Island (23 page)

The day of our departure. Nikki and Calum cross
the water. Nikki tests the length and strength of Calum’s chain. Nikki pits her strength against her mother.

We were getting the early ferry; he tapped quietly on the outer door at 6.15, I was up but not ready, I let him in. The light was murky and a gust of wind came in with him.

‘I – I’ve got to tell her we’re going.’ He crossed to the inner door.

‘Calum – why? You don’t have to tell her any–’

His feet went up the stairs. I drank my tea and put my coat on, there was the sound of their voices rising – indistinct but both of them agitated. Then the quick sound of heavy footsteps on the stairs. ‘Come on. L-let’s go.’ He ran to the outer door as if she was chasing him.

I shouldered my rucksack and followed him out, he
was hovering at the edge of the garden. ‘Come on–’ We literally ran away from the house.

The weather had changed overnight. Wind was coming in from the sea in great big swoops, great buffeting gobbets that pushed you and sucked away your breath. Strong but not cold. We half ran down the lane to the village, breathless and exhilarated. Huge clouds were shifting across the sky, back lit, everything was on the move – like a theatre when it goes nearly dark and they bundle all the scenery around, it was suddenly
all change
. And the thought of me and Calum, me and my brother going over the sea and back the way I had come on my own, filled me up with laughter. Calum grinned his big turnip grin and we hurried past all the sleeping houses and out of the village and down to the jetty. That was the first time I looked at the sea. The sea was excited too. It was standing up on end in spiky rows like punk hair; except the spiky rows were running across from right to left and flinging themselves over each other in their hurry.

‘Look!’ The waves were smashing against the jetty and the ferry was bobbing up and down on its moorings like a cork. ‘Look at the sea!’ I shouted at Calum, spray was hurtling into the air above the jetty and raining down on us, everything was in motion like us, swooping, soaring, flying. It was alive.

Calum had a funny look on his face. Last time he told her he was going somewhere she tried to kill herself. Why does he care? Why care about the bitch? She’s
nothing
. There was a car with two men sitting in it, staring across the sound. Calum went over to the driver and he opened his window. The wind snatched their words away but I saw the man look at his watch and shake his head. The two men conferred then
the driver spoke to Calum again. Calum stepped back, the driver reversed the car then drove off towards the village.

‘What is it?’

Calum shrugged, coming towards me. ‘It’s not going.’

‘What?’

‘The ferry. Sea’s too rough.’

‘Not going?’

He nodded.

‘But it has to go. People’re stranded here.’

‘The forecast’s bad. D-Davy said.’

‘Is he the driver? The captain?’

Calum had turned back to face the teeming sea.

‘But – but when will it go?’

He shrugged.

‘In an hour? At dinnertime?’

‘S-sometimes it can’t go for days.’

‘
Days?
’ I could see the opposite shore. It was a ten-minute boat ride away. You could
swim
it. It was completely and utterly ridiculous.

Calum turned his back on the sea. ‘Come on.’

‘But they must sail later. What about the farmers? What about bread and milk?’
Calum started to walk back towards the lane and I had to go after him.

‘You c-can always get cut off.’

Ah no. This weather was for us; it was saying
yes! Yes! You can do it, you and your brother together yes!
It wasn’t so we could go meekly back to the old witch’s house and sit there listening to weather forecasts.

‘Calum! Isn’t there another boat we could get? Couldn’t we pay someone to take us over? What about the fishermen?’

He looked puzzled.

‘We can still go. We
can
go, we’ll be alright, I know we will.’ I couldn’t bear the idea of losing all our momentum. How long before he changed his mind? ‘Calum! Calum! Don’t you know someone we can borrow a boat off?’

He stared at me then grinned. He turned his back on the village and began to scramble up a narrow path that ran on along the coast – it would have been an extension of the lane, if the lane hadn’t turned down towards the jetty and run into the sea. I hurried after him, the wind was tearing at my clothes and flipping my hair in my eyes. I wanted to shout out loud. He was running up in front of me then he suddenly disappeared; I got to the top and the path went straight down into the next little cove. There were three wooden sheds like garages there, on the edge of the stony beach. Calum was running down to them. At the first one he reached up and felt along the ledge above the double doors – found a key, unlocked the door and began to drag it open. It had dropped on its hinges and stuck against the ground, I ran down and helped him to heave it open. There was a little boat in
the dark shed. I couldn’t stop laughing. ‘Is it yours?’

