The Boat (35 page)

Clem looked at Johnny. He and she hadn’t had this conversation yet. They hadn’t had any conversation at all. Clem picked up Annie’s cardigan, which was lying on the seat, and wrapped it around Smudge. ‘Here, put this on!’ she said. ‘It’s cold out here.’

Smudge let Clem wrap the cardigan around the blanket and then knelt on the stern seat and peered over the edge, Johnny and Clem both watching her.

‘They’ve taken the dinghy,’ Smudge said.

‘Yes,’ Johnny said. ‘They’ve gone ashore for a while.’

She looked out to sea. ‘Without me?’’ she asked, confused. ‘When are they coming back?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

‘Have they gone to find Granny?’

He’d forgotten all about Granny. ‘I don’t know, Smudge. They just left.’

‘I think they’ve probably gone to find Granny,’ she said, sitting down next to him, swinging her legs. ‘Or maybe…’ she added, brightened by some new idea, ‘… they’ve gone to find me a
new
pet.’

Johnny put his arm around her, squeezing her gently towards him. ‘Maybe,’ he said quietly. He had no idea how to handle this.

She looked up into his eyes. ‘Do you think it might be a horse?’ she asked.

He paused. ‘I’m not sure about horses on boats,’ he said.

‘Horses like boats.’ She seemed pretty sure of it.

Clem bit her lip and looked over her shoulder, away from Smudge.

‘There were dolphins at the bows just now, Smudge,’ he said. ‘Go and have a look.’ And he watched as she tripped merrily down the deck and lay down on her tummy at the bows talking to the dolphins.

Johnny looked over at Clem. He saw her wipe her cheeks. She was shivering. It was getting very cold up on deck. Shortly she got up and went down the deck to get Smudge and the pair of them went below into the saloon, shutting the cockpit doors behind them, leaving Johnny to sail the boat alone.
We’ll get through it
, he said to himself again. But really he was wondering how the hell they were meant to do so. He had done a terrible thing. It had had to be done, there had been no alternative, he knew that, but still, he had done a terrible thing. He would have to live with that. And now he had a child to look after, something that he had never ever anticipated. He had to take deep breaths.
Moment to moment
.

Far away on the horizon he watched a cruise ship making its way somewhere, the row of little lights like lanterns on a wall. He pictured them dancing, sipping cocktails, listening to some old crooner, slipping between clean sheets, and he wanted to be someone on that ship, someone who wasn’t him.

He watched the morning star come up. It was so bright and red at first he thought it was the port light of a huge ship but as the hours went on it crawled up the mast and went the way of all the other stars. When it went over the top of the sail he hove to and went down to make some coffee; his eyes were scratchy with tiredness. There was no point in trying to sleep. He knew sleep would evade him now.

Clem was lying motionless on the port side, her back to the saloon, the small reading light on behind her head. He stood next to her and looked down at her. The skin on her temple was so dark now, and even the inside of her upper arm was the same colour as the rest of her body; the sun had forged itself into her very hairline. He would once have been unable to stop himself bending down to kiss her but he couldn’t do it now; they had grown so far apart. He knew that they were breaking and he didn’t know how to mend them; it seemed so low down on the list of his priorities right at this moment. He went past her and through to the forepeak and opened the door. Smudge had taken her mother’s place. Clem had tucked her in, ramming her into the port side with the other pillows. She looked so tiny and vulnerable, her lips parted in sleep, the deep, gentle sounds of her breathing. The full impact of the responsibility he now found himself with hit him like a gybing boom. She was theirs now. She was his. He had to do his best for her. He took her little curled fingers in his own and promised her that he would always put her first and her fingers seemed to tense in response and somewhere in his hardening heart he felt a melting. He bent over and kissed her cheek.

When he came back through the saloon, Clem was sitting up with the blanket tight around her, watching him as he passed. ‘I thought you were asleep,’ he said as he got to the galley, picking up the kettle.

‘How can you look her in the eye?’ she whispered in a voice he didn’t recognize, as if he disgusted her. He paused a moment before pumping the tap with his foot, looking over at her and deciding to ignore her. He filled the kettle with two cups’ worth of water and turned on the hob. He wondered how big the tank was; they’d have to stop at some point.

