Ghosting Home (Strong Winds Trilogy)

by Julia Jones

  “Bribed or frightened?”

  “Remember that man we saw through the binoculars that day?” Anna asked Donny, as if he could have forgotten. “That wasn’t Bill because Bill was already in prison.”

  “I think,” said Donny, who usually tried not to think about that sight more often than he could help, “that the Tiger kept his cage-birds on board the Pride of Macao.”

  “The Hispaniola, you mean.”

  “Yes, but she’s the wrong story. The right one must have started when Gold Dragon was living in the South China Sea. You know, the story of the Three Islands. It was you that told me, Maggi and Xanthe. I know it’s only fiction but everything’s based on something.”

  “So?”

  “So, not a lot. There’s a character called the Tiger in that story who keeps birds, that’s all. Maybe this bloke’s posing as him.”

  “Why?”

  “Make himself look scarier? I dunno.”

  “And Gold Dragon can’t remember.”

  “She nearly did. There was a moment off the Belgium coast when she saw him coming at us ... The shock was probably what gave her the heart attack.”

  “But the Tiger doesn’t know that she’s forgotten. So it’s not surprising he got in such a panic when we hoisted her dragon flag on his boat.”

  “Especially as we made that mistake and put up the Chinese flag when it should have been the Australian. He must have thought the message was for him – ‘you are standing into danger.’”

  “That it was a threat to him instead of a warning to her!”

  “Quite funny really.”

  “Except not.” Donny thought of all the trouble there’d been. “Because I didn’t tell you what I did on board the Hispaniola the next day. I had your knife, Xanth, the old one with the marlinspike, and I found a piece of plank and I scratched all the welcome words I could remember and put it on top of the Chinese flag and left it for him to find, like a doormat.”

  “Including the Mark?”

  The others didn’t know whether to giggle or gasp.

  “He must have gone ... ballistic!”

  Donny nodded, unhappily. “I think he did. But I think he took it out on his birds. Smashed the place up a bit, threw the cages about. Tipped a couple overboard. That’s why we found Hawkins so soon afterwards. And there were other birds, cage birds. They were still fluttering around the Hisp ... Pride of Macao. We saw some being blown right across the harbour. They’d never have survived.”

  “That’s horrible,” said Maggi. “Are you sure?”

  “If Strong Winds was here I could check the dates in her logbook. But yes, I am sure. That boat gave me a really weird feeling ...”

  “You and your feelings,” said Anna. “You’re as bad as Liam.”

  “I dunno. I thought Gold Dragon had finished the Tiger and I didn’t ever expect to see the Hispaniola again. I can’t get her out of my head. I get fed up with it. I only want to go sailing. And draw maps,” he added hastily. That bit about sailing had slipped out by accident. It was such a lovely evening. He could hear all the boats in the marina chattering to each other through their hulls and their halyards and their rigging.

  “We did mind-mapping once,” said Maggi. “When they were trying to teach us study skills.”

  “I actually meant charts. I got a letter from Gold Dragon this morning. Not really a letter – she doesn’t do them – it was one of her crazy texts. I don’t think she’s quite grasped that the world isn’t run via telegrams any more.”

  “Or writing with a hook isn’t all that straightforward,” said Anna.

  Oh. She was probably right. Donny’d got so used to his great-aunt being able to do everything he’d actually forgotten that she only had one hand. It wasn’t something he noticed any more.

  “Get on then,” ordered Xanthe, “Read it out.”

  “A TALE TO TELL OF THE HOUDALINQUA. INTEND TRADING CHART FOR CHART WITH YOUR ARCHIPELAGO REPORT. WAS IT WAR OR EXPLORATION?”

  “That’s a bit cryptic?”

  “Not by her standards. She expected us to have spent more time sailing round the islands and exploring all those little creeks. She thinks I’ll have drawn a map but I haven’t done anything. What with school and SATs ... as well as what actually happened. It’s almost too late now. There was a letter from my ... uncle as well. He wants me to come out to Oostende again and help him sail Strong Winds home.”

  That wasn’t precisely what Defoe had written ...

  “I need you to agree to skipper the junk as that’s the only way Polly Lee is prepared to relinquish her command. I’ll sign on as your crew. Bring a friend if you’d like. And Skye, my dream-sister. Come as soon as you can. I begin to feel uneasy here. With love from uncle Ned (though I prefer Defoe if you can manage it).”

