The Backpacker (26 page)

FIVE

During the course of the week we spent in Bangka, Dave and Watti had been in each other's company twenty-four hours a day. At first he'd paid the owner of the brothel, but after two days Watti had all but left the place and moved on to the boat. She did all our washing and cooking, among other things, and was generally a pleasure to have around. But more importantly for Dave, on top of all the domestic chores she was so good at, she was very young and very beautiful.

If Rick or I had to go to town for anything Dave would immediately suggest that Watti come with us, reeling off her attributes as though without her the world, or our boat at least, would fall apart. Similarly, when we had our bedtime smoke and started to talk about places we wanted to travel to, each suggesting our dream location, Dave, one arm around Watti, would always say ‘We' would like to go to such and such a place, or ‘We' think so and so would be nice.

Dave hadn't brought up the subject, but I knew sooner or later he was going to suggest that Watti would make an invaluable addition to the crew, someone we couldn't possibly do without while travelling through Indonesia. Either that or we would weigh the anchor and sail off, and two days into the voyage find her stowed down below deck. ‘What's she doing here?' I'd say, discovering her beneath the life jackets. Dave would look blankly back and say, matter-of-factly, ‘It's
Watti
, my
girlfriend
, John.'

So, when, on the night before we planned to leave, Dave asked us if we minded taking a new passenger onboard, Rick and I were unhappy but not altogether surprised.

Watti had already gone to bed, the other girls had been sent ashore without any hassles and the three of us were smoking on deck beneath a brilliant starry sky. The only sound around us was the ‘ping' of the rigging against the steel mast, caught by the strengthening wind.

‘No,' Rick replied firmly. He leaned to one side and flicked his ash over the gunwale. ‘Dave, you're forgetting yourself. We're going to Bali, remember?'

‘Yeah, and she can come along. I–' He hesitated, tapping his cigarette even though it wasn't lit. ‘Look, I really like her, man.'

‘Then stay here with her. Or go with her to her home in Java. But we're not going to fook about sailing all the way down to some obscure port in Java, just so she can tell her mum and dad where she is!'

‘It's on the way, guys.'

Rick slapped his thigh. ‘It's not on the way, Dave, it's miles
out
of the fooking way.' He exhaled heavily. ‘What's going to happen, Dave, ask yourself that question. We'll sail all the way down to wherever it is, you'll be sick of her by then and we'll be fooked because we haven't got the money to move on.'

‘We would be fucked,' I added, and nodded sagely. ‘He's right, Dave, see sense. You've only known her, what, less than a week?'

Rick quickly chimed in. ‘And you want to throw everything away? Fook it up for yourself if you want but don't ask us to come with you.' Rick got up and went down below to fetch another beer, bringing the conversation to a close. I just shrugged.

The next hour was filled with heavy silences as Dave avoided eye contact with us, picking at the stitching on his shorts. I felt sorry for him. I knew that he was really torn between being with his friends and being with someone he had fallen in love with. He never mentioned the word love, but it was pretty obvious that he had strong feelings for her, ever since their encounter in the bar on our first night in town.

I didn't sleep at all well that night, probably because I was used to the double bed and had decided to sleep up on deck instead with Rick. I told him I fancied a night under the stars, but the real reason was to be as far away from Dave's love-making as possible. I couldn't bear to listen to what I suspected would be their last night in each other's arms and Dave's pathetic attempt to lie about the following day. I knew he wouldn't have the guts to tell her the truth and would make up some excuse why she had to go into town without him.

I lay awake, watching the stars move across the sky, accompanied by the sound of gently lapping waves whipped up by the wind, and the sound of the rigging. All of which was very nearly drowned out by Rick's snoring.

I must have fallen asleep eventually, because when I awoke at sunrise the dinghy was gone and I hadn't heard a sound. Rick was still snoring evenly so I made coffee and, after checking the bedroom and finding it empty, waited on deck for something to happen.

‘Did you make me one?' Rick opened an eye, having apparently sucked in the aroma while snoring.

