The Corsaire's Mistress

Sean Hawkwood turned his face to the cold south-westerly breeze that blew from the English Channel.  He stood for a moment on the wet quayside and then turned up the collar of his sailing jacket against the chill.  A rolling bank of low cloud hid the moon and out on the bay the only movement was the red and green blinking of navigational lights.  The boatyard stood at the head of an inlet, huddled close under a tree-covered slope that tumbled to the water’s edge.  There a narrow stream flowed from the moorland high above and gurgled under an ancient stone bridge.  The boatyard gates were closed and secured by a padlocked chain, but he expected that.   He looked around, made sure that he was alone, and then took a key from his pocket and fitted it to the padlock.  It had been recently oiled and the mechanism opened with a soft click.  The wind was funnelled by the high cliffs so it blew straight up the bay and across the yard.  It was a good force five, ideal for a fast and blustery yacht race across to the welcoming cafes and bars of the French ports on the other side of the Channel.  He quickly glanced around the yard but it was empty.   He was not supposed to have a key, not since the bankruptcy court had decided that Hawkwood’s Boatyard no longer belonged to him.

 

   He stepped inside and cautiously closed the gate.  The yard would normally have been bathed in the yellow glow of powerful floodlights but he knew the lights were not working because the electricity had been cut off.  Nobody had worked here for over two months. The ramshackle collection of buildings was secured and locked.  His glance took in the yard - the paint shop, the sheds where they moulded fibreglass and carbon-fibre into racing hulls and the office building that had been the headquarters of his yacht building business.  The court-appointed receivers had worked quickly.  They had sent in a team to inventory the yard’s assets.  The heartbreak of the auction was scheduled for tomorrow.  He was dreading it.  The day when his family’s business, built by generations of the Hawkwoods going back more than a hundred years, was broken up and sold off.  He thrust the thought from his mind.   It was too awful to contemplate.  As he stood there his senses became attuned to the darkness and the familiar aromas filled his nostrils.  There was the sharp chemical scent of the fiberglass resins, mixed with the woody perfume of sawn teak and the oily diesel scent of the black water that lapped around the dock, all mixed with the fresh salt wind from the open sea.

 

   A dog barked and he heard urgent footsteps slapping on the wet stone yard.  Torchlight flashed and a dark shape loomed out of the gloom.  A beam of light stabbed at his eyes and dazzled him.   “Oh, it’s you!  Sorry, Mr Hawkwood,” The old man who stood in front of him was dressed in a thick duffel coat and a woollen fisherman’s hat.  In one hand he held the torch and in the other was a lead that led to a large slobbering Labrador.

 

   “That’s OK, Bill.  Sean knelt and patted the friendly looking dog. “Glad to see someone is looking after the place”.  The dog licked his hand and wagged its tail.   Bill Rudd had been a skilled joiner when the yard had been working, a craftsman who fabricated the wooden moulds that shaped the carbon and epoxy resin racing hulls.  His father had worked at the yard before him.

   “They asked me to keep an eye on things; there was a burglary here the other night.   They never took much.  It was local kids, probably.”  He paused and shuffled his feet.  “Is it true then Mr Hawkwood?  The yard shut for good?”

 

   Hawkwood shrugged.  It was true enough unless he could find a way of buying the yard from the receiver.  And with little to his name but a couple of thousand in the bank, an old Land Rover and a half-share in a crumbling old house he could see no way that that was going to happen. 

 

   “I am afraid so, Bill.  It’s a sad business.” He pulled the collar of his jacket higher against the wind that was now laced for good measure with a generous helping of West Country drizzle.   “I came for a last look at her,” he said.  She was the reason he had come back to the yard.  Sean was in love and now he was about to lose his love and he was heartbroken.  For the last two years he had poured his energy, his heart and soul, - and more foolishly his money - into a yacht, an achingly beautiful yacht.  Now she towered gracefully over them.  She was a huge two-masted schooner.

     Bill nodded. “I shouldn’t really, Mr Hawkwood, they said nobody was to be let in.”  Then he saw the look in Sean’s eyes and relented.  “But I don’t suppose a few minutes will hurt.”  He stood aside and pulled the dog back.

 

     Sean could not help the feeling of pride that swelled inside him as he gazed at the schooner.  She was afloat, moored to the dock and secured with thick lines.  He adored the graceful curve of her bow and the breathtaking beauty of her stern.  He loved this yacht, even though it had killed his boatyard and destroyed his business.  He had designed her from scratch.  He had used a famous America’s Cup racing yacht from the 1930’s as his inspiration and then modernised it.  He had painstakingly drawn and re-drawn the blueprints by hand, and then, once he had finished the design, he had gone back to the beginning and improved every part of it.  He had made her a schooner because to him that was the most beautiful of all boat designs.  She was more graceful and better proportioned than a ketch and her two masts made her easier to handle than a single-masted sloop.  It had been an unusual choice because no British yard had produced a schooner in decades.  But for this particular customer no other design would do.  Once he was happy with her lines he had personally supervised every detail of her construction, even building some of the critical parts by hand himself.   Only the most expensive materials had been used because her buyer had specified that he wanted the best, and he could afford to pay.  She was just over a hundred feet long from her proud stem to her graceful stern.  She was the biggest and most expensive yacht Hawkwood’s Yard had ever built and the largest private sailing yacht built by any British yard for years.  Her hull was made from a combination of the finest Honduran mahogany combined with the most modern composite material that was stronger and lighter than steel.   She was painted gleaming white and her polished hull shone in the dull light.  Her name " Corsaire - was painted proudly in large golden letters on her transom.   Her two carbon-fibre masts stretched high above her.  They were covered in a veneer of mahogany to give the illusion of wood, but they were stronger and lighter than any wooden mast and they could carry clouds of sail.  Sails had already been fitted to her booms, her rigging was all set up and she was ready to be handed over to her owner and sailed anywhere in the world. 

 

  But Sean know that she was not going to be sailed anytime soon, not anymore, not now the buyer had vanished without sending the yard his payment.  Hawkwood’s Boatyard had run out of money and his banks had run out of patience and they had forced the yard into bankruptcy

 

   The big beautiful schooner had destroyed Hawkwood’s Yard.  Sean had ploughed all of his capital into her construction and then borrowed heavily from three different banks to finish and equip her.   Now the banks wanted their money back and they had called in their loans.  They had looked uncomfortable, as bankers do if they are trying to be polite, but they had been ruthless about recovering their debt, as bankers always are.   We are not comfortable with so much money tied up in just one boat, one single asset, that you can’t sell, they had said.  Now if you had built a few smaller production cruisers too, for the family sailing market it would have been different.  The risk is lower because you are not relying on just one customer.  And everyone knows that smaller boats are easier to sell.  In the present economic climate, they had said, where is the market for such a large and expensive yacht?   There are only a few millionaires who could buy it, but nowadays most of them seem to prefer motor-yachts.  I am sorry, they had said, as they sent him the official-looking letters that destroyed his business. 

 

   It was unfair, because Sean had had a customer for her.  Corsaire had been specially commissioned by Ed Loomis " his oldest friend.  The schooner had been built to Ed’s specification and to his budget, and Edward Loomis was a very wealthy man.  He and Sean had been born in the village, in sight of the sea on England’s south coast.  When they were barely old enough to walk they played on the sailing dinghies that were stored on the pebble beach and when they were just a little older they learned to sail in them.  When other children were playing on their pushbikes Ed and Sean took their little dinghies far out into the English Channel and pretended to be setting out on great voyages of plunder and adventure. They grew up together and sailing boats, building them, repairing them, and - most of all - racing them, was their passion.  They had competed in all the summer regattas up and down the south coast of England, sailing single handed against each other, and double handed against everyone else.

 

  Then Sean went away to university and onto a commission in the Royal Marines and Loomis had started work at his father’s small trucking and haulage business.  Even though they both had other commitments they occasionally found time to go yacht-racing together.

