Run Before the Wind (32 page)

"Listen to me, Willie. I know myself very well, and what's more, I know you. If you'll get some help from Finbar and get started, you can have this boat sailing in six weeks, and she'll make the starting line for the Azores race on July seventeenth. And I don't care what that doctor told you back there, I'll be aboard, I promise you. You and Annie and I will have the sail of our lives. We can do it. You can do it."

I looked back at him, and just for a moment, I believed him.

"Okay, Mark," I said, my throat tightening.

"We'll do it."

By the time their plane had left for Plymouth, I was no longer sure. I was all alone, now, and not noted for finishing things.

I TOOK A TAXI from the airport and picked up Mark's van, which we had left at the boatyard. I didn't go inside to speak to Finbar or Harry; it seemed best to keep them out of it for a while, at least, until I knew what I was going to do. What Mark had proposed was impossible. Even if I got the boat into some sort of shape, he was clearly going to be out of commission for a long time to come.

At the cottage I sat, numbly, for a long time. Late in the afternoon I found my notebook and dialed a New York number. There was a beep after the first ring.

"This is Will Lee," I said.

"I would appreciate it if ... somebody would contact me as soon as possible." I gave the number and hung up. Then it occurred to me that there was another call I should make. I left a message, and within minutes the call was returned.

"This is Major Primrose, Mr. Lee; how can I help you?"

"Major, the boat is no longer at the yard, so there's nothing for you to guard anymore."

"I'm aware of your launching. My man says it was very exciting."

"Too exciting."

"Where is the boat, now?"

I told him.

"I'll have a man nearby in an hour's time."

"I think maybe that's a good idea. There's a lot of expensive gear on board, and it wouldn't be difficult to break in."

I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening trying not to think about the boat at all, and instead, kept trying to think of a way out. I couldn't just bug off to Paris, leaving things as they were, but there had to be some orderly way to wrap things up and then go. I was trying to figure a way out, when the phone rang at about eight o'clock.

"Willie?"

"Hello, Annie. How's Mark?"

"Annoyed, but resigned. He's over at the naval hospital with his leg packed in ice; he goes to surgery at eight in the morning.

Somehow, he managed to make them give him a room with a phone; he hasn't been off it since. He's arranged for you to be able to write checks on the London account for whatever you need for the boat and yourself. He'd like you to send them a specimen of" your signature. Got a pencil? I'll give you the address."

I wrote down the bank's address, all the while trying to think of a way to begin to tell Annie how impossible the situation was, but she stopped me in my tracks.

"Willie, I don't know what I'd do without you. Mark will do so much better knowing that you're still working on the boat. I told you how depressed he was when he had the original surgery. I honestly don't think I could go through that again. But now he's still got the boat to look forward to, and best of all, he's got you."

I had been prepared to put myself up for the Shit of the Year award by backing out, and now I knew I couldn't do it, not while Annie still needed me around.

"Well, I don't think his plan is realistic; I don't see how I can possibly get the boat in shape in time to make the Azores race; and I don't see how Mark can possibly be in any sort of shape to do the qualifying cruise before the end of the year. Those two items apart, we're in perfectly wonderful shape; that is, if somebody's lawyers don't descend from the sky and take the boat away." I thought of mentioning that the IRA might come and bomb it, too, but thought better of it.

She laughed, and I knew I would have to go on trying to keep her laughing. It was such a wonderful sound.

"Well, I'm going to turn in, now," she said, yawning.

"I'm at the Mayflower Post Hotel, if you need to reach me." She gave me the number and Mark's number at the hospital.

"It'll probably be day after tomorrow before you can talk to him. As soon as he's safely out of post-op I'll start looking for a flat hereabouts. You take care of yourself, now. I'll talk with you in a day or two."

I hung up, and the phone rang almost immediately.

"Will? This is Nicky. We got your message. What's doing?"

"Oh, hi, thanks for getting back to me." I told him about the premature launching of the boat and Mark's accident.

