the lords of France and Burgundy, Gloucester.” He had spoken Lear’s opening lines and I had felt a shiver run through the theatre’s great darkness, because the voice was there, and the power of it, and he was suddenly not a dirty old man at all, but a great, kind, foolish and painfully honest King.
The performance was a triumph. Later that night, drinking champagne at the first night party, he gave me his usual disclaimers; how it was all an illusion, everything was an illusion, all life was an illusion, and how he, Sir Tom, was the master of illusion, but how his dear children were real because they alone could not be spawned from the imagination. “Sweet soul—” he took my arm in his, “come home to me. To England.” He was drunk.
“Why?”
“You could succeed me. You have it in you, you know.”
“Of course I don’t.”
“You are my bad conscience, Nick. That is why I need you.” He looked across the room to where a famous actress held scornful court. “I screwed her in a hot-air balloon. Over California. Her husband chased us in a jeep, and the oscillations of the basket told him what I was doing to his wife, and the poor man was jealous.” My father had begun to giggle. “Do you know what she told me, Nick? She said she could feel a shard of genius enter her soul with my seed! Oh, Nick! How generous I have been with my genius. Her silly husband shot himself, which was hardly surprising because she was a rotten lay.”
He talked me into staying two more days, and thus three days passed before I discovered that Masquerade was missing. It was another seven days before she was found grinding her starboard side to shreds on a coral reef north of Straker’s Cay in the Far-Out Islands. Bonefish Straker reckoned that some Bahamian kids must have stolen the boat as a means of getting home, but we would never know who had wrecked her, only that they had removed a dinghy load of gear including her chronometer, sextant, VHF, barometer, spare sails, lines, fenders, and even the mattress off the starboard quarter-berth. They had stolen my good oilskins, but the thieves had never found my small stash of money which had been hidden in a redundant sea-cock, nor had they found the old Webley .455 revolver that I had hidden deep in Masquerade ’s bilges. The gun itself had been a prop in a film version of Journey’s End in which my father had starred, and when the filming was over he had ‘forgotten’ to return the pistol which was still in good working order. I had fewer than a hundred rounds for the gun which I kept solely as a deterrent for those remote places where cruising yachtsmen are seen as plump victims, ripe for pillaging, and the Webley offered me good protection for, though the gun was over seventy years old, it was massively built and frighteningly powerful.
Bonefish Straker had rescued Masquerade, propping her up in his own backyard and refusing to take any money from me as a salvage fee. Bonefish Straker was Thessalonians’ father, and also father to two dozen other children, most of them orphans who had been unofficially adopted by Bonefish and his wife, Sarah. Bonefish’s real name was Hector, but he had earned his nickname because of his uncanny ability to find the elusive fish. He was reckoned one of the islands’ best fishing guides, a man who could name his own price to the rich northerners who came to the blue waters to kill gamefish, but Bonefish believed that his family might stray from the path of righteousness if he spent too much time away from home so he restricted his guide work to just a few weeks of the year. The rest of the time he caught snapper or conch or lobster, and brooded over the souls of his ramshackle family; each of whom was named for a different book in the Bible. He had started at the back of the good book and was perversely working his way towards Genesis, which meant that his eldest daughter was called Revelation Straker; a young woman as pretty as her name,
The performance was a triumph. Later that night, drinking champagne at the first night party, he gave me his usual disclaimers; how it was all an illusion, everything was an illusion, all life was an illusion, and how he, Sir Tom, was the master of illusion, but how his dear children were real because they alone could not be spawned from the imagination. “Sweet soul—” he took my arm in his, “come home to me. To England.” He was drunk.
“Why?”
“You could succeed me. You have it in you, you know.”
“Of course I don’t.”
“You are my bad conscience, Nick. That is why I need you.” He looked across the room to where a famous actress held scornful court. “I screwed her in a hot-air balloon. Over California. Her husband chased us in a jeep, and the oscillations of the basket told him what I was doing to his wife, and the poor man was jealous.” My father had begun to giggle. “Do you know what she told me, Nick? She said she could feel a shard of genius enter her soul with my seed! Oh, Nick! How generous I have been with my genius. Her silly husband shot himself, which was hardly surprising because she was a rotten lay.”
He talked me into staying two more days, and thus three days passed before I discovered that Masquerade was missing. It was another seven days before she was found grinding her starboard side to shreds on a coral reef north of Straker’s Cay in the Far-Out Islands. Bonefish Straker reckoned that some Bahamian kids must have stolen the boat as a means of getting home, but we would never know who had wrecked her, only that they had removed a dinghy load of gear including her chronometer, sextant, VHF, barometer, spare sails, lines, fenders, and even the mattress off the starboard quarter-berth. They had stolen my good oilskins, but the thieves had never found my small stash of money which had been hidden in a redundant sea-cock, nor had they found the old Webley .455 revolver that I had hidden deep in Masquerade ’s bilges. The gun itself had been a prop in a film version of Journey’s End in which my father had starred, and when the filming was over he had ‘forgotten’ to return the pistol which was still in good working order. I had fewer than a hundred rounds for the gun which I kept solely as a deterrent for those remote places where cruising yachtsmen are seen as plump victims, ripe for pillaging, and the Webley offered me good protection for, though the gun was over seventy years old, it was massively built and frighteningly powerful.
Bonefish Straker had rescued Masquerade, propping her up in his own backyard and refusing to take any money from me as a salvage fee. Bonefish Straker was Thessalonians’ father, and also father to two dozen other children, most of them orphans who had been unofficially adopted by Bonefish and his wife, Sarah. Bonefish’s real name was Hector, but he had earned his nickname because of his uncanny ability to find the elusive fish. He was reckoned one of the islands’ best fishing guides, a man who could name his own price to the rich northerners who came to the blue waters to kill gamefish, but Bonefish believed that his family might stray from the path of righteousness if he spent too much time away from home so he restricted his guide work to just a few weeks of the year. The rest of the time he caught snapper or conch or lobster, and brooded over the souls of his ramshackle family; each of whom was named for a different book in the Bible. He had started at the back of the good book and was perversely working his way towards Genesis, which meant that his eldest daughter was called Revelation Straker; a young woman as pretty as her name,
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