Narrow Dog to Indian River

by Terry Darlington

  So Rob is a Knight Templar—I have never met a Knight Templar before. I am sure he will be a verray parfit gentil knight, like Chaucer's knight in the Canterbury Tales. I wonder is Rob pure—knights are supposed to be pure, but perhaps since the sexual revolution they have relaxed the rules a bit. I believe the Templars are a Masonic order, like the Shriners, who are drunk all the time and run hospitals. The Templars must be the ones who get all the prestige commissions—I wonder what his first quest will be? Perhaps to find all the bums whose fathers fought in the Second World War and give them four thousand dollars, or find the place where all the lovely girls are kept who are sold from the catalogues with the big boats, and free them. That will be up some dark river, like the Waccama, and there will be alligators, and piranhas, and Dicks and Wallys who make their own cartridges. Childe Robert to the Dark Tower came. They didn't have a Middle Ages in the US so Childe Robert will have a lot to learn. Captain David is a bit old to be his squire—but of course Lila would be his squire, disguised as a boy—they liked a bit of that sort of thing in the Middle Ages.

  My mind drifted away, drowsed by the engine and my hangover.

  BLAARR! BLAARR!

  Oh my God! A great white ship right upon me—she's running me down! Why don't I look behind more often? That siren—it's just not nice. She's too close—she'll force me into the bank and turn me over. I can't speed up—I'm flat out! How near can I get to the side? They are on me!

  Oh it's them!

  Monica took Jim out on to the bow and waved and Captain David slid the plastic monster past us, with Jack at his side saluting, and Rob waved and shouted. Lila took photographs and David floored the pedal and flung ahead and the wake splashed into the woods on each bank.

  Perhaps Rob has received his instructions for his first quest, said Monica, and is on his way. The battle against evil is all but won.

  NEXT MORNING WE SAILED FROM PALM COVE Marina, at mile 747, to run thirty miles down the narrow cuts and the Tolomato River to the oldest town in the US. St Augustine was founded by the Spanish in 1565, and has changed hands twelve times since, but we understood that at the moment it was in the hands of the Americans. St Augustine is not pronounced St Augustine, it is pronounced like brilliantine—if anyone pronounces brilliantine any more. You put brilliantine on your hair after the war, and it smelt awful and got all over your girlfriend.

  Perhaps more to the point, it said in the book that to get to St Augustine you had to go across St Augustine Inlet, passing so near to the Atlantic that you are practically among the breakers. That's going to be bloody great, I thought—surfing the breakers on a board sixty feet long weighing seventeen tons, with a four-foot tiller arm—I could feel my shoulder going already.

  But here we come into the sound—Oh it's not too bad—I can see the other side—a bit of current running in from the ocean on my left—oh I've lost her—no she's OK—just aim off and bang into it—if you let these head-on currents pull your bow round and get you broadside on you're done for.

  Monica in the bow waving back at me, pointing and making the sign for dolphins. You hold out your hand in front of you and curve it up and down to suggest the flight of the beautiful creatures. If you like you can make a sucking noise too, though some might think that was overdoing it. You can practise at home, but make sure no one sees you.

  And there they are—lots of little fins, going all ways, and then four little dolphins slid from the deep, lingered among us in mid-air and slipped away. Baby dolphins, baby dolphins, shouted Monica.

  One more flight and some big fins. It was a pod, said Monica—they call it a pod, a family group. Oh the darlings, the little darlings.

  The maternal instinct is very strong in Monica.

  Now I can see the breakers—must be a quarter of a mile away—a boatyard and waterside houses on my left and a pelican just overhead. Pelicans are beauties in their ugly old way—white, brown and black heavily textured feathers, white and yellow domed head, yellow eyes. Their feet are black rubber like a swan—why has this one got his feet down? Oh, he's coming in on the grab-rail!

  As we sailed along I did most of the talking and the pelican nodded and smiled. Then I looked up from my GPS and he had gone. He saw you turning right to go up to St Augustine, said Monica, and he knew you were not going fishing in the Atlantic. He wanted a free ride and a free dinner.