I pointed to the steaming mug beside his blanket and kept my eyes on the figure that walked along the quayside towards the dinghy. Dave stood on the jetty and looked back up towards the main street for a moment's reflection, before turning and walking down the steps to the boat, his skin glowing brown-orange in the early morning sun. The T-shirt he was wearing was taken off angrily and thrown into the bottom of the boat as a cushion and he stepped in.

‘D'you think we should have let her come?' I asked, unable to keep my thoughts to myself.

Rick leaned up on one elbow and followed my gaze over the prow to where the small, white plastic square edged through the water. ‘No. If he really wants to be with her he can stay here, or take her to Singapore, or back home to America. He doesn't need us to do that.' He sipped his coffee noisily. ‘Bringing her on this boat with two other single men is the last thing he needs.'

I nodded unhappily. Rick was right. He could easily have gone overland with her to Java, or anywhere else for that matter, and they could have lived together. As it was he must have had the same doubts as us.

I watched as Dave drew alongside us, but averted my gaze when he climbed up. ‘OK then,' he said with contrived enthusiasm, ‘let's get the sails up before I change my mind.'

Neither of us replied. I tied up the dinghy that Dave had left free, and Rick started to unfurl the sails. Dave went down below and started to play around with the radio and navigation equipment and, apart from the odd instruction given without emotion, none of us spoke.

Slowly at first, with just part of the sail up, we drifted out of the harbour past the fishing boats. Women were washing pots and pans in the water, while men took their early morning bath, occasionally waving to us, as we went by.

We cleared the headland and let out the rest of the sail; the wind filled the flapping canvas and our newly named yacht picked up speed, leaving the town and so many girls as nothing more than a memory.

Within an hour we were out of sight of land, and out of mind of everything other than the sea and the sky, and the re-named vessel beneath our feet:
Wet Dream
.

ONE

FAST FORWARD
. Two weeks later. Dave and Rick took it in turns to steer the boat, as planned, usually doing a whole day or night on and half a day off. One slept while the other steered, and when they were both awake (usually half a day) one of them operated the radio and navigating equipment. As well as doing most of the cooking, I sort of floated about, helping here and there where possible; rolling joints, that sort of thing.

The weather for the whole time was perfect for sailing; that is to say a constant force five blowing from the north and a clear sky to navigate by. We had GPS but it was nice to be reassured; none of us felt entirely at home relying upon electronics in an all-natural environment. Horses for courses, you might say.

One drawback to the clear weather, though, was the constant exposure of our skin to the harsh tropical sun. Despite all of our time spent on beaches, it didn't prepare our soft, northern bodies for the battering they received, as the salt sea-spray wet us and the sun baked us. Every time I looked at Dave he was grinning as though trying to crack his face, his gleaming white teeth and eyes peering ghoulishly out of a black skull. He looked funny because his hair had lightened while his skin had gone to the other end of the spectrum, turning as black as shoe polish and making him look like a yellow-haired old granny.

Rick's hair and moustache had turned almost white too, in contrast to his deep tan. Even his eyebrows had changed colour, making him look like a hippy version of Santa Claus. The constant lashing of salt water, wind and sun, along with no shampooing, had left his hair ridged. Sometimes, when he passed me on his way to the bedroom having just spent ten hours on deck, his hair stood up two feet into the air, as though he'd shoved his fingers into an electric socket. I once woke from a dream to find him roaming through the closet in my room, after a night at the helm, and thought that the boat had been over-run by aliens. He was like an apparition standing there; his sticking-up hair, back-lit by a ceiling-mounted tilly lamp, looking like a golden halo.

Apart from lowering the sail and drifting around an island called Bawean in the Java Sea one afternoon, we didn't anchor until reaching a place called Changu. It was two weeks since we had left Bangka; we were burnt to a crisp and almost out of water but too exhausted to continue that night. We were no more than a day's sail from Bali by Rick's reckoning, and as we still had a north wind it should be a cruise.

A small bay appeared in the distance, and after a minute's observation we aimed for it, anchoring a mile offshore above a beautiful coral reef. If we could have seen Bali we would have pressed on, but because it was so nice to spot land after the boredom of open sea, we all agreed to stop there for the night, and possibly the next day. We could fish on the reef and generally relax in calm waters before moving on.

