Wildtrack

by Bernard Cornwell

  "What did Harry want?" the landlord asked me.

  "He was just having a chat."

  "He never does that. He's a clever bugger, is Harry. Mind you, his golf swing's lousy. But that's the only thing Harry wastes time on, believe me."

  I did believe him, and it worried me.

  As the days lengthened and warmed, I forgot my worries. I forgot Bannister and Mulder, I forgot the rumours about Nadeznha Bannister's death and the whispers about sabotage, I even forgot the unpleasantness that had marked my introduction to the television business, because Sycorax mended.

  Jimmy Nicholls and I mended her. They were weeks of hard work, and therefore of pleasure. We scarfed new timbers into Sycorax's hull and caulked them home. We shaped new deck planks and joggled them into place. We raised the cockpit's sole and put gutters out to the transom so that, for the first time, Sycorax had a self-draining cockpit.

  Jimmy selected trunks of Norway spruce from the timber yard and fetched them upriver on his boat. He made me listen at one end of the trunks while he tapped the other with a wrench and I heard how the note came clear and sharp to prove the timber's worth. We put the spruce on the wharf and adzed the trunks down; first we turned them into square sections, then we peeled away each corner, and each new corner, until they were rounded and we had our masts, gaff and booms. We used a hefty piece of pitch-pine for the bowsprit. Each evening, when the work was done and before I went to the pub, I would treadle a grindstone to put an edge back on tools blunted by good wood.

  They were good days. Sometimes a spring rain thundered on the tarpaulin that we'd rigged overhead, but mostly the sun shone in promise of summer. We made a new coachroof, but strengthened it with oak beams so that the cabin could resist a knockdown in heavy seas. A smith from the town put lead into Sycorax 's keel and forged me new hounds to take the rigging on her mast. As spring turned into summer Jimmy and I began to lay bright new copper sheets over the finished hull, bedding them on layers of tar and paper and fixing them with flat-headed nails of bronze. The copper was expensive, but superior to any anti-fouling paint, and I wanted its protection before I sailed my wooden boat to where the tropical worms could turn iron-hard mahogany into a porous sponge. Jimmy and I did a good, old-fashioned job. On our rare days off we went to boat auctions on the river and bought good second-hand gear—an outboard for the dinghy, warps, blocks, cleats, flares and smoke floats, fire-extinguishers—and all the receipts were sent to the television company who repaid the money without demur. They were even paying Jimmy a cash wage that the taxman would never hear about. Life in those days was good.

  Wildtrack had moved to the Hamble where a larger marina offered uniformed guards and large dogs as security. There were no more incidents of sabotage. Anthony Bannister, when he returned from his holiday, stayed in Richmond and sailed out of the new marina, so I did not see him. Angela sometimes came to the house to oversee her film, but rarely. When she did come she was businesslike and brusque. She pretended no great interest in Sycorax 's progress, except to insist that the boat was moved off Bannister's lawn before the party. I assured Angela the boat would be ready in time.

  She frowned at the cradled hull that was still only half-coppered. "How can it be ready? You haven't finished the masts yet!"

  I ignored her sharp critical tone. "We don't step the masts till she's in the water. So all I have to do before we launch is finish the coppering and put in the engine."

  She snatched at a chance to hurry the process. "Can't the engine wait till she's afloat?"

  "Not unless you want the river coming in where the propellor ought to be."

  "You know best, I suppose." She sounded very grudging. I waited for her to mention Bannister's invitation that I should sail on the St Pierre, but she said nothing and I assumed the invitation was forgotten. I was relieved when she stalked away; a cold girl with a clipboard. She went to the terrace of the house where she chivvied Matthew Cooper into making faster progress.

  It seemed to me that it was Matthew who did the real work for the television company. He and his camera crew came down every other week to film Sycorax's rebuilding. When Angela was absent they were relaxed, except about their expense sheets on which they spent hours of devoted work. Their union rules insisted that they travelled in a monstrous herd, which meant that most of them had no work to do, but one of the drivers and the assistant cameraman proved to be enthusiastic carpenters and happily helped with whatever work was on hand. Yet the film crew's presence inevitably meant frustration and delay. A piece of work that Jimmy and I might have finished in an hour could take a whole day with Matthew fussing about camera angles and eyelines. Sometimes he'd arrive to find a job finished and would insist that we dismantle the careful joinery and recreate it for the camera. Then he would shoot it from every conceivable angle. "Nick? Your right arm's in the camera's way. Can you drop your elbow?"

