What I said, of course, was that I'd have to talk it over with Soo and she wouldn't be out of hospital until next morning. 'Exchanging boats is one thing,' I told him. 'But that villa was my wife's idea. I don't know whether she'll agree.' For a moment I toyed with the thought that I might force through an exchange on a boat-for-boat basis, perhaps with a small cash addition, but he wasn't that much of a fool.
In the end he agreed to leave it over until I had had a chance to talk to Soo. 'Ring Senor Florez here. He'll know where to find me. But I want that fishing boat by Saturday at the latest, tanked up with fuel and ready to go. That gives you two days, okay?' He got to his feet then, and when I asked him whether he needed anybody local to show him the best fishing grounds, he looked at me sharply and said, 'Don't bother. I know where I'm going.'
'What about charts then?'
'Not your problem. I got all the charts.' And he added, 'You ring Florez, eh? Tomorrow, right after you pick up your wife from the hospital.'
I told him that might not be long enough to talk her into the deal, but in fact Soo proved much easier to persuade than I had expected. She was more interested in the man's friendship with Gareth Lloyd Jones at Gangesthan in the future of the villa she had so recklessly acquired the day before she lost the child. 'But didn't you ask him?' she demanded almost angrily when I told her I had no idea what the relationship of the two men had been after the flagpole episode. 'I'm certain there was something between them, an intimacy — I don't think it was sexual. You don't think Gareth's in any sense gay, do you? I mean, he doesn't behave like one.'
'No,' I said. 'I don't think he is.' In fact, I hadn't given it a thought.
'Hero worship?' She was sprawled on the old couch we had picked up in Barcelona, her head turned to the window, staring at the sea. 'Was that why he was looking for this man?' Her smooth, darkish forehead was slightly puckered, her eyes half-closed, her body slim again, no lovely curve to her belly and the madonna look quite gone from her face so that it was now pinched, even a little haggard.
I think she was quite glad not to have to cope with the problems of overseeing the completion of that villa. At any rate, she accepted the situation. But later, much later, she was to insist that if I hadn't been so obsessed with my 'new toy' I would have known what was going on. She was, of course, much closer to the people of the island than I was. She had a lot of friends, not only in Mahon and Ciudadela, but out in the country among the farms, and she did pass on to me some of the talk she picked up about the growing popularity of the separatist movement. It was backed by the two communist parties, the Partido Communista de Espana,or PCE, and the Partido Commu-nista de los Pueblos de Espana,or PCPE, and appeared to be gaining ground. Menorca,the Diario Insular orlocal paper, and even La Ultima Horaof Palma in Mallorca had carried the occasional article on the subject. But now I had no time any more to read the local newspapers. I was fully stretched getting Thunderflashready for sea.
Once I had agreed the deal with Patrick Evans and checked the share ownership certificate, which showed him to be the sole owner, with sixty-four-sixty-fourths of the shares, I had pictures taken of the catamaran, some with the sails up, others of the saloon with the table laid, a vase of wild flowers and a large Balearic crayfish as the centrepiece. These I mailed off to a dozen of the most up-market agencies specialising in Mediterranean travel, together with a plan of the layout and full details. Three of them I actually phoned, and within a week two of these had expressed interest, and one of them, representing an American agency, had their representative fly in from Mallorca to inspect the boat and cable a report direct to Miami. Two days later I received a cable offering a two-week charter if I could pick up a party of eight Americans at Grand Harbour, Malta, on May 2. There was no quibble about the price, which would mean that in just one fortnight Thunderflashwould earn more than the Santa Mariahad made the whole of the previous season.
Moments like this make one feel on top of the world. I didn't stop to wonder why Evans had gone fishing instead of chartering the cat himself. I simply cabled acceptance, asking for twenty per cent deposit, and when this came through by return, I hardly thought of anything else, my energies concentrated on getting Thunderflashrepainted and in perfect condition, the hulls white, not blue, and the boat in tip-top condition.
We finished her just three days before I was due to speak at the opening of the Albufera urbanization,and when I got back that night Soo was almost starry-eyed, not because Thunderflashwas back in the water and moored right outside, but because she had received a note from Gareth Lloyd Jones in Gibraltar. 'He says he was piped aboard at fifteen thirty-two on Wednesday afternoon.' And she added, the letter clutched in her hand, 'It's there in the log — Captain piped on board HMS Medusa.'She looked up at me then. 'Medusawas one of Nelson's ships, wasn't she?'
'Ask Carp,' I said. 'There's a Medusabuoy off Harwich. I sailed past it once on a navigational course.'
'But you were Army.'
'The outfit I was in, they expected you to be able to find your way at sea.'
'It made me feel good- that's all he says.' She folded the letter up. 'What a wonderfully exciting moment it must have been for him — the piercing whistle of the bo's'n's pipes, his salute to the quarterdeck, and thinking all the time that he'd made it, from Gangesand the lower deck right up to the command of a frigate.'
I went through to the office and checked the mail. Another charter — that made two lined up for the summer. Things were beginning to look real good. At least the boating fraternity weren't to be put off by the threat of bombs following the Libyan raid, or the fall in the dollar. Not even the information that another of our villas had been paint-sprayed could dampen my spirits. It was the usual slogan — URBANIZAR ES DESTRUIER SALVEMO MENORCA,and Miguel had written me a long letter of complaint in Spanish. I told Soo to deal with it, my mind still on Thunderflash.The weather was set fair for the moment and next morning, standing at the open window in the blazing sun, drinking my coffee, I could hardly believe it, the twin hulls so beautiful, such a thoroughbred, lying there to her reflection, no wind that early in the morning, the surface of Mahon harbour absolutely still.
I called Soo to come and look at her. 'We'll take her out under engines as far as La Mola, wait for the wind there.' But she had promised to pick up one of the Renato girls at their vineyard farm beyond St Luis and picnic on the limestone rock ledges of Gala d'Alcaufar. Carp appeared with the semi-inflatable from the direction of the naval quay, the aluminium bows half-lifted out of the water as the big outboard thrust the tender close past the Club Maritime, the metal masts of the yachts alongside the pontoon winking in the sun as they bobbed and swayed to the sharp-cut wake.
East Coasters tend to keep their emotions under control, but though he didn't show it, I sensed Carp's excitement as the two of us scrambled aboard and got the engines started and the anchor up. He had never skippered anything like this before and the fact that I had put him in charge of the boat had done wonders for his ego. He had bought himself one of those baseball-type hats with a long America's Cup peak and he couldn't stop talking as we motored out past Bloody Island, rounding the northern end of it, bare earth showing where Petra had trenched beyond the great stone capping slabs of the hypostilic chamber she had been excavating. The water was so still we could have nosed in for her to jump on board.