Charlie was sharpening his chisels when I got back to his yard. “What’s got up your nose?” he asked.
I told him about my visit to Buzzacott’s gallery, and how the girl I had been chasing worked for Buzzacott. Charlie was scornful of my amateur sleuthing. “You’re a berk, Johnny, a prize berk” – he stropped a blade on his palm and gave me a long-suffering smile – “you should know better than to get involved.”
“I offered to help her find the painting,” I explained.
“What painting? It’s gone, Johnny. If you miss it, buy yourself a tin of yellow emulsion and paint another.” He tested the newly sharpened chisel by slicing away a sliver of his thumbnail then, satisfied, dropped the blade into his toolbox. “I made you a new chart table. Say thank you.”
“Thank you,” I said. Behind us Sunflower was shrouded in a canvas tent ready for the professional shot-blasters who were coming the next day. I hated to think what the work was going to cost, and said as much.
“That’s my problem,” Charlie said. “I’ve told you I’ll pay, and I will. You did enough for me in the old days, so you don’t need to feel embarrassed now.”
Yet I was embarrassed, because Charlie was clearly spending a small fortune on Sunflower’s repair, but as the days passed I also saw how much pleasure he was taking from the work. “I’d forgotten how much fun you can have in getting a boat ready for sea,” he told me more than once. He threw himself enthusiastically at the task, so enthusiastically that it seemed at times as if Sunflower was his boat and not mine. Whatever she needed, he was determined to supply, but only the very best. He would leave the house at dawn, drive down to the yard, and start work. He found rust under the transducer plugs, so nothing would serve but that the fittings were drilled out of the hull and new steel fairings made for the depth-sounder and Pitot log heads. Charlie welded the new fairings into place himself and afterwards, in his old fashion, congratulated himself on a well-done piece of work. “Proper job, that.”
In the next busy days there were dozens of ‘proper jobs’ performed on Sunflower. Her shot-blasted hull was anti-fouled and, above the blue bootline, painted a dazzling white. Her liferaft was sent away to be repaired and restowed in its canister. The guardrail stanchions were replaced, and new lifelines rigged from bow to stern. Her cabin joinery was repaired with a lovely pale oak, but not before Charlie had rewired the whole boat. “I needed a holiday,” he told me when I wondered how his business was managing without him, though in fact Sunflower simply became Charlie’s temporary office. He had a cordless telephone in his tool box and, if a problem would not yield to bullying on the phone, he would drop down from Sunflower’s gunwales and stride across to his real office. I was grateful for his continual presence; just to be with Charlie gave me a sense of being physically protected from Garrard and Peel, while working with him brought back memories of happy days.
The biggest difference between our old days and these new ones was the amount of money we now lavished on Sunflower. A new VHF radio was installed, one that was pre-tuned to all the American and European frequencies. Charlie wasn’t content with such a lavish toy, but insisted on installing a short-wave radio as well. “So you can listen to all those posh voices on the BBC.” He patted the panel which he’d made to house the twin radios. “Proper job, that.”
I had to dig my heels in and refuse some of his suggestions. I was tempted by a Satnav set, which snatched position reports from passing satellites, but I have a fear of too many electronic toys on a boat, so I wouldn’t let him buy one. He had a Decca set which he claimed to have taken off one of his old boats and which he insisted on installing over Sunflower’s chart table. I couldn’t refuse the gift, but as Decca will only give positions in a limited number of waters I did not fear that I would become too used to its electronic magic and forget how to use a sextant. Charlie wanted me to have a radar set, but I adamantly refused; they drain too much electricity and their aerials look too ugly. I won that battle, but Charlie won others: he insisted that the new mast should have an electronic wind direction and speed vane which would display on twin dials in the cockpit and above the chart table. He made new chart drawers, and filled them with brand new charts. He took a small boy’s pleasure in surprising me with new purchases: danbuoys for the stern; a radio direction finder; a stripper for the propeller; a sun awning for the hot latitudes; and bright red canvas dodgers with Sunflower’s name sewn large in brilliant yellow letters. Best of all he bought me a new fibreglass tender with a small outboard. “You can burn that scabby inflatable,” he said.
It all cost money. So much money. Embarrassing amounts of money. I tackled Charlie about the cost, but he simply dismissed my embarrassment. “I’m enjoying it, Johnny. That’s all that matters.”
“You must let me pay you back.”
“What with? Bottle tops?” He grinned. We’d been working till well past nine o’clock and had driven over to the Rossendale Arms for a good-night pint. Some hotel guests from Stowey sat at the bar and sneaked surreptitious looks at me; the landlord had probably told them they were staying in my ancestral home, but I could see from their faces that they weren’t sure whether to believe that the paint-stained scruff truly was a belted earl.
“What is Sunflower costing you?” I pressed Charlie.
“I’m not counting.” He leaned back on the settle and stretched his long arms. “I’m enjoying myself, Johnny. It’s been too long since I did a proper job. I spend too much of my time on the bloody phone these days, or in the office. I like working with these.” He held out his hands, big and scarred. “Besides, it’s a way of making up to you.”
“Making up to me?” I said with astonishment.
“Fetch me a pint, and I’ll tell you.”
I fetched two pints. That was something I’d miss, I thought, the good taste of proper ale instead of the gassy piss-weak lager that the Germans had persuaded the rest of the world to drink.
Charlie lit himself a cigarette. “I always felt guilty about deserting you,” he said in explanation.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“It’s true.” He was entirely serious. “When we flew back from Australia I was really looking forward to going back to sea. We had some good times, you and I. But then I got Yvonne pregnant so, like a fool, I did the decent thing.”
He was speaking of the time after my brother’s suicide, four years before. It had been a bad time for me; trammelled with accountants, lawyers and bank managers. I had thought then that I would be trapped by all those responsibilities and, though Charlie and I had often talked of going back to sea, I had never been certain that it would be possible. I used to escape Stowey’s hopelessness by delivering yachts in the Channel, but I had doubted whether I could ever afford to sail far oceans again; Stowey’s problems were too comprehensive for such luxuries. Charlie felt guilty that he had abandoned me, but he had never known that I had been considering abandoning him. I confessed as much to him now, but Charlie shook his head dismissively. “Of course you were going back to sea! I knew that. You were never going to stay with all those pin-striped wankers for longer than you had to!” He laughed. “Could you see yourself living with your mother?”
I smiled. “No.”