The Merciless Ladies Page 12

  A few minutes later I found Sir Clement Lynn sitting in the saloon smoking a damp cigarette. He had a chair wedged under one end of the table so that it could not slide about, and his feet on the rail beside the cupboards. He had made very few appearances during the last days.

  ‘Sorry about all the water’, I said.

  He put out a rubber boot and stirred an eddying pool with his toe. ‘The important thing is to view minor discomforts in their true perspective. The immediate present in time is apt to loom too large. What one should do is get a pencil and make a dot and say, ‘‘There, that is me at this instant, no more and no less.’’ What is the tobacco the Grimshawes smoke?’

  ‘Digger Plug.’

  ‘Hm. Do they cook all the food in it? Perhaps I imagine these flavours. I wish Ethel could see me now. She always says I eat too much.’

  At that moment Holly and Paul came into the saloon. Holly actually looked better for her eight days at sea; she had recovered more quickly than the other two, and the constant wind had tanned her normally pale skin. Paul, his wrist bandaged and with a considerable growth of beard, had not come off so well, but I had a feeling that he was more content than he had been for years.

  ‘I’ll clean this up in a few minutes’, said Holly, looking at the water which was slopping about the floor of the saloon.

  I followed Paul’s eyes to the barometer. ‘I know’, I said. ‘It’s still low and we haven’t made very good progress. We’ll be six weeks on the passage at this rate.’

  Paul said: ‘The Grimshawes want to make for Vigo. They say Sir Clement and Holly could travel overland from there.’

  ‘That would be admitting defeat’, said Holly, taking off her mac and béret and shaking them.

  ‘And the weather may improve at any time’, said her father.

  ‘I suppose we’ve plenty of food?’ said Paul. ‘We shouldn’t have used even our normal rations this week.’

  ‘Food’s all right’, I said. ‘The question, with the wind in this quarter, is how long would it take to make Vigo?’ Paul draped his dripping coat over the end of the table, but said

  nothing.

  ‘What of this court action of Stafford’s?’ asked Sir Clement. ‘ It’s

  – hm – the first of October tomorrow.’

  Paul said: ‘It won’t come off until about the fifteenth, and if I’m

  not there they can postpone the darned thing until I am.’

  ‘Of course’, I said, ‘the obvious resort would be to go about and

  run before the wind back to Funchal.’

  There was silence.

  ‘That would be admitting defeat’, said Holly.

  I patted her head.

  ‘Whom would it be admitting defeat to?’ Paul asked.

  ‘Ourselves’, she said. ‘They’re the only people that matter.’

  He looked at her. ‘Yes, you’re perfectly right.’

  Sir Clement climbed slowly to his feet, holding to a cupboard.

  ‘This change of position has done me good. I’ll go back and do a

  little work. That will complete the cure.’ He rubbed the week’s

  growth on his chin. ‘I have seldom felt my kinship more with the

  Anthropomorpha. One develops the simian desire to scratch.’

  When he had gone I said: ‘ He’s the one we have to consider.’

  Holly nodded. ‘I know. And Paul’s wrist. Don’t be influenced by

  me; turn back if you think it best.’

  ‘Let’s see today out’, suggested Paul. ‘ There’s a good chance that

  the weather will moderate. It should do on the law of averages.’

  III

  The law of averages is not one which has much influence on wind and weather. It blew steadily all that day, and we remained hove-to under reefed mainsail and small jib with a sheet to windward, bobbing up and down like a cork. With sails trimmed this way there is always a certain amount of drift, and some of our progress in the previous twenty-four hours was likely to be lost.

  An hour before sunset, the wind having dropped, we sighted a tramp steamer. She was a biggish ship, eight or ten thousand tons, and was making heavy weather of it, burying her great blunt nose in the seas and spouting them across her decks. But her progress was steady and she rapidly came up with us. When she was about a mile away she signalled; but every few seconds she was hidden from us by the next wave and we couldn’t read what she said. Dave Grimshawe got out a storm lantern and signalled IMI.

