The Boat (30 page)

Annie wanted to die, that was the difference. And her eyes weren’t shut: they were open and staring. On one occasion he was surprised to see a tear fall down the side of her face and he had wiped it away and said, ‘It’s going to be all right, Annie.’ But he didn’t know that, it was just something you said because the thought of it not being all right was too much. At other moments he took her hand and pumped it a little in his own but not once did she respond to anything. Frank had got her heavily medicated.

Smudge was evidently accustomed to her mother in this state. She would go and lie with Annie’s limp body, hugging her tight, singing her songs or playing cards on her tummy, but she would soon get bored or distracted and would come out on deck to play or just to sit with Johnny holding his hand. He could feel her tiny paw in his. It was as if she knew that he was going too. Half of him was already gone; his salvation lay on that shore. Once she pressed her lips to his hand and whispered, ‘I love you, Johnny,’
and his heart had squeezed a little, but he’d looked away because he too would be deserting her the moment that he could. It was in the afternoon of the following day when Johnny saw the village. The other three were all looking down at a great gutted fish. Frank had caught a tuna and had hauled it up on to the deck. It was a baby, with a round silver belly and a beautiful sheen to its skin. It thrashed about on the cockpit sole and Frank had bashed it hard on the head with a block of wood and they all stood there watching it as it lay there stunned and bleeding, its red pain washing down on to the transom and into the water. He killed it calmly and methodically, gutting it efficiently with those great bear hands of his.

Johnny had looked up and seen the smoke rising from the hills. For a moment he couldn’t believe his eyes, a part of him had really begun to believe that there was nothing left, civilization had upped and gone. Slowly he stood up, picked up the binoculars and focused in as the boat rounded the bay. He stepped up on to the deck for a better view.

‘
Yeeeees!’ he’d cried and everyone had looked up at him. ‘There’s a village!’

He jumped with joy. He ran down the deck, leaping and shouting. Smudge trailed him, trotting behind him, not quite sure what was the cause of such merriment but wanting to join in. She jumped up and down too. Frank stood up and he too wandered down the deck, holding on to the lifelines, his eyes following Johnny’s. Johnny leapt back down into the cockpit and grabbed the helm from Clem, altering course, heading for land. He wrapped his arm around her and pulled her to him.

‘Life!’ he kept crying. ‘Oh my God! There’s human life!’ The weight that had been bearing down on his shoulders for so long was suddenly lifted. He felt like a free man. Salvation was here. She let him lift her off the ground, laughing at his wildness. She’d not seen him like this before.

‘Human life!’ Smudge echoed, jumping down into the cockpit, hugging Clem. ‘Where are we going, Johnny?’

He stopped and looked down at her, his smile briefly faltering. ‘Clem and I have to get on, Smudge. We have to get on.’

‘Get on what?’ she asked, not understanding at all.

‘We have to get on with our honeymoon,’ Johnny said, locking eyes with Clem. Somehow, what with one thing and another, they had both forgotten that this was their honeymoon. Then he picked up the binoculars again and focused in on their new life before disappearing below deck to try and make sense of the rudimentary chart, to see whether this village was marked. He felt such lightness of being, his spirits soared. If it wasn’t bad luck, he would have whistled. Instead he began to sing lustily, that same old Beatles song about those words of kindness lingering on, but he couldn’t remember the rest of it.

Out of habit he put the kettle on. This would be their final cup of tea. Yes, he would make everyone sweet tea. He could be forgiving and magnanimous now that freedom beckoned. He looked about the saloon making a note of all their belongings; it would only take two minutes to pack up their things. He hummed merrily as he traced the crude outline of the coast on the chart with his forefinger. Then he heard it, very faintly: singing from the forepeak. He stopped in his tracks, just as he had on that very first night on the rocks, drawn in by the haunting sound. She was singing the same song he had been. The others were oblivious to it; he could hear them chatting in the cockpit, Smudge complaining about something.

Slowly Johnny stood up, pushing away the chart. He wanted to hear her better. He quietly crossed the saloon and stood by the door to listen. Even through the mists of her misery she could sing like an angel. She sang slowly and stiltedly, the music almost deconstructed, each note hit perfectly and yet the song almost unrecognizable.

He pressed his ear against the door. He needed to hear more. Although the kettle began to scream from the hob, it didn’t disturb her singing. She sang of dead love and eyes that showed nothing.

He would bring her sweet tea. He went to the galley and poured the boiling water into the aluminium pot, stirring the bags and the sugar all in one. He made her a cup and brought it back to the door. He turned the handle and gently pushed it open, stepping in to the forecabin. He could see her lying there at a slight angle, the wrong way round, her head towards the bow, still staring straight up through the hatch, just as she had been when he had last seen her, in some holy communion with the sky, undisturbed by his presence. He closed the door behind him.

‘Annie,’ he said and he thought she paused a little in her singing. ‘I’ve brought you some tea. There’s a village coming up.’ She did pause then. Very slowly she blinked and turned her head and looked at him as if she had no idea who he was. Her skin was deathly pale, her eyes transparent pools, her pale lips mouthing lyrics.

‘Here,’ he said, offering the tea, but she didn’t take it. ‘Let me help.’ He put the cup in the holder and gently lifted her up, propping her up with pillows. She offered no resistance. He sat beside her and fed her the tea.

‘Clem and I are going, Annie. You must get better for Smudge. You must.’ He tucked some of her hair behind her ears in a feeble attempt at normality. The tea seemed to spill right through her, its hot sweetness loosening something: the tears began to pour from her eyes. She didn’t make another sound, nor did she wipe her eyes. She just turned away from him and tucked herself into the hull. He didn’t know what he had expected but he felt bad leaving her like this. She made him feel treacherous. Yet he had to. He paused, his hand resting on her side; then he left her.

The village was small, twenty houses or so. There was a café right on the water’s edge built of painted red wood with vines hanging from the beams. To Johnny, looking through the binoculars, it was the most wonderful place he had ever seen. There was a road going up into the mountains. There would be people with cars, lifts out of here, options. A small group of men had gathered on the shore to watch the
Little Utopia
sail in.

They dropped the anchor fifty yards out and got themselves ready to go ashore. It felt peculiar preparing for departure, for civilization, getting washed and clothed, brushing hair and teeth, putting shoes on their feet. They looked and felt like strangers to each other. Smudge had dressed up too as if she was coming with them. She was wearing a dress beneath her Captain Hook coat and had put on a pair of socks to go ashore in because she couldn’t find her shoes. She sat in the saloon watching them pack and when she began to cry Frank came and took her up on deck.

Johnny chucked his few belongings into the red sail bag, Clem neatly rolling up the prayer mat and folding up the sleeping bags and stuffing them in, bending over to pick up a hair clip, suddenly remembering her flannel. She was looking for all her matchboxes with her collections of beach debris to put in the side panels, slipping pebbles into various pockets and compartments before going through to say goodbye to Annie. There was a certain quiet sadness in the air. Now that they were leaving Johnny allowed himself to indulge in a fondness for the tubby old bucket of a boat and the peculiar adventure they had had in it, accompanied all the while by his heart singing with delight.

They left Annie in the boat and the four of them climbed down into the tender and despite the corks plugging up the holes the water still seeped in. Johnny rowed towards the shore; he felt as strong as an ox, as if he could row for ever. Though his eyes were fixed on the retreating spectacle of the
Little Utopia
the rest of him was concentrated on the land over his shoulder. Clem sat in front of him. She was so brown and her hair bleached so fair, she appeared to have been dunked in the sunshine. She had the red sail bag in her lap and was holding Smudge’s hand, trying to cheer her up, saying how they would all meet up again, maybe in Africa. Smudge did not seem cheered by this, she did not want to go to Africa, she wanted to stay here with them. She was suddenly inconsolable at the prospect of their departure and Clem hugged her and she started crying too and Johnny felt bad for not breaking it more gently.

The café was set slightly in the cliff, raised from the beach, in the shade of several trees. There were five or six wooden tables and benches with a bar running along one side and the obligatory portrait of Atatürk hanging on the wall. They were robustly welcomed by the large proprietor with much gesticulating and hand-crushing and squeezing of Smudge’s cheeks; the smell of frying garlic and fish almost overwhelmed them. He helped them up the rocky steps and into the bar towards a table. Frank made it clear he wasn’t staying but needed to find a few provisions while Johnny went straight to the bar to try and organize a lift. The barman, without being asked, got out several long, tall glasses and a bottle of raki, gesturing for Johnny to go and sit down with Clem and Smudge at a table. Johnny looked about the place. Men seemed to have appeared from every cranny and the other tables were filling up as if their arrival was a curiosity, an excuse to celebrate. Two small boys were staring at Smudge. He hadn’t seen her with other children before; she was surprisingly shy, clutching Gilla to her chest as if they might nick him off her. He let his eyes survey the room – there was so much more to take in on land, there were clangings going on in the kitchen and savoury cooking smells in the air and so many close-up things in the room. It was all so intense. His senses would need time to adjust to the immediacy of land life.

He moved over to talk to a young lad with bad skin and a T-shirt that said
Banana Cool
on the front
.
The café swayed about him as he went; his body not yet in harmony with the land. The boy was probably the same age as he was but seemed much younger. Johnny gesticulated and pointed, mimed driving a car, repeating the word ‘Datca’ and tried as hard as he could to negotiate a lift out of there. The boy kept pointing at the
Little Utopia
repeating something until Johnny eventually worked out that he was trying to tell him that it would be much quicker to go by boat. Johnny laughed and shook his head.
No way, Banana Cool.
The boy shrugged and said his brother could give him a lift to Datca this afternoon, if he really wanted, dismissing Johnny’s offer of lira. Johnny grabbed the boy’s hand and shook it heartily, sealing the deal. They were sorted, tthey were on their way! They had come to the right place.

He strolled merrily back over to the table where Frank was involved in a conversation with some of the Turks on the adjacent table. The barman had brought the raki over and was pouring out three generous glasses. Clem sat there watching him pour it, her eyes hidden by shades, Smudge sitting close at her side, her eyes watching the boys.

‘Come on, Johnny,’ Frank said. ‘One for the road!’ Smudge got up cautiously to go and investigate where the boys had disappeared to.

He hadn’t planned on celebrating their departure but this seemed right, a farewell drink, a proper goodbye to their adventure. How apt that the beverage should be raki – the circle of their journey on the
Little Utopia
was being completed. It seemed such a very long time ago that first night in the thunderstorm, Clem and he scared for their lives, stumbling about on the rocks. He sat down, picked up a glass and chinked it against Frank’s.

‘To thunderstorms,’ he said.

‘To thunderstorms,’ both Frank and Clem echoed.

The raki burnt pleasantly down his throat.

‘They say the mountain road is slow and dangerous,’ Frank said. ‘By sea it’s only a hundred odd miles round the headland, you know…’

Johnny knew this. He didn’t care. He smiled and raised his glass to
Banana Cool
over there at the bar. ‘Ah well, we’re all sorted now.’ He stretched out his legs and let the sounds of the bar wash around his head: plates landing on tables, mint tea being stirred, a gabble of Turkish. It sounded heavenly to his ears. The next stage of their adventure was about to begin. He knocked back some more firewater.

Over Frank’s shoulder, he caught sight of the boat rocking about in the waves and he thought of Annie lying there, staring or sleeping, and he wondered whether he would always think of her that way: deadened and glazy-eyed, or whether he would think of her under that tree with the cicadas chirruping around them, drinking water from the bottle, taking his hand and placing it on her breast. He looked over at Smudge in her funny dress and socks. She was playing with the boys, hanging upside down from the wooden railing. He would miss her. What a fascinating life she was having and would continue to have, once Annie was well again, back on her medication; Smudge’s childhood was exactly what he’d wish for his own children. He looked at Clem – she too was looking over at the boat with nostalgia in her eyes.

As he crossed the room to go to the gents, the bar seemed to sway a little more and this time he couldn’t entirely blame his sea legs. He was pretty pissed. So was Frank. When he returned to the table, Frank was holding court. He was talking about where the
Little Utopia
would be going after Turkey – Syria, Lebanon, round to Africa, to Egypt; he wanted Smudge to see the empire of Alexander the Great, the greatest general that ever lived. One of the old men muttered something about Atatürk and some of the men laughed. Frank talked about Libya and Morocco and how eventually they would one day get to Tangiers and back to Spain and Johnny thought that perhaps, one day, they’d cross paths again, maybe in Africa, or some other continent. As the bottle of raki was coming to an end
Banana Cool
appeared at the table with an even spottier version of himself. Johnny leapt up and shook the brothers’ hands heartily. They were ready to head off to Datca. The moment had come.