by Peter Tonkin
Robin went down as though she were kneeling on broken glass. “Hello?” she called. Abruptly, the screaming ceased. “HELLO?” Louder. She knew the child wouldn’t understand English, of course. But at least it would know there was someone near. She paused. Silence. “Where are you?”
Silence.
She remained where she was, half kneeling, and looked very carefully around the deck. Both the fore and after castles were big enough to hold a child, and yet it seemed to her that the cries had come from straight ahead. And immediately in front of the stump of the mast there was an open hatchway. She crouched onto all fours, like a cat. Inch by inch, she began to crawl forward. Every now and then a wave slightly larger than the rest would explode against the bottom of the wreck, causing it to lift, causing great pieces of wood to spring free against Prometheus’s stem and fall rattling like dry bones into the sea, causing the hulk to scream even more loudly than the child. When this happened, Robin would freeze, watching her shadow on the deck, watching her sweat mark the dry planks beneath her as the drops cascaded off her face. And as they landed, increasingly frequently they would roll forward and down, away from her as the slope of the deck increased.
I’m going to die here, she thought. I’m going to bloody well die…I’m going to sodding well die…I’m going to…As she moved, so her language became fouler.
And the hatchway came closer.
At the lip of the hatchway, she was faced with a dilemma. Should she keep the chair on as she went down? The obvious answer seemed to be yes, and yet, if the felucca went while she was below and she was still tied in, she could all too easily be torn to pieces. On the other hand, if she untied herself, then went with the felucca, she would be just another man overboard.
And, of course, the rope would make it more difficult to reach the child if anything did go wrong.
It was that more than anything which decided her.
“What is she doing?” cried one of the others to Khalil as soon as he felt the rope slackening in his hands.
“She’s taking the chair off. I think she’s going below…” Kerem turned and deliberately started signaling to the bridge.
“Sir!” The helmsman noticed Kerem’s signal first. He couldn’t make out quite what the tiny figure was doing, however, because the forepeak was nearly three hundred yards away.
John had some trouble making out what was going on too, until he went out onto the bridge wing and used his binoculars. Then, at full magnification, it became obvious that something was wrong.
He walked briskly back onto the bridge proper, mentally cursing Ben for having left the bridge at just the wrong moment. He picked up the internal phone and dialed the captain’s number.
With the wooden seat firmly wedged under her left arm, Robin crept gingerly down the ladder from the hatchway. The noise down here was incredible, the stench damn near unbearable, the sense of danger absolutely overpowering. The felucca was quite simply—but, thankfully, quite slowly—coming to pieces under her feet. On her right, sloping away at an increasing angle, was the single below-deck area, with the foot of the mast rising immediately ahead at a crazy tilt.
On her left, incredibly close at hand, was the huge, blunt metal blade of Prometheus’s bow. It rose through the crushed and splintered wood almost as though it had always been there. And yet, at the same time, it was an obscene intrusion, horribly out of place. Robin felt as though she were inside Mr. Borden’s skull, just after Lizzie had delivered the first whack, looking out at the axhead.
“HELLO!”
Gripping the seat with bruising force, she stepped off the bottom rung, onto the deck itself.
There was an explosion of sound and movement immediately behind her, from under the ladder itself. This was so unexpected that she jumped forward, swinging on the rope and gasping with shock. The rope slackened at once, dumping her unceremoniously on her bottom. She sat still, looking up.
Beyond the ladder was a cavern of darkness stretching toward the bow. Still dazzled by the early morning brightness she had encountered on the deck, she could not see into the shadows. Even as she looked, however, her vision was aided by shaft after shaft of light. Like searchlight beams, like the light under storm-clouds, flat blades stabbed down in increasing numbers from the edge of that jagged wound as the felucca began to slide off Prometheus’s bow.
And this light revealed, just a step or two behind the ladder but chained helplessly to its perch, a scarlet, yellow, and blue Macaw parrot. And, as Robin watched it, the terrified creature opened its bill and screamed like a frightened child.
“Damn you!” Robin was on her feet at once, her rage beyond expressing—in direct proportion to her own fear. All this. And for a bloody bird! From the bottom of the ladder, looking through the rungs, she yelled at the top of her voice, “We’re going to die! You know that, bird?” The parrot leaped toward her, but was brought up short in a flapping, squawking bundle by the chain.
“We’re both going to sodding die!” At least it had the wit to sit still while she wrestled the chain loose from the perch. Then it jumped easily onto her right shoulder. “I wouldn’t stay there, you dumb SOB,” she warned it, “unless you can swim as well.”
It screamed in her ear.
She stepped back onto the ladder.
The felucca fell into the sea.
CHAPTER TWELVE
It hadn’t been as simple as Ben led Slope to believe that morning a fortnight ago, when he told him of Mariner’s past. It hadn’t been clean, cut and dried, full of simple rights and wrongs. It had been like any human relationship: messy.
Richard, Robin, Rowena, and Bill had met the second the sixties became the seventies at midnight, December 31, 1969. Their yachts were tied side by side at the unfashionable end of that long marina that makes up the seaward side of the main street of St. Tropez.
None of them had any particular reason for being in such a place in such a town when most of their friends were somewhere else anyway. Richard himself, who had bought the yacht Rebecca a few years previously to celebrate his first tanker captaincy, had sailed aimlessly out of Poole, alone, at Christmas and ended up here because there had been severe storms in Biscay preventing him returning. The champagne had been a pointless indulgence. Its cork hit Sir William on the head as he stood in the cockpit of the neighboring yacht. Apologies had led to introductions; introductions to mutual recognition.
Sir William was there with his two girls. It was exactly a year since the death of Lady Heritage and they had all wanted to get away. Why they had come here, none of them seemed to know, but Richard suspected it was Robin’s idea: one of the vivid enthusiasms that seemed constantly to be impelling the gawky, sensitive, brilliant sixteen-year-old.
Certainly, it had nothing to do with the dazzling, slightly bored Rowena, who seemed to be following the debutante fashion of the time—he discovered later, she led it—in approaching everything with a chic ennui. The precociously mature twenty-two-year-old would rather have been almost anywhere else—and she made no secret of it.
Richard would never forget that first sight of her, sitting in the after cockpit of the Heritage yacht, sipping Bollinger, wearing Balmain, like Princess Grace come slumming it down the coast. Nor would he ever forget the fierce, feral passion that simmered just beneath that glacial surface.
How well he had fitted into the family; worshiped by one daughter, beloved of the other. Respected by a man whom he respected. Social calls in London soon became professional ones to Heritage House in Leadenhall Street. Richard’s standing as an in de pen dent tanker captain eventually expanded by his appointment as senior captain to Heritage Shipping. Rowena and he married within the year, a red-eyed Robin as bridesmaid.
Neither of Richard’s commitments to the Heritage family was a sinecure. Keeping Rowena in the style demanded by her position in society soon used up even his salary and he soon came to count himself almost fortunate when commitments to her father kept him away at sea where he at least lived fr
ee. But they were five heady, happy years nevertheless. He was building something lasting—or so it seemed. With his father-in-law, one of those hardheaded, down-to-earth northern businessmen who are the backbone of City institutions, he was creating a shipping empire of almost Greek proportions. During his increasingly rare visits home, he was feted as the dashing husband of a leader of the jet set, his name in the society as well as the financial pages; his picture at the front of Tatler as well as in the middle of The Economist. A coming man on every front.
It ended at Robin’s twenty-first birthday party.
She was at the London School of Economics at the time, although her father would much have preferred her to be following in Rowena’s footsteps at finishing school in Lausanne, or with her family friends at Oxford. The party itself was held at Cold Fell, the great house overlooking Hadrian’s Wall in Cumbria, which had come to Heritage with his late wife, Lady Fiona Graham.
Richard and Rowena drove up; Richard, at least, unaware that anything was wrong. The house was full of undergraduates, echoing to youthful laughter for the first time since the thirties when Lady Fiona’s parents had entertained the bankrupt Gertrude Lawrence and the young Noel Coward here, with the others of their set.
Sir William was in his element, dispensing punch and fatherly advice, insisting to one and all, “Nay, call me Bill,” in his rich northern brogue, though none ever dared. Richard had joined him, of course, keeping an eye on all the excited young faces, discreetly checking all the more obvious places where virtue could be lost; feeling almost ancient in the process.
But it was Robin’s night. Richard had never seen her look so lovely. She would never rival the cool perfection of her big sister. She remained slightly gawky, even when trying to be chic; even when dressed by Laura Ashley. Time and again their eyes met over the throng of her friends. Time and again they danced. He ought to have queued for the honor—he would have had to have joined a considerable queue to get a dance with his own wife—but she crossed out whole sections of her dance card and came to him time and again.
At midnight she demanded the vintage champagne. A bottle had been left in the library specially, and the two of them went through together. The great, book-lined room was empty, as was obviously part of Robin’s simple plan. Richard suddenly found her in his arms. With all the overpowering enthusiasm she applied to everything in her life, she loved him; had always loved him: would always love him. As gently as possible, he pushed her away. He loved her too, but as a sister. Anything else would be unthinkable. And what about Rowena?
Stung by the simple unfairness of it, she told him about Rowena. How, during his absence at sea, she was busily sleeping her way through Burke’s Peerage.
At first he had refused to believe her, but she was well stocked with proof. In the end, half convinced, he had gone to Sir William. Sir William had known for some time, but had hidden the truth; only Richard, it soon transpired, had not known.
