by Peter Benson
‘Last page…’
How long had it been, how long since I had felt I could hold a woman and not disgust myself with the thought that I was using her, buying her, trading hearts on a one-way voyage? I felt my heart calm now, and as she finished the chapter I took my hand from my shirt and rested it in my lap. She closed the book, laid it on the floor and turned towards me.
‘Tell me how good it is,’ she said. ‘How good can you make me feel, Michael?’
‘It’s the best film you’ve ever made. It was wonderful, you were wonderful. You were Jennifer.’
‘Thanks…’
‘You are wonderful. You’re going to win an Oscar.’
‘You reckon?’
‘Absolutely. No contest…’
She laughed. ‘Sure.’
‘And Robert Mitchum. He was always my favourite actor. What a face! His eyelids are…’
‘Forget Bob,’ she said.
‘Gone,’ I said, and I clicked my fingers. ‘Gone, forgotten. But not for ever…’
‘No.’
Our faces were a foot apart. I moved an inch towards her and she moved too, but then I stopped. This was close and serious and I tried to count the years since the last time I had done this, since the iced-up years I gave myself. Thirty years. What sort of solution were they? Why did I freeze myself? I had no excuse, and then a man has forgotten the moves. He knows it’s happening as it does, but he thinks that maybe it’s a blessing. No more monkey on your back. No more waiting in darkened alleys for light footsteps that will never come, no more standing beneath balconies with your face turned to the moon. Guilty feelings, dead dreams in a damp bed… ‘Elizabeth?’ I said.
‘Yeah?’
‘I stayed to watch the credits, but Mrs Bell didn’t. She waited for me outside. I don’t think she liked me for that. She said she caught a chill.’
‘Little things shouldn’t come between lovers.’
‘What do you mean? We’re not lovers…’
‘It’s what I learned, Michael. You know me.’ She winked.
‘Turn me upside down and use me as a champagne glass.’
‘What?’
‘I smoke twenty-five to thirty a day, drink enough liquor to stone a horse, I’ve been married twice, three times, I can never remember. A couple of them kinda merged into each other. But I’m seventy-five years old.’ She raised a finger and wagged it at me. ‘And I don’t care.’ She put the finger away. ‘You could have stayed for the credits or left halfway through the movie and gone for a pizza instead. I’d still go for you.’
‘Go for me?’
‘Sure.’
‘Would you?’
‘Please,’ she said, ‘you know that,’ and she took my hand. ‘You’re boiling!’ She put her other hand on my forehead. ‘Are you sick? I know that look.’
‘What look?’
‘Your skin! You want to lie down…’
‘I’m okay. Fine.’
‘You don’t look fine. You should go to bed…’
‘Please!’ I raised my voice. ‘Maybe I felt a little twinge, but I have one of them every day. It’s my body talking to me, giving me the warning I’m supposed to listen to.’
‘And do you?’
‘Of course. I’m not an idiot. I’ve been one. I know the feeling.’ I tapped my heart. ‘It’s in here, Elizabeth. It’s woken up.’
‘Your heart’s been asleep?’
‘For years,’ I said.
‘What’s done the trick?’
‘You have to ask?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘but I want to hear you say it.’
‘Come on, then,’ I said. ‘Come with me,’ and I stood up and pulled her to me. She waited while I prodded the fire and then she let me lead the way.
21
A man forgets the moves and when he’s sixty-eight and the estuaries of his heart have laid silt in all the important places then it’s hard to remember, hard to dredge those places and remember what a woman’s skin needs. A woman’s skin needs tracing, a man’s heart needs holding, a woman’s eyes must be kissed, a man’s hands must be smoothed, a woman’s flight is longer, a man’s glide is uncontrolled. I lay in bed with Elizabeth Green, and all my dreams carefully laid themselves at my feet, and the ice floes that once held me so tight cracked and broke around the bed. I heard them and she watched me as I listened. She blinked her huge eyes slowly, and their colour did not fail her. The wind blew against the plastic over the window, and salt spray drifted off the bay.
