Isvik (3 page)

I still had twenty minutes to wait and I strolled across to
Gypsy Moth
. Looking at the slender racing lines of that Illingworth thoroughbred, I marvelled that a man in his mid-sixties, keeping cancer at bay on a vegetarian diet, could have sailed her single-handed, not just round the world, but round the Horn. By comparison with the
Cutty Sark
she looked tiny, of course, but standing there, close by the wind-vane steering, gazing up at the main mast standing against the sky, she looked one hell of a handful for an elderly man all alone.

I thought of my own boat then, the beauty of the June morning making me long to have her back, to be sailing out of Blakeney, north down the gut, seabirds white in the sunshine, and out by the point seals basking on the shingle, their heads popping up to look at me out of limpid brown eyes … And here I was in London, the boat sold and myself urgently in need of work.

I glanced at my watch again as I walked back to the
Cutty Sark
. Sixteen minutes to eleven. I would have liked to go on board to refresh my memory of the ship's layout, but somehow I felt it would be wrong to be more than fifteen minutes early. If Victor Wellington heard I was on the ship, he would almost certainly send for me. It would give an impression of over-eagerness. Pride, of course: I didn't want him to know how desperate I was for some sort of a contract from the National Maritime, however small. If only I could get that, then I felt other business would follow.

The sun was already striking warm off the stone surround of the dock as I wandered down the starb'd side, the Gypsy Moth pub shining gold on brown beyond the ship's stern, its sign painted with Chichester's yacht on one side, his plane on the other, and there was a youth standing alone on the concrete viewing platform. His back was against the railings, a slim, lounging figure in light blue cotton trousers and a loose-fitting gold blouson with a brown sweater tied round his neck. He had a camera slung from his shoulder, but somehow he looked more like a student than a tourist.

I noticed him because he wasn't looking at the
Cutty Sark
. He was standing very still, staring intently at the Church Street approach where one of those little Citroëns was trying to squeeze in between a delivery truck parked outside the Gypsy Moth and the row of five chain-secured crush barriers separating the roadway from the brick and concrete surround of the dock.

A young woman got out of the car after she had parked it, her black hair cut very short, almost a crew cut, so that it was like black paint gleaming in the sun, the bright silk of a scarf tied loosely around her neck – and something in her manner, the way she stood there looking up at the
Cutty Sark
, her head thrown back, her body tensed … It was as though the tea clipper had a special significance for her.

By then I had reached the stern of the
Cutty Sark
. I walked past the student, then stopped, leaning my back against the railings, watching as she reached into the car, pulling out an old leather briefcase and extracting a loose-leaf folder, which she rested on the bonnet. She stood there for a moment, turning the pages. The student shifted his position. He was short and dark, a gold ring catching the sun as he unslung his camera, opening it and checking the setting. Like his clothes, the camera was an expensive one.

There were plenty of tourists about, but they all seemed to be at the bows of the ship or gathered around the entrance amidships, so that at the moment when she locked her car and started walking towards us the student and I were the only people standing at the stern of the
Cutty Sark
.

She moved slowly, stuffing the folder back into the bulging briefcase. Her manner seemed abstracted, as though her mind was far away and she saw nothing of the beauty of the morning or of the tea clipper's masts towering against the blue sky. She was of medium height, not beautiful, but striking because of the firm jut of her jaw and the curve of her nose. It was a strong face, her cheekbones sharply etched in the morning light, the forehead broad, and the eyes, which caught mine for a moment as she approached, were brightly intelligent under straight black brows.

She was then only a few yards away and the student had his camera to his eye. I heard the click of it as he took a picture of her. She must have heard it, too, for she checked, a momentary hesitation, her eyes widening in a sudden shock of recognition. But there was something more than recognition, something that seemed to leave her face frozen, as though with horror, and behind the horror there was a sort of strange excitement.

It was a fleeting expression, but even so my recollection of it remains very vivid. She recovered herself almost immediately and walked on, passing quite close to me. Again our eyes met, and I thought she hesitated, as though about to speak to me. But then she was moving away, looking down at the heavy watch on her wrist, which was of the kind that divers wear. She was stockier than I had first realised, quite a powerful-looking young woman with a swing to her hips and strong calf muscles below the dark blue skirt. At the entrance to the ship she had to wait for a group of school children, her head thrown back to gaze up now at the
Cutty Sark
's masts. Then, just before she disappeared into the hull, she half paused, her head turned briefly in my direction. But whether she was looking at me or at the student I couldn't be sure.

He had his camera slung over his shoulder again and had turned as though to follow her. But then he hesitated, realising I think that it would be too obvious. I was standing right in his path, and now that I could see his face, I understood something of what had perhaps affected her so strongly. It was a very beautiful face. That was my overriding impression. A bronzed face under a sleek black head of hair that beneath the beauty of its regular features was touched with cruelty.

It was only a few seconds that we stood facing each other, but it seemed longer. I nearly spoke to him, but then I thought perhaps he didn't speak English. He looked so very foreign, the eyes dark and hostile. Instead, I turned away, walking quickly the length of the dock. I would give it another five minutes before going on board. As I reached the bows the student was crossing the entrance gangway. He glanced quickly in my direction, then disappeared into the hull, and my mind went back then to the meeting ahead, wondering again what would come of it. That note from Wellington, the reference to a ship that was of great interest to the National Maritime, and that bit about the circumstances being intriguing. What circumstances?

As I passed under the bowsprit and the maiden with the outstretched hand and flying hair, a car came through the barrier and parked against the Naval College railings. Three men got out of it, all of them dressed in dark suits, and one of them was Victor Wellington. They were talking earnestly amongst themselves as they made their way quickly across to the ship and up the gangway to the quarterdeck. They stood there for a while, looking for'ard at the rigging, still talking with a degree of concentration that suggested perhaps they weren't looking at the ship or at anything in particular, but were entirely engrossed in the subject of their conversation.

They were there about a minute, an incongruous little gathering in their dark suits, then they moved to the after end of the coachroofing and disappeared down a companionway. I rounded the stern of the ship and headed for the entrance. There is a ticket desk on the left as you go in and when I told the CPO on duty my business, he directed me to a little cuddy of an office on the far side, where one of the
Cutty Sark
's captains was seated at the table drinking a mug of tea.

‘Mr Kettil?' He glanced at a typewritten note on the table in front of him, then got to his feet and shook my hand. ‘The meeting is in the after cabin. Do you know the way?'

I shook my head. ‘I've been here once before, but I don't remember the layout.'

‘I'll show you then.' He gulped down the rest of his tea. ‘The others have arrived, all except one.' He then led the way to the deck above, up the ladder to the quarterdeck and aft till we were just above the wheel position. Brass treads led down into a dark-panelled interior. The beautifully appointed dining saloon ran athwartships, taking up the whole after part of the officers' living accommodation.

As soon as I had ducked my head through the doorway I remembered it, the superb quality of the woodwork. The panelling was of bird's-eye maple and teak, all of it a dark rich reddish colour. So was the refectory-type table that ran athwart the saloon, plain planked seats like pews either side with backs that folded up for easy stowing, and aft of the table a magnificent dresser with a mirror back and barometer set into it as a centre piece. There was a skylight over the table with a big oil lamp gleaming brassily below it, and just behind the for'ard pew was a little coal grate set in what looked like a copy of a cast-iron Adam fireplace.

There were four men seated at the table: Victor Wellington, the two who had boarded the ship with him, also a somewhat gaunt individual, and at the far end was the young woman I had been so conscious of as she walked from her car to the ship. She looked up from her loose-leaf notebook as I entered, and again I was aware of her eyes and the look of appraisal; also something else, something indefinable, a sort of recognition, not quite animal, but certainly sexual.

The ship's duty captain had taken his leave and Victor Wellington was introducing me, first to a very slim, live-featured man, an admiral, who was Chairman of the National Maritime Museum, then to the young woman who was sitting next to him – ‘Mrs Sunderby'.

She smiled at me, a quick lighting up of her features. ‘Iris Sunderby.' She pronounced it ‘Eeris'. The eyes were very blue in the electric light beamed down from the big brass lamp above her head. ‘I'm the cause of all these kind gentlemen giving up so much of their time.' She smiled at me, but very briefly, her English careful now and her eyes on the door.

The other two men were the Chairman of the Maritime Trust and, next to him, the almost legendary figure who had saved the
Cutty Sark
and then gone on to form the World Ship Trust. Victor Wellington waved me to a seat opposite Mrs Sunderby, and as I manoeuvred my body into the position indicated, I was remembering why her name was familiar. I hesitated, then leaned across the table. ‘Sorry to ask you this, but are you still married? I mean, is your husband alive?'

Her eyes clouded, the lips tightening. ‘No. My husband's dead. Why?'

‘He was a glaciologist, was he?'

‘How did you know that?'

Hesitantly I began telling her about the strange conversation I had had some weeks back with a station commander who had served in the Falklands, and all the time I felt the need to tread delicately, not sure if she knew about her husband's psychological state, his fear of the ice. I was skating round this when the discussion about presentation of a World Ship Trust International Heritage Award was interrupted by the arrival of the man we were all apparently waiting for.

His name was Iain Ward and everybody at the table rose, no easy feat I found, the polished plank edge of the pew catching me behind my knees. I think it was innate good manners rather than respect for wealth, though the fact that he had suddenly found himself presented with a cheque for over a million probably made some difference. It was the Chairman of the National Maritime Museum who said with a friendly smile, ‘Good of you to come all this way, Mr Ward.' He held out his hand, introducing himself with no mention of a title.

It was as they shook hands that I realised the man's bulging right sleeve ended in a black-gloved hand. He had paused in the entrance, his head slightly bowed as though in anticipation of contact with the deck beams. He was about my own age, tall and heavily built with long sideburns and a slightly diffident smile. ‘Sorry if Ah'm late.' He had a very strong Scots accent.

Iris Sunderby stepped out from the restriction of the pew opposite and moved towards him. ‘Do come in. I'm so glad you could make it.' And the Museum Chairman, still with that charming smile of his, said, ‘You're not late at all. We were early. We had other business to discuss.'

She introduced him to the rest of us and he went round the table, shaking everybody very formally with his left hand. Clearly his gloved hand was artificial, but what the bulge in the sleeve was I could not quite figure out. When she had finally ushered him into the vacant place beside her, she handed everybody a typewritten sheet of paper, a memorandum setting out very briefly the reason for this meeting. Iain Ward glanced at it momentarily, then lifted his head to gaze round the table. He was seated right opposite me, his big frame squeezed into a loud check sports jacket, his shirt open at the neck to reveal a heavy gold chain round a thick bull of a neck. There was also a gold signet ring on one of the fingers of his left hand.

An awkward silence was broken by Victor Wellington saying, ‘Now that we're all here I think we can get started.' He waited until we were settled, then went on, ‘To go back a bit, Iris first got in touch with me about this
Flying Dutchman
of a ship shortly after her husband's death. Since then she has been very busy trying to raise money and, at the same time, making enquiries in Buenos Aires and Montevideo, and more particularly in the far south of South America, at Punta Arenas in the Magellan Strait and at Ushuaia in the Beagle Channel. As a result, we have, all four of us, come to the conclusion that if her husband did in fact sight the wreck of a square-rigged ship in the ice of the Weddell Sea before the plane he was in crashed, then it has to be the frigate
Andros
.' He looked across at the World Ship Trust representative. ‘You have some photographs, I believe?'

The other nodded. ‘Two in fact. One taken just after she was raised from the mud of the River Uruguay in 1981, the other after she had been restored and purchased by the Argentine Navy. Both are from the World Ship Trust's
International Register of Historic Ships
.' He had several copies and these he passed round the table. When we had all looked at them, Wellington said, ‘Speaking for the Museum, and the Chairman is in full agreement, we would support any effort on anybody's part to obtain for exhibition in Britain a fully-rigged Blackwall frigate. That's what we believe it to be. It would be one of the earliest frigates on display anywhere in the world …'