‘Yes,’ I shouted back, untying the rope. ‘What time is it?’
‘Five o’clock. Afternoon.’
‘What day?’
‘Sunday.’ He pulled the rope up and began to shut the hatch.
‘Give me some light,’ I yelled.
He shouted something which sounded like ‘Batteries’ and put me back among the blind. Yes, well... one could live perfectly well without sight. I slid back onto the bunk, fastened the net, and investigated the carrier bag.
The water bottle, full; an apple; and a packet of two thick sandwiches, faintly warm. They turned out to be hamburgers in bread, not buns; and very good too. I ate the lot.
Five o’clock on Sunday. Three whole damned days since I’d stepped into the white van.
I wondered if anyone had missed me seriously enough to go to the police. I had disappeared abruptly from the weighing room, but no one would think it sinister. The changing room valet might be surprised that I hadn’t collected from him my wallet and keys and watch, which he’d been holding as usual in safe keeping while I raced, and that I hadn’t in fact paid him, either: but he would have put my absentmindedness down to excitement. My car would still, I supposed, be standing in the jockeys’ car park, but no one yet would have begun to worry about it.
I lived alone in a cottage three miles outside Newbury: my next-door neighbour would merely think I was away celebrating for the weekend. Our two office assistants, one boy, one girl, would have made indulgent allowances, or caustic allowances perhaps, when I hadn’t turned up for work on Friday. The clients I had been supposed to see would have been irritated, but no more.
Trevor was away on his holidays. So no one, I concluded, would be looking for me.
On Monday morning, the bankrupt Mr Wells might make a fuss. But even if people began to realise I had vanished, how would they ever find me? The fact had to be faced that they wouldn’t. Rescue was unlikely. Unless I escaped, I would be staying in the sail locker until someone chose to let me out.
Sunday to Monday was a long cold, wild, depressing night.
4
On Monday, March 21st the hatch opened twice to let in air, food, sprays of water, and brief views of constantly grey skies. On each occasion I demanded information, and got none. The oilskins gave merely an impression that the crew had more than enough to do with sailing the boat in those conditions, and had no time to answer damn fool questions.
I was used to being alone. I lived alone and to a great extent worked alone; solitary by nature, and seldom lonely. An only child, long accustomed to my own company, I tended often to feel oppressed by the constant companionship of a large number of people, and to seek escape as soon as possible. All the same, as the hours dragged on, I found life alone in the sail locker increasingly wearing.
Limbo existence, I thought. Lying in a black capsule, endlessly tossing. How long did it take for the human mind to disintegrate, left alone in uncertainty in the rattling corkscrewing dark.
A bloody long time, I answered myself rebelliously. If the purpose of all this incarceration was to reduce me to a crying wreck, then it wasn’t going to succeed. Tough thoughts, tough words... I reckoned more realistically that it depended on the true facts. I could survive another week of it passably, and two weeks with difficulty. After that... unknown territory.
Where could we be going? Across the Atlantic? Or, if the idea really was to break me up, maybe just up and down the Irish Sea? They might reckon that any suitable stretch of rough water would do the trick.
And who were ‘they’?
Not him in the oilskins. He looked upon me as a nuisance, not a target for malice. He probably had instructions regarding me, and was carrying them out. How unfunny if his instructions were to take me home once I’d gone mad.
Dammit, I thought. Dammit to bloody hell. He’d have a bloody long job. Bugger him. Bugger and sod him.
There was a great sane comfort to be found in swearing.
At some long time after my second Monday glimpse of the outside, it seemed that the demented motion of the boat was slowly steadying. Standing up out of the bunk was no longer quite such a throw-around affair. Holding on was still necessary, but not holding on for dear life. The bows crashed more gently against the waves. The thuds of water over the hatch diminished in number and weight. There were shouts on deck and a good deal of pulley noise, and I guessed they were resetting the sails.
I found also that for the first time since my first awakening, I was no longer cold.
I was still wearing the clothes I had put on in the far off world of sanity: charcoal business suit, sleeveless waistcoat-shaped pullover underneath, pale blue shirt, underpants, and socks. Somewhere on the floor in the dark was my favourite Italian silk tie, worn to celebrate the Gold Cup. Shoes had vanished altogether. From being inadequate even when reinforced by a blanket, the long-suffering ensemble was suddenly too much.
I took off my jacket and rolled it into a tidy ball. As gent’s natty suiting it was already a past number: as an extra pillow it added considerably to life’s luxuries. Amazing how deprivation made the smallest extras marvellous.
Time had become a lost faculty. Drifting in and out of sleep with no external references was a queer business. I mostly couldn’t tell whether I’d been asleep for minutes or hours. Dreams occurred in a semi-waking state, sometimes in such short snatches that I could have counted them in seconds. Other dreams were deeper and longer, and I knew that they were the product of sounder sleep. None of them seemed to have anything to do with my present predicament, and not one came up with any useful subconscious information as to why I should be there. In my innermost soul, it seemed, I didn’t know.
Tuesday morning — it must have been Tuesday morning — he came without the oilskins. The air which flowed in through the open hatch was as always fresh and clean, but now dry and faintly warm. The sky was pale blue. I could see a patch of white sail and hear the hissing of the hull as it cut through the water.
‘Food,’ he said, lowering one of the by now familiar plastic carriers.
‘Tell me why I’m here,’ I said, untying the knot.
He didn’t answer. I took the carrier off, and tied on the empty one, and held on to the rope.
‘Who are you? What is this boat? Why am I here?’ I said.
His face showed no response except faint irritation.
‘I’m not here to answer your questions.’
‘Then what are you here for?’ I said.
‘None of your business. Let go of the rope.’
I held on to it. ‘Please tell me why I’m here,’ I said.
He stared down, unmoved. ‘If you ask any more questions, and you don’t leave go of the rope, you’ll get no supper.’
The simplicity of the threat, and the simplicity of the mind that made it, was a bit of a stunner. I let go of the rope, but I made one more try.
‘Then please just tell me how long you’re going to keep me here.’
He gave me a stubborn scowl as he pulled up the carrier.
‘You’ll get no supper,’ he said, withdrawing his head out of sight, and beginning to shut the hatch.
‘Leave the hatch open,’ I shouted.
I got no joy from that either. He firmly fastened me back in the dark. I stood swaying with the boat, holding onto the upper bunk, and trying to fight down a sudden overwhelming tide of furious anger. How dared they abduct me and imprison me in this tiny place and treat me like a naughty child. How dared they give me no reasons and no horizons. How dared they thrust me into the squalor of my own unwashed, unbrushed, unshaven state. There was a great deal of insulted pride and soaring temper in the fiery outrage with which I literally shook.