Sea Lord

animals.

“Do you still have the dogs?” I asked him.

“Of course.” Charlie had loved hunting with his terriers. That was how I’d first met Charlie; he had been eight years old, I was seven, and I had found him poaching my father’s land. He had been teaching me tricks ever since.

There was a thump as another rabbit died. I winced. Charlie frowned, but not because of the rabbit. “I saw that your mother died.”

“Cursing me.”

He laughed. “She was a rancid bitch, eh?”

“She never liked you.”

“That was mutual. How’s Georgina?”

“Same as ever.”

“Poor maid,” he tutted. Charlie had always been kind to Georgina, though that kindness had never extended to my other sister. He used to call Elizabeth ‘Lady Muck’, and I noticed he did not bother to ask after her now. Instead, after a moment’s silence, he laughed ruefully. “Funny when you think about it.”

“What is?”

“I don’t know.” He was silent for a moment. The headlights were brilliant on the tall hedgerows. Sometimes, as we breasted a rise, the light would sweep across pastures. There were no lights showing in this deep countryside, though off to our west the reflection of Plymouth’s street-lamps glowed against the clouds. It was only out at sea, I thought, that one found real darkness; absolute, impenetrable, black darkness. Everything was polluted ashore, even the night.

Charlie picked up his train of thought. “When I was growing up we used to look at your house and be real impressed by it. When I was just a tot I used to think God lived in Stowey, and it was damn nearly true. That was Lordy’s house, we were just his farm labourers, and I don’t suppose Lordy even knew we existed. But now look at us. I’ve got more money than all your lot put together.”

“Well done, Charlie.”

He smiled. “And you’re Lordy now.” The villagers had always called my father ‘Lordy’. They had not really liked the family, there were too many memories of past injustices, some of the memories stretching back five centuries; but, in their own way, they had been proud that the Earl and Countess of Stowey lived in their community. Now ‘Lordy’ was a penniless yachtsman and the labourer’s son drove a Jaguar.

And owned a house that was half the size of Stowey. I caught a glimpse of the big house as the Jaguar’s headlights slashed across its facade. My impression was of raw brick and broad glass. Charlie touched a button in the car and the triple garage doors clanked open. A dog began yelping in the kennels and Charlie shouted at it to be silent. “It isn’t a bad place,” he said of the house as he parked the car. “Cost me a penny or two.”

It was four o’clock in the morning, but Charlie made no effort to be silent. He crashed into the house, switching on lights and slamming doors. He went to the laundry room and fetched me a pair of dry jeans and a sweater. I changed in the kitchen where children’s drawings were held by magnets on the fridge door. “How many kids have you got now?” I asked him.

“Still just the two. Johnny and Sheila.” Johnny had been named after me, despite Charlie’s wife who didn’t like me. Sheila was named for Charlie’s mother. Yvonne, I reflected, did not have much say in how this family was run.

Charlie scooped ice out of the freezer and filled two glasses. Even when we’d been teenagers he had liked to take his drinks American fashion; that, for Charlie, was the height of sophistication, and he hadn’t changed. He grinned as I jettisoned the ice from my glass, then he filled it to the brim with single malt Scotch. “Cheers, Johnny.”

“Cheers, Charlie.”

It was good to be home. We touched glasses, then drank. Somewhere upstairs a child cried, and I heard footsteps as Yvonne went to soothe it. She must have heard Charlie’s arrival, but she did not come down.

“Come on, Johnny, let’s have a proper chat.” Charlie led me into a wide drawing room. Before he switched on the lights I saw that the windows looked across sloping pastures to one of Salcombe’s lakes, then the view was obliterated by the glare of electric lights. He put the whisky bottle on the table, sat me down in a leather armchair, then insisted on hearing the whole story of my night once more. “I’ve told you once,” I protested.

“But I want to hear it again, Johnny.”

So I told him again. And still nothing made sense.

I woke at midday. The sun was streaming past yellow curtains. A Thermos of coffee, a jug of orange juice and a packet of cigarettes lay on the bedside table. My jeans, newly washed and ironed, were folded on a chair with a clean shirt. A radio was playing somewhere in the house.

I washed, shaved with a razor that had been laid out for me in the bathroom, then went down to the kitchen. Yvonne was topping and tailing a bowl of string beans. She was a tall thin woman with long dark hair and very pale skin. She had grown up in Stowey’s village and had been the prettiest girl there when Charlie married her. She was still attractive, but now her frail beauty was sullied by an air of brittle nervousness. She wasn’t glad to see me. “In trouble again, Johnny?” She sounded awkward calling me ‘Jonnny’, but Charlie and I had long cured her natural urge to address me as ‘my lord’.

“The trouble’s not of my making, Yvonne.”

“It never is, is it? You want coffee?”

“I’ve got some.” I lifted the mug which I’d filled from the Thermos upstairs. “Nice house, Yvonne.”

“He likes it. He built it.” She said it dismissively.

“You don’t like it?”

“I liked living in the village. I miss my friends.” She tipped the vegetable scraps down the sink, then turned on the waste disposer. While the machine ground away she stared through the wide window at the far yachts on the distant water. “He likes it, though,” she said when the machine had stopped its din; then, with a wry look at me, “he likes to show off his money, you see.”

“Why shouldn’t he?”

“It’s the bank’s money, not ours.” She sniffed. “I suppose you’ll be staying here for a few days now?”

“I hadn’t thought about it.”

“You will if he wants you to. What he wants, he gets. You’re supposed to join him now.”

“Where?”

“In the yard. It’s on the Exeter road. You can’t miss it, it’s got his name plastered all over it. He says to take the jeep.”

The jeep was a powerful Japanese four-by-four; what Charlie would call a proper piece of kit. I drove it to the Exeter road where, in Charlie’s vast yard, Sunflower was standing on the bed of a low- loader. She’d been expertly cradled in timber. It was obvious that someone had worked very fast and very skilfully that morning.

“I couldn’t get to sleep,” Charlie greeted me from her cockpit. “So I went over to George’s and knocked up the cradle myself. A proper job, eh?” He congratulated himself on his own carpentry, then tossed me down a lit cigarette. “You’re looking better.”

“I’m feeling better.” I climbed the ladder propped against Sunflower’s starboard flank. “Jesus,” I swore bitterly. Sunflower’s portside guardrail stanchions were stove in, the mast was nothing but a stump, and, as the mast had buckled and broken, it had lifted the coachroof out of true. The starboard cleats had ripped from the teak-planked steel deck, leaving two-foot holes edged with jagged splinters. The deck was thick with filth. The liferaft must have been triggered into action after Charlie and I had left, for it had inflated itself and now, torn and cut by the crane wires, lay bedraggled and wet over the foredeck. I stepped down into the cabin which stank of filthy river water. Everything was waterlogged. In the forepeak the tool drawers had splintered open. I found my pipe, passport and money and carried them back topsides. The boathooks were missing, the danbuoys had gone; almost anything which had not been shackled to the deck had dropped or floated away. The boat was a mess; a tragic mess.

“What damage?” Charlie asked cheerfully. “It’s nothing! I’ll have the cabin dried out by tomorrow, then we’ll put some chippies in to repair the joinery. I’ll shot-blast your hull properly, instead of the dog’s mess you were