Wildtrack

by Bernard Cornwell

  She pretended to think about it. "Definitely no bilge pumps. Ever."

  I made it.

  Angela's flat was a gloomy basement in Kensington. She only used it when Bannister was away, but the very fact that she had retained the flat spoke for her independence. At least I thought so. The flat had a somewhat abandoned feel. It was sparsely furnished, the plants had all long died of thirst, and dust was thick on shelves and mantelpiece. Papers and books lay in piles everywhere. It was the flat of a busy young woman who spent most of her time elsewhere.

  "Next Tuesday," she told me.

  "What about it?"

  "That's when we'll film Sycorax going to sea."

  "Not till then?"

  She must have heard my disappointment. "Not till then." She was sitting at her dressing-table wiping off her make-up. "We can't do it till Tuesday because Monday's the travelling day for the crew."

  "Why can't they travel on Sunday?"

  "You want to pay them triple time? Just be patient till Tuesday, OK?"

  "High tide's at ten forty-eight in the morning," I said from memory, "and it's a big one."

  "Does that matter?"

  "That's good. We'll go out on a fast ebb."

  She leaned towards the mirror to do something particularly intricate to an eyelid. "There's another reason it has to be Tuesday," she said, and I heard the edge of strain in her voice.

  "Go on."

  "Tony wants to be there." She did not look at me as she spoke. "It's important that he's there. I mean, the film is partly about how he helped you, isn't it? And he wants to see Sycorax go to sea."

  "Does he want to be on board?"

  "Probably."

  I lay in her bed, saying nothing, but feeling jealousy's tug like a foul current threatening a day's perfection. It was stupid to feel it, but natural. I knew that Angela's prime loyalty was to Bannister, yet I resented it. I had lived these past weeks in a mist of happiness, revelling in the joys of a new love's innocence, and now the real world was snapping shut on me. This present happiness was an illusion, and Bannister's return was a reminder that Angela and I shared nothing but a bed and friendship.

  She turned in her chair. She knew what I was thinking. "I'm sorry, Nick."

  "Don't be."

  "It's just that..." she shrugged, unable to finish.

  "He has prior claim?"

  "I suppose so."

  "And you have no choice?" I asked, and wished that I had not asked because I was betraying my jealousy.

  "I've got choice." Her voice was defiant.

  "Then why don't we sail Sycorax out on Sunday." On Sunday Bannister would still be in France, even though Wildtrack had sailed for home three weeks before. "You come with me," I said. "We'll be in the Azores in a few days. After that we can make up our minds. You want to see Australia again? You fancy exploring the Caribbean?"

  She twisted her long hair into a hank that she laid up on her skull. "I get seasick."

  "You'll get over it in three days."

  "I never get over it." She was staring into the mirror as she pinned up her hair. "I'm not a sailor, Nick." "People do get over it," I said. "It takes time, but I promise it doesn't last."

  "Nick!" I was pressing her too hard.

  "I'm sorry."

  She stared at herself in the mirror. "Do you think I haven't been tempted to get away from it all? No more of Tony's insecurity, no more jealousy at work, no more sodding around with schedules and film stocks and worrying where the next good idea for a programme will come from? But I can't do that, Nick, I can't! If I was twenty years old I might do it. Isn't that the age when people think the world will lap them in love and all they need do is show a little faith in it? But I'm too old now."

  "Twenty-six is not old."

  "It's too old to become a hippy."

  "I'm not a hippy."

  "What the hell else are you?" She shook a cigarette from its packet and lit it. "You think you're going to drift around the world like a gypsy. Who's going to pay you? What will you do when your leg collapses? What about your old age? It's all right for you, Nick, you don't seem to care. You think that it really will be all right, but I'm not like you."

  "You want to be safe."

  "Is that so bad?" she said belligerently.

  "No. It's just that I'm in love with you, and I don't want to lose you."

  She stared at me. "Get a job, live in Devon. Can't you parlay that medal into a job?"

  "Maybe."

  She grimaced and stubbed out the cigarette she'd only just lit. She stood, walked round the bed, and dropped her bathrobe on to the floor. She stood naked, looking down on me. "Let's make the film first, Nick, then worry about life?"

  I threw back the bedclothes for her. "OK, boss."