  "I can't tighten a bolt if I'm screwed up like Quasimodo."

  "It won't show on film." He waited patiently till I'd finished my grotesque impression of the hunchback of Notre-Dame. "Thank you, Nick. Dropping the elbow will be enough. That's better."

  Then the sound-recordist would stop everything because a light aircraft was ruining his tape, and when the plane's sound faded a cloud would arrive and the cameraman would insist on remeasuring the light. I perceived that film-making was very like soldiering in that it consisted of hours of idle waiting punctuated by moments of half-understood panic.

  I was frustrated by the delays, but in turn inflicted frustration on Matthew. Often, while the camera rolled, he would spring questions on me. In the finished film, he told me, his own voice would be replaced by Bannister's so that the viewers would think that the great man had been constantly present during the filming. The frustration occurred every time Matthew asked the one question that lay behind the film's purpose. "Can you tell us how you won the medal, Nick?"

  "Not right now. Anyone seen the tenon saw?"

  "Nick?" Chidingly.

  "I can't remember what happened, Matthew, sorry."

  "Don't call me Matthew. Remember I'm supposed to be Tony. So what happened, Nick?" Long pause. "Nick, please?"

  Another long pause. "What was the question, Matthew?"

  "Nick!"

  "Nothing to say, Matthew, sorry, Tony."

  "Oh, fuck it. Cut!"

  Jimmy would chuckle, the film crew would grin, and Matthew would glare at me. I liked him, though. He had a shaggy black moustache, unruly hair, and a face which looked tough but which on closer inspection proved rather sad and dogged. He was hagridden with self-doubt and smoked more than a fouled engine, but, like his cameraman, Matthew cared desperately about the quality of his work. He did what Angela ordered him to do, but he invested those orders with a concern for the very best pictures. He would spend hours waiting for the light to touch the river in just the right way before he started shooting. He was an artist, but he was also the conduit for Angela Westmacott's instructions and worries; the chief of which still remained that Sycorax would not disfigure Anthony Bannister's lawn on the day of his big party.

  Angela need not have worried, for Jimmy and I finished the hull ten days ahead of our schedule. The engine was still in pieces, the boat was unrigged, and the sails were still being repaired, but it was a great day when we could walk round the gleaming hull and see all the hard work come to a satisfying wholeness. I phoned Matthew and told him we could launch in a week's time, just as soon as the engine was back in the boat's belly, and he promised to bring the crew down for the event. Thus we would be in the water the day before the party.

  I spent the next two days repairing the diesel and replacing the propellor. The new strength that the swimming had put into my back helped during the tedious hours of installing the engine. I rigged a jury crane with chains and blocks and spent frustrating hours settling the shims under the engine-block so that the propellor shaft ran true. It was probably the most difficult job of the whole repair, but eventually it was done
. The self-starter would not work, but there was a handle and a flywheel, so I threw the damn thing away.

  Melissa went to Paris for a fashion show and sent the children down to Devon for the next three days to get them off her hands, and I borrowed a Drascombe Dabber to potter about off the river's mouth where we caught mackerel on hand lines. Their nanny came to fetch the children back to London in Melissa's new Mercedes. "Mrs Makyns says the children are in need of the summer clothes, Mr Sandman." The nanny was a lolloping great Swede with a metronome voice.

  "Tell Mrs Makyns that there are shops which sell the children's clothes."

  "You are yoking, I think. She says you are to give me the money."

  "Tell her I will send her a cheque."

  "I will tell her. She will see you next week at Mr Bannister's party, I think." It sounded like a threat.