"Well, that's bad news," he said, "but it sounds as if you've made the right decisions."

"Look, Nicky, we're going to have a hell of a time getting the boat finished if I can't take her back to the yard. What are the chances of this legal situation getting resolved soon?"

"Not good, I'm afraid. Unfortunately, it's tied to a whole string of other difficulties; it can't be favorably resolved until a number of other things happen first. You certainly aren't going to be able to go back to the yard with the boat this summer, not without its being attached, and to tell you the truth, I think Derek would rather you scuttled her than let that happen."

Scuttling her was beginning to seem an attractive option.

"Well, maybe motoring her to Jersey might be the best plan, once I've got her sorted out a bit."

"Prom what you've told me, I think leaving the boat right where it is is the best, possibly the only alternative. You've got Primrose watching over you, and at least some of the resources you need.

The yard in Jersey is very good, but we've no guarantee that she won't be found there, and then we'd be right back to square one.

Have you got enough money?"

"I think so, for the moment, anyway. I can write checks on Mark's London account."

"Good. We'll make the final deposit of our agreement in that account immediately, so you can go ahead and pay Cork Harbour Boatyard what you owe them to date. Does anybody in Cork know that the boat has not actually left the country?"

I thought for a minute.

"No, nobody, not even Pinbar at the yard. Mark purposely didn't tell him."

"Good, my advice would be to keep it that way. Both the boat and Mark are safely out of circulation. Is there somewhere you could stay--someplace out of the way?"

"Well, I guess the logical thing for me to do would be to live aboard Toscana. She's tied up next to the boat, and she's quite comfortable."

"That sounds a good idea. Now, Will, if you need anything, you let us hear from you, all right? Just call the New York number.

Derek is very grateful for the way you're handling this, and we'll do anything we can to help."

"Okay, Nicky, thanks. If you should have trouble reaching me and can't, call Mark or Annie at the Royal Naval Hospital in Plymouth."

I had a sudden urge to get out of the cottage before I had to explain anything to anyone. I sat down and wrote to Mark's bank,

then to Lord Coolmore, enclosing a check for the remainder of our lease on the cottage, through September. I said we wouldn't actually be moving out until then but wouldn't be around much. I certainly couldn't move all of Mark's and Annie's things out, and it seemed better to leave everything in the cottage but what I needed. I began getting my things together and loading them into the van. There wasn't all that much, really. I went into Mark's and Annie's bedroom and had a quick look around. I found some sailing gear of theirs and loaded that, too.

On my last trip, I looked into their wardrobe and found the Ingram machine pistol and the .45 automatic. Those shouldn't be left lying about; I put them into the van, as well, hiding them under" everything else.

Then I telephoned Finbar.

"Where are you, Willie? Where's the boat?"

"It's better if you don't know, Finbar, believe me."

He estimated the amount owing on the boat, and I included instructions for payment in the envelope I was sending to the London bank. That way, the check would come from England.

I had one last look about, collected some bottles of wine, some books and other odds and ends, locked the cottage and got into the van. At the main road, I put the note to Coolmore in his mailbox and in Carrigaline, I posted the letter to the bank. It was after midnight, now, and I drove slowly and carefully through the deserted streets of Cork, nervous about the possibility of being stopped by the police; I would have one hell of a time explaining what I was doing with a machine gun in the van. Then I turned east. The boat was moored on Great Island, on the other side of the harbor. I drove slowly across the bridge and through Cobh, formerly Queenstown, where passenger ships had once called regularly, even the Titanic, on her one and only voyage. The village was still a marine center, and I passed a couple of shops where I would be able to find things I might need for the boat.

