The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [128]
But was his father going to win? Willie had boasted to Jonathan that he would, that night out at Bisterne, and he certainly wasn’t going to take it back. But he wished he knew what his father was really up to.
The truth of the matter was that Alan Seagull didn’t know himself. Certainly, he hadn’t the least intention of publicly disclosing his vessel’s speed. If that were needed to win, he would cheerfully lose. But you never knew with the sea. Something might happen to the other boat. The sea itself would decide, and chance, and his own free will. He hadn’t a care in the world. Until one evening, three days before the race.
He knew something was up the moment he saw young Willie, and the sheepish way he was approaching; but even so, he was completely taken aback by the boy’s question.
‘Dad, for the race, can Jonathan come in the boat too?’
Jonathan? Jonathan Totton? When his father was betting on the other boat? The mariner stared in amazement.
‘If his father says yes, that is,’ Willie added.
Which he certainly won’t, thought Alan.
‘I said I thought you might let him. He isn’t heavy,’ Willie explained.
‘Let him go in the other boat, then.’
‘He doesn’t want to. He wants to come with me. And anyway …’
‘Anyway what?’
Willie hesitated, then said quietly: ‘Dad, the Southampton boat’s going to lose isn’t it?’
‘So you say, my son.’ Alan started to smile, but then a thought hit him. ‘Willie?’ He looked at his son carefully. ‘You think I’m going to win?’
‘’Course I do, Dad.’
‘Is that why he wants to come with us, then? Because you told him we’d win?’
‘I don’t know, Dad.’ Willie looked awkward. ‘Maybe.’
‘Did you tell him about our business?’
‘No, Dad. I mean, not really.’ There was a pause. ‘I may have said something.’ He looked down, then raised his eyes hopefully to his father again. ‘He won’t tell, Dad. I swear.’
Alan Seagull said nothing. He was thinking.
There were quite a few people in Lymington who knew Alan Seagull’s business. His crew for a start. One or two merchants also – for the obvious reason that they gave him the illicit wool to carry. But Totton wasn’t one of them and never would be. And the rule in the business was very simple: you didn’t talk to people like Totton. For sooner or later, if people like him knew, things would get out; boats would be stopped, men fined, business disrupted and, strangely intangible but perhaps most important of all, freedom would be limited.
Did Totton know? Perhaps not yet. What he really needed, Seagull thought, was some time alone with Jonathan. He’d be able to tell, he guessed, if the boy had told his father. If he had, there was nothing to be done. If not … he mused. If the boy were out at sea, some men in his situation would quietly tip him overboard. He shrugged to himself. There was no chance of Totton allowing him to come anyway. ‘Don’t say any more about our business. Just keep your mouth shut,’ he ordered his son, and waved him away. He needed to think some more.
Jonathan found his father sitting in an upright chair in the hall, under the gallery. Totton was asleep.
The gallery passage that ran from the front to the back of the bigger Lymington houses was quite an impressive feature, but it was not handsome. Although two storeys high, the central hall was quite narrow, so that the gallery seemed to overlook a rather cramped covered area. Since the death of his wife, instead of going at the end of his workday to the pleasant parlour at the back of the house, which looked over the garden, and where his wife had liked to sit, Totton had taken to sitting in a chair in the rather awkward space of the hall. There he would remain until it was time to eat dinner, which he punctiliously did with his son. Sometimes he just sat staring quietly ahead; sometimes he dozed a little. He was dozing when Jonathan approached him.
Jonathan, after standing in front of him for several moments, touched his wrist and gently asked: ‘Father?