Part 19 (2/2)

'What fly should I put on?'

'What's the smallest and darkest you have in your box?'

'I have a No. 14 Munro Killer. It's tiny!'

'Tie it on, and cast it in the same place as before.' In her haste the cast was clumsy and fell a little short.

'Shall I pull it out, Heck?'

'No. Let it fish through.' He waited tensely. There was no flash in the water, but abruptly the fly line stopped swinging. 'Wait!' he shouted. 'Don't do a thing.' He saw the tip of her rod jiggle and nod.

'He's playing with it. Don't strike him. Please don't strike him, Cay.' Then the rod tip dipped slowly but purposefully. 'Lift it into him! Now!' She leaned back slowly putting her weight into the fish, the rod arching like a longbow. Nothing moved for a long moment.

'I think I've hooked up on a rock on the bottom,' she cried.

'It's a fish, a monstrous brute. Wait for it. He hasn't realized that he's hooked yet.' Suddenly her reel screamed like a soul in purgatory, and the line hissed from it into the darkling waters.

'Take your b.l.o.o.d.y fingers off the line or he'll break you. He's going to jump!' The surface opened and the salmon came out in a burst of spray, like a silver projectile from a cannon's mouth. Hector went cold when he saw the size of it. That skinny little girl of theirs was fighting way out of her cla.s.s. She was hanging on grimly as the line raced out and the fish went greyhounding away down the river.

'Hold on, darling! I'm coming,' he shouted, ripping off his waders. Then barefoot and clad only in his long-johns he plunged into the current and tore through it with powerful overarm strokes. He came out on her side of the pool and splashed up behind her. He put his hands on her shoulders to steady her on the boulder-strewn bottom.

'Don't touch my rod,' she warned him possessively. 'This is my fish, do you hear!' She knew that if he touched the rod it disqualified the catch. Hazel, who had been fis.h.i.+ng the pool above them, was alerted by the commotion and she came running down the bank with her rod in one hand and the camera in the other.

'What's happening?' she called, but both of them were too busy to reply.

'You have to turn him, Cay,' Hector warned her. 'There's a waterfall around the bend. If he gets in there it's bye bye blackbird. Tighten up on him slowly. Don't jerk the line.' Now he had a hold on the belt of her waders to prevent her being dragged into the deep water. She laid the rod in the crook of her left arm and palmed the reel with her right hand to brake the run of the fish. He began to slow and at last when there were only a dozen turns of backing line left on the spool of her reel, the fish stopped. The rod jerked from side to side as the salmon shook his ma.s.sive head. Suddenly he turned and came back towards her as fast as he had run away from her.

'Get that line out of the water,' Hector told her. 'Reel!'

'You don't have to scream in my ear,' Cayla protested. 'I'm doing it.'

'But not b.l.o.o.d.y fast enough. Don't argue. Reel, girlie, reel! If you give him a bight to pull against he will snap your leader like cotton.' At the same time Hazel was contributing her advice from the bank, and trying to get them to pose for her camera. 'Look at me, Cayla, and smile!'

'Don't you dare listen to that crazy mother of yours! Keep your eyes on the b.l.o.o.d.y fis.h.!.+' Hector warned her. The fish set off upstream like a silver shooting star. Hector hooked one arm around her waist and dragged her along after him, splas.h.i.+ng and stumbling over the boulders. Howling like a pair of escapees from the mad house they chased after the salmon. The fish turned again and they were forced to turn with him and chase him back downstream. Back he took them and then around again. Suddenly, after almost a full hour of mayhem, the fish stopped and they could see him at last, lying on the bottom in midstream shaking his head like a bulldog with a bone.

'You've broken him, Cay. He's almost ready to come to you now.'

'I don't care about him. He's almost b.l.o.o.d.y broken me,' she whimpered.

'If you swear again I am going to tell your granny on you, girlie.'

'Go ahead. After this I am afraid of nothing, not even Granny Grace.' Slowly and delicately she pumped the salmon closer to the bank, easing him a few inches off the bottom with each lift of the rod and then dropping the tip to wind in the slack line.

'When he sees us he is going to make his last run. Be ready for it. Let him take all the line he wants. Don't try to hold him.' But the fish was almost done. His last run was less than twenty yards and then she was able to turn his head and bring him back towards the bank. In the shallow water he suddenly rolled onto his back in exhausted submission, his gill covers opening and closing like a bellows as he hunted for oxygen. Hector waded forward and slipped two fingers into his gills and, careful not to tear the delicate membranes, lifted his head gently until he could take him in his arms like an infant. He carried the fish to the bank and Cayla sat beside him waist deep in the icy river.

'How much does he weigh?' she asked.

'Over thirty pounds, but less than forty,' he answered. 'But it doesn't matter. He's yours for ever. That's all that counts.' Hazel knelt in front of them and photographed them with the great salmon across their laps and their faces alight with happiness.

Hector and Cayla carried the fish between them into deeper water and turned him to face into the current so the water flowed through his gills. He recovered his balance and strength swiftly and started to wriggle to be free. Cayla stooped to kiss him on his cold slippery nose.

'Adieu!' She bade him farewell for ever. 'Go and make lots of little fish for me to catch.' Then Hector opened his arms and the fish's tail thumped from side to side and he shot away into the depths. They laughed and hugged each other for the sheer joy of it.

