I took Jim down to the shore of the sound. The crossing had been seven hours but after shivering for the first half an hour he had cheered up. I tried to keep him away from the edge of the water and the long grass. I knew about the alligators and the monitor lizards and the snakes and the mosquitoes and the bears and the hunters and the poison ivy but I knew there was probably something else in the grass, behind the scrub, waiting. Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun the frumious Bandersnatch.
Dinner in the gas station. Monica and Brent ordered a hamburger and I ordered soft-shelled crabs and Michele had crab cakes. Brent and Michele told us that to be a captain you had to study and have lots of experience and that Brent worked on the ferry to Aurora and Michele used to run a cruise business and they had sailed the Intracoastal twenty-six times and they thought the Phyllis May was a very fine boat considering she was never meant to go to sea; and in fact she was a very fine boat without qualification, a sweetheart, and she handled beautifully with a very fine engine that liked going flat out and they would stay with us all the way across these wide northern waters to Oriental on the Neuse River and they looked forward to it.
Like most Americans we had met, Brent and Michele did not drink alcohol with their meals, and ordered iced tea. I went to the counter and ordered a glass of Merlot for Monica and a glass of Chablis for me. Miss Wanda appeared at the table—We do Chablis and we do Blush Chablis. When you ordered the Chablis I could not help wondering to myself why you did not choose the Blush Chablis. To me you look the type of gentleman who would be drawn to the Blush Chablis. Would you like to try the Blush Chablis?
The Blush Chablis tasted like Chablis and cough syrup. I drank it, because I will drink anything. Miss Wanda reappeared—would you like some more Blush Chablis?
She leaned against my shoulder.
AWAY AT DAWN, INTO A HEAVY BLACK CHOP AND a beam sea—the one from the side that tries to turn you over. I was on the tiller.
Brent had suggested we take off the storm deck on the front of the Phyllis May because she had ridden so well across Albemarle Sound and he thought closing one of the two exits was not a good idea. As soon as we got a chance we should make the drain-holes—the scuppers—bigger in the front deck because they were made for rain, not waves.
The Phyllis May floundered and swerved and the sea flung up each side of the bow. I was scared but at least I was on the tiller and had the illusion of control.
Go under the bridge now, said Brent, and I did, and we were out on the Alligator River, straight at the wind. I could see how wide the river was and now, having crossed the Albemarle, I realized that I had suffered a failure of the imagination of some importance.
I had known there were sea crossings but in my mind, apart from the sounds here in the north, the Waterway had always been a canal down the side of the US—There it is, look at the maps, that little thread-like line and those little rivers and estuaries.
But in the nature of things all the rain that falls on the eastern side of the North American continent, a million square miles of deluges, runs downhill until it reaches the Atlantic. So every drop of rain that isn't steamed off flows to the ocean in an estuary or a sound right across the path of the Phyllis May.
We have to cross all these great waters without protection—you can't build a canal where the tides pour in from the Atlantic and the wind kicks up the tides and the tropical storms crackle and the tornadoes twist and the hurricanes rush up from the south bringing hell and destruction.
Yes, there are canals, cutting across points and isthmuses, but the rivers and estuaries are immense: huge inland seas, wide, wide, wide, out of sight of help or harbour: a prey to harsh chops and waves and currents. The Albemarle is only the start—the Intracoastal is not a canal, it is not a waterway—it is a seaway. America had diddled me again—just like my failed offices on Madison Avenue: just like my botched New York Marathon.
As a businessman I had not begun to understand the money and commitment you need to set up a company in the US—as an athlete I had not begun to understand that the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge was a mountain and if you don't hold plenty in reserve the wind on the Elizabeth Bridge will cut you to pieces and a gay fireman will be waiting in Central Park. And as a boater here I am in another ridiculous and dangerous situation, because of pride, because I let my fantasies take me over, because of hunger for attention, because of carelessness for my safety and the safety of my dear wife and my defenceless dog.
I did not see any canal boats in Atlantic Yacht Basin, among all the hundreds that passed through.
And do you know why you did not see any canal boats in Atlantic Yacht Basin, Terence my son? Do you know why? Would you like meto tell you why? Because there are no canal boats on the Intracoastal Waterway, Terence my son.
