The Mother Fault

by Kate Mildenhall

  ‘Okay,’ she says, and ducks under the awning, stepping over the back of the seat and onto the foredeck.

  The wind whips in her ears.

  Under her bare feet, the deck is wet and she has to choose where to place each step. She holds her arms out to the next piece of rigging, pulling back when she feels herself caught by the lean of the boat. She looks over her shoulder and can just see Nick peering out around the side of the awning. He yells something but the wind whips it away. She shakes her head and he points past her, nods.

  She looks at the foremast and can see where she needs to pull down the rope. Ten more steps. The mainsail flaps and whacks behind her, the boom shifting from side to side, as far as the taut ropes will let it. As she steps forward, the bow tilts down, and she feels the lift and surge as the boat surfs the front of a wave.

  ‘Yaaaaah!’ she yells into the wave, but she is not afraid, not now, it is a rush, exhilaration. She leaps the next steps and puts both hands out to grab the mast as she comes at it hard. She waits for Nick to release the halyard and looks up to see the sail go slack. She wedges her knee against the mast and puts her left arm around it, pushing her shoulder in, her foot, bracing her whole body against it. She bends both knees so she can ride the swell as the deck tilts and rolls. She looks up and she can see the sail begin to drop, now the wind cannot catch its fullness and tip them so close to the surface of the sea. She guides it down, arms above her, trying to hold herself steady, feeling the weight, the awkwardness of all that material bearing down on her. ‘Wait!’ she tries to call out, but the word is whipped away from her, and she races to keep up, guiding the folds down over the boom like she has watched him do.

  Her arms are burning by the time the last fold is down and she is slowing, can hardly get her arms up to wrap the sail with the ties. She lets go of the mast and pushes her hip hard against it, hoping it will hold her if she overbalances.

  She can hear her own breath loud in her ears, her eyes sting with the salt of spray and sweat. She holds on to the mast and leans forward, squinting through the spray and flapping rigging to make out Nick’s face. She sees his thumb go up.

  She is lighter, quicker, as she leans in and around the ropes and the wires, quick-stepping back to the cockpit where she slides in next to Nick, breathing heavy.

  ‘I did it.’

  He nods. Face white, a half smile.

  ‘Good. Now the genoa.’

  ‘What?’ She feels the adrenaline ebb.

  ‘The little sail. You gotta get that up.’

  She shakes her head. ‘Can’t we just motor through it like this?’

  ‘It’ll help keep us steady. Safer.’

  She looks back out to the foredeck, the bow careening up and down the waves.

  ‘Mum!’ she hears from the cabin.

  ‘You okay?’ she calls, rushing forward to peer down the companionway. The kids are standing, holding on, two bottles roll back and forth on the floor as the boat rides the wave down.

  ‘Is it meant to be like this, Mum?’ Essie calls up, eyes wide, the edge of panic.

  ‘Just stay down there, close this hatch,’ she yells and hears it click into place.

  This time, she is quicker, more sure-footed as she goes. Anticipating the fall and the dip of the deck with the swell, keeping her legs wide, the muscles of her core locked.

  She recites the instructions. Change the rig. Blue and yellow sheet. Then put the halyard in the winch ready to hoist the sail up as he winds it on.

  He shouldn’t be doing it. He can sit, he says, and it’s true, but she knows his body is starting to refuse, that she needs to check his foot. Things could get bad, and quick.

  She is drenched. And the wind is cooler now. Her t-shirt sticks against her back as she works at the sail, flattening and feeding it up, unknotting, pulling it back through, repeating the incantation.

  She raises her hand, waves so Nick can see, watches as the little sail begins to unfurl above her. Inch by inch. She puts her hands on the fabric, guiding it smoothly and following it down to check there is no kink, no place for it to catch, like he has told her.

  There is a hollow noise and she looks up to see the sail has stopped. She leans forward to try and see Nick. Can just make him out hunched over the winch, jamming his arm. Stuck.

  She sees a wave coming from behind the boat, feels the lift and braces herself for the rushing slide as they come down the face of it.

