Look old man, if you don't mind me saying, you can't just pick up your beer and drink it—the bottle can freeze to your tongue and medical attention is expensive here. Put it in your armpit for a few minutes first to warm it up.
Here's the bread—those brown balls under the rolls are called Hush Puppies. You remember Hush Puppies—the shoes we all wore in the seventies. When they went out of fashion they were shipped to the US and ground up and fried. They wash them first but they still taste a bit leathery to me.
Here we are—yes, that's all yours—you haven't been given the buffet for a wedding by mistake. Don't panic—you are not expected to eat it or anything—you take it home in a box.
Just pick the fried bread from off the top of the salad. And have acouple of those slices of green tomato in batter—each is four hundred calories. That will make a satisfying and well—balanced meal. I shall eat half of my collard greens—cabbage with lumps of fat bacon—and I will manage a shrimp. The shrimps are the size of gerbils. The grits is corn porridge by the way. It will solidify into a cake by tomorrow morning and I will slice it up for breakfast.
Now the waiters are going to do the Macarena—they do it every twenty minutes to show they are having a great time. It's noisy but it will be over soon and you don't have to join in. Here, have half one of my gerbils. No, hands off the pork ribs—Jim likes those.
Our bill already—lovely thank you Ellie Mae—my friend will pay. How many different parties on average would you serve at this table in an evening? Ten? Well done, Ellie Mae. Yes it was lovely—can we have the big box please?
That's right—at least 15 per cent tip—we don't want to be beaten up by her boyfriend in the car park. They don't pay her anything of course, but she counts on a hundred dollars a night. Now hold on to me and feel your way round this corner.
Quite sure you don't want a T-shirt? You won't find them like that in Tunbridge Wells, with the shrimps riding surfboards and playing guitars.
Be very careful here on the stairs. Watch the carpet, it's torn—
Too late!
Oh my God what a mess. You've spilt Jim's pork ribs all over the place. How do you expect him to eat them now? And look at you—food all over you. Go over there where no one can see you and I will sort this out.
Ellie Mae my child—I will come by tomorrow about this time for a chat. I may be able to help you in your career.
• • •
WE HAD FIFTY MILES TO GO FROM CHARLESTON, and you can't do that in a narrowboat on a short winter's day unless you have a full crew and get the ropes off early. Put this on first, said Robert, and tied on to the tunnel light a Christmas wreath of pine branches and a red velvet bow.
Under the flyovers and across Charleston harbour and into the cut—broad, blue, jettied: houses thinning slowly. Faster than top speed—the tide was with us.
I was on the tiller and Bubba and Robert were hanging on the grab—rail. We were brought up here, said Robert. We used to go water-skiing down these stretches. You can't now, it's No Wake, No Wake—all jetties and houses. We lived here a long time—we knew everyone.
I tried to follow what the brothers were saying over the noise of the engine.
That's where that girl, said Bubba.
They say she very nearly, said Robert.
Actually she did, more than once—I should know, said Bubba.
The pistachio ice cream, said Robert.
It was strawberry. And it was in Barefoot Landing, so it doesn't count.
Her brother, said Robert.
Oh my God her brother, oh my God.
County Judge now, said Robert.
They never found the gorilla, said Bubba.
Or the piano accordion, said Robert.
Sometimes it's best, said Bubba, just to let things fade away.
Inside the boat Jim was lying on his back with his legs in the air, his paws bent over, grinning. He loves having friends on the boat—more pack power, and more chance of getting your tummy tickled.
Six hours later and we were on St Helena Sound, a great water, where the Edisto and the Combahee flow into the Atlantic and I was on the tiller again, and the sound stretched smooth into the ocean and into the sky.
As always on a calm day at high tide there was a sense of abundance. This is America—be astonished at the waters—we have rivers that dwarf the Rhône—we have two oceans. We have Arcadias of forests. Marvel at the marshes and the yellow grass—we have thousands of miles of marsh and yellow grass. Be charmed by the people—we are three hundred million—we are multitudes.
