‘Yes I can as a matter of fact. Mr Plumb taught me.’
‘Like he taught you to sail.’
‘Like my aunt taught me to swim.’
‘You can swim as well?’
‘I love swimming. I try to swim every day in the lake at home.’
Richard eyed the water, which was much calmer now the wind had dropped.
‘I often swim from the side of the boat,’ he said.
‘There’s nothing to stop you having a swim if you want to,’ Portia assured him. ‘You can change in the cabin and I won’t watch.’
‘I wouldn’t mind if you watched,’ Richard laughed. ‘I’m quite a good swimmer.’
Portia felt herself colour slightly. ‘That wasn’t what I meant,’ she said. ‘What I meant was that if you were embarrassed, you needn’t be. Because I wouldn’t watch. If you didn’t want me to.’
Richard smiled shyly back and for a moment they sat in silence, each sipping their lemonade, while behind them Perrott steadily munched his way through his leg of chicken.
‘I think I might have a dip actually,’ Richard finally announced. ‘After a short rest, of course, I mean having just had my lunch. I think what we’ll do is stretch out on deck for a while because the wind and the currents won’t be right for about another hour yet, and then before we set sail for home I think I will have a swim.’
Later when he emerged from below dressed in his red, yellow and black striped bathing suit he called to Portia, who was studiously looking the other way out over the stern of the yacht at a flight of moorhens who had landed not fifty yards away, that one of his sisters had left her bathing costume on board.
‘So if you do want to have a swim, I mean once I’m in the water and everything, I don’t see why not!’ he called. ‘Victoria’s about the same size as you, isn’t she? I mean I don’t think her costume’s going to be too big or anything! Or too small!’
Portia turned as he finished calling to her and thanked him, saying she’d think about it, but Richard just waved and jumped off the side of the yacht, as if anxious not to be visible too long in just his costume. As soon as he had started swimming away from Mandrake Portia slipped below into the tiny cabin and found Victoria’s costume which Richard had laid out for her on the bunk. It was a blue serge all-in-one garment, with full sleeves and a skirt, and when she held it up against her Portia could see that the size was more or less perfect. So she closed both halves of the door behind her and started to undress. Richard’s clothes were on the floor, dropped where he had discarded or stepped out of them, his thick white sailing shirt and old trousers, his socks, shoes and his underlinen. As she undressed herself, Portia tried to ignore their intimacy but found that she could not, her gaze being drawn back to the discarded clothes, and as she pulled her borrowed costume up over her own nakedness she imagined the boy who had stepped out of the white shirt and trousers and linen undergarments. Although she had no exact idea of male nudity she had seen enough of Richard’s muscular chest and fine strong upper arms through his open-necked shirt with its sleeves rolled up to imagine him as being like the statues Uncle Lampard admired so much in the gardens at Bannerwick. The carvings were of strong and athletic young men, unclothed except for the barest cover afforded by some sort of athletic toga or short loincloth. And as she imagined him as some sort of young and glorious god, stepping out of his robes and plunging into the cool mysteries of the waters she could hear lapping against the hull, another feeling of intense excitement rushed over her, but a very different excitement from the one she had felt as she had stood at the helm of Mandrake. This delirium was altogether more powerful and intoxicating, and frightening, shocking to Portia because it hinted at the unknown, of a land she had not yet even caught sight of, let alone set foot on. She found herself suddenly seized with a desire to grab the discarded white shirt and to bury her face in it, and so strong was the urge that it made her catch her breath and hurry even more to get herself ready for her bathe and out of the claustrophobic little cabin as quickly as she could.
The shock of cold water began to bring her back to reality, and only then as she began to swim away from the yacht did she remember stumbling out of the cabin back up on deck and easing herself over the side. Far away, two hundred yards or more, she could just see Richard swimming in a wide arc, now making his way back to the boat. Treading water she waved at him and he waved back, then turning her back on him Portia swam out in a dead straight line away from Mandrake, concentrating hard on her strokes and the rhythm of her swim until all the feelings she had just experienced seemed to be washed away from her by the cool clear waters in which she swam.