I could see from my map that a road ran close to where the boat and Toscana lay. I found a dirt lane leading through a field toward the water, and after closing the farmer's gate carefully behind me, drove into the trees. As I neared the boat, the headlights of a vehicle came on, startling me, but they went off immediately, and a figure waved from a Range Rover. Primrose's man. I was able to park within ten yards of the water, then I had to swim out for the rubber dinghy. Transferring the gear from the van to the boat took some time, then I rowed across the East Ferry Channel to Dirty Murphy's and retrieved the hard dinghy and outboard that we had left there that morning, feeling terribly furtive. It was after four in the morning before I was able to climb into a sleeping bag aboard Toscana and, with a groan, start to fall asleep.

I had effectively disappeared. I was alone, now, with what I had to do.

IT WAS NEARLY NOON before I could drag myself from the sleeping bag and force myself to face the mess at hand. I ate a makeshift breakfast while gazing absently through a port at the day outside. It was raining steadily. Trust the Irish summer to produce what the Irish call "A fine, soft day." Just the sort of day to stay in bed with my cold.

Finally, I stepped from Toscana aboard the big boat and hurriedly unlocked the hatch, hunching my shoulders against the rain. The reality in the dim, green light below was even worse than my memory of it. Chaos would have been too polite a word. Thousands in electronic gear was jumbled together with thousands in other, more mundane equipment. It took me twenty minutes of shifting before I could even get a floorboard up to check the bilges. She was still taking water. I checked the softwood plug under the galley sink and gave it a couple of whacks with the mallet for good measure. It was leaking, but not fast enough to account for all the water she had taken. I laboriously pumped the bilges, thinking all the while that somewhere in the jumble of gear there was an electric bilge pump that could make my life a great deal easier. It would be first on my list of installations.

That done, I decided that neatness would help; just putting the boat in reasonable order would make my task seem easier and give me cause for optimism. Besides, sorting and cleaning didn't require much thinking. I wasn't ready for thinking yet. I would have liked to put everything on deck and start from there, but the rain prevented me. Instead, I had to rummage for things that could safely get wet, shove those on deck, and leave the rest below. It was slow going. By the end of the day I had separated much of the gear, but had stowed or connected nothing. My cold sapped my strength and slowed me down.

That evening I went into Cobh, found a telephone, and called Annie in Plymouth.

"He was in surgery for six hours," she said.

"They did a lot of very delicate work, and the doctor says that all we can do now is wait for the healing. The leg will be in plaster for about three weeks, and they won't know until it comes off whether the surgery has been as successful as they hope. If everything is all right at that time, then Mark can begin physiotherapy to regain use of the leg."

"It doesn't sound as if there's a prayer of his doing the Azores race, does it?"

"No," she said, "not for an ordinary person, but then. Mark's not ordinary. He was still pretty groggy when I left him, but he was talking about the race. I know this sounds mad given the circumstances, but he just might make it. I think Mark must have the greatest recuperative powers of any human being who ever lived, Jesus Christ only barely excepted. But he has to have something to aim for, something to keep him going. That's why what you're doing with the boat is so important. Call him tomorrow, if you can. It'll boost his spirits."

For three days it rained steadily, inhibiting what I already considered an impossible task. I talked with Mark twice, and he was full of helpful ideas and suggestions, but I told him that my circumstances made it difficult for me to call every day. I wanted to have progress to report when I talked with him. On the fourth day it stopped raining, and I made better progress. At the end of the week my cold had improved, and I had everything sorted and had made a list of the location of every piece of equipment and where it was to be installed.

The next morning the cold that I had thought was healing had degenerated into something awful. I took to my bunk, and it got worse. Everything went wrong; I couldn't keep anything down or, for that matter, up. I grew very weak and was obviously running a high temperature. I drifted in and out of sleep, too sick to fix myself much to eat or even to think about going into Cobh for a doctor. Even when I began to come out of it some days later, I was so weak that I couldn't sit up. It was another couple of days before I could move about without fear of falling, and by the time I felt like thinking about work again, ten full days had been lost to whatever bug I had had. I checked the calendar; I had just about four weeks before I would have to sail away from Ireland in order to be in Plymouth in time to provision the boat and make her ready for the race. And nothing had been installed yet.