‘N-no. I’m not allowed–’ Of course. His mother didn’t let him go out in boats.

‘How d’you–’

‘Gerry sometimes takes me out in it. J-just for an hour in the evening, when my mother’s watching telly.’

‘Gerry?’

‘He knew my dad.’ We went into the dark shed, it felt warm after the wind. There was an outboard motor on the boat and a pair of oars in the bottom, it was quite new. It would be over that sound in minutes.

‘Jackets.’ Calum pulled two orange lifejackets off a shelf and threw one at me.

‘We don’t need–’

‘I c-can’t swim.’

‘OK, you wear one but I–’

‘Nikki you m-m-’ I put it on to humour him, no point wasting time in argument. Then we began to drag the boat out and over the pebbles. It was white and red. Its name was
Iris
.

‘It’s brilliant! You weren’t going to tell me, were you?’

‘I’m not supposed–’ I couldn’t hear the rest because he turned to look over his shoulder at the sea. There were waves but it was perfectly OK. ‘You get in–’ He held it while I stepped in then he pushed it deeper while I started to row.

‘Come on, get in, it’s afloat.’ He clambered
in making it rock like crazy, his feet were wet up to the knee. ‘OK?’ The wind made my throat laugh. I heaved on the oars and dug us away from the beach. ‘Aren’t you starting the engine?’

‘I don’t know how–’

‘Haven’t you seen Gerry do it?’ Calum clambered over to the motor and peered at it dumbly. I thought OK, fine, we can row if necessary. ‘Come and do the oars while I have a look at it.’ He came clumsily back towards me, he was too thin to be really heavy but the boat tilted madly and I nearly lost an oar. ‘Calum! You great fool – sit down!’ I could hardly get my breath for laughing. I edged along the seat to make room for him. ‘Now swap over to this seat. Careful – don’t upset us–’

He moved slowly and as soon as he was seated I got him to take the right oar and slide his left arm round behind me to take the left. Then I shifted across and over the next seat to the motor. It was one of those where you pull a string. The waves were hitting us sideways on with a slap and great spray of water, I knelt down to pull the string and my knees were in a puddle.

‘Row Calum! Get the boat turned round a bit.’ I yanked on the string and it made a clucking noise but nothing else. There would be a place to switch the fuel on, I felt around the side and underneath. The boat was rocking from side to side as if a lunatic’d got hold of a hammock – ‘Calum! Aren’t you rowing?’ I glanced round at him; he was sitting with the oars up like wings, frowning at me. ‘Put the oars in the water! Row!’

He shrugged. We swung round a bit and the wind was full on my face, pouring into my mouth and nose, rushing into my lungs. It was alright
he couldn’t row. I would take us. It would be me – I was soaring, I was in my element, I could do
anything
. I flicked the switch and yanked the cord again and the motor choked out a cloud of blue smoke. Again – and it was going. I knew it. I knew it would. The boat started pushing through the water, there was a primitive handle for steering. I turned us so we were heading into the waves – sat facing Calum as we went crashing through them, rearing and plunging like a horse. He was still holding the oars.

‘Isn’t it great! Put them in the boat! Put the oars in the boat!’ Spray from the prow was cascading over him – he lifted the right oar out of the rowlock then turned up his collar and while he was doing it a wave caught the left oar, jerked it up and out of place and sucked it into the sea. He grabbed for it and missed.

‘It doesn’t matter. We don’t need it.’ I was bellowing to be heard over the motor and the wind – we were moving away from the shore now, you could see the distance opening up, we were moving away and the motor was chugging and I’d never managed a boat before but it was perfectly obvious and easy, nothing to it. I was flying, I could do anything.

Suddenly the waves got bigger – not just bigger but more random, they started coming at us on the slant as well as from ahead – suddenly we started tipping down them like something chucked down a lift shaft.

‘N-Nikki!’ I couldn’t hear what else he said. I swung the steering handle round to try and get on a better line with the waves, we were being slapped by them and juddered, we were suddenly falling into big troughs between them. I looked up and saw the end of the rocky promontory dividing us from the jetty’s bay – OK, we were out of shelter, we were in the sound, it was OK – then we went down and
up again and something seemed to swivel us round and the air was so full of torrential spray there weren’t any gaps in it and I couldn’t see which way we were going. I tried to stand to see over the top of the waves and spray but the land had disappeared. It was darker everywhere, the sky was darker and lower, it had all closed in.