The day was beginning to cool as they sailed for home, so Dick insisted that Portia wrap herself up in a warm wool rug which was stowed in the cabin for precisely these circumstances. The wind was no longer fresh and had swung right round behind, so that they ran only steadily and under a light sail. Richard took the rudder while Perrott manned the canvas, leaving Portia to sit well wrapped up on deck with her back against the upper framework of the cabin. For a long time no-one talked, the three of them just content to listen to the water rushing by and the breeze in the rigging. Perrott lit his pipe and sat for’ard on the deck, legs crossed like an old tar while he hummed some half-remembered tunes and shanties to himself.
Finally as the creek leading up to Brueham House hove into view, Richard spoke.
‘That was splendid, Miss Tradescant,’ he said. ‘Do you want to come out again? I mean soon?’
‘Thank you, Mr Ward,’ Portia replied. ‘I’d like that very much.’
‘You swim well. I’ve never seen a girl swim quite as well as you, you know.’
‘Thank you. I only wish I was able to handle sails as well as I can water.’
‘Gosh – that’s easily arranged!’ Richard laughed, easing the rudder over and nosing Mandrake into the entrance of the creek. ‘Perrott and I can see to that, can’t we, Perrott?’
‘Indeed we can, Mr Ward, sir,’ Perrott replied, trimming more sail and smiling at Portia. ‘I taught my young sister to sail, miss, and now she handles the sheets better’n I.’
‘We’ll fix it up once we’ve landed,’ Richard assured her. ‘Pappa’s going back to London next week, but we’re staying on up here so although we won’t be able to sail Merlin, if Pappa gives his consent Perrott and I will teach you everything you need to know about canvas aboard Mandrake.’
SHIPWRECKED
Not only did everyone give their unqualified consent, but once back at Bannerwick Aunt Tattie volunteered to set about finding Portia an altogether more practical outfit in which she could sail. As always the attics were plundered for this purpose and after much indecision accompanied by just as much muttering and sighing Aunt Tattie descended with her shortlist, an armful of mixed clothing some of which was nearly a century old.
‘There,’ she said finally, standing back from an outfit she had selected and laid out on the day bed in her boudoir for Portia to see. ‘I think that would be ideal, yes? Both smart enough and yet practical. A white shirt and tie underneath the jacket—’
‘I’m not sure I’ll fit into that jacket, Aunt Tattie,’ Portia said, taking the waist-length brass-buttoned boy’s double-breasted jacket and holding it up against her. ‘At least if I do, it’s going to be quite a tight fit.’
‘That was your great-uncle’s, you know,’ Aunt Tattie replied, as if that particular piece of information would help the jacket fit her niece the better, leaving Portia to wonder quite how she was meant to button it across her bosom. ‘And these—’ She held up a pair of large white bell-bottoms. ‘These belonged to a cousin of ours. I really intended to look them out the other day for you, when I knew how keen you had become on all this sailing, because I remembered our cousin wearing them at a party. Not that he sailed. In fact he was the most unsporting of men. But he used to love dressing up, particularly as a sailor – so if I got Mrs Shipman to cut these down to size they really would be ideal, don’t you think? Aft
er all, they’re tailor-made for the purpose.’
‘You don’t think I should look a little odd, do you, Aunt Tattie? Wearing a pair of man’s trousers?’
‘Why ever? Girls wear bloomers to bicycle and split skirts for tennis and the like, so why not a pair of bell-bottoms to go sailing? Heavens, dearest, they’re wide enough to be taken for a skirt on land.’
