THAT EVENING I TELEPHONED Jane in Paris, but she had still not heard from Derek Thrasher.
“Have you seen the London papers?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“What do you think? Is he in a lot of trouble?”
“I don’t think we should talk about this on the telephone. I’ll tell you all about it when you come to Paris. I’m looking forward to seeing you New Year’s.”
I said goodbye and hung up.
“Any luck?” Mark asked.
I shook my head. “She’s heard nothing. How did you get in touch with Thrasher in the beginning?”
I met him at the Royal London Yacht Club Ball during Cowes week, only a few days before we met you. We met at the club the next day for me to show him the plans for the yacht and go over my budget projections. Couldn’t have been together for more than half an hour. I suppose he did some checking up on me, during the next couple of days, and the next time I saw him was when you were with us. I haven’t seen him since. He didn’t give me a mailing address, just the number on the card, the same one he gave you. The one that’s now disconnected.”
“Well, I suppose his mailing address was the house I visited in London, next door to his office building. Why don’t you send him a telegram there? The papers say he isn’t there anymore, but he must have some means of having mail and messages forwarded.”
Mark jumped up and grabbed the phone. “Bloody good idea! Why didn’t I think of that sooner?”
Mark dictated a brief telegram to the cable operator, addressing it to “D.T.” at the Berkeley Square address. “Please telephone me soonest. Most urgent. Mark.” He instructed the operator to have the telegram delivered to the door first thing Tuesday morning.
“Mark, how could Denny O’Donnell even have gotten a whiff about Derek? It seems impossible.” I had a sinking feeling that I knew how, and I was hoping Mark would have another, better idea.
“Only you, Annie, and I know about Thrasher, at least you two are the only people I’ve told. Thrasher could hardly object to your knowing, since you were both there when the deal was done.”
“And I told Connie,” I said. And Connie had told at least one other person.
“Well, it’s done, now; word’s out in all the worst places. The next step is damage control.”
“Damage control?”
“A navy expression. When you take a hit on a ship you stop worrying how you got hit. You just do what you can to keep the water out.”
“What can we do?”
Mark walked to the sideboard, poured himself a scotch, and knocked back half of it. “I don’t know,” he said. There was despair in his voice, something I had never expected to hear from him.
I thought there was one small thing I might do. I went to Connie’s.
She took the news angrily. “You just don’t understand. Maeve is sequestered at the convent. She only gets out to do the shopping, and I’m the only person she sees.”
I shook my head. “She’s seeing someone else.”
“She is not. She wouldn’t lie to me.”
“Let’s find out.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I want you to tell her something else.”
“Tell her that Thrasher is out, that he’s no longer Mark’s sponsor.” For all I knew that might be the case.
“Is he?”
“We haven’t heard a word from him. We can’t get in touch with him. The next payment to the boatyard is due the day after tomorrow, and we don’t have it. Tell her that Mark is selling the family farm in Cornwall to get enough to finish the boat.” I knew that Mark could not legally sell the farm because of a stipulation in his grandfather’s will.
“Is he?”
“It’s the only possible way he could finish the boat if Thrasher doesn’t come through. Something else. Point out to her that if the boat doesn’t get finished, everybody at the boatyard is going to be put out of work for at least four months. Finbar has no work until a fishing boat starts building in April. He can’t find another boat to build just on the spur of the moment. The fact is, he would almost certainly go under, and his crew would be out of work permanently. You know what the unemployment rate is around here. They might not work for years.
“Is all this true, or are you asking me to lie to Maeve?”
I stood up and slammed down my drink on the table. “Now you listen to me, godammit. You and you alone are the only possible way we could have gotten into this mess. I told you things in confidence, and you betrayed my confidence. All I’m asking you to do now is to try and help contain some of the damage you’ve done.” I braced myself for the assault I knew might come. Then she sagged, and I knew I had won.
“All right,” she said in a small voice.
As I left her cottage I felt like a shit, because I knew that Connie was not the cause of our problems; I was. It was I who had betrayed Mark’s confidence when I had told Connie about Thrasher. We had been in bed at the time.
The following day, Tuesday, Annie called Mark at the boatyard. The cable operator had called back: Delivery had been refused of the telegram Mark had sent to Berkeley Square.
That evening I told Mark what I had said to Connie.
“Well,” he said, “I suppose it can’t do any harm, but I don’t really understand what you hope to accomplish.”
“Two things,” I replied, and they both seemed small to me. “First, if the word does get out, and the right people buy it, Thrasher will be out of the picture for them; they’ll believe they can’t get at him by sabotaging the project. Second, the crew might not walk off the job right away if they think you’re getting the money another way. It could buy us some time, in case Derek does come through.”
Mark shrugged. “It might help. At least if they hear the story, we’ll know how they got it.”
The next day, Wednesday, work went on as usual on the yacht. Finbar said nothing about the payment. Then, at half past four, Murray from the bank turned up with another man. Both were carrying brief cases. Finbar went into the office with them. Through the glass partition we could see him shaking his head and arguing with them. The man with Murray seemed to be trying to get Finbar to accept a folded piece of paper. The telephone rang. Finbar answered it and stuck his head into the shop.
“Captain Robinson, telephone for you.”
Mark went to the office. I followed and stood in the door. “Yes? This is Captain Robinson.” He listened for a moment. “When?” He listened again. “Thank you very much.” He hung up. He started back into the shop, ignoring Murray and the other man, then paused. “Oh, Finbar, I nearly forgot.” He walked to where his coat hung on a peg, got his checkbook from a pocket, and dashed off a check. “Here you are,” he said, handing it to Finbar. “Thirty-three thousand, four hundred pounds.”
Finbar looked as astonished as I did. Mark walked briskly back into the shop with me in tow. I looked back into the office and saw Finbar tuck the paper into Murray’s coat pocket. “I’ll be having a word with your regional manager about this, Mr. Murray,” he said. The two men looked embarrassed.
I caught up with Mark. “Jesus, is that check good?”
Mark grinned. “That call was from Messrs. Coutts & Company in London. Fifty thousand pounds has been lodged to my account.” He laughed aloud. “It was delivered in cash by an armored car just at closing time. Blew the manager’s mind, I think.”
Later, as Mark and I were leaving for the day, Finbar stopped us. “I want you to know that I’d have stood up to the bank as long as I could have. I told Murray I’m going to his boss and complain about the pressure. His boss will have his ass. And the lads are behind you, too. They came to me today and offered to work without wages as long as they could in the hopes of seeing you get the money.”
“Even Denny O’Donnell?” Mark asked.
Finbar grinned. “Donal did the talking for them all, but Denny went along.”
“Well, thank them for me, will you, Finbar? And thank you too for standing up to Murray.”
“Not at all, Captain, I enjoyed it. And Captain,” Finbar’s face took on a sorrowful expression, “I’m sorry you had to sell the farm. I truly am.”
Mark patted him on the back. “Not to worry, Finbar. At least we’re sure of being able to finish the boat, now.”
“Well, Derek came through, and not a moment too soon,” I said as we walked toward the car.
“Too bloody right, mate.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “You came through, too. I think we’ll have a breathing spell, now. They’ll want us to finish the boat.”
“And we know a bit more than we did, too,” I said, thinking of Connie. I would have to go and apologize for yelling at her. She had come through for us. “Still, even though they think Derek’s out of the picture, they’ve still got their version of Belfast to hold against you. They’re going to remember that before long.”
“Maybe, but now they’re thinking their jobs depend on the boat’s being finished. We’ll have a breathing spell until then.”
But what, I wondered, would happen when the yacht was finished?