lilly. Not the ones from abroad – they belonged to the Tiger as soon as they arrived – people like me, outcasts in our own country.”

  “That’s hardly surprising.” June had been there. They’d all been sitting around talking, trying to understand what they ought to do. “Lots of those women would have had children taken into care or children getting in trouble. Denise Tune would have all the information – who’d been in prison, who was in debt, who had addictions. She didn’t actually hand you a Pura-Lilly card, did she?”

  “I found it on the bedside table after she’d left. Anyone could have put it there. Pura-Lilly send temporary cleaners in when the hospital services can’t cope.”

  June had looked keen.

  “That’s good. That’s the sort of detail that can be checked. We need to investigate who signs those cleaning contracts, where the payments are made, who has named responsibility for quality control.”

  She noticed Xanthe rolling her eyes.

  “You might think it’s dull but it can be deadly. Ask anyone who’s been tax-inspected!”

  Xanthe had recently grown taller than her mother. She patted her on the head.

  “Aged Parent,” she’d said kindly. “You’ve lost the plot. We’re talking global piracy here, not annual audits.”

  “Innocent child,” her mother had answered. “These people are exploiting and mistreating others to earn themselves big money. But they’re not being paid in pieces of eight. Their profits could be traceable.”

  Donny thought over that conversation again as he sat in Snow Goose’s cockpit watching the wave shapes grow steadily more distinct, as daylight strengthened and the world seemed to open up around them. Joshua was at the helm and Donny was keeping a lookout for the Armada buoy, the first indicator that they were nearing the southern tip of the dangerously shallow Cork Sand.

  The fake Hispaniola had left her mooring this weekend of all weekends. But she hadn’t chased out to sea after Strong Winds, she’d gone in the opposite direction up to Ipswich. Why?

  And where was the Tiger now?

  “The Armada’s unlit. It shouldn’t present any problem as long as we stick to our course. The South Cork itself should soon be visible: six very quick flashes and one long one every ten seconds. But it’s as well to be sure.”

  They’d hoisted the yawl’s full set of sails and she was slicing keenly through the tossing waters. Joshua had arranged that he would call Gold Dragon on his VHF when he was approaching the Black Deep. She would then bring Strong Winds back to meet Snow Goose and he would transfer June and the passport. Skye could be reassured that Donny was okay and they would go their separate paths.

  “I thought you told me that the problem with VHF was that all your transmissions were public? Anyone who happened to be listening on the right channel would hear everything that was being said. Even if you were planning a barbecue on a beach.”

  Joshua glanced up the mainmast as if he wasn’t quite certain that Snow Goose’s topsail had been properly set.

  “That’s true,” he agreed. “And for the first transmissions, when your great-aunt was venting her anger and informing us of her intention to leave territorial waters, we communicated clearly and on maximum wattage. Then later, we used different channels ... and perhaps, not the same ship’s names.”

  Donny liked that. If he couldn’t go to Holland with Skye and Gold Dragon, staying with the Ribieros would be okay.

  More time passed in comfortable silence. He stole a glance at Joshua’s dark, clever-looking head. The neurosurgeon was wearing a navy blue woolly hat and a cream silk scarf inside the turned-up collar of his all-weather jacket. Plenty of texture there. He might even get his art homework done.

  Not that Joshua looked relaxed exactly. There was a short frown-line between his eyebrows, and once or twice his lips pressed together and the corners of his mouth twitched as if he was thinking of things that he didn’t want to say.

  Donny looked out to sea again. They’d passed the South Cork buoy and were approaching the North East Gunfleet. There had been the usual massive container vessels lumbering along in the distance in the deeper water and three smaller ships, not going anywhere. Joshua said they were at anchor, probably waiting for a pilot or a tide. Otherwise the sea appeared empty. No schooner coming after them. No masts.

  “Wow! Look at that!”