 

    When Edward Loomis took the business over from his father it comprised of just one old Bedford truck that his father had used to haul goods to and from merchants in Plymouth.  The truck was old and Loomis began to spend more time underneath it making repairs than hauling paying cargo.  He sold the truck and used the money as down payment on a brand-new eighteen wheeler.  Within a year he was employing drivers and running a fleet of half a dozen trucks.  Then he got contracts to haul goods all over Europe and he took out a large bank loan to buy a dozen more trucks.  Loomis’s Transport hauled goods from the seaports on the south coast and shipped them as far as Moscow, Budapest and Frankfurt.   In less than two years he had paid off the bank loans and was well on his way to becoming a millionaire.  He grew the business into one of the largest transport operations in southern England.   He still found time to sail and as his wealth grew so did the size of the boats he could afford to buy.  He joined the prestigious Royal Ocean Racing Club and won their trophies for tough offshore long distance races.  Every few years he commissioned a new boat from Hawkwood’s Boatyard and he delighted in discussing with Sean the modifications and design improvements that would help him to win more races.

 

   When Sean’s commission in the Marines ended he returned home to the salt air of the West Country and joined his father at the family boatyard.  Hawkwood’s Yard had produced sailing boats for well over a century.  At first they had built wooden pilot cutters.  These were tough working boats designed to race out in the teeth of the westerly gales to deliver the pilot who would meet the big square-rigged ships that arrived with cargoes from every corner of the British Empire " and guide them safely into port. The pilots’ local knowledge guided the big ships around the hidden reefs and sandbars that had claimed many a victim.  The pilots were self-employed and the one who could be delivered to a ship first got the business.  Pilots wanted fast, safe boats and soon Hawkwood’s Yard gained a reputation for turning out pilot cutters that were not only tough but very quick.  They were built of the finest English oak and Scots pine, weathered and seasoned, and constructed with boatbuilding skills that were handed down from father to son.  Pilots whose livelihoods depended on being first out to an incoming ship, and whose lives depending on the sea-keeping qualities of their boats, bought many of their boats from Hawkwood’s Yard.

 

    With the coming of steam engines the role of the traditional sail-powered pilot cutter disappeared and the yard turned its skills to producing racing yachts for gentlemen.  Yacht racing was a growing sport in the nineteenth century and Hawkwood’s wooden yachts were lightweight and sturdy but they could carry a cloud of sail and they were fast.  Soon they were winning races at Cowes in front of the famous Royal Yacht Squadron and a couple of Hawkwood boats were purchased and raced by royalty.   Years later, when fiberglass replaced wood in boat-building many predicted the end of Hawkwood’s Yard. But the business adapted to the new technology and changed.  The craftsmen, skilled at working in wood, developed new skills in working with glass matting and resins and the yard turned out a series of custom-designed boats for affluent yachtsmen.   When Sean’s father passed away, three years after Sean joined the firm, he handed on a business that had weathered many storms.  Sean took the helm enthusiastically.  He introduced new materials: composites, epoxies and carbon-fibre and developed some radical new lightweight designs.  And they kept winning races and selling boats.

 

    Sean skippered yachts as well as built them and had a string of regatta victories to his credit and a sideboard of silver cups at home.   But his sailing success did not translate into financial wealth.  Every penny he made was re-invested into the business, into huge new kilns to cure the largest carbon-fibre hulls and ever more sophisticated and expensive computer-design systems.

   “Sean, me old mate”, Edward Loomis had once said over a foaming pint of local ale, “As we sit here drinking our beer my trucks are driving up and down the continent, making me money the easy way.  You, my friend, sweat it out making things.  I wonder which one of us has got it right?”  Then he had laughed, drained his pint and ordered another round. Eddie never seemed to work very hard these days but he always had plenty of money to throw around.  One day he dragged Sean outside the pub to see his latest new car.  “The fastest Ferrari money can buy,” he said proudly.  “Fancy a spin in her?”  They had raced the car around the narrow lanes of South Devon and when he misjudged a bend and put the car through a hedge, ripping the expensive bodywork to pieces, he just roared with laughter. “It’s only money,” he said.

