Medusa (10 page)

I was wet and tired by the time I got in. Instead of providing me with the opportunity of thinking things through, it had taken all my concentration just to keep the dinghy upright and avoid capsizing. Ramón was waiting for me with a whole string of queries, mostly about matters that Soo would normally have dealt with, and there was the mail. I hadn't dealt with the day's mail yet and I loathed typing letters. There is a telephone call.' He was hovering over me as I stripped and towelled myself down. ‘About the
Santa Maria
.'

‘You deal with it,' I said. ‘You know the charter terms.'

‘He don't want a charter.'

‘You mean he wants to buy her …' I had been trying to sell the
Santa Maria
for over a year now.

But Ramón shook his head. ‘He already have a boat.'

I paused in the act of stepping into a dry pair of trousers. Then what the hell does he want? Who is he?'

‘Señor Flórez. He want you to phone him.'

Apparently Flórez was acting for the owner of a catamaran lying at the commercial dock, in the area reserved for larger yachts and those on passage. ‘He want to make some sort of exchange,' Ramón added.

A big cat had come in that morning. I had seen it running in under jib alone when I was talking to Petra, dark blue hulls with the paint flaking and a bad scrape along the port side. But she had still looked beautiful and very purposeful, a real thoroughbred.

I zipped up my trousers, pulled on a light sweater, Ramón still standing there and my mind in a whirl. The fishing boat wasn't worth much, not here in Menorca, and running it for charter was a lot of work with very little in it for us. It had never really paid its way. ‘How big is this cat?'

Ramón shrugged. ‘You phone Señor Flórez, then he tell you everything you want to know.'

But when I rang Flórez, all he said was, ‘Come and see it for yourself.' He and the owner would be on board that evening. ‘Then we talk about it, eh? I have a very good deal for you, Mr Steele.' And he had put the phone down, leaving me with all my questions unanswered and the deal not specified.

I would like to have driven over to the commercial dock right away. Looking through the yachting magazines, I had often thought what a perfect charter vehicle a big cat would be, and now I was being offered one, right here in Mahon. But the phone began ringing and I couldn't get away. There were two calls from England, as well as letters. Spring was in the air and people suddenly anxious to be sure their boats or their villas would be ready for the holidays.

I worked right through lunch, sending Ramón out to the restaurant at the corner for the fish-and-rice dish they
often put up for us when Soo was too busy to cook anything for herself. It was shellfish this time,
arroz de marisco,
with
calamares
tentacles finely chopped to give it body. All the time I was eating, and afterwards, I kept thinking about that catamaran, wondering what it would be like, what condition it would be in, what accommodation it would have, the navigation equipment and the state of the sails, excitement building though I knew bloody well the Mediterranean was a graveyard of shattered dreams.

It was late afternoon before I finally caught up with the office work and then it was time to visit the hospital again. I didn't mention the catamaran to Soo, even though I found her sitting up in bed reading a Spanish novel she had been lent. She looked much better, the dark patches under her eyes almost gone, some of the old sparkle back and her face more animated. The doctor had said she would be fit to leave the following day. ‘Eleven o'clock. Will that be all right? Can you come for me then?'

I said ‘Of course', and then she talked for a bit, about the friends who had been to visit her, the gossip they had passed on, and particularly about the Renatos' Red Cross party in the Quarries. ‘What will you say when you speak at the opening of that Albufera development? You never told me the Alcalde had asked you. Am I invited?'

‘I imagine so.'

‘But he didn't ask me, did he?'

‘I'm sure he will. When they send out the official invitations.'

She was silent then and I feared she was going into one of her sulky moods. But after a moment she brightened and began asking questions about the business – how Lennie was getting on with the villa out at Binicalaf, whether the equipment for the extra bathroom in another of the villas in our care had been flown in yet, had I remembered about completing the forms for customs clearance, and the accounts to settle with two of our suppliers. ‘You know, I'm really looking forward to being
back. Lying here with nothing to do but read and listen to the radio and think.' And she added darkly, ‘I've had all the time in the world to think these past few days.' And almost without a pause: ‘Did Gareth come and see you before he left? No, of course – I remember. He said it was bad enough seeing me, feeling it was his fault I'd lost the child, and though I told him I might have lost it anyway, he still said he couldn't face you. You told him it was his fault. I have a distinct memory of that.
Why the hell didn't you stay with her?
you shouted at him, and accusing him like that …'

Her voice trailed away. Then suddenly she said, ‘Did you know, he came up through the lower deck –
Ganges
, Dartmouth, the Fleet Board. Just like Papa. It makes a difference, doesn't it? You're more vulnerable then. Everything that bit harder. No admiral ever came up through the lower deck that I can remember. And it wasn't his fault. It wasn't anybody's fault.' Tears welled. I went to comfort her, but she pushed me away. ‘I know what you think. And you're probably right. I'll never have a child now.'

I didn't know what to say. Life doesn't make sense. There was Petra who didn't want a child, but would almost certainly have no difficulty if she did find herself with a bun in the oven. And Soo's mother, she had had five, one every two years, regular as clockwork. Then, being a devout Catholic, she must have gone on strike. That was probably why Soo and her father had been so close.

It was almost dark by the time I left the hospital and cut down the little hairpinned gut that led to the waterfront. I could see the catamaran before I had even parked the car, a broad cabin top spanning the whole width of the twin hulls, her single mast standing very tall and overtopping the dock sheds. She was moored outside of a big yawl, and when I asked permission to cross over to the catamaran, an American in a blue jersey, half-glasses perched on his nose, poked his head out of the doghouse. ‘Sure. But there's
nobody on board. They're over at the cafe-bar across the road.'

I asked him where he was from and he said, ‘Newport, Rhode Island, via Gibraltar and Ibiza.'

I swung my leg over his guardrails, crossed the foredeck to stand by the shrouds looking down on the long, slim line of the two hulls, their bows poking out from the broad foredeck platform, a safety net slung between them.

‘Good trip,' he went on. ‘We made it across the ditch in just over sixteen days, almost all of it under sail.'

A woman's head appeared in the hatch, grey-haired like the man. ‘That cat belong to you?' she asked.

‘I wish it did.' I jumped on to the cabin top, moving aft across the top of it to drop down into the cockpit. There was a swivel chair for the helmsman immediately aft of the wheel and a console full of dials – engine revs, speed through the water, true and apparent wind speeds, just about everything anybody could want, and though the door was locked, I could see through the glass panel that the whole arrangement was repeated in the saloon, which was broad and spacious, running across the ship with a semi-circular settle, a big folding table and steps leading down into the hulls on each side. Compared with the old
Santa Maria
the accommodation was so grand it was more like a house, and around the chart table, on the starb'd side, there was everything a navigator could wish for, radar, sat-nav and Decca, ship-to-shore radio telephone …

‘Quite a machine, eh?' the American said.

I nodded, laughing ruefully. To own this sort of a vessel I'd have to sell both our villas. They were in our joint names, and even if Soo agreed and we succeeded in selling them on the present market, it would probably not be enough. The ship needed painting, of course, and the scrape along the outer curve of the port hull was deeper than I had thought. It looked as though some frames might be broken. But otherwise she seemed in remarkably good shape. There was even a big semi-inflatable moored
alongside with wheel steering, spray screen and remote controls to the outboard engine.

I hauled myself back on to the American's deck. ‘You came through Gib, you say. Did you see a Royal Navy frigate in the harbour there?'

‘Not that I recall. It's a big place, all those high stone quays, and anyway we were round in the marina.' And he added, ‘We saw some US Navy ships though. They were powering through the Straits as we came in from Cape St Vincent. Destroyers by the look of them. More watchdogs for the Sixth Fleet's carriers, I guess.'

I was back on the dock then, wondering why anyone should want an old fishing boat like the
Santa Maria
in place of that cat. I could see her name now. It was on the flat, sloping stern of each hull –
Thunderflash
. If I owned a machine like that … I turned back to the American. ‘What made you think I was the owner?'

