Wildtrack

by Bernard Cornwell

  Through the rain outside, coming from George's locked offices above me, I heard a phone start ringing. I could not concentrate on the list of supplies, so instead I teased my anticipation by unfolding my chart of the Azores. The season would be ending by the time I reached Horta, which was good because berthing fees would be low. I could resupply with fresh food and renew friendships in the Cafe Sport. I smiled in anticipation, then noticed that the phone in the offices still rang. And rang. And rang.

  I banged my right knee as I scrambled up the side of the wharf. The curved coping stones were wet, throwing me back down the wall, but I seized one of Sycorax's warps and scraped my way over the top. My knee was numb and my back laced with pain as I limped across the yard. The rain had begun to fall harder so that it bounced in a fine spray from the cobbles.

  The phone, dulled by the window and the rain, still rang.

  I slipped in a puddle. I had the keys to the yard's outer gate in my pocket, but George never trusted me with the office keys in case I made phone calls that he could not monitor. I pulled at the door, but he'd remembered to lock it. I swore. The phone still rang.

  I told myself it was probably only a customer asking about one of George's endlessly delayed jobs, but it was a bloody stubborn customer who'd phone at this time of the evening. I found an abandoned stanchion and swung it to shatter the door's pebbled glass. I reached through for the latch. The phone sounded louder now that I was inside the building.

  I limped upstairs, thanking providence that there was no burglar alarm. I knew the phone would stop before I reached it. I smashed the glass in the door of Rita's office, then tripped on the frayed carpet as I lunged across the room. I stumbled and, as I fell headlong, my right hand grabbed the telephone's old-fashioned braided lead and the ancient Bakelite instrument slid off the desk to shatter its case on the floor. I fumbled for the fallen handset and prayed I had not cut off the connection. "Hello!"

  There was silence. Except for the airy and echoing hiss that told me the line was not dead. I straightened the broken phone on the carpet and twisted myself round so that my back was against Rita's desk. "Hello?"

  "Nick?" The voice was very small and unnaturally timid.

  "Oh, God." I felt tears in my eyes. Then, stupidly, I really was crying with the relief of it. "Angela?"

  "Nick."

  "I'm crying," I said.

  "So am I," she said, "for Tony."

  I closed my eyes. "Where are you?" I asked.

  "Cherbourg. Melissa telephoned."

  I said a small prayer of thanks for Melissa's caring and compassionate soul. "I told her to."

  "I know. I don't know what to do, Nick."

  "Stop Tony sailing."

  "He's already gone. They caught the afternoon's tide."

  "Oh, Christ."

  "Melissa called just afterwards and then I spoke to that journalist you told me to find and he said you'd been telling the truth. I should have believed you before, Nick, but..."

  "It doesn't matter." I stared up at a calendar that Rita had hung on the wall. The calendar, which showed three kittens nestling in a pink blanket, was an incongruous advert for a firm that supplied VHF sets. "You must radio him," I said. "Get a taxi to the Chantereyne Marina. Go to the office there—"

  "I've tried him on the radio telephone already. It wasn't any good. He says I'm being hysterical. He says it's newly-wed nerves. He says you're just trying to stop him winning the St Pierre because you work for Kassouli."

  I scrambled to my feet to see if there was a clock on Rita's desk. There wasn't. "What time is it now?"

  "Nearly seven o'clock." I subtracted one hour to get British Summer Time. "Nick?" Angela asked.

  "I'm still here."

  "Can you stop him, Nick?"

  "Jesus." I thought for a few seconds. The answer had to be no, but I didn't want to be so bleak. "What time did he leave?"

  "He crossed the start line at twenty past three exactly."

  "Local time?" I asked. She confirmed that and I told her to wait.

  I went into George's office and ripped pin-ups off his wall to reveal an ancient and faded chart of the Channel. I dragged open his desk drawer and, among the pipe reamers, corkscrews and patent medicines found an old pair of dividers. This year's tide table was in the other drawer. High Water at Dover had been ten minutes after mid-day, British Summer Time, which meant Bannister was sensibly using the fastest tidal current to launch his run.

