Dark Echo by F. G. Cottam Page A

the Solent in savage, briny gusts somewhere approaching gale force. The rain it brought was incessant and heavy, a driving thrum of water on the roof of the car and the surrounding earth. It danced in deepening puddles, giving the yard a depressed and derelict appearance. In the neat cluster of sheds in the distance to landward, I looked for signs of industry; for the blue brightness of blow torches or the white brilliance of welding rods, flickering through their windows, cleaving the gloom. But there was nothing. There were no signs of life either in the boatsheds on the wharf or at the broad slipway where they launched. I was aware of wind singing through the taut security wire strung between concrete fence posts as I used the key to release the electric gate. It slammed again behind me. I looked over to Hadley’s office suite, which occupied the second floor of a smart, pale wooden building a hundred yards to my right. His blindswere down. But there were comforting chinks of warm yellow brightness from within between their slats. He, at least, was at work.
    The tarp protecting my father’s boat had torn in places in the violence of the day’s weather. It was very heavy canvas cloth and was criss-crossed with strengthening seams and thick, reinforced stitching. So there was no chance of it sundering entirely and pulling free of the craft. Or at least, I did not think there was. But in places it had snagged and sheared and torn. Wind whistled through it like a wild jeer. The cloth capered and trembled in the wind. It shook and howled like a living thing, in protest.
    I reached the boat soaked. I’d dressed for a meeting rather than a tempest. I paused and looked to my left, out to where the Hamble ran out to the Solent, awed by the anger and scale of the pitching sea. My feet slithered on the big cobbles of the wharf and I understood for the first time the giant solidity and scale of the stonework there, the reason for it. Those walls were defences, ramparts. Their immensity was only a pragmatic measure against the elements they defied.
    I slithered towards the
Dark Echo
on treacherous shoe leather, cursing my own ineptitude. I’d proven a dab hand at the maths needed to pass exams in navigation. Yet here I was, in danger of falling thirty-five feet on to the concrete where the keel of our boat lay, only for the want of a pair of rubber-soled shoes. I steadied myself. The tarp roared and flapped incessantly, where it was newly torn, the looming shape of it huge around the bulk of the long hull now I’d got this close. I looked up, wincing through needles of rain. The sky, which had glowered earlier, was now just a scudding roof of gloom over the world. I fingered the small Maglite in my pocket. Thank God I’d had the wit to remember to take that from the Saab’s glove compartment beforeentering the yard. I took it out and shone the thin beam of the torch on to canvas. At least I would have no trouble getting aboard. There was a rent in the heavy fabric right in front of me about eighteen inches long. I switched off the Maglite and clamped it between my teeth and hauled myself through on to the
Dark Echo
’s deck.
    My first impression was one of cosiness. I felt the childhood comfort of my camping days as a boy in the Cubs and later as a young teenager in the Scouts. The rain drummed, a nostalgic sound on stiff cloth, but couldn’t get to me any more. There was the smell of damp, but I was dry in my snug and musty refuge from the downpour.
    Nevertheless, this was business. I used the torch to orientate myself. In doing so, I saw the new timber with which they had expertly patched the deck. It had not been treated and varnished yet, but even in the Maglite’s beam I could see that the work had been done with faultless expertise. I ran my fingers over it and could not feel the joins. The specification my father had demanded was astonishingly high. But they had worked to it. I looked down along the smooth lines of the