Dark Echo

found on board. Busy boatyards were places where accidents would inevitably occur. Storage facilities were sites in which bored security staff would sneak a smoke and leave a burning stub to spark a blaze. Sea mammals did not have the wit to avoid the churning screws of a Wight ferry, particularly when their skewed sonar had sent them hundreds or even thousands of miles off their true course.

Nothing would deter him. Everything was explicable. Faith in his stern and almighty God was the only mystery my father allowed into his life. He was not about to see it challenged now by the fear in others of what he sneered at as witchcraft. He would restore Dark Echo at whatever terrible cost she claimed. And he would embark aboard her on his transatlantic voyage. And I would have to go with him, not because I was any longer flattered by the invitation, but because I loved him so much and sensed the slippery, brooding danger and could not let him face it on his own. If I did that, I would lose him, I was sure. I did not want my father confounded by terror and madness. And I did not dare to face the loss of him.

These were my thoughts on the quay at Hadley’s boatyard. And they seemed perfectly fitting to the circumstances. The headless dolphin swayed and dripped some viscous stuff on to the cobbles. Out on the Solent a ship’s horn sounded, withered and deformed by the wind. Hadley’s men were grey and pinched and flapping at the extremities of their clothing under a grey sky. My father, magisterial under his mane of silvery hair, looked doomed. And the boat he had bought brooded like a secret under its ragged canvas wrapping.

But Peitersen entirely changed the mood, once we got to the cafe. He was buoyant and energetic and focused. His eyes were as bright with enthusiasm as the double row of brass buttons on his pea coat. He had, for want of a better word, a style about him. He talked only in terms of sunny practicalities. We would tow Dark Echo aboard a flat-decked, seagoing barge as soon as we could charter the vessel and the tug to pull it, and got our weather window. He had a provisional berth for her already in mind. There was a small boatyard we could lease short-term about five miles along the coast. It was not state of the art, like Hadley’s place. It was not resourced to create Viking longships for the directors of epic films. But it possessed all the necessary facilities to make Dark Echo seaworthy once again. And, he said, tucking into his full English breakfast, to make her once more proud and beautiful.

Talk like this would, I knew, have no trouble in seducing my father simply because it voiced his most ardent dreams in the kind of phraseology he would have chosen to use himself. But I was unconvinced. I studied Peitersen. He was not so young as his lithe movement had promised from a distance aboard the boat. There were lines around his eyes and a suggestion of scragginess at the neck. His tumbling curls of strawberry-blond hair were youthful enough with his watch cap taken off at the table to eat. And he had a tan that suggested the tropics and took a few years off him as well. But the man I had first thought to be about thirty-five was probably in reality more like fifty years old.

‘You don’t believe she’s an unlucky boat, Mr Peitersen?’

‘Jack will do,’ he said to me, smiling. His teeth were very white against the unseasonal depth of his tan. ‘And no, I don’t, son. I think she’s a boat has had more than her fair share of unlucky owners. But that’s been her misfortune. And her fortunes are about to change.’

I looked at my father. The smile he now wore was broad, almost beatific. Peitersen could play him, alright. And the two of them had only just met.

‘How do you explain the dolphin, Jack?’

He looked at me. His eyes were blue-grey and as bright as his grin. He was very alert. I thought that if his hands were as quick as his mind, the restoration of my father’s boat would take no time at all.

‘I wouldn’t presume to,’ he said. ‘It’s arrogant for a man to try to justify the mysteries of the sea. I can tell you that, to my mind, the dead creature signifies nothing beyond itself. I wouldn’t speculate on why it swam here or how it perished. I prefer to deal in nails and timber and tar and rope. I can make Dark Echo respond to the lightest touch of her tiller. I can squeeze eighteen knots out of her under full sail. I prefer to deal in practicalities rather than to dwell on superstition, son.’

I nodded. I really didn’t like him calling me son.

‘I don’t believe in curses. I stick to what I know.’

‘I can see that.’

The grin hadn’t left his face. ‘How?’

‘Because you’ve eaten every scrap of your eggs and bacon and sausage. But you’ve left your black pudding intact.’

He looked at his plate. ‘You’re telling me that stuff’s edible, Martin, then I’m obliged to take your word for it. But only because you seem such an honest boy.’

My father slapped the table in a show of mirth. It occurred to me that his optimism was probably the reason he’d made such a success of his life. It seemed unsinkable.

‘Don’t like him, do you?’

We were in the Saab, on the way back to London.

‘He’s supercilious. He’s patronising. And I think there’s more to him than meets the eye.’

‘I hope there’s more to him than there was to Frank Hadley,’ my father said.

The new boatyard was on the other side of Southampton Water, between Calshot and Lepe, just beyond the point and the old Calshot lifeboat station. My father had agreed to pay for Peitersen to stay for the duration at a country hotel in Exbury. The hotel was old but very comfortable, with an excellent restaurant. But Peitersen had said he expected to bed down most nights in the yard. He said with the coming of the spring and warmer evenings, it would be comfortable enough and the most practical way of making sure we did not slip behind the schedule agreed. Of course, such talk was music to my father’s ears.

‘You know, Martin, you don’t have to share this voyage.’ His voice was gentle.

‘I know.’

‘You might not wish to come. Suzanne might not wish you to go. I’d understand totally if you pulled out now. It would give me three months to find someone to help me crew and three months is ample time.’

‘I’m coming, Dad. Nothing would stop me.’

‘Good,’ he said. He reached across and gave my shoulder a squeeze. ‘I’m delighted that’s how you feel.’

We got our window in the weather the following day. I did not go down to witness the events. It was bright and balmy, helicopter weather, so my services as a chauffeur were not required. Peitersen chartered the tug and a barge he’d put on standby, and the Dark Echo was winched aboard the barge and secured there without incident. She was unloaded, again without incident, at the new yard after a short journey over innocent blue water. My father told me over the phone that evening that the conditions had made the turbulent grey weather of the preceding weeks seem like some weird Wagnerian dream. Frank Hadley hadn’t been present for the extrication of the vessel from his dock. ‘Didn’t ask where he was,’ my father said. ‘Probably busy having his dolphin stuffed.’

‘Peitersen?’

‘Competence personified. He’s a boatman to the soles of his sea boots, Martin. And he has the gift of leadership. Men do as he asks, almost before he has to ask them.’

I nodded, which is a pretty stupid thing to do on the telephone, where only words and vocal expression count. But I did not like Jack Peitersen and did not think that I ever would.

But he was true to what he had said in his airmail letter to Hadley. There were no more gruesome accidents. April brought a prolonged spell of warm spring weather and the small team of craftsmen he assembled made solid progress. There was debate over whether to fit an engine and, if so, what type to fit. I did not participate in this. My father was reluctant to have the boat powered by anything but wind. Peitersen thought it was only a matter of practicality that would have no real impact on the aesthetics of the boat and would make it far easier for inexperienced sailors like my father and myself to get her in and out of harbour without mishap. He said the engine was only one of a number of innovations that would improve the boat’s performance without compromising her integrity. The others were a state-of-the-art land to sea communications system, a satellite navigation system and sonar as a precaution to prevent us running aground or tearing the hull on submerged rocks or coral banks. All of these would be battery powered.

My father pondered at length on the merits or otherwise of the engine. It would be an exaggeration to say that he agonised, but not so very much of one. Spalding, the war hero and racing champion, had not required an engine. Peitersen apparently laughed when this point was made and said that if the small clean marine turbines of today had existed then, his great-grandfather would have fitted one to the Dark Echo as a