The Merciless Ladies (12 page)

‘So your yachting holiday's still being considered?' I said.

‘With no dissentients this time. We hope to leave some time next week. For Madeira.'

‘Good. I'll drink to that.'

‘Actually', Paul said, ‘that was all decided a week ago. What's being considered at this meeting is
your
yachting holiday.'

I smiled. ‘Week at Margate for me. With or without a blonde.'

Paul ordered another round of drinks. ‘There are four of us so far. John and myself and two of a crew. There's plenty of room for a fifth, and personally I'd like you to come. What do you say?'

‘Me? A veritable land-lubber?''

‘Don't give me that. After all the mucking about in small boats we did in Grimsby.'

‘Small boats? Just how small is this? It can't be exactly a dinghy.'

‘She's a fifty-eight-ton cutter', said Connor. ‘I bought her last autumn. She's an ex-pilot cutter that's been converted. Fairly old, of course, but she's sound over every inch. I've made sure of that. I've had an auxiliary motor fitted for inshore work. I've been round Ireland twice this summer and she's a first-rate little craft.'

‘And how long', I asked, sipping a second drink, ‘do you suppose this little jaunt is going to take?'

‘Six weeks, maybe. Of course it would depend a bit on the weather.'

I said: ‘You both obviously have laughable ideas of the amount of leave given to struggling journalists.'

‘You're not struggling any longer', said Paul. ‘I hate mock modesty. Why not go to your editor and tell him the facts? You haven't had
much
time off.'

That was true enough. I'd been working fourteen hours a day some of the time.

Connor said: ‘Let's go to lunch, shall we? It'll give him time to think. Anyway, don't persuade him against his wishes. You don't know how poisonous even the most willing partners may seem to each other after a month at sea. You'll maybe hate my guts in a fortnight.'

‘I'm convinced of it', said Paul. ‘That's why I want a change of company.'

We went in and ate.

‘Have we anyone else in view if Grant refuses?' Connor asked. ‘It's a pity Doughton-Smith is out of England.'

‘There's Parkins', said Paul. ‘ He's inoffensive enough. But an eternal yes-man might equally get one's goat in the end.'

‘No, thanks', I said to the wine. ‘I have to work this afternoon.'

‘D'you know, I'm looking forward to it, John', said Paul. ‘Whatever pleasure we get, or whatever mishaps, at least they'll be
real
. I could do with being in touch with something real for a change.'

When we had finished lunch Paul said: ‘‘Well, Bill?'

I said: ‘I'll talk it over with my immediate boss. Bur it may mean going up to Manchester and seeing Scott. He doesn't believe journalists should have holidays. I'll ring you as soon as I know.'

Rather to my surprise when I put the idea up that I should like a break – and if I exceeded the time for a legitimate break the rest would strictly be unpaid – the paper didn't object. I'd been at the stretch for three years. They were pleased with my reporting and articles on the General Strike and its consequences. The miners' strike looked as if it was going on for ever, and there wasn't much new to say about that. Perhaps I'd like to write a couple of pieces on what it felt like to be shipwrecked in the Atlantic? It would be a change from recording the shipwreck of goodwill in England.

I phoned Paul next morning and told him I'd come.

II

It wasn't until I saw the
Patience
that I had second thoughts. Experience showed she was all Connor claimed for her, but that first afternoon in Plymouth she looked lifeless, cramped, insignificant and ugly of line, dwarfed by the vessels around her and ridiculously small for anything more adventurous than an afternoon's fishing off Salcombe. We went aboard, stared about the deck, examined the gear and the sails, and then climbed awkwardly down into the gloomy and cramped and smelly interior.

Forward of the main companion ladder down which we had climbed was the saloon, with its hinged dining-table, its small swinging lamp, two or three mahogany cupboards, a solitary bookshelf and a portable wireless set. Leading off from this forward was a double cabin with, beyond, a door leading into the forecastle, where the crew slept and the cooking was done, and which connected separately with the deck by means of a forward ladder. Aft of the main ladder was another double cabin, and this was separated from the tiny engine-room behind by a stout bulkhead. The engine itself, a four-cylinder Kelvin motor, was accessible from a third hatch just in front of the binnacle. A lavatory and store cupboard occupied the space on either side of the main ladder.

