Skip. We’ve got a visitor at the door.’
The huge white building, all lit up and merry, came head on for the crunch, and Richard thought, well if this is how it’s got to end, so be it. The life jacket might just keep him afloat, but at least he could swim. People fishing at the end of the pier looked on, as well they might, laughing at such stupidity, or misfortune.
How they missed it he would never know – God protect me from such shipmates – but Scuddilaw jeered as the escarpment went by, comic-book passengers with big eyes and red hands looking at them through the murk – and as welcome a slice of luck as Richard had so far known.
Bracing themselves for the wash, the boat went up and down like a piece of balsa, though it was nothing to when open sea struck them beyond the harbour walls, a prelude to the leg back, which was the worst small-boat journey he’d ever put up with, eight hours of corkscrewing through high waves, when the next was always hungry enough to tip them over and under.
After four hours edging way from the French coast Scuddilaw set the engine going while Richard pulled down the jib and put two reefs in the main sail, but left it up to steady the yacht under power. They stayed by the wheel, leaving chaos below deck to look after itself: better to be in the open than go down and sick your guts up, which didn’t stop Cannister spewing before they were halfway across. Richard, who boasted guts of concrete, said it must have been the meal they had in town – when Scuddilaw went to the rail as well.
Under the lee of Dungeness the sea was quieter, all of them happy to reach the welcoming arms of the river mouth that had been in sight for over an hour. The tide took them neatly between the red on port and green on starboard, and suddenly into calm water. ‘We won’t stop for the customs,’ Scud said. ‘We’ll do a Lord Nelson, and go straight on into town. Let the bastards come for us.’
The neat concrete walls to either side, holding the mounds of shingle and sand beyond, channelled them reassuringly back into nanny England, though adrenalin beat through Richard at the thought of what they carried. Even before reaching the berth a man from the customs post followed them along the straight road on his low-powered motorbike.
Tying up was quick and efficient, slotting in without trouble. ‘Here he comes,’ Scud said. ‘Let me talk.’
‘Didn’t you see my signal? You should have stopped at the harbour,’ were his first tetchy words.
‘Come aboard. To tell you the truth, we didn’t. We’ve had one hell of a bloody crossing. I think none of us had eyes except for the berth. We’re just about done for. It took eight hours from Boulogne. Some pleasure trip that was. I thought it was going to be the last.’
He looked down into the saloon, and Richard could have laughed: a mass of dirty bedding, food, pots and pans, radio, charts and logbooks, all Swiss-rolled into a disgusting mess. ‘What do you have on board?’
‘Our duty-free’s somewhere down there,’ Scud told him.
‘I’ll get it.’ Cannister jumped up. ‘If you like. It’s in them plastic bags.’
The customs man was halfway down. Let him cut into it if he was in the mind to. He’d need a sharp knife. Going the rest of the way, he opened a cupboard or two, and came back up. He might have been suspicious, but couldn’t take the boat to pieces on his own. ‘Next time, stop at my signal.’
When the noise of his half-stroke put-put bike diminished along the road they brought out the bundles. Rain came warm and wetter than wet from seawards, but they had something to sing about as they took them under their coats to Cannister’s Land-Rover so that he could set off for London.
‘He’d never have found it, anyway,’ Scud said when he and Richard sat down to a meal in the galley after a quick tidying. ‘I’ve never known such weather for this time of year.’
‘Maybe that’s what saved us.’ The thought of surviving another such trip put him in a low mood, yet they were all the same, and none exactly alike. As the spaghetti and rich meat sauce went down, helped by two bottles of wine, he could only look forward to collecting his pay. Hard to know how Waistcoat had been so sure they would accomplish what he’d sent them to do in such foul weather.
‘Bad trip, I hear?’ Waistcoat said the next afternoon.
‘It was all right.’
‘Smoke, if you want to.’ He offered a cigar. ‘I’m glad you were with them. You might not think you’re essential, but you are. You keep them in order, just by being there.’
So that was it. Thank you very much, fuck face. Without him they might run off with the stuff.
‘Or do something silly,’ Waistcoat said. ‘You never know.’ He flashed the gold lighter under Richard’s cigar. ‘But a chap like you, well, they feel safe. Anyway, it’s good to have a radio officer on board.’ He took an envelope from the pocket of his smoking jacket – plum coloured this time. ‘I hope this keeps you happy.’
Best to be a man of few words. Make him think he’s got a bargain. ‘Thanks.’
‘The next trip will be in a bigger league altogether. Much larger boat. All engine power. We’ll fly to Malaga, and bring it back from Gib.’
‘I’d like a date.’
‘Don’t know myself yet.’
‘As soon as you can, let me have it, then.’
Meeting over. The next stage was to face Amanda’s righteous anger for not having told her where he was going and how long he would be away. He brought that one off as well, in spite of them screaming at each other that there was nothing else to do but end the marriage.
‘Next time,’ he said, a shake in his hands as he fitted the corkscrew into a bottle of wine from Boulogne, ‘and for me anyway it’ll be hemlock before wedlock.’ Which made her laugh, the crisis over, leaving him to wonder how many more times he would get away with it.
He sat again at the radio and checked all frequencies. Nothing was coming through that could be used. At half-past six everyone had signed off, so he picked up the phone and dialled Laura’s number from his address book. She had a young woman’s voice, and seemed more than happy when he said his name. ‘If it’s all right with you I’ll knock on your door tomorrow evening, sometime after supper.’
‘About eight o’clock? You’ll be able to have coffee. Howard will be thrilled when I tell him.’
Sunspots had given so much trouble that Howard hadn’t heard Moscow for a week, no sound of Vanya on his usual qui vive. A wobbly-wobbly note, like the noise of a bathtub eternally filling, might turn into his reappearance, but the sound died, though he listened assiduously and long for anything intelligible. Ionised gases and the sun’s ultraviolet rays in the upper atmosphere, bending the radio beams back to earth, were troublesome at dawn and dusk, and solar flares played havoc for days.
The magician’s cabin was full of complications, a test bed of patience needed even from the most devoted. He became angry when things weren’t perfect, always hoping for something, maybe a signal from God’s miracle department