  “The thing is that I’ve got my passport and I’ve looked on our school calendar and the teachers have a day off next Friday – for marking tests and writing reports and all that stuff – and Rev. Wendy says she’ll take us across on the ferry. But I’ll have nothing to give Great Aunt Ellen except bad news. I ought to send her a message back but I can’t think of a single word.”

  “Forensics,” said Anna.

  “Huh?”

  “You wanted a single word, send that. She doesn’t have a monopoly of cryptic communication. It might amuse her. The more she thinks about it, the better prepared she’ll be to hear the real story.”

  Donny so knew how Gerald and Wendy felt. “That’s a really great idea, Anna, but ...”

  “You have a problem with it?”

  “Um ... my problem is that I’m never exactly sure what ‘forensics’ means. I’ve heard it on TV of course. When they cordon off an area with that sort of orange ribbon. Or put special tents up so people don’t get rained on when they’re checking for DNA.”

  “Then you hear some interviewer saying that someone’s got a ‘forensic’ intelligence, and you wonder if they just mean that she’s a mega-brainiac? I’m not sure either,” said Maggi.

  “Forensics is what the Romans did in the forum. So it’s any sort of legal argument or the special sorts of science and medicine that you can use as evidence. We should have taken a photo of the Mark when Bill drew it on the sand and another when we saw it on the container. And we should have noted the number of the container so that it could be tracked back to port of origin. But we did do some deductive stuff – mainly you, Donny – and we’re doing our best to be forensic now.”

  “Because we want to present a case with real evidence, you mean?” said Xanthe.

  “Yes. And if Donny wants to start assembling our evidence on a map for Gold Dragon – I think we should all help.”

  “A forensic map?”

  “Oh come on, Donny, don’t be slow. A hunter’s map’s going to be different from a farmer’s map.”

  “And a detective’s chart will be different from a hydrographer’s.” Xanthe’d got it. “War and exploration all on the single sheet, I’d say. Stop yearning out of that porthole, skipper. It’s time to sharpen the ship’s pencils.”

  “By the way,” she added, sometime later, when she’d been struggling to sketch an accurate outline of Felixstowe Dock, “Mags and I won’t be arm-wrestling you for that spare berth on board Strong Winds. I’m going sailing next weekend and she’s my PR manager.”

  Okay.

  Donny looked at the harbour map: at the position of the red and white schooner – so strategic and yet so isolated. There was a link he was missing. He was sure of it.

  Harwich Harbour, June 2007

  There was a person missing too. But his disappearance had been well disguised and no-one had yet noticed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  HMS Beckfoot

  Southern North Sea, Friday 22 June 2007

  As soon as they boarded the Ramsgate-Oostende ferry, Rev. Wendy hurried to find a cabin. It was only a four-hour crossing and the weather was completely okay – sunny, wind southerly force 3-4, visibility good, sea-state s
light. If this lasted through the weekend, as the forecast promised that it would, they were going to have such a brilliant return voyage in Strong Winds.

  Donny was so excited he could scarcely bear to sit down. Let alone go shut himself in some drab little cubicle and lie flat on a bunk. He wondered whether Rev. Wendy had had a bad experience that had made her afraid of the sea? There was that day that she and Gerald had been on Snow Goose and they’d raced from Woodbridge Haven to the Orwell. Snow Goose had heeled over quite far. Maybe that had put her off.

  He tried, unsuccessfully, to explain that the ferry would feel completely different to a classic yacht carrying full sail on a crisp spring morning. It wasn’t crowded; there were loads of comfortable seats in the lounges or she could sit with Skye on the after deck, watching the wake and wave patterns and the following seabirds.

  Not that relaxing in the fresh air would have been normal Wendy activity. Normally she’d have marched to a spare table and set up her laptop to write a sermon or a progress report on the Diocesan Aid for Indonesia. Then she’d have worked solidly throughout the trip, pausing only to accept the cups of tea that she would command him or Anna to bring her. Though, come to think of it, she didn’t drink tea nowadays, or coffee.

