Clouds drowned the moonlight.
Sycorax sailed herself. Her tiller was pegged and her sheets cleated tight. Sometimes, as the swell dropped her hard into a trough, the mainsail would shiver, but she picked herself up and drove on. I still had no radar-reflector and hoped that the big ships which were bashing down from Amsterdam and Hamburg and Felixstowe were keeping a proper watch. I could see the bright confusion of their lights all about me.
Midnight passed and the wind dropped and veered. I let out the sheets and felt Sycorax’s speed increase as she found herself on her favourite point of saiclass="underline" a broad reach. I’d seen few other yachts, but just before one o’clock, and when I should still have been well north of Wildtrack’s course, I saw the lights of a vessel under sail. She was travelling west and, to intercept her, I unpegged the tiller and hardened Sycorax into the wind again. The big swell sometimes dropped the other yacht out of my sight, all but for her masthead’s tri-coloured light which would flicker over the shredding wavetops.
I tried to judge her size, but could not. I took bearings on her which told me she was sailing fast.
I opened the locker where my flares were stored. Bannister would not stop if I radioed him on the VHF, and if I tried to sail across his bow I invited a collision that, though it would stop him, could also sink Sycorax. Instead I planned to cross his stern and loose red emergency flares into the sky, because even a racing boat would have to stop and help a boat in distress. That was the law. Mulder and Bannister might curse, but they would have to gybe on to the new course and come to my rescue. Once they had come alongside I would play what cards I had. They were not many, but they included a Colt .45 which I had fetched up from its hiding place. I knew that if I fired the rocket flares I would cause chaos in the Channel. There would be lifeboats, radios and other ships all contributing to a rescue that wasn’t needed, but I had promised Angela to stop her husband, and if that promise turned a busy sealane into chaos, then chaos it would be.
I saw I was heading the approaching yacht. He was on the port tack, I on a starboard, so it was his job to stay clear of me. He’d seen my lights, for he steered a point southerly to give me room. I hardened again, and he thought I had not seen him and shone a bright torch beam up on to his mainsail to make a splash of white light in the darkness. At the same time another of his crew called me on Channel 16; the VHF emergency channel. “Sailing boat approaching large yacht, do you read me, over.”
It was not Mulder’s voice, nor Bannister’s. I thought I detected a French accent in the crackling speaker. I was close enough to see the sail number in the torchlight and, because it was not Wildtrack, I fell off the wind to go astern of him. The torch was switched off. A voice shouted a protest that was made indistinct by the spray and wind.
The yacht’s stern light showed me the name Mariette on the white raked transom. The port of registry was Étaples. I waved as I passed, then the wind tore us apart as I headed south again.
By three o’clock I knew I must be well inside the rough circle I’d sketched on George’s chart. The night was black as pitch and the wind was still dropping. I turned westwards, heading against Wildtrack’s course. I searched for an hour. I saw two more French-men, a Dutchman, but no Wildtrack. A bulk-carrier crashed past and Sycorax’s sails slatted as we were tossed on the great wake. Apart from the big ship the sea was empty. I had failed.
I turned north. There was already a lightening to the east as the false wolf-light of dawn edged the clouds. I was bone tired, cold, and hungry. I had failed, but I had always known how narrow was my chance of success. From Sycorax’s cockpit I could never see more than two miles and Wildtrack could have run past me at any time in the darkness. In truth I doubted whether I had ever sailed far enough south. Bannister was gone to the Lizard and death.
It began to rain again as I ran for home. The rain beaded the shrouds and dripped from the lacing on the boom. I made some more tea and found a wrinkled apple in the galley. I cut out the rotten bit and ate the rest.
Dawn showed the sea heaving in a greasy, slow swell. Patches of fog drifted above a sludge-like sea. If the fog lifted, it rained. The wind was west now, but negligible and sullen. The rudder, with no speed to give it bite, banged in its pintles. Another depression was meant to be racing towards the Channel, and Wildtrack would be praying for its arrival if she was to make a fast outwards run.
I was just praying to get home. Sailing isn’t always fun in the sun.
It isn’t always happy friends on sparkling decks in a perfect force four on a glinting ocean. It can be misery incarnate. It can be rain and fog and cold and hunger. It can be a sulky sea and a listless sky.
It can be failure, and then the only consolation is to remember that we volunteered for the misery.
So, in misery, I crawled north. I spent a quarter-hour working out the tidal currents to help my course, then tried to coax the engine into life. It was on strike, and the wind seemed to be in sympathy with its grudge. I stripped the fuel system, tried again, and still it wouldn’t start, so, instead, I tidied up the cabin and washed the decks. I told myself time and time again that I would not be disappointed if Angela had not returned to Devon. I told myself that the two of us had no future. I told myself over and over that I really did not care whether she was waiting for me at Bannister’s house or not.
At mid-morning, reluctant at first, a wind scoured the sea and creaked the port shrouds. I dropped the mop and seized the tiller.
I listened to the growing sound of water running past the hull and felt my excitement increase because Angela might be waiting for me. I did care. I cared desperately.
It was mid-day before I passed the Calfstone Shoal. The bell-buoy clanged at me. The wind was fitful now, but strong enough to carry me up the river and round the point.
Where, on the terrace above the river, and in front of an empty house, Angela was waiting.
She had been crying. She was in jeans and sweater, her hair bound in a single plait that hung to her narrow waist. “It’s a hell of a way to start a marriage.”
Or to end one, I thought, but did not say as much.
She was distraught, but I was too cold and famished to be a gentle listener. I made myself eggs, bacon, coffee and toast that I ate at the kitchen table. Angela sat opposite me and I noticed the thick gold wedding ring on her finger beside her diamond. She shook her head despairingly. “I tried to talk to him…”
“…but he wouldn’t listen.” I finished the sentence for her.
“He thinks you put me up to it. He thinks you want him to fail.” She stood and paced the floor. She was restless and confused, and I did not blame her. She only had my word, and that of Micky Harding, that her new husband was sailing to his death.
For a time she tried to convince herself that it was untrue. I let her talk while I ate. She talked of Bannister’s belief that he could take the coveted St Pierre, and of his happiness because she had walked up an aisle with him. She spoke of the programmes Bannister would make in the new season; she spoke of the future they had discussed and, because that future was threatened, it only seemed the brighter and more blessed to her now. “Tell me it isn’t true.” She spoke of Kassouli’s threat.