‘It’s unfair,’ Jossie said, smiling.
‘It’s often like that.’
The town was bright with new spring paint, the Regency buildings clean and graceful in the sun. Every year, before the holiday-makers came, there was the big brush-up, and every winter, when they’d gone, the comfortable relapse into carpet slippers and salt-caked windows.
‘Ryde pier,’ I said, ‘is two thousand, three hundred and five feet long, and was opened in 1814.’
‘I don’t want to know that.’
‘There are approximately six hundred hotels, motels and boarding houses on this sunny island.’
‘Nor that.’
‘Nine towns, two castles, a lot of flamingoes and Parkhurst Prison.’
‘Nor that, for God’s sake.’
‘My Uncle Rufus,’ I said, ‘was chief mucker-out at the local riding school.’
‘Good grief.’
‘As his assistant mucker-out,’ I said, ‘I scrambled under horses’ bellies from the age of six.’
‘That figures.’
‘I used to exercise the horses and ponies all winter when the holiday people had gone home. And break in new ones. I can’t really remember not being able to ride, but there’s no racing here, of course. The first race I ever rode in was the Isle of Wight Foxhounds point-to-point over on the mainland, and I fell off.’
We walked along the Esplanade with the breeze blowing Jossie’s long green scarf out like streamers. She waved an arm at the sparkling water and said, ‘Why horses? Why not boats, for heaven’s sake, when you had them on your doorstep.’
‘They made me seasick.’
She laughed. ‘Like going to heaven and being allergic to harps.’
I took her to a hotel I knew, where there was a sunny terrace sheltered from the breeze, with a stunning view of the Solent and the shipping tramping by to Southampton. We drank hot chocolate and read the lunch menu, and talked of this and that and nothing much, and the time slid away like a mill-stream.
After roast beef for both of us, and apple pie, ice-cream and cheese for Jossie, we whistled up a taxi. There weren’t many operating on a Sunday afternoon in April, but there was no point in being a native if one didn’t know where to find the pearls.
The driver knew me, and didn’t approve of my having deserted to become a ‘mainlander’, but as he also knew I knew the roads backwards, we got a straight run over Blackgang Chine to the wild cliffs on the south-west coast, and no roundabout guff to add mileage. We dawdled along there for about an hour, stopping often to stand out of the car, on the windswept grass. Jossie took in great lungfuls of the soul-filling landscape and said whyever did I live in Newbury.
‘Racing,’ I said.
‘So simple.’
‘Do you mind if we call on a friend on the way back?’ I said. ‘Ten minutes or so?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Wootton Bridge, then,’ I said to the driver. ‘Frederick’s boatyard.’
‘They’ll be shut. It’s Sunday.’
‘We’ll try, anyway.’
He shrugged heavily, leaving me to the consequences of my own stupidity, and drove back across the island, through Newport and out on the Ryde road to the deep inlet which formed a natural harbour for hundreds of small yachts.
The white-painted façade of the boatyard showed closed doors and no sign of life.
‘There you are,’ said the driver. ‘I told you so.’
I got out of the car and walked over to the door marked ‘Office’, and knocked on it. Within a few moments it opened, and I grinned back to Jossie and jerked my head for her to join me.
‘I got your message,’ Johnny Frederick said. ‘And Sunday afternoon, I sleep.’
‘At your age?’
His age was the same as mine, almost to the day: we’d shared a desk at school and many a snigger in the lavatories. The round-faced impish boy had grown into a muscular, salt-tanned man with craftsman’s hands and a respectable hatred of paperwork. He occasionally telephoned me to find out if his own local accountant was doing things right, and bombarded the poor man with my advice.
‘How’s your father?’ I said.
‘Much the same.’
A balk of timber had fallen on Johnny’s father’s head in days gone by. There had been a lot of unkind jokes about thick as two planks before, three planks after, but the net result had been that an ailing family business had woken up in the hands of a bright new mind. With Johnny’s designs and feeling for materials, Frederick Boats were a growing name.
I introduced Jossie, who got a shrewd once-over for aerodynamic lines and a shake from a hand like a piece of callused teak.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said, which was about the nearest he ever got to social small-talk. He switched his gaze to me. ‘You’ve been in the wars a bit, according to the papers.’
‘You might say so.’ I grinned. ‘What are you building, these days?’
‘Come and see.’
He walked across the functional little office and opened the far door, which led straight into the boatyard itself. We went through, and Jossie exclaimed aloud at the unexpected size of the huge shed which sloped away down to the water.
There were several smallish fibreglass hulls supported in building frames, and two large ones, side by side in the centre, with five foot keels.
‘What size are those?’ Jossie said.
‘Thirty-seven feet overall.’
‘They look bigger.’
‘They won’t on the water. It’s the largest size we do, at present.’ Johnny walked us round one of them, pointing out subtleties of hull design with pride. ‘It handles well in heavy seas. It’s stable, and not too difficult to sail, which is what most people want.’
‘Not a racer?’ I said.
He shook his head. ‘Those dinghies are. But the big ocean-racers are specialist jobs. This yard isn’t large enough; not geared to that class. And anyway, I like cruisers. A bit of carpet in the saloon and lockers that slide like silk.’
Jossie wandered off down the concrete slope, peering into the half-fitted dinghies and looking contentedly interested. I pulled the envelope of enlarged photographs from my inner pocket and showed them to Johnny. Three views of a sailing boat, one of an out-of-focus man.
‘That’s the boat I was abducted on. Can you tell anything about it from these photos?’
He peered at them, his head on one side. ‘If you leave them with me, maybe. I’ll look through the catalogues, and ask the boys over at Cowes. Was there anything special about it, that you remember?’
I explained that I hadn’t seen much except the sail locker. ‘The boat was pretty new, I think. Or at any rate well maintained. And it sailed from England on Thursday, March 17th, some time in the evening.’
He shuffled the prints to look at the man.
‘His name is Alastair Yardley,’ I said. ‘I’ve written it on the back. He came from Bristol, and worked from there as a deckhand on sea-trials for ocean-going yachts. He skippered the boat. He’s about our age.’
‘Are you in a hurry for all this info?’
‘Quicker the better.’
‘O.K. I’ll ring a few guys. Let you know tomorrow, if I come up with anything.’
‘That’s great.’
He tucked the prints into their envelope and let his gaze wander to Jossie.
‘A racing filly,’ he said. ‘Good lines.’
‘Eyes off.’
‘I like earthier ones, mate. Big boobs and not too bright.’
‘Boring.’
‘When I get home, I want a hot tea, and a cuddle when I feel like it, and no backchat about women’s lib.’
When I got home, I thought, I wouldn’t mind Jossie.
She walked up the concrete with big strides of her long legs, and came to a stop at our side. ‘I had a friend whose boyfriend insisted on taking her sailing,’ she said. ‘She said she didn’t terribly mind being wet, or cold, or hungry, or seasick, or frightened. She just didn’t like them all at once.’