Amazing Disgrace
Page 32
Given her trademark amputee image, I wondered why she had decided to strap on a false arm at all for this occasion. I was idly speculating about such things as her indomitable vanity and Lew’s enthusiasm for prosthetic limbs when the extraordinary event took place. She was still a hundred yards short of the bridge when Beldame heeled slightly beneath a clout of breeze. Millie evidently decided she would shorten sail or something and we glimpsed her reaching for the various electronic controls with which the yacht was festooned. Another lurch of the boat threw her against the base of the mast. In an instant she was seen to be bodily hoisted off her feet and carried briskly at an awkward angle to the top of the mast where there was some sinister floundering and thrashing. Even as we watched it happen I surmised the automatic hoist she had had installed for carrying out masthead repairs in midocean must somehow have malfunctioned, snagged her false arm and run away with her. Maybe it will turn out that the gearing had recently been repaired and wrongly reassembled – only the inevitable inquiry will reveal such details. In any case it was the shocking speed of the transition that stayed in the mind. Within a matter of seconds Horatia Cleat at full salute was whipped a hundred feet skyward as a flailing marionette, her cap falling off and twirling down into Beldame’s wake.
Taken by surprise, the cameras did their best to follow her in close-up but by now the yacht was in the bridge’s shadow and viewers were left with a confused impression of Millie’s left hand waving – or was it trying to reach a halyard? It had all happened so fast that most people assumed this unconventional manoeuvre was planned, an extra piece of drama designed to heighten the triumphal pageantry. They were mildly intrigued to see what would happen next when the trimaran emerged on the far side of the bridge. Perhaps Millie was going to lead the regatta from her masthead? It was a gesture that would surely transcend mere pluckiness and reach the level of the heroically dotty.
From his vantage point in Kirribilli House the Minister for Tourism, despite his reactions being lightly retarded by Bundaberg rum, must surely by now have had a blurred premonition of disaster. For when the cameras picked Millie up again, once more bathed in brilliant sunshine, it became apparent to everybody that something had gone badly wrong and that the uniformed figure who appeared to be kissing the mast at a cramped and unnatural angle might be beyond making gestures of any kind. Before the cameramen had the presence of mind to jump back into long focus viewers had the impression that Millie was actually pinned by the neck to the hollow titanium mast by a wire rope; but amid the blurred confusion of rigging it was impossible to be sure. We now know, of course, that she was already dead. While the commentators slowly caught on to the fact that this good old Millie they were still chuckling over and praising for her cheeky sense of drama was in fact a corpse, the cameras continued to follow her. The last thing viewers saw in close-up was the slogan on Beldame’s foredeck: No Worries. Thereafter it took several minutes for a police launch to summon the nerve to officially spoil the regatta’s dignity. It ran alongside the yacht while men in orange life jackets swarmed aboard her. One took over the empty helm while others wrestled with the fused machinery in a vain attempt to bring down the grotesque figurehead. In the event there was nothing for it but to tow the yacht to shore. This was done and a crane jib was extended over her from which dangled a man with cutting equipment. Even now something else went wrong. Before he could get a sling around the defunct mariner the harness of her prosthesis finally snapped and her released body tumbled all the way down to the deck leaving her bent right arm dangling aloft, trailing straps. All in all, the passing of Millie Cleat lacked solemnity.
In fact, the gross and global outburst of mawkishness that ensued has made it impossible to view Millie’s demise other than as high comedy. Adrian tells me many of his BOIS colleagues phoned to interrupt each other’s family Christmas, eager to ensure that all had heard the news and seen the footage and to urge the opening of yet more champagne. ‘That’ll teach her to ignore COLREGS’ was the general tone, and plans were made for the prompt release to the media of the film of Millie’s near collision in the Canaries to counterbalance the lying and fawning obituaries. Heartless it might sound; but as her biographer I am in a much better position than you, dear reader, to know how frightful she really was. And if the flippant among us choose to see the hand of the Spirit of the Deep in her downfall, I would be the last to dissuade them. If you will elect to pollute the stately ocean with torrential ciderpresses and mottled mothers shot in the bottom, it’s your own lookout. Neptune is not mocked.
As for Millie’s own malicious maxim that it is an ill wind that blows somebody else more luck than her, I can only agree it has held true. For the same ill wind that sent Beldame heeling in Sydney Harbour and hanged its skipper from her own masthead has puffed billowing life into my own sales. I have always said that in my line of business a really dramatic and punctual death can do wonders for a book and Millie!, having sold very briskly in the two months before Christmas, has now taken off like mad. I gather Champions Press have cudgelled their holidaying printers back to work and are rushing out another hundred thousand copies. The most unlikely countries are at this very moment struggling to translate my prose into their motley languages to catch the tide.
Just as well, too; for my own future is a black book into whose pages not even regular tinctures of grappa and opium can yet nerve me to peer. I simply glean a debilitating impression of rootlessness and insurance claims. Plus, of course, the same old toad demanding that I keep on scribbling foolishly. Still, Samper may pull through and his fifty-first year could yet turn out to have been cathartic. Worse for some, I reflect, as a verselet rises unbidden to my lips:
Amazing Disgrace, so bitter-fanged,
Has brought low poor old Millie!
Admirers saw her hubris hanged
While cheering themselves silly!
Acknowledgements
Not for the first time I have to thank Mrs Maribel Ongpin for her generosity in providing me with that near-impossibility: a quiet retreat in which to work in Manila. The closing chapters of this book were mostly written in her hospitable home, whose calm and serious tenor is so innocently at odds with the antics of the egregious Gerry Samper.
I equally wish to thank Mrs Monica Arellano Ongpin. Over the years her house in Italy has been a locus of friendship, improper conversation and gin: an exhilarating and frequently inspiring combination.
Once again Quentin Huggett has earned my gratitude, as have other of my friends at Geotek Ltd, in particular John Roberts and Sally Marine. Between them they have answered my questions while supplying ideas of their own. Those, as usual, ranged from the invaluable to the frankly barking. It is for the lack of anything in between that I most thank them. Nor can I forget that when we were aboard R/V Farnella fifteen years ago, Quentin and I were present at the moment The Face first manifested itself: an ineffable apparition that immediately sparked an irreverent train of thought.
Finally, Ken Thomson was an obliging and witty consultant on Australiana and Ozisms in general.
About the Author
James Hamilton-Paterson is the author of Gerontius, winner of a Whitbread Prize; Seven-Tenths: The Sea and its Thresholds; Playing With Water; and most recently, of the wild comic trilogy Cooking With Fernet Branca, Amazing Disgrace and Rancid Pansies.
By the Same Author
FICTION
Loving Monsters
The View from Mount Dog
Gerontius
The Bell-Boy
Griefwork
Ghosts of Manila
The Music
Cooking with Fernet Branca
Amazing Disgrace
Rancid Pansies
CHILDREN’S FICTION
Flight Underground
The House in the Waves
Hostage!
NON-FICTION
A Very Personal War: The Story of Cornelius Hawkridge
(also published as The Greedy War)
Mummies:
Death and Life in Ancient Egypt
Playing with Water
Seven-Tenths
America’s Boy
Three Miles Down
POETRY
Option Three
Dutch Alps
Copyright
First published in 2006
by Faber and Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
This ebook edition first published in 2012
All rights reserved
© James Hamilton-Paterson, 2006
The right of James Hamilton-Paterson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–26765–1