I moved slowly from disbelief to shock. As she rested her head on my chest and twirled the hairs there I felt my life contracting, time shrinking, memories overlapping and snapping under their accumulated weight. I heard her say, ‘This is the night I’ve waited for,’ and I heard the words echo back with my mother’s voice. I heard my mother say, ‘Always wear it. Promise me, Michael,’ and I heard the sounds of a wharf at night, sailors pushing past, the hoot of a distant horn.
‘I’ve forgotten something,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘My cap. It’s downstairs.’ I took her hand and kissed it and laid it on the blanket, slipped out of bed and went to the door.
‘Your cap?’
I turned and nodded.
‘You’re kidding!’
I opened the door, said, ‘You won’t know I’ve gone,’ and went downstairs.
The wind was gusting, blowing west from the point to Port Juliet, strengthening and creaking the front door. Gloria was lying in front of the fire. She opened one eye and moved her head towards me. The first sheet of rain swept against the house, and the draught under the door picked up. I took my cap from its hook, put it on my head and said ‘Go to sleep’ to the dog. She closed her eye and I went back upstairs. I climbed into bed again, slipped an arm around Elizabeth Green and she rested her head on my shoulder.
‘So what’s with the cap?’
I thought and I waited, and I shifted towards her as I said, ‘My mother gave it to me.’ I took it off, turned it over and ran my fingers over the lining. I could feel the caul in there, smooth where it capped my head, wrinkled around the edges. It was the size of a fried egg. ‘A sailor’s cap. She bought it for me when I was born. I’ve had it mended a few times.’
‘Can I see?’
‘It’s a part of me,’ I said, and I gave it to her.
She rubbed its edges, its peak and the seams around the top. She held it to her nose and took a deep breath.
‘It’s as old as me.’
‘You smell better.’
‘My caul’s stitched into the lining.’
‘Your what?’
‘My caul. You know…’
‘No…’
‘The membrane in the womb. I was born in it, I was born in a shroud. I came as I’ll go. Born breathing water, Elizabeth. It hardly ever happens, but when it does it’s as lucky as you can get. A baby born in its caul will never be drowned, and a sailor who owns a caul will never be drowned. I’ve got double luck.’
‘So it protected you?’
‘Most of the time. At sea, all of the time…’
‘And you wear it in bed?’
‘Only when I’m with a woman. You know… women and the sea…’
‘What about them?’
‘They’re supposed to be similar.’
‘Are they? Who says?’
‘No one says, exactly.’
She turned and rubbed her lips over my chin. ‘Did it protect you at sea?’
‘Yes. I believe it did…’
‘In bed?’
‘No.’
‘So women and the sea, they’re not similar at all.’
I shrugged and said I didn’t know, and didn’t want to know. I was alive and that counted for more than the cap or the caul. She agreed with that, and tucked her knees up towards my waist. We kissed each other and then we did what old people do for loving. The wind blew through our moves, and the rain beat like rattles against the plastic. The slates drummed, the sea
smashed the shore. The bed groaned like a ship, and all the time I felt my cap on my head and her in my arms and for once I felt protected, quiet in the cradle of luck and chance and their conjunction over Port Juliet in the early stormy spring of the year.
She dozed and then she slept, and I tucked a pillow under my head and watched her. The rain eased and a slice of moonlight caught her face for five minutes, and her face blued in my bed. There was never a chance that we would do what we could have done once but I did think the thought, I did imagine her running her fingers down my back. Like her voice the thought was an echo, lost at sea, sliding down the valleys of waves and foaming at the bottom. Elizabeth Green in my bed — that would be something to tell Mr Boundy. Elizabeth Green, that woman, that whore with her hair and her diamond brooch, and her voice. Elizabeth Green thinking that she’s better than the rest of us, that she can buy love and respect. The wind raced on and the rain stormed over the house. I bent my head and kissed her cheek and like the dog she opened one eye and moved her head to look at me.