It turned out to be the worst decision of our lives.

TWO

The exhaustion of the past weeks, just as Rick had suggested would happen, had given us all the feeling that a life spent sailing around the world in search of paradise wasn't all it was cracked up to be, and that maybe it wasn't what we were looking for after all.

Rick was the first to voice a sea change by continually speculating on the selling prices of second-hand yachts, and, as the days wore on, Dave and I found ourselves joining in the discussion with increased fervour. Dave was still missing Watti, and going ashore anywhere, he thought, would help take his mind off her.

‘How much do you think, Rick?' I called, searching around in the clutter of fishing gear that Dave had so neatly dumped on the deck. The two of them sat at the rear of the boat, feet dangling over the end, fishing on the reef.

‘Enough to keep us three travelling for a few years, that's how much.' Rick lifted the rod behind his head and cast it a short way out into the shimmering blue sea. He had woken up early that morning and had taken the only rod capable of handling a fish of any real size. Dave had his flimsy little telescopic that he'd bought in Singapore (the gear he'd bought in Bangka broke the first time it was used).

To one side of us was nothing but shades of blue that changed colour the further away from the boat I looked. Beneath us the highs and lows in the reef created a patchwork of different shades, until the angle of my vision was at about forty-five degrees and the colours became more uniform.

Over the prow, a far away island that looked like a policeman's helmet protruded from the water, a single, almost circular white cloud hanging above it like a Red Indian's smoke signal. Probably a volcano, I thought, vaguely remembering something called the ‘ring of fire', and turned around.

On the other side of the boat was the nearest island. A single peak tapered each side into what looked like smaller islands that had once been separate, but were now glued onto its sides, a bit like a half submerged head and a pair of ears. There didn't appear to be any beach, but because we'd arrived late the previous night and anchored against the first dark shape we'd come to, it didn't necessarily mean it wasn't approachable.

I went over to that side of the boat and looked at the sheer face of rock that ran down into the sea, letting my head tilt down slowly until I was looking directly at the side of the boat. With nothing else to occupy my mind, I took off my shorts, stood up on the side rail and dived off into the cool water.

The first thing that struck me when I opened my eyes and looked down was the depth. I blew out a little air to maintain equilibrium and studied my dangling feet, and the amount of space beneath them, before looking horizontally at the boat's keel to gauge the depth. About fifty feet I reckoned.

I love to look at the underneath of a boat, to see the parts that are not normally visible. Seeing it in dry dock is no good, it has to be in the water, surrounded by blue sea, its shadow cast onto the seabed, giving it scale and definition. A boat in dry dock is like a fish on a fishmonger's slab, it's out of context and has no place in a dry world, no meaning among its surroundings.

Time for a game, I thought, looking to the stern and seeing two pairs of feet: grab the two fishing lines and give them a yank, then surface in time to watch Rick and Dave fight over nothing and later tell me about the one that got away. If they had only been fishing at different ends of the boat I could have tied their lines together.

Coming up and taking another gulp of air out of sight, I dived back under the boat and swam to the rear in search of the lines. I had just reached their ankles when a dark shadow passed beneath me. Automatically I flinched and froze, blinking rapidly as though it would clear the water from my eyes. Without the movement provided by my arms, my body drifted upwards and my back bumped against someone's feet, making me jump. The dark shape cruised along the seabed then doubled back on itself, apparently heading towards me.

Surfacing with a gasp of air, I looked up to find the other two no longer sitting on the low platform at the back of the boat, but looking down at me from the deck, astonished looks on their faces. ‘Jesus fuckin' Christ, John, you scared the living shit out of me!' Dave slumped, as though releasing built-up tension. ‘We thought you were a shark, man.'

I giggled and hauled myself onto the platform. ‘Reel yours in, Dave.'

‘How's that?'

‘Your line, reel it in. There's a fucking big fish down there.' I stood up, wiping the water from my eyes with both hands. ‘I don't know what it is, but it's about this big.' I held my arms as far apart as I could. ‘It'll snap your rod like a twig.'

At that moment Rick's rod arced violently downwards and he almost let go under the force. ‘Fooking hell!'

