The Wind Chill Factor (25 page)

We made our way among the palatial Grecian columns of the Grosvenor House, obtained an enormously expensive room overlooking the street and the park. Peterson stood staring into the rain. “Cat Island … I suppose it pours all the time on Cat Island.”

Early the next morning, fortified with eggs and kippers and muffins, lugging a thermos of coffee, we rented an Audi and set off for Land’s End, desperately dependent on a road map and Peterson’s ability to drive on the wrong side of the road. Any change in the weather was clearly for the worse. The windshield wipers beat steadily. Headlights were on all day.

The man at the car rental had told us that Cornwall was like a foreign country. Turning left at Morwenstow to follow the coastline, I spotted a
MEBYON CURNOW!
chalked on a brick wall: home rule for Cornwall! The rain was beating in off the Atlantic, washing the chalk down the dirty wall.

Sharpnose Point, Marham Church, Dizzard Point Cambeak, Fire Beacon Point, Tintagel Castle. …

The rain and fog to our right rolling in from the sea blended sea and sky into a deepening gray void. Blotting out the light. Through rips in the fog, breakers from the Atlantic punished the shattered headlands far below us. The cliffs of granite dropped away like the walls of a skyscraper miles in length.

At Tintagel Castle we stretched our legs. King Arthur’s birthplace stood alone, devoid of tourists in the brutish weather, being slowly reclaimed by nature over the centuries. The towers and walls rose like mossy men guarding what lay inland beyond. Below, the Atlantic crashed wildly against the causeway. The ruins were carpeted in wet green turf and in the mist your mind played tricks.

Peterson had his hands over his ears; rain dripped from his nose. He beckoned to me. The breakers drowned out his voice. We got back in the Audi. It was three o’clock and darkness was creeping all around us. We were forty miles from Land’s End and Dawson and the good ship
Lear.

The place-names crept by, wetly, wearily. My back was beginning to ache from the long hours. Doyden Castle, Pentire Point, Wadebridge, Trevase Head. …

At Newquay the hotels brooded darkly over the wet gray beaches as we sped past. I was driving while Peterson dozed; everything blurred through the steady rain. The wind along the coast had gathered velocity. Water exploded like pebbles on the windshield, then slacked off to nearly nothing, then the cycle repeated itself. The radio crackled relentlessly.

The narrow streets of St. Ives were almost deserted. A man in a beret and a heavy sweater stood on a corner, drunk, pissing in the gutter. He stared into the glare of the lights, wiped a hand across his beard, and continued his duty.

Down toward Land’s End, the fading remnants of daylight revealed only the bayonet-steel granite, severe and bleak, an exposed fist of stone flung angrily into the sea. Gurnard’s Head, Pendeen Watch, Cape Cornwall, St. Just. … Penzance to the left and you between it and the ocean coast with the countless coves and inlets and rock-shrouded bays, chinks nibbled out of the mainland.

Land’s End. Beyond it, if your brakes fail, you plummet from cliff top into the churning sea. There is no more England once you’ve got to Land’s End.

Peterson peered out of sleep warily.

“Christ. End of the world.” He yawned.

Before us, a lone hotel clung to the edge like an outcast, banished forever from the company of others. The gale whined around the car. Sea gulls wheeled and dipped into the void, like phantoms swallowed in the fog.

A fire roared in the grate; a woman brought us brandy and cakes and coffee. My throat was raw; the brandy burned it, fired my stomach.

“I wonder, Cooper, I really wonder. …” Peterson frowned. “I think I have a temperature. Some madman thinks he’s going to get us out in a boat in this goddamned hurricane. We’re headed for some nickel-fiction place called Cat Island. There can’t be anything out there, it’s just not possible.”

The youngish woman reappeared, threw a log on the fire. “It is a blustery day,” she said simply. “Will you be staying the night?”

“No. We’re going out there.” I gestured toward the coast.

“To the Scillies?” She seemed surprised. “It’s not a good night for it, is it?”

“Not the Scillies. A place called Cat Island. Do you know it?”

“Mr. Dawson is coming for you, then?” I nodded. “Well, he’s a dandy sailor, my father says. And the
Lear
is a lovely craft, too.”

She smiled again. “They sometimes come here for dinner in the summertime. Dawson fancies the girls, the young people who come down for the surfing at Newquay and St. Ives.” Peterson tried to stifle a yawn, gave up on it.

“And doesn’t Steynes fancy the girls?”

