Sea Change (25 page)

After he’s trimmed the direction again he runs back to the store and, miraculously, finds what he’s looking for almost immediately. That’s great, he thinks, knowing it’s really only the start of his worries. On the way back to the wheelhouse, dragging the canvas sacking and iron hoops and chain through the saloon, he takes a heavy weather manual from the bookshelf. Back in his chair, at last, with one hand on the wheel, he finds the chapter he’ll need:
Assembly and Deployment of a Sea Anchor
.

When the waves die down again he makes the last series of checks, out on deck, walking the length of the barge with a heavy-duty torch to look for damage. Luckily, the waves haven’t breached the bow yet, but he still checks the fastenings and ropes and anchor housing and bow thruster in case the wind and roll of the boat has moved anything. He also checks the inflatable dinghy, making sure there’s plenty of fuel in the outboard and the chains to the davit are secure. Satisfied, he climbs on to the roof of the wheelhouse and looks out at the sea. The wind has dropped, and he hears the water more clearly - it seems to gather round the boat as if it has noticed him, in a choppy motion that feels welcome. The waves are smaller now, busily sweeping past with their own individual characters, some rising briefly and nervously, being swept aside by larger, more robust rolls of water. The
Flood
has been magnificent, he thinks. He’s miles and miles from shore, there are no lights on the horizon, no sign that man has ever lived or is alive at any place; the sea and the sky are alone as having no lasting touch of man upon them. His world is this boat. There is nothing else.

Position: Eighty or so miles offshore? Guess about 53° 56’N 1° 42’E. 9:30pm

Although they’d travelled half a continent to reach it, crossing the Mississippi had been disappointing. The bridge had appeared too suddenly, and then a high safety barrier and a heavy lattice of girders virtually obscured any view of the river. What they saw were the briefest of glimpses of a wide, impossibly long stretch of water, way beneath them. That was all.

They had entered another state, Arkansas, relentlessly flat, and their journey had suddenly seemed to lose its sense of purpose. Guy had been wrong about the morning. Those feelings of optimism hadn’t lasted. A trick of the coffee, he reflects as he drives, making everything so unbelievably positive. His mood had sunk soon after leaving the plantation, whereas Judy’s mood - if he had any gauge on it - had brightened. It really did seem that admitting the affair the previous night had been cathartic. In her view she’s no longer betraying me, he thinks, because she has said as much.

The sheer recording his mind is doing is exhausting, and has given the day an epic, stretched dimension that is in itself disconcerting. Just this morning, he’d been eating those rolls on the back porch of the shack, and yet that feels like it happened a few weeks ago, a scene from a play even, strangely lit and full of improbability. A lunch, too, where they’d stopped off at a family-run restaurant, specializing in home-fried chicken. Guy had walked in to discover the two men who ran it, a father and son, were both disfigured by burns on their faces, tending to the serving dishes of vegetables, corn, chicken and coleslaw in a dimly lit part of the room. Judy and Freya had noticed, and become quiet about it, and Guy had gone to pay for the food and stared right into the man’s eyes - they peered back at him as though through a mask.

He’d taken the food to the table and they’d all eaten in comparative silence, worn out by the travel and unnerved by the restaurant, and Guy had looked at the elderly man shuffling back to the kitchen, as if he was a ghost. It’s all unreal, he’d thought, and was thinking it again right now, sitting behind the wheel while the road rolled endlessly by. Louisiana, passing without event. A westerly direction. Scenes from the day, recurring to him now, while the daylight faded. The heat at noon as he’d climbed out of the car to stretch his back. A slight click of his vertebra as he leant from side to side, a comforting feeling. Relieving himself at the corner of a cotton field, his warm urine falling on to dry stalks and dry dusty red earth. Freya collecting cotton buds from the plants a few rows away. How she’d held the cotton tufts to her face like a beard. Judy, biting her nails in an unguarded moment, then tying her hair back in a swift professional motion, the hair twisting obediently to her fast-working fingers. Her reliance on wearing sunglasses, her three cups of coffee at lunch time. His entire family - that unit he so easily took for granted - had felt threadbare.