  It would be lovely if we could have a pelican, I said. They don't interrupt you when you talk and they are so relaxed and wise and they don't whine and pull on the lead and they can catch their own dinner and you don't have to take them for walks.

  Good idea, said Monica—he could come into bed with us in the morning. Jim would snuggle up to me and you could snuggle up to your smelly old bird, all beak and feet.

  MONICA AND I TOOK JIM UP TO THE QUAY FOR his late night walk, and on the way Jim went on to one and three-quarter ears. When he is asleep, which is nearly all the time, Jim's ears are folded back on his head. They are like that too when he is running. What little time is left he mainly spends mucking about, with one ear up and the other down. But when he is about to attack, both ears are erect, and pointed forward, and quivering. Jim's ears are hollow like flowers and you can see through them and they are very soft. Apart from the coiled and hurdling muscles of his thighs, Jim's ears are his best bit.

  A chap appeared out of the dark with a small brown hairy dog. Good evening, said the chap.

  Jim and the small brown hairy dog pulled towards each other, and then walked in a circle, sniffing. They did not wag their tails.

  That's a nice little dog, said Monica. I used to have a nice little dog like that when I was a little girl.

  Would you like to see him dance? asked the chap.

  He held out his hand and made a circle in the air and the small brown hairy dog went up on his back legs and spun around. The chap made a circle the other way and the dog went the other way. Jim started to growl and his ears went stiff and began to quiver.

  Would you like to see him jump? asked the chap.

  He reached behind him on to his boat and took a long white stick and held it out and the small brown hairy dog jumped it one way and then the other and then went under it by mistake and the chap scolded him. Jim growled some more.

  Does he sing ‘Moon River’? I asked.

  Sure, said the chap.

  The small brown hairy dog cleared his throat and began to sing ‘Moon River’. After a couple of hoarse notes he gave up.

  He's got a cold, said the chap.

  Poor little fellow, said Monica.

  Jim gave a scream and went for the throat. He nearly pulled me off the dock and he was still growling when we got him back to the Phyllis May.

  That dreadful little hairy dog showed him up, I said. Jim didn't like him because he was jealous. Jim won't dance or jump or sing. In fact he won't do anything.

  He'll come when you call, said Monica.

  No he won't, I said. He'll sometimes stop and let you come and get him, but only if he wants you to.

  All that time and money in dog school, all those evenings we went with him and all that training and he's out of control, said Monica.

  But he's beautiful, I said, and he loves us, and he's got the softest ears.

  I don't like it when dogs do tricks, said Monica.

  Just as well, I said.

  Jim laid back his ears and grinned.

  ONWARD, ONWARD—WHITE PELICANS ON THE Matanzas River—blue-white, electric white. And alongside them on the sandbar hundreds of little black and white guys, like tennis balls on feet. They would have been shoulder to shoulder, if tennis balls had shoulders.

  When we passed waterside houses they sometimes looked Spanish, and some had big terraces boxed in with nets. No lonely mansions as in Georgia, but smaller plots, lower-rise houses, some condominiums—from formality to informality, to a summer place.

  We were going somewhere that was so informal it wasn't there at all.

  On the chart a grid of creek
s led off the Intracoastal and we turned right and docked at Palm Coast Marina, mile 803, under a high quay in the middle of a building site—piles of dirt, muddy roads, the foundations of condominiums and houses and wharves. The pretty semi-detached houses across the cut were finished and occupied. The Village is just up the road, said the dockmaster, but it's not finished.

  Henrietta came along the quay and looked at the boat and walked back to the door of the marina office. She wants her dinner, said the dockmaster, but we are out of shrimp. I'll get some later. Jim looked out of the boat and Henrietta fled under the bridge and into the sky. She's a dear old thing, said the dock-master, but she sure makes a terrible noise when she is cross—like a scream and a fart and a car crashing.

  The cry of the Great Blue Heron, I said, is never forgotten.

  We got lost in the building site but found our way to the road and walked with Jim along a jogging path by some woods, staying away from the ponds. Keep him on the lead, I said, then at least we will have a chance of pulling him back out of the alligator.