  I went to the window. The wind was southerly, gusting hard enough to slap the rain against the dirty panes. I picked up the phone on George's desk. "Are you still there?"

  "Yes."

  "Wait." I walked the rusty dividers across George's wretched chart. I knew that Wildtrack would be going like a bat out of hell to clear the Lizard before she swung up towards the Mizen on Ireland's south-west coast. After that she would go north-west, hunting for the backwash of the depression-born gales that arced their way eastwards across the North Atlantic, but the only place I could stop her was in my own back alley: the Channel. I added a divider's pace for the fair current and reckoned that, by three in the morning, and assuming Wildtrack had taken a slightly northerly course to clear the traffic-separation zone, Bannister would be in an area about twenty nautical miles south-south-west of Bolt Head. I drew a circle on the chart to limit the search area.

  It's easy to posit such a search on a chart, but out in the Channel, amidst a squally darkness, it would be like trying to find a dying firefly in the Milky Way. I shortened the dividers to compensate for Sycorax's pedestrian pace, then pricked them north from my circle to Plymouth. Eight hours of windward discomfort.

  "I might intercept him if I leave now," I said dubiously.

  "Please, Nick?" There was a pleading eagerness in her voice. "Will you stop him?"

  The difficulty was not stopping Wildtrack. "Listen, Angela, I can't even promise to find him."

  "But you'll try? Please?" The last word was said with all her old seething passion.

  "I'll try. I promise." I thus volunteered for the madness. "What will you do now?"

  "I don't know." She sounded helpless and frightened.

  "Listen," I said. "Fly to Exeter. Hire a private plane if you have to. Meet me at Bannister's house tomorrow. I'll be there about mid-day."

  "Why?"

  Because I want to see you, I thought, but did not say it. Because I'm about to flog myself ragged in a bloody night for your rotten husband, and the least you can do is meet me afterwards and say thank you, but I didn't say that either. "Just be there, Angela. Please?"

  She paused, and I thought she was going to refuse. "I'll try," she said guardedly.

  "I'll try too." I put the phone down. The wind rattled George's window panes and blew damp litter in tumbling disarray across his yard. It was a south wind, and still rising, which meant that tonight's sail would be a windward slog to nowhere. The chances of finding Bannister were negligible, but that was no excuse to break the promise I'd just made to Angela. I closed the broken doors behind me, ducked my head to the wind, and limped to Sycorax.

  I moved George's half-wrecked fishing-boat, primed my wretched engine, and hurt my back turning the flywheel. I needed a self-starter. I needed self-steering. I needed my head examining. I supposed that this was the manner in which knight errants had arranged their own disappointments; one bleat from the maiden and the fools galloped off into dragon land. The motor caught eventually and I let it get used to the idea of working while I dragged the foresails through the forehatch and hanked them on their halliards. I felt a moment's jealousy of the slick sailors who had roller-reefing and self-tailing winches, then forgot the self-pity as I took Sycorax stern first into the river where the waves scudded busily before the cold wind. I hammered the gear lever into forward and Sycorax bluffed her bows against wind and water.

  I prayed that the engine would keep running. We were pushing past drab quays where even the gulls, perched to face the southerly wind, looked miserable. Once ou
t of the river I hoisted all the sails, but left the engine running so I would not have to tack my way past the breakwater. The sky on this English summer's evening was a low, grey and wintry murk through which two Wessex helicopters thumped towards a frigate moored in the sound. A landing craft, black and khaki, thumped evilly towards Mount Edgcumbe, and the brutal, squat lines of the ugly craft brought back memories of the time when I had two good legs and the belief that I was both invincible and immortal. A sudden percussive bang from the Wembury gunnery range brought the memories into sickeningly sharp focus, but then I forgot the past as my engine gave an ominous bang of its own. It stopped dead, but it had taken me safely to the searoom at the breakwater's western edge.

