Ontreto

by Peter Crawley

  The pavements are now crowded and though the band continues to play as it marches past, the air is strangely stilled. Those in the cafés quiet. They stand and join the assembled gathering in bowing their heads.

  Behind the band trails an old, green three-wheeled Ape with a flat bed on which are arranged bouquets of brightly coloured flowers. Close on the heels of the Ape, file the clergy: altar boys dressed in white surplices over blue robes, priests in similar vestments bearing the cross, and a senior cleric wearing his mitre, pallium and pectoral cross, and thrusting his crosier before him, as though without it he would collapse onto the cobbles.

  Next, a modern, shiny black hearse bears a coffin draped in more bright colours. The family and friends of the deceased follow close behind; the men, clean shaven and black-suited; the women gazing down at their feet, their heads veiled in black lace, their hands gloved. As the hearse inches down the Corso, it is pursued by an eddy of whispers. Like a slow-moving boat rippling the water of a still pond, so a ripple of conversation spreads in the wake of the hearse. Bystanders mutter and mumble aside and point furtively, sharing knowing looks.

  The man at the head of the cortège walks with his head held high. He is barrel-chested and broad-shouldered, and pain and sorrow are etched deep in the lines of his face. He ignores the discourteous babble from the onlookers, but when he recognises a face amongst the crowd, he sets aside his sorrow to offer a weak smile of appreciation.

  He glances at Ric by accident. The man’s eyes are as dark as coal and glow with the embers of emotion.

  Ric is startled by the intensity of the man’s gaze, but he returns the look with an appropriately respectful nod.

  In turn, the man acknowledges Ric’s response with a slight bow. His glare yields for a moment and he walks on.

  As soon as the last of the mourners have passed by, the low murmur of conversation returns to busy chatter. The young amongst the crowd offer the elders their sympathy; the elders eventually falling silent and wandering away.

  The shopkeepers unlock their premises and stand back to allow their staff inside. The café waiters bring out the tables, chairs and parasols, and restore the street to its former symmetry. The melancholic atmosphere quickly evaporates and the movement of life returns to the Corso.

  Ric sits back down, finishes his coffee and wonders what it was about the man that made those looking on so unsettled.

  He pays his bill and sets off back up the Corso, reading the map as he walks. He’s enjoyed his meal and, curiously, the company of the escurzionista, Sandro, and as the coffee works its magic with his weary limbs, he is taken with the feeling that he will enjoy his time in Lipari.

  But when he gets back to the top of the road down to the small bay in which he’s moored the Mara, he notices she is sitting low in the water. And by the time he gets down to the beach, he is alarmed at just how low.

  A tall, elderly woman stands on the retaining wall, gazing, with her right hand shading her eyes, towards the Mara. She wears a floral blouse and long skirt, and–

  “Your boat,” she says as he reaches her side, “is sinking.”

  8

  Unfortunately, the woman is right; the Mara is sinking. That she is down by a foot and some is obvious, but, thankfully, the water isn’t yet up to her gunwales.

  “Damn!” Ric swears, looking round, hoping to see a solution materialise out of the rocks around him. But, when he looks back at the woman beside him, he realises she has retrieved the plastic bag containing his towel and trunks from behind the oleander and it now sits at her feet.

  “Yes,” says the woman, in answer to his questioning look, “I thought you might need them quickly when you returned, so I took them from the bush. I thought it was a good idea.”

  “It was. Thank you,” he replies, glancing at the woman. Ric kneels to open the bag, changes quickly and immodestly into his trunks. “Excuse me,” he says, “if I…”

  “Yes, of course,” she says, as though she hadn’t been expecting him to hang around to make polite conversation, “but I have a–”

  He runs down to the beach, charges into the sea and swims the twenty metres out to the Mara as quickly as he can.

  Ric scrambles on board, grabs the key from beneath the seat and unlocks the main hatch. He slips down inside. The cabin floor is already flooded, the water washing around his ankles.

  Ric turns on the bilge pump. By rights, it should have kicked in automatically, but it hasn’t and when he flicks the switch, he is rewarded by an irritating silence.

  “Damn,” he swears again. Water has been seeping in through the packing gland on the propeller shaft; not much, but enough for the bilge pump to have to put in some overtime and blow its fuse in dissent.

  Fortunately, Camille has had the foresight to fit a manual pump as well as an electric one. So, the only avenue left open to Ric is to get on and pump the water out by hand. There is a lot; he will be a long time pumping.

  Ric sits down in the cockpit and begins to work the pump handle back and forth in slow rhythm. There are only a couple of hour’s daylight left; obviously not enough time to pump the bilge and prepare and pack some more homemade sealant around the shaft, so all he can do is to carry on pumping until the seawater in the bilge has sunk to an acceptable level. Then, maybe he’ll be able to fix the pump.

  In all the brief excitement he realises he’s left his clothes with the tall woman. He twists in his seat and looks over at the beach.

  She is still standing on the retaining wall, watching him. He can see she has long, wavy hair, but remembers that when he turned to thank her for retrieving his kit, he noticed that her hair was greyed at the crown and fine and blonde down the side. She is heavily tanned, as though she is used to the sun year round; as though, in spite of her good English, she is a native of the island.

  Strange, he thinks, he didn’t really look at her at the time, being as he was more concerned about the state of the Mara. And yet, from the brief glance he afforded her, he now recalls what she looked like in considerable detail: her frame slender and willowy, her shoulders broad and her collarbone well-defined. Her eyes, he remembers noticing, were grey; grey and possibly a touch cold.

  Ric waves a brief acknowledgement of her. There is not much more that he can do; he can’t stop pumping for the moment, so he will have to sort out what he is going to do about his clothes later.

  Then, as if she is reading his mind, the woman bends and collects his shorts, shirt and shoes and folds them neatly, before putting them in the bag. Expecting her to replace the bag where he has left it, Ric is surprised when the woman simply tucks the bag under her arm and walks back to the house set up above the shingle beach. She walks smoothly. Her poise, her deportment, is elegant and graceful, and he wonders if perhaps she was at one time a ballet dancer.

  When she gets to the front door of the dwelling, she turns to gaze rather dreamily at Ric and, as she gazes, she raises her hand and waves at him.

  Ric acknowledges her and watches her go inside.

  The grey stone cottage is small, more garden shed than holiday retreat, and the roof, like those he’s already seen, is pitched low and tiled in terracotta. But, at most, the place cannot accommodate more than a couple of rooms.

  He glances out towards the eastern horizon. He knows from his winter in Sardinia that when the Levanter blows, as it does out of the east, the waves which beat the windward side of the island can swell to fifty feet or more, and he wonders if the cottage is set sufficiently far back from the retaining wall to be protected from them. The wall is, he judges, twice his height, maybe a bit more, and the garden between the house and the walls no more than ten or so strides back.

  Ric pumps. His arm grows sore, so he switches hands and stands for a while, preventing himself from looking down into the cabin in case his efforts have not yet produced a noticeable reduction in the water level.

  How many minutes have passed he isn’t sure, when a small white skiff appears round the northern corne
r of the shallow bay. The outboard whines excitedly and the prow stands proud, obscuring his view of the occupants.

  There is little wind to speak of and the sea is calm but for a broad, docile undulation. The sky is a silken light blue and cloudless, and the temperature languishes in the early twenties; it will cool, later, without any cloud cover.

  The little skiff ploughs steadily towards him.

  Ric works the pump to and fro, and watches the boat. A movement out of the corner of his eye makes him glance shoreward. The woman is once again standing on the retaining wall, but now she is between the Mara and the cottage. She is gazing in his direction and when she sees she has his attention, she points in the direction of the small skiff. The woman seems to be signalling that there is something, or someone, in the boat he should take note of.

  When the skiff draws close to the Mara, the driver slews it round broadside so that with the wash from the turn the skiff drifts very smartly alongside. The act is precise, practised. The man at the tiller is short and wiry of build; his hair brown and shorn in a rather amateur fashion. Thick glasses perch on his wide nose and he wears a pair of faded blue shorts and a short-sleeved shirt, which probably started out white, but is now a tired shade of grey daubed with oily, smudged finger marks.

  He grabs hold of the guardrail and stares at Ric through the thick lenses of his glasses: it is the man who was driving the Ape down the narrow Maddalena; the man who saluted Ric as he stood aside to let him pass.

  “Salve,” Ric greets.

  The man nods and grins in reply; his teeth are extremely white and even for a man who doesn’t look as though he possesses the funds necessary to procure the services of a dentist.

  Ric continues to work the pump.

  The man just stands, holding the guardrail, watching.

  “Well, I guess you’ve come to help?” Ric says, “Better come aboard then. Vieni… a bordo,” he adds.

  And that is all that the man is waiting for. He ties the skiff off to a cleat by the pushpit and climbs over the rail.

  “Si è rotta la pompa di sentina elettrica?” he offers, looking puzzled.

  Ric shakes his head, “Si, dead right, my friend: the electrical bilge pump is on the blink.”

  He steps towards Ric and motions to relieve him of his onerous task.

  “Grazie,” Ric replies with considerable feeling, “mi chiamo Ric.”

  “Salvo,” says the man. He grins again and adds for good measure, “Salvatore.” He works the handle more smoothly and seemingly more easily than Ric, as though he and the pump are old friends and now that they are reacquainted with each other, the pump will transfer the water out of the Mara quicker for him than it will for Ric.

  “Grazie, Salvo, mille grazie,” Ric offers by way of encouragement.

  “Prego,” he replies and proceeds to work the pump. Great jets of water spurt from the outlet just below the gunwale, punctuating his effort. And although Salvo pumps assiduously, his expression betrays a casual indifference to his exertions, as if it would not bother him to have to pump all night.

  He grins, a wide toothy grin. “Albero motore, trasmissione? Elica? Stagno?” he asks, letting go of the pump handle briefly. He sticks the index finger of his left hand out straight and makes a winding motion around it with the same finger on his right hand.

  “Possibile,” Ric replies, and then says more positively, “probabilmente.”

  “Okay,” Salvo decides, “nessun problema,” and he continues to grin as though the leak is nothing more than a manifestation of the Mara’s age and therefore nothing that one should be ashamed of.

  They take turns at the pump for the better part of an hour and when the water level has receded sufficiently, Ric replaces the fuse in the electric bilge pump. It whirrs, cuts out, and then whirrs away continuously, allowing them time to take a breather.

  “Scusa, Salvo,” Ric apologises, “non ho birra, posso offrirti un bicchiere d’acqua?”

  He shakes his head, “No grazie. Nessun problema. Grazie.”

  Salvo has brought tools with him. Strewn about the bottom of the little white boat lies a collection of wrenches, screwdrivers and spanners, and a box of assorted lines, weights, tins of grease and various off-cuts of material.

  He climbs down into the skiff and returns with a lump of dull, cream-coloured waxen substance, which he begins to work between his large hands the way a cigar wrapper rolls tobacco leaves. “Stucco,” he says allowing Ric to sniff it.

  “Sure! Okay, putty?”

  Salvo nods enthusiastically. “Si,” he says and then tugs at his eyelid to suggest Ric pays attention. He lays the little pipe of putty carefully on the deck, strips off his shirt and shorts, and climbs down into the skiff. From it, he grabs a diving mask, which he puts on, and then he slips, carefully, into the sea.

  “Ric, lo stucco, per favore?” he asks, sounding as though his head is thick with cold.

  Ric leans over the rail, passes him down the putty and Salvatore disappears beneath the boat. From where Ric is standing in the cockpit, he can feel the little Italian fumbling about somewhere around the prop.

  While he is left alone, Ric tries to understand why Salvatore has materialised out of the blue and, perhaps more importantly, where his saviour has come from. Apart from passing him in the narrow passage on his way into town, he doesn’t know the man from Adam. And apart from Sandro who, like an unwanted pet, seems to have attached himself to Ric and the tall lady with the cottage across the way, he has so far spoken to no one else.

  Salvo reappears, gasping for air. He pushes back his mask and treads water. “Aspetti,” he says, half-climbing into the skiff and grabs what looks to Ric to be a reel of clingfilm. Tearing off several strips, he winds them around his forearm, repositions the mask on his face and disappears down beneath the Mara’s hull once more.

  Again, Ric can feel Salvo tugging at the propeller shaft. And again, just when Ric reckons he must be out of air, Salvo reappears, panting and puffing.

  He slips off his mask, tosses it over into the skiff and clambers up on board the Mara. “Okay! Finito!” he says, pointing at the deck.

  “Sure,” Ric replies and guesses at what it is that Salvo wants him to check. The bilge is, by now, pretty much dry and he can see that whereas before, where there had been a steady succession of drips from the stuffing box around the prop shaft, now there is only the very slightest and very occasional drip of water coming through the seal.

  “Fantastico, Salvo!” Ric exclaims, hoping his pronunciation doesn’t make him sound too British.

  “Prego,” replies Salvo, with a nod of his head that almost qualifies as a bow. He is evidently a little embarrassed at the reaction his efforts have drawn. Then he seems to want to say something to Ric, but clearly doesn’t want to put his point across in words of more than one syllable, so he just points to the deck again and says, “Presto, eh?”

  Ric smiles. For sure, he knows the packing needs replacing soon; to ship water in a heavy sea would be disastrous. He looks at his new-found deliverer and notices the deep squint lines at the corners of his eyes and the long-cured scars on his knuckles and forearms. Whoever he is, Salvo is no stranger to work.

  “Si,” replies Ric, “Presto. E mille grazie. Mille grazie.”

  “Prego,” says Salvo, with another vague nod. Then he looks around the Mara as though seeing her for the first time. “Mara! Una bella barca, eh?” And with that he slips over the rail down into the skiff, unties his line, yanks the starter cord on the outboard, waves at Ric with his free hand and beetles off towards the town.

  Ric stands and scratches his head. What he’s done to deserve such kindness, he can’t think.

  The sun is sinking with what is left of the breeze, but now, thanks to Salvatore and his tuck box of homemade remedies, the Mara will not go the same way. He thinks briefly of his shirt, shoes and shorts the lady in the cottage has picked up off the beach. He supposes they’ll be just as well in her care as they would have been in
his. And he realises he’s forgotten to ask Salvo if he has moored the Mara to a free buoy and decides it doesn’t matter either way. He’ll run the risk of being harangued by some late-returning sailboat; he’s run greater risks in his time.

  9

  For the second time in two days, Ric is aware of a distant, mechanical droning; only this time it is much louder and much closer than before. He rolls off his bunk and stands, head up through the main cabin hatch.

  A mile or so out, an Aliscafo, which ties the islands and acts as their umbilical to Milazzo on the Sicilian coast, thunders northward towards the town. It is a mean, wailing banshee hastening across a mirror-like veneer; a mad mullah, robes raised, charging along the Mare Siculum in search of the infidel.

  There is not a cloud to poison the sky and only the faintest hint of a breeze out of the east. The first aid the little Salvo has applied to the propeller shaft seal has slowed the ingress of water to an acceptable level. But Ric knows he will not be able to leave the island until he has attended to the greater problem and hopes there is a dry dock over in the bay beyond the citadel. In the meantime he makes a note to keep an eye on the water level in the bilge.

  He heats up a pan of water with which to make a cup of tea and shaves in what is left. As is the way of things, just as he’s lathered his cheeks a small Rib comes alongside and two youths, wearing T-shirts and shorts and looking more like beach loafers than port officials, greet him casually.

  “Salve,” says the leaner of the two sitting in the bow. But Ric loses the gist of what the lad tries to tell him next.

  “Scusa,” Ric interrupts, “Non parlo l’Italiano. Parla Inglese?”

  “Ah, Si,” he replies, grinning and pointing at the Tricolour of France hanging at the stern. “Inglese!” he adds as though everything is now clear to him. “Inglese,” he repeats and turns to his associate standing at the helm. They bat whatever issue it is they have with Ric back and forth between them in a staccato of conversation, weighing their alternatives.