Sea Change

by Jeremy Page

  ‘Hi,’ the lad says, brightly. ‘You’re the first. Shouldn’t really open till half-six, but that’s just a shit rule.’

  ‘Cheers,’ Guy says. The boy has a strong Suffolk accent. ‘Fill it will you? And I’ll need water. What else is there?’

  ‘Kiosk ent got nothing. There’s stuff in that shed.’

  While the boy fills the Flood’s tank, Guy takes the greenfinch to a spot on the bank where he can release it. There, he squats in the rough grasses and the mats of reeds washed up by the high tides. It smells of fish and oil and hay and, as he opens the flaps of the cardboard box, he looks along the stretch of shore at the gulls standing on the stones and mud, hunched in the early morning coolness. The greenfinch startles itself, flapping to a corner and staying there. It won’t last the morning on this bank, with those gulls.

  Guy closes the box again. ‘Looks like you’re off to sea again,’ he whispers. ‘Till you’re better.’

  On the way back he visits the shed and picks a bag of greengages, some plums, a dozen eggs and a jar of marmalade, dropping the money for them into a wooden chest with a padlock on it. He looks out through the doorway at the long clog-shaped profile of his boat, tied to the platform. It’s like a whale, he thinks, unbelievably big compared to the rest of the boats in the estuary. It’s a fine sight, tied up by its ropes, in the fresh morning air.

  ‘Nice food,’ Guy says, walking back to the Flood. The pontoon has a slightly swinging motion to it. The diesel hose pulses like a dark vein as it fills the tank, and the pump registers the litres in a series of soft clicks.

  ‘You goin’ up the coast?’ the boy asks.

  ‘I’m going out to sea.’

  ‘Yeah? What for?’

  Guy looks calmly back at the lad. He shrugs, and the boy smiles.

  ‘My gran would call them swimmer’s clouds,’ the lad says, giving a single nod at the sky.

  ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘Meaning go out in a boat, you come back swimming.’

  ‘You serious?’

  ‘Half.’

  The lad finishes filling the tank and goes to the kiosk to print out the bill. Guy follows him. Inside, there’s a CD playing and a smell of instant coffee. ‘See that village,’ the boy says, as he takes Guy’s card, ‘that’s the absolute worst village in the whole world.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘For the fifth year running,’ the lad says, grinning.

  Guy laughs, and offers some greengages.

  ‘No thanks, sir. Sick to death of them.’

  Guy climbs back on the Flood, puts the produce and the box with the greenfinch on the bench seat of the wheelhouse, and is cast off. He waves to the lad as he leaves, and the lad waves back, watching the Flood go for a long time.

  Soon after, the mouth of the estuary widens on both sides, a gaping sandy jaw, fringed with mud, opening like lock gates it seems, to let him pass, both shores curving away into the wide emptiness of the North Sea, then vanishing from view.

  From his seat he looks down at the passing water. It quickly loses its river character, its muddy sullen quality - here the water is churned with a new deeper energy, and he sees the point where the river finally gives way to the sea in a long curved line of tea-stained clouds of sediment, rolling below the surface. There’s a fresh smell of salt and air and increasingly an absence of land, of its smell. No more scents of agriculture and woodland and vegetation here, just the smell of the wind that arrives without obstacle from as far as it wants to, from Denmark, from Norway, from the Arctic Ocean. Empty places with little on their breath.

  Guy’s elated to be in this wildness once more - facing a horizon that has no mark in the sea other than the line the planet gives it, but the wind is stiffer and the waves more choppy and streaming than he’d imagined. Through the binoculars he checks the horizon and sees it’s a dark land of waves, peaking, foreshortened by the perspective, as rough as oak bark. Even here, so close to the coast, the bow rises in soft arcs as the waves pass by his window with gushing noises, making the boat dip in uncomfortable rhythm with the troughs. He hears objects shifting below in the saloon and cabin, a result of his river laziness, of being in calm water - the longer these boats are in the estuary the more cluttered they get - but soon all that clutter will settle into new positions, the way things tend to at sea. The Flood is strong, he thinks, it’s been afloat for years. It’s iron strong.

