The Tropical Issue (37 page)

I didn’t want to hear the answer, but I asked in the end.

‘We can’t motor?’

‘Empty fuel tanks,’ said Raymond. ‘And the sails are all missing. They really have thought of everything.’

‘I don’t know why they didn’t just open the sea cocks,’ I said.

‘But that would have been murder,’ said an unexcited voice, distantly, on my knee.

This time, it didn’t surprise a name out of Raymond. He only went red, and when Johnson didn’t open his eyes, touched his hand.

‘It’s all right,’ Raymond said. ‘The yobs have gone. It’ll be daylight in a couple of hours. We’ll have you in St Lucia in no time.’

Dolly
rolled. When you knew to listen for it, the grinding crunch from the saloon sounded like a Corporation tip in an earthquake.

Johnson said, ‘Sure.’

He was absolutely motionless, but he didn’t have to say any more. The first sense to come back is your hearing. He knew, all right.

He still hadn’t opened his eyes. Raymond drew a deep breath and said, ‘O.K. Tanks, sails, supplies, navigational gear, all kaput. Ferdy’s shot through the shoulder: no danger. Maggie and Lenny are O.K. but haven’t come to, yet. Rita and I are about to see if we can sail on bare poles. If the storm moves at an even rate, we’ll still be in St Lucia before it.’

‘Hurricane,’ Johnson said. He half-opened his eyes, fatally, to see if Raymond had got it, and the torchlight got to his nerves.

You can’t let people be sick lying down. Raymond’s big hands were careful, but the boat wasn’t. Afterwards, its owner flaked out again without comment. Between us, we got him sort of shawled in the half-hammock. Without his glasses on, he looked unreliable.

‘Hurricane
,’ he’d said. I said, ‘The Spaniards heard something about Chloe.’

‘That would be it,’ Raymond said. ‘Tropical Storm Chloe, now granted hurricane status. Rate of progress therefore unknown. Sunrise just before six. Time now, nearly four-thirty.

‘We don’t know where we are, or where St Lucia is. We don’t know if it’s downwind, and if we can get there without sail before the hurricane does.

‘We don’t know if we’re in deep water, or near a lee shore with shallows. The winds aren’t normal, so we can’t rely on their direction to tell us anything. Because there’s a hurricane warning, there won’t be any other ships about.’

‘What’s the good news?’ I said. I had put off the big torch to save its battery.

‘Don’t hold your breath,’ Raymond said. ‘We might get clear patches, before sunrise or after, that would let us get our bearings. We might get a land sighting in daylight. Chloe could be approaching at the same pace, or slower. It could have changed direction. If we’re in its path, but in deep water, there’s a slim chance that we could ride it out. We haven’t got a sea-anchor, but we could make a drogue of smashed wood.’

The boat rocked and jolted, and the sling beside us moved with it.

I said, ‘How long does a hurricane take to pass?’

‘Too bloody long,’ said Raymond shortly.

On St Lucia there were six hospitals, and a lee shore. I said, ‘Ferdy might know these waters. He’s had his Barbados house for ages. And what about Lenny?’

‘Yes,’ said Raymond. ‘Manpower undoubtedly the next move.’

I felt him shiver. I wanted to go and check up on Ferdy, but I prodded Raymond instead with the torch. I said, ‘Look. See if there’s something to put on in the other locker. Where this came from. They haven’t cleared it out.’

Behind our backs, things were still shifting about in the cockpit and Raymond turned, using the torch. Among the rubbish was Lenny, sitting up. He said, ‘Oh, my Gawd,’ with his hand on the back of his head.

We all knew the feeling. Raymond said, ‘Over there,’ and levered him over to the side; then went back for Maggie, who was stirring.

She opened her eyes, saw him leaning over her, and said, ‘What?’

Raymond said, ‘All present and correct, but the skipper’s had a bad go and the boat’s disabled. On your feet, my angel. We’ve got some problems.’

It was still dark. The hurricane was still on its way. But at least the manpower had doubled.

And what was more important, they were the sailing buffs in the team.

Maybe there was no way of saving ourselves. But if there was, I’d put my money on Lenny and Raymond. And possibly even on Maggie, who was a survivor if ever I saw one.

It struck me to wonder, once she was on her feet, which of our two injured men she’d be most concerned about.

Lenny’s reaction, kneeling by Johnson, had been to swear: real nautical stuff that went on and on with hardly any repeaters.

Maggie just gazed, without wasting energy. Then she wrenched the torch out of Raymond’s hand and plunged below, Lenny following.

