We came to the new marina by the big bridge over Smith Creek and there outside a restaurant was an African-American gentleman playing upon the organ. Jim lay down on the cedar decking and I ordered a bottle of Samuel Adams and listened to ‘Groovin'’, and ‘Ferry 'Cross the Mersey’, played and sung Ray Charles style. You hear many more British songs in the US than you do in England. It is just like being at home, except you don't hear the songs at home, if I make myself clear.
A withered gentleman left his table. Is that a greyhound? he asked.
No, I said, a whippet.
The dog is being bothered by the music, said the withered gentleman. He went up to the African-American gentleman. Can you turn it down? You are bothering the dog.
The musician smiled and turned down the volume.
I have a resolution that when on the waterways I shall think the best and not take offence, and on the whole this has worked well. But I wish I had walked away from the withered gentleman, instead of carrying on talking to the little prick.
My dog died, he said. She was a boxer. She had cancer then she got it again. Cost me ten grand in chemotherapy and radiation in one year. She still died but when they took her away I could look her in the face. We are too far from the hospitals here—it is three hours to Greenville. My wife's got Parkinson's disease and so we will have to move. No one stays here very long.
When Jim and I got back into the boat it was empty but at once a large man with white hair fell into the front deck. I helped him up. Came to see your boat, he gasped. Lost my footing. Jesus what a boat—love it! I'm going to die soon. I've got cancer—it doesn't get much worse than that, does it? Come back to the Tiki Bar and drink with me.
You know Monica, I said later, there is something sinister about Oriental. Everyone has a terrible disease. There are no children. It is three hours to a big hospital—in three hours we can get from Stone to Glasgow. People move here because it is beautiful and because of the boating and because of the property prices but they are bored stiff and getting more and more ill and they are cut off from the world and their families and to ease the pain they drink all the time and smoke all the time and go to each other's parties. They are so sweet and so generous but they seem so needy I am afraid they will eat us up. One night they will be scratching at the windows, grinning, with blood on their teeth.
WE AWOKE ON SUNDAY TO THE GRINDING OF metal. At first I thought it was the breakfast crowd talking, but it was Bob Two cutting holes in the Phyllis May. Bob Two looked fit and had white hair and an easy manner as if he were many times a millionaire, which of course he was. He lay in the well deck in a flood of sparks.
This baby is made of the toughest steel I have ever seen, said Bob Two. I had to put the big head on the cutter. The drain hole each side is now six inches by two—she'll come up quick and be ready for the next wave. No, I will not take anything—a handshake is enough for me. Accept your new scuppers as a sign of welcome to Oriental.
Bob's hand shook slowly as he held it out, but he got the gas cylinders back in his truck before I could help him. Do you want to come back to my place and take my car? he asked. Or I'll take you anywhere—just let me know.
Dear Bob Two, I thought. No need to work the taps now.
• • •
WE WENT TO THE EPISCOPALIAN CHURCH. THE service was led by the ladies who look after things when the minister has put on the whole armour of God and gone to serve with the marines.
There are few public events lower key than an Episcopalian service and this ten o'clock observance was almost invisible. The Episcopalian Church does not worship God so much as show him a certain amount of respect. During the service we were asked, as usual, to greet each other. Peace, said a fairly withered man in a brown sports jacket.
Peace, I replied.
Peace and the love of God, said the fairly withered man, which passeth all understanding. He embraced me—What sort of engine does she have?
On the way out of the church he approached me again. It has been a privilege to have you at our service, he said, to share our Sunday on this God-given morning. What's she like in a beam sea?
They are so generous and kind, said Monica at lunch, laying her teeth by her plate.
Along this coast millions of years ago there were sharks that could snatch the Phyllis May and break her back and pick her clean of people and dogs. In the Tiki Bar Monica had made a friend called Bev who had a fossilized shark's tooth seven inches long. Bev had given Monica five little teeth polished to jet—one to protect us each month to Florida.
• • •
WHY DO I HATE ORIENTAL SO MUCH? WHY AM I so cold? It seems unfair when everyone is so good to us. I lay waiting for five o'clock and tried to work it out. Heaven knows I will take a glass but I hate the relentless drinking—being summoned to the bar at five o'clock every day—and their relentless smoking. I hate the contrast between the hostel for the Mexican girls who process the shrimps and the wooden palaces by the water. I hate the way the streets where the African-American people live are left off the street map. I hate the lack of children, the way everyone seems to be playing a role, and people hanging around waiting for the next trip to the bar or the hospital. I hope I will never be rude to a gongoozler, but these people have pushed me close—I found one chap in the bedroom cabin. I hate the way they nearly all seem to be divorced. Monica and I know what a broken home is like—our fathers were in the war.
Rich, desperate, sick people, running away from their families and the world—My God, they are a bunch of bloody ex-pats!
I do hope the good and generous citizens of Oriental will forgive me—four o'clock in the morning is not when the mind is most clear or the heart most full of love, and of course I was scared. The captains had departed and to get back to the Atlantic coast we had to cross Carteret County and to get to Carteret County we had to cross the Neuse River and the Neuse River was four miles wide.
Our last solo crossing in the Phyllis May had been the Etang de Thau, the inland sea by the Mediterranean, where we set out one morning two years ago and nearly didn't come back. You can see your way round the Etang de Thau, because you stick to the margins and head for the lighthouse, but you can't see across the Neuse—we had to rely on charts and daymarks.
The makers of charts pour out alphabet soup and photograph it, and the charts are impenetrable even on a table at home. On the top of the boat before dawn, forget it.
Daymarks are poles stuck in a river or an estuary. They have green or red squares or triangles on them. You go to the left of one and to the right of the other, or to the right of one and to the left of the other. Few boaters ever work out why, and none of them managed to explain it to me.
As you steer the Phyllis May you can see the beetle boat crawling along the four-inch GPS screen by your elbow, but I was still scared. This was the first crossing in America on our own, and we were leaving at dawn regardless of a poor forecast, hoping to get over the river before the wind came up. We had been here ten days and, overwhelmed by hospitality, had lost too much time.
A BANGING ON THE BOAT—HELLO, HELLO!
On the quay a white beard two feet long. The beard came out of the darkness into the boat and behind the beard a tall thin man with a stocking cap. He had two fruit-preserving jars under his arm full of something golden. I am Tennessee Ronnie, he said, and this is to help you through the winter. And here is a bag of apples.
How wonderful, Tennessee, I said, how generous. Is it honey?
In a way, said Tennessee Ronnie. It's Tennessee Brown—the best there is.
I just don't know what to say, Tennessee—you are from Tennessee?
Tennessee Ronnie's face saddened. No, he said, I was born in Arkansas, but only twenty miles from Tennessee. They are waiting for you at breakfast.
IT WAS STILL DARK BUT THE BREAKFAST CROWD was in—Ike, Sigourney, the lot—Bob and Dick of course.
Owya doon, they cried. They did not know the dark thoughts I had harboured in the night.
>
Bloody awful, I said, I'm terrified. Haven't slept since midnight. The Neuse is four miles wide and I've never tried to navigate by daymarks before and it's going to be windy.
No trouble, said Johnny Cash—you leave the green ones on the left—follow the magenta track on your GPS screen—I walk the line.
You're telling him wrong you old fool, said Ernest Hemingway. You leave the green ones on the right; it's an estuary. Terry, why is your dog so thin?
I picked up my coffee and muffins and went back across the road to the boat. My stomach didn't feel good and my brain was running without oil, making a grinding noise. Jim was shivering and whining. Monica was setting up the backup GPS on her computer in the galley and looked pale.
I heaved out of the hatch and stood on the back of the boat. The breakfast crowd had come across the road and stood two feet from me and watched me put on my life jacket. You try putting on one of those inflatable life jackets with straps when you are disabled with fear and there are twelve people watching you, making remarks. I put it on sideways, then upside down, then the right way and reached over and shook hands with everyone and dropped into reverse and set out backwards for Florida.
Out of the slip, slowly into the harbour basin, avoiding the shrimp boats and yachts. I might be frightened of going to sea, but I can handle a narrowboat in flat water. I turned in my own length to scattered applause and looked back to wave goodbye. On the balcony of the café a row of people was holding cards a foot square. I could see in the dawn light the numbers 9, 8, 9, 7, 9, 8, 9, 8.
I wonder which bastard gave me a seven. I bet it was that Sigourney Weaver.
SEA OF GRASS
North Carolina
The Most Wonderful Moment — Tears for Jackie — Half a Dozen Beards on Stools — The Gongoozler's Charter — Jim Began to Shudder — It's Only Us, Said the Dolphins — The Swansboro Scale — Sea of Grass — A Great Deal of Water Rushing About — You Know What You Are, Terence My Son? — With a Wag of His Tail He Was Gone — I Heard It Singing in the Wires — A Fox Jumped Her from the Garden Shed — Jim in the Zone — Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever — Nine People Were Killed — What About the Piranhas? —Crossing the Cape Fear River — The Brits Started Drinking at Ten in the Morning — I'll Just Die if I Don't Get That Recipe — I Blasted It with a Shotgun — White as Eternity
MY NERVES QUIETENED AS WE CAME OUT ON TO the Neuse, and my brain began to tick over. A congregation of cormorants, largely submerged, let us pass. Do they sleep in the water? Every spin of the engine would take us nearer the safety of the other bank, but further from the safety of Oriental. I watched the beetle boat on the GPS screen at my elbow and I watched for the poles with the markers and there they were, nearer and clearer than I expected and they seemed to match the ones on the screen. Past the last one and out into the stream, the beetle pushing nearer to the middle, the southern shore four miles away, the Oriental shore still close.
It was dawn and the wind got up and the Phyllis May began to roll, pulling the counter from under my feet—not very nice, but there seems to be no water coming in at the bow. That was a big one—now don't lose control of yourself—keep a firm hold on the tiller and smile in case Monica looks back from the bow. How far is the daymark for the other shore? I can't see it—just the bank a long way off. You can't see the bloody things, you can't separate them from other things on the bank, and when you do you don't know which mark it is, or which side to pass it, or where to go next. But settle down, you old coward, watch the little beetle boat, he won't let you down. The engine, my pride, was clamouring and leaving a white tunnel just under the water and the wake jostled with the chop from the side. Use your weight, Terry, lock the tiller, trust your engine and trust Pete Wyatt at Canal Cruising in Stone who set it up.
We forced on and the banks and the trees came nearer and the waves lessened and we were in the mouth of a great creek. You sailed a perfect course, said Monica—I was checking on my computer screen.
I went and sat in the bow with Jim, who was still shivering. Jim had wanted to settle in Oriental. Everyone loved him and the mayor was a dog, and he could kill squirrels and the black retriever. I put his bed on the bow. He narrowed his eyes and went to sleep, and the creek closed to half a mile wide and the sun came out and the waves became ripples and the water went richest blue.
Terry! Terry! Look!
Two grey bodies, each about three hundred pounds, close together, came out of the water right by us, going at our speed, and flew with us, looking at us, and then slipped back into their own element. I could hear them slap the water, I could hear them breathe, see the muscles working, the water dripping from their skin, feel the power.
In response to this marvel of nature I should have cried out What hath God wrought! or Welcome beautiful creatures to our little adventure! But all I could think of was Bloody 'ell! Bloody 'ell! I shouted. And Bloody 'ell! again as the dolphins encored their joyful flight.
You can see them in zoos God forgive you and you can see them on the telly, or you can watch them from the deck of a cruise ship, or once in your life they will say Can we join you for a moment in your own world right here and now because it would suit us to do so?
