Black Ship

by Carola Dunn

  “Just a gesture to welcome new neighbours,” said Aidan, perhaps with an eye to depressing future expectations.

  “I’m afraid,” Daisy went on regretfully, “my husband’s job precludes our accepting favours.”

  “Civil service?” he asked.

  “Yes, sort of.”

  “No one need know,” said his father.

  “Thank you, but it’s just not on.” The inevitable moment had come when Mr. Irwin’s discretion went for nothing and all must be revealed. “Alec’s a policeman, you see. Scotland Yard. He’s a detective.”

  “Too thrilling!” Audrey exclaimed.

  The rest of the Jessups appeared more dismayed than thrilled.

  “Of course he can’t accept a gift, then,” said Mr. Jessup with a jovial laugh that didn’t quite come off. “Are you a policeman, too, Mr. Lambert?”

  “Who, me?” Lambert said blankly.

  “Lambert’s usual idiotic response to any question about himself,” Daisy told Alec later that evening when he rang up, “but it averted further interrogation and they dropped the subject.”

  “They were alarmed, though, to hear I’m a copper?”

  Daisy considered. “Perturbed is the word. They didn’t seem as worried as Mr. Irwin was.”

  “Perhaps Irwin, as a lawyer, is more aware of the legal ramifications of whatever they’re doing. You say the Jessups run an off-licence?”

  “I should think they call themselves ‘Purveyors of Fine Wines and Spirits to the Aristocracy.’ Premises in New Bond Street, and the elder Jessup trots around the Continent, presumably visiting vineyards.”

  “Most likely they’re evading duty somewhere. Not my headache, thank heaven. I don’t feel obliged to tip off Customs and Excise, especially as the whole thing may exist only in your imagination.”

  “It’s not!” said Daisy indignantly. “You don’t think it could have something to do with their unwanted Yankee visitor?”

  “Great Scott, Daisy, it’s not against the law to have visitors from America, even unwanted ones, or we’d be in trouble ourselves! It’s probably just the shiftiness the law-abiding public so often display when coming face-to-face with the police. Are you having second thoughts about moving in next door?”

  “Oh no, darling. I like them. Mrs. Jessup’s read my articles—”

  “A sure way to a writer’s heart.”

  “And she didn’t tell the others about my writing as ‘the Hon.,’ which was jolly decent of her. It would have been frightfully embarrassing! Of course, maybe she didn’t notice or had forgotten.”

  “I wish you could persuade your editors to leave it off.”

  “Believe me, so do I. At least in England. I don’t care if—”

  “Your time is up, caller,” the exchange operator announced. “Do you want another three minutes?”

  “Let me see if I have change. Daisy, I’ll be home tomorrow late, but I have to leave again early the next—”

  Click click bzzzz. They were cut off. With a sigh, Daisy hung up the receiver.

  “Gee whiz!” Lambert stood on the stairs, staring at Daisy. “Are you telling me some guy from the States called on the Jessups?”

  “No.”

  “They didn’t have an American—?”

  “I wasn’t telling you anything.”

  Lambert looked confused. “You mean there was—?”

  “I mean it’s not really any of your business. Or mine, come to that.”

  “Aw, gee, come on, Mrs. Fletcher! I’m here to do a job for the government—”

  “Not my government. As it happens, I can’t tell you anything for certain anyway. I overheard what sounded to me like an American accent, but I could well have been mistaken.”

  “And old Jessup’s a wine merchant. What a stroke of luck! It gives me somewhere to start looking. As soon as my papers arrive,” he added sheepishly.

  “Let’s hope it’s soon,” said Daisy in heartfelt tones.

  THIRD SEA INTERLUDE

  They hired men with the scythes so sharp

  To cut him off at the knee.

  They rolled him and tied him by the waist,

  And served him most barbarously.

  They hired men with the sharp pitchforks,

  Who pricked him to the heart,

  And the loader he served him worse than that,

  For he bound him to the cart.

  “Welcome aboard Barleycorn,” grunted the seaman who had helped Patrick to descend from Iffie. A couple of others were busy stowing sacks and crates. “Skipper’s in the wheelhouse.”

