From the next lot of noises from the outside world, I gathered that someone was putting up sails. On a sailing boat, that merely made sense. There were rattlings and flappings and indistinct shouts, about none of which I cared a drip. It seemed vaguely strange that someone should be sluicing the decks with buckets of water at such a time, until it dawned on me that the heavy intermittent splashes were made by waves breaking over the bows. The tight-closed hatch made sense. I had never wished for anything more passionately than to get my feet on warm steady dry land.
I entirely lost touch of time. Life became merely a matter of total wretchedness, seemingly without end. I would quite have liked a drink of water, but partly couldn’t raise the energy to search for it, and partly feared to spill it in the dark, but mostly I didn’t bother because every time I lifted my head the whirling bouts of sickness sent me retching to my knees. Water would be no sooner down than up.
He came and undid the hatch: not wide, but enough to let in some grey daylight and a flood of fresh air. He did not, it seemed, intend me to die of suffocation.
It was raining hard outside: or maybe it was spray. I saw the bright shine of his yellow oilskins as a shower of heavy drops spattered in through the narrow gap.
His voice came to me, shouting. ‘Do you want food?’
I lay apathetically, not answering.
He shouted again. ‘Wave your hand if you are all right.’
I reckoned all right was a relative term, but raised a faint flap.
He said something which sounded like ‘Gale’, and shut the hatch again.
Bloody hell, I thought bitterly. Where were we going that we should run into gales? Out into the Atlantic? And what for?
The old jingle about seasickness ran through my head: ‘one minute you’re afraid you’re dying, next minute you’re afraid you’re not’. For hours through the storm I groaned miserably into the pillow, incredibly ill from nothing but motion.
I woke from a sunny dream, the umpteenth awakening into total darkness.
Something different, I thought hazily. Same wild weather outside, the bows crashing against the seas and shipping heavy waves over the deck. Same creaking and slapping of wind-strained rigging. But inside, in me, something quite different.
I breathed deeply from relief. The sickness was going, subsiding slowly like an ebb tide, leaving me acclimatized to an alien environment. I lay for a while in simple contentment, while normality crept back like a forgotten luxury: but then, insistently, other troubles began to surface instead. Thirst, hunger, exhaustion, and an oppressive headache which I eventually put down to dehydration and a dearth of fresh air. A sour taste. An itching stubble of beard. A sweaty feeling of having worn the same clothes for a month. But worse than physical pinpricks, the mental rocks.
Confusion had had its points. Clarity brought no comfort at all. The more I was able to think straight, the less I liked the prospects.
There had to be a reason for any abduction, but the most usual reason made least sense. Ransom... it couldn’t be. There was no one to pay a million for my release: no parents, rich or poor. Hostage... but hostages were mostly taken at random, not elaborately, from a public place. I had no political significance and no special knowledge: I couldn’t be bartered, didn’t know any secrets, had no access to Government papers or defence plans or scientific discoveries. No one would care more than a passing pang whether I lived or died, except perhaps Trevor, who would count it a nuisance to have to find a replacement.
I considered as dispassionately as possible the thought of death, but eventually discarded it. If I was there to be murdered, it would already have been done. The cabin had been made ready for a living prisoner, not a prospective corpse. Once out at sea, a weighted heave-ho would have done the trick. So, with luck, I was going to live.
However unrealistic it seemed to me, the only reason I could raise which made any sense at all was that I was there for revenge.
Although the majority of mankind think of auditing accountants as dry-as-dust creatures burrowing dimly into columns of boring figures, the dishonest regard them as deadly enemies.
I had had my share of uncovering frauds. I’d lost a dozen people their jobs and set the Revenue onto others, and seen five embezzlers go to prison, and the spite in some of those eyes had been like acid.
If Connaught Powys, for instance, had arranged this trip, my troubles had hardly started. Four years ago, when I’d last seen him, in court and newly convicted, he’d sworn to get even. He would be out of Leyhill about now. If by getting even he meant the full four years in a sail locker... well, it couldn’t be that. It couldn’t. I swallowed, convincing myself that from the solely practical viewpoint, it was impossible.
My throat was dry. From thirst, I told myself firmly: not from fear. Fear would get me nowhere.
I eased myself out of the bunk and onto the small patch of floor, holding on tight to the upper bunk. The black world went on corkscrewing around, but the vertigo had really gone. The fluid in my ears’ semi-circular canals had finally got used to sloshing about chaotically: a pity it hadn’t done it with less fuss.
I found the catch of the wall locker, opened it, and felt around inside. Paper cups, as promised. Bottle of water, ditto. Big plastic bottle with a screw cap. It was hopeless in the dark to use one of the cups: I wedged myself on the only available seat, which was the lowered lid of the loo, and drank straight from the bottle. Even then, with the violent rolling and pitching, a good deal of it ran down my neck.
I screwed the cap on again carefully and groped my way back to the bunk, taking the bottle with me. Hooked up the net again. Lay on my back with my head propped up on the pillow, holding the water on my chest and whistling ‘Oh Susanna’ to prove I was alive.
A long time passed during which I drank a good deal and whistled every tune I could think of.
After that I stood up and banged on the cabin door with my fists and the bottle, and shouted at the top of my voice that I was awake and hungry and furious at the whole bloody charade. I used a good deal of energy and the results were an absolute zero.
Back in the bunk I took to swearing instead of whistling. It made a change.
The elements went on giving the boat a bad time. I speculated fruitlessly about where we were, and how big the boat was, and how many people were sailing it, and whether they were any good. I thought about hot sausages and crusty bread and red wine, and for a fairly cheerful hour I thought about winning the Gold Cup.
At about the time that I began to wonder seriously if everyone except me had been washed overboard, the hatch-opening noises returned. He was there, still in his oilskins. I gulped in the refreshing blast of cold air and wondered just how much of a stinking fug was rushing out to meet him.
I unhooked the net and stood up, holding on and swaying. The wind outside shrieked like starlings.
He shouted, ‘Do you want food?’
‘Yes,’ I yelled. ‘And more water.’ I held the nearly empty bottle up to him, and he reached down for it.
‘Right.’
He shut the hatch and went away, but not before I had a terrifying glimpse of the outside world. The boat rolled heavily as usual to one side, to the left, and before it rolled back to the right I saw the sea. A huge uneven wave, towering to obliterate the sky, charcoal grey, shining, swept with dusts of spray. The next heavy crash of water over the hatch made me think happier thoughts of my dry cabin.
He came back, opened the hatch a few inches, and lowered in a plastic carrier bag on a loop of rope. He shouted down at me.
‘Next time I bring you food, you give me back this carrier. Understand?’