After some time we attracted the barman, and paid. I'm still off duty, he explained.
Jolly nice of you to stay, I said.
It's a privilege to serve, said the barman.
The Michigan men and Monica and I took pictures with our arms round each other. Nephew Merle seemed a little drunk. I owe it all to Jesus, said Burl.
Now I've met some English people I feel different about Europe, said Carl, and I shall be over to see y'all. I think you are very nice people and I am glad the Dutch won't torture me.
A GREY MORNING AS WE LEFT CLEWISTON ON the Okeechobee Waterway, for a short run following the side of the lake before we turned west towards Fort Myers. The hot wind was hard in our faces.
I had heard there were alligators on this waterway. And indeed the shore was covered in twisted bodies, brown and green and grey, tumbled over each other, but the bodies were lifeless and as we came nearer in the poor light they resolved into stones and logs and reefs.
Then we began to see the nostrils and the eyes.
An alligator looks very like flotsam but you can tell it is an alligator by the two sets of flotsam breaking the surface. One set is the nostrils, and the other is the eyes. They move together, as they are on the same ancient head. As you get nearer they sink slowly. The sinking is the worst bit—they are not frightened: just considering their next move. Where do they go? They are aware of you, that's for sure; they would like to kill you, no question; so they must be under the surface trying to find a way to reach you and organize a bit of twisting and drowning.
On the back of the boat Monica and I were inches over the water, with no protection—if an alligator could brave the prop he could swipe us off the counter like a crazed shoplifter. I could sense the reptiles’ frustration—it had been a cold winter and they were starving—that is why so many are in the water hunting, not lying out on the bank. How can they get a meal out of this noisy monster hurrying by?
A parliament of vultures—the ones with the black heads. A hundred of them standing around and on a corpse as big as a horse—the chest empty, the limbs splayed in abandon, the soul gone to the marshes of paradise, where it could feast on boaters for all eternity, with two twistings and drownings a day. You can be sorry even for a killer reptile—he must have been a beauty.
We churned on and here was another big fellow. He lay facing the Waterway. He was not moving apart from his yellow eyes, which followed us. He was perhaps twelve feet long.
What to say of him, God knows.
Such violence. And such repose.
Oh my God!
The alligator hit the water in a ringing bellyflop and made for the back counter of the boat, his tail driving hard. Monica swerved and stepped as far as she could into the engine room and looked down for the jaws coming up for her legs.
The prop thrashed the water into yellow foam.
The Phyllis May fled along the far side of the cut, Monica pressing the Morse handle hard down for a few more revolutions and more foam and more noise. Rows of nostrils and eyes twitched and swivelled as she passed. Into the basin before the lock and the boat turned towards the gates which opened out to the west—the last gates before the Gulf of Mexico.
Thank heaven, said Monica—I think he's gone. Watch out we don't lock through with him or he'll have me off the back while we are waiting.
MOORE HAVEN ON THE CALOOSAHATCHEE Canal, the little town half blown and washed away.
Dinner was two catfish, a gift on the dockside from an old guy and his wife.
What bait did you use? I asked.
I had meant to be a fisherman myself on the Intracoastal but they don't let you fish in the marinas and I was too lazy to go somewhere else. But if he would tell me his bait I might have a go some time.
Night crawlers, said the old guy.
I did not enquire further.
Catfish are strong-tasting fish, enjoyed by many. They are grey, and white underneath and slippery, with a big head and whiskers and stiletto spines. The Intracoastal is seething with catfish and they have been around for millions of years. Under the skin the head is protected with a carapace, and although the fish was only a couple of pounds I could not cut through the backbone. Monica was dispirited by the fish appearing to be still alive after two hours, though I had bashed it most vigorously to release it from this world of toils and snares.
We were enjoying our catfish when my thumb started to hurt—in the angle where it joins the hand—the place where my grandfather had always told me that lockjaw started. The catfish had driven a spine into me as I strove to get it off the old guy's hook. It's not poisonous, he had said.
But the pain was so intense that there must be venom in the wound. It was not a normal puncture pain—it was too harsh. And I could feel it going along my thumb. I put down my knife and fork and explained my fears to Monica. The pain reached my wrist and now my elbow and as God is my witness I felt it reach my heart.
It's reached my heart, Monica, I said. I suppose it had to be—something in the US was going to get me in the end. It is the poison catfish, the killer of the waterways—the whiskered death.
Have some more mashed potato, said Monica.
WE WERE FAST AGROUND IN THE MIDDLE OF the Caloosahatchee River, two miles from Fort Myers. Monica had been at the tiller. Monica does not make many mistakes, so when she fouls up she takes it hard.
It's a very narrow channel, she said.
Yes, I said, and you are outside it.
I didn't mean to do it, said Monica—I was pushed over by another boat.
You sound like Tony Blair, I said. No one is questioning your motives. You know what they say—there are two sorts of boaters—those that run aground, and liars. These great rivers and lagoons are often inches deep. The Indian River is only three feet average. We are half a mile from the shore here, but look over the side and there is the sun shining on the bottom.
I spoke to the Towboat US chap on the VHF, said Monica. He said we would know him because he is a fat man in a red boat.
I looked through my binoculars, through which you can see as plainly as with the naked eye. There were the new condominium blocks at Fort Myers and our marina under the bridge two miles away, and the traffic on the Edison Bridge and under it an insect boat foaming our way. Fat man come, I said, in red boat. Can we have a chat about Jim while we are waiting?
The fleas have gone, said Monica. American fleas need American flea-spray.
Great, but I was thinking about what you said about finding him a pal. Perhaps we should ring Whippet Rescue when we get back.
He wouldn't be lonely when we went out, said Monica, and it wouldn't be so bad for them in kennels if there were two of them.
We'll call her Daisy, I said.
Jess, said Monica.
I'VE WRITTEN A POEM, I SAID TO MONICA, TO BE read at my funeral. I'm over seventy, and you have got to be realistic. We might be taken up in the Gulf of Mexico tomorrow—it could be the Rapture. The poem is called ‘Darling’. It's for you.
Where the bow touches the water
In the light on a black headland
Look for me there
I shall not lean on the tiller again
Or hold you in the midnight storm
But there are places where earth rubs up
close to heaven
Look for me there
Mist on the cut
Ice talking along the hull
The sunset canal incarnadine
Darling-look for me there
You've made me cry, said Monica.
AN ADVENTURE BEGINS AT DAWN WITH QUIET conversations on a runway or a platform or a quay, about things someone has forgotten to bring.
Captain Rob arrived on the beat of six thirty and I was on the back of the boat, hoping I had not woken the whole marina when I banged open the hatch. Marv from the next boat untied our line and I backed slowly into the basin and turned on to the Caloosahatchee.
In the saloon Monica was trying to reason with
Jim. He didn't want to set out again—nine months of being chucked about in a buzzing tube is a long time. He shuddered and whined and would not be comforted. Jim had had enough.
But hang on Jimmy—this is it—the last adventure—the Gulf of Mexico. Soon we are going home.
The river was a couple of miles wide and a blue day arose and there was a breeze and I gave Captain Rob the tiller.
It is my pleasure to help, he said, in this grand endeavour.
Captain Rob was a grandfather, though he looked like a beach boy. He had been a banker and decided he preferred to go fishing so he bought a couple of boats, eighteen and twenty-two feet long, and hung out his shingle, offering backwater fishing in the creeks and lagoons and rivers. There are lots of fish round here—one day he caught seventeen different sorts. For the first year he and his wife lived off peanut butter and now he was earning more than he did as a banker. Like our other gallant captains, he said he had never even imagined a boat like the Phyllis May and he would never drive anything so strange again and she tracks like a champion and bang bang look how she went over that wake the sweetheart.
Like Jim, Monica and I were tired and wanted to go home. We would always treasure our memories of the lovely Yanks and their enormous country but sometimes you just want to live in Lilliput and watch Wimbledon and go down the chippie.
But even a burned-out traveller could not resist the blue waters turning to green and the river two miles wide narrowing into islands and then broadening out towards the Gulf and the sun and the warm wind, and the Sanibel Bridge coming up with Marv and his camera. Marv had talked his way on to the centre span, where pedestrians are not allowed. Marv looks like Jimmy Carter, and the bridgekeeper didn't want to risk turning away a president.
At least the attacks by your wildlife are over, I said to Rob.
What about the no-see-ums I warned you about?
No-see-um.
And the giant lizards?
No-see-um.
Look at that, said Rob.
Under my feet, inches away from the side of the boat, two dim shapes: muscular, eight feet long. They held alongside without seeming to flex their bodies.
They will be up in a moment, said Rob.
The dolphins were shining grey, and blew and sucked and I could see the blow-holes open and they rolled down again and held tight to the boat.
They're getting some good vibrations, said Rob.
We're giving them excitations?
Good, good, good, good vibrations, said Rob.
With our grey escorts we headed out to sea from the Sanibel Bridge, to where the waters widened and the waves chopped green and there was a smell of salt. The spray from our bow was flame, and the flakes of flame. I took over the tiller.
Where is the line? I asked. At what point are we actually in the Gulf of Mexico?
The line is at the Sanibel lighthouse over there to starboard. From then on you are in the Gulf of Mexico. Not far now—your boat is handling the waves well and the dolphins will make sure we get there. They are very clever, you know—they are trained to rescue people and fight alongside the marines. This pair has probably been sent by the CIA. They don't want a writer saying he went to the US and had a failure. Think back, I bet you have seen this pair before.
Thank heaven, I said, a creature that is on our side. You have so much savage and dangerous wildlife. I nearly lost my life to a catfish—I could feel my circulation collapsing—if I hadn't been a runner he would have had me. But all that's over now—they can't get me out here on the bounding main—ah the buggers, Tits Magee has triumphed—he has overcome—not the Virginia chiggers, the Hilton Head mosquitoes, the bluefish, the catfish, the alligators—nothing has stopped him, because his heart is pure. Your heart must be pure indeed if you are to survive the terrible broken coast of the eastern US—anything wrong, Rob?
Rob was coughing, a dry cough, as one who has put too much ginger on his melon, or has been covered in pepper by an enthusiastic Italian waiter. It's the Red Tide, he choked.
The Red Tide?
Yes, said Rob, gagging, it's a red algae. It is in the seawater. It is thrown up by the bow in the spray and we are breathing it in. It's an irritant.
He broke down coughing and I tried to answer and couldn't. We coughed and coughed and the Phyllis May drove out into the Gulf of Mexico, shouldering the green waves, foaming at the neck most like to a swan, throwing poison in the wind. Monica came up from below—Jim isn't well—he is gagging and coughing!
I could not speak but pointed to the GPS, which showed we were crossing the magic line, and Monica held the tiller with me.
We kissed and embraced and waved our hats.
We knew the Gulf of Mexico was there, though our eyes dazzled. We knew we had made it, though we could not say so. We knew the Sanibel lighthouse was behind us and the Gulf was under our flat bottom and those were the waves not of the Intracoastal but of a great sea, but we couldn't revel in it because we could hardly breathe.
The US wildlife had not stopped us, but it didn't give up easy, either.
• • •
ON THE FLOOR JIM WAS FIGHTING TO GET HIS whole body inside a bag of beef jerky. Cousin Ken's champagne cork went up with a merry bang as everyone shouted different instructions about how to open the bottle. Marv had already printed a couple of his pictures, and Captain Rob's wife, JoNell, who had shadowed us in a fishing boat, brought us shells harvested after the last hurricane—angel's wing, moon snail, buttercup, fig, olive, scallop, sand dollar.
Poor old Jim, said Monica, six hours of boating and then the Red Tide. But he has cheered up now we have stopped. Next week we fly home, Jim baby, and Andrew, our agent in Liverpool, will get the boat back to Stone. The St Christopher keyring Karen and Peter gave us at the boatyard has brought us a lot of luck. I wonder if Jim knows we are going home?
Of course he knows, I said—he knows everything before we do. Now excuse my coughs but on behalf of my dog, Jim, I want to say a few words. I want to say how pleased I am all this nonsense is over, so I can sit under the table in public houses as is proper in a civilized country and run on the common again and find that rabbit I buried last year and feel the grass between my toes and the ground firm so I can get my athlete's balance. And eat pork scratchings—the stone-hard greasy ones that nature intended as my natural food, for which she gave me my mother-of-pearl teeth and my nutcracker jaws and my long pink tongue to lick out the salty bits in the corners.
Well done, said Captain Rob, to the Phyllis May and its crew!
Everyone shouted Well done! Well done! and lifted their glasses and coughed.
I put my arm around Monica—We have been so lucky, and everyone has been so kind, and I just want to say, while our friends are here, I just want to say to you, my Gulfstream Rose …
I began to cough, and everyone else began to cough.
Jim looked up and licked his lips. He grinned, coughed, and farted.
AS I SAT IN ATLANTIC YACHT BASIN, GREAT Bridge, Virginia, for three months in a heat wave, staring death in the face, there was time to think about the path Monica and I had travelled since we met, and how I had finished up an old man on a narrowboat far from home, trying to write a book about a journey that was not going well—a journey that was not going at all.
ONE SATURDAY IN 1959 I CRASHED THE CARDIFF University Union hop and there was a girl in frilly red petticoats. When she came up to London to teach I asked her to marry me. But you are a brutish businessman working for a soap company, she said. I explained that I was really an artiste waiting my hour.
Each day I travelled up to the City from our flat in a littered shopping parade. The trains were filthy and overcrowded and too cold or too hot and I was hunched up writing stories in my lap for Punch and dreading another day at Lever Brothers—
Fear in the belly
Fear in the brain
Here we all go
To work again
Sweating hands
Sweating feet
> Move along please
Someone wants a seat
Imagine that girl
In a lustful pose
Dull the ache
With the Daily News
Try and forget
That here we go
To a million desks
All in a row
Breakfast, dinner
Lunch and telly
I love my beer
And I love my Mummy
Come here Mummy
Hold my head
Why am I still aching
Now that I'm dead
I was brought up with a three-hundred-degree view of Pennar Gut, with Pembroke Castle holding one corner and the sea flooding in from the other twice a day in hammered silver or mercury, and the clouds over Bentlass, where my grandmother was born, at the ferry. Now I was the Prince of Aquitaine, in the banished tower—
These are the blues of the businessman
These are the blues of the tired man
My music the rattle of car and train
Save me Lord from the telephone
Hear me, people hear my voice
I sing of trees and long soft grass
All day I sit upon my arse
Save me Lord in my tower of glass
My boss is sitting on my back
People all round me I don't like
I eat too much and my belly aches
Save me Lord from the diesel smoke
New towers growing every day
And there we'll all be filed away
Until we go home in the usual way
Give us strength O Lord to collect our pay
In eight years at Lever Brothers I heard no mention of the poor shareholders. We fixed our prices with our competitors, allowing us three men for each job, two-hour lunches for the Board, and freedom for the managers to go off every lunch-time and get drunk with someone from J Walter Thompson. The organisation was balanced so that no-one took any responsibility for anything. Promotion depended on how good you were at crawling—
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