Daring Dooz (The Implosion Trilogy (Book 2)) (15 page)

Chapter 32

While Mrs Hathaway was running her usual
five breakfast miles on the treadmill, the phone rang again. The ringing woke
Aubrey up, but when he realised it was only the phone and not a police siren,
he closed his eyes and went back to tunnelling through into the bank.

It was Giles.

He was overjoyed to hear Mick and Jim
had been located.

‘That’s it then, Tallulah. All you have
to do is get yourself and your fella down to Cowes, and it’s anchors away! I’ve
got all the equipment you could possibly want already stowed on board. You’ll
need to get some new Caribbean-type clothes. There’s lots of up-market casual
stuff in the shops. My stylist will help you choose. We want you to look your
best at all times. As we say: Daring Doozers are Winnerz not Loozers. They
expect to see hot tottie action, from cover to cover.’

She was about to set him straight about
the ‘hot tottie’ remark, but her latest bank statement was open on the coffee
table, and she decided to postpone the setting straight to a more appropriate
moment.

*

The next morning, she made calls to Mick and Jim’s sat
phone number, but there was no answer. After the fourth attempt, she gave up.
There were more important things to do – and anyway, she knew exactly
where they were. A few hours later, Mrs Hathaway and Aubrey arrived at Waterloo
station in good time for the train. They were wearing their purchases from
Aubrey’s post-operative trip to Harrods. Mrs Hathaway wore a bright red
Barbour Polarquilt Jacket
with black, ‘7 For All Mankind’ jeans and Kurt Geiger
ankle boots in black suede.

Aubrey wore a pink and light blue shell suit, by Cavlin
Kiln, with trainers that flashed little lights when he walked. It wasn’t from
Harrods. He had felt there was nothing there to suit his casual apparel
aspirations. However, a pavement stall outside the main doorway had
just
what he wanted. He was particularly
lucky to get this natty outfit, because just after his purchase, the stall
owner and his stall were collected by a police van and taken away.

Giles had said travel light, and that’s what they were
doing - apart from Mrs Hathaway’s old leather travel trunk, which contained
over 400 assorted manuals, guides and instructional videos on DVD. For over
three decades, she had lived by, and relied on, the vast amount of knowledge
contained in the trunk, and there was no way it was being left behind.

So, there they stood in the dusty spotlight of the
mid-morning sun. An odd couple with a large travel trunk, two first-class
reserved tickets to Southampton and no real idea of what the future had in
store.

They looked up at the clock above the main entrance.
It was time to go. They gazed for a moment into each other’s eyes, and breathed
in and out, simultaneously. Then, holding hands tightly, they dragged the
travel trunk through the archway and into the dark recesses of the concourse.

Chapter 33

Everything went perfectly, and in no
time at all, they were seated on the hi-speed ferry over to West Cowes. In the
seat pocket were some magazines which told visitors all about the wonderful
things they could do on the Isle of Wight.

As Mrs Hathaway turned the pages, it
occurred to her, how isolated her life had been, even though she had lived in
the centre of London for years. She also thought how much she would miss
exploring new things in life if anything went wrong with the Daring Dooz
challenges. What good was Aubrey and what good was £2 million if you got
yourself eaten alive collecting rare poisonous rhubarb in an underwater cave
full of vampire bats and hyenas.

She flipped the pages, and even the most
mundane things seemed to resonate. There was a stupid advertisement for a
musical duo, ‘Who Shot Nelson’. She pointed it out to Aubrey. ‘Look, what a
stupid name, and anyway
nobody
knows
who shot Nelson.’

‘I do,’ said Aubrey - ‘a bloke with a
gun!’

Aubrey was quite pleased that she
laughed. He assumed it was his urbane wit - whatever that was.

In truth, a few months back, he’d been
to see his Auntie - Ethel Wainright. Ethel ran Salmonella’s - a dingy club out
in the sticks, north of Portsmouth. She was about to go into an old folks’ home
in Bournemouth, and, as she was probably the only one of his relatives not in
prison, he felt duty bound to go and see the delinquent old bag.

He found the place eventually. He said,
‘Hello Auntie Ethel, it’s me Aubrey.’