  Taking this as an invitation—or perhaps an order—Patrick made his way cautiously forward by starlight, making for the blacker black rectangle in the bow. The wheelhouse was much lower than he would have expected. He couldn’t imagine how a man might stand upright inside.

  Beneath his feet, the deck surged as the Barleycorn put on speed, her engines running smooth and quiet. Having found his sea legs weeks ago aboard Iphigenia, Patrick adjusted easily to the motion.

  “And these three men made a solemn vow, John Barleycorn was dead …,” he sang silently to himself.

  “Then little Sir John sprung up his head, and soon amazed them all.”

  Whoever had christened the bootleggers’ boat had a sense of humour, though somewhat lacking in common sense. Her name would surely arouse suspicion in anyone who knew the old ballad.

  He was quite close to the wheelhouse before he could make out the windows, faintly illuminated by the binnacle lamp within. But glancing back, he saw the wide white curve of the wake. If Coast Guard vessels were about, they could hardly miss that signal. Then, the very absence of required lights would be cause enough to stop her.

  The wheelhouse roof was just above his waist level. Stooping, he peered through the side window and saw the silhouette of a mariner in a peaked cap. He knocked.

  The man at the wheel gestured to him to enter. He had to crouch to enter and climb down a short ladder to reach the deck inside.

  “Sir, I’m Patrick—”

  “No names,” growled the skipper.

  “Right-oh. I mean, aye, sir. But I’m supposed to be meeting a man….”

  “The Irishman.”

  “Is he aboard?”

  “Nope. Waiting ashore.”

  “Oh.” While not exactly gushing, the skipper didn’t seem actually hostile. Patrick ventured a question. “May I ask why the wheelhouse is lower than the main deck?”

  “So there’s somewhere to duck down when the bullets start flying.”

  “Gosh, I’d hoped the stories I’ve heard were exaggerated. The Coast Guard actually shoot to kill?”

  “Ayup. Leastways, I don’t say they mean to kill, but when you turn a machine gun on a manned ship, accidents happen.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Even with bulletproof glass and armour plating.”

  “Which she has?”

  “Purpose-built.”

  Patrick was silent for a moment, contemplating the degree of adventure he was encountering. “Are you … er … are we expecting to meet any Coast Guard ships?”

  “Regular patrol cutter hereabouts is paid off. Shore station likewise. But there’s no knowing where they’ll pop up. We can outrun ’em, given half a chance, even their new cutters.”

  “I thought your engines sounded sweet. Where do you intend to land the stuff?”

  “No names. We’ll get you where you’re bound. You don’t need to know how.”

  “Sorry!”

  Patrick expected to be dismissed ignominiously to join the crew. However, the nameless captain ignored him henceforth. After waiting for a few minutes, he found a stool and sat down, leaning back against the rear window. He even managed to sink into an uneasy doze without falling off the stool.

  He dreamt he was standing in the middle of Piccadilly Circus, with motor-car horns blaring all around him. The noise woke him.

  A brilliant white light flooded the small cabin. The moon? No,
much too bright, and it moved with a disconcerting unsteadiness. “What …?” he asked, confused.

  “Get down! Last thing we need is them to find a limey aboard. Go nap on those sacks.” The captain pointed at a pile in the corner. “Pull one over you. If you’re questioned, you’re my sister’s deaf-mute boy.”

  “Aye, sir.” As Patrick ducked below window level and scuttled over to the sacks, a Klaxon horn bellowed again, followed by a loud-hailer.

  “Ahoy, Barleycorn! U.S. Coast Guard. Stand by to be boarded.”

  The beam of the searchlight remained on the wheelhouse. “Damn their eyes!” the captain swore. “It’s illegal to throw a searchlight on the bridge of a ship! Pity I’m in no position to report them, though if it comes to trial….” He let roll a slew of oaths but throttled back the engine. He hauled himself up the short ladder to the main deck.

  Huddled among the sacks, which smelled of a curious mixture of fish, spirits, and tar, Patrick heard only fragments of the ensuing conversation.

  “… Double-crossing whoreson skunk …”

  “Hey, take it easy. Me and the boys just figured …”

  “… Had a deal …”

  “… Spare a coupla crates …”

  Concluding that he was not going to be arrested in the immediate future, Patrick stopped cowering and made himself as comfortable as possible on his odiferous bed. He was half-asleep again by the time the captain returned with another man.

  “Greedy bastard’s made us run late,” the captain growled. He resumed his post at the wheel and the purr of the engines swelled. “It’ll be daylight before we’re in signalling distance.”

  “What we need’s one of those radio transmitters,” said the other in the dogmatic tone of one who was repeating oft-unheeded advice.

  “That’s what the limey’s here for.” Without turning his head, the captain asked, “You awake, son?”

  “Yes, sir.” Patrick scrambled to his feet.

  “You’re here to set up radio codes, that right?”

  “That’s right, sir. We’ve heard your Coast Guard is intercepting uncoded messages from ship to shore, so my father hired a top-notch cryptographer—a chap who worked for the War Office during the War—to set up a code for us. It’s not hard to use, and it can be changed at irregular, prearranged intervals, so they won’t get a chance to work it out. I’m going to set it up with Mr…. uh …” He recalled the warning against naming names. “With our buyer’s agent.”

  “What did I say, skipper? These days, you gotta have radio.”

  The captain gave an unenthusiastic grunt. When nothing more was forthcoming, the seaman went out and Patrick subsided on his pile of sacks again.

  When next he roused, day was breaking. A light mist swirled over the sea. The captain still stood at the wheel, steady as a rock. Feeling chilly, Patrick yawned and stretched. He was dying for a cuppa, but he knew one didn’t ask New Englanders for tea.

  “Good morning, sir.”

  The captain, now revealed as a tall, lean man with a long, seamed face fringed with grizzled whiskers, hooked a laconic thumb over his shoulder. “Bread and cheese in the locker.”

  “Thanks. Will you have some?”

  “Ayup.”

  With the half loaf and hunk of cheese in the locker, Patrick found a thermos flask of coffee and a couple of battered tin mugs. Having acquired a seaman’s knife aboard the Iphigenia (for which he now felt a nostalgic affection), he cut a doorstep of bread and a slab of the cheese. The coffee smelled very strong. He poured a cup and carried the makeshift meal to the captain.

  When Patrick tasted the coffee, he discovered the aroma disguised a healthy slug of whisky. It wasn’t the breakfast he’d have chosen, but it warmed him through. Evidently, the captain of the Barleycorn believed in his work, unlike the Boston Irishman, who, according to Patrick’s father, was a teetotaller.

  An Irishman, a Catholic Irishman, who didn’t drink was oddity enough. A teetotaller who broke the law to import booze for his fellow citizens boggled the mind, Patrick mused, gnawing on his bread and cheese. Love of money was the root of all evil, they said. Not, of course, that he considered dealing in high-quality alcoholic beverages to be an evil.

  A young seaman burst into the wheelhouse. “Skipper, Jed spotted a destroyer astern!”

  Startled, Patrick choked on a crumb.

  The captain swore a brief but pungent oath. “He’s sure?”

  “Just a glimpse, but he’s using the spyglass.”

  “Did they see us?”

  “She ain’t hailed us. Nor shot at us … yet.”

  “Which way’s she heading?”

  “Dunno, skipper. He couldn’t tell.”

  “This fog’s going to burn off soon as the sun rises. So much for the weather forecast! Tell the boys to hold on to their hats. We’ll run for it.”

  By the time Patrick got over his choking fit, the heavy-laden Barleycorn was ploughing through the swells at her top speed. The mist turned to gold as the sun’s first rays touched it, and soon its wraithlike wisps dissipated.

  The young seaman returned, bursting with excitement. “She’s turning, skipper. She’s spotted us for sure. A mile and a half astern, Jed says. D’you want us to chuck the stuff overboard?”

  “Send a hundred thousand bucks’ worth of good liquor to Davy Jones’s locker? Not danged likely,” said the captain grimly. “We’ll give her a run for her money.”

  FOUR

  A smell of paint still hovered in the hallways when Belinda came home for her half-term holiday. That the Fletchers had managed to move from St. John’s Wood by then was in no small part due to Lambert.