  She calls out, ‘You okay?’ but, again, the words are taken by the wind. She hurries back – hold, dip, feet against the slick deck.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she says, leaning in under the awning.

  ‘Fucking jammed,’ he spits.

  His foot down on the deck now, a smear of blood marring the white surface.

  ‘How do we fix it?’

  ‘Might be the sail, caught on something. Have to check.’

  ‘What am I looking for?’

  He shakes his head. ‘You won’t know.’

  ‘Well tell me.’

  ‘It’s not,’ he hangs his head, then, with a surge of anger looks up at her, ‘it’s not that fucking easy! I’ve done this for years. You can’t just – in a couple of days – you can’t…’ He stops and shakes his head. ‘I’ll do it.’

  ‘You can’t stand up.’

  ‘I’ll manage.’

  She holds on to the rigging with both hands as the boat dips and Nick tries to stand.

  ‘You’re a fucking idiot,’ she says.

  He holds on to the table and shuffles towards the spot where he can get through to the foredeck.

  ‘If you go overboard, what the fuck am I going to do?’ she yells over the wind.

  ‘I won’t,’ he yells back over his shoulder. And then a wave rolls beneath them again and they tilt further. She looks behind her to see the roiling ocean, clamps her grip tighter, looks back at Nick to see him grabbing for another handhold, his weight shifting. Unable to bear the weight on his foot he goes to kneel on the bench and falls heavily, yelping in pain as he twists around to protect his foot.

  ‘Stay there,’ Mim says, climbing over him. His eyes are closed and his teeth are biting into his lower lip.

  ‘Essie!’ she calls down the companionway. ‘I need you!’

  * * *

  Later, after the storm, she will wonder what she was thinking. She will berate herself for not weighing up the risks. I was mad, she will think. She will imagine a wave sweeping up, imagine the flash of Essie’s red t-shirt sinking in the swell, disappearing behind them. She will find herself on her knees in the cabin, hands pressed into the solid floor, gasping for air, not sobbing, not heaving, some foreign land of terror in between, what might have been.

  But she will also see her daughter’s face.

  The way she gripped the mast, one hand clenched, wrapped around the rope, holding the winch in place, then drawing it slowly, slowly, so that Mim could use both hands to test where the jam was, find it, ease it out.

  ‘I’m okay, Mum.’ Her voice clear and unafraid as Mim yelled across the roar of the water and wind.

  The jubilation in her voice as she yelled down the companionway, ‘I fixed the sail,’ and Sam’s little face looked up at her, awestruck.

  And she will press them both to her, forget for a moment about everything else, what’s to come, what has been, and will just hold her children’s heads to her chest, feel their arms loop around her waist and cling tight, rock with them there as the storm subsides and she will feel a certainty, something finally click into place – ‘I will do anything for you,’ she whispers into their hair.

  22

  ‘We’re close,’ he says.

  ‘How close?’

  ‘Couple of miles off. Should be –’ He inhales sharply, winces and closes his eyes. They’d moved through the storm quickly, it churned the sea in one direction and they sped through with their little sail in the other. She feels high, fuelled by the adrenaline, the responsibility of getting them here. She’d forced Nick
to go down under once the wind died a bit, motor chugging along, has left the sail as is. She has checked on him through the hatch. He has dozed fitfully. The pain must be intense, and the double dose of painkillers has made him groggy. When she changed the bandage she was shocked at how swollen his whole foot was, to the ankle. An angry red spreading from the purple-black bruising at the front of his foot. She is tender with him as she touches his foot, his leg. Thankful for the calm she feels now with his skin under her fingertips. Almost maternal.

  He needs a doctor. Will need IV. Needs someone to decide if those toes can be saved. But first, they must get there.

  She asks Essie to keep watch, takes Nick water, asks him how it needs to be done.

  ‘The cove. It’ll be tricky,’ he says.

  ‘What do I need to look out for?’

  ‘I’ll do it.’ He goes to sit up.