They weren’t down very long. When they came back, Lenny wasn’t swearing. He just looked rather like the head in the blue banana bag.

On the other hand, Maggie had got her voice working. She said to me, ‘Ferdy’s fine. The way you’ve got him, he’ll be all right till daylight. We’ll need the lamp up here to get the boat seaworthy anyway.’

She hesitated, looking at my skin under the reefer. It was then that I saw there were tears on her cheeks. She said, ‘Are
you
all right?’

I could hardly believe it. As Ferdy’s nurse, my status had upped. I said, ‘Oh, yeah. Another dull night.’ Since, suddenly, she seemed almost human, I added, ‘I told Raymond, but I don’t think he looked. They’ve left stuff in that locker.’

Maggie didn’t waste any time either. Before I stopped speaking she was on her knees, shining the torch into the space where it came from.

‘Flags,’ she said. ‘Raymond, that’s your new shirt, boy. What do you fancy? There’s a G Flag, a Red Ensign, lots of International Code . . . racing colours . . . four-flag hoist . . . No. We might need that. And something for Rita, for God’s sake. You know you’re black and blue, girl?’

I knew. I could also feel what was happening at the back of my neck. I caught the flags she threw me. They were coarse and clammy, but I packed them in under my oilskin.

As my aunt would say, it would be the price of me, to be washed up on some darkies’ beach wearing bunting.

Maggie was still searching, without much success. No alcohol, no emergency first aid, no beach towels. ‘Brushes . . . cans of stuff . . . engine waste . . . turpentine.’ She sat up. ‘Turps and engine waste?’

From where he was working, on the edge of the light, Raymond looked over. ‘No matches, but J.J. had a lighter. Rita love, go and look. In his back pocket, I suspect. It’d let us make flares in a can, for what it’s bloody worth.’

I understood. Even if we’d had distress rockets, who would see them? He’d already guessed, from the weight of the sea, that we couldn’t be close to land.

However, if a lighter was wanted, I’d get it. I scrambled back to the cockpit in my briefs just as Maggie finished repacking the locker and turned back to where Johnson was lying. The torchlight jerked all over, and steadied.

I heard her say, ‘I thought you were awake. We need your lighter. How is it?’

‘Moderate to hellish,’ he said. ‘How’s Ferdy?’

‘Lost a lot of blood but he’ll be O.K. Still out,’ she said. ‘We couldn’t really see what’s what, without any lights. Your lighter. Where do you keep it? I’ll hold you, and Rita’ll get it.’

I got the lighter without having to move him much, and this time he stuck it. Maggie said, ‘Once it’s daylight, we’ll rig you up something below.’

Carefully, nobody had actually said what had happened below, as if he wouldn’t have noticed the reek, or the noise of the rolling wreckage.

I said, ‘There’s enough smashed wood to make a few torches to work by. I could make a start in the saloon.’

‘My God, would you?’ said Maggie. ‘And keep an eye on poor Ferdy? If you could heap the worst of it, and batten it somehow.’

‘It sounds charming. Poor Rita,’ said Johnson. ‘Is anything working at all?’

Maggie glanced at him, and then at me. ‘What about the water pump?’ she said. ‘There were pewter mugs somewhere.’

I went below, and had a look, and found one dented mug, and a pipe that would give me some water.

We all drank some, beginning with Johnson. She had been right again. He had needed it badly. I took the sixth refill along to the sleeping Ferdy.

He was going to need it too. Unlike the rest of us in the open air, he’d had a real dose of chloroform. What with that and his shoulder, he was going to have a nasty awakening.

I worked for half an hour, staggering backwards and forwards in the saloon, with a makeshift torch stuck in a tin can.

I could hear talk on deck, and hammering, and the others moving about. At one point I saw Maggie let herself down into the cockpit and then into the big stateroom which had been Johnson’s. After a bit, I realised she was clearing his room as I was clearing the saloon, except that a lot of stuff was going overboard, with Johnson’s sanction.

My head was still aching, and I was tender all over from cannoning into obstacles of one kind or another. But I had cleared a working passage through to the front of the ship and shored up some of it when Lenny came down to give me a hand, and to sort out stuff Raymond needed on top.

With his help, I got some quite heavy stuff moved, and secured it. Like Raymond, he was good to work with, and had lost all his aggro, the way that happens in disasters.

Ferdy woke soon after that, yelling blue murder because he thought we’d all been shot as well. He didn’t seem to mind that I wasn’t Maggie, but drained his mug of water and then, stretching shakily, sat himself down and collected me beside him with his good arm, to prove that we were both really alive, he said.

He must have been in real pain from his other shoulder, but his good hand played with my neck and my ear in a familiar, friendly way that I never resented in Ferdy, and that seemed such a nuisance with Porter. Even his bristly chin and his whiskers were comforting.

He talked nonsense for a while, and then got me to tell him what had happened, and about the boat, and about Johnson.

At the end, he was quiet for a bit. Then he withdrew his arm and said, ‘If he thinks it’s safer, he’ll persuade Raymond to stay in deep water, rather than risk our lives getting him into St Lucia . . . Rita, you’re a shrewd little Scotch cookie. Is he badly hurt?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Burgee at half mast,’ said Ferdy, and swore suddenly. Then he got up, and without listening to me, lurched his way through the pitching boat to the cockpit stairs, where he stuck, looking up at his skipper.

‘You mean,’ said Ferdy, ‘that the Rotary Club of St Lucia have sent a tornado to fetch you, and you’re hanging about?’

On Johnson’s glassless, black-bristled face appeared a mild copy of Ferdy’s indignation.

‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘Just held up by the traffic.’ He and Ferdy stared at one another, and then Johnson closed his eyes.

‘He comes and goes,’ I said. ‘There isn’t any morphine. Maggie’s trying to fix some space in his cabin.’

I helped Ferdy up the steps and into the cockpit and called, ‘Maggie!’

She came to the door of the stateroom, and gazed at the one-armed photographer with the most. She said, ‘You absolute ass. Bulldog Braithwaite. Too many of Rita’s films. I’ve never seen you perform an unselfish act in your life. Why begin now?’

Her eyes were sparkling, and he looked pretty cheered up, in spite of everything. He said, ‘I was working up to the sequel. Let’s begin the sequel. You and I get stranded on a desert island. And the skipper and Raymond, if you insist.’

‘And Rita and Lenny,’ said Maggie. She had turned bitchy again, and the crisis hadn’t even peaked.

Raymond said, ‘Skipper!’

He said it in such an odd tone that at first I thought something had happened to Johnson.

Then Johnson opened his eyes, rather slowly, and looked up, and I turned and saw that Raymond wasn’t studying him at all, but was standing on the cabin roof, peering into the darkness ahead.

He said, ‘I think I see a ship’s lights.’

‘Nonsense,’ Ferdy said. ‘It’s a mirage. You’ll see camels next. You’ll see water next, I shouldn’t wonder.’

Maggie said, ‘Shut up, Ferdy. Raymond?’

Lenny’s voice said, ‘Yes, Miss Maggie. I see it too. Shall I do the flares now, sir?’

‘Flares, torches, everything,’ Raymond said. ‘Starting with the big one up the mast. It’s not a small boat. It’s big enough to have radar. We’ll be on her screen. All we have to do is show we’re in distress . . .’

He looked down. His face was quite different. ‘J.J.: it looks hopeful. Pretty nurses and brandy.’

‘It’s a hospital ship?’ said Ferdy lightheadedly.

She was not, naturally, a hospital ship. She had, however, seen Raymond’s signals. In quite a short time it was clear that she had changed course and was making towards us. We had no binoculars, but we all watched her coming closer and closer.

It was again Raymond who, as the gap narrowed, jumped on the tossing coach-house roof with our precious torch, and began sending rapid signals.
Yacht
Dolly,
adrift without power, on passage Barbados St Lucia.

Out of the wind, a light flickered in answer. ‘What does it say?’ Maggie burst out.

Raymond looked down. ‘That she’ll take us in tow. Into hurricane shelter on St Lucia. Remain hove-to and they’ll try to board us.’

‘That happened to me once before,’ Ferdy said. ‘Could it be the same bastards? Come back for the gold in our fillings?’

It wasn’t an old rusty boat; you could see that. But all the same, I felt the same qualm as Ferdy.

It was Raymond who answered.

‘I don’t think you need worry. We know them.

‘It’s the
Paramount Princess,
storm-delayed on her way to Miami.’

The transfer to the
Paramount Princess
was a cinch, although even for five fairly nippy people there were a few interesting moments. Ferdy, who is no Stook, yelled regularly every time something strained his injured shoulder, but otherwise performed as if at the Aldershot Tattoo.

Johnson soon lost interest in the proceedings, having been pumped full of pain relievers sent over from the
Princess
earlier.