The older you are the more lightly you sleep, and the more lightly you sleep the flightier the dreams. She said, ‘I was dreaming about the old days.’
I said, ‘I haven’t slept…’
‘I was in this house I used to own. Miserable place, it was. Miserable times. Nineteen eighty? I don’t know… I was in the kitchen, staring out at the back yard when a delivery man came by, put a package on the back step and tapped on the window. I had to sign for the package, and as I did he said, “You… you used to be Elizabeth Green, didn’t you?”, as if I was dead already. And I knew it, in the dream… I knew I was dead. I could eat and drink and breathe but I was dead inside.’ She tapped her chest. ‘As I was watching him leave I felt so sad, overwhelmingly sad. Sad like some lost child. That was it…’
‘You cried in the night.’
‘What does it mean?’
‘Does it have to mean anything?’
‘Sure.’
‘I don’t think so. The only thing that means anything, that matters, is that you’re leaving today.’
‘Am I?’
‘Please…’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Never mind.’
She smiled, half at me and half at the pillow, and said, ‘I can’t say what’ll happen. This is a waking dream, isn’t it? Who knows how it’s going to end?’
I cannot say what will happen — I was not going to hang on to those words again. I would not fool myself again. She ran her tongue over her teeth and closed her eye, and five minutes later she was snuffling back to sleep. The storm gathered at the doors and windows of my house, and it flipped bricks from the ruins and tossed them on to the shore. I listened for as long as I could, but some time before two o’clock in the morning I fell into my own dreaming, and lost all the sense waking gave me.
22
I made captain in 1972. I bought myself a new suit, a travelling clock/barometer/thermometer and a leather suitcase. This suitcase, the certification and my age kicked me into a gear I had never tried before, a stern one with narrow eyes, slitty lips and a lonely walk. The captain’s walk, hands held behind the back, head up, the one I had been born for. I grew my first beard since Barcelona, Isabel and the plane trees of Sant Feliu de Guixols, and I told myself that I had not failed. I was not lonely; I was respected. Men waited for me to speak, and listened when I did. I was an artist of command, fearless, equal to any situation. My heart slept but I was a complete man, and all my ambitions had hatched.
I took my first command to West Africa, and as we swung at anchor in the Takoradi roads I stood on the bridge with my head over the radar screen, and I plotted the courses of a dozen ships as they crossed the Gulf of Guinea. I was at the centre of the screen, the ocean, the world. I was not proud but I was absolute. I was wearing tropical uniform: white sleeveless shirt, white trousers. I was not sweating. My first ship; she was the MV Moon Dreams, and we carried a mixed cargo from Tilbury. Tyres, stationery, twelve diesel generators, five second-hand Land Rovers, oil tanks and containers of small tools.
There’s a place on the ocean where Europe fades, the swells lengthen and Africa begins to thrum, dimly at first, then stronger and deeper. One month this place is moving over the Cape St Vincent Ridge and the next it has drifted south to Madeira and it’s there you feel it, there you smell the spiced steam that blows off the coast, the coast that gives more sailors more nightmares than nightmares exist. Even now, even with maps and radio, I have heard them whispering in their cabins, and they dream: creeping disease, solid water, cats the size of dogs and dogs the size of horses. Clouds that take the shape of monsters and spirits, beasts that eat Christians and Christians who cannot see an end to it. Clouds that fool and clouds that lie. Clouds no man could follow, however much he thought he knew them.
I left the radar and went to the bridge wing. I stood with my back to the sun and watched Ghana slip into the evening. Haze rose over the reefs and birds called from the trees that lined the shore. The sky bled the ocean, and fish jumped across the bows of the ship. The air was still but it passed me by. The holds creaked and a fetid smell drifted, but I stood apart. This bridge was mine, this world was mine, I was in control, I would not bend again. I heard the motorman call out. He was looking for the man who should have greased a bearing. He was doing his job and I was doing mine, and I would. I was stronger than I had ever been, and quieter in my mind. Memories came but I let them pass me by. I could not let them distract me. Not now, not here at the top of my life. I went back to the radar and its light crossed my face, around and around, and the courses of the ships in the Gulf blinked off, on, off and on.
