Medusa

‘Hero worship?’ She was sprawled on the old couch we had picked up in Barcelona, her head turned to the window, staring at the sea. ‘Was that why he was looking for this man?’ Her smooth, darkish forehead was slightly puckered, her eyes half-closed, her body slim again, no lovely curve to her belly and the madonna look quite gone from her face so that it was now pinched, even a little haggard.

I think she was quite glad not to have to cope with the problems of overseeing the completion of that villa. At any rate, she accepted the situation. But later, much later, she was to insist that if I hadn’t been so obsessed with my ‘new toy’ I would have known what was going on. She was, of course, much closer to the people of the island than I was. She had a lot of friends, not only in Mahon and Ciudadela, but out in the country among the farms, and she did pass on to me some of the talk she picked up about the growing popularity of the separatist movement. It was backed by the two communist parties, the Partido Communista de España, or PCE, and the Partido Communista de los Pueblos de España, or PCPE, and appeared to be gaining ground. Menorca, the Diario Insular or local paper, and even La Ultima Hora of Palma in Mallorca had carried the occasional article on the subject. But now I had no time any more to read the local newspapers. I was fully stretched getting Thunderflash ready for sea.

Once I had agreed the deal with Patrick Evans and checked the share ownership certificate, which showed him to be the sole owner, with sixty-four-sixty-fourths of the shares, I had pictures taken of the catamaran, some with the sails up, others of the saloon with the table laid, a vase of wild flowers and a large Balearic crayfish as the centrepiece. These I mailed off to a dozen of the most up-market agencies specialising in Mediterranean travel, together with a plan of the layout and full details. Three of them I actually phoned, and within a week two of these had expressed interest, and one of them, representing an American agency, had their representative fly in from Mallorca to inspect the boat and cable a report direct to Miami. Two days later I received a cable offering a two-week charter if I could pick up a party of eight Americans at Grand Harbour, Malta, on May 2. There was no quibble about the price, which would mean that in just one fortnight Thunderflash would earn more than the Santa Maria had made the whole of the previous season.

Moments like this make one feel on top of the world. I didn’t stop to wonder why Evans had gone fishing instead of chartering the cat himself. I simply cabled acceptance, asking for twenty per cent deposit, and when this came through by return, I hardly thought of anything else, my energies concentrated on getting Thunderflash repainted and in perfect condition, the hulls white, not blue, and the boat in tip-top condition.

We finished her just three days before I was due to speak at the opening of the Albufera urbanization, and when I got back that night Soo was almost starry-eyed, not because Thunderflash was back in the water and moored right outside, but because she had received a note from Gareth Lloyd Jones in Gibraltar. ‘He says he was piped aboard at fifteen thirty-two on Wednesday afternoon.’ And she added, the letter clutched in her hand, ‘It’s there in the log — Captain piped on board HMS Medusa.’ She looked up at me then. ‘Medusa was one of Nelson’s ships, wasn’t she?’

‘Ask Carp,’ I said. ‘There’s a Medusa buoy off Harwich. I sailed past it once on a navigational course.’

‘But you were Army.’

‘The outfit I was in, they expected you to be able to find your way at sea.’

‘It made me feel good — that’s all he says.’ She folded the letter up. ‘What a wonderfully exciting moment it must have been for him — the piercing whistle of the bo’s’n’s pipes, his salute to the quarterdeck, and thinking all the time that he’d made it, from Ganges and the lower deck right up to the command of a frigate.’

I went through to the office and checked the mail. Another charter — that made two lined up for the summer. Things were beginning to look real good. At least the boating fraternity weren’t to be put off by the threat of bombs following the Libyan raid, or the fall in the dollar. Not even the information that another of our villas had been paint-sprayed could dampen my spirits. It was the usual slogan — URBANIZAR ES DESTRUIER SALVEMO MENORCA, and Miguel had written me a long letter of complaint in Spanish. I told Soo to deal with it, my mind still on Thunderflash.