    Then, one day, without warning, Edward Loomis vanished.

 .  Within a few days the trucks stopped moving and the employees were laid off.  There was no working capital and no manager to keep the firm afloat.  When Loomis vanished, so apparently did his money.   Sean had seen him the day he disappeared.  They had been at the pub, warming up by the fire after a wet cross-channel race.  He had seemed quiet and withdrawn.  “I am off on holiday for a week or two,” he had said.  “I am going to Central America, see the Maya ruins, and look at Spanish castles. Do you fancy coming along?  It will be my treat.”  Sean had laughed and said, “Don’t be ridiculous.  We can’t all drop things at the drop of a hat like you can.”  Loomis had driven home in his Ferrari, and then taken a plane to Miami and that was the last that anyone had heard of him.  That had been more than six months ago and there had been no word since, and no cheque to pay for the new schooner.

 

   Sean had borrowed heavily to finish Corsaire and then borrowed almost the same amount again to fit her out.  He had contracted a firm of top marine electronics experts to install half a million pounds worth of the most modern navigation and communications systems.  All her equipment was the best that borrowed money could buy. Her huge winches were top of the range, electrically operated and very expensive.  Most of her critical systems, navigation, electrical generators and water-makers were duplicated so that the failure of one piece of equipment would not mean having to put into port.  Her huge tanks held enough fuel and water to circumnavigate the world without stopping, even if the on-board water-makers failed.  Her galley was finished in the best Italian polished granite and skilled craftsmen had built her staterooms in the finest teak and mahogany.  But she was not just a luxurious boat " like all of Hawkwood’s products she was designed to be fast.  “I want something that I can sail across the Atlantic in under two weeks, single-handed, through a bloody hurricane,” Loomis had specified as they discussed the design.  It had been tough to balance the conflicting needs of comfort, safety and speed, but Sean reckoned that Corsaire managed it.  She was set up so that a competent sailor could navigate her single-handed around the world in perfect safety and comfort.  But unless someone handed the boatyard’s receivers a bankers draft for two million pounds Sean knew that she was going to be sailing nowhere.   Now Corsaire strained gently at her moorings as the wind pushed against her hull and masts. 

Hawkwood put one hand on her guardrail, felt it take his weight, and vaulted lightly aboard.   He was only able to do so because the schooner’s deck, falling with the tide, was almost level with the dockside.   He noticed a muddy footprint on the otherwise spotless teak deck and frowned.  Dirty shoes were absolutely forbidden on-board.  He bent down to brush the dried mud away.  As he did so he heard a thud as something fell out of the pocket of his sailing jacket.  He looked down and then picked up the mobile phone from where it had fallen.  

 

 Headlights briefly illuminated the schooner as a car turned the corner from the quayside road into the lane that led to the boatyard.

 

   “Mr Hawkwood,” Bill called up urgently.  “Maybe it would be better if you left now, sir. Don’t want to be getting in any trouble.”

 

   “Of course, Bill,” replied Sean.  He put the mobile phone back into his pocket and took one last look along Corsaire’s deck.  He vaulted back over the guardrail and landed lightly on the cobblestones.

 

   There was the roar of a car engine and a screech of tyres.  The car squealed to a halt outside the boatyard gates and a young man in a well-tailored suit leapt out.  The wind tore at his jacket and made his tie flap.  He opened the gates and then strode angrily into the yard.

 

   “What’s he doing here?” he demanded, pointing an accusing finger at Hawkwood.

 

   “It’s OK, Sir.  Mr Hawkwood was just going,” Bill said.   He tugged at the dog’s lead.

 

   “Well, you shouldn’t have let him in.  He doesn’t own the bloody place anymore.  He has no right to enter the premises.  He could have been stealing something.”  The man glared suspiciously at Sean. 

 

   Sean shrugged. He wasn’t in the mood for an argument.  “Goodnight Bill,” he said.  He patted the dog and walked out of the yard and jumped into the old Land Rover he had parked just outside.  The petrol engine fired with a rattle and he drove up the dark rain-slick street that led from the boatyard into the village.  The small fishing village was deserted except for a couple of pubs where yellow welcoming light spilled from doorways onto the street.  He followed the narrow road as it hugged the rocky coastline and began to climb the high cliff behind the village.  On his left the black expanse of darkness was the English Channel, widening as it started to merge with the Atlantic.  At the top of the cliff road he saw the distant white flash of the lighthouse on Start Point.  The lane ran along the cliff-top parallel to the coast. After a couple of miles he turned off onto a gravel track.  The dull headlights picked out a forest of bushes and neglected ornamental plants, then a wild tangle of rhododendrons.  He drove over a cattle grid and past a crumbling stone lodge.  The house was perched on the cliff-top above a deep cleft in the rock.  It had started as a small stone castle and successive generations of Hawkwoods had added to the building so now it was a mixture of styles and materials with medieval stone walls topped with battlements in the centre, with some half-timbered Tudor parts on one side and a Georgian wing on the other.  He parked the Land Rover in the stable yard and walked around through the kitchen garden to a side door.  His footsteps crunched the gravel.  He kicked his boots clean and pushed the heavy wooden door open. The kitchen was bright and welcoming and heat radiated from the wood-burning Aga stove.  A black Labrador, identical to the one at the boatyard, thumped its tail happily in greeting.  The twins sat at a long oak table, blonde hair falling into their colouring books.  “Hey kids!”  He said.  They grinned at him and went back to their colouring.   He blew a kiss at the woman who was stirring something in a pot on the stove.  She was dark and slim and beautiful and " most regretfully - married to his twin brother.

 

   “You were down at the boatyard.  Richard rang me on his mobile. He sounded cross.”

 

   “Well, Richard has no right to be cross.  I just wanted to see her again, make sure she was alright.”  ‘She’ was Corsaire of course.

 

   “Forget her, Sean,” his sister-in-law said, giving him a hug. “She killed off the boatyard.  She and that awful man who was your friend.” 

 

   “Edward has disappeared” said Sean quietly.  “I am sure he can explain everything when he turns up.  You know what he’s like.  He sometimes goes off travelling.”

 

   “Sean, he’s been gone for months without a word.  He knew the money for the boat was due weeks ago.”  She sighed and wiped her hands.  “We have had this conversation many times and there is really nothing new to add.”

 

   There was a crunch of gravel and the door flew open.  The young man from the boatyard stood in the doorway.  He brushed rain from his jacket and scowled at Sean.

 

  “Hello, Richard,” said Sean. 

 

   Richard took off his jacket and flung it over the back of an armchair.  Then he slumped into it.  He looked tired and angry.  Richard was his twin and elder brother by fourteen minutes.  They were not identical, Richard was darker complexioned, with black bushy eyebrows that met in the middle and Sean was almost blond.   

 

   “I am surprised you have the balls to come back here,” Richard said.  “You threw away the only part of the family inheritance that made any money, now it’s just this " he gestured at the building they were in - and a couple of lousy farms.  Not going to keep us in clover are they?   That was a small farm where a tenant farmer managed a small herd of very expensive prize-winning cattle.  “We’ll have to increase the poor bugger’s rent.  Or sell the place!”

 

 

   “You can’t increase his rent,” said Sean.  “Her is just about getting by as it is, and anyway, mother wouldn’t allow it.”

 

“Wouldn’t allow it? What does she know?  Father should have left me the boatyard, then at least it would still have been a Hawkwood involved in Hawkwood’s Yard!”  The disputed inheritance had been a cause of arguments since old Charles Hawkwood has passed away the previous year.  He had left the boatyard to Sean and the house to Richard.  Sean had a room in the house but he had spent the last few months, until the bankruptcy, sleeping on a temporary bed in the boatyard office as he worked day and night on Francis Drake.