And there they are in the sunlight, the water shining on them, your own special creatures from another world come to have a laugh, just with you. It was the most wonderful moment in ten years of boating.
THEY ALL THINK JACKIE WAS LITTLE BUT SHE wasn't, said Becky. She was nearly as tall as John—have a look at the photos. She called me her Cheffette because I cooked on her friend Maurice's boat. She was lovely.
Bob and Becky had met us in Atlantic Yacht Basin in June and now we were twenty feet in the air on top of their trawler at Seagate Marina on Adam's Creek Canal, halfway across Carteret County, mile 194 on the Intracoastal. Bob was a sturdy chap and Becky was small and blonde. They were a bit younger than us.
We were captain and crew for five years for Maurice Tempelsman, said Becky, and Jackie was there a lot. It was after Onassis—she was very happy with Maurice.
Being a captain is not just sitting around you know, said Bob. You have to plan all the journeys and you have a budget to look after everything. You can't clean a seventy-foot Hatteras trawler in one day, believe me. Have a bit more steak.
Bob and Becky had a stainless steel barbecue that looked like a robot. I chatted with it and said Take me to your leader and Exterminate, as you do, and they thought that was funny, but they had not heard of Daleks. They gave Monica another large gin and filled their own glasses. I was not drinking much because I was still getting over Oriental.
Becky was crying. She was so sweet, she said. When she looked at me and said—Becky, help me buckle this travel case, I don't think I can do it, then I realized how ill she was. She was so beautiful.
Becky cried some more and Monica put her arms around her. Remember little John-John saluting his father's coffin? asked Bob. Grew up into a bloody idiot. Nearly killed one of his friends. Skin-diving—gave him the bends. Then he flies straight into the sea with his wife and her sister.
JFK must have been a terrible hard act to follow, I said. The Mafia killed him you know. Joe Kennedy gave them money to fix the presidential election then JFK set Bobby on them so they killed him. They may have killed Bobby too. I read a book about it.
There are plenty of books, said Bob, some better than others.
We carried on talking while Becky wept. Perhaps we were being callous, but it seemed all right at the time.
I haven't thought of Jackie for so long, said Becky. She was so beautiful.
NEXT DAY WE WERE NEAR THE OCEAN AGAIN, AT Town Creek Marina in Beaufort, just sheltered by the outstretched fingers of the Outer Banks.
The city waterfront was big boats, gift shops, old houses. The sort of place you are supposed to visit—the sort of place that bores us stiff.
On the way back to the marina we passed the Ebb Tide Motel. The tide was going out for the Ebb Tide Motel, and looked as if it m
ight not come in again. Opposite the motel, the Handlebar, which looked like a chicken shed. Let's go and have a look, said Monica.
I'm not going in there, I said. It's bikers—they'll rape and eat us.
Come on, said Monica. Jim pulled her across the road. The smell of beer can mean scratchings.
In the Handlebar there were half a dozen beards on stools, with thin men in overalls looking out from behind them. Their eyes gleamed. On draught was Budweiser and Foster's. Monica had a vodka and tonic. The barmaid was blonde, tattooed in blue and orange.
At the bar the owner, who had been to England once and liked it. She asked us why we were here and the barmaid gave Jim a biscuit. The beards watched closely, sometimes making loud comments, which we did not understand, and they would all laugh. A large gentleman bought us a round. The beards began to tell us that they were fishermen, and one of them asked me outside into the car park.
He looked like those confederate soldiers you see in old photographs—tall and thin, with a plaid shirt and desperate eyes. He took me just outside the door and stopped. He leaned close and I realized I had forgotten to bring the pepper spray.
I wondered if he was going to knife me or offer me sex but he was speaking in my ear. I was a writer, so he was reciting his poetry. He got through his two short poems smoothly and smiled. The poems were about keeping the planet clean.
Very nice, I said, and we agreed that the most important thing about a poem was the rhythm, and went back inside, where the large gentleman had bought us another round, and the beards were telling Monica about fishing and Jim was getting more biscuits.
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