  The open sea was raggedly high. Sycorax jarred at the first wave beyond the breakwater, then she seemed to realize what was expected of her and she tucked her head round and heeled to the wind that was flicking the tops off the waves into tails of white spume. I was sorting out the tangle of sheets in the cockpit. I was soaked through. Once clear of the Draystone I'd go below and find rough-weather clothes, but for now I knew I must stay with the tiller. A big Moody ran past me and the skipper waved and shouted something that got lost in the wind. He was probably calling that I had a nice boat. He was right, I did.

  But that was small consolation tonight. I hunched low in the cockpit and knew that I was only making this gesture to impress Angela. I was meddling in her life because it gave me a chance to be close to her, but there had been no sign on the telephone that she reciprocated that wish. She had sounded desperate for her husband, while I had wanted her to be desperate for me. Such is pride.

  I turned on to the starboard tack and hauled the sheets tight. I might have done this mainly for Angela, but there was a small part of me that was offended by what had happened. I'd been warned off by people who did not give a toss for the justice of their cause. No one knew how Nadeznha Bannister had died, but that ignorance had not prevented them planning a callous revenge. So tonight, despite the warnings, I would sail out of bloody-mindedness. I remembered another night when I'd been told, ordered, not to do something. There'd been a sniper, I remembered, and two bunkers with bloody great .50 machine-guns. The sniper was the real bastard, because he'd had a brand new American nightsight and had already hit a half-dozen of our men. The boss had radioed that we were to bug off out of there, but to do that would have been to jeopardize.. .I jerked back to the present as Sycorax crashed her bows into a steeper wave and the spray rattled harsh along her decks. I shivered, pegged the tiller, and went below for sweater, boots and oilies.

  As it fell dark I saw the vaporous loom of the Eddystone's light sweeping its double flash through the pelting rain. Sycorax was holding her course beautifully as she pounded through a broken sea; she might not have slick self-tailing winches and roller-reefing, but her long deep keel made her a better sea boat than any of the modern plastic-fantastics that roamed the pleasure coasts of the world. I switched on my electric navigation lights and hoped the battery was properly charged. The engine smelt weird, so I just put the cover back on and hoped benign neglect would cure whatever had gone wrong. I tapped the barometer and found the glass was rising. I called the coastguard on the VHF and asked for a forecast. Strong winds tonight, but falling off towards dawn, then another depression following quickly.

  I went topsides briefly and checked that no merchant ship was about to turn me into matchwood. None was, so I went below again and emptied two tins of baked beans into a saucepan. It was all the food I had, and tasted good. I filled a Thermos with tea and carried it to the cockpit. Now it was simply a question of letting the wet hours pass. The rain slackened as the full darkness came, and I wondered if the wind was already falling off. The sea was softer now, though the swell which slid under Sycorax 's counter was long and high. The waves had gone from silver-grey to grey to dark. Soon they would be jet black, but perhaps streaked with phosphorescence. Clouds drowned the moonlight.

  Sycorax sailed herself. Her tiller was pegged and her sheets cleated tight. Sometimes, as the swell dropped her hard into a trough, the mainsail would shiver, but she picked herself up and drove on. I still had no radar-reflector and hoped that the big ships which were bashing down from Amsterdam and Hamburg and Felixstowe were keeping a proper watch. I could see the bright confusion of their lights all about me.

  Midnight passed and the wind dropped and veered. I let out the sheets and felt Sycorax's speed increase as she found herself on her favourite point of sail: a broad reach. I'd seen few other yachts, but just before one o'clock, and when I should still have been well north of Wildtrack 's course, I saw the lights of a vessel under sail. She was travelling west and, to intercept her, I unpegged the tiller and hardened Sycorax into the wind again. The big swell sometimes dropped the other yacht out of my sight, all but for her masthead's tri-coloured light which would flicker over the shredding wavetops. I tried to judge her size, but could not. I took bearings on her which told me she was sailing fast.