  ‘Will you just stop? I can do it. You can’t.’ She puts her hand on his arm, softening. ‘You could lose your whole foot if it gets infected. You’ve got to keep it up. Keep it clean.’

  She squeezes his arm, moves her hand away once he lies back, repeats the question. ‘What am I looking for?’

  ‘Deep entrance, but narrow. The current, tide. Got to get it right.’

  She knows the way water travels over rock. She imagines the trench at the bottom of this ocean here, the island erupting up out of the underwater mountain range, the way it might fall and deepen, the ridges and valleys. She thinks of the way wind erodes, how it niggles and flows and whips, is trapped and then gusts away. Now she thinks of water.

  ‘What do we want the tide to be doing when we go in?’

  ‘Has to be on the turn. Check the tide chart. On the nav desk.’

  She ducks through into the cabin, riffles through the papers on the desk, finds the one.

  ‘Tomorrow morning, early, three o’clock,’ he says, decoding the chart after a moment.

  ‘Can I do it in the dark?’

  ‘Not great.’

  ‘You need a doctor.’

  He doesn’t reply.

  ‘Can it be done?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Okay,’ she says, and repeats it, softly. ‘Okay.’

  * * *

  She can see the bulk of the island against the horizon as dusk starts to shadow the sky. She gets them into position, faces the boat into the wind, current behind, keeps the motor ticking over. He’s said they can idle here while they wait.

  She feels sick. A humming adrenaline in her veins that has her buzzing, too high, like she’s had three coffees on an empty stomach. Tries to breathe, to slow it down.

  She hopes he is right, that they are too far out for customs yet. There’s a chance they’ll come out to the boat. She can’t afford to be seen. It’s a risk, but, just in there, there is help for Nick. And in town there are buses, motos, people she can speak to, people who might know Ben.

  Ben.

  She hasn’t thought of him for hours, for a day, since the companionway slammed down. She tries to resurrect his face before her and it’s as though he is caught behind smudged glass. Lacking definition. Maybe he has been found. Maybe he is back home, wondering where his wife and kids have gone. Trying to comprehend the shitstorm she has left in her wake. Maybe it has all been for nothing. They might have died last night, taken by the hungry sea, and not a soul would know where they were. Maybe Ben is right now sitting at the kitchen table thinking that she is the one who has disappeared. Perhaps he is grasping at logic and possibilities, hollowed out by his aloneness. Wondering what to do next. She looks at the mass of land rising up out of the sea in front of them, made mountainous by forces deep beneath, by the shifting plates of the continents, by forces that are beyond time and space and control.

  Or maybe he is somewhere in there. Lost, held, dead.

  You will not recognise me, she thinks, when I find you.

  * * *

  Down under, the kids are at the table. Essie is drawing intricate patterns in her book. She has done one for Sam and ripped it out and he is carefully, carefully colouring in the tiny shapes she has created. Indigo, then royal blue, then aquamarine.

  ‘They look amazing.’ She touches Essie’s head.

  ‘Look at mine, Mum.’ Sam holds it up, and Mim runs her finger along the indents he has made, pushing the colour so deep into the page that it ruts the thick paper. ‘Essie made it for me.’

  Essie smiles, flicks her eyes up. Gratitude blooms in Mim.

  ‘So, we’re going to be there tonight.’

  ‘At the island?’ Sam turns to her, eyes wide.

  ‘Yep. You can see it already if you go up on deck.’

  ‘Cool.’ He jumps up, but she stops him, asks him to wait.

  ‘I just wanted to,’ she hesitates, ‘to talk to you a bit about what’ll happen when we get there.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Sam says.

  Essie doesn’t look up.

  ‘We’re breaking some rules to be here.’

  Sam’s forehead furrows. ‘What rules?’

  ‘Rules about how you enter a country, how you leave, stuff like that.’

  ‘Will we get in trouble?’

  ‘I hope not.’

  ‘What will happen if we get caught, though?’

  ‘We won’t.’ She hopes they can’t hear the anxiety in her voice.

  ‘But why are we breaking the rules?’

  ‘We had to, Sammy, honey, so we could find Dad. Sometimes,’ she reaches out and puts her hand on his shoulder, ‘sometimes we have to break the law to do the right thing.’

  Essie chimes in. ‘There’s different sets of rules for different people, then.’

  ‘Well there shouldn’t be. But yeah. There are.’

  ‘So we’re lying.’

  ‘Sometimes something is against the law, but it’s still right.’

  ‘So, the law doesn’t apply to us?’

  ‘No. The law applies to everyone.’

  ‘Then what? Because this isn’t our country, the law doesn’t apply to us?’

  ‘No – it does. It’s just a really special circumstance.’

  ‘But don’t lots of other people have special circumstances, too?’

  Mim takes a deep breath. ‘Yep. Yep, Essie they do.’

  Essie raises an eyebrow, looks back at her picture.

  ‘Anyway,’ Mim says, ‘I just wanted to tell you that. So, if anyone asks, we’re just on a holiday, okay? Just let me talk. That’s really important. You just let me talk.’

  * * *

  Later, the moon is full and astonishing on the water. Even after five nights out here, she cannot get over how solid the light is, the quality of it, quicksilver and cold. There’s hardly any wind. It’s good, means they can drift out here a little, waiting to go in. She keeps checking the nav to make sure they haven’t gone too far off course. A cargo ship passed earlier – right on the horizon. She watched it track across the dark, checked the course, that it wouldn’t come close. Fifteen minutes, maybe less, that’s what Nick said, from the time you saw lights on the horizon to impact. They wouldn’t even know they’d hit you, he said. You’d just go down.

  A beeping sound. Her alarm. Time.

  This is what has to go right:

  She has to steer them through the narrow entrance.

  They have to go unnoticed.

  She has to find a shallow spot to anchor.

  She has to be able to inflate the dinghy, get it over the side, get the four of them in it, and then row them in.

  They have to find a taxi, or someone in those early morning hours to take them into the city to the medical clinic.

  Then, then she can think about Ben.

  She checks the horizon. Steps down into the companionway, the cabin inside lit blue with the navigation lights. He is asleep on the bench.

  She touches his leg. ‘Nick, it’s time.’

  He groans. She leans over him, touches his face, damp with sweat. He is giving off a bitter scent, fear maybe, or pain, or his fle
sh starting to rot.

  ‘Nick, I’m gonna do it now. You want to keep an eye on the nav down here?’

  ‘Coming.’ He pushes himself up to his elbows, and has to stop. She leans in and gets her shoulder behind his, pulls him up.

  ‘I’m good,’ he says, and pulls away. ‘I’m coming up.’

  ‘You can’t –’

  He cuts her off. ‘Stop telling me what to do. Okay?’

  He struggles to stand against the table, against the faint rock of the boat. But she doesn’t touch him again.

  He sits on the seat in front of the helm, his leg up, at least.

  ‘You thought of a story if they come out?’ His voice is quick, fevered maybe.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Customs.’

  ‘Should I have?’

  ‘Fuck yes.’

  ‘Right.’ She keeps her eyes trained ahead. ‘Like what, mine and the kids’ passports fell overboard?’

  ‘You would have been on my papers.’

  ‘You picked us up off some remote island? Fuck, I don’t know, Nick. Why are you only saying this now?’

  ‘Cos now is when it’s fucking dangerous.’ His eyes seem wild.

  ‘It’s been fucking dangerous the whole time.’

  ‘For you, maybe.’

  ‘Oh, so, now it’s dangerous for you, now it’s a fucking risk for you, now you want me to think of something in case you go down.’

  ‘I can’t afford to lose my boat.’

  She turns on him, feels her eyes hot in the dark, wishes she could shoot sparks from the tips of her hair, swell the ocean with her fury.

  ‘You can’t afford to lose your fucking boat!’

  ‘Bring her round.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Bring the boat around a bit. Starboard.’

  She has to think about it. Doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction. Inches the helm around, checks the nav. Notices the flickering red in the corners of her vision, furious phosphorescence. Arsehole.

  ‘Sorry,’ he says.

  She stays silent.