Isvik Read Online Free Page A

a while, looking for’ard at the rigging, still talking with a degree of concentration that suggested perhaps they weren’t looking at the ship or at anything in particular, but were entirely engrossed in the subject of their conversation.
    They were there about a minute, an incongruous little gathering in their dark suits, then they moved to the after end of the coachroofing and disappeared down a companionway. I rounded the stern of the ship and headed for the entrance. There is a ticket desk on the left as you go in and when I told the CPO on duty my business, he directed me to a little cuddy of an office on the far side, where one of the Cutty Sark ’s captains was seated at the table drinking a mug of tea.
    â€˜Mr Kettil?’ He glanced at a typewritten note on the table in front of him, then got to his feet and shook my hand. ‘The meeting is in the after cabin. Do you know the way?’
    I shook my head. ‘I’ve been here once before, but I don’t remember the layout.’
    â€˜I’ll show you then.’ He gulped down the rest of his tea. ‘The others have arrived, all except one.’ He then led the way to the deck above, up the ladder to the quarterdeck and aft till we were just above the wheel position. Brass treads led down into a dark-panelled interior. The beautifully appointed dining saloon ran athwartships, taking up the whole after part of the officers’ living accommodation.
    As soon as I had ducked my head through the doorway I remembered it, the superb quality of the woodwork. The panelling was of bird’s-eye maple and teak, all of it a dark rich reddish colour. So was the refectory-type table that ran athwart the saloon, plain planked seats like pews either side with backs that folded up for easy stowing, and aft of the table a magnificent dresser with a mirror back and barometer set into it as a centre piece. There was a skylight over the table with a big oil lamp gleaming brassily below it, and just behind the for’ard pew was a little coal grate set in what looked like a copy of a cast-iron Adam fireplace.
    There were four men seated at the table: Victor Wellington, the two who had boarded the ship with him, also a somewhat gaunt individual, and at the far end was the young woman I had been so conscious of as she walked from her car to the ship. She looked up from her loose-leaf notebook as I entered, and again I was aware of her eyes and the look of appraisal; also something else, something indefinable, a sort of recognition, not quite animal, but certainly sexual.
    The ship’s duty captain had taken his leave and Victor Wellington was introducing me, first to a very slim, live-featured man, an admiral, who was Chairman of the National Maritime Museum, then to the young woman who was sitting next to him – ‘Mrs Sunderby’.
    She smiled at me, a quick lighting up of her features. ‘Iris Sunderby.’ She pronounced it ‘Eeris’. The eyes were very blue in the electric light beamed down from the big brass lamp above her head. ‘I’m the cause of all these kind gentlemen giving up so much of their time.’ She smiled at me, but very briefly, her English careful now and her eyes on the door.
    The other two men were the Chairman of the Maritime Trust and, next to him, the almost legendary figure who had saved the Cutty Sark and then gone on to form the World Ship Trust. Victor Wellington waved me to a seat opposite Mrs Sunderby, and as I manoeuvred my body into the position indicated, I was remembering why her name was familiar. I hesitated, then leaned across the table. ‘Sorry to ask you this, but are you still married? I mean, is your husband alive?’
    Her eyes clouded, the lips tightening. ‘No. My husband’s dead. Why?’
    â€˜He was a glaciologist, was he?’
    â€˜How did you know that?’
    Hesitantly I began telling her about the strange conversation I had had some weeks