  I opened the locker where my flares were stored. Bannister would not stop if I radioed him on the VHF, and if I tried to sail across his bow I invited a collision that, though it would stop him, could also sink Sycorax . Instead I planned to cross his stern and loose red emergency flares into the sky, because even a racing boat would have to stop and help a boat in distress. That was the law. Mulder and Bannister might curse, but they would have to gybe on to the new course and come to my rescue. Once they had come alongside I would play what cards I had. They were not many, but they included a Colt .45 which I had fetched up from its hiding place. I knew that if I fired the rocket flares I would cause chaos in the Channel. There would be lifeboats, radios and other ships all contributing to a rescue that wasn't needed, but I had promised Angela to stop her husband, and if that promise turned a busy sealane into chaos, then chaos it would be.

  I saw I was heading the approaching yacht. He was on the port tack, I on a starboard, so it was his job to stay clear of me. He'd seen my lights, for he steered a point southerly to give me room. I hardened again, and he thought I had not seen him and shone a bright torch beam up on to his mainsail to make a splash of white light in the darkness. At the same time another of his crew called me on Channel 16; the VHF emergency channel. "Sailing boat approaching large yacht, do you read me, over."

  It was not Mulder's voice, nor Bannister's. I thought I detected a French accent in the crackling speaker. I was close enough to see the sail number in the torchlight and, because it was not Wildtrack, I fell off the wind to go astern of him. The torch was switched off. A voice shouted a protest that was made indistinct by the spray and wind. The yacht's stern light showed me the name Mariette on the white raked transom. The port of registry was Etaples. I waved as I passed, then the wind tore us apart as I headed south again.

  By three o'clock I knew I must be well inside the rough circle I'd sketched on George's chart. The night was black as pitch and the wind was still dropping. I turned westwards, heading against Wildtrack's course. I searched for an hour. I saw two more Frenchmen, a Dutchman, but no Wildtrack. A bulk-carrier crashed past and Sycorax's sails slatted as we were tossed on the great wake. Apart from the big ship the sea was empty. I had failed.

  I turned north. There was already a lightening to the east as the false wolf-light of dawn edged the clouds. I was bone tired, cold, and hungry. I had failed, but I had always known how narrow was my chance of success. From Sycorax's cockpit I could never see more than two miles and Wildtrack could have run past me at any time in the darkness. In truth I doubted whether I had ever sailed far enough south. Bannister was gone to the Lizard and death.

  It began to rain again as I ran for home. The rain beaded the shrouds and dripped from the lacing on the boom. I made some more tea and found a wrinkled apple in the galley. I cut out the rotten bit and ate the rest.

  Dawn showed the sea heaving in a greasy, slow swell. Patches of fog drifted above a sludge-like sea. If the fog lifted, it rained. The wind wa
s west now, but negligible and sullen. The rudder, with no speed to give it bite, banged in its pintles. Another depression was meant to be racing towards the Channel, and Wildtrack would be praying for its arrival if she was to make a fast outwards run.

  I was just praying to get home. Sailing isn't always fun in the sun. It isn't always happy friends on sparkling decks in a perfect force four on a glinting ocean. It can be misery incarnate. It can be rain and fog and cold and hunger. It can be a sulky sea and a listless sky. It can be failure, and then the only consolation is to remember that we volunteered for the misery.

  So, in misery, I crawled north. I spent a quarter-hour working out the tidal currents to help my course, then tried to coax the engine into life. It was on strike, and the wind seemed to be in sympathy with its grudge. I stripped the fuel system, tried again, and still it wouldn't start, so, instead, I tidied up the cabin and washed the decks. I told myself time and time again that I would not be disappointed if Angela had not returned to Devon. I told myself that the two of us had no future. I told myself over and over that I really did not care whether she was waiting for me at Bannister's house or not.

  At mid-morning, reluctant at first, a wind scoured the sea and creaked the port shrouds. I dropped the mop and seized the tiller. I listened to the growing sound of water running past the hull and felt my excitement increase because Angela might be waiting for me. I did care. I cared desperately.

  It was mid-day before I passed the Calfstone Shoal. The bell-buoy clanged at me. The wind was fitful now, but strong enough to carry me up the river and round the point.

  Where, on the terrace above the river, and in front of an empty house, Angela was waiting.

  She had been crying. She was in jeans and sweater, her hair bound in a single plait that hung to her narrow waist. "It's a hell of a way to start a marriage."