Chapter Fourteen
Eleni. Gary loved the name. It suited her. A simple name, old-fashioned, unpretentious, yet classy. He was glad the new owners hadn’t insisted on renaming her. Not only would he have considered it bad luck for a boat to be renamed but a modern name would not have fitted a classic motor yacht like the Eleni. Laid down in 1915, completed in 1920, she was a gentleman’s yacht and every one of her seventy-three feet and seven inches a lady. Loved, abused and neglected in turn, she had been at home in the Adriatic, had languished in a lonely berth in the thirties, had seen action in WWII on harbour defence patrol and had survived a near miss off Dunkirk. Gary tapped the soft soles of his shoes on the wooden deck. Beautiful women had sunbathed here under tropical skies, soldiers had huddled here after having been picked off the beaches. Both tanning lotion and history had soaked into these planks and would stay sealed inside them now for as long as she stayed afloat, no matter who walked on them. He would miss her, missed her already. The refurbishment had taken six months and he had worked on her almost from the beginning.
In the light of the setting sun the Eleni inspired nostalgic dreams. Here, moored at the very end of the harbour basin, surrounded by nothing but boat sheds and the gutted hulls of barges and houseboats waiting for a second chance for a useful life, it was easy to forget which century you lived in. You could lean back against the woodwork and dream.
Almost as soon as the press had finished scribbling notes and taking pictures of smiling people holding aloft glasses of champagne everyone had packed up and left. Gary was not important enough to have been invited along to the celebration dinner, only the project leader, engineer, vendor and new owners went. He himself, along with Dave the mechanic and Sharon the general dogsbody, had been given money to celebrate in the pub. But he’d declined and Dave and Sharon had left without him. All day sadness had crept up on him, and more than sadness. Not far below it nagged an irrational anger as though the yacht had been stolen from him. Sold into slavery. Like a beautiful woman the Eleni could inspire jealousy as well as love.
The fact they had chosen to celebrate in a restaurant rather than here, probably for fear someone might spill champagne on the polished fittings, simply added to his resentment. If they felt any real connection to her they’d have celebrated on board, started up her two Gardner engines and taken her out to sea, where she belonged. But the new owners were not really interested in her, she was a business tool now, to be used for corporate hospitality around Majorca. He wasn’t likely to see her again let alone be allowed on board. In the end he had chosen to remain behind and say a quiet, undisturbed farewell.
What he really wanted to do was to cast off and take her back in time all the way to the Indian Ocean of the nineteen-twenties and — thirties, to Ceylon and on to the islands off Siam. He ran his fingers over the cool, polished teak of the wheelhouse. He’d had a hand in restoring it, as in most other things wooden on the yacht: her steamed oak beams, rock elm timbers and teak deck. He wouldn’t really call himself a shipwright yet, though he had when he applied for the job. He’d lied a fair bit but got away with it and learnt on the job. Now that the project was finished there was no more work here for a while. Perhaps he would move to Cornwall or up north, he hadn’t decided yet. There was still boat building going on in Scotland, he knew.
Dusk had crept through the harbour and the sodium glow of the city lights threw workshop and sheds into sharp relief. Without illumination from the boat or the office there was just enough residual light in the west for him to take one more turn around her deck. Trailing the fingers of his left hand lightly over the familiar surfaces of the wheelhouse, the edge of the coach roof, the radar mast and finally the wheelhouse again he completed his last inspection. As he got ready to go ashore via the short gangway connecting the yacht to the deserted quay his foot nudged a heavy object that did not belong there. Gary stepped back and picked it up. It was a bottle.
A full bottle of champagne. An unlikely bottle of champagne. He could just make out the label, a supermarket own-brand! How did it get there? All the champagne drunk earlier had been vintage stuff. He knew, he had been given a glass, well, half a glass, most of it had been froth, and he had seen the bottles, it was Something amp; Something French champagne. Had this one been bought for the lower deck to drink and then forgotten about? Yet he was pretty sure that a bottle of champagne, supermarket or not, would have been spotted if it stood on deck right by the gangway. In fact he was pretty sure it hadn’t been there a few minutes ago when there had still been more than enough light to spot it.
Stranger things happened at sea. The bottle felt well chilled and it was perfect for the occasion. Even the fact that it was cheap champagne fitted well with his tiny contribution to the story of the Eleni. He would drink a private, quiet toast to their parting. The foil top slid off easily. Unused to opening champagne bottles, a little fearful of the bottled power behind the cork, he pointed the neck of the bottle well away from himself as he untwisted the wire clip and set his thumb under the rim of the cork. His nervousness and the sturdiness of the champagne bottle probably saved his life. The neck of the bottle disintegrated as the small explosive charge ignited the petrol in the bottle. The content self-propelled in an imperfect arc towards the door of the wheelhouse and splattered flames across the varnished teak. Gary fell backwards on to the deck with his hair and clothes enveloped in petrol flames. He wasted no time rolling towards the guard rail and heaving himself overboard into the harbour. When he resurfaced the shock and pain made him gasp and thrash as he struggled in the freezing water towards the quay.
Above him the Eleni burnt. Oiled planks and varnished timbers caught easily even as the petrol burnt itself out. A petrol bomb. One minute he was going to toast her, the next she was ablaze. He had set her on fire. He had to make it to the quay, he had to put it out somehow, call for the fire brigade. She mustn’t burn, not after all the work they had put into her, not after all she had survived. It was his fault. It was insane, completely insane, but it was. When he reached the quay a few yards away from the burning yacht and the raw flesh of his palms closed around a rusty ring set in the harbour wall, Gary screamed.
‘It doesn’t smell as bad as I expected.’
‘Yeah, quite pleasant really.’
‘The owners might not agree of course.’
‘Perhaps not.’ McLusky sniffed audibly. ‘Or is that your sandwich I can smell?’
Austin folded up a corner of sliced white from his home-made sandwich. ‘Bavarian smoked cheese. You’ve got a good nose.’
‘It’s house fires I can’t stand, they smell truly awful. It’s all those burnt plastics and melted TVs.’
‘No plastics here, she was a posh boat, all natural ingredients.’ Austin rocked lightly on his heels beside McLusky as they continued to look down on to the charred hull from atop a tarpaulined nest of oil drums on the quay. The Eleni had remained afloat but her wheelhouse had disappeared and the galley had burnt fiercely after a small propane bottle had exploded there with the fire spreading to the saloon. There were two holes in the deck, which was blackened from bow to stern. Now that there was daylight fire investigators were going through the treacherous remains.