‘Calum! Calum! Can you see–’ we were rolled sideways and the propeller came right out of the water whirring madly then we were crashed down again and a whole wave poured itself into the boat. It just crested and broke, like a bath being tipped onto us. The boat was full of water to our knees.

‘Bail! Calum, bail it out!’ There were a couple of plastic jugs floating around; I started scooping and hurling the water out. The noise of crashing and howling was louder and louder, we were right
in
the water, it was taller than us on all sides.

‘Calum, bail!’ I’d let go of the rudder – when I grabbed it again I realised the motor’d cut out. I just kept bailing. We got it down to ankle level before we stopped, the waves were hitting us and spinning us round and dropping us over their edges but they were keeping out of the boat. As we slid up one and I lifted my head I could see the promontory off behind Calum.

‘Keep bailing–’ I pulled the cord for the engine. Nothing. Again. Nothing.

‘Nikki!’ His shout came swooping in with the wave that seemed to swell up directly underneath us and suddenly shrug us off sideways so deftly that we were upside down while I was still yanking on the cord. I went right under and my clothes dragged me down like hands pulling me, the lifejacket a weight not a help and my lungs were bursting. I
scrabbled to get to the surface I was impossibly deep it was pitch dark – then my head popped through the surface into air and it
was
dark, it was black with a kind of thumping crashing echo all around me. My lungs froze in terror until I realised I’d come up under the upturned boat. I felt for the edge of it and ducked down under, keeping my fingers clenched around it. Now the jacket wouldn’t go down – I had to force myself with all my strength. Outside it was light but raging – Calum
Calum
, I was looking for Calum – I couldn’t breathe for water slapping in my face I was coughing and gasping and the water was going down my throat and the boat was jerking out of my hand. Then something was grabbing me and pulling me under, yanking at my shoulder but I didn’t let go the boat and I gasped a lungful of air and turned my head and it was Calum lunging and spluttering. I got an arm around his neck and dragged him close.

‘Hold on! Hold onto the boat!’ His flailing arms hit the side of it and slid off. ‘Calum, hold the edge of the boat!’ I managed to get one of his hands to clasp on and his brain must have started working because he brought the other one up and then he was coughing and spluttering but his eyes opened and saw me. Our heads weren’t really out of the water because the waves were slapping and cresting and spraying against the boat and the sea was so churned up that air and water weren’t separate it was one choppy mess we were trying to breathe, the boat was moving and dodging with the waves slapping against its other side, showering spray onto us, jerking our arms out of their sockets.

‘Hang on! Just hang on!’ I couldn’t – it wasn’t possible – to see. It crossed my mind to try and turn the boat over but with no oars – at least if it was upside down it couldn’t fill with water and sink. We
hung on there. I don’t know how long for. It wasn’t cold, I didn’t think about that. It was just the thing of keeping breathing, every time you gasped water came in too, or it slapped right over your face – it was just trying to keep your nostrils clear of water – and the arms beginning to ache – and mind still racing over what to do whether to try and hand-over-hand to the prow and then swim toward land tugging the boat after? Utterly unfeasible since we were too low to
see
land and neither of us could have tugged the boat – the water slapped and pushed it where the water wanted it to go, we were powerless.

I tried to shout to Calum but either he couldn’t hear or was too terrified to respond and water was plunging down my throat too frequently for me to finish a phrase anyway.

Something suddenly hit my feet jarring my ankles nearly breaking my legs. It was hard as iron, I pushed my foot against it – rock. The waves slapped the other side of the boat and it came on into our faces and we found ourselves knocked backwards onto rocks that were climbing out of the water. The boat was pinning us against them, we had to hold it off and wriggle our legs out and crawl half-slither up the rocks out of the water like things that’d been born in the sea. We crawled up out of the reach of the waves and the battering boat then sprawled on the cold hard rock pulling on the air pulling it into our lungs gasping and grasping it in like drunks swigging on an empty bottle. My stomach clenched and my throat went into spasm. Frothy sea water came out, long strings of it mixed with bile, a long watery trickle of vomit.