 

“Come on Richard,” said Sean quietly.   “You never liked boats that much.”

 

“But I understand business and I would never have allowed some mate unlimited credit without so much as a bloody brass farthing of security,” Richard sneered. 

 

     “Look, Richard, this house is safe. It’s only the yard that is in trouble.   You are right about security, I should have asked for it, but I never imagined that Edward would vanish.  Nobody did.”

 

  “Easy to vanish when you owe someone two million pounds,” observed Richard bitterly.

 

  “He’ll be back to sort this out,” Sean replied.

 

“Why would he?  His business is gone.  The banks are after him.  We’re after him.  He’s screwed his friends over quite beautifully.  No, he won’t be back.” 

 

  “No arguing tonight,” said Jo firmly.  “I have had enough of it.  And anyway, it is dinner time”.   There was a thick stew, dumplings and potatoes.  She filled their plates high and cut thick slices of homemade bread.  “Who wants wine?” she said.  She opened a bottle of Italian red and poured generously.   Conversation was muted in spite of the wine.

  “Delicious as always,” said Sean when they had finished.  “Come, I will wash up.  Twins, you can dry!”

   “Oh before I forget,” Jo wiped her hands on a tea-towel and picked a letter up from the table.  “This came for you, Sean.  It has a London postmark.  Something to do with the hearing I expect”.  She handed the envelope to Sean.  Most correspondence, and everything that looked as if it came from a solicitor’s office, had, for the past six months, been about the ‘hearing’ " the process of changing Sean Hawkwood from a successful businessman to a bankrupted former boatyard owner.

 

   “Oh, bloody hell!   Give it to me in the morning.  I really don’t have the heart for another creditor’s letter.  I am going to the pub for a pint. Want to come, Richard?”

 

   “No,” spat his brother.

 

   “Come on then, Bess,” Sean said and the Labrador leapt up and wagged her tail. He pulled on an old sailing jacket and strode down the hill to the village.  The pub was a few minutes’ walk away if you knew the shortcut through the castle grounds.  The Hawkwood Arms had thick walls, low ceilings and wooden beams and was filled with the welcoming scent of wood smoke and real ale.  A fire crackled in the hearth and old framed black and white photographs of square-rigged ships decorated the walls.    

 

    “A pint of best please, Jack”, he called out to the barman.  He nodded at the others in the bar.  He knew most of them but there were also a few new faces.  He hung his jacket on a peg and sat on a barstool.  Bess lay contentedly near the fire and thumped her tail.

 

   “Here you are,” said the barman, handing him a foaming pewter tankard that was engraved with his family’s crest.  “Sorry to hear about the yard, Sean,” he added.

 

   “I am sorry too, Jack.  We employed good workers. Made bloody good boats too” 

 

  “Aye.  The men will be off to Southampton now I shouldn’t wonder.  No other boat-builders left round these parts, not now Hawkwood’s Yard is closed.”  He shook his head sadly.

 

   “So you are the famous Sean Hawkwood.”  A voice behind him said, loud, female and foreign sounding.   He turned around to see a young woman looking coolly at him. 

 

   “I don’t know about that.” 

 

   The girl was small, tanned and very pretty. Her long black hair was tied in a ponytail.  She smiled, and her lips were full and her teeth were startlingly white. She was dressed in a woollen jumper and faded jeans that hugged her figure.  She looked at him with brown, wide-apart eyes. “You are famous”, she insisted.  “You won the single-handed Trans-Atlantic race in, when was it, ‘82?” she said.  “There’s a framed press cutting over the bar.  I read about it.”

 

   “Oh, so there is.  But it was in ‘83, actually”.   He smiled at her.  Yacht racing had always been his passion and when he unexpectedly won the famous Trans-Atlantic in a small boat that he had designed himself he had been a minor celebrity in sailing circles for a few months. 

 

   “Then you sailed single-handed around the world in a wooden boat you built yourself.  You are really quite famous.”

 

   “I am only famous now for losing the family business”.