  That same afternoon a crane arrived ready to lift Sycorax into the water. The launch was scheduled for the next morning and I had a bottle of champagne ready to break over the fairlead at her bows. Preparations for Bannister's party were also well advanced; caterers were setting up tables on the terrace, florists were delivering blooms, and gardeners were tidying up the lawns. Matthew arrived that evening and found me still working. The newly-laid copper reflected the dying sun so that Sycorax looked as if she had been cast in red-gold.

  "She looks good, Nick," Matthew said.

  "She is." I was dressed in swimming trunks and felt happily filthy with tar, paint and varnish stains. I was on Sycorax's deck, varnishing the boom-gallows. "One month for rigging, then she's finished."

  Matthew lit a cigarette and helped himself to a beer from the crate I kept by the sheerlegs. "I've got bad news for you."

  I peglegged down the ladder and took a beer. "Tell me."

  "Medusa wants you out of the house by tomorrow night." We had nicknamed Angela 'Medusa'—the snake-haired female with the basilisk gaze that turned her enemies to stone.

  "That's fine," I said.

  "She says it's only till next Tuesday. Because they've got weekend guests staying, you see. I'm sorry, Nick." Matthew sounded miserably embarrassed at having to make the request.

  "I really don't mind, Matthew." I was getting too used to the luxury of Bannister's house and would happily move into a relaunched Sycorax. She had no berths yet, no galley and no lavatory, but I had a sleeping bag, a primus stove and the river.

  "And Medusa also asked me to tell you not to use the swimming pool till all the guests are gone."

  I laughed. "She doesn't want a cripple to spoil the decor?"

  "Something like that," Matthew said unhappily. "But, of course," he went on, "you're invited to the party."

  "That's nice."

  "Because Bannister wants to announce that you'll navigate Wildtrack for him."

  For a second I did not respond. I was watching the shining-hulled Mystique that had suddenly appeared at Sansom's Point. The boat had been absent for the last two months and I presumed the American girl had been exploring the harbours she would describe in her pilot book.

  "Did you hear me?" Matthew asked.

  "I heard."

  "And?"

  "I'm not bloody doing it, Matthew."

  "Medusa wants you to do it," Matthew said warningly.

  "Sod her." I was watching the American girl who was motoring Mystique against the tide with just a jib to stiffen her. She had chosen the eastern channel which was both narrower and shallower than the main channel, and which would bring her close to where Matthew and I stood.

  "Medusa's set her mind on it," Matthew said.

  "She never mentions it to me."

  "She will, though."

  "I'll say no again."

  "Then she'll probably refuse to pay for Sycorax's rigging."

  "Sod her!" I said again. "I'll buy the rigging wire out of the fee you're paying me."

  "What fee?" Matthew said. "Medusa says you've been living in Bannister's house, so he ought to get some rent out of you."

  "He wrecks my boat, now I'm paying him to mend it? You're joking!"

  The misery on Matthew's face told me that he was not joking. He tried to soften the blow by saying that perhaps it was just a rumour, but he was not convincing. "It's Medusa's fault," he said at last. "She was nothing till she started screwing Bannister. Now she virtually runs the bloody programme." He sounded envious that such a route of advancement was denied to him. "Bannister insisted she was made a full producer before he signed his last contract. Never let it be said, Nick, that you can't get to the top of British television by lying flat on your back. It is still the one certain, well-tried and infallible method of success."

  I felt somewhat uncomfortable with the criticism, even if it was true. "She seems good at her job?" I offered mildly.

  "Of course she's good at her job," Matthew said irritably. "It doesn't take much intelligence to be a good television producer. It's not nearly so demanding a job as teaching. All that being a producer takes is a capacity for expense account lunches and the ability to pick the right director." He shrugged. "What the hell. Perhaps she'll marry Bannister and leave us all in peace?"

  "Do you think that's likely?" I asked.

  "With all his money? She'd love to marry him." He drew on his cigarette. "She'd like to get her hands on his production company." Bannister's company, as well as making his own summer films, also made rock videos and television adverts. It was, I gathered, a most lucrative business.

  "Hi!" The voice startled both of us and we turned to see that it was the black-haired American girl who had hailed us from Mystique's cockpit. She was standing by the tiller. She was only a stone's throw away now, but the setting sun's sheen on the rippling water made her face into an indistinct shadow. "Can I stay in this channel for the pool?"

  "What do you draw?" I asked.

  "Four foot three." Her voice was businesslike and quick. As she glanced forward I had an impression of bright eyes and a tanned, lively face.

  "When you get alongside the perch," I pointed, "steer 310."

  "Thanks!"

  "Been far?"

  "Far enough." She tossed the answer back. I stared at her silhouette and I suddenly very much wanted to be in love with a girl like her. It was a ridiculous wish; I hadn't seen her face properly, I didn't know her name, but she was a consummate sailor and she had nothing whatever to do with the writhing jealousies and greed of television.

  I crouched for a bottle, noting how the pain in my back was almost bearable. "You want a welcome-home beer?"

  Her black hair lifted as her head turned. "No, thanks. 'Predate the help, though. Thanks again." She stooped to push the throttle forward and Mystique's exhaust blurred blue at the transom.

  Matthew chuckled. "Not your day, Nick."

  "Take me to the pub," I said. "We'll get drunk."

  So we did.

  We got drunk the next day, too. We put Sycorax in the water at the tide's height and we broke champagne across her bows, then we raided Bannister's cellar for more champagne. The cameraman was ceremoniously thrown into the river, then Matthew, then me. The American girl watched from her cockpit, but, when Matthew shouted at her to join us, she just shook her head. An hour later she hoisted sails and went downstream on the tide.

  Sycorax looked much smaller now she was in the water. She floated high so that a wide belt of her new copper shone above the river. Jimmy had tears in his eyes. "She's a beauty, Nick."

  "We'll go somewhere in her together, Jimmy."

  "Maybe." I think he knew he was dying, and that he would never sail out of sight of land again.

  Angela did not come for the launching, which was why we enjoyed it. After the ceremonial throwings-in we all went swimming, then finished the champagne as we dried in the late-afternoon sun. We stole strawberries and clotted cream from Bannister's fridge, then more champagne, and that night I sat on the river bank and stared at my boat in the water. I admired her lines and I dreamed the old dreams of far-off seas that were now so much c
loser. Sycorax still had no masts, rigging or sails, but she was afloat and I was happy. I could afford to forget Angela's insistence that I sailed in Wildtrack's crew; I had my own boat in the water again, and that was enough.

  I slept aboard Sycorax that night. I'd cleared my room in Bannister's house and carried my few belongings down to the wharf. I made a space on the cabin sole where I could spread the sleeping bag. I cooked soup on the primus and ate it in my own cockpit. It did not matter that Sycorax was a mess, that her decks were a snake's honeymoon of tangled ropes, or that her scuppers were cluttered with tools, timber and chain; she was floating.

  I woke the next morning to the good sound of water slapping my hull. I went topsides to see Wildtrack's gleaming white hull with its broad and slanting blue streak moored in the channel. She must have come upriver on the pre-dawn tide, and Mulder and his crew were stringing flags up the forestay, doubtless ready for the night's party. Mystique was still off her mooring.

  Later that morning Bannister and Angela arrived with the first of their house-guests. Angela ignored me, but Bannister strolled down to look at Sycorax. He brought two of the guests with him, which was perhaps why neither of us mentioned the St Pierre, nor my eviction from his house. This was the first time I'd seen Bannister since his holiday, and he looked very fit, suggesting that freedom from the studio programme had been good for him. He treated me with a jocular familiarity, though I noted that he took pains to mention my VC to his two friends and the medal went some way towards redeeming my reputation that had been spoilt by my raggedly stained appearance. Bannister stared up at Sycorax 's mainmast which I'd stood against the boathouse wall so that the linseed and paraffin in which I'd soaked it could drain down to the heel. "You wouldn't feel happier with a metal mast, Nick?"

  "No." I said.

  "Nick's a traditionalist," he explained to his friends; a London couple. The woman told me she was an interior designer and thought my boat was 'cute'. The husband, a stockbroker, opined that Sycorax was a splendid sort of boat for knocking about the Channel. "Just the ticket for a jaunt to Jersey, what?"