Good Enough For Nelson (30 page)

McAllester, who was steering, had been keeping a regulation eye on another sloop-rigged yacht, with a white hull, of about
Pegasus’
size, about a mile and a half further out to sea. She seemed to be steering almost the same course before the wind, but
Pegasus
was slowly catching her up. The light was just beginning to thicken, and for the first time Isaiah Nine Smith noticed a darkening cloud astern of them. That might turn into a squall later. Just possibly, he fancied he saw the faintest paling of the cloud, as though lightning were playing across its surface. It was so quiet, with the wind still dropping, they could hear the water hissing along
Pegasus’
side.

‘Sir,’ said McAllester, ‘I think that yacht out there is signalling us...’

There certainly was a light flickering on board, but it failed and came again, so irregularly, it was difficult to tell whether it was intended as signalling.

‘Could be somebody flashing a torch,’ said Bingley.

‘Bloody big torch at that range.’

‘Somebody have a look through the binoculars,’ said Isaiah Nine Smith.

Caradoc took up the binoculars. He could see two figures on the yacht’s deck aft, and then, as he watched, a great billowing cloud of what looked like flame and smoke from the stern sheets.

‘Hell’s teeth! That’s not signalling, sir, they’re on fire!’

The bright light showed again from the other yacht, and a red rocket soared up, followed by another. There was now no doubt they were distress signals.

‘Come on McAllester,’ said Isaiah Nine Smith, ‘you’ve got the watch, what are you going to do?’

McAllester had expected Isaiah Nine Smith to take over command, but he reacted quickly. ‘I’m steering towards now, sir. Start the engine. Down spinnaker!’

‘Who’s the communications number for this watch?’ Isaiah Nine Smith asked.

‘Me, sir,’ said Bombulada.

‘See if you can raise the coast guard and the College. Tell them we may need the helicopter flight, if it’s available. That flash of flame didn’t look good to me. Chop chop, with that engine!’

There was a whirring and a coughing and a cloud of blue smoke astern, and Bingley had the diesel going.
Pegasus
began to pick up speed, while Chung Toi and Syllabub handed down the spinnaker and unshipped the boom.

Pegasus
was now heading across a quartering wind, and as her speed was greater than she could have achieved under sail the wind made her fore and main sails flap from side to side and to and fro with an uneasy, unnatural sound and motion. The bows rose and dipped with the same hissing of water sliding by.

Isaiah Nine Smith had taken up the glasses. ‘Get out the first aid kit. Somebody put the kettle on and brew up some tea. I’ve an idea we’re going to put all our drills into effect before we thought. Any joy on the set yet?’

‘Just getting them, sir.’

‘Adrianovitch, get the Aldis out and flash them up.’

‘What shall I say, sir?’

‘Good God, anything! Anything reassuring. Just say we’re coming.’

Watching and listening to him, Lucy acknowledged that Ikey’s speed of thought was that much quicker than her own. She could have thought of everything, in her own time, but he got there first. Lucy herself felt very glad that Ikey was in charge.

Almost unnoticed at first, it had begun to rain. But as it grew heavier, they all got out oilskins and put them on, their bare legs looking incongruous beneath the heavy black capes.

The wind had backed and freshened and was blowing from dead astern again. McAllester wondered whether to order the spinnaker hoisted again. But the other yacht was now only a quarter of a mile or so away, and they were closing her fast. A spinnaker might obscure his vision forward. McAllester looked about him. The light was going much more rapidly.

‘College asking for confirmation we need the helo, sir,’ said Bombulada.

It was ten o’clock at night and only another bare three-quarters of an hour of usable daylight left. The other yacht was still flashing, but they could see that the light was actually a sail on fire. Flames seemed to have consumed all her mainsail, except a brown rag of remnant hanging from the peak. They still had their foresail, a large genoa, set and drawing.

‘Yes please, Bombulada, confirm that we do need the helo flight.’

‘Aye aye sir.’

‘I hope they have the wit to lower that genoa,’ said McAllester. ‘She’s still making way on it and making it that much harder to catch her.’

‘Helicopter will be ready in thirty minutes, sir.’

''Gosh! ’ said McAllester. Ten o’clock on a weekday evening and the helo flight would be ready in half an hour. That was either amazing luck or very good management.

‘Tell the flight to go ahead. Somebody, here Persimmons, take a bearing to Start Point lighthouse. Make to the Flight Commander, we are now bearing... come on come on ... what bearing, Persimmons?’

‘Start Point two eight zero, sir.’

‘Two eight zero
magnetic
is the proper report. Make to the Flight Commander My position now Start Point bears two eight zero magnetic, distance... what would you say was the distance, Persimmons?’

‘Three miles, sir?’

‘Call it four. Distance four miles. My course is at the moment one-one-zero magnetic, steering to close the yacht in distress.’ Isaiah Nine Smith looked at the coast-line again. ‘I should say we’re only about ten miles from the College as the helo-crow flies. Should be here in a few minutes’ flying time.’

The other yacht, with its genoa still hoisted, had sagged away off the wind and was lying broadside on to the swell when McAllester ran
Pegasus
smoothly alongside her. They could see the name
Shangri La
, of Dartmouth, on her counter.

‘Stop the engine. Here, you steer, Lucy. Just keep steering south-east, dead out to sea.’

Thunder broke overhead with a violent clap that made everybody jump and duck. The rain fell with such weight Lucy could actually feel it drumming and pressing down on her oilskin hat. Clutching
Pegasus'
tiller in frozen and wet hands, Lucy watched, as though she were dreaming, the rescue taking place. McAllester and Bingley and Chung Toi leapt on board with fire extinguishers. The rain streaming down plastered their hair on their foreheads, and they held their mouths gaping open as though under a shower, as they splashed to and fro on
Shangri La's
deck. The gear was strange to them and the nylon sheets appeared to have fused in the heat but they soon had the genoa down. The crew were helped on deck. There were three of them, a middle-aged man, his son and daughter.

‘The Navy’s here!’ the man cried. He looked as if he were crying with relief. The phrase made Lucy tingle all over, as though an ancient memory had been revived, but she could not recall where she had heard those words before.

‘Thank God for the Navy! ’

They had had a petrol leak in the bilges, it seemed, and when the boy went down to look for it and mend it, the vapour had exploded. There was surprisingly little visible signs of the fire on Shangri La’s deck, but the boy had been very badly burned by the flash, on his face, his right arm and shoulder. Lucy saw his face as he was carried on board
Pegasus
. He said nothing, but just looked at her. The disfiguring blotches on his cheek and fore-head, the eyelashes frizzled yellow-white, the head scorched almost bald like an old man’s, made her feel physically sick. While he was carefully laid on a bunk, his father and sister sat, trembling with shock, unable to speak, in
Pegasus’
cabin. Persimmons and Adrianovitch wrapped them both in blankets and gave them steaming tea in mugs they could hardly hold, their hands were shaking so much.

Lucy had been vaguely aware that the thunder was louder and the rain was falling harder, but looking up she saw the helicopter directly overhead, as it had been that day on the moor. But this time, Isaiah Nine Smith was beside her. They were lowering a stretcher inside a cage on a wire line. McAllester and Bingley and Chung Toi carefully handled the boy on to the stretcher, but it was impossible for Buster to keep his helicopter directly over
Pegasus
, and no sooner was the boy in than the cage swung away and out over the sea, where it soon dipped and scraped into the waves. In a flash, Chung Toi and Bingley had their oilskins off and had dived into the sea, but before they could reach the stretcher Buster’s winchman had hauled it up. Soon the line was lowered again with the rescue collar for the daughter and her father, and both were whirled upwards into the dusk. Buster made one triumphant pass over
Pegasus
and then flew out across the sea towards the College.

They took
Shangri La
, with a ‘prize crew’ on board, in tow and headed back under power towards Dartmouth. Lucy, still steering
Pegasus
, had time to reflect. Ikey’s crew had behaved very well, all of them. They had worked as a team, with the minimum orders needed. They had fought a fire, handled unfamiliar sails in an unfamiliar boat, called up help, rendered first aid, made tea, jumped into the sea, all as it seemed necessary at the time.

‘Have we got any of that beer left?’ Isaiah Nine Smith asked. ‘We’ve got some whisky, sir.’

‘I won’t enquire how
that
got on board, but let’s have some. Would you like some grog, Lucy?’

