The Boat

by Clara Salaman

  The human spirit is cursed with survival and after what might have been days or weeks, he must have stopped waiting for her to come back, he must have got himself up off the saloon berth, stopped staring into the yellow flower on the fabric of the cushion covers and started functioning again, because he left the island, the wind took them west and the sun set and rose as if everything was exactly the same. He watched aimlessly as it journeyed across the timeless sky. At night the stars carried on their usual business prickling the sky with false hope. Meaningless days passed. Alcohol was his only friend. He drank all the hours he could.

  He had no idea what month it was. It might have been August or September: it meant nothing. He saw other boats, day trippers. Some sailed close and he stared dazed and confused at their smiling, waving faces. He wondered what they saw. He remembered Smudge then, but she was a stranger to him. She was as brown as a nut, her once dark hair now streaked by the sun. He knew he wasn’t fit to look after himself, let alone her. Truly, he just didn’t care; where there should have been a hot and sentient heart, there was nothing, only numbness. He watched Smudge feeding herself, opening jars, eating jam with her fingers, licking biscuit crumbs from the floor, squeezing cartons of old juice that she had ripped open, scooping out powdered milk with her fingers, her face covered in the white powder like something out of Scarface. She would sit at the bows clutching her spear, looking as feral and as crazy as he presumed he did, but he couldn’t feel anything about it. Sometimes he caught her staring at him and once or twice he thought he had heard her whispering in his ear, singing songs, but on the whole she left him alone and mainly he just didn’t notice her at all. He knew he frightened her with his mumbling. Sometimes, in his sleep, the numbness was pierced by a hot white fury and he would rant and rave and wake himself up in a furious sweat. Frank, Annie, Clem – all three of them had fucked him over. He was full of loathing.

  And yet he couldn’t rid himself of all the love. What was he meant to do with this left-over love inside of him, where was it meant to go. Her absence hit him again and again, a hundred times a day, never lightening its touch. There was no point to anything. Nor would there ever be any point, he knew that. He kept his eyes focused on the horizon because that was all he could do – he kept moving because there was no other choice.

  Only when Smudge spotted the island did it strike him that perhaps he did have a choice. The choice had been there all along. He’d taken the binoculars from her and had a look. They were a long way off. He could see that it was like most of the islands they had passed: mountainous, the tip of some ancient volcano exposed to the air, the landscape so dry and scorched that human life seemed an impossibility. He wondered vaguely where they were, what island this was, what language the people spoke, but not enough to find out. He was better off not knowing. They were somewhere off Africa, that was all he needed to know. It crossed his mind to start working out the longitude and latitude, perhaps he should drag the sextant out – it was probably about midday, perfect for a bearing. But ultimately, he saw no point.

  All afternoon he tacked towards the island, then the wind swung round and he found himself approaching it on a gentle run. As they got closer it became clear that he had been wrong about human life: the occasional stone house stood on the hillsides and his idea began to grow roots. He kept checking through the binoculars and soon saw a small port, which he avoided; he had no desire to be seen or to see people, he barely felt human himself any more. Instead he sailed around to the western side. The coastline was sheer, punctuated by the occasional turquoise cove, but mainly the beaches were made of black volcanic sand: the kind the tourists didn’t like.

  The moon had begun to rise now and it was huge and yellow, stealing the light from the sun as it slipped down the other side of the sky, both of them glinting in competition.

  When he saw the church everything fitted into place. At least one of them could be saved. A cross, even at a subliminal level, is a strangely comforting sign. It stood out, propitious and blaring above the small arched building at the top of a hill. Beneath the church a few houses were scattered about around a sheltered bay. Ten or so colourful fishing boats bobbed up and down by a pontoon in the golden evening light. They were still a good couple of miles out and he sat there at the tiller knowing what he had to do; he was filled, for the first time since she’d gone, with a purpose.

  He sailed past the church and took refuge in a small inlet on the other side near a natural arch in the rocks. The moon had won the battle for the sky. It was shining up high, had got smaller and turned silver but was glowing brighter than ever. In fact it was so bright, the water so clear and the seabed so sandy, he watched the anchor sink and take hold beneath him. The boat swung round into a comfortable position and Johnny sat on deck and rolled the last of the cigarettes. He picked up the binoculars and studied every cranny of the shoreline, spotting a path over beyond the rocks on the far side of the beach.

  He told Smudge that they were going to dress for dinner on the boat. She looked up, surprised to hear him speak directly to her. Her face lit up, so like her mother’s he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up on end. He told her that they would wait until tomorrow to go ashore; in the meantime they would have a dinner party.

  Below deck, Smudge wandered down to the forepeak while Johnny examined the non-contents of the food cupboard. There was one packet of pasta left. He rifled around for more edibles and found a tin of sardines under the saloon seat. He didn’t think either of them had had anything resembling a meal for a long time so he pulled up a bucket of seawater and got it on the boil over the weak gas flame.

  He went through the saloon, where Smudge was now taking off her filthy clothes, and into the heads where he found a hairbrush lying by the sink. He noticed little specks of blood on the mirror. Annie’s blood. He picked them off with his thumbnail, looking through them into the reflection beyond, which shocked him. He was terribly thin and wasted with a look in his eye so grim that he wasn’t surprised that Smudge cowered from him.

  He went through into the forecabin and leant over the planks of the bed and opened one of the lockers. He rummaged around and grabbed a few handfuls of Smudge’s clothes, picking up the hairbrush from the washstand as he came back through. He chucked the clothes in the corner and tried to brush her hair but she didn’t like it so he didn’t bother, instead he put her old woolly hat on her head. He ran a flannel over her filthy face and it turned out that most of her tan was dirt. Her freckles emerged one by one like the first stars of the night. He couldn’t avoid her big, watery stare as he wiped clean her little heart-shaped face.

  ‘Hello, Johnny,’ she said quietly and he felt an unfamiliar tugging at his heart.

  He tried to smile but the muscles in his face felt strange and unused. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said.

  ‘What are you sorry for?’ she asked as he concentrated on getting the dirt off her neck. ‘Why are you cleaning me?’ she said.

  ‘Can’t have a dinner party looking like shit, can we?’ he said.

  ‘You look like shit too,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You’re right. Shall I shave?’

  ‘Daddy has a suit you could wear.’

  ‘Does he?’

  ‘And a twiddly tie. I think he met the Queen in it.’

  Johnny nodded. ‘Did he now?’ He tweaked her cheek. ‘Well, what’s good enough for the Queen should be good enough for you. I’ll put it on.’

  He went back through for a shave. He could see her in the saloon going through her bag of clothes with great deliberation, humming all the while. He marvelled at her capacity for happiness, the resilience of childhood, for she too had lost everything. He saw her pick out her blue, stripy pyjamas and he watched as she carefully put them on back to front and went up into the cockpit to wait for him.

  Smooth-faced and paler beneath the beard, Johnny looked inside the forepeak locker again and found Frank’s suit, black and creased. He put it on with a white sh
irt and the dicky bow and stared at himself in the mirror. He looked ridiculous, as though he was getting married or something. He rolled up the trouser legs and the sleeves and tied a belt around the waist. He put on his old trainers but his feet felt strange in shoes, he’d been barefoot for so long.

  ‘OK, my lady,’ he said to her as he put the pasta in the pot. ‘Before we eat we must have a toast!’

  She was enjoying the game, or perhaps was just enjoying some attention for a change. He could see her stripy legs banging against the cockpit seat as she waited impatiently for him to come up and join her. Inside the silver medicine box, he found the bottle of sleeping medicine that Annie had used, which he took out and brought up along with two tumblers and a bottle of wine. She laughed with delight when she saw him dressed up like that. He paused, listening to that crackly little laugh that he hadn’t heard for a long while. She’s five years old, for Christ’s sake. Five years old.

  He placed the tumblers between them on the seat and poured her a shot of the sleeping medicine and himself a tumbler full of wine. They chinked glasses. He noticed how she mimicked the way her mother held her glass, with her little finger raised.

  ‘To you, Smudge!’ he said, a lump in his throat, and they both knocked it back. He refilled the tumblers and they repeated the toast several times until the medicine bottle was nearly empty and he thought to himself surely that had to be enough. He watched her eat her salty pasta in silence. She was ravenous; she couldn’t get it into her mouth fast enough. He took courage from that. She would be all right, he thought. She was a survivor.

  An hour later, the moon beaming down on them, Smudge sound asleep on his lap, he gently rubbed her little fingers in his hand and stared out at the silver water with his vacant eyes. There were no other options. He looked up at the stars; they were trying to tell him where they were, trillions of them splashed about the heavens like arrows, but he didn’t want to know.

  The time had come. He pressed her little hand to his lips, looking at the grubby long nails, the dimples on her hands. In her sleep she gave his hand a little squeeze in response. He closed his eyes and kissed her fingers. He prised himself out from under her sleeping body and laid her flat on the cockpit seat. She was wearing a jumper of Clem’s now, the small blue one with holes at the elbows and the sleeves rolled up.

  He went down into the saloon and clicked the light on. He opened the portside seat and pulled out their big maroon sail bag. For a moment he stood there holding it, unable to move, filled with an intense but fleeting anger towards Clem for leaving him in this situation. Then he hurriedly unzipped it and glanced inside. It was full of all her bits of crap: papers, tickets, pear drops, pebbles and stuff that she’d been dragging round for months. He couldn’t bear to look at it. Instead he turned it inside out and shook out all the contents on to the floor. He folded a blanket and laid it out on the base of the bag like a mattress, putting in a few clothes at the sides to pad it out.

  He took it up into the cockpit and picked up Smudge’s drugged little body, carefully placing her inside the bag on to the blanket, fitting her in as snugly as he could. He wrapped the sides of the blanket around her and folded her arms across her body. He picked up Gilla, with his shining button eyes, and tucked him under her arm and did up the zip to her chest. He went down into the saloon and filled one of her beakers with water and put it in the bag with her. Then he clicked off the lights and shut the cockpit door behind him.

