Rum Affair (8 page)

I could believe I was getting to like Johnson, at times.

Compared with Ardrishaig, the bay of Lochgair was quite dark, save for a pricking of lights from the hotel half-hidden behind foreshore and trees, and the moving beams of cars slipping to and from Inveraray. Around us, as the engine cut and the anchor chain rattled down, were little white roadhouses, floating on the calm sea like indestructible plastic toys – the motor yachts, the luxury arm of the fleet.

The largest – eighty tons; eighty-four feet overall, with twin-screw oil engines each 6-cylinder and 250 b.h.p. (said Rupert) was
Evergreen.
From her decks, a nightmare of striped awnings, Sekers curtains and potted geraniums, came a shouted invitation to drinks. I slipped below quickly to change. The black kangaroo dress with the copper chain belt, I thought; and small copper boots.
Seawolf,
who had had water in her carburettor, arrived in the anchorage just as I fixed my eyelashes on.

The first I knew of it was when I slammed my chin in the eyeshadow and my three cases crashed at my heels. Something had hit
Dolly’s
side with a hideous thud. There followed something like the quartet from
Trovatore,
with Victoria’s shrill drawl distinguished among other, masculine voices, heated and also resigned. I repaired the scars in my make-up and, rubbing my back, marched up on deck.

Feebly lit in the sparkling concourse,
Seawolf
was there on our beam, swiftly retreating under the aegis of an almighty shove by
Dolly’s
owner and crew.
Seawolf’s
engine was off, although not far behind her one could see several large boats with which she would shortly collide. Ogden, who had patently seen them too, was now clambering into his pram with a towline. He fixed this, shoved in rowlocks, took up his oars; then with
Seawolf’
s lashed sternpost looming in front of him started to pull her away. He rowed, slowly at first; and then like a charnel house in a wind machine as
Seawolf,
responding, began to change course, and finally veered out of the danger zone after him.

“Gawd,” said Lenny reverently. He, Johnson and Rupert, argumentatively sober, stood on
Dolly’s
deck watching.

“What’s happened?” I asked. “Why doesn’t he start
Seawolf’s
motor?” They were going to enjoy answering.

“Because the engine’s jammed full ahead,” said Johnson, his expression completely covered with glass. “He can’t go slow or reverse: very fussing. That’s why he hit us. And the wind’s gone, so sailing’s no good. Poor Cecil. He’ll have to tow
Seawolf
clear of us all to get room to drop anchor . . . Oh, God be praised. I know what’s going to happen.”

We all strained our eyes. “The tow rope’s going to break?” suggested Rupert.

The tow rope broke. Ogden performed a back somersault inside the dinghy. Ogden’s yacht, still sailing backwards, overtook Ogden’s dinghy, caught it a smart blow on the beam and flipped it aside, upside down. She then sailed slowly on, backwards, while Ogden, somersaulting briskly into the water, rose bubbling beside the fast-dispersing shapes of his oars.

Rupert squeaked.

“Shut up. There’s another reel,” said Johnson.

There was. Victoria, finding herself alone on a powerless yacht backing rapidly out into the shoals of Lochgair, rushed to the cockpit and started the engine.
Seawolf
burst into shuddering sound and advanced, roaring, in top gear into the anchorage.

There was an echoing roar as every yacht in the bay started up its anchor winch and its engine at one and the same time. There was a brisk movement, as of fry in a jam jar, and then one by one all the engines cut out again.

On
Seawolf
the roar of the throttle had weakened; the pulse slowed and a tinny rattling came clear over the water, together with some thin shouting traceable to Victoria. The trailing end of her dinghy rope had caught in the screw.

In the water, a long way behind, a dimpling pool located the swimming figure of Ogden.
Seawolf’s
engine cut and she slid forward dreamily, headed towards the sandbanks on the other side, Victoria steering. As we watched, the yacht lost way and began to slip sideways, impelled by the tide. Victoria, a silhouette against the saloon skylight, was seen to leave the cockpit and, running forward, to pick up the anchor and heave it successfully over the side. There was a distant ticking as the anchor chain followed, a splash as the anchor hit water and sank, and then silence.

“The anchor chain!”
said Lenny. The ticking had stopped.

“The anchor chain?” said Rupert, but louder.

