“Oh, Christ, I hadn’t thought of that.” My brother David, rural dean in the local diocese and rector of our parish church, frequently complained that while he often patronized my place of work I rarely patronized his. David’s muscular Christianity was not entirely to my taste, but, thanks to a London lawyer, it looked as if I would have to grin and bear a dose this Easter.
I left Joanna with the accounts and went back to finish the yawl’s repairs. As I ran across the yard I noted that the midstream buoys were empty, which meant that the big yacht I thought I had seen there must have been a figment of my imagination, which made sense for no one in their right mind would have slipped and gone to sea in the teeth of this vicious wind. The weather seemed to be worsening, making a mockery of the marine forecast’s promise of a fair morning, but Joanna, more trusting than I, went home at nine o’clock to get a good night’s sleep before her early start. When I followed her up the hill three hours later the gale was still blowing the sky ragged, yet, when the alarm woke me before dawn, the wind had indeed veered westerly and lost its spitting venom. “I told you so,” Joanna said sleepily. “Did you finish the yawl?”
I nodded. “The bugger’ll never know it was hit.”
She opened the bedroom window and sniffed the wind. “It’s going to be a fast crossing,” she said happily. Joanna had grown up in Guernsey where she had learned to sail as naturally as other children learned to ride a bicycle. She relished strong winds and hard seas and, anticipating that this day would bring her a fast wet channel crossing, all spray and dash and thumping seas, she was eager to get under way.