'Strange how good things always happen when you are with us, Heck,' Cayla said with sudden seriousness. Hazel recorded the moment with her Nikon. That was how she would always remember her daughter.

They flew on down to Paris and put Cayla on the commercial flight direct to Denver. There followed four long days of discussions with officials of the French Board of Trade, discussing import tariffs and the other problems of importing natural gas into France. Nevertheless they found time to spend an afternoon at the Musee d'Orsay admiring the Gauguins and another full day in the Musee de l'Orangerie with Monet's water lilies. Then they went on to Geneva to attend another art auction. There was one item in the sale that Hazel wanted desperately: a lovely Berthe Morisot of a Parisian flower seller. This time Hazel found herself in a grim bidding contest with a Saudi prince. In the end even she had to capitulate, but she was furious.

'You were right, Hector darling. These people are dangerous.'

'Naughty! Naughty!' he admonished her. 'That isn't at all PC.' Secretly he was not unhappy with the result. Surely there had to be a limit to her spending?

'I am not objecting to his skin colour. It's the size of his wallet that really galls me.' It took a little sweet talking and a lot of loving before she regained her good humour.

Russia was the next stop on their movable honeymoon feast. As always the Hermitage museum in St Petersburg enchanted them with its vast array of treasures that the Bolshevik revolutionaries had plundered from their own doomed aristocrats. However in Moscow things turned a little sour once more. For the past two years Bannock Oil had been involved in a courts.h.i.+p dance with the Russian oil giant Gazprom. The proposed project was a joint venture in deepwater exploration of gas deposits in the Gulf of Anadyr in the Bering Sea. Bannock had spent tens of millions on bringing this proposal to the bargaining table. Now it ran into the iceberg of Russian intransigence and sank without a trace.

'Insufferable Russkies! I have to punish them somehow,' Hazel fumed at Hector when they settled once more into the lulling luxury of the salon in the BBJ, and took off for Osaka. 'I think I am going to have to seriously boycott their caviar and vodka.'

'If you destroy the Russian economy that way, just think of those millions of cute little Russian babies who will starve to death because of you.'

'G.o.d! You are a bleeding heart, Mr Cross! Okay. I give in. I never did fancy the Bering Sea, anyway. I hear it's dreadfully cold up there.' Hector called the chief steward on the intercom.

'Please bring Mrs Cross her usual Dovgan vodka and lime juice.'

'Not bad!' Hazel gave her opinion as she tasted it. 'But isn't there anything for afters?' She glanced at the door to the Versace bedroom.

'I did have something in mind,' he admitted.

'Goody! Goody!' she said.

In the s.h.i.+pyards of Osaka the mighty tanker stood on the slipway ready for launching. The entire board of Bannock Oil and a number of other dignitaries, including the Prime Minister of j.a.pan, the Emir of Abu Zara and the US Amba.s.sador to j.a.pan, were a.s.sembled to witness the event.

The interior of the s.h.i.+p was still unfinished. She would sail with a skeleton crew to Chi-Lung, the seaport of Taipei in Taiwan, where she would undergo the final fitting out and the installation of the revolutionary new cargo tanks. A lift took the guests to the top of the scaffold at the bows of the hull, where they were seated in the aerial auditorium. They applauded as Hazel went to the front edge of the platform to name and launch the great s.h.i.+p. From such a height she felt as though she were standing on the peak of a mountain with the world far below her. The subst.i.tute for champagne that she was to break against the steel hull was a magnum of Australian sparkling chardonnay.

When Hector had queried her choice of wine she told him seriously, 'We aren't going to drink it, darling. We're going to smash it to little bits. I don't want to get the reputation of being spendthrift.'

'Extremely abstemious of you, my love,' he agreed. Fifty photographers had their lenses focused on her as she made her speech from the front of the high platform. Her voice was magnified by the loudspeakers until it echoed and reverberated around the yard below her where thousands of workers were a.s.sembled.

'This s.h.i.+p is a monument to the genius of my deceased husband Henry Bannock. He created and controlled the Bannock Oil Corporation for forty years. His nickname was The Goose. Therefore I name this s.h.i.+p the Golden Goose Golden Goose. G.o.d bless and protect her and all who sail in her.' The Golden Goose Golden Goose slid broadside down the slipway and when she entered the water she raised a tidal wave that rocked every other vessel in the basin. They sounded their foghorns and all the spectators cheered and clapped. There were another three days of meetings and banquets before Hector and Hazel were able to escape again. slid broadside down the slipway and when she entered the water she raised a tidal wave that rocked every other vessel in the basin. They sounded their foghorns and all the spectators cheered and clapped. There were another three days of meetings and banquets before Hector and Hazel were able to escape again.

They flew up to the s.h.i.+nto temple of auspicious memories below Mount Fujiyama. Their hectic itinerary had left both of them close to exhaustion, so after their obligatory visit to the sacred cherry tree in the temple orchard they returned to their suite and bathed together in the hot tub. As they lay there soaking in the almost scalding waters, Hazel reached out for her mobile phone and switched it on.

'Five missed messages from Dunkeld,' she murmured lazily as she wriggled her toes against his back. 'I wonder what Mater wants. She isn't usually so persistent. I wonder what the time difference is?'

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