Free Amazing Disgrace by James Hamilton-Paterson Page B

something he picked up in the Navy. Not the only thing he picked up in the Navy, as a matter of a fact, but unfortunately I didn’t know about that until well after we were married. Anyway, the facts speak for themselves: I’m a seawoman born and bred, everyone knows that. So those bits will have to go. But more than that, Gerry, what really bothers me is the way you manage to make me sound like somebody who’s just another around-the-world sailing legend. And I’m a lot more, as we both know, and as the British public knows.’  
    Strewth. If I flatter myself – and it has happened now and then – it is because, almost alone in this hack trade of mine, I have a reputation for making two-dimensional sporting heroes seem briefly three-dimensional despite everything they can do. Take that downhill skier, Luc Bailly. When I first met him he was nothing but a crippled priapist in his late twenties with a factory making hideous sportswear and a private round- the-clock team of deft-fingered nurses. But by the time I’d finished with him he was Monsieur Renaissance Man. Even the group sex orgies, the clysters in Klosters, had been airbrushed into something hazy and artistically stylized, like one of those huge brown old canvases of the Rape of the Sabine Women.
    ‘I’m mortified to hear about the book’s shortcomings, Millie,’ I tell her dangerously. ‘Perhaps if you will be a bit more specific we can pump up the portrait accordingly. Is there any particular aspect of your fascinating personality you would like elaborated ? Your maternal qualities? Cookery skills? Kindness to animals? Sense of humour?’  
    Surely this time I have gone too far and I fully expect her to give me one of her nautical tongue-lashings for impertinence, facetiousness, etc., but she just looks thoughtful.
    ‘I’m thinking more that you haven’t taken me seriously as a spiritual person,’ she waves her hand at the incriminating folder on the coffee table. ‘As your version stands, our heroine gets bitten by the long-distance sailing bug and goes for gold, driven by her extraordinary determination, competitiveness and raw courage. Do you really think that’s me, Gerry? After all the time you’ve spent with me?’  
    ‘You’re saying you’re not determined, competitive and courageous?’ I grope, flummoxed by her having spent the best part of a month last winter telling me she was exactly all those things.  
    ‘Of course not,’ she snarls, reverting reassuringly to type. ‘How could I possibly have become world-record holder and the most successful yachtswoman in all history otherwise? But I’m other things as well , you must have noticed that? Really, Gerry, wake up! You’re missing the whole point, if I may say so. Perhaps it’s because you’re a man. Sort of. Sort of because you’re a man,’ she adds quickly.  
    Yeah, and packing more veal, is what I’d like to retort. My ex-analyst, who retired badly bruised after only three sessions many years ago, would have been interested to learn that what pops into Samper’s mind at this instant is a vision of himselfwearing his new jeans, the crotch distressed beyond the designer’s intentions. And over in Guangzhou an elderly couple look up from their tireless chopping and bundling and beam with pride. But I don’t want things to degenerate still further. I want to get briefed, go away and amend the book and then get the hell out of Millie Cleat’s life for ever and ever. Samper knows when to swallow his pride. I notice the sun has broken through the London overcast outside. Millie notices, too, with her weather eye. She gets up and goes to the window with her engorged telescope and resumes her Horatia Nelson act, scanning far horizons.  
    ‘I had a dream, Gerry,’ she says loftily. Goodness gracious; forget Nelson, it’s Martin Luther Queen. ‘I’m quite certain I must have told you. Even in Pinner the sea was calling me. It was never to do with winning races, you