I SAW tawny hair with bright, sun-bleached streaks falling down to shoulders clad in a yellow sweater, which gave way to perfectly fitting jeans, which ended, quite some distance later, in yellow rubber boots. Before I could see more, a pile of sail-bags from a big racing yacht came between us. I forgot the boats and hurried to get a look at the rest of this creature. I caught sight of her again, then she turned a corner and was gone once more, but not before I had glimpsed a high cheekbone and an ample breast. I half ran to the corner. She was gone.
I was looking at an open lot filled with boats ashore for repairs, piles of lumber and parked cars. I chose a direction and jogged through the space, craning my neck here and there. I was approaching another, smaller marina; I could see the masts beyond. Then a flash of yellow through a stack of lumber made me turn toward the water. I was walking quickly beside the long stack, peering through whatever cracks presented themselves. I caught a glimpse of a chin, a snatch of sweater, a flash of hair as she walked quickly along the other side of the lumber stack. I had just gotten a fraction of a second’s look at a whole face when my viewpoint changed radically. I pitched forward and fell eight feet, head first, into the Medina River.
When I came up, before I could clear my eyes of water, I could hear her laughing. I mopped away water and a clump of weed and looked around. She was standing on a floating dock a few yards downstream; I drifted toward her.
“That was marvelous,” she shouted. “Do you do regularly scheduled performances, or was this a one-off?”
“Just this once, and only for you!” I yelled back, coughing and sputtering.
“I shouldn’t swallow any of that,” she called, as I swam for the dock and continued to spit out water. “I should think half the toilets in the marina are flushing just about now.”
“Wonderful,” I said, hauling myself from the water. She was English. I had never met an English girl before.
“Come along, we’d better get you dry.” She turned and walked down the dock. I followed her like a wet puppy. “You’re a Yank, are you?” she asked.
“I’m an American—from Georgia, in the South. We respond poorly to being called Yankees.”
She laughed—a wonderful, rich sound. “Gone with the Wind and all that?”
“Now you’ve got it.”
“Here we are.” She stepped lightly onto an attractive sailboat of some thirty-odd feet. The name, Toscana, was painted on her stern. “Shoes off.” She pointed to my heavy hiking boots. “Odd footwear for around boats. You’ll have to get some deck shoes if you hang about Cowes for very long.”
“I had some deck shoes,” I said, “but somebody’s just lifted them, along with all my other gear. I shucked the boots while she fiddled with a combination lock on the hatch of the boat. I explained to her what had just happened.
“How exciting!” she laughed. “You should have hung about; the Queen might have knighted you for services to the Crown.”
“More likely I’d have been mistaken for the owner of the boat and sent straight to the dungeons. Jesus, I’m freezing, can I borrow a blanket or something?”
“I think we can find you something to wear,” she said. Momentarily, she tossed a pair of jeans, a sweatshirt, and a towel into the cockpit with me. “You can change in the heads.”
A few minutes later I was sipping strong tea and having a close look at my hostess. Broad forehead, longish nose, clear, tanned skin, huge eyes. I reckoned she was a couple of years older than I. Her hands were bare of rings. It had been worth the dive. Whose clothes was I wearing, I worried. It especially worried me that they were too big.
She leaned over from the galley and stuck out a hand. “I’m Anna Pemberton-Robinson. Mouthful, isn’t it? Annie will do for the first, Robinson for the second.”
I took her hand. It was strong and surprisingly tough for a girl’s. “I’m Will Lee.”
“Pleased to meet you, Willie.”
“No, that’s Will … Lee.”
There was a scuffing of feet on deck and a voice called down, “Hello … visitors!” Two men descended through the companion-way—two very different men. One was about thirty, handsome, tanned, athletic-looking, wearing jeans and a light slicker over his bare chest. I am six feet one inch tall, and as I rose to meet them I could stand erect in the boat’s cabin. He had to stoop.
“Oh, Mark, this is Willie Lee,” Annie said. His hand enveloped mine, and I felt that he could have crushed it to pulp had he wished to. Now I knew who the clothes belonged to. “Willie, ah, had a little accident; those are his things drying in the cockpit. Willie this is Mark, and …” She turned toward the other man and offered her hand.
“I’m Derek Thrasher,” the man said smoothly. Everything about him was impossibly smooth. He was not handsome, he was beautiful. He seemed in his late thirties and was as tall as the other fellow, Mark, but slimmer, gorgeously barbered, exquisitely dressed in a cashmere blazer and white flannel trousers, a yellow silk shirt, and an ascot tied at the throat. I had never seen a man wearing white flannel trousers and an ascot, except in the movies, and he looked perfectly comfortable and unselfconscious in them. He looked as much at home with the soft, glossy loafers in his hand as another man would with them on his feet. His handshake was firm, personal, but his hand was as soft and buttery as the shoes in his hand.
“He is Derek Thrasher,” Mark echoed, “and he thinks he might like to sponsor a large effort in the Singlehanded Transatlantic Race.”
Annie’s face was lit by the broadest of smiles. “Oh, Mark,that’s wonderful! Mr. Thrasher, I can’t tell you how delighted I am … ”
Thrasher held up a perfectly manicured finger. “It’s Derek, please.”
“Of course.” She began rummaging in the galley icebox and produced a bottle of champagne. “I’ve had this on hand just in case.”
Mark opened the bottle, and we settled ourselves about the cabin settees. I had obviously stumbled into the middle of a very happy event for all these people. Thrasher and Annie immediately launched into a discussion about boats. I leaned toward Mark and said, “Excuse me, I didn’t get your last name.”
He flashed a wide smile at me. “Pemberton-Robinson,” he said. “Robinson will do, Willie, if that’s a bit of a mouthful for a Yank.”
My anxiety at the news of his name was so keen that I didn’t bother to correct him on either my name or regional loyalties. “Ah … you and Annie are … ?” Brother and sister, I said directly to God. Please let them be brother and sister.
“Man and wife, old chap.” He grinned. There was sympathy in his voice. “Sorry.”