  Ahead in the east the sun has risen in a pale dazzling blaze. The wheelhouse is illuminated by its brilliant whiteness, coming at him on a level, a vivid sea light that cauterizes the air, unlike the estuary light that had seemed heavy with a green stain. He steers towards it, symbolically, allowing its flood of clarity to cleanse the boat, cleanse him, shine its light against the dark scenes the diary has brought: glimpses of betrayal in a brass coal scuttle, the oddly clammy skin of the artificial leg, held on his lap, late night drives through Mississippi with wooden crucifixes in front of floodlit churches, plantation shacks where relationships fall apart surrounded by cicadas.

  The cabin in Mississippi had resembled the interior of the Flood. And though he’d added embellishments, such as the gingham curtains and the rear porch with its flaky-painted rocker, essentially there was too much similarity for him to deny what’s really happening: his imagined journey and his real journey have been growing together, in a kind of reproduction.

  Even the American hire car has changed, adopting the shed-like air of the wheelhouse, along with the broken-backed feel it gives him after a day of driving. Sometimes, writing about it, when he imagines a glance into the rear-view mirror, he doesn’t see America with all its lushness and roadside signage, but he sees the North Sea instead, scraped bare and lifeless, stretching away endlessly.

  And he remembers the way Judy had sat across the cabin room, just at the point when he was going to invite her out to the porch to share the Jack Daniel’s, the way she’d levelled her gaze and told him about her affair. That wasn’t meant to happen, Guy thinks now. What was meant to happen was they drive across the States as a family, not bog themselves down in the soft underbelly of Mississippi and casually, effortlessly, destroy themselves.

  ‘Are you having an affair?’ he’d written.

  ‘Yes,’ she’d said back.

  He cuts the engine about ten miles offshore, the last point where he can see England, nearly gone, it’s as fragile as an eyelash on the curve of the sea. The waves seem to collect round the hull of the boat, toying with it. Guy wants to feel how strong they are. It’s OK, he thinks.

  He goes down to the galley and makes a breakfast of warm rolls and coffee and chocolate, and follows this with some of the greengages he bought at the fuel platform.

  He looks through the windows at the sun, where a wide bleaching light is shining in the air - it’s still fairly early. The taps of his sink glisten like they’ve been varnished - they have the appearance of being intensely real and entirely false at the same time. Marta and Rhona will be having their own breakfast now. He wonders whether Rhona’s migraine has lifted during the night, whether Marta has noticed his boat has left. It was rude what he did, to her, and to leave like this. He’s behaved like a child.

  The thought of her in his cabin last night, how calm it had seemed, how the space had closed between them in effortless intimacy - how could he have acted as bluntly as he did? That frown of worry on her forehead after she kissed him, her mouth still slackened with anticipation.

  Something very strange had occurred: for the first time in five years Guy had not wanted to be alone any more. Just a little move to one side and she could be there, with him, both of their absences with new life to fill them. The thought had arrived with such a force he had been shocked by it. Shocked by how easy it could be.

  He’ll see Marta again, he’s sure of it.

  Sitting in the bright bathe of the North Sea sunlight, he feels as though he has steadied something, albeit briefly.

  He thinks about America, and he thinks it’s time
they all woke up to face the new day.

  He wakes groggily in the morning to hear Freya laughing outside. She’s on the back porch, going wild on the flaky-painted rocker. He can hear Judy too, laughing with her. When he walks out there he enters, briefly, a picture of domestic bliss. Freya’s straddling the rocker, laughing at her own pantomime, while Judy takes photos with her old Olympus. Freya’s grinning so widely her gums are showing pink and clean above her teeth. Judy says hi, still framing Freya in the viewfinder, and tells him there’s a jug of fresh orange juice on the side. Automatically he sits at the table, seeing the juice next to a small basket of rolls with a linen cloth over them.

  ‘Where are these from?’ he asks, bewildered.

  ‘George,’ she says. ‘The owner.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I had an egg,’ Freya chips in, leaping from the rocker and walking over to a plastic child’s tricycle which has been left in the grass.

  ‘She’s loving it,’ Judy says, smiling at Freya. Guy hasn’t the words to join in. He can’t just go along with this pretence. But maybe that’s all there is to do now? A mean vine twists above him along the woodwork, and a green lizard flits along the boards, near his feet, full of eyes and fast energy.

  ‘You sleep?’ he says.

  ‘Badly,’ she says, with a hint of acknowledgement.

  ‘Me too,’ he says. They really are in the same boat, he thinks, they’re both having to deal with this, but it won’t bring them closer. It’s like an illness which will kill them in separate ways.

  The thought of asking her what has or hasn’t gone on with Phil, or what her plans are, fills him with horror. He should probably say nothing. You have to wait for the pain and recrimination to emerge - you can’t just expect it to be fully formed. And Judy seems to be in the same mood. She clearly doesn’t want to go into it now, and then there’s Freya, a few yards away on the grass - nothing can be discussed here. They will all just have to pretend this is like any other day.

  During the night Guy had watched Judy asleep on the other bed. She had drawn her body up into the shape of a question mark, and her hair was spread in a wound knot across the pillow. He’d resented her peacefulness, she didn’t deserve it, and he resented other things too, like how she must have lived a double life. Whole scenes and experiences that have been kept private from him. She must have had worries too, no doubt, about getting involved with another man - it’s plain ridiculous, that he and Judy talk about so many things, all the food and shopping decisions, the mundane running of their lives, the meaningless chatter that makes up a relationship, and yet this enormous event, this utter betrayal, has never even been hinted at.

  He imagines the times when she’s returned home after seeing Phil, from sleeping with him even, only to chat about day-to-day issues. Guy has a sudden image of her sitting outside their house in her car. A moment as she turns the engine off and just waits, thinking about being with Phil, the memory of his arms round her, the discovery of his body perhaps, where the hairs are, where the skin is paler, the smell of his neck. Intimacies she is exploring. And she sits out there, thinking about the trouble she’s in and the excitement too, and how in a second she will have to walk into her family home, put the keys in the bowl on the table, and kiss Guy chastely on the cheek. A Judas kiss.

  Sensing a day filled with mistakes arriving, Guy decides to eat. Appetite never leaves him, whatever happens. He tucks into the rolls, cutting thick slices of butter on to them and spreading honey on top of that, pouring it on. A condemned man, enjoying his right. He downs the orange juice and fills the glass again, and discovers a metal pot of hot black coffee. Judy looks slyly at him scoffing the food, a little amazed - she might be denying what’s really going on, refusing to talk about it either last night or this morning, but Guy’s sheer hunger is unfathomable to her. He knows she won’t have had a thing for breakfast. It amuses him, grimly, that she is more bothered by his ability to eat than anything else.

  Freya sits on the tricycle and tries to push it through the grass. A wheel is missing, and the grass has grown long and tangled through the rest of the toy, but she still tries to steer it. An endearing sight, Guy thinks, when a child plays with a toy they’re already too old for, glimpsing Freya’s own sense of nostalgia.

  The coffee perks him up. He puts in an extra spoonful of sugar, and dunks his last roll. A thin sheen of honey spreads across the surface of the drink. He’s eaten the whole basketful of bread, and he has the curious pleasure of knowing that Judy can’t tell him off for it. Strange, that she’s so quickly lost the right to be critical about his behaviour. Ordinarily she would have made a comment, that’s for sure. It’s a surprise to them both.

  A second surprise is that sitting there, looking out over the grassy back yard, the strange farm machinery and broken down trucks, and the wide flat expanse of the cotton field beyond - with the smell of the coffee mingling with the warm sunny air, he feels the sense of holiday returning. He’s travelling, he feels alive, he feels oddly free. It gives him a strange sense of inner strength, yet to emerge, but preparing, a thing he can rely upon. Yes, Phil’s a prat and he’s a few hundred miles away now, heading to an airport for a long and troubling flight home - and he only has one leg - let’s not forget that - while Guy is here, the man of his own family, still. Maybe it’s Judy who’s worried. After all, it’s one thing to rehearse your grand gesture - how to tell your husband that you’ve been cheating on him - but really that’s just a tiny moment, a few seconds perhaps. The real struggle comes after. Sit back, Guy, and enjoy the ride.

  Position: About ten miles offshore, say, 51° 59’N 1° 38’E. 11:50am.

  Know your place in the world, Guy says ironically, as he studies his maritime map. The North Sea is an odd shape - like a dissected rat pinned out over Europe. Blue, on the chart, but grey in reality. He looks at the countries round its edge, all of them changing the world at some point as the shoals of herring have swum past their coasts, awakening their hunger and industry. And to the north of the map, there’s nothing. Just the empty terrifying wastes of the Arctic Ocean, where the world’s latitude lines seem to converge in fear, as the distances of the sea expand.

  He starts the Flood’s engine, hears the axle revolve like a spade turning in gravel, the taps of the piston heads like far-away typewriter keys, and the thick spin of the propeller below him. So comforting, the droning chug of an engine that’s neither irritating nor relaxing, just a persistent sound of work never done. He listens to all this, and heads further out to sea.

  When he dozes off, he dreams about what keeps him awake: Freya. He feels her presence sitting by his side. They’re next to a river, in East Anglia, at the neck of the estuary. The tide has turned, and the bulrushes are moving eerily among themselves as the water wells up from below. Freya is four again, marvelling at the sights of nature she knows her father loves. Wanting to learn, wanting to be part of the moment her father is creating. Her wellies are muddy and he wonders if her feet might be cold in there, she refuses to put on thick socks because she doesn’t like the feel of them. Too itchy. Her hair-clips sparkle at him as she edges down the bank and tries to throw bits of broken reed into the water, but the water is too far even for that, and her throws are pathetically mistimed. But still she’s trying, she wants to hit the water, and he’s worried now because the water seems too near, too menacing, his fatherly apprehension once more so strong, keeping her close, keeping her away from danger. Steady love. And he can’t remember, he can’t even remember whether this moment actually happened, or whether it’s just like the rest, just another dream he’s making up.

  Guy wakes, blearily, slumped against the felloe of the ship’s wheel. He’s been holding the spokes but the boat’s been turning in a large wide curve. Behind him, his wake has encircled an area of sea like it’s his own personal claim. An island of small waves. He checks the compass and steers once more.

  He plays some music, loudly, on the stereo in the saloon. He tries to match it to wh
ere he last imagined himself in America - that dirty blues area of the Mississippi Delta. He has the blues all right! Ma baby’s juss left me, he shouts, over the track he’s playing, enjoying the abandon of it, enjoying the motion of the Flood as it takes the waves on. They seem to be a little stronger here. Yaar! he shouts as the bow rises a touch too high, every so often, opening the windows of the wheelhouse so the sea air rushes in to drown him, the water passing noisily below, bubbling up in cresting foam, and in the distance the growing darkness of storm clouds and rain. A rough black voice on the stereo now, complaining about his own wife. Relationships are such a mess, Guy thinks: they shift so slowly, almost too slow to see the changes emerging, yet every so often they have to be realigned completely, like an osteopath cracking the vertebrae to set the spine straight - it’s grown out of true while you were asleep. And he thinks of that wonderful realignment he performed himself, that wonderful cracking punch he sent into the side of Phil’s face. Forget being liberal, when it comes down to it, striking a man with all your might is an immensely satisfying act. What a tremendously pleasing thing to be able to replay in your memories! That look of total surprise. Yes, that look, of defeat.

  Guy thinks back on it now, how politely he’d knocked on the door, with the same fist that was already clenching, and that little wait while Phil found his crutch and hobbled over, legless. Legless! The look of intrigue mixed with a hint of confrontation in Phil’s expression, a man who has always reacted badly, petulantly, as if he’s never quite grown up. Despite his pursuit of Judy, he’s always taken his lead from Guy, who was a man before Phil was, who had a child first, who’s seen more of life. And when Guy looks back on that great punch he threw, it now has a cartoon image in his head - a wonderful THWACK! reeling across the room over Phil’s startled face as the man falls down. Phil, shattered on the floor and crawling off towards his bed, while Guy stands enormous in the doorway - his animated shadow flung far across the carpet in front of him.