Lucy realised she was freezing cold and wet. Her arms and legs felt like ice. ‘Yes, please.’

Isaiah Nine Smith came and sat beside her, in the steering position. ‘I hope you weren’t too dismayed by all that?’

A few weeks earlier, Lucy might have resented such a condescending question. But now, she said, ‘To be honest, I was absolutely petrified, half with fright and half with sheer excitement.’

‘Don’t be too worried. It wasn’t nearly as bad as it seemed.’

‘I think your team did very well indeed.’

‘Yes they did, didn’t they?’

Ikey himself, in Lucy’s opinion, had done better than anybody. He had handled everything and everybody without ever appearing to get ruffled or at a loss. It was very comforting, Lucy admitted it freely, to be in the hands of somebody who so clearly knew what he was about. Somebody passed up a mug of cocoa to her and Lucy sipped it, gazing at the friendly shaded light of the compass. In the comfortable darkness, Isaiah Nine Smith put his arm round Lucy’s waist and they sat together in the stem-sheets companionably, quite oblivious of McAllester’s baleful gaze from astern of them, where he was steering
Shangri La
in tow.

Back at Norton, the helicopter had landed, to be welcomed by the PMO and The Bodger. When the three members of the Dartmouth Amateur Dramatic Society got out, The Bodger was ready for them.

‘How did it go?’ he asked.

‘Marvellous. Better than Strindberg any day!’

‘There was one anxious moment when Tom got washed into the sea and we thought his make-up and his rubber scalp would come off!’

‘I must say, Sam, I thought you were pushing it with your touch of the old
Altmark's
. I was sure they’d rumble that. The
Navy’s
here,
indeed
!’

Reading his breakfast
Times
, The Bodger slowly became aware, first, that these crumpled pages had been read before and, second, that Julia was regarding him steadily and intently. From previous experience of these two phenomena, The Bodger knew enough to turn at once to the court circular page, with its notices of marriages which had been arranged. And there it was, the top notice.

‘Hell’s teeth! Well, I’ll be homswaggled! Ikey Smith and Lucy! How about that! Who’d have thought it? How on earth did that happen without anybody noticing?’

‘Without you noticing, you mean,’ Julia said. ‘It’s been as plain as the nose on your face for weeks and weeks. They did everything but put in it in the College daily orders...’

‘
Have
they put it in Daily Orders?’

‘They might just as well have done. Looking back now, I think it’s been on the cards since they first met. It is amazing in one way, I will agree. Naval officers are so diffident about these things, one wonders how they ever do get married. They deserve to become extinct.’

‘Well, these two certainly fooled me. Lucy marrying an NO! Lucy a naval wife! Cor, there’s a turn up for the book! Whatever happened to the reactionary running dogs of fascism or whatever? This is like Madame Mao marrying General de Gaulle.’

All the same, The Bodger reflected, this had happened before, many times. This engagement was typical of the Service and, in a way, it was reassuring to find it still so. The Bodger had forgotten how many times in his life he had opened his morning paper and found that someone he would never have expected to get engaged had got engaged to someone he would never have expected him to get engaged to.

But Julia was still looking expectantly at the paper. The Bodger looked again. And there it was, much further down.

''Polly
and Lionel
Tinkle
! Ye Gods and little sharks, wonders will never
cease!
’ The Bodger read the notice again, and blinked. ‘Goodness, I didn’t know that was who her father was. I knew he was an admiral from what Polly said, but I didn’t somehow connect the two names. Hell’s teeth, how’s he going to react when he finds out his daughter is going to marry someone like Lionel Tinkle? I can hear all those dear dead distinguished family admirals of the red, white and blue revolving in their hammocks! ’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Julia. ‘Polly’s the youngest daughter, and she’s got two older sisters, both married, and there are three older boys, all married. Knowing that family I expect they’ll be glad that Polly has brought a fresh face on to the scene. It’s Mr Tinkle I’m sorry for. Marrying into that family. They’ll eat him alive.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said The Bodger. ‘He’s pretty indigestible, young Tinkle, like his little red book.’

But Julia was still on edge.

‘Don’t tell me there’s
more
... Holy Mackerel, what a day for the College! Here it is, Professor Alastair McAllester, PhD, MA, to Mrs ... Mrs
Who
?’