At times he’d looked to America itself, passing left and right, to give him a shot of inspiration. But America was flat here. Just another hundred or two miles of the same. And as a result he’d driven them hard today, driven and driven with few stops and no plan in his head. Driving west, that’s the plan, as it always was, the family might be falling apart but the journey continues, stubbornly, towards a bright and fantastical California which waits like an advertising hoarding. Pacific surf, rolling in, dazzling light, a living dream.

When it’s properly dark, about nine o’clock, Freya begins to complain. ‘I don’t really want to go much further,’ she says, politely, wary of a growing atmosphere she doesn’t grasp. The air in the car is getting brittle and charged.

‘OK,’ he says quietly, knowing he’s pushing them all too far. ‘I’ll stop when we see a place. I’m sorry it’s been such a long day.’

‘Me too,’ she says. ‘Thanks for doing all the driving.’

He smiles weakly at her. An unexpectedly huge rush of emotion hits him, a welling of feeling which has been mounting all day - it floods him, but he can only understand it in fragments, it’s so consuming. His responsibility, his care, his deep love of Freya. All this hits sharply, and he thinks he might cry, just pull over on to the shoulder there and cry, while Judy sits silently in the back, so close and yet so distant.

The lights of a motel approach, and he turns in without asking the others. He will make the decisions now. He’s damned if he’s going to listen to Judy on this.

He parks right by the office and gets out immediately, but it’s only once he’s in there under its punishing fluorescent light that his tiredness overtakes him. He catches a reflection of himself in the darkened windows and he’s shocked at how worn out he looks. Bleary, impatient and old - this is the cost, he thinks, this is how it’s going to be from now on.

He pays for two rooms, next to each other, and drives the car over the lot to park in front. He opens both doors, but says nothing about who will sleep where, knowing that Judy will be trying to work it out, trying to second guess him on this. It’s rattled her. Guy sits on the edge of one of the beds and then lies flat across the mattress. He can hear the others bringing in some of the luggage. He looks up at the ceiling and says one thing to them - a thing that he only learned himself about five minutes ago:

‘We’re in Texas.’

Freya’s asleep within minutes, in the first room they went into. Judy’s moving around, trying to keep quiet, and Guy just stands, grabs her wrist, and takes her to the room next door. She immediately sits on a chair, by a small table. He sits on the bed facing her.

‘I won’t let you ruin things for Freya,’ she begins.

‘If there’s someone who’s ruining things I think we both know who it is,’ he replies, instantly. He’s not going to stand for her trying to turn things on him. She did that last night and it’s not going to happen again.

‘I don’t want to talk tonight,’ she says, wearily.

‘Then you’ll listen,’ he says.

His abruptness is working. She sits there quietly, drawn in, mouth firm and chin set. He feels a pang of guilt for being harsh, but pushes it aside. He doesn’t know where to start.

‘Where do I start?’ he says. He gets no response from Judy, she’s not there to help him. ‘Why are you doing this terrible thing to us? To all of us?’ She remains quiet, retaining the air of being scolded. ‘I can’t just accept it, you know. You can’t just tell me outright that you are having an affair and expect me to ...’

‘. . . I expect nothing.’

‘Right.’

She looks at him, her eyes a little watery, but filled with a defiance that’s easily a match for anything he might say.

He stumbles. ‘Why are you . . . why are you talking to me like this?’

He looks away from her, and notices the room for the first time. It’s small with ochre walls and brown carpet, designed for softness, comfort and could be anywhere in the world. A television faces the bed - its dumb lead-grey eye looks watchfully back at him, he can see his reflection in its lifeless blank screen - how tense he looks in the arms and shoulders - and sees how he’s become curiously distorted by a subtle curve. They should provide curtains to hang over these things - TVs have become bigger, and so have their dead reflections.

‘Jude - this is crazy. I can’t believe this craziness.’ He’s already sounding inarticulate. Worse, defeated. ‘I never thought we would be in this situation. Did you? I mean, we are in a situation, aren’t we?’

She nods, rather than say anything. But even that gesture seems guarded. There’s just no way in. This kind of quietness in her, it’s dangerous, because it draws him into saying too much.

‘Are you going to speak?’ he asks, regaining his anger.

The anonymous motel room seems designed for this kind of night they’re having. Characterless, presiding over them with complete indifference. It unsettles him.

‘I thought I was here to listen,’ she says.

‘Don’t be smart.’

She shrugs, dismissively.

‘You need to listen all right, you need to listen to yourself,’ he says, trying to be smart himself, but feeling foolish, feeling he’s losing so easily.

‘We’ll find a way, Guy,’ she says with surprising tenderness, or at least the hint of it. He brushes it off with an impatient
pah
sound. He won’t be so quickly dealt with. He looks around, exasperated. Now the room seems laid out for an argument, scene for a fight. It strikes him poignantly, and he yields towards it, wanting to share how he’s feeling with Judy - he wants to tell her how alone this is making him feel - she’s been his sounding-board for so long. But he knows confidences like this just can’t exist any more.

They look at each other. Stalemate. It’s like they’re playing some kind of game - as though someone’s told them to wait in here and not talk.

‘Why the two rooms?’ she asks.

‘You tell me.’

‘We’re not going to get anywhere if we fight.’

‘Believe it or not, I don’t want to fight. But you’ve stung me and the poison’s still there, in the system.’ He’s being too flowery. He mustn’t lose her here. He tries another tack. ‘Why Phil?’

She looks away and lets out a quiet sigh through the little slot her mouth has become. ‘Let’s not talk about him here.’

‘Isn’t he exactly who we should be talking about?’ Guy’s on the attack again - he must keep the heat down - she’ll shut him down the moment he goes too far.

‘He’s kind to me,’ she says, quietly, conceding, damning Guy with the implication of his own possible failings. What exactly
are
his failings? She is all dead ends and dark secrets, and he’s a fool to be groping his way forward - even his right to be asking these questions appears to be in doubt. And Phil - his presence seems to be there in the room with them, skulking, cowardly, yet strangely arrogant, offering a hand to be on Judy’s shoulder, and her accepting it, it’s like she’s possessed. This is Judy sitting here, he has to remind himself, the woman whom he knows most about in all the world. He knows every inch of her skin, he knows the precise shape and weight of her arms, the tiny rough patches of her elbows where she applies the moisturizer, the back of her neck where the hairline grows - where it occasionally has to be shaved by the hairdresser - the widened shape just high of her hips, the memory of childbirth there, forever. The shortness of her shinbone, the shapeliness of her calf muscle, which hangs like a breast when her knee is raised. Her thin tapering fingers, the skin in that place slightly darker than the rest of her, and her childlike toes, slightly clenched in, always. These are
his
details, just as he is a familiar landscape to her, mapped over the years till it’s indelibly part of both of them.

‘How long?’ he asks her, unimaginatively. She replies with a slight shake of her head, a cool liquid glaze over this moment which gives nothing away.

‘We need to talk about Freya,’ she says.

That shuts him up. Its cold assertion of widening this situation out into a public field, its suggestion of finality, of practicality - this is an advanced conversation they are having. Here’s Guy wanting to discuss the whys and wherefores, the moral dimension to the betrayal he’s unearthing, and Judy’s just not interested at all. It’s a
fait accompli
. She wants to talk about who Freya will live with.

‘We will need to sit down with her and explain what’s happening, ’ Judy says, a little recklessly, implying Guy will sign up to the situation without question. She sees her mistake, and makes half a plea. ‘Let’s not make this messy.’

This time it’s Guy who plays the silent card. Judy waits, in no hurry, her father’s bank-management skills showing through - she’s a businesswoman, after all this, it’s a new revelation to Guy and, predictably, it’s he who backs down first.

‘Judy,’ he says, ‘I’m still in love with you.’

The start of so many cherished moments between them, a word that usually unlocks her, but here, it’s the end. She gets up, stretching her back as if she’s been in there for hours, and walks calmly towards the door.

‘I’m not sleeping in here,’ she says, flatly.

‘Is that it? Our discussion’s over?’

‘Yes.’

‘So what am I meant to do?’

‘You paid for the room. You may as well use it.’

‘Well, I’m not going to.’

‘No? Where do you think you’re going to sleep then?’

‘In there. In the same room as Freya.’

Judy’s had enough of this. ‘Suit yourself,’ she says.