  He pulled the inflatable life raft from the deck, wondering how old it was, hoping it would still work. He chucked it in the water. He’d never opened one of these before but it did exactly what it said it would. He pulled the rope and it unfolded into air-filled life like that blow-up doll Rob had once bought. He tied it to the cleat and then carefully leant overboard and lowered Smudge into the raft, surprised at how small and light she was: the bag was no heavier than it had been with all Clem’s stuff. He climbed into the boat after her and undid the painter.

  He began to paddle shorewards. The moon was so bright he felt extremely visible but was pretty sure he was safe from prying eyes; there was nothing habitable on this side. Once on the shore, he pulled the raft up high on to the sand behind a small rock and lifted the bag over his shoulder and carried little Smudge like a piece of luggage. He trudged across the sand and clambered up over the rocks towards the path, noticing the shells that were embedded in the volcanic rock as if artfully placed and he couldn’t help but wonder where he was. He became aware of a cacophony of noise ahead of him, birds or frogs, he wasn’t quite sure.

  The church was up high on the left of the bay, he’d noticed that as they’d passed, and he headed up towards it, the moon lighting up every cranny in the rocks as he carried her gently on to the path. He must have disturbed whatever was making the noise for it stopped abruptly as he got there and in the silence he could hear faint sounds of a guitar; it took him by surprise, he hadn’t been near other humans for ages. He paused on the rocks and listened but the warmth of the music made him ache for Clem and his old life so acutely he bit his lip until he could taste blood. He could hear laughter and applause from the same direction as the guitar music. The laughter sounded displaced, utterly alien to him; the idea that there could be joy and happiness in the world when she was gone confirmed to him that he had no place here any more.

  He stood stock-still, taking in his surroundings. He was on the westerly edge of the bay; there were barely a dozen houses dotted about it and, to his left, the highest point of the village was the church. The music was coming from one of the houses nearer the water, a bar perhaps. A single frog ribbited from close by; he must have been near a pool, but he couldn’t see it. Then the lot of them joined in, he had never heard frogs en masse before and the noise was deafening. He peered at Smudge under his arm, sleeping peacefully despite the racket, her mouth open, her cherubic lips a little parted, and he set off up the sandy path towards the church.

  The church was a small building with an arch and a bell at the top, its rusty tongue hanging out above him. The door was ajar and he pushed it wide open. It creaked loudly and he stepped inside. The space was functional and to the point, Christ on a cross at the pulpit and ten or so rows of chairs. Moonlight flooded in through an arched window at the back of the church casting Christ’s shadow across the stone floor in the aisle, his left hand almost brushing Johnny’s trainer. He looked around carefully, trying to fix it in his memory; he didn’t know why, but it seemed important. And then he turned briskly and stepped out. Not a soul was about. He carefully took the bag off his shoulder and placed it gently on the ground in the porch with only the moonlight looking on. He undid the zip a smidgeon and tucked Gilla in close under Smudge’s arm.

  He bent over her and kissed her soft, smooth cheek and squeezed her little fingers. The tightness in his throat came out as a stifled sob. ‘God, you bastard,’ he said. ‘If you have any mercy at all, look after her.’

  Then he crept off stealthily back towards the boat with no name without looking back, just glad that she hadn’t cried out. He ran down on to the beach and dragged the life-raft back into the water and rowed as fast as he could back to the boat. He tied it up, got on board, pulled up the anchor, got the main up and set off at a lick. He didn’t look back once, he didn’t want to know where he was, what island this was, what bay he was in. It didn’t matter to him. Nothing mattered to him at all any more. He had no attachments; he was just ghosting now.

  He sailed out into the night, over the water into the nothingness, and didn’t stop until the sun had set and risen again and crossed the sky and set and risen and he was sure that he had no chance of being rescued.

  Drowning

  There had to be worse ways of dying. This was unbelievably good. He hadn’t envisaged this at all. He had never imagined death to be such a peaceful affair. What was all the fuss about? Death had had a bad press. Death was nothing but a refuge for the tired, a pillow at the end of an exhausting day. And now that the pillow wa
s so tangible, so plumped and comfortable, all the pain inside him had subsided. He was a man with absolutely nothing left to lose. He was a free man.

  The surface of the water was flickering silver and black ribbons in the moonlight. The waves had abated a little; they were his friends again. He hadn’t noticed when everything had stopped hurting. He must have been too busy dying. It couldn’t be long now; he felt as though he’d been drowning for days. He wanted to roll over face down into the water and slip away. But even that felt like too much effort. He turned his head slightly, or maybe he didn’t but his eye looked up at the moon, which was so bright and so beautiful that he had to squint a little. His salted lips cracked as he smiled up at her. He must have turned again for now he seemed to be lying on his back looking up at the stars. They took his breath away, sparkling like jewels in the dark blanket of the night: Orion’s belt pointing to the west, the plough, the North Star, Betelgeuse. There they all were, eternally glittering and dancing, regardless of anything, all for nothing, all for no one. It was so fucking beautiful he wanted to weep.