by Fiona Shaw
‘I think your mother wants you to break the mould,’ Benjamin said. ‘Do something daring, or inventive. She’d be disappointed if you followed your father.’
‘So why don’t we do that?’ Will said. ‘And we can share a flat, have our own kind of life.’
‘But she doesn’t want you to break that kind of mould. Your mother can’t order you to dances forever, but she’s no fool.’
‘But she doesn’t want me to disappear,’ Will said. ‘And I would if I did as she asked. Found a girl, got married. I’d be like these fish, just the shape left, just some flesh, but no heart, no guts.’
Using two small stones, Will turned the fish on their rack.
‘Don’t your parents want you to marry a nice Jewish girl?’ he said.
‘Eventually, I suppose. But my brother’s done it already; it’s taken the heat off.’
They talked on a little till the fish were cooked, their electric blue skins blackened and the flesh turned grey. But the discussion had run its usual course and both were relieved to stop. They ate – mackerel and sandwiches, apples and cake – both boys famished, eager to fill their senses with what was here and what was now, to push away the smell of the future. The mackerel was as delicious as hunger and fire could make it, and after they had eaten their fill, they made love gently. Then Benjamin read his book, and Will lay beside him, curled against his lover’s thigh. His limbs felt heavy, his mind drifted, and soon he slept.
He woke with a start. The air had changed. Benjamin had placed a sweater over him as he slept but still he felt cold. The wind was gusting fitfully, chopping at the water first here and then there. Benjamin stood staring at it. The sun still shone, but hazily, as though something were draped over it, like a piece of the muslin his mother used for making marmalade. He looked out to the shoal of rocks. There was no question that they looked less distinct. But he didn’t want to give up the languor of their day just yet and he glanced at Benjamin, standing there in just his shirt and sweater. It would only get colder now, though, and the fret would get denser, and after a minute he stood up and got dressed.
He called out. ‘Sea fret. We’ll have to go, soon as we can. You remember, the old man?’
Benjamin turned, as if from a revery, his thoughts still drifting on the water.
‘But you said there wouldn’t be one.’
Will shrugged. ‘I was wrong. It’s OK. We’ll be out of here as soon as the tide’s high enough. Shouldn’t be too bad. And we’ll keep close to the shore heading back. Once we’re round the point and in to the estuary, we’re home and dry.’
Benjamin gathered up the gear while Will gutted and sluiced off the remaining mackerel.
‘She’ll be pleased,’ he said, wanting to reassure. ‘Plenty for supper.’
‘It’s safe, though?’ Benjamin said. And with a stab at the jocular: ‘After all, we haven’t got an A to Z. It’s the only way I can find my way anywhere.’
‘I’ve been in one of these before,’ Will said. ‘They can come in very fast, take you by surprise. But I do know what to do.’
Benjamin nodded. ‘OK.’
‘We’ll put on the oilskins now, and cap and plimsolls.’
‘They’re sodden,’ Benjamin said.
‘Keep your feet warmer than nothing at all,’ Will said, but Benjamin drew the line at soggy plimsolls, and wouldn’t wear the damp cap either.
‘If you catch a chill, my mother will blame me,’ Will said.
‘And she’ll be right.’ Benjamin’s voice was partly amused and partly not.
By the time the tide was high enough for the boys to leave, the fret had grown denser. Will rowed them through the channel and into the open sea and within moments the beach, the rocks, the very land had disappeared and he could see no further than three pulls of the oar. They were no distance away and yet it was as if nothing else existed in the world beyond this boat in its circle of water. Everything was silenced: gulls, wind, even somehow the noise from the oars. They dipped and rose into a silent sea.
The fret was set right in now, a wetness in the air that was not rain and yet it had soaked Will’s trousers and was gathered in Benjamin’s hair like a spray of dull stars.
Will said: ‘You watch for the shore, call out when you see land, and I’ll take care of the sailing. We’ll inch our way home.’
‘But we can’t see anything. What about rocks?’
‘There’s only the Brigstone,’ Will said. ‘We won’t be going near her.’
Will could hear fear in Benjamin’s voice, but he made no acknowledgement of it. That would help neither of them right now. As for his own fear, his own feelings, he kept these to himself too. Benjamin was right. He had been complacent, and arrogant. The fret had been forecast; he’d been warned. But he’d lied to his mother, and brushed off the old man. He’d thought the gods would keep the sun blazing because he wanted it; because this was to be their perfect day. And he had so nearly got away with it.
Slowly, slowly they felt their way up the coast, tacking out from the shore and in again. Out for the count of twenty, and in; out again and in. The wind was erratic and Will sailed with all the wit he knew to keep their course. They must stay close, but not too close or they’d fall foul of the rocks that hid below the surface, ready and eager to hole a small boat like theirs, for all Will’s easy words. Too far out – and it might be no more than a handful of yards – and they could be swallowed up by the fret and lost.
‘Call out when you see land,’ Will said. ‘Eyes skinned, or we’ll be on the rocks.’
He worked hard to keep his voice calm and to seem unafraid, but somehow he betrayed himself and he knew there would be a reckoning later. And he made each starboard tack with his heart in his mouth till Benjamin called ‘Land’ again.
Still the fret was thick around them so that they could see and hear only each other. Once there was the sound of an outboard engine, a deep chug chug that came from nowhere and went to nowhere, but they never had sight of the boat; and once, as they came close to the invisible shore, Benjamin shouted ‘Seal,’ and as they went about Will saw something sleek and dark and silent slip down into the sea.
How long they sailed like this for, Will didn’t know, the only sounds Benjamin’s cry of ‘Land’ and then, fast on it, his own ‘Ready about’. It seemed hours. A cramping had started in his rudder arm and he could feel the strain behind his eyes. His body felt tight as if he might snap suddenly, like a rubber band pulled too far beyond its limit. Finally, as the starboard tack grew longer and the wind dropped, he knew they had reached the mouth of the estuary.
‘Safe now,’ he called to Benjamin.
As the estuary narrowed, it became easier to navigate. Trees loomed on one side, dripping green. Will dropped the sails and rowed. It was slower, and safer with all the yachts and small boats moored.
‘Can you tie up somewhere for a minute before we get back?’ Benjamin said.
‘Here, do you mean? In the estuary?’
‘Anywhere.’
So Will caught the next buoy and looped the painter through the ring.
‘There,’ he said. He rolled his shoulders round, feeling them ease.
Benjamin faced him square.
‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ he said slowly.
Will was perplexed.
‘We’re back, Ben. Safe. I got us back.’
‘I’m going to make a speech, because I don’t know how else to make you understand.’
‘I know you’re angry about the weather,’ Will said, ‘but it happens at sea.’
‘What if you hadn’t got away with it? If we hadn’t found our way home?’
‘But we did.’
‘You can’t always just wish and make things so. This trip. Our perfect day. Your life. You were as scared as I was out there. You knew better than me how dangerous it was, and it was your fault.’
‘I’m sorry …’ Will began, but Benjamin waved it away.
‘I told you it was a speech,�
�� he said.
Will stared at the buoy they had tied to, its dull, dented silver slick with seaweed, crusted with barnacles. It might have floated there all his life, longer, impervious to the tides, impervious to the weather, rocking steady.
‘I’ve been lucky so far,’ Benjamin said, ‘but life doesn’t owe me anything. So I’m going to make it go on giving me what I want. I’m going to work, and study, and battle for things. I want to battle for you, Will. With my family, with yours, do whatever it takes. But you need to battle too. What if we had lost the land? Everything’s not a bloody game. This isn’t a game. We’re not playing at boats in the bath; we’re not playing Roundheads and bloody Cavaliers any more.’
Sound carries over water, but Benjamin spoke his piece quietly. Then – ‘I’ve finished,’ he said. ‘I know you’re different to me, and I know you’re sorry, and we did have a perfect day till it changed. Just tell me you’ll take more care next time.’
Much later Will tried to recall what he’d said then. Enough, and seriously spoken, that they’d made up and kissed out there, hidden inside the wet air. Then untied and gone on.
Soon after they passed close enough to a yacht, that Will could read her name.
‘The Aurora,’ he said. ‘We’re nearly back. Look out for the jetty. It’s got Estuary Hotel on a sign. Our slipway’s just to the right.’
And they were there, drifting up so quiet and calm.
He shipped the oars and jumped out.
‘Come on,’ he said with a grin. ‘Think of the hot muffins. Think of the warm bath.’
‘Typical of you. Stomach first.’
Benjamin stepped out gingerly and together they brought the trailer down, easing it into the water and under the dinghy, bringing her bow high before they pulled her out.
‘Plain sailing from here,’ Will said. ‘Clean her up, stow the sails, pack away the gear; just the walk then, and we can’t get lost.’
He gave the boat a pat, because she had done well by him, and in the end he had done well by her.
They pulled the trailer up the slope and on to the track, one hand each on the trailer head, the other gripping the boat edge. Benjamin’s fingers were white with cold and his lips were pale.
‘I don’t need the muffin, but you need the warm bath,’ Will said.
‘Enough sailing for a while,’ Benjamin said, but he was smiling.
Along the track they pulled the boat, and they were almost there, almost back.
It came from nowhere, it came from the air and exploded through him, a bolt, a silent force, a terrible shaft of electricity that hurled him away from the boat and slammed him into the ground, into the thicket of weeds alongside the track. He was burning, he felt he was burning, and everything was white …
… His eyes hurt. Why did his eyes hurt? And his hands, and his feet; somebody was groaning. He opened his eyes and slowly the light resolved to grey. Had he been sleeping? He had been somewhere. The mast of a boat struck up at an angle above him, and beyond it a thick black line ran across the sky. He couldn’t think where he was. It was cold on this ground but he felt very hot. A single thought came, that he should move. Slowly he tried out his arms and legs, and there was the groaning again. He was lying, he found, in a twist, one leg flung across the other, one arm over his head, one under his back.
He tried to bring his arms back to himself, though the pain in his hands was very strong. Eventually he was able to roll onto his stomach, and then he saw the belly of a boat, and beyond it, another boy lying.
Knowledge came like a cold wave.
‘Ben,’ he called, but his voice was small and Benjamin didn’t hear him.
It took Will forever to reach him, digging at the ground with his elbows, his shoulders screaming. Behind him, his legs dragged like dead wood and his feet burned. Benjamin lay on his back, his cold, bare toes pointing upwards, and on each toe was a blood-red blister. He had one arm by his side and there, too, in the palm of his hand, a small red circle, as if someone had pressed a hot coin on him. His eyes were closed and his mouth was curled in a slight smile, for all the world as if he were simply sleeping for a while in the weeds beside the track in the cold, wet air.
Later Will saw it, burnt into his retina: an arc of light, a shaft of brutal, pointed energy.
‘Ben,’ he said and he bent forward to feel Benjamin’s breath, or, if he could only make his fingers work, to find the jump of a pulse in his neck. If he could only make his fingers work. Then awkward in his own pain, he took his lover in his arms and tried to keep him warm.
He didn’t remember being found. Had no recollection of his father bending to him, or of his mother’s hands around his shoulders, on his hair. He didn’t feel the passing touch of the St Christopher medal she wore around her neck. He didn’t see their faces when they touched Benjamin’s cheek, or hear their shouts for help, or see others come running. It took two of them to prise his arms away, and carry him down the track, a dead weight.
So he didn’t hear his mother’s cry that Benjamin was still warm – quick – a doctor – quick. Because if he had been there he could have told her that it was only borrowed warmth, and why else had he held him so tight all that time? Nor did he see the doctor crouch in the weeds, nor see his fist thump down onto his lover’s chest, once, twice, a third time; nor hear the man’s cry of horror, for all his years at work with death, when from Benjamin’s mouth came, dark and clotted, all the stuff of his life.
Will had gone away in his head for a time.
When at last he came back, it was to a white bed where he lay and lay, his body screaming at him, and his mind.
His mother came and he saw in her face what he knew already.
She said: ‘It was his heart that killed him.’
He said: ‘Oh.’ He didn’t say: Well, I knew that. I didn’t need to be told. He didn’t say that out loud, not to his mother, not to anyone. And she never told him what she had seen with the doctor. She never told anyone that.
She brought flowers from the garden and muffins and books gathered from his room. He didn’t tell her that one of the books was Benjamin’s.
‘How do you feel?’ she said.
He shrugged.
‘Does it hurt?’
‘Do you mean my hands and my feet?’ he said. Do you mean my head and my heart and my flesh and my bones?
Meg walked over to the window. Will’s eyes were sore and so the curtains were drawn, but the sun was pushing at them, shoving fingers round the edge. She shook them wide shut again with a practised air.
Stigmata, he thought. Hands, feet, heart. Benjamin, my Jewish boy, you would have found that funny.
‘The doctors say you might not need a skin graft. And they say the headaches and dizziness will pass.’
‘I brought us back safe,’ Will said.
‘The doctors say you were very lucky.’
‘I lost him, Mother.’
‘I understand.’
‘No, you don’t. I loved him, and I brought him back safe, but I’ve lost him.’
Meg sat on the bed beside him.
‘I had a brother who was lost,’ she said, but she didn’t say more, and he didn’t ask her, not then.
She stood up again. ‘The little ones want to come and see you. I said perhaps in a couple of days, depending how you feel.’
‘Henry will ask me questions. He’ll try not to but he won’t be able to stop it.’
‘Emma cries when I mention you. They are very sad about Benjamin. It would help her; it would reassure her.’
‘Bring Emma,’ he said. ‘I’d like to see Emma.’
After his mother had gone he slept again, for an hour or a day, he didn’t know, sometimes drifting deep, sometimes waking as nurses came and went. Once he woke to find a doctor showing him off, others around the bed noting him, pointing. The doctor spoke of ferning patterns and of cutaneous burns; he counted out Will’s burnt toes, eenie, meenie, minie, mo; and as they turned to leave he spoke more quietly and
in a different voice, of congestive heart failure and haemorrhaged lungs, and Will shut his eyes against the light again.
‘Did they do an autopsy?’ he said.
His mother was putting more flowers in a vase.
‘William, he was buried yesterday.’
‘I know. You told me, and Father was to attend; he didn’t like Benjamin.’
‘He was there for all of us.’
‘But did they do an autopsy first?’ he said.
‘Please, Will,’ Meg said. She got up and stood at the window, though there was nowhere to see with the curtain still shrouding it. ‘I don’t want to think about it.’
‘Did they?’ he said.
‘They have to,’ she said finally. ‘The law.’
So they’d cut him open. Easy as cleaning a fish. Run a knife down that beautiful chest, followed that delicate line of dark hair down and down with their keen blade, split wide his stomach and dabbled about. Dabbled about in his boy, then zipped him up again and buried him.
‘They think it was his finger on the halyard. The coroner is guessing from the burn,’ she said.
‘Was it sunny?’ Will said.
‘Sunny?’
‘When they buried him. Was the sun shining?’
‘I don’t know, Will. The funeral was in London.’
‘The sun should be shining. It shone all that day till the fret.’
‘I’ll ask your father how it was.’
‘I know what they do. He told me after his grandfather’s funeral. The body should be guarded and honoured, watched over by those who love him until it is buried. And when it is buried, everybody puts a spade of earth over the coffin. Father will have done it.’
‘He’ll have done it from you too. From us all. Benjamin’s family knew you couldn’t be there.’
‘And afterwards you’re not supposed to shave for a week, or look in mirrors.’
‘I’ll bring Emma tomorrow,’ his mother said.
So the next day his little sister came. She had a doll in a small basket that she placed carefully at the end of the bed.
‘What are you doing?’ he said.