I immediately looked from him to the water. ‘That's it, I think you've got it!'

Rick ordered Dave to reel his in, and then told me to put some clothes on, which I did. The three of us stood on the edge of the deck and watched the water, as Rick fought against whatever was on the other end. ‘Fooking hell!' he kept saying, and the only other thing he said over the next thirty minutes was, ‘Light me a fooking fag'.

‘There she blows!' Dave shouted, and the line, the rod, Rick, Dave and I all turned and went to one side of the boat as the fish shot off towards deeper water. Wherever the fish went, we three followed, like a tightly packed herd of sheep, all bunched together. Rick would strain and gasp, sucking in air through the corner of his mouth, as he let the rod drop almost horizontal and then heaved it up again, emitting his usual expletive. He talked and breathed through a tiny slit in the corner of his mouth, the other side being occupied by the limp, saturated cigarette.

I plucked it from his mouth and he gasped as though breathing for the first time. ‘Another.' I lit him another one and poked it in. ‘Here we go,' the cigarette said, bobbing to the words.

We all turned on the spot, watching as the shiny, taut line, like a precisely aimed laser-beam from the tip of the rod to the surface of the sea, slowly swung through ninety degrees.

‘The front,' Dave said excitedly, and the three of us all moved as one, up to the prow.

Rick suddenly had a look of concern on his face, the cigarette hanging down, almost resting on his chin. He began to wind slowly, and we watched as the laser beam began to shorten, coming nearer to the boat. He reeled harder and faster, trying to take up the slack, before the rod arced once again and the fish darted off, this time towards the island. ‘Fooking hell!'

We all shuffled over to the other side of the boat and stared at the water, the fishing line almost pointing downwards. There was a screech of the ratchet, the reel letting out line under too much pressure, and once again the fish swam out into the distance. We waited, tensed. Dave and I jumped down to the lower platform while Rick stood on the upper deck sweating and holding the rod up in the air.

‘Is it moving? The fish?'

‘No. Hasn't done anything for five minutes. Can you see it?'

‘No, but I can feel it,' I shouted, ‘in the line.'

There was a puff of smoke and he put both hands back onto the rod. The cigarette was immediately doused by dripping sweat and I could see him sucking frantically to re-light it. ‘Stick your head under and have a look,' he shouted.

It wasn't easy to see something that wasn't moving because of the changes in shade presented by the holes and dips in the reef, but then, just as I was about to surface for air, something down to my left moved three feet and I saw it. From where I was it appeared as just another dark shape, but it had moved, revealing its location. Looking back up out of the water I quickly checked the angle of the fishing line and followed its probable direction under water, before going under again. It was exactly where the shape was, and I raised my arm, making an OK sign while still looking down.

Dave tapped me on the shoulder and I came up, wiping the water from my face. ‘See it?' he asked, wide-eyed.

‘Nggh,' I gagged, clearing my nose. ‘Down there. Huge fucker.'

‘Shark?'

I shook my head. ‘Don't think so.' Rick called over and asked the same question and I gave the same response. ‘It's just lying there, Rick. It looks fucked.'

He nodded wisely. ‘Yeah, they always do that when they're exhausted. He's probably had enough. I know I have!' He gripped the rod suddenly. ‘Ooh, fook!' and the fishing line came cutting through the water towards us. The angle between the line and the sea surface became more and more acute until, about twenty feet from us, the fish broke the surface with a huge splash and a flip of its tail fin.

‘Garoupa!' Rick shouted. ‘It's a fooking garoupa!'

The fish had started its final run, swinging around to the rear of the boat, the line slicing through the air. Dave and I ducked, almost too late, and nearly got scalped, much to Rick's amusement; Dave patted his afro to make sure it was still there. The fish surfaced again, this time rolling over languidly, its huge pink belly like a giant shiny blancmange in the sunlight. It was bigger than our dinghy!

‘How the fuck are we going to land that?' The fish was more or less finished and was lolling around on the surface, only occasionally righting itself for a token dive before it came back up. ‘I've never seen a fish that big before,' I said shaking my head at the sight.

‘It's fuckin' huge, man. And ugly too.'

