Lifeboat

by Zacharey Jane

  ‘Good morning,’ he said from the doorway. He had arrived silently.

  ‘Good morning. Would you like some tea?’ I asked, starting to rise.

  ‘No. Please, stay where you are. I thought perhaps you would allow me to prepare breakfast?’

  He didn’t wait for me to agree, but disappeared again. I heard him moving about in the kitchen. The woman joined me a few minutes later, wrapped in a blanket, her hair falling loosely to her shoulders.

  ‘Are you happy here?’ she asked.

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘I think we could be too. Or I could be. Do you think they will let us stay?’

  I couldn’t answer that. ‘Don’t you want to return to your families?’

  She frowned at me.

  ‘I can’t assume that there is a family. I think I would feel it if there were; if I had left someone precious and important to me.’

  ‘What about the child in your dreams?’

  ‘But I lose the child.’

  ‘You think the child dies?’

  ‘Don’t wish that upon me … the death of a child … who could recover from the death of their child?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I tried not to think of my own mother.

  ‘Anyway, that was only a dream from which I awoke,’ she said. She pulled the blanket about her. ‘Could a doctor tell if I have given birth?’ she asked, hugging herself, pulling her legs up to her chest. ‘Even at my age?’

  ‘I don’t know. Shall I find out for you?’

  ‘No, I don’t know – I think I just want proof that I exist.’

  I looked at her, puzzled.

  ‘I know the obvious, that I’m here, that this is real. But where do I fit in? Have you ever thought about how much we define ourselves by those around us? By who we know or associate with?’

  I thought of myself.

  ‘Well, it’s sad,’ she said.

  ‘But temporary,’ I replied.

  ‘I hope so, but each time I try to bend my brain to this problem, which is so huge, I come up with nothing, not a thing.’

  ‘Give yourself some time.’

  ‘That is the one thing neither of us have. Not in life and not here.’

  ‘I’m tracking down that African writer.’

  ‘And what if there is no writer, no father? Or, maybe even worse, if having tracked him down, I still don’t remember. Something that means nothing to me, no matter how true it is, still means nothing. What if, even if we find out exactly who I am, I still cannot remember? What will I do then? I can’t start again, not now when I should be getting ready to finish. I feel like I have been robbed and it scares me.’

  She spoke calmly, but I had an inkling of the chasm she faced.

  The man returned, bearing three plates, laden with food, which he laid down with a flourish. He carried a tea towel over his forearm, like a waiter.

  ‘Pancakes,’ he announced. ‘And eggs, scrambled. Grilled tomatoes. Ham, left over from yesterday – waste not want not. And mushrooms. I hope this is suitable.’

  We savoured the beautiful smells rising in steamy wafts from the plates.

  ‘Wonderful,’ she exclaimed.

  ‘I hope it’s not too much for you.’

  ‘No no,’ I said. ‘It’s perfect.’

  ‘Do start,’ he said. He took up his own plate to lead the way. ‘While it’s hot.’

  The food was delicious, seasoned with thyme, he told me, which he had found growing in my back garden. I didn’t even know it was there.

  ‘Where did you learn to cook?’ I asked, without thinking.

  ‘Hah!’ he laughed. ‘Let me think … you know, I don’t know. However, I would be willing to bet it was not in the army.’

  After breakfast she wandered about the house, touching things, looking into drawers. It didn’t bother me, there was nothing to hide: no love letters, diaries, photographs, none of those private things people like to squirrel away. She found a book in English and settled down on the verandah to read. He took himself to the garden. They both seemed content – only I was at a loose end.

  I’d brought some papers home with me but had no desire to work. I sat at the desk in my sunroom, looking over the bay with the folders unopened in front of me, pondering the problem of the castaways. With only one week to go I felt out of my depth, but still adamant that I was the only person who could help them. It was a contradiction I could not reconcile.

  Around midday we walked down to the waterfront, making a slow return to the compound.

  ‘My dear,’ she said, a small frown scuttling across her face. ‘That dream I had this morning, the nightmare …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘How real do you think my dreams are?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think anyone knows. Why?’

  ‘I saw the man chasing me, trying to kill me …’

  ‘Did you recognise him?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The person who was trying to kill me was him.’

  I looked ahead to where he walked. He felt my eyes upon him and waved, smiling. I squeezed her arm and said a silent prayer to green grass, blue sky and all that is good in the world.

  When we got to the gate I turned to say goodbye. She was crying. Small, silent tears ran down her cheeks and it was as much as I could do not to cry myself as I hugged her goodbye.

  THE RETURN

  She should have recognised him, treetop-tall, as he

  approached across thefield – but he was dead. She should have recognised the timbre of his voice, which whispered to her in dreams – but he was dead.

  She knew his hands were just a haunting, his smell a mirage blown across the worldfrom the desert where he died.

  ‘I mourned you’

  ‘But I am not dead’

  ‘I died with you.’

  ‘But I am not dead’

  ‘I prayed for your soul’

  ‘But I am not dead’

  ‘Then pray for mine – I died with you. I cut out my heart. I burnt it upon a pyre’

  ‘And the ashes?’

  ‘I drink of them daily’

  ‘And our child?’

  ‘She is gone’

  ‘Then what did I fight for? I may as well be dead’

  She took his hands between her own. ‘We have always thought the same.’

  He looked around, scared that if he stayed he would stay forever. So he walked away from her, slow strides across the field. Then he ran, gulping air like a drowning man.

  But behind him trailed a line, fine catgut, unbreakable, invisible, attached by a hook to his heart. It vibrated as he ran, thrumming like the wind in the trees as the world turns, increasing with distance, making him thrash and fight and run harder.

  At night when he lay down to sleep he felt the tug, the barb. Upon waking to a new, clear day he waited, willing it gone, but there it was, replying to his every move with a jag, a pull. The more he fought, the more it fought back, the further he ran, the tighter the line stretched.

  To escape this hook, he thought, I must cut out my heart. Or give in. Follow the invisible line to the hands of the fisherman and hope that this time she will not throw me back.

  Then his running became a pilgrimage to each of the places that had brought them happiness. I am a Tendai monk, my sutra is her name. Down this tight stretched line I will call to her, drawing the fisherman to the fish.

  DAY EIGHT

  I finalised the translations for the chief of security. I typed, paying little attention to the content, fretting at my lack of success with the castaways. It was the beginning of our last week and we knew little more than on the first day; certainly nothing strong enough to persuade my boss to extend the deadline.

  In the morning I’d sent a note to the harbourmaster, inquiring about records of private yachts coming or going. Alone at work I didn’t feel as optimistic as the day before; such a search could take months to complete and I had only days.

  A knocking on my desk disturbed my thoughts. My
boss’s secretary, the same girl who had shown the librarian in, stood before me.

  ‘Hello, anybody home?’

  She knocked again, smiling at my startled expression.

  ‘That’s a very bad habit.’

  ‘What?’ I asked, looking about the room in a daze.

  She indicated to my hand, forefinger still in the corner of my mouth.

  ‘Oh.’ I took the finger away and hid it behind my back, transported back to school days and the exasperation of the nuns; but she was smiling. She fluttered a fan of paper at me.

  ‘How can I help you?’ I asked.

  ‘Deportation papers, for your lifeboat pair.’

  I stared at the papers in shock.

  ‘But I still have a week to go,’ I said, hearing my voice rise with panic. ‘She said two weeks – I still have this week.’

  ‘I don’t know about that – I’m just doing the typing, and the paperwork has to be ready before they go on Friday,’ said the secretary, putting the forms down on my desk. She pulled up a chair. ‘It’s not much, I just need to get country of origin and names from you. And anything else you know.’

  ‘But I don’t even have that,’ I said, my voice trembling. I tried hard to appear unconcerned.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, making it obvious that I was failing.

  ‘I don’t have that,’ I said, in a neutral tone, pitching my voice low.

  ‘Then just tell me what you do have, it will be fine,’ she said.

  A lump obstructed my throat. Don’t cry, I willed myself, don’t cry. I looked down at my knees.

  ‘I’m alright as long as no one is nice to me,’ I said, blinking quickly as I looked back up at her. I smiled to show I knew how contradictory my words were. She laughed and changed the subject.

  ‘Hey, how’s that fella who came to see you? Is he your boyfriend?’

  She was speaking of the librarian.

  ‘No,’ I exclaimed hurriedly. ‘He had some information for me about the lifeboat pair – a book. He’s from the library.’

  ‘So why’d he bring it himself? Since when does a librarian do deliveries?’ she asked, looking at me with wide eyes.

  ‘It was his day off,’ I said. ‘He’s been really helpful.’

  ‘I’m sure he has,’ she smirked, nodding knowingly. She whispered: ‘No boy ever did something for nothing, not on his day off. But good for you – he’s nice.’ She drew out the last word and pretended to fan herself, batting her eyelids.

  I laughed and shook my head in denial.

  I took the deportation papers and scanned them quickly.

  ‘So I need anything you can give me to fill in here,’ she said, pointing. ‘And here.’

  ‘Can I delay things by not having the information?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t think so, they’ll still be deported, but who knows where they’ll end up.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, reading as I spoke. ‘You can put England for her. Him, I don’t know, maybe Spain.’ I frowned.

  ‘So what do you know?’

  ‘Not a lot. I, we, think that her father was a writer – that’s why the librarian was here,’ I said, trying to sound convincing as I said that. ‘So I’ve written to the publisher to ask – that’s my only lead. I’m waiting to hear from them.’ I slumped in my seat, feeling like I’d been found wanting.

  ‘Written,’ she exclaimed. ‘That could take till next year – do you know how slow the mail is out of here?’ She took back the papers from me. ‘You should wire them – did you think of that?’

  ‘No, can I?’

  ‘I don’t know – but I can. Do you know what happens next?’ she asked, waving the papers at me. I shook my head. ‘I send a wire to the English passport authority, asking them if they’re missing a nice old lady. They wire back saying, “We’re missing a hundred old ladies.” Then I wire the port authority. And immigration. So while I’m sending all these things out that are not going to help at all but that I have to because it says so here,’ she said, waving the papers again, ‘why don’t we wire this publisher too?’

  ‘That would be fantastic. Thank you.’

  ‘It is my pleasure,’ said she as she turned to leave. ‘And you know what else? I’m going to include details of the old man too because I think they look so nice together.’

  The secretary’s visit dismayed me. What if they separated them? What if they deported them? What if they took them from me before the two-week deadline?

  I walked out to the waterfront with little thought to where I was going. Chastened by my failure to think of sending a wire myself, I reviewed all the clues I had, in case there was something else I had missed.

  I passed the impounded freighter, looking forlorn without the usual time-is-money hustle that surrounds commercial vessels. The paint was peeling from the hull and three prow rails were missing, replaced with aging rope. The sailors had been moved back on board for want of room to house them elsewhere. I exchanged greetings with two I recognised.

  My path took me past the security compound and on impulse I decided to visit, unannounced. But I would not tell them about the deportation papers.

  A strong smell of cooking struck me as I stepped through the front doors. It clung like gravy with lumps; it was the smell of institutions. I was returned to the convent, to the cold corridors, burnt porridge, and gristly shepherd’s pie with no cheese on top. The smell was stifling.

  They were both in the common room, sitting by the barred windows talking. They were alone. Although the compound was quiet, it didn’t feel peaceful, despite the gold wash of the afternoon sun softening the hard lines of the perimeter walls.

  She looked over as I entered.