She told him she had a band practicing
that night, so he could sod off to the back room, get pissed, then bugger off
back to London. Aubrey was happy he’d called when she was in a good mood.

He followed her instructions, and stayed
in the office getting blasted. He could hear ‘Who Shot Nelson’ practicing in
the background, but couldn’t be arsed to go and have a look. However, he did
remember that reply - ‘a bloke with a gun’ - which was part of their big
finishing song, ‘Who Shot Nelson?’

But all in all, it was not a nice night.
When the band had packed up and gone, and Ethel had thrown him out, he found
some bastard had shoved a pitchfork and a wheelbarrow though the windscreen of
his old Mondeo.

Ethel told him ‘Who Shot Nelson’ were a
four piece, but now, it seemed, they were a duo. That story appealed to
Aubrey’s nascent philosophical tendencies, and he thought ‘funny how everything
changes all the fuckin’ time.’

These deep, metaphysical thoughts were
interrupted by the bump as the ferry tied up at the West Cowes landing stage.
As they dragged the travel trunk up the covered walkway onto dry land, they
could see Giles waving in the sunlight.

Giles’ face fell when he saw Aubrey, and
he made a mental note to make sure Tallulah kept him well out of camera shot.
But that didn’t dampen the enthusiasm of his welcome, at least not by much.

A large, black limousine was waiting to
whisk them away. And even Aubrey, who had an understandable aversion to large,
black limos, was glad to be finishing the long journey in style.

At Cowes,
Daring
Dooz
had taken a luxurious suite of offices overlooking the harbour. An
immense panoramic window gave them a spectacular view of the River Medina and
world-famous stretch of water. Giles immediately began explaining everything
they needed to know, about the equipment, the technology, the stills and video cameras,
the sat nav, VHF radio, autopilot, self-steering gear,
electronic
compass
and satellite
television
.

‘Look,’ interrupted, Mrs Hathaway,
‘that’s all very interesting, but we’ve been on the go all day, and it would be
great if we could get some rest. If you can get the equipment manuals up to my
hotel room, I’ll read through them, tonight.’

Giles looked a little disappointed,
again, but
he
wasn’t the one facing
the challenges of the Atlantic, accompanied by what looked like a useless
hobbit who had just finished taking a course of extra-strength ugly pills. What
she said went.

But he needed an answer to a delicate
question, and drew Mrs Hathaway to one side.

‘Look, I’ve arranged for the limousine
to take you to your hotel, but is it - you know - double room, twin room or
separate?’

‘I think separate will be fine - we’re
an item, but not
that
much of an
item.’

‘Well, if you
do
become a 100 per cent item,
particularly
on this trip, you know our readers will be up for all the - er - you know -
er...’

‘Yes, I
know
,’ she said, fully aware that if one particular ‘er - detail’
about Aubrey was released, the circulation of
Daring Dooz
would triple overnight.

*

The next day, in the middle of the
morning, Mrs Hathaway arrived at
Daring
Dooz
temporary HQ, looking a little tired. She’s been indulging in one of
her favourite pastimes - the nocturnal scouring of technical equipment manuals.
The morning mist had disappeared and the sun shone bright and clear over the
river with yachts, large and small, bobbing in the light swell.

‘I suppose you’d like to see your vessel,’
said Giles, over coffee and croissants.

‘Thanks,’ she said, ‘but first, I’d like
to see Aubrey.’

‘Aubrey?’

‘Yes, I can’t raise him - phoned his
room, banged on the door - nothing.’

The sea air must have done Aubrey good,
because a minute later, he arrived, looking very pleased with himself.

‘Hello you two. Got up early, went round
the shops, got some stuff for the trip - what d’ya think?’

He was wearing a jaunty peaked cap with
the word ‘Skipper’ around the rim, and a t-shirt saying ‘Hello I’m A Sailor’
with the ‘I’m A’ in very, very small lettering. Round his middle was an
inflatable plastic ring with faded photographs of Troy Tempest and Phones from
Stingray.

An hour later, he returned to HQ after a
shopping trip with Mrs Hathaway. Their purchases included a bright yellow Henri
Lloyd Ocean Pro jacket
,
bright yellow Ocean trousers, a Baltic Marstrand Flotation Jacket, pro-racing
deck shoes, along with a range of astronomically expensive, hoodies, fleeces,
sweaters, thermal underwear, hats, gloves and sunglasses. And despite the help
of Giles’ well-meaning, but rather irritating stylist, she had bought both of
them, a selection of tropical clothing.