  She climbed in beside me. "You'll stay tomorrow?"

  Tomorrow was Friday. "How about the whole weekend?"

  "You know I can't." Bannister wanted her to go to France for the weekend. After Wildtrack's successful series of races he had moved to the Riviera where he had been a judge at a television festival. That work was now completed and he wanted Angela to fly down for the festival's closing celebrations. The plan was that she would fly to Nice on Friday evening, then return with Bannister on Monday morning and drive down to Devon that same afternoon. We thus both sensed that this might be our last night of stolen freedom, for the old constraints would come back with Bannister's return.

  Angela left early next morning, going to the studios where she was rough-cutting the film that had been shot so far. I made myself coffee in her tiny kitchen, bathed in her tiny bathroom, then sat and made a list of the charts I wanted to buy. The list was very long, but the money was typically short so I cut the list down to the Azores and the Caribbean. Every fare to London denied Sycorax another clutch of charts, but I didn't think Sycorax would deny me these visits. I looked at Angela's few belongings; the untidy papers left over from the research of past programmes, a pretty watercolour on her wall, the old and decrepit teddy-bear that was the one thing she had brought from her childhood home.

  The phone rang. I did not move. The telephone was connected to an answering machine and, when I was in the flat, I left the machine's speaker turned up. If it was Angela calling me then I would hear her voice and know to pick up the telephone and switch off the machine. I hated the process, which struck me as a typical shift of adultery, but it was necessary. Sometimes Bannister called and I would listen to his peremptory voice delivering a curt message and the jealousy would spark in me.

  This time I heard the usual tape of Angela's voice apologizing that she could not answer the phone in person. Please speak after the tone, she said, and the tone dutifully blipped. There was a pause, and I thought the caller must have hung up, but then another familiar voice sounded. "Hi. You don't know me. My name's Jill-Beth Kirov. We met at Anthony Bannister's house, remember? I'm kind of looking for Nick Sandman and I gathered you were filming him, and I wonder if you'd pass on a message to him? My number is—"

  She broke off because I had switched off the answering machine and lifted the telephone. "Jill-Beth?"

  "Nick! Hi!"

  I was angry. "How the hell did you know I was here?"

  "What's the drama, Nick?" She sounded pained. "I was just trying to reach you. I didn't know where you were. I was just going to leave messages everywhere. I need to talk with you, OK?"

  For a second I forgot my careful arrangements with Micky Harding. "I don't think we've got anything to say to each other."

  She paused. "You want to play hardball or softball, Nick?"

  "I'm sorry?" I said, not understanding.

  She sighed. "I once had to investigate a guy who had a boat pretty much like yours, Nick. His was a yawl, but it was really cute. He even had a figurehead, a mermaid with his wife's face. He was real proud of that boat. It burned. It was a real tragedy. I mean the guy had put his life into that yawl, and one careless cigarette end and suddenly it's the Fourth of July fireworks show."
>
  "Are you threatening me?"

  "Nick!" She sounded very hurt. "I just want to talk with you, OK? What's the harm in that?"

  I remembered Micky Harding and his promise that the newspaper could ease me off Kassouli's hook. "All right." I spoke guardedly.

  She suggested this very lunchtime and named a pub in Soho, but I didn't know if I could find Micky that quickly. I didn't even know if I could find him at all during the weekend. "I can't meet till Monday," I said, "and that's the earliest, and I'll be back in Devon by then."

  She paused, then sounded warily accepting. "OK, Nick." She named a pub that I knew and a time.

  I put the phone down. It seemed that Yassir Kassouli had not given up his pursuit of Bannister. The hounds of revenge were slipped and running, and I now had to head them into the light where they would be dazzled and confused by publicity. I telephoned Micky's paper and tracked him down to the newsroom. I told him where and when I was supposed to meet Jill-Beth. "Can you make it?" I asked.

  "I'll make it." I heard anticipation in his voice. He was already relishing the headlines: "Tycoon Plots Piracy!", "Yank Billionaire Threatens UK Jobs," or, more likely from Micky's newspaper, "Piss Off Kassouli!"

  Angela came home irritated because a film editor had taken off sick and she had needed him to cut a particular sequence and the replacement film editor was, she said, a butcher. She played the message tape on the phone. I'd rewound the spool after Jill-Beth's call and the American girl's voice had been overlaid with an invitation for lunch, a message about flights to Nice, and a call from an old acquaintance of Angela's who just wanted to say hello.

  "What she wants is a job," Angela said scathingly. "What kind of a day did you have?"

  "I bought two charts," I said, "and discovered a million things I can't afford."

  "Poor Nick." She reached out a long thin hand and touched my cheek. "A friend has said I could borrow a cottage in Norfolk this weekend. There's no phone there, and he's got a dinghy in the creek. A Heron dinghy? Does that makes sense?"

  "A Heron makes much sense." My joy at having Angela to myself all the weekend must have shown, but I still wanted to make certain of it. "And Nice?"

  "Bugger Nice. I'll tell Tony I'm too busy."

  So we buggered Nice, and I did not tell Angela about Jill-Beth's call. I wanted to, but I didn't know how to explain why I was meeting the American, nor did I care to say that I was only doing it because Micky would be there. Angela would have bridled at the thought of the bad publicity that would be flung at Bannister, and anyway I told myself I was only meeting Jill-Beth to end Kassouli's interference. I thought I was taking care of the matter and I did not need Angela's help, so I felt rather noble about it, and not in the least guilty, because, all things considered, and come Monday evening, Yassir Kassouli, just like Nice, would be buggered.

  Micky Harding and I drove down to Devon on the Monday afternoon. I was nervous. "We're taking on one of the richest men in the world, Micky. They threatened my bloody boat!"

  "Ah." Micky made the soothing noise sarcastically. "What we're going to do, Nick, is screw the bastard." He glanced at me as I twisted awkwardly to look through the back window. "You think we're being followed?"

  "No." Instead I had been looking for Angela's Porsche. She had gone to meet Bannister at Heathrow and, if they left directly for Devon, they could well overtake us on the road. I did not want to see them together. I was jealous. I'd just spent a weekend of gentle happiness with a small sailing boat and with Angela to myself. She had not even been seasick. But now, with the horrid crunch of a boat going aground, the real world was impinging on me.

  Micky lit a cigarette. "You are bleeding nervous, mate, that's what you are. I could do a story on that. VC revealed as a wimp."

  "I'm not used to this sort of thing."

  "Which is why you called in the reinforcements?"

  "Exactly."

  The 'reinforcements' were waiting for us at a service area where the cafeteria offered an all-day breakfast and where Terry Farebrother was mopping up the remains of fried egg and brown sauce with a piece of white bread. I've never known a man eat so much as Sergeant Terry Farebrother; he wasn't so much a human being as a cholesterol processor. Morning, noon and night he ate, and he never seemed to put an inch of fat on his stocky, hard body. The one thing he'd hated about the Falklands was the uncertainty of meal times and I'd once watched him pick his way into an Argentinian minefield to salvage an enemy pack on the off chance that it might have contained a tin of corned beef. His moustached face was impassive as the two of us approached his table. "Bloody hell," he greeted Micky Harding. "It's the Mouse."

  The Mouse, who had known the Yorkshire sergeant in the Falklands, shook Terry's hand. "You don't improve with time, do you?"

  "I'm just waiting till the Army takes over this country, Mouse, then I'm going to Fleet Street to beat up all the fucking fairies."

  "Not a chance," Micky said. "We've got dolly-bird secretaries who'd crucify you pansies."

  Insults thus dutifully exchanged, Terry nodded a greeting to me and wondered aloud whether there was time to eat another plate of fried grease, but I said we should be moving on. "Shall I buy you a cheese sandwich?" I asked.

  "Cheese gives me the wind something rotten. I'll have a couple of bacon ones instead." He half crushed my fingers with his handshake. "You're looking better, boss. Sally said you looked like something the cat threw up."

  "How is Sally?"

  "Same as ever, boss, same as ever. Bloody horrible." Terry was in his civvies; a threadbare blue suit that was buttoned tight round his chest. He'd probably bought the suit the year before he entered the Army as a junior soldier and had never replaced it. He did not really need to, for Terry was one of those men who only look at home in camouflage or battledress. He was a bullock of a man; short, stubborn and utterly dependable. It was good to see him again. "No trouble," he said when I asked if he'd had difficulties in getting away from the battalion. "They owed me leave after the bleeding exercise."

  "How was the exercise?"

  "Same as ever, boss; a bloody cock-up. Got fucking soaked in a turnip field and then half sodding drowned in a river. And, of course, none of the bleeding officers knew where we were or what we were bloody doing. I tell you, mate"—this was to Micky—"if the Russkies ever do come, they'll fuck through us like a red hot poker going up a pullet's arse."

  "It's not surprising, is it?" Micky asked, "when most of our soldiers are as delicate and fastidious as your good self?"

  "There is that," Terry laughed. "So what are we doing?"

  "Nick's nervous," Micky said dismissively as we walked to the car.

  I told Terry that I was indeed nervous, that I was meeting this American girl, and it was just possible, but extremely unlikely, that she might threaten my boat if I didn't agree to do whatever she wanted, and so I would appreciate it if Terry sat on Sycorax until Micky and I got back to the river.

  "Nothing's going to happen." Micky accelerated back on to the motorway. "You just get to sit on a bloody boat while it gets dark outside."

  Terry, eating the first of his cold bacon sandwiches, ignored Micky. "So what will these buggers do? If they do anything?"

  "Fire," I said. Jill-Beth had hinted at arson, and it frightened me. A hank of rags, soaked in petrol and tossed into the cockpit, would reduce Sycorax to floating ash in minutes. If I turned Jill-Beth's proposal down, which I planned to do, Sycorax would be vulnerable, and never more so than in the hour it would take me to get back from our rendezvous to the river. That fear presupposed that Jill-Beth had already stationed men near the river; men whom she could alert by telephone. The whole scheme seemed very elaborate and fanciful now, but the fear had seemed very real as I had brooded on it during the weekend. Yassir Kassouli was a determined man, and a bitter one, and the fate of one small boat on a Devon river would be nothing to such a man. The fear had prompted me to phone the Sergeants' Mess from the public phone in the Norfolk village. I'd l
eft a message and Terry had phoned back an hour later. I'd told Angela I'd been talking to Jimmy Nicholls about anchor chains and, though I had hated telling her lies, they seemed preferable to explaining the complicated truth. Now, with Terry's comforting solidity on my side, I wondered if I had over-reacted. "I don't think anything will happen, Terry," I confessed, "but I'm a bit nervous."

  "End of problem, boss. I'm here." Terry slumped in the back seat and unwrapped another sandwich.

  We reached the river two hours later and, as Micky waited on the road above Bannister's house, I took Terry down through the woods and behind the boathouse to Sycorax. I saw two of Mulder's crewmen preparing Wildtrack II in the boathouse, ready for tomorrow's outing when she would be the camera platform for Sycorax's maiden trip. I assumed, from their presence, that Mulder must have returned from his victorious Mediterranean foray, but I did not ask. I looked up at the house, but could see no one moving in the windows. I thought of Bannister sleeping with Angela tonight and an excruciating bite of jealousy gnawed at me.

  The tide was low. Terry and I climbed down to Sycorax's deck and I unlocked the cabin. I did not tell him about the hidden Colt, for I didn't want his career ruined by an unlicensed firearm's charge.

  "Any food, boss?" he asked hopefully.

  "There's some digestive biscuits in the drawer by the sink, apples in the upper locker and beer under the port bunk."

  "Bloody hell." He looked disgusted at the choice of food.

  "And you might need these." I dropped the two fire-extinguishers on the newly built chart table. Sycorax might lack a radio, pump, anchors, log, chronometer, compass, loo and a barometer, but I'd taken good care to buy fire-extinguishers. She was a wooden boat and her greatest enemy was not the sea but fire. "And if anyone asks you what you're doing here, Terry, tell them you're a mate of mine."

  "I'll tell them to fuck off, boss."

  "I should be back by nine," I said, "and we'll go over the river for a pint."

  "And a baby's head?" he asked hopefully.

  "They do a very good steak and kidney pudding," I confirmed. If there was one certainty about this evening now, it was that Sycorax was safe. Kassouli would need an Exocet to take out Terry Farebrother, and even then I wasn't sure the Exocet would win.