“Goodness, no. He has no use for the girls, I’m sure.”

“And why is that?”

“You’ll see, won’t you?” She picked up the tray after giving the fire a severe poke. “Have a nice journey.” She smiled formally and went away.

We huddled in a shed at the tip of the wooden dock, oily slick with the pelting rain. I wiped my eyes, Peterson cursed. A light blurred like a tiny cold moon through the fog and rain, an engine throbbed against the constant thundering of breakers. The
Lear
bumped solidly against the timbers. A large, exceedingly agile man in a dark slicker was making the ship fast to a piling with a coil of thick rope. The lamp swung from a hook over our heads, creaking. Finally he jumped onto the dock and leaned into the rain, making for the shed.

“Cooper?” he yelled over the fierce whine.

I nodded. “And Mr. Peterson.” A black turtleneck curled up over his chin and a rainhat was pulled low. I smelled oil and sea water.

“Well, come aboard then,” he said good-naturedly, “and don’t fall in the sea.” He gave us a hand on the slippery ladder. The rope strained; the
Lear,
which seemed to be about thirty-five feet in length, with a large cabin, quivered. Peterson came up behind me and we headed own the stairway into the cabin while Dawson cast off.

He came into the warm cabin and slipped out of the slicker, took off the rainhat, hung them on a hook. It was an immaculate room, polished brass and wood and built a long time ago. Rain beaded on the windows.

“Bad night,” Peterson said.

“We’re used to it.” Dawson’s mouth was crooked, his nose flattened, his eyebrows snarled like a hedge, everything dark brown. “Here, a tot of brandy’ll do you good.” He poured from a flask into coffee mugs. He moved a switch, the engines throttled up, pounding beneath us.

“Still it’s a bad night in my book,” Peterson grumbled.

“Choppy, it’s choppy, I’ll give you that, but the
Lear
can handle it like a knife in cakes. Hold on … I’m taking her out. …”

Waves chopped across the deck, foamed at the windshield, coiled like snakes across the deck. Peterson slumped in a pile on the bench, clutching his mug of brandy. His face was paling rapidly.

“How long will it take us to get there?”

Dawson stared straight ahead. “An hour, give or take a bit. It’s not far, you know, but it’ll be slow going, fighting the seas.”

I drank some brandy.

“Have you been with Sir Ivor long?”

“Let’s see, I met the Colonel in forty-two. He was back from Africa by then, working for CIGS, and I was seconded to him on some special assignments.” He glanced my way, drained off his brandy. “Been with him ever since, the way it turned out.”

Later he said: “Don’t be alarmed—the
Lear
is seaworthy. Like the old pirates. The coastline harbored more pirates in its day than any other in the world.”

“Are you a pirate?” Peterson asked.

“No, no, not a pirate.”

“Jesus,” Peterson muttered, “thank God for small favors.”

“But we fitted out the
Lear
to go U-boating in the old days. Used to run the Channel looking for the bastards. Good recreation, it was.”

“Ever find one?”

“Oh, yes, we found two of them. Wounded from one thing or another, unable to submerge. Came across them in the fog.”

“What did you do?” Peterson’s interest was fanned.

“Well, the Colonel’s blood was up, you know.” Dawson poured another measure of brandy. “We mounted cannon. We opened fire, no damned warning shots, shot hell out of both of ’em. Sunk ’em both, you know.”

“Good God,” Peterson muttered.

“Water was full of Jerries, yelling and waving, quite a sight. …”

“You took prisoners, then?”

“Prisoners?” Dawson smiled, wolfish, deep ridges at the corners of his mouth. “No.”

“Well, what did you do? You couldn’t leave them to drown.”

“Oh, no, we didn’t leave them to drown. No, the Colonel ordered me to run them down. And he made use of a machine gun.” He was staring ahead again, into the fog. “No, nobody drowned, I’m certain of that, sir.”

Sick, weak-kneed, exhausted, we finally felt the clunk against the jetty. It was old, constructed of splintered timbers, soaked with the rain. That structure itself finally petered out and after Dawson had secured the boat in a covered hutch we followed him across the pebbly shingle of sand, encountered scrub and bracken and finally, gasping, reached what he called the Beach Road. A lengthy, gleaming, rain-spattered pre-World War II Rolls-Royce sat squarely in the middle of the road. We bundled into the back seat, teeth chattering.

“There are only two vehicles on Cat Island,” Dawson said as he arranged himself behind the wheel. “And I’m the only one who drives them. So I can park wherever I damned please.” He put it in gear and we began to move cautiously forward, headlights poking fingers of light into the mist and fog. “This road was built in 1760, according to the official history. The Colonel had it repaved when he retired here.” He gestured into the darkness at the vaguest of shapes. “Disused old carriage house there, some stables, tennis courts all caged in … but the vines have pretty well taken over. None of that has been used since the whole family came often to the island, a long time ago, before my time. Now there’s only the Colonel left.”

Peterson swore under his breath, stared into the dark. “Jesus,” he said suddenly, “what the hell is that?” The lights had tweezed an angular, gaunt shape at the roadside, plunged into the turf like a huge dagger. Dawson stopped the car. Water coursed down the beam of his flashlight playing across the shape.

“It’s a German bomber. It crashed here during the Blitz, badly shot up, on fire. No survivors, by the way. The Colonel likes it, says we should treat it like a piece of lawn sculpture. So there it sits.” He flicked the light off. The Colonel’s funny about it, likes things that remind him of the war.” The Rolls began to ease forward. “He left the remains of his own Hurricane on the other side of the island, out near the cliffs. Quite a story, that. He was pretty badly riddled over the Channel and just barely got the aircraft back to Cat Island—ten feet lower and he’d have caught the top of the cliffs. As it was, he skimmed in over the top, belly-landed it, and blacked out. The Messerschmitt chasing him came in too low, couldn’t see the cliffs in the fog, and flew smack into the granite.” He chuckled quietly and I found myself straining to hear him. “That one is still there, too, driven like a big rusty nail right into the island. That’s a lot of wrecked airplanes, three of them, on an island only a mile long and three hundred yards wide. But, hell, it’s an unusual island in lots of ways.”

“The Colonel sounds like a strange man,” I said.

“Bit eccentric, you know. But that’s the English all over, isn’t it? You Yanks always get a chuckle out of eccentric Englishmen.” He laughed, continued: “Bertie Wooster and Jeeves. Well, the Colonel’s an eccentric, all right. And more power to him, I say.”

A massive stone wall rose out of the fog.

“This is the castle’s outer wall.” Dawson left us, beaten by the wind.

“Cooper, Cooper,” Peterson growled. “What in the name of God have you gotten us into now? This is insane.”

“It’s only the weather.”

“Goddamn Colonel’s obviously a nut case. Broken airplanes all over his playpen. This Dawson is his keeper. He’s got that tolerant sound when he’s talking. It comes from taking care of crazy people.”

Dawson came back and eased the car through the gate, past the wall four feet thick.

“Main house is about two hundred yards up the hill. We’re in the keep now but it’s all ruins. Things a thousand years old are pretty often in ruins.” Dawson enjoyed his role as guide. “We’ve got a Stone Age hut here. Think of it. And a graveyard from Roman times.”

He braked the Rolls before the large, three-tiered, square house. It was absolutely symmetrical: window for window, column for column. Dim yellow lights shown from deep inside and I thought of Roman campfires and soldiers huddled in the brutish night.

Dawson took our bags and left them in a porter’s cubbyhole off the entrance hall. The yellow light came from ornate wall brackets which had once been converted to electricity. The hallway gave onto murky depths where the paneled walls became all but invisible. The floor was stone and cold. He took us into a library toward the back of the main floor. The walls were immensely thick; books rose like the face of a tor into the darkness. Peterson made for the fireplace, where flames leaped hungrily from huge, blackened logs. Outside, the Atlantic wind screeched along the plateau; rain beat on the windows.

“I’ll go check on the Colonel,” Dawson said, “if you’ll just make yourselves comfortable. Brandy, whiskey, soda—”

Peterson poured a brandy into an oversized snifter with a coat of arms cut into its side, hurried back to the fire. “Cold,” he grumbled, “so damned wet.”

A table contained framed photographs, ranging in subject matter from family outings in tennis gear that had a twenties look to pilots grouped around a Spitfire in some corner of a forgotten English aerodrome. Propped in a corner was a huge propeller—from such a plane, I supposed, and on the wall I saw a striking antique-looking crude black-and-white drawing on framed, glassed-in parchment. A body with an expressionless face was being dragged behind a horse and a man appeared to be dancing beside the body, but he, likewise, possessed an utterly disinterested face. Beneath, in perfect penmanship, was an inscription several lines long: