A Ravelled Flag (Strong Winds Trilogy) Read online

  It was lucky that Donny had helped his great-aunt to stow the mainsail as they’d approached the marina yesterday evening.

  In fact it was better than lucky. The man from the marina office might have thought that it was chance that had led the boy unerringly to find the main halliard amidst the chaos, but Donny sensed that there had been something guiding him. Something Ancestral?

  A few hard pulls and the junk’s mainsail meekly disappeared.

  Donny fastened it firmly but didn’t waste time coiling the halliard. He dashed to the stern ready to catch one of the mooring ropes. Two neat loops made a clove hitch knot over the samson post and Strong Winds was finally secured.

  Slowly, silently and hopelessly, Donny and the man began their vain attempt to pull the junk back from the mass of wreckage that had been Snow Goose’s stern.

  That was when his new great-aunt returned from the village shop.

  His social worker arrived as well. Her name was Sandra. She had come to tell the family that the Statutory Service Care Review & Assessment Meeting, which should have been taking place that afternoon, had been rearranged for Friday morning.

  “We hoped that a later date would ... allow everyone time to ... re-assess,” Sandra stuttered, her rosy face blanched by the sight before her. “I think I’ve come at a bad moment.” She paused again, gulping on her understatement. “Should I call ... medical help?”

  Skye had collapsed. Her body sagged against the junk’s high side. Her brown eyes were open and appalled, gazing at the wounded yacht, beginning to comprehend the damage she had caused.

  “Not unless you know a good boat surgeon,” said Great Aunt Ellen grimly, not averting her own eyes one second from the tangle of spars and rigging and splintered wood. She’d seen water hosing from an outlet in Snow Goose’s white hull. Donny could hear a faint whirring that he guessed was some kind of automatic pumping system.

  What would she think of them now? On their first morning!

  Then June Ribiero came hurrying down the pontoon. She’d taken Xanthe and Maggi to school. She bent forward towards Snow Goose and stretched out one arm as if to ask ... but words failed her.

  “Uh, I’ll be off then,” said Sandra. “If there’s nothing I can do. Donny, there’s a bus that you can catch from outside the Shotleygate Stores tomorrow morning. It leaves at about quarter to eight. I’ve got you a temporary pass.”

  Donny took the pass and put it in his back pocket. Gallister High School seemed worlds away. “Goodbye,” he said.

  June stepped neatly on board. “I’ll check her bilges. There may be damage below the waterline.”

  “I’ll begin cutting her free.” Gold Dragon’s good hand was reaching for the wire cutters that she kept in the rigging pouch permanently strapped to her side; her hook was teasing out the first of the shrouds that would need to be severed. “There’s a yard here, isn’t there?” she asked the man from the office. “That water’s coming in fast.” She pointed to the continuous arc pouring from Snow Goose. “She needs hauling out PDQ. Get them to send a launch.”

  He nodded and spoke urgently into his hand-held radio.

  June reappeared. “She’s filling. There’s a plank sprung. Maybe two or three. We need to get her out. The automatic pump’s not coping.”

  “Message sent.”

  Great Aunt Ellen was back to Polly Lee now, Donny thought. She wasn’t bothered about him and his mum. You could see that she was a round-the-world sailor who’d got used to coping with things. Like sinking ships were her daily bread.

  She’d found an extra-thick, tarry rope, which she and the marina man were fixing under Snow Goose. It worked like a sling: one end fastened to the mooring stage, the other to Strong Winds. It kept the yacht supported either side, though Donny didn’t reckon it would last for long if Snow Goose was really going to sink.

  The eighty-year-old was moving fast. Now she was cutting away more of the wreckage that snarled the two boats together, then she looped a thin, strong, length of line around the tangle of mast and rigging, so it could be hauled back on board for repair later. She got the marina man to help with that.

  “Okay,” she said, allocating jobs to a couple of other boat owners who’d come along to stare. “You take the forrard mooring line and you stand by aft. Then I could do with a hand amidships...”

  She looked at Skye. Shook her head, irritably. No room for land-lubbers. That was what she’d said.

  “Sinbad. Hand-pump and bucket in the port cockpit-locker.

  Get aboard with Mrs Ribiero and get pumping.”

  There was already water spilling over the cabin floor and rising

  up the sides of the berths when Donny joined June on board the stricken yacht.

  “I’m ... sorry.”

  She was putting all her energy into pulling up and down on the manual bilge pump. Her tailored trousers were rolled clumsily up to her knees; there was a sheen of sweat on her dark face.

  “I’ve brought another pump. Where would you like me to go?”

  To hell, perhaps? The Ribieros had been so unbelievably kind and now he and his mum had wrecked their beautiful boat. He wanted to cry but he hadn’t got time.

  “That depends on its hose. A long one? Good. It’ll reach right over her side. Take my place while I lash it in position.”

  No shouting or recrimination – yet – just focused and practical, determined to save Snow Goose.

  Donny put all his feelings into his pumping. Up and down until his lungs were heaving and his shoulders howled. Up and down. His stomach hurt; his breath was roaring in his ears. If he died doing this he wouldn’t care.

  They got the water level back below the cabin sole and managed, desperately, to keep it there. Then June went on deck and Polly Lee press-ganged another spectator to replace her at the second pump.

  Donny pumped on. It was all he could do. His chafed hands burned.

  He heard the launch arrive and then Strong Winds’ engine started. He felt Snow Goose begin to move as she was half towed, half lifted to safety.

  He and the other man didn’t speak. There wasn’t much Donny wanted to say.

  Only Skye was out of place when Donny eventually left Snow Goose and came back on board his new home. Strong Winds’ decks were clear, her boat hook had been re-stowed, ropes fastened and coiled, fenders positioned for use.

  His mum, however, was lying on the foredeck. Her knees were pulled up to her chin, her arms clasped over the back of her head. Her hair covered her face, her eyes were hidden. They would be shut.

  This was Skye’s terrified shape. Donny wished that he could curl up next to her. What was Great Aunt Ellen going to say now she had time? How could he face his friends?

  He knelt down awkwardly. He guessed from the damp patch on her skirt that she had wet herself. This must be what Joshua had meant when he said ‘physical symptoms’. What a start to their new life!

  “I’ve never been good with people.” Gold Dragon had come up behind him. She was carrying one of the blankets from the cabin and a large bar of milk chocolate. “Unlike Edith. She’d have produced hot tea for all and sets of dry clothes half an hour back.”

  She dropped the chocolate abruptly in his lap and let the blanket cover Skye. Then she began making violent shooing gestures. “They’re cacking themselves watching. Human shite- hawks! Can’t you get your mother below?”

  She was right. There were knots of people standing on the pontoons and along the seawall. Some were straightforwardly staring; others chatting and glancing furtively in their direction or happening to pass by, carrying their water cans or refuse bags. Some of them had cameras. One looked really professional.

  “I’ll try. Honestly she’s not always like this.”

  His great-aunt stopped shooing. She looked old.

  “I didn’t know how to begin. I could see I was scaring her w
orse.

  So I left her. I had to think of the ship. That’s my responsibility.” That faint Australian lift at the end of her sentences made it sound as if she was asking him for understanding.

  “I know,” he said. “I really do.” A captain’s duty was to his ship. That was something he’d accepted years and years before he was born. “I bet your brother Greg never wrecked any of his boats though.”

  She laughed then. “He most certainly did. I wasn’t there but I heard all about it. Now eat some chocolate yourself and do what you can for your mother.” And off she went, over Strong Winds’ side and down onto the pontoon.

  The spectators shifted out of her way. The people with cameras mostly hid them behind their backs. Just one person pushed a microphone in her face and asked whether she had anything to say.

  She didn’t even glance at him. Donny watched her striding resolutely to the boatyard: a small, determined figure, facing another unpleasant task.

  It didn’t get much more pleasant when Xanthe and Maggi came back from school that afternoon and Joshua from the hospital.

  “You’re saying that your mum untied everything and started trying to go somewhere – in Strong Winds?” Xanthe was trying to understand. She wasn’t making much headway.

  “Yup,” said Donny.

  “She untied ... like everything? Whether she knew what it did or not?”

  “Yup.”

  “She’s never been on board a boat ... not before last night?” said Maggi.

  “Nope.”

  The sisters fell silent, frowning furiously with the effort of not being angry. They were both skilled sailors. They couldn’t imagine why anyone would so randomly unfasten a deck’s worth of ropes. They’d looked without speaking at their own lovely yacht, high out of the water, with two planks sprung from her stern and the mizzenmast snapped jaggedly away at the base.

  Donny looked at his feet to avoid looking at his friends. Their mother had gone home without speaking to him and he’d thought he was going to puke when he’d stood there watching their father’s clever fingers feeling round the ugly slit where the planks had burst away.

  “It is possible that there was already a weakness. Perhaps the fastenings should have been replaced before now.”

  “There was nothing wrong with her mizzenmast.” Xanthe couldn’t stop herself.

  “Accidents happen, Xanthe, you know that. Sometimes we can learn from them and sometimes we can only accept.”

  The accepting bit wasn’t going so well.

  Xanthe and Maggi had known that Donny’s mum was different. They didn’t have any problem with the idea of disability or mental illness. It was the reality that was hard to deal with.

  “Is this what she’s like?” asked Xanthe. “Your mum. Twenty-four seven?”

  “No! No way. Not hardly ever. She’s ... beautiful. Okay, so she very occasionally gets panic attacks. Who wouldn’t?”

  “Do you think she was trying to escape?” asked Maggi, frowning harder. “Take Strong Winds and just go? I mean, she’s been in ... a mental ward. If that was me, I might ...”

  “Maybe,” said Donny. “No, I don’t know what started her off. I’ll try and ask her when she’s better. Probably she’d woken up and I wasn’t there and she didn’t know where I was ... and then she saw all those ropes tying things down. Like she’d been tied down. So she started setting some of them free. Your dad said I shouldn’t leave her. It’s totally my fault.”

  “You only went to have a pee. You weren’t exactly sightseeing.”

  “I did notice she moved when I was leaving. I could have found a bucket. Then I was slow getting out. There was some bloke in a muddle with the numbers. I couldn’t explain to him.”

  “Donny-man, I know she’s your mum but you’re gonna have to stop beating yourself up. It was that loose mainsail that really caused the damage. And the wind, catching it.”

  He wished they’d chuck him into a piranha tank.

  “You weren’t there, Xanth, you didn’t see. I want you to take Lively Lady back before I wreck her too.”

  Xanthe shook her head. She looked cross and tired and his good friend all at once. “We’re Allies, right? We want you to have the dinghy. You can’t know what’s going to happen next.”

  “Anyway,” Maggi added, “the man from the office told Dad you’d acted like you were twice your age. Dad’s a doctor, remember; he understands about sick people. Him and Mum, they’re kinda reliable ...”

  “Yeah,” agreed Xanthe. “Mum can be stressy but she gets over it. Look, Donny-man, we need to get home and do stuff. You know – homework and music practice and supper. Go easy on yourself. Okay?”

  As he watched his friends go loping off towards their father’s car, Donny wondered, for a moment, what it would feel like to have parents who were ‘kinda reliable’?

  Skye was sitting in a sleeping bag when Donny returned to Strong Winds. Her wet skirt was swirling around the marina laundrette and she hadn’t anything else to wear.

  “A crooked tongue told me you were gone. I sought to follow.”

  She must have been having a bad dream.

  “It’s okay, Mum. We’re going to be okay. Be a family again.”

  “We’ll get your camper-van back,” said Great Aunt Ellen. “Then you can decide what you’re bringing on board.” She didn’t understand signing. “Your foster-carer dropped by with your school clothes, Sinbad. I told him today wouldn’t be such a good day for those other children to visit.” She gave a wrinkly grin. “He wasn’t shedding any tears. Said he’d have to fit them all with safety harnesses first. Name’s Gerald. Bit of a dry bob is he?”

