The Triple Goddess (38 page)

Arbella’s captain was made to walk the plank, which he did in a dignified manner to the cheers of the victors as they brandished their cutlasses. In a histrionic display of grief at the nobility with which the captain had toddled off to Davy Jones’s locker, the pirate chief picked the man’s dress hat off the deck, removed his own headwear of red knotted kerchief and put it on, athwart-wise in the style of Nelson, wept, and commanded the yards cock-billed in mourning.

He came up close and leered at Arbella. As she recoiled from the filthy black stubble of his beard and fetid breath, he swore an oath and said that he had never seen a finer man. Then he rewarded his crew by giving the order to splice the main-brace, allowing them to consume as much grog as they could take on board before passing out.

The captive’s rations were meagre. She was allowed a little salt beef, or junk. But mostly it was hard bread or ship’s biscuit, or a piece of rancid cheese; but she dared not complain, for fear of inviting lashes on her back from the cat-o’-nine-tails.

On her first morning she was put to work. The buccaneers were vociferous in critiquing everything she did. In addition to her daytime duties she was made to stand night-watch—the word “watch” derives from the Old English
wæccan
, meaning to stay awake—so that she got very little sleep and lost all sense of time. As is customary at sea, each twenty-four hour period was divided into five watches of four hours each; plus two half, or dog-, watches of two hours, a rotation that allowed the seamen more regulated rest.

But Arbella was not allowed benefit of the system. Every time she was caught falling dozing off she was punished by being sent to the galley to prepare the pirate chief’s next meal. He was very particular in what he ate, and demanded that she use only the highest quality and freshest ingredients that had been brought over from the captured frigate. The boatswain later confided to her that before he ran away to sea the captain had trained as a
sous-chef
at Rules Restaurant in London when it opened in 1798.

Arbella was sent everywhere. She loosed the topgallants and royals, and sheeted home the fore-royal. She braced yards and hauled on bowlines, and belayed halyards, and shook out reefs. She learned rope parcelling and worming, and how to make spun yarn. She became proficient in the use of a marline-spike as both fid and heaver.

She tied sailor’s knots, stevedore’s knots, reef knots, turl knots, blood knots, bow knots, water knots, reef knots, running knots, and figures of eight. She tied granny knots. She tied sheet bends, carrick bends, fisherman’s bends, and halyard bends. She tied half hitches, chain hitches, clove hitches, rolling hitches, killick hitches, timber hitches, slippery hitches, tiller’s hitches, midshipman’s hitches, marlinspike hitches, and tautline hitches. She tied bowlines-on-the-bight, cat’s paws, and monkey’s fists, sheepshanks, prusiks, square lashings, jams, and Turk’s and lark’s heads.

Alas, Arbella’s knots, hitches, bends, loops, and rope work generally were deemed substandard, and she was ordered to do more until her fingers bled. Then she was blindfolded, and the chief made her do still more while he swigged from a bottle of rum and timed her by counting off the seconds. Next she was set to picking oakum, caulking timbers, and tarring stays and shrouds. Clambering up and down companion-ways and ladders, she cleaned the cabins, and the between-decks, and the steerage and forecastle, and the rails, bulwarks, and water-ways.

After she had swabbed the upper and lower decks fore and aft, and dried them off with squilgees, she holystoned the planks, using a “prayer-book” to scrub those narrow places where the holystone was too large to go.

When she was finished, the pirate captain inspected her work to make sure that she had not missed any spots, or “holidays”; and then asked what she had in mind to prepare for his pudding that night.

On occasion, when he was pleased with her work and her cheesecake, which she flavoured with lemon juice to ward off scurvy, the swashbuckler-in-chief rewarded her by personally tarring her hair and plaiting it into a pigtail or queue, and instructed her to change into a tight white able seaman’s uniform that had belonged to one of her late sea-mates. Then he gave her a glass of port and cracked her a walnut.

But his good humour only lasted as long as his digestion, which was weak. Whenever his stomach got upset after dinner, as he ran to the head he ordered the crew to throw the galley waste around, so as to give Arbella something extra to clean up in the morning. As a result she got no time off for hammock-swinging, and gathering with the sailors round the scuttled butt, and yarning and dancing hornpipes with them, and singing sea shanties.

However she did become friendly with many of the crew, and in her few spare moments she darned their socks, listened to stories about their onshore lives and families, took down letters from them—only a few had mastered the rudiments of writing—for posting home from the next town they sacked, and gave them recipes for their wives. In return they taught her how to carve scrimshaws.

One evening the chief, as he sat picking at a light evening repast of omelette made with egg-whites, and dry toast, sat her down and began educating her in the difference between barks and cutters, brigs and hermaphrodite brigs and brigantines, lateen-rigged settees, schooners, corvettes, galiots, and snows. He taught her how to distinguish launches, pinnaces, sloops or shallops, luggers, yawls, jolly-boats, larboard quarter-boats, and gigs. He waxed lyrical about jibs, studding-sails, spankers, staysails, topsails, topgallants, shrouds, stays, and tops. He told her a lot more than she thought there might be to know about close-hauling and running downwind. He demonstrated how to use a quadrant, and an astrolabe, and a Jacob’s staff, and he lectured her on the constellations and how to navigate by them.

Later the same night the chief, unable to sleep for cogitating about the whereabouts of the
17th century Welsh privateering looter of the Caribbean, Sir Henry
Morgan,’s buried treasure, and how he might find it before anyone else beat him to the rum punch, joined her on deck where she was keeping watch and nibbling a piece of salt beef that one of the sailors had slipped her.

After extracting her promise that she would not tell the men, the captain confided that his name was Bruce, and that he was in love with a merman called Antonio who lived on a small island, more of a rock, really, near Sardinia. Bruce and Antonio were hoping some day to set up house there together.

Then the chief inflated his hair-matted chest and sang shanties to her in a light tenor until she nodded off.

The alarm-clock went off in Eaton Square much too early. As Arbella dragged herself out of bed, she was stiff and unsteady on her feet, and there were bruises on her legs and arms. The sheets were twisted like rope and her hands were very sore.

Surveying her exhausted features in the mirror, she vowed to become such a landlubber that she would never again get on a sailing boat, or take even the shortest of ferry rides. In the shower, the soap took a long time to lather, as if her skin were covered in salt, and after she dried off she slathered Elizabeth Arden Eight Hour C
ream Intensive Moisturizing Body Treatment
over herself.

Being ravenous, when she went downstairs Arbella pitched into the fullest breakfast that she had ever eaten. This greatly surprised and discomposed her father, a man who had regular booster shots to maintain his immunity against peripeteia, or sudden changes in life.

Valiantly fighting a rising panic, Stace
père
drew deep upon his inner resources to be encouraging. ‘Recovered your appetite, my dear? Daddy is so pleased. In re the oesophagus, a busy tract is a happy tract. Have another sausage.’

‘Aye aye, sir.’

‘Dearest?’

‘Sorry, Father. I was dreaming of the sea last night, and not pleasantly.’

‘It must be the Lloyd’s influence, darling, you’re working too hard and need a break. Your pater recommends a nice cruise: the sea air will revive you. The Caribbean is the place to go at this time of year, he understands; he hasn’t been there himself, but members of his staff get sent there for a day or two when they have their annual nervous breakdowns. All my employees get to see the Caribbean.

‘His lordship will arrange for his travel company, Raleigh Cruiselines, to book you on the
Captain Bligh
; it’s a most luxurious boat, the gem of the fleet. Don’t be put off by the name, it was just Daddy’s little joke. You’ll have the biggest state room, very “posh”: you know, Port Out, Starboard Home…though one gathers that the acronym is spurious.

‘You’ll love the
Bligh
, dear, and won’t have to do a thing all day except lounge about on deck and deflect the rays with broad spectrum SPF one hundred sunblock. Get plenty of rest and let the jolly Jack tars do all the work. His lordship will instruct the captain to make a fuss of you: Hank Morgan’s his name, he runs a very tight ship. Hank’ll invite you to dine at his table every night—gourmet food, of course, none of those old-fashioned ship’s rations, hard tack with weevils in it.

‘’Parently Hank trained to become a chef at Overton’s seafood restaurant on St James’s Street before he took to the briny, so he’s very proud of his kitchen.’

‘Galley.’

‘Eh? Anyway, your Pappy was very taken by Captain Morgan when he interviewed him, and hired him on the spot without bothering to check his references, which is unheard of in Pappyville. Had a long chat with him at the last Raleigh Christmas party—a full thirteen and one quarter minutes as one recalls.

‘He’s a rum cove: black spade beard, rolling gait, and a gold ring in his right ear…straight out of
Treasure Island
. One can just picture him with a wooden leg and a parrot on his shoulder yelling, “Pieces of eight, pieces of eight!” Jib-booms and bobstays!—as one understands the expression to be—and shiver my timbers! you might even meet someone on board and have one of those shipboard romances.

‘One should not expect Morgan as a son-in-law, however: the Hankster’s light on his feet…not that there’s anything wrong with that…and Daddy’s girl that you are, he doesn’t see you and him living upstairs.’

Arbella was feeling queasier by the second. ‘Jib-boom:’ she said in a low voice, ‘the boom rigged out beyond the bowsprit to which the tack of the jib is attached. Bobstay: a rope or chain extending from the bowsprit to the cutwater.’

‘Beg pardon?’

‘Nothing, Father.’ She was seriously regretting the breakfast that she had just eaten, and feeling the onset of nausea. ‘Please…I don’t mean to be rude, but I can’t think of anything I’d less rather do than go on a cruise.’ She held her napkin to her mouth.

Stace waved the protest aside. ‘Nonsense. This boat’s a pleasure palace with every conceivable modern convenience. There’s even a fully equipped hospital, which his lordship insisted upon, with every specialty of doctor on staff. Olympic-size swimming pool, tennis courts, gymnasium, cinema, auditorium…orchestral concerts featuring internationally renowned conductors and soloists, and bands…you can dance into the wee hours and sleep through the bells—that’s how they tell the time on boats, you know, by ringing the hours. Celebrity chefs to give cookery classes.

‘So take Daddy’s word for it, dear, when he assures you that you’ll have one whale of a time. Anyone who says you won’t become a regular Flying Dutchwoman and never wish to come onshore again is talking bilge-water.

‘Now then, why don’t you wrap a few slices of bacon in some fried bread, to eat on your way to work? One should be hung from the yard-arm for suggesting it, or flogged, but a good dollop of grease’ll help you put on some much-needed weight.’

Arbella ran to the bathroom and only just made it in time.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Arbella arrived late in the office that morning, sat down with several legal-size yellow pads of paper, and tried to summon sufficient inventive power to produce a slip for a potential Ralegh contract.

As she lobbed ball after ball of screwed-up paper at the waste basket, she wondered what had possessed her to come up with such a preposterous notion.

While she worked she smoked cigarette after cigarette, and drank cups of office coffee, neither of which stimulants improved either her mood or her stomach. Unlike the beverage that the secretaries served from Italian espresso machines to the executives on the Golden Mile, the ersatz brew from the brokers’ drinks service next to the toilets was a foul concoction, which led one to suspect that the two facilities were connected.

When one pressed a selection of buttons for powdered coffee, tea or chocolate, milk and sugar, at first nothing happened. This was the moment to remember to remove two plastic cups from the bottom of the dispenser to the side, and place them under the delivery spout over the drain reservoir. No matter how careful one was, a generous dozen cups would come out together, and the surplus had to be set to one side because they would not fit back in. The double thickness was necessary because one cup would melt into a bulge at the bottom and be too hot to pick up.

Once there had been cup-holders available, but these were hoarded by the old-timers and nobody under the age of fifty had one. Each year a precious few were bequeathed by individuals upon their retirement, to favoured colleagues with ten or fifteen years of active service left who were still unendowed with beverage receptacles, and who looked forward to receiving them more than would have being given a key to the executive bathroom.