“It’s got stuck in the hawsepipe,” reported Johnson amiably. “And there’s poor Victoria drifting out again on the tide with a short-chain anchor punching holes in the yacht like a pickled ticket collector. I think we should help her.”

Almost before he had finished talking,
Dolly’s
dinghy was in the water, with me in it. I was not being left aboard
Dolly
for anything, even though copper boots and kangaroo skin are not the best thing for nautical ballet. Then Johnson was talking to a slick white launch from
Evergreen
which had appeared with a uniformed helmsman, also rescue-bent; and in a moment Johnson, Rupert and I had transferred to the launch and were tearing over the dark water to
Seawolf,
while Lenny started up the outboard and snarled off in
Dolly’s
dinghy to the lugubrious spot in the sea which was Cecil Ogden.

While
Evergreen’s
paid hand lashed motorboat to yacht and prepared to lead
Seawolf
gently back to civilisation and safety, the rest of us boarded Ogden’s boat.

Nearly helpless with giggles and madly pleased with herself and with us, Victoria helped us aboard.

Johnson disappeared below to the chain locker. Rupert started to throw off his clothes.

He wore a string vest. I wished very much I had stayed safe on
Dolly.
When he took off the string vest and started on his trousers, I marched below, leaving Victoria. I am broad-minded, naturally, but not in public. Then my attention was arrested by other things altogether.

Seawolf
was not, I declare, an irredeemable misnomer. If a Wolf Cub tried to train for all his badges at once in an area roughly the size, shape and smell of a large dental cavity, the result would be the inside of
Seawolf.
She was floored and half-lined. Above waist level were merely the ribs of the boat, with a shelf tacked onto the wood here and there. Hinged to the mast was a let-down table of rough-cut mahogany, with a brass plate on its underside:
. . . In token of esteem and affection for his thirty years’ service to the Presbytery,
I read.

There were evidences, too, of the esteem and affection of the Navy, in the form of a standard pair of naval binoculars, a naval issue raincoat (American) and, on the benches, a pair of rubber-stamped charts. The Air Force had contributed a couple of fire extinguishers, British Railways a towel, and the Northern Lighthouse Commission a miscellany of objects, including three Brasso tins and a clock.

The light, of a theatrical isolation, came from an engineer’s inspection lamp slung on a festoon of flex. The bedding, which lay rolled up under one of the benches, was as supplied by HM Prisons. Beside it, under this and the second bench opposite, was Ogden’s working equipment: old chocolate boxes filled with rusty screwdrivers, mouldering insulating tape, wire clippers and nails, tacks, hooks, hammers, odd bits of chalk and a spirit level, inscribed clearly WIMPEY. There were some engineers’ waste, and a number of old, dirty flags strung together, with some anonymous cans reeking of spirit and oil which clinked together as
Seawolf
began to sail up to her tow.

There was another clinking too, which I was investigating in the fo’c’sle, a kind of aftercare unit for nail sickness, when a whoop from Victoria in the bows told of success with the chain: a moment later and from above there came the squeak of a hand-operated winch and rhythmic crash from the chain locker as the anchor was brought up from the sea to the bows. Soon after that,
Seawolf’s
gentle sauntering stopped; Johnson spoke, and there was a splash and a racing rattle as the anchor was thrown in again and the chain ran out, properly this time, to reach the seabed. Casting a last, fascinated glance at my immediate scenery, I prepared to return to the saloon.

On the inside of the cockpit door was a painted legend, insufficiently sandpapered off, reading LADIES. I was studying it, entertained, when it flew open and the owner vaulted down the stairs.

I was not tempted to laugh now: indeed I was not. Cecil Ogden was wet, cold, tired and in a towering temper. “Who the hell gave you leave to break in and meddle down here? You’ve squawked before all the zombies in Europe, and that makes you the bloody Queen of the May?” His eyeballs were bloodshot, but his ducking had practically sobered him.

Before I could answer, Johnson spoke matter-of-factly behind me: “It’s nothing to be ashamed of, the building of a boat with your own hands, Ogden. Madame Rossi is a friend and a guest of mine, not a Hennessy, you know.”

Then Ogden’s long, high-boned cheeks flamed under the streaming tails of his hair; and he muttered, directing it somewhere between us: “It’s the end of the season, that’s all. After a hard season’s wear, you can’t expect the same service from the best engine there is.”

He was almost sober, as I have said; but the whole boat still reeked of spirits. Of course he didn’t want strangers exploring his fo’c’sle unaccompanied. But it wasn’t the boat he was ashamed of.

But now Victoria emerged from the chain locker, talking excitedly; the man from
Evergreen
in immaculate uniform appeared in the cockpit and began testing the engine; Lenny, rather wet, vaulted into the cabin and announced
Seawolf’s
pram in good order and tied to its parent again; and last of all Rupert, a godly figure quite nude but for a pair of bathing trunks, appeared glistening negligently on the stairs and announced calmly that the rope was freed from the screw. As he said so, under the surgical fingertips of
Evergreen’s
skipper, the engine stirred, chattered and then boomed into life.

There was a deafening cheer. The paid hand from
Evergreen,
his face severe, slowly entered the crowded saloon and confronted Cecil Ogden. “I think that’ll be all right now sir, although your clutch, if you’ll pardon my saying so, is in a verra poor kind of condition. Would there be somewhere I could wash my hands, sir?”

Pressing back, we gave him passage through to the galley. There was no tap. He put an oily, efficient thumb over the open vent of the old trawler pump, and after a moment the water gushed into the sink, which he hadn’t yet plugged.

Alas, he had not yet noticed – why should he? – that the sink and the waste pipe were not united. Water, falling straight through the hole, filled his immaculate shoes.

There was a sorrowful silence. Then Johnson, his voice beautifully modulated, recalled that we were on our way to a cocktail party, and led the way out.

On
Evergreen,
the first person I saw was my manager, Michael Twiss. There he stood among the flood-lit geraniums with his blow-waved hair, doeskin jacket and Italian belt with the silver and ceramic clasp, looking blanched about his small, well-shaped mouth, which was smiling politely. He had been encountered ashore at the Lochgair Hotel by our host and hostess, May and Billy Bird, who had invited him aboard while he waited to join
Dolly.
Damn, damn, and a triple-force damn.

Why? Why join
Dolly
now, at the start of her voyage, instead of at the end, at Tobermory? To Johnson, who welcomed his change of plan, Michael said merely that he had decided to take up the original invitation. To me, as he uttered smiling politeness, his eyes were eloquent with
tepidita.
For the second time tonight, someone was in a passion of rage with me, poor Tina Rossi. And this time, again, I knew very well why.

But of course Michael was at his most charming. Beside him, in any case, in open-necked shirts and clean trousers, were the Buchanans of
Binkie.
I was still wondering what they had managed to talk about when I found myself among the scatter cushions in the deck saloon, my feet in the bulwark-to-bulwark carpeting and my wrist bones creaking under a tumbler six inches thick, full of single malt Talisker.

“Eee, lass,” May Bird, dispensing drinks from a commode like a Hammond organ, was screaming to me. “You’re a right dishy girl for a singer. And don’t tell me it don’t always ‘elp. My ‘Arold now ‘ad a nice little tenor, but never the looks for it; and ‘is Dad and me, we kept ‘im off the stage. I won’t say the Navy pays well; but it’s safer.” She dimpled, like a very old window pane. “Takes after me. The only way I could ever make the Winter Garden Torquay, legitimate, was to marry old Billy boy here.”

May Bird was small and fat, with bouffant hair, very yellow, and a short sleeveless dress in pink cloqué. The diamonds in her ears were real. Billy Bird, her husband, showed his age more: pink and round and white-haired, with stagey lines all around the mouth. They owned, Nancy whispered, a large public house and dance hall in Liverpool.

I did not care, just at that moment, what they owned, apart from a radio telephone Johnson could use before I was pounced on by Michael. I sat drinking and smiling until I saw Johnson and Billy Bird get up together and disappear into the passage which led to the wheelhouse: a faint crackling ensued, and was cut off as a door shut.

After an interval it opened again: there was more crackling, a faint burst of uproarious laughter, an unidentifiable booming, and then the voice of our host, embarking on something I could swear was a limerick. Johnson came back. “Mrs Billy, you’ve been letting him get into bad company. That’s a new one since last year.”