Nicole, her kit bag hastily packed, did not want us to go to the boatyard to see her off, but she could hardly stop us, so we drove her to the river where Caspar’s boat proved to be a great brute of a wooden catamaran called Erebus. Erebus was a graceless craft, nearly fifty feet in length, with a boxy, clumsy appearance that suggested she had been constructed by an amateur builder who had compensated for his lack of experience by making every part of his craft hugely heavy. That precautionary strength must have paid off, for Erebus carried the unmistakable marks of long and hard usage. Her gear was chafed, her hulls were streaked, and her decks had been blanched by long days of hard tropic sunlight. There was no indication of where the boat had come from, for no hailing port was painted on either of her transoms and her ensign was an anonymous pale green rag that hung listless in the day’s sullen heat.
The big catamaran was moored at our visitor’s pontoon. Clothes and dishrags were hanging to dry from her guardrails, but there was no other sign of life on board until, quite suddenly, a tribe of very small, very fair-haired and very naked children erupted from the cabin to scream and chase one another across the coach roof and down onto the trampoline netting that formed the catamaran’s foredeck. “Are they Caspar’s children?” Joanna asked, with what I thought was a remarkable forbearance.
“Yes,” Nicole said, as though it was the most normal thing in the world for a girl to wander off and join a ready-made family she had met only two or three hours before.
“So he’s married?” I asked.
“Don’t be a toad, Daddy.” Nicole swung her kit bag onto her shoulder and walked down to the pontoon.
The four naked children on the catamaran’s foredeck netting were shrieking with loud excitement, but then a very tall and excruciatingly thin man, who had a pale green scarf knotted around his neck, suddenly appeared in Erebus’s cockpit. “Shut up!” He spoke in German, which I had learned years before and still half understood.
The four children were immediately quiet and utterly immobile.
“Oh dear, sweet Lord,” Joanna murmured, for the man, apart from the wispy pale green scarf, was bare-assed naked. His skin was tanned the color of old mahogany against which his long white hair and straggly white beard showed bright. He glowered at the cowering children for a few seconds, then turned as he heard Nicole’s footsteps on the wooden pontoon. He smiled at her, then held out a hand to assist her on board.
“Time to become the heavy father,” I said grimly, then climbed out of the car into the summer afternoon’s sunshine. Billy grinned at me from the inner pontoon where he was rerigging a Beneteau, but I did not grin back. Instead I strode down the pontoon, past the fuel pumps, and jumped down into Erebus’s cockpit. “Nicole!”
Nicole and the naked man had disappeared into the catamaran’s spacious main cabin. I ducked down the companionway into the familiar cruising-yacht reek of unwashed bedding and smelly oilskins. Once in the big saloon my immediate impression was of a tangle of sun-browned skin and greasy hair, then I unraveled the impressions to see that, besides Nicole and the bearded man, there were two other girls in the big cabin. Both girls were about Nicole’s age, and both girls were naked. One was completely nude, while the other, a startling redhead, wore nothing but a pale green sarong that was loosely knotted round her waist. That girl seemed to be helping Nicole undress. “What the hell is going on?” I demanded fiercely.
“This is my father,” Nicole offered in laconic explanation. The two girls, both as blond as Nicole, snatched up clothes to cover their nakedness, while the man, whom I assumed was the beguiling Caspar, turned slowly to face me. He said nothing, but just stared at me with an oddly quizzical look on his thin face.
“What the hell is going on?” I demanded again.
“Do you want to join us?” the man asked in a courteous voice.
“Nicole! For God’s sake,” I said, “come away.”
“Daddy! Please go away,” Nicole said, as though I was being tiresome.
“Tim?” That was Joanna, calling me from the pontoon.
Caspar slowly unfolded himself to stand upright in the spacious cabin. He found a pair of faded khaki shorts, which he pulled on, then he gestured for me to go back to the cockpit. “I would like to talk with you,” he said, and his manner was so polite that I felt I had no choice but to do as he requested. “You are unhappy?” he asked when we were both in the open air. His English was strongly accented with German and held a tone of pained puzzlement. “You think your daughter is coming to some harm, yes? I am sorry. It is just that we are most casual on the boat.” He smiled contentedly, as though inviting me to share pleasure in his explanation.
But I was beyond reason. “You’re running a bloody whorehouse!” I shouted.
Joanna, standing on the pontoon, tried to calm me down. Caspar offered her the hint of a bow. “My name is Caspar von Rellsteb”—he introduced himself—“and I welcome you both on board Erebus. Your daughter wishes to join our small group, and I am delighted for her and for us.” He waved a thin hand about the boat, encompassing the frightened children who huddled together at the catamaran’s bows. “We have work to do,” he added mysteriously.
“Work?” Joanna asked.
“We do not sail for our recreation,” Caspar von Rellsteb said very portentously, “but to measure the damage being done to our planet.” His voice was suddenly tougher, and I saw that despite his scrawny build he was no weakling, but had hard muscle under the deeply tanned skin. I guessed he was about my own age, early forties, though it was hard to tell because his long hair, which had gone prematurely white, made him look older, while the lithe movements of his tanned and sinewy body suggested a much younger age.
“Nicole tells us you’re an ecologist,” Joanna said in her best conversational tone.
“It is a convenient label, yes, though I prefer to think of myself as a surveyor of the planet. My present task is to gauge the extent of pollution and of species-murder. My small boat is ill-equipped to fight such evils, but I monitor them so that the extent of the world’s ills will be understood.”
“He’s not an ecologist,” I broke in scornfully, “he’s just running a private knocking-shop.” I pushed past the tall man and shouted into the cabin’s shadows. “Nicole!”
There was no answer. Caspar von Rellsteb half smiled as though Nicole’s lack of response was a measure of his victory. “Nicole is an adult, Mr. Blackburn,” he explained to me in a patronizing voice, “and she can choose her own life. You can choose to use violence against me if you wish, but nothing you can do will alter what is ordained.” He turned away from me. “Nicole! Do you wish to leave Erebus and return to your parents’ home?”
There was silence except for the small waves slapping at the twin hulls and the raucous cry of gulls in the warm air.
“Answer me, Nicole!” Caspar von Rellsteb’s voice held a sudden heart of steel.
“I want to stay.” Nicole’s voice was unnaturally timid, as though she feared this skinny man’s displeasure, and Joanna and I, hearing such unaccustomed meekness in our daughter’s voice, were both astonished.
“Then stay you shall,” von Rellsteb said magnanimously, “but first it is only right that you should say farewell to your mother and your father. Come!”
He left us alone with Nicole who was now wearing a shirt and trousers in the pale green that seemed to be the uniform color of the Erebus crew, when they wore any clothes at all. “I’m sorry,” she said awkwardly, “it’s just something I have to do.”