I telephoned Angela at her London office that afternoon. “She’s all ready,” I said. “Sails bent on, ma’am, ready to go.”
“Completely ready?”
“No radio, no navigation lights, no stove, no barometer, no chronometer, no compass, no bilge pumps, no anchors, no radar reflector, no…” I was listing all the things Fanny Mulder had stolen.
“They’re ordered, Nick,” Angela said impatiently.
“But she can sail,” I said warmly. “Sycorax is ready for sea. She awaits your bottle of champagne and your film crew.”
“That’s wonderful.” Angela did not sound very pleased, perhaps because I was finishing a boat that would take me away from her, which made my own enthusiasm tactless. There was a pause. “Nick?”
“There’s a train that leaves Totnes at twenty-six minutes past five this afternoon,” I said, “and it reaches London at—”
“Twenty-five minutes to nine,” she chimed in, and did sound pleased.
“I suppose I could just make it.” I made my voice dubious.
“You’d bloody well better make it,” she said, “or there’ll be no radio, no navigation lights and no stove.”
“Bilge pumps?”
She pretended to think about it. “Definitely no bilge pumps. Ever.” I made it.
Angela’s flat was a gloomy basement in Kensington. She only used it when Bannister was away, but the very fact that she had retained the flat spoke for her independence. At least I thought so. The flat had a somewhat abandoned feel. It was sparsely furnished, the plants had all long died of thirst, and dust was thick on shelves and mantelpiece. Papers and books lay in piles everywhere. It was the flat of a busy young woman who spent most of her time elsewhere.
“Next Tuesday,” she told me.
“What about it?”
“That’s when we’ll film Sycorax going to sea.”
“Not till then?”
She must have heard my disappointment. “Not till then.” She was sitting at her dressing-table wiping off her make-up. “We can’t do it till Tuesday because Monday’s the travelling day for the crew.”
“Why can’t they travel on Sunday?”
“You want to pay them triple time? Just be patient till Tuesday, OK?”
“High tide’s at ten forty-eight in the morning,” I said from memory, “and it’s a big one.”
“Does that matter?”
“That’s good. We’ll go out on a fast ebb.”
She leaned towards the mirror to do something particularly intricate to an eyelid. “There’s another reason it has to be Tuesday,” she said, and I heard the edge of strain in her voice.
“Go on.”
“Tony wants to be there.” She did not look at me as she spoke.
“It’s important that he’s there. I mean, the film is partly about how he helped you, isn’t it? And he wants to see Sycorax go to sea.”
“Does he want to be on board?”
“Probably.”
I lay in her bed, saying nothing, but feeling jealousy’s tug like a foul current threatening a day’s perfection. It was stupid to feel it, but natural. I knew that Angela’s prime loyalty was to Bannister, yet I resented it. I had lived these past weeks in a mist of happiness, revelling in the joys of a new love’s innocence, and now the real world was snapping shut on me. This present happiness was an il-lusion, and Bannister’s return was a reminder that Angela and I shared nothing but a bed and friendship.
She turned in her chair. She knew what I was thinking. “I’m sorry, Nick.”
“Don’t be.”
“It’s just that…” she shrugged, unable to finish.
“He has prior claim?”
“I suppose so.”
“And you have no choice?” I asked, and wished that I had not asked because I was betraying my jealousy.
“I’ve got choice.” Her voice was defiant.
“Then why don’t we sail Sycorax out on Sunday.” On Sunday Bannister would still be in France, even though Wildtrack had sailed for home three weeks before. “You come with me,” I said. “We’ll be in the Azores in a few days. After that we can make up our minds.
You want to see Australia again? You fancy exploring the Caribbean?”
She twisted her long hair into a hank that she laid up on her skull.
“I get sea-sick.”
“You’ll get over it in three days.”
“I never get over it.” She was staring into the mirror as she pinned up her hair. “I’m not a sailor, Nick.”
“People do get over it,” I said. “It takes time, but I promise it doesn’t last.”
“Nick!” I was pressing her too hard.
“I’m sorry.”
She stared at herself in the mirror. “Do you think I haven’t been tempted to get away from it all? No more of Tony’s insecurity, no more jealousy at work, no more sodding around with schedules and film stocks and worrying where the next good idea for a programme will come from? But I can’t do that, Nick, I can’t! If I was twenty years old I might do it. Isn’t that the age when people think the world will lap them in love and all they need do is show a little faith in it?
But I’m too old now.”
“Twenty-six is not old.”
“It’s too old to become a hippy.”
“I’m not a hippy.”
“What the hell else are you?” She shook a cigarette from its packet and lit it. “You think you’re going to drift around the world like a gypsy. Who’s going to pay you? What will you do when your leg collapses? What about your old age? It’s all right for you, Nick, you don’t seem to care. You think that it really will be all right, but I’m not like you.”
“You want to be safe.”
“Is that so bad?” she said belligerently.
“No. It’s just that I’m in love with you, and I don’t want to lose you.”
She stared at me. “Get a job, live in Devon. Can’t you parlay that medal into a job?”
“Maybe.”
She grimaced and stubbed out the cigarette she’d only just lit. She stood, walked round the bed, and dropped her bathrobe on to the floor. She stood naked, looking down on me. “Let’s make the film first, Nick, then worry about life?”
I threw back the bedclothes for her. “OK, boss.” She climbed in beside me. “You’ll stay tomorrow?” Tomorrow was Friday. “How about the whole weekend?”
“You know I can’t.” Bannister wanted her to go to France for the weekend. After Wildtrack’s successful series of races he had moved to the Riviera where he had been a judge at a television festival. That work was now completed and he wanted Angela to fly down for the festival’s closing celebrations. The plan was that she would fly to Nice on Friday evening, then return with Bannister on Monday morning and drive down to Devon that same afternoon.
We thus both sensed that this might be our last night of stolen freedom, for the old constraints would come back with Bannister’s return.
Angela left early next morning, going to the studios where she was rough-cutting the film that had been shot so far. I made myself coffee in her tiny kitchen, bathed in her tiny bathroom, then sat and made a list of the charts I wanted to buy. The list was very long, but the money was typically short so I cut the list down to the Azores and the Caribbean. Every fare to London denied Sycorax another clutch of charts, but I didn’t think Sycorax would deny me these visits. I looked at Angela’s few belongings; the untidy papers left over from the research of past programmes, a pretty watercolour on her wall, the old and decrepit teddy-bear that was the one thing she had brought from her childhood home.
The phone rang. I did not move. The telephone was connected to an answering machine and, when I was in the flat, I left the machine’s speaker turned up. If it was Angela calling me then I would hear her voice and know to pick up the telephone and switch off the machine. I hated the process, which struck me as a typical shift of adultery, but it was necessary. Sometimes Bannister called and I would listen to his peremptory voice delivering a curt message and the jealousy would spark in me.