Sea of Troubles Box Set

by Peter Tonkin

  Beyond the ladder was a cavern of darkness stretching towards 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. 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 towards 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 on to her right shoulder. 'I wouldn't stay there, you dumb S.O.B.,' she warned it, 'unless you can swim as well.'

  It screamed in her ear.

  She stepped back on to the ladder. The felucca fell into the sea.

  Chapter Thirteen

  It hadn't been as simple as Ben led Slope to believe that morning nearly a fortnight ago. It hadn't been clean, cut and dried, full of simple rights and wrongs. It had been like any human relationship: messy.

  Richard and Rowena had met the second the sixties became the seventies at midnight, 31st December 1969. Their yachts were tied side by side at the unfashionable end of that long marina which 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 bit Sir William on the head as he stood in the cockpit of the neighbouring 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 which seemed constantly to be impelling the gawky, sensitive, brilliant sixteen-year-old.

  Certainly, it was nothing to do with the dazzling, slightly bored Rowena, who seemed to be following the debutante fashion of the time - she led it, he discovered later - 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 - but she had been swayed against her better judgement by the slightly bourgeois energies of her father and her sibling.

  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; worshipped 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 independent tanker captain was eventually enhanced 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 early on he came to count himself almost fortunate when commitments to her father kept him away at sea where he at least lived free. 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 hard-headed, 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 have much 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 in the E-type; 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. 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 honour - 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, which 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 furnished 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 jewellery, clothes and perfumes had been hers for the asking. She saw no reason why lovers should be any different. She could not understand that this was where Richard drew the line. Like any spoilt 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 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 the matter through carefully.

  It seemed to them that the matter had not yet gone beyond the point where reconc
iliation was impossible. Although Richard had often been compared with him in his business dealings, he had no wish to conduct his private life like Rhett Butler. 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 smiled at him on the night she first came aboard did he remember Rowena's smile, and the power it had once held.

  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 her Captain that he bore the whole weight of her insurance himself - risking much more than he could afford to lose - instead of waiting for the consortium of businessmen who would normally share the risk on advice from Lloyd's.

  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 Third Engineer to bed. Richard found out that morning, and had just backed out of the deal himself - and out of the family, and the company - when the whole thing went up in his face.

  That was the stuff of his nightmares - the massive power of the moment closed on him like a great steel door which no power at his command could hold ajar.

  Stage by stage he relived it in his nightmares from the first sight of the pale, twisting bodies which had driven him on to the bridge, to Daniel Strong's first urgent 'Sir!'

  The vision of the bodies stayed before his eyes and the soft sounds they were making filled his ears throughout the rest of it - though he knew the Third Engineer must have been back at his post before the end of it, and Rowena, calculatedly, alone. The sight and sound of their coupling remained more real than the death of his ship. That was part of the horror of it - had the knowledge affected his judgement? Was there a moment when what she had been doing simply got in the way of what he had been doing? Had there been a moment of hesitation which had caused him to 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 from the other ship who had watched their Captain leave the bridge, putting an inexperienced boy in charge: a Third Officer who, it transpired, had not been qualified at all. An overconfident, inept young man who had panicked and done everything wrong.

  Yet Richard still wondered, remembering how remote he had felt during that sequence from first warning on the Collision Alarm Radar, to formal warning by siren, radio, coastguard; from standard avoiding action to sickening realisation that the oncoming signal, approaching the wrong way down the Channel's one-way street in any case, had turned on to a collision course and sealed all their fates.

  The bodies had been before his eyes more vividly than the massive bows chopping at him out of the fogbank. Their sighing had filled his ears with more reality than the colossal roar of the impact, though thankfully the impact not the bodies had remained in his dreams.

  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 the 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 a long time 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 upwards in one, grabbing the rungs above while her legs pumped smoothly below.

  The parrot, of course, deserted as soon as it saw the sky.

  She had taken perhaps ten steps upwards when the ladder toppled sideways with the rest of the hull. She twisted, reaching up for the lip of the hatchway with her right hand while keeping firm hold of her lifeline with her left. In this position she hung while the felucca pivoted round her. The hatch which had been a hole above her became almost a doorway framing her as she faced inwards. She pushed off hard and stepped back into the dazzling, roaring day.

  At once, the seat on the bo'sun's chair under her left armpit took all her weight; but as it slid up past her ribs, it gathered her shirt into a pad which, during the next few minutes, protected her shoulder from serious damage.

  As soon as she swung out of the hatchway, the deck fell forward into her face. She brought up her arms and legs, bouncing off it as best she could, with elbows and knees. Everything was happening far too quickly now to allow her to plan ahead or even to think clearly. So it was that the broken railing round the edge of the deck was able to slide down unexpectedly and bash her over the crown of her head. She felt giddy; almost slipped into unconsciousness. But her lithe body just would not quit. Everything went extremely bright. Reality wavered. She seemed to lose contact with what was going on around her.

  The high aftercastle gathered her almost gently to itself, swinging in from her right as the wreck fell left. She flew out, spun around, came back in like a pendulum, in the grip of forces far beyond her control. When her mind cleared, she was just sliding off the huge torpedo-head protrusion on which the felucca had rested, and slipping down into the sea.

  Horrified, she looked up. In a tangle, hanging out over the side, destroyed by the same physical forces which had been sporting with her over the last few minutes, the tripod of the bo'sun's chair protruded like a bizarre bowsprit. Then this too seemed to swing into dizzying motion as the water took her and swept her into the boiling bedlam of the bow-wave.

  Her head only went under for a second, then she was gripping madly with her left arm, the strain beginning to tell in her shoulder joint, and she rose above the surface a little. The weed and barnacle-encrusted side of the ship pressed against her. The movement of the monster through the sea tried to suck her under once more, but the trusty rope, and the trusty men on the far end of it, would not let her down. Instead, she ground back towards the stern, losing a little skin from exposed parts of her body, as though she were being keelhauled. By this stage, she would have been glad enough to let go, even if it meant being sucked to oblivion under that long, long hull; but something in her made her throw her right arm up instead to grasp the rope above her head, relieve the pressure on her shoulder a little, and hang on like grim death.

  The rope angled back from the forepeak now, tight as a fishing line, with her body riding the inner curv
e of the bow-wave some twenty feet back. The pendulum effect had pulled her almost half out of the water and, because only her legs were still submerged, she was slowly spinning round and round, so that one moment she was facing the black hull and the next she looked out to Madagascar nearly two hundred miles away.

  It was when she was facing out that the flying fish returned. Something had panicked them this time and Robin's mind was suddenly filled with visions of sinister shadows cruising the depths. Instead of running parallel to the ship, as they usually did, they hurled themselves straight at the side, and at Robin. One moment the sea rolled away smoothly, the next its bright blue surface exploded with bodies. Wings spread wide, they hurled themselves into the air just above her head. She quailed automatically, giving her shoulder a nasty twinge, and almost let go of the rope with her right hand, so overpowering was the desire to shield her face. Then they were on her. Luckily, only the smallest hit her. The rest smashed into the metal above her and fell back, stunned, down into the sea.

  Those few that did hit her were quite enough, however, for there was no way for her to protect herself and no time to try to turn. They connected with bruising force. She tried to disregard them, grinding her heels against the metal in an effort to stay still as she looked for what had spooked them. But there was nothing there.

  How much time had passed since the felucca fell free she had no way of knowing, but the shock had cleared her mind and this was her first opportunity for anything approaching coherent thought. So, as she held herself facing out, as much by an effort of will as anything else, looking for a shark's fin near at hand, she began to wonder how she was going to get out of this.

  The constant pummelling motion of the water over her skin had already killed off most of the sensation below her waist - if only it could do as much for her shoulder, which was really starting to hurt! Even if she could pull free, she could not trust three of her limbs to get her up the rope. But she wasn't looking forward to being hoisted up fifty odd feet by her shoulder either.