  “Um ... probably.”

  He’d no idea what a dry bob was but it seemed unlikely that Gerald, the health and safety fanatic, and Gold Dragon, the nautical adventurer, would ever view the world through the same pair of binoculars.

  He remembered Gerald’s bleachy clean kitchen at Erewhon Parva vicarage. Then he looked at Strong Winds’ glowing varnish work, her oil lamps, books, the gleaming barometer and alluring compass.

  If only she’d allow them to stay. If only they didn’t mess up again.

  He’d like to have seen the others – Luke and Liam and baby Vicky – and he had to see Anna. He’d got his mother back: she needed to find hers.

  His great-aunt was looking at him. Her eyes were bright and hard. He’d better offer to do something helpful. Didn’t know what. Peel potatoes or something? Wash up?

  “You look land-sick, Sinbad. Go for a sail, why don’t you? I’ll stand the watch with Nimblefingers. We’ll eat later. If we can’t wait, we’ll probably save you some. Or we might not. Then you’ll have to make do with weevils and hard tack.”

  “Could I really? Go for a sail?”

  Donny knew that Gold Dragon would be proud and fierce and not a bit like Granny Edith. He was learning that she was also trustworthy and kind. So you could see that they were sisters.

  He explained to Skye what he wanted to do and took her on deck, still wrapped in her sleeping bag, to show her Lively Lady. He absolutely promised he wouldn’t be away for long. She even sort of smiled when he told her that, in this new place, her name was Nimblefingers.

  Then he scrambled into the dinghy and rowed out through the lock behind a small motorboat setting off for an evening’s fishing. The cross-harbour ferry was tying up for the night. The river lay before him, wide and quiet.

  He set his sails and headed for the old red and white schooner, the one they’d nick-named the Hispaniola.

  When he and the Allies hadn’t met Great Aunt Ellen, they had used one of the schooner’s three tall masts to run up a warning message for her, in flags. They wanted to put her on her guard against Inspector Jake Flint, the gross policeman, and his devious accomplice, Denise ‘Toxic’ Tune. The gruesome twosome had been out to get Gold Dragon – Don
ny didn’t know why.

  The flags had been Anna’s idea: a red and gold one for China because that was where Great Aunt Ellen had been living and a red and white quartered ‘U’ flag. In the international code of the sea that meant ‘you are standing into danger’. Best of all was a double-headed dragon ramping across a black silk background. She’d found it on the Internet when she’d googled Strong Winds. It even had the right number of toes.

  The evening breeze was warm and steady. Lively Lady was pulling forward and heeling slightly. She tempted him to hold his course – across the harbour and out to sea. When Flint had come at him – was it still only yesterday? – Gold Dragon had stopped his powerboat as neatly as if she’d been lassooing a galloping bullock.

  He could see that the flags weren’t flying any more. The Hispaniola’s signal halliards had been dirty grey with age. They must have frayed. He ought to climb aboard and collect them. Otherwise it was like forgetting about your balloons when the party day was gone. And anyway, he’d promised Skye ...

  The signal halliards hadn’t frayed: they’d been cut.

  Someone had severed the cod-line and the entire hoist had tumbled down. Two of the flags – the stars of China, and the ‘U’ flag that spelled danger – were lying neatly on the deck. A piece of planking had been placed over them. It had a message in fresh black paint:

  SHIP PRIVAT.

  KEEP OFF.

  GO HOME LÓNG.

  The third flag – Anna’s resplendent dragon on its rippling black background – had been slashed into tatters. Not torn or cut but ripped, again and again, with an extremely sharp knife.

  Donny stood still a few moments. Shocked. Then he bent down and began to pick up the small pile of jagged strips that had been blowing out so bravely only twenty-four hours before. There was no fragment left more than a centimetre wide. No-one, apart from him and his Allies could have identified these remains as Great Aunt Ellen’s ‘house’ flag.

  Xanthe and Maggi had told him that the dragon flag had been copied from a famous pirate called Miss Lee. They assumed it was a sort of tribute.