 

   She frowned for a second.  “Yes, I read about that too.  They say you invested a fortune into a boat but you couldn’t sell it.”   She waved a local newspaper at him.  “It’s all in here.”

 

   He shook his head sadly.  “There’s a lesson there, I suppose.  Still, I came here to try and get away from life’s unpleasant little details.”

 

   “Sorry.  I guess I am just nosey.”

 

   “No problem.”  He glanced around the bar.  He though he had seen the girl sitting with a companion when he came in, but the man had vanished.  “Do you want a drink?  You look like you could do with one.  You are Spanish?”    She shook her head, and grinned a perfect white toothed smile again.  

   “On my father’s side I am Spanish.  On my mother’s I am Venezuelan/

“A good combination then,” he grinned, “but what does that make you?”

  “A child of the world,” she said, “with a Latin temperament.”

  

Over a beer she told him that she had been packed off by her parents on a European tour.  “I guess they wanted me to experience a little of your culture.”  She told him she had finished college in the spring, had done a short History of Art summer course at Oxford and was spending a couple of days in the West Country prior to catching a train to Paris for the next chapter of her cultural tour.  She planned to do twelve countries in three weeks and was living out of a backpack.  Someone she had met suggested Hawkwood’s Creek and she had found a little bed and breakfast near the harbour.

 

   She was the prettiest thing he had seen in the village for a long time and so he flashed his famous Sean Hawkwood smile at her.  “Travelling with your boyfriend?”

 

   She laughed and tossed her head back.  “No boyfriend.  I am doing this alone.  It is supposed to be character-building.”

 

  “I see, a lady of independence!” 

 

   “Absolutely!”  She beamed her dazzling smile at him.

 

   “Right then, in that case, why don’t I show you around the village?” 

 

  “You are a fast worker!” she joked, “I thought the Englsh were supposed to be cold and aloof.”

 

   “Not this one.”

  “Actually, there is not that much to see” He thought for a second or two.  “We do have an old Roman fort - well I suppose it is more a small pile of old Roman stones,” he confessed, “and of course there is the castle.”

 

   “An old castle sounds good!  In my country the closest we get is Disneyland.”

 

   “Well, it no Windsor, but actually it is where I live.  It belongs to my brother.”

 

   “Oh my God! You live in a castle!  Are you a duke or something?”  She pronounced it “dook”.   “I can’t wait to tell my girlfriends back home " they will just die!”

 

   “No”, he laughed, “Well, my ancestors were robber barons and they needed a castle, probably to stop their victims murdering them, but I am afraid I am plain mister.  Younger son, you see.  Plus the family lost most of its money centuries ago, and the last bit I am afraid I lost myself.”

 

   “Oh, what a pity” she said.  “Not much use being a duke if you have no money.”

 

     “You do have a good point there, young lady” he replied.  He finished his pint.  “Right then, might see you tomorrow.”

 

   “OK,” she agreed with a broad smile, “where?”

 

    “Down on the quayside.  I’ll be there early.”

 

    “It’s a date,” she giggled and then said, “Got to be going then.”  She put on a denim jacket and slipped out into the night.  Sean wondered where the other stranger had gone " they had certainly appeared to be together when he arrived.  Probably just coincidence he told himself and ordered himself another pint.

 