  ‘Well, hello,’ she called, a bright smile lighting up her face. She turned to the old man. ‘I told you she would come.’

  He stood quickly and smiled.

  ‘So you did. Come to join us for dinner? Or shall we have a card night?’

  There was a pack on the table beside them, dealt out as if a game were in progress.

  ‘Have I interrupted?’ I asked, nodding at the cards. They both laughed.

  ‘You are a funny girl,’ she said.

  He scooped up the cards with one hand and stacked them neatly in the centre of the table.

  ‘A much appreciated interruption – I was being beaten, soundly,’ he said. ‘I have lost my entire fortune, should it turn out that I have one, and my own personal services for the next twenty years.’

  ‘Should you live that long,’ she quipped.

  ‘Madam, it will be a point of honour to me that I do, if only to have my revenge,’ he replied. ‘I am sure she cheats.’

  ‘He is a very poor loser.’

  ‘She fiddles the scores, but I must, as a gentleman, trust her reckoning.’

  She pulled a spare seat towards her and patted it.

  ‘Pay no attention to him. What do you have for us today?’

  ‘Well, nothing really new,’ I said, remaining standing. Her eyes seemed to fade a moment, then she smiled quickly, as if determined to be cheerful. ‘But I thought you might like to come out and have some dinner?’

  ‘So you got my note?’ she asked.

  ‘No. What note?’

  ‘No matter. Dinner would be lovely,’ she said. ‘You are very kind.’

  He helped her from her seat, then tucked her hand into his arm. They looked very comfortable together.

  ‘You’ll forgive us if we don’t dress for dinner,’ he said, gesturing to the door. ‘Lead on.’

  ‘I went to university in England,’ I told them. ‘Languages. I won a scholarship.’

  We ordered our dinner and were sipping wine, a semi-sweet local drop, served icy cold, which always became the drink of choice to anyone who stayed in the country long enough. It was never exported, not even when technology opened the country up to the rest of the world. I know, because I have since scoured liquor stores in the outside world and have always been disappointed. Sometimes I catch a h
int of it in the first breath of a fruity Riesling, enough to whisk me straight back to that time just for a moment. But none are ever quite the same.

  ‘That was one very good thing about the sisters – they understood the importance of education, even for women. Especially for women, I think,’ I said.

  ‘My degree took three years. I considered staying on and pursuing an academic career but I wanted to get out and see the world, as they say. England is so cold.’

  As if in comparison, I looked about us. It was now dark and the evening promenade had begun. Groups of people wandered along the street, waving, greeting, chatting. Families spread out in their favourite restaurants, the children sitting up next to the adults, pleading for a sip of wine, scrambling for their favourite dish. How different to what I had grown up with. I felt a surge of affection for my adopted home.

  ‘Was it a wrench leaving friends behind?’ she asked.

  ‘No, not really. I found the study so engrossing. And the scholarship dictated I achieve certain levels of achievement.’

  I didn’t answer her question, but she didn’t pursue it. In truth there were no close friends to leave behind, at least none more dear to me than my fascination to travel.

  ‘I had a dream about sailing last night,’ he announced. I was surprised at his volunteering the information.

  I wondered if she had mentioned his appearance in her nightmare to him.

  ‘Would you like to hear it?’

  ‘Of course,’ I replied. ‘Do you mind if I don’t make notes?’

  They both laughed. He settled back in his chair and began.

  ‘You are in my dream,’ he said, nodding to me. ‘We’re sailing, on board your beautiful boat. It’s a fine day and all is well. We are going to meet your mother.’ I must have looked surprised at this, for he said: ‘Yes indeed. That was very clear in the dream. You have to find her to tell her that you are well and that we three,’ he waved his hand at each of us, ‘are going to sail to Spain.’

  ‘You’re making this up,’ I said, laughing at him. A small voice of doubt in the back of my head wondered if he really was.

  ‘Indeed, I am not. Our friend here can’t have all the dreams you know.’