In 1776, when the population of America was only three million, Thomas Paine published his book Common Sense—
America doth not yet know what opulence is; and although the progress which she hath made stands unparalleled in the history of other nations, it is but childhood, compared with what she would be capable of arriving at, had she, as she ought, the legislative powers in her own hands.
Hit the bullseye with that one, Tom. Tom Paine's books were burned in England by the public hangman, and books don't get much better than that.
BEAUFORT, SOUTH CAROLINA, IS A DIFFERENT place to Beaufort, North Carolina, as you might expect, and further to clarify matters it is pronounced bewfoot.
Beaufort waterfront is beautiful. The trees, the old houses not too tall, the main street just there, the shops. On our left a walk along the bay between the palms—yellow grass, white boats, the tide rising. The evening was short and night the usual surprise and the street lamps had been coiled with lights so they looked like candy walking—sticks.
Heads down, here come the gongoozlers—three Young Ole Boys and a Young Ole Girl.
Oh my Gard, oh my Gard—you're here, you're here! They told us you were coming! It's the replica, the replica! It's come! It's come! Nearly submerged—that's so authentic—that's real neat! Now where does the mine go at the front? Where is the conning tower? Shouldn't she have Hunley on the side? Didn't know she had windows! Did she really have flowers on the top?
We normally dive at dawn, I explained, and spend the day at ten fathoms, but I brought her up this afternoon so the citizens of Beaufort could have a good look at her, and to clean the windows and water the flowers. The mine dropped off and started to tick and it's just underneath the pontoon where you are standing.
Oh dear, I guess they told us wrong, sir and ma'am—do forgive our poor manners—but she's a real cool boat, just the same—Gee she's so thin. Y'all take care now—is that a dog? She looks like a little deer.
AT NIGHT JIM WAITS FOR US ON OUR BED IN THE cabin. We kick him out but before dawn he creeps back and we are too sleepy to push him off. Every morning he comes five minutes earlier. This morning I woke up and tickled him behind the front leg and he groaned quietly, as he does when he is very pleased. I rubbed his chest and felt his heart beat.
I made breakfast, and turned on the radio, and it was Lowcountry Radio— The Dick and Wally Show.
I was so excited, said Dick or Wally. My friend took a chance and it came off. It must have been two hundred yards—you could see the jerk and then it sort of rolled and then it was away into the trees. Nice antlers, a real good one. We laughed and laughed just with the pleasure of it. The fresh air, the sport. I love nature—it had been ages since I shot anything.
Wish I had been there, said Wally or Dick, it must have been magic.
Then this doe, said Dick or Wally—looked like a doe, about a hundred yards, and I hit just behind the front leg to get the heart and it sort of hopped into the bushes but we found him and he had little buttons on his head. I didn't flinch at all when I pressed the trigger—that was the best bit. It is so easy to flinch and you miss and you feel bad and you have let yourself down. We were flying, man, we were happy—you should have seen him hop!
I thought What have you got to flinch about—you are not the one who will be shot and left to blunder round in pain until you die, so some bastard can get pleasure from you.
At dinner that night
a man in a tartan shirt talking loudly to his friend—It's the spray that gives it away, the pattern—you can tell if you have hit them in the chest or not, or in an artery. I look on the trees, but you can often see the blood on the ground, or on the bushes. I make my own cartridges now, got more power—you can tell by the blood.
I suppose there are Dicks and Wallys everywhere, said Monica.
Even in Arcadia, I said.
TO GET TO HILTON HEAD WE HAD TO CROSS Port Royal Sound and Port Royal Sound is five miles wide. Sure we had managed the Bogue Sound on our own but that was more a case of running along the shore—Port Royal Sound is an estuary like the Cape Fear River and the widest crossing we had tackled without a pilot.
To get to Port Royal Sound you have to go ten miles down the Beaufort River and then you go on to the heaving main and you can be swept out to sea and if the wind comes up against the tide you can be turned over. As my old rowing partner Dai Morgan in Llandaff would put it—One slip boyo and you're buggered—literally!