  Car parks, piles of gravel, condominium blocks ten storeys high. I see no Village, I said.

  We passed from the car park through an ugly gap in a tower-block wall and were in a space defined by the three blocks, the walls hung with balconies. It was a bit like a square in France or Italy, but it was a triangle. In the centre a rock band was doing a sound check and there were back projection screens above, facing three ways. Around the triangle were gift shops, clothes shops, and cafés and restaurants which reached out on to the central piazza. They were all full—it was Friday at five o'clock. We went into a bookshop and soon my T-shirt was dark with sweat. It must be an inferno in the summer, I said, and it's all fake—Disneyland, based on a European village square, in the middle of nothing but heaps of gravel and car parks and desolation.

  It's rather nice, said Monica.

  It's bogus, I say, and not nice bogus like Portmeirion. It's all kitsch—no style, no taste—look at those condominiums looming over it. Think of the heat—it's only February now but I'm drenched—you can't air-condition the whole thing. If you do you are back to a shopping mall. The Yanks get me down with their false environments—they are afraid of reality, in case it bites them in the bum, which of course it always does. Dear old England, where you can go out of doors without worrying about chiggers and alligators and dying of heat or cold. Bring back the rude waitresses, the dirty toilets, the Saturday night teenage drunks like Babylon. All is forgiven—just take me back to Blighty and put me in front of a telly and I'll watch the cricket with a couple of mates and drink London Pride out of cans or we'll walk up Tittensor Chase with Jim and he'll find that rabbit he buried last spring.

  You're tired, said Monica—we have been pushing along. You will finish your book soon, and we can go home.

  We walked back between the ponds—the alligators come out at dusk, I thought. Now we are by the woods—and there in the woods eight deer—we were right on them—they were looking straight at us—you could see their eyes shining, the white hairs on their muzzles, the black around their eyes, their ears like Jim's. They seemed as tall as me, and so dignified, so still.

  It's marvellous what they can do, I said. They sculpt them in clay, putting in every hair—takes ages—then they cast them in resin. They call it resin but it's just plastic. Plastic deer—like everything else round here it's all plastic; it's all a fake. Plastic lawn deer, part of the fake Village—garden ornaments from hell—fake, fake, fake!

  The deer tensed and blinked, and leaped into the air, and rushed away, their white bums flashing.

  FORCE ON, FORCE ON, TOWARDS DAYTONA Beach, down the Halifax River where the waters are half a mile wide. A short chop, and the wind behind us—just right for our long thin boat. The daymarks were not too far apart, and the banks on each side had houses and jetties. This was nothing to old Tits Magee.

  Safe at last, I thought, south of the tides and the currents, and I hugged my fleece and my oilskin and my scarf round me, and my Australian bush hat, and tried to remember in which restaurant I had left my Breton sailor's cap. I must have looked pretty dashing, and it was a shame that there was no one much to look dashing for—the Waterway was empty and the sky was grey.

  A funny noise I had not heard before—crackle, crackle—it was getting nearer and then I saw holes in the water. The rain was falling faster than you expect. This was rain from a bigger planet, rain with bigger drops that came faster because there was more gravity, and it came faster again, and thicker, and though there was no wind it whitened the water and filled the air and I could not read the chart on the roof or see twenty yards ahead.

  Such storms pass quickly in the US—most tornadoes last less than ten minutes. Tornado One was touching down in Sumter County sixty miles inland. The winds reached a hundred and fifty miles an hour and pulled trees out of the ground. Six people were killed. Tornado Two hit Lake County, fifty miles away. It travelled twenty-two miles, destroying homes, cars, businesses and trees. It killed fourteen people. Tornado Three hit New Smyrna Beach, south of us. It didn't kill anyone, but it left five miles of destruction. If we had been a few hours earlier the Phyllis May would have been flipped out of the water like a hooked trout.

  Those poor people, said Monica. Your friends or family killed; your house or your business blown away. Can you imagine the noise of it, the weight of it? It must have been like a truck falling on you, like a bomb.

