We stood for a time looking down at the boats lying white and deserted against the floating wooden arms of the marina. ‘I wouldn’t mind living somewhere out here,’ she said, the huskiness in her voice more pronounced. ‘A boat, a house by the shore, and the world — the European world of demos, unions, terrorism, all the mayhem of politics — a million miles away. Or would one find it too peaceful, too removed — too dull?’ She looked up at me, smiling.
The Keg, like the ships’ chandlery nearby, was a disused boathouse, all wood and bare simplicity. We had another drink, a salad, some fish and a couple of bottles of Californian wine, and we talked — about everything except what she’d come to tell me. It wasn’t until the coffee arrived, and with it the two large brandies she had ordered, that she suddenly blurted it out: ‘Stone Slide Gully,’ she said, taking a telex out and passing it across to me. ‘Jonny Epinard — he sent that from Whitehorse.’ And she went on, her words coming so fast I could barely follow her — ‘You remember that Indian, Jack McDonald — you said you’d been through the gully into that grim, volcanic-looking crater beyond — the time I saw it I thought it looked like an old-fashioned lavatory pan, the mountains rising up round it at roughly the same angle. It was always subject to rock slides — not so much where Tom and the Indian were beavering away with their tractor and sluice box, but on the opposite slope. It’s very sheer there.’ Her hand reached over, gripping hold of mine. ‘You see what he says. There’s been a slide.’
I nodded, my eyes on the telex text: … closing down for winter. Jack had look at new slide. Picked up 23 nuggets in under an hour, largest 0.4 oz. Looks promising subject evaluation next season. Sorry Tom won’t know. Jonny Epinard. Her grip on my hand tightened. ‘Gold!’ she said. ‘And even if it’s nothing big it would have got Tom out of the mess he was in. He’d have been able to tell those bastards in Chicago to go to hell.’ I could feel her nails biting into my flesh. ‘Why didn’t it happen when he was up there? Why now — when it’s too late?’
She went on talking about that for some time, what it would have meant to Tom, how, if it had only happened the previous year, or better still two years ago, he would never have got in hock to the bank, would never have considered selling even an acre of High Stand. And then abruptly she veered away from that line of thought and began talking about the future, her future — ‘Me, a gold-miner — just think of it!’ Her eyes were sparkling, her face flushed and that Titian hair shining softly in the dim light. She looked just wonderful as she went on, ‘The hours I’ve listened to Tom talking about his father, about the Klondike and the fever that gripped them all when the Bonanza was discovered. And now, here I am with nuggets in the bank. Not a Bonanza. Of course not. But another Ice Cold perhaps. That would be enough. And when spring comes we can go up there, see if it really is a new placer mine. Would that make me a sourdough?’ She drained the last of her brandy, giggling to herself. ‘Me, a sourdough!’ And she shook her head, adding in a subdued voice, ‘I’m glad about High Stand, that I shan’t be concerned with those trees. Tom was right — Brian will appreciate them. He understands about trees, and after what happened there …’ She leaned across the table to me. ‘You will handle the legal side for me, won’t you? Ice Cold, I mean — you’ll come up there with me?’ And then on a lighter note: ‘I can manage a mine. At least, I think I can,’ she added with a grin. ‘But it’ll mean a company, accounts, a lot of paperwork.’ She laughed. ‘I never was any good at that sort of thing.’
We talked it over for a while, Miriam building castles, mentally leaping ahead to a full-blown mine, and myself doing the best I could to keep her feet somewhere near the ground. It was all good fun, dreaming dreams and both of us involved. Finally she paid the bill — she insisted absolutely and I let her, because it was her evening, the start of an attempt to build a future for herself from the wretchedness of what had happened. Then we went out into the shadowy world of Coal Harbour quay, the night very still with low cloud so that the water and the old boathouses were lit by the reflected glow of the city’s lights.
We reached the uneven, pot-holed surface of the private roadway leading westward to the hotel, walking arm-in-arm, not talking now — just content to let the stillness and the magic of the night work on us, conscious of our closeness and the hours ahead. We were approaching the entrance to the marina and stopped for a moment to watch one of those fast big game fishing boats gliding in towards the pontoon. ‘That’s what I’d like,’ Miriam said. ‘A boat like that, so I could explore — ‘ She walked on.
We were just passing the approach to one of the parking bays when a car’s engine started. The lights flicked on at high beam, our shadows leaping across the roadway. Startled, our eyes were blinded. Then the engine revved and in the instant that the car began moving down on us with a squeal of tyres, something triggered inside me, an instinct of preservation. I flung Miriam forward — The marina. Run!
Thank God she didn’t hesitate. We made it as the car hurtled past us, scraping the wall and screeching to a halt. The sound of doors and voices calling in the darkness. But by then we were down the ramp and onto the floating pontoon. There was a crack like a backfire and something smacked into the water beside us. Feet sounded on the ramp, the pontoon swaying. I took the second bay, a pontoon full of parked boats, hoping to God I had picked the right one, the boats all dark, not a soul about.
And then I saw it — the high, white bow of that fishing cruiser gliding in towards the end of the pontoon. ‘Jump or swim,’ I gasped. ‘We’ve got to make that boat.’ I gave one quick glance over my shoulder. ‘Can you make it?’
‘Yes.’ She was close behind me and even then I noticed her breasts, the way she moved. And then we were almost at the end of the pontoon and I was calling to the skipper high on the open bridge: ‘Mayday! Mayday!’ I yelled. ‘Need your help. Muggers.’
He reacted quite instinctively, closing the gap to the pontoon-end just as I reached it. I jumped, landing on my feet and staggering against the wheelhouse. Miriam landed beside me. ‘Full ahead — please,’ I called up to the man above me. ‘They’re armed.’
He must have seen them running towards him along the pontoon, for he didn’t hesitate, slamming his cruiser into gear, and as the screws bit, he increased the revs, lifting the bows half out of the water and swinging the boat away in a boiling arc towards the pale line of the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club boat sheds.
He was the owner, an American by the sound of it. ‘You want the police?’ he asked as we joined him on the open bridge. ‘I got R/T down below.’
‘Did you see their faces clearly?’ I asked. ‘Could you identify them?’
But of course he had been too occupied getting his boat away. ‘If you hadn’t called Mayday…’ He shrugged, cutting down on the revs and settling back in his swivel chair, idling across the harbour as I said who we were and told him something of what I thought it was all about. ‘So you can’t identify them? You’re a lawyer and you don’t see what the police can do about it?’ He sat there for a moment, his peaked cap pushed back on his head, gazing out at the dark outline of the Coal Harbour buildings. A car was disappearing up towards Georgia Street, otherwise there was no sign of movement. ‘I’m from California,’ he said, ‘and down there we get to hear a lot about what drugs do to people, the way kids act — anything to get the next fix; and of course the millions to be made by the men running the racket. You want my advice?’ He turned his head sharply, leaning forward and staring at us through his gold-rimmed glasses. ‘You get the hell out, back to England, and fast. That’s my advice. And if they need you back over here to give evidence, you make damn sure you’re under police protection every second you’re here. You, too, lady. Okay?’ He stood up, increasing the revs again and heading in for the lit bulk of the hotel.