‘To tell you the truth,' Rick said, sweating from the exertion, ‘I haven't seen a fish that big either.'

I don't think any of us really thought we'd be at the point of actually catching it, and none of us were sure what to do next.

‘What are we going to do with it?'

Dave looked at me. ‘Eat it?'

‘It's six-foot long, Dave! And about six-foot wide. How can we eat that between three of us? Be serious, that'd feed a family of four for a month!'

‘It'll taste like shit, anyway,' Rick said knowledgeably, and we both looked up at him. ‘It's too old.'

‘How d'you know it's old?' I said.

‘Look at him! No fish gets to be that big without being very, very old.'

We all stared for a moment, and I said, ‘What then?'

‘Let him go.' Rick sat down on the edge of the deck. ‘Dave, there's a pair of pliers in that tool kit down below, go and get them.'

Dave went off and came back with the whole toolbox, opening it up on deck. ‘These?'

Rick looked up. ‘Yep.' I reached up and grabbed them. ‘Right,' Rick said, easing himself down onto the low platform next to me, ‘I'll reel him in to the back of the boat. John, you take out the hook.'

‘Me?' I exclaimed, slightly taken aback at the idea.

He nodded.

I held the pliers out to him. ‘You take the fucking hook out.'

‘Oh don't be such a pussy.'

‘Yeah, John,' Dave said from the safety of the deck, ‘don't be a pussy.'

‘I'm not doing it,' I said, shaking my head vigorously.

‘Go on!'

‘Nope.' I pushed the pliers into his chest.

‘Why not?'

‘Cause I don't want to get my hand bitten off, that's why not.'

Rick laughed. ‘They haven't got teeth. Anyway, that thing's so old it's probably lost all his by now.' The fish, as if insulted, tried a final run, but gave up almost as soon as it had started. Rick reeled it in like a piece of flotsam until it was floating right beneath our feet.

I still held the pliers out to Rick. He sighed. ‘Oh, OK, you hold the rod and I'll take the hook out.' We exchanged implements. ‘Now pull him round, John. Bring the mouth towards me.' He knelt down and I pulled the rod to one side with all of my strength. I couldn't believe how much effort it took just to get the fish to rotate in the water. I wondered how on earth Rick had managed to play it for over thirty minutes.

Rick tilted his head and looked at me. ‘If he runs, for Christ's sake don't let go of that rod.' He reached out and grabbed hold of the line, pulling the fish through ninety degrees so that they were head to head. ‘Great, just lipped him. Slacken off a bit, John.'

I dropped the rod down a foot and Rick grasped the hook with the pliers and twisted it free, taking a two-inch chunk of lip with it. The fish was full of battle scars so I don't think a split lip bothered it.

‘Look at the size of that mouth, boy. Whoo-ee!' Dave jumped down between us. ‘And those lips, like fuckin' liver sausage.'

I couldn't have put it better myself. Its mouth was two feet in diameter and rimmed by a pair of lips as full and round as a salami. ‘Is it dead?' I asked, gingerly leaning closer, the fish's big inky eye staring blankly back.

‘No, but it will be if it doesn't get oxygen. It needs to move through the sea so that the water passes over its gills.' Rick held one of its dinner plate-sized gill flaps open, revealing thousands of soft, feathery red ridges, all in rows. He looked around and swore. ‘We'll have to use the dinghy. Dave, get the dinghy untied.'

Dave went over to the dinghy and stopped halfway. ‘What for?'

‘We're going to row out. I'll hold the fish and you row. We can't use the boat, it'll take too long.'

So, five minutes later, with Rick hanging over the back of the dinghy holding on to the fish and Dave pulling on the oars for all he was worth, they edged away at a pathetic speed. ‘Can't you row faster, Dave?' Rick said, looking under his arm.

Dave put his back into it and one of the oars snapped, sending him sprawling and cracking his head on the hard plastic shell of the dinghy. He cursed, rubbing his head. ‘Now what?'

I don't know if the fish just needed the rest or whether it had been given enough oxygen, but it turned over from its side onto its front, and with one flick of its tail, drenched the two of them and swam off.