  Though he still spent every weekday morning haunting the American embassy, an unhappy ghost who had lost his obol for Charon, he would then go to the Hampstead house to “ginger up” cleaners and workmen, as he put it. Daisy didn’t tell Alec that when she dropped in to see how things were going, Lambert was generally standing at a window with borrowed binoculars, watching the doings of the next-door neighbours.

  Daisy wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but she was pretty sure he hadn’t seen it. He couldn’t have hidden his subsequent excitement from her.

  Be that as it might, the refurbishment was completed in record time. The house was light and bright. Bel loved her new bedroom, three times the size of the one she had occupied since the twins’ arrival.

  The very morning after she came home, Lambert returned from the embassy with his passport and papers, and took his leave.

  His gratitude for the Fletchers’ hospitality was so heartfelt that Daisy began to feel quite mean for having scoffed at him and resented his intrusion into their lives.

  “You’ve been a great help,” she said. “I hope you’ll come back to say good-bye before you leave England.”

  He cast a furtive look behind him and whispered, “You may see me around, Mrs. Fletcher. If you do, please pretend you don’t know me. Don’t speak to me, and don’t tell anyone. Except Mr. Fletcher, of course.”

  She bit her lip to hold back a laugh. He was so keen to be a hero out of Anthony Hope’s romances, or John Buchan’s, or the American equivalent, and he just wasn’t cut out for the role. “I won’t,” she promised.

  He stood on the threshold for a moment, scanning his surroundings before he ventured forth. As he went down the steps, Daisy saw him turn up his coat collar and pull down his hat.

  She told Alec when he turned up in the middle of the afternoon and announced that he was taking three days off while Belinda was at home. To her surprise, her news made his dark brows lower in a frown.

  “What’s the matter, darling? Aren’t you glad he’s gone at last?”

  “Naturally. I just hope he’s not going to cause any trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “The Americans are pushing us to help them enforce their stupid law. It started last year with extending territorial waters from three to twelve miles. Well, the government approved that treaty for
our own reasons, and a lot of grief it’s caused already. They’ve seized a number of British-registered ships, some actually outside the new limit, when they’ve caught them off-loading alcohol, or even just with alcohol aboard. Now they’re sending agents over here to investigate the shippers. The last thing we need is trigger-happy idiots like Lambert wandering about.”

  “Customs took away his gun, remember?”

  “Thank heaven for small mercies! Let’s forget about him, for the present at least. No doubt he’ll turn up again sooner or later, like a bad penny. Where’s Bel?”

  “She went with Mrs. Gilpin and Bertha…. Don’t look blank, darling. Bertha’s our new nursery maid. They’ve taken the babies and Nana for a walk on the Heath. It’s such a beautiful day, let’s go to meet them.”

  “Right-oh. Just let me get changed.”

  A two-minute walk took them to the edge of the Heath, eight hundred acres of woodland and meadow practically on their doorstep. From their high position, on this clear October afternoon, they could see the glint of the sun’s slanting rays on the Crystal Palace, far off beyond St. Paul’s. At the foot of the hill, a large pond gleamed between leafless trees.

  Quite a number of people were taking advantage of the weather: boys kicking balls, well-wrapped pensioners chatting on benches, dog walkers, pram pushers, and, combining the last two, a small group coming up the slope towards Daisy and Alec.

  Nana was first to spot them. Off her lead, she came bounding up to them, tail gyrating wildly. Behind her, at a snail’s pace, came Belinda, bent double with Oliver clutching her forefingers and staggering along on his own two feet. Next was Bertha, a plump, toothy girl with a soft West Country voice, carrying Miranda. Keeping an eye on her charges, Nurse Gilpin brought up the rear with the empty pushchair, a newfangled contraption she had fought tooth and nail until it was made plain to her that Daisy’s brother-in-law, Lord John, had had it specially designed and built for the twins. Nurse Gilpin was a snob.

  Belinda looked up to see where Nana had gone. Of course, Oliver promptly sat down. He opened his mouth to yell but stopped when Bel picked him up, the burden making her look skinnier than ever. She had been a thin child as long as Daisy had known her, and since going back to boarding school after the summer hols, she seemed to have grown an inch without putting on an ounce. Daisy hoped she was getting enough to eat. She didn’t seem to have any trouble carrying the baby, though, and gave him up reluctantly to Daisy when they met.