‘You killed her parents,’ she said blankly, a statement of fact.

‘They’ve got a chance of making it.’ He bent over to light the hob. ‘Besides, it was Annie’s choice to jump.’

‘But it was your choice to kill
him
.’

‘I
left
him in the tender, in case you hadn’t noticed.’

‘You as good as killed him and you know that.’

He banged the kettle down on the flame. ‘What choice did I have?’ he said.

‘You could have
not
killed him. It’s not up to you to play God.’

‘Could I?’ he said, looking over at her. ‘Let me tell you something’ He took a step towards her and leant on the sink, trying to keep his voice down. ‘Do you know how badly Annie wanted to get away from her husband… what lengths she was planning on going to? She’d saved up a stash of pills and this time she was going take Smudge with her.’

Clem stared at him for a moment then shook her head. ‘I don’t believe you.’ But he saw a flash of fear in her eye.

‘You tell me why would a woman want to do that? What awful thing must she be trying to escape from?’

‘She’s insane, Johnny.’

‘Tell me what I should have done then, Clem?’ He was quiet, fixing her with his eyes.

‘You should have just taken us to Datca.’

‘I tried but you didn’t want to go.’

‘No, I mean the second time.’

‘Oh, and you’d be OK with that, would you? Leaving him to it? Leaving Smudge in his hands?’

‘Yes. Of course I’d be OK.’

He stared at her, incredulous. She was in total denial, deliberately refusing to believe him. ‘That man has sex with his five-year-old daughter. Don’t you get it?’

She paused. ‘She’s a lunatic, Johnny. It’s all bullshit!’ she was shouting now, not caring about Smudge next door.

‘Oh my God! Clem!’ he said, wiping his brow. ‘Open your fucking eyes!’

‘She’s a mad fucking bitch! You know that!’

He hadn’t wanted to tell her this; he hadn’t wanted the depths of Frank’s depravity to reach her. He had wanted to protect her from him for as long as he could. He leant against the sink and held her eye. ‘There’s a book in there with a load of photographs of things I don’t think you ever want to see. But I think you’re going to have to take a look.’

He saw her back away, her lips part, her eyes widen, the blood drain from her cheeks as the ugliness of what he was saying drowned out all other thoughts. She couldn’t defend him now.

Eventually she said in a quiet, knowing little voice, ‘Is there a picture of
him
?’

Johnny frowned, not understanding what she was asking.

‘Is there a photograph of
him
in the book?’ she repeated. Then she smiled. ‘There’s not, is there? Of course there’s not. Pictures don’t prove anything, Johnny. Annie set him up like a fool and you fell for it.’

He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said. ‘He’s really got you, hasn’t he?’

‘And she hasn’t got you? You think you’re some knight in shining armour rescuing her?’

‘She tried to hack her hand off, Clem.’

‘It was just a cry for help.’

‘Well, I was fucking listening, wasn’t I? Annie got some fucking help!’ He was shouting at her now. He had never shouted at her before.

‘Annie, Annie – it’s all I hear from you. It’s not up to you to
dispense
with her husband.’

‘What would you have done then? Tell me! Reported him to the police?’

‘It’s not true!’ She was blocking her ears trying to drown him out.

Johnny could feel the blood vessels in his head filling with a pure white-hot rage. He was screaming now. ‘Who would I report him to? Who gives a shit? There are no laws here! Don’t you get it? He can do what the hell he wants. That’s why it’s called the
Little
fucking
Utopia
!’

Then he punched the crappy wooden panel so hard with his fist that the wood caved in with a crunch and his knuckles went from white to pink and started to bleed. He caught her eye then and they stared at each other, reeling in horrified wonder at what they had become, how everything had got so wrecked so quickly. He turned around and leant his elbows against the companionway steps, hanging his head in his hands, trying not to cry, trying to regain control of himself. Neither one of them dared to speak. He looked up at the night sky, at the vast, aching emptiness around them.

The kettle screamed. He turned and slowly, with meticulous care, he made the coffee, scooping up the grounds as if his whole life depended on these two cups of black stuff. He stirred in the sugar and brought them over to the table. Clem was still sitting there staring blankly ahead, her face drained of all life. He sat down next to her and placed the coffees in front of them on the table, both of them watching the swirling vortexes. They sat like that for a long time.