THE SPRAY WAS FLINGING UP EACH SIDE OF THE bow and crashing into the foredeck and pouring through the ventilation louvres in the front door and into the boat. We were going into two-foot waves, smash, smash, smash—this is new, this is nasty—we have not had these conditions before—we don't know if the boat can take it.
Monica and Michele were mopping up, and Brent covered up the louvres. Jim was shivering in his kennel, coming out now and then to do a bit of cowering. Cascades of water were coming into the front deck, and against the front window like a rainstorm from hell. Slap, spray, the air full of waterfalls. Outside the windows a maelstrom of blue waves and sunlight and foam. Would the front deck drain, or fill and sink us?
Through the window on the door I watched a spot on the front deck and no standing water appeared—how is all this water getting out through our little drain holes? You cannae change the laws of physics, Captain. Another few inches on the waves and the front deck will be overwhelmed and the bow will be pulled down and the front doors will give way and that will be it. I went up out of the engine room and stood on the tiller with Brent, holding on to the grab-rail very hard.
The wide part of the river ends in seven miles, said Brent, and the waves won't get any worse. They didn't and for an hour I arm-wrestled the tiller on the tea-dark sea, musing upon our wreck, which would surely happen sooner or later; it is only a matter of time—and what will they say in the Star?
In harmony with my mood the trees had all died on the distant banks and stood jagged in rows, white bones in the sun. There was a fire, said Brent.
Must have been a hell of a fire, I said.
The breeze was still brisk but the waves were not moving the boat so much. Then the Alligator River stopped.
We sailed into an opening two hundred yards wide and looked ahead and could see straight down the twenty-mile Alligator-Pungo Canal all the way to the horizon, where it opened on the foam of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. Grey ivory lay heaped and twisted along the banks and the low trees let in the light from a huge sky. Now and then a powerboat crept by and put the pedal to the metal and fled, brewing up a typhoon of Typhoo.
Monica took the tiller and I went down inside the boat for my afternoon nap and when I awoke we were out of the canal cut and in the Pungo River, nearly as wide as the Alligator.
An hour of light breeze and crystal spray and here we are at Dowry Creek Marina, Brent and Michele's home port, in the forks of the creeks. We moored next to the trawler Miss Maggie, where they lived. We had been sailing for eight hours.
Jim, you are a star. You have been so good, and I know you were scared—we all were. Let's go for a walk along the river.
Monica and I walked past the holiday homes on their stilts with their lawns running down to the river. Jim ran and ran, and when he came to a grassy drain across the lawns he jumped, and to celebrate his freedom hung motionless in the air. He did not know that the Pamlico River was next, then the Neuse River, the second widest in America, and he did not know the wind drove the waves down the Neuse a hundred miles from the Outer Banks, or that this could be the most dangerous part of our journey.
TWO MOSQUITO BITES CLOSE TOGETHER MULTIPLY your misery by three, and if I
slept at all it was not for long. Anyway on the backs of my eyelids the sea stretched ahead, and powerboats came from the side, and the waves waterfalled into the front deck, and the drain holes couldn't cope and in went the door.
I know what to do—as the front deck fills I'll turn on the taps so the water tank in the bow will lighten and come up. I will stand by the taps and run them at exactly the same speed as the deck is filling. Where is the captain? Oh, he's on the taps—he won't let anyone else touch them.
My misery ended at four o'clock as the alarm went off.
Brent and Michele were on the quay—The local weather forecasts are unreliable—we don't want to hang around for weeks—we're taking a chance—we'll go today.
We pushed off, our green and red boiled-sweet navigation lights glowing, and headed into the darkness before creation. Isolated lights far away—then the dawn came up and the darkness comprehended it not. The firmament streamed with lavender and orange, the trees on the bank stark black. The water was so smooth you could have shaved in it.
Ten miles down the Pungo River and five miles across the Pamlico River. The mirror trembled and shimmied along the boat, and then the wind was up and a light chop a foot high. The Phyllis May ran on rails into the morning, out of the Pamlico into Goose Creek—lovely, desolate, shining. Watch for the crab pots, said Michele, and look for the daymarks. They are on poles—red triangles on your left and green squares on your right, except when they are the other way round.
Along the narrow Bay River and out into the Neuse. And out, and out and out. I had thought to hug the shore in my little boat that only draws two feet and can sail down Stafford High Street on a wet Sunday afternoon. But no, but no, said Michele—you must follow the daymarks or you will hit a shoal and be stuck until the waves turn you over. Or you will go off up some poisonous bayou or out into the Atlantic as soon as your GPS at the tiller goes down, like it just did. And your electronic compass only works if you hold it ten feet away from the boat and just try doing that in a beam sea.
Out to sea, and out to sea: miles out to sea, stretching my confidence to a thread. As we passed a pole with the red or green daymarks you could sometimes see the next one on the horizon, and sometimes you couldn't. Good practice, said Michele, and the cormorants on the daymarks looked at me out of the corners of their eyes and spread their wings in the sun.
The wind got up and the waves hit us on the left and the boat started to bounce, but it was not taking water over the bow. Powerboats and trawlers came up behind and gave us hundreds of yards of space but their wakes rolled us and inside we bumped and staggered and Jim crouched tight inside his kennel. Shrimp boats on the horizon, their arms out like little children pretending to fly. Will the sea get up? If it does the front deck will start filling, and only the taps can save us.
The Phyllis May fought on through the beam sea. We could have got Brent off the tiller, but I so hate violence. My old flat-water Phyllis, my darling, my love, was not happy, but not pitching and hardly rolling—just slightly off balance. Brent was hammering along at nearly six and a half miles an hour. That's fast, but we were on a fifty-mile journey today. You could feel the vibrations through your feet and when you hung on the walls.
It took an hour to reach the corner off Maw Point, three miles from the shore to avoid the shoals, and now at last we could turn on to a smoother course with the wind coming from behind and from the left.
Then an hour later the electric beetle turned again down the magenta line of the Intracoastal on the GPS screen and the Phyllis May had the sea dead behind her, heading for Oriental.
We were going to make it; we were going to make it! White blurs and a bridge, and a pretty port with the shrimp boats with their arms over their heads. Go for the man with the blue jumper on the quay, said Monica, holding her VHF radio.
There were two men with blue jumpers, on different quays, and even Tits Magee can't get a boat in with dignity in those circumstances.
But we would have stood no chance of getting to any quay without our gallant captains, who like Jehovah guided us through the world's tempestuous sea, for a hundred and thirty miles, and guarded us and kept us and fed us, for we have no help but thee—asking for nothing in return but a chance to drive an English narrowboat and drink iced tea with its hopeless crew. You don't forget people like that.
Mile one hundred and eighty, out of eleven hundred. We are haulin'. Now we have to cross the four miles of the Neuse River to get to Morehead City, but we might be able to manage that ourselves when we have had a break in Oriental.
Who are these people at the bridge, and why are there so many dogs?
WHY AM
I SO COLD?
North Carolina
Jim Goes for the Throat — A Blizzard of Flashes — One Day You'll Find Out Where She Gets It — Breakfast with Eisenhower — A Dying Man Falls into the Boat — Accept Your New Scuppers as a Sign of Welcome — The Seven Lucky Teeth — Why Am I So Cold? — Tennessee Honey — Backwards to Florida
THE POPULATION OF ORIENTAL WAS LEANING on the rail to the marina and looking at the Phyllis May from five feet away. Not the whole eight hundred—a dozen at a time, in shifts. Cars would drive up and people would get out and do a quarter of an hour, and then get back in their cars and go and buy a disposable camera and come back.
Monica was hiding in the boat. If she looked out they asked her—Did you sail her across the Atlantic? Did she go in a container? And then She is the damn cutest boat I ever did see and What does she draw? and What is her horsepower? and Where are you headed?
The Tiki Bar was nearby, under a little roof, South Pacific style. Traffic in Oriental is limited to fifteen miles an hour, explained Bob, and the dogs roam free. The mayor is a dog.
Bob was a boater, like nearly everyone else in Oriental—a nice man with a beard.
