“Mine. I always wanted to be a ballet dancer, you see, but it doesn’t help if you’re built like a steer.”
“You should have qualified then.”
She smiled at the compliment. “I grew too tall. Anyway, I prefer sailing now.”
“She’s a lovely boat,” I said warmly. Ballet Dancer had the good look of a well-used boat. You can always tell when a boat is sailed hard; it loses its showroom gloss and accretes the small extra features that experience has demanded. Ballet Dancer’s cleats and fairleads were worn, there were extra warps neatly coiled in her scuppers, and there was a ragged collection of oars, poles and boathooks bundled beside the lashed-down liferaft. The teak decks and trim had faded to a bone white. In a month or two Sycorax would have this same efficient and weathered look. “She looks beautiful,” I said.
“And all mine,” Jill-Beth said happily. “Paid off the final instalment last month.” She switched off the BMW’s engine and opened her door. “Coming?”
I followed her on to the floating pontoon and watched as she disconnected the shoreside electricity and unlooped the springs.
“We’re going out?” I said with surprise.
“Sure. Why not?”
It seemed very odd to be crewing a boat while dressed in evening clothes, but that was evidently Jill-Beth’s plan. She started the engine.
“You want to take her out, Nick?”
The boat’s long keel made it hard to turn in the marina’s restricted water, but I backed and filled until the bow was facing the channel.
Once there Jill-Beth unrolled the genoa from the forestay, then hoisted the main. I’d never seen a girl in evening dress rig a yacht before. “The trick to it,” she said happily, “is a damned good anti-perspirant.” She came and sat next to me in the cockpit where she opened a locker. “Champagne?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
The evening had been sparked with a spontaneity that matched the irresponsibility of flying the Atlantic. I felt happy, even light-headed. It was cooler out on the water where the small wind spilt down on us from the mainsail’s curve. “How does she compare to Sycorax? ” Jill-Beth asked.
“Sycorax carries more windage aloft. The gaff, all those blocks and halliards, the topsail yard. So she has to have a lot of metal underwater. That makes her stubborn.”
“Like you?”
“Like me. And like me she’s not too hot to windward, but I don’t plan to fight my way round the world.” A motor-cruiser surged past us. There was a party in evening dress on its covered quarterdeck and they raised their glasses in friendly greeting. I could see the first stars pricking the sky’s pale wash where an airliner etched a white trail. “Thank you for the air ticket,” I said.
“Nada.” Jill-Beth grinned. “Isn’t that why white knights rescue damsels in distress? For a reward?”
“Is this my reward?” I asked.
“What else?” She touched my glass with hers. The wake of the cruiser jarred Ballet Dancer’s double-ended hull and made Jill-Beth’s champagne spill on to my black trousers. She wiped the excess off.
“I like you in a tux. It makes you look elegantly ugly.” I laughed. “I think it’s the first time I’ve worn a tie since they gave me the medal.” We passed a moored boat which had a smoking barbecue slung from its dinghy davits. The skipper waved a fork at us and we raised our champagne flutes in reply. I thought how the pleasure of this evening compared to the bitter paranoia of Bannister’s life; the jealousies and ambitions, the sheer squalidness of his suspicions. No wonder, I thought, that his American wife had tired of it. Had she wanted to come back to this elegant coast with its sprawl of luxuries?
I pushed the mainsheet traveller across as the wind backed a point or two. We were going softly eastwards, past shoals, but keeping within the buoys that marked the offshore channel. Two more motor-cruisers passed us, and both carried yet more people in evening dress. “Where’s the party?” I asked.
“There.” Jill-Beth pointed directly ahead towards a massive white house that occupied its own sand-edged promontory. The house was shielded on its landward side by trees while wide terraced lawns dropped to the private beaches and to the private docks that this night were strung with lanterns and crowded with boats. A string of headlamps showed where other guests drove along the spit of sand that led to the promontory. “The house belongs to Kassouli’s wife,” Jill-Beth said. “She’s not there, but Kassouli is. He wants to thank you.”
“Thank me for what?”
“For rescuing me.”
I suddenly felt nervous. There’s something about the very rich that always makes me nervous. Principles, I remembered, are soluble in cash, and I had already surrendered my privacy to Bannister’s cash and feared that something more might be asked of me this night. I pushed the helm away from me. “Why don’t we just bugger off to Nantucket? I haven’t been there for years.” Jill-Beth laughed and pulled the helm back again. “Yassir wants to see you, Nick. You’ll like him!”
I doubted it, but obediently steered for the dock where servants waited to berth our yacht. I could hear the thump of the music coming from the wide, lantern-hung gardens. I chose a windward berth, spilt air from the sails, and two men jumped aboard to take our warps.
We entered the garden of Kassouli’s delights. A pit had been dug on one of the beaches and a proper clambake of driftwood and seaweed sifted smoke into the evening and tantalized us with the smells of lobster, clams and sweetcorn. Higher up, on one of the terraces, steaks dripped on barbecues. There was champagne, music and seemingly hundreds of guests. It was clearly an important social occasion, for there were photographers hunting through the shoals of beautiful people. One flashed a picture of Jill-Beth and myself, but when he asked my name I told him I was no one important. “A Brit?” He sounded disappointed, then cheered up. “Are you a Lord?” I told him my name was John Brown. He wrote it down, but it was plain I was not destined to be the evening’s social lion.
“Why didn’t you say who you were?” Jill-Beth protested.
“I’m no one important.”
“Nonsense. You want to dance?”
I said my back hurt too much and so we sat at a table where we were joined by a noisy group. One of the men, after the introductions, told me how I could refinance my boat on a twelve-year amortization schedule. I made polite noises. I gathered that a good few of the guests worked for Kassouli, either in his finance houses, shipping line or oil companies. I looked for Kassouli himself, but the man who wanted to lend me money said that the boss probably wouldn’t show himself. “Yassir’s not a great partygoer. He likes to give ’em, though.” The man peered round the garden. “That’s his son, Charlie.”
I recognized the son from the pictures I’d seen in Bannister’s house, but there was one thing I was not prepared for. Charles Kassouli was now in a wheelchair. He was only in his early twenties, but had withered legs slewed sideways on the chair.
“What happened?” I asked my new acquaintance.
“Motorbike.” The reply was laconic. “Too many bucks and not enough sense. What do you expect of rich kids?” Jill-Beth introduced me to the son a few moments later.
Charles Kassouli’s face was startlingly handsome, but his character was distant and churlish. I thought he might be doped into lethargy with painkillers, though he proved snappish enough when Jill-Beth told him I was a sailor.