Rowena herself was slightly surprised by all the fuss. She had always been given exactly what she wanted. The most expensive jewelry, clothes, and perfumes had been hers for the asking. She saw no reason why lovers should be any different. She really could not understand that this was where Richard drew the line. Like any spoiled child, she started throwing tantrums. There and then, at Robin’s party, she threw the first. Richard had never seen her like this; nor had Sir William for many years: but then, Rowena had had everything she had wanted from the time she was seventeen.
The marriage turned to dross almost at once, and all Sir William’s plans for Richard were automatically put at risk. The simple fact was that blood was thicker than water and so Rowena found it easy enough to drive a wedge between the men. This was not grand opera. It had not even reached the stature of tragedy yet. Richard and Sir William talked things through carefully. It seemed to them that the matter had not yet gone beyond the point where reconciliation was possible. And he still loved his wife. If she could remain faithful, he would welcome her back with open arms.
In succeeding years, going over the mess time and again in his mind, he looked back at himself with increasing wonder. He could not believe he had agreed to such a thing, for he was a fiercely proud man. Nor, indeed, could he see how Bill Heritage could have asked it of him. Only when Robin had smiled at him on the night she had first come aboard did he remember Rowena’s smile, and the power it had once held over him.
Rowena had grudgingly agreed to try, as though it were she who had been wronged. A second honeymoon was mooted and agreed to: the perfect solution; a working holiday for Richard, a cruise for Rowena, who had never sailed the Cape Route before.
Sir William’s new flagship was hurried into commission for the purpose and named Rowena. Time was short. Rowena was impatient, and Sir William so worried that he made one of the few serious business errors of his life. He insured his own bottom rather than waiting for the underwriters—desperate of course, but so confident in the massive tanker and in her captain that he bore the whole weight of the insurance himself, risking far more than he could afford to lose, instead of waiting for the consortium of businessmen who would normally share the risk with him on advice from Lloyd’s of London.
The cruise passed off well enough until they reached the Channel. Then, quite simply and deliberately, Rowena kicked over the traces. She had never been a one-man woman. She could never be one. The strain of remaining faithful was going to prove too much for her. She backed out of the deal. She took the young third engineer to bed. Richard found out that morning, and had just backed out of the deal—and out of the family, and the company—himself, when the whole thing went up in his face.
That was the stuff of his nightmares—the massive power of the moment grinding closed on him like a great steel door that no power at his command could hold ajar.
Stage by stage he relived it in his dreams from the first sight of the pale, twisting bodies in his cabin, which had driven him back onto the bridge, to Daniel Strong’s first urgent, “Sir!”
The vision of their bodies stayed before his eyes throughout the rest of it, though he knew the third engineer would have been back at his post before the end of it and Rowena, calculatedly, alone. The sight and sound of their coupling had remained more real to him than the death of his ship until that first grinding roar of collision. That was part of the horror of it—had the knowledge affected his judgment? Was there a moment when what she had been doing got in the way of what he had been doing? Had she caused him an instant of hesitation that had made him lose it all?
Not according to the Coastguards who had watched it all on their radar, nor according to the helicopter pilot who had seen the final impact through an eddy in the fog—and was lucky to live through the explosion. Not according to the survivors of the other ship who had watched their captain leave the bridge, putting an inexperienced boy in charge: a so-called third officer who, it transpired, had not been qualified at all. An overconfident, inept young man who had panicked and done everything wrong.
And yet Richard still wondered, remembering how remote he had felt during that sequence from the first warning on the Collision Alarm Radar, to formal warning by siren, radio, Coastguard; from standard avoiding action to sickening realization that the oncoming signal—they did not see the ship itself until the very end, of course—which was steaming the wrong way down the Channel’s one-way street in any case, had turned onto a collision course and sealed all their fates.
The bodies had been before his eyes more vividly than anything until those massive bows came chopping toward him out of the fog bank. Their sighing had filled his ears with more reality than anything until the colossal roar of the impact.
And everything else had been darkness and silence anyway.
After the inquiry, the two men found themselves strangers. Rowena’s ghost stood between them. Robin could see only the terrible cost of her infatuation with her dashing brother-in-law, and turned from Richard to try to make it all up to Sir William. She became t
he business partner, adviser, and son that Richard had almost been, working so much harder; gaining so much less of the credit. But almost single-handedly holding Heritage shipping together until her father recovered; and that recovery was years in coming. Even now, once in a while, he would do something ill-advised, almost suicidal in business terms.
Like buying the oil in Prometheus.
Richard lay on his bunk, chin on his chest, lost in these thoughts; wondering why Robin was really here. His memory of her twenty-first birthday was so vivid, he could still feel her hot in his arms, still smell the champagne on her breath as she swore undying love. How different things would have been had he loved the little sister. But ten years ago she had been a child: the idea was pointless. Or had been, then…
His phone rang and he reached for it, still lost in thought.
The moment Robin felt it go she hurled herself forward. She had just reached the bottom of the ladder when the whole felucca lurched left and so she was able to dive forward and upward in one, grabbing the rungs above while her legs pumped smoothly below.