  Rev. Wendy and her little car were going straight back to England once she had delivered the three of them to the Mercator yacht Basin. Lottie was taking Luke, Liam and Vicky camping at a folk festival for the weekend so Wendy and Gerald would be getting two days’ practice at living on their own again – which was what it would be like for them in just a few weeks’ time. Anna’s family were planning to move to their new home as soon as school had broken up for the summer and he’d be back on Strong Winds with his great-aunt, his mum and ... Defoe.

  His uncle had said that he’d managed to complete all that was needed on his current project so, as long as they could find him space to live, he’d like to stay a while. At least until it was over, he said. Donny assumed he meant the official enquiry into the container accident. That would probably take years.

  He spread out his Southern North Sea passage chart and asked Anna if she’d like him to begin entering waypoints into the portable GPS she’d bought on her most recent shopping expedition. She’d said that it was her reward to herself for getting such high marks in the scholarship exams. Donny refused to ask how brilliantly she’d done. Never mind that the portable GPS was the best toy he’d ever played with. Even if she gave it to him it wouldn’t compensate for her leaving Gallister High.

  By the time they reached Oostende he’d not only followed the ferry’s track and compared it with the course he remembered from his first crossing, he’d also roughed out a passage plan for their return journey, assuming conditions similar to today. He’d even made a few calculations of tidal advantage. In reality, his great-aunt or his uncle would take charge of all that, but it was an absorbing occupation and it would be interesting to see how his ideas compared with theirs. Last time he’d been on this ferry he’d felt like a deportee. Today he felt convinced that the world was his at the tip of a pencil.

  Gold Dragon’s long plait had gone. Her hair was thin, short and completely white. She hadn’t been released from hospital because she was well again. She’d been released because there was nothing more they could do.

  As a voyage it was idyllic: as a family reunion it was ... complicated. His uncle hadn’t entirely been joking when he’d said that Donny would be acting as skipper. He’d been expected to arrive with ideas about times to leave, courses to steer and watch systems. Donny thanked his stars for the portable GPS and resolved never to criticise Anna’s shopping habit again. Defoe had dealt with provisions, fresh water and diesel. He’d also checked that Strong Winds’ engine and all her electrical systems were running properly and had fitted a simple radar transmitter.

  “Yes, even as a little boy he loved engines,” said his aunt affectionately. “Eirene and the others used to tease him about the amount of time he spent below, when they had those summer holidays together. And that spaniel of his, carrying the tool-bag.”

  “That wasn’t me, Aunt Ellen, that was uncle Ned – your brother. I’m Defoe, remember, Eirene and Henry’s son. I grew up on Cocos Island in the Eastern Pacific – hundreds of miles from the whiff of an oily rag.”

  “I know, my dear, you did tell me. It was Eirene’s dream to reach the Pacific. I’m so happy for you all. Happier than I ever thought possible. Your dear, dear father ... what a navigator he must have been! But you must remember that the reason my sister called you Ned when you were born, was because she wanted something of our brother to live on. Just as Edith called this one John,” she added, gesturing at Donny. “After Ransome. Him with his charts and his leadership qualities.”

  This wasn’t the moment to burst into tears. But where was Gold Dragon in this sweet old lady? His ‘leadership qualities’, indeed! Had there maybe been a mix-up in the hospital?

  “It’s as if Ellen’s mind is circumnavigating her life,” said his uncle. “When the light is shining on her childhood years, then we companions of her old age fall into shadow. But then her mind returns again and here we are in our modern shapes.”

  “So are you an engineer?”

  “No, I’m a hydrographer; I work with charts. Ocean currents and depths are my speciality. I got a basic, all-round training with the US Navy while I was going through college. I had to work my way because I hadn’t any money. Although I’d grown up on Treasure Island (as my mother called it) it wasn’t the sort of treasure that converted into dollars. Ellen says that you’re a map-maker. I hope it’ll give us something in common – as well as our worshipful forebears, of course.”

  “Well ... ” Donny stopped feeling misunderstood and realised that there could be a funny side to all of this, “I’m useless with engines but I suppose I could learn and then I could give you a break when you’re fed up with being Ned. You could take on the leadership qualities. That was Great Uncle Greg. We’ve got his book if you need to do research. I don’t think I can provide a spaniel with a tool-bag though.”

