“More than his poor bloody son. Crippled for life, I hear.” I kept silent, pretending an interest in the ugly houseboat moored at my wharf. She had once been a working boat, perhaps a trawler, but her upperworks had been sliced off and a hut built there instead.
There was no other word for it: a hut that was as ugly as a container on a barge. The hut had a sloping roof covered with tarpaper. A stainless steel chimney protruded amidships. At the stern there was a railing which enclosed an afterdeck on which two deckchairs drooped. Washing was pegged to the railings. “Who lives in that?” I asked the question with some distaste.
“Bannister’s racing crew. Bloody apes, they are.” The presence of the houseboat on my wharf suggested that it had been Bannister himself who had removed Sycorax, but I did not want that to be true. Anthony Bannister’s public image was that of a strong and considerate man; the kind of person any of us might turn to for advice or help, and I was reluctant to abandon that imaginary friend.
Besides, he was a yachtsman who had lost his wife, which made me feel sympathetic towards him. Someone else, I was sure, must have moved Sycorax.
We were in line with the cut now and I could see a second Bannister craft in the boathouse: this boat was a low, crouching, twin-engined speedboat with a polished hull and a flashy radar arch. I could see her name, Wildtrack II, and I remembered that Bannister’s yacht which had so nearly won the St Pierre had been called Wildtrack.
There was a sign hanging in the roof arch above the powerboat:
“Private. Keep Out”.
“Are you sure we should be here?” The dentist throttled back, worried by other strident signs which had been posted along the river’s bank: “Private”, “No Mooring”, “Private”. The lettering was bright red on white; glaring prohibitions that jarred the landscape and seemed inappropriate from such a well-loved man as Bannister.
“The broker said it was OK.” I jerked my head towards Sycorax.
“He said anyone could view her.”
“You’re buying her?”
“I was thinking of it,” I answered guardedly.
The explanation seemed to satisfy the dentist that I was not a burglar, and my accent was presumably reassuring, but he still looked dubious. “She’ll take a bit of work.”
“I need the therapy.” I was staring at Sycorax, seeing how she had been dragged a full twenty feet above the high-water mark. There were stones in that slope which would have gouged and torn at her planking as she was scraped uphill. Her stern was towards me and her keel was pointing down the hill. I could see that her propellor had gone, and it seemed obvious that she’d been dragged into the trees and left to die. “Why didn’t they just let her rot on the water?” I said angrily.
“Harbour Authority wouldn’t allow that, would they?” The dentist span the dinghy expertly and let its stern nudge against the end of the wharf where a flight of stone steps climbed towards the woods. He held the dinghy fast as I clambered awkwardly ashore.
“Wave if you want a lift back,” he said.
I was forced to sit on the steps while the pain receded from my back. I watched the dentist take his dinghy to the upstream moorings.
When his motor cut there were only the gentle noises of the river, but I was in no mood to enjoy the peace. My back hurt, my boat was wrecked, and I wondered why Jimmy Nicholls had allowed Sycorax to be moved. God damn it, that was why I had paid Jimmy a fee. The money had not been much, but to earn it Jimmy had merely to keep an eye on Sycorax. Instead, I’d returned to find her high and dry.
The climb was hard. The first few feet were the most difficult, for there were no trees to hold on to and the ground had been scraped smooth by Sycorax’s passage. I had to stop after a few feet and, bent double, catch the breath in my lungs. There were low branches and undergrowth that gave handholds for the last few feet, but by the time I reached Sycorax the pain was like white-hot steel burrowing into my spine. I held on to her rudder, closed my eyes, and forced myself to believe that the pain was bearable. It must have been all of two minutes before I could straighten up and examine my boat.
She lay on her side, dappled with the wintry sun. At least a third of the copper sheathing had been torn away. Floating ice had gouged, but not opened, her planking. The keel had been jemmied open and the lead ballast stolen. Both her masts and her bowsprit were gone.
The masts had not been unstepped, but sawn off flush with the deck.
The teak grating in the cockpit, the washboards, and both hatch covers were missing. The compasses had disappeared.
The brass scuttles had been ripped out. The fairleads and blocks were gone. Anything of value had been taken. The coachroof must have snagged on a tree-stump halfway up the slope for it had been laid open as if by a tin-opener. I leaned on the broken roof and peered into the cabin.
It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. At first all I could see was the black gleam of still water lying deep in her canted hull, then I saw what I expected: nothing. The radios were gone, the stoves had been stolen and all the lamps were missing. The main cabin’s panelling had been stripped. A mattress lay in the rain water.
There would be rot in the boat by now. Seawater pickles wood, but fresh water destroys it. The engine, revealed because the cabin steps had been tossed aside, was a mass of rust.
I was feeling oddly calm. At least Sycorax was here. She had not disappeared, not sunk, and she could be rebuilt, and all it would take would be my time and the money of the bastard who had done this to her. The damage was heart-rending, but, rather than anger, I felt guilt. When I had been eight years old my dog, a fox terrier, had been hit by a milk lorry. I had found the bitch dying in the grass beside the lane. She’d wagged her tail to see me and I’d wept beside her and felt guilty that all her innocent trust in me had been betrayed.
I felt that way now. I felt that I had let Sycorax down. At sea she looked after me, but back in the place where men lived I was her protector, and I heard myself talking to her just as I used to talk to her when we were at sea. I patted her ripped coachroof and said everything would be all right. It was just her turn to be mended, that was all.
I stumbled back down the hill. I planned to cross the river, then walk to the pub and give Jimmy Nicholls a few hard moments. Why the devil hadn’t he done something? The freehold of the wharf was mine and there was no law on God’s earth by which anyone could take it. The wharf had been built two hundred years before when lime was exported from the river, but now the sixty feet of old stone wall were mine. Even the Harbour Authority had no rights over the wharf, which I’d bought from my father because it would provide a haven for Sycorax and a place I could call home. It was my address, God damn it, my only address: the Lime Wharf, Tidesham, South Devon, and now Anthony Bannister had his ugly houseboat moored to it. I still found it hard to believe that a man as celebrated as Bannister had stolen the wharf by moving Sycorax, but someone had stranded my boat and I swore I would find them and sue them for every penny my broken ship needed.
I stepped over one of the springs which held the houseboat safe against my wharf. I was going to hail the dentist for a lift across the river, but glanced first into the boathouse.
And saw my dinghy there. She lay snugly moored against Wildtrack II’s starboard quarter. My ownership was proclaimed in flaking paint on her transom: ‘Tender to Sycorax’. She was a clinker-built wooden dinghy, my dinghy, and she was tied alongside Bannister’s flash speedboat.