A dog like a teddy bear passed and a dachshund bustled by. A black retriever arrived and Jim went for the throat and nearly pulled me off my stool. They were waiting for us when we sailed in from the Neuse River, I said to Bob, and the dogs were waiting too. They were lining the quay. The local reporter was on board before the boat had stopped. Then the lady who does the town website, who looked like Sigourney Weaver, asked me When you get off your narrowboat does the world look very broad? After fifty miles of the Pamlico River and the Neuse I couldn't think of an answer to that one.
It'll be worse when the newspaper comes out, said Bob. Did you sail her across the Atlantic?
WE SLEPT MOST OF THE NEXT DAY, THE GONGOOZLER nattering alongside. Some brought their lunch. A narrowboat is almost soundproof if you shut the windows tight and I was fathoms into sleep when someone hammered on the roof. I stumbled to the door and it was a pretty lady of a certain age—Will you come to dinner with us tonight?
Of course, I said.
Never seen her before in my life, I said to Monica.
When Bob came to fetch us the shrimp boats had lit their anchor lights, which shone on their masts and rigging and poles, all folded up like the wings of a dragonfly.
We rushed into the car with coats over our heads, through a blizzard of flashes.
BOB AND BETTY'S HOUSE WAS A MILE AWAY. IT was white-painted cedar, raised, in a large plot, with many windows. It was richly furnished, traditional-style but colourful, and the carpets were deep. Outside the sitting room a lawn and flowers and twenty yards away the river, turning to ink. You couldn't see the other side. I sucked on a bottle of Newcastle Brown that tasted of barbecue smoke and maple syrup. (You can always ask for a glass in America, and sometimes you get one.)
Bob had been in telecoms and Betty was an artist. They had asked Dick and Judy. To me Dick looked like Lyndon Johnson, and Judy like a beautiful spy. I wasn't far out—Dick had been a Washington lobbyist, and Judy in the CIA. I was a prostitute, said Dick—that's all lobbyists are—prostitutes. How long have you been married?
Forty-five years, I said.
My God—most of us are on our third wife and Monica loo
ks so young!
She gets plenty of sex, I explained.
One day you'll find out where she gets it, said Bob, stealing my punchline.
Property here is much cheaper than up north, said Dick, and people who like boating come here to retire—we all know each other. The average age here is sixty-five. There is a small shrimping fleet with some Hispanic workers and the black guys live at the other end of town. We are forty-five minutes from New Bern, and three hours from Greenville. Tomorrow is ladies' night at the Tiki and the next night there are free peanuts on the bar. Then there is gentlemen's night and the next night is the marquee and a band. Saturday is the picking of the roast pig at Don's place and in the evening the rock group from Virginia Beach. On Sunday the croquet and then dinner at my place on Monday. We will come and get you for these occasions, and tomorrow we will see you at breakfast.
AT SEVEN O'CLOCK NEXT MORNING VOICES came across the road into the cabin. Some American gentlemen have a note in their voice which recalls the grinding of steel. Here it is considered a sign of masculinity, but to an effete European it sounds like someone grinding steel and For the love of God turn it down.
I got up and crossed the road to the café. Sitting on the stoop was Gabby Hayes, the bearded guy in braces from the old western films. Bob and Dick were inside at a table, with Clint Eastwood and Ernest Hemingway and Dwight Eisenhower. Sigourney Weaver was on a stool in the corner reading a book, and over there were Larry David and Johnny Cash. They were all looking at each other, like cormorants, from the corners of their eyes. Look, said Bob and Dick, we are having a great time!
One of the few useful things they taught me at Oxford was not to talk at breakfast but I chatted as best I could with my new friends and bought two cups of coffee and a Danish to go and as soon as I could go politely, I went.
THAT EVENING JIM AND I SET OUT INTO THE sunlight and walked under the big trees between the wooden houses, painted and pretty, in their open plots. There were lots of squirrels and they were tame, which is not to the advantage of a squirrel if a whippet is in town. Jim's screams echoed down the leafy avenues and more than once I was tempted to let him slip, but I was not sure what a suburban American would say about havoc on his lawn and a shredded squirrel. For all I know they feed them and give them names and put them in the airing cupboard in winter.
Narrow Dog to Indian River Page 11