‘I want to go back home,’ she said in a small voice.

Home
. He hadn’t thought of home at all. He looked up at her. He remembered her then, from before, from home, them together. It seemed another world away. He remembered her as a child, back-flipping off the sand dunes, their first date at the Blue Anchor, her in that white shirt and jeans, putting songs on the jukebox, how much he had loved her,
did
still love her. But he couldn’t quite reach that love any more. He couldn’t reach anything any more. The core of him was numb and the edges were jagged and frayed.

‘Yes,’ he said in answer to a question no one had asked. ‘I’ll take you home.’

‘How, Johnny?’ she said. ‘We’ve got Smudge.’

‘We’ll take her with us.’

She paused and looked up at him, her dark eyes puffy and swollen. ‘How could we ever explain that?’

She was right. They couldn’t go home. ‘Let’s live somewhere else then,’ he said, holding her gaze.

She nodded, but tears started to spill from her eyes. ‘But I want to go back home, where everything is familiar,’ she said.

‘Please,’ he said, hanging his head, sighing, rubbing his forehead in his hand – he was so phenomenally exhausted. ‘I can’t do this on my own.’ They sat there for a while listening to the waves lapping the boat, eyes on the ghost vortexes now swirled into stillness.

He looked around the boat as if he was only just seeing where they were: the dented wood, the ugly municipal carpet on the floor, Frank’s history books, Annie’s trashy novels, his pens and gadgets, her bits and bobs of crap, behind the door their sleeping child. They were gone and Johnny and Clem had stolen their life.

The wedding had not gone according to plan at all. It was a small affair, there were only about twelve of them waiting at the church in St Mawgan – the same church where Johnny’s parents had got married twenty-five years before. Rob had given Clem a lift on the back of the old Tiger Cub because she had insisted they went separately; she was having a hard time keeping to all the superstitions and was picking and choosing along the way. Some were just absurd, like not seeing each other on the wedding morning – nothing would ever induce them to spend a night apart. She did the ‘something borrowed, something blue’ bit. The dress was borrowed – kind of – she planned on returning it to the charity shop. Sarah had found it in Barnardo’s in Newquay in the nightwear section. But it looked like a wedding dress, although it had little blue flowers on it, it was figure hugging and shiny white with long virginal sleeves. She’d also found Johnny a three-piece suit, so they looked the part. No one seemed to have much idea how weddings were meant to be run and Clem had allowed her mother no part at all in the arrangements. She would have wanted everything the traditional way: unknown relatives and flower arrangements, conversations with the vicar and caterers, table names and hired cars until Clem had explained to her that that just wasn’t the way things got done with the Loves. So her mother had watched bemusedly as they picked holly and ivy for Clem’s bouquet, and bought kegs of beer from the Riv pub. She’d found it hard to conceal her disappointment, especially when she’d found Sarah painting the old Tiger Cub with white emulsion.

It was November and the weather was trying to be everything in one day; a rainbow had even looped the hills earlier on, which Clem had taken as a sign – though she wasn’t quite sure what of. She’d hung on tightly to Rob, her knees gripping the bike, her dress hoiked up beneath her, her curls stuffed up under the helmet, letting her body go with the flow, letting Rob’s body be her guide as they wound around the country lanes. He was shorter and broader than his brother but otherwise there was a cosy familiarity about him. They smelt similar. She rested her head against his back and her heart seemed so full it might burst. The whole world seemed to be shining in her reflected happiness. When they’d set off from the cottage down the hill, she thought she had never seen the water so blue and the surf so white, the cliffs so sheer and the grass so green. Everything had been intensified for this, their wedding day; nature was putting on a show especially for her – she’d never been able to entirely shake off those childish suspicions that the world had been constructed purely for her benefit.

The weather didn’t hold though; as they headed up the hill, the sky darkened dramatically and the heavens opened and it had started to bucket down. She could feel the rain slipping down her neck where the helmet and jacket didn’t meet, hear the smacking sound of the rain on Rob’s leather jacket, and see the stream of white paint they were leaving behind them – it was coming off all over the road, all over her legs, all over Rob’s suit.