“But I’m not going to navigate.”
She kept her patience. Perhaps, as she claimed, she had overlooked the small matter of my agreement, but I suspected she had preferred to try and bounce me into Bannister’s crew. By catching me in company and presenting me with a fait accompli she gambled on my spontaneous acceptance. She clearly feared my refusal, for she fed me a passionate argument about the advantages of ending the film in the way she wanted; how it would knit the two programmes together, and how it would offer me a double appearance fee as well as the fame of being on a winning team. She then painted an heroic picture of Nick Sandman, victorious navigator, encouraging the handicapped by his achievement.
I shook my head. “But I’d be about as much use to Bannister as a pregnant pole-vaulter.”
That checked her. She frowned. “I don’t understand?”
“I told you before; I’m not a tactician navigator, and that’s what you need. You need someone who’ll hunt down every breath of wind and trace of current. You need a ruthless taskmaster. I hate that sort of sailing. My idea of sailing is to bung the boat in front of a convenient wind and open a beer.”
“But you’re a brilliant navigator,” she said in protest. “Everyone says so.”
“I can generally find the right continent,” I agreed, “but I’m not a racing tactician. That’s what Bannister needs. For me to be in his crew just wouldn’t be honest, or fair.”
“Honest?” She bridled at that word.
“I really hate making yachts go fast for no other reason than to win races. So it would be excessively dishonest of me to pretend that I cared about the St Pierre. I don’t. And I fear I don’t really care about your audience ratings, either.”
The last comment touched her to the quick, perhaps because it attacked the holy grail of television producers. “You’re so goddamned righteous!” There was anger, almost hysteria, in her voice that had been loud enough to attract embarrassed looks from the nearer guests.
“I just like to be truthful,” I said gently, thereby hoping to deflect the threatening storm.
But Angela’s patience snapped like a rotted hawser. “Do you really want my film to be truthful? Because the honest truth, Nick Sandman, is that you’re nothing but a privileged public-schoolboy who chose the mindless trade of soldiering because you didn’t care to exert yourself in the real world. You were wounded in an utterly pointless war, fighting for a quite ridiculous cause, and you probably went down there like an excited puppy with a wet nose and a wagging tail because you thought it would be fun. But we won’t say that in our film. We won’t say that you were a vacuous upper-class layabout with a gun, and that if it hadn’t been for a stupid medal you’d be nothing now, nothing! And we won’t say that you’re too proud or too stubborn or too idiotic to make a proper living now. Instead we’ll applaud your sense of adventure! Nick Sandman, eccentric rebel, refusing to recognize life’s misfortunes. We’ll say you were a war hero! Doing your bit for Britain!” Her passion was extraordinary, unleashed in a corrosive flood of emotion that lacerated the evening and appalled the terrace into an awed silence. Even the musicians ceased playing.
“And the real truth, Nick Sandman, is that you can’t even be an eccentric rebel without our help, because you haven’t got a boat. And when you do get it, if you ever get it, you’ll be finished inside six months because you’ll run out of money and you’ll be too lazy to earn any more! Is that the truth you want my film to tell?” A very embarrassed Bannister appeared at her side. “Angela?” She shook him off. There were tears in her eyes; tears of pure rage.
“I’m trying to help you!” She hissed the words at me.
“Good-night,” I said to Bannister.
“Nick, please.” He was every bit as excruciated as his guests.
“Good-night,” I said again, then backed off from the two of them.
The guests were turning away in the clumsy pretence that nothing had happened. I saw that Jill-Beth Kirov had arrived, but she too turned abruptly away from me. Everyone was awkward, looking away from me. The evening, which had been such a success, was suddenly foully soured, and I was the focus of the embarrassment.
Then Melissa knifed through the crowd. “Nick, darling! I thought you were going to dance with me?”
“I’m leaving.” I said it quietly.
“Don’t be such a bloody fool.” She said it just as quietly, then turned imperiously towards the rock group. “You’re paid to make a noise, not gawp at your betters. So strum something!” A semblance of normality returned to the terrace. Melissa and I danced, or rather she danced and I rhythmically disguised my limp.
I was furious. Angela had disappeared, leaving Bannister with his actress. A whispered rumour that Angela was suffering from overwork circled the terrace. I forced myself to dance, but was saved from the indignity by the sudden collapse of my right leg that spilt me sideways to clutch desperately at the flagpole.
“Are you drunk?” Melissa asked with amusement.
“My leg’s still buggered up.”
“We’ll sit.” She took my arm and steered me to the terrace’s edge where she lit a cigarette. “I must say that loathsome girl was quite right. You did go off to the Falklands with a wet nose and a wagging tail. You were frightfully bloodthirsty.”
“I got paid for being bloodthirsty, remember?” I was massaging my right knee, trying to force sensation back into it.
Melissa watched me. “Poor Nick. Was it an awful little war?”
“Not awful, just unfair. Like playing soccer against a school for the blind.”
“It was awful, I can tell. Poor Nick. And I was beastly to you. I thought your leg was cured?”
“It is, most of the time.” But not now. My back felt as if it was being harrowed by fire, while my leg seemed nerveless. I felt the old panic that I would never be functional. I knew I’d never be fully fit again; I’d never run uphill with a heavy pack or step down a wicket to drive a ball sweetly through the covers, but I did want to be functional. I wanted a leg that would hold me on a pitching foredeck while I changed a staysail. It didn’t seem much to ask, and for days it seemed possible until, quite suddenly, like now, the damned knee would disappear beneath me and the pain would start tears to my eyes.
Melissa blew out a stream of smoke. “Do you know what your problem is, Nick?”
“An Argentinian bullet.”
“That’s just self-pity, which isn’t like you. No, Nick, your problem is that you fall in love with all the wrong women.” I was so astonished that I forgot my knee. “I don’t!” I protested.
“Of course you do. You were quite soppy about me once, and you’re just the same about that sordid little television tart who’s just clawed you.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
Melissa laughed at my shocked expression. “I saw you fancying her before she exploded in your face. You always fall helplessly in love with pale blondes, which is extremely silly of you because they’re never as vulnerable as you think they are.”
“Angela isn’t vulnerable.”
“But she looks it, which triggers you. I know you, Nick. You should settle for some sturdy girl with whacking great thighs. You’d be much happier.”
“Like that one?” I said, rather ungallantly, for Jill-Beth hardly fitted Melissa’s prescription. The American girl was dancing with Fanny Mulder and, to my chagrin, seemed intensely happy to be in his arms.
Melissa watched till Jill-Beth and Mulder were swallowed up by the other dancers. “She’d do,” she finally said, “except you prefer your women to look like wounded birds” She sighed. “Lust is so frightfully inconvenient, isn’t it? Do you remember when we first met? You were positively festooned with weapons and smothered in camouflage cream. You looked endlessly glamorous; not at all like the sort of man who’d ever worry about a mortgage.” We’d met at the Bath and West Show where my regiment had staged a display.