  Through a flurry of rain we saw that she was approaching nearer and had again altered course with the apparent intention of making a circle round us. Both Holly and Paul had come on deck, and the five of us watched her with interest.

  ‘Wish she could give us a tow’, said Paul.

  ‘She’s all adrift if she thinks we want her help’, said Sam Grimshawe.

  With the glasses we were able to read John Armitage and Liverpool. Homeward bound. She made no further signal.

  After a complete circle she came in suddenly, on our lee so as not to interfere with our wind, and soon we were barely two hundred yards apart. She was wallowing now, fairly wallowing in the sea like a great animal, scuppers under.

  We saw a man on the raised deck beneath the bridge. He put a megaphone to his lips, but the words didn’t carry. Holly waved as if to show appreciation. Then a man appeared on the bridge-deck and began to semaphore.

  ‘What is it?’ I said.

  Dave Grimshawe wiped the salt water from his mouth with the back of a hairy hand.

  ‘He says, we seem to be in trouble; can he be of any assistance?’

  ‘Looking for salvage’, growled Sam. ‘Tell him, no. We’re right ’nough.’

  I said: ‘I suppose he’s not used to seeing little cutters in this latitude. Thank him, Dave, and say that we’re going on quite nicely. But’, I added, ‘ask him if he can take off a woman passenger and two sick men.’

  ‘Bill!’ said Holly. ‘ That’s not fair! I—’

  ‘One sick man’, said Paul.

  ‘Go on’, I said to Dave. ‘ See what he says.’

  I caught a glimpse of a smile under Dave’s beard as he began to signal.

  ‘Bill, why should I go?’ said Holly. ‘ I can see—’

  ‘Sh … he’s answering. Well?’

  ‘He says the sea is too big at present, and it’ll be dark in ’alf an hour. He says he’ll try an’ keep in contact with us tonight and see what the weather’s like at dawn.’

  ‘All right. Thank him and say we shall be pleased if he can do that.’

  ‘I’m not going’, said Paul.

  ‘You must’, I said. ‘You don’t want that action postponed.’

  ‘I don’t see why anyone need go’, said Holly. ‘We haven’t complained, have we?’

  ‘Your father isn’t a young man’, I said, ‘and he’s had a tiring lecture tour. It was a great idea, but the weather’s been against us. And if he goes …’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Holly took off her glasses to wipe the spray from them. You’re right there. I couldn’t possibly desert him now.’

  ‘If one goes we all ought to go’, said Paul. ‘But then I don’t suppose the brothers Grimshawe …’

  ‘They couldn’t manage it themselves’, I said. ‘It wouldn’t be fair either. It won’t matter about my being a bit late back. Three can manage the cutter in comfort.’

  ‘Or four’, said Paul.

  ‘Three’, I said. ‘With that wrist you’ll be a passenger anyhow for another month.’

  ‘Um’, said Paul. ‘What do you think, Sam?’

  The man at the wheel did not remove his suspicious eyes from the John Armitage, which had drawn away into the gathering dusk and was once more nudging her way into the oncoming seas.

  ‘She’ll have lost us long afore morning.’

  IV

  Dawn found the horizon bare. Wind and sea had moderated, but still were much against us. We set some sail and decided that a useful compromise
between all the conflicting suggestions was to try to make Vigo.

  At noon to our surprise we sighted the John Armitage. We learned later that she had heaved to during the night and had taken the opportunity of making an engine repair. She had given us plenty of sea room and had fallen well behind.

  As soon as the tramp was sighted Paul went into an excess of indecision. I had never known him so irresolute. I told him that the issue was plain: if the master of the John Armitage would agree to take anyone off, then he must go. Very well to say that he did not care if the libel action was put down in the lists again; that wasn’t true, the thing had been at the back of his mind all summer. I didn’t mind being left alone, it would be rather fun.

  ‘I know, I know’, he said. ‘It’s all very pretty the way you put it. But I invited you on this trip. What sort of a mouse do you think I am to desert you in mid-Atlantic after a few days’ bad weather!’