    That night Sean slept fitfully in his small room high in the castle’s west tower.  It was in the oldest part of the building and the salt wind from the Atlantic blew hard at the crumbling ivy-covered battlements and through the cracks in the stonework.  Branches of trees that surrounded the castle tapped the windows like ghosts asking for shelter.   Hawkwood’s Castle was not large but some of its stone walls were ancient.  It sat in fifty acres of woodland in a deep coombe at the top of a hidden cove.  He awoke just as dawn stained the eastern sky with shades of pink.  “Red sky in morning, sailors take warning,” he grinned to himself and rolled out of bed.  He pulled on a pair of shorts and trainers and headed out across the dewy overgrown lawn that surrounded the buildings.  The grass was cold and wet on his legs.  Soon his way was blocked by a tangle of wild bramble.  He pushed through the bushes, following an old path that had been neglected for years and was almost lost under the encroaching greenery.  Many years ago a small army of gardeners had kept the grounds immaculate but they, together with the rest of the house’s staff, were long gone.  Just beyond the wall of brambles the ground fell steeply down to the surging ocean.  The crash of the surf far below mingled with the screams of seagulls and he smelled the sharp tang of the sea.  He pushed aside the brambles at the edge of the cliff.  The ocean looked like a vast carpet of molten lead that was tinged silver by the rising sun.  It moved and boiled with the impossibly complex interaction of wind and tide around the jagged headlands.  In the distance a freighter ploughed an arrow-straight course up-channel.  Sean lay on his stomach on the grassy clifftop and then eased himself backwards, slowly over the side.  There was nothing under him except for air.  Just as he thought he must fall his feet touched a flat stone and then he was standing at the top of the secret path.  The narrow age-worn path led to the cove far below.  It had been carved from the rock in ancient times when a secret route from the castle to the sea was a matter of life and death and later, in the age of smugglers, a matter of profit.   The rocky steps were slippery with wet lichen.  Far below in the cove waves crashed against a rocky beach.  Here was where bygone generations of Hawkwoods had landed loaded with silks and brandy from the continent.  The mouth of the cove was protected a necklace of jagged reefs that kept the Revenue’s cutters out but allowed Hawkwood’s smugglers’ small boats in.  When he had been a little boy his grandfather had told him tales of the old smuggling days.  He had told him about the cliff path and about the secret cave where the gentlemen of the night, as they were known as locally, had stored their wares and had hidden from the Revenue’s men.    As a ten year-old Sean had discovered the path and then he had spent long and happy hours searching for the cave in the cliff-side. 

 

    He reached the narrow pebble beach at the bottom of the cliff path, kicked off his shoes and plunged into the surf. The chilled water ripped the breath from his lungs.  He swam out to the mouth of the cove, where the green swells surged over the reef and dangerous rip-currents of white water raced back out to sea.  The Atlantic was clean and fresh and he swam until his muscles ached.

 

   Later, after changing into old jeans and a clean cotton shirt, he wandered down to the kitchen.  Jo and Richard were already there, helping the twins with breakfast. 

 

   “There’s tea in the pot and some fresh eggs,” said Jo.

 

   “Thanks, love.”  He fried himself a couple of eggs on the Aga.  He was always ravenously hungry after a swim.  He saw the solicitor’s letter in its heavy manila envelope on the sideboard.  He took his breakfast plate and the letter and sat down at the kitchen table.  He pulled a folding knife from his pocket, flicked it open and slit the envelope.  Inside was a single sheet of folded paper, heavy, embossed and cream coloured.   Whatever it was, it looked very fancy and official.  He unfolded it. The engraved letterhead gave the name of a London law firm.  He frowned.  All the legalities to do with the boatyard had taken place in Plymouth, the nearest large city, not in London.  He scanned the letter.  There was no mention of debts, repayments or boats.  The letter was short.  It simply suggested that he would learn something to his advantage if he attended a meeting.  It gave a date and a time and was signed by someone called Cartwright.  Sean laughed to himself.

 

   Jo started to butter a plateful of freshly baked scones.  “What does it say?” she asked.

 

   “It’s about some more creditors, I’ll be bound,” said Richard from the easy chair in the corner where he was feeding scraps of bread to the Labrador.

 

   “No, it’s nothing like that.  At least I don’t think so.  Actually it looks like it might even be good news. It says I should go to London and I will learn something to my advantage.”

 

   “Extraordinary!   Possibly a distant and hitherto unknown relation has left you lots of money and you can pay off all your creditors.”  Richard sniggered unpleasantly.  “But I rather doubt it.”

 

   “I don’t know what it’s about, but I think I should find out.”

 

  Jo looked at the clock.  “If you hurry you can make the morning train to London.”

 

He looked at his watch.  “I wasn’t planning to do anything else today.”