We laid the chart on the table and studied the thirty-mile route and went online and checked the tides and the weather. There would be a slight risk of rain and winds of five to ten miles an hour. I didn't know what winds of five to ten miles an hour meant—they sounded pretty fast to me.
Like your girlfriend blowing in your ear, said the chap in the next boat.
When we left town the afternoon was still, and we wove down the Beaufort River through cuts and narrows in the yellow grass. The river became wider and wider and when it was a mile wide it stopped and Tits Magee faced the endless white waters of Port Royal Sound, his heart pounding, his resolve evaporating because he could not see the daymark or where he was on the chart and the beetle on the GPS said we were crossing Jermyn Street. Call me a scaredy-pants but I do so much like to see the other side before I set out to sea in a canal boat.
We might pause, gentle reader, as poor Tits faces the terrible crossing and bring you up to date on some matters from Virginia which must have been troubling you. Yes thanks, my hernia operation worked fine, and the heart doctor prescribed a tablet and it has fixed my palpitations though no doubt it will be destroying other vital organs—I know what goes on in the pharmaceutical industry.
But here I am for the moment alive and scared and far from shore and looking into the sun for the pole and triangle of the next daymark, far away and thread-thin and fading and I've lost it and it was probably something else anyway. I would blame Monica but can't think of a reason and she has gone below. But she just pointed at the chart and said There you are as if it was easy.
I could go on into the nothingness and keep hoping and that might be best. Let's try to work out what the GPS is showing—use the magnifying glass and look closely into the hood—and think man, think. And keep the tiller going straight—look where the sun is—you have wandered forty-five degrees—you'll finish up in the Gulf Stream. The GPS screen is clearer now—so that is where we are! Now the chart—you will be a long way back from where you think because you always are and the narrow bits are broad and the broad bits go to the end of the world—Oh look over there! I think I can see my daymark again! It is! It is! It's the mark! The mark! Now relax, you were never in danger because you kept so cool. There's the next mark as well! It is! It is! Now we won't die! We aren't going to die!
Out and out into the five-mile sound and there are no day-marks any more and the magenta line showing the Intra coastal Waterway has gone from the GPS screen but the water is smooth and look—that black blur over there. If I head for that I am bound to hit the other side somewhere and then I can run along it. And I can see some sort of headland—that has to be the entrance to Skull Creek. Why don't I just head for that? That's why the daymarks have run out and there is no magenta line—you can just sail towards the headland. It's all so simple really—it's a lovely day and you just sail towards the headland, out across the shining sound, and here come the dolphins!
EACH NIGHT AT HARBOUR TOWN YACHT BASIN on Hilton Head Island cost us two bucks fifty a foot. Harbour Town is a gated community, and like Portmeirion village in North Wales it was designed around a concept.
Portmeirion is bogus Italian and seizes you and flies you out over the Dee estuary, dizzy with the fun of it. Harbour Town is fifties American and clean and tasteful like Singapore or Switzerland, and makes you feel death is too much to hope for.
There is a red and white candy-bar lighthouse and gift shops and a circular boat basin from a Mediterranean tour catalogue and the blocks of flats they call condominiums like slabs of cheese around the basin and among the trees. The basin is full of million-dollar powerboats and cruisers and sport-fishers. One white plastic cruiser in the middle of the basin was a hundred and twenty feet long. It was called the Passion for Excellence. Once a day, for reasons not revealed to us, it would go out into the sound for an hour, with a grinding of bow thrusters-Passion for Tupperware, I said to Monica, har har.
The Phyllis May docked next to a sixty-foot sport-fisher—no one on board. No one on board any of the boats. We walked along the pontoon and looked back and the marina staff were running tours to the Phyllis May in a little boat. Six gongoozlers were standing up in the boat in a row, quite still, as if this was their last chance to see something so strange and if they moved it would open its wings and fly away.
I felt sorry for the Harbour Town gongoozlers—one day something arrives from the world outside, where things are dirty and make no sense but can be so beautiful you just want to look and look and wonder what else you have lost.