  ‘Well, damn it, we’re in no danger. I should certainly go if I were in your shoes. You ought to know me well enough to be sure I wouldn’t say so if I didn’t mean it.’

  ‘Oh, you mean it’, he agreed. ‘And thanks for the suggestion. It seems to be a question of my own conscience.’

  ‘Your own what?’

  ‘Anyway, don’t congratulate yourself on losing me yet. This rusty old tramp will probably consider the sea is still too rough.’

  Fifteen minutes later we began to exchange messages with the John Armitage. Then we dowsed our headsails and took a few more rolls in the mainsail, leaving just enough to steady her in the swell while under motor. It was strange to feel the beat of the Kelvin engine.

  The John Armitage signalled again.

  Dave shouted: ‘He wants fur us to go in further under his lee before he lowers a boat.’

  ‘He’ll not get me any nearer’, shouted Sam, his moustache drooping. ‘If we got in too close he’d knock us to bits. Tell ’im no.’

  More semaphoring passed.

  ‘He’ll lower a boat’, said Dave.

  The big tramp came slightly more into the wind, and we edged round until we could feel some protection from her great iron sides. Two of her davits swung out and a small boat was cautiously launched, one moment relatively steady as she swung from the ropes, the next sweeping up and down by the side of the mother ship. Then she crawled away like a beetle from under a protecting wall and came towards us through the broken water.

  Paul went. We said goodbye, Holly and Sir Clement and Paul and I. At the last moment I almost regretted having persuaded them to go; there might be a month of hard sailing ahead, and the change after they had left would be drastic. Sir Clement shook his head at me and took my hand while he clutched his suitcase of papers.

  The transfer was an anxious one. Getting into the ship’s boat with its crew of seven was the least difficult part. Through the glasses I watched them come under the shadow of the John Armitage and thought they were drowned twice in unsuccessful attempts to board her. But at last it was done. I saw three figures standing by the rail of the upper deck aft of the funnel as the John Armitage hooted once and slowly turned and began to draw away from us. I took the wheel while the Grimshawe brothers raised sail. Then through flying spray I watched the bulk of the tramp steamer dwindle until it disappeared into the grey heaving patchwork of the distance.

  I went below and made an entry in the log. ‘ Mr Stafford, Sir Clement and Miss Lynn left for England. Remaining in Patience: Grimshawe, Grimshawe and Grant.’

  For the rest of the morning I was below, tidying up the saloon, wandering through the unaccustomed emptiness of the three main cabins, wondering if now, in the ironical way things happen, we’d have fair weather all the way home.

  Dave Grimshawe came below, paused, wedged in the door of the saloon to light his pipe.

  ‘Be wondering what you’ll have for your midday meal, Mr Grant. Tin of tongue, maybe?’

  I agreed.

  ‘Thur’s a few of them spring onions left. As well t’eat them before the soil goes sour.’

  ‘Yes’, I said. ‘ We’ll have those.’

  ‘Glass has gone down again’, he said. ‘Didn’t like the green in the sky this morning. Reckon we haven’t seen the end of it yet by no means.’

  ‘Well’, I said. ‘ I’m very sorry to lose my friends, but this was the best solution.’

  ‘Aye. ’ Tis just a question of ridin’ out this stiff breeze o’ wind.’

  ‘Did you check the rest of the water?’

  ‘Yes. ’Tis right enough.’

  Dave Grimshawe stayed in the doorway drawing at his juicy pipe. He had got on well enough with all those who had left, but their going had unlocked his tongue.

  ‘That was a queer young lady’, he said. ‘ First night we was out she came and stood by me at the wheel. I started telling her about the stars. I felt a fool, fur it turned out she knew more about ’em than me.’

  ‘She knows a good bit’, I said. But, I thought, she doesn’t know Bertie’s secret of happiness. Very few of us do.

  ‘She don’t make a show of it’, said Dave. ‘But she told me one of them stars, Beetle-something in the Hunter, was so big that if you put the earth at its edge the earth wouldn’t go round it in three hundred and sixty-five days. I suppose that couldn’t be true?’

  ‘If she told you’, I said, ‘it is. They’re a great family for telling the truth.’

  ‘Be they engaged, Mr Stafford and her?’

  ‘Engaged?’ I said in surprise. ‘ Good Lord, no. They only met in Funchal. What makes you ask?’

  He shifted and looked round for somewhere to spit, but thought better of it.

  ‘Oh nothin’. ’Twas just an idle thought.’

  ‘But something must have made you think it. What was it?’

  He stared at me from under bushy eyebrows.

  ‘Lord, I don’t know. I thought from the way I caught them looking at each other now and then that perhaps they was engaged. I say ’twas just a notion. That was all.’

  Chapter Eleven

  To a man not fond of his own company it might seem obvious that twenty-two days spent beating into head winds in a small cutter in the Atlantic with two taciturn seamen for company would become very tedious. But I hadn’t expected that it would be so. I like being on my own. This has long been regarded as a major eccentricity by my friends.

  Of course the persistently adverse weather was to blame. The cramped surroundings, the never-ceasing lifting and ducking of the boat, heavy rain, the awareness that we were making painfully slow progress; all these wore down patience and stamina. Of course, I was very disappointed at missing the libel action. The whole thing would be past history and stale news when we reached home.

  … I dismissed from my mind Dave Grimshawe’s curious assumption about Paul and Holly. Obviously there could be nothing in that. The thought recurred, and I wondered how he could have come to make the mistake …

  We did not run into Vigo but made the journey direct.

  Off the Bishop a fast motor vessel passed so close to us that I could have given them the message I had promised Holly, but at that time we were almost becalmed, and reaching Plymouth might be a matter of one more day or two. So eventually we crept into the Sound one late October evening unheralded and unexpected.

  Getting our clearance papers was not a difficult matter, and now that we were at last here I was anxious to go ashore. I parted from the Grimshawes, who both had homes to go to, and made an appointment to meet them again the next morning to see about the arrangements for the winter care of the cutter and such other minor matters as needed the attention of the owner. Then I went off to the Royal and booked a room for the night.

  The sensation of being on solid ground again after so long a voyage is a peculiar one. I couldn’t get used to the spaciousness of the hotel, to the fact that everything remained in exactly the same place minutes on end, to the absence of the sound of the sea and the thrust of the wind, and the creaks and groans of straining wood. My eyes
, unused to the stability about them, began to supply movement by some malmechanics of their own. The floor of the dining-room persisted in going up and down before my eyes. I began to feel seasick.

  I asked the waiter if he could get me an evening paper. He failed to do this but brought a morning paper instead, and I was able to subdue my dizziness and get abreast of latest developments in the world of affairs.

  The miners had gone back at last. Mr Baldwin was predicting an era of industrial peace. Unemployment had reached a new peak. My old friend Mussolini had been making a belligerent speech at the League of Nations. The new football season was in full swing and I didn’t know even who had won the cricket championship.

  Then I stared at the paper, not quite able to believe my own eyes. A paragraph said:

  SOCIETY LIBEL ACTION OPENS TODAY

  ‘The suit for libel, which the Hon. Mrs Brian Marnsett, daughter of Lord Crantell, is bringing against Mr Paul Stafford, the well-known portrait painter, is due to open today before Mr Justice Freyte and a special jury. Sir Philip Bagshawe, KC, and Mr J. K. Fearborne are appearing for the plaintiff. Mr Raymond Hart, KC, and Mr John C. Starbell are representing Mr Stafford. Mr C. D. A. Cressigny is holding a watching brief for the Ludwig Galleries.’

  I looked at the date of the paper, and then went to the reception desk and told them I’d not be requiring my room tonight. A train for London left at 11.30. I went into the writing-room and wrote to David Grimshawe, explaining my reasons for leaving Plymouth without seeing them again and giving them what advice I could for the laying up of the cutter and the disposal of the remaining stores.

  I phoned North Road Station and was lucky enough to get a sleeper. Then I went out and tried to get an evening paper for myself, but was only able to buy a Western Evening Herald, which didn’t mention the libel suit. Then I went back to the hotel and repacked my battered little suitcase.