Sea Lord

the mackerel boat had made his emergency call to the arrival of the helicopter. It had seemed like an hour. Even now, looking back, and having read the coastguard’s log, I cannot believe it was only eight minutes.

My legs were badly burned, I’d inhaled smoke, and my hands and forearms were scorched. It could have been much worse. For Jennifer it was, though just how bad, in those first days, I wasn’t told.

Harry Abbott was my first visitor. I was barely conscious or coherent. I gathered that as soon as the police heard of the burning boat they had feared it might be Sunflower, and had sent a man to the hospital to identify us. I tried to tell Harry it was attempted murder, but he must already have assumed that because I later learned that a police guard stayed in the corridor outside my ward all the time I was in the hospital. I do remember that Harry brought me some grapes that he ate himself. I asked about Jennifer and he just shrugged and said she’d been flown to a big London hospital that specialised in burn victims.

Charlie came the next day. I had never seen him so troubled. I tried to tell him that I was all right, that I would walk again, but Charlie seemed to think he had let me down. “I should have found those two blokes and fucking killed them.”

“You tried, Charlie.”

“Bastards.” He sat beside the bed. “Bastards.”

“I’m going to find them,” I said, “and I promise you they’ll wish they’d never been born.”

“Bastards.” He was too restless to stay seated and began pacing the floor. “What happened?”

I told him about the severed gas pipe. “They did a proper job, Charlie,” I said bitterly. “They must have cut the gas pipe in the engine compartment, then pushed the broken end into the hole in the bulkhead.” They had also done it without dislodging the feed tap inside the cabin, because otherwise Jennifer would have seen the break.

“Didn’t you lock the engine compartment?” Charlie asked.

“It was only a cheap padlock.”

“There you go,” he said hopelessly. It was Charlie who had first taught me how to open a locked padlock; you just brace the loop against something solid, then tap the keyhole end with a hammer. If the lock doesn’t jump open first time, tap harder. There are expensive makes that won’t respond to the treatment, but I’d lost my good padlock when the two men had pulled Sunflower off the grid and my replacement had been a run-of-the-mill lock.

“And the liferaft didn’t work,” I added.

“Jesus.” He was horribly depressed, but he forced himself to talk optimistically about the boat which would replace Sunflower. He said we’d pick her out together, equip her together, and make her maiden voyage together. “But this time we’ll make sure there’s a gas alarm in her.”

I shook my head. “There won’t be another boat, Charlie.”

“Of course there will!”

“I can’t afford one, and I won’t take your money. You’ve given me enough already.”

“You’ll take what you’re given, Johnny.” He stopped his pacing and stood staring out of the window. “Bastards,” he said softly, then he turned ruefully towards the bed. “I told you not to get involved.”

“I’m involved now. I’m going to kill those two. For Jennifer’s sake.”

He smiled. “Like that, is it?”

“It’s like that.”

He grimaced. “I often wondered when you’d fall, Johnny. I get Yvonne and you end up with a millionaire’s stepdaughter.”

“If she lives, and if she wants me.”

“You saved her life,” he said as though that gave me full rights over that life.

“No,” I said disparagingly. Yet I probably had saved her. The helicopter pilot came to tell me as much, and so did Harry Abbott on his second visit. He listened glumly as I described the fire, and to my conviction that the gas pipe had been deliberately cut.

“I didn’t think to guard the boat,” Harry said ruefully, “only you.” He seemed genuinely upset at what had happened.

“I want those two, Harry.”

“We’re looking for them, Johnny, we’re looking for them.”

“And Elizabeth, if she’s behind it.”

“Who else?” He lit a cigarette and stared moodily at the bandages on my ankle. “Mind you,” he went on, “she’s taking damned good care to keep a long way out of it.”

“Out of it?”

“She’s done a runner. I went to question her, see, but her husband says he thinks she’s in France. Thinks!” Harry said disgustedly. “I’ll not be able to nail her, Johnny, not unless I can find Garrard and persuade him to talk.”

“Then find him, Harry, and give me a few minutes alone with him when you do.”

“You know I can’t promise you that.”

I took a cigarette off him. My precious pipes were gone, as was everything else. Doctor Mortimer, my black angel, had forcibly suggested I use the opportunity to give up smoking, but I’d failed again. “How the hell does Elizabeth have the money to go to France?” I asked Harry.

“I asked her husband that. He says she sold your mother’s house.” Harry frowned pensively. “That Lord Tredgarth, he’s a miserable sod, isn’t he?”

I didn’t want to talk about Peter Tredgarth. “Tell me how Jennifer is, Harry.”

He didn’t answer for a long time, then he shrugged. “Bad.”

“How bad?”

“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “Don’t ask me, Johnny, because I don’t know.”

I found out the next day when Helen, Lady Buzzacott, came to visit me. I was sitting in an armchair by the bed and tried to stand when she came into the room. She told me not to be so silly and to stay seated. She put a bunch of grapes on the bedside table. “Why do the English always take grapes to hospital patients? It’s really a ridiculous habit, but quite unbreakable. I was getting quite frantic because I hadn’t bought you any, so I made Higgs drive through the town centre and stop outside a fruiterer. So there they are, and you’ll probably tell me you hate grapes.”

“I like grapes.”

She sat on the edge of my bed. “You’re looking better than I expected, John.”

I closed my eyes. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“Whatever for?” She asked the question too lightly.

I opened my eyes. This was difficult. This was a meeting I had been dreading, but I had to say my piece and I had to let her know that I meant what I was saying. “I’m sorry for taking Jennifer out in the boat. I’m sorry that I didn’t check the gas line before we sailed. I’m sorry I didn’t pump the bilges. I’m just sorry about what happened.” I had begun to cry, so closed my eyes again. “I’m just sorry, Lady Buzzacott. It was my fault.”

“I’m sorry too,” she said, “but I don’t blame you.”

I couldn’t say anything. I was blubbing like a child. I felt entirely responsible for what had happened to Jennifer. I’d taken a lovely girl and I had turned her into burnt meat.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Helen Buzzacott said very clearly. “Of course you can look back and see a score of things you might have done to prevent it happening, but that isn’t the point, John. The point is that you did nothing to cause the accident. All you did was go for a day’s sailing, and I can’t think of anything more innocent than that.”

“Shit,” I said, and reached for a paper handkerchief.

“And Jennifer’s going to be all right,” Helen said.

I looked at her through a blur of tears, but said nothing.

“Or rather we hope she’ll be all right,” Helen amended the statement. “The burns are really quite frightful, but I’m told they’re very skilled at these things nowadays.” She spoke in a very matter-of-fact voice, but it was clear that she had suffered agonies for her daughter in the last few days. “Of course it will take a lot of time, and a horrible amount of surgery, but she’s got a very pompous doctor who says that in the end she’ll be as good as new. Of course one can’t tell if he’s just telling professional lies, but he’s certainly a very expensive liar if he is.” Tears were glinting on her cheeks. She tried to ignore them. “They’re starting the first skin grafts tomorrow, but I