Noose Read Online Free Page B

Ian. And they’d be sick in the lounge and the dining saloon as well. Such a job, clearing up when we docked. It might be a quick turn-around trip, new passengers waiting, and you could not have public rooms in that condition, the prickly stench of recent ample vomit – often, admittedly, high-quality vomit, with a French touch from the dining salon: genuine
hors d’oeuvres
,
steak tartare, Camembert. And not always neatly piled, but strung out in long, many-coloured, glistening lines on the floor and across the upholstery. People threw it up uncontrolled when staggering about with the swell, or against it, maybe having had, yes, a four-course luxury meal with all the trimmings, plus wine – perhaps
red
wine, usually dark red, but sometimes brighter, burgundy or claret.
    â€˜A ship could lose its passenger licence if an inspector came aboard and found wholesale, prevalent puke. This was understandable. The ship would not seem comfortable or homely. A pleasure boat had to look like a pleasure boat and smell like a pleasure boat, not a disgorge site. The
King Arthur
was over six-hundred gross tonnage. She could take a thousand passengers. Not all would be aboard and sick every trip, though still quite a quantity sometimes. But on a nice day, such a brave sight, the
King
Arthur
! Unusually high potential horse power for such a vessel then. This would be quite a few years ago, now, Ian.’
    â€˜Horsepower meaning the energy used to drive the paddles.’
    â€˜And a speed touching twenty knots.’
    â€˜A knot, or nautical mile, is two thousand and twenty-five yards – more than an ordinary mile, twenty knots being twenty-three miles an hour.’
    â€˜There were races, Ian.’ Mr Charteris would sound a little ashamed and confidential about this.
    â€˜Not proper races, with judges and a starting gun, Dad.’
    â€˜Races of a commercial nature to get first to where passengers waited ashore and pick them up, and collect their fares. That was the objective, Ian – collect their fares. The Masthead was not the only fleet. Hardly. Some did very well indeed. People who had some money meant to enjoy themselves after all the troubles of the Great War. Excursions in the Bristol Channel between south Wales and the west country, and vice-versa. Popular. That’s what I mean about the racing. Competition. It wasn’t supposed to happen – of course it wasn’t. It could be dangerous, boats nearly ramming each other to get in ahead at a landing stage. But it did happen. You could call it greed, you could call it enterprise.’
    â€˜And so, that terrible bad accident,’ Ian would say.
    â€˜Very bad. Not necessary. Never take the sea lightly, Ian. There’s a lot of it, with its own way of doing things, such as swamping, battering, rearing high. The Bristol Channel might be limited, but it’s joined to all kinds of other seas and oceans covering much of the globe. The decline of the Masthead
operation started here. We won the race that day, but the death – it broke company morale, it put a pall over the fleet for a while. I think the company might have failed, even if the war hadn’t come. I got this dredger job then. It wasn’t any longer a time for cruising and enjoyment; it was a time for sand and gravel.’
    â€˜But back on that special day, you dived in from the port deck rail, determined to make a rescue.’
    â€˜Had to.’
    â€˜The woman’s coat and other wet clothes tugged her down.’
    â€˜The sea there, murky. Hard to spot anyone at a depth. That’s what I meant about the sea. It can be murky, it can be clean and clear, but it is always the sea and unmerciful, summer or winter. It doesn’t just lie there between pieces of land. It’s never still. Go and look at it. What you’ll see more than anything else is movement. That’s built in to the sea – movement.’
    â€˜We had a poem in school: