Commodore Crispin waved within his elevated wheel-house in acknowledgment of the Club members’ salutations. He was smoking a cigar as big as a cucumber. His yachting cap, though quite as clean as Hatch’s, was much creased and buckled and had a distinctly jaunty, sea-doggy look about it.
“Ahoy there, Joey boy! Tell your missus to get athwart that line or she’ll go tit over anchor!”
The commodoreal sally sent a group of ladies aboard bookmaker O’Conlon’s launch Pope Paul into shrieks of amusement.
“Hard luck on the bloody sharks if you fall in, mate!” somebody shouted back. There was renewed laughter. Crispin grinned his delight.
Mrs Millicent Spain, attired in jumper and bell-bottoms and standing by the stern, murmured something that included word “common” and frowned steadfastly to starboard.
The stately progress of Crispin’s boat put the moorings far enough behind after ten minutes for those on the bank to have become tiny blobs of colour. Then Lively Lady passed through the central arch of the bridge at Chipper’s Hum and the two passed from sight altogether.
It was not until they were half way up the next reach that Mrs Spain noticed that Daffodil had increased speed and was now only a couple of lengths astern. She shouted to Crispin and nodded back towards the overhauling boat.
Hatch’s face was relaxed, slightly bored-looking. He smiled thinly on seeing Crispin turn and stare.
Crispin gave Hatch a friendly wave. At the same time, he eased the throttle lever forward a fraction.
Lively Lady’s prow lifted and began to sprout two little wings of spume. The distance between the boats increased. Mrs Spain raised her hand and fluttered three fingers in ladylike farewell.
A few minutes later, she was disconcerted to see that the features of Mrs Hatch, which had been diminished to a small blur by Daffodil’s falling astern, were once more clear and large. Triumphant, too, reflected Mrs Spain rancorously. She glanced at Crispin, whose face thereupon folded like a bellows into a prodigious wink.
Mrs Spain had to make a quick grab for the rail, so sudden and strong was the boat’s surge forward.
Both Lively Lady and Daffodil had now risen into high-angled racing postures. The twin shouts of their engines could be heard clearly back at the Club stages. Anglers spaced out ahead along the Pennick Level heard them also. A ripple of apprehension passed up their ranks on either shore like an eagre. As the boats approached, the anglers stared at them first with curiosity, then with disapproval, and finally with fury and alarm as they saw their own fate presaged by the abandonment of rods and baskets by comrades downstream in their panic to scramble clear of the great double bow wave that the Crispin-Hatch duel was creating.
Some of the fishermen who had managed to rescue their belongings at first sign of the impending deluge now stood at the bank top hurling colourful obscenities and tightly packed fistfuls of ground bait at the boaters. Several hazarded their lines in efforts to wreak whatever vengeance they could with long casts of hook and sinker. Apart from one luckily aimed ground bait grenade that burst upon and severely discoloured Mrs Hatch’s yachting cap, all these attacks were in vain.
Each craft was now being urged at practically full throttle and leaving a wake like a medium warship’s. Crispin tried to sustain his lead by zig-zagging from bank to bank, but this manoeuvre lost him just enough speed for Daffodil, with a sudden burst of extra power, to slip into a starboard gap and draw alongside.
Crispin’s yachting cap had been pummelled altogether out of shape and pulled pugnaciously over one eye. With the other he glared ahead, not sparing the other boat a glance.
Hatch, too, seemed to be indifferent to the fact that the craft were practically hull to hull, but his cap was as straight as ever and he was still reclining in his seat as though Daffodil were a carriage in Hyde Park.
The two women, finding themselves only a few feet apart, lacked the excuse of navigational concentration for ignoring each other. Mrs Hatch inclined her head and simpered archly. Mrs Spain responded with a smile as fleet as a camera shutter.
The boats canted on their keels as they roared into a left-hand bend. Then they followed the river right and left again, past a derelict pumping station with a window like a bombed cathedral’s, and under a single span railway bridge. In the instant of their passing, the steel girders threw back the sound of the engines as a sudden yell of rage. The women jumped and instinctively ducked their heads.
One more wide bend round a regiment of willows, and the final stretch before Pennick Lock came into view.
It was deserted except for a pair of heron, planing idly over the sedge, and two fishermen, one on each bank, about quarter of a mile ahead.
The towering tail gates of the lock, though nearly as far away again, stood out clearly between water and sky: stark, tarry black, intimidating. The river there looked oily; rags of mist hung about it.
Mrs Hatch did not like locks. For her, they were dark, fearsome chambers of oozing brick, unsafe and God knew how deep, where frail boats were buffeted by a creamy turbulence of water that rose with frightening speed and threatened at any moment to burst back the great timber doors and swill her away like a potato peeling down a sink.
The sight of Pennick Lock, even at a distance of almost half a mile, suddenly turned in her mind what had been a lark into something more like a ride to the abyss.
She cautiously edged her way aft and reached up and tweaked her husband’s trouser leg.
“Arnold!”
Hatch gave her a quick, cross glance over his shoulder.
“Arnold, that’s enough. Slow down. Let them go.”
He said nothing. But she saw his back give a little shrug of disdain. Daffodil did not slow down.
It so happened that Mrs Spain was making similar representations to the master of Lively Lady.
“It’s not worth it, Harry. They’re just trying to provoke you. You’re silly to take any notice.”
Crispin leaned out of his wheelhouse on the port side and grinned. In the slipstream, his fat cigar showered sparks like a smokestack. Mrs Spain was put unhappily in mind of a film she once had seen about a mad engine driver. “Balls!” growled Crispin, fondly.
“No, I’m serious, Harry. Please!”
He jerked back his head and blew clear the butt of his cigar. It sailed in a fiery parabola to hit the water twenty yards behind.
“You pipe down, girl. I’m not giving way to that pofaced git, and he’d better bloody well get used to the idea.”
Hatch held Daffodil’s course almost exactly in the centre of the river. At the same time, he maintained a speed—not far short of the engine’s limit—which kept his wheelhouse a couple of feet ahead of Crispin’s. This small advantage was enough to discourage his rival from trying to nudge him further over to the right.