Between full English breakfast mouthfuls,
Aubrey expressed his gratitude, and angled to be allowed to take stuff he had bought
originally.

Now Aubrey was fully protected from the
elements, Mrs Hathaway relented, but insisted the Stingray inflatable ring had
to remain stowed away, until they were out of sight of land.

*

Their mode of transport to the sunny Caribbean was a
beautiful 40-foot
Sweden Yacht 42
, specially designed for one-man, ocean-going
sailing.

‘Very nice,’ said Mrs
Hathaway, as Giles started to give them a guided tour.

Within a minute, it was
obvious Giles knew nothing about yachts. Mrs Hathaway took Giles’ list of
features and carried on.

‘Full-hoist, self-tacking working jib. Good. Aluminium
mast with 2kW radar dome. Excellent. VHF radio, Ray marine 6000 autopilot with
400G processor, Vane self-steering option. Chartplotter. First class. 55hp
Volvo D2-55 diesel engine.

‘Know the D2-55 well, in theory, at least,’ she said.
‘When I was reading the manual last night, it seemed perfectly straightforward.’

And so she went on through the list. But, as the man
who had paid one of the world’s leading ocean-going racers a fortune to select
and equip the boat, Giles felt he was due a comment or two.

‘It’s got six beds.’

‘Bunks,’ said Mrs Hathaway, absent mindedly as she
continued to check the technical specifications.

Aubrey was impressed with the yacht as it bobbed
gently at its mooring. All that polished wood and chrome and smart ropes. Plus
it had a nice place to have a kip and knock up some grub. His brain had not
been penetrated by the fact that he was facing thirty-odd days on this thing
with mountainous waves, filthy electrical storms, hurricane-force winds and God
knows what else. For the moment, he was happily intoxicated with new words,
such as transom, deep canoe bodies, pronounced rockers, forefoot knuckles and
soft bilges. And, despite knowing even less about yachts than Giles, he felt
the need to chip in.

‘Gorra ‘fridge?’

There was a fridge. Good, though Aubrey, as long as
there was somewhere to get a cold lager, he was sure he could handle anything.

*

That evening, as a special treat, the three of them
went for a meal at the Cowes Balti Towers restaurant, which Aubrey had
discovered on his early morning shopping trip. Mrs Hathaway was confident about
the voyage, despite finding out her old CD
Atlantic
Crossing
was not a useful instruction manual, but a collection of songs by
Rod something or other.

After a little more rummaging in her trunk, she’d
found a VHS tape,
Crossing the Atlantic
with a useless drunk.
The basic pitch of the programme was ‘you’ll have to
be mad to even consider it, but if you insist on going ahead, here are some
tips’. It was a strange programme, and she had a vague idea it might
not
be an instruction video, but part of
a TV series featuring alternative comedians, where the comedy was so bad, it
could easily be mistaken for something produced by the Royal Yachting
Association on a day when there wasn’t much proper royal yachting to do.

The implications of this lack of hard information were
lost on Aubrey as he happily wolfed down his standard mutton vindaloo, chana
bhuna and lager mix. Giles reassured Mrs Hathaway that, with the sat nav, radio
communications and internet connections he’d had installed, they would be able
to deal with any eventuality.

Later that evening, as she tucked a garblingly happy,
extremely inebriated Aubrey into bed, the enormity of the undertaking suddenly
struck her. If there were violent storms, what good was a Rod something or
other CD? If the mast was downed by lightning, what information would she get
from a load of under-age Groucho clubbers trying to be funny in a big water
tank?

When she got back to her room, she checked through her
trunk again and found a faded pamphlet. As far as she could tell, it was a free
gift from
Girl,
the old
Eagle’s
sister comic, all about how to
navigate by the stars. The paper was thin, the typeface was small and you could
just about see the hand-drawn illustrations. But it had a strange air of
authority. It was probably useless, but, as she sat on her bed and stared down
at the scrap of paper, it somehow gave her more comfort than the rest of Giles’
gizmos put together.