Once Mrs Shipman had effected the alterations both to the trousers and to the jacket, which she increased in size by the careful addition of a couple of hidden underarm pleats, Portia tried the whole outfit on, including a dark blue sailing hat with a black shiny peak they had also found in the attics. Aunt Tattie was of the opinion that the whole thing was perfectly splendid and could well start a new fashion for the New Woman who was busily emerging into society at that time, declaring that it was perfectly ridiculous to expect women to indulge in the ever increasing number of recreations without being allowed to wear sensible and appropriate attire. Portia’s mind, however, was quite taken with other matters as she looked at herself in the long looking glass. She could see herself at the wheel of her own three-masted schooner which she had already decided to call the Wild Goose, fighting her way around Cape Horn and heading for the South Pacific. In the cockpit with her stood Henry, with his tail tightly curled and his little legs planted firmly on the deck, secured by a leash to a cleat lest he be swept overboard by one of the huge waves which were threatening to turn the fine yacht turtle. Over the din of the sea and the gale Portia was shouting her orders to her crew who were all busy scaling the rigging and trimming sail as the Wild Goose did battle with the storm while she fought to keep hold of the wheel and keep the yacht on course. Above her the thunderclouds crashed, spilling jagged flares of lightning across the black sky, but she felt no fear. The only thing missing she realized as the sound of her aunt’s voice awakened her from her reverie was any sign of Richard on board. She would have thought he might have been by her side at the helm, or climbing the rigging to attend to a sail, but strangely in her mind’s eye, whichever way she turned on the deck, there was no sight of him whatsoever.
Such an omission was soon forgotten once Portia was back on board Mandrake and sailing on real water rather than circumnavigating the world in her dreams. Both Richard and his mother seemed to approve of her rig, although she thought she detected a smile and whisper between Victoria and Marie-Louise on her first appearance back at Brueham House. This however she ascribed to the novelty of her dress rather than its eccentricity or peculiarity and once aboard the yacht and learning how to handle the sheets at first hand under the tuition of Richard and Mr Perrott any discomfort as to what opinions may or may not have been aired about her outfit was soon forgotten. For Portia the rest of the late summer and early autumn days passed in a rapture of bliss, albeit one which left her exhausted at the end of each lesson, with aching muscles, calloused hands and more often than not either soaking wet from a tumble off the yacht or just saturated by the spray.
Afterwards, once Mandrake had been safely secured at her mooring, Richard and she would wander up the lawns to be greeted by Rug and Henry, who had become inseparable friends. Rug would rush around his master, getting behind him and jumping up to push him in the back before running round him in ever widening circles and barking, challenging Richard to catch him, while Henry, having given his funny half-strangled cry of delight at their reunion, would jump up into Portia’s arms and lay his head sweetly on her shoulder. Generally they would then join all the rest of the family for tea if they were not too late back, or if they were they would sit under the portico with all the pugs and eat fruit cake washed down with iced homemade lemonade. They would talk endlessly of their dreams, which both seemed to amount to the same thing, namely to sail where few people or perhaps even no-one had sailed before. It was never made clear whether these journeys were to be made together or separately, because their fantasies were never made specific, but the more they talked the more the ship they were going to sail took shape. Richard wanted it to be modelled on Lady Brassey’s now famous Sunbeam in which she and her family including its pets had sailed around the globe in 1876, a voyage reported in a book written by Lady Brassey and published by Longman’s Green and Co. The Sunbeam was a screw composite three-masted topsail schooner, with 350hp engines capable of 8 knots in fine weather. Portia on the other hand was all for not having engines, preferring the classic purity of a wind-powered vessel such as the Cutty Sark, a clipper built in 1869 and said to have sailed from London to Sydney in seventy-five days, and arguing that a yacht such as the Sunbeam had required a crew of thirty-two to sail and man her which would make any intended voyage they might have in mind more of a cruise and less of an adventure. Portia craved adventure and however extraordinary the journey of the Sunbeam may have been, to her a repeat of such a trip would be too tame. What she wanted was a short fast ship which she could really sail, with nothing to help her if and when she became becalmed. After all, she argued, that was half the excitement of sailing under canvas. The winds were your horses and the stars your compass.
