‘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 matter of course. My dad told me the clincher in eventually agreeing to the engine was that it did not prevent the boat from qualifying for official status as a genuine vintage schooner. But I think the clincher was the weight he accorded Peitersen’s opinion, as the man’s influence grew as a consequence of his obvious expertise and the impressive progress he was making generally with the boat.
There were two big set-pieces in the restoration my father was very keen for me to attend. These were the fitting of the replacement main mast and the attachment to the fore-deck of the capstan, chain and anchor. Both were scheduled to be fitted early in May. My theoretical seamanship was impressive enough by now and I knew my way out of Whitstable and around the Isle of Sheppey on an actual yacht under sail. But I began to believe that I really needed first-hand experience aboard a schooner of similar vintage to the Dark Echo. It was a prerequisite if I was going to get aboard my father’s boat with any genuine sense of competence.
I did an internet search and found a holiday company that allowed you to masquerade as a nineteenth-century seafarer aboard a variety of restored boats. Theirs were all far more spartan than my father intended the refurbished Dark Echo to be. You slept in a hammock and bathed in a barrel of rainwater on the deck, and oil lamps provided the only illumination in the cabins once the sun dipped below the horizon. Even the rations approximated authentic provisions of the period. It was mostly biscuits and beef jerky and dried fruit. You ate fresh only what you could catch on a line. It all sounded very Joseph Conrad. And it sounded exactly the type of immersion in the culture of pure sailing I required.
There was a schooner voyage planned for the end of April. Maybe it wasn’t so much Conrad as Erskine Childers, in the detail. The vessel embarked from Rotterdam and journeyed through the North Sea to East Friesland and its belt of islands off the coast of Lower Saxony. It was a dank, windswept, even desolate part of the world. That said, I knew it only from Childers’ description in his novel, The Riddle of the Sands. We were to anchor off the island of Baltrum and stay there for a couple of nights to enable the birdwatchers among the makeshift crew to indulge their masochistic habit. Then it was back to Rotterdam and a hop along the coast to Antwerp, where the vessel was due a refit. She was called Andromeda, and she had originally been registered as a British boat, her keel having been laid on the Clyde in 1878. Winston Churchill had been a mewling toddler. The telephone had not been invented. I was to trust my life in the North Sea to a boat built a full ten years before Jack the Ripper began his short season of atrocities.
It seemed a very good idea. Navigation in the tricky shallows off the string of islands where we were headed was notoriously difficult. The tides were swift and the currents strong. Sudden and overwhelming fogs often descended. And there was the elemental force of the North Sea itself. I would learn a lot.
‘Will you bring me something back?’ Suzanne said.
‘Scurvy, probably,’ I said, ‘given the diet we’ll be living on.’
And she laughed. She did not mind me going. The trip coincided with what would probably be her last Michael Collins-inspired journey to Ireland. The previous week, curiosity had overcome her and she had asked if she could visit the Lepe boatyard and see the Dark Echo for herself. We drove down and deliberately surprised Jack Peitersen. I didn’t want him having the time to prepare anything phoney in the way of a reception for Suzanne.