  A very large bird was flying low over the waves, about fifty metres to port, powering upwards to gain height before plummeting down in the most spectacular dives. It was white underneath and dark on top. Too big for even the largest type of gull. And he’d never seen a gull scythe into the water like that, with its neck outstretched and wings tucked tight against its sides.

  Then there was a second giant bird: pure white with black wing-tips. It too dived like a Stuka and came up with a flash of silver struggling in its beak. The first bird tried again. Then they both fished together before flying off into the distance with the rising sun gleaming on their under-plumage.

  “Gannets,” said Joshua. “Probably parent and child. It’s time we reduced sail. The wind’s getting up and we’re over-pressing the yacht.”

  They worked together as companionably as the gannets had fished, taking in one of Snow Goose’s two jibs and bringing down her topsail. If he had sailed with ... Hermann, would it have been like this?

  “Thank you,” said Joshua. “I should have taken that action some time ago. I have an important meeting at the hospital later this morning and am anxious to be punctual – but that’s no excuse for poor seamanship.”

  “Meeting?”

  “I handed in my resignation on Friday and I have to explain my decision to the management committee.”

  “Huh?”

  He knew that Joshua had been brought in to develop a centre of excellence in neurosurgery and he sort of knew that the Ribieros hadn’t planned to stay in Suffolk for ever. He’d no idea that the job was going to finish so soon.

  “Is that what you want to do?”

  “I can no longer continue to work in a system where something as basic as cleaning is allowed to put people’s lives at risk.”

  “Oh.” he remembered there’d been some sort of crisis last Christmas when Joshua’s unit was threatened with temporary closure.

  “Do you have to? You know, like, resign?”

  “It’s my department. I cannot continue working in such chaos.”

  “Oh. Do Xanthe and Maggi know?”

  “Not yet. Neither does June. I’ve talked to her, of course. She insists that I should carry on fighting. I can’t do it. Too many of my patients have become ill. We have had unnecessary deaths. I intend to go abroad.”

  “Oh,” said Donny. He was going to lose this whole family. “Is it time to make the call?”

  He took the helm whilst Joshua used channel 73 for Motor Vessel Spray to communicate with Fishing Vessel Larky Lass over the relocation of a misplaced line of lobster pots. Then he woke June and Xanthe. It wasn’t long before the creamy sails of Strong Winds were visible fine on the starboard bow and the two yachts closed for the handover.

  The sky was heavily overcast, those gleams of morning sun no more than a memory. The wind continued to rise, flinging the waves angrily upwards when they met the shoal waters of the Long Sand.

  The two boats hove to as close to one another as they dared; then Donny helped Xanthe launch the inflatable so she could row June across to Strong Winds. He waved to Skye – wide cheerful gestures to show he was okay.

  But he wasn’t ok
ay. Wasn’t okay at all. What was it with adults that they thought they could do as they liked the whole time? Go for a holiday or chuck up their jobs – Mr McMullen, Edward, Joshua – simply push off whenever it suited them.

  He hated Joshua.

  For a moment he even hated beautiful Snow Goose. Strong Winds was his ship and that was where he ought to be.

  He helped Xanthe climb back on board and dragged the inflatable out of the water. It fitted neatly on the cabin roof; each varnished fastening so thoughtfully positioned.

  The two yachts dipped flags in farewell.

  Donny watched Strong Winds spread her broad sails like wings. He watched as those winds began to fly her away from him.

  He made up his mind. He jumped.

  And when Joshua immediately, instinctively, threw him a line, he folded his arms and kicked away on his back, refusing to catch it.

  “Tell Gold Dragon that I’m having a Sinbad moment,” he yelled up to Xanthe.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Reality Check

  Off Long Sand Head, Monday 16 April 2007

  The waves seemed much larger down here than they had from the deck of the yawl. One slapped him in the mouth as he shouted and, by the time he’d spat it out again and shaken his head and tried, ridiculously, to wipe his face with sopping wet hands, Snow Goose was several metres further away. Then another wave came up from behind and crashed right over his head.

  His lifejacket had inflated as soon as he’d hit the water. It was holding his face upturned so there would be a chance for air to continue to reach his lungs even if he was unconscious. That was what it was meant to do. By leaning his head even further back and kicking away from Joshua he was simply inviting each curling wave to break onto his face. He needed to twist away, look where he was going and take them one by one.

  The water was really cold out here. This was only April. There’d been no long summer days to raise the sea temperature. Not like that evening in September when he’d been in the water once before waiting for his great aunt to come and rescue him. The flood was pouring slightly west of south, through the Deeps and up into the great throat of the Thames. The wind was doing the opposite.

  Splosh. Donny misjudged another Eiger-peaked wave. It pushed him under for a moment and spun him round so he felt completely disorientated. He couldn’t see Snow Goose; he couldn’t see Strong Winds. He was achingly cold.

  If Snow Goose’s lifeline had been beside him he’d have grabbed it with a gurgle of relief. He’d got to swim or his circulation would be gone. He’d got to take every single sea hill at exactly the right angle and he’d got to keep his face out of the water. Snow Goose must still be there, somewhere, and surely Xanthe’d have radioed Strong Winds by now?

  But when Donny next bobbed upon a crest and glimpsed the yawl, Xanthe hadn’t moved. She was still standing on the port side of the cockpit, holding the shrouds with one hand and pointing at him steadfastly with the other.

  Of course she couldn’t move!

  If you were a person with an eye-line to the casualty (aka utterly crazy idiot) you didn’t go scampering off to use the VHF. You didn’t grab the tiller, help with the sails or start the engine; you didn’t do anything: you simply hung on there, looking and pointing, knowing you were that idiot’s single thread of hope.

  He stopped his craziness of swimming away from Snow Goose and tried his best to keep his wet white face pointing in her direction. Trying to meet each wave right so he didn’t get swamped again. Single combat with an endless queue of contenders.

  Snow Goose was still sailing away from him. Not fast, because Joshua had loosed all the sheets, but steadily because the wind was pushing at her superstructure. Or was it that he, Donny, was being taken away from her by the cold, unceasing tug of the tide?

  Why wasn’t Joshua radioing or bringing the yawl round?

  ‘When there’s a man overboard, always gibe.’

  Donny knew, as clearly as if he could see it printed on a page, that this was what Great Uncle Greg would have done. Surely Joshua, Vice Commodore of the RO&A, knew that too? The tall man seemed to have gone slightly mad. His first throw with a line had been good but Donny had ignored it.

  Idiot him.

  Swiftly Joshua had followed up with a life belt and another. They were heavy and didn’t go so far. One had a sort of flag on it, which was good. Donny tried swimming in that direction but he couldn’t make any headway. His calf muscles were starting to ache. He’d pushed his trainers off a few moments ago. His feet had hurt furiously as the cold seemed to chew its way through his socks.

  That fierce pain had stopped now. Or moved up a bit. He wasn’t sure he still had feet.

  Donny kept kicking. Trying to. Every time he was between waves, he focussed really hard on where he would come up again. This way he could keep catching glimpses of Snow Goose in a sort of freeze-frame sequence.

  One frame had Joshua stooping to haul in the line he’d thrown at first. Mustn’t risk it fouling Snow Goose’s propeller. So maybe the engine’s running? Gives him control.

  In the next frame Joshua wasn’t there at all. The heavy boom was thrashing wildly side to side. Had he been knocked overboard?

  Donny slid into a trough. That would be the end.

  No. Joshua was still there. He was throwing cabin cushions into the sea one after another with the speed and strength of a bowling machine, not bothering to look for Donny, just following the line of his daughter’s outstretched arm. Did he really think that a sopping, semi-submerged cushion was going to be any use or was he suffering some sort of deranged hissy fit? A couple of fenders followed and a spare mooring buoy, florescent orange, very distinctive.

  Donny got the next waves wrong and was smothered twice. So he didn’t see the surgeon pull a handheld VHF set from the grab bag in the cockpit locker and make a fast, carefully worded call to the distant Strong Winds (aka Larky Lass).

  He didn’t see the junk’s battened sails come cracking across one, two, three as Polly Lee wore her around 180 degrees and started back, close-hauled, on a reciprocal course with her engine leaping into life.

  ‘When there’s a man overboard, always gibe.’

  Great Uncle Greg’s book had said nothing about throwing cushions and fenders so when Donny saw the first of them drifting damply towards him, he ignored it.

  It was different with the life-belt. That had a flag. He wanted it. He was tired. He was afraid his calf muscles were about to seize up completely. He must hang on to something.

  With what felt like all his remaining strength, he struggled towards it. Never mind trying to keep Snow Goose in sight. His eyes were stinging with the salt, his face was frozen and his hands felt as if they were going the same way as his feet. Going ... gone?

  Donny hadn’t seen Joshua push the MOB button on his GPS. Or use the handheld compass to take a swift directional reading. He didn’t realise the importance of the other items of flotsam in helping establish the precise set and drift of currents in the area.

  Bodies which have become too cold and tired to do any more than cling, eyes closed, to a horseshoe life-belt, fitted with a danbuoy and a drogue, behave much more like sodden cabin cushions than like buoyant, manoeuvrable yachts. Joshua had got the message that Donny would refuse rescue from Snow Goose. He was doing all that he could to mark out the area where Strong Winds would operate.

  Skye had been looking astern at the disappearing yawl and saw Snow Goose’s sheets were let fly. Something was wrong. She mimed a bird with drooping, quivering wings. Her meaning was as clear as if she’d shouted.

  “Larky Lass, Larky Lass. This is MV Spray. Item of your equipment adrift. Trademark Sinbad. In sight but not retrievable by us. Drifting approximately 199 degrees from initial position 049 ̊ 60’ N: 001 ̊ 32’E. Over.”

  “MV Spray. This is Larky Lass. Proceeding to collect item with all speed.”

  Skye was lookout, ready to point or to call. Polly Lee was on the helm and in charge, whilst June refastene
d the rope ladder that she herself had used to climb aboard. Once it was over the ship’s side, she followed the captain’s instructions to minimise Strong Winds’ sail area.

  When they finally reached Donny, after what seemed hours to the watchers on Snow Goose, but was really less than ten minutes, he was in no state to manage the rope ladder.

  “Doh!” he heard, as he clung to his fluorescent life-belt, “Doh!!”

  His brain must have got a bit frozen too. He had forgotten why he jumped. He had to struggle to open his eyes to check that she was there. The salt began to sting again so he blinked hard several times.

  Then he saw her, though his reddened, half-shut lids. She was crouching towards him from the high deck of his home, stretching her arms down through the guard-rails. She couldn’t reach him, and he definitely couldn’t manage to climb the rope ladder to reach her. It was amazing that he’d got so cold so fast. He had thought people went swimming in April for pleasure.

  He tried. He let go the life-belt and launched himself towards the junk’s high heaving side. That could have been another very bad move if he hadn’t managed to hook one of his uselessly numb arms in between the two bottom rungs of the ladder.

  “T – too cccold,” he stuttered though teeth that began to chatter as soon as he quit clamping his jaws together.

  June made a big bowline on a bight of rope and lowered it towards him as Gold Dragon slashed the cod-line which kept the rails taut. Skye signed that he should wriggle his free shoulder in the loop and try to get it right across his body.

  He smashed against Strong Winds. Even if you were numb it hurt. But he got hooked on. One arm in the rope ladder: the bowline round his body.

  Then Skye used all her frantic strength to pull up the ladder whilst June found a sheet winch to help her tighten in her rope. Between them, slowly and bumpily, they hauled Donny up onto the broad side decks where he lay sodden and bruised and dazed with relief.