The Coffin Ship (10 page)

It hadn’t been as simple as Ben led Slope to believe that morning a fortnight ago, when he told him of Mariner’s past. It hadn’t been clean, cut and dried, full of simple rights and wrongs. It had been like any human relationship: messy.

Richard, Robin, Rowena, and Bill had met the second the sixties became the seventies at midnight, December 31, 1969. Their yachts were tied side by side at the unfashionable end of that long marina that makes up the seaward side of the main street of St. Tropez.

None of them had any particular reason for being in such a place in such a town when most of their friends were somewhere else anyway. Richard himself, who had bought the yacht
Rebecca
a few years previously to celebrate his first tanker captaincy, had sailed aimlessly out of Poole, alone, at Christmas and ended up here because there had been severe storms in Biscay preventing him returning. The champagne had been a pointless indulgence. Its cork hit Sir William on the head as he stood in the cockpit of the neighboring yacht. Apologies had led to introductions; introductions to mutual recognition.

Sir William was there with his two girls. It was exactly a year since the death of Lady Heritage and they
had all wanted to get away. Why they had come here, none of them seemed to know, but Richard suspected it was Robin’s idea: one of the vivid enthusiasms that seemed constantly to be impelling the gawky, sensitive, brilliant sixteen-year-old.

Certainly, it had nothing to do with the dazzling, slightly bored Rowena, who seemed to be following the debutante fashion of the time—he discovered later, she led it—in approaching everything with a chic ennui. The precociously mature twenty-two-year-old would rather have been almost anywhere else—and she made no secret of it.

Richard would never forget that first sight of her, sitting in the after cockpit of the Heritage yacht, sipping Bollinger, wearing Balmain, like Princess Grace come slumming it down the coast. Nor would he ever forget the fierce, feral passion that simmered just beneath that glacial surface.

How well he had fitted into the family; worshiped by one daughter, beloved of the other. Respected by a man whom he respected. Social calls in London soon became professional ones to Heritage House in Leadenhall Street. Richard’s standing as an in de pen dent tanker captain eventually expanded by his appointment as senior captain to Heritage Shipping. Rowena and he married within the year, a red-eyed Robin as bridesmaid.

Neither of Richard’s commitments to the Heritage family was a sinecure. Keeping Rowena in the style demanded by her position in society soon used up even his salary and he soon came to count himself almost fortunate when commitments to her father kept him away at sea where he at least lived free. But they were five heady, happy years nevertheless. He was building something
lasting—or so it seemed. With his father-in-law, one of those hardheaded, down-to-earth northern businessmen who are the backbone of City institutions, he was creating a shipping empire of almost Greek proportions. During his increasingly rare visits home, he was feted as the dashing husband of a leader of the jet set, his name in the society as well as the financial pages; his picture at the front of
Tatler
as well as in the middle of
The Economist.
A coming man on every front.

It ended at Robin’s twenty-first birthday party.

She was at the London School of Economics at the time, although her father would much have preferred her to be following in Rowena’s footsteps at finishing school in Lausanne, or with her family friends at Oxford. The party itself was held at Cold Fell, the great house overlooking Hadrian’s Wall in Cumbria, which had come to Heritage with his late wife, Lady Fiona Graham.

Richard and Rowena drove up; Richard, at least, unaware that anything was wrong. The house was full of undergraduates, echoing to youthful laughter for the first time since the thirties when Lady Fiona’s parents had entertained the bankrupt Gertrude Lawrence and the young Noel Coward here, with the others of their set.

Sir William was in his element, dispensing punch and fatherly advice, insisting to one and all, “Nay, call me Bill,” in his rich northern brogue, though none ever dared. Richard had joined him, of course, keeping an eye on all the excited young faces, discreetly checking all the more obvious places where virtue could be lost; feeling almost ancient in the process.

