The bump and scrape of wood against stone, ropes thrown and tied up. The same man who had helped him onto the boat now helped him off again. Davey marvelled at the unselfconscious way he touched Davey’s hand and elbow. At school, physical contact was governed by unbreakable rules. Shoulders and upper arms were alright, as long as you slapped hard. Legs were for kicking. Heads were for capturing in a headlock and thumping. Penises, bizarrely, were acceptable, in certain situations. Hands and forearms were too close to holding hands, therefore a shortcut to social death. He tried to remember the last time he’d been touched gently by someone who wasn’t his mother, and remembered a nurse bandaging his arm one night in casualty. “How did this happen?” she’d asked him, and when he’d stammered out something about a broken glass, she’d smiled cynically and shaken her head. He still had a jagged, silvery line to remind him.
He was exhausted, but something in him was forcing him on. He climbed a steep, narrow street – barely wide enough for a single car – and opened the whiskey bottle, now nearly empty. A woman walking her dog glanced at him in disgust. He tried to apologise, but his mouth was too dry. The double yellow lines were like those on the floor of the hospital, guiding bewildered patients around the labyrinth.
I’ve got to get up high.
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