The more they sailed together and the longer they talked the more elaborate became their plans. Using Admiral Ward’s great globe which he kept in the library of the house to map out their route in general and his navigational charts to detail it in particular the two of them planned a voyage of epic proportions which would indeed take them to the very corners of the earth. To judge by Richard’s teasing and Portia’s daring flights of fantasy it was obvious neither of them was taking the possibility of such an undertaking totally seriously, yet from their joint passion for the sea and sailing, as well as their mutual wish for adventure, it was equally obvious that if ever such an opportunity did arise neither would walk away from it and pretend it had only been an idle fancy. Indeed, every time Portia made her way back to Bannerwick after another of her sailing lessons she became more and more convinced that one day this particular dream would come true. Finally she knew that it would come true because she was so utterly determined to see that it did.
As is always the way the blows came when least expected. The first one, although completely unforeseen by everyone concerned and undoubtedly intended as a hammer stroke, was actually easier to ride since once the shock of it had been absorbed the notion it contained was dismissed out of hand. The second smack to the face was the one from which Portia found herself unable to recover, except ironically enough by accepting the proposal which had accompanied the first strike.
This was the sequence of events.
Just as she was about to leave one Saturday morning for what she feared might be her last sailing lesson for a while due to the rumour that the Ward family were to return to their house in London a week earlier than planned, Portia was called back into the hall by her aunt who was holding an already opened letter. From the look of distress on her aunt’s face Portia knew the news contained in the letter could not possibly be good.
‘Dearest,’ Aunt Tattie said, clasping Portia by the arm. ‘Dearest, I simply cannot even begin to imagine what you must make of me. First your brother – and now you.’
Aunt Tattie stopped and looked at her niece, suddenly biting hard on her lip as her big eyes filled with tears. ‘I just do not know what you will think of me now. I am such a careless, stupid, thoughtless woman.’
‘Why?’ Portia wondered, taking her aunt’s hand in her own and walking her back into the hall. ‘Why should I or anyone think of you in such terms, Aunt Tattie? Everyone knows you are kindness personified. Oh!’ Portia suddenly gasped as a terrible realization hit her. ‘Nothing has happened to Edward, has it?’
‘No, no, dearest, your brother is still as well as ever, thank the Lord. No, this is something altogether different, and when you learn of it I do not like even to imagine what you must think of me.’
‘I shall think what I always think of you, Aunt Tattie,’ Portia replied. ‘That you are the kindest and most gentle person I know.’
‘That I have my head in th
e clouds, you mean,’ Aunt Tattie sniffed in contradiction. ‘That’s what everyone says. That I am an incurable dreamer. Even now that I am almost fully recovered from whatever mysterious illness it was which ailed me, people still mention it, you know. They even say it to my face. I know what people think of me well enough. And dearest girl—’ Aunt Tattie looked at Portia. ‘Dearest girl, when you read this letter you too will think that everything people say of me is true. Believe me.’
Portia had already caught sight of the handwriting on the envelope and been immediately sure that it belonged to Aunt Augustine, but she could not begin to imagine what her least favourite relative could possibly want with her.
‘Do you want me to read the letter, Aunt Tattie? Or do you want to tell me its contents? After all, it is addressed to you.’
Aunt Tattie looked at the letter she was holding in her hand as if she wished it would disappear.
‘What to do,’ she sighed. ‘I just do not know what to do. It’s from Augustine, as no doubt you have already guessed. However, I never realized she had been made your trustee as well, do you see? This is why people are right to criticize my character. I seem not to have the faintest of notions as to what goes on in the world.’
Without knowing why, hearing the word trustee made Portia feel as if she had suddenly swallowed a large icicle. ‘I don’t know what you mean by trustee, Aunt Tattie,’ she said. ‘Not as far as I am concerned, anyway. With Edward I remember it was all to do with his having what Aunt Augustine thought of as a proper education, but since I am no longer of an age where such a thing matters, and besides – as Uncle Lampard is always saying – girls don’t count, so why should the fact of Aunt Augustine’s being my trustee upset you so?’
‘Oh, because, child,’ Aunt Tattie sighed again, and breathed in so deeply that she quite lost her colour and Portia felt it necessary to lead her to a nearby hall chair, ‘because, dear girl,’ her aunt continued when she had recovered her breath, ‘because she is a trustee she has the authority until you come of age to make you do her bidding.’
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