We walked to the beach and a notice told us to cooperate with the ecological plans for the area and clear off, so we walked down the side of a golf course. It said in the book the golf course was one of the finest in the country, and indeed Kidderminster's best could not have woven the grass on those greens.
The Harbour Town mosquitoes are trained in laboratories by men in spectacles to bite writers who don't like Harbour Town, and when we got back to the Phyllis May I had been bitten twelve times on each forearm and twelve times on each leg—three nights' sleep broken and the scars still there two weeks later. The residents of Harbour Town would have laughed like anything if we had told them but we spoke to no residents of Harbour Town and we heard no one laugh.
• • •
I LAY AWAKE SCRATCHING, LOVELY GEORGIA ON my mind.
Tomorrow we cross the state line, Monica had said, and we go up the Savannah River, which is deep and full of ships. The thing is not to get run down by a container ship.
I remembered that sailboat skipper we met in Beaufort—when he sailed out on to the Savannah River he had his radio on the wrong channel and forgot to look over his shoulder. The container ship sounded its siren and he looked round and saw it coming on him, fifty yards high, fifty yards away.
Now wherever he is he keeps his back to the wall and moves from one foot to the other, ready to run across the room and dive out of the window.
RAINING ALL OVER
THE WORLD
Georgia
With a Sad Sweet Song — I Think It Is Titanium Slag — She Had Antlers on Her Head-Bunch of Crooks — The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner — Now She Is Like the Rest— Only the US Army Can Save Us— Eight Thousand Acres of Trees— Now That's What I Call Hospitality — A Sour and Plangent Bellow — Pretty T-shirt and Silver Sandals — Dreadful Things at Three in the Morning — One Day at a Time, Sweet Jesus
I SAT AT THE TILLER, LOOKING OVER MY SHOULDER too often but otherwise in a contemplative mood. It would soon be dark and the container ships seemed to have knocked off and so had everybody else, including the pelicans, who had gone down the pub. The grey river was a mile wide, with a terrible shore—ragged machinery hundreds of feet high spilling noise and steam, hung with lights like Christmas in hell. But when we came on Paris from the rear three years ago in the Phyllis May the City of Light had looked savage, unbuilt, infested with pirates; so the jury was still out on Savannah.
I had always wan
ted to go to Georgia, and I knew it would be a rainy night when I arrived—that it would be raining all over the world. Maybe I would be in time for the midnight train.
Our younger daughter is called Georgia—after my father, but with a sad sweet song in mind. ‘Georgia on My Mind’ was written by Hoagy Carmichael, and so were ‘Stardust’ and ‘The Nearness of You’, not to mention ‘Heart and Soul’. Yes, I know he wrote ‘My Resistance Is Low’, but show some forgiveness, it's Christmas. Did you know his real name was Hoagland? You don't care? That information won me a beer in the Handlebar in Beaufort—my God what's that?
A huge tug coming right at us—hold right, Darlington, it's a wide river—there you are he's given you fifty yards. A hoot, a hoot! He hooted me! I have been hooted by a huge tug! He said hello! He likes me!
I remembered that time on the Birmingham Main Line Canal when we had just bought the Phyllis May. A railway runs alongside the cut and a long train came up behind me and as he passed the driver hooted, and he waved. For a moment on one bright morning I was accepted among the oily engineering aristocracy and their lovely old machines. I had never been welcomed again into that brotherhood, until the tug hooted me in Savannah.
We are moving fast with the tide behind us and here comes Savannah up on that hill and here comes the wharf—here it is—look at that fool—NO I CAN'T COME IN THAT WAY—the dockmaster doesn't know what he is doing—you don't come in with a strong current behind you and try to force the back in unless you plan to go straight into that glass-fibre freak just downstream and out the other side, and there goes a million quid.
Chuck him the bow rope, Mon, and ask him to get it on a cleat and hold the end of it and fall silent and show some respect and let me dock my boat my way—the current will sweep me right round and I will come in as neat as that Jeff Goldblum landing on the butter and we will be safe in Savannah, which looks a very strange place indeed.
Narrow Dog to Indian River Page 17