Connor carefully watched our faces for any signs of misgiving or distaste, but Paul was always hard to read, and I was at pains on this occasion to show nothing of what I felt. We went off and had dinner at the Royal. Over it we discussed additional stores and when we should start. Connor thought everything would be ready by the day after tomorrow. Paul was taking along a case of whisky.

‘I like those brothers', said Paul, referring to our ‘crew'. ‘They're the sort who'd have been useful to Drake.'

‘They'll not let us down', said Connor. ‘It's not a lot of fun being the crew on a show like this. Great thing is to find people who won't get seasick or the sulks at the first sign of bad weather.'

Among the passengers as well, I thought he was probably implying.

‘Even bad weather', said Paul, ‘would be a change for me from the atmospheres I've been breathing. I don't know whether I dislike more the smell of Mayfair drawing-rooms or of lawyers' offices.'

III

We left Plymouth on a damp misty morning in mid-August and put into Vigo on the following Wednesday. The sea in the Channel on the first two days was choppy, with the cutter kicking and bucketing about at unexpected moments, and our newness to the vessel made adjustment a bit difficult; but later the weather improved and we had a fresh following breeze.

We settled into our quarters uncomfortably enough. After a time they began to expand, as do all shipboard quarters, even the tiniest, and we ceased to fall over each other and bang our heads and kick into various obstructions. The table in the saloon was on gimbals with lead beneath it to give it stability, and when the cutter was driving hard the person on one side of the table would eat his dinner standing up, while the man opposite sat on the floor. Paul and I shared the centre cabin and John Connor had the rear one to himself.

Sam and Dave Grimshawe – or the brothers Grimm, as they were soon called – were tough, hardy, efficient old mariners, both men who had commanded their own small craft and been at sea since childhood.

From Vigo to Madeira everything was as favourable as it could be. We caught the north-east trades, the sun shone, and with such a leading wind the idea that there was something venturesome in sailing over a thousand miles across the Atlantic in a small pilot cutter seemed a quite misplaced one.

Despite all his concern to see that the case was safely shipped, Paul did not touch the whisky after the first day out. As the days passed we turned brown and leathery with the warmth of the sun and the whip of the wind. I saw the tight expression on Paul's face begin to relax. During the last few months or years there had crept over his features certain nuances which had been unnoted until they began to go. The life he had been living had left its mark. Something of the smoothness and polite insincerity of his normal speech showed itself in the way his mouth formed the words: they slipped out facilely, polished and rounded and impermanent. Something of the universal praise with which success had surrounded him could be noticed in his eyes. With some saving instinct he had withdrawn for these few weeks to take stock.

For there
is
something fundamentally searching to the soul in sailing a small yacht in deep waters, even in fair weather. A man should not essay it unless he's prepared to see and recognize his own stature and his own unimportance. It's a sovereign cure for egoism and smugness. The sun rises out of a silver-grey horizon, and the immensity of waters, unmarred by ship or rock or bird, colours and blooms into the familiar pigments of day. The sea is a long grey swell; even in fair weather it is always uneasy, always moving in low ridges towards one or another horizon bent on some strange purpose, as if there were a universal solution to all restlessness waiting over the edge of the world.

The wind freshens and shifts a point and the sun climbs, quickly at first, then it seems more slowly as the measuring rim recedes. We shave unsteadily and wash and eat breakfast cooked on the Rippingale oil-stove by Dave Grimshawe, while Sam Grimshawe takes the wheel. Then we make our bunks and tidy the saloon, and John Connor, having taken his sights, goes below and plots out our position and our course, with Sam Grimshawe peering over his shoulder to see that the job is properly done. We talk or read through the morning until the sun rises to its greatest height and pours down on a tiny white cutter dipping through the water with its three sails taut and on the man at the wheel and on the men lounging on her slanting deck – and on nothing else except the furrowed, glinting sea. The sun begins its downward journey and the wind shifts another point and slackens, and for a few minutes there is a bustle while the sails are trimmed.

