Best Kept Secret (The Clifton Chronicles, #3)(85)

Giles sat back and thought about Bruno’s words. Whatever you do, don’t tell my father I’ve spoken to you. Sebastian couldn’t have asked more of a friend. He looked at his watch again: 7.30 p.m. How could the butler have made such a simple mistake when he said they were on their way to London Airport? 7.45 p.m. It clearly wasn’t a mistake, because the man had addressed him as ‘Sir Giles’, although he had no way of knowing that he was about to turn up on his doorstep. Unless . . . 8 p.m. And when he said ‘they left for London Airport’, who was the other person he was referring to? Bruno’s father? 8.15 p.m. Giles hadn’t been able to come up with a satisfactory answer to any of these questions by the time the taxi swung off the Winchester Road and headed for the docks. 8.30 p.m. Giles set aside all his misgivings and began to think about what needed to be done if they arrived at the dockside before the ship had raised its anchor. 8.45 p.m.

‘Faster!’ he demanded, although he suspected the driver already had his foot flat to the floor. At last he spotted the great liner, and as it grew larger and larger by the minute, he began to believe that they just might make it. But then he heard a sound he had been dreading: three loud, prolonged blasts of a fog horn.

‘Time and tide wait for no man,’ said the driver. An observation Giles could have lived without at that particular moment.

The taxi came to a halt by the side of the South America, but the passenger ramp had already been raised and the mooring ropes released to allow the vast ship to ease its way slowly away from the dockside and out into the open sea.

Giles felt helpless as he watched two tugs guide the ship out into the estuary, like ants leading an elephant to safer ground.

‘The harbourmaster’s office!’ he shouted, without any idea where that might be. The driver had to stop twice to ask for directions before he pulled up outside the only office building that still had all its lights on.

Giles jumped out of the taxi and charged into the harbourmaster’s office without knocking. Inside, he came face to face with three startled men.

‘Who are you?’ demanded a man dressed in a port authority uniform, displaying more gold braid than his fellow officers.

‘Sir Giles Barrington. My nephew is on board that ship,’ he said, pointing out of the window. ‘Is there any way of getting him off?’

‘I wouldn’t have thought so, sir, unless the captain is willing to stop the ship and allow him to be lowered on to one of our pilot boats, which I’d have thought was most unlikely. But I’ll give it a try. What’s the passenger’s name?’

‘Sebastian Clifton. He’s still a minor, and I have his parents’ authority to get him off that ship.’

The harbourmaster picked up a microphone and began twiddling some knobs on a control panel as he tried to get the captain on the line.

‘I don’t want to get your hopes up,’ he said, ‘but the captain and I did serve together in the Royal Navy, so . . .’

‘This is the captain of the SS South America,’ said a very English voice.

‘It’s Bob Walters, skipper. We’ve got a problem, and I’d be grateful for any assistance you can give,’ the harbourmaster said before passing on Sir Giles’s request.

‘In normal circumstances I’d be happy to oblige, Bob,’ said the captain, ‘but the owner’s on the bridge, so I’ll have to ask his permission.’

‘Thank you,’ said Giles and the harbourmaster in unison, before the line went dead.

‘Are there any circumstances in which you have the authority to over-rule a captain?’ asked Giles as they waited.

‘Only while his ship’s in the estuary. Once it’s passed the northern lighthouse, it’s deemed to be in the Channel and beyond my jurisdiction.’

‘But you can give a captain an order while his ship’s still in the estuary?’

‘Yes, sir, but remember, it’s a foreign vessel, and we don’t want a diplomatic incident, so I wouldn’t be willing to over-rule the captain unless I was convinced a criminal act was taking place.’

‘What’s taking them so long?’ asked Giles as the minutes passed. Suddenly a voice crackled over the intercom.

‘Sorry, Bob. The owner’s unwilling to grant your request as we’re approaching the harbour wall and will soon be in the Channel.’

Giles grabbed the microphone from the harbourmaster. ‘This is Sir Giles Barrington. Please put the owner on the line. I want to speak to him personally.’

‘I’m sorry, Sir Giles,’ said the captain, ‘but Mr Martinez has left the bridge and gone to his cabin, and he left strict instructions that he’s not to be disturbed.’





HARRY CLIFTON





1957





33


HARRY HAD ASSUMED that nothing could surpass the pride he felt when he heard Sebastian had been awarded a scholarship to Cambridge. He was wrong. He felt just as proud as he watched his wife climbing the steps and on to the platform to receive her business degree, summa cum laude, from Wallace Sterling, the president of Stanford University.

Harry knew better than anyone the sacrifices Emma had made to meet the impossibly high standards Professor Feldman set himself and his students, and he had expected even more from Emma, as he had made clear over the years.