“I’m planning to find my daughter,” I said as calmly as I could.
“For which purpose you’re carrying guns?” Jackie accused me.
“You’re the one who warned Tim that these wretched people are survivalists”—David was trying to retrieve the damage he at last perceived he had caused—“and you can’t really expect us to face such maniacs unarmed, can you?”
Jackie ignored him. “I’m going to the Archipiélago Sangre de Cristo to secure a story, Tim, and I thought you were going to help me.” She paused in an effort to control the fury that was suffusing her voice, but instead of calming down she seemed to shake with a sudden rage. “But now I find that you lied to me! That you’re carrying guns! And that you expect me to help you in your stupid macho crusade!”
There was silence. Some Americans at the next table, embarrassed by the intensity of Jackie’s words, raised their voices as if to demonstrate that they were not really eavesdropping, while David, realizing that he had sown the wind that had raised this whirlwind, desperately tried to calm the storm. “Dear girl! Please calm down!”
Jackie still ignored him, fixing me with a fierce look instead. “Did you lie about the guns?”
“Yes,” I said wretchedly. “I’m sorry.”
“So all this time, when you’ve been talking about finding your daughter and reasoning with her, you were really planning to use violence?”
“No!” I insisted, though weakly, because I was again lying. I believed von Rellsteb had murdered Joanna, and I knew I would take revenge if it was possible. I could see Jackie did not believe my feeble denial, so I tried another and more plausible justification. “If we’re attacked,” I said, “then we have to be able to defend ourselves.”
“Even the act of carrying a weapon is offensive,” Jackie said passionately, “and is liable to encourage violence in others.”
“Oh, come!” David said. “Does carrying a fire extinguisher make a man an arsonist?”
Jackie threw down her napkin. “I thought we were going to Chile to find a story! To discover a truth! I can’t be a part of some stupid scheme to start a fight!” Her eyes were bright with tears and she shuddered, clearly in the grip of an overpowering emotion. “And I will not involve myself in even the smallest part of your futile and primitive violence!” She glared at David. “Not even as a fucking cook!”
Her piercing voice had now attracted the attention of half the bar. Someone cheered her last words.
“For God’s sake, girl!” David tried frantically to calm her, but Jackie would not be calmed. She flung her chair backward and stalked away between the tables. An amused group of Americans offered her loud applause and a berth on their own yacht.
“Oh, good Lord,” David groaned, “I’m sorry, Tim.”
“Look after the bill,” I said to him, then hurried after Jackie, but she had run from the pub to the quay, and, by the time I came out into the harsh sunlight, she was already swinging herself down to Stormchild’s deck. “Jackie?” I called as she disappeared down the yacht’s companionway.
“God damn it, Tim! Leave me alone!”
By the time I had reached Stormchild’s saloon Jackie had already locked herself in her forward cabin. “I don’t want you to leave!” I shouted through the door.
“I am not going to be part of a killing expedition! That is not why I came! I want to write a good piece of journalism, and I want to help the parents whose kids have run off with von Rellsteb, but that is all I want to do! I do not want to be a part of your violence, so from now on I’ll have to make my own arrangements!” I could hear a half sob in her voice.
“Jackie!” I tried to open the door, but its bolt was too solid to be forced. “I don’t want to kill anyone,” I said, but it sounded a rather feeble defense, even to me.
“Then throw the guns overboard! You know how I hate guns! Will you throw them overboard?”
“Just come out and talk to me,” I said, “please.”
“Will you throw the guns away?”
“I might if you come out and talk to me,” I said, but my halfhearted concession earned nothing but Jackie’s silence, or rather the sounds a girl makes when she stuffs a seabag full of dirty clothes. “Jackie!” I rattled the door again.
“Go away.”
“You can’t leave,” I said, “you haven’t got any money.”
“I’ve got plastic!” she shouted at me as though I had insulted her.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll make you some tea, then we’ll talk about it, OK?” I went back to the galley, leaned my hands on the stove, and sighed. God damn it, I thought, God damn it. Then, taking my time so that Jackie would have a chance to calm down, I made a pot of the herbal tea she liked so much. I let the concoction steep, then poured it into her favorite mug — one that showed two cats with twined lovers’ tails and surrounded by little love hearts. I carried the tea to her cabin. “Jackie?”
There was no answer.
I knocked harder. “Jackie?”
The silence was absolute.
“Jackie!”
I ran back through the saloon, up the companionway, and onto Stormchild’s deck, where I found the forehatch was open and the bird was flown. She must have climbed on deck while I was making the tea, tiptoed her way aft, then climbed to the quay and disappeared. I ran through the dockyard, but there was no sign of her. I even caught a cab and raced to the island’s small airport, but still I did not find her. My shipmate had vanished; she was gone.
“There’s an obvious explanation for the girl’s behavior,” David said to me a week later. It had been an awkward week. We had spoken about such mundane matters as navigation and watch-keeping, but neither of us had spoken about Jackie’s abrupt departure. David, realizing that he had behaved in Antigua with the sensibility of a falling rock, seemed to be ashamed of himself for detonating the emotional outburst, while I was just plain miserable. But now, as Stormchild slammed into a vicious steep wave, my brother at last tried to break the silence that was so painfully between us.
“Tell me what is obvious,” I, at last, invited him.
“The girl was in love with you.”
“Thank you, David,” I said with a caustic venom, “and now please shut up.”
I had waited three days for Jackie to return to Stormchild, but she had not appeared. I couldn’t raise any answer from her home telephone number, and, finally, believing that action would be a better diversion than anger, I put back to sea where I had crammed on all sail to drive the big yacht through the Caribbean as though the devil himself was in our wake. It was proving a rough passage for the east winds were driving the Atlantic waters into the shallow basin of the Caribbean and heaping them into steep, short waves. David and I had rigged jacklines down either side of the deck, and I insisted that we wore safety harnesses and lifelines if either of us moved out of the cockpit. We had also erected the new spray hood so that the helmsman could crouch behind its view-perspex screens as the seas shattered white at our stem and splattered down the decks like shrapnel. Now, four nights out of English Harbour, David and I were sharing the sunset watch as he steered Stormchild fast toward the Panama Canal. He was also trying to repair the breach that gaped between us. “I think you’ll find I’m right,” he said mildly, “she showed all the symptoms.”
“I thought you were a vicar, not an agony aunt.”
He crouched to light his pipe. When, at last, the tobacco was drawing sweetly, he straightened up to steer Stormchild into the next steep wave. “A man in my job is constantly being tapped for help by people having emotional crises, so one does learn to recognize the symptoms.”