Then we have another meal and turn on the wireless to remind ourselves that all the other men in the world still exist; and the afternoon passes like the morning, with a few clouds moving across the sky to mark the difference and to remind us that fine weather is our good fortune and not our right. Then the wind shifts back and freshens again, and the sun finds it's late and moves more quickly towards the end of the day. Gold seeps into the ridges of the waves, slivers of light turning slowly bloodshot, the deepening shadows in the troughs like smudges of the approaching night.

A last meal and everybody on deck to see the sunset, pipes going and a sense of well-being, speech in monosyllables if at all. Barely noticed, the temperature has fallen as the sky reddens: one and then another of us goes below. Dave Grimshawe, bearded and silent, spits overboard, and moves forward to light and put up the sidelights in the rigging. The sun has gone down into a slate-grey horizon bare of any ship or rock or bird.

Stars appear, winking one by one unobtrusively in the pale sky, then quite suddenly they have begun to grow and multiply and glitter in a cave of cobalt. And in that great space of empty water two stars only wink and bob their way blindly through the encroaching darkness, those in the red and green sidelights which Dave Grimshawe has put up. Neither of the Grimshawes could live for one minute in a vessel without those lights, for the Mercantile Law is rightly the law to them. But being a miserable amateur I sometimes wonder at their value. They certainly don't show us our way. Of course, they are a valuable protection against our being rundown. But rundown by what? The ocean is emptier than it has been for four hundred years. All steamships keep to the sea lanes. And we are quite alone and bobbing forwards into the loneliness of sea and sky.

Well, the day is done and we are for the night.

IV

One unnatural event spread a cloud over the last few days of the outward voyage. As Paul's spirits lightened so Connor's grew heavier.

This was all the more curious because he had been the one to mention, before we left, the danger of a small company palling on each other in cramped surroundings over a long period. But the weather had been so good and the voyage so pleasant, I began to wonder if this was a normal development on his part, that he ended every voyage quarrelling with everyone in sight.

So we endured his attitude in silence and tried to ignore it. When he was particularly glum we politely asked after his health, but this made him more snappy than ever.

We made a good landfall on the last day of August and reached Madeira later the same day. We dropped anchor in the roadstead outside Funchal, and I began to speculate on what excuse Paul and I could make to return by passenger ship and leave Connor to his private gloom.

Not until the little bearded Portuguese doctor came out to issue our
pratique
did the mystery begin to resolve. His examination of us was brief and perfunctory until he came to Connor. There he stopped, felt his pulse, shook an emphatic head and thrust a thermometer into the Irishman's mouth. This when retrieved showed the figure 103.8°, and we were all refused permission to land. Connor glowered at the doctor and said it was all nonsense, what he needed was a few days ashore and some fresh fruit to eat; then he glowered at us and said yes, well, he'd had pains in his belly ever since leaving Vigo, but it was no good squealing about them in mid-Atlantic, he'd be all right in a couple of days. We said why on earth didn't he let us know he was sick, and he said a fine lot of good that would have done, we'd only have prescribed what he'd already taken himself.

In about an hour the doctor returned with a hospital launch, and Connor was taken ashore. For the rest of that day and night we remained bobbing gently up and down at our moorings, full of anxious speculation.

Early the following morning the little doctor again appeared, this time with permission for us to land and with the story in his broken English that during the night Connor had been operated on for peritonitis. We went ashore in the bright sunshine, and spent the next eight days in the neighbourhood of the International Nursing Home where Connor hovered between life and death.

While September slipped away we watched Connor fight his way slowly out of danger. In the meantime we kept an eye on the calendar. The Michaelmas Law Sittings began on 10 October. We had intended spending only a week in Madeira, whereas it would be at least a month before Connor was able to travel, and then it was very doubtful whether he would be fit to rough it in the
Patience
. Paul cabled Messrs Jude & Freeman and received the answer ‘ Expect about October Sixteen or Seventeen.'