  “Would a canary do? Because my little brother Liam truly does love engines and he and Luke – that’s my other brother, the wordy one – have been training their canary to pick things up with his claws and carry them when he’s flying. A tool-bag would possibly be a bit heavy but somebody mentioned rags? I’m Anna by the way. We’re not related but I have a vacancy for an uncle if you find you like the role?”

  Defoe smiled his amazing smile.

  “To have a nephew without a niece would be like ebb without flood. I have been alone for so long, dreaming of my sister. Now I have found her and a family beyond my imagination.”

  Gold Dragon had said something like that. Donny couldn’t cope with any more of this emotional stuff.

  “Your mum and dad are dead, I suppose.”

  “And buried in Costa Rica. Ellen is the last of her generation. So if sometimes she wants to go travelling back and I have to be Ned and you, Greg (or John), I think we should go with her.”

  “Fine,” said Anna. “I totally agree: so let’s all join in. Skye is Eirene’s real daughter and she’s got a crazy name and loads of creativity so she’s typecast for the middle sister. Therefore, for the purposes of this trip – and this trip only – I’ll be Edith. Or Mate Susan. Whichever you prefer. Lead me to the galley! My trademark is the kettle and I demand to count your stores. One thing I’m not going to do though. I’m not going to check whether you’re wearing double underclothes.”

  She’d meant it as a Swallows and Amazons joke, of course but unfortunately for her she was looking at Defoe as she said it. She suddenly saw how fit and muscular he was in his t-shirt and jeans. Those wide, dark eyes, that amazing glossy ponytail ... deus or what? Anna went completely scarlet and fled for Strong Winds’ cabin.

  “She’s not like that normally,” Donny reassured his uncle. “She’s really clever. She’d be a better radar operator than a cook.”

  “It’
s okay. Ellen’s told me about Anna. And Oboe. We’ve had a lot of time to talk while she’s been in hospital. I began to wonder whether she was quite safe there. There were some ... characters hanging about that I wasn’t sure I liked. I would have spent every spare moment with her anyway. There was so much I didn’t know. My mother had promised my father that she wouldn’t look back when she left her family so she only told me stories. Nothing about the real people. Ellen has explained why that was. She told me what happened to them in the war. She’s not always been drifting back to childhood.”

  “No, she certainly has not.” The sweet old lady was shaking her hook at them. “And she doesn’t take kindly to being the subject of scuttlebutt. If you two don’t skip along to your mess deck, I’ll be resuming command, with Nimblefingers as my first mate.”

  Defoe beamed at Skye. Donny had wondered what language they were going to use to talk to each other but it seemed that at this moment they didn’t need one.

  “When are we sailing?” he asked his uncle.

  “We’ll have to take a look at your calculations, skipper. I’d like to arrive on the other side in daylight but that shouldn’t be difficult at this time of year. Depends how hard you want to push us. I was rather hoping you might let us take our time. I’ve heard so much about this ship.”

  They left Oostende on the evening tide, past the statue of the unknown sailor, and out into the dove-grey sea. The surface of the water was in constant sluggish motion: molten pewter, with dints of pink and lilac among the silver and grey. The sun was almost gone and the series of approach buoys flashed ruby and emerald as they guided them away from the coast.

  Polly Lee took the helm for the first couple of miles but then she handed over and allowed Skye to wrap a blanket round her and tuck her into the leeward corner of the cockpit. No-one wanted to go below.

  Later, Donny used the GPS to show Anna exactly where they had been when the Pride of Macao had caught up with them.

  “That was when I recognised her,” said Gold Dragon, speaking out unexpectedly from her sheltered corner. “I last saw her forty years ago, in the mid-1960s. She was HMS Beckfoot then, a seaward defence boat, and she was being used for covert action in Indonesia. Intercepting kumpits and sampans that might – or might not – have communists on board. It was one of those little local wars that don’t get much of a mention back home. The Beckfoot was based in Singapore and came out on night patrol. Sometimes she was out days at a time, threading her way south through the islands towards the top end of the Java Sea. She had a couple of Vickers machine-guns mounted forward and Brens on the bridge and stern. Her brief was capture and destruction. No questions asked or explanations accepted. Her crew wouldn’t have understood the explanations anyway. They weren’t exactly linguists.”