Sea Lord

and the ocean’s long swell.

Charlie was right, I thought. The picture was long gone. It was in some Texan vault, or Japanese mansion, or Swiss strongroom. Whoever had bought it would take care to keep it safe, silent and hidden for generations. Perhaps, hundreds of years in the future, the picture would surface again and the art historians would recall that it had once been stolen from an obscure British family, but for now, for Elizabeth and me, the Van Gogh might just as well be on the dark side of the moon.

Not that I cared any more; I was back at sea, chopping my bows into the long ocean waves. I slept in the mornings. At noon, after the ritual sight, I made myself a meal. In the afternoons I found work to do. The new joinery in the cabin needed varnishing, and, day by day, coat by coat, the gleam deepened. I catnapped in the early evening, ate again, then read until the sun dropped. I had an old battered Shakespeare, Proust, The Oxford Book of English Verse, and Joshua Slocum’s account of his solo voyage round the world. There was meat enough in those four volumes to last a lifetime. All had been soaked when Garrard had dropped Sunflower off the grid, but the pages had dried out and, though crinkled, were still readable. When the light made the pages indistinguishable I would prepare the sextant for the first star sight of the evening, then just sit and let the time drift past.

At night the phosphorescence glittered in our wake. Sometimes a large fish would come close to the hull and I’d see its rising track like a trailing coat of stars deep in the water. In seven years I’d never tired of that sight, nor thought I ever would. It became warmer as we travelled south. By day I rarely wore any clothes: why wear out things that cost money to replace? At night I pulled on jeans and a sweater and, in the early hours when sleep threatened most, I would go to the foredeck and exercise till I was sweating. There isn’t much exercise to be had on a yacht; the toughest task is hoisting the mainsail, but, in a good year, it stayed up most of the time.

I took the sails down once. I was fourteen nights from Ushant and the weather turned. The dawn revealed a sullen oily swell above which my sails hung limp beneath a brassy sky. The glass dropped all morning, while heavy greasy clouds piled from the west to shroud the sky in an ominous darkness. At noon a heavy rain flayed the sea, then stopped as abruptly as it had begun. The rudder banged in its pintles.

I sensed a squall. There was none in sight, but the instinct is enough. At sea it’s best to act on the first impulse, for there might not be time for second thoughts. I dropped the foresails and lashed them to the pulpit rails, then let down the main. I tied the heavy sail to its boom, then disconnected the self-steering gear. I slid the washboards into their grooves, bolted them home, and locked the companionway shut.

A minute later the squall struck. It came out of the west like an express train. The squall was an onslaught of wind and rain, stirred to fury, but so confined and travelling so fast that it had neither the time nor space to stir the sea’s venom into threatening waves. The rain seemed to be flying parallel to the sea which was being whip- skimmed into a fine spray that struck Sunflower with the force of a sand-blaster. I crouched down from its fury and felt my naked back being stung red by the rain’s lash. I could hear nothing but a maniacal hiss. I looked up once and saw the mast straining. The forestays were bar taut while the twin backstays were bellying out like bows. I dared not look again. The pressure of the wind on the bare pole was driving Sunflower backwards and I could feel the sea’s pressure trying to slew the tiller. I had never known such fury in an Atlantic squall. I’d experienced them in the Pacific, but this was a timely reminder never to take the sea lightly. Then, as suddenly as it had come, the squall went.

The wind dropped to nothing. A gentle heavy rain pattered down. Behind me I could see the sea being scourged white, but ahead and around Sunflower the water was just a dappled black. The hull seemed to shiver as the cockpit drains gurgled.

Two other squalls struck, neither as fierce as the first, and an hour after the second the black clouds rent to show sunlight. By nightfall we were under full sail again, beating west and south as though there had been no interruption. I played myself tunes on my penny-whistle and opened a rare bottle of wine. Two dolphins investigated me, and stayed with the boat halfway through the night.

Next morning the first dawn rays of sun reflected pink on the undersides of the wings of two gulls. It was a sign that I was nearing the Azores and by dusk I could see the white clouds heaping above the mountains of Graciosa. Twelve hours later, after a sweet night’s sail, Sunflower was safe alongside the painted wall in Horta. I recognised two yachts in the busy harbour. One, a graceful double-ender, belonged to an hospitable American couple whom I had last met in Tasmania, while the other, an immaculately maintained wooden yawl, was sailed by an obnoxious Swede who was the bane of every sailor on the seven seas. I asked in the Cafe Sport where the Americans were. “They had family trouble, Johnny, so they flew home.”

“That’s a mistake,” I said fervently.

My own mistake was to go to the Cafe Sport. I was just addressing a dirty postcard to Charlie when Ulf, the loathsome Swede, slapped my back. “I saw Sunflower here. That’s Johnny, I said to myself. How are you?”

Because I was back where I belonged and therefore feeling well-disposed to all mankind, even to the gruesome Ulf, I said I was in wonderful health, which rather disappointed him. I asked how he was.

“A redundant question, Johnny, as you well know. I do not get the illness, ever. Physical sickness is an aberration of the subconscious mind.” He was off, unstoppable and unbearable. I’d once heard an Australian threaten to break Ulf’s bloody legs to test his theories that all ailments were in the mind, but the trouble is that the repugnant Ulf stands nearly six feet eight inches tall and is built like an advert for steroids.

He drank lemonade while I drank beer. Once he had expounded his theory of human sickness he launched himself on Sunflower’s ills. “You have a new mast, yes?”

“Is that what it is, Ulf? I was trying to work out what that big stick was.”

“I remember telling you to get a new mast. You were wise to take my advice, Johnny. But it should have been a wooden mast. Wooden masts are more easily repaired. Your shrouds are still too far forward.”

“They’re not.”

“I know about these things. If you don’t want to move the chain-plates I should take three feet off the mast. That will cure the weather-helm.”

“Balls. She doesn’t have weather-helm.” Well, a touch, I confessed to myself, but nothing to worry about. “Balls,” I said again.

He smiled. Ulf always smiles when he’s insulted, and he’s insulted often because he always knows what is wrong with everyone’s boat and, quite unasked, offers his tedious advice. “I shall come and look her over for you, Johnny.”

“I don’t want you to.”

“I will make no charge. My only concern is your safety.”

I ordered another beer. I was trying to think of some outrageous fault which I could assign to Ulf’s yawl, but my imagination wasn’t up to the task. The big bastard kept an exemplary boat.

“Someone was asking about you last week,” Ulf said suddenly.

“Who?”

“I don’t know. I just mentioned it.”

“A man? A woman? A Swede?”

Ulf missed the feeble joke. He has no sense of humour, just a skin as thick as a shark’s hide. “Just a man,” he said airily. “A Portuguese man, I think. He wore a suit. He wasn’t local, or at least I haven’t seen him since last week.”

I didn’t like that the man wore a suit. To my mind that made him a suspicious character, but at least it hadn’t been an Englishman which meant that it could not have been Garrard. “Did this man say why he wanted me?”

“No.”

“You’re a fat lot of help, Ulf.”

“I try to be.” He offered me his benevolent smile. “That is my purpose in life. To help people. But the man did say one thing that I found most notable.”

“What?”

“That you are an earl of England. A real aristocrat.”

I spluttered laughter into my beer. “Oh, come off it, Ulf! For Christ’s sake! How long have you known me?”

“We first met, I remember, in the Marquesas, so it has been just over three years.”

“Do you really think an earl would be a bare-arsed sailor?”