I watched The Tony Bannister Show that night. I was hurting. For some reason the pain in my back had decided to tighten and flare, while my right leg, which I kept telling myself was almost healed, felt numb and flaccid. Alone in the lavish house, I felt the temptation of despair; of accepting that I would never walk properly.
I swallowed four aspirins that I helped down with two large glasses of Irish whiskey, none of which helped, then I diverted my self-pity by switching on Bannister’s programme.
It was a nightly programme, shown from autumn until spring, and transmitted after the late news. I’d watched more than a few of the programmes since I’d been a guest in Bannister’s house, and I hadn’t much enjoyed them.
That night’s show was the final programme in the present series.
It kept to Bannister’s usual formula: a handful of celebrity guests, a rock group and an excited audience. I watched the programme in Bannister’s big living-room where I lay on a sofa trying to persuade myself that the weakness of my right leg was only imaginary. I’d left the windows open to air the room of the lingering smell of cigarettes.
Bannister’s first guest was an American actress, then there was a British politician who seemed wittier than most practitioners of the evil trade. I turned the sound down while a rock group caterwauled, then turned it up again for a comedian who rattled off jokes at the speed of a light machine-gun.
It was a standard kind of television chat show, even an average show, yet there was one very special ingredient—Tony Bannister himself. I didn’t need to be an addict of the television to understand that he was very good indeed at his job. He had a natural and immediate charm, a quicksilver wit, and a very reassuring presence that made him an ideal intermediary between the audience and the gilt-edged celebrities that were his guests. He seemed so very trust-worthy, which made Angela Westmacott’s prickly-sour attitude so puzzling. I warmed to Bannister as I watched him, and was proud that I’d met him. Damn it, I liked him. I noticed how much younger he looked on television. When I’d met him in hospital I’d thought him in his mid-forties, while tonight he looked no older than thirty.
At the show’s end Bannister talked about the films he would be making during the coming summer months. I’d been told he always made films in the warm months, and nearly all the films contributed to his tough-but-tender image. They showed Bannister climbing mountains, or diving to wrecks, or training with the Foreign Legion. This year’s films, all of the same ilk, would be dominated by an account of his assault on the St Pierre. He spoke with real dignity of his dead wife, recalling her loss, but promising that this year he would sail Wildtrack to victory in her memory. The screen showed a film of Wildtrack as he spoke. She was a Farley 64, a British-made racing cruiser that appealed to wealthy customers about the world. I’d often sailed by the Farley yard and seen their sleek products being sea-tested. The 64-footer, Farley’s largest production model, was a typical modern boat; wedge-shaped, flat-arsed, and with a stabbing fin keel. They were undoubtedly quick, but I wouldn’t want to be in one when a real Atlantic storm struck. Give me a deep, heavy boat like Sycorax any day. Sycorax might not be fast, but she was built for the bad seas.
The picture cut back to Bannister in the studio. “And I’ll be making another, and very special, film this summer,” he was saying, “a film about bravery and recovery. A film about a man who has modestly refused to make any profit from his hard-won fame.” I knew now why Angela had told me to watch this show, and I cringed back in the sofa. “Indeed,” Bannister continued, “a man who has so far shunned the limelight, but who has finally agreed to tell his story as an encouragement to anyone else who finds themselves in ad-versity.” The screen showed a photograph of me. I was in uniform, sitting in a wheelchair, and it must have been taken on the day I received the medal. “In the autumn we’ll be bringing you the true story of Britain’s most reluctant Falklands hero, Captain Nicholas Sandman, VC.” The audience applauded.
Pain scoured my back as I wrenched myself off the sofa to turn the television off. I gasped from the vivid agony, then sat back in sullen silence. God damn it, but why had I agreed to their damned film? Only for Sycorax, of course, but I felt a fool; a damned, damned fool. I could hear the halliards slapping at the masts on the river, and the sound made me fretful and lonely. God damn it, God damn it. I unscrewed the cap of the whiskey bottle.
The telephone rang suddenly, forcing me to abandon the whiskey to pick up the handset.
“So that’s why you did it?” It was Inspector Harry Abbott chuckling at me.
I closed my eyes against the sullen and insistent throb of pain in my spine. “Why I did what, Harry?”
“I told you Bannister looked after his friends, and I suppose you’re a friend of the great man’s now. Going to be a telly star, are you?
But remember what they say about supping with the devil, Nick.”
“What have I done, Harry?”
He paused, evidently to gauge the innocence of my question.
“You’ve withdrawn your charges against Fanny Mulder, Nick, that’s what you’ve done.”
“I have not!”
“Then how come that a television company’s lawyer has been on the telephone to our office?”
“Saying what?”
“Saying you’ve withdrawn your charges, of course. He’s sending the paperwork down to us. He claims he’s got your signature, but are you telling me you don’t know anything about it?”
“Bloody hell,” I said softly, remembering all the pages I’d signed and initialled, but hadn’t read. “I know about it.”
“Long spoon, lad, long spoon.” Harry sighed. “Still got your gong, has he?”
“Yes.”
“If it’s any interest to you, Nick, the bugger’s staying at Bannister’s London house. We think he’s been there ever since he raked you over.”
“If you knew that,” I said irritably, “why hasn’t someone gone to arrest the bastard?”
Abbott paused. “I told you, Nick, I’m not crime any more.”
“What are you, Harry?”
“Good-night, Nick.”
I put the phone down, then found my copies of the contract documents and, sure enough, there was a clause which said that I unre-servedly relinquished any legal claims, actions, or proceedings that might be pending against any member of the production company. I turned yet more pages to find that Francis Mulder was named as boatmaster for the production; responsible for the supply and safe handling of all vessels needed for the filming.
And all the time Bannister had sworn he did not know where Mulder was. All the time.
I limped to the window, lurching my weight on to my right leg in an attempt to convince myself that it would not buckle and that I was strong enough to sail alone into emptiness. Once at the window I stared into the night and reflected on the art of committing a reluctant enemy to battle. You sucker them in, offering an easy victory, then you clobber them with all the nasties that you’ve kept well hidden.
And I’d just been clobbered.
It was easy to find Bannister’s London address by going through the papers in his study. I thought of phoning him, but an enemy warned was an enemy prepared.
Next morning I caught the first London train, but still did not reach Richmond Green until nearly eleven o’clock. I was supposed to collect my children from the tradesmen’s entrance of Melissa’s Kensington house at mid-day, so I was in a hurry. My back was hurting, but not so badly as on the previous night.
Perhaps it was the weather that made me feel better, for it was a lovely spring morning, warm and fragrant with blossom. A cherry tree shed petals in the front garden of Bannister’s house, which was expensive, and flamboyantly marked as such by the burglar alarm fitted high on its imposing façade. The downstairs windows were all barred and shuttered.