  Norwood Thomas rang—Are you all right? Steve and I have been worried—those tornadoes were so near. Those poor people. Take care—you will always be in our thoughts.

  TERRIBLE, SAID TIM AND KIM. TERRIBLE. THE second worst in Florida's history. We have a quiet summer, apart from Ernesto, so all the forecasters are wrong about the hurricanes, but then in the winter the tornadoes get us. Those poor people. And we are in real estate, and it's bad for business.

  I had called into the bar at Daytona Beach Marina for a quick one before dinner and Tim and Kim were settled in. They were in their fifties. Real estate, I said—that's interesting—so much development all down the coast.

  There have been thousands of high-rise condominiums built in Florida in the last few years, said Tim. Business is not good just now but it will pick up. Kim and I work together—we have been married three months.

  Everyone I meet is on a second or third marriage, I said.

  It's because we have so much in America, said Tim. We get used to having what we want when we want it.

  I'm not sure you have everything. What a savage land—I don't understand how the East Coast was ever settled.

  Oh no, said Kim, it's really nice here.

  But the boardwalks are still smashed up from last year's hurricanes, and you can be swept away into the sky at any moment, and you can't go out of doors in the summer.

  That's true, said Kim, but we have air-conditioning.

  And the wildlife attacks you. I was chiggered—it was awful.

  Ah, the Red Bugs, said Kim. You paint yourself with nail polish and then they die and then you are all right.

  A fish bit me. And there are pythons in the swamps, and lizards that run at thirty-nine miles an hour, and alligators. Death stalks you wherever you go.

  There is some truth in what Terry is saying, said Tim. Look at that time when I dropped my mobile phone and bent down to pick it up and four banana spiders jumped out of the grass and fastened on to my neck. They were as big as my hand—like that.

  He held out his hand in a claw. I had to go to hospital and have the poison drawn out by syringes, he said. It was in defence of their eggs—they were mother spiders.

  He swelled up all down his face and neck and chest like a freak, said Kim. He was off work for six weeks.

  Tim's phone rang—Oh, good, said Tim. You will be really happy. Lovely neighbours and the wildlife is wonderful.

  I could see the eight scars on his throat under his chin—they were smooth and shiny and each was the size of a penny piece.

&
nbsp; Tim put the phone in his pocket and looked at me. In defence of their eggs, he said—they were mother spiders.

  MOSQUITO LAGOON, INDIAN RIVER—THE NAMES, the names. We are sailing through a pattern of islands and out on to Mosquito Lagoon. Mosquito Lagoon is big enough to appear on all the atlases, and the name had bewitched me. Now that I knew more about mosquitoes the romance had gone, but so had the mosquitoes because it was winter.

  We were running down the west shore outside the islands of spoil from the dredging and there were two miles of water on our left and then the narrow strip of the Canaveral National Seashore and then the Atlantic.

  A day from the big book of best days—the air was fresh and there was so much space, and all the birds and the water for ever, and a cloud or two, and the millions of fish beneath us, and the Atlantic just over the dunes where the merchant ships sailed along the coast.

  In 1942 Admiral King, the Commander-in-Chief of the US Navy, did not believe in blackouts or convoy escorts. So the amusement parks blazed and headlights flashed along the East Coast and the merchant ships passed before the lights and the U-boats waited with their bows pointed to the shore. Along the Atlantic coast and on the Gulf of Mexico four hundred ships were sunk, at the cost of nine U-boats. Five thousand US, British and Norwegian sailors died—twice the deaths at Pearl Harbor. You could read a newspaper on the Outer Banks by the light of blazing oil tankers, and wreckage and corpses lay on the beaches and the blood of the dying tankers fouled the waves. It was America's worst defeat of the war.

  The Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy lost 9 per cent of their number in the Second World War, and the British Army 6 per cent. The British merchant marine lost 17 per cent—thirty-three thousand men. We carried petrol, an old seaman told me one night in the Star. When that was torpedoed you stood no chance, and we all knew it. So the officers didn't call it petrol—they called it white oil.