He smiled and gave a quick shrug. ‘Something in the way you were moving about her. Thought maybe it was a delivery job.' There had been four of them on board, he told me, when they came in that morning. One he took to be the skipper, two were obviously crew, and there had also been a short, dark man dressed in a suit who looked and behaved like a passenger. They had had to clear immigration, as well as health and customs, so he presumed the boat had come from France or Italy, which could of course mean Corsica or Sardinia. The passenger had gone ashore immediately afterwards, the skipper about an hour later, while the others just sat around drinking wine and listening to the radio. The skipper had returned about half an hour before I had arrived with a man who was obviously Flórez and the four of them had then gone across to Anton's for a drink.

The café-bar was almost opposite the Estacián Maritima, just back of the Customs House. Above it loomed the older part of Mahon, clouds scudding over a moon-dark sky. As always at this time of night, the bar
was dark and very crowded. They were at a table at the far end, heads close together, coffee cups and glasses at their elbows, a bottle in the centre. They were talking in English and as I approached I heard one of them say, ‘Fifteen minutes, and that's not driving fast.'

Flórez saw me then, and as he switched on a smile and got to his feet, the man sitting with his back to me raised his hand as though for silence. ‘You want a drink with your coffee, Mr Steele?' Flórez called the order to the barman and pulled up a chair. ‘Later we go over to the ship.' He didn't introduce me to any of the others, merely saying I was the man he had been talking about.

There was a short, awkward silence after I had sat down. I was between Flórez and the man I took to be the skipper. He wore an old reefer and his neck stuck out of the collar of it like a column running straight up into the long, narrow head. His face, what little I could see of it in that light, was weathered to a dark brown, a strong, flamboyantly handsome face with a powerful jaw line and a nose that hung straight and sharp over a narrow, tight-lipped mouth. It was an almost Gallic face, the eyes very bright, the brilliance of the whites under the thick head of black hair giving them a wide-eyed look that was almost a stare. A little black moustache, turned down over the corners of the mouth, seemed to split his features in two, dividing the jaw and the mouth from the sharp, pointed nose and staring eyes. If it hadn't been for the moustache, I think I might have recognised him at once.

‘That fishing boat of yours …' he said. ‘Señor Flórez took me to see it this morning. Just what I and my two friends here are looking for.' His two friends, seated across the table from me, nodded. One of them was small and sharp-featured, the other much larger, a big barrel of a chest, broad shoulders, his crumpled features reminding me of a boxer from Dublin I had picked up one time in Gib and delivered to Tangier. ‘We got to earn a living.' He smiled an engaging, friendly smile. ‘Nice place, Mahon.
Fishing good, too.' There was a softness in his voice, the accent faintly Irish.

‘What he means is we're just about broke,' the man beside me went on. ‘We need a fishing boat and somewhere ashore where we can live and store our gear. You happen to have what we want. I saw that villa you're building this afternoon. I also had a look at Port d'Addaia. If we had the villa we'd keep the boat there. Nice and handy. Well sheltered, too.' He wasn't looking at me now, his eyes on his coffee as though talking to himself and his hands flat on the table. They were big, fine-boned, very capable-looking hands. ‘Now tell me something about this fishing boat of yours – speed, range, charts on board, sails, etc. I've read the details, of course, and one of your men showed me over her, but I'd like to hear about her from you, okay?'

My coffee came as I began to run through the inventory and the performance, and all the time I was thinking of that catamaran and trying to build up the value of the
Santa Maria
, knowing that the exchange was heavily weighted in my favour. To build a cat like that at the present time – good God, it would cost a fortune.

A glass had come with my coffee. He reached for the bottle and filled it for me. ‘
Salud!
' We drank, raising our glasses as though the deal were already completed.

‘I saw you come in this morning,' I said. ‘Where were you from?'

He stared at me, and there was something about the eyes … but then he had turned away. ‘Fishing,' he said. ‘We'd been fishing.'