But it was Robin’s night. Richard had never seen her look so lovely. She would never rival the cool perfection
of her big sister. She remained slightly gawky, even when trying to be chic; even when dressed by Laura Ashley. Time and again their eyes met over the throng of her friends. Time and again they danced. He ought to have queued for the honor—he would have had to have joined a considerable queue to get a dance with his own wife—but she crossed out whole sections of her dance card and came to him time and again.

At midnight she demanded the vintage champagne. A bottle had been left in the library specially, and the two of them went through together. The great, book-lined room was empty, as was obviously part of Robin’s simple plan. Richard suddenly found her in his arms. With all the overpowering enthusiasm she applied to everything in her life, she loved him; had always loved him: would always love him. As gently as possible, he pushed her away. He loved her too, but as a sister. Anything else would be unthinkable. And what about Rowena?

Stung by the simple unfairness of it, she told him about Rowena. How, during his absence at sea, she was busily sleeping her way through
Burke’s Peerage.

At first he had refused to believe her, but she was well stocked with proof. In the end, half convinced, he had gone to Sir William. Sir William had known for some time, but had hidden the truth; only Richard, it soon transpired, had not known.

Rowena herself was slightly surprised by all the fuss. She had always been given exactly what she wanted. The most expensive jewelry, clothes, and perfumes had been hers for the asking. She saw no reason why lovers should be any different. She really could not understand that this was where Richard drew the line. Like any spoiled child, she started throwing tantrums. There and
then, at Robin’s party, she threw the first. Richard had never seen her like this; nor had Sir William for many years: but then, Rowena had had everything she had wanted from the time she was seventeen.

The marriage turned to dross almost at once, and all Sir William’s plans for Richard were automatically put at risk. The simple fact was that blood was thicker than water and so Rowena found it easy enough to drive a wedge between the men. This was not grand opera. It had not even reached the stature of tragedy yet. Richard and Sir William talked things through carefully. It seemed to them that the matter had not yet gone beyond the point where reconciliation was possible. And he still loved his wife. If she could remain faithful, he would welcome her back with open arms.

In succeeding years, going over the mess time and again in his mind, he looked back at himself with increasing wonder. He could not believe he had agreed to such a thing, for he was a fiercely proud man. Nor, indeed, could he see how Bill Heritage could have asked it of him. Only when Robin had smiled at him on the night she had first come aboard did he remember Rowena’s smile, and the power it had once held over him.

Rowena had grudgingly agreed to try, as though it were she who had been wronged. A second honeymoon was mooted and agreed to: the perfect solution; a working holiday for Richard, a cruise for Rowena, who had never sailed the Cape Route before.

Sir William’s new flagship was hurried into commission for the purpose and named
Rowena.
Time was short. Rowena was impatient, and Sir William so worried that he made one of the few serious business errors of his life. He insured his own bottom rather than waiting
for the underwriters—desperate of course, but so confident in the massive tanker and in her captain that he bore the whole weight of the insurance himself, risking far more than he could afford to lose, instead of waiting for the consortium of businessmen who would normally share the risk with him on advice from Lloyd’s of London.

The cruise passed off well enough until they reached the Channel. Then, quite simply and deliberately, Rowena kicked over the traces. She had never been a one-man woman. She could never be one. The strain of remaining faithful was going to prove too much for her. She backed out of the deal. She took the young third engineer to bed. Richard found out that morning, and had just backed out of the deal—and out of the family, and the company—himself, when the whole thing went up in his face.

That was the stuff of his nightmares—the massive power of the moment grinding closed on him like a great steel door that no power at his command could hold ajar.

Stage by stage he relived it in his dreams from the first sight of the pale, twisting bodies in his cabin, which had driven him back onto the bridge, to Daniel Strong’s first urgent, “Sir!”

The vision of their bodies stayed before his eyes throughout the rest of it, though he knew the third engineer would have been back at his post before the end of it and Rowena, calculatedly, alone. The sight and sound of their coupling had remained more real to him than the death of his ship until that first grinding roar of collision. That was part of the horror of it—had the knowledge affected his judgment? Was there a moment when what she had been doing got in the way of what
he had been doing? Had she caused him an instant of hesitation that had made him lose it all?

Not according to the Coastguards who had watched it all on their radar, nor according to the helicopter pilot who had seen the final impact through an eddy in the fog—and was lucky to live through the explosion. Not according to the survivors of the other ship who had watched their captain leave the bridge, putting an inexperienced boy in charge: a so-called third officer who, it transpired, had not been qualified at all. An overconfident, inept young man who had panicked and done everything wrong.

And yet Richard still wondered, remembering how remote he had felt during that sequence from the first warning on the Collision Alarm Radar, to formal warning by siren, radio, Coastguard; from standard avoiding action to sickening realization that the oncoming signal—they did not see the ship itself until the very end, of course—which was steaming the wrong way down the Channel’s one-way street in any case, had turned onto a collision course and sealed all their fates.

The bodies had been before his eyes more vividly than anything until those massive bows came chopping toward him out of the fog bank. Their sighing had filled his ears with more reality than anything until the colossal roar of the impact.

And everything else had been darkness and silence anyway.

After the inquiry, the two men found themselves strangers. Rowena’s ghost stood between them. Robin could see only the terrible cost of her infatuation with her dashing brother-in-law, and turned from Richard to try to make it all up to Sir William. She became the business partner, adviser, and son that Richard had almost
been, working so much harder; gaining so much less of the credit. But almost single-handedly holding Heritage shipping together until her father recovered; and that recovery was years in coming. Even now, once in a while, he would do something ill-advised, almost suicidal in business terms.

Like buying the oil in
Prometheus.

Richard lay on his bunk, chin on his chest, lost in these thoughts; wondering why Robin was really here. His memory of her twenty-first birthday was so vivid, he could still feel her hot in his arms, still smell the champagne on her breath as she swore undying love. How different things would have been had he loved the little sister. But ten years ago she had been a child: the idea was pointless. Or had been, then…

His phone rang and he reached for it, still lost in thought.

The moment Robin felt it go she hurled herself forward. She had just reached the bottom of the ladder when the whole felucca lurched left and so she was able to dive forward and upward in one, grabbing the rungs above while her legs pumped smoothly below.

The parrot, of course, deserted as soon as it saw the sky.

She had taken perhaps ten steps upward when the ladder toppled sideways with the rest of the hull. She twisted, reaching up for the lip of the hatchway with her right hand while keeping firm hold of her lifeline with her left. In this position she hung while the felucca pivoted round her. The hatch that had been a hole above her became almost a doorway framing her as she faced inward. She pushed off hard and stepped back into the dazzling, roaring day.

At once, the seat on the boatswain’s chair under her left armpit took all her weight; but as it slid up past her ribs, it gathered her shirt into a pad which, during the next few minutes, protected her shoulder from serious damage.

As soon as she swung out of the hatchway, the deck fell forward into her face. She brought up her arms and legs, bouncing off it as best she could, with elbows and knees. Everything was happening far too quickly now to allow her to plan ahead or even to think clearly. So it was that the broken railing round the edge of the deck was able to slide down unexpectedly and bash her over the crown of her head. She felt giddy; almost slipped into unconsciousness. But her lithe body just would not quit. Everything went extremely bright. Reality wavered. She seemed to lose contact with what was going on around her.

The high aftercastle gathered her almost gently to itself, swinging in from her right as the wreck fell left. She flew out, spun around, came back in like a pendulum, in the grip of forces far beyond her control. When her mind cleared, she was just sliding off
Prometheus
’s huge torpedo-head protrusion on which the felucca had rested, and slipping down into the sea.

Horrified, she looked up. In a mess, hanging out over the side, destroyed by the same physical forces that had been sporting with her over the last few minutes, the tripod of the boatswain’s chair protruded like a bizarre bowsprit. Then this, too, seemed to swing into dizzying motion as the water took her and swept her into the boiling bedlam of the bow wave.