Sunday morning boomed over the ruins. The storm passed. The sky spread itself, the sun rose milky and a bright sea foamed to the shore. Broken altocumulus spread from the west, the kindest clouds, spreading long shadows across the fields, the walls and my house. Gulls wailed with a light wind and the grass rustled along the verges of the road to Port Juliet.
I woke before Elizabeth Green. She was wearing one of my shirts. It had fallen off her shoulder and the buttons had come undone. I reached over and covered her up, and touched her cheek with my fingertips. She stirred but did not wake.
She had been in the film I had seen the night before, fifteen feet tall with shining teeth, huge eyes and hair like a twenty-five-year-old’s. She had lived in my house for four days. We had gone for walks and watched gulls over the offshore stacks. I had taken her swimming in the sea and she had worn my clothes. We had eaten eggs together and worked in the vegetable garden. The sun had shone and it had rained, but she never mentioned the weather. She did not babble or crunch or say something stupid at the wrong moment. The little wattles of skin beneath her chin hung from her like leaves. Her lips quivered as she slept, and I noticed a mole beneath her left earlobe. It had a single fair hair growing from its centre. I held my fingers over it for a second then climbed slowly out of bed, grabbed my jacket and trousers and went downstairs. I dressed, put the kettle on the stove, then stepped outside with Gloria, and walked down to the shore.
As we passed the weavers’ cottages I saw the cat crouched over the remains of a bird. It had been a wren. I recognised the feathers. Any sailor does. They are lucky; not as lucky or permanent as the best luck, but you don’t pass them by.
Jenny’s feather… Once upon a time, a beautiful mermaid sat upon her rock and sang with a voice so wondrous that passing sailors could not resist. They steered their ships closer and closer to the rock, for they wanted to hear more, and they wanted to see more, but lust for song and flesh brings its own terrible rewards and they were drowned, one after another.
A knight errant, a brave man whose name is lost in the faint clouds of time, determined to punish the wicked mermaid, but just as he was about to put his plan (details lost also) into action, the mermaid changed into a wren.
Infuriated beyond belief, the knight called upon higher powers, who placated his anger by condemning the mermaid to
appear as a wren every New Year’s Day…
I hissed the cat away, picked up the remains and plucked out a pair of tail feathers, wiped them clean on my sleeve and tucked them behind my ear. One, two, three, Jenny Jenny wren; a great deal smaller than a gull or a hen.
I walked down to the beach, stood with my back to the ocean, and as Gloria dashed to the tideline I shaded my eyes and stared towards the house.
I remember very well:
I thought about you sleeping through that morning, and I wished your mother had never left this place. I wished that luck or something stronger had given us a chance. Luck is an expression of man’s ignorance? I don’t think so. I think luck is like the wind blowing clouds.
Were you awake? Had you got out of bed? Were you peeking through a gap in the plastic? Had you brushed your hair? Could you see me? Did you decide to stay but quickly dismiss the thought? Did you think I looked handsome as I stood on the shore with the dog beside me? Did you turn around, pick up the black dress you arrived in, fold it up and put it in a bag? Did you?
Nothing changes for ever. Oh, please. You always find yourself back where you started, back at the place where the pain is keenest, and all your sense breaks and you could be twenty-five again. Did you think you were twenty-five again? Or were we old people? Was I a big old man with a regret denied and a dog? Did my hair make you think of clouds?
I remember; I thought about you sleeping through that morning, and I wished your mother had never left this place. I loved you because I had to. I know I was a selfish man but I had failed too many times and I wanted to know how that love you talked about felt. Unconditional love. Love for the end of our lives. I walked back to the house with a strained heart, but when I saw you the only thing I could say was: