Isvik Read Online Free Page B

back with a station commander who had served in the Falklands, and all the time I felt the need to tread delicately, not sure if she knew about her husband’s psychological state, his fear of the ice. I was skating round this when the discussion about presentation of a World Ship Trust International Heritage Award was interrupted by the arrival of the man we were all apparently waiting for.
    His name was Iain Ward and everybody at the table rose, no easy feat I found, the polished plank edge of the pew catching me behind my knees. I think it was innate good manners rather than respect for wealth, though the fact that he had suddenly found himself presented with a cheque for over a million probably made some difference. It was the Chairman of the National Maritime Museum who said with a friendly smile, ‘Good of you to come all this way, Mr Ward.’ He held out his hand, introducing himself with no mention of a title.
    It was as they shook hands that I realised the man’s bulging right sleeve ended in a black-gloved hand. He had paused in the entrance, his head slightly bowed as though in anticipation of contact with the deck beams. He was about my own age, tall and heavily built with long sideburns and a slightly diffident smile. ‘Sorry if Ah’m late.’ He had a very strong Scots accent.
    Iris Sunderby stepped out from the restriction of the pew opposite and moved towards him. ‘Do come in. I’m so glad you could make it.’ And the Museum Chairman, still with that charming smile of his, said, ‘You’re not late at all. We were early. We had other business to discuss.’
    She introduced him to the rest of us and he went round the table, shaking everybody very formally with his left hand. Clearly his gloved hand was artificial, but what the bulge in the sleeve was I could not quite figure out. When she had finally ushered him into the vacant place beside her, she handed everybody a typewritten sheet of paper, a memorandum setting out very briefly the reason for this meeting. Iain Ward glanced at it momentarily, then lifted his head to gaze round the table. He was seated right opposite me, his big frame squeezed into a loud check sports jacket, his shirt open at the neck to reveal a heavy gold chain round a thick bull of a neck. There was also a gold signet ring on one of the fingers of his left hand.
    An awkward silence was broken by Victor Wellington saying, ‘Now that we’re all here I think we can get started.’ He waited until we were settled, then went on, ‘To go back a bit, Iris first got in touch with me about this Flying Dutchman of a ship shortly after her husband’s death. Since then she has been very busy trying to raise money and, at the same time, making enquiries in Buenos Aires and Montevideo, and more particularly in the far south of South America, at Punta Arenas in the Magellan Strait and at Ushuaia in the Beagle Channel. As a result, we have, all four of us, come to the conclusion that if her husband did in fact sight the wreck of a square-rigged ship in the ice of the Weddell Sea before the plane he was in crashed, then it has to be the frigate Andros .’ He looked across at the World Ship Trust representative. ‘You have some photographs, I believe?’
    The other nodded. ‘Two in fact. One taken just after she was raised from the mud of the River Uruguay in 1981, the other after she had been restored and purchased by the Argentine Navy. Both are from the World Ship Trust’s International Register of Historic Ships .’ He had several copies and these he passed round the table. When we had all looked at them, Wellington said, ‘Speaking for the Museum, and the Chairman is in full agreement, we would support any effort on anybody’s part to obtain for exhibition in Britain a fully-rigged